This dissertation was inspired by difficult decisions patients of chronic diseases have to make about about treatment options in light of uncertainty. We look at rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a chronic, autoimmune disease that primarily affects the synovial joints of the hands and causes pain and deformities. In this work, we focus on several parts of a computer-based decision tool that patients can interact with using gestures, ask questions about the disease, and visualize possible futures. We propose a hand gesture based interaction method that is easily setup in a doctor's office and can be trained using a custom set of gestures that are least painful. Our system is versatile and can be used for operations like simple selections to navigating a 3D world. We propose a point distribution model (PDM) that is capable of modeling hand deformities that occur due to RA and a generalized fitting method for use on radiographs of hands. Using our shape model, we show novel visualization of disease progression. Using expertly staged radiographs, we propose a novel distance metric learning and embedding technique that can be used to automatically stage an unlabeled radiograph. Given a large set of expertly labeled radiographs, our data-driven approach can be used to extract different modes of deformation specific to a disease.

This action research study compared student intellectual engagement between two different instructional delivery methods. The first instructional method was a non-contextual teaching approach using a textbook to teach the work outcomes for the S4 physics mechanics unit. The second instructional method was a contextual teaching approach where students built an electric guitar pickup and a simple electric guitar in order to provide a context for the teaching of the electromagnetism outcomes for the S4 physics electricity unit. To measure the intellectual engagement of students, data was collected from personal student journals and from questions generated by students following different instructional activities. The student generated questions were categorized and ranked to judge the degree of student intellectual engagement and depth of thought using a framework where numerical values were assigned to the questions. Each question was categorized as peripheral, factual, conceptual, or philosophical where the peripheral questions had the lowest intellectual ranking and the philosophical questions had the highest intellectual ranking. Data was also collected from cumulative unit tests, short exit slips and a personal teacher journal. The research revealed that students were more intellectually engaged and exhibited much more positive attitudes during the contextual lessons. The questions generated by students during the contextual lessons were of the higher order factual and conceptual types while the questions generated during the non-contextual lessons were predominantly of the lowest order peripheral type. By using the electric guitar and electric guitar pickup as a context, this action research study demonstrated that these contextual activities intellectually engaged students and helped to facilitate their deeper understanding of electromagnetism.

This action research study compared student intellectual engagement between two different instructional delivery methods. The first instructional method was a non-contextual teaching approach using a textbook to teach the work outcomes for the S4 physics mechanics unit. The second instructional method was a contextual teaching approach where students built an electric guitar pickup and a simple electric guitar in order to provide a context for the teaching of the electromagnetism outcomes for the S4 physics electricity unit. To measure the intellectual engagement of students, data was collected from personal student journals and from questions generated by students following different instructional activities. The student generated questions were categorized and ranked to judge the degree of student intellectual engagement and depth of thought using a framework where numerical values were assigned to the questions. Each question was categorized as peripheral, factual, conceptual, or philosophical where the peripheral questions had the lowest intellectual ranking and the philosophical questions had the highest intellectual ranking. Data was also collected from cumulative unit tests, short exit slips and a personal teacher journal. The research revealed that students were more intellectually engaged and exhibited much more positive attitudes during the contextual lessons. The questions generated by students during the contextual lessons were of the higher order factual and conceptual types while the questions generated during the non-contextual lessons were predominantly of the lowest order peripheral type. By using the electric guitar and electric guitar pickup as a context, this action research study demonstrated that these contextual activities intellectually engaged students and helped to facilitate their deeper understanding of electromagnetism.

In this thesis a mechatronics education desk is developed. The system developed is a low cost, versatile mechatronics education and teaching environment that aims to facilitate hands-on education of undergradutate level mechatronics students. The desk is formed of three main modules that address the needs of mechatronics education: The WorkDesk, Mechatronic Building Blocks and Experimental Setups. These parts are well designed and presented to form a complete and coordinated solution for mechatronics education. The WorkDesk is a platform devoted to the mechatronics engineering trainee, which provides mechanical, electrical and software prototyping that enables studying, testing and parts integration for mechatronic projects. The components building up the WorkDesk are selected or developed to facilitate mechatronics design and prototyping. Mechatronic building blocks necessary for mechatronics teaching are identified and selected to be a part of the system. In order to support these modules, low cost custom building blocks are also developed. These include, an autonomous mobile robot kit and a versatile interface board called ready2go. Demonstrative experiments with custom developed building blocks are also presented. Two experimental setups are developed and presented in the scope of the thesis. The setups, Intelligent Money Selector and Heater/Cooler, address and demonstrate many aspects of mechatronic systems as well as aid introducing systems approach in mechatronics education. As a consequence, a mechatronics education desk is developed and presented with many hands-on educational case studies. The system developed forms an extensible and flexible software and hardware architecture and platform that enables integration of additional mechatronics education modules.

