Publications by authors named "BARBER R"

Motion primitives are a highly useful and widely employed tool in the field of Learning from Demonstration (LfD). However, obtaining a large number of motion primitives can be a tedious process, as they typically need to be generated individually for each task to be learned. To address this challenge, this work presents an algorithm for acquiring robotic skills through automatic and unsupervised segmentation.

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Purpose: To evaluate the effect of instructional therapeutic play on acceptance of nasal lavage in children hospitalized for respiratory conditions.

Design And Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted at a teaching hospital. For the therapeutic play session, disposable gloves filled with compressed air and designed to resemble a human face, syringes, and saline solution ampoules were used.

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Sexual selection, one of the central pillars of evolutionary theory, has powerful effects on organismal morphology, behaviour, and population dynamics. However, current knowledge about geographical variation in this evolutionary mechanism and its underlying drivers remains highly incomplete, in part because standardised data on the strength of sexual selection is sparse even for well-studied organisms. Here, we use information on mating systems-including the incidence of polygamy and extra-pair paternity-to estimate the intensity of sexual selection in 10,671 (>99.

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  • Cervicofacial necrotizing fasciitis (CNF) can arise from dental infections, despite its rarity, and poses serious health risks.
  • The report details two cases: a 33-year-old man with severe pain and necrotic skin requiring extensive surgeries, and a 14-year-old girl with necrosis linked to malnutrition, treated with antibiotics.
  • It emphasizes the critical need for early diagnosis and prompt surgical intervention combined with antibiotics to effectively manage such dangerous complications from dental issues.
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Background: Continuous glucose monitor (CGM) usage improves glycemia in people with type 1 diabetes (PWD) and is accepted as the standard of care. The CGM utilization is lower in patients with public insurance and minorized ethnicities. In 2022, California Medicaid reduced its barriers to obtaining CGM coverage for PWD.

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  • The study aimed to investigate the differences in early versus late rapid force production in female soccer players during a specific hamstring assessment using force plates.
  • 21 elite female soccer players participated, and they performed maximal isometric contractions to measure peak force and rapid force (RF) development at two time intervals: early (0-100 ms) and late (100-200 ms).
  • Results showed significant differences, with early RF reaching about 52-54% of peak force compared to only about 15% for late RF, suggesting that tracking early RF could help practitioners optimize performance assessment and inform injury prevention strategies.
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Well-controlled type 1 diabetes (T1DM) is characterized by inflammation and endothelial dysfunction, thus constituting a suitable model of subclinical cardiovascular disease (CVD). miR-199b-5p overexpression in murine CVD has shown proatherosclerotic effects. We hypothesized that miR-199b-5p would be overexpressed in subclinical CVD yet downregulated following metformin therapy.

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Background: Chronic pain is a highly prevalent long-term condition, experienced unequally, impacting both the individual living with pain, and wider society. 'Acceptance' of chronic pain is relevant to improved consultations in pain care, and navigating an approach towards evidence-based, long-term management and associated improvements in health. However, the concept proves difficult to measure, and primary qualitative studies of lived experiences show complexity related to our socio-cultural-political worlds, healthcare experiences, and difficulties with language and meaning.

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Patients who speak languages other than English are frequently excluded from research. This exclusion exacerbates inequities, biases results, and may violate federal regulations and research ethics. Language justice is the right to communicate in an individual's preferred language to address power imbalances and promote equity.

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The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm is a powerful and flexible tool for complex optimization problems of the form . ADMM exhibits robust empirical performance across a range of challenging settings including nonsmoothness and nonconvexity of the objective functions and , and provides a simple and natural approach to the inverse problem of image reconstruction for computed tomography (CT) imaging. From the theoretical point of view, existing results for convergence in the nonconvex setting generally assume smoothness in at least one of the component functions in the objective.

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Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are cancer cells shed from a primary tumour which intravasate into the blood stream and have the potential to extravasate into distant tissues, seeding metastatic lesions. As such, they can offer important insight into cancer progression with their presence generally associated with a poor prognosis. The detection and enumeration of CTCs is, therefore, critical to guiding clinical decisions during treatment and providing information on disease state.

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While rapid development and roll out of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary in a pandemic, the process limits the ability of clinical trials to assess longer-term vaccine efficacy. We leveraged COVID-19 surveillance data in the U.S.

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Introduction: From the advancement of treatment of pediatric cancer diagnosis, the five-year survival rate has increased significantly. However, the adverse consequence of improved survival rate is the second malignant neoplasm. Although previous studies provided information on the incidence and risk of SMN in long term survivors of childhood cancer, there is still scarce information known for short term (< 5 years) prognosis.

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As a tumor-suppressing protein, p53 plays a crucial role in preventing cancer development. Its utility as an early cancer detection tool is significant, potentially enabling clinicians to forestall disease advancement and improve patient prognosis. In response to the pathological overexpression of this antigen in tumors, the prevalence of anti-p53 antibodies increases in serum, in a manner quantitatively indicative of cancer progression.

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One of the major problems of today's society is the rapid aging of its population. Life expectancy is increasing, but the quality of life is not. Faced with the growing number of people who require cognitive or physical assistance, new technological tools are emerging to help them.

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An alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) framework is developed for nonsmooth biconvex optimization for inverse problems in imaging. In particular, the simultaneous estimation of activity and attenuation (SAA) problem in time-of-flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET) has such a structure when maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is employed. The ADMM framework is applied to MLE for SAA in TOF-PET, resulting in the ADMM-SAA algorithm.

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  • People with dementia are more likely to fall, which can make them less confident and affect their daily lives.
  • A study in the UK is testing a new program to help prevent falls in these individuals by involving them and their caregivers.
  • The research will look at how well the program works, how many people agree to join, and its costs, while also checking in on the participants’ daily activities and quality of life.
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Well-controlled type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is regarded as a model of subclinical cardiovascular disease (CVD), characterized by inflammation and adverse vascular health. However, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. We investigated insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) levels, their correlation to miR-106b-3p expression in a subclinical CVD model, and the cardioprotective effect of metformin.

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Objective: To analyze clinical and sociodemographic factors associated with the health-related quality of life of children and adolescents with type 1 Diabetes Mellitus.

Method: A quantitative, cross-sectional and analytical study, developed in a municipality in northeastern Brazil, between March and September 2021, with 81 children/adolescents with type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and their guardians/caregivers. A questionnaire containing sociodemographic and clinical variables and two quality of life instruments were used.

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Background: Age is known to be the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), and Mexican Americans (MAs), who are one of the fastest-aging populations in the United States, are at a uniquely elevated risk. Mitochondrial stress and dysfunction are key players in the progression of AD and are also known to be impacted by lifestyle and environmental exposures/stressors.

Objective: This study aimed to identify population-specific differences in indicators of mitochondrial stress and dysfunction associated with AD risk that are detectable in the blood.

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  • Phase three trials of the monoclonal antibodies lecanemab and donanemab have shown promising results in treating early Alzheimer’s disease, with some countries already using these drugs while the UK is considering them for regulatory approval.
  • A study estimated that around 906 individuals per year in two National Health Service trusts qualify for these treatments based on clinical trial criteria, suggesting a national demand of about 30,200 patients.
  • The findings indicate that implementing these monoclonal antibody treatments could strain healthcare resources, highlighting the need for careful planning to meet the potential demand for such therapies in the UK.
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