This paper presents a novel linkage-transmission hand exoskeleton designed to assist individuals with motor disabilities in completing the grasping of daily living items. Based on the analysis of intra-finger and inter-finger grasping motion, the primary and secondary movements of finger joints and thumb opposability are crucial for completing the grasping task, which provides a foundation for designing assistive hand exoskeletons. Aiming at the grasping characteristics of fingers, an underactuated mechanism based on redundant degrees of freedom is proposed to enable adaptive grasping of objects with different shapes and sizes by the exoskeleton. The proposed exoskeleton is actuated by three motors, allowing for flexion/extension movements (index MCP, PIP joints, and thumb CMC, MCP joints) as well as abduction/adduction movements (thumb CMC joint). Finally, motion transparency and grasping dexterity experiments are conducted on the hand exoskeleton prototype with six healthy subjects. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed exoskeleton can assist the wearer in grasping different objects and exhibits grasping dexterity.
This letter proposes a dynamic system approach to learn point-to-point motions while keeping the stability of the dynamic system. The proposed approach is grounded on a Learning from Demonstration (LfD) method based on a neural network, which gets a better reproduction performance while guaranteeing the generalization ability. The proposed approach has been experimentally validated on the LASA dataset and by the "pick-and-place" task of Franka Emika robot, and experimental results demonstrate that: (1) compared with the state-of-the-art results, the trajectory generated by the proposed approach achieves higher accuracy (approximately 24.79%) in terms of the similarity with respect to the demonstration; (2) the proposed approach can handle high dimensional data and learn from one or more demonstrations; (3) the proposed approach can guarantee the performance regardless of the variation of starting points even in the case of high dimensional complex motions.
Objective: To investigate the hemorheologic changes in different stages of in the steroid-induced avascular necrosis of femoral head after hyperbaric oxygen treatment,and to explore the pathogenesis.Methods: Sixty adult Japanese rabbits were randomly divided into two groups as model group(n=42) and blank control group(n=18).Prednisolone acetate at 10 mg/kg for twice per week was injected in each rabbit of the model group,while in the control group the normal saline was injected for six weeks.Then,rabbits in the model group were randomized into hyperbaric oxygen(HBO) group(n=16) and model control group without HBO treatment(n=16).At the end of 2,4,6,8,10,12 weeks,hemorheologic and pathological changes of femoral head in light microscope,electron nicroscope or X-ray were observed.Results: At the end of the 2nd week,4th week and 6th week,blood viscosity and plasma viscosity in model group were higher than those in control group.Osteoporosis of the femoral head,increased numbers of empty bone lacunae and fat cells,shrinked nuclei,dissolved osteocytes and fragments were observed under electron microscope in the model group.In the HBO treatment group,the above changes were less than in the model control group.Conclusion: The large dosage of hormone could cause the characters of hemorrheology get worse,which may be the cause of avascular necrosis of femoral head.
Abstract The Farm animal Genotype-Tissue Expression (FarmGTEx, https://www.farmgtex.org/) project has been established to develop a comprehensive public resource of genetic regulatory variants in domestic animal species, which is essential for linking genetic polymorphisms to variation in phenotypes, helping fundamental biology discovery and exploitation in animal breeding and human biomedicine. Here we present results from the pilot phase of PigGTEx (http://piggtex.farmgtex.org/), where we processed 9,530 RNA-sequencing and 1,602 whole-genome sequencing samples from pigs. We build a pig genotype imputation panel, characterize the transcriptional landscape across over 100 tissues, and associate millions of genetic variants with five types of transcriptomic phenotypes in 34 tissues. We study interactions between genotype and breed/cell type, evaluate tissue specificity of regulatory effects, and elucidate the molecular mechanisms of their action using multi-omics data. Leveraging this resource, we decipher regulatory mechanisms underlying about 80% of the genetic associations for 207 pig complex phenotypes, and demonstrate the similarity of pigs to humans in gene expression and the genetic regulation behind complex phenotypes, corroborating the importance of pigs as a human biomedical model.
