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The field of mechatronic/robotic wearable exoskeletons, specifically those designated for assistance/rehabilitation in severe neuro-/locomotor disabling conditions in the lower limbs, is considered to have a great potential for radically changing the harsh condition of wheelchairs users, by restoring their defining human traits: bipedal, vertical, stance and gait. But even the most advanced such complex devices, are not yet effectively able to largely replace the wheelchairs. Therefore, until the overall complete wheelchairs’ substitutes, will meet, in this purpose, all the necessary related requirements, we have determined, and accordingly, designed – from a double perspective: of professionals and of (a) consumer – a series of necessary and rather accessible/feasible, consistent: mechanical and electro-mechanical improvements, to the current common type of wheelchairs, in order to improve the global functioning, autonomy and consequently, the quality of life in the needing people, with severe mobility restraints. These, for now, narratively innovative concepts and specifically designed, practical/technological-constructive solutions, target 10 main kinds of beneficial outcomes, i.e. a decalogue and their derivatives to be expected (most of them previously imagined by us but not completely designed until now, two of them already achieved but which need updating and other four entirely new), that could result in an “all-in-one” product paradigm which, to our knowledge, is not available at present. This model of wheelchair we propose is, at the same time, modular, so a certain consumer can purchase/ be offered only his/her own case-specific needed optimization components of it

Background. Balneotherapy is a stimulation - adaptation treatment method applied in the forms of bathing, drinking, and inhalation cures performed with natural therapeutic factors, a method which is acting in three main ways: thermally, mechanically, and chemically. Mud or peloids are natural therapeutic factors formed by natural processes under the influence of biological and geological phenomena, which in a finely dissolved state and mixed with water (mud) are used in medical practice in the form of baths or local procedures. Objective. This systematic review aims to rigorously select related articles and identify within their content, the main possible uses of therapeutic mud and physiological mechanisms, to see the main region of scientific interest for pelotherapy, and to discuss the value of mud therapy in rehabilitation medicine. Methods. The working method is based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. We searched for open-access articles published in English, between January 2015 and December 2020, from the following databases: Cochrane, Elsevier, NCBI/PubMed, NCBI/PMC, PEDro, and ISI Web of Knowledge/Science (the latter was also used to identify ISI indexed articles). The contextually searched syntax used was ”Pelotherapy/Peloidotherapy/Mud-therapy/ /Fango-therapy AND Rehabilitation”. The selected articles were analyzed in detail regarding pathologies addressed by mud therapy and country scientific relevance for this therapeutic method. The meta-analysis proceeded was designated to estimate the prevalence of various pathologies in the use of mud therapy. Results. Our search identified, first, 394 articles. Based on the successive filtering stages and, respectively, on the classification criteria of the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro), we finally identified/retained and analyzed 68 articles. Although, in principle, a rigorous method – and we have followed the PRISMA type paradigm – there still might be some missing works of our related article selection. On the other hand, to augment/ consolidate our documentation base, we have used also 40 papers freely found in the literature, and even – aiming, too, at an as exhaustive knowledge underpinning as possible – derogatively, we have also considered some articles which, probably being very new, couldn't yet have reached the PEDro threshold score we have settled. Conclusions. This paper overviews the current state-of-the-art knowledge in the approach of peloidotherapy in rehabilitation, with a focal point on the therapeutic properties of peloids. Keywords: mud-therapy, pelotherapy, peloidotherapy, fango therapy, rehabilitation, balneotherapy, natural therapeutic factors

