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In lower limb prostheses, the physical interface constituted by the socket is a crucial component for the device success. This work proposes a new design based on a rigid frame integrated into a silicone structure which allows for a more comfortable biomechanical coupling with the residual limb and facilitates the integration of smart technologies. In particular, four surface EMG sensors and three vibrotactile units have been integrated to enable a bidirectional interface able to decode the user’s motor intention and provide augmenting feedback, respectively. The new socket was tested on a transfemoral amputee. The sEMG signals were registered during five different locomotion tasks in a circuit training and the classification median accuracy of an intention decoding algorithm was found always higher than 73%. The user’s perception of vibrotactile feedback was assessed through a psychophysical experiment of localization of single, couple or triple of stimuli. It revealed that vibrations from singularly activated units were the best perceived. Questionnaire results confirmed a high satisfaction level. However, tests on temperature and humidity within the socket suggest that more efforts are still required in terms of skin perspiration. The proposed socket paves the way to smart physical interfaces for robotic prostheses.

Predation risk is the main factor affecting movements of mammal prey species. Here we assessed the activity patterns of a nearly endemic fossorial rodent, the Savi’s pine vole Microtus savii, in two agroecosystems in central Italy. Direct captures were carried out in cold months (December–March) with live-traps; sex and age were recorded for each captured individual following standard methods. Savi’s pine voles were mostly active during daytime in both study sites, with no differences between sexes or age classes. Night-time movements were mainly registered during waning moon nights and were severely restricted in bright moonlight. The activity pattern of Savi’s pine voles seems to support the hypothesis of predation avoidance. The most common predators of these small rodents are mainly active during bright nights, when visibility is highest, forcing voles to be more active aboveground during daylight hours as well as in the darkest nights. Efficient monitoring and trapping programmes should therefore take place in daylight hours to increase capture success and to reduce stress levels of the captured animals.

This study presents a novel torque-controlled hand exoskeleton, named HandeXos-gamma, which uses a series-elastic actuator (SEA)-based architecture to allow a compliant actuation of the hand joints, and an intention decoding algorithm that combines surface electromyography (sEMG) signals with kinematic information from the exoskeleton's encoders. The algorithm was developed offline using data acquired from healthy subjects who performed two grasping movements (lateral and power grasp) under different operating conditions while wearing the exoskeleton. Performance was evaluated for three variants of the algorithm: one using sEMG signals only, another using kinematic data only, and the last combining sEMG and kinematic data. Results indicated that the combination of the two modalities conferred greater algorithm performance than sEMG alone, thus supporting a new paradigm for adaptive robotic hand rehabilitation.

Wearable robotic devices require sensors and algorithms that can recognize the user state in real-time, in order to provide synergistic action with the body. For devices intended for locomotion-related applications, shoe-embedded sensors are a common and convenient choice, potentially advantageous for performing gait assessment in real-world environments. In this work, we present the development of a pair of pressure-sensitive insoles based on optoelectronic sensors for the real-time estimation of temporal gait parameters. The new design makes use of a simplified sensor configuration that preserves the time accuracy of gait event detection relative to previous prototypes. The system has been assessed relatively to a commercial force plate recording the vertical component of the ground reaction force (vGRF) and the coordinate of the center of pressure along the so-called progression or antero-posterior plane (CoPAP) in ten healthy participants during ground-level walking at two speeds. The insoles showed overall median absolute errors (MAE) of 0.06 (0.02) s and 0.04 (0.02) s for heel-strike and toe-off recognition, respectively. Moreover, they enabled reasonably accurate estimations of the stance phase duration (2.02 (2.03) % error) and CoPAP profiles (Pearson correlation coefficient with force platform &rho, CoP = 0.96 (0.02)), whereas the correlation with vGRF measured by the force plate was lower than that obtained with the previous prototype (&rho, vGRF = 0.47 (0.20)). These results confirm the suitability of the insoles for online sensing purposes such as timely gait phase estimation and discrete event recognition.

