Management of lower urinary tract obstructive disease using bladder tube cystotomy in a Saanen buck

This report describes a procedure of bladder tube cystotomy to relieve progressing bladder distension in a goat diagnosed to have obstructive urolithiasis. This one-year old Saanen buck was presented with a complaint of not passing urine and being in discomfort for almost three days. On physical examination, pulsation of the urethra in the perineal region could be felt and swelling and pain along the prepuce and perineum were indicated on deep palpation. Amputation of the urethral orifice and attempt to catheterise the urethra failed to relieve bladder distension; thus, bladder tube cystotomy procedure was performed. Following this procedure, all vital parameters returned to normal and normograde cystourethrogram was performed to radiographically assess the lower urinary tract of the goat. The outcome of this case supports that the bladder tube cystotomy technique provides an effective method to allow immediate relief of a distended bladder, allowing the urethra to heal as the urine outflow is diverted through the catheter and allows normograde cystourethrography to be performed

Online system for automatic tropical wood recognition

There are more than 3000 wood species in tropical rainforests, each with their own unique wood anatomy that can be observed using naked eyes aided with a hand glass magnifier for species identification process. However, the number of certified personnel that have this acquired skills are limited due to lenghty training time. To overcome this problem, Center for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics (CAIRO) has developed an automatic wood recognition system known as KenalKayu that can recognize tropical wood species in less than a second, eliminating laborious manual human inspection which is exposed to human error and biasedness. KenalKayu integrates image acquisition, feature extraction, classifier and machine vision hardware such as camera, interfaces, PC and lighting. Grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) is used for feature extraction. The features are trained in a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) for classification. This paper focusses more on the database development and the online testing of the wood recognition system. The accuracy of the online system is tested on different image quality such as image taken in low light condition, medium light condition or high light condition

A hybrid automata framework for an adaptive impedance control of a robot-assisted training system

There is an increasing demand for an effective and adaptive robot-assisted training system for traumatic brain injury patients which can considerably promote their sensorimotor control performance, apart from ensuring the safety of the patients. This study focuses on the impedance control framework to simultaneously track the position trajectory while regulating the apparent impedance of the robot. The framework is based on the hybrid automata model that is used to govern the desired trajectory deployed by the robot-assisted training in assisting rehabilitative motion. A designed experimental setup was developed to evaluate the performance of the proposed hybrid automata scheme. Preliminary simulation results demonstrated the excellent response of the proposed framework with its ability to track the desired trajectory as well as the varying patients' arm impedance profile

Assistive-as-needed strategy for upper-limb robotic systems: An initial survey

Stroke is amongst the leading causes of deprivation of one’s ability in carrying out activities of daily living. It has been reported from literature that, the functional recovery of stroke patients are rather poor, unless frequent rehabilitative therapy is assumed on the affected limb. Recent trends of rehabilitation therapy have also shifted towards allowing more participation of the patient in the therapy session rather than simple passive treatments as it has been demonstrated to be non-trivial in promoting neural plasticity to expedite motor recovery process. Therefore, the employment of rehabilitation robotics is seen as a means of mitigating the limitations of conventional rehabilitation therapy. It enables unique methods for promoting patient engagement by providing patients assistance only as needed basis. This paper attempts on reviewing assist-as-needed control strategy applied on upper-limb robotic rehabilitation devices

IV-FMC: an automated vision based part modeling and reconstruction system for flexible manufacturing cells

The use of computer vision system in manufacturing industry can eliminate the visual faults due to the limitation of human vision and increase productivity. The aim of the current study is to develop an automated vision system (IV-FMC) to reconstruct manufacturing parts in three-dimensional (3D) model. In the designed system, laser stripes are projected onto an object to be scanned. A charge-coupled device (CCD) camera captures the two dimensional (2D) image from the reflected stripes. Based of the principle of optical triangulation, the distance between the object and the camera is calculated in which the third dimension of the image is obtained. These processes iterate each time the object is rotated in different angles, letting the system to capture the whole view of the object being scanned. A 3D model of the object is then reconstructed by merging multiple range images obtained from the range scanning. A PC-based data acquisition board is designed to control the switching of the laser module. The reconstruction process is automated to form a single 3D surface model of the object being scanned

Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of quantitative upper limb spasticity evaluation based on modified Ashworth scale tool

Clinical assessments of muscle spasticity are done by physiotherapists with the help of assessment scales. The gold standard is by using Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), in which the scale quantifies the level of muscle spasticity by measuring resistance to passive movements. However, this scale is highly subjective to the assessors’ opinions and experiences. Therefore, we proposed Muscle Spasticity Assessment System (MSAS) as an attempt to add objective weights to the current spasticity assessment method. In this study, inter-rater reliability of MSAS and its intra-rater reliability with MAS are presented. 46 subjects with neurological disorders participated in this study. Inter-rater reliability for clinical and MSAS assessment method gives substantial to excellent (kappa value 0.82) and excellent (kappa value 0.99) respectively. For both methods, intra-rater proved to give excellent result. MSAS are accurate and reliable in assisting the physiotherapist to quantify the spasticity of the upper limbs

Komunikasi Guru Dalam Bilik Darjah Dan Tingkahlaku Delinkuen Murid Sekolah Menengah

Tujuan kajian ini adalah untuk mengenal pasti halangan dan hubungan antara komunikasi guru dalam bilik darjah dengan tingkah laku delinkuen murid di sekolah menengah. Kaedah tinjauan menggunakan soal selidik melibatkan responden seramai 80 orang yang terdiri daripada guru.Data-data kajian dianalisis melalui SPSS menggunakan statistik deskriptif seperti kekerapan, peratus, min dan sisihan piawai manakala statistik inferensi yang digunakan Korelasi Pearson.Dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa halangan kepada keberkesanan komunikasi guru dalam bilik darjah ialah guru selalu tidak masuk kelas manakala analisis korelasi pearson menunjukkan wujud hubungan negatif yang signifikan antara komunikasi guru dalam bilik darjah, komunikasi lisan dan bukan lisan guru dengan tingkah laku delinkuen murid

Analysis of selected glutathione S-transferase gene polymorphisms in Malaysian type 2 diabetes mellitus patients with and without cardiovascular disease

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is believed to be associated with excessive production of reactive oxygen species. Glutathione S-transferase (GST) polymorphisms result in decreased or absent enzyme activity and altered oxidative stress, and have been associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD). The present study assessed the effect of GST polymorphisms on the risk of developing T2DM in individuals of Malaysian Malay ethnicity. A total of 287 subjects, consisting of 87 T2DM and 64 CVD/T2DM patients, as well as 136 healthy gender- and age-matched controls were genotyped for selected polymorphisms to evaluate associations with T2DM susceptibility. Genomic DNA was extracted using commercially available kits, and GSTM1, GSTT1, and α-globin sequences were amplified by multiplex polymerase chain reaction. Biochemical parameters were measured with a Hitachi autoanalyzer. The Fisher exact test, the chi-square statistic, and means ± standard deviations were calculated using the SPSS software. Overall, we observed no significant differences regarding genotype and allele frequencies between each group (P = 0.224 and 0.199, respectively). However, in the combined analysis of genotypes and blood measurements, fasting plasma glucose, HbA1c, and triglyceride levels, followed by age, body mass index, waist-hip ratio, systolic blood pressure, and history of T2DM significantly differed according to GST polymorphism (P ˂ 0.05). Genetically induced absence of the GSTT1 enzyme is an independent and powerful predictor of premature vascular morbidity and death in individuals with T2DM, and might be triggered by cigarette smoking’s oxidative effects. These polymorphisms could be screened in other ethnicities within Malaysia to determine further possible risk factors

Physical measurement of the expansion rate of anisotropic tissue expander in the skin of the horse

Tissue expansion technique is one of the most important innovations in skin reconstructive surgery. In this study, anisotropic self-inflating hydrogel tissue expanders were implanted subcutaneously at different anatomical locations; frontal, right shoulder and right forelimb of horses. The resulting skin expansion were observed and recorded daily for the duration of 28 days by manual physical measurements. The rate of height growth and swelling that were recorded are 164.25% at the frontal region of the head, 189.13% at the shoulder region and 122.42% at the forelimb region. The growth of the tissue expander in the three sites could be summarized in three phases; biodegradable in week one, the peak of anisotropic expansion in week two and three, and final degree of swelling in week four