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of hands-on activity enriched instruction on sixth grade students&rsquo / achievement (on sense organs) and attitudes towards science. In this study, Science Achievement Test and Science Attitude Scale were used to assess students&rsquo / achievement on sense organs and students&rsquo / attitudes towards science, respectively. Also, hands-on activities about sense organs were prepared. This study was conducted with 2 teachers and 4 classes and total of 140 sixth grade students in the public elementary schools at Ke&ccedil / i&ouml / ren district of Ankara in the fall semester of 2002-2003 academic years. One class of each teacher was assigned as experimental group and treated with hands-on activity enriched instruction and other class was assigned as control group and treated with traditional instruction. At the beginning of the study, both teachers were trained for how to implement hands-on activity enriched instruction in the classrooms. The Science Achievement Test and The Science Attitude Scale were applied twice as pre-test and after three week treatment period as a post-test to both experimental and control groups to assess and compare the effectiveness of two different types of teaching utilized in science course. The data obtained from the administration of post-test were analyzed by statistical techniques of Multivariate Analyses of Covariance (MANCOVA). The statistical result indicates that hands-on activity enriched instruction was more effective than traditional instruction. However, the statistical results failed to show a significant difference between the experimental and control groups attitudes toward science.

Title: Electricity and magnetism: Hands-on minds-on approach Author: Věra Koudelková Department: Department of Physics Education Supervisor: Doc. RNDr. Leoš Dvořák, CSc., KDF Abstract: The PhD. thesis is focused on high school students' understanding of electricity and magnetism and on experiments which can help students to develop this understanding. The thesis can be divided into two parts: In the first research part typical misconceptions of high school students in the area of electricity and magnetism are described, both misconceptions known from foreign literature and results of Czech Conceptual Test of Electricity and Magnetism. This test is based on the known Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism, but unlike it and other conceptual tests in electricity and magnetism this new Czech test is intended for high school students. The second part of the thesis is developmental. It contains methodical materials, lab works and experiments which partly arise from the discovered misconceptions. In this part of the work four learning sequences (we chose topics, which were identified as problematic for students), four laboratory works and 13 experiments are described. Prepared materials were verified during instructions in high school and during conferences for physics teachers. Experiences with them are...

Este estudo tem como objetivo realizar uma análise comparativa da técnica terapêuticoreligiosa da bênção através da Imposição das Mãos em três entidades filosófico-religiosas, procurando descobrir as suas distinções contextuais e as possíveis estruturas desse fenômeno. Utilizam-se como fontes, além da bibliografia atinente, também entrevistas com os adeptos das tradições que vivenciam tal modo de prece. Serão situadas historicamente e contextualizadas dentro da comum tradição oriental inculturada em suas derivações brasileiras, as práticas do passe no Espiritismo, do johrei na Igreja Messiânica e do Reiki no movimento de mesmo nome. Em seguida, pela análise comparativa dos depoimentos dos praticantes, será esboçada uma morfologia do sagrado que transparece nessas vivências terapêuticas da Imposição das Mãos, que realizam variações em torno da binômia saúde e salvação. / This study aims to make a comparative analysis of the blessing therapeutic-relogious technique, by hands imposition in three philosofical religious entities, trying to discover their contextual distinction and the possible estructures of this phenomenon. They have been used as sources, besides the regarded bibliograghy,as well as interviews of those who adapt the tradition that they have been using as a prayer. Historically, they are situated and contextualized in the common oriental tradition present in brazilian derivation, the practice of Passe in the Spiritism, Johrei of Messianic Church and Reiki in the movement using the same name. Soon afeter, by the comparative analysis of the testimonies of the participantes, it will be outlined a morfology of the sacret that is showed in the terapeutical experiences of Hands Imposition, Which make variations between healt and salvation.

