Michael Morse

• BS, MS, Ph.D., JD
• Professor at University of San Diego

The press is full of articles discussing the risk of Electric Shock Drowning (ESD). Per these publications, the risk of ESD is limited to current leakage in fresh water environments. Medical response and treatment of ESD is based on this generally held belief. There appears to be no research or simulation establishing the true bounds and risk of ES...

The press is full of articles discussing the risk of Electric Shock Drowning (ESD). Per these publications, the risk of ESD is limited to current leakage in fresh water environments. Medical response and treatment of ESD is based on this generally held belief. There appears to be no research or simulation establishing the true bounds and risk of ES...

Until the late 1980's it was believed that the mechanisms of electrical injury had been identified and thoroughly explored. In rare instances where people presented with symptomatology that was inconsistent with known mechanisms, the symptoms were thought to be of psychological (non-organic) origin. In the last two decades a broader set of symptoms...

An investigation into the impact of the presence of a prototype exemplar in an introductory design experience is described. The design experience occurred early in an Introduction to Engineering course following a single lecture on the engineering design process. The design activity, necessarily simple at this stage, consisted of designing, buildin...

If one works in the world of electrical safety long enough, taking part in forensic investigations is almost inevitable. Whether one is investigating an electrical incident in-house, or investigating as an expert witness, the nature of forensic investigation is largely the same. Whether analyzing a product failure or advising an attorney, forensic...

An investigation into the impact of the presence of a prototype exemplar in an introductory design experience is described. The design experience occurred early in an Introduction to Engineering course following a single lecture on the engineering design process. The design activity, necessarily simple at this stage, consisted of designing, buildin...

Electrical safety starts with policy, continues with education, requires administrative vigilance, and becomes individual responsibility at all levels. Case studies in electrical injury will be presented herein as the basis for understanding concepts of design for electrical safety. Working on the assumption that all electrical injuries are prevent...

The appearance of non-resolving non-path-related symptomatology following some low voltage (120/240 volt) electrical contacts has proven to be a scientific puzzlement. The problem is that the best of our diagnostic technology is not yet technologically advanced enough to image the mechanism of injury. Still, in the context of this wealth of data, b...

Forensic investigation of an accident involving a general laborer's escape from injury following contact with electric current is presented. The accident involved a general laborer, working for a hazardous materials removal company, and tasked with dismantling and salvaging an out-of-use train substation. The victim thought that because all electri...

When considering the issue of electrical safety in product and system design, it is critical to use a well defined design process that complies with the legal standards. Engineers need not be lawyers but they do need to understand how the law views the process of engineering design. For any product or system that brings electrical energy into close...

A case study of an accident involving an electric utility company, which resulted due to the small distance between stationary power lines and its personnel, is presented. The company was assigned with the task of transporting a metal shed under power lines. The move of the crew started as per plan, with the building brought into position near the...

The reasonable person is one who acts with prudence. To avoid liability, product design must assure that the reasonable person will not be injured. The question addressed herein is how much of the reasonable person is reasonably the result of the design and programming of the human machine itself? Is reasonableness nature or nurture? Avoiding injur...

Momentary lapse in judgment of a shocking scaffolding, with the help of a 120 volt stringer light leads to some casualties in an industrial boiler environment. The workers faced extreme conditions, while working in the tight confines of an industrial boiler. The first victim was passing a scaffolding leg down to the second victim when the first vic...

When human beings were first designed, the designer must have considered that someday they would live in a society in which they were in constant and close proximity to electrical energy. Human skin is a naturally protective barrier to the flow of electricity, but still, under the right conditions, humans can become part of the electric technology...

Using geometric primitives, a three dimensional finite element model has been developed to assess the pathway followed by electric current during an electrical accident assuming the entry point for the current was on one hand. Results indicate that the area where the risk of soft tissue injury is greatest is in the wrist region. Current entry on th...

Electrical injuries can produce physical, neurological, and neuropsychological sequelae that exist even in the total absence of a theoretical current path that includes the brain. Diffuse electrical injury (DEI) is a rarely occurring class of electrical injury (EI) that can occur even after low-voltage contact. The objective of the study was to com...

Historically, tissue damage from electrical contact was thought to arise from resistive heating of tissues along the current pathway. The modern view has accepted that tissue damage can result from cellular rupture (electroporation) induced by the presence of an electric field. There remain electrical injuries that defy explanation by either theory...

