Body Skeleton Research Articles

Postmortem microbial communities in burial soil layers of skeletonized humans

Microorganisms are major ecological participants in the successional decomposition of vertebrates. The relative abundance, or the scarcity, of certain microbial taxa in gravesoil has the potential to determine the ecological status of skeletons. However, there are substantial knowledge gaps that warrant consideration in the context of the surrounding terrestrial ecosystem. In the current study, we hypothesized that i.) soil microbial diversity is disparate in the latter stage of decomposition (skeletonization) compared to the earlier stages (fresh, bloat, active and advanced decay), and ii.) the three layers of gravesoil (top, middle, and bottom) encompass similar microbial taxa and are analogous with control soil. To test these hypotheses, microbial communities in layers of burial soil of skeletonized bodies (treated) and from control soil, obtained from burial plots with no bodies (untreated), were compared using sequencing data of the 16S rRNA gene. The results demonstrated that Acidobacteria was confirmed as the most abundant microbial genus in all treated and untreated soil layers. Furthermore, Proteobacteria demonstrated a relatively low abundance in skeletonized gravesoil which is dissimilar from previous findings that assessed soil from earlier stages of human decomposition. Also, these results determined that soil microbial signatures were analogous in all three soil layers under the effects of similar abiotic and biotic factors, and they were similar to the communities in untreated soil. Therefore, the current study produced empirical data that give conclusive evidence of soil microbial successional changes, particularly for Proteobacteria, for potential use in forensic microbiology research.

A novel physical colonoscopy simulator based on analysis of data from computed tomography colonography

PurposeLaparoscopic surgery is now practiced widely because of its lower postoperative morbidity. As flexible endoscopy during laparoscopic surgery minimizes surgical trauma further, training in endoscopy will become more important for surgeons. Thus, we designed a physical simulator, the Noda–Kitada–Suzuki (NKS) model, which could provide the more realistic insertion of a colonoscope.MethodsWe designed a colonoscopy simulator, based on information from computed tomography colonography scans of the anatomy and kinetic properties of the colon and rectum.ResultsThe transparent skeleton body of the NKS model provides instant visual feedback to the operator and the trainer. Our novel colonoscopy simulator replicates the realistic and reproducible insertion of a colonoscope from the rectum to cecum, providing authentic views of the Houston’s valves, the flexures, and mucosal folds. This was verified through an objective questionnaire, with 14 of 16 colonoscopists preferring the NKS model over the previous CM15 model for training purposes. Moreover, the Modified Colonoscopy Simulator Realism Questionnaire analysis confirmed that the NKS model was significantly more realistic than the CM15 for 7 (21.2%) of the 33 items when assessed by 12 colonoscopists.ConclusionThe NKS model provides a realistic training platform and may improve the quality of training in colonoscopy.

Poster Abstract: 3D Activity Localization With Multiple Sensors.

We present a deep learning framework for fast 3D activity localization and tracking in a dynamic and crowded real world setting. Our training approach reverses the traditional activity localization approach, which first estimates the possible location of activities and then predicts their occurrence. Instead, we first trained a deep convolutional neural network for activity recognition using depth video and RFID data as input, and then used the activation maps of the network to locate the recognized activity in the 3D space. Our system achieved around 20cm average localization error (in a 4m × 5m room) which is comparable to Kinect's body skeleton tracking error (10-20cm), but our system tracks activities instead of Kinect's location of people.

上半身骨格情報の教師付きデータを用いた個人識別に関する研究

Production age Popularity of service robots is expected with decreasing population. There is a guide robot as one of service robots. The guiding robot can conduct guidance that is more personalized by identifying individuals. Therefore, personal identification is a function required for the guide robot. Personal identification has some skeletal information of the whole body acquired using Kinect v2. However, since the distance between the guide robot and the guidance target is short, even if Kinect v2 is installed in the guide robot, it is not possible to acquire skeletal information of the whole body. Therefore, the authors proposed an individual identification method using human upper body skeleton information. In this paper, we describe the effectiveness confirmation by using the actual data on the proposed method.

