Preliminary development of an active planar upper limb rehabilitation robotic device

This paper presents the development of a low-cost active planar upper limb rehabilitation robotic device, which aims to help in the rehabilitation process of people living with movement disorders. Many people living with conditions such as cerebral palsy, stroke, spinal cord injury or muscular dystrophy experience upper limb impairments (muscle spasticity, lack of selective motor control, muscle weakness or tremors), and require physical and occupational therapy to maintain or gain motor performance. The proposed device is designed to be fixed on a table. Direct current (DC) motors control the two degrees of freedom (DOF) of the mechanism. The user interacts with the device using a handle. The device is designed so that the handle stays in the same orientation all the time. The device offers different levels of assistance to guide planar movements, going from a complete assistance, where the user is guided by the mechanism that performs predefined movements recorded by the therapist, to the addition of resistance during the movement, where the user moves the end effector without the help of the mechanism and the latter adds perturbations

The 'global city' misconceived: the myth of 'global management' in transnational service firms

The ‘global city hypothesis' proposed by Saskia Sassen – and subsequently developed by Manuel Castells and others in the theory of a globalized urban network – has in recent years formed the basis for the argument that power and control in transnational firms (TNCs) is primarily situated in global head-offices. Such offices are located in key urban centres such as London, New York or Tokyo where global managerial power is ultimately wielded and where senior managers make strategic decisions about transnational business activity. This paper takes issue with this theoretical legacy, arguing that the idea of strong centralised managerial power and control in contemporary TNCs is far more complex than this literature suggests. It explores how managerial control in some of the supposedly most globalized of business service industries – investment banking and management consultancy – cannot be understood as being centralised in global headquarter offices, and nor does it purely reside with a few senior managers at the top of the transnational organisation. Rather, it argues that managerial control in TNCs is diffused throughout a transnational network of management-level employees, and that strategic power in transnational firms resides with a larger and more dispersed group of actors than has been previously suggested. These arguments are developed through analysis of qualitative research into the managerial strategies and practices of senior business practitioners in the transnational investment banking and management consultancy industries. In presenting qualitative data from interviews with senior management in transnational corporate head offices, the paper thus examines the decision-making process of global management practice and unpacks the complex context in which transnational corporate strategy develops in such firms

JACO assistive robotic device : empowering people with disabilities through innovative algorithms

JACO is a commercially available robotic assistive device designed to help people with upper body disabilities gaining more autonomy in their daily life. The device consists of an arm and hand (gripper) mounted on a power wheelchair. This assistance is possible through basic functions such as tri-dimensional displacement of the gripper in space, finger opening and closing and orientation of the wrist. Although these basic functionalities allow the user to perform many tasks, advanced functionalities were required to further empower the users. This paper presents advanced functionalities that were implemented in JACO in order to increase the users’ safety and to enhance their autonomy by increasing the number of achievable tasks and diminishing the time and effort needed to achieve them

Materiality in the future of history: things, practices, and politics

Frank Trentmann is professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London. From 2002 to 2007, he was director of the £5 million Cultures of Consumption research program, cofunded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). He is working on a book for Penguin, The Consuming Passion: How Things Came to Seduce, Enrich, and Define Our Lives, from the Seventeenth Century to the Twenty‐First. This article is one of a pair seeking to facilitate greater exchange between history and the social sciences. Its twin—“Crossing Divides: Globalization and Consumption in History” (forthcoming in the Handbook of Globalization Studies, ed. Bryan Turner)—shows what social scientists (and contemporary historians) might learn from earlier histories. The piece here follows the flow in the other direction. Many thanks to the ESRC for grant number RES‐052‐27‐002 and, for their comments, to Heather Chappells, Steve Pincus, Elizabeth Shove, and the editor and the reviewer

Kinova modular robot arms for service robotics applications

This article presents Kinova's modular robotic systems, including the robots JACO2 and MICO2, actuators and grippers. Kinova designs and manufactures robotics platforms and components that are simple, sexy and safe under two business units: Assistive Robotics empowers people living with disabilities to push beyond their current boundaries and limitations while Service Robotics empowers people in industry to interact with their environment more efficiently and safely. Kinova is based in Boisbriand, Québec, Canada. Its technologies are exploited in over 25 countries and are used in many applications, including as service robotics, physical assistance, medical applications, mobile manipulation, rehabilitation, teleoperation and in research in different areas such as computer vision, artificial intelligence, grasping, planning and control interfaces. The article describes Kinova's hardware platforms, their different control modes (position, velocity and torque), control features and possible control interfaces. Integration to other systems and application examples are also presented