Historically, tissue damage from electrical contact was thought to arise from resistive heating of tissues along the current pathway. The modern view has accepted that tissue damage can result from cellular rupture (electroporation) induced by the presence of an electric field. There remain electrical injuries that defy explanation by either theory...

Diffuse electrical injury (DEI) is a rarely occurring class of electrical injury that can arise even after a low voltage contact. It is characterized by broad symptomatology which is often disproportionate to the magnitude of the contact. The occurrence rate of 65 symptoms, categorized by gender, was studied. Data was derived from a Web-based inter...

Some electrical injuries defy explanation by the theories of thermal damage or electroporation. In rare electrical contacts, symptomatology arises that is remote to the theoretical current pathway and is often disproportionate to the parameters of electrical contact. The rarity with which this type of diffuse electrical injury (DEI) occurs often le...

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) has been diagnosed in as many as 10% of the hand-involved electrical contacts studied by the authors. Typically a CTS diagnosis is indicative of median nerve compression. Such would not be consistent with the known apparatus of electrical injury. Using the finite element method, current density has been evaluated in the...

Carpel Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is sometimes diagnosed post electrical injury. Unfortunately, there is no clear causal connection between electric shock and the electro-diagnostic indications of CTS. One might thus infer that the electro-diagnostic appearance of signal slowing through the carpel tunnel is indicative of electrical injury to the median...

While the immediate effects from electric shock injuries are obvious in terms of entry wounds, exit wounds and cellular damage to the pathway traversed by the current, the long term effects are often unpredictable. Furthermore, in electric shock injuries of either extremely short duration or of less than 500 Volts, there may be minimal or no observ...

The feasibility of using neural networks to recognize speech using the myoelectric signals from the muscles associated with speech is analyzed. Three sites on the neck and one site on the temple were observed. The signals were digitized, broken down into their frequency components, and analyzed using a backpropagation neural network. The parametric...

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The authors report on research into the recognition of speech utilizing the myoelectric signals exhibited by the muscles that shape the vocal tract. Myoelectric signals from four muscle sites were digitized along with the acoustic waveform. Energy, average magnitude, and standard deviation of the biopotentials served as inputs to a maximum likeliho...

A stimulation system has been built for application in clinical and laboratory environments. It has been designed to serve two individual functions. First, the system is used as a research tool in Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES). Second, the system functions as a rehabilitative assist device for individuals with spinal injuries. The stimula...

It has been determined that the myoelectric signals (MES) from muscles associated with speech that are obtained using surface electrodes can be used to recognize speech at approximately five times a priori. The results of ten experiments have been evaluated using a maximum-likelihood recognition scheme and have consistently yielded similar recognit...

The subject was a paralyzed T-7 spinal cord injured male. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) was delivered by means of two Respond II units, one attached bilaterally to the quadriceps femoris and the other placed bilaterally on the dorsiflexors of the foot. The electric muscle stimulator settings were set at 30 p.p.s. and 100% output, with a s...

Quantitative electromyographic analysis of 40 paralyzed muscles in ten spinal-cord-injured subjects was performed. The majority of muscles (32/40) demonstrated increased myoelectric activity but no observable gross muscle movement as a result of voluntary effort. Some subjects with paralysis retain miniature motor potentials. Increase in the magnit...

In two separate studies, a correlation has been observed between the myoelectric signals (MESs) present in neck muscles during speech and the acoustic waveform. In the first study, five experiments were conducted using a 17-word vocabulary. The application of maximum likelihood pattern recognition to the averaged myoelectric signal produced recogni...

A C-5 incomplete quadriplegic was provided with gait training using long leg braces and a walker. During locomotion, the stance phase was weak; she was 'sinking' on the supporting leg. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) was applied to the gluteus medius during the stance phase of locomotion. The result was that her posture appeared more uprigh...

The availability of speech information in the myoelectric signals (MES) of neck and head muscles was observed during five experiments conducted on two subjects. The MES of four channels, obtained using surface electrodes, was analog amplified, filtered and enhanced prior to digitization. Information was extracted at the rate of 20 points per second...

A scheme to recognize speech from the myoelectric signals (MES) of neck and head muscles has been developed and tested on two subjects. Differential recordings , taken from three electrode sites on the neck and one site on the temple, were amplified approximately 200,000 times prior to being used as input to a threshold comparator board. Whenever t...