Introduction: exploring and explaining the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate

This introduction lays the groundwork for this Special Issue by providing an overview of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), and by introducing three main analytical themes. The first theme concerns the emergence and continuation of the APP. The contributions show that the emergence of the APP can be attributed to international factors, including the United States' rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, and its search for an alternative arena for global climate governance, and other countries' wish to maintain good relations with the US; as well as domestic factors, such as the presence of bureaucratic actors in favour of the Partnership, alignment with domestic priorities, and the potential for reaping economic benefits through participation. The second theme examines the nature of the Partnership, concluding that it falls on the very soft side of the hard-soft law continuum and that while being branded as a public-private partnership, governments remain in charge. Under the third theme, the influence which the APP exerts on the post-2012 United Nations (UN) climate change negotiations is scrutinised. The contributions show that at the very least, the APP is exerting some cognitive influence on the UN discussions through its promotion of a sectoral approach. The introduction concludes with outlining areas for future research. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Virtual environments increase participation of children with cerebral palsy in robot-aided treadmill training

Virtual environments can make repetitive motor rehabilitation exercises more motivating and thereby more effective. We hypothesize that participation-dependent multimodal stimuli increase the patientpsilas activity as expressed through force exertion during robot-aided treadmill training. In a single case study with one patient (12 years old), we were able to show that active participation increased in the presence of visual stimuli and decreased in their absence. For a feasibility study, we included four children with cerebral palsy in order to assess the user acceptance of four different virtual environment scenarios including a soccer scenario, a traffic situation, obstacle crossing and wading through deep snow. Using questionnaires, we found that only the soccer scenario provided sufficient interactive elements to engage the patients

Virtual realities as motivational tools for robotic assisted gait training in children: A surface electromyography study

Patient's active cooperation is essential to achieve good outcome in pediatric rehabilitation. Therefore, virtual environments were developed to enhance robotic assisted gait training. The purpose of this study was to evaluate virtual realities as motivational tools during robotic assisted gait training with children in the pediatric Lokomat®. Nine children with different gait disorders and eight healthy children participated in the study. Muscular effort of the lower leg was assessed by surface electromyography during a randomly designed training protocol with virtual realities. Self reported motivation was investigated with two questionnaires. Comparisons were drawn through repeated measurement Analysis of Variance and paired-t-tests. The logarithmic transformed data showed that the electromyographic activity output in both groups was significantly higher during tasks with virtual realities than during normal walking conditions. These results support that virtual realities seem to be efficient motivational tools to increase children's muscular effort in the pediatric Lokomat®. The gaming aspect of virtual realities keeps children highly engaged during repetitive tasks

Virtual reality for enhancement of robot-assisted gait training in children with central gait disorders

Objective: To examine the effect of various forms of training interventions, with and without virtual reality, on the initiation and maintenance of active participation during robot-assisted gait training. Design: Intervention study at the Rehabilitation Centre Affoltern a. A., University Children’s Hospital, Zurich. Subjects: Ten patients (5 males, mean age 12.47 years, standard deviation 1.84 years) with different neurological gait disorders and 14 healthy children (7 males, mean age 11.76 years, standard deviation 2.75 years). Methods: All participants walked in the driven gait orthosis Lokomat® in 4 different randomly-assigned conditions. Biofeedback values calculated during swing phases were the primary outcome measure and secondary outcomes were derived from a questionnaire assessing the participant’s motivation. Results: Findings revealed a significant main effect for training condition in all participants (p<0.001), for patients (p<0.05) and for healthy controls (p<0.01). Overall, both virtual reality-assisted therapy approaches were equally the most effective in initiating the desired active participation in all children, compared with conventional training conditions. Motivation was very high and differed between the groups only in the virtual navigation condition. Conclusion: Novel virtual reality-based training conditions represent a valuable approach to enhance active participation during robot-assisted gait training in patients and healthy controls

Social immunity and the evolution of group living in insects

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