An Integrated Decision Making Approach for Adaptive Shared Control of Mobility Assistance Robots

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Mobility assistance robots provide support to elderly or patients during walking. The design of a safe and intuitive assistance behavior is one of the major challenges in this context. We present an integrated approach for the context-specific, on-line adaptation of the assistance level of a rollator-type mobility assistance robot by gain-scheduling of low-level robot control parameters. A human-inspired decision-making model, the drift-diffusion Model, is introduced as the key principle to gain-schedule parameters and with this to adapt the provided robot assistance in order to achieve a human-like assistive behavior. The mobility assistance robot is designed to provide (a) cognitive assistance to help the user following a desired path towards a predefined destination as well as (b) sensorial assistance to avoid collisions with obstacles while allowing for an intentional approach of them. Further, the robot observes the user long-term performance and fatigue to adapt the overall level of (c) physical assistance provided. For each type of assistance a decision-making problem is formulated that affects different low-level control parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated in technical validation experiments. Moreover, the proposed approach is evaluated in a user study with 35 elderly persons. Obtained results indicate that the proposed gain-scheduling technique incorporating ideas of human decision-making models shows a general high potential for the application in adaptive shared control of mobility assistance robots

Organization Culture as an Explanation for Employee Discipline Practices

Most supervisors dread employee discipline and often employ strategies not officially sanctioned by the organization. Poorly designed discipline systems cause this variation in discipline practices. Inconsistent discipline can cause losses in productivity and reduce employee morale. Extant literature offers little in the form of guidance for improving this important human resource activity. This article explore where normative literature on organizational culture may have explanatory value for understanding variation in discipline practices. The article suggests two groups of factors that have causal effects on discipline practices. The tangible factors are those describing the formal practices the organization wishes its employees to follow. The intangible factors provide cues for explaining why informal strategies emerge as successful practices for getting things done. Using this conception of organization culture, the article proposes hypotheses for future testing to validate the suspected influence of culture on decisions regarding employee discipline.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Evaluation of serum hepatitis B antibody level in vaccinated children after 14 years in Kashan, Iran

Background and Objective: Hepatitis B vaccination has been conducted in neonates in the routine vaccination in Iran since 1993. This study was carried out to evaluate the serum hepatitis B antibody level in vaccinated children after 14 years in Kashan, Iran. Materials and Methods: This prospetive cohort study was conducted on 200 fourteen-year-old children which were selected via a simple random sampling method in Kashan, Iran drung 2008-09. This subjects were have been vaccined according to the govermental guildline at 0, 2 and 6 months old. Two ml blood specimens were obtained from children and serum hepatitis B surface antibody (anti-HBs) and hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc) were determined by ELISA method. Immunity was interpreted as anti-HBs≥10 IU/L. Data were analyzed using SPSS-13, Chi-Square and Fisher’s exat tests. Results: 92% girls and 95% boys, totally 187(93.5%) children had serum anti-HBs≥10 IU/L. Anti-HBc was positive in 3 (3%) girls and 5(5%) boys, totally 8(4%) which all of them had serum anti-HBS≤10 IU/L. No case of positive HBs Ag was detected. Immunity was detected in 11 of 18 (61.1%) children with birth weight<2.5 kg and in 176 of 182 (96.7%) children with birth weight≥2.5 kg (P<0.05). Conclusion: The immunity following the complete series (0, 2, 6 months old) of hepatitis B vaccination remained detectable after 14 years

Towards a Dual-User Haptic Training System User Feedback Setup

International audienceThis paper introduces preliminary works on building an experimental end-user evaluation for dual-user haptic systems for hands-on training. Such systems bring together the advantages of haptic computerbased training systems and those of supervised training where an expert trainer actively helps in the learning process. The first results mainly permitted to highlight several technical and organizational issues to overcome in a close future. The objective of this project is to test other architectures such as those listed in the state-of-the-art section, to provide comparative conclusions about the pros and cons of each one

Neuroimaging Findings in Normocephalic Newborns With Intrauterine Zika Virus Exposure

© 2017 Elsevier Inc. Background Congenital Zika infection can result in a spectrum of neurological abnormalities in the newborn. Newborns exposed to Zika virus in utero often have neuroimaging as part of their clinical evaluation. Methods Through the Congenital Zika Program at Children\u27s National Health System in Washington DC, we performed fetal or neonatal neuroimaging, including magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound, on over 70 fetuses or neonates with intrauterine Zika exposure. Novel findings on neonatal brain magnetic resonance imaging were observed in two instances. Results Gadolinium-contrast magnetic resonance imaging showed enhancement of multiple cranial nerves at three days of age on one infant. Another infant underwent magnetic resonance imaging at 16 days of age and was shown to have a chronic ischemic cerebral infarction. This infant had previously normal fetal magnetic resonance imaging. Conclusion Cranial nerve enhancement and cerebral infarction may be among the expanding list of neurological findings in congenital Zika infection. Postnatal brain magnetic resonance imaging should be considered for newborns exposed to Zika virus in utero

Neuroimaging Findings in Normocephalic Newborns With Intrauterine Zika Virus Exposure.

© 2017 Elsevier Inc. Background Congenital Zika infection can result in a spectrum of neurological abnormalities in the newborn. Newborns exposed to Zika virus in utero often have neuroimaging as part of their clinical evaluation. Methods Through the Congenital Zika Program at Children\u27s National Health System in Washington DC, we performed fetal or neonatal neuroimaging, including magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound, on over 70 fetuses or neonates with intrauterine Zika exposure. Novel findings on neonatal brain magnetic resonance imaging were observed in two instances. Results Gadolinium-contrast magnetic resonance imaging showed enhancement of multiple cranial nerves at three days of age on one infant. Another infant underwent magnetic resonance imaging at 16 days of age and was shown to have a chronic ischemic cerebral infarction. This infant had previously normal fetal magnetic resonance imaging. Conclusion Cranial nerve enhancement and cerebral infarction may be among the expanding list of neurological findings in congenital Zika infection. Postnatal brain magnetic resonance imaging should be considered for newborns exposed to Zika virus in utero