Silicone Based Capacitive E-Skin Sensor for Soft Surgical Robots

In this extended abstract, we present a soft stretchable multi-modal capacitive skin sensor that can be used for exteroception and proprioception in soft surgical manipulators. A soft skin prototype was made using Ecoflex, embedding three conductive carbon grease terminal layers. This soft skin is capable of measuring stretch and touch simultaneously. The soft skin measures uniaxial stretches from 1 to 1.2475 within an error range of 2.6% and can also quantify as well as localize local indentation. An algorithm is developed that decouples local change, i.e., due to indentation, from global strain, due to stretch. An experimental study was conducted; results are presented

Predictive Ability of Emotional Support Resources, Birth Order, Gender, and Grade in Cyberbullying among Gifted Adolescents in Jordan and the Sultanate of Oman: A Comparative Study

هدفت الدراسة الحالية إلى الكشف عن القدرة التنبؤية لمصادر الدعم العاطفي والترتيب الميلادي والجنس والصف في التنمر الإلكتروني بين المراهقين الموهوبين في الأردن وسلطنة عمان. كما هدفت إلى التعرف على الفروق إن وجدت في التنمر الإلكتروني (المتنمر، الضحية) حسب المصادر المختلفة للدعم العاطفي، والترتيب الميلادي، والجنس، والصف لدى عينة من المراهقين الأردنيين والعمانيين. وقد شملت عينة الدراسة (340) طالبًا وطالبة من الموهوبين في الأردن وسلطنة عمان، وقد تراوحت أعمارهم بين 13 و15 عامًا. ولتحقيق أهداف الدراسة تم اتباع المنهج الوصفي الارتباطي التنبؤي، وتم استخدام مقياس التنمر الإلكتروني (المتنمر والضحية)، ومقياس الدعم العاطفي المدرك المقدم من (الأهل والأصدقاء) بعد التحقق من خصائصهم السيكومتربة. وقد أشارت النتائج إلى إمكانية التنبؤ بالتنمر الإلكتروني (الضحية) من خلال الدعم العاطفي المدرك المقدم من الأهل ومن خلال جنس الطالب. أما بالنسبة للتنمر الإلكتروني (المتنمر)، فقد أشارت النتائج إلى عدم إمكانية التنبؤ به من الدعم العاطفي المدرك المقدم من (الأهل والأصدقاء) والجنس والترتيب الميلادي والصف، كما أشارت النتائج إلى وجود فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية في التنمر الإلكتروني (الضحية) باختلاف الجنس ولصالح الإناث وللذكور في التنمر الإلكتروني (المتنمر). وبهذا فقد أكدت النتائج إمكانية التنبؤ بالعديد من المتغيرات النفسية والشخصية، مثل الدعم العاطفي المدرك المقدم من الأهل والجنس، واحتمال أن يكون للجنس دور في التنمر الإلكتروني (الضحية)، مما يساهم في فهم المزيد من العوامل النفسية والمعرفية والشخصية. والجوانب الاجتماعية المتعلقة بسلوك التنمر الإلكتروني، والحاجة إلى تركيز البحث على معرفة الدوافع الكامنة وراء سلوك التنمر الإلكتروني وتحديد الرغبات والسلبيات التي يسعى المتسلط لتحقيقها، وتأثير ذلك على المتنمر الإلكتروني والآخرينThe current study aimed to reveal the predictive ability of the emotional support resources, birth order, gender and grade in cyberbullying among gifted adolescents in Jordan and Oman. It also aimed to identify the differences, if any, in electronic bullying (bully, victim) according to the different sources of the emotional support, birth order, gender and grade among a sample of Jordanian and Omani adolescents. The study participants were 340 gifted students from Jordan and Oman, ranging from 13 to 15 years old. The Cyberbullying (bully, victim) and the perceived emotional support scale (family and friends) were used and appropriate methods verified their validity and reliability indicators. The results indicated the possibility of predicting cyberbullying (victim) through the perceived emotional support provided by the family and the student's gender. As for cyberbullying (bully), the results indicated its unpredictability to perceived emotional support from (family and friends), gender, birth order and grade. In addition, significant differences in cyber-bullying (victim) were found in favor of females and males in cyberbullying (bully). The results confirmed the predictive ability of several psychological and personal variables, such as perceived emotional support provided by family and gender and the possibility that gender might have a role in cyberbullying (the victim), which contributes to understanding more psychological, cognitive, personal and social aspects related to cyberbullying behavior, and the need to focus research on knowing the motives behind cyberbullying behavior and on identifying the desires and negatives that the bully seeks to achieve, and the effects of this on the cyberbully and others

