UNIQUE LARGE-SCALE RESEARCH FACILITIES "SEISMIC INFRASOUND ARRAY FOR MONITORING ARCTIC CRYOLITOZONE AND CONTINUOUS SEISMIC MONITORING OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, NEIGHBOURING TERRITORIES AND THE WORLD"

The description of the Unique Large-Scale Research Facilities "Seismic infrasound array for monitoring Arctic cryolithozone and continuous seismic monitoring of the Russian Federation, neighbouring territories and the world" (URF SIA MAC), its hardware and software components are presented. Methods and principle areas of research carried out using the URF are outlined. The URF SIA MAC includes 364 seismic stations throughout Russia and three infrasound arrays. The data obtained at the URF serve to provide domestic fundamental and applied research in the field of Earth Sciences (seismology, geophysics, geodynamics, geoecology) and to study catastrophic events of a natural induced nature. The modern URF data archive includes digital seismic records since 1993. In addition, there is a significant amount of analogue records (since 1904) available for further digitization. The URF SIA MAC provides seismological data to many Russian scientific, research and design organizations. The article presents the main results of the Federal Research Centre Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences obtained in recent years using the URF data

Accurate multi-robot targeting for keyhole neurosurgery based on external sensors monitoring

Robotics has recently been introduced in surgery to improve intervention accuracy, to reduce invasiveness and to allow new surgical procedures. In this framework, the ROBOCAST system is an optically surveyed multi-robot chain aimed at enhancing the accuracy of surgical probe insertion during keyhole neurosurgery procedures. The system encompasses three robots, connected as a multiple kinematic chain (serial and parallel), totalling 13 degrees of freedom, and it is used to automatically align the probe onto a desired planned trajectory. The probe is then inserted in the brain, towards the planned target, by means of a haptic interface. This paper presents a new iterative targeting approach to be used in surgical robotic navigation, where the multi-robot chain is used to align the surgical probe to the planned pose, and an external sensor is used to decrease the alignment errors. The iterative targeting was tested in an operating room environment using a skull phantom, and the targets were selected on magnetic resonance images. The proposed targeting procedure allows about 0.3 mm to be obtained as the residual median Euclidean distance between the planned and the desired targets, thus satisfying the surgical accuracy requirements (1 mm), due to the resolution of the diffused medical images. The performances proved to be independent of the robot optical sensor calibration accuracy

УНИКАЛЬНАЯ НАУЧНАЯ УСТАНОВКА «СЕЙСМОИНФРАЗВУКОВОЙ КОМПЛЕКС МОНИТОРИНГА АРКТИЧЕСКОЙ КРИОЛИТОЗОНЫ И КОМПЛЕКС НЕПРЕРЫВНОГО СЕЙСМИЧЕСКОГО МОНИТОРИНГА РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ, СОПРЕДЕЛЬНЫХ ТЕРРИТОРИЙ И МИРА»

The description of the Unique Large-Scale Research Facilities "Seismic infrasound array for monitoring Arctic cryolithozone and continuous seismic monitoring of the Russian Federation, neighbouring territories and the world" (URF SIA MAC), its hardware and software components are presented. Methods and principle areas of research carried out using the URF are outlined. The URF SIA MAC includes 364 seismic stations throughout Russia and three infrasound arrays. The data obtained at the URF serve to provide domestic fundamental and applied research in the field of Earth Sciences (seismology, geophysics, geodynamics, geoecology) and to study catastrophic events of a natural induced nature. The modern URF data archive includes digital seismic records since 1993. In addition, there is a significant amount of analogue records (since 1904) available for further digitization. The URF SIA MAC provides seismological data to many Russian scientific, research and design organizations. The article presents the main results of the Federal Research Centre Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences obtained in recent years using the URF data.Представлено описание уникальной научной установки «Сейсмоинфразвуковой комплекс мониторинга арктической криолитозоны и комплекс непрерывного сейсмического мониторинга Российской Федерации, сопредельных территорий и мира» (УНУ СИЗК МАК), eе аппаратной и программной компонент, описаны методы и основные направления исследований, проводимые с ее использованием. В состав установки входит 364 сейсмические станции, расположенные на всей территории России, и три инфразвуковые группы. Данные, получаемые на УНУ, служат для обеспечения отечественных фундаментальных и прикладных исследований в области наук о Земле (сейсмология, геофизика, геодинамика, геоэкология), а также для изучения катастрофических событий природного и техногенного характера. Современный архив данных УНУ включает цифровые сейсмические записи начиная с 1993 г.; кроме того, имеется значительный объем аналоговых записей (с 1904 г.), доступных для дальнейшей оцифровки. Установка обеспечивает сейсмологическими данными многие научные, изыскательские и проектные организации страны. В статье представлены основные результаты собственных исследований Единой геофизической службы РАН, проводимых в последние годы с использованием данных УНУ