abstract: Robotic systems are outmatched by the abilities of the human hand to perceive and manipulate the world. Human hands are able to physically interact with the world to perceive, learn, and act to accomplish tasks. Limitations of robotic systems to interact with and manipulate the world diminish their usefulness. In order to advance robot end effectors, specifically artificial hands, rich multimodal tactile sensing is needed. In this work, a multi-articulating, anthropomorphic robot testbed was developed for investigating tactile sensory stimuli during finger-object interactions. The artificial finger is controlled by a tendon-driven remote actuation system that allows for modular control of any tendon-driven end effector and capabilities for both speed and strength. The artificial proprioception system enables direct measurement of joint angles and tendon tensions while temperature, vibration, and skin deformation are provided by a multimodal tactile sensor. Next, attention was focused on real-time artificial perception for decision-making. A robotic system needs to perceive its environment in order to make decisions. Specific actions such as “exploratory procedures” can be employed to classify and characterize object features. Prior work on offline perception was extended to develop an anytime predictive model that returns the probability of having touched a specific feature of an object based on minimally processed sensor data. Developing models for anytime classification of features facilitates real-time action-perception loops. Finally, by combining real-time action-perception with reinforcement learning, a policy was learned to complete a functional contour-following task: closing a deformable ziplock bag. The approach relies only on proprioceptive and localized tactile data. A Contextual Multi-Armed Bandit (C-MAB) reinforcement learning algorithm was implemented to maximize cumulative rewards within a finite time period by balancing exploration versus exploitation of the action space. Performance of the C-MAB learner was compared to a benchmark Q-learner that eventually returns the optimal policy. To assess robustness and generalizability, the learned policy was tested on variations of the original contour-following task. The work presented contributes to the full range of tools necessary to advance the abilities of artificial hands with respect to dexterity, perception, decision-making, and learning. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Mechanical Engineering 2016

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-02-20Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:07:11Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 santos_ea_me_ilha.pdf: 1369014 bytes, checksum: 7ea566c05320b595e08fe89ae2170203 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O teste de força de aperto das mãos tem como finalidade detectar eventuais patologias nos membros superiores e avaliar a força exercida pelas mãos de pacientes. Neste trabalho é descrito o desenvolvimento de um dinamômetro biomédico projetado para efetuar a avaliação funcional das mãos, através da utilização de moldes específicos. O equipamento é constituído basicamente por sensores com extensômetros metálicos, um circuito de condicionamento de sinais, um circuito de interfaceamento e por um display digital. O circuito de condicionamento de sinais foi implementado com um amplificador de instrumentação, um amplificador com ganho programável e por um filtro passa-baixas. O principal componente do circuito de interfaceamento é o microcontrolador ATMEGA8. O equipamento é robusto, apresenta resposta linear na faixa de 0 a 500 N, precisão de 0,54%, resolução de 0,70 N e histerese desprezível. O valor da força pode ser lida em um display e também na tela de um computador. Pode ser útil em Engenharia de Reabilitação, Fisioterapia e Terapia Ocupacional / In this work we describe the development of a biomedical dynamometer. It was designed with the goal of performing the functional evaluation of hands with specific shapes. The equipment is constituted by force sensors, a signal conditioning circuit, an interface circuit and a digital display. Metallic strain gages were used as sensors. The signal conditioning circuit is constituted by an instrumentation amplifier, a programmable gain amplifier and a low-pass filter. The main component of the interface circuit is an ATMEGA8 microcontroller. The instrument can measure forces with resolution of 0.70 N and precision of 0.54% in the range of 0 to 500 N. It is rugged, presents linear response and very small hysteresis. The value of the force can be read in a display and in a computer screen. The device can be useful in Rehabilitation Engineering, Physiotherapy and Ocupational Therapy

O objetivo deste trabalho é desenvolver um algoritmo capaz de extrair medidas dos dedos e da palma das mãos. Essas imagens serão adquiridas através de um banco de imagens digitalizadas em um scanner de mesa, facilmente encontrado, e processadas para se obter uma curva do contorno da mão, permitindo assim que se extraia informações biométricas das mesmas. As imagens armazenadas no banco serão então associadas a um determinado usuário, visando em um estágio futuro, aplicações na identificação pessoal. / The object of this work is to develop an algorithm to extract fingers and hands palm measures. Those images will be acquired from a database of images digitalized by a scanner, easily founded, and processed to get the hand contour, allowing biometrics informations to be extracted. The images stored in the database will be associated with an user, aiming personal identification in a future stage.