BACKGROUND: Cerebral circulation delivers the blood flow to the brain through a dedicated network of sanguine vessels. A healthy human brain can regulate cerebral blood flow (CBF) according to any physiological or pathological challenges. The brain is protected by its self-regulatory mechanisms, which are dependent on neuronal and support cellular populations, including endothelial ones, as well as metabolic, and even myogenic factors. OBJECTIVES: Accumulating data suggest that “non-pharmacological” approaches might provide new opportunities for stroke therapy, such as electro-/acupuncture, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, hypothermia/cooling, photobiomodulation, therapeutic gases, transcranial direct current stimulations, or transcranial magnetic stimulations. We reviewed the recent data on the mechanisms and clinical implications of these non-pharmaceutical treatments. METHODS: To present the state-of-the-art for currently available non-invasive, non-pharmacological-related interventions in acute ischemic stroke, we accomplished this synthetic and systematic literature review based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Principles Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). RESULTS: The initial number of obtained articles was 313. After fulfilling the five steps in the filtering/selection methodology, 54 fully eligible papers were selected for synthetic review. We enhanced our documentation with other bibliographic resources connected to our subject, identified in the literature within a non-standardized search, to fill the knowledge gaps. Fifteen clinical trials were also identified. DISCUSSION: Non-invasive, non-pharmacological therapeutic/rehabilitative interventions for acute ischemic stroke are mainly holistic therapies. Therefore, most of them are not yet routinely used in clinical practice, despite some possible beneficial effects, which have yet to be supplementarily proven in more related studies. Moreover, few of the identified clinical trials are already completed and most do not have final results. CONCLUSIONS: This review synthesizes the current findings on acute ischemic stroke therapeutic/rehabilitative interventions, described as non-invasive and non-pharmacological.

Hypoxia represents the temporary or longer-term decrease or deprivation of oxygen in organs, tissues, and cells after oxygen supply drops or its excessive consumption. Hypoxia can be (para)-physiological—adaptive—or pathological. Thereby, the mechanisms of hypoxia have many implications, such as in adaptive processes of normal cells, but to the survival of neoplastic ones, too. Ischemia differs from hypoxia as it means a transient or permanent interruption or reduction of the blood supply in a given region or tissue and consequently a poor provision with oxygen and energetic substratum-inflammation and oxidative stress damages generating factors. Considering the implications of hypoxia on nerve tissue cells that go through different ischemic processes, in this paper, we will detail the molecular mechanisms by which such structures feel and adapt to hypoxia. We will present the hypoxic mechanisms and changes in the CNS. Also, we aimed to evaluate acute, subacute, and chronic central nervous hypoxic-ischemic changes, hoping to understand better and systematize some neuro-muscular recovery methods necessary to regain individual independence. To establish the link between CNS hypoxia, ischemic-lesional mechanisms, and neuro-motor and related recovery, we performed a systematic literature review following the” Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA”) filtering method by interrogating five international medical renown databases, using, contextually, specific keywords combinations/”syntaxes”, with supplementation of the afferent documentation through an amount of freely discovered, also contributive, bibliographic resources. As a result, 45 papers were eligible according to the PRISMA-inspired selection approach, thus covering information on both: intimate/molecular path-physiological specific mechanisms and, respectively, consequent clinical conditions. Such a systematic process is meant to help us construct an article structure skeleton giving a primary objective input about the assembly of the literature background to be approached, summarised, and synthesized. The afferent contextual search (by keywords combination/syntaxes) we have fulfilled considerably reduced the number of obtained articles. We consider this systematic literature review is warranted as hypoxia’s mechanisms have opened new perspectives for understanding ischemic changes in the CNS neuraxis tissue/cells, starting at the intracellular level and continuing with experimental research to recover the consequent clinical-functional deficits better.

