Publisher Health

Emergency responders in Ukraine’s capital offer not only physical care to the victims of airstrikes, but also mental health support for survivors in crisis.Hands shaking as she covered her mouth, a woman looked toward a gaping hole in the side of a high-rise, the contents of apartments spilling out of its side.Standing alongside her was Ivanka Davydenko, 29, wearing a blue uniform with “Psychologist” emblazoned in yellow on both sides, her arm placed gently across the woman’s back.She handed her a paper cup of water and asked how she could help. The woman’s son lived on the building’s 18th floor, she explained, and he was not answering his phone. Most of that floor was gone.“We help people because they are in a state of shock and do not always understand what they need at the moment,” Ms. Davydenko said. “We offer banal things: water, coffee, a blanket.”A woman searching for her son, who lived in the building in Kyiv that was hit by a missile on June 24, talked with emergency responders.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesMs. Davydenko is a member of a small team within Ukraine’s State Emergency Services, delivering psychological first aid at moments of crisis in the capital, Kyiv. She arrived minutes after a Russian attack, early on the morning of June 24, in which Ukrainian air defenses destroyed incoming missiles, causing fragments to careen into apartments.Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have forced its emergency crews to face not only fire, smoke and blood, but also the rippling psychological effects felt by people experiencing war. Public health experts warn that millions of Ukrainians will probably develop a mental health condition because of the invasion, and that the number will only grow as the days of bombardment, violence and grief go on.So Ukraine’s emergency crews include not only firefighters, paramedics and police officers, but also psychologists, including Ms. Davydenko, to help people dealing with the immediate effects of shock or other acute mental health care needs. There are similar efforts in other cities, but with Russian missiles persistently raining down horror on the capital, the Kyiv team is perhaps the busiest.“Before, we used to respond to serious and large-scale emergencies, like a gas explosion and where a lot of people needed to be evacuated,” said Liubov Kirnos, the Kyiv unit’s manager. “When the war started, we were on duty all the time, we didn’t leave the city.”Liubov Kirnos in June in Kyiv. “When the war started, we were on duty all the time, we didn’t leave the city,” she said.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesLike other emergency workers, the psychologists are on call. When an attack happens, a coordination center sends a team racing to the site. There, psychologists often find people crying, frozen in shock or breaking down.“When we meet a person for the first time, we ask, ‘What do you need right now? How are you feeling right now?’” Ms. Kirnos said. Some people simply ask the psychologists to stay close for a while. “They might be expecting their loved ones to be taken out from the rubble,” she said.That was the case on June 24 with the mother Ms. Davydenko was supporting. The psychologist walked with her as she consulted a list of people taken to hospitals or missing.Outside the building that was struck. City officials said five people had been killed.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesBut as they walked away, a firefighter said in a low voice that there was nothing left on the 18th floor, where her son had lived.Residents had been sleeping when the strike tore open their building before dawn. The bodies of at least two victims had been thrown from the building along with twisted metal, insulation and fragments of furniture, scattering into the parking lot below.Dozens of people stood in shock, Ms. Davydenko said, including some who had seen dead bodies and others who were wounded but did not fully understand they were bleeding.Ms. Davydenko and another colleague at the site would help around 45 people over some 12 hours. Iryna Kuts, 62, went to Ms. Davydenko with her daughter, still trembling from shock, asking for some water and a moment to speak.Ms. Kuts described being jolted from sleep in her 19th-floor apartment, and then her room filling with smoke.Ivanka Davydenko, a psychologist with the Kyiv Emergency Services, at the scene of the damaged apartment building.Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times“We were just hugging, thinking we would suffocate,” she said. They eventually made their way down the stairs, helped by police officers, but were surveying the ruins of their apartment building in a stupor.“We provide psychological first aid to people with anxiety, stress, crying, aggression,” Ms. Davydenko explained. “Then we work with people who stay on the benches, in the yard, because it’s like a second emotional wave is hitting.”A young woman in a white tank top who had been wandering the parking lot sobbing was led over. The woman’s father, a resident, had survived the strike but was refusing to come out.“Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” Ms. Davydenko told her, holding her arm, adding that firefighters would help her father out. “But you cannot go in — no one can.”She waited until the father finally emerged, and the young woman threw her arms around his neck, weeping.A woman waiting for her father to emerge from the damaged apartment building.