Detail-preserving switching algorithm for the removal of random-valued impulse noise

© 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. This paper presents a new algorithm for the denoising of images corrupted with random-valued impulse noise (RVIN). It employs a switching approach that identifies the noisy pixels in the first stage and then estimates their intensity values to restore them. Local statistics of the textons in distinct orientations of the sliding window are exploited to identify the corrupted pixels in an iterative manner; using an adaptive threshold range. Textons are formed by using an isometric grid of minimum local distance that preserves the texture and edge pixels of an image, effectively. At the noise filtering stage, fuzzy rules are used to obtain the noise-free pixels from the proposed tri-directional pixels to estimate the intensity values of identified corrupted pixels. The performance of the proposed denoising algorithm is evaluated on a variety of standard gray-scale images under various intensities of RVIN by comparing it with state-of-the-art denoising methods. The proposed denoising algorithm also has robust denoising and restoration power on biomedical images such as, MRI, X-Ray and CT-Scan. The extensive simulation results based on both quantitative measures and visual representations depict the superior performance of the proposed denoising algorithm for various noise intensities

Peptide-MHC Cellular Microarray with Innovative Data Analysis System for Simultaneously Detecting Multiple CD4 T-Cell Responses

Peptide:MHC cellular microarrays have been proposed to simultaneously characterize multiple Ag-specific populations of T cells. The practice of studying immune responses to complicated pathogens with this tool demands extensive knowledge of T cell epitopes and the availability of peptide:MHC complexes for array fabrication as well as a specialized data analysis approach for result interpretation. T cell cultures. A novel statistical methodology was also developed to facilitate batch processing of raw array-like data into standardized endpoint scores, which linearly correlated with total Ag-specific T cell inputs. Applying these methods to analyze Influenza A viral antigen-specific T cell responses, we not only revealed the most prominent viral epitopes, but also demonstrated the heterogeneity of anti-viral cellular responses in healthy individuals. Applying these methods to examine the insulin producing beta-cell autoantigen specific T cell responses, we observed little difference between autoimmune diabetic patients and healthy individuals, suggesting a more subtle association between diabetes status and peripheral autoreactive T cells.The data analysis system is reliable for T cell specificity and functional testing. Peptide:MHC cellular microarrays can be used to obtain multi-parametric results using limited blood samples in a variety of translational settings

Infection with 2009 H1N1 influenza virus primes for immunological memory in human nose-associated lymphoid tissue, offering cross-reactive immunity to H1N1 and avian H5N1 viruses

Influenza is a highly contagious mucosal infection in the respiratory tract. 2009 pandemic H1N1 (pH1N1) virus infection resulted in substantial morbidity and mortality in humans. Little is known on whether immunological memory develops following pH1N1 infection and whether it provides protection against other virus subtypes. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot assay was used to analyze hemagglutinin (HA)-specific memory B cell responses after virus antigen stimulation in nasal-associated lymphoid tissues (NALT) from children and adults. Individuals with serological evidence of previous exposure to pH1N1 showed significant cross-reactive HA-specific memory B responses to pH1N1, seasonal H1N1(sH1N1) and avian H5N1(aH5N1) viruses upon pH1N1 virus stimulation. pH1N1 virus antigen elicited stronger cross-reactive memory B cell responses than sH1N1 virus. Intriguingly, aH5N1 virus also activated cross-reactive memory responses to sH1N1 and pH1N1 HAs in those who had previous pH1N1 exposure, and that correlated well with the memory response stimulated by pH1N1 virus antigen. These memory B cell responses resulted in cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies against sH1N1, 1918 H1N1 and aH5N1viruses. 2009 pH1N1 infection appeared to have primed human host with B cell memory in NALT that offers cross-protective mucosal immunity against not only H1N1 but also aH5N1 viruses. These findings may have important implications to future vaccination strategies against influenza. It will be important to induce and/or enhance such cross-protective mucosal memory B cells

