Prolonged ursodeoxycholic acid administration reduces acute ischaemia-induced arrhythmias in adult rat hearts.

Acute myocardial ischaemia and reperfusion (I-R) are major causes of ventricular arrhythmias in patients with a history of coronary artery disease. Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) has previously been shown to be antiarrhythmic in fetal hearts. This study was performed to investigate if UDCA protects against ischaemia-induced and reperfusion-induced arrhythmias in the adult myocardium, and compares the effect of acute (perfusion only) versus prolonged (2 weeks pre-treatment plus perfusion) UDCA administration.

Optoelectronic Sensor-based Shape Sensing Approach for Flexible Manipulators.

This paper presents a novel two-axis shape sensor based on optical optoelectronic sensors and integrated with a flexible manipulator arm to measure the overall shape of the robotic arm. The disc-shape bio-compatible sensor presented here can be embedded as a sensing system into flexible manipulators and is applicable to the geometry of its structure and to the structure of any other similar multi-segment robotic manipulator. Design and calibration procedures of the device are introduced: experimental results allow defining a sensor matrix for real-time estimation of the pitch and roll of the plate above the sensor and confirms the usefulness of the proposed optical sensing approach.