Design of a re-configurable test stand for a multi degree of freedom compliant robot prototype

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.A test stand was designed and constructed to compress a compliant robot prototype, while measuring the force applied and the displacement of the prototype's end. The prototype is a five degree of freedom, compliant device, which required the design process to preserve these DOF while measuring the force and displacement. To reduce the restriction on the robot's DOF, the final design utilizes a stepper motor and a counterweighted pulley system to apply a compressive force through a single monofilament line. The test stand can accommodate prototypes up to 25 cm in length, and can apply a compressive force up to 6.5N with a resolution of ±0.04N. The displacement can be measured accurately to ±0.064cm.by Daniel E. Klenk.S.B

Strengthening Resilience by thinking of Knowledge as a nutrient connecting the local person to global thinking: The case of Social Technology/Tecnologia Social

In this chapter, we describe the Knowledge as a Nutrient framework that emerged from these conversations. We describe how it relates to the Tecnologia Social policy approach to sustainability, developed in Brazil (Dagnino et al. 2004, Fundação Banco do Brasil 2009, Costa 2013), which is not well known in the anglophone world. Tecnologia Social was both inspired by and rooted in Paulo Freire’s pedagogical thinking (2000, Klix 2014).   We show how this framework has the potential to increase community resilience and adaptive capacity, not only for communities that face and must adapt to climate change but for all communities in the throes of complex social, ecological, economic and political transitions.This research was supported by the International Development Research Centre, grant number IDRC GRANT NO. 106002-00

How will disenfranchised Peoples adapt to Climate Change? Strengthening the Ecojustice Movement

The Fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledged That millions of people are currently, and will increasingly be, affected by the impacts of climate change, in the form of floods, droughts and other extreme events, as well as related threats to food security. In response to these global environmental changes, the international community, including civil society, is acting on the need for immediate adaptation measures and is developing strategies for future adaptation. However, the impacts of climate change are unevenly distributed, with many of the poorest, most vulnerable peoples experiencing the immediate effects of climate change, in the here and now. As the IPCC noted, developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change and often, the least able to adapt due to lack of infrastructure and resources

Phase resetting of human walking

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 34-35).This thesis is an investigation of the neural control of unimpaired human walking. Specifically, this work studied the potential for phase resetting of human walking by analyzing results from treadmill walking experiments. Subjects walked on a treadmill while wearing a robotic device that attaches to the lower leg, which applied 6 Nm torque perturbations to the ankle that acted to plantarflex the ankle. The effect of these perturbations on the stride period was then analyzed to determine the potential for phase resetting of the gait. For the experimental setup used, no phase resetting was found. This was determined by fitting a Fourier series regression to the data and finding very low R² values for all subjects, ranging from 0.04 to 0.10, which implies that no underlying periodic curve exists in the data. This evidence of zero phase resetting is consistent with prior work that indicates some type of kinematic controller is present during walking.by Daniel Klenk.S.M

Strengthening Resilience by thinking of Knowledge as a Nutrient that connects the personal to global thinking

Poster presented at the Adaptation Futures Conference, the Third International Climate Change Adaptation Conference, Fortaleza Ceará, Brazil, May 12-16,2014. http://adaptationfutures2014.ccst.inpe.brPoster presented at the Adaptation Futures Conference, the Third International Climate Change Adaptation Conference, Fortaleza Ceará, Brazil, May 12-16,2014. http://adaptationfutures2014.ccst.inpe.br In April 2009, we held an international conference at York University, Toronto, Canada. Activists and academics who work with NGOs from the Global South and North came together to discuss adaptation to climate change. Most significantly, the Canadian perspective was entirely presented by First Nations and Inuit, which was and is highly unusual at conferences of this kind that are held in the south of Canada. This conference triggered and reinforced a cascade of diverse activities and research that has followed many intertwining pathways that diverged, crossed and reconnected over time. Several key factors have emerged from both the field experiences shared at the conference, and the related research, indicating that the adaptive capacity of disenfranchised peoples in Brazil, India, South Africa, Canada and beyond, is enhanced by diverse kinds of shared knowledge.York University & Environment Canada, Government of Canada International Polar Year for fundin

