A 6-DOF haptic manipulation system to verify assembly procedures on CAD models

During the design phase of products and before going into production, it is necessary to verify the presence of mechanical plays, tolerances, and encumbrances on production mockups. This work introduces a multi-modal system that allows verifying assembly procedures of products in Virtual Reality starting directly from CAD models. Thus leveraging the costs and speeding up the assessment phase in product design. For this purpose, the design of a novel 6-DOF Haptic device is presented. The achieved performance of the system has been validated in a demonstration scenario employing state-of-the-art volumetric rendering of interaction forces together with a stereoscopic visualization setup

On the correct surface stress for the prediction of the wind wave field and the storm surge in the Northern Adriatic Sea

This paper discusses which formulation of the surface stress over the sea determines the most accurate prediction of the wind wave field and storm surge in the Northern Adriatic Sea. The study shows that the results of the storm surge and wind wave models, when compared to the available observations, can be used for the validation of the surface stress and of the expression adopted for the ssr (sea surface roughness). The results are representative of short fetch and young wind sea conditions. The agreement between the results and the measurements shows the feasibility of the wind wave and storm surge predictions in the Adriatic Sea and supports the dependence of the ssr, and, therefore, of the surface stress, on the spectrum of the surface wave

Multiscale Characterization of Isotropic Pyrolytic Carbon Used for Mechanical Heart Valve Production

Usage of pyrolytic carbon (PyC) to produce mechanical heart valves (MHVs) has led to heart valve replacement being a very successful procedure. Thus, the mechanical properties of employed materials for MHV production are fundamental to obtain the required characteristics of biocompatibility and wear resistance. In this study, two deposition methods of PyC were compared through a multiscale approach, performing three-point bending tests and nanoindentation tests. Adopted deposition processes produced materials that were slightly different. Significant differences were found at the characteristic scale lengths of the deposited layers. Setting changes of the deposition process permitted obtaining PyC characterized by a more uniform microstructure, conferring to the bulk material superior mechanical properties

Efeito do período de incubação e de doses de composto de lixo urbano na disponibilidade de metais pesados em diferentes solos

The agricultural use of urban waste compost is an alternative for a better technician-scientific-economic viability, because this organic residue is a source of nutrients and organic matter. This study was carried out in greenhouse conditions in order to evaluate the temporal availability, by Mehlich-1 extractor, of Cd, Co, Cr, Ni, and Pb in five types of soils incubated with 0, 25, 50 and 100 Mg ha-1 of waste compost during 0, 16, 32, 64 and 150 days. Most of the heavy metals had its availability reduced at the beginning of incubation. The availabitily of heavy metals was dependent of the soil texture, pH and content of soil organic matter. The application of the highest doses of waste compost can result in risks of soil contamination mainly in the Oxisol, Mollisol and Alfisol, with periods from 6 to 12 months for reduction of heavy metal availability.O uso do composto de lixo nas lavouras constitui alternativa econômica e ambiental viável, por ser fonte considerável de nutrientes e matéria orgânica. Este estudo, realizado em casa de vegetação, teve como objetivo avaliar a disponibilidade temporal dos metais pesados Cd, Co, Cr, Ni e Pb, por meio do extrator Mehlich-1, em cinco tipos de solos, incubados com 0, 25, 50 e 100 Mg ha-1 de composto de lixo, em períodos de 0, 16, 32, 64 e 150 dias. A maioria dos metais pesados teve sua disponibilidade reduzida nos primeiros períodos de incubação, sendo esse efeito dependente de textura, pH e teor de matéria orgânica do solo. O uso continuado de composto de lixo, principalmente nas doses mais elevadas, pode resultar em riscos de contaminação do ambiente pelo efeito cumulativo, em especial nos solos Latossolo Vermelho-Amarelo distrófico, Chernossolo Háplico órtico e Nitossolo Vermelho eutroférrico, cujo período para redução da disponibilidade dos metais pesados varia de 6 a 12 meses

Epidemiology and mortality of the multidrug resistant gram-negative bloodstream infection in acute myeloid leukemia

Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Infectol Dept, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Hematol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Infectol Dept, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Hematol, São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

Deep Learning for real-time neural decoding of grasp

Neural decoding involves correlating signals acquired from the brain to variables in the physical world like limb movement or robot control in Brain Machine Interfaces. In this context, this work starts from a specific pre-existing dataset of neural recordings from monkey motor cortex and presents a Deep Learning-based approach to the decoding of neural signals for grasp type classification. Specifically, we propose here an approach that exploits LSTM networks to classify time series containing neural data (i.e., spike trains) into classes representing the object being grasped. The main goal of the presented approach is to improve over state-of-the-art decoding accuracy without relying on any prior neuroscience knowledge, and leveraging only the capability of deep learning models to extract correlations from data. The paper presents the results achieved for the considered dataset and compares them with previous works on the same dataset, showing a significant improvement in classification accuracy, even if considering simulated real-time decoding