Human-Exoskeleton Interaction Portrait

Human-robot physical interaction contains crucial information for optimizing user experience, enhancing robot performance, and objectively assessing user adaptation. This study introduces a new method to evaluate human-robot co-adaptation in lower limb exoskeletons by analyzing muscle activity and interaction torque as a two-dimensional random variable. We introduce the Interaction Portrait (IP), which visualizes this variable's distribution in polar coordinates. We applied this metric to compare a recent torque controller (HTC) based on kinematic state feedback and a novel feedforward controller (AMTC) with online learning, proposed herein, against a time-based controller (TBC) during treadmill walking at varying speeds. Compared to TBC, both HTC and AMTC significantly lower users' normalized oxygen uptake, suggesting enhanced user-exoskeleton coordination. IP analysis reveals this improvement stems from two distinct co-adaptation strategies, unidentifiable by traditional muscle activity or interaction torque analyses alone. HTC encourages users to yield control to the exoskeleton, decreasing muscular effort but increasing interaction torque, as the exoskeleton compensates for user dynamics. Conversely, AMTC promotes user engagement through increased muscular effort and reduced interaction torques, aligning it more closely with rehabilitation and gait training applications. IP phase evolution provides insight into each user's interaction strategy development, showcasing IP analysis's potential in comparing and designing novel controllers to optimize human-robot interaction in wearable robots

Determinants of safe sexual behavior of female sex workers in Tehran:the woman, her network, and the sexual partner

BACKGROUND: Despite the steady growth of sexual transmission of HIV, there is little evidence about safe sexual behavior of FSWs, and social network effects on this behavior, in Iran. Our aim in this study was to determine the effect of social network characteristics on condom use among FSWs, considering individual characteristics of the FSWs and of their sexual partners, characteristics of their relationship, and the FSW’s personal network. METHODS: A cross-sectional ego-centric network survey of 170 FSWs was carried out in Tehran between January and June 2017. A multilevel ordered logistic regression analysis was conducted to examine the effects of individual and relational characteristics simultaneously. RESULTS: Condom use in sexual relationships of the FSWs on average was rather low. Important determinants of safe sexual behavior were found both at the level of the individual FSW and at the level of the sexual partner. The main determinants at the level of the individual FSW were FSWs’ age and HIV knowledge. At the level of the sexual partner, age and education of sexual partners, as well as intimacy, duration of tie, frequency of contacts with a given partner, frequency of contact, perceived social support, and perceived safe sex norms were significantly associated with condom use. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlighted that considering only the individual characteristics of female sex workers is not sufficient for effectively promoting condom use. Factors at the network and dyadic level should also be considered, especially the role of sexual partners. Network-based interventions may be useful which modify social relationships to create a social environment that can facilitate changes in sexual behavior

Balance strategy in hoverboard control.

This study examines how people learn to perform lower limb control in a novel task with a hoverboard requiring to maintain dynamic balance. We designed an experiment to investigate the learning of hoverboard balance and two control strategies: A hip strategy, which mainly uses hip movements to change the angle of the foot, and an ankle strategy relying more on ankle motion to control the orientation of hoverboard plates controlling the motion. Motor learning was indicated by a significant [Formula: see text]% decrease in the trial completion time (p < 0.001) and a significant 24 ± 11% decrease in total muscle activation (p < 0.001). Furthermore, the participants, who had no prior experience riding a hoverboard, learned an ankle strategy to maintain their balance and control the hoverboard. This is supported by significantly stronger cross-correlation, phase synchrony, lower dynamic time warping distance between the hoverboard plate orientation controlling hoverboard motion, and the ankle angle when compared to the hip angle. The adopted ankle strategy was found to be robust to the foot orientation despite salient changes in muscle group activation patterns. Comparison with results of an experienced hoverboard rider confirmed that the first-time riders adopted an ankle strategy

A Case Study of Syntactic Embedding in Transitive and Intransitive Verbs and Their Validity in the Tafsirs al-Tibyan, al-Jami' li-Ulum al-Quran, and al-Mizan

