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Identification of neuromuscular impairments in cerebral palsy (CP) is essential to providing effective treatment. However, clinical recognition of neuromuscular impairments in CP and their contribution to gait abnormalities is limited, resulting in suboptimal treatment outcomes. While CP is the most common childhood movement disorder, clinical evaluations often do not accurately identify and delineate the primary neuromuscular and secondary musculoskeletal impairments or their specific impact on mobility. Here we discuss the primary neuromuscular impairments of CP that arise from early brain injury and the progressive secondary musculoskeletal impairments, with a focus on spastic CP, the most common form of CP. Spastic CP is characterized by four primary interrelated neuromuscular impairments: 1. muscle weakness, 2. short muscle-tendon units due to slow muscle growth relative to skeletal growth, 3. muscle spasticity characterized by increased sensitivity to stretch, and 4. impaired selective motor control including flexor and extensor muscle synergies. Specific gait events are affected by the four primary neuromuscular impairments of spastic CP and their delineation can improve evaluation to guide targeted treatment, prevent deformities and improve mobility. Emerging information on neural correlates of neuromuscular impairments in CP provides the clinician with a more complete context with which to evaluate and develop effective treatment plans. Specifically, addressing the primary neuromuscular impairments and reducing secondary musculoskeletal impairments are important treatment goals. This perspective on neuromuscular mechanisms underlying gait abnormalities in spastic CP aims to inform clinical evaluation of CP, focus treatment more strategically, and guide research priorities to provide targeted treatments for CP.

Gait abnormalities in spastic cerebral palsy (CP) result from four primary neuromuscular impairments: muscle weakness, short muscle-relative-to-skeletal-length, muscle spasticity, and impaired selective motor control. The Clinical Gait Evaluation with Neuromuscular Impairments (Clinical GENI) was developed to help clinicians identify gait abnormalities and contributing neuromuscular impairments in spastic CP for use in any clinical setting. This study evaluated use and validity of the observational-based Clinical GENI to identify gait abnormalities and contributing neuromuscular impairments in children with spastic CP. Patients with spastic CP seen in 2023 for instrumented gait analysis and physical exam of neuromuscular impairments were evaluated using the Clinical GENI. Validity was assessed by agreement between identification of gait abnormalities on the Clinical GENI compared to 3D gait kinematics. Severity of neuromuscular impairments associated with gait abnormalities listed on the Clinical GENI was compared, and severity of neuromuscular impairment was correlated with severity of gait abnormalities. Participants included 12 children with spastic CP (4 GMFCS I, 8 GMFCS II; mean age 11.25 years). The most common gait abnormalities were forefoot/flatfoot initial contact (IC) (16/24), flexed-knee IC (19/24), hip-flexion in single limb stance (12/24), and reduced pre-swing ankle plantarflexion (19/24). Strong agreement (83-100%) occurred between gait abnormalities on the Clinical GENI and kinematic values. Severity of neuromuscular impairment was higher ( < 0.05) for those with gait abnormalities vs. without and correlated to severity of gait abnormalities in a majority of comparisons. Results support clinical utility and validity of the Clinical GENI for evaluating gait abnormalities and contributing neuromuscular impairments in spastic CP.

As autonomous vehicle (AV) capabilities expand, it is important to ensure their safety during testing and deployment for public usage. While several testing regulations have been proposed in research, US federal, and even global guidelines for low-speed vehicles in metropolitan settings, regulations for high-speed travel are mainly vacant—this is especially true for regulations relating to AV emergency obstacle avoidance maneuvers (EOAMs). Research in this manuscript introduces a general obstacle avoidance capability assessment (GOACA) for AVs traveling at highway speeds. This GOACA includes test modes including car and bicycle active road objects (AROs) in rural and urban highway settings. These tests were novel in their definitions, methodologies, and execution, especially in the context of AVs driving at highway speeds—critically, this research proposes a test evaluation protocol such that it could serve as a foundation for an official regulation in the future. These GOACA tests included adjacent traffic vehicles which have not been utilized in the prior literature when considering EOAMs within a wholistic AV system context. While the vehicle type will cause simulation results to var, in general, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication is recommended for usage with AVs at highway speeds for critical safety. This is especially true when considering oncoming traffic and low surface μ conditions.

An autonomous vehicle (AV) uses high-level decision making and lower-level actuator controls, such as throttle (acceleration), braking (deceleration), and steering (change in lateral direction) to navigate through various types of road networks. Path planning and path following for highway driving are currently available in series-produced highly automated vehicles. In addition to these, emergency collision avoidance decision making and maneuvering are another key and essential feature that is needed in a series production AV at highway driving speeds. For reliability, low cost, and fast computation, such an emergency obstacle avoidance maneuvering system should use well-established conventional methods as opposed to data-driven neural networks or reinforcement learning methods, which are currently not suitable for use in highway AV driving. This paper presents a novel Emergency Obstacle Avoidance Maneuver (EOAM) methodology for AVs traveling at higher speeds and lower road surface friction, involving time-critical maneuver determination and control. The proposed EOAM framework offers usage of the AV’s sensing, perception, control, and actuation system abilities as one cohesive system to avoid an on-road obstacle, based first on performance feasibility and second on passenger comfort, and it is designed to be well integrated within an AV’s high-level control and decision-making system. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method, co-simulation including the AV’s EOAM logic in Simulink and a vehicle model in CarSim is conducted with speeds ranging from 55 to 165 km/h and on road surfaces with friction ranging from 1.0 to 0.1. The results are analyzed and interpreted in the context of an entire AV system, with implications for future work.

