Individuals with upper limb motor deficits due to neurological conditions, such as stroke and traumatic brain injury, may exhibit hypertonia and spasticity, which makes it difficult for these individuals to open their hand. The Hand Orthosis with Powered Extension (HOPE) Hand was created in 2018. The performance of the HOPE Hand was evaluated by conducting a Box and Blocks test with an impaired subject. Improvements were identified and the HOPE Hand was mechanically redesigned to increase the functionality in performing grasps. The original motor configuration was reorganized to include active thumb flexion and extension, as well as thumb abduction/adduction. An Electromyography (EMG) study was conducted on 19 individuals (10 healthy, 9 impaired) to evaluate the viability of EMG device control for the specified user group. EMG control, voice control, and manual control were implemented with the HOPE Hand 2.0 and the exoskeleton system was tested for usability during a second Box and Blocks test.

My thesis covers the design and fabrication of novel humanoid robotic eyes and the process of interfacing them with the industry robot, Baxter. The mechanism can reach a maximum saccade velocity comparable to that of human eyes. Unlike current robotic eye designs, these eyes have independent left-right and up-down gaze movements achieved using a servo and DC motor, respectively. A potentiometer and rotary encoder enable closed-loop control. An Arduino board and motor driver control the assembly. The motor requires a 12V power source, and all other components are powered through the Arduino from a PC. Hand-eye coordination research influenced how the eyes were programmed to move relative to Baxter’s grippers. Different modes were coded to adjust eye movement based on the durability of what Baxter is handling. Tests were performed on a component level as well as on the full assembly to prove functionality. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

by Cecilia Li Tsang Wai Ping. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [175-185]). / ABSTRACT / AKNOWLEDGEMENTS / Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- INTRODUCTION / Chapter 1.1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- AIMS OF STUDY --- p.3 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS / Chapter 2.1 --- DEFINITION --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2 --- PREVALENCE --- p.4 / Chapter 2.3 --- AETIOLOGY --- p.4 / Chapter 2.4 --- PATHOLOGY --- p.5 / Chapter 2.5 --- CLINICAL FEATURES OF RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS IN HAND --- p.5 / Chapter 2.6 --- CRITERIA FOR DIAGNOSIS OF RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS --- p.7 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- HAND DEFORMITIES IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS / Chapter 3.1 --- THE HAND --- p.9 / Chapter 3.2 --- THE RHEUMATOID HAND --- p.13 / Chapter 3.4 --- CAUSES OF FLEXION CONTRACTURE AT THE PROXIMAL INTERPHALANEAL JOINT --- p.16 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- SPLINTING FOR THE RHEUMATOID HAND / Chapter 4.1 --- SPLINTING IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS --- p.19 / Chapter 4.2 --- SPLINTING FLEXION CONTRACTURES AT THE PROXIMAL INTERPHALANGEAL (PIP) JOINTS --- p.24 / Chapter 4.3 --- THE MECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF SPLINT DESIGN --- p.32 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE --- HAND ASSESSMENT IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS / Chapter 5.1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.41 / Chapter 5.2 --- A REVIEW OF THE STANDARDISED HAND FUNCTION ASSESSMENT --- p.42 / Chapter 5.3 --- MEASUREMENT OF GRIP STRENGTHS --- p.48 / Chapter 5.4 --- MEASUREMENT OF ACTIVE RANGE OF MOTION OF FINGER JOINTS --- p.52 / Chapter CHAPTER SIX --- DEVELOPMENT OF HAND EVALUATION SYSTEM in RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS / Chapter 6.1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.56 / Chapter 6.2 --- AIMS OF STUDY --- p.56 / Chapter 6.3 --- DEVELOPMENT OF THE HAND EVALUATION SYSTEM --- p.57 / Chapter 6.4 --- A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HAND