Fall Recovery Subactivity Recognition With RGB-D Cameras

Accidental falls have been identified as a cause of mortality for elders who live alone around the globe. Following a fall, additional injury can be sustained if proper fall recovery techniques are not followed. These secondary complications can be reduced if the person had access to safe recovery procedures or were assisted, either by a person or a robot. We propose a framework for in situ robotic assistance for post fall recovery scenarios. In order to assist autonomously robots need to recognize an individual's posture and subactivities (e.g., falling, rolling, move to hands and knees, crawling, and push up through legs, sitting or standing). Human body skeleton tracking through RGB-D pose estimation methods fail to identify the body parts during key phases of fall recovery due to high occlusion rates in fallen, and recovering, postures. To address this issue, we investigated how low-level image features can be leveraged to recognize an individual's subactivities. Depth cuboid similarity features (DCSFs) approach was improved with M-partitioned histograms of depth cuboid prototypes, integration of activity progression direction, and outlier spatiotemporal interest point removal. Our modified DCSF algorithm was evaluated on a unique RGB-D multiview dataset, achieving 87.43 ± 1.74% accuracy in the extensive 3003 $({{\boldsymbol{C}}_{10}^{15}})$ combinations of training-test groups of 15 subjects in 10 trials. This result was significantly larger than the nearest competitor, and faster in the training phase. This work could lead to more accurate in situ robotic assistance for fall recovery, saving lives for victims of falls.

A Discriminative Framework for Action Recognition Using f-HOL Features

Inspired by the overwhelming success of Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) features in many vision tasks, in this paper, we present an innovative compact feature descriptor called fuzzy Histogram of Oriented Lines (f-HOL) for action recognition, which is a distinct variant of the HOG feature descriptor. The intuitive idea of these features is based on the observation that the slide area of the human body skeleton can be viewed as a spatiotemporal 3D surface, when observing a certain action being performed in a video. The f-HOL descriptor possesses an immense competitive advantage, not only of being quite robust to small geometric transformations where the small translation and rotations make no large fluctuations in histogram values, but also of not being very sensitive under varying illumination conditions. The extracted features are then fed into a discriminative conditional model based on Latent-Dynamic Conditional random fields (LDCRFs) to learn to recognize actions from video frames. When tested on the benchmark Weizmann dataset, the proposed framework substantially supersedes most existing state-of-the-art approaches, achieving an overall recognition rate of 98.2%. Furthermore, due to its low computational demands, the framework is properly amenable for integration into real-time applications.

Spatiotemporal representation of 3D skeleton joints-based action recognition using modified spherical harmonics

Action recognition based on the 3D coordinates of body skeleton joints is an important topic in computer vision applications and human robot interaction. At present, most 3D data are captured using recently introduced economical depth sensors. In this study, we explore a new method for skeleton-based human action recognition. In this novel framework, the normalized angles of local joints are first extracted, and then the modified spherical harmonics (MSHs) are used to explicitly model the angular skeleton by projecting the spherical angles onto the unit sphere basis. This process decomposes the skeleton representation into a set of basis functions. A spatiotemporal system of the spherical angles is adopted to construct the static pose and joint displacement over a human action sequence. Consequently, the MSHs coefficients of the joints are used as the discriminative descriptor of the sequence. The extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier and recently published 3D action datasets are used to validate the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed approach performs better than many classical methods.

10 The Bioarchaeology of Pain and Suffering: Human Adaptation and Survival during Troubled Times

ABSTRACTAncient human remains can be analyzed with an eye toward clarifying the limits of human adaptation to many of life's hardships. Data collected from the remnants of skeletonized bodies provides information on the costs of living under trying times and the pain, suffering, and disability experienced. Focusing on the survivors of stressful conditions such as colonization, endemic warfare, climate change, or slavery provides a way to examine the experience of survival as well as the human costs of adapting to the environmental or political‐economic processes creating the condition.

Determination of medicinal and illicit drugs in post mortem dental hard tissues and comparison with analytical results for body fluids and hair samples

In burnt or skeletonized bodies dental hard tissue sometimes is the only remaining specimen available. Therefore, it could be used as an alternative matrix in post mortem toxicology. Additionally, analysis of dental tissues could provide a unique retrospective window of detection. For forensic interpretation, routes and rates of incorporation of different drugs as well as physicochemical differences between tooth root, tooth crown and carious material have to be taken into account. In a pilot study, one post mortem tooth each from three drug users was analyzed for medicinal and illicit drugs. The pulp was removed in two cases; in one case the tooth was root canal treated. The teeth were separated into root, crown and carious material and drugs were extracted from the powdered material with methanol under ultrasonication. The extracts were screened for drugs by LC-MSn (ToxTyper™) and quantitatively analyzed with LC-ESI-MS/MS in MRM mode. The findings were compared to the analytical results for cardiac blood, femoral blood, urine, stomach content and hair. In dental hard tissues, 11 drugs (amphetamine, MDMA, morphine, codeine, norcodeine, methadone, EDDP, fentanyl, tramadol, diazepam, nordazepam, and promethazine) could be detected and concentrations ranged from approximately 0.13pg/mg to 2,400pg/mg. The concentrations declined in the following order: carious material>root>crown. Only the root canal treated tooth showed higher concentrations in the crown than in the root. In post mortem toxicology, dental hard tissue could be a useful alternative matrix facilitating a more differentiated consideration of drug consumption patterns, as the window of detection seems to overlap those for body fluids and hair.

