Robotics Enabled In-Home Environment Screening for Fall Risks

Our overarching goal is to investigate, design, create and validate the fundamental scientific and engineering framework for intelligent, networked mobile robots to semi-autonomously perform environmental fall risk assessment in the home. Motivated by the facts that (1) aging in place improves the overall health and well-being of individuals, (2) falls are the leading cause of mortality in older adults, (3) home environmental fall risk assessment is an effective preventive strategy, and (4) extreme costs and shortage of trained personnel are huge barriers for effective and efficient delivery of fall risk home assessments by health care providers, we are iteratively developing user-centric designs for a new class of robotic systems that can be assembled easily and cost-effectively to detect environmental hazards and, as a result, preventively and proactively minimize falls in the home. The tight integration of the research thrusts in robot design and control, task and motion planning under uncertainty, and human-on-the-mesh control of networked robots is aimed at advancing the theory and practice of robotics and lead to the demonstration of innovative approaches to transform healthcare delivery with a focus on wellbeing. In this poster presentation, we will present our preliminary results from developing this framework. We present the communication and control framework for a semi-autonomous mobile robot that can be controlled over an internet connection via a web interface. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with a human-robot team completing the HEROS (http://www.temple.edu/older_adult/) environment safety checklist. Our preliminary results demonstrate that this technology can be helpful to effectively prevent the in-home falls among elderly

Measurement of methyl mercury (I) and mercury (II) in fish tissues and sediments by HPLC-ICPMS and HPLC-HGAAS

A procedure for the extraction and determination of methyl mercury and mercury (II) in fish muscle tissues and sediment samples is presented. The procedure involves extraction with 5% (v/v) 2-mercaptoethanol, separation and determination of mercury species by HPLC-ICPMS using a Perkin-Elmer 3 μm C8 (33 mm × 3 mm) column and a mobile phase 3 containing 0.5% (v/v) 2-mercaptoethanol and 5% (v/v) CH3OH (pH 5.5) at a flow rate 1.5 ml min-1 and a temperature of 25 °C. Calibration curves for methyl mercury (I) and mercury (II) standards were linear in the range of 0-100 μg l-1 (r2 = 0.9990 and r2 = 0.9995 respectively). The lowest measurable mercury was 0.4 μg l-1 which corresponds to 0.01 μg g-1 in fish tissues and sediments. Methyl mercury concentrations measured in biological certified reference materials, NRCC DORM - 2 Dogfish muscle (4.4 ± 0.8 μg g-1), NRCC Dolt - 3 Dogfish liver (1.55 ± 0.09 μg g-1), NIST RM 50 Albacore Tuna (0.89 ± 0.08 μg g-1) and IRMM IMEP-20 Tuna fish (3.6 ± 0.6 μg g-1) were in agreement with the certified value (4.47 ± 0.32 μg g-1, 1.59 ± 0.12 μg g-1, 0.87 ± 0.03 μg g-1, 4.24 ± 0.27 μg g-1 respectively). For the sediment reference material ERM CC 580, a methyl mercury concentration of 0.070 ± 0.002 μg g-1 was measured which corresponds to an extraction efficiency of 92 ± 3% of certified values (0.076 ± 0.04 μg g-1) but within the range of published values (0.040-0.084 μg g-1; mean ± s.d.: 0.073 ± 0.05 μg g-1, n = 40) for this material. The extraction procedure for the fish tissues was also compared against an enzymatic extraction using Protease type XIV that has been previously published and similar results were obtained. The use of HPLC-HGAAS with a Phenomenox 5 μm Luna C18 (250 mm × 4.6 mm) column and a mobile phase containing 0.06 mol l-1 ammonium acetate (Merck Pty Limited, Australia) in 5% (v/v) methanol and 0.1% (w/v) l-cysteine at 25 °C was evaluated as a complementary alternative to HPLC-ICPMS for the measurement of mercury species in fish tissues. The lowest measurable mercury concentration was 2 μg l-1 and this corresponds to 0.1 μg g-1 in fish tissues. Analysis of enzymatic extracts analysed by HPLC-HGAAS and HPLC-ICPMS gave equivalent results