1,720,970 research outputs found
BrailleCursor: an Innovative Refreshable Braille Display Based on a Single Sliding Actuator and Simple Passive Pins
No full textIn this work, we present the design and development of BrailleCursor, a patent pending full-size Refresh able Braille Display featuring 40 Braille cells and based on an innovative method: it uses a single actuated cursor for refreshing Braille cells composed of passive pins. In particular, a single electromagnetic actuator, moved on a linear slider, is capable of refreshing a full row of passive pins: each pin consists in a simple metal cylinder and can be reconfigured in a low or high state by an external magnetic field. This solution disentagles the cost of the device from the number of Braille cells and pins. Finally, we experimentally evaluated the performance of the prototype, including embedded electronics and control interface, in terms of rendering errors with respect to the reference Braille characters. The technical features of our proposed method allow us to start to design and develop a dense matrix Refreshable Braille Display
New generation emerging technologies for neurorehabilitation and motor assistance
No full textThis paper illustrates the application of emerging technologies and human-machine interfaces to the neurorehabilitation and motor assistance fields. The contribution focuses on wearable technologies and in particular on robotic exoskeleton as tools for increasing freedom to move and performing Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). This would result in a deep improvement in quality of life, also in terms of improved function of internal organs and general health status. Furthermore, the integration of these robotic systems with advanced bio-signal driven human-machine interface can increase the degree of participation of patient in robotic training allowing to recognize user's intention and assisting the patient in rehabilitation tasks, thus representing a fundamental aspect to elicit motor learning
Convex polygon fitting in robot-based neurorehabilitation
No full textFitting a polygon to a set of points is a task that finds application in many scientific fields. In particular, in robot-based neurorehabilitation, it would be interesting to retrieve the shape that best fits with the path followed by a patient, and evaluate the performance based on the accuracy of the drawing. However, when dealing with a dataset sampled by a drawn trajectory, the methods proposed by the literature may not be exhaustive. In this work we propose a method to define the distance between a set of points and a polygon, which is used as cost function of a Genetic Algorithm to solve the polygon fitting problem. This method involves a novel space separation metrics to retrieve the correct polygon edge to be compared with each point of the set, featuring linear time complexity. We compared the proposed approach with the metrics known in the literature, finding that our method performs significantly better in retrieving the original polygon. Finally, we present a robot-based rehabilitation application in which the proposed method is used to evaluate the performance of a group of subjects. The achievements of twenty healthy subjects were compared with three stroke patients. Results emphasize significant differences between the two categories of subjects, proving that the proposed algorithm can quantitatively determine the degree of impairment of a stroke survivor and be used in the future as reference for monitoring and enhancing the efficiency of robot-based therapies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