Based on Wide Area Environment Abnormal Behavior Analysis and Anomaly Detection Research

Group anomaly identification and location is an important issue in the field of artificial intelligence. Capture of the accident source and rapid prediction of mass incidents in public places are difficult problems in intelligent video identification and processing, but the traditional group anomaly detection research has many limitations when it comes to accident source detection and intelligent recognition. We are to research on the algorithms of accident source location and abnormal group identification based on behavior analysis in the condition of dramatically changing group geometry appearance, including: 1) to propose a logic model of image density based on the social force model, and to build the crowd density trend prediction model integrating “fast and fuzzy matching at front-end” and “accurate and classified training at back-end”; 2) to design a fast abnormal source flagging algorithm based on support vector machine, and to realize intelligent and automatic marking of abnormal source point; 3) to construct a multi-view human body skeleton invariant moment model and a motion trajectory model based on linear parametric equations. The expected results of the research will help prevent abnormal events effectively, capture the first scene of incidents and the abnormal source point quickly, and play a decision support role in the proactive national security strategy.

Kinect-Based Sliding Mode Control for Lynxmotion Robotic Arm

Recently, the technological development of manipulator robot increases very quickly and provides a positive impact to human life. The implementation of the manipulator robot technology offers more efficiency and high performance for several human’s tasks. In reality, efforts published in this context are focused on implementing control algorithms with already preprogrammed desired trajectories (passive robots case) or trajectory generation based on feedback sensors (active robots case). However, gesture based control robot can be considered as another channel of system control which is not widely discussed. This paper focuses on a Kinect-based real-time interactive control system implementation. Based on LabVIEW integrated development environment (IDE), a developed human-machine-interface (HMI) allows user to control in real time a Lynxmotion robotic arm. The Kinect software development kit (SDK) provides a tool to keep track of human body skeleton and abstract it into 3-dimensional coordinates. Therefore, the Kinect sensor is integrated into our control system to detect the different user joints coordinates. The Lynxmotion dynamic has been implemented in a real-time sliding mode control algorithm. The experimental results are carried out to test the effectiveness of the system, and the results verify the tracking ability, stability, and robustness.

Paedomorphosis and heterochrony in the origin and evolution of the class holothuroidea

The role of paedomorphosis as a particular case of heterochrony in the origin and evolution of the class Holothuroidea is analyzed. It is shown that holothurians are characterized by the presence of some paedomorphic characters (reduced skeleton, absence of an axial complex in the shape of a morphologically integrated structure, single gonad with one gonopore). In many members of the subclass Holothuriacea, sclerites of the body wall are arranged in two layers. Sclerites of the deeper layer develop as a perforated plate and correspond to the skeletal elements forming in other echinoderms the body skeleton, for example, the test of sea urchins. Sclerites of the superficial layer frequently look like various tables, develop like spines of other echinoderm classes, in particular, juvenile tetraradiate spines of sea urchins, and correspond to spines of other classes of Echinodermata. Ontogenetic changes at the stage of five first tentacles resulted in interruption at an early stage of the development with the catastrophic metamorphosis, which is typical for other Eleutherozoa. The ontogeny of holothurians acquired the evolutive (gradual) character; the adult body began to develop on the basis of the larval body and larval tissues were partially included in the body of adult holothurians. As a result, the place and developmental pattern of the radial complex of organs changed and heterochrony in the development of characters concerned with different coordination chains intensified; therefore, the modern body plan of holothurians was formed. The processes of paedomorphosis and heterochrony played an important role not only in the origin and formation of the class Holothuroidea, but also during its evolution. Paedomorphic processes became rather important in the evolution of the order Synaptida. Paedomorphic features are particularly prominent in the structure of small interstitial forms. In some holothurians, the paedomorphosis resulted in the change in relationships between symmetry planes. The bilateral plane of symmetry of these holothurians coincide with the plane of symmetry 2–1–2, which is positioned in the majority of holothurians at about 72° to the bilateral plane. Independently, but frequently in parallel, the intestinal loop disappeared, so that the gut became straight and suspended on mediodorsal mesentery almost throughout its extent. The combination of these processes in holothurians of the order Synaptida resulted in the formation of almost complete pentaradially bilateral symmetry.

