The effect of hip muscle strengthening on pain and disability for individuals with non-specific low back pain : a randomized controlled trial

Introduction Clinical guidelines for the treatment of chronic low back pain suggest the use of supervised exercise. Motor control (MC) based exercise is widely used within clinical practice but its efficacy is equivalent to general exercise therapy. MC exercise targets the trunk musculature. Considering the mechanical links between the hip, pelvis, and lumbar spine, surprisingly little focus has been on investigating the contribution of the hip musculature to lumbopelvic support. The purpose of this study is to compare the efficacy of two exercise programs for the treatment of non-specific low back pain (NSLBP). Methods Eighty individuals aged 18-65 years of age were randomized into two groups to participate in this trial. The primary outcome measures included self-reported pain intensity (0-100mm VAS) and percent disability (Oswestry Disability Index V2). Bilateral measures of hip strength (N/kg) and two dimensional frontal plane mechanics (º) were the secondary outcomes. Outcomes were measured at baseline and following a six-week home based exercise program including weekly sessions of real-time ultrasound imaging. Results Within group comparisons revealed clinically meaningful reductions in pain for both groups. The MC exercise only (N= 40, xˉ =-20.9mm, 95%CI -25.7, -16.1) and the combined MC and hip exercise (N= 40, xˉ = -24.9mm, 95%CI -30.8, -19.0). There was no statistical difference in the change of pain (xˉ =-4.0mm, t= -1.07, p=0.29, 95%CI -11.5, 3.5) or disability (xˉ =-0.3%, t=-0.19, p=0.85, 95%CI -11.5, 3.5) between groups. Conclusion Both exercise programs had similar and positive effects on NSLBP which support the use of the home based exercise programs with weekly supervised visits. However, the addition of specific hip strengthening exercises to a MC based exercise program did not result in significantly greater reductions in pain or disability. Trial Registration NCTO1567566 Funding: Worker’s Compensation Board Alberta Research Grant.

The forgotten ones : a case study on conceptualising and implementing a peer mentoring program for postgraduate coursework students

We employed an action research approach to develop a context specific peer mentoring program (Postgrad Assist) that aids first year postgraduate coursework (PGCW) students in their transition to postgraduate study. We explored the transition literature and best practice approaches, undertook comprehensive surveys of both our students and staff, conducted student focus groups, formed a diverse working party, with strong representation from students and adopted an on-going evaluation program to develop and refine Postgrad Assist. The program substantially alleviated transitioning students’ cultural and academic shock, and social isolation. The program makes a contribution to the transition and mentoring research domain in that it challenges the common misconception that PGCW students are similar to undergraduate students with no particular distinguishing features that would suggest a need for a different approach to their mentoring.

Mentors’ and mentees’ views about desirable attributes and practices for preservice teachers

Universities provide preservice teachers (mentees) with directions on how to engage within their school placements, yet mentees have ongoing concerns about how to interact with their mentors. What are desirable attributes and practices for preservice teachers in their roles as mentees? This qualitative study gathers data from primary and secondary Australian teachers (n=25) through extended response questionnaire and audio-recorded focus group discussions, and preservice teachers (n=10) using audio-recorded interviews at the conclusion of their four-week practicum. Findings indicated that mentors had clear views on desirable attributes (e.g., enthusiasm, commitment, resilience) and practices (e.g., planning, preparation, building a teaching repertoire) for mentees; whereas mentees had varying views on identifying such attributes and practices and did not refer to: content knowledge, differentiation, and knowing school and university policies. This showed that mentees need more guidance for focusing on specific attributes and practices to benefit the mentoring relationship and their teaching development.

Socioeconomic status and its effect on pregnancy and childbirth : paramedic considerations in the prehospital setting

This poster aims to identify the role that socioeconomic status plays in determining poor health outcomes in pregnancy and childbirth. It brings to light the limitations and complications that a person in a lower socioeconomic society may face, and the effect that this possibly has on the health of the mother and child. A review of the peer reviewed literature was undertaken which identified three key areas relating to pregnancy in lower socioeconomic areas. These were social and emotional matters, lifestyle factors and financial issues. Particular focus has been put on understanding these issues from a paramedic perspective and how this can assist in both the treatment and education of patients in the pre-hospital environment. While there has been sufficient research into the three individual areas highlighted in the literature which affect pregnant patients living in lower socioeconomic communities, this poster has drawn these topics together to create an overview of a subject which is complex and multifaceted.

