Abstract: The present invention provides an isotonic six degree-of-freedom input device to be grasped by a user's fingers and manipulated by both fingers, wrist and upper limb. The device includes a housing having a shape and dimension effective to permit a user to grasp and manipulate the housing using the fingers of his hand. In one embodiment the housing encloses an interior cavity adapted to contain a position sensor. The entire housing is a pressure sensitive switch which is activated by the user squeezing the housing with his fingers and/or thumb from any position on the outer surface of the housing. In a preferred embodiment the input control device is spherical in shape and has a textured outer surface adapted to prevent slippage in the user's fingers. In addition to the large muscle groups of the shoulders, arm and hand, the input device makes extensive use of the small muscle groups of the fingers and thumb.

Abstract: The present invention provides a new synchronized optical method for measuring surface pressure on rotating objects such as propellers or other rotating objects. The technique is based on the phenomenon of oxygen quenching of luminescence coatings and synchronized optical imaging. A surface coating, referred to as a pressure sensitive paint (PSP), is formed by mixing photo-luminescence molecules in an oxygen permeable polymer. The luminescence excited by an appropriate light source decreases as the oxygen concentration rises due to quenching. As a result, the luminescence intensity of light emitted from the coating varies as a function of the partial pressure of oxygen. A digital camera measures the luminescence intensity distribution over the object and the pressure distribution can be computed.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and device for producing an illusion of weightlessness. An enclosed room having walls, a floor and a ceiling defining an interior is provided. A plurality of visually polarized objects are rigidly secured to the walls, ceiling or floor to indicate an up and down direction. A user is secured into a cushioned user support member mounted in the enclosed room and rotated into the supine posture. The room is then rotated into alignment with the user's body. The room containing a rich variety of visually polarized objects having recognizable tops and bottoms still appears upright when the room and person in the support member are both rotated at an angle of 90.degree. from the upright position. The gravity sense organs in the inner ear (otolith organs) which normally indicate when the head is erect, are not powerful enough in most people to overcome the strong contradictory visual information.

Abstract: Cellulose films useful as wound and bum dressings are prepared from a solution of cellulose produced by Acetobacter xylinum in a stirred tank. The materials of this invention comprise a film of microbially produced cellulose, particularly cellulose produced from the culture of Acetobacter xylinum in a stirred tank. The film is made by dissolving the cellulose in a solvent system comprising dimethylacetamide and lithium chloride, casting the resulting solution onto a flat surface and regenerating the film in a gelation bath. Humectant is incorporated into the film by solvent exchange. The film is then sterilized and packaged for long term storage. These films are strong and elastic having mechanical properties superior to plant derived cellulose membranes and similar to that of the human skin and are useful as wound dressings.

Abstract: Automatic discovery of qualitative and quantitative patterns inherent in data sets is accomplished by use of a unified framework which employs adjusted residual analysis in statistics to test the significance of the pattern candidates generated from data sets. This framework consists of a search engine for different order patterns, a mechanism to avoid exhaustive search by eliminating impossible pattern candidates, an attributed hypergraph (AHG) based knowledge representation language and an inference engine which measures the weight of evidence of each pattern for classification and prediction. If a pattern candidate passes the statistical significance test of adjusted residual, it is regarded as a pattern and represented by an attributed hyperedge in AHG. In the task of classification and/or prediction, the weights of evidence are calculated and compared to draw the conclusion.