Social determinants of gastrointestinal malformation mortality in Brazil: a national study.

Introduction: In Brazil, approximately 5% are born with a congenital disorder, potentially fatal without surgery. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between gastrointestinal congenital malformation (GICM) mortality, health indicators, and socioeconomic factors in Brazil.

Methods: GICM admissions (Q39-Q45) between 2012 and 2019 were collected using national databases.

Evaluation of the regional distribution of the pediatric surgery workforce and surgical load in Brazil.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the regional distribution of the pediatric surgery workforce and the expected local demand for pediatric surgical procedures in Brazil.

Methods: We collected data on the pediatric surgical workforce, surgical volume, Gross Domestic Product per capita, and mortality for gastrointestinal tract malformations (MGITM) across the different regions of Brazil for 2019.

Results: Data from the Federal Medical Council reported 1515 pediatric surgery registries in Brazil, corresponding to 1414 pediatric surgeons (some pediatric surgeons are registered in more than one state), or 2.

CircuitBot: Learning to survive with robotic circuit drawing.

Robots with the ability to actively acquire power from surroundings will be greatly beneficial for long-term autonomy and to survive in uncertain environments. In this work, a scenario is presented where a robot has limited energy, and the only way to survive is to access the energy from an unregulated power source. With no wires or resistors available, the robot heuristically learns to maximize the input voltage on its system while avoiding potential obstacles during the connection.

Variable Stiffness Object Recognition with a CNN-Bayes Classifier on a Soft Gripper.

Soft grippers significantly widen the palpation capabilities of robots, ranging from soft to hard materials without the assistance of cameras. From a medical perspective, the detection of size and shape of hard inclusions concealed within soft three-dimensional (3D) objects is meaningful for the early detection of cancer through palpation. This article proposes a framework for variable-stiffness object recognition using tactile information collected by force sensitive resistors on a three-finger soft gripper.

Bootstrapping Virtual Bipedal Walkers with Robotics Scaffolded Learning.

We reach walking optimality from a very early age by using natural supports, which can be the hands of our parents, chairs, and training wheels, and bootstrap a new knowledge from the recently acquired one. The idea behind bootstrapping is to use the previously acquired knowledge from simpler tasks to accelerate the learning of more complicated ones. In this paper, we propose a scaffolded learning method from an evolutionary perspective, where a biped creature achieves stable and independent bipedal walking while exploiting the natural scaffold of its changing morphology to create a third limb.