Molecular biogeography of planktonic and benthic diatoms in the Yangtze River

Background: Diatoms are of great significance to primary productivity in oceans, yet little is known about their biogeographic distribution in oligotrophic rivers. Results: With the help of metabarcoding analysis of 279 samples from the Yangtze River, we provided the first integral biogeographic pattern of planktonic and benthic diatoms over a 6030 km continuum along the world's third largest river. Our study revealed spatial dissimilarity of diatoms under varying landforms, including plateau, mountain, foothill, basin, foothill-mountain, and plain regions, from the river source to the estuary. Environmental drivers of diatom communities were interpreted in terms of photosynthetically active radiation, temperature, channel slope and nutrients, and human interference. Typical benthic diatoms, such as Pinnularia, Paralia, and Aulacoseira, experienced considerable reduction in relative abundance downstream of the Three Gorges Dam and the Xiluodu Dam, two of the world's largest dams. Conclusions: Our study revealed that benthic diatoms are of particular significance in characterizing motile guild in riverine environments, which provides insights into diatom biogeography and biogeochemical cycles in large river ecosystems

HAMK Kaupallisten tapahtumien liiketoimintamalli

Tämän opinnäytetyön toimeksiantajana toimii Hämeen ammattikorkeakoulun Työelämän lähipalvelut. Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli määritellä Työelämän lähipalveluiden kaupallisten tapahtumien liiketoimintamalli. Liiketoimintamallin tavoitteena on toimia kaupallisten tapahtumien tuotantoprosessin tukena. Liiketoimintamalli havainnollistetaan Business Model Canvas-työkalua hyväksi käyttäen. Työn teoriaosuus koostuu liiketoimintamallista, liiketoimintamallin rakentamisesta ja tapahtumatuotannosta. Liiketoimintamallin teoriaa avataan käyttäen Business Model Canvas-työkalun kokonaisuuksia hyväksi käyttäen. Työhön on tehty teemahaastattelu, jossa haastateltiin kolmea henkilöä jotka toimivat tapahtumatuotannon asiantuntijoina. Haastattelun avulla selvitettiin Työelämän lähipalveluiden kaupallisten tapahtumien nykytilannetta ja tulevaisuuden mahdollisuuksia. Haastattelun tulokset on huomioitu liiketoimintamallia rakentaessa. Opinnäytetyön tuloksena on syntynyt kaupallisten tapahtumien liiketoi-mintamalli. Liiketoimintamalli havainnollistaa kaupallisten tapahtumien asiakaskuntaa, myyntiä, tapahtumatuotantoa ja kustannustehokasta ajattelua. Opinnäytetyön loppuun on koottu kehitysehdotukset. Kehitysehdotuksissa käydään läpi kokonaisuuksia, jotka saattaisivat parantaa kaupallisten tapahtumien tuotantoprosessia.This thesis was commissioned by the Business Services of Häme Univer-sity of Applied Sciences. The subject of this thesis was to make a business model of the commercial events of the Business Services. The business model is made to be part of the commercial events’ production process. The business model is illustrated by using the Business Model Canvas tool. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with the parts of the business model, how to build a business model and the event production. The business model itself is opened by using the Business Model Canvas tool. The thesis uses a qualitative research method. The study was made by in-terviewing three professional event organizers. The point of the interview was to clarify the current status of the Business services’ commercial events and the possibilities of the future. The results of the interviews were used when creating the actual business model. As the result of this thesis, the business model was created for the Business Services. The business model elaborates customer markets, sales, event production and cost-efficiency approach of commercial events. The final part of the thesis compiles the development points, which could help the production process of the commercial events

Human-Machine Interface for the Control of Multi-Function Systems Based on Electrocutaneous Menu: Application to Multi-Grasp Prosthetic Hands.

Modern assistive devices are very sophisticated systems with multiple degrees of freedom. However, an effective and user-friendly control of these systems is still an open problem since conventional human-machine interfaces (HMI) cannot easily accommodate the system's complexity. In HMIs, the user is responsible for generating unique patterns of command signals directly triggering the device functions. This approach can be difficult to implement when there are many functions (necessitating many command patterns) and/or the user has a considerable impairment (limited number of available signal sources). In this study, we propose a novel concept for a general-purpose HMI where the controller and the user communicate bidirectionally to select the desired function. The system first presents possible choices to the user via electro-tactile stimulation; the user then acknowledges the desired choice by generating a single command signal. Therefore, the proposed approach simplifies the user communication interface (one signal to generate), decoding (one signal to recognize), and allows selecting from a number of options. To demonstrate the new concept the method was used in one particular application, namely, to implement the control of all the relevant functions in a state of the art commercial prosthetic hand without using any myoelectric channels. We performed experiments in healthy subjects and with one amputee to test the feasibility of the novel approach. The results showed that the performance of the novel HMI concept was comparable or, for some outcome measures, better than the classic myoelectric interfaces. The presented approach has a general applicability and the obtained results point out that it could be used to operate various assistive systems (e.g., prosthesis vs. wheelchair), or it could be integrated into other control schemes (e.g., myoelectric control, brain-machine interfaces) in order to improve the usability of existing low-bandwidth HMIs.Open-Access-Publikationsfonds 2015peerReviewe

The impact of the stimulation frequency on closed-loop control with electrotactile feedback

Abstract Background Electrocutaneous stimulation can restore the missing sensory information to prosthetic users. In electrotactile feedback, the information about the prosthesis state is transmitted in the form of pulse trains. The stimulation frequency is an important parameter since it influences the data transmission rate over the feedback channel as well as the form of the elicited tactile sensations. Methods We evaluated the influence of the stimulation frequency on the subject’s ability to utilize the feedback information during electrotactile closed-loop control. Ten healthy subjects performed a real-time compensatory tracking (standard test bench) of sinusoids and pseudorandom signals using either visual feedback (benchmark) or electrocutaneous feedback in seven conditions characterized by different combinations of the stimulation frequency (FSTIM) and tracking error sampling rate (FTE). The tracking error was transmitted using two concentric electrodes placed on the forearm. The quality of tracking was assessed using the Squared Pearson Correlation Coefficient (SPCC), the Normalized Root Mean Square Tracking Error (NRMSTE) and the time delay between the reference and generated trajectories (TDIO). Results The results demonstrated that FSTIM was more important for the control performance than FTE. The quality of tracking deteriorated with a decrease in the stimulation frequency, SPCC and NRMSTE (mean) were 87.5% and 9.4% in the condition 100/100 (FTE/FSTIM), respectively, and deteriorated to 61.1% and 15.3% in 5/5, respectively, while the TDIO increased from 359.8 ms in 100/100 to 1009 ms in 5/5. However, the performance recovered when the tracking error sampled at a low rate was delivered using a high stimulation frequency (SPCC = 83.6%, NRMSTE = 10.3%, TDIO = 415.6 ms, in 5/100). Conclusions The likely reason for the performance decrease and recovery was that the stimulation frequency critically influenced the tactile perception quality and thereby the effective rate of information transfer through the feedback channel. The outcome of this study can facilitate the selection of optimal system parameters for somatosensory feedback in upper limb prostheses. The results imply that the feedback variables (e.g., grasping force) should be transmitted at relatively high frequencies of stimulation (>25 Hz), but that they can be sampled at much lower rates (e.g., 5 Hz).peerReviewe