scholarly journals Action imitation via trajectory-based or posture-based planning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica M. Barhorst-Cates ◽  
Mitchell W. Isaacs ◽  
Laurel J. Buxbaum ◽  
Aaron L. Wong
Keyword(s):  
Switch Cost ◽  
Motor Task ◽  
The Body ◽  
Motion Path ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Relative Positioning ◽  
End Effector ◽  
Action Imitation ◽  
Partial Dissociation ◽  
Movement Imitation

AbstractMovement imitation is a significant daily activity involved in social interaction and motor learning. Although imitation remains poorly understood, recent research suggests that it may be achieved in two distinct ways. In posture-based imitation, movements reproduce how the body should look and feel, and are sensitive to the relative positioning of body parts. In trajectory imitation, movements mimic the spatiotemporal motion path of the end effector. We hypothesized that people can imitate via either mechanism. If true, we would expect to see a switch cost when individuals change from one mechanism to the other. To test this, twenty-five healthy young adults performed a sequential multitasking imitation task. Participants were first instructed to pay attention to the limb postures or the hand path of a video-recorded model. They next performed an intervening motor task that was neutral, congruent, or incongruent with the instructed imitation type. Finally, participants imitated the modeled movement. Spatiotemporal imitation accuracy was greatest after a neutral intervening task, and worst after posture matching. When the primary task involved imitating trajectories, we observed a switch cost: movements following the posture-matching intervening task were less consistent with baseline (neutral) performance, suggesting performance was disrupted by the incongruence. Incongruent primary and intervening tasks also reduced cross-subject consistency. Such effects were not observed when imitating limb postures. In summary, we observed a partial dissociation between posture matching and trajectory imitation as a result of instructions and intervening tasks that is nevertheless consistent with the existence of two computationally distinct imitation mechanisms.

Formulation, Design and Development of Niosome Based Topical Gel for Skin Cancer

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Skin Cancer ◽  
Drug Release ◽  
Hemorrhagic Cystitis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cancer Drug ◽  
Inversion Method ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Basal Cells ◽  
Formulation Design ◽  
Topical Gel

Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer in which mostly damaged unpaired DNA starts mutating abnormally and staged an unprecedented proliferation of epithelial skin to form a malignant tumor. In epidemics of skin, pigment-forming melanocytes of basal cells start depleting and form uneven black or brown moles. Melanoma can further spread all over the body parts and could become hard to detect. In USA Melanoma kills an estimated 10,130 people annually. This challenge can be succumbed by using the certain anti-cancer drug. In this study design, cyclophosphamide were used as a model drug. But it has own limitation like mild to moderate use may cause severe cytopenia, hemorrhagic cystitis, neutropenia, alopecia and GI disturbance. This is a promising challenge, which is caused due to the increasing in plasma drug concentration above therapeutic level and due to no rate limiting steps involved in formulation design. In this study, we tried to modify drug release up to threefold and extended the release of drug by preparing and designing niosome based topical gel. In the presence of Dichloromethane, Span60 and cholesterol, the initial niosomes were prepared using vacuum evaporator. The optimum percentage drug entrapment efficacy, zeta potential, particle size was found to be 72.16%, 6.19mV, 1.67µm.Prepared niosomes were further characterized using TEM analyzer. The optimum batch of niosomes was selected and incorporated into topical gel preparation. Cold inversion method and Poloxamer -188 and HPMC as core polymers, were used to prepare cyclophosphamide niosome based topical gel. The formula was designed using Design expert 7.0.0 software and Box-Behnken Design model was selected. Almost all the evaluation parameters were studied and reported. The MTT shows good % cell growth inhibition by prepared niosome based gel against of A375 cell line. The drug release was extended up to 20th hours. Further as per ICH Q1A (R2), guideline 6 month stability studies were performed. The results were satisfactory and indicating a good formulation approach design was achieved for Melanoma treatment.

Re-imagining Reproduction: Unsettling Metaphors in the History of Imperial Science and Commercial Surrogacy in India

Somatechnics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalindi Vora
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Commercial Surrogacy ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Travel Industry

This paper provides an analysis of how cultural notions of the body and kinship conveyed through Western medical technologies and practices in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) bring together India's colonial history and its economic development through outsourcing, globalisation and instrumentalised notions of the reproductive body in transnational commercial surrogacy. Essential to this industry is the concept of the disembodied uterus that has arisen in scientific and medical practice, which allows for the logic of the ‘gestational carrier’ as a functional role in ART practices, and therefore in transnational medical fertility travel to India. Highlighting the instrumentalisation of the uterus as an alienable component of a body and subject – and therefore of women's bodies in surrogacy – helps elucidate some of the material and political stakes that accompany the growth of the fertility travel industry in India, where histories of privilege and difference converge. I conclude that the metaphors we use to structure our understanding of bodies and body parts impact how we imagine appropriate roles for people and their bodies in ways that are still deeply entangled with imperial histories of science, and these histories shape the contemporary disparities found in access to medical and legal protections among participants in transnational surrogacy arrangements.

