Blended Learning (BL) is defined as a combination of face‐to‐face and digital activities that, in recent years, has been adopted more and more frequently by Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). In ...the engineering field, the adoption of BL allows creating challenging situations for students with industry‐like problems to foster the acquisition of advanced problem‐solving skills. Thus, it can be used to enhance traditional learning by enriching it with new aspects, allowing to update the Intended Learning Outcomes traditionally defined by teachers. Although prior coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) teachers had the time to prepare and programme the transition to BL, during the pandemic they had to abruptly move to the full digital delivery of the content, requiring technological and organizational adaptation, as well as change in the content teaching and assessment methods. Through a systematic literature review, this paper aims to understand how BL has been implemented in the engineering field by HEIs, discussing if and how the learning expectations of teachers (evaluated through Bloom's Taxonomy) change when using different mixes of face‐to‐face and digital activities and when the target audience changes. More specifically, the investigation addresses how content and learning expectations are split and set in face‐to‐face and digital settings. Additionally, the interest is towards understanding how COVID‐19 impacted the adoption of BL, not only during the pandemic but also after.
Abstract Amputees face a number of challenges when acquiring and using a prosthesis, with major issues being the cost of the device, the time it takes for their custom prosthesis to be developed and ...delivered, as well as the challenges they face to get it regularly serviced and maintained. The other stakeholders involved, including the prosthetists and standard systems manufacturers, have a difficulty to collectively handle so many issues that occur to the different amputees. To address these challenges, our research reported in this paper contributes an approach to how these can be handled, through a Prescriptive approach entitled Adaptive Prosthetic Life-Cycle Service System (adProLiSS) Framework. Unlike other product service systems, adProLiSS is designed to explicitly involve and serve the amputee and their evolving needs during different phases throughout the amputee's life. This impacts how a prosthetic device needs to be designed to ensure a smoother interaction between the amputee and the device. The adProLiSS preliminary evaluation shows an improvement by which amputees can be efficiently provided with a prosthesis that evolves with their changing needs and aspirations, this fostering a longer term 'patient-centred care' service.
Abstract Despite technological and medical advances, amputations continue to increase. Amputees face significant challenges when acquiring and using prosthetic devices, challenges which are made ...worse as their emotional needs, aspirations, mobility, prosthesis requirements and problems change over time. These challenges require custom solutions for each individual amputee, a fact that current amputee centered prosthesis services tend to ignore. The work reported in this paper contributes an AI based Prosthesis Development Service Framework to cater for the current and evolving needs of amputees.
Primary treatment of obstructive sleep apnea can be accompanied by a persistence of excessive sleepiness despite adherence. Furthermore, effectiveness of sleep apnea treatment is limited by poor ...adherence. Currently available pharmacologic options for the treatment of sleepiness in this population are limited.
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of solriamfetol (JZP-110), a selective dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor with robust wake-promoting effects, for the treatment of excessive sleepiness in participants with obstructive sleep apnea with current or prior sleep apnea treatment.
This was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, 12-week trial comparing solriamfetol, 37.5, 75, 150, and 300 mg, with placebo.
Of 476 randomized participants, 459 were included in the prespecified efficacy analyses. Coprimary endpoints (Maintenance of Wakefulness Test sleep latency and Epworth Sleepiness Scale score) were met at all solriamfetol doses (
< 0.05), with dose-dependent effects observed at Week 1 maintained over the study duration. All doses except 37.5 mg resulted in higher percentages of participants reporting improvement on Patient Global Impression of Change (key secondary endpoint;
< 0.05). Adverse events were reported in 47.9% of placebo- and 67.9% of solriamfetol-treated participants; five participants experienced serious adverse events (two 1.7% placebo, three 0.8% solriamfetol); none were deemed related to study drug. The most common adverse events with solriamfetol were headache (10.1%), nausea (7.9%), decreased appetite (7.6%), anxiety (7.0%), and nasopharyngitis (5.1%).
Solriamfetol significantly increased wakefulness and reduced sleepiness in participants with obstructive sleep apnea and excessive sleepiness; most adverse events were mild or moderate in severity. Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT02348606) and www.eudract.ema.europa.eu (EudraCT 2014-005514-31).
The three-dimensional imaging of mesoscopic samples with Optical Projection Tomography (OPT) has become a powerful tool for biomedical phenotyping studies. OPT uses visible light to visualize the 3D ...morphology of large transparent samples. To enable a wider application of OPT, we present OptiJ, a low-cost, fully open-source OPT system capable of imaging large transparent specimens up to 13 mm tall and 8 mm deep with 50 µm resolution. OptiJ is based on off-the-shelf, easy-to-assemble optical components and an ImageJ plugin library for OPT data reconstruction. The software includes novel correction routines for uneven illumination and sample jitter in addition to CPU/GPU accelerated reconstruction for large datasets. We demonstrate the use of OptiJ to image and reconstruct cleared lung lobes from adult mice. We provide a detailed set of instructions to set up and use the OptiJ framework. Our hardware and software design are modular and easy to implement, allowing for further open microscopy developments for imaging large organ samples.
The myogenic regulatory factor Myf5 is integral to the initiation and control of skeletal muscle formation. In adult muscle,
Myf5 is expressed in satellite cells, stem cells of mature muscle, but not ...in the myonuclei that sustain the myofibre. Using the
Myf5
nlacZ/+
mouse, we now show that
Myf5 is also constitutively expressed in muscle spindles-stretch-sensitive mechanoreceptors, while muscle denervation induces extensive reactivation of the
Myf5 gene in myonuclei. To identify the elements involved in the regulation of
Myf5 in adult muscle, we analysed reporter gene expression in a transgenic bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) deletion series of the
Mrf4/Myf5 locus. A BAC carrying 140 kb upstream of the
Myf5 transcription start site was sufficient to drive all aspects of
Myf5 expression in adult muscle. In contrast, BACs carrying 88 and 59 kb upstream were unable to drive consistent expression in satellite cells, although expression in muscle spindles and reactivation of the locus in myonuclei were retained. Therefore, as during development, multiple enhancers are required to generate the full expression pattern of
Myf5 in the adult. Together, these observations show that elements controlling adult
Myf5 expression are genetically separable and possibly distinct from those that control
Myf5 during development. These studies are a first step towards identifying cognate transcription factors involved in muscle stem cell regulation.
PDF
