Gaze-based teleprosthetic enables intuitive continuous control of complex robot arm use: Writing & drawing

Eye tracking is a powerful mean for assistive technologies for people with movement disorders, paralysis and amputees. We present a highly intuitive eye tracking-controlled robot arm operating in 3-dimensional space based on the user's gaze target point that enables tele-writing and drawing. The usability and intuitive usage was assessed by a “tele” writing experiment with 8 subjects that learned to operate the system within minutes of first time use. These subjects were naive to the system and the task and had to write three letters on a white board with a white board pen attached to the robot arm's endpoint. The instructions are to imagine they were writing text with the pen and look where the pen would be going, they had to write the letters as fast and as accurate as possible, given a letter size template. Subjects were able to perform the task with facility and accuracy, and movements of the arm did not interfere with subjects ability to control their visual attention so as to enable smooth writing. On the basis of five consecutive trials there was a significant decrease in the total time used and the total number of commands sent to move the robot arm from the first to the second trial but no further improvement thereafter, suggesting that within writing 6 letters subjects had mastered the ability to control the system. Our work demonstrates that eye tracking is a powerful means to control robot arms in closed-loop and real-time, outperforming other invasive and non-invasive approaches to Brain-Machine-Interfaces in terms of calibration time (<;2 minutes), training time (<;10 minutes), interface technology costs. We suggests that gaze-based decoding of action intention may well become one of the most efficient ways to interface with robotic actuators - i.e. Brain-Robot-Interfaces - and become useful beyond paralysed and amputee users also for the general teleoperation of robotic and exoskeleton in human augmentation

The cost of trauma operating theatre inefficiency.

The National Health Service (NHS) is currently facing a financial crisis with a projected deficit of £2billion by the end of financial year 2015/16. As operating rooms (OR) are one of the costliest components in secondary care, improving theatre efficiency should be at the forefront of efforts to improve health service efficiency. The objectives of this study were to characterize the causes of trauma OR delays and to estimate the cost of this inefficiency. A 1-month prospective single-centre study in St. Marys Hospital. Turnaround time (TT) was used as the surrogate parameter to measure theatre efficiency. Factors including patient age, ASA score and presence of surgical and anaesthetic consultant were evaluated to identify positive or negative associations with theatre delays. Inefficiency cost was calculated by multiplying the time wasted with staff capacity costs and opportunity costs, found to be £24.77/minute. The commonest causes for increased TT were delays in sending for patients (50%) and problems with patient transport to the OR (31%). 461 min of delay was observed in 12 days, equivalent to loss of £951.58/theatre/day. Non-statistically significant trends were seen between length of delays and advancing patient age, ASA score and absence of either a senior clinician or an anaesthetic consultant. Interestingly, the trend was not as strong for absence of an anaesthetic consultant. This study found delays in operating TT to represent a sizable cost, with potential efficiency savings based on TT of £347,327/theatre/year. Further study of a larger sample is warranted to better evaluate the identified trends

Arms Industry

A summary assessment of the dimensions and concentrations of military equipment manufacture primarily in the United States and western Europe and the extent of availability of this equipment to buyers throughout the world. Treaty-based limitations are also listed

Glutathione-S-Transferase and Thiol Stress in patients with acute renal failure

Introduction: Tubular damage is common finding in acute renal failure (ARF). Various etiologies have been put forth to explain the tubular damage in ARF, one important mechanism among them is oxidative damage to renal tubules. Several biomolecules including low-molecular weight peptides and enzymes in urine have been proposed as early markers of renal failure. Current study has been undertaken to study the thiol stress and glutathione-S-transferase (GST) levels in ARF patients. Method: 58 ARF patients and 55 healthy controls were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Serum thiols, GST, malanoldehyde (MDA) and urine thiols were determined by spectrophotometer based methods. Results: Serum thiols and urine thiols were significantly decreased (p<0.0001), and serum GST and MDA levels were significantly increased (p<0.0001) in ARF patients compared to healthy controls. Serum GST and MDA correlated positively in ARF cases (r2 = 0.6938, p<0.0001). Conclusion: There is significant thiol stress and increased lipid peroxidation in ARF patients which leads to tubular cell membrane damage and release of GST into blood stream and into urine. This may be possible mechanism for the increased presence of GST in urine (enzymuria) found in other studie

Using simulation studies to evaluate statistical methods

Simulation studies are computer experiments that involve creating data by pseudorandom sampling. The key strength of simulation studies is the ability to understand the behaviour of statistical methods because some 'truth' (usually some parameter/s of interest) is known from the process of generating the data. This allows us to consider properties of methods, such as bias. While widely used, simulation studies are often poorly designed, analysed and reported. This tutorial outlines the rationale for using simulation studies and offers guidance for design, execution, analysis, reporting and presentation. In particular, this tutorial provides: a structured approach for planning and reporting simulation studies, which involves defining aims, data-generating mechanisms, estimands, methods and performance measures ('ADEMP'); coherent terminology for simulation studies; guidance on coding simulation studies; a critical discussion of key performance measures and their estimation; guidance on structuring tabular and graphical presentation of results; and new graphical presentations. With a view to describing recent practice, we review 100 articles taken from Volume 34 of Statistics in Medicine that included at least one simulation study and identify areas for improvement.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures (2 in appendix), 8 tables (1 in appendix

Globalization and citizenship education in Hong Kong and Taiwan

The article focuses on goals adopted in Hong Kong and Taiwan in order to prepare citizens for the challenges of globalization. Notwithstanding the demands to create global citizens, in Hong Kong and in Taiwan, school curricula have responded to contemporary sociopolitical changes primarily in relation to the People's Republic of China. Recent reforms in both Hong Kong and Taiwan have emphasized generic and transnational skills, such as English proficiency and information technology, and developed tripartite frameworks for citizenship education at local, national, and global levels. The reconfiguration of citizenship and citizenship education in Hong Kong and Taiwan are useful counterexamples to the predictions of transnational convergence offered by some globalization theorists.published_or_final_versio

Culture, Gender, and School Leadership: School Leaders' Self-Perceptions in China

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