Deadlift Recognition and Application based on Multiple Modalities using Recurrent Neural Network

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (17) ◽  
pp. 2-1-2-6
Author(s):  
Shih-Wei Sun ◽  
Ting-Chen Mou ◽  
Pao-Chi Chang
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Recurrent Neural Network ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Inertial Sensors ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Multimodal Sensing ◽  
Multiple Devices ◽  
Neural Network Structure

To improve the workout efficiency and to provide the body movement suggestions to users in a “smart gym” environment, we propose to use a depth camera for capturing a user’s body parts and mount multiple inertial sensors on the body parts of a user to generate deadlift behavior models generated by a recurrent neural network structure. The contribution of this paper is trifold: 1) The multimodal sensing signals obtained from multiple devices are fused for generating the deadlift behavior classifiers, 2) the recurrent neural network structure can analyze the information from the synchronized skeletal and inertial sensing data, and 3) a Vaplab dataset is generated for evaluating the deadlift behaviors recognizing capability in the proposed method.

Our Bodies, Whose Property?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Human Organs ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Right

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, this book challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies and argues against the normalization of markets in bodily services and parts. The book explores the risks associated with metaphors of property and the reasons why the commodification of the body remains problematic. The book asks what is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale? What, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex, reproduction, or human body parts, and the other markets we commonly applaud? The book contends that body markets occupy the outer edges of a continuum that is, in some way, a feature of all labor markets. But it also emphasizes that we all have bodies, and considers the implications of this otherwise banal fact for equality. Bodies remind us of shared vulnerability, alerting us to the common experience of living as embodied beings in the same world. Examining the complex issue of body exceptionalism, the book demonstrates that treating the body as property makes human equality harder to comprehend.

Study on Pramana Shareera in relation to Prakriti

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajendra Pai N. ◽  
U. Govindaraju
Keyword(s):  
Observational Study ◽  
Upper Limb ◽  
Lower Limb ◽  
Characteristic Property ◽  
The Body ◽  
Artificial Limbs ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Unit Of Measurement ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Parts

Ayurveda in its principle has given importance to individualistic approach rather than generalize. Application of this examination can be clearly seem like even though two patients suffering from same disease, the treatment modality may change depending upon the results of Dashvidha Pariksha. Prakruti and Pramana both used in Dashvidha Pariksha. Both determine the health of the individual and Bala (strength) of Rogi (Patient). Ayurveda followed Swa-angula Pramana as the unit of measurement for measuring the different parts of the body which is prime step assessing patient before treatment. Sushruta and Charaka had stated different Angula Pramana of each Pratyanga (body parts). Specificity is the characteristic property of Swa-angula Pramana. This can be applicable in present era for example artificial limbs. A scientific research includes collection, compilation, analysis and lastly scrutiny of entire findings to arrive at a conclusion. Study of Pramana and its relation with Prakruti was conducted in 1000 volunteers using Prakruti Parkishan proforma with an objective of evaluation of Anguli Pramana in various Prakriti. It was observed co-relating Pramana in each Prakruti and Granthokta Pramana that there is no vast difference in measurement of head, upper limb and lower limb. The observational study shows closer relation of features with classical texts.

Shakespeare’s Dancing Bodies

2019 ◽  
pp. 172-196
Author(s):  
Brandon Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Somatic Psychology ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Early Modern Times

Romeo’s well-known excuse that he cannot dance because he has soles of lead is demonstrative of the autonomous volitional quality Shakespeare ascribes to body parts, his utilization of humoral somatic psychology, and the horizontally divided body according to early modern dance practice and theory. This chapter considers the autonomy of and disagreement between the body parts and the unruliness of the humors within Shakespeare’s dramas, particularly Romeo and Juliet. An understanding of the body as a house of conflicting parts can be applied to the feet of the dancing body in early modern times, as is evinced not only by literary texts, but dance manuals as well. The visuality dominating the dance floor provided opportunity for social advancement as well as ridicule, as contemporary sources document. Dance practice is compared with early modern swordplay in their shared approaches to the training and social significance of bodily proportion and rhythm.

scholarly journals Estimation of Motion and Respiratory Characteristics during the Meditation Practice Based on Video Analysis

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 3771
Author(s):  
Alexey Kashevnik ◽  
Walaa Othman ◽  
Igor Ryabchikov ◽  
Nikolay Shilov
Keyword(s):  
Respiratory Rate ◽  
Evaluation System ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
The Body ◽  
Meditation Practice ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Mental Health Training ◽  
Negative Thoughts ◽  
The Mean

Meditation practice is mental health training. It helps people to reduce stress and suppress negative thoughts. In this paper, we propose a camera-based meditation evaluation system, that helps meditators to improve their performance. We rely on two main criteria to measure the focus: the breathing characteristics (respiratory rate, breathing rhythmicity and stability), and the body movement. We introduce a contactless sensor to measure the respiratory rate based on a smartphone camera by detecting the chest keypoint at each frame, using an optical flow based algorithm to calculate the displacement between frames, filtering and de-noising the chest movement signal, and calculating the number of real peaks in this signal. We also present an approach to detecting the movement of different body parts (head, thorax, shoulders, elbows, wrists, stomach and knees). We have collected a non-annotated dataset for meditation practice videos consists of ninety videos and the annotated dataset consists of eight videos. The non-annotated dataset was categorized into beginner and professional meditators and was used for the development of the algorithm and for tuning the parameters. The annotated dataset was used for evaluation and showed that human activity during meditation practice could be correctly estimated by the presented approach and that the mean absolute error for the respiratory rate is around 1.75 BPM, which can be considered tolerable for the meditation application.

