The flexible motion of the inchworm makes the locomotion mechanism as the prominent one than other limbless animals. Recently, the application of engineering greatly assists the inchworm locomotion to be applicable in the robotic mechanism. Due to the outstanding robustness, sliding mode control (SMC) has been validated as a robust control strategy for diverse types of systems. Even though the SMC techniques have made numerous achievements in several fields, some systems cannot be comfortably accepted as the general SMC approaches. Accordingly, this paper develops the Grey Wolf-Second order sliding mode control (GW-SoSMC) to control the manipulator of the inchworm robot. The GW-SoSMC reduces the chattering phenomenon of SMC and improves the controlling ability of SoSMC by weightage function. Subsequently, it compares the performance of the proposed method with several conventional techniques like Grey Wolf-SMC (GW-SMC), FireFly-SoSMC (FF-SoSMC), Artificial Bee Colony-SoSMC (ABC-SoSMC), Group Searching-SoSMC (GS-SoSMC), and Genetic Algorithm-SoSMC (GA-SoSMC). It portrays the valuable comparative analysis by measuring the accomplished joint angles, error, and response of the controller. Thus the proposed method discovers the supervisory controller for the inchworm robot that is immensely better than conventional controllers mentioned earlier.

We study the asymptotic behavior of a new particle filter approach for the estimation of hidden Markov models. In particular, we develop an algorithm where the latent-state sequence is segmented into multiple shorter portions, with an estimation technique based upon a separate particle filter in each portion. The partitioning facilitates the use of parallel processing, which reduces the wall-clock computational time. Based upon this approach, we introduce new estimators of the latent states and likelihood which have similar or better variance properties compared to estimators derived from standard particle filters. We show that the likelihood function estimator is unbiased, and show asymptotic normality of the underlying estimators.

Objectives: We compared Polish and Scottish Health Technology Assessment (HTA) process in order to elicit recommendations for future development of HTA methodological guidelines in Poland.

Methods: We studied the differences between Polish and Scottish HTA methodological guidelines. HTA recommendations issued by Polish HTA agency (AHTAPol) in the period January 1 through December 31, 2008, were benchmarked to HTA guidance published by Scottish Medical Consortium (SMC) for the same drug technology.

Results: The Scottish HTA methodological guidelines were more instructive in terms of clinical and economic evaluations than Polish guidelines. SMC evaluated forty-eight of sixty-eight drug technologies appraised by AHTAPoL. There were thirty drug technologies that received similar guidance in both countries and eighteen with contradictory HTA recommendations. In Scotland, there were more positive HTA recommendations than there were in Poland. While comments about efficacy or safety were commonplace among reasons for negative recommendations in Poland, insufficient justification of treatment's cost in relation to benefits was the most often cited reason for rejection in Scotland. SMC tended to recommend restricted use to specific sub-populations for several drug technologies negatively appraised by AHTAPoL.

Conclusions: The comparison between SMC and AHTAPoL suggests that there is potential room of improvement of the Polish HTA methodological guidelines. Comparative effectiveness and safety, subgroup analysis, and adaptation of models to local settings were identified as key areas for further development of Polish HTA methodological guidelines.

The spatial power spectrum of the HI 21 cm intensity in the Small Magellanic Cloud (Stanimirovic et al. 1999) is a power law over scales as large as those of the SMC itself. It was interpreted as due to turbulence by Goldman (2000) and by Stanimirovic & Lazarian (2001). The question is whether the power spectrum is indeed the result of a dynamical turbulence or is merely the result of a structured static density. In the turbulence interpretation of Goldman (2000) the turbulence was generated by the tidal effects of the last close passage of the LMC about 0.2 Gyr ago. The turbulence time-scale was estimated by Goldman to be 0.4 Gyr, so the turbulence has not decayed yet. Staveley-Smith et al. (1997) observed in the SMC about five hundreds of HI super shells. Their age is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the turbulence age. Therefore, if the turbulence explanation holds, their observed radial velocities should reflect the turbulence in the gas in which they formed. In the present work we analyze the observed radial velocities of the super shells. We find that the velocities indeed manifest the statistical spatial correlations expected from turbulence. The turbulence spectrum is consistent with that obtained by Goldman (2000).

L'objectif de cette étude est de comprendre et de modéliser le comportement mécanique de divers types de composites(fibres courtes, fibres longues...) par le couplage d'un modèle micro-mécanique et d'un modèle d'endommagement. Le modèle micromécanique permet de déterminer les caractéristiques élastiques du matériau à partir des caractéristiques thermo-mécaniques de la fibre et de la matrice par une technique d'homogénéisation micromécanique. Le modèle d'endommagement, par l'utilisation du couplage plasticité à écrouissage isotrope et/ou cinématique non-linéaire avec l'endommagement, permet la prise en compte de l'évolution des déformations résiduelles et de l'augmentation de la pseudo-limite élastique au cours du chargement

We are preparing a catalog of extragalactic planetary nebulae. The current number of entries is $\sim$8,000 objects, with the largest samples coming from the Local Group (SMC, LMC, M33, and M31), but with representation from over 55 galaxies. The catalog is expected to be complete in late 2007.

Absolute dimensions and the distance modulus have been established for the early-type eclipsing binary HV 2226 in the SMC. Analyses of the new radial velocities reported here, and CCD light curves published by Jensen et al. (1988) yield component masses of 9.3 ± 0.7 and 5.6 ± 0.5 M⊙, respectively. The radii are 5.6 ± 0.2 and 5.3 ± 0.2 R⊙ with the secondary component filling its Roche lobe which implies that HV 2226 must have evolved through a case A mass-transfer process. A distance modulus of (mv – Mv )0 = 18m.6 ± 0m.3 is derived, marginally lower than the adopted mean of 18m.9 for the SMC. The position of HV 2226, however, indicates that it is in fact situated in the near side of the SMC. In the present case, the accuracy of this estimate is limited mainly by the uncertainties of ≈ 2000 K in the effective temperatures. We point out that distance moduli with uncertainties of ± 0m.15 can be achieved from accurate radial velocities, light curves and colour indices of eclipsing binaries; such systems in the SMC and LMC are therefore promising distance indicators and work on further selected candidates is in progress.