Bayesian reinforcement learning with exploration

We consider a general reinforcement learning problem and show that carefully combining the Bayesian optimal policy and an exploring policy leads to minimax sample-complexity bounds in a very general class of (history-based) environments. We also prove lower bounds and show that the new algorithm displays adaptive behaviour when the environment is easier than worst-case

FEATURES OF USING NONSTEROIDAL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DRUGS IN DENTAL PRACTICE

Aim. This study was conducted to assess the awareness of dentists about the questions of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as well as to study the features of their use for the relief of pain syndrome in dental practice.Materials and methods. By means of the questionnaires were studied 107 dentists working in dental clinics and dental departments of General hospitals, especially their use of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for pain relief.Results. It was determined that 85% of doctors use non-selective and moderately selective cyclooxygenase inhibitors (COX), 15%-prefer Cox-2 inhibitor with the pronounced selectivity for pain relief. The highest number of correct answers was given by a group of doctors with work experience from 5 to 10 years (40.3%), the lowest – by doctors with work experience more than 20 years, respectively 40.3% and 36.1% of the total number of doctors from the studied groups.Conclusion. There was noted that it is necessary to pay attention to the peculiarities of pain relief for the improvement of dentists’ work as well as to involve clinical pharmacologists for these purposes

Miniaturized rigid probe driver with haptic loop control for neurosurgical interventions

During neurosurgical “keyhole” procedures (i.e. functional neurosurgery and biopsies), linear probes are inserted into the brain toward selected targets. Recently, robotic systems have been introduced to help the surgeon to improve the operation accuracy and safety while simultaneously reducing the invasiveness of the procedure. In this paper, an innovative miniaturized linear actuator for neurosurgical probe insertion, with a remote master device, is presented. The linear actuator, with three piezo-motors that allow the movement of the probe, is equipped with a position sensor and with a force sensor in order to provide the surgeon with haptic feedback. The haptic master drives the linear actuator and reproduces and amplifies the contact forces between the surgical tool and the brain tissue. The results of two different force sensing modalities are compared. First tests show the surgical application requirements are satisfied

Visualization of trends in subscriber attributes of communities on mobile telecommunications networks

Churn, the decision for a subscriber to leave a provider, is frequently of interest in the telecommunications industry. Previous research provides evidence that social influence can be a factor in mobile telecommunications churn. In our work, presented at ASONAM, we presented a system, called ChurnVis, to visualize the evolution of mobile telecommunications churn and subscriber actions over time. First, we infer a social network from call detail records. Then, we compute components based on an overlay of this social network and churn activity. We compute summaries of the attributes associated with the subscribers and finally, we visualize the components in a privacy preserving way. The system is able to present summaries of thousands of churn components in graphs of hundreds of millions of edges. One of the drawbacks of the original approach was that churn components were sometimes very large, leading to over-aggregation in the summary data. In this extension of the ASONAM paper, we adapt the ChurnVis approach to operate on the output of a community finding algorithm and present new results based on this adaptation.Science Foundation Irelan