Dysphagia, commonly referred to as abnormal swallowing, affects millions of people annually. If not diagnosed expeditiously, dysphagia can lead to more severe complications, such as pneumonia, nutritional deficiency, and dehydration. Bedside screening is the first step of dysphagia characterization and is usually based on pass/fail tests in which a nurse observes the patient performing water swallows to look for dysphagia overt signs such as coughing. Though quick and convenient, bedside screening only provides low-level judgment of impairment, lacks standardization, and suffers from subjectivity. Recently, high resolution cervical auscultation (HRCA) has been investigated as a less expensive and non-invasive method to diagnose dysphagia. It has shown strong preliminary evidence of its effectiveness in penetration-aspiration detection as well as multiple swallow kinematics. HRCA signals have traditionally been collected and investigated in conjunction with videofluoroscopy exams which are performed using barium boluses including thin liquid. An HRCA-based bedside screening is highly desirable to expedite the initial dysphagia diagnosis and overcome all the drawbacks of the current pass/fail screening tests. However, all research conducted for using HRCA in dysphagia is based on thin liquid barium boluses and thus not guaranteed to provide valid results for water boluses used in bedside screening. If HRCA signals show no significant differences between water and thin liquid barium boluses, then the same algorithms developed on thin liquid barium boluses used in diagnostic imaging studies, it can be then directly used with water boluses. This study investigates the similarities and differences between HRCA signals from thin liquid barium swallows compared to those signals from water swallows. Multiple features from the time, frequency, time-frequency, and information-theoretic domain were extracted from each type of swallow and a group of linear mixed models was tested to determine the significance of differences. Machine learning classifiers were fit to the data as well to determine if the swallowed material (thin liquid barium or water) can be correctly predicted from an unlabeled set of HRCA signals. The results demonstrated that there is no systematic difference between the HRCA signals of thin liquid barium swallows and water swallows. While no systematic difference was discovered, the evidence of complete conformity between HRCA signals of both materials was inconclusive. These results must be validated further to confirm conformity between the HRCA signals of thin liquid barium swallows and water swallows.

Fiber optics has revolutionized telecommunication with its superior bandwidth and distance it can span. For its use in IoT networks, some of the limiting factors are the high cost of new installations and the need to power the end device by electrical current. The installations are a part of long-term investments, and one can expect this to be an ever-smaller issue as more fibers are installed. Typically, the newly installed cables contain single-mode fibers. There are a lot of reports on transport of power over fiber, however, majority recommend using multi-mode fibers with a large core or double-clad fibers. In our approach, instead of increasing the core of the fiber, we focus on the possibility of shortening the working time of IoT devices, using the existing single-mode fiber for powering. Also, instead of an expensive PV (photo voltaic) cell with small dimensions and a high efficiency, we propose using the commercially available larger PV cells with an air gap between the end of the fiber and the cells. In accordance with our approach, we successfully conducted an experiment.

This paper presents a comprehensive treatment of the complex motion control systems in the the Sliding Mode Control (SMC) framework. The single and multi degrees of freedom (DOF) plants and applications to haptics and functionally related systems are discussed. The paper concentrates on presenting the designs that are easy to apply and tune. The proposed algorithms are based on the application of the equivalent control observer and the convergence term that guaranty stability of the closed loop in a Lyapunov sense and enforces the sliding mode on selected manifolds. Presented SMC design leads to a solution that easily could be modified to include majority of the algorithms presented in the literature.

We present an open-source web tool for quality control of distributed imaging studies. To minimize the amount of human time and attention spent reviewing the images, we created a neural network to provide an automatic assessment. This steers reviewers’ attention to potentially problematic cases, reducing the likelihood of missing image quality issues. We test our approach using 5-fold cross validation on a set of 5217 magnetic resonance images.

Widening case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) interpreting the notion of discrimination, especially the ambit of discrimination based on “other status” offers important elements in the understanding of the legal definition of discrimination. More specifically, it offers elements in understanding of the scope of discrimination grounds listed under “other status”, such as the place of residence. Discrimination cases before the ECtHR against Bosnia and Herzegovina relate primarily to the discriminatory nature of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s election system, focusing on ethnicity as the main basis for discrimination. However, often overlooked is the place of residence as the discriminatory ground, identified in numerous cases alongside ethnicity (such as the cases of Pilav, Zornic and recently Pudaric), or as a stand-alone basis as in the case of Baralija. The ECtHR’s positions expressed in judgements to these cases offer certain interpretations important for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s election system, legal and constitutional order and showcase the potential power and influence which the ECtHR’s judgements may have in the strengthening of rule of law and overcoming political stalemates. Outside Bosnia and Herzegovina, the cases may offer some new insights in defining and reinterpreting the legal notion of discrimination and the legal ambit of the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of place of residence, such as discriminatory effects of legal void and the discriminatory treatment between persons having a place of residence within the same respondent country.