Towards the development of an EIT-based stretchable sensor for multi-touch industrial human-computer interaction systems

In human-computer interaction studies, an interaction is often considered as a kind of information or discrete internal states of an individual that can be transmitted in a loss-free manner from people to computing interfaces (or robotic interfaces) and vice-versa. This project aims to investigate processes capable of communicating and cooperating by adjusting their schedules to match the evolving execution circumstances, in a way that maximise the quality of their joint activities. By enabling human-computer interactions, the process will emerge as a framework based on the concept of expectancy, demand, and need of the human and computer together, for understanding the interplay between people and computers. The idea of this work is to utilise touch feedback from humans as a channel for communication thanks to an artificial sensitive skin made of a thin, flexible, and stretchable material acting as transducer. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate that the first prototype of our artificial sensitive skin can detect surface contacts and show their locations with an image reconstructing the internal electrical conductivity of the sensor

Notes for genera: basal clades of Fungi (including Aphelidiomycota, Basidiobolomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Calcarisporiellomycota, Caulochytriomycota, Chytridiomycota, Entomophthoromycota, Glomeromycota, Kickxellomycota, Monoblepharomycota, Mortierellomycota, Mucoromycota, Neocallimastigomycota, Olpidiomycota, Rozellomycota and Zoopagomycota)

Compared to the higher fungi (Dikarya), taxonomic and evolutionary studies on the basal clades of fungi are fewer in number. Thus, the generic boundaries and higher ranks in the basal clades of fungi are poorly known. Recent DNA based taxonomic studies have provided reliable and accurate information. It is therefore necessary to compile all available information since basal clades genera lack updated checklists or outlines. Recently, Tedersoo et al. (MycoKeys 13:1--20, 2016) accepted Aphelidiomycota and Rozellomycota in Fungal clade. Thus, we regard both these phyla as members in Kingdom Fungi. We accept 16 phyla in basal clades viz. Aphelidiomycota, Basidiobolomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Calcarisporiellomycota, Caulochytriomycota, Chytridiomycota, Entomophthoromycota, Glomeromycota, Kickxellomycota, Monoblepharomycota, Mortierellomycota, Mucoromycota, Neocallimastigomycota, Olpidiomycota, Rozellomycota and Zoopagomycota. Thus, 611 genera in 153 families, 43 orders and 18 classes are provided with details of classification, synonyms, life modes, distribution, recent literature and genomic data. Moreover, Catenariaceae Couch is proposed to be conserved, Cladochytriales Mozl.-Standr. is emended and the family Nephridiophagaceae is introduced

How can community health programmes build enabling environments for transformative communication?: Experiences from India and South Africa

Whilst much research has examined how to empower poor community members to identify the social roots of health problems and articulate demands for health-enabling living conditions, less is known about how to create receptive social environments where the powerful are likely to heed the voices of the poor. This paper seeks to characterise the social environments in which community-led health programmes are most likely to facilitate effective and sustainable health improvements, using three dimensions to characterise social contexts: material, symbolic and relational . We distinguish between technical communication (the transfer of health-related knowledge and skills from experts to communities) and transformative communication (a more politicised process, where marginalised groups develop critical understandings of the social roots of their ill-health, and the confidence and capacity to tackle these). Drawing on secondary sources, we compare two well-documented case studies of HIV/AIDS management projects. Both sought to use technical communication about HIV/AIDS as a springboard for developing transformative communication skills amongst marginalised women. The Entabeni Project in South Africa sought to empower impoverished women to deliver home-based nursing to people with AIDS. Whilst it performed a vital short-term welfare function, it did not achieve its goals of leadership by local participants and long-term sustainability. By contrast, the Sonagachi Project in India, which started as an HIV-prevention programme targeting female sex workers, has achieved both these outcomes. We examine the way in which pre-existing social contexts in West Bengal and rural KwaZulu-Natal impacted on the possibility of effective mobilisation of excluded women in each case. We also highlight the strategies through which Sonagachi, but not Entabeni, was able to alter aspects of the material, symbolic and relational contexts of participants’ communities in ways that opened up significant opportunities for project participants to articulate and assert their needs, and motivated powerful actors and groups to heed these demands

EIT-Based Tactile Sensing Patches for Rehabilitation and Human Machine Interaction

We present the development of an innovative stretchable tac- tile sensor based on electrical impedance tomography (EIT) for appli- cations in wearable robotics and rehabilitation. To extract the tactile information we exploit the electrical impedance tomography technique to reconstruct the local conductivity changes of a piezoresistive fabric. The EIT method poses several new challenges in the reconstruction, counterbalanced by the overcoming of many of the drawbacks of the cur- rent tactile sensors. Results obtained are preliminary but encouraging and we believe that the combination of the EIT method with advanced machine learning techniques will enable reliable wearable tactile sensing

Intrinsic epigenetic regulation of the D4Z4 macrosatellite repeat in a transgenic mouse model for FSHD

Contains fulltext : 118685.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD) is a progressive muscular dystrophy caused by decreased epigenetic repression of the D4Z4 macrosatellite repeats and ectopic expression of DUX4, a retrogene encoding a germline transcription factor encoded in each repeat. Unaffected individuals generally have more than 10 repeats arrayed in the subtelomeric region of chromosome 4, whereas the most common form of FSHD (FSHD1) is caused by a contraction of the array to fewer than 10 repeats, associated with decreased epigenetic repression and variegated expression of DUX4 in skeletal muscle. We have generated transgenic mice carrying D4Z4 arrays from an FSHD1 allele and from a control allele. These mice recapitulate important epigenetic and DUX4 expression attributes seen in patients and controls, respectively, including high DUX4 expression levels in the germline, (incomplete) epigenetic repression in somatic tissue, and FSHD-specific variegated DUX4 expression in sporadic muscle nuclei associated with D4Z4 chromatin relaxation. In addition we show that DUX4 is able to activate similar functional gene groups in mouse muscle cells as it does in human muscle cells. These transgenic mice therefore represent a valuable animal model for FSHD and will be a useful resource to study the molecular mechanisms underlying FSHD and to test new therapeutic intervention strategies