As passenger vehicle technologies have advanced, so have their capabilities to avoid obstacles, especially with developments in tires, suspensions, steering, as well as safety technologies like ABS, ESC, and more recently, ADAS systems; however, environments around passenger vehicles have also become more complex, and dangerous. As autonomous road vehicle (ARV) development aims to address these complex environments, one area that is still new and open is ARV emergency obstacle avoidance at highway speeds (55-165 km/h) and on slippery road surfaces. When introducing obstacle avoidance capabilities into an ARV, it is important to target performance that meets or exceeds that of human drivers. This dissertation highlights subsystems within an entire ARV, which are crucial for the completion of a highly functional emergency obstacle avoidance maneuver (EOAM), and combines them in a novel framework while considering the nuances of traveling at highway speeds and/or slippery road surfaces. The primary subsystems developed and tested in this research include the synthesis of ARV sensing, perception, decision making, control, and actuation. These subsystems are introduced with some novelties to the current state-of-the-art as well as the holistic ARV EOAM Framework, designed to handle highway speeds and slippery surfaces, as a novelty. Lastly, a newly considered testing and validation methodology for ARV EOAM performance and validation is presented. This general obstacle avoidance capability assessment (GOACA) has implications for adoption by national or even global regulation bodies, regarding ARV EOAM safety performance while requiring all the core ARV systems to perform well, and in harmony, to achieve top marks

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is recognized as a founder of the modern scientific project and a forerunner of the modern era of political thought. He advocated the development of an active science that would enable human beings to control nature in order to relieve man's estate. To accomplish this, Bacon argues that we must reconstruct all arts and sciences upon a more solid foundation. In reconstructing the arts and sciences, Bacon subtly changes the meaning of foundational religious, political, and scientific notions in order to better suit his project of progress. As the inheritors of his vision, turning to Bacon helps recover foundational considerations that have been forgotten as a result of his success. This dissertation approaches Bacon's thought through an analysis of his New Atlantis, a fable that envisions the completion of his project. I also turn to his other political, scientific, and religious works as appropriate to supply what is omitted in the fable. I find that although his revision of religious, scientific, and political foundations is conducted subtly they are nevertheless revolutionary, and essential for preparing the various outlooks that characterize the modern world.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is recognized as a founder of the modern scientific project and a forerunner of the modern era of political thought. He advocated the development of an active science that would enable human beings to control nature in order to relieve man's estate. To accomplish this, Bacon argues that we must reconstruct all arts and sciences upon a more solid foundation. In reconstructing the arts and sciences, Bacon subtly changes the meaning of foundational religious, political, and scientific notions in order to better suit his project of progress. As the inheritors of his vision, turning to Bacon helps recover foundational considerations that have been forgotten as a result of his success. This dissertation approaches Bacon's thought through an analysis of his New Atlantis, a fable that envisions the completion of his project. I also turn to his other political, scientific, and religious works as appropriate to supply what is omitted in the fable. I find that although his revision of religious, scientific, and political foundations is conducted subtly they are nevertheless revolutionary, and essential for preparing the various outlooks that characterize the modern world.

As passenger vehicle technologies have advanced, so have their capabilities to avoid obstacles, especially with developments in tires, suspensions, steering, as well as safety technologies like ABS, ESC, and more recently, ADAS systems. However, environments around passenger vehicles have also become more complex, and dangerous. There have previously been studies that outline driver tendencies and performance capabilities when attempting to avoid obstacles while driving passenger vehicles. Now that autonomous vehicles are being developed with obstacle avoidance capabilities, it is important to target performance that meets or exceeds that of human drivers. This manuscript highlights systems that are crucial for an emergency obstacle avoidance maneuver (EOAM) and identifies the state-of-the-art for each of the related systems, while considering the nuances of traveling at highway speeds. Some of the primary EOAM-related systems/areas that are discussed in this review are: general path planning methods, system hierarchies, decision-making, trajectory generation, and trajectory-tracking control methods. After concluding remarks, suggestions for future work which could lead to an ideal EOAM development, are discussed.

DwL srenerallv includes drilline virein hole with a drillshoe at the end of the liner and with the liner-hanger assembly at the top of the liner. When drilling is complete, the process begins setting the hanger and releasing the running tool, cementing the liner, pressure testing the liner, setting the packer at the top of the liner and pressure-testing it reverse circulating excess cement out of the hole, and pulling the tool out of the hole.