Development and preliminary evaluation of a novel low cost VR-based upper limb stroke rehabilitation platform using Wii technology.

Abstract Purpose: This paper proposes a novel system (using the Nintendo Wii remote) that offers customised, non-immersive, virtual reality-based, upper-limb stroke rehabilitation and reports on promising preliminary findings with stroke survivors. Method: The system novelty lies in the high accuracy of the full kinematic tracking of the upper limb movement in real-time, offering strong personal connection between the stroke survivor and a virtual character when executing therapist prescribed adjustable exercises/games. It allows the therapist to monitor patient performance and to individually calibrate the system in terms of range of movement, speed and duration. Results: The system was tested for acceptability with three stroke survivors with differing levels of disability. Participants reported an overwhelming connection with the system and avatar. A two-week, single case study with a long-term stroke survivor showed positive changes in all four outcome measures employed, with the participant reporting better wrist control and greater functional use. Activities, which were deemed too challenging or too easy were associated with lower scores of enjoyment/motivation, highlighting the need for activities to be individually calibrated. Conclusions: Given the preliminary findings, it would be beneficial to extend the case study in terms of duration and participants and to conduct an acceptability and feasibility study with community dwelling survivors. Implications for Rehabilitation Low-cost, off-the-shelf game sensors, such as the Nintendo Wii remote, are acceptable by stroke survivors as an add-on to upper limb stroke rehabilitation but have to be bespoked to provide high-fidelity and real-time kinematic tracking of the arm movement. Providing therapists with real-time and remote monitoring of the quality of the movement and not just the amount of practice, is imperative and most critical for getting a better understanding of each patient and administering the right amount and type of exercise. The ability to translate therapeutic arm movement into individually calibrated exercises and games, allows accommodation of the wide range of movement difficulties seen after stroke and the ability to adjust these activities (in terms of speed, range of movement and duration) will aid motivation and adherence - key issues in rehabilitation. With increasing pressures on resources and the move to more community-based rehabilitation, the proposed system has the potential for promoting the intensity of practice necessary for recovery in both community and acute settings.The National Health Service (NHS) London Regional Innovation Fund

A Jeziorski-Monkhorst fully uncontracted Multi-Reference perturbative treatment I: principles, second-order versions and tests on ground state potential energy curves

The present paper introduces a new multi-reference perturbation approach developed at second order, based on a Jeziorsky-Mokhorst expansion using individual Slater determinants as perturbers. Thanks to this choice of perturbers, an effective Hamiltonian may be built, allowing for the dressing of the Hamiltonian matrix within the reference space, assumed here to be a CAS-CI. Such a formulation accounts then for the coupling between the static and dynamic correlation effects. With our new definition of zeroth-order energies, these two approaches are strictly size-extensive provided that local orbitals are used, as numerically illustrated here and formally demonstrated in the appendix. Also, the present formalism allows for the factorization of all double excitation operators, just as in internally contracted approaches, strongly reducing the computational cost of these two approaches with respect to other determinant-based perturbation theories. The accuracy of these methods has been investigated on ground-state potential curves up to full dissociation limits for a set of six molecules involving single, double and triple bond breaking. The spectroscopic constants obtained with the present methods are found to be in very good agreement with the full configuration interaction (FCI) results. As the present formalism does not use any parameter or numerically unstable operation, the curves obtained with the two methods are smooth all along the dissociation path.Comment: 4 figures, 18 page

Variations in household microclimate affect outdoor-biting behaviour of malaria vectors

Background: Mosquito behaviours including the degree to which they bite inside houses or outside is a crucial determinant of human exposure to malaria. Whilst seasonality in mosquito vector abundance is well documented, much less is known about the impact of climate on mosquito behaviour. We investigated how variations in household microclimate affect outdoor-biting by malaria vectors, Anopheles arabiensis and Anopheles funestus. Methods: Mosquitoes were sampled indoors and outdoors weekly using human landing catches at eight households in four villages in south-eastern Tanzania, resulting in 616 trap-nights over 12 months. Daily temperature, relative humidity and rainfall were recorded. Generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) were used to test associations between mosquito abundance and the microclimatic conditions. Generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) were used to investigate the influence of microclimatic conditions on the tendency of vectors to bite outdoors (proportion of outdoor biting). Results: An. arabiensis abundance peaked during high rainfall months (February-May), whilst An. funestus density remained stable into the dry season (May-August). Across the range of observed household temperatures, a rise of 1ºC marginally increased nightly An. arabiensis abundance (~11%), but more prominently increased An. funestus abundance (~66%). The abundance of An. arabiensis and An. funestus showed strong positive associations with time-lagged rainfall (2-3 and 3-4 weeks before sampling). The degree of outdoor biting in An. arabiensis was significantly associated with the relative temperature difference between indoor and outdoor environments, with exophily increasing as temperature inside houses became relatively warmer. The exophily of An. funestus did not vary with temperature differences. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that malaria vector An. arabiensis shifts the location of its biting from indoors to outdoors in association with relative differences in microclimatic conditions. These environmental impacts could give rise to seasonal variation in mosquito biting behaviour and degree of protection provided by indoor-based vector control strategies

