This paper presents a novel algorithm for simultaneous position and interaction force control. In the classical algorithms, position and force control are executed concurrently by switching between two separate controllers: the position and force controller. Thus, one can consider the control system working in two modes, namely the position control and force control modes. Switching between these two modes often leads to oscillations in the controlled position and force. Therefore, the safe interaction between a controlled mechanical system and its environment is jeopardized. The above issues are tackled in this study by introducing a new control strategy. The proposed algorithm combines position and force control into a single controller, in which the transition between position and force control is smooth, removing the oscillations of classical methods. Therefore, the safe interaction between a mechanical system and its environment is enabled. In addition, using this method one can equip actuators with a control system capable of performing both position and force control. Thus, a step towards “smart actuators” is possible.

This article describes the process of competence-based curriculum development in nursing education at Western Balkan (WB) universities. Nursing education in the WB has been noncompliant with the standard educational approaches of the European Union's directive on regulated professions. The overall aim of the TEMPUS project "Competency-Based Curriculum Reform in Nursing and Caring in Western Balkan Universities" was to bring curricular reform for bachelor's nursing education in the WB region in line with competence-based education and professional standards to demonstrate compliance with all member countries of the European Union.

The phenomenon of the increasing number of ageing people in the world is arguably the most significant economic, health and social challenge that we face today. Additionally, one of the major epidemiologic trends of current times is the increase in chronic and degenerative diseases. This paper tries to deliver a more up to date overview of chronic diseases and other limitations associated with old age and provide a more detailed outlook on the research that has gone into this field. First, challenges for seniors, including chronic diseases and other limitations associated with old age, are specified. Second, a review of seniors’ needs and concerns is performed. Finally, solutions that can improve seniors’ quality of life are discussed. Publications obtained from the following databases are used in this scoping review: Web of Science, PubMed, and Science Direct. Four independent reviewers screened the identified records and selected relevant publications published from 2010 to 2017. A total of 1916 publications were selected. In all, 52 papers were selected based on abstract content. For further processing, 21 full papers were screened.” The results indicate disabilities as a major problem associated with seniors’ activities of daily living dependence. We founded seven categories of different conditions - psychological problems, difficulties in mobility, poor cognitive function, falls and incidents, wounds and injuries, undernutrition, and communication problems. In order to minimize ageing consequences, some areas require more attention, such as education and training; technological tools; government support and welfare systems; early diagnosis of undernutrition, cognitive impairment, and other diseases; communication solutions; mobility solutions; and social contributions. This scoping review supports the view on chronic diseases in old age as a complex issue. To prevent the consequences of chronic diseases and other limitations associated with old age related problems demands multicomponent interventions. Early recognition of problems leading to disability and activities of daily living (ADL) dependence should be one of essential components of such interventions.

Visually impaired person might find it very difficult to locate an object that has been even slightly misplaced from its usual position. Unfortunately this is very common situation in a shared environment where multiple individuals can affect object’s position and where visually impaired person cannot rely on object’s position remaining unchanged since the last interaction with the object. In order to independently localize the object of its interest visually impaired person must rely on assistive technology. It is yet very unlikely that any single wearable assistive device will encompass the whole range of object localization scenarios and be universally adoptable to a broad range of environments. In this paper we propose indoors test setup for visually impaired persons by creating RFID based assistive environment – Visual Impairment Friendly RFID Room. The test setup can be used to evaluate RFID object localization and its use by visually impaired persons.

Visual impairment severely constraints the ability to independently conduct many everyday tasks that we usually do not consider challenging. Although some types of visual impairment can be treated efficiently there is still a considerable number of visually impaired persons, especially among aging population, which depend on help of others or assistive technology to sustain their life quality. Visually impaired person cannot perceive the full extent of surrounding information due to the lack of visual details. However great progress can be achieved if surrounding information can be somehow visually transformed to the subset of visual information that visually impaired person can perceive. To certain extent every impairment has individual characteristics, as different individuals may better respond to different subsets of visual information. Thus any assistive solution aiming to visually transform surrounding information to accommodate broad range of impairment conditions must be personalized in order to be effective. Virtual reality enables individuals to experience imaginary surroundings by tricking their visual senses and such virtual surroundings can be personalized to any extent desired. We use virtual reality, image processing, and RFID to create a test setup able to simulate visual impairment and visually transformed surroundings suitable for visual Impairment studies. The test setup enables gathering information and conducting studies on both healthy and visually impaired individuals in a controlled environment enabling reliable assistive technology development and testing.

Automated detection of asphalt pavement distresses is a very popular computer vision and image processing problem. In recent years, automated detection is an essential part of every pavement management system, since it allows very fast detection of distresses on the road. This is important because timely detection can prevent many road accidents, and hence it has potential to save lives. In this paper, we presented a new unsupervised image processing method for segmentation of the most common road distresses-pavement cracks. The method first performs slicing of an image into M×N sub-images, and then removes sub-images without cracks based on empirically defined threshold. Analysis is then carried out only on a small number of sub-images, which significantly reduces computation time. Then, a series of images processing tasks are performed to select only pixels with pavement cracks. The method is suitable as a pre-processing step in a number of computer vision tasks, and can provide rough estimation of damaged area in an image.

The aim of this paper is comparing a simulation model with real IPTV (Internet Protocol TeleVision) scenario in access network. In real IPTV scenarios, it is known that packet losses appear suddenly and might have an "explosive" character, especially in DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) case. In addition, these packet losses usually appear in groups and lead to huge degradation of the video service, which decreases customer’s QoE (Quality of Experience) level. Hence, estimation of this degradation in access network is important and the paper explained one simulation model based on SSIM (Structural Similarity Index) analysis, which can be used as one perceptive video quality assessment by imitating a real environment with packet losses. To check this, we compared our simulation model with the real IPTV video distributed over DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and exposed to different packet loss appearances.