Preparing for and Responding to Disturbance: Examples from the Forest Sector in Sweden and Canada

Coping or adaptation following large-scale disturbance may depend on the political system and its preparedness and policy development in relation to risks. Adaptive or foresight planning is necessary in order to account and plan for potential risks that may increase or take place concurrently with climate change. Forests constitute relevant examples of large-scale renewable resource systems that have been directly affected by recent environmental and social changes, and where different levels of management may influence each other. This article views disturbances in the forest sectors of Sweden and Canada, two large forest nations with comparable forestry experiences, in order to elucidate the preparedness and existing responses to multiple potential stresses. The article concludes that the two countries are exposed to stresses that indicate the importance of the governing and institutional system particularly with regard to multi-level systems including federal and EU levels. While economic change largely results in privatization of risk onto individual companies and their economic resources (in Canada coupled with a contestation of institutional systems and equity in these), storm and pest outbreaks in particular challenge institutional capacities at administrative levels, within the context provided by governance and tenure systems.In Sweden, funding from the research agency FORMAS, the MISTRA Arctic Futures programme, and the Future Forests programme (funded by research agency MISTRA, the forest industries, Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) as well as from the EU for data collection is acknowledged. Ryan Bullock acknowledges funding provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by the Mistra Arctic Futures programme for preparing this paper.https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/2/2/50

Objective measures of rollator user stability and device loading during different walking scenarios

Walking aids are widely used by older adults, however, alarmingly, their use has been linked to increased falls-risk, yet clinicians have no objective way of assessing user stability. This work aims to demonstrate the application of a novel methodology to investigate how the type of walking task, the amount of body weight supported by the device (i.e., device loading), and task performance strategy affect stability of rollator users. In this context, ten users performed six walking tasks with an instrumented rollator. The combined stability margin “SM” was calculated, which considers user and rollator as a combined system. A Friedman Test was used to investigate the effects of task on SM and a least-squares regression model was applied to investigate the relationship between device loading and SM. In addition, the effects of task performance strategy on SM were explored. As a result, it was found that: the minimum SM for straight line walking was higher than for more complex tasks (p<0.05); an increase in device loading was associated with an increase in SM (p<0.05); stepping up a kerb with at least 1 rollator wheel in ground contact at all times resulted in higher SM than lifting all four wheels simultaneously. Hence, we conclude that training should not be limited to straight line walking but should include various everyday tasks. Within person, SM informs on which tasks need practicing, and which strategy facilitates stability, thereby enabling person-specific guidance/training. The relevance of this work lies in an increase in walking aid users, and the costs arising from fall-related injuries. Supplementary data is available in Figshare

Shotgun metagenome data of a defined mock community using Oxford Nanopore, PacBio and Illumina technologies.

Metagenomic sequence data from defined mock communities is crucial for the assessment of sequencing platform performance and downstream analyses, including assembly, binning and taxonomic assignment. We report a comparison of shotgun metagenome sequencing and assembly metrics of a defined microbial mock community using the Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) MinION, PacBio and Illumina sequencing platforms. Our synthetic microbial community BMock12 consists of 12 bacterial strains with genome sizes spanning 3.2-7.2 Mbp, 40-73% GC content, and 1.5-7.3% repeats. Size selection of both PacBio and ONT sequencing libraries prior to sequencing was essential to yield comparable relative abundances of organisms among all sequencing technologies. While the Illumina-based metagenome assembly yielded good coverage with few misassemblies, contiguity was greatly improved by both, Illumina + ONT and Illumina + PacBio hybrid assemblies but increased misassemblies, most notably in genomes with high sequence similarity to each other. Our resulting datasets allow evaluation and benchmarking of bioinformatics software on Illumina, PacBio and ONT platforms in parallel