Re-imaging everyday routines and educational aspirations under COVID-19 lockdown: Narratives of urban middle-class children in Punjab, India

Based on in-depth interviews with 24 middle-class Indian child participants, this is the first exploratory qualitative study, in India, to demonstrate the ways in which children as reflexive social actors re-negotiated everyday schedules, drew on classed resources at their disposal and made sense of the impact of the pandemic on their educational pathways and future aspirations. These narratives offer a unique lens on the politics of middle-classness and its constitutive relation to constructions of normative childhoods in contemporary India. Study findings contribute to the sociology of Indian childhood and more generally help enrich our understanding of southern childhoods and the reproduction of inequalities in contemporary India

Kinematic, kinetic and electromyographic response to customized foot orthoses in patients with tibialis posterior tenosynovitis, pes plano valgus and rheumatoid arthritis

Objective. To describe the effect of customized foot orthoses (FOs) on the kinematic, kinetic and EMG features in patients with RA, tibialis posterior (TP) tenosynovitis and associated pes plano valgus.<p></p> Methods. Patients with RA and US-confirmed tenosynovitis of TP underwent gait analysis, including three-dimensional (3D) kinematics, kinetics, intramuscular EMG of TP and surface EMG of tibialis anterior, peroneus longus, soleus and medial gastrocnemius. Findings were compared between barefoot and shod with customized FO conditions.<p></p> Results. Ten patients with RA with a median (range) disease duration of 3 (1–18) years were recruited. Moderate levels of foot pain and foot-related impairment and disability were present with moderately active disease states. Altered timing of the soleus (P = 0.05) and medial gastrocnemius (P = 0.02) and increased magnitude of tibialis anterior (P = 0.03) were noted when barefoot was compared with shod with FO. Trends were noted for reduced TP activity in the contact period (P = 0.09), but this did not achieve statistical significance. Differences in foot motion characteristics were recorded for peak rearfoot eversion (P = 0.01), peak rearfoot plantarflexion (P < 0.001) and peak forefoot abduction (P = 0.02) in the shod with FOs compared with barefoot conditions. No differences in kinetic variables were recorded.<p></p> Conclusion. This study has demonstrated, for the first time, alterations in muscle activation profiles and foot motion characteristics in patients with RA, pes plano valgus and US-confirmed TP tenosynovitis in response to customized FOs. Complex adaptations were evident in this cohort and further work is required to determine whether these functional alterations lead to improvements in patient symptoms.<p></p&gt

RIS-aided smart manufacturing: information transmission and machine health monitoring

This paper proposes a novel industrial Internet-of-Things framework to monitor the machine health conditions (MHCs) in a smart factory. The framework utilises reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to address propagation blockages while employing a novel power mapping scheme and an autoencoder to facilitate the transmission and classification of the MHCs. Analytical and numerical analyses are then performed to study the ergodic capacity (primary information) and the MHC accuracy (secondary information) in terms of the RIS size (K) and the transmit power (P). We observe that the accuracy of detecting MHCs does not change significantly with K and P , implying that the MHC alerts can be efficiently conveyed in parallel with the primary information. By contrast, a careful choice of different power mapping levels is necessary in order to achieve the two main goals: i) reasonably high data rate for primary transmission and ii) high accuracy for secondary MHC information

Towards the model driven organization

Todays modern organization is faced with a need for rapid response to changes from external business pressures by updating systems and operational procedures. The effect of such continuous evolution eventually leads to sub- optimal configurations of its underlying systems. The management of continuous business change is compromised by uncertainty due to the inadequacy of existing mechanisms for responding to multiple change drivers thus leading to signifi- cant organizational costs. This represents a major opportunity for seeking greater efficiencies. To date, there has been little or no attempt to apply model driven principles or approaches to addressing these issues. We present a new vision of a Model Driven Organisation (MDO) that has the potential to increase produc- tivity by promoting integration of business processes and collaborations across the organisation whilst supporting safe and convenient adaptations that enable rapid response to change whilst maintaining integrity of the systems within the organisation. The approach proposed is based on the use of modelling languages and simulation technologies that support abstractions for understanding business goals through to specification of IT systems and ultimately to deployed systems. The paper motivates the problem and proposes a definition of the MDO. We val- idate the proposal through an illustrative case and conclude with a review of the state of the art leading to a roadmap of research and emergent grand challenges towards achieving the MDO vision

An e-learning support toolkit for social work students on placement

Students of the social work professions generally are required to be placed in social work settings and to undergo assessment in the workplace during their training. These students are usually supported by qualified practice tutors who regularly meet with them and give feedback on their practice performance and progress. The support procedure sometimes is fragile and affects the quality of the students? learning experience. Through a user centered design approach, the Remora project aims to provide an integration of mobile software toolkits and social software applications to support work-based learning and assessment for social workers. Two main applications are created and deployed on two categories of portable devices to help practice workers in their administration, information sharing and collection of documents linking with competency learning resources. The applications are extendible to be applicable to any work-based learning situation

Utilisation of maternity services by black women in rural and urban areas of the Orange Free State