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesNot everyone would have such a happy reunion. Later in the day, Ms. Davydenko accompanied the mother and her husband, who had been looking for their son, to examine the badly mutilated remains of a body.They were still awaiting official DNA confirmation, but the remains were most likely her son’s, the psychologist explained.The next day, city officials confirmed that five people had been killed in the strike.Public health experts like Dr. Jarno Habicht, the head of the World Health Organization’s office in Ukraine, have warned of the war’s long-term and widespread effects on mental health. In an interview, he said that an estimated 10 million people would most likely develop some form of mental health condition because of Russia’s invasion.The W.H.O. estimate, based on an analysis of how other conflicts had affected mental health, will probably increase the longer the war drags on, he added. Stress-induced disorders, including anxiety and depression, are among experts’ main concerns.The key to addressing mental health concerns in Ukraine, Dr. Habicht said, “is not waiting until the war is over.”A handful of programs have sought to help Ukrainians, including one spearheaded by Olena Zelenska, the first lady, that aims to make high-quality, affordable mental health services available to people across the country.Much of the apartment building’s 18th floor was destroyed.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesUkraine’s Ministry of Health, the W.H.O. and more than a dozen other partners have also begun a program to train primary care physicians on how to treat patients with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal behavior and substance abuse.But programs like the emergency team of psychologists try to provide an early intervention in moments of crisis.“If you don’t deal with stress right away, it can turn into long-term stress, which can turn into P.T.S.D.,” said Ms. Kirnos. “It’s aimed at helping bring home the idea to people that, ‘You were in danger, but now you’re safe.’ If we don’t do this right away, people might get stuck in this state.”Still, the burden can also be heavy for those giving psychological care. Days after the missile attack on Kyiv, Ms. Davydenko said team members were working with their own therapists to process what they had seen.“Of course,” she said, “I am also a human being.”Oleksandr Chubko

The assessment is the first advance in diagnosing the deadly condition since it was discovered more than a century ago, experts said.The Food and Drug Administration has approved a blood test that can identify pregnant women who are at imminent risk of developing a severe form of high blood pressure called pre-eclampsia, a leading cause of disability and death among childbearing women.The condition disproportionately affects Black women in the United States and may have contributed to the recent death of Tori Bowie, a track star who won gold at the 2016 Olympics. Two Black teammates of Ms. Bowie — Allyson Felix and Tianna Bartoletta — also developed pre-eclampsia during their pregnancies.The new test may offer an early warning, identifying which of the many pregnant women who have suggestive symptoms will go on to develop the life-threatening disease within the next two weeks.“It’s groundbreaking. It’s revolutionary,” Dr. Doug Woelkers, a professor of maternal fetal medicine at the University of California, San Diego, said of the test. “It’s the first step forward in pre-eclampsia diagnostics since 1900, when the condition was first defined.”To what extent the test will improve outcomes and save lives is not clear, however, as there is no effective treatment for pre-eclampsia, which usually eases after birth.“We don’t have a therapy that reverses or cures pre-eclampsia other than delivery of the baby, which is more like a last resort,” Dr. Woelkers said.The new blood test, made by Thermo Fisher Scientific, has been available in Europe for several years. It is intended for pregnant women who are hospitalized for a blood pressure disorder in the 23rd to 35th weeks of gestation.The test can tell, with up to 96 percent accuracy, who will not develop pre-eclampsia within the next two weeks and so can safely be discharged from the hospital. Two-thirds of the women who get a positive result, on the other hand, will progress to severe pre-eclampsia in that time, and their babies may need to be delivered early.Distinguishing between the two groups of women is a challenge that has long vexed physicians.“The warning signs of pre-eclampsia are not very specific,” said Dr. Sarosh Rana, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago who has studied the test. “A lot of women will have edema and headaches.” (Edema means swelling.)“But we don’t really know who among those patients is at higher risk for the really adverse outcomes,” she said.Pre-eclampsia affects about one in 25 pregnancies, and the incidence has been on the rise in recent years in the United States. The problem usually starts about halfway through a pregnancy, though it can also occur after childbirth. It can lead to a condition called eclampsia, which can lead to seizures and death.Black women in the United States have pre-eclampsia rates much higher than those of white women, and they are three times as likely as white women to suffer kidney damage or death from pre-eclampsia. Black women are also more likely to lose their babies.The blood test measures the ratio of two proteins that are produced by the placenta. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in November tracked 1,014 pregnant women hospitalized with a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy at 18 medical centers in the United States from 2019 through 2021. Just under one-third were Black, and 16 percent were Hispanic.The researchers found that the two proteins were greatly unbalanced in the blood of women who developed severe pre-eclampsia. Those with the widest ratios had a 65 percent chance of progressing to severe pre-eclampsia and of delivering their baby within two weeks, either spontaneously or through induction.