Considering its marked life-threatening and (not seldom: severe and/or permanent) disabling, potential, plus the overall medico-psycho-socio-economic tough burden it represents for the affected persons, their families and the community, the cerebrovascular accident (CVA)-including with the, by far more frequent, ischemic type-is subject to considerable scientific research efforts that aim (if possible) at eliminating the stroke induced lesions, and consist, as well, in ambitious-but still poorly transferable into medical practice-goals such as brain neuroregeneration and/or repair, within related corollary/upshot of neurorestoration. We have conducted, in this respect, a systematic and synthetic literature review, following the "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)" concept. Accordingly, we have interrogated five internationally renowned medical data bases: Elsevier, NCBI/PubMed, NCBI/PMC, PEDro, and ISI Web of Knowledge/Science (the last one to check whether the initially identified articles are published in ISI indexed journals), based on a large (details in the body text) number of most appropriate, to our knowledge, key word combinations/"syntaxes"-used contextually-and subsequently fulfilling the related, on five steps, filtering/selection methodology. We have thereby selected 114 fully eligible (of which contributive: 83-see further) papers; at the same time, additionally, we have enhanced our documentation-basically, but not exclusively, for the introductive part of this work (see further)-with bibliographic resources, overall connected to our subject, identified in the literature within a non-standardized search. It appears that the opportunity window for morph-functional recovery after stroke is larger than previously thought, actually being considered that brain neurorestoration/repair could occur, and therefore be expected, in later stages than in earlier ones, although, in this context, the number of cases possibly benefitting (for instance after physical and/or cognitive rehabilitation-including with magnetic or direct current transcranial stimulation) is quite small and with more or less conflicting, related outcomes, in the literature. Moreover, applying especially high intense, solicitating, rehabilitation interventions, in early stages post (including ischemic) stroke could even worsen the functional evolution. Accordingly, for clarifications and validation of more unitary points of view, continuing and boosting research efforts in this complex, interdisciplinary domain, is necessary. Until finding (if ever) effective modalities to cure the lesions of the central nervous system (CNS)-including post ischemic stroke-it is reasonable and recommendable-based on rigorous methodologies-the avail of combined ways: physiatric, pharmacologic, possibly also bio-technologic. On a different note, but however connected to our subject: periodic related systematic, synthetic literature reviews reappraisals are warranted and welcome.

We found differences related to the neuro-functional deficiency and clinical progress, among non-consumers and chronic consumers of ethanol, with recent traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). We present a synthesis of related data on lesion mechanisms in post-traumatic myelogenous disorders, namely some of the alcohols and their actions on the nervous system, with details on the influences exerted, in such afflictions, by the chronic consumption of ethanol. The subject is not frequently approached – according to a literature review with systematic elements, which we have done before – thus constituting a niche that deserves to be further explored. The applicative component of the article highlights statistical data resulted from a retrospective study regarding the specialized casuistry from the Neuromuscular Recovery Clinic of the “Bagdasar Arseni” Emergency Clinical Hospital, following the comparative analysis of two groups of patients with recent SCI: non-consumers – the control group (n=780) – and chronic ethanol consumers – the study group (n=225) – with the addition of a prospective pilot component. Data processing has been achieved with SPSS 24. The American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) mean motor scores differ significantly (tests: Mann-Whitney and t) between the control and study group in favor of the second, both at admission (p

Unknowingly we surround ourselves with code. Our technological world revolves around it and its quality impacts us. 85 billion USD are lost annually worldwide because of our lack of interest in improving the way we write code. Our educational institutions currently do not address this issue proportional to its impact. This paper describes a complete technical course on code quality as a straightforward solution. Practical work, periodic examinations and reviews will be executed in compliance with modern teaching techniques, simulating a workplace environment.

The paper treats the control problem of a class of hyperbolic PDE with nonlinear components by using the three-dimensional fuzzy control since the spatial nature of a distributed parameter system requires an extension of the traditional fuzzy set by adding the third coordinate for spatial information. A fuzzy transform is proposed in order to obtain a spatial compression of the distributed model, and for this reason, the linguistic expression is reformulated by the compression of the spatial information, in terms of the new fuzzy sets. The effect of this spatial compression on the 3D fuzzy components, on the premise and consequence parts, is presented and discussed. A Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy mechanism that operates on the spatial compressed variables is proposed. The reconstruction of variables is obtained as a spatial decompression by the inverse F-transform. The control quality is analysed, and the conditions that ensure the algorithm convergence are determined. The proposed method is validated by numerical simulations. The behaviour of system is examined, and numerical results illustrate the control algorithms.

The Electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG) is a semi-cyclic, rhythmically, and synchronous signal with a cardiac function through the passive sensory apparatus in which the apparatus is performing as generator of bioelectric signal mimicking the function of the heart. The EKG signals are inherently weak, and noisy signals built of many variable components due to many environmental factors in which it may include but is not limited to changes in body temperature, body movement, and line frequency 50/60 Hz. The ECG signal cannot be conditioned, amplified, nor reproduced directly and therefore, digital filtering techniques with adjustable window are used in this paper. The paper analyses several models of Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filters of low-pass and high-pass and their aspects in term of response time, gain, and harmonic distortion, and rejection to determine the best band-pass filtering model to reproduce an ECG signal that closely resembles the actual Heart function of a patient. A hybrid filtering model is proposed and experimentally tested. Mean square error (MSE) is used to estimate a signal goodness. MATLAB environment has been used for the experimental part to simulate the signals. This research work has been considered in the context of a larger project that consists of a complex wearable health monitoring system comprising biosensors, wireless communication modules and links, control and processing units, medical shields, wearable materials and advanced algorithms used for decision making and data extracting. The proposed filtering technique is useful in the medical data preprocessing phase.

Prevalence of neurocognitive diseases in adult patients demands the use of wearable devices to transform the future of mental health. Recent development in wearable technology proclaimed its use in diagnosis, rehabilitation, assessment, and monitoring. This systematic review presents the state of the art of wearables used by Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients or the patients who are going through a neurocognitive disorder. This article is based on PRISMA guidelines, and the literature is searched between January 2009 to January 2020 analyzing four databases: PubMed, IEEE Xplorer, Elsevier, and ISI Web of Science. For further validity of articles, a new PEDro-inspired technique is implemented. In PEDro, five statistical indicators were set to classify relevant articles and later the citations were also considered to make strong assessment of relevant articles. This led to 46 articles that met inclusion criteria. Based on them, this systematic review examines different types of wearable devices, essential in improving early diagnose and monitoring, emphasizing their role in improving the quality of life, differentiating the various fitness and gait wearable-based exercises and their impact on the regression of disease and on the motor diagnosis tests and finally addressing the available wearable insoles and their role in rehabilitation. The research findings proved that sensor based wearable devices, and specially instrumented insoles, help not only in monitoring and diagnosis but also in tracking numerous exercises and their positive impact towards the improvement of quality of life among different Parkinson and neurocognitive patients.

Ubiquitous computing for innovative health-care systems, services and applications became more and more connected to Cloud systems and the applications required a scalable, reliable and secure environments, the containerized environments representing suitable solutions. In this paper we deal with the advantage of multi-agent systems and IoT for ehealth applications in scalable platforms. We investigated how Cloud-based model can be adopted. Thus, an architecture was designed for a medical data based intelligent system that processes the collected data and takes the right decisions based on them. This work also presents a drill down into the mobile client architecture focusing on the implementation of some of the simple periodic agents and combining them into complex periodic agents. The pulse-oximetry sensors were considered in this research. In this context, a heart rate simple periodic agent and a SpO2 simple periodic agent were developed. Our model considers that the data measured by the sensors will be used to monitor health status of a patient in real time or to discover threshold values for the data that can be further careful be analyzed and interpreted as a medical pre-diagnosis.

The overall goal of a complex wearable healthcare monitoring system (WHMS) is to support design and development a high impact personalized ICT healthcare services based on measurements of health state acquired by sensors capturing everyday physical, cognitive and social activities of that will be fed into the risk prediction model to perform personal profiling and identify deviations from the expected baseline of each specific user groups. In this paper, a robust comparison of different solutions of architectures dedicated to Wearable Health Monitoring Systems (WHMS) based on microcontrollers and FPGAs are presented and analyzed. It is also proposed a new architecture that uses all the advantages of its components. An embedded microcontroller will facilitate the communication. An eHealth specialized platform like MySignals Hardware Development Platform V2.0 will be used for recording and analyzing the data coming from the medical biosensors. For a critical analyze of the current state of the art, a set of relevant research papers will be reviewed.

This paper presents some results of a research work that aims to use Brain - Computer Interfaces to facilitate rehabilitation training of a patient who has lost motor functions. The subject must perform motor imagery tasks that will be transmitted to a computer application. The paper is also focused on the study of classification algorithms that can be optimal candidates for signals classification obtained in order to identify right and left hand movement. Two types of neural networks-based classifiers are used and tested in order to compare the results - Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) and Radial Basis Function (RBF), two types of linear classifiers – Linear Discriminant Analysis and Support Vector Machine and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN).