GRIP ASSESSMENT TOOLS: THE JAMAR DYNAMOMETER AND THE REC PROTOTYPE GRIP ANALYSER --- p.58 / Chapter 6.5 --- A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE JEBSEN HAND FUNCTION TEST IN HONG KONG --- p.67 / Chapter 6.6 --- ASSESSMENT OF FUNCTIONAL RANGE OF MOTION --- p.77 / Chapter 6.7 --- CONCLUSION --- p.83 / Chapter CHAPTER SEVEN --- THE MAIN STUDY / Chapter 7.1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.85 / Chapter 7.2 --- RESEARCH DESIGN --- p.85 / Chapter 7.3 --- DEFINITION OF VARIABLES --- p.86 / Chapter 7.4 --- SUBJECT SELECTION --- p.89 / Chapter 7.5 --- EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES --- p.89 / Chapter 7.6 --- PILOT STUDY --- p.91 / Chapter 7.7 --- STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF DATA --- p.94 / Chapter CHAPTER EIGHT --- RESULTS / Chapter 8.1 --- RESULTS --- p.95 / Chapter 8.1.1 --- Age distribution --- p.96 / Chapter 8.1.2 --- Occupation --- p.98 / Chapter 8.1.3 --- Functional class --- p.98 / Chapter 8.1.4 --- Group characteristics --- p.99 / Chapter 8.1.5 --- Comparison of the effect of corrective splints on hand functions of clients --- p.100 / Chapter 8.1.6 --- Comparison of the effect of two types of corrective splintage on hand functions of clients --- p.103 / Chapter 8.2 --- SUMMARY --- p.113 / Chapter 8.2.1 --- Summary of findings --- p.113 / Chapter 8.2.2 --- Compliance and complication of the splint intervention programme --- p.114 / Chapter CHAPTER NINE --- DISCUSSION / Chapter 9.1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.116 / Chapter 9.2 --- COMMENTS ON THE HAND EVALUATION PROTOCOL … --- p.117 / Chapter 9.3 --- DISCUSSIONS OF THE RESULTS OF THE PILOT STUDY --- p.121 / Chapter 9.4 --- DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS OF THE MAIN STUDY --- p.125 / Chapter 9.5 --- IMPLICATION OF STUDY INTO OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY PRACTICE --- p.130 / Chapter 9.6 --- LIMITATION OF THE STUDY --- p.131 / Chapter 9.7 --- SUMMARY --- p.132 / Chapter CHAPTER TEN --- CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS / Chapter 10.1 --- CONCLUSION --- p.134 / Chapter 10.2 --- RECOMMENDATIONS --- p.138 / Chapter 10.3 --- SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH --- p.139 / APPENDICES / REFERENCES

This thesis investigates whether the use of hand-held technology affects motivation and learning in science. An innovative mixed methods approach was used to provide new insights into an emerging area of research. First, two pilot observational studies were conducted, which aimed to establish how a school currently uses hand held dataloggers, and gain further insight into how learners respond to this technology. This was followed by a primarily quantitative experiment that was concerned with the role of data ownership and the impact of ‘seams’ on the transformation process of the collected data. The results indicated that a hands-on experience increased confidence among students in explaining their own data, as opposed to data collected by someone else. A third study was designed to compare how student motivation and learning were affected when carrying out the same inquiry task either with or without the support of dataloggers. The results revealed no difference in accuracy or motivation for learning. The final, fourth, study was a longitudinal study designed in collaboration with a secondary science teacher, comparing three conditions: the inclusion of cameras to support student reflection, the inclusion of both cameras and the use of dataloggers to support teaching, and a control condition where the lessons were not changed. This study found that inclusion of dataloggers into modules led to increased assessment scores, while the use of cameras indicated that students are adept at taking relevant photos, and did not suffer from an extensive novelty effect. The results highlighted the importance of using a range of methods and tools for teaching students. The thesis concludes with recommendations and future research ideas, including exploring how data is visualised and the role of physical context. Of key importance is that future work is conducted in collaboration with educators in the wild.