“If your levels are among the highest, you deliver in a few days,” said Dr. Ravi Thadhani, an author of the study.Women who have symptoms suggesting pre-eclampsia but who test negative can be reassured and sent home, but they may need to have the test repeated every two weeks, Dr. Rana said.Pre-eclampsia develops precipitously, and without the blood test, the warning signs can be vague.“A woman can go from feeling fine and being completely healthy and having normal kidney and liver function, and within 24 to 48 hours those organs can fail and she develops brain swelling and seizures,” Dr. Thadhani said. “That is the scary part of the disease.”

Published19 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, ReutersBy Oliver Slow & James FitzGeraldBBC NewsFootball clubs should think about the impact on fans when accepting sponsorships from gambling firms, the head of NHS England has said. Amanda Pritchard said the deals send a message to children that gambling was OK. Her comments came after the news that the NHS is nearly doubling the number of gambling addiction clinics to 15 after a record number of referrals. Some 1,389 patients were referred for gambling support in 2022-23.This is up from 775 two years prior.Seven new facilities are to be opened this summer on top of the eight already open.Speaking on the BBC Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, Ms Pritchard described severe gambling addiction as a “cruel disease” and a “life destroyer”. “It would be really great to see the gambling industry, and also organisations like football clubs, really think seriously about their responsibilities here,” she said. Shirt sponsorship deals mean “that it’s kids that are seeing every day now messages that say gambling is OK”, she says.She also highlighted the fact people can bet every hour of the day on their mobile phones, leading to a “really significant increase” in demand for NHS gambling addiction services.In a separate statement to announce the new clinics, Ms Pritchard said children and adults were being “bombarded” with gambling adverts. The NHS announcement follows a coroner’s verdict on Thursday that one betting firm could have done more to help a gambler who took his own life in 2021 after amassing huge debts.The company in question, Betfair, said it had met all the regulatory standards which were in place at the time, but conceded in hindsight that it should have done more.Meanwhile, a campaign group this week urged the UK government to “step in” after three Premier League clubs announced new shirt sponsorship deals with betting firms.Gambling addiction: “It’s a double life”When the full set of 15 NHS facilities are open across England, the health service hopes to be able to treat 3,000 patients a year, using techniques such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).The seven new clinics are in Blackpool, Bristol, Derby, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Sheffield, and Thurrock in Essex.These are in addition to others already running in London, Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Telford.An eighth clinic in London exists to treat not only gambling but also gaming addiction in children and young people.Public health minister Neil O’Brien said the government had set out plans to tackle gambling, including a commitment to introduce a statutory levy so gambling companies pay their “fair share” towards treatment services.The publication of the government’s white paper in April marked the biggest shake-up of regulation in the sector since the advent of the smartphone.Among the measures proposed were a stake limit of £2 on online slot machines for young gamblers – but campaigners attacked a lack of action on adverts.The new addiction facilities were described as “heartening” by the charity Gambling with Lives, whose strategy director Will Prochaska said the clinics “couldn’t come at a more pertinent moment, whilst gambling advertising lures more people into harm”. The announcement was also welcomed by Matt Zarb-Cousin, the director of Clean Up Gambling, who said the current business model was built on “harm”. The Lib Dems said news of record addiction referrals showed the Conservatives were not doing enough to protect gamblers.”Far too many people are suffering from gambling harms,” said health spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP, accusing the government of “dragging their feet” on the issue.”These new figures must be a wake-up call to ministers to stop dithering and act now, before more lives are ruined.”If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article you can visit the BBC’s Action Line for information and support.More on this storyGovernment must ‘step in’ over gambling sponsorsPublished4 days agoPsychiatrists warn gamblers ahead of Grand NationalPublished14 AprilWhat’s the answer to Britain’s hidden gambling problem?Published21 February

NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard says patients are facing disruption for “both sides” failing to find agreement in a dispute over pay in the health service.Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Ms Pritchard said industrial action had caused “significant” disruption, and would get worse in the next round of strikes later this month.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have identified a potential new immune checkpoint receptor that could lead to treatments for diseases such as lung and bowel cancer and autoimmune conditions including IBD.
