Robot-Assisted Mindfulness Practice: Analysis of Neurophysiological Responses and Affective State Change

Mindfulness is the state of paying attention to the present moment on purpose and meditation is the technique to obtain this state. This study aims to develop a robot assistant that facilitates mindfulness training by means of a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system. To achieve this goal, we collected EEG signals from two groups of subjects engaging in a meditative vs. nonmeditative human robot interaction (HRI) and evaluated cerebral hemispheric asymmetry, which is recognized as a well defined indicator of emotional states. Moreover, using self reported affective states, we strived to explain asymmetry changes based on pre and post experiment mood alterations. We found that unlike earlier meditation studies, the frontocentral activations in alpha and theta frequency bands were not influenced by robot guided mindfulness practice, however there was a significantly greater right sided activity in the occipital gamma band of Meditation group, which is attributed to increased sensory awareness and open monitoring. In addition, there was a significant main effect of Time on participants self reported affect, indicating an improved mood after interaction with the robot regardless of the interaction type. Our results suggest that EEG responses during robot-guided meditation hold promise in realtime detection and neurofeedback of mindful state to the user, however the experienced neurophysiological changes may differ based on the meditation practice and recruited tools. This study is the first to report EEG changes during mindfulness practice with a robot. We believe that our findings driven from an ecologically valid setting, can be used in development of future BCI systems that are integrated with social robots for health applications.Comment: accepted for conference RoMAN202

Multifunctional genes

In this paper a sensor fusion for pose estimation using optical and inertial data is presented. The proposed algorithm is based on extended Kalman filtering and fuses data from an optical tracking system and an inertial measurement unit. These two redundant sensor systems complement each other well, with the tracking providing absolute position accuracy and the inertial measurements giving low latency information of derivatives. Models for both sensors are given respecting the different sampling times and latencies. Another key issue is to use information about every landmark, i.e. marker, visible for the tracking system, by coupling the two sensor systems tightly together. The algorithms are evaluated in simulation and tested with an experimental hardware platform. The combined sensor system provides robust pose estimation in case of short time marker occlusion and effectively compensates for latencies the pose measurements

Wi-Closure: Reliable and Efficient Search of Inter-robot Loop Closures Using Wireless Sensing

In this paper we propose a novel algorithm, Wi-Closure, to improve computational efficiency and robustness of loop closure detection in multi-robot SLAM. Our approach decreases the computational overhead of classical approaches by pruning the search space of potential loop closures, prior to evaluation by a typical multi-robot SLAM pipeline. Wi-Closure achieves this by identifying candidates that are spatially close to each other by using sensing over the wireless communication signal between robots, even when they are operating in non-line-of-sight or in remote areas of the environment from one another. We demonstrate the validity of our approach in simulation and hardware experiments. Our results show that using Wi-closure greatly reduces computation time, by 54% in simulation and by 77% in hardware compared, with a multi-robot SLAM baseline. Importantly, this is achieved without sacrificing accuracy. Using Wi-Closure reduces absolute trajectory estimation error by 99% in simulation and 89.2% in hardware experiments. This improvement is due in part to Wi-Closure's ability to avoid catastrophic optimization failure that typically occurs with classical approaches in challenging repetitive environments.Comment: 6 pages without reference

Physician preferences in diagnostics and treatment of juvenile osteochondritis dissecans are diverse across the knee, ankle and elbow:an ESSKA survey

Purpose: To investigate the current preferences regarding the work-up and treatment choices of juvenile osteochondritis dissecans (JOCD) of the knee, ankle and elbow among orthopaedic surgeons. Methods: An international survey was set up for all European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy (ESSKA) members, which assessed various questions on diagnosis and treatment of JOCD of different joints. Respondents answered questions for one or more joints, based on their expertise. Proportions of answers were calculated and compared between joints. Consensus was defined as more than 75% agreement on an item; disagreement was defined as less than 25% agreement. Results: Fifty physicians responded to the survey, of whom forty-two filled out the questions on the knee, fourteen on the ankle and nine on the elbow. Plain radiography and MRI were the most used imaging modalities for the assessment and follow-up of JOCD in the knee and ankle, but not for the elbow. MRI was also the preferred method to assess the stability of a lesion in the knee and ankle. There was universal agreement on activity and/or sports restriction as the non-operative treatment of choice for JOCD. Size, stability and physeal closure were the most important prognostic factors in determining the operative technique for the elbow. For the knee, these factors were size and stability and for the ankle, these were size and location. Conclusion: Activity and/or sports restriction was the non-operative treatment of choice. Furthermore, plain radiography and MRI were the preferred imaging modalities for the knee and ankle, but not for the elbow. For determining the operative technique, physicians agreed that the size of the lesion is an important prognostic factor in all joints. These findings help us understand how juvenile osteochondritis dissecans is treated in current practice and may provide opportunities for improvement. Level of evidence: Level V.</p

Molecular mechanisms that distinguish TFIID housekeeping from regulatable SAGA promoters

An important distinction is frequently made between constitutively expressed housekeeping genes versus regulated genes. Although generally characterized by different DNA elements, chromatin architecture and cofactors, it is not known to what degree promoter classes strictly follow regulatability rules and which molecular mechanisms dictate such differences. We show that SAGA-dominated/wTATA-box promoters are more responsive to changes in the amount of activator, even compared to TFIID/TATA-like promoters that depend on the same activator Hsf1. Regulatability is therefore an inherent property of promoter class. Further analyses show that SAGA/TATA-box promoters are more dynamic because TATA-binding protein recruitment through SAGA is susceptible to removal by Mot1. In addition, the nucleosome configuration upon activator depletion shifts on SAGA/TATA-box promoters and seems less amenable to preinitiation complex formation. The results explain the fundamental difference between housekeeping and regulatable genes, revealing an additional facet of combinatorial control: an activator can elicit a different response dependent on core promoter class

GeneSeeker: extraction and integration of human disease-related information from web-based genetic databases

The identification of genes underlying human genetic disorders requires the combination of data related to cytogenetic localization, phenotypes and expression patterns, to generate a list of candidate genes. In the field of human genetics, it is normal to perform this combination analysis by hand. We report on GeneSeeker (), a web server that gathers and combines data from a series of databases. All database searches are performed via the web interfaces provided with the original databases, guaranteeing that the most recent data are queried, and obviating data warehousing. GeneSeeker makes the same selection of candidate genes as the human geneticists would have performed, and thus reducing the time-consuming process to a few minutes. GeneSeeker is particularly well suited for syndromes in which the disease gene displays altered expression patterns in the affected tissue(s)

A Case of Oral-contraceptive Related Ischemic Colitis in Young Woman

Ischemic colitis is generally considered a disease of the elderly. The causes of ischemic colitis include low-flow states due to cardiac dysfunction or hypovolemia and certain medications including estrogen. Here we report a case of ischemic colitis in a 26-year-old woman. She had no specific medical history except taking oral-contraceptives for a long time. The mechanism of estrogen-induced ischemic colitis is not clearly understood. But we recommend that oral-contraceptives should be considered as a cause of ischemic colitis in young women