Second-hand smoke exposure (SHSe) causes significant morbidity and mortality in children. A large proportion of children with smoking parents do not live in smoke-free homes, however, to date, little is known about the prevalence of partial smoking restrictions and their efficacy in reducing children’s SHSe. Given the lack of convincing evidence on how to achieve further reductions in children’s SHSe in the home, the identification of the modifiable factors associated with childhood SHSe is imperative to reduce the burden of disease resulting from childhood SHSe. Analysis of the Omnibus Survey (OS) revealed that the prevalence of smoke-free homes in England did not increase significantly between 2006 and 2008. Only 30% of smokers reported a smoke-free home in 2008. However, during the same time period, the proportion of smokers (who did not have a smoke-free home) reporting that they did not smoke when in the same room as a child increased significantly from 62.5% to 74.8%. Using the Health Survey for England, biologically validated self-reported measures of child SHSe revealed that in 2008 and 2009 approximately 50% of children living with a smoking parent were not exposed to SHSe in the home (0.30ng/ml, 95% confidence interval 0.27-0.32ng/ml). Of the 50% of children who remained exposed inside the home, 29% had a parent that smoked in one room only in the home. These children had significantly lower cotinine concentrations (1.13ng/ml, 95% CI 1.05-1.22) than the 21% of children with smoking parents who smoked in 2 or more rooms in the home (2.36ng/ml, 95% CI 2.08-2.68ng/ml). Although smoking in one room equates to lower risk it does not equate to no risk and so interventions are required to change indoor smoking to outdoor smoking. The OS data found that good knowledge of SHS-related illnesses was predictive of both full and partial smoking restrictions in the home. Increases in the proportion of respondents with good knowledge occurred during 2003-2006, a period when frequent anti-SHS mass media campaigns were aired. A case-study evaluation of a brief mass media campaign in the North West and North East of England, which aimed to move smoking parents to smoke outside, was found to have no statistically significant effect on home smoking behaviour in the short term, however knowledge that SHS caused both heart attack and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome increased in this region following the campaign whilst simultaneous decreases were found in the rest of England. Following the identification of those children most exposed to SHS, and the modifiable factors associated with this exposure, this thesis suggests that a comprehensive multi-level approach to tobacco control policy, which includes emotive media campaigns which include information on SHS-related illnesses, will contribute to the continued reduction of childhood SHSe.

With the proliferation of touch screens, sketching input has become popular among many software products. This phenomenon has stimulated a new round of boom in free-hand sketch research, covering topics like sketch recognition, sketch-based image retrieval, sketch synthesis and sketch segmentation. Comparing to previous sketch works, the newly proposed works are generally employing more complicated sketches and sketches in much larger quantity, thanks to the advancements in hardware. This thesis thus demonstrates some new works on free-hand sketches, presenting novel thoughts on aforementioned topics. On sketch recognition, Eitz et al. [32] are the first explorers, who proposed the large-scale TU-Berlin sketch dataset [32] that made sketch recognition possible. Following their work, we continue to analyze the dataset and find that the visual cue sparsity and internal structural complexity are the two biggest challenges for sketch recognition. Accordingly, we propose multiple kernel learning [45] to fuse multiple visual cues and star graph representation [12] to encode the structures of the sketches. With the new schemes, we have achieved significant improvement on recognition accuracy (from 56% to 65.81%). Experimental study on sketch attributes is performed to further boost sketch recognition performance and enable novel retrieval-by-attribute applications. For sketch-based image retrieval, we start by carefully examining the existing works. After looking at the big picture of sketch-based image retrieval, we highlight that studying the sketch's ability to distinguish intra-category object variations should be the most promising direction to proceed on, and we define it as the fine-grained sketch-based image retrieval problem. Deformable part-based model which addresses object part details and object deformations is raised to tackle this new problem, and graph matching is employed to compute the similarity between deformable part-based models by matching the parts of different models. To evaluate this new problem, we combine the TU-Berlin sketch dataset and the PASCAL VOC photo dataset [36] to form a new challenging cross-domain dataset with pairwise sketch-photo similarity ratings, and our proposed method has shown promising results on this new dataset. Regarding sketch synthesis, we focus on the generating of real free-hand style sketches for general categories, as the closest previous work [8] only managed to show efficacy on a single category: human faces. The difficulties that impede sketch synthesis to reach other categories include the cluttered edges and diverse object variations due to deformation. To address those difficulties, we propose a deformable stroke model to form the sketch synthesis into a detection process, which is directly aiming at the cluttered background and the object variations. To alleviate the training of such a model, a perceptual grouping algorithm is further proposed that utilizes stroke length's relationship to stroke semantics, stroke temporal order and Gestalt principles [58] to perform part-level sketch segmentation. The perceptual grouping provides semantic part-level supervision automatically for the deformable stroke model training, and an iterative learning scheme is introduced to gradually refine the supervision and the model training. With the learned deformable stroke models, sketches with distinct free-hand style can be generated for many categories.

