New developments in prosthetic arm systems

Absence of an upper limb leads to severe impairments in everyday life, which can further influence the social and mental state. For these reasons, early developments in cosmetic and body-driven prostheses date some centuries ago, and they have been evolving ever since. Following the end of the Second World War, rapid developments in technology resulted in powered myoelectric hand prosthetics. In the years to come, these devices were common on the market, though they still suffered high user abandonment rates. The reasons for rejection were trifold - insufficient functionality of the hardware, fragile design, and cumbersome control. In the last decade, both academia and industry have reached major improvements concerning technical features of upper limb prosthetics and methods for their interfacing and control. Advanced robotic hands are offered by several vendors and research groups, with a variety of active and passive wrist options that can be articulated across several degrees of freedom. Nowadays, elbow joint designs include active solutions with different weight and power options. Control features are getting progressively more sophisticated, offering options for multiple sensor integration and multi-joint articulation. Latest developments in socket designs are capable of facilitating implantable and multiple surface electromyography sensors in both traditional and osseointegration-based systems. Novel surgical techniques in combination with modern, sophisticated hardware are enabling restoration of dexterous upper limb functionality. This article is aimed at reviewing the latest state of the upper limb prosthetic market, offering insights on the accompanying technologies and techniques. We also examine the capabilities and features of some of academia’s flagship solutions and methods

Link Workers in Social Prescribing for Young People work: a case study from Sheffield

Introduction: Social Prescribing has an established recognition regarding the benefits provided to the health-related social needs of adults, but little is known about how the intervention addresses young people’s needs. There is optimism regarding the central role of two core mechanisms that allows social prescribing to be effective, such as the empathetic role of Link Workers and the connection with community resources. This paper aims to describe the role played by Link Workers working a Social Prescribing intervention targeting young people. Description: This paper adopts a case study methodology to describe the role of Link Workers addressing young people’s needs and implementing Social Prescribing scheme in Sheffield (UK). Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with four of the seven link workers of one organisation based in Sheffield. Data were analysed through an inductive approach for emerging themes. Discussion: We provided a description of the profiles and background of Link Workers and described the three models of referral pathways into the intervention. The paper also shows how Link Workers identify young people's needs and how they connect with the community. Conclusion: Based on the insights and the internationally accepted definition of Social Prescribing, we provide a visual representation of the Social Prescribing model and discuss challenges. The paper highlights lessons learned and future directions regarding the role of Link Workers from the case stud

One-dimensional symmetry and Liouville type results for the fourth order Allen-Cahn equation in RN^N

In this paper, we prove an analogue of Gibbons' conjecture for the extended fourth order Allen-Cahn equation in R N , as well as Liouville type results for some solutions converging to the same value at infinity in a given direction. We also prove a priori bounds and further one-dimensional symmetry and rigidity results for semilinear fourth order elliptic equations with more general nonlinearities

Evaluasi Kecernaan Protein Kasar Dan Retensi Nitrogen Pada Ayam Broiler Dengan Ransum Berbeda Level Protein Dan Asam Asetat (Evaluation of Crude Protein Digestibility and Nitrogen Retention of Broiler with Different Level Crude Proteindiet and Acetic A

This research was aimed to find interaction effect of using different level protein of crude diet and acetic acid on broiler. Matters were used 180 broiler chicken, acetic acid and crude diet (rice brand, yellow corn, fish meal, soybean meal, poultry meat meal and premix).Equipments wereused including cage, brass, plastic, buckets, brooms, spray and chaff. The method of this study was done by raising broiler according with the treatment started from 8 to 21 days old. This research used completely randomized factorial design with 2 x 3 treatment with each three replication. First factor was level crude protein 21% (T1) and 20% (T2). Second factor was level acetic acids 0% (V0), 0,75% (V1) and 1,5% (V2). Research used variance analysis. The research showed there was no significant interaction (P>0,05) between using diet with different level of crude protein and acetic acid to crude fiber digestibility and nitrogen retention on broiler

Dynamics of relativistic solitons

Relativistic solitons are self-trapped, finite size, electromagnetic waves of relativistic intensity that propagate without diffraction spreading. They have been predicted theoretically within the relativistic fluid approximation, and have been observed in multi-dimensional particle in cell simulations of laser pulse interaction with the plasma. Solitons were observed in the laser irradiated plasmas with the proton imaging technique as well. This paper reviews many theoretical results on relativistic solitons in electron-ion plasmas.Comment: 12th International Congress on Plasma Physics, 25-29 October 2004, Nice (France

Note: Comparison between a prism-based and an acousto-optic tunable filter-based spectrometer for diffusive media

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Water consumptions in public schools

Water consumption per user in non-residential buildings is still a very complicated issue for engineers and designers in the process of analyzing water demand and water management. It is easier to design for residential units than for public buildings, as you never know exactly how many users will access the building daily, you can just estimate the number. Our goal is not to set certain and fixed numbers, as they probably will never exist, but to analyze the data we gathered through time and to try to get to an approximation of water usage in public schools connected to building occupants. This research integrates quantitative data of water consumption through water metering and historical data about users in buildings. Six hundred buildings have been monitored over a period of 5 years (2005 e 2010).We focused on consumptions for 3 types of schools: Nurseries (0-3 years old children), Kindergartens (3-6 years) and Elementary Schools (6-11 years). Finally we studied how they are linked to building occupants on a daily consumption rate. The results are that the rational basic demand for water is estimated as 48 liters per pre-school student per day and 18 liters per elementary school student per day. Moreover younger children use more water on a daily basis than elementary school students, as they need more services, such as laundries and kitchens, whereas older students consume water mainly in restrooms

Distributed Personalized Gradient Tracking with Convex Parametric Models

We present a distributed optimization algorithm for solving online personalized optimization problems over a network of computing and communicating nodes, each of which linked to a specific user. The local objective functions are assumed to have a composite structure and to consist of a known time-varying (engineering) part and an unknown (user-specific) part. Regarding the unknown part, it is assumed to have a known parametric (e.g., quadratic) structure a priori, whose parameters are to be learned along with the evolution of the algorithm. The algorithm is composed of two intertwined components: (i) a dynamic gradient tracking scheme for finding local solution estimates and (ii) a recursive least squares scheme for estimating the unknown parameters via user's noisy feedback on the local solution estimates. The algorithm is shown to exhibit a bounded regret under suitable assumptions. Finally, a numerical example corroborates the theoretical analysis

Continuous dependence on the constitutive functions for a class of problems describing fluid flow in porous media

Abstract. — In this paper we consider the PDE describing the fluid flow in a porous medium, focusing on the solution’s dependence upon the choice of the saturation curve and the hydraulic conductivity. Basically, we consider two different saturation curves (say y1 and y2) and two different hydraulic conductivities (K1 and K2) which are both ‘‘close’’ in the L2 loc-norm. Then we find estimates to prove a constitutive stability for the solutions of the corresponding problems with the same boundary and initial conditions