Practical path planning and obstacle avoidance for autonomous mowing

There is a need for systems which can autonomously perform coverage tasks on large outdoor areas. Unfortunately, the state-of-the-art is to use GPS based localization, which is not suitable for precise operations near trees and other obstructions. In this paper we present a robotic platform for autonomous coverage tasks. The system architecture integrates laser based localization and mapping using the Atlas Framework with Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees path planning and Virtual Force Field obstacle avoidance. We demonstrate the performance of the system in simulation as well as with real world experiments.

Automated sensory data alignment for environmental and epidermal change monitoring

In this paper we present research adapting a state of the art condition-invariant robotic place recognition algorithm to the role of automated inter- and intra-image alignment of sensor observations of environmental and skin change over time. The approach involves inverting the typical criteria placed upon navigation algorithms in robotics; we exploit rather than attempt to fix the limited camera viewpoint invariance of such algorithms, showing that approximate viewpoint repetition is realistic in a wide range of environments and medical applications. We demonstrate the algorithms automatically aligning challenging visual data from a range of real-world applications: ecological monitoring of environmental change, aerial observation of natural disasters including flooding, tsunamis and bushfires and tracking wound recovery and sun damage over time and present a prototype active guidance system for enforcing viewpoint repetition. We hope to provide an interesting case study for how traditional research criteria in robotics can be inverted to provide useful outcomes in applied situations.

Effect of cell wall properties on porosity and shrinkage of dried apple

Water removal during drying depends on the pathway of water migration from food materials. Moreover, the water removal rate also depends on the characteristics of the cell wall of plant tissue. In this study, the influence of cell wall properties (such as moisture distribution, stiffness, thickness and cell dimension) on porosity and shrinkage of dried product was investigated. Cell wall stiffness depends on a complex combination of plant cell microstructure, composition of food materials and the water-holding capacity of the cell. In this work, a preliminary investigation of the cell wall properties of apple was conducted in order to predict changes of porosity and shrinkage during drying. Cell wall characteristics of two types of apple (Granny Smith and Red Delicious) were investigated under convective drying to correlate with porosity and shrinkage. A scanning electron microscope (SEM), 2kN Intron, pycnometer and ImageJ software were used in order to measure and analyse cell characteristics, water holding capacity of cell walls, porosity and shrinkage. The cell firmness of the Red Delicious apple was found to be higher than for Granny Smith apples. A remarkable relationship was observed between cell wall characteristics when compare with heat and mass transfer characteristics. It was also found that the evolution of porosity and shrinkage are noticeably influenced by the nature of the cell wall during convective drying. This study has revealed a better understanding of porosity and the shrinkage of dried food at microscopy (cell) level, and will provide better insights to attain energy-effective drying processes and improved quality of dried foods.

The effect of autonomy transparency in human-robot interactions : a preliminary study on operator cognitive workload and situation awareness in multiple heterogeneous UAV management

The autonomous capabilities in collaborative unmanned aircraft systems are growing rapidly. Without appropriate transparency, the effectiveness of the future multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) management paradigm will be significantly limited by the human agent’s cognitive abilities; where the operator’s CognitiveWorkload (CW) and Situation Awareness (SA) will present as disproportionate. This proposes a challenge in evaluating the impact of robot autonomous capability feedback, allowing the human agent greater transparency into the robot’s autonomous status - in a supervisory role. This paper presents; the motivation, aim, related works, experiment theory, methodology, results and discussions, and the future work succeeding this preliminary study. The results in this paper illustrates that, with a greater transparency of a UAV’s autonomous capability, an overall improvement in the subjects’ cognitive abilities was evident, that is, with a confidence of 95%, the test subjects’ mean CW was demonstrated to have a statistically significant reduction, while their mean SA was demonstrated to have a significant increase.

