Simultaneous remote haptic collaboration for assembling tasks

Stand-alone virtual environments (VEs) using haptic devices have proved useful for assembly/disassembly simulation of mechanical components. Nowadays, collaborative haptic virtual environments (CHVEs) are also emerging. A new peer-to-peer collaborative haptic assembly simulator (CHAS) has been developed whereby two users can simultaneously carry out assembly tasks using haptic devices. Two major challenges have been addressed: virtual scene synchronization (consistency) and the provision of a reliable and effective haptic feedback. A consistency-maintenance scheme has been designed to solve the challenge of achieving consistency. Results show that consistency is guaranteed. Furthermore, a force-smoothing algorithm has been developed which is shown to improve the quality of force feedback under adverse network conditions. A range of laboratory experiments and several real trials between Labein (Spain) and Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland) have verified that CHAS can provide an adequate haptic interaction when both users perform remote assemblies (assembly of one user’s object with an object grasped by the other user). Moreover, when collisions between grasped objects occur (dependent collisions), the haptic feedback usually provides satisfactory haptic perception. Based on a qualitative study, it is shown that the haptic feedback obtained during remote assemblies with dependent collisions can continue to improve the sense of co-presence between users with regard to only visual feedback.

The Creative Life of Law: Improvisation, Between Tradition and Suspicion

Originally applying solely to chefs, waiters, dishwashers and the like, New York City (NYC) regulations governing cabaret employees were altered in 1943 to include musicians and entertainers, who until the late 1960’s would be required to hold a NYC Cabaret Employee’s Identification Card. The introduction of these notorious “police cards” occurred roughly contemporaneously to the emergence in after-hours night clubs in Harlem of a new and supposedly “wild”, improvisatory brand of jazz: bebop. This article adds to the many rather practical theories on why these cards were introduced a more abstract discussion coined in terms of the relationship between suspicion and tradition and focusing on differing essences of law and improvisatory jazz. While law breathes tradition and is suspicious of improvisation and unpredictability, the converse is true of jazz. Allusion to tradition in jazz improvisation is often viewed as a betrayal of its creative and spontaneous nature. And yet it is only through its departure from the stable transmission of past meaning that improvisation gains meaning. Law, in contrast, while appearing to be entirely composed of tradition, to transmit some sort of determinate and fixed meaning, is constantly betraying itself. As no two legal actions can be exactly the same, judges must improvise on tradition and past precedent every time they are asked to decide a case. Law can thus neither dispense with nor be completely determined by tradition. The legal decision instead lies on the border between what it “is” and what it otherwise could be and every judicial act is, in some sense, a species of improvisation. This article uses the cabaret cards to explore this uncertain terrain between law and improvisation, between tradition and suspicion.

Development and clinical validation of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method for the rapid detection of Neisseria meningitidis

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is an innovative technique that allows the rapid detection of target nucleic acid sequences under isothermal conditions without the need for complex instrumentation. The development, optimization, and clinical validation of a LAMP assay targeting the ctrA gene for the rapid detection of capsular Neisseria meningitidis were described. Highly specific detection of capsular N. meningitidis type strains and clinical isolates was demonstrated, with no cross-reactivity with other Neisseria spp. or with a comprehensive panel of other common human pathogens. The lower limit of detection was 6 ctrA gene copies detectable in 48 min, with positive reactions readily identifiable visually via a simple color change. Higher copy numbers could be detected in as little as 16 min. When applied to a total of 394 clinical specimens, the LAMP assay in comparison to a conventional TaqMan® based real-time polymerase chain reaction system demonstrated a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 98.9% with a ? coefficient of 0.942. The LAMP method represents a rapid, sensitive, and highly specific technique for the detection of N. meningitidis and has the potential to be used as a point-of-care molecular test and in resource-poor settings.

Jamming the Law: Improvisational Theatre and the 'Spontaneity' of Judgment

Modern ‘nonscripted’ theatre (NST) clearly owes much to improvisation. Perhaps less obviously, and more surprisingly, so too does modern law. In this article I will contend that, despite all the rules of evidence and procedure, statutes and legal precedents that fundamentally govern the decisions and actions of a judge, it is only through ‘spontaneity’ that judgment can take place. This claim may appear strange to those well-versed in the common law tradition which proceeds on the basis of past legal decisions, or reason where no precedent exists. NST, on the other hand, is assumed to rely heavily on the unprecedented and unreasoned. Therefore, when the public watches a NST production, it places its faith in the belief that what is being observed is entirely new and is being produced ‘on the spur of the moment’.

