Timing and correction of stepping movements with a virtual reality avatar

Research into the ability to coordinate one’s movements with external cues has focussed on the use of simple rhythmic, auditory and visual stimuli, or interpersonal coordination with another person. Coordinating movements with a virtual avatar has not been explored, in the context of responses to temporal cues. To determine whether cueing of movements using a virtual avatar is effective, people’s ability to accurately coordinate with the stimuli needs to be investigated. Here we focus on temporal cues, as we know from timing studies that visual cues can be difficult to follow in the timing context. Real stepping movements were mapped onto an avatar using motion capture data. Healthy participants were then motion captured whilst stepping in time with the avatar’s movements, as viewed through a virtual reality headset. The timing of one of the avatar step cycles was accelerated or decelerated by 15% to create a temporal perturbation, for which participants would need to correct to, in order to remain in time. Step onset times of participants relative to the corresponding step-onsets of the avatar were used to measure the timing errors (asynchronies) between them. Participants completed either a visual-only condition, or auditory-visual with footstep sounds included, at two stepping tempo conditions (Fast: 400ms interval, Slow: 800ms interval). Participants’ asynchronies exhibited slow drift in the Visual-Only condition, but became stable in the Auditory-Visual condition. Moreover, we observed a clear corrective response to the phase perturbation in both the fast and slow tempo auditory-visual conditions. We conclude that an avatar’s movements can be used to influence a person’s own motion, but should include relevant auditory cues congruent with the movement to ensure a suitable level of entrainment is achieved. This approach has applications in physiotherapy, where virtual avatars present an opportunity to provide the guidance to assist patients in adhering to prescribed exercises

Comparison of different cephalometric variables in patients with and without history of snoring

Background: Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome has a high prevalence among adults. Cephalometric variables can be a valuable method for evaluating patients with this syndrome. The objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the craniofacial variables in subjects with and without snoring by cephalometric analysis.Methods: 40 patients were included in the study who were divided into two groups; group 1 of 20 snoring patients and group 2 control group of 20 non-snoring patients and were evaluated and compared for various cephalometric variables.Results: The distance from the hyoid bone to the mandibular plane (MP-H) was the only variable that showed a statistically significant correlation between two groups.Conclusions: Cephalometric variables are useful tools for evaluating the patients with snoring who are predisposed to obstructive sleep apnoea. The distance from the hyoid bone to the mandibular plane showed a statistically significant correlation between two groups

Comparative study of safety and efficacy of pregabalin and gabapentin in management of neuropathic pain associated with chronic lumbar radiculopathy

Background: Chronic lumbar radiculopathy a clinical condition in which there is back and leg pain associated with sensory, reflex, or motor deficits in the area of nerve root distribution lasting for more than 12 weeks. The prevalence of lumbar radiculopathy has been reported to be 5.3% in men and 3.7% in women. Pregabalin and gabapentin, which fit in to a new category of drugs called as alpha-2-delta (α2δ) modulators, have been discovered to be effective in the treatment of neuropathic pain related with multiple conditions. So this study was done to compare safety and efficacy of pregabalin and gabapentin in management of pain associated with chronic lumbar radiculopathy.Methods: This was a randomized two arm comparative prospective study. Total 160 patients were enrolled and randomized equally into 2 groups. Group A patients were given capsule pregabalin 75 mg two times a day orally, Group B patients were given tablet gabapentin 300 mg two times a day. Pain intensity was assessed at the start of study i.e. at baseline (0 week), at 6 weeks and at 12 weeks of starting the treatment using numeric pain rating scale.Results: There was significant reduction in pain at the end of 12 weeks in both the groups (p<0.0001), but there was no significant difference between these two groups. The incidence of adverse effects was also more in group A.Conclusions: Both the drugs are having comparable efficacy but gabapentin is more tolerable in such cases

An Enhanced Energy Balanced Data Transmission Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks.

This paper presents two new energy balanced routing protocols for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs); Efficient and Balanced Energy consumption Technique (EBET) and Enhanced EBET (EEBET). The first proposed protocol avoids direct transmission over long distance to save sufficient amount of energy consumed in the routing process. The second protocol overcomes the deficiencies in both Balanced Transmission Mechanism (BTM) and EBET techniques. EBET selects relay node on the basis of optimal distance threshold which leads to network lifetime prolongation. The initial energy of each sensor node is divided into energy levels for balanced energy consumption. Selection of high energy level node within transmission range avoids long distance direct data transmission. The EEBET incorporates depth threshold to minimize the number of hops between source node and sink while eradicating backward data transmissions. The EBET technique balances energy consumption within successive ring sectors, while, EEBET balances energy consumption of the entire network. In EEBET, optimum number of energy levels are also calculated to further enhance the network lifetime. Effectiveness of the proposed schemes is validated through simulations where these are compared with two existing routing protocols in terms of network lifetime, transmission loss, and throughput. The simulations are conducted under different network radii and varied number of nodes

The contemporary model of vertebral column joint dysfunction and impact of high-velocity, low-amplitude controlled vertebral thrusts on neuromuscular function

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Pharmacovigilance: a study to evaluate knowledge, attitude, and practices of and impact of educational intervention among doctors in teaching hospital, in rural area of Jalna, India

Background: According to WHO Pharmacovigilance is “The science and activities which are related to the detection, assessment, understanding, and the prevention of adverse effects or any other drug-related problems.” A majority of India’s population prefers government hospitals when they are in need of health care facilities. The patients also prefer other available free health care facilities. Hence, these hospitals can be a good source for generating an adverse drug reactions database. However, the Herculean task is to foster a culture of reporting among the doctors, especially among the junior doctors, as they are more closely associated with the patient care, hence the present study to assess awareness of pharmacovigilance among the doctors and to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention for improving awareness of pharmacovigilance among doctors in an Indian tertiary care teaching hospital.Methods: A suitable self-administered knowledge, attitude, practice (KAP) survey questionnaire was designed, based on previous studies. An interventional educational activity was organized and the impact of the educational Intervention was evaluated by again administering the similar questionnaire. The statistical analysis was carried for comparing the pre- and post-intervention.Results: It was seen that the KAP of pharmacovigilance among doctors is low. The results also showed that there was an improvement after the educational intervention.Conclusions: The KAP of pharmacovigilance is low among doctors and educational intervention can improve it

An energy-efficient distributed clustering algorithm for heterogeneous WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) were envisaged to become the fabric of our environment and society. However, they are yet unable to surmount many operational challenges such as limited network lifetime, which strangle their widespread deployment. To prolong WSN lifetime, most of the existing clustering schemes are geared towards homogeneous WSN. This paper presents enhanced developed distributed energy-efficient clustering (EDDEEC) scheme for heterogeneous WSN. EDDEEC mainly consists of three constituents i.e., heterogeneous network model, energy consumption model, and clustering-based routing mechanism. Our heterogeneous network model is based on three energy levels of nodes. Unlike most works, our energy consumption model takes into account the impact of radio environment. Finally, the proposed clustering mechanism of EDDEEC changes the cluster head selection probability in an efficient and dynamic manner. Simulation results validate and confirm the performance supremacy of EDDEEC compared to existing schemes in terms of various metrics such as network life.Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University Research Group Project No. RG#1435-051.Scopu