Savi’s pine vole,Microtus savii, is the most widespread Italian vole species, an important rodent pest in agriculture and yet one of the least studied species. One of the reasons for this gap in knowledge is that members of this species are quite difficult to capture with standard trapping procedures, being fossorial and rarely active aboveground. For this reason, we developed a protocol that maximizes trapping success. This method requires the identification of active tunnel holes and the placement of traps directly in front of the exits. We also compared capture and recapture rates of Savi’s pine voles in three different trap types: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), Longworth and Ugglan. If properly equipped with food and nesting material, INRA, Longworth and Ugglan traps showed similar capture rates, but the recapture rate of Ugglan traps was the highest of the three kinds of traps. These results, in combination with the species’ fossorial and social habits, lead us to conclude that Ugglan traps are the best suited for studies on Savi’s pine voles. Our results may have implications for planning and implementing management strategies based on traps rather than rodenticides, as well as field studies on other fossorial small mammals.

Vantage point counts (VPCs) are adopted to estimate the densities of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) populations for harvest management. Thus, counts should be performed only within blocks without woodlands where it is possible to relate counts to block sizes. Alternatively, if VPCs are simply carried out on all blocks in a study region, the expectations of total counts could be used as relative abundance indices. In most cases, surveying all blocks is too demanding because of the number of observers required, time, and organization. Therefore, VPCs are performed only on a portion of the blocks, and relative abundance indices are estimated from these counts. If the blocks are selected by means of probabilistic sampling schemes, then statistically sound estimators of total count expectations can be adopted. Therefore, the estimation of the sampling errors, construction of confidence intervals, and assessment of change are possible, together with a post hoc power analysis for evaluating the probability of failing to detect a change in the expectations. Our objective in this study is to consider sampling strategies that allow the performance of all these statistical steps and to check the performance of these strategies on a hunting district located in Tuscany, Italy, in which all the blocks were surveyed in 2013 and 2014. The results provide evidence of the imprecision of the estimators. Even for large sampling fractions of 40–50%, the relative standard errors never decreased below 20%, and the corresponding powers in detecting a change of 30% at a level α=0.05 were

The study of animal diet and feeding behaviour is a fundamental tool for the illustration of the ecological role of species in the ecosystem. However, size and quality of food intake samples make it hard for researchers to describe the diet composition of many small species. In our study, we exploited genomic tools for the analysis of the diet composition of the Savi’s pine vole (Microtus savii) using DNA barcoding and qPCR techniques for the identification of ingested plant species retrieved from stomach contents. In contrast with previous studies, we found that, despite being a fossorial species, the Savi’s pine vole is a selective feeder that undergoes intense superficial activity in search for food. In addition, our study shows that with a a priori knowledge of the candidate plant species included in animal diet, qPCR is a powerful tool to assess presence/absence, frequency of occurrence and electivity of ingested species. We conclude that this approach offers new opportunities to implement the analysis of food selection in small animals, thereby revealing a detailed picture of plant-animal interactions.

Lower limb prosthesis performance determines the quality of life of amputee patients. Such performance will benefit from a feedback informing the patient about the gait phase and the overall condition of the foot. This study reports the design and validation of a wearable haptic feedback system conceived to assist lower-limb amputees in various locomotion scenarios. Three vibrating motors were attached to a belt in textile to provide information about the foot-ground contact, by remapping the variables detected under the foot, on the waist of the user. Multiple activation patterns were implemented and compared in a pilot study involving one able-bodied subject, during walking, ascending and descending stairs. A novel assessment protocol was proposed to benchmark the different stimulation patterns. The protocol resulted to be a viable method for quicker development and testing of new strategies.