Received: 2019-05-01   |   Accepted: 2020-09-21  A branch of Arabic syntax and in particular studying syntactic embedding have been developed for understanding the Holy Quran, hence experts of Arabic syntax studies focused on linguistic embedding, its features, and uses. One of the several effects of syntactic embedding is changing intransitive verbs to single-object transitive verbs, and changing single-object transitive verbs to two-object transitive verbs. This paper attempts to explore aspects of syntactic embedding and giving an overview of them, with special regard to transitive and intransitive verbs in three Quran tafsirs, namely al-Tibyan of Sheikh al-Tusi, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Quran of al-Qurtubi, and al-Mizan of Allama Tabatabaie. There are some benefits, for example, one of the benefits of using syntactic embedding is changing intransitive verbs to single-object transitive verbs and the single-object transitive verbs to two-object transitive verbs. Their syntactic-rhetorical effects are evident. Also experts of Arabic syntax are ahead of tafsir experts in giving syntactic argumentations. Among the tafsir authors, the above three tafsir experts render the same syntactic interpretation of embedding; however, Sheikh al-Tusi and al-Qurtubi never used the Arabic syntactic term "tazmin", instead they used other synonymous terms, for example, "in the sense of", "or", and "signifying"; however, Allama Tabatabaie used the very term "tzmin".     © Khalifah Shushtari, M.I; Sadeqi, A. (2021) A Case Study of Syntactic Embedding in Transitive and Intransitive Verbs and Their Validity in the Tafsirs al-Tibyan, al-Jami' li-Ulum al-Quran, and al-Mizan. Biannual Journal of Comparative Exegetical Researches, 6 (12) 211-234.  Doi: 10.22091/PTT.2020.4446.157

The comparison of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Traits in mothers of 4 -11 years children having OCD Vs control group

Objectives: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)   begins in childhood and adolescence and progresses along with aging .This  survy is conducted to compare temperament and character and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and OCPD traits in parents of children with OCD and parents of healthy controls.Materials and Methods: In each group, 30 patients were studied. There were 11 boys (%36.7) in the study group (children with obsessive compulsive disorder), and 12 ones in control group (%40.0). In case group, four mothers (%13.3) had obsessive compulsive personality disorder, while the frequency in control group was one (%3.3) and the frequency difference was not considered statistically significant. There was also a case of borderline personality disorder in mothers of children with obsessive-compulsive disorder, but those in control group were not diagnosed with this disorder which showed thta there was still no significant difference between the two groups. No other personality disorders (including mixed personality disorder or NOS)  was detected in two groups.Results:The results indicated that the frequency of preoccupation with details was %46.7 in the case group (children with obsessive-compulsive disorder), and %10.0 in the control group that means no significant difference between the two groups (0.002). The frequency of perfectionism was %43.3 in the treatment group and %20.0 in the control group which again had no significant difference (0.052).Conclusions: The existence of the some symptomsof OCPD according to SCID in parents of children withOCD in comparison to parents of healthy children confirm the necessity of considering the role of personality factors in familial OCD.The results of this study showed that the four dimensions of temperament based on TCI-125 and triple dimensions of attitudes between mothers in the two groups was not statistically different

Safe sex norm questionnaire for female sex workers:development and validation study in Iran

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a safe sex norm questionnaire as an appropriate instrument which would be adaptable to the female sex worker (FSW) population.Study design: A mixed method study.Methods: Appropriate content was prepared through a literature review. Content validation indices were assessed using interviews with content experts and lay experts. A conservative approach was used to assess the inter-rater agreement among the participants about the instrument relevance and clarity. The scale content validity index was computed using the average method. Non-parametric Mokken scale analysis was used for assessing scalability and unidimensionality of the questionnaire in a sample of 170 FSWs in Tehran. To evaluate the reliability and internal consistency of the questionnaire intra-class correlation and Cronbach's alpha were employed.Results: A list of 34 items was finalized, with subscales for actual behavioral norms and for perceived norms. The relevance of the actual and perceived norms subscales in the final questionnaire was higher than 96%; clarity of the subtests was 99% and higher. The comprehensiveness of the actual and perceived norms subscales was 85% for both. Mokken scale analysis showed that the two subscales were distinct constructs, and all items are good indicators for the constructs.Conclusion: Our findings support that the safe sex norm questionnaire is a valid and reliable measure that would be useful to harm reduction programs and help effective HIV prevention among female sex workers. (C) 2018 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.</p

Development and psychometric evaluation of the Persian version of the Phoneme Recognition Test A central auditory processing measure

&nbsp; Objectives The present study evaluating the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Phoneme Recognition Test (P-PRT) in normal subjects and cochlear implant (CI) users. Material &amp; Methods This study includes developing the Persian phoneme recognition test (PRT), determining its validity and reliability, and comparing the results of a control group versus CI users. The test reliability was examined through a test-retest with an approximately five-week interval. In the present survey, 363 subjects were investigated in three stages. The face validity evaluation stage was conducted on 40 subjects. The psychometric properties of the P-PRT were evaluated in 323 individuals (225 normal subjects and 98 CI users). The test-retest reliability was examined in all the 225 subjects in the control groupand 40 CI users. ResultsThe results confirmed the face validity of the P-PRT. No significant differences were observed between the two genders in terms of performance in the P-PRT. Significant differences were observed between the control and CI groups. Evaluating the test-retest reliability suggested perfect reliability (r&gt;0.9) in both groups. Significant differences were observed in the P-PRT between the adults and the 7-year-old subjects compared to other age groups. Conclusion The P-PRT can be used as a valid and reliable test for clinically evaluating phoneme recognition abilities and monitoring the rehabilitation progres