The second hand and vintage clothes market is increasing and the attitude and perception of the clothes are changing. Demographic age groups are important driving forces for change of attitudes and values. The purpose of the thesis is to get a better understanding of the MeWe generation, people born in the mid 80’s, as a driving force behind the increasing interest in second hand/vintage clothes. In this thesis their values are connected with their attitudes and motivations towards second hand and vintage clothes consumption. Qualitative method has been used and interviews with five representatives of the MeWe generation have been conducted. As a theoretical framework the survey of the MeWe generation by Lindgren et al is used along with research about second hand and vintage clothes. The conclusion of the thesis is that the MeWe generation can be considered to be an important driving force behind the growing second hand and vintage market. Their attitudes towards second hand clothes can be explained by their values. In this thesis the concepts of individuality, authenticity and post-materialism is in focus. They are important traits of the MeWe generation and can be used to explain the shifting perception of second hand clothes and the growing market / Program: Magisterutbildning i fashion management med inriktning modemarknadsföring

”Det finns en chans att man hittar ett unikt plagg som ingen annan har.”(Kommentar från undersökningen)Idag används second hand kläder flitigt av trendsättare och kändisar och är ofta ett återkommande tema i modetidningar och styling jobb. Kända personer som skådespelerskan Josephine Bornebusch och artisten Agnes Carlsson förespråkar second hand och har alla second hand- kläder i sina garderober. Två detaljhandelsföretag som är välkända inom second hand- branschen är företagen Myrorna och Beyond Retro. Trots att de är verksamma inom samma bransch, andrahandskläder, har de enligt oss fokuserat på olika element som gör dem konkurrenskraftiga. Exempel på dessa olikheter är butikernas sortiment, lokalernas lägen, priset på varorna och deras yttre påverkan. Rapporten utgår ifrån de fyra P: na (pris, plats, produkt, pverkan), vilka är grunden i Kotlers marknadsmix. Med hjälp av en enkätundersökning ger rapporten svar på vilken faktor som avgör kundernas köp i butikerna. Enkätundersökningen har utförts i en Myrorna- och en Beyond Retro- butik i Göteborg. Resultatet är baserat på 200 svarande på undersökningen, med en fördelning på 100 svaranden per butik.I uppsatsen analyseras de olika faktorerna vid köp och visar ett tydligt svar. Majoriteten av de tillfrågade i Myrorna butiken ansåg att priset på produkterna var det som styrde köpet. Beyond Retros tillfrågade kunder hade dock en annan uppfattning och procentantalet visar att deras produkter är överlägsna vid köp. “There is a chance that you will find a unique garment that no one else has.”(Comment from our survey)Today second hand clothes are frequently used by trendsetters and celebrities and are often a recurrent theme in fashion magazines and styling jobs. Famous people like actress Josephine Bornebusch and artist Agnes Carlsson advocate second hand and have second hand clothing in their closets.Two retail companies that are well known in the Swedish second hand clothing industry are Myrorna and Beyond Retro. Although they operate in the same industry, this paper shows that they have focused on different elements that make them competitive. Examples of these differences are the selection of products, the location of the shops, the prices of goods and the impact on their customers.This report is based on the four P: s (price, place, product and promotion), also called Kotler´s marketing mix. With help of a survey response we come to a conclusion of which factors determine the costumer´s purchases in the stores. The survey was conducted in one Myrorna and one Beyond Retro shop in Gothenburg. The result is based on 200 respondents to the survey, with a distribution of 100 respondents per store.The report examines the importance of the four P´s in the two stores and displays a clear result. The majority of respondents in the store Myrorna felt that the price of the products was the most important P when purchasing. Beyond Retro´s customers had a different view. Their customers believe that their products are more important than the price. / Program: Butikschef, textil och mode

