Comfort-Centered Design of a Lightweight and Backdrivable Knee Exoskeleton

This paper presents design principles for comfort-centered wearable robots and their application in a lightweight and backdrivable knee exoskeleton. The mitigation of discomfort is treated as mechanical design and control issues and three solutions are proposed in this paper: 1) a new wearable structure optimizes the strap attachment configuration and suit layout to ameliorate excessive shear forces of conventional wearable structure design; 2) rolling knee joint and double-hinge mechanisms reduce the misalignment in the sagittal and frontal plane, without increasing the mechanical complexity and inertia, respectively; 3) a low impedance mechanical transmission reduces the reflected inertia and damping of the actuator to human, thus the exoskeleton is highly-backdrivable. Kinematic simulations demonstrate that misalignment between the robot joint and knee joint can be reduced by 74% at maximum knee flexion. In experiments, the exoskeleton in the unpowered mode exhibits 1.03 Nm root mean square (RMS) low resistive torque. The torque control experiments demonstrate 0.31 Nm RMS torque tracking error in three human subjects.Comment: 8 pages, 16figures, Journa

Structural Behavior of Thin-Walled Concrete-Filled Steel Tube Used in Cable Tunnel: An Experimental and Numerical Investigation

One steel grid and five thin-walled concrete-filled steel tubes (CTST) used as the supports of tunnel were tested in site for investigating the mechanical behavior. The mechanical influences of thickness, node form, and concrete on CTST were gained and compared with the impacts on steel grid. It is indicated that high antideformation capacity of CTST improved the stability of surrounding rock in short time. The cementitious grouted sleeve connection exhibited superior flexibility when CTST was erected and built. Although the deformation of rock and soil in the tunnel was increasing, good compression resistance was observed by CTST with the new connection type. It was also seen that vault, tube foot, and connections were with larger absolute strain values. The finite element analysis (FEA) was carried out using ABAQUS program. The results were validated by comparison with experimental results. The FE model could be referred by similar projects

Review of research progress on soil moisture sensor technology

Soil moisture is directly related to the amount of irrigation in agriculture and influences the yield of crops. Accordingly, a soil moisture sensor is an important tool for measuring soil moisture content. In this study, the previous research conducted in recent 2-3 decades on soil moisture sensors was reviewed and the principles of commonly used soil moisture sensor and their various applications were summarized. Furthermore, the advantages, disadvantages, and influencing factors of various measurement methods employed were compared and analyzed. The improvements were presented by several scholars have established the major applications and performance levels of soil moisture sensors, thereby setting the course for future development. These studies indicated that soil moisture sensors in the future should be developed to achieve high-precision, low-cost, non-destructive, automated, and highly integrated systems. Also, it was indicated that future studies should involve the development of specialized sensors for different applications and scenarios. This review research aimed to provide a certain reference for application departments and scientific researchers in the process of selecting soil moisture sensor products and measuring soil moisture

Flood risk in a range of spatial perspectives – from global to local scales

The present paper examines flood risk (composed of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability) in a range of spatial perspectives – from the global to the local scale. It deals with observed records, noting that flood damage has been increasing. It also tackles projections for the future, related to flood hazard and flood losses. There are multiple factors driving flood hazard and flood risk and there is a considerable uncertainty in our assessments, and particularly in projections for the future. Further, this paper analyses options for flood risk reduction in several spatial dimensions, from global framework to regional to local scales. It is necessary to continue examination of the updated records of flood-related indices, trying to search for changes that influence flood hazard and flood risk in river basins

Some Observations on TWIS Block Cipher

The 128-bit block cipher TWIS was proposed by Ojha et al in 2009. It is a lightweight block cipher and its design is inspired from CLEFIA. In this paper, we first study the properties of TWIS structure, and as an extension we also considered the generalized TWIS-type structure which can be called G-TWIS cipher, where the block size and round number can be arbitrary values. Then we present a series of 10-round differential distinguishers for TWIS and a n-round differential distinguisher for G-TWIS whose probabilities are all equal to 1. Therefore, by utilizing these kinds of differential distinguishers, we can break the full 10-round TWIS cipher and n-round G-TWIS cipher

Distressed yet bonded: A longitudinal investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s silver lining effects on life satisfaction.

It is a common understanding that the 2019 coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) significantly harmed mental health. However, findings on changes in overall life satisfaction have been mixed and inconclusive. To address this puzzling phenomenon, we draw upon the domain specific perspective of well-being and research on catastrophe compassion and propose thatthe pandemic can have opposing effects on mental health and communal satisfaction, which then differently relate to people’s overall life satisfaction. Longitudinal analyses of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics (HILDA) Survey of Australia (N = 12,093) showed that while there was a greater decrease in mental health in the first COVID-19 pandemic year (2019-2020) than in previous years (2017-2019), an increase in communal satisfaction also occurred, demonstrating a potential silver lining effect of the pandemic on people’s satisfaction with family, community and neighborhood. Moreover, consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory, changes in mental health, communal satisfaction and life satisfaction were related to age such that older adults generally reported less harmful and more beneficial psychological changes. We further found that age was associated with stronger associations of mental health and communal satisfaction with life satisfaction during the pandemic year. Overall, our findings speak to the importance of communal life in life satisfaction during the pandemic and age-related differences in the process, shedding light on the need to devise customized support to address inequalities in pandemic effects on public well-being

Study on Flexural Properties of Tubular Underwater Inflated Structures Filled with Hydrogel Beads

Underwater inflatable structures (UISs) are distributed in an initial folded state for ease of transportation and deployment. They are able to morph into their intended geometry upon arrival at their destination. This morphing/inflation process can be driven by hydrogel beads, which swell when they contact water. In this research, we study the physical characteristics of tubular UISs with different configurations (length, slenderness, beads density). We fabricated sets of tubular UISs with nylon sleeves filled with different amounts of hydrogel beads and built a flexural test platform mounted on the test tank for the bending experiment. This work provides the experimental Young’s modulus of the tubular UISs under elastic and plastic deformations, and also discusses how the different configurations contribute to the tubular UIS’s stiffness

Weikangning Therapy in Functional Dyspepsia and the Protective Role of Nrf2

Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a non-organic gastro-intestinal disorder that has a marked negative impact on quality of life. Compared with conventional pharmacological therapies, the traditional Chinese medicine weikangning (WKN) is a safe and effective treatment for FD. The present study aimed to determine the molecular mechanisms underlying the efficacy of WKN. The effect of different concentrations of WKN on the proliferation of the human gastric mucosal epithelial cell line GES-1 was assessed. The optimal WKN concentration to promote cell proliferation was determined, and this concentration was used to examine the effect of WKN compared with a domperidone-treated positive control group on the antioxidant capacity of GES-1 cells. The effect of WKN treatment on the growth and antioxidant activity of GES-1 cells was also assessed following nuclear factor erythroid 2 like 2 (Nrf2) knockdown. The optimal WKN dose for promoting cell growth was determined to be 0.025 mg/ml; at this concentra-tion the expression of the antioxidant proteins glutathione S-transferase P and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) were significantly elevated (