Exercises using a touchscreen tablet application improved functional ability more than an exercise program prescribed on paper in people after surgical carpal tunnel release: a randomised trial

Question: In people who have undergone surgical carpal tunnel release, do sensorimotor-based exercises performed on the touchscreen of a tablet device improve outcomes more than a conventional home exercise program prescribed on paper? Design: Randomised, parallel-group trial with concealed allocation, assessor blinding, and intention-to-treat analysis. Participants: Fifty participants within 10 days of surgical carpal tunnel release. Intervention: Each participant was prescribed a 4-week home exercise program. Participants in the experimental group received the ReHand tablet application, which administered and monitored exercises via the touchscreen. The control group was prescribed a home exercise program on paper, as is usual practice in the public hospital system. Outcome measures: The primary outcome was functional ability of the hand, reported using the shortened form of the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (QuickDASH) questionnaire. Secondary outcomes were grip strength, pain intensity measured on a 10-cm visual analogue scale, and dexterity measured with the Nine-Hole Peg Test. Outcomes were measured by a blinded assessor at baseline and at the end of the 4-week intervention period. Results: At Week 4, functional ability improved significantly more in the experimental group than the control group (MD –21, 95% CI –33 to –9) on the QuickDASH score (0 to 100). Although the mean estimates of effect on the secondary outcome also all favoured the experimental group, none reached statistical significance: grip strength (MD 5.6 kg, 95% CI –0.5 to 11.7), pain (MD –1.4 cm, 95% CI –2.9 to 0.1), and dexterity (MD –1.3 seconds, 95% CI –3.7 to 1.1). Conclusion: Use of the ReHand tablet application for early rehabilitation after carpal tunnel release is more effective in the recovery of functional ability than a conventional home exercise program. It remains unclear whether there are any benefits in grip strength, pain or dexterity. Trial registration: ACTRN12618001887268

High-accuracy real-time monitoring of solar radiation attenuation in commercial solar towers

The main objectives of this work are twofold, the immediate objective is to provide current commercial solar towers with a system able to monitor accurately the solar radiation attenuation, the midterm objective is to acquire, with the adequate and precise measurements, the necessary knowledge about the different phenomena involved in the atmospheric attenuation in order to correlate it with meteorological and weather conditions when possible. The purpose of this paper is to describe the basic design features and operational capabilities of a new system designed by CENER and the University of Zaragoza (patent P201830758) for measuring real-time atmospheric attenuation of solar radiation at surface level. It performs a direct measurement without needing any previous assumption about atmospheric conditions. The work will be complemented with the analysis of the influence of atmospheric aerosols and meteorological conditions at surface level in atmospheric attenuation (at the lower ~300m atmospheric layer)

On the relativistic origin of the kink effect in the chain of Pb isotopes

We investigate the origin of the kink effect (KE) in the relativistic mean field theory by transforming the single-particle Dirac equation into a Schrodinger-like equation. It is found that relativistic self-consistent effects as well as contributions from the rho meson determine the actual structure of the KE. However, the spin-orbit force generated by the rho meson has no significant influence on the KE.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX, 3 postscript figs., Phys. Lett.

Enhancing Edge robotics through the use of context information

Cloud robotics aims at endowing robot systems with powerful capabilities by leveraging the computing resources available in theCloud. To that end, the Cloud infrastructure consolidates servicesand information among the robots, enabling a degree of centralization which has the potential to improve operations. Despite beingvery promising, Cloud robotics presents two critical issues: (i) it isvery hard to control the network between the robots and the Cloud(e.g., long delays, high jitter), and (ii) local context information (e.g.,on the access network) is not available in the Cloud. This makeshard to achieve deterministic performance for robotics applications.Over the last few years, Edge computing has emerged as a trend toprovide services and computing capabilities directly in the accessnetwork. This is so because of the additional benefits enabled byEdge computing: (i) it is easier to control the network end-to-end,and (ii) local context information (e.g., about the wireless channel) can be made available for use by applications. The goal of this paperis to showcase, by means of real-life experimentation, the benefits ofresiding at the Edge for robotics applications, due to the possibilityof consuming context information locally available. In our experimentation, an application running in the Edge controls over a Wi-Filink the movement of a robot. Information related to the wirelesschannel is made available via a service at the Edge, which is thenconsumed by the application.Results show that a smoother drivingof the robot can be achieved when wireless quality information isconsidered as input of the movement control algorithm.This article has been partially supported by the EU H2020 5G-CORAL Project (grant no. 761586) and by the 5G-City project (grant no. TEC2016-76795-C6-3-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Instabilities of infinite matter with effective Skyrme-type interactions

