Background: Earlier nonrandomized studies have suggested that laparoscopic distal pancreatectomy (LDP) is advantageous compared with open distal pancreatectomy (ODP) regarding hospital stay, blood loss, and recovery. Only one randomized study has been conducted showing reduced time to functional recovery after LDP compared with ODP. Methods: LAPOP is a prospective randomized, nonblinded, parallel-

The precarious situation faced by women and girls in the wake of climate-related disasters is illustrated through fieldwork conducted in Eastern Visayas in the Philippines, one of the regions most affected by Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. However, this article illustrates that these heightened levels of gendered violence faced by women and girls are not a result of the disaster alone; rather, they

Primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) is an autoimmune disease, primarliy affecting women, characterised by inflammation and destruction of exocrine glands with a prevalence of 0.01-0.09%. About one-third of the patients also suffer from extraglandular manifestations e.g. inflammation in the lungs, kidneys, skin or nerves. Apart from dyness symptoms, patients often suffer from fatigue and pain. Little

Patient-reported outcomes but not Demographic Factors Predict Normal Muscle Function 2-5 Years After ACL Injury: A Cross-Sectional StudyNiklas Cederström1, Ewa Roos2, Eva Ageberg1(1)Musculoskeletal Function Research Group, Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University(2)Institute of Sport Science and Clinical Biomechanics, Musculoskeletal Function and Physiotherapy, Universit

This paper presents a framework developed for an industrial robotics system that utilises two different planning components. At a high level, a multi-robot mission planner interfaces with a fleet and environment manager and uses multiagent planning techniques to build mission assignments to be distributed to a robot fleet. On each robot, a task planner automatically converts the robot's world mode

In this chapter, we describe three common scenarios of older people’s living situation in order to increase the understanding of when and how home monitoring can be used among older people at risk of worsening health. We aim at describing the different circumstances under which monitoring approaches and personal care solutions can be applied. Then, we describe relevant geriatric conditions and thr

This chapter summarizes the existing review articles in the field of monitoring and diagnosing older adults at risk of health deterioration, in the context of smart-homes. We provide taxonomy of these notable review articles, characterizing their aims and reviewing approaches of proposed monitoring systems capable of detecting health threats in smart-home settings. We included reviews, which focus

Publicly available datasets constitute the ground to evaluate and compare the performance of proposed approaches for monitoring older patients at home. In this chapter, we shed light on the importance of using datasets as a benchmarking tool for comparing various monitoring techniques for detecting the health threats, which we discussed in the previous chapters. The methods, which are tested by us

This chapter aims at giving an insight into a variety of available monitoring technologies and techniques, which aim to provide solutions to the issues listed in Chap. 3. First, we start with discussing possible data collection approaches, by revealing choices of available sensors and underlying constrains. Second, we provide a summary of sensors used for data acquisition in regard to needed medic

In this paper we focus on the joint problem of tracking humans and recognizing human action in scenarios such as a kitchen scenario or a scenario where a robot cooperates with a human, e.g., for a manufacturing task. In these scenarios, the human directly interacts with objects physically by using/manipulating them or by, e.g., pointing at them such as in "Give me that...", 10 recognize these type

Object segmentation is the first step towards more advanced robotic behaviors, as robots need to localize objects before attempting tasks such as grasping or manipulation. A robot vision system should be able to provide accurate object hypotheses in reasonably high frame rates, using images and possibly also depth data. This work proposes a fixation-based object segmentation algorithm able to cope

Is low-cost tracking precise enough for recognition of pointing actions? We investigate the quality of the human body tracking available with a Kinect camera by comparing it to a state-of-the-art motion capture system. The application is action recognition with parametric hidden Markov Models (PHMMs) for programming industrial robots. The data from the Kinect is overall more noisy and potentially

In this paper we discuss the use of the infinite Gaussian mixture model and Dirichlet processes for learning robot movements from demonstrations. Starting point of this work is an earlier paper where the authors learn a non-linear dynamic robot movement model from a small number of observations. The model in that work is learned using a classical finite Gaussian mixture model (FGMM) where the Gaus

Background Globally recommended measures for comprehensive tuberculosis (TB) infection control (IC) are inadequately practiced in most health care facilities in Ethiopia. The aim of this study was to assess the extent of implementation of TB IC measures before and after introducing a comprehensive technical support package in two regions of Ethiopia. Methods We used a quasi-experimental design, wh

Mobile robots that have the ability to cooperate with humans are able to provide new possibilities to manufacturing industries. In this paper, we discuss our mobile robot arm that can a) provide assistance at different locations in a factory and b) be programmed using complex human actions such as pointing in Take this object. We discuss the use of the mobile robot for a feeding scenario where a h

We present a novel low-cost device for scanning object surfaces based on structured LED (Light Emitting Diode) light and a single, monocular image from a standard machine vision camera. During the calibration phase we find the displacement of the imaged LED-projected marker points as a function of depth. Using this displacement data and a suitable interpolation technique, the depth of surface poin

Introduction: Treatment after Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury includes physical therapist supervised neuromuscular training, with or without surgical reconstruction, aiming to improve patient-reported outcomes and muscle function. Despite this treatment, sensorimotor deficiencies persist, possibly constituting a contributing factor for risk of re-injury, early-onset osteoarthritis, and a l