Followership Imperative of Good Governance: Reflections on Nigeria’s ‘Second Chance’ at Democratization

This paper examines the role of followership in democratization vis-à-vis good governance in Nigeria. The Nigerian Fourth Republic is burdened by followership deficit. The near under-emphasis of the role of followership in the democratization process in both formal and informal discourses with regards to Nigeria is disturbing. Democracy is a game of number and the only system of government that allows the masses to contract government. In fact, the followers in any democratic society remain the largest bloc. And on the basis of this numerical supremacy to leaders, they wield (or are supposed, in the Nigeria’s example, to wield) a lot of power in determining/constituting leadership, molding and shaping leadership, checkmating leadership and thereby stemming the tide of bad governance. The paper discovered that a whole lot of challenges, though surmountable, exist in the way of critical exercise of followership. However, the paper attempts a paradigm shift from seemingly unending scholastic debates on leadership as though such would bring good governance that has eluded the largest black nation in the world to solution-specific examination of curious, active, critical, interrogative and participatory followership as the harbinger of good governance. Key words: Followership, democratization, Nigeria, good governance and developmen

Environmental Behavior Factors Influencing the Outlook of Chinese College Students on the Domestic Adoption of Solar Photovoltaic Technology

Over the last century, China has soared in economic growth and now stands as the world’s second-largest economy. However, rapid economic growth has given rise to environmental degradation. New visions and innovative technological systems, such as domestic solar photovoltaic systems, have been introduced to mitigate pollution from power generation. Despite the positive individual and environmental benefits associated with adopting this innovative system, adoption rates of solar PV system remain comparatively low in China. Survey data targeting environmental behavior factors were distributed among Chinese college students in Shanghai and Beijing to facilitate understanding of the low adoption rate and to shed light on the environmental behavior dimensions influencing Chinese students regarding residential rooftop solar PV adoption. The findings of this study suggest that Chinese college students have high levels of concern for the environment and hold pro-environmental beliefs, suggesting a high potential for their engaging in environmental-oriented purchasing, such as purchasing solar PV technology. However, other studies have indicated a value-action gap, which means that individuals with pro-environmental attitudes will not always invest in green products. Consumer-behavior researchers and those interested in solar PV adoption in China might reference the results of this research

WG\u3csup\u3e2\u3c/sup\u3eAN: Synthetic Wound Image Generation Using Generative Adversarial Network

In part due to its ability to mimic any data distribution, Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) algorithms have been successfully applied to many applications, such as data augmentation, text-to-image translation, image-to-image translation, and image inpainting. Learning from data without crafting loss functions for each application provides broader applicability of the GAN algorithm. Medical image synthesis is also another field that the GAN algorithm has great potential to assist clinician training. This paper proposes a synthetic wound image generation model based on GAN architecture to increase the quality of clinical training. The proposed model is trained on chronic wound datasets with various sizes taken from real hospital environments. Hyperparameters such as epoch count and dataset size for training tasks are studied to find optimum training conditions as well. The performance of the developed model was evaluated through a mean squared error (MSE) metric to determine the similarity between generated and actual wounds. Visual inspection is performed to examine generated wound images. The results show that the proposed synthetic wound image generation (WG2AN) model has great potential to be used in medical training and performs well in producing synthetic wound images with a 1000-image training dataset and 200 epochs of training

Development of an electric drive train for cycles as a sustainable means of transportation for a green environment

Abstract: A reliable and sustainable means of human transportation is vital for the world’s increasing pollution emissions and congestions on the motorways. The research aimed at and focused on developing an affordable electric drive train for cycles using the principle of Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) to provide an interminable number of speed ratios by varying the pulley diameters. The planetary gears designed and installed within the CVT chamber provided a locking mechanism for the ring gear to provide forward transmission to the rear wheel where motion was stepped up through an open differential gear to propel the cycle forward. For stability and ease of manufacture and assembly, a tricycle concept was chosen and developed as a sustainable and alternative means of transportation. The developed electric drive train provides a ‘green’ and affordable means of human transportation in a world geared towards the elimination of pollution