MicroRNA regulation of core apoptosis pathways in cancer

Recent research has demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNAs) are key regulators of many cell processes often deregulated in cancer, including apoptosis. Indeed, it is becoming clear that many miRNAs are anti-apoptotic and mediate this effect by targeting pro-apoptotic mRNAs or positive regulators of pro-apoptotic mRNAs. Conversely, many pro-apoptotic miRNAs target anti-apoptotic mRNAs or their positive regulators. We have reviewed the current knowledge in this area including evidence of miRNA involvement in cancer drug resistance. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sensitive detection of African swine fever virus using real-time PCR with a 5 ' conjugated minor groove binder probe

The design of a 5' conjugated minor groove binder (MGB) probe real-time PCR assay is described for the rapid, sensitive and specific detection of African swine fever virus (ASFV) DNA. The assay is designed against the 9GL region and is capable of detecting 20 copies of a DNA standard. It does not detect any of the other common swine DNA viruses tested in this study. The assay can detect ASFV DNA in a range of clinical samples. Sensitivity was equivalent to the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) recommended TaqMan assay. In addition the assay was found to have a detection limit 10-fold more sensitive than the conventional PCR recommended by the OIE. Linear range was ten logs from 2 x 10(1) to 2 x 10(10). The assay is rapid with an amplification time just over 2 h. The development of this assay provides a useful tool for the specific diagnosis of ASF in statutory or emergency testing programs or for the detection of ASFV DNA in research applications. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

‘Symposium: New Technologies, European Law and Citizens’

This special issue seeks to draw attention to the relations between new technologies and European law (encompassing EU law and the law of the Council of Europe and its institutions), and some of the implications for citizens.

Justice as Improvisation:The Law of the Extempore

Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore theorises the relationship between justice and improvisation through the case of the New York City cabaret laws. Discourses around improvisation often imprison it in a quasi-ethical relationship with the authentic, singular ‘other’. The same can be said of justice. This book interrogates this relationship by highlighting the parallels between the aporetic conception of justice advanced by the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida and the nuanced approach to improvisation pursued by musicians and theorists alike in the new and emerging interdisciplinary field of Critical Studies in Improvisation (CSI). Justice as Improvisation re-imagines justice as a species of improvisation through the formal structure of the most basic of legal mechanisms, judicial decision-making, offering law and legal theory a richer, more concrete, understanding of justice. Not further mystery or mystique, but a negotiation between abstract notions of justice and the everyday practice of judging. Improvisation in judgment calls for ongoing, practical decision-making as the constant negotiation between the freedom of the judge to take account of the otherness or singularity of the case and the existing laws or rules that both allow for and constrain that freedom. Yes, it is necessary to judge, yes, it is necessary to decide, but to judge well, to decide justly, that is a music lesson perhaps best taught by critical improvisation scholars.

Improvising (Il)legality: Justice and the Irish Diaspora, NYC, 1930-32

The Seabury Commission, 1930-32, probed allegations of corruption made against, amongst others, the Irish-American Mayor of New York City, James J. ‘Jimmy’ Walker, and the Irish-dominated Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that had supported Walker. Taking the Seabury inquiry as its focus, this article explores these allegations from the perspective of Critical Studies in Improvisation (C.S.I.) fused with postcolonial critique. Improvisation, in accordance with C.S.I. principles, is not a lawless or extempore event; it is, instead, lawful, or full of law. The laws of improvisation may appear impenetrable to those unfamiliar with the practice. However, when read through a hibernocentric postcolonial perspective, their meaning and form become more understandable. As will be argued in this article, diasporic communities are inherently improvisatory; that is, they utilise improvisational techniques to help adapt and respond to new situations and social contexts. To be queried is whether the law and politics practiced by Tammany and Walker, taken together, constituted a markedly Irish approach to justice, one that entailed not scripted or planned illegality, as was alleged by Judge Seabury, but improvisations on Anglo-Protestant law as a response to the displacement of and discrimination against the Irish Diaspora in early twentieth century America.