In the field of autonomous systems, accurately predicting the trajectories of nearby vehicles and pedestrians is crucial for ensuring both safety and operational efficiency. This paper introduces a novel methodology for trajectory forecasting based on state-space dynamic system modeling, which endows agents with models that have tangible physical implications. To enhance the precision of state estimations within the dynamic system, the paper also presents a novel modeling technique for control variables. This technique utilizes a newly introduced model, termed "Mixed Mamba," to derive initial control states, thereby improving the predictive accuracy of these variables. Moverover, the proposed approach ingeniously integrates graph neural networks with state-space models, effectively capturing the complexities of multi-agent interactions. This combination provides a robust and scalable framework for forecasting multi-agent trajectories across a range of scenarios. Comprehensive evaluations demonstrate that this model outperforms several established benchmarks across various metrics and datasets, highlighting its significant potential to advance trajectory forecasting in autonomous systems.
Paratuberculosis in cattle causes substantial economic losses to the dairy industry. Exploring functional genes and corresponding regulatory pathways related to resistance or susceptibility to paratuberculosis is essential to the breeding of disease resistance in cattle. Co-analysis of genome-wide DNA methylation and transcriptome profiles is a critically important approach to understand potential regulatory mechanism underlying the development of diseases. In this study, we characterized the profiles of DNA methylation of jejunum from nine Holstein cows in clinical, subclinical, and healthy groups using whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS). The average methylation level in functional regions was 29.95% in the promoter, 29.65% in the 5' untranslated region (UTR), 68.24% in exons, 71.55% in introns, and 72.81% in the 3' UTR. A total of 3,911, 4,336, and 4,094 differentially methylated genes (DMGs) were detected in clinical vs. subclinical, clinical vs. healthy, and subclinical vs. healthy comparative group, respectively. Gene ontology (GO) and analysis based on the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) showed that these DMGs were significantly enriched in specific biological processes related to immune response, such as Th1 and Th2 cell differentiation, wnt, TNF, MAPK, ECM-receptor interaction, cellular senescence, calcium, and chemokine signaling pathways (q value <0.05). The integration of information about DMGs, differentially expressed genes (DEGs), and biological functions suggested nine genes CALCRL, TNC, GATA4, CD44, TGM3, CXCL9, CXCL10, PPARG, and NFATC1 as promising candidates related to resistance/susceptibility to Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP). This study reports on the high-resolution DNA methylation landscapes of the jejunum methylome across three conditions (clinical, subclinical, and healthy) in dairy cows. Our investigations integrated different sources of information about DMGs, DEGs, and pathways, enabling us to find nine functional genes that might have potential application in resisting paratuberculosis in dairy cattle.
Various cognitive systems have been designed to model the position and stiffness profiles of human behavior and then to drive robots by mimicking the human's behavior to accomplish physical human–robot interaction tasks through a properly designed impedance controller. However, some studies have shown that variable stiffness parameters of the impedance controller can cause the violation of the passivity constraint of the robot states, and make the robot's stored energy exceed the external energy injected from the human user, thus leading to the unsafe human–robot interaction. To solve this problem, this article proposes a novel passive model-predictive impedance control method including two control loops. In the bottom-loop of the proposed controller, the robot is driven by a variable impedance controller to achieve the desired compliant interaction behavior. In the top-loop of the proposed controller, the model-predictive control (MPC) is used to ensure that the robot states satisfy the passivity constraint by calculating a complementary torque to limit the stored energy of the robot. The passivity of the closed-loop robot system and the feasibility of MPC are guaranteed by theoretical analysis, ensuring the safety of the robotic movement in the human–robot interaction. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by the simulation and experiment on the Franka Emika Panda robot.
