1,677 research outputs found
Human Rights and History Education: An australian study
The place of education for and about human rights within the school curriculum remains contested and this paper reports on the first national crosssectoral investigation of its place in Australian curricula and more specifically in national and state History curriculum documents. Opportunities for the inclusion of human rights based studies were examined across school learning stages, taking into account explicit and implicit, compulsory or elective, as well as curricular and extra-curricular dimensions. Given the continued importance of History as a learning area, there is a need to strengthen the available explicit and mandatory opportunities for students to learn about human rights issues, working closely with key teacher associations, non-government agencies and supportive networks, drawing on available educational technologies
The effects of early rheumatoid arthritis on dominant and non-dominant hand impairment and function
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is defined as a symmetrical disease yet there is evidence that hand joint damage sustained in RA is related to use, and hand dominance could affect the degree of structural impairment evident in the wrist and hand. This exploratory research aimed to examine the relationship of dominant and non-dominant wrist and hand joint impairment and function in an early rheumatoid population. A multi-centre cohort study was conducted, recruiting consenting patients with early rheumatoid arthritis from eight outpatient occupational therapy departments. Wrist and hand joint impairment and function were assessed by measuring joint pain and swelling, range of motion and joint deviation, handgrip and hand dexterity. The results demonstrated that the non-dominant hand showed less pathological structural and functional involvement than the dominant hand in all but one outcome measure. These differences reached statistical significance between dominant and non-dominant hands on active range of motion in the wrist and some digits. Dominant hand structural impairment and dysfunction in this early RA sample was consistently greater than the non-dominant hand and bilateral handgrip ratio did not reflect healthy values for norms. Individuals with early RA showed a greater level of impairment in their dominant hands
Functional Electrical Stimulation mediated by Iterative Learning Control and 3D robotics reduces motor impairment in chronic stroke
Background: Novel stroke rehabilitation techniques that employ electrical stimulation (ES) and robotic technologies are effective in reducing upper limb impairments. ES is most effective when it is applied to support the patients’ voluntary effort; however, current systems fail to fully exploit this connection. This study builds on previous work using advanced ES controllers, and aims to investigate the feasibility of Stimulation Assistance through Iterative Learning (SAIL), a novel upper limb stroke rehabilitation system which utilises robotic support, ES, and voluntary effort. Methods: Five hemiparetic, chronic stroke participants with impaired upper limb function attended 18, 1 hour intervention sessions. Participants completed virtual reality tracking tasks whereby they moved their impaired arm to follow a slowly moving sphere along a specified trajectory. To do this, the participants’ arm was supported by a robot. ES, mediated by advanced iterative learning control (ILC) algorithms, was applied to the triceps and anterior deltoid muscles. Each movement was repeated 6 times and ILC adjusted the amount of stimulation applied on each trial to improve accuracy and maximise voluntary effort. Participants completed clinical assessments (Fugl-Meyer, Action Research Arm Test) at baseline and post-intervention, as well as unassisted tracking tasks at the beginning and end of each intervention session. Data were analysed using t-tests and linear regression. Results: From baseline to post-intervention, Fugl-Meyer scores improved, assisted and unassisted tracking performance improved, and the amount of ES required to assist tracking reduced. Conclusions: The concept of minimising support from ES using ILC algorithms was demonstrated. The positive results are promising with respect to reducing upper limb impairments following stroke, however, a larger study is required to confirm this
Rate- and State-Dependent Friction Law and Statistical Properties of Earthquakes
In order to clarify how the statistical properties of earthquakes depend on
the constitutive law characterizing the stick-slip dynamics, we make an
extensive numerical simulation of the one-dimensional spring-block model with
the rate- and state-dependent friction law. Both the magnitude distribution and
the recurrence-time distribution are studied with varying the constitutive
parameters characterizing the model. While a continuous spectrum of seismic
events from smaller to larger magnitudes is obtained, earthquakes described by
this model turn out to possess pronounced ``characteristic'' features.Comment: Minor revisions are made in the text and in the figures. Accepted for
publication in Europhys. Letter
Stick-Slip Motion and Phase Transition in a Block-Spring System
We study numerically stick slip motions in a model of blocks and springs
being pulled slowly. The sliding friction is assumed to change dynamically with
a state variable. The transition from steady sliding to stick-slip is
subcritical in a single block and spring system. However, we find that the
transition is continuous in a long chain of blocks and springs. The size
distribution of stick-slip motions exhibits a power law at the critical point.Comment: 8 figure
The Network of Epicenters of the Olami-Feder-Christensen Model of Earthquakes
We study the dynamics of the Olami-Feder-Christensen (OFC) model of
earthquakes, focusing on the behavior of sequences of epicenters regarded as a
growing complex network. Besides making a detailed and quantitative study of
the effects of the borders (the occurrence of epicenters is dominated by a
strong border effect which does not scale with system size), we examine the
degree distribution and the degree correlation of the graph. We detect sharp
differences between the conservative and nonconservative regimes of the model.