Många välgörenhetsorganisationer har idag second hand-butiker knutna till sin verksamhet som ett sätt att omvandla gåvor till likvida medel som doneras till välgörande ändamål. Detta innebär att organisationerna måste arbeta aktivt med sin varumärkesidentitet för att kunna särskilja sig från andra aktörer på marknaden. Författarna till denna uppsats har försökt klargöra varumärkesidentiteten hos Röda Korsets mötesplats Kupan som bedriver försäljning av second hand. Inom teorier och tidigare forskning betonar man vikten av att varumärkesinnehavare måste veta vad som kännetecknar deras varumärke och vad det skall förmedla, annars finns risken att konsumenterna får svårt att bilda en tydlig uppfattning utav varumärket. Det önskade scenariot är att varumärkesinnehavaren och konsumentmarknaden skall uppfatta varumärket likadant. Röda Korset är en mångsidig organisation med många olika verksamheter knutna till sig, varav second hand-verksamheten utgör en av dessa. Mötesplats Kupan har många olika syften, dels skall rörelsen kunna gestalta det konkreta över vad Röda Korset innebär och vara en kommunikationskanal och upplysa om organisationens internationella uppdrag att ingen lämnas ensam vid en katastrof. Mötesplats Kupan har också en funktion av att vara en fysisk mötesplats och bedriva second hand-verksamhet som ett verktyg för organisationens insamling. Idag spretar verksamheten åt alla olika håll inom Sverige och kretsarna sköter sina mötesplatser på olika sätt då det inte finns några konkreta eller tydliga direktiv från Röda Korset centralt om hur verksamheten skall skötas. Detta innebär att även om rörelsen har en stark identitet lokalt sett skiljer sig dem sinsemellan och kan riskera att avvika från det som Röda Korset önskar förmedla. Myrorna däremot är en butikskedja av second hand med ett helhetskoncept som är märkbart i alla butiker med bland annat ett identiskt skyltmaterial. Myrorna skänker sitt överskott till Frälsningsarmén som är en organisation jämte Myrorna och de har utöver detta inget konkret samarbete. Detta underlättar för Myrorna att inta en tydlig position i kundernas medvetande som varumärke, men de riskerar att inte förstå huruvida Myrorna arbetar för välgörenhet. / Program: Butikschef, textil och mode

As habilidades manuais podem estar prejudicadas na paralisia cerebral (PC), interferindo nas atividades funcionais do cotidiano da criança, como alimentar-se, ir ao banheiro, brincar, o que ocasiona impacto negativo na vida dela e da família. Objetivo: elaborar, aplicar e analisar um protocolo de avaliação da função manual de crianças com PC, de 0 a 7 anos e 11 meses de idade. Método: estudo dividido em 2 etapas - 1) planejamento: definição de objetivo e população alvo, realização de revisão da literatura sobre instrumentos já existentes, tipos de itens e formato de instrumento, 2) construção: construção I -desenvolvimento dos itens, seleção dos instrumentos utilizados como base do protocolo, seleção dos itens relevantes por faixa etária, análise dos itens e adequação do protocolo; projeto piloto - aplicação do protocolo junto a 36 crianças de 0 a 7 anos e 11 meses, sendo 18 com PC e 18 com desenvolvimento típico (DT), análise dos itens e adequação do protocolo; construção II - validação de conteúdo por profissionais/pesquisadores experientes (experts) na área, elaboração e envio do questionário aos juízes especialistas, revisão dos itens (inclusão e exclusão), análise das avaliações dos especialistas e adequação do protocolo. Resultados: foram selecionados 238 itens, sendo 38 itens da Escala Lúdica Pré Escolar de Knox (ELPKR), 126 do Inventário Portage Operacionalizado (IPO), 32 do Teste de Triagem de Desenvolvimento de Denver II (TTDD-R), 38 do Inventário de Avaliação Pediátrica de Incapacidade (PEDI) e 4 do Manual de Avaliação Motora - Escala de Desenvolvimento Motor (MAM-EDM). Todos os itens foram revisados. Realizou-se o agrupamento de 161 itens recorrentes, totalizando 120 itens, os quais foram aplicados em crianças com PC e DT. Após a aplicação, em nova análise do protocolo, foram agrupados 