Savi's pine vole (Microtus savii) is a rodent species of the Cricetidae family, inhabiting southern European agroecosystems. It is considered to be the main cause of rodent-attributed damage in Italy. To achieve an effective management, detailed knowledge of this species is needed. However, the available information about this species is fragmentary and incomplete. In this paper, the existing knowledge of Savi's pine vole taxonomy, reproduction, population dynamics, habitat and food preferences is reviewed in order to organise available information and identify priority areas of future research. Some of the changes in farming practices that have occurred in recent decades may have increased the impact of Savi's pine vole populations in crop fields. To manage this pest species effectively, an integrated strategy is recommended (involving habitat management, trapping and, when appropriate, the use of rodenticides). The apparent lack of cyclical population outbreaks and the relatively small litter size and long gestation and interpartum period of this species suggest that it could be more manageable than other vole species, while its strict herbivorous diet, stable population size in open habitats and wide distribution seem to indicate it as an ideal model species for risk assessment studies.

The Savi's pine vole, Microtus savii is an Italian species living in grasslands, both natural and anthropogenic (i.e. agroecosystems) where it is generally considered a pest because it may damage crops and orchards. As for most rodent pests, the extent of the damage might depend on population density and temporal food availability (e.g. Brown et al. 2007, Jacob & Tkadlec 2010). However, data on demographic parameters are not available, making ecologically-based management strategies difficult to plan. Therefore, we conducted a study on Savi's pine vole demography for one year in two study areas in central Italy using capture-mark-recapture method. Density values ranged from 3 to 32 ind./ha, the highest population densities occurred in October, while the lowest occurred in February-April in both study areas. Turnover rates of both populations were very high, with time of residency usually no longer than two months. Juveniles' survival was constant in both study areas, but it differed between the two populations regarding adults. The two populations showed similar demographic trends along the year with relatively small intra-annual fluctuations. The breeding season covered the whole year in both areas. The results here presented contribute to add meaningful information about this poorly known species, and could be useful to plan population control strategies for this rodent in agroecosystems.

Savi's pine vole (Microtus savii) is a rodent species of the Cricetidae family, inhabiting southern European agroecosystems. It is considered to be the main cause of rodent-attributed damage in Italy. To achieve an effective management, detailed knowledge of this species is needed. However, the available information about this species is fragmentary and incomplete. In this paper, the existing knowledge of Savi's pine vole taxonomy, reproduction, population dynamics, habitat and food preferences is reviewed in order to organise available information and identify priority areas of future research. Some of the changes in farming practices that have occurred in recent decades may have increased the impact of Savi's pine vole populations in crop fields. To manage this pest species effectively, an integrated strategy is recommended (involving habitat management, trapping and, when appropriate, the use of rodenticides). The apparent lack of cyclical population outbreaks and the relatively small litter size and long gestation and interpartum period of this species suggest that it could be more manageable than other vole species, while its strict herbivorous diet, stable population size in open habitats and wide distribution seem to indicate it as an ideal model species for risk assessment studies.

Nowadays, lower-limb prostheses are reaching real-world usability especially on ground-level walking. However, some key tasks such as stair walking are still quite demanding. Providing haptic feedback about the foot placement on the steps might reduce the cognitive load of the task, compensating for increased dependency on vision and lessen the risk of falling. Experiments on intact subjects can be useful to define the feedback strategies prior to clinical trials, but effective methods to assess the efficacy of the strategies are few and usually rely on the emulation of the disability condition. The present study reports on the design and testing of a wearable haptic feedback system in a protocol involving intact subjects to assess candidate strategies to be adopted in clinical trials. The system integrated a sensorized insole wirelessly connected to a textile waist belt equipped with three vibrating motors. Three stimulation strategies for mapping the insole pressure data to vibrotactile feedback were implemented and compared in terms of intuitiveness and comfort perceived during level and stair walking. The strategies were ranked using a relative rating approach, which highlighted the differences between them and suggested guidelines for their improvement. The feedback evaluation procedure proposed could facilitate the selection and improvement of haptic feedback strategies prior to clinical testing.