An Active Control Method for a Lower Limb Rehabilitation Robot with Human Motion Intention Recognition.

This study presents a method for the active control of a follow-up lower extremity exoskeleton rehabilitation robot (LEERR) based on human motion intention recognition. Initially, to effectively support body weight and compensate for the vertical movement of the human center of mass, a vision-driven follow-and-track control strategy is proposed. Subsequently, an algorithm for recognizing human motion intentions based on machine learning is proposed for human-robot collaboration tasks.

W-VSLAM: A Visual Mapping Algorithm for Indoor Inspection Robots.

In recent years, with the widespread application of indoor inspection robots, high-precision, robust environmental perception has become essential for robotic mapping. Addressing the issues of visual-inertial estimation inaccuracies due to redundant pose degrees of freedom and accelerometer drift during the planar motion of mobile robots in indoor environments, we propose a visual SLAM perception method that integrates wheel odometry information. First, the robot's body pose is parameterized in SE(2) and the corresponding camera pose is parameterized in SE(3).

An H-GrabCut Image Segmentation Algorithm for Indoor Pedestrian Background Removal.

In the context of predicting pedestrian trajectories for indoor mobile robots, it is crucial to accurately measure the distance between indoor pedestrians and robots. This study aims to address this requirement by extracting pedestrians as regions of interest and mitigating issues related to inaccurate depth camera distance measurements and illumination conditions. To tackle these challenges, we focus on an improved version of the H-GrabCut image segmentation algorithm, which involves four steps for segmenting indoor pedestrians.

Research on Speech Synthesis Based on Mixture Alignment Mechanism.

In recent years, deep learning-based speech synthesis has attracted a lot of attention from the machine learning and speech communities. In this paper, we propose Mixture-TTS, a non-autoregressive speech synthesis model based on mixture alignment mechanism. Mixture-TTS aims to optimize the alignment information between text sequences and mel-spectrogram.

Autonomous motion and control of lower limb exoskeleton rehabilitation robot.

The lower limb exoskeleton rehabilitation robot should perform gait planning based on the patient's motor intention and training status and provide multimodal and robust control schemes in the control strategy to enhance patient participation. This paper proposes an adaptive particle swarm optimization admittance control algorithm (APSOAC), which adaptively optimizes the weights and learning factors of the PSO algorithm to avoid the problem of particle swarm falling into local optimal points. The proposed improved adaptive particle swarm algorithm adjusts the stiffness and damping parameters of the admittance control online to reduce the interaction force between the patient and the robot and adaptively plans the patient's desired gait profile.

Planning of Medical Flexible Needle Motion in Effective Area of Clinical Puncture.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Although several lung cancer diagnostic methods are available for lung nodule biopsy, there are limitations in terms of accuracy, safety, and invasiveness. Transbronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) is a common method for diagnosing and treating lung cancer that involves a robot-assisted medical flexible needle moving along a curved three-dimensional trajectory, avoiding anatomical barriers to achieve clinically meaningful goals in humans.

Adaptive Neural Sliding-Mode Controller for Alternative Control Strategies in Lower Limb Rehabilitation.

Research on control strategies for rehabilitation robots has gradually shifted from providing therapies with fixed, relatively stiff assistance to compelling alternatives with assistance or challenge strategies to maximize subject participation. These alternative control strategies can promote neural plasticity and, in turn, increase the potential for recovery of motor coordination. In this paper, we propose a control strategy that dynamically switches between assistance and challenge modes based on the user's performance by amplifying or reducing the deviation between the user and the rehabilitation robot.

Magnesium sulfate provides neuroprotection in lipopolysaccharide-activated primary microglia by inhibiting NF-κB pathway.

Background: Magnesium sulfate has been used as an anticonvulsant in severe preeclamptic or eclamptic women prior to surgical trauma, but its effects on neuroinflammation is not well defined. In the present study, we investigated the neuroprotective effects of magnesium sulfate in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced microglia and explored the underlying mechanism.

Materials And Methods: Microglia was incubated with LPS in the presence or absence of various concentrations of magnesium sulfate, or L-type calcium channel activator BAY-K8644.

Mitochondrial dysfunction may explain the cardiomyopathy of chronic iron overload.

In patients with hemochromatosis, cardiac dysfunction may appear years after they have reached a state of iron overload. We hypothesized that cumulative iron-catalyzed oxidant damage to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) might explain the cardiomyopathy of chronic iron overload. Mice were given repetitive injections of iron dextran for a total of 4weeks after which the iron-loaded mice had elevated cardiac iron, modest cardiac hypertrophy, and cardiac dysfunction.

Mitochondrial DNA damage in iron overload.

Chronic iron overload has slow and insidious effects on heart, liver, and other organs. Because iron-driven oxidation of most biologic materials (such as lipids and proteins) is readily repaired, this slow progression of organ damage implies some kind of biological "memory." We hypothesized that cumulative iron-catalyzed oxidant damage to mtDNA might occur in iron overload, perhaps explaining the often lethal cardiac dysfunction.

Cytochrome C oxidase activity and oxygen tolerance.

Most cultured cells and intact animals die under hyperoxic conditions. However, a strain of HeLa cells that proliferates under 80% O(2), termed "HeLa-80," has been derived from wildtype HeLa cells ("HeLa-20") by selection for resistance to stepwise increases of oxygen partial pressure. The tolerance of HeLa-80 cells to hyperoxia is not associated with changes in antioxidant defenses or susceptibility to oxidant-mediated killing.

Cytotoxic and mutagenic effects of tobacco-borne free fatty acids.

Tobacco smoke contains substances capable of binding iron in an aqueous medium and transferring the metal into both organic solvents and intact mammalian red cells. This iron-binding activity is due to free fatty acids which are abundant in tobacco smoke and form 2:1 (free fatty acid:iron) chelates with ferrous iron. These earlier observations suggested that smoke-borne free fatty acids and the associated delocalization of iron within the lung might contribute to both the chronic pulmonary inflammation and the carcinogenesis associated with smoking.

Oxygen tolerance and coupling of mitochondrial electron transport.

Oxygen is critical to aerobic metabolism, but excessive oxygen (hyperoxia) causes cell injury and death. An oxygen-tolerant strain of HeLa cells, which proliferates even under 80% O2, termed "HeLa-80," was derived from wild-type HeLa cells ("HeLa-20") by selection for resistance to stepwise increases of oxygen partial pressure. Surprisingly, antioxidant defenses and susceptibility to oxidant-mediated killing do not differ between these two strains of HeLa cells.

Mitochondrial metabolism underlies hyperoxic cell damage.

Exposure of mammals to hyperoxia causes pulmonary and ocular pathology. Hyperoxic damage and cell death may derive from enhanced intracellular formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), probably of mitochondrial origin. There is, however, controversy on this point.