The stability of the equation of state predicted by Skyrme-type interactions is examined. We consider simultaneously symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter. The stability is defined by the inequalities that the Landau parameters must satisfy simultaneously. A systematic study is carried out to define interaction parameter domains where the inequalities are fulfilled. It is found that there is always a critical density $\rho_{cr}$ beyond which the system becomes unstable. The results indicate in which parameter regions one can find effective forces to describe correctly finite nuclei and give at the same time a stable equation of state up to densities of 3-4 times the saturation density of symmetric nuclear matter.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.

Automatic-dependent surveillance-broadcast experimental deployment using system wide information management

This paper describes an automatic-dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) implementation for air-to-air and ground-based experimental surveillance within a prototype of a fully automated air traffic management (ATM) system, under a trajectory-based-operations paradigm. The system is built using an air-inclusive implementation of system wide information management (SWIM). This work describes the relations between airborne and ground surveillance (SURGND), the prototype surveillance systems, and their algorithms. System's performance is analyzed with simulated and real data. Results show that the proposed ADS-B implementation can fulfill the most demanding surveillance accuracy requirements

Contribución para la caracterización bioclimática del Norte de Portugal. La transición florística atlántico-mediterránea.

Contribución para la caracterización bioclimática del norte de Portugal. La transición florística atlántico-mediterránea. Este trabajo se incluye en la serie de trabajos ya iniciados por Crespí et al. (2001), con el objetivo de contribuir al conocimiento bioclimático del Norte de Portugal, a través de la información florística presente. En este sentido, y para proceder a una posible cartografia de las áreas biogeográficas naturales desde una perspectiva termopluviométrica, son ahora introducidos 39 nuevos táxones para la relación ya existente. Los táxones analizados en esta aportación son: Anthemis triumfetti f. flosculosa, Arnica montana subsp. atlantica, Aster aragonensis, Carduus bourgeanus, Carduus carpetanus, Carduus platypus subsp. platypus, Carduus platypus var. granatensis, Carduus pycnocephalus, Centaurea cyanus, Centaurea geresensi, Centaurea herminii subsp. herminii, Centaurea langeana, Centaurea rivularis, Centaurea triumfetti subsp. lingulata, Leucanthemopsis pallida subsp.flaveola, Leucanthemopsis pallida subsp. pulverulenta, Leuzea rhaponticoides, Phalacrocarpum hoffmannseggii, Santolina rosmarinifolia, Santolina semidentata, Arbutus unedo, Cistus ladanifer, Cistus laurifolius, Cistus populifolius, Cistus psilosepalus, Cistus salvifolius, Erica arborea, Erica australis, Erica ciliaris, Erica cinerea, Erica lusitanica, Erica scoparia, Erica tetralix, Erica umbellata, Halimium lasianthum subsp alyssoides, Halimium lasianthum subsp lasianthum, Halimium ocymoides, Halimium umbellatum subsp umbellatum, Halimium umbellatum subsp. viscosum. De modo a poder alcanzar los objetivos propuestos, se procede a la aplicación de una rutina programática multivariada, basada en un sistema de información geográfico (SIG), a partir del cual cada uno de los táxones estudiados es georeferenciado sobre cartografía ambiental (confeccionada y publicada por el Instituto para a Conservação da Natureza, del Ministerio del Ambiente portugués), comparándola después con las caracterizaciones fitoclimáticas de Franco (1994) y de Costa et al. (1998). Los resultados obtenidos confirman no sólo un acusado efecto gradual de transición entre el área de influencia bioclimática atlántica y la mediterránea, como además la existencia de una tendencia de comportamiento fitoclimático intermedio, no considerada hasta el momento en las caracterizaciones bioclimáticas ya publicadas.Approach on the climatic characterization for Northern of Portugal. The atlanticmediterranean floristic transition. Thirty-nine specific and infraspecific taxa with different occurrences in the continental portuguese area are referred in the present work. In the light of these behaviours, the climatic and geomorphological variability of the North of Portugal has been important environmental factors to explain the floristic diversity in this part of the country. In this case, the taxa analysed are: Anthemis triumfetti f. flosculosa, Arnica montana subsp. atlantica, Aster aragonensis, Carduus bourgeanus, Carduus carpetanus, Carduus platypus subsp. platypus, Carduus platypus var.granatensis, Carduus pycnocephalus, Centaurea cyanus, Centaurea geresensi, Centaurea herminii subsp. herminii, Centaurea langeana, Centaurea rivularis, Centaurea triumfetti subsp. lingulata, Leucanthemopsis pallida subsp. flaveola, Leucanthemopsis pallida subsp. pulverulenta, Leuzea rhaponticoides, Phalacrocarpum hoffmannseggii, Santolina rosmarinifolia, Santolina semidentata, Arbutus unedo, Cistus ladanifer, Cistus laurifolius, Cistus populifolius, Cistus psilosepalus, Cistus salvifolius, Erica arborea, Erica australis, Erica ciliaris, Erica cinerea, Erica lusitanica, Erica scoparia, Erica tetralix, Erica umbellata, Halimium lasianthum subsp alyssoides, Halimium lasianthum subsp lasianthum, Halimium ocymoides, Halimium umbellatum subsp umbellatum, Halimium umbellatum subsp. viscosum. Because of the appropriate management of the floristic richness, a multivariate statistic routine is applied on a Geographical Informatic System (GIS) the chorological, geomorphological and climatic characterization for each one are described in this paper. The geological substrate and the altitudinal classes are focused for the geomorphological approach, as well as two biogeographic classifications are used to correlate the occurrence of the taxa and their bioclimatic preferences. In the light of this analytical scheme, every taxa is geo-referenced upon an environmental cartography (elaborated by the Instituto para a Conservação da Natureza), compared with the Franco´s (1994) and Costa´s et al. (1998) phytoclimatic characterizations. The results obtained are pointing out the floristic progressive differentiation between the atlantic bioclimatic influence and the mediterranean one, as well as the existence of an intermediate bioclimatic tendency which had never been considered so far