The role of facemasks and hand hygiene in the prevention of influenza transmission in households: results from a cluster randomised trial; Berlin, Germany, 2009-2011

Background: Previous controlled studies on the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) - namely the use of facemasks and intensified hand hygiene - in preventing household transmission of influenza have not produced definitive results. We aimed to investigate efficacy, acceptability, and tolerability of NPI in households with influenza index patients. Methods: We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial during the pandemic season 2009/10 and the ensuing influenza season 2010/11. We included households with an influenza positive index case in the absence of further respiratory illness within the preceding 14 days. Study arms were wearing a facemask and practicing intensified hand hygiene (MH group), wearing facemasks only (M group) and none of the two (control group). Main outcome measure was laboratory confirmed influenza infection in a household contact. We used daily questionnaires to examine adherence and tolerability of the interventions. Results: We recruited 84 households (30 control, 26 M and 28 MH households) with 82, 69 and 67 household contacts, respectively. In 2009/10 all 41 index cases had a influenza A (H1N1) pdm09 infection, in 2010/11 24 had an A (H1N1) pdm09 and 20 had a B infection. The total secondary attack rate was 16% (35/218). In intention-totreat analysis there was no statistically significant effect of the M and MH interventions on secondary infections. When analysing only households where intervention was implemented within 36 h after symptom onset of the index case, secondary infection in the pooled M and MH groups was significantly lower compared to the control group (adjusted odds ratio 0.16, 95% CI, 0.03-0.92). In a per-protocol analysis odds ratios were significantly reduced among participants of the M group (adjusted odds ratio, 0.30, 95% CI, 0.10-0.94). With the exception of MH index cases in 2010/11 adherence was good for adults and children, contacts and index cases. Conclusions: Results suggest that household transmission of influenza can be reduced by the use of NPI, such as facemasks and intensified hand hygiene, when implemented early and used diligently. Concerns about acceptability and tolerability of the interventions should not be a reason against their recommendation

Oseltamivir-Resistant Pandemic A/H1N1 Virus Is as Virulent as Its Wild-Type Counterpart in Mice and Ferrets

The neuraminidase inhibitor oseltamivir is currently used for treatment of patients infected with the pandemic A/H1N1 (pH1N1) influenza virus, although drug-resistant mutants can emerge rapidly and possibly be transmitted. We describe the characteristics of a pair of oseltamivir-resistant and oseltamivir-susceptible pH1N1 clinical isolates that differed by a single change (H274Y) in the neuraminidase protein. Viral fitness of pH1N1 isolates was assessed in vitro by determining replication kinetics in MDCK α2,6 cells and in vivo by performing experimental infections of BALB/c mice and ferrets. Despite slightly reduced propagation of the mutant isolate in vitro during the first 24 h, the wild-type (WT) and mutant resistant viruses induced similar maximum weight loss in mice and ferrets with an identical pyrexic response in ferrets (AUC of 233.9 and 233.2, P = 0.5156). Similarly, comparable titers were obtained for the WT and the mutant strains on days 1, 3, 6 and 9 post-infection in mouse lungs and on days 1–7 in ferret nasal washes. A more important perivascular (day 6) and pleural (days 6 and 12) inflammation was noted in the lungs of mice infected with the H274Y mutant, which correlated with increased pulmonary levels of IL-6 and KC. Such increased levels of IL-6 were also observed in lymph nodes of ferrets infected with the mutant strain. Furthermore, the H274Y mutant strain was transmitted to ferrets. In conclusion, viral fitness of the H274Y pH1N1 isolate is not substantially altered and has the potential to induce severe disease and to disseminate