A Study of educational robotics in elementary schools

Every teacher aims to find new pedagogical tools that motivate the students and that are ultimately effective in the teaching/learning process of a broad set of contents. Frequently, novel educational tools are developed that bring new sheds of hope to teachers, parents and students. Some of them are able to survive in the fierce competition, but most disappear in a short span of time. The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as a whole, have offered lots of promises to education, and some even talk about a huge revolution. Nowadays, it is certain that its impact on the classrooms is still far from these promises, mainly in what regards elementary education. But, it is undeniable that nowadays there are already a number of tools that can be used by teachers and students. The question is shifting from “Will we use ICT in education?” to “How can we use ICT in education to obtain good results?” In this context, Educational Robotics (ER), the research field that studies the application of Robotics as a pedagogical tool, has been growing in importance in the last few years as an emergent approach to Education. This development has been made possible by the technological advances in ICT and electronics, as well as by the progressive drop of costs

Contact lens care solutions and ocular surface

Safe wear of non-daily disposable contact lenses require care systems to ensure disinfection and cleaning to allow the lens to be reused after a period of non lens wear (typically overnight). To do so, modern care systems, also known as multipurpose solutions (MPS) or multipurpose disinfecting solutions (MPDS) try to mimic the environment of the ocular surface regarding pH, osmolality, surface tension or viscosity while introducing other singular properties as a wide-spectrum antimicrobial activity and high cleaning performance. This delicate equilibrium or properties is challenging and sometimes results in adverse events that have drawn the attention of the CL industry and scientifi c community to these systems with an increased intensity during the past decade. Even with disposable lenses, safety is still a concern and presently we are in front of a new paradigm of solutions development, which must provide reinforced disinfecting capabilities and at the same time improve the compatibility with the ocular surface. Indeed, disinfection effi cacy against different new strains of microorganisms and compatibility with the ocular surface have been two aspects widely covered in the recent scientifi c literature, topics that will also be addressed in this chapter

State Augmented Constrained Reinforcement Learning: Overcoming the Limitations of Learning with Rewards

Constrained reinforcement learning involves multiple rewards that must individually accumulate to given thresholds. In this class of problems, we show a simple example in which the desired optimal policy cannot be induced by any linear combination of rewards. Hence, there exist constrained reinforcement learning problems for which neither regularized nor classical primal-dual methods yield optimal policies. This work addresses this shortcoming by augmenting the state with Lagrange multipliers and reinterpreting primal-dual methods as the portion of the dynamics that drives the multipliers evolution. This approach provides a systematic state augmentation procedure that is guaranteed to solve reinforcement learning problems with constraints. Thus, while primal-dual methods can fail at finding optimal policies, running the dual dynamics while executing the augmented policy yields an algorithm that provably samples actions from the optimal policy

High-rate deposition of nano-crystalline silicon thin films on plastics

Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) is commonly used in the bottom cell of tandem solar cells. With an indirect bandgap, nc-Si:H requires thicker (∼1 µm) films for efficient light harvesting than amorphous Si (a-Si:H) does. Therefore, thin-film high deposition rates are crucial for further cost reduction of highly efficient a–Si:H based photovoltaic technology. Plastic substrates allow for further cost reduction by enabling roll-to-roll inline deposition. In this work, high nc-Si:H deposition rates on plastic were achieved at low substrate temperature (150 °C) by standard Radio-frequency (13.56 MHz) Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition. Focus was on the influence of deposition pressure, inter-electrode distance (1.2 cm) and high power coupled to the plasma, on the hydrogen-to-silane dilution ratios (HD) necessary to achieve the amorphous-to-nanocrystalline phase transition and on the resulting film deposition rate. For each pressure and rf-power, there is a value of HD for which the films start to exhibit a certain amount of crystalline fraction. For constant rf-power, this value increases with pressure. Within the parameter range studied the deposition rate was highest (0.38 nm/s) for nc-Si:H films deposited at 6 Torr, 700 mW/cm2 using HD of 98.5 %. Decreasing the pressure to 3 Torr (1.5 Torr) and rf-power to 350 mW/cm2 using HD – 98.5 % deposition rate is 0.12 nm/s (0.076 nm/s). Raman crystalline fraction of these films is 72, 62 and 53 % for the 6, 3 and 1.5 Torr films, respectively.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)DREBM/PICS_CNRS/201

