| 1. |
- Spanos, Elias, et al.
(författare)
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Cardioprotection of the enkephalin analog Eribis peptide 94 in a rat model of ischemia and reperfusion is highly dependent on dosing regimen and timing of administration
- 2015
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Ingår i: European Journal of Pharmacology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0014-2999. ; 747, s. 1-6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Eribis Peptide 94 (EP94) is an enkephalin analog with cardioprotective properties in ischemia and reperfusion. The aim of the present study was to define the optimal timing and dosing of the administration of EP94 during ischemia and reperfusion in a rat model. 172 anesthetized and mechanically ventilated male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to different administration protocols of EP94 and subjected to 30 or 40min of coronary artery occlusion followed by 2h of reperfusion. EP94 was administered intravenously at different doses and time intervals. Area at risk (AAR) and infarct size (IS) were determined by staining with Evans Blue (EB) and Triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC), respectively. EP94 reduced IS/AAR when administered as a double bolus (0.5µg/kg per dose), whereas single (1μg/kg) or triple boluses (0.5μg/kg per dose) did not confer any protection. Reduction of IS/AAR was of highest magnitude if EP94 was administered 5 and 0min before the 30min ischemic period (47% reduction, P<0.05), with declining cardioprotective effect with later administration during ischemia. When EP94 was administered after 15 and 20min of a 40-min ischemic period, reduction of IS/AAR was of the same magnitude as when given after 5 and 10min of a 30-min ischemic period. It is concluded that EP94 confers cardioprotection after double bolus administration. The effects are highly dependent on the timing of administration in relation to ischemia and reperfusion. Time of reperfusion from drug administration seems to be more critical than the total duration of ischemia.
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| 2. |
- Alirezaie, Marjan, 1980-, et al.
(författare)
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An ontology-based context-aware system for smart homes : E-care@home
- 2017
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Ingår i: Sensors. - Basel : MDPI AG. - 1424-8220. ; 17:7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Smart home environments have a significant potential to provide for long-term monitoring of users with special needs in order to promote the possibility to age at home. Such environments are typically equipped with a number of heterogeneous sensors that monitor both health and environmental parameters. This paper presents a framework called E-care@home, consisting of an IoT infrastructure, which provides information with an unambiguous, shared meaning across IoT devices, end-users, relatives, health and care professionals and organizations. We focus on integrating measurements gathered from heterogeneous sources by using ontologies in order to enable semantic interpretation of events and context awareness. Activities are deduced using an incremental answer set solver for stream reasoning. The paper demonstrates the proposed framework using an instantiation of a smart environment that is able to perform context recognition based on the activities and the events occurring in the home.
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| 3. |
- Andreasson, Henrik, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Autonomous transport vehicles : where we are and what is missing
- 2015
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Ingår i: IEEE robotics & automation magazine. - 1070-9932 .- 1558-223X. ; 22:1, s. 64-75
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we address the problem of realizing a complete efficient system for automated management of fleets of autonomous ground vehicles in industrial sites. We elicit from current industrial practice and the scientific state of the art the key challenges related to autonomous transport vehicles in industrial environments and relate them to enabling techniques in perception, task allocation, motion planning, coordination, collision prediction, and control. We propose a modular approach based on least commitment, which integrates all modules through a uniform constraint-based paradigm. We describe an instantiation of this system and present a summary of the results, showing evidence of increased flexibility at the control level to adapt to contingencies.
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| 4. |
- Axelsson, Christer, et al.
(författare)
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The Early Chain of Care in Patients with Bacteraemia with the Emphasis on the Prehospital Setting
- 2016
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Ingår i: Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. - : Cambridge University Press. - 1049-023X .- 1945-1938. ; 31:3, s. 272-277
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is a lack of knowledge about the early phase of severe infection. This report describes the early chain of care in bacteraemia as follows: (a) compare patients who were and were not transported by the Emergency Medical Services (EMS); (b) describe various aspects of the EMS chain; and (c) describe factors of importance for the delay to the start of intravenous antibiotics. It was hypothesized that, for patients with suspected sepsis judged by the EMS clinician, the delay until the onset of antibiotic treatment would be shorter.All patients in the Municipality of Gothenburg (Sweden) with a positive blood culture, when assessed at the Laboratory of Bacteriology in the Municipality of Gothenburg, from February 1 through April 30, 2012 took part in the survey.In all, 696 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Their mean age was 76 years and 52% were men. Of all patients, 308 (44%) had been in contact with the EMS and/or the emergency department (ED). Of these 308 patients, 232 (75%) were transported by the EMS and 188 (61%) had “true pathogens” in blood cultures. Patients who were transported by the EMS were older, included more men, and suffered from more severe symptoms and signs.The EMS nurse suspected sepsis in only six percent of the cases. These patients had a delay from arrival at hospital until the start of antibiotics of one hour and 19 minutes versus three hours and 21 minutes among the remaining patients (P =.0006). The corresponding figures for cases with “true pathogens” were one hour and 19 minutes versus three hours and 15 minutes (P =.009).Among patients with bacteraemia, 75% used the EMS, and these patients were older, included more men, and suffered from more severe symptoms and signs. The EMS nurse suspected sepsis in six percent of cases. Regardless of whether or not patients with true pathogens were isolated, a suspicion of sepsis by the EMS clinician at the scene was associated with a shorter delay to the start of antibiotic treatment.
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| 5. |
- Bidot, Julien, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Geometric backtracking for combined task and motion planning in robotic systems
- 2017
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Ingår i: Artificial Intelligence. - : Elsevier. - 0004-3702 .- 1872-7921. ; 247, s. 229-265
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Planners for real robotic systems should not only reason about abstract actions, but also about aspects related to physical execution such as kinematics and geometry. We present an approach to hybrid task and motion planning, in which state-based forward-chaining task planning is tightly coupled with motion planning and other forms of geometric reasoning. Our approach is centered around the problem of geometric backtracking that arises in hybrid task and motion planning: in order to satisfy the geometric preconditions of the current action, a planner may need to reconsider geometric choices, such as grasps and poses, that were made for previous actions. Geometric backtracking is a necessary condition for completeness, but it may lead to a dramatic computational explosion due to the large size of the space of geometric states. We explore two avenues to deal with this issue: the use of heuristics based on different geometric conditions to guide the search, and the use of geometric constraints to prune the search space. We empirically evaluate these different approaches, and demonstrate that they improve the performance of hybrid task and motion planning. We demonstrate our hybrid planning approach in two domains: a real, humanoid robotic platform, the DLR Justin robot, performing object manipulation tasks; and a simulated autonomous forklift operating in a warehouse.
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| 6. |
- Christiansen, Evald H, et al.
(författare)
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Instantaneous Wave-free Ratio versus Fractional Flow Reserve to Guide PCI.
- 2017
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Ingår i: The New England journal of medicine. - : Massachussetts Medical Society. - 1533-4406 .- 0028-4793. ; 376:19, s. 1813-1823
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The instantaneous wave-free ratio (iFR) is an index used to assess the severity of coronary-artery stenosis. The index has been tested against fractional flow reserve (FFR) in small trials, and the two measures have been found to have similar diagnostic accuracy. However, studies of clinical outcomes associated with the use of iFR are lacking. We aimed to evaluate whether iFR is noninferior to FFR with respect to the rate of subsequent major adverse cardiac events.We conducted a multicenter, randomized, controlled, open-label clinical trial using the Swedish Coronary Angiography and Angioplasty Registry for enrollment. A total of 2037 participants with stable angina or an acute coronary syndrome who had an indication for physiologically guided assessment of coronary-artery stenosis were randomly assigned to undergo revascularization guided by either iFR or FFR. The primary end point was the rate of a composite of death from any cause, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or unplanned revascularization within 12 months after the procedure.A primary end-point event occurred in 68 of 1012 patients (6.7%) in the iFR group and in 61 of 1007 (6.1%) in the FFR group (difference in event rates, 0.7 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], -1.5 to 2.8; P=0.007 for noninferiority; hazard ratio, 1.12; 95% CI, 0.79 to 1.58; P=0.53); the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval for the difference in event rates fell within the prespecified noninferiority margin of 3.2 percentage points. The results were similar among major subgroups. The rates of myocardial infarction, target-lesion revascularization, restenosis, and stent thrombosis did not differ significantly between the two groups. A significantly higher proportion of patients in the FFR group than in the iFR group reported chest discomfort during the procedure.Among patients with stable angina or an acute coronary syndrome, an iFR-guided revascularization strategy was noninferior to an FFR-guided revascularization strategy with respect to the rate of major adverse cardiac events at 12 months. (Funded by Philips Volcano; iFR SWEDEHEART ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02166736 .).
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| 7. |
- d. C. Silva-Lopez, Lia Susana, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Towards configuration planning with partially ordered preferences : representation and results
- 2015
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Ingår i: Künstliche Intelligenz. - : Springer Berlin/Heidelberg. - 0933-1875 .- 1610-1987. ; 9:2, s. 173-183
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Configuration planning for a distributed robotic system is the problem of how to configure the system over time in order to achieve some causal and/or information goals. A configuration plan specifies what components (sensor, actuator and computational devices), should be active at different times and how they should exchange information. However, not all plans that solve a given problem need to be equally good, and for that purpose it may be important to take preferences into account. In this paper we present an algorithm for configuration planning that incorporates general partially ordered preferences. The planner supports multiple preference categories, and hence it solves a multiple-objective optimization problem: for a given problem, it finds all possible valid, non-dominated configuration plans. The planner has been able to successfully cope with partial ordering relations between quantitative preferences in practically acceptable times, as shown in the empirical results. Preferences here are represented as c-semirings, and are used for establishing dominance of a solution over another in order to obtain a set of configuration plans that will constitute the solution of a configuration planning problem with partially ordered preferences. The dominance operators tested in this paper are Pareto and Lorenz dominance. Our solver considers one guiding heuristic for obtaining the first solution, and then switches to a dominance based monotonically decreasing heuristic used for pruning dominated partial configuration plans. In our empirical results, we perform a statistical study in the space of problem instances and establish families of problems for which our approach is computationally feasible.
