Regulating Healthcare Robots: Maximizing Opportunities While Minimizing Risks

Some of the most dynamic areas of robotics research and development today are healthcare applications. Robot-assisted surgery, robotic nurses, in-home rehabilitation, and eldercare robots\u27 are all demonstrating rapidly iterating innovation. Rising healthcare labor costs and an aging population will increase demand for these human surrogates and enhancements. However, like many emerging technologies, robots are difficult to place within existing regulatory frameworks. For example, the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) seeks to ensure that medical devices (few of which are consumer devices) are safe, the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules apply to data collected by health care providers (but not most consumer-facing hardware or software developers), and state licensing statutes oversee the conduct of doctors and nurses who, heretofore, have all been human beings

Understanding Divertor Detachment through CRETIN Modeling - a Work in Progress

From numerous studies aimed at reducing the divertor target plate incident heat flux or understanding divertor detachment, an abundance of evidence supporting the importance of atomic processes in tokamak plasmas now exists. Through use of a multi-dimensional Non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (NLTE) simulation code named CRETIN [1] this repor

Non-neoclassical up/down asymmetry of impurity emission on Alcator C-Mod

We demonstrate that existing theories are insufficient to explain up/down asymmetries of argon x-ray emission in Alcator C-Mod ohmic plasmas. Instead of the poloidal variation, ñ[subscript z]/〈n[subscript z]〉, being of order the inverse aspect ratio, ϵ, and scaling linearly with B[subscript t][superscript _ over n][subscript e]/I[2 over p], it is observed over 0.8 < r/a < 1.0 to be of order unity and exhibits a threshold behaviour between 3.5 <B[subscript t][superscript _ over n][subscript e]/I[subscript p] < 4.0 (T10[superscript 20] m[superscript −3] MA[superscript −1]). The transition from a poloidally symmetric to asymmetric impurity distribution is shown to occur at densities just below those that trigger a reversal of the core toroidal rotation direction, thought to be linked to the transition between the linear and saturated ohmic confinement regimes. A possible drive is discussed by which anomalous radial transport might sustain the impurity density asymmetry as the ratio of the perpendicular to parallel equilibration times, τ[subscript ⊥,z]/τ[subscript ∥,z], approaches unity. This explanation requires a strong up/down asymmetry in radial flux which, while not observable on C-Mod, has been measured in TEXT and Tore Supra ohmic plasmas.United States. Dept. of Energy (Contract DE-FC02-99ER54512)United States. Dept. of Energy (Fusion Research Postdoctoral Research Program