Recent advances on open fluidic systems for biomedical applications: A review

Microfluidics has become an important tool to engineer microenvironments with high precision, comprising devices and methods for controlling and manipulating fluids at the submillimeter scale. A specific branch of microfluidics comprises open fluidic systems, which is mainly characterized by displaying a higher air/liquid interface when compared with traditional closed-channel setups. The use of open channel systems has enabled the design of singular architectures in devices that are simple to fabricate and to clean. Enhanced functionality and accessibility for liquid handling are additional advantages inputted to technologies based on open fluidics. While benchmarked against closed fluidics approaches, the use of directly accessible channels decreases the risk of clogging and bubble-driven flow perturbation. In this review, we discuss the advantages of open fluidics systems when compared to their closed fluidics counterparts. Platforms are analyzed in two separated groups based on different confinement principles: wall-based physical confinement and wettability-contrast confinement. The physical confinement group comprises both open and traditional microfluidics; examples based on open channels with rectangular and triangular cross-section, suspended microfluidics, and the use of narrow edge of a solid surface for fluid confinement are addressed. The second group covers (super)hydrophilic/(super)hydrophobic patterned surfaces, and examples based on polymer-, textile- and paper-based microfluidic devices are explored. The technologies described in this review are critically discussed concerning devices' performance and versatility, manufacturing techniques and fluid transport/manipulation methods. A gather-up of recent biomedical applications of open fluidics devices is also presented.European Research Council grant agreement ERC-2012-ADG 20120216-321266 for project ComplexiTE and ERC-2014-ADG-669858 for project “ATLAS”. N. M. Oliveira acknowledges the financial support from Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology − FCT (Grant SFRH/BD/73172/2010), from the financial program POPH/FSE from QREN. The work was developed within the scope of the project CICECO Aveiro Institute of Materials, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007679 (FCT Ref. UID/CTM/50011/2013). Sara Vilabril acknowledges the financial support from national funds through the FCT/MEC and when appropriate co-financed by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreementinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Release kinetic model and antimicrobial activity of an innovative minocycline and voriconazole co-delivery system

Purpose and Strategy: Development of a new local drug-delivery system aiming at bone infection and the modulation of the polymicrobial activity; simultaneous delivery of minocycline and voriconazole, antibacterial and antifungal agents, respectively; polylactide (PDLLA) scaffolds functionalized with collagen and bioglass, osteogenic enhancers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Interaction between lactose and cadmium chloride in aqueous solutions as seen by diffusion coefficients measurements

Diffusion coefficients of an aqueous system containing cadmium chloride 0.100 mol · dm−3 and lactose at different concentrations at 25 °C have been measured, using a conductimetric cell and an automatic apparatus to follow diffusion. The cell relies on an open-ended capillary method and a conductimetric technique is used to follow the diffusion process by measuring the resistance of a solution inside the capillaries, at recorded times. From these results and by ab initio calculations, it was possible to obtain a better understanding of the effect of lactose on transport of cadmium chloride in aqueous solutions

Poly(DL-lactic acid) scaffolds adsorbed with minocycline and voriconazole: a new pathway towards infection containment

Bone infection (osteomyelitis): burden as a clinical complication of orthopedic surgeries. Controlled antimicrobial release systems: treat and prevent osteomyelitis. Biomaterials based on porous scaffolds: local administration of high concentration of drugs; no systemic toxicity; extended time. Scaffolds in bone tissue engineering: a combination of bioresorbable polymers with bioactive bioglasses; present biodegradability and biosafety; suitable microenvironment and structure; favor osteogenic differentiation and cell growth. Co-encapsulation of drugs: advantageous means for administration of drugs; novel strategy directed to the co-delivery of two antimicrobials (voriconazole and minocycline).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio