A graphical tool for designing interactive video cognitive rehabilitation therapies

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) has become one of the most common causes of neurological disability in developed countries. Cognitive disorders result in a loss of independence and therefore patients? quality of life. Cognitive rehabilitation aims to promote patients? skills to achieve their highest degree of personal autonomy. New technologies such as interactive video, whereby real situations of daily living are reproduced within a controlled virtual environment, enable the design of personalized therapies with a high level of generalization and a great ecological validity. This paper presents a graphical tool that allows neuropsychologists to design, modify, and configure interactive video therapeutic activities, through the combination of graphic and natural language. The tool has been validated creating several Activities of Daily Living and a preliminary usability evaluation has been performed showing a good clinical acceptance in the definition of complex interactive video therapies for cognitive rehabilitation.

Dynamics of brain networks in aesthetic appreciation

Neuroimage experiments have been essential for identifying active brain networks. During cognitive tasks as in, e.g., aesthetic appreciation, such networks include regions that belong to the default mode network (DMN). Theoretically, DMN activity should be interrupted during cognitive tasks demanding attention, as is the case for aesthetic appreciation. Analyzing the functional connectivity dynamics along three temporal windows and two conditions, beautiful and not beautiful stimuli, here we report experimental support for the hypothesis that aesthetic appreciation relies on the activation of two different networks, an initial aesthetic network and a delayed aesthetic network, engaged within distinct time frames. Activation of the DMN might correspond mainly to the delayed aesthetic network. We discuss adaptive and evolutionary explanations for the relationships existing between the DMN and aesthetic networks and offer unique inputs to debates on the mind/brain interaction.

Thermal evolution of lower limbs during a rehabilitation process after anterior cruciate ligament surgery

Infrared thermography (IRT) is a safe and non-invasive tool used for examining physiological functions based on skin temperature (Tsk) control. The aim of this paper was to establish the probable thermal difference between the beginning and the end of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rehabilitation process after surgery. For this purpose thermograms from 25 ACL surgically operated patients (2 women, 23 men) were taken on the first and last day of a six-week rehabilitation program. A FLIR infrared camera according to the protocol established by the International Academy of Clinical Thermology (IACT). The results showed significant temperature increases in the posterior thigh area between the first and the last week of the rehabilitation process probably due to a compensatory mechanism. According to this, we can conclude that temperature of the posterior area of the injured and non-injured leg has increased from the first to the last day of the rehabilitation process.

Study for the rehabilitation of vernacular architecture with sustainable criteria

This paper assesses rural vernacular heritage established in a warm temperate climate, with dry, hot summer, in São Vicente e Ventosa (SVV), Alentejo, Portugal, and takes part in a larger investigation intending to create rehabilitation guidelines, with sustainable criteria and integration of recent technologies, to improving indoor comfort, and revert the state of deterioration. To further reach this aim, this paper proposes a four phases methodology: data collection, evaluation, simulation and development; a first survey data analysis, including climate data and the adapted comfort climograph and isopleth diagram, allows an understanding of thermal comfort and main constraints in site, as well as suitable bioclimatic strategies for SVV: high thermal inertia for tempering extreme summer conditions and the considerable temperature amplitudes throughout the year, complementarily night ventilation for passive cooling, small-sized window openings and movable shading systems for solar radiation protection. An efficient behaviour in stabilizing indoor temperature swings is revealed.

A model of economic management of cultural heritage: the rehabilitation of fort christmas as an interpretation center of defensive architecture of the Mediterranean in Cartagena (Spain)

The Cultural Heritage constitutes a way to generate social identities and play an important role in the development of the Spanish Mediterranean cities that opt to sustainable quality tourism. The reflection on the necessity of intervention on this heritage, in addition to establishing what should be done, brings up the need to define the reasons for taking action, why and what-for. These decisions are essential to establish if its maintenance and recovery are economically sustainable. The Project "Cartagena Port of Cultures", with support from the European Union, is an example of effective instrument for ensuring the sustainability of our built heritage conservation. Its main objective was to enable sustainable development of tourism in Cartagena based on sustainability and seasonality. This was achieved through a process of recovery of heritage resources and their optimum promotion and marketing.

Intelligent Therapy Assistant (ITA) for cognitive rehabilitation in patients with Acquired Brain Injury

This paper presents the design, development and first evaluation of an algorithm, named Intelligent Therapy Assistant (ITA), which automatically selects, configures and schedules rehabilitation tasks for patients with cognitive impairments after an episode of Acquired Brain Injury. The ITA is integrated in "Guttmann, Neuro Personal Trainer" (GNPT), a cognitive tele-rehabilitation platform that provides neuropsychological services.

Housing plans and urban rehabilitation in Spain, 1992-2012

This paper explores the urban rehabilitation projects promoted by the Spanish Government between 1992 and 2012 through housing plans. The analysis is based on the comparison of programmes and estimations gathered in these plans with actual housing production within this period in order to find the connection between sectoral housing planning and real estate cycles in these last twenty years. During the period under review, six state housing plans, that were mainly focused on the promotion of newly-constructed state-subsidised housing, were developed, including the Areas of Integrated Rehabilitation programmes (ARI programmes). In spite of the relevance and growing complexity of these programmes, these played a subsidiary role in the government housing policy and were insignificant regarding the whole real estate production in this period.

On the improvement of urban regeneration processes from more than thirty years of rehabilitation experiences

At this moment of extended economic, social and environmental crisis within which new interventions on the consolidated city are being set out, it is essential to count on the acquired experience in urban rehabilitation processes that were carried out in Spain during the last thirty years. Despite the complexity of this kind of processes and the diversity of the situations and actions that happened, this paper addresses the analysis of common patterns in twenty urban rehabilitation experiences. Different stages of the processes were studied, from the management to the regenerated areas in order to ease the design of new intervention initiatives.

The role of rehabilitation of building in the urban integration, social cohesion and environmental responsibility

In the framework ofthe National Research Plan2008-2011, our research poses estrategy for the design and evaluation of plans and programmes of urban integrated regeneration. The objective is to develop a study on the role of rehabilitation of buildings in concepts like urban integration, social cohesion and environmental responsibility. The research proposes a methodological tool for evaluating urban regeneration processes from a holistic perspective that can serve as a guide for governments and technical teams to address intervention in consolidated urban areas with physical and socio-economic problems. The development of the tool has inevitably led to delve into different areas where you can intervene but has not lost sight of the complex interplay of factors involved in the process.It is an open source tool to visualize Urban Integrated Rehabilitation processes.

A novel motion tracking system for evaluation of functional rehabilitation of the upper limbs

Upper limb function impairment is one of the most common sequelae of central nervous system injury, especially in stroke patients and when spinal cord injury produces tetraplegia. Conventional assessment methods cannot provide objective evaluation of patient performance and the tiveness of therapies. The most common assessment tools are based on rating scales, which are inefficient when measuring small changes and can yield subjective bias. In this study, we designed an inertial sensor-based monitoring system composed of five sensors to measure and analyze the complex movements of the upper limbs, which are common in activities of daily living. We developed a kinematic model with nine degrees of freedom to analyze upper limb and head movements in three dimensions. This system was then validated using a commercial optoelectronic system. These findings suggest that an inertial sensor-based motion tracking system can be used in patients who have upper limb impairment through data integration with a virtual reality-based neuroretation system.

A data-globe and immersive virtual reality environment for upper limb rehabilitation after spinal cord injury

While a number of virtual data-gloves have been used in stroke, there is little evidence about their use in spinal cord injury (SCI). A pilot clinical experience with nine SCI subjects was performed comparing two groups: one carried out a virtual rehabilitation training based on the use of a data glove, CyberTouch combined with traditional rehabilitation, during 30 minutes a day twice a week along two weeks; while the other made only conventional rehabilitation. Furthermore, two functional indexes were developed in order to assess the patient’s performance of the sessions: normalized trajectory lengths and repeatability. While differences between groups were not statistically significant, the data-glove group seemed to obtain better results in the muscle balance and functional parameters, and in the dexterity, coordination and fine grip tests. Related to the indexes that we implemented, normalized trajectory lengths and repeatability, every patient showed an improvement in at least one of the indexes, either along Y-axis trajectory or Z-axis trajectory. This study might be a step in investigating new ways of treatments and objective measures in order to obtain more accurate data about the patient’s evolution, allowing the clinicians to develop rehabilitation treatments, adapted to the abilities and needs of the patients.

Improving brain injury cognitive rehabilitation by personalized telerehabilitation services: Guttmann neuropersonal trainer

Cognitive rehabilitation aims to remediate or alleviate the cognitive deficits appearing after an episode of acquired brain injury (ABI). The purpose of this work is to describe the telerehabilitation platform called Guttmann Neuropersonal Trainer (GNPT) which provides new strategies for cognitive rehabilitation, improving efficiency and access to treatments, and to increase knowledge generation from the process. A cognitive rehabilitation process has been modeled to design and develop the system, which allows neuropsychologists to configure and schedule rehabilitation sessions, consisting of set of personalized computerized cognitive exercises grounded on neuroscience and plasticity principles. It provides remote continuous monitoring of patient's performance, by an asynchronous communication strategy. An automatic knowledge extraction method has been used to implement a decision support system, improving treatment customization. GNPT has been implemented in 27 rehabilitation centers and in 83 patients' homes, facilitating the access to the treatment. In total, 1660 patients have been treated. Usability and cost analysis methodologies have been applied to measure the efficiency in real clinical environments. The usability evaluation reveals a system usability score higher than 70 for all target users. The cost efficiency study results show a relation of 1-20 compared to face-to-face rehabilitation. GNPT enables brain-damaged patients to continue and further extend rehabilitation beyond the hospital, improving the efficiency of the rehabilitation process. It allows customized therapeutic plans, providing information to further development of clinical practice guidelines.

MedVir: an interactive representation system of multidimensional medical data applied to Traumatic Brain Injury's rehabilitation prediction

Clinicians could model the brain injury of a patient through his brain activity. However, how this model is defined and how it changes when the patient is recovering are questions yet unanswered. In this paper, the use of MedVir framework is proposed with the aim of answering these questions. Based on complex data mining techniques, this provides not only the differentiation between TBI patients and control subjects (with a 72% of accuracy using 0.632 Bootstrap validation), but also the ability to detect whether a patient may recover or not, and all of that in a quick and easy way through a visualization technique which allows interaction.

Energy rehabilitation of social housing for rent, as demonstrator in the LIFE 'New4Old' Project

The main goal of the cofounded by the European Commission LIFE Project, New4Old (LIFE10 ENV/ES/439), is to define the most appropriate method and the best available practice in social housing rehabilitation with energy and environmental sustainability criteria, as well as to apply innovative technologies in the fight against climate change through an efficient use of resources and energy. The institutions involved in the Project are the Technological Centre AITEMIN, Madrid Polytechnic University (UPM), Portugal Technological Centre for Ceramics and Glass (CTCV) and the Zaragoza City Housing Society (SMZV). The demonstrator project consists in the energy rehabilitation of a rental social housing building located in Zaragoza?s historic quarter, according to the conclusions and strategies developed for the LIFE project. In actions taken in households of this nature passive design strategies are essential due to the limited income of owners, who often cannot afford energy bills. Therefore, the proposed actions will help improve the building?s passive performance and reach a higher thermal comfort, without increasing the economic cost linked to energy consumption.

Estudio de la fisuración en particiones verticales de yeso laminado, producidas por la deformación de forjados

Las exigencias de calidad, tanto en el ámbito de la rehabilitación como en el de las obras de nueva planta, obligan a evitar la fisuración de la tabiquería. Una de sus principales causas es la deformación excesiva de los forjados. Aunque en la mayoría de los casos no tiene efectos estructurales sino solamente estéticos, es necesario tomar precauciones para evitar la fisuración, pues es una de las patologías más frecuentes y en muchos casos motivo de reclamación de los usuarios. El aumento del consumo de los paneles de placa de yeso laminado y lana de roca para la realización de tabiquerías, justifica la necesidad de ahondar en el conocimiento del comportamiento y del mecanismo de fisuración de este material, pues hasta la fecha no se ha encontrado ningún trabajo especificamente dedicado al estudio del comportamiento en fractura de paneles sandwich de placa de yeso laminado y lana de roca en su plano. A la hora de abordar el estudio del comportamiento en fractura del material objeto de esta tesis, es preciso tener en cuenta que se trata de un material compuesto y, como tal, sus propiedades mecánicas y resistentes dependen en gran medida de las de sus componentes. Por tanto, para poder explicar el comportamiento en fractura del panel sandwich, habrá que estudiar también el de sus componentes. Por otro lado, se considera también muy útil disponer de una herramienta de calculo para la simulación de la fractura de paneles sandwich que sea predictiva. Este modelo hará posible facilitar el diseño de tabiquerías que no se fisure con este material, al poder relacionar las flechas que pueden tomar los forjados con su potencial fisuración. Para contrastar y validar un modelo de este tipo, es necesario disponer de suficientes datos experimentales del comportamiento en fractura del panel sandwich de placa de yeso laminado y lana de roca, que se puedan simular numericamente con el mismo. A partir de lo anteriormente expuesto se plantea, en primer lugar, una campaña experimental con el fin de obtener los parámetros necesarios para caracterizar el comportamiento en fractura de los paneles sandwich y sus componentes: placa de yeso laminado y lana de roca, estudiando también, su comportamiento en fractura en Modo Mixto, y el efecto del tamaño en los parámetros del panel. Por otro lado se propone un modelo de cálculo para la simulación de la fractura en Modo Mixto de paneles sandwich de placa de yeso laminado y lana de roca, comprobando la validez del modelo numérico a partir de los resultados experimentales obtenidos en la campaña de ensayos. Finalmente, se aplica el modelo para estudiar la fisuración de tabiquería realizada con el panel sandwich producida por la deformación de forjados unidireccionales realizados con viguetas de hormigón y bovedilla cerámica, por ser esta tipología la más usual en obras de edificación de viviendas. The quality requirements in terms of rehabilitation and new Works, force to prevent cracking on partitions and one of the main causes is the excessive deformation of the floor. In most of the cases, there are any structural damages, only aesthetic effects, but it is necessary to take precautions to avoid cracking because it is one of the most common diseases and in addition is the main reason of user’s complaints. The increased consumption of plasterboard panels and mineral wool used to build partitions, justifies the need to develop a deeper understanding of the cracking behaviour and mechanism, because by now, any specifically work dedicated to the study of fractures behaviour of sandwich plasterboard panels and rock wool has been found. When approaching the study of the fracture behaviour of the material it must bear in mind that we are referring to a composite material and as such, its mechanical and strength properties depend heavily on its components. Therefore, to explain the fracture behaviour of sandwich panels its components must be studied as well. On the other hand, it is also considered very useful to have a calculation tool to simulate the more likely fractures of the sandwich panel in order to predict it. This model used to perform simulations will enable the design of partitions built with these materials without cracks because it will relate the deflections in decks with its potential cracking. To contrast and validate this type of model, it is necessary and imperative to have enough experimental data of the sandwich plasterboard and rock wool fractures in order to enable its numerical simulation with it. On the basis of the above, the question arises firstly an experimental campaign in order to obtain the necessary parameters to characterize the cracking behaviour of sandwich panels and its components: plasterboard and rock wool, studying also its cracking behaviour in a mixed mode fracture and the effect of size parameters of the panel. Furthermore, a calculation model to simulate fractures in mixed mode of the sandwich panels made of plasterboard and rock wool is proposed in order to check the validity of the numerical model, based on experimental results obtained from the test campaign. Finally, this model is applied to study cracking on partitions built with sandwich panels resulting from the unidirectional floor’s deformations built with prestressed concrete beams and slab pottery pieces being this typology the most common one on residential buildings works.