A model-framed evaluation of elephant effects on tree and fire dynamics in African savannas

There is a concern that high densities of elephants in southern Africa could lead to the overall reduction of other forms of biodiversity. We present a grid-based model of elephant-savanna dynamics, which differs from previous elephant-vegetation models by accounting for woody plant demographics, tree-grass interactions, stochastic environmental variables (fire and rainfall), and spatial contagion of fire and tree recruitment. The model projects changes in height structure and spatial pattern of trees over periods of centuries. The vegetation component of the model produces long-term tree-grass coexistence, and the emergent fire frequencies match those reported for southern African savannas. Including elephants in the savanna model had the expected effect of reducing woody plant cover, mainly via increased adult tree mortality, although at an elephant density of 1.0 elephant/km2, woody plants still persisted for over a century. We tested three different scenarios in addition to our default assumptions. (1) Reducing mortality of adult trees after elephant use, mimicking a more browsing-tolerant tree species, mitigated the detrimental effect of elephants on the woody population. (2) Coupling germination success (increased seedling recruitment) to elephant browsing further increased tree persistence, and (3) a faster growing woody component allowed some woody plant persistence for at least a century at a density of 3 elephants/km2. Quantitative models of the kind presented here provide a valuable tool for exploring the consequences of management decisions involving the manipulation of elephant population densities. © 2005 by the Ecological Society of America.

Histogram matching and global initialization for laser-only SLAM in large unstructured environments

This paper presents an enhanced algorithm for matching laser scan maps using histogram correlations. The histogram representation effectively summarizes a map's salient features such that pairs of maps can be matched efficiently without any prior guess as to their alignment. The histogram matching algorithm has been enhanced in order to work well in outdoor unstructured environments by using entropy metrics, weighted histograms and proper thresholding of quality metrics. Thus our large-scale scan-matching SLAM implementation has a vastly improved ability to close large loops in real-time even when odometry is not available. Our experimental results have demonstrated a successful mapping of the largest area ever mapped to date using only a single laser scanner. We also demonstrate our ability to solve the lost robot problem by localizing a robot to a previously built map without any prior initialization.

Autonomous hot metal carrier: Navigation and manipulation with a 20 tonne industrial vehicle

This paper reports work on the automation of a hot metal carrier, which is a 20 tonne forklift-type vehicle used to move molten metal in aluminium smelters. To achieve efficient vehicle operation, issues of autonomous navigation and materials handling must be addressed. We present our complete system and experiments demonstrating reliable operation. One of the most significant experiments was five-hours of continuous operation where the vehicle travelled over 8 km and conducted 60 load handling operations. Finally, an experiment where the vehicle and autonomous operation were supervised from the other side of the world via a satellite phone network are described.

Analysis of passenger group behaviour and its impact on passenger flow using an agent-based model

Group interaction within crowds is a common phenomenon and has great influence on pedestrian behaviour. This paper investigates the impact of passenger group dynamics using an agent-based simulation method for the outbound passenger process at airports. Unlike most passenger-flow models that treat passengers as individual agents, the proposed model additionally incorporates their group dynamics as well. The simulation compares passenger behaviour at airport processes and discretionary services under different group formations. Results from experiments (both qualitative and quantitative) show that incorporating group attributes, in particular, the interactions with fellow travellers and wavers can have significant influence on passengers activity preference as well as the performance and utilisation of services in airport terminals. The model also provides a convenient way to investigate the effectiveness of airport space design and service allocations, which can contribute to positive passenger experiences. The model was created using AnyLogic software and its parameters were initialised using recent research data published in the literature.

A real-time software architecture for robotics and automation

This paper describes a software architecture for real-world robotic applications. We discuss issues of software reliability, testing and realistic off-line simulation that allows the majority of the automation system to be tested off-line in the laboratory before deployment in the field. A recent project, the automation of a very large mining machine is used to illustrate the discussion.