High-Performance Continuous Hydraulic Motor for MR Safe Robotic Teleoperation

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guided intervention has drawn increasing attention over the last decade. It is accredited to the capability of monitoring any physiological change of soft tissue with the high-contrast MR images. This also gives rise to the demand for precise tele-manipulation of interventional instruments. However, there is still lack of choices of MR safe actuators that provide high-fidelity robot manipulation. In this letter, we present a three-cylinder hydraulic motor using rolling-diaphragm-sealed cylinders, which can provide continuous bidirectional rotation with unlimited range. Both kinematics and dynamics models of the presented motor were studied, which facilitate its overall design optimization and position/torque control. Motor performance, such as step response, frequency response, and accuracy, were experimentally evaluated. We also integrate the motor into our catheter robot prototype designed for intra-operative MRI-guided cardiac electrophysiology (EP), which can provide full degree-of-freedom and precise manipulation of a standard EP catheter

Progenitor-like cells derived from mouse kidney protect against renal fibrosis in a remnant kidney model via decreased endothelial mesenchymal transition

Showing A quantification of GFP-positive cells in the lung after intravenous injection of MKPCs in five-sixths nephrectomized mice (y axis shows the number of cells, while the x axis (FL1-H) shows the fluorescence intensity; M1 is the area of GFP-positive cells) and B immunohistochemistry of the lung after intravenous injection of MKPCs into a mouse that underwent five-sixths nephrectomy. Few GFP positive cells were found in the lung at the first day but there were no GFP-positive cells at week 14. (TIFF 2253 kb

A Smart Card-Based Electronic School Absenteeism System for Influenza-Like Illness Surveillance in Hong Kong: Design, Implementation, and Feasibility Assessment

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The FENE dumbbell polymer model: existence and uniqueness of solutions for the momentum balance equation

We consider the FENE dumbbell polymer model which is the coupling of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the corresponding Fokker-Planck-Smoluchowski di ffusion equation. We show global well-posedness in the case of a 2D bounded domain. We assume in the general case that the initial velocity is sufficiently small and the initial probability density is sufficiently close to the equilibrium solution; moreover an additional condition on the coeffcients is imposed. In the corotational case, we only assume that the initial probability density is sufficiently close to the equilibrium solution

Flow state analysis on abrasive motion of centrifugal grinding under different working conditions

The flowing behavior on abrasive grains was analyzed by two-phase flow dynamic model when using different duty parameter in planetary lapping. The results show that the duty parameter will affect and control grains flowing behavior in lapping process. Further, it is pointed out that duty parameter is important to enhance productivity. The parameters of design and technology can be optimized economically and efficiently with the method so as to improve working quality

Acupuncture Point Localization Varies Among Acupuncturists

Background: Studies assessing the point-specific effect of acupuncture or the characteristics of acupuncture points (APs) tend to yield inconclusive results. In order to identify a possible confounding factor, we aimed to examine the variability in AP localization by means of a survey. Material and Methods: Attendees of the 14th ICMART (International Council of Medical Acupuncture and Related Techniques) congress as well as DAGfA (German Medical Society of Acupuncture) lecturers and students were asked to locate and mark the APs LI 10 and TH 5 on a research assistant's arm. Identified points were transferred into a coordinate system, and the respective bivariate distribution function was calculated. Additionally, participants filled out a questionnaire about their acupuncture education and experience, the acupuncture style and point localization techniques used most frequently, and their estimation of the size of an AP. Results: The areas of the ellipses, theoretically containing 95% of AP localizations, varied between 44.49 and 5.18 cm(2). The largest distance between 2 identified points was 8.45 cm for LI 10 and 5.3 cm for TH 5. Apart from being trained at the same school, no other factor could be identified that determined the variability in AP localization. Conclusion: Our results indicate that congruity of AP localization among experienced acupuncturists might be low. Although there are some limitations to our results, this possible bias should be taken into account when conducting acupuncture trials and interpreting results of previous acupuncture studies

Stability of Mine Car Motion in Curves of Invariable and Variable Radii

We discuss our experiences adapting three recent algorithms for maximum common (connected) subgraph problems to exploit multi-core parallelism. These algorithms do not easily lend themselves to parallel search, as the search trees are extremely irregular, making balanced work distribution hard, and runtimes are very sensitive to value-ordering heuristic behaviour. Nonetheless, our results show that each algorithm can be parallelised successfully, with the threaded algorithms we create being clearly better than the sequential ones. We then look in more detail at the results, and discuss how speedups should be measured for this kind of algorithm. Because of the difficulty in quantifying an average speedup when so-called anomalous speedups (superlinear and sublinear) are common, we propose a new measure called aggregate speedup

Protective efficacy against pandemic influenza of seasonal influenza vaccination in children in Hong Kong: a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: The efficacy of seasonal influenza vaccination against 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) remains unclear. METHODS: One child aged 6-17 years in each of 796 households was randomized to receive 2009-2010 seasonal trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) or saline placebo between August 2009 and February 2010. Households were followed up with serology, symptom diaries, and collection of respiratory specimens during illnesses. The primary outcomes were influenza infection confirmed by reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or a >/=4-fold rise in serum antibody titer measured by hemagglutination inhibition assay. RESULTS: Receipt of TIV led to 8-13-fold mean geometric rises in antibody titers against seasonal A and B viruses, but only 1.5-fold mean geometric rises against the pandemic A(H1N1) virus that was not included in the vaccine. Children who received TIV had a reduced risk of seasonal influenza B confirmed by RT-PCR, with a vaccine efficacy estimate of 66% (95% confidence interval [CI], 31%-83%). Children who received TIV also a had reduced risk of pandemic influenza A(H1N1) indicated by serology, with a vaccine efficacy estimate of 47% (95% CI, 15%-67%). CONCLUSIONS: Seasonal TIV prevented pandemic influenza A(H1N1) and influenza B infections in children. Pandemic A(H1N1) circulated at the time of vaccination and for a short time afterward with no substantial seasonal influenza activity during that period. The potential mechanism for seasonal TIV to provide protection, possibly short lived, for children against pandemic A(H1N1) infection despite poor cross-reactive serologic response deserves further investigation. Clinical Trials Registration. NCT00792051.postprin

Decentralized Estimation over Orthogonal Multiple-access Fading Channels in Wireless Sensor Networks - Optimal and Suboptimal Estimators

Optimal and suboptimal decentralized estimators in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) over orthogonal multiple-access fading channels are studied in this paper. Considering multiple-bit quantization before digital transmission, we develop maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) with both known and unknown channel state information (CSI). When training symbols are available, we derive a MLE that is a special case of the MLE with unknown CSI. It implicitly uses the training symbols to estimate the channel coefficients and exploits the estimated CSI in an optimal way. To reduce the computational complexity, we propose suboptimal estimators. These estimators exploit both signal and data level redundant information to improve the estimation performance. The proposed MLEs reduce to traditional fusion based or diversity based estimators when communications or observations are perfect. By introducing a general message function, the proposed estimators can be applied when various analog or digital transmission schemes are used. The simulations show that the estimators using digital communications with multiple-bit quantization outperform the estimator using analog-and-forwarding transmission in fading channels. When considering the total bandwidth and energy constraints, the MLE using multiple-bit quantization is superior to that using binary quantization at medium and high observation signal-to-noise ratio levels