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This research examines the effects of obesity, gender, and specialty on the social influence of physicians. Recent research in other areas of social science indicates that the effects of gender are declining, but the effects of the obesity physical appearance dimension linger. For physicians, just the opposite seems to be the case. More significant gender effects than obesity effects were found. Some specialties also interact with gender and obesity. Moreover, the research describes an innovative use of morphing to manipulate and isolate the obesity stimulus.

Background:Electrical stimulation of fractures has been reported to enhance fracture healing. X-rays are normally used to assess union of fractures. Electrical conduction is not tried as a tool to study fracture healing. The current study focuses on electrical conduction as a diagnostic tool to assess fracture healing and new bone formation. The aim was to find if electrical resistance across the fracture can be used as a tool to study fracture healing which can be verified with simultaneous radiographs.Materials and Methods:A prospective study was conducted where 12 open fractures of tibia, including two with bone defects were evaluated. They were debrided and four-carbon ring Ilizarov external fixators were applied. Their healing was followed with clinical assessment and periodical X-rays till the endpoint of fracture union and then the rings were removed. In addition, all these cases also had application of electrical voltage in the range of 0.1–1.0 V DC in 0.1 V increments, across the two wires on either side of fracture. The output current was recorded by an ammeter connected in series. Resistance calculated for various voltages was plotted as a graph for the period of fracture treatment and the characteristics were studied. This graph was compared with the appearance of new bone in the X-rays.Results:In all cases, when the above graph stabilized, in the consecutive recordings, the X-rays showed healing (bridging callus) matching the curve and the patient was able to load the limb. The time of stabilization of this graph for a specific voltage was different in individual cases. However, for a given case, the resistance characteristics were the same for the entire voltage range of 0.1–1.0 V.Conclusion:If the resistance versus day curve stabilizes on the consecutive recordings, we can predict that the fracture is in the process of healing. This stabilization period also matched the patients’ ability to comfortably load the limb and also the radiographs which showed bridging callus (healing). If this is used as a positive criterion for fracture healing in future, the radiation exposure by X-rays shall be less.

The Twin Rotor MIMO System is a higher order non-linear plant and is inherently unstable due to cross coupling between tail and main rotor. In this paper only the control of main rotor is considered which is non-linear and stable by using adaptive schemes. The control problem is to achieve perfect tracking for input reference signals while maintaining robustness and stability. Four adaptive schemes were implemented, two using Model Reference Adaptive Control under which MIT rule and Modified MIT rule are used. The other two using Adaptive Interaction, namely, Adaptive PID and Approximate Adaptive PID. It is observed that adaptive schemes fulfill all the three system performance requirements at the same time. Modified MIT rule was found to give superior performance in comparison to other controllers. Also Approximate Adaptive PID was able to stabilize the main rotor and cancel the effect of cross coupling between tail rotor and main rotor when operating simultaneously without the need for designing decouplers for the system. Thus the main rotor can be made independent from the state of the tail rotor by using Approximate Adaptive PID.

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