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| 8. |
- Dandan, Kinan, 1976-
(författare)
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Enabling Surface Cleaning Robot for Large Food Silo
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Working conditions in the dry cleaning and sanitation of confined interior spaces are often extreme, and workers need overall protection with tight clothing, helmets, face mask, earmuffs, and respirators. The environment is dirty, noisy with bad visibility and heavy with a high static work load. Dry cleaning is mainly practised in silos for grain, foodstuff and flour, etc. The inside of the silo is a hazardous environment due to many factors such as an unsafe oxygen level, engulfment, biological, mechanical, electrical, and atmospheric hazards. The requirements of the EU norms related to hygiene and food quality indicate that silos should be cleaned frequently and cleaning is obligatory after a silo is totally emptied. Therefore, there is an increased societal need for silo cleaning and a natural necessity to replace humans by robot manipulators in executing this risky and dangerous job.This thesis presents a new concept of a flexible crawling mechanism for an industrial food cleaning robot, which is evaluated from the viewpoint of the capability to work inside a large food silo, scanning the desired surface, and performing the cleaning task. The main research questions investigated in this thesis are about: how to select the most important characteristics in designing a robot to fulfil the surface cleaning operation of a large confined space; how the crawling movement affects the dynamic behaviour of the robot mechanism; how the cleaning process affects the dynamic behaviour of the robot mechanism; how to develop the control of the robot to realize the locomotion and the cleaning process.The structure of the robot and the cleaning technology are well defined after an overview of the existing technologies and solutions for cleaning large confined spaces. The robot design is based on a suspension and crawling system, using minimal actuators, where the force of gravity is well used to simplify the control system and to stabilise the robot. Further, the static and dynamic analysis of the mechanical system is studied. In addition, the control architecture of the system is performed, where the required sensors and control algorithm are given. A scale model testing has also been used to verify the locomotion of the concept, while simple controllers and algorithms are used to manage the motions of the prototype.
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| 9. |
- Eriksen, Niklas, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Starting from Scratch : Implementing CDIO in a new Master of Science in Engineering
- 2016
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In 2015, Örebro University was granted the rights to provide a Master of Science in Engineering (5 year engineering programme). This fall we launch two programmes, in Computer Science and Industrial Economics. The basis of these programmes rests on a pedagogical approach of increasing interest, namely CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate), which aims to provide a framework particularly suited for technical and engineering programmes.A number of non-trivial challenges were addressed when crafting a programme that conforms to the CDIO standards and guidelines. In particular, one of the more difficult tasks is to ensure that a programme in its entirety satisfies both the CDIO goals and the learning outcomes in the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance in a coherent and meaningful way. A further challenge is to educate the entire teaching core to help them adopt the model, and to guide the staff in finding proper use of CDIO within each different subject.This talk presents how these challenges were addressed in adopting CDIO during the application process and the initial implementation stages. It describes how a department in rapid development was able to anchor the concepts of the pedagogical model with its teachers and programme directors. In particular, we outline the tools and processes which were used in order to create familiarity and consensus with the teaching core responsible for the new education. The talk also describes the difficulties encountered in applying a single pedagogical model to an education, and outlines the iterative process taken in order to integrate CDIO in a new programme and within its various courses.
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| 10. |
- Eriksson, D, et al.
(författare)
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Extended exome sequencing identifies BACH2 as a novel major risk locus for Addison's disease
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Internal Medicine. - : Wiley. - 0954-6820 .- 1365-2796. ; 286:6, s. 595-608
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Autoimmune disease is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. In Addison's disease, the adrenal glands are targeted by destructive autoimmunity. Despite being the most common cause of primary adrenal failure, little is known about its aetiology.METHODS: To understand the genetic background of Addison's disease, we utilized the extensively characterized patients of the Swedish Addison Registry. We developed an extended exome capture array comprising a selected set of 1853 genes and their potential regulatory elements, for the purpose of sequencing 479 patients with Addison's disease and 1394 controls.RESULTS: We identified BACH2 (rs62408233-A, OR = 2.01 (1.71-2.37), P = 1.66 × 10(-15) , MAF 0.46/0.29 in cases/controls) as a novel gene associated with Addison's disease development. We also confirmed the previously known associations with the HLA complex.CONCLUSION: Whilst BACH2 has been previously reported to associate with organ-specific autoimmune diseases co-inherited with Addison's disease, we have identified BACH2 as a major risk locus in Addison's disease, independent of concomitant autoimmune diseases. Our results may enable future research towards preventive disease treatment.
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