Establishing rural water management

Establishing rural water managemen

Williopsis saturnus yeast killer toxin does not kill Streptococcus pneumoniae

Streptococcus pneumoniae is an important human bacterial pathogen, and the increase in antibiotic resistance demands the development of new antimicrobial compounds. Several reports have suggested that yeast killer toxins show activity against bacteria and we therefore investigated the activity of K9 killer toxin from the yeast Williopsis saturnus var. mrakii NCYC 500 against S. pneumoniae. However, no inhibition of bacterial growth was observed with concentrated K9 preparations in agar diffusion assays and in liquid culture. Although cell morphology was slightly affected by K9 treatment, no effect on cellular viability was detectable, and K9 had no stimulatory effect on cell lysis induced by β-lactams or Triton X-100. This indicated that K9 did not contribute to cell wall damage. Moreover, flow cytometry was used as a sensitive assessment of integrity of cells exposed to killer toxin. No significant damage of S. pneumoniae cells was evident, although minor changes in fluorescence suggested that K9 killer toxin may interact with bacterial surface components

Connectivity Differences between Human Operators of Swarms and Bandwidth Limitations

Human interaction with robot swarms (HSI) is a young field with very few user studies that explore operator behavior. All these studies assume perfect communication between the operator and the swarm. A key challenge in the use of swarm robotic systems in human supervised tasks is to understand human swarm interaction in the presence of limited communication bandwidth, which is a constraint arising in many practical scenarios. In this paper, we present results of human-subject experiments designed to study the effect of bandwidth limitations in human swarm interaction. We consider three levels of bandwidth availability in a swarm foraging task. The lowest bandwidth condition performs poorly, but the medium and high bandwidth condition both perform well. In the medium bandwidth condition, we display useful aggregated swarm information (like swarm centroid and spread) to compress the swarm state information. We also observe interesting operator behavior and adaptation of operators' swarm reaction

Neglect Benevolence in Human-Swarm Interaction with Communication Latency

In practical applications of robot swarms with bio-inspired behaviors, a human operator will need to exert control over the swarm to fulfill the mission objectives. In many operational settings, human operators are remotely located and the communication environment is harsh. Hence, there exists some latency in information (or control command) transfer between the human and the swarm. In this paper, we conduct experiments of human-swarm interaction to investigate the effects of communication latency on the performance of a human-swarm system in a swarm foraging task. We develop and investigate the concept of neglect benevolence, where a human operator allows the swarm to evolve on its own and stabilize before giving new commands. Our experimental results indicate that operators exploited neglect benevolence in different ways to develop successful strategies in the foraging task. Furthermore, we show experimentally that the use of a predictive display can help mitigate the adverse effects of communication latency

An audit of dressing practice by occupational therapists in acute stroke settings in England

Introduction Dressing independence is commonly affected after stroke, with clinical guidelines recommending that dressing practice should routinely be provided for those with dressing difficulties. The aim of this study was to update the literature on current practice in the treatment of dressing problems in stroke rehabilitation units. Method A questionnaire survey of occupational therapists experienced in stroke care was sent to 157 stroke units in England. Results Responses were received from 70 stroke units. Frequency and duration of dressing practice varied substantially between units, with respondents typically providing dressing practice for six to 10 patients per week and spending 30 to 45 minutes per treatment session. Only 17 respondents (24.3%) stated that they regularly used standardised assessments of dressing ability. The functional approach was used more widely than the remedial approach. Service priorities, working environment and limitations of time and staffing were reported to influence dressing practice. Conclusion There is widespread variability in dressing practice. There is a lack of use of standardised dressing assessments, and therapists’ rationale for their choice of approach is unclear

Improving Operator Recognition and Prediction of Emergent Swarm Behaviors

Robot swarms are typically defined as large teams of coordinating robots that interact with each other on a local scale. The control laws that dictate these interactions are often designed to produce emergent global behaviors useful for robot teams, such as aggregating at a single location or moving between locations as a group. These behaviors are called emergent because they arise from the local rules governing each robot as they interact with neighbors and the environment. No single robot is aware of the global behavior yet they all take part in it, which allows for a robustness that is difficult to achieve with explicitly-defined global plans. Now that hardware and algorithms for swarms have progressed enough to allow for their use outside the laboratory, new research is focused on how operators can control them. Recent work has introduced new paradigms for imparting an operator's intent on the swarm, yet little work has focused on how to better visualize the swarm to improve operator prediction and control of swarm states. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate how to present the limited data from a swarm to an operator so as to maximize their understanding of the current behavior and swarm state in general. This dissertation develops--through user studies--new methods of displaying the state of a swarm that improve a user's ability to recognize, predict, and control emergent behaviors. The general conclusion is that how summary information about the swarm is displayed has a significant impact on the ability of users to interact with the swarm, and that future work should focus on the properties unique to swarms when developing visualizations for human-swarm interaction tasks

Interventions to reduce dependency in bathing in community dwelling older adults: a systematic review

Background The onset of bathing disability for older adults has been found to be an indicator and potential precursor of further disability. Thus interventions targeting bathing may prevent or delay further disability and the use of health and social care services. The aim of this systematic review was to identify interventions targeted at reducing dependency in bathing for community dwelling older adults, and determine their content and effectiveness in maintaining or improving function and quality of life. Methods We conducted a systematic search of electronic databases including: The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL); MEDLINE; EMBASE; AMED; CINAHL; PsycINFO and OTSeeker. The search took place on 18 October 2016. We included randomised controlled trials, nonrandomised controlled trials, and controlled before and after studies that evaluated an intervention designed to reduce dependency in bathing. Articles were screened for inclusion by two independent reviewers; risk of bias was assessed using quality assessment tools; and data extracted using pre-prepared forms. Disagreements were resolved by discussion and inclusion of a third reviewer. Results The search process identified one study for inclusion in the review. This study evaluated a bathing intervention delivered by an occupational therapist following discharge from hospital. Overall, the findings suggest modest improvements in functional ability in favour of the intervention group although the results should be interpreted with caution. Conclusion Despite evidence suggesting the importance of addressing bathing difficulties as a means of possible prevention of disability in the ageing process, there is a dearth of evaluative or interventional research studies. Further robust research is warranted, including studies of randomised and controlled design

Using Coverage for Measuring the Effect of Haptic Feedback in Human Robotic Swarm Interaction

A robotic swarm is a decentralized group of robots which overcome failure of individual robots with robust emergent behaviors based on local interactions. These behaviors are not well built for accomplishing complex tasks, however, because of the changing assumptions required in various applications and environments. A new movement in the research field is to add human input to influence the swarm in order to help make the robots goal directed and overcome these problems. This research in Human Swarm Interaction (HSI) focuses on different control laws and ways to integrate the human intent with local control laws of the robots. Previous studies have all used visual feedback through a computer interface to give the user the swarm state information. This study adapted swarm control algorithms to give the operator hap tic feedback as well as visual feedback. The study shows the benefits of the additional feedback in a target searching class. Researchers in multi-robot systems have shown benefits of hap tic feedback in obstacle navigation before, but this study is a novel method because of the decentralized formation of the robotic swarm. In most environments, operators were able to cover significantly more area, increasing the chance of finding more targets. The other environment found no significant difference, showing that the hap tic feedback does not degrade performance in any of the tested environments. This supports our hypothesis that hap tic feedback is useful in HSI and requires further research to maximize its potential