Overview of 100 patients with voice prosthesis after total laryngectomy--experience of single institution [Pregled 100 bolesnika sa govornom protezom nakon totalne laringektomije]

Surgical procedures, especially total laryngectomy, used for treatment of advanced laryngeal carcinoma, have a profound adverse effect on the patient's physical, functional, and emotional health, and almost always decrease quality of life. There are three main types of voice rehabilitation after surgery. They are: esophageal speech techniques, the use of artificial larynx devices and tracheoesophageal puncture with the insertion of various types of voice prostheses. Voice prosthesis was inserted in 100 patients in the ENT Department, University Hospital Center Zagreb, from January 2004 until February 2011, and 91 of these patients were included in our study. The prosthesis was inserted secondary at 71 patients, while in other 20 it was inserted primary, i.e. immediately after laryngectomy as a part of the same procedure. Voice rehabilitation was initiated 10th day after primary insertion and 1st-3rd day after secondary insertion. The postoperative voice quality was compared with a five degree scale, which was taken from Hilger's retrospective study (2000). The rehabilitation was successful in 75.8% of our patients. Early complication rate was 4.4%, and 10.9% of patients had late complications. Statistical analysis didn't show significant differences regarding the complications rate and success rate of rehabilitation between groups of patients, formed according to age, irradiation status and timing of prosthesis insertion

A Distance-Geometric Method for Recovering Robot Joint Angles From an RGB Image

Autonomous manipulation systems operating in domains where human intervention is difficult or impossible (e.g., underwater, extraterrestrial or hazardous environments) require a high degree of robustness to sensing and communication failures. Crucially, motion planning and control algorithms require a stream of accurate joint angle data provided by joint encoders, the failure of which may result in an unrecoverable loss of functionality. In this paper, we present a novel method for retrieving the joint angles of a robot manipulator using only a single RGB image of its current configuration, opening up an avenue for recovering system functionality when conventional proprioceptive sensing is unavailable. Our approach, based on a distance-geometric representation of the configuration space, exploits the knowledge of a robot's kinematic model with the goal of training a shallow neural network that performs a 2D-to-3D regression of distances associated with detected structural keypoints. It is shown that the resulting Euclidean distance matrix uniquely corresponds to the observed configuration, where joint angles can be recovered via multidimensional scaling and a simple inverse kinematics procedure. We evaluate the performance of our approach on real RGB images of a Franka Emika Panda manipulator, showing that the proposed method is efficient and exhibits solid generalization ability. Furthermore, we show that our method can be easily combined with a dense refinement technique to obtain superior results.Comment: IFAC 202

PRIMJENA NAPREDNIH RAČUNALNIH TEHNOLOGIJA U MODELIRANJU I UPRAVLJANJU POMORSKIH SUSTAVA

The paper deals with some application possibilities of advanced computing technologies in marine systems modelling and control. New computing technologies and techniques like fuzzy logic (FL), expert systems (ES), artificial neural networks (ANN), genetic algorithms (GA), object oriented programming (OOP) offer new, extended possibilities to identification, modelling and control of dynamic systems. This paper presents some possibilities of practical use of advanced computing technologies applied to the modelling and control of marine diesel engines. The emphasis is put on two well recognised techniques, fuzzy logic and expert systems. Some application examples are illustrated in the paper to show effectivness of using such methods and techniques in marine diesel engine modelling and control.U radu se daju neke mogućnosti primjena novih računalnih tehnologija u modeliranju i upravljanju sustava u pomorstvu. Nove računalne tehnologije i tehnike kao: neizrazita logika (FL), ekspertni sustavi (ES), umjetne neuronske mreže (ANN), genetički algoritmi (GA), objektno orjentirano programiranje (OOP) pružaju nove proširene mogućnosti za identifikaciju, modeliranje i upravljanje dinamičkih sustava. U ovom radu prezentiraju se neke od mogućnosti praktičnog iskorištenja naprednih računalnih tehnologija s primjenom u svrhe modeliranja i upravljanja drodskih dizelskih strojeva. Naglasak se u radu daje na dvije priznate i dobro prihvaćene tehnike, neizrazite logike i ekspertnih sustava. U radu se daje nekoliko primjera primjene ovih tehnika i metoda, te pokazuje njihova učinkovitost

Obesity and cancer

Epidemiologic evidence associating obesity and cancer accumulated over last two decades pointing to potentially preventable forms of cancer disease. Observational prospective analyses point to breast and colon cancer as most influenced by obesity-linked lifestyle habits. Other tumor-types can comprise to this group as well (endometrium, esophagus, liver, stomach, thyroid, pancreas, and prostate cancer), according to epidemiological data, but with lesser level of certainty. Randomized studies of lifestyle interventions are still scarce in this area of research, despite being urgently needed. Different pathophysiological mechanisms for obesity-cancer link are proposed in literature. Endocrine factors, deregulated signaling cascades, oxidative stress, and chronic inflammation are implicated as obesity-related carcinogenic processes. Considering growing prevalence of obesity, expert recommendations for lifestyle change (healthy nutrition, physical activity) are widely suggested as a main strategy in primary and secondary prevention of adiposity-related cancers