1,720,970 research outputs found
New scenarios in human trunk posture measurements for clinical applications
Get PDFIt is well established how maintaining a correct body
posture is absolutely fundamental to prevent skeleton and
muscular pathologies. For instance the trunk’s postures assumed
in a typical working day for who spends many hours in front of a
pc-screen, or the typical motion behaviour in the classroom
routine for the pupils, can even lead to some body handicaps.
Accordingly, it appears obvious how the exact evaluation of
assumed postures during the possible daily activities is the
starting point for the adoption of related prevention expedient or
the application of subsequent medical treatments. On the basis of
our experience, this paper deals with the common adopted
systems for measuring human postures, especially related to the
torso, suggesting a complete classification scheme, and imaging
new possible future scenarios for clinical applications
Evaluation of a Stretch Sensor for its inedited application in tracking hand finger movements
No full textFlex sensors are frequently used as wearable tools for unobtrusively tracking human joint movements. Among all the flex sensor types, the resistive ones are the mostly adopted thanks to their electrical and mechanical properties capable to furnish electrical resistance values related to the amount of mechanical flexion. In particular, resistive flex sensors have been finding many applications when embedded into gloves, in order to evaluate fine flexion/extension movements of the finger joints. Within this frame, here we investigate the possible utilization of a different type of flex sensors embedded into gloves, i.e., the stretch ones, since the stretch sensors change in resistance proportionally to their stretch that can be just obtained when laid on-top of a finger joint. In such a view, here we compare the characteristics of commercial flex and stretch sensors obtained by means of an ad-hoc setup and protocol. Results demonstrate the different peculiarities of the two different types of sensors, so to determine when it is convenient to adopt one type instead of the other
Assessment of hand rehabilitation after hand surgery by means of a sensory glove
No full textThe assessment of hand functions after hand surgery treatment is essential to address the optimal rehabilitation procedures for any patient. To this aim, the current procedures anachronistically rely mainly on manual goniometers (highly prone to human errors) and know-how of experienced medical staffs (potentially prone to biased judgment), so that there is room for improvements in objective measurements of hand capabilities and new technological systems are very welcome. In particular, systems based on sensory glove are gaining more and more relevance in acquiring hand movement capabilities. Within this frame, in this research the Range of Motion (ROM) for all fingers and the ability of participants (health vs. patient subjects) to repeat two ADL (Activities of Daily Living)-based tasks were investigated. As a result, the glove-based system was evaluated in its feasibility for the assessment of hand function in clinical practice and rehabilitation settings
Support vector machines to detect physiological patterns for EEG and EMG-based human-computer interaction:a review
Get PDFSupport vector machines (SVMs) are widely used classifiers for detecting physiological patterns in human-computer interaction (HCI). Their success is due to their versatility, robustness and large availability of free dedicated toolboxes. Frequently in the literature, insufficient details about the SVM implementation and/or parameters selection are reported, making it impossible to reproduce study analysis and results. In order to perform an optimized classification and report a proper description of the results, it is necessary to have a comprehensive critical overview of the applications of SVM. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of the usage of SVM in the determination of brain and muscle patterns for HCI, by focusing on electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) techniques. In particular, an overview of the basic principles of SVM theory is outlined, together with a description of several relevant literature implementations. Furthermore, details concerning reviewed papers are listed in tables and statistics of SVM use in the literature are presented. Suitability of SVM for HCI is discussed and critical comparisons with other classifiers are reported
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
Curvature characterization of flex sensors for human posture recognition
Get PDFResistive flex sensors have been increasingly used in different areas for their interesting property to change their resistance when bent. They can be employed in those systems where a joint rotation has to be measured, in particular biomedical systems, to measure human joint static and dynamic postures. In spite of their interesting properties, such as robustness, low price and long life, to date commercial flex sensors have been only characterized against the variation of the bend angle with small fixed curvature radius mostly around the device center, so limiting the application to the measure of human joints. Here we aimed to investigate the flex sensor’s response when there is a change in curvature radius as it is, for instance, for the measure of the postures of the human torso. So, we designed a novel automated test process to obtain resistances vs. curvature radius pairs. Results demonstrated the usability of flex sensors to other parts of the human body rather than “simply” joints, differently as it is currently done
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
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