The study, published today in Science Immunology, examines a family of 13 receptors, or proteins that transmit signals for cells to follow, called killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR). Of the 13 receptors, one is unique in that it has not readily been observed on immune cells of peripheral blood. Researchers identified that this mysterious receptor, called KIR3DL3, is found in the intestine and lungs, suggesting it could provide signals specifically required by immune cells that are resident in mucosal tissues.
“We’re always searching for these cell surface receptors that can be such important targets for immunotherapies,” says Billy Palmer, PhD, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus researcher and lead author. “This is one that is very specific to T cells in certain tissues. That’s something that may be able to be leveraged medicinally, opening the door for potential new therapies.”
Researchers were able to determine the tissue distribution of the elusive KIR3DL3 receptor by searching for a sequence of nucleotides specific to KIR3DL3 in public RNA sequencing databases. After developing a short list of probable tissues where KIR3DL3 could be expressed, they collaborated with lab groups in the United Kingdom that created a KIR3DL3-specific antibody, and colleagues from the University of Colorado School of Medicine who supplied the tissues. Using this antibody, the researchers confirmed KIR3DL3 protein expression was rare in peripheral blood and most common in the intestine.
To assess the functional attributes of KIR3DL3-expressing cells, the researchers used flow cytometry and single cell RNA sequencing. These approaches identified KIR3DL3 expression in a unique population of T cells with hallmarks suggestive of recent activation. In a series of functional experiments, they found that when KIR3DL3 is activated by its binding partner, HHLA2, it transmits a signal that can inhibit immune responses.
“KIR3DL3 marks a unique cell population, and assessing its role is a very exciting discovery — we now have a new tool at our disposal” says Paul Norman, PhD, professor in the CU Anschutz Department of Biomedical Informatics and a senior author of the study. “Whenever a unique cell population is discovered, we want to know how these cells affect disease. Can we further our understanding, and design new therapies or treatments with this knowledge? Our findings present the opportunity to see how best we can utilize this receptor; work that is ongoing in the lab.”

A team of scientists from around the globe, including those from Trinity College Dublin, has gained high-res structural insights into a key bacterial enzyme, which may help chemists design new drugs to inhibit it and thus suppress disease-causing bacteria. Their work is important as fears continue to grow around rising rates of antibiotic resistance. The scientists, led by Martin Caffrey, Fellow Emeritus in Trinity’s School of Medicine and School of Biochemistry and Immunology, used next-gen X-ray crystallography and single particle cryo-electron microscopy techniques to “look under the bacterial bonnet” and produce a molecular blueprint of the full-length enzyme that may be used to design drugs that attack any structural weaknesses.Because the enzyme Lnt is not found in humans – it only exists in bacteria and helps them build stable cell membranes through which things are transported in and out of cells – it is of huge potential significance as a therapeutic target as any bespoke drug designed to attack it should have fewer side-effects for patients.The research has just been published in leading international journal Science Advances.Martin Caffrey said: “A number of disease-causing bacteria have developed resistance to a plethora of first-choice drugs used to treat them and, with antimicrobial resistance on the rise in general, the World Health Organization has for some time now advised that a post-antibiotic era, in which minor injuries and common infections could prove fatal, is looming.“New drugs are therefore badly needed and, while the journey can be a long one from providing a structural blueprint like this to developing a new drug, the precision to which we have resolved this potential target paints something of a ‘bullseye’ on that target.”