Estimation of stature by cephalometric facial dimensions in skeletonized bodies: study from a sample modern Colombians skeletal remains

Estimation of stature is an important factor in the identification of the deceased from unknown fragmentary and dismembered remains. The skull sometimes is the only remain available for identification. The aim of the present study was to estimate the stature of an individual from cephalo-facial dimensions. The study was carried out on 54 males and 16 females from the bone collection of the contemporary Colombian population that belongs to the National Institute of Legal Medicine. Ten cephalo-facial measurements were also made on each subject. The stature of each individual in centimeters was taken from the registration and/or from the autopsy document. The results indicate that the measurements N-M (p<0.001) and G-Op, Ba-N, Ma-SN (p<0.05) are correlated with stature for males. The correlation between these measures with stature for females was not significant. However, the formulae obtained from univariate linear regression analysis using cephalo-facial measurements showed a greater degree of reliability for estimation of stature in males and females.

Weightlifter Lumbar Physiology Health Influence Factor Analysis of Sports Medicine.

Chinese women's weightlifting project has been in the advanced world level, suggests that the Chinese coaches and athletes have many successful experience in the weight lifting training. Little weight lifting belongs to high-risk sports, however, to the lumbar spine injury, some young good athletes often due to lumbar trauma had to retire, and the national investment and athletes toil is regret things. This article from the perspective of sports medicine, weightlifting athletes training situation analysis and put forward Suggestions, aimed at avoiding lumbar injury, guarantee the health of athletes. In this paper, first of all to 50 professional women's weightlifting athletes doing investigation, found that 82% of the athletes suffer from lumbar disease symptoms, the reason is mainly composed of lumbar strain, intensity is too large, motion error caused by three factors. From the Angle of sports medicine and combined with the characteristics of the structure of human body skeleton athletes lumbar structural mechanics analysis, find out the lumbar force's two biggest technical movement, study, and regulate the action standard, so as to minimize lumbar force, for athletes to contribute to the health of the lumbar spine.

Human body motion parameters capturing using kinect

This paper introduces a new real-time human motion parameters capturing method using Kinect. It consists of five modules. First, the hybrid action type classifier categories human body motion into four different action types. Second, for each action type, there is a body part (BP) classifier which segments the human silhouette into 16 BP regions of which the centroids become the BP joints. These BP joints are linked to represent the human body skeleton. Third, an action type validation process verifies the identified action type. Fourth, the partial occlusion recovery method relocates the occluded BP joints. Fifth, the offset compensation process fine tunes the positions of BP joints and then validates the compensation results. The major contributions of this paper are hybrid action type classification and correction, offset compensation, and partial occlusion recovery. The experimental results show that this method can estimate human upper limb motion parameters in real time accurately and effectively.

Bone densitometry in clinical practice

In this paper an information on the features of bone densitometry on DEXA devices was presented, and basic errors that can occur during the execution of the study or assessment of patients data after their examination were specified. Bone densitometry is an important informative method of examination allowing to detect not only qualitative and quantitative indicators of bone condition but to perform also monitoring which is important after medicament therapy for evaluation of effectiveness of treatment of osteoporosis. The method makes it possible to detect deformations and fractures of the vertebral bodies as well as to assess quantitatively change of their shape. For measurement of bone mineral density on the lumbar spine they use AP-projection LI–LIV. If in the area of the research there are vertebrae with destructive disorders they exclude them from the analysis and carry out diagnostics according two vertebral bodies without any violations. The difference between the vertebral bodies should not be 1 SD in accordance with T-criterion. Orthopedic programs incorporated into the device make it possible to describe bone tissue condition in the area of contact with the implant after arthroplasty. Quantitative evaluation of bone mass adjacent to the implant implanted into the hip joint they performed in Gruen zones which they determine in frontal plane with the prone position of a patient after 2–3 weeks after arthroplasty and consider as basic assessment. One may assess the condition of the entire skeleton, fat and fat-free body mass which is important for examination of children and patients with endocrine disorders, identifying sarkopenia, in the case of obesity, malabsorption syndrome and so on. Interpreting the results one should also take into account some features of this method of patient examination for reducing the risk of diagnostic errors.