scholarly journals Development of a Deep Neural Network Model for Estimating Joint Location of Occupant Indoor Activities for Providing Thermal Comfort

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 696
Author(s):  
Eun Ji Choi ◽  
Jin Woo Moon ◽  
Ji-hoon Han ◽  
Yongseok Yoo
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Deep Neural Network ◽  
Mean Squared Error ◽  
Thermal Environment ◽  
The Body ◽  
Estimation Accuracy ◽  
Accurate Estimation ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Joint Location

The type of occupant activities is a significantly important factor to determine indoor thermal comfort; thus, an accurate method to estimate occupant activity needs to be developed. The purpose of this study was to develop a deep neural network (DNN) model for estimating the joint location of diverse human activities, which will be used to provide a comfortable thermal environment. The DNN model was trained with images to estimate 14 joints of a person performing 10 common indoor activities. The DNN contained numerous shortcut connections for efficient training and had two stages of sequential and parallel layers for accurate joint localization. Estimation accuracy was quantified using the mean squared error (MSE) for the estimated joints and the percentage of correct parts (PCP) for the body parts. The results show that the joint MSEs for the head and neck were lowest, and the PCP was highest for the torso. The PCP for individual activities ranged from 0.71 to 0.92, while typing and standing in a relaxed manner were the activities with the highest PCP. Estimation accuracy was higher for relatively still activities and lower for activities involving wide-ranging arm or leg motion. This study thus highlights the potential for the accurate estimation of occupant indoor activities by proposing a novel DNN model. This approach holds significant promise for finding the actual type of occupant activities and for use in target indoor applications related to thermal comfort in buildings.

The effects of group rearing and providing fresh cut grass on the incidence of oral stereotypies in young calves

1996 ◽  
Vol 1996 ◽  
pp. 71-71
Author(s):  
C.J.C. Phillips ◽  
R. Lambert ◽  
M. Rouse
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Palatable Food ◽  
Young Calf ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
Strong Motivation ◽  
Fresh Cut ◽  
Spread Of Infection

The young calf has a strong motivation to suckle, which is not satiated by providing milk in buckets. As a result calves develop oral vices, such as excessive licking, sucking and chewing of objects in their immediate environment. This can include the body parts of other calves, leading to rapid spread of infection in a group of calves (Smits and de Wilt, 1991). Such vices sometimes persist into adulthood, as udder sucking in the female or prepuce sucking and tongue rolling in the male (Albright et al., 1989). Normally the motivation for suckling declines once the calf starts ruminating, and it is therefore important to provide palatable food that is sufficiently fibrous to stimulate rumination (Sambraus et al., 1979). Hay or straw is often provided, but fresh grass could be more palatable and be eaten sooner and in larger quantities. This could allow the calves to be weaned earlier or concentrate allocation to be reduced.

Three-Degree-of-Freedom Parallel Robot Arm

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Hosek ◽  
Michael Valasek ◽  
Jairo Moura
Keyword(s):  
Parallel Robot ◽  
Degree Of Freedom ◽  
Motion Path ◽  
Angular Orientation ◽  
Robot Arm ◽  
Flat Panel Display ◽  
End Effector ◽  
Cluster Tools ◽  
Manufacturing Applications ◽  
Three Degree Of Freedom

This paper presents single- and dual-end-effector configurations of a planar three-degree of freedom parallel robot arm designed for automated pick-place operations in vacuum cluster tools for semiconductor and flat-panel-display manufacturing applications. The basic single end-effector configuration of the arm consists of a pivoting base platform, two elbow platforms and a wrist platform, which are connected through two symmetric pairs of parallelogram mechanisms. The wrist platform carries an end-effector, the position and angular orientation of which can be controlled independently by three motors located at the base of the robot. The joints and links of the mechanism are arranged in a unique geometric configuration which provides a sufficient range of motion for typical vacuum cluster tools. The geometric properties of the mechanism are further optimized for a given motion path of the robot. In addition to the basic symmetric single end-effector configuration, an asymmetric costeffective version of the mechanism is derived, and two dual-end-effector alternatives for improved throughput performance are described. In contrast to prior attempts to control angular orientation of the end-effector(s) of the conventional arms employed currently in vacuum cluster tools, all of the motors that drive the arm can be located at the stationary base of the robot with no need for joint actuators carried by the arm or complicated belt arrangements running through the arm. As a result, the motors do not contribute to the mass and inertia properties of the moving parts of the arm, no power and signal wires through the arm are necessary, the reliability and maintenance aspects of operation are improved, and the level of undesirable particle generation is reduced. This is particularly beneficial for high-throughput applications in vacuum and particlesensitive environments.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document