6 itens semelhantes, divididos 2 e excluídos 7, totalizando 109 itens, os quais foram enviados em forma de questionário para os juízes especialistas. Na sequência, as avaliações dos experts foram analisadas e, então, 3 itens foram agrupados, 1 item subdividido e 7 itens excluídos, chegando-se a um protocolo final com 101 itens, divididos em 8 faixas etárias: de 0 a 5 meses, de 6 meses a 11 meses, de 1 ano a 1 ano e 11 meses e, sucessivamente, na sequência anual até de 4 anos a 4 anos e 11 meses; em seguida há uma faixa etária de 5 anos a 6 anos e 11 meses e, após, a faixa etária de 7 anos a 7 anos e 11 meses. O resultado foi então denominado de Avaliação Manual Infantil Geral e Objetiva - AMIGO. Foram observadas 2 crianças de cada grupo em cada faixa etária, sendo que as crianças com DT apresentaram, no geral, melhores pontuações quando comparadas às crianças com PC da mesma faixa etária. Considerações finais: a avaliação AMIGO foi considerada válida e alcançou seu objetivo principal. Ainda está, porém, em processo de construção e, em estudos futuros, passará por mais duas fases de construção, sendo elas a fase III - avaliação quantitativa e a fase IV - validação, para que possa ser considerada totalmente válida e segura a sua utilização na prática clínica e na pesquisa científica. / Manual skills may be affected in cerebral palsy (CP), interfering with functional activities of child\'s daily life, such as eating, toileting, playing, which causes negative impact on child´s life and family. Objective: To develop, implement and analyze an evaluation protocol to assess manual children function with CP, aged between 0-7 years and 11 months old. Method: This study was divided into two stages - 1) planning: setting goals and target population, literature review on existing instruments, types of items and instrument format, 2) Construction: Construction I -development of items, selection of instruments used as basis of the protocol, selection of relevant items by age group, item analysis and protocol adjustment; Pilot Project - protocol application with 36 children 0-7 years, 11 months, 18 CP childerb and 18 children with typical development (TD), item analysis and protocol adjustment; Construction II - Content validation by professional / experienced researchers (experts) in the area, preparation and submission of the questionnaire to expert judges, items review (item inclusion or exclusion), analysis of experts evaluations and suitability of the protocol. Results: We selected 238 items, 38 items Revised Knox Preschool Scale (RKPPS) 126 items from Operationalized Portage Inventory (IPO), 32 from Denver II Developmental Screening Test (DDST-R) 38 from Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) and 4 from Manual of Motor Evaluation - Motor Development Scale (MAM-EDM). All items were reviewed. We grouped 161 recurring items, totalizing 120 items, which we applied both in CP children and with CP and TD children. After the implementation, we performed a new protocol analysis and 6 similar items were grouped, 2 items divided and 7 items excluded, totalizing 109 items, which were sent as questionnaire to the expert judges. Further, experts assessments were analyzed and then 3 items were grouped, 1 item subdivided, and 7 items deleted, coming to a final protocol with 101 items, divided into eight age groups: 0-5 months of 6 months to 11 months, 1 year to 1 year and 11 months and, subsequentially, the annual sequence till 4 years to 4 years and 11 months; then there is an age group between 5 years and 6 years and 11 months, and after the age of 7 years to 7 years and 11 months. The resulting product was then called Children´s Manual Assessment General and Objective - AMIGO. Two children in each group were observed at each age, and children with TD had, overall, better scores compared to children with CP in each age group. The final considerations were that AMIGO has been valid and reached its main goal. But it is still under construction, and in future studies it will go through two more stages of construction, which were phase III - quantitative assessment and phase IV - validation, in order to be considered valid and secure to be uesd in clinical practice and in scientific research.