Polyomaviruses KI and WU in Immunocompromised Patients with Respiratory Disease

Polyomaviruses KI (KIPyV) and WU (WUPyV) were recently identified, mainly in respiratory specimens from children. Among 200 patients with respiratory disorders admitted to Saint Louis Hospital, Paris, France, KIPyV was detected in 8% and WUPyV in 1%. KIPyV was significantly more frequent among human stem cell transplant patients (17.8% vs. 5.1%; p = 0.01)

Calcium Independent Effect of Orai1 and STIM1 in Non-Hodgkin B Cell Lymphoma Dissemination

International audienceCa 2+ release-activated Ca 2+ channels, composed of Orai1 and STIM1 (stromal interaction molecule 1) proteins, are the main Ca 2+ entry mechanism in lymphocytes. Their role in cell migration and metastasis is demonstrated in solid cancers but it remains elusive in malignant hemopathies. Diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is characterized by the dissemination of neoplastic B cells throughout the organism which is under the control of chemokines such as Stromal Derived Factor 1 (SDF-1) and its receptor CXCR4. CXCR4 activation triggers a complex intracellular signaling including an increase in intracellular Ca 2+ concentration whose role is still unclear. Using pharmacological and genetic approaches, we revealed that STIM1 and Orai1 were responsible for Ca 2+ influx induced by SDF-1. Furthermore, we provide in vitro and in vivo evidence that they are necessary for basal or SDF-1-induced DLBCL cell migration which is independent of Ca 2+ entry. We identify that they act as effectors coupling RhoA and ROCK dependent signaling pathway to MLC2 phosphorylation and actin polymerization. Finally, we revealed an alteration of Orai1 and STIM1 expression in extra-nodal DLBCL. Thus, we discovered a novel Ca 2+-independent but Orai1 and STIM1-dependent signaling pathway involved in basal and CXCR4 dependent cell migration, which could be relevant for DLBCL physiopathology

Towards a synthesized critique of neoliberal biodiversity conservation

During the last three decades, the arena of biodiversity conservation has largely aligned itself with the globally dominant political ideology of neoliberalism and associated governmentalities. Schemes such as payments for ecological services are promoted to reach the multiple ‘wins’ so desired: improved biodiversity conservation, economic development, (international) cooperation and poverty alleviation, amongst others. While critical scholarship with respect to understanding the linkages between neoliberalism, capitalism and the environment has a long tradition, a synthesized critique of neoliberal conservation - the ideology (and related practices) that the salvation of nature requires capitalist expansion - remains lacking. This paper aims to provide such a critique. We commence with the assertion that there has been a conflation between ‘economics’ and neoliberal ideology in conservation thinking and implementation. As a result, we argue, it becomes easier to distinguish the main problems that neoliberal win-win models pose for biodiversity conservation. These are framed around three points: the stimulation of contradictions; appropriation and misrepresentation and the disciplining of dissent. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s recent ‘compositionist manifesto’, the conclusion outlines some ideas for moving beyond critique

Producing interventions for AIDS-affected young people in Lesotho's schools: Scalar relations and power differentials

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Geoforum. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Children and youth are a key target group for interventions to address southern Africa’s AIDS pandemic. Such interventions are frequently implemented through schools, and are often complex products of negotiation between a range of institutional actors including international agencies, NGOs, government departments and individual schools. These institutions not only stand in different (horizontally scaled) spatial relationships to students in schools; they also appear to operate at different hierarchical levels. Empirical research with policy makers and practitioners in Lesotho, however, reveals how interventions are produced through flows of knowledge, funding and personnel within and between institutions that make it difficult to assert that any intervention is manifestly more international or more local than any other. Scale theory offers the metaphor of a network or web which usefully serves to move attention away from discrete organisations, sectors and scalar positionings and onto the relationships and flows between them. Nevertheless, organisations and development interventions are often partly structured in scalar hierarchical ways that express substantive power differentials and shape the forms of interaction that take place, albeit not binding them to strict binaries or nested hierarchies. A modified network metaphor is useful in aiding understanding of how particular interventions are produced through intermeshing scales and diverse fluid interactions, and why they take the form they do.RGS-IB