Simulation training with haptic feedback of instrument vibrations reduces resident workload during live robot-assisted sleeve gastrectomy.

Background: New surgeons experience heavy workload during robot-assisted surgery partially because they must use vision to compensate for the lack of haptic feedback. We hypothesize that providing realistic haptic feedback during dry-lab simulation training may accelerate learning and reduce workload during subsequent surgery on patients.

Methods: We conducted a single-blinded study with 12 general surgery residents (third and seventh post-graduate year, PGY) randomized into haptic and control groups.

AiroTouch: enhancing telerobotic assembly through naturalistic haptic feedback of tool vibrations.

Teleoperation allows workers to safely control powerful construction machines; however, its primary reliance on visual feedback limits the operator's efficiency in situations with stiff contact or poor visibility, hindering its use for assembly of pre-fabricated building components. Reliable, economical, and easy-to-implement haptic feedback could fill this perception gap and facilitate the broader use of robots in construction and other application areas. Thus, we adapted widely available commercial audio equipment to create AiroTouch, a naturalistic haptic feedback system that measures the vibration experienced by each robot tool and enables the operator to feel a scaled version of this vibration in real time.

Maternal Weight, Weight Gain, and Metabolism are Associated with Changes in Fetal Heart Rate and Variability.

Objective: Prepregnancy obesity and extensive weight gain can lead to diseases in the offspring later in life. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of anthropometric and metabolic factors on the fetal autonomic nervous system (ANS) in uncomplicated pregnancies.

Methods: A total of 184 pregnant women in the second or third trimester were included, and for 104 women, maternal insulin sensitivity (ISI) was determined.

Central insulin administration improves whole-body insulin sensitivity via hypothalamus and parasympathetic outputs in men.

Animal studies suggest that insulin action in the brain is involved in the regulation of peripheral insulin sensitivity. Whether this holds true in humans is unknown. Using intranasal application of insulin to the human brain, we studied the impacts of brain insulin action on whole-body insulin sensitivity and the mechanisms involved in this process.