Removing border effects, the conservative regime exhibits a Poisson-like degree
statistics and is uncorrelated, while the nonconservative has a broad
power-law-like distribution of degrees (if the smallest events are ignored),
which reproduces the observed behavior of real earthquakes. In this regime the
graph has also a unusually strong degree correlation among the vertices with
higher degree, which is the result of the existence of temporary attractors for
the dynamics: as the system evolves, the epicenters concentrate increasingly on
fewer sites, exhibiting strong synchronization, but eventually spread again
over the lattice after a series of sufficiently large earthquakes. We propose
an analytical description of the dynamics of this growing network, considering
a Markov process network with hidden variables, which is able to account for
the mentioned properties.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures. Smaller number of figures, and minor text
corrections and modifications. For version with full resolution images see
http://fig.if.usp.br/~tpeixoto/cond-mat-0602244.pd
Human Rights Education in the Australian School Curriculum
Australian education systems, at state and federal levels, have been undergoing major reforms to their governance structures and to the nature of their curriculum. At the same time over the last decade there has been a national conversation about our knowledge and understanding of human rights (NHRCC 2009). In this context, it is an opportune time to review the place of education for and about human rights within the school curriculum. The study reported on in this paper outlines and examines the findings of a nationwide investigation into the capacity of each state and territory school education system and their individual curricula to provide opportunities to educate and motivate school students about human rights. It also engages in a discussion of the curriculum reforms being introduced as a result of the national Australian curriculum framework and the extent to which it caters for human rights perspectives. Our data derive from four main sources: a review of the literature; input from roundtable discussions with participants involved in the advocacy for and the delivery of, human rights education in schools; analysis of curriculum and policy documents at the state, territory and national levels; and resources and technologies being used in the teaching of human rights in schools
Human Rights Education in the School Curriculum
Human Rights Education centres; Professional Teachers Associations; Australian Human Rights Commissio
Optimisation of hand posture stimulation using an electrode array and iterative learning control.
Nonlinear optimisation-based search algorithms have been developed for the precise stimulation of muscles in the wrist and hand, to enable stroke patients to attain predefined gestures. These have been integrated in a system comprising a 40 element surface electrode array that is placed on the forearm, an electrogoniometer and data glove supplying position data from 16 joint angles, and custom signal generation and switching hardware to route the electrical stimulation to individual array elements. The technology will be integrated in a upper limb rehabilitation system currently undergoing clinical trials to increase their ability to perform functional tasks requiring fine hand and finger movement. Initial performance results from unimpaired subjects show the successful reproduction of six reference hand postures using the system
Near mean-field behavior in the generalized Burridge-Knopoff earthquake model with variable range stress transfer
Simple models of earthquake faults are important for understanding the
mechanisms for their observed behavior in nature, such as Gutenberg-Richter
scaling. Because of the importance of long-range interactions in an elastic
medium, we generalize the Burridge-Knopoff slider-block model to include
variable range stress transfer. We find that the Burridge-Knopoff model with
long-range stress transfer exhibits qualitatively different behavior than the
corresponding long-range cellular automata models and the usual
Burridge-Knopoff model with nearest-neighbor stress transfer, depending on how
quickly the friction force weakens with increasing velocity. Extensive
simulations of quasiperiodic characteristic events, mode-switching phenomena,
ergodicity, and waiting-time distributions are also discussed. Our results are
consistent with the existence of a mean-field critical point and have important
implications for our understanding of earthquakes and other driven dissipative
systems.Comment: 24 pages 12 figures, revised version for Phys. Rev.
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