Kinect Acquisition of Skeleton Body Positions during Yoga and Tai Chi for Exergame Development

Kinect Acquisition of Skeleton Body Positions during Yoga and Tai Chi for Exergame Development

발포공정을 이용한 경량의 연질 세라믹 보온단열재의 제조

본 연구는 유기계 보온단열재의 장점인 경량성과 연질특성을 갖는 무기계 보온단열재의 제조를 위한 새로운 개념의 무기질 저온 발포 공정에 관한 것이다. 새로운 무기질 발포 공정은 섬유상인 해포석 및 규산알루미늄으로 하여금 발포체의 골격을 형성토록 하고, 저온에서 기체 발생이 가능한 발포제를 사용하여 무기질 섬유상 골격체가 팽창되어 공동을 형성하게 하며, 이 형성된 공동 속에 낮은 열전도도를 갖는 무기질 다포체인 팽창진주암을 채우는 것이다. 총괄적으로 무기질 재료를 고온 용융함이 없이 저온에서 무기질 발포체의 제조가 가능하게 된다. 이를 위해서 섬유상인 해포석의 해섬처리과정, 발포를 위한 섬유상 슬러리의 열처리공정 등 다양한 준비공정이 필요하며, 열처리 전 슬러리의 최적 조성물 조건이 요구된다. 제조된 발포체는 경량, 연질의 보온단열재로서의 겉보기 밀도, 내력 강도, 굽힘강도, 고내열성 등의 물성을 보여주었다. A new concept of an inorganic foaming process at low temperature was demonstrated for the production of inorganic thermal insulating materials with the properties of flexible light-weight, the advantages of organic-based thermal insulation material. The foaming process was proceeded by establishing a skeleton of the foam body by using inorganic fibrous sepiolite and aluminum silicate. A cavity was formed by the expansion of fibrous skeleton body, by the gas which was generated from foaming agent at low temperature. Then the multi-vesicular expanded perlite with low thermal conductivity was filled into the cavity in a skeleton of the foam body. Finally through these overall process, a new inorganic foamed body could be obtained at low temperature without the hot melting of inorganic materials. In order to achieve this object, various preparations such as fibrous sepiolite fibrillation process, heat treatment process of the fibrous slurry were needed, and the optimal compositional condition of slurry was required. The foam body produced showed the properties of flexible light-weight thermal insulation materials such as bulk density, yield strength, flexural strength, and high heat resistance.

The latent structure of anthropometric variables in female volleyball players aged 12-14 years

The goal of this transverse research was to establish the correlations between morphological characteristics, and identifying the latent morphological structure. In the morphological space, a group of 12 standard anthropometric variables was measured. The sample encompassed 158 female subjects, aged 12 to 14 years, from volleyball clubs of the Kolubara-Macva Inter regional Serbian league. Statistical data analysis was conducted using Pearson's coefficient of correlation and Principal component analysis (PCA). Results from the correlation analysis showed statistically significant linear correlations in almost all anthropometric variables of female U14 volleyball players. Using the method of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), together with the Kaiser-Guttman criteria and Varimax rotation, a threecomponent model was extracted which comprised 83,35% of proportion of the total variance of manifested anthropometric variables. This model was structured by the hypothetical factors with their characteristic roots (ƛ > 1), which were interpreted as: longitudinal skeleton dimensionality (F1), body volume and body mass (F2), and subcutaneous fat tissue (F3). The limitations of this study were discussed, as well as recommendations for future longitudinal research. Objectively, an insufficient amount of conducted empiric studies so far presents a motive for other authors to establish a relationship between morphological landmarks and defining the build of the morphological space in preadolescent population of female volleyball population.

A Novel Method for Bending Stiffness Evaluation of Bus Body

Bending stiffness is an important factor to determine the mechanical performance of bus body skeleton. Traditional computational method for bending stiffness is sensitive to local deformation and load applications, which often results in great fluctuation to the computational results. This paper proposes an advanced computational method for bending stiffness based on deformable feature curve of bus body. Firstly, the feature point collection from the deformation of bus body under bending conditions is extracted. Secondly, all the feature points are processed by means of coordinate transformation and then the feature curve of bus body deformation is established via piecewise cubic curve-fitting. Lastly, the expected value of bending stiffness of bus body is obtained through the stiffness samples which are computed according to the feature curve. Furthermore, a FORTRAN program is written to implement the method. Compared with the traditional methods, the validity and stability of this method are verified via several numerical examples. This method is meaningful to the conceptual design of a bus body, as the experimental measures are difficult to be carried out in the early stage.