Adaptive Natural Oscillator to Exploit Natural Dynamics for Energy Efficiency

We present a novel adaptive oscillator, called Adaptive Natural Oscillator (ANO), to exploit the natural dynamics of a given robotic system. This tool is built upon the Adaptive Frequency Oscillator (AFO), and it can be used as a pattern generator in robotic applications such as locomotion systems. In contrast to AFO, that adapts to the frequency of an external signal, ANO adapts the frequency of reference trajectory to the natural dynamics of the given system. In this work, we prove that, in linear systems, ANO converges to the system's natural frequency. Furthermore, we show that this tool exploits the natural dynamics for energy efficiency through minimization of actuator effort. This property makes ANO an appealing tool for energy consumption reduction in cyclic tasks; especially in legged systems. We also extend the proposed adaptation mechanism to high dimensional and general cases; such as n-DOF manipulators. In addition, by investigating a hopper leg in simulation, we show the efficacy of ANO in face of dynamical discontinuities; such as those inherent in legged locomotion. Furthermore, we apply ANO to a simulated compliant robotic manipulator performing a periodic task where the energy consumption is drastically reduced. Finally, the experimental results on a 1-DOF compliant joint show that our adaptive oscillator, despite all practical uncertainties and deviations from theoretical models, exploits the natural dynamics and reduces the energy consumption

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and mortality of HIV, 1980–2017, and forecasts to 2030, for 195 countries and territories: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017

Background Understanding the patterns of HIV/AIDS epidemics is crucial to tracking and monitoring the progress of prevention and control efforts in countries. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the levels and trends of HIV/AIDS incidence, prevalence, mortality, and coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for 1980–2017 and forecast these estimates to 2030 for 195 countries and territories. Methods We determined a modelling strategy for each country on the basis of the availability and quality of data. For countries and territories with data from population-based seroprevalence surveys or antenatal care clinics, we estimated prevalence and incidence using an open-source version of the Estimation and Projection Package—a natural history model originally developed by the UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling, and Projections. For countries with cause-specific vital registration data, we corrected data for garbage coding (ie, deaths coded to an intermediate, immediate, or poorly defined cause) and HIV misclassification. We developed a process of cohort incidence bias adjustment to use information on survival and deaths recorded in vital registration to back-calculate HIV incidence. For countries without any representative data on HIV, we produced incidence estimates by pulling information from observed bias in the geographical region. We used a re-coded version of the Spectrum model (a cohort component model that uses rates of disease progression and HIV mortality on and off ART) to produce age-sex-specific incidence, prevalence, and mortality, and treatment coverage results for all countries, and forecast these measures to 2030 using Spectrum with inputs that were extended on the basis of past trends in treatment scale-up and new infections. Findings Global HIV mortality peaked in 2006 with 1·95 million deaths (95% uncertainty interval 1·87–2·04) and has since decreased to 0·95 million deaths (0·91–1·01) in 2017. New cases of HIV globally peaked in 1999 (3·16 million, 2·79–3·67) and since then have gradually decreased to 1·94 million (1·63–2·29) in 2017. These trends, along with ART scale-up, have globally resulted in increased prevalence, with 36·8 million (34·8–39·2) people living with HIV in 2017. Prevalence of HIV was highest in southern sub-Saharan Africa in 2017, and countries in the region had ART coverage ranging from 65·7% in Lesotho to 85·7% in eSwatini. Our forecasts showed that 54 countries will meet the UNAIDS target of 81% ART coverage by 2020 and 12 countries are on track to meet 90% ART coverage by 2030. Forecasted results estimate that few countries will meet the UNAIDS 2020 and 2030 mortality and incidence targets. Interpretation Despite progress in reducing HIV-related mortality over the past decade, slow decreases in incidence, combined with the current context of stagnated funding for related interventions, mean that many countries are not on track to reach the 2020 and 2030 global targets for reduction in incidence and mortality. With a growing population of people living with HIV, it will continue to be a major threat to public health for years to come. The pace of progress needs to be hastened by continuing to expand access to ART and increasing investments in proven HIV prevention initiatives that can be scaled up to have population-level impact