Competition of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spin ordering in nuclear matter

In the framework of a Fermi liquid theory it is considered the possibility of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phase transitions in symmetric nuclear matter with Skyrme effective interaction. The zero temperature dependence of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spin polarization parameters as functions of density is found for SkM$^*$, SGII effective forces. It is shown that in the density domain, where both type of solutions of self--consistent equations exist, ferromagnetic spin state is more preferable than antiferromagnetic one.Comment: 9p., 3 figure

Context-Awareness at the Service of Sensor Fusion Systems: Inverting the Usual Scheme

Proceedings of: 11th International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (IWANN 2011). International Workshop of Intelligent systems for context-based information fusion (ISCIF 11). Torremolinos-Málaga, Spain, June 8-10, 2011Many works on context-aware systems make use of location, navigation or tracking services offered by an underlying sensor fusion module, as part of the relevant contextual information. The obtained knowledge is typically consumed only by the high level layers of the system, in spite that context itself represents a valuable source of information from which every part of the implemented system could take benefit. This paper closes the loop, analyzing how can context knowledge be applied to improve the accuracy, robustness and adaptability of sensor fusion processes. The whole theoretical analysis will be related with the indoor/outdoor navigation system implemented for a wheeled robotic platform. Some preliminary results are presented, where the context information provided by a map is integrated in the sensor fusion system.This work was supported in part by Projects ATLANTIDA, CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, SINPROB, CAM MADRINET S-0505/TIC/0255 DPS2008-07029-C02-02.Publicad

ONTOGENERATION: Reusing Domain and Linguistic Ontologies for Spanish Text Generation

A significant problem facing the reuse of ontologies is to make their content more widely accessible to any potential user. Wording all the information represented in an ontology is the best way to ease the retrieval and understanding of its contents. This article proposes a general approach to reuse domain and linguistic ontologies with natural language generation technology, describing a practical system for the generation of Spanish texts in the domain of chemical substances. For this purpose the following steps have been taken: (a) an ontology in the chemicals domain developed under the METHONTOLOGY framework and the Ontology Design Environment (ODE) has been taken as knowledge source; (b) the linguistic ontology GUM (Generalized Upper Model) used in other languages has been extended and modified for Spanish; (c) a Spanish grammar has been built following the systemic-functional model by using the KPML (Komet-Penman Multilingual) environment. As result, the final system named Ontogeneration permits the user to consult and retrieve all the information of the ontology in Spanish