The paper presents the design of an intelligent haptic robotic glove (IHRG) model for the rehabilitation of the patients that have been diagnosed with a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). Total loss or loss of range of motion, decreased reaction times and disordered movement organization create deficits in motor control, which affect the patient's independent living. The proposed approach aims to improve the recovery programs using a set of predefined rehabilitation exercises. They will work together and, according to the hand movement, the progress will be encountered when the patient uses more his own force and less the controlled glove. The final goal was the integration of the haptic robotic glove with Shadow Dexterous Hand and ROS (Robot Operating System). In this way the glove movements made by a patient wearing it, will be found in the virtual reality simulator.

In the first part, the paper describes the Romanian e-Health service, the modalities of its operation in terms of patients medical data usage. The usage of medical data is very important, both administrative or medical point of view. Medically they have the ability to increase the efficiency of decision-making for all health care providers, both in the private and in the public area. It presents how a medical document model can be used nationwide and internationally and how it can facilitate the interoperability of medical data. In order to do that, a medical questionnaire is proposed (a model presentation of health data in a systematic and uniform way) that generates prerequisites standardization documents which represents in fact the patient’s medical history and disease description. Once the questionnaire has been defined (which varies depending on existing medical specialties), the corresponding XML schema is generated that makes computer-computer interaction available.

Autonomous manipulation is one the the most complex fields of humanoid robotics research, because it involves several domains such as: object recognition, object tracking, manipulator positioning, grasping, etc. In this paper a tactile controller based on fuzzy logic is proposed, capable of complex inhand manipulation tasks. This fuzzy logic approach assures finger motion smoothness by dealing with sensor nonlinearities and uncertainties, thus reducing the need of knowing the object dimensions or exact position in relation to the robot hand.

One of the most important human capabilities is the tactile sensing that allows advanced in hand manipulation for several objects or tasks. In the robot world, object manipulation without tactile sensing is relying only on visual detection, thus introducing large error margins. This paper presents several solutions for point of contact detection and normal force estimation by using a biomimetical tactile sensor mounted on a robot hand. Even if this paper focuses on the data generated by using a specific sensor, the results and implemented methods can be applied to a wide range of tactile sensors.

The article presents a solution for the teleoperation of a robot hand and arm designed as a complex system that captures human motion and controls the robot into mimicking the human actions. This hybrid system allows the robot execution to be guided by human actions, therefore decreasing the planning complexity and allowing the robot to perform more complex movements and to use the human capacity of adapting to unexpected situations.

Tactile sensing plays an important role in robot hand manipulation. This papers presents an analysis of the raw values produced by a biomimetic tactile sensor and the proposed solution organized in a pipeline processing structure to overcome the signal's noncompliances and issues for further processing. Even if this paper focuses on the data generated by the SynTouch BioTac sensor, the results and implemented modules can be applied to a wide range of tactile sensors.

This paper presents a distributed solution of the synchronization of Business Intelligence (BI) Systems via networking services. The main problem addressed by the proposed project is to create a common solution that allows automatically redeploying of business intelligence applications among different servers located in the Internet. A case study by using the Microsoft BizTalk Server as a Business Intelligence system is presented included in a research project called PrO Processor. The research came as a necessity because of the lack of support for remote deployment of applications via Internet. Our solution overcomes this issue and presents the synchronization architecture capable of transporting, installing and starting BI applications, orchestrations and ports to any number of BI servers in the Internet.

This paper presents a proper solution for a medium enterprise or public institution that enables easier management of the digital documents library and eases the common document workflows. The main problem addressed by the proposed project is the complexity of document workflows in public administration. Documents that need to be filled out and signed are always around us and often can cause problems and delays when poorly managed. With its characteristics, our solution eliminates all the inconvenient of the document workflows helped by the document library and workflows, while keeping the security part, now represented by hand signatures with the implementation of the digital signatures. The main benefit it brings to the client is that it automates the signing and approval process to any kind of document it uses inside or outside the company. The signature system allows signing on multiple levels (counter-signatures) and multiple signatures per level (co-signatures) for perfectly mimicking a plain document.