Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge

The FPVC combines mechanical engineering disciplines to design and manufacture a vehicle that utilizes hydraulic power. The FDR covers the final manufacturing process and verification processes developed during the front end of research and analysis built upon the Critical Design Review (CDR) and the PDR (Preliminary Design Review). This report showcases the design decisions and extensive research that supports the continuing efforts by the Team Pump My Ride, to build upon the accomplishments of Cal Poly’s previous team, The Incompressibles. The FDR presents how Team Pump My Ride produced the design changes from the CDR and PDR to achieve improvements to the vehicle’s performance. The FDR is detailed with the procurement methods, validation procedures, results, conclusions, recommendations for next year’s team. In addition, details about the virtual competition are included in this report. Major changes that were made during manufacturing included reconstruction of the rear drive train, installation of the new manifold with soft lines, mounting the controller unit, re-designing the controller software and hardware, installation of new bike tires, and re-orientating the accumulator. Testing that was completed include a full trial run for competition as well as testing different pre-charge pressures. In addition, a user manual was developed in order to aid the next team’s members to operate the bike. This report proceeds to conclude team Pump My Ride’s efforts to improve the vehicle and finish as a high-ranking competitor in the 2020 Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge. Disclaimer: This report is meant to be used as a guide for basic orientation with the 2020 Cal Poly Fluid Powered Vehicle. This is a dangerous machine that can cause grave bodily injury if misused. This report is in no way complete and should not be treated as such. High pressure hydraulics are inherently dangerous, and care should be taken whenever in the vicinity of the vehicle. Likewise, the Li-Po battery used on this project must be fully understood to prevent injury or fires. By using the vehicle, you take full responsibility for your safety and the safety of those around you

Improving Soft Pneumatic Actuator Fingers through Integration of Soft Sensors, Position and Force Control, and Rigid Fingernails

We seek to overcome two key limitations which limit the abilities of Soft Pneumatic Actuators (SPAs) to grasp and manipulate objects: 1) Current SPAs lack position or force sensor feedback, which prevents controlling them precisely, and 2) the tip of the SPA is compliant and has high friction against common surfaces, causing the SPA to stick against surfaces when grasping objects from above. Our experiments suggest that we can achieve low steady-state error and overshoot in position and force using feed-forward models that relate pressure, force, and curvature along with a PID controller. We also compare several fingernail designs and show that the best-performing design significantly outperforms having no fingernails when grasping a set of common objects from a table

Bernice Richmond Correspondence

Entries include brief biographical information, a letter of reply typed on homemade Winter Harbor Lighthouse stationery during severe weather conditions, a newspaper story written by Lord concerning an article in Gourmet with a reprint illustration from the magazine, a copy of a letter typed to Lord on homemade Sunny Acres Farm stationery concerning newspaper publicity, a biographical book review newspaper clipping detailing the purchase of the lighthouse at Winter Harbor with the photographic images of Capt. Nelke and his wife and the house of Richmond\u27s birth, and newspaper book review clippings with the photographic image of Richmond autographing her book

Workshop on the Development and Evaluation of Digital Therapeutics for Health Behavior Change: Science, Methods, and Projects

The health care field has integrated advances into digital technology at an accelerating pace to improve health behavior, health care delivery, and cost-effectiveness of care. The realm of behavioral science has embraced this evolution of digital health, allowing for an exciting roadmap for advancing care by addressing the many challenges to the field via technological innovations. Digital therapeutics offer the potential to extend the reach of effective interventions at reduced cost and patient burden and to increase the potency of existing interventions. Intervention models have included the use of digital tools as supplements to standard care models, as tools that can replace a portion of treatment as usual, or as stand-alone tools accessed outside of care settings or direct to the consumer. To advance the potential public health impact of this promising line of research, multiple areas warrant further development and investigation. The Center for Technology and Behavioral Health (CTBH), a P30 Center of Excellence supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, is an interdisciplinary research center at Dartmouth College focused on the goal of harnessing existing and emerging technologies to effectively develop and deliver evidence-based interventions for substance use and co-occurring disorders. The CTBH launched a series of workshops to encourage and expand multidisciplinary collaborations among Dartmouth scientists and international CTBH affiliates engaged in research related to digital technology and behavioral health (eg, addiction science, behavioral health intervention, technology development, computer science and engineering, digital security, health economics, and implementation science). This paper summarizes a workshop conducted on the Development and Evaluation of Digital Therapeutics for Behavior Change, which addressed (1) principles of behavior change, (2) methods of identifying and testing the underlying mechanisms of behavior change, (3) conceptual frameworks for optimizing applications for mental health and addictive behavior, and (4) the diversity of experimental methods and designs that are essential to the successful development and testing of digital therapeutics. Examples were presented of ongoing CTBH projects focused on identifying and improving the measurement of health behavior change mechanisms and the development and evaluation of digital therapeutics. In summary, the workshop showcased the myriad research targets that will be instrumental in promoting and accelerating progress in the field of digital health and health behavior change and illustrated how the CTBH provides a model of multidisciplinary leadership and collaboration that can facilitate innovative, science-based efforts to address the health behavior challenges afflicting our communities

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

NSQIP 30-day outcome measures for below-knee amputations by ICD-10 diagnoses

Background: The indications for Below-Knee Amputation (BKA) are expansive and etiologic subgroups are not well defined. This analysis uses primary ICD-10 diagnosis codes to stratify patients undergoing BKA, and examines differences in subgroup characteristics and 30-day outcomes. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of patients in the NSQIP database who underwent BKA between 2015 and 2020. Approximately 80% of the 12,157 NSQIP BKA entries with primary ICD-10 diagnosis codes were stratified to diabetic (n = 3,363), vascular (n = 3,632), or infectious (n = 2,743) etiological subgroups. Results: Patients with vascular etiologies were older, more likely to be female, underweight, ASA classification of four, and active tobacco users than patients in the other groups. Across all groups, there were incidences of 37.5% for 30-day inpatient complications, 7.0% for Clavien-Dindo Grade IV 30-day complications, 10.2% for 30-day readmission, and 4.2% for 30-day mortality. On bivariate analysis, infectious patients had the highest incidences of inpatient complications (38.6%, p = 0.030) and Clavien-Dindo Grade IV complications (7.8%, p = 0.055). Patients in the vascular group had the highest rates of readmission (12.7%, p<0.001) and mortality (4.9%, p = 0.006). In multivariate analysis, infectious etiology was an independent risk factor for 30-day mortality with an odds ratio of 1.48 (1.11–19.6, p = 0.007). Conclusions: Despite significant clinical overlap of diabetic, vascular, and infectious etiologies of BKA, this study demonstrates that these patients can be grouped by primary ICD-10 code with statistically significant differences in patient characteristics and 30-day outcomes. Further delineation by etiology could focus clinical and research efforts

Bernice Richmond Correspondence

Entries include brief biographical information, a letter of reply typed on homemade Winter Harbor Lighthouse stationery during severe weather conditions, a newspaper story written by Lord concerning an article in Gourmet with a reprint illustration from the magazine, a copy of a letter typed to Lord on homemade Sunny Acres Farm stationery concerning newspaper publicity, a biographical book review newspaper clipping detailing the purchase of the lighthouse at Winter Harbor with the photographic images of Capt. Nelke and his wife and the house of Richmond\u27s birth, and newspaper book review clippings with the photographic image of Richmond autographing her book