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Piezoelectric force touch panels receive increased attentions in recent years. However, user-induced nonstable force-voltage responsivity limits their successful use in interactive displays. In this work, touch-induced capacitive information is used for estimating contact area and touch angle, which are further employed to interpret user performed force amplitude. A promising result of improving the stability of force-voltage responsivity by 85% is achieved, enhancing user experience and advancing the development of piezoelectric force sensing in interactive displays.

The use and interpretation of diagnostic cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers for neurodegenerative disorders, such as Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), represent a clinical challenge. According to the literature, the composition of CSF in DLB patients varies. Some patients present with reduced levels of amyloid, others with full Alzheimer Disease CSF profile (both reduced amyloid and increased phospho-tau) and some with a normal profile. Some patients may present with abnormal levels of a-synuclein. Continuous efforts will be required to establish useful CSF biomarkers for the early diagnosis of DLB. Given the heterogeneity of methods and results between studies, further validation is fundamental before conclusions can be drawn.

Interdisciplinary movement artists and educators Rob Kitsos and Meagan Woods share the process behind Moving Matter: material-led collaborative choreographies, a research-creation project that offers a methodology for rethinking the dynamism between raw materials, garments, and the body. Moving Matter steers the locus of choreography and wearable design away from human hierarchy to instead support truer collaboration amongst all moving materials, both human and non-human. In a challenge to normative structures where costumery operates 'in service' of dance, the textile designs for Moving Matter do not support the complete autonomy and freedom of moving humans; the wearables have striking characteristics of their own that limit what the human body can do. In establishing parameters, we intend not to reverse the hegemony of human-led design to human-suppressed design, but to re-recognize the agency of all matter through material-led collaborations that support distributed power and collective, innovative approaches to making. This paper details the artists' studio process and their methodology template for material-led collaborative process that can be adapted for practices within and beyond performance and art disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Force touch based interactivity has been widely integrated into displays equipped in most of smart electronic systems such as smartphones and tablets. This paper reports on application of artificial neural networks to analyze data generated from piezoelectric based touch panels for providing customized force sensing operation. Based on the experimental results, high force sensing accuracy (93.3%) is achieved when three force levels are used. Two-dimensional sensing, also achieved with the proposed technique, with high detection accuracy (95.2%). The technique presented here not only achieves high accuracy, but also allows users to define the range of force levels through behavioral means thus enhancing interactivity experience.

Abstract Background Diabetic retinopathy is a major cause of visual impairment and blindness among working-age people worldwide. The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of a carotenoid supplementation on retinal thickness and macular function of patients with diabetes using optical coherence tomography (OCT) and multifocal electroretinography (mfERG). Methods A retrospective study of one hundred and twenty eyes of sixty patients age between 40 and 60 years with non-insulin dependent type 2 diabetes mellitus without diabetic retinopathy who underwent OCT and mfERG and took vitamin supplements for a period of two years. Patients received a carotenoid supplement containing lutein (10 mg), zeaxanthin (2 mg) and meso-zeaxanthin (10 mg) once a day for two years. The thickness of the fovea was evaluated using OCT and the macular function was tested by mfERG. Results OCT showed an increase in the central foveal thickness and mfERG revealed increased retinal response density within the central 13° surrounding the fovea (rings 1 to 3) at two years after the onset of carotenoids supplement intake. Conclusion The use of carotenoid supplements may be of benefit for improving visual function of type 2 diabetes patients. However, further study is needed to assess the treatment’s long-term efficacy.

Antonia Sarli,1 Iosif Skalidakis,2 Aliki Velissari,1 Chryssanthi Koutsandrea,2 Maria Stefaniotou,3 Michael B Petersen,4,5 Christos Kroupis,1,* George Kitsos,3,* Marilita M Moschos2,* 1Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Attikon University General Hospital, 21st Department of Ophthalmology, “G. Gennimatas” General Hospital, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, 3Department of Ophthalmology, Ioannina University General Hospital, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece; 4Department of Clinical Genetics, Aalborg University Hospital, Aalborg, Denmark; 5Department of Clinical Medicine, Aalborg University Hospital, Aalborg, Denmark *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a multifactorial degenerative ocular disease that leads to loss of central vision. Functional gene polymorphisms have already been associated with the disease (for example, ARMS2 A69S, rs10490924).Aim: The goal of our study was to verify the correlation of the aforementioned ARMS2 variation with the disease, to examine, for the first time, the role of the CD14 C260T variation (rs2569190), and to investigate the association of two TLR4 polymorphisms (Asp299Gly or rs4986790 and Thr399Ile or rs4986791) in a Greek population with the wet form of AMD.Patients and methods: Genomic DNAs were isolated from blood samples of 103 healthy controls and 120 Greek patients with wet AMD who were age- and sex-matched, and all of whom were clinically evaluated. For the genotyping of all selected polymorphisms, polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis was performed.Results and conclusions: This study confirmed the association between the ARMS2 variation and AMD, detecting the T risk allele in a significantly higher frequency in the patient group, compared with the control subjects (45% vs 29.13%, P

Background: National health surveys indicate that chronic kidney disease (CKD) is an increasingly prevalent condition in Australia, placing a significant burden on the health budget and on the affected individuals themselves. Yet, there are relatively limited data on the prevalence of CKD within Australian general practice patients. In part, this could be due to variation in the terminology used by general practitioners (GPs) to identify and document a diagnosis of CKD. This project sought to investigate the variation in terms used when recording a diagnosis of CKD in general practice. Methods: A search of routinely collected de-identified Australian general practice patient data (NPS MedicineWise MedicineInsight from January 1, 2013, to June 1, 2016; collected from 329 general practices) was conducted to determine the terms used. Manual searches were conducted on coded and on “free-text” or narrative information in the medical history, reason for encounter, and reason for prescription data fields. Results: From this data set, 61 102 patients were potentially diagnosable with CKD on the basis of pathology results, but only 14 172 (23.2%) of these had a term representing CKD in their electronic record. Younger patients with pathology evidence of CKD were more likely to have documented CKD compared with older patients. There were a total of 2090 unique recorded documentation terms used by the GPs for CKD. The most commonly used terms tended to be those included as “pick-list” options within the various general practice software packages’ standard “classifications,” accounting for 84% of use. Conclusions: A diagnosis of CKD was often not documented and, when recorded, it was in a variety of ways. While recording CKD with various terms and in free-text fields may allow GPs to flexibly document disease qualifiers and enter patient specific information, it might inadvertently decrease the quality of data collected from general practice records for clinical audit or research purposes.