A year after Dobbs, researchers are still trying to answer a central question: How many more babies are born as a result of abortion bans?For more than a year, since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, pregnant women have faced a radically altered landscape of challenges and choices as the number of abortion providers dropped to zero in more than a dozen states.But the precise impact of the decision has been difficult for researchers to measure directly, particularly when it comes to a central question: How many more babies are born as a result of abortion bans?On Thursday, researchers from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health published one of the first serious attempts at an answer. They focused on Texas, where a law that took effect in September 2021, nine months before the court’s Dobbs decision, effectively banned abortion at six weeks. The analysis found that the state had nearly 10,000 more births between April and December of last year than would have been expected without the law, or 3 percent more.The finding, which cheered abortion opponents, could suggest a striking number of pregnancies carried to term that otherwise might not have been, absent the law known as Senate Bill 8.Researchers watching the new abortion bans around the country have expected a resultant rise in births, but perhaps not one so large.“It looks like they have demonstrated that births increased more in Texas than we would have expected,” said Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College who studies abortion but did not participate in the study. “The inference I’m less comfortable making at this point is that all of those excess births are because of S.B. 8. Some of it may be, but I don’t think all of it will be. It’s just too high.”The authors of the study, which was published as a two-page research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also stopped short of attributing their estimated increase in births solely to the unusual law, which allows for civil lawsuits against those who aid abortions after the onset of fetal cardiac activity, usually around six weeks. The results at least suggested that “not everyone who might have received an abortion in the absence of S.B. 8 was able to obtain one,” they wrote.Still, the authors were confident in their methods and results.“This pattern was unique to Texas,” said Alison Gemmill, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and one of the researchers on the study. She said the team looked at each of the other 49 states and Washington, D.C., but found no evidence of differences from expected birth counts. If there were other explanations for the increase, she added, they would have to be unique to Texas and to the time after the S.B. 8 abortion law went into effect.Quantifying the effect of abortion bans has been difficult for researchers because of a lag in obtaining detailed data about births.In other states where abortion bans went into force after the Dobbs decision in June 2022, researchers are still collecting vital statistics in order to study the effect of new prohibitions on births. Expectations have been that those bans would have an even greater effect on those seeking abortions than the S.B. 8 law did in Texas, because many of them prohibited all abortions and were adopted in a large number of contiguous states, making it difficult for women to travel to other states for procedures.The study published on Thursday, which looked at data back to 2016, relied on provisional birth data for 2022 because fuller data was not available. It did not include demographic information such as the mother’s age or race that could be compared to prior years and used to understand other factors that may have played a role.The researchers then created a statistical model of what Texas would have looked like without the abortion law. With that, they were able to estimate the number of births that would have taken place in that case.“This is an indirect way of measuring what we can’t measure,” Ms. Gemmill said. “We don’t know the decisions behind whether people sought abortions, or whether they weren’t able to.”Broader changes in birthrates have complicated researchers’ efforts. The number of births has been lower in recent years in Texas, and across the United States, a trend that was exacerbated at the height of the Covid emergency. But there has been a rise in births since the pandemic in Texas: There were around 389,000 births last year, down from 398,000 in 2016, but larger than the number recorded in 2020.Other factors may have led to higher birth trends during that time period, Ms. Myers said, including a rise in the number of foreign-born mothers giving birth, many of them in Texas. Ms. Gemmill said that factor was hard to measure without detailed demographic data on births in 2022.Despite the new restrictions under S.B. 8, many Texas women still obtained abortions, either by having them before the six-week cutoff, by traveling out of state for their procedures or by taking abortion medications on their own. Texas has seen a flood of mail-order pills, and some Texans have been able to get abortions in