An epidemiological survey was undertaken to evaluate the utilisation of maternal services for black women in the Orange Free State. Two hundred and forty clusters were selected from the rural (farms) and urban (local authorities) black population and eight households were interviewed in each cluster. Information was gathered from 237 rural women (from 959 households) and 168 urban women (from 926 households) who had delivered a baby or aborted during the preceding year. Antenatal care was received by 71 % of the rural women and 87% of the urban women. Rural women delivered at home in 60% of cases while 37% delivered in hospitals. Only 23% of urban women delivered at home while 67% of their deliveries were conducted in hospitals. Nurses supervised deliveries in both instances in more than 60% of cases, but in rural areas traditional midwives managed 26% of the confinements. The conclusions are that the maternity service was largely provided by nurses and was predominantly limited to hospitals and homes. It is recommended that the quality of service be upgraded and more emphasis placed on midwife obstetric units

A digital twin framework for predictive maintenance in industry 4.0

The rapid advancements in manufacturing technologies are transforming the current industrial landscape through Industry 4.0, which refers not only to the integration of information technology with industrial production, but also to the use of innovative technologies and novel data management approaches. The target is to enable the manufacturers and the entire supply chain to save time, boost productivity, reduce waste and costs, and respond flexibly and efficiently to consumers’ requirements. Industry 4.0 moves the digitization of manufacturing components and processes a step further by creating smart factories. Within this context, one of the key enabling technologies for Industry 4.0 is the adoption and integration of the Digital Twin (DT). However, most of the DT solutions provided by the current leading vendors are in fact digital models or digital shadows, and not digital twins. This is due to the fact that there is no common understanding of the definition of the DT amongst the leading vendors, and its usage is slightly different but showcased under the same umbrella of DT. In this paper, a DT framework is proposed that replicates the processes of a real production line for product assembly using the Festo Cyber Physical Factory for Industry 4.0 located at Middlesex University. Moreover, the paper introduces a viable framework for interlinking the physical system with its digital instance in order to offer extended predictive maintenance services and form a fully integrated digital twin solution

An innovative blockchain-based traceability framework for industry 4.0 cyber-physical factory

Industry 4.0 is currently transforming the industrial landscape through the use of innovative technologies and novel data management approaches. The incorporation of Industry 4.0 brought new dimensions of improvement and autonomy into the existing industrial manufacturing processes which has also led to increased expectations for traceability in manufacturing. Traceability enables the tracking of every part and product of the manufacturing process giving insights into each manufactured component and its full history across each operation step that helps manufacturers improve quality and efficiency. Despite the huge potential in facilitating the optimization of the production lines, product traceability has remained a challenging topic in mass manufacturing. Hence, in this paper, an innovative Blockchain-based framework is proposed to integrate the processes of a real production line using the Industry 4.0 Festo Cyber-Physical Factory located at London Digital Twin Research Centre, Middlesex University. Blockchain technology is a distributed and shared database of events for a product life cycle that is encrypted in blocks or smaller data units. This paper introduces a viable blockchain-based framework implemented within a real smart product assembly for internal traceability within the production process in order to improve the security by preventing counterfeiting, identify specific problems on the production lin

Metatarsophalangeal joint pain in psoriatic arthritis: a cross-sectional study

Methods. Thirty-four consecutive patients with PsA (mean age 45.3 years, 65% female, mean disease duration 9.9 years) and 22 control participants (mean age 37.9 years, 64% female) underwent clinical and US examination to determine the presence of pain, swelling, synovitis, erosions, effusions and submetatarsal bursae at the MTP joints. Mean barefoot peak plantar pressures were determined at each MTP joint. Levels of pain, US-determined pathology and peak pressures were compared between groups. Binary logistic regression was used to identify demographic, clinical examination-derived, US-derived and plantar pressure predictors of pain at the MTP joints in the PsA group. Results. The presence of pain, deformity, synovitis, erosions (P < 0.001) and submetatarsal bursae and peak plantar pressure at MTP 3 (P < 0.05) were significantly higher in the PsA group. MTP joint pain in PsA was independently predicted by high BMI, female gender and the presence of joint subluxation, synovitis and erosion. Conclusion. These results suggest local inflammatory and structural factors, together with systemic factors (gender, BMI), are predominantly responsible for painful MTP joints in PsA, with no clear role for plantar pressure characteristics

Digital twins: a survey on enabling technologies, challenges, trends and future prospects

Digital Twin (DT) is an emerging technology surrounded by many promises, and potentials to reshape the future of industries and society overall. A DT is a system-of-systems which goes far beyond the traditional computer-based simulations and analysis. It is a replication of all the elements, processes, dynamics, and firmware of a physical system into a digital counterpart. The two systems (physical and digital) exist side by side, sharing all the inputs and operations using real-time data communications and information transfer. With the incorporation of Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3D models, next generation mobile communications (5G/6G), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), distributed computing, Transfer Learning (TL), and electronic sensors, the digital/virtual counterpart of the real-world system is able to provide seamless monitoring, analysis, evaluation and predictions. The DT offers a platform for the testing and analysing of complex systems, which would be impossible in traditional simulations and modular evaluations. However, the development of this technology faces many challenges including the complexities in effective communication and data accumulation, data unavailability to train Machine Learning (ML) models, lack of processing power to support high fidelity twins, the high need for interdisciplinary collaboration, and the absence of standardized development methodologies and validation measures. Being in the early stages of development, DTs lack sufficient documentation. In this context, this survey paper aims to cover the important aspects in realization of the technology. The key enabling technologies, challenges and prospects of DTs are highlighted. The paper provides a deep insight into the technology, lists design goals and objectives, highlights design challenges and limitations across industries, discusses research and commercial developments, provides its applications and use cases, offers case studies in industry, infrastructure and healthcare, lists main service providers and stakeholders, and covers developments to date, as well as viable research dimensions for future developments in DTs