Objective To observe microvascular changes in hormone-induced bone necrosis and also to study the mechanism of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) in the treatment of femoral head bone necrosis.Methods Forty-eight adult Japanese white rabbits were randomly divided into 2 groups:the experiment group (n =36) and the control group (n =12).The animals in the model group (or the experimental group) were injected with 10mg/kg of prednisone acetate,twice a week for a duration of 6 weeks,while the animals in the control group were injected with 2 ml of normal saline,also twice a week for a duration of 6 weeks.Then,the rabbits in the experimental group were randomly divided into the HBO group (n =17) and the control group (n =17).The HBO group received HBO treatment,for 6 successive weeks,while the control group breathed normal fresh air.At the end of 2,4,6,8,10 and 12 weeks after experiment,blood rheology,vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF),pathological changes in the tissue involved and radiological imaging changes were observed closely.Results At the end of the 2nd week,4th week and 6th week after experiment,features of hemorheology in the model group deteriorated.The animals of the model group developed endangium,thrombosis,osteoporosis of the femoral head,increased numbers of empty bone lacunae and fat cells,rupture of certain bone trabecula,volume reduction of bone cells of the femoral head and quite a few bone cells were seen to be dead and dissolved into fragments under the electron microscope.In the HBO treatment group,hemorheologic features tended to be better,positive expressions of VEGF could be seen in the osteoblasts on the bone trabecula surface and blood vessels as well,and positive expressions were mainly detected in endangium.Repair of necrostic bone cells to some extent could be seen under the light microscope,and neogenetic bone cells could also be seen under the transmission electron microscope.Conclusions Large dosage of hormone could induce damage to endangium,which might be the main cause of avascular necrosis of the femoral head.HBO could accelerate the processes of vascular regeneration and bone ossification through the expressions of VEGF and other cytokines and promote bone repair,which might provide an important theoretical evidence for the treatment of hormone-induced bone necrosis of femoral head.
Key words:
Micrangium; Femoral head necrosis; Hyperbaric oxygen; Vascular endothelial growth factor
Paratuberculosis is a major endemic disease caused by Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) infection and leads to huge economic loss in the dairy sector worldwide. Alternative splicing (AS) events, playing indispensable regulatory roles in many protein functions and biological pathways, are shown to be associated with complex traits and diseases. In this study, by integrating the RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data of 24 samples from three tissues (peripheral blood, jejunum and salivary gland) of Holstein cows, we obtained 2,706,541,696 uniquely mapped reads in total that represented 12,870 expressed genes, and detected 4285 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between MAP-infected and healthy cows (p < 0.05). Of them, 92 differentially expressed splicing factors (DESFs) were included. Further, 119, 150 and 68 differential alternative splicing (DAS) events between MAP-infected and healthy cows were identified in peripheral blood, jejunum and salivary glands, respectively. Of note, six DAS events were highly and significantly correlated with the DESFs (R2 > 0.9; p < 0.01), and their corresponding genes (COPI coat complex subunit gamma 2gene (COPG2), kinesin family member 2C gene (KIF2C), exocyst complex component 7 (EXOC7), Rab9 effector protein with kelch motifs gene (RABEPK), deoxyribonuclease 1 gene (DNASE1) and early endosome antigen 1gene (EEA1)) were significantly enriched in immune response such as vesicle-mediated transport, regulation of acute inflammatory response and tuberculosis through gene ontology (GO) and KEGG analysis. KS test showed that the DAS events in the EXOC7 and KIF2C genes indeed displayed differences between MAP-infected cows and healthy cows. The DAS in EXOC7 might produce a new protein sequence with lack of 23 amino acids, and the DAS in KIF2C induced a stop codon of premature occurrence and resulted in a lack of functional domain. In summary, this study identified the DAS events and corresponding genes related to MAP-infection base on the RNA-seq data from multiple tissues of Holstein cows, providing novel insights into the regulatory mechanisms underpinning paratuberculosis in dairy cattle.
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