7 research outputs found
Automating Vascular Shunt Insertion with the dVRK Surgical Robot
Vascular shunt insertion is a fundamental surgical procedure used to
temporarily restore blood flow to tissues. It is often performed in the field
after major trauma. We formulate a problem of automated vascular shunt
insertion and propose a pipeline to perform Automated Vascular Shunt Insertion
(AVSI) using a da Vinci Research Kit. The pipeline uses a learned visual model
to estimate the locus of the vessel rim, plans a grasp on the rim, and moves to
grasp at that point. The first robot gripper then pulls the rim to stretch open
the vessel with a dilation motion. The second robot gripper then proceeds to
insert a shunt into the vessel phantom (a model of the blood vessel) with a
chamfer tilt followed by a screw motion. Results suggest that AVSI achieves a
high success rate even with tight tolerances and varying vessel orientations up
to 30{\deg}. Supplementary material, dataset, videos, and visualizations can be
found at https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/autolab-avsi
In the dedicated pursuit of dedicated capital: restoring an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism
Tony Blairâs landslide electoral victory on May 1 (New Labour Day?) presents the party in power with a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, opportunity to revitalise and modernise Britainâs ailing and antiquated manufacturing economy.* If it is to do so, it must remain true to its long-standing (indeed, historic) commitment to restore an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism. In this paper we argue that this in turn requires that the party reject the very neo-liberal orthodoxies which it offered to the electorate as evidence of its competence, moderation and âmodernisationâ, which is has internalised, and which it apparently now views as circumscribing the parameters of the politically and economically possible
Rethinking capital mobility, reâregulating financial markets
The globalisation hypothesis has altered many of the common-sense âtruthsâ around which the social world is organised.* In particular, globalisation is thought to restrict the parameters of the politically and economically possible. Indeed, the notion of constrained choice is so pronounced that we are increasingly confronted with the image of globalisationâs âlogic of no alternativeâ; an image which is predicated on the assumption of perfect capital mobility. Capital is considered to be sufficiently rational to take advantage of enhanced exit options from the national economy in circumstances in which its interests are served by moving off-shore. Moreover, global markets are also assumed to have exploited contemporary technological developments to such an extent that they now clear instantaneously; consequently, allowing capital to further its interests wherever in the world new profit opportunities arise. Thus, we are presented with the fundamental ârealityâ of globalisation as currently narrated throughout much of the west: unless the market can be allowed to restore a competitive global equilibrium, capital will exit high-wage, high-cost western economies and re-locate in lower-wage, lower-cost, newly industrialising economies. Under the auspices of ever more hostile wage competition from the newly industrialising economies, globalisation is commonly presumed to act as a trigger for an âinevitableâ job displacement effect as capital deserts the advanced industrialised economies
Self-Supervised Learning for Interactive Perception of Surgical Thread for Autonomous Suture Tail-Shortening
Accurate 3D sensing of suturing thread is a challenging problem in automated
surgical suturing because of the high state-space complexity, thinness and
deformability of the thread, and possibility of occlusion by the grippers and
tissue. In this work we present a method for tracking surgical thread in 3D
which is robust to occlusions and complex thread configurations, and apply it
to autonomously perform the surgical suture "tail-shortening" task: pulling
thread through tissue until a desired "tail" length remains exposed. The method
utilizes a learned 2D surgical thread detection network to segment suturing
thread in RGB images. It then identifies the thread path in 2D and reconstructs
the thread in 3D as a NURBS spline by triangulating the detections from two
stereo cameras. Once a 3D thread model is initialized, the method tracks the
thread across subsequent frames. Experiments suggest the method achieves a 1.33
pixel average reprojection error on challenging single-frame 3D thread
reconstructions, and an 0.84 pixel average reprojection error on two tracking
sequences. On the tail-shortening task, it accomplishes a 90% success rate
across 20 trials. Supplemental materials are available at
https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/autolab-surgical-thread/ .Comment: International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE)
2023, 7 page
Beyond the chains that bind: the political crisis of unions in Western Europe
The dynamics of neo-liberal restructuring have generated serious tensions in the institutional alignments between social democratic political parties and labor unions in Western Europe. This article explores the origins, development and consequences of the resulting political crisis through a detailed analysis of the institutional alignment of parties and unions in Sweden, Germany, UK and France. The authors reject the argument that the changing contours of the party-union nexus can be understood solely on the basis of a rational choice analysis of labor movement actors in favor of an account that also highlights the importance of historical path dependency and ideological orientation. The resulting complexity of union responses to the crisis of the party-union nexus is explored through the construction of a typology that charts union reorientation along the dimensions of accommodation with, or resistance against, neo-liberalism and within and beyond the national political context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
Idebenone reduces respiratory complications in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy
AbstractIn Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), progressive loss of respiratory function leads to restrictive pulmonary disease and places patients at significant risk for severe respiratory complications. Of particular concern are ineffective cough, secretion retention and recurrent respiratory tract infections. In a Phase 3 randomized controlled study (DMD Long-term Idebenone Study, DELOS) in DMD patients 10â18 years of age and not taking concomitant glucocorticoid steroids, idebenone (900âmg/day) reduced significantly the loss of respiratory function over a 1-year study period. In a post-hoc analysis of DELOS we found that more patients in the placebo group compared to the idebenone group experienced bronchopulmonary adverse events (BAEs): placebo: 17 of 33 patients, 28 events; idebenone: 6 of 31 patients, 7 events. The hazard ratios (HR) calculated âby patientâ (HR 0.33, pâ=â0.0187) and for âall BAEsâ (HR 0.28, pâ=â0.0026) indicated a clear idebenone treatment effect. The overall duration of BAEs was 222 days (placebo) vs. 82 days (idebenone). In addition, there was also a difference in the use of systemic antibiotics utilized for the treatment of BAEs. In the placebo group, 13 patients (39.4%) reported 17 episodes of antibiotic use compared to 7 patients (22.6%) reporting 8 episodes of antibiotic use in the idebenone group. Furthermore, patients in the placebo group used systemic antibiotics for longer (105 days) compared to patients in the idebenone group (65 days). This post-hoc analysis of DELOS indicates that the protective effect of idebenone on respiratory function is associated with a reduced risk of bronchopulmonary complications and a reduced need for systemic antibiotics