Impact of active smoking on survival of patients with metastatic lung adenocarcinoma harboring an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation

Lung cancer in smokers and non-smokers demonstrates distinct genetic profiles, and cigarette smoking affects epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) function and causes secondary EGFR tyrosine kinase resistance. We evaluated the effect of active smoking in patients with metastatic lung adenocarcinoma. A total of 132 metastatic lung adenocarcinoma patients, diagnosed between 2008 and 2013, with known EGFR mutation status, were evaluated retrospectively. Among these patients, 40 had an activating EGFR mutation. Patients who continued smoking during the treatment were defined as active smokers. Former smokers and never smokers were together defined as non-smokers. The outcomes of the treatment in relation to the EGFR mutation and smoking status were evaluated. The median follow-up time was 10.5 months. The overall response rate for the first-line therapy was significantly higher among the EGFR-mutant patients (p = 0.01), however, smoking status had no impact on the response rate (p = 0.1). The EGFR-mutant active smokers progressed earlier than the non-smokers (p < 0.01). The overall survival (OS) of the non-smokers and patients treated with erlotinib was significantly longer (p = 0.02 and p = 0.01, respectively). Smoking status did not affect the OS in EGFR wild type tumors (p = 0.49) but EGFR-mutant non-smokers had a longer OS than the active smokers (p = 0.01).The active smokers treated with erlotinib had poorer survival than the non-smokers (p = 0.03). Multivariate analysis of EGFR-mutant patients showed that erlotinib treatment at any line and non-smoking were independent prognostic factors for the OS (p = 0.04 and p = 0.01, respectively). Smoking during treatment is a negative prognostic factor in metastatic lung adenocarcinoma with an EGFR mutation

Do Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Delay Posterior Capsule Opacification After Phacoemulsification in Children? A Randomized, Prospective Controlled Trial

Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy of topical ketorolac for the prevention of posterior capsule opacification (PCO) in pediatric cataract surgery

7-DOF Haptic device and interface design

In this study, the developed 7-DOF haptic device (HaP-7) and its virtual reality interface are presented. The design issues, design constraints, and alternative design configurations are discussed and the potential advantages of the HaP-7 are put forward. The kinematic model of the proposed device looks like a simplified human arm kinematic model. The redundant characteristic of the device provides larger workspace and allows for appropriate posture selection for the purposes of maximization of the rigidity, transparency and stability, while minimizing the inertia and power consumption in addition to the singularity and obstacle avoidance optimization

Optimal posture control algorithm to improve the stability of redundant haptic devices

Stability is indispensable to haptic interfaces for the simulation of a large variety of virtual environments. On a multi-degree of freedom (multi-DOF) haptic device, the passivity condition must be satisfied in both end-effector and joint space to achieve stable interaction. In this study, a conservative passivity condition is utilized for the stability such that guaranteeing the passivity at all joints is a sufficient condition for the passivity and then stability of the whole haptic system. An optimal posture control algorithm is developed to satisfy this passivity condition and maximize the stability performance of a redundant haptic device. The algorithm optimally adjusts the device postures, which are estimated by a Golden Section Search algorithm. The proposed control algorithm was experimentally implemented on a virtual sphere by using a 7-DOF redundant haptic device. Z-width stability metric was used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results show that the optimal posture control approach significantly improves the stability of the redundant haptic devices

Kinematic calibration of a 7 DoF hapic device

Precise positioning and precise force control requirement in haptic devices necessitate the kinematic calibration of the device. Since force control algorithms in haptic interfaces employ Jacobian matrix which includes kinematic model parameters, kinematic calibration is not only important for pose accuracy but also for force control. The deviation of kinematic parameters and joint transmission errors are main reasons disturbing the kinematic calibration of the manipulators. In haptic device design, capstan drives and parallelogram mechanisms are preferred to use for actuation. Hence, their transmission errors should be estimated in the kinematic calibration. This paper presents a simulation study including the estimation of the kinematic parameters and transmission errors due to the capstan drives and parallelogram mechanism for a 7 DOF haptic device. The closed chain kinematic model is preferred to use for easy implementation in the presented kinematic calibration study

Utilization of motor current based torque feedback to improve the transparency of haptic interfaces

In this paper motor current based torque feedback compensator is utilized in actuator space together with a closed loop impedance control algorithm instead of model based compensator to improve the transparency performance of haptic interfaces; moreover, a novel transparency evaluation metric is developed to evaluate the transparency performance of these devices. The proposed control algorithm is experimentally tested on a 1 DOF haptic device by employing a low-cost current sensor. It is also tested on a MATLAB/Simmechanics (R) model of a 2 DOF serial planar elbow type haptic manipulator to show that it is applicable to multi-DOF haptic systems. Free-motion, virtual-load and virtual-wall performance tests are conducted to compare the performance of the proposed control algorithm with the alternative algorithms by means of apparent inertial effects. The results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the transparency of the haptic devices

Theoretical and experimental determination of capstan drive slip error

Cable capstan drives are rotary transmission elements widely used in robot applications because of their low inertia, low backlash, high stiffness and simplicity. The cable in capstan drives is typically wrapped around the input and output drums in a figure-eight pattern and is the principle component for power transmission. In this paper an analytical method is developed for predicting the transmission error of capstan drives due to cable slippage on the drum so that designers can include this in the control phase of devices. The theoretical analysis was verified by experiments

Kinematic Calibration of PHANTOM Premium 1.516DOF Haptic Device

Precise positioning and precise force control requirement in haptic devices necessitate the calibration of the device. Since force control algorithms in haptic interfaces employ Jacobian matrix that includes kinematic model parameters, calibration is not only important for pose accuracy but also for force control. The deviation in kinematic parameters and joint transmission errors are main reasons disturbing the calibration of the haptic devices. Capstan drives and parallelogram mechanisms are preferred to use for actuation in haptic device design. Their transmission errors should be estimated in the calibration. This paper presents a simulation study including the estimation of kinematic parameters and transmission errors due to the capstan drives and parallelogram mechanism for a PHANTOM Premium haptic device

Kinematic model calibration of a 7-DOF capstan-driven haptic device for pose and force control accuracy improvement

The literature on kinematic calibration of industrial robots and haptic devices suggests that proper model calibration is indispensable for accurate pose estimation and precise force control. Despite the variety of studies in the literature, the effects of transmission errors on positioning accuracy or the enhancement of force control by kinematic calibration is not fully studied. In this article, an easy to implement kinematic calibration method is proposed for the systems having transmission errors. The presented method is assessed on a 7-DOF Phantom-like haptic device where transmission errors are inherently present due to the use of capstan drives. Simulation results on pose estimation accuracy and force control precision are backed up by experiments