The paper presents an algorithm for automatic layout of class diagrams. The presented algorithm efficiently and openly tries to lay out a diagram in the landscape format using a modified Sugiyama algorithm. The proposed algorithm is implemented as an Eclipse plug-in and works within Papyrus class diagram modeling projects.

BACKGROUND Morbidity and mortality attributed to prescription opioids are a crisis in the US and spreading globally. Sex differences related to these conditions have not been adequately assessed. METHODS Through our community engagement program, data on demographics, health status, and substance use, including prescription opioids (e.g., Vicodin®, Oxycodone), were collected from community members in Florida (primarily North Central Florida) during a health needs assessment. Participants over 18 years of age were classified by opioid use: past 30-day, lifetime but not past 30-day, or no lifetime prescription opioid use. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were calculated, and multinomial logistic regression was used to calculate adjusted odds ratios (aOR; CI). Analyses were conducted for men and women separately to examine sex specific effects. RESULTS Among 9221 community members assessed, the mean age was 45 years, 60% were female, and 58% were black. Respondents who endorsed past 30-day use and lifetime use were more likely to be female. Prescription sedative use was the strongest risk factor for past 30-day (aOR = 3.96; 95% CI, 3.35-4.68) and lifetime (aOR = 2.67; 95% CI, 2.34-3.04) prescription opioid use, regardless of sex. Other factors including marijuana use and history of cancer were significantly associated with prescription opioid use; they varied by sex. CONCLUSIONS The risk factors identified in this community sample provide additional information not accounted for by national studies. Future examinations of the consequences of concomitant opioid and sedative use, especially among women, are needed.

Recent development in wireless technology enabling communication between vehicles led to introduction of the concept of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC), which uses wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communication and aims at string stable behavior in a platoon of vehicles. Degradation cascades have been proposed as a way to maintain a certain level of the system functionality in presence of failures. Such degradation behaviour is usually controlled by a runtime/state manager that performs fault detection and transitions the system into states where it will remain acceptably safe. In this paper, we propose a dynamic controller manager that focuses on both safety and performance of the system. In particular, it monitors the channel quality within the platoon and reacts by degrading platoon performance in presence of communication failures, or upgrading the performance when the communication quality is high enough. The reaction can include, e.g., adjusting the inter-vehicle distance or switching to another suitable platoon controller to prevent collisions. We focus on the functional and operational safety and evaluate the performance of the dynamic controller manager under different scenarios and settings in simulation experiments to demonstrate that it can avoid rear-end collisions in a platoon, continue platooning operation even in dense traffic scenarios where the state-of-the-art controllers fail to do so.

Introduction/Background Aberrant Hedgehog (Hh) pathway signaling has been implicated in pathogenesis of several human cancers. Recent studies have indicated its active role in serous ovarian carcinomas. Smoothened protein (SMO), a transmembrane co-receptor in Hh pathway signal transduction, is inhibited in non-dividing cells, thus its disinhibition might be a trigger for uncontrolled cell proliferation and growth. Very few studies have explored the role of SMO in serous ovarian cancers. The aim of the study was to assess the expression of SMO protein and to explore the Smoothened gene promoter methylation in a cohort of serous ovarian carcinomas. Methodology SMO protein expression was immunohistochemically quantified in 40 high-grade serous carcinomas (HGSC), 12 low-grade serous carcinomas (LGSC), 20 normal ovarian and 9 normal fallopian tube samples (controls). SMO gene promoter methylation status was analyzed using methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction (MSP) in randomly selected HGSCs (n=10), LGSCs (n=10), and normal fallopian tube (n=9) samples. Kaplan-Meier survival plots were used to estimate the impact of SMO expression on patients‘ overall survival (OS). Results SMO nuclear expression was significantly higher in HGSCs and LGSCs compared with the fallopian tube samples (p=0.010 and p=0.003, respectively). LGSCs, compared with normal ovarian tissue, exhibited higher total, cytoplasmic/membrane and nuclear expression (p=0.000, p=0.001 and p=0.000, respectively). Comparing HGSCs and LGSCs, significantly higher total and cytoplasmic/membrane expression was found in HGSC (p=0.026 and p=0.030, respectively). SMO gene promoter was unmethylated in both LGSCs and HGSCs as well as in fallopian tube. In addition, the SMO protein expression had no significant impact on patients‘ OS (p=0.07). Conclusion Our data indicate the lack of SMO gene promoter methylation while a significant overexpression (particularly nuclear) of SMO protein characterized a substantial proportion of serous ovarian carcinomas. Further functional studies should elucidate the clinical relevance of these findings. Disclosure Nothing to disclose.

As the majority of cancers and gestational diseases are prognostically stage- and grade-dependent, the ultimate goal of ongoing studies in precision medicine is to provide early and timely diagnosis of such disorders. These studies have enabled the development of various new diagnostic biomarkers, such as free circulating nucleic acids, and detection of their epigenetic changes. Recently, extracellular vesicles including exosomes, microvesicles, oncosomes, and apoptotic bodies have been recognized as powerful diagnostic tools. Extracellular vesicles carry specific proteins, lipids, DNAs, mRNAs, and miRNAs of the cells that produced them, thus reflecting the function of these cells. It is believed that exosomes, in particular, may be the optimal biomarkers of pathological pregnancies and cancers, especially those that are frequently diagnosed at an advanced stage, such as ovarian cancer. In the present review, we survey and critically appraise novel epigenetic biomarkers related to free circulating nucleic acids and extracellular vesicles, focusing especially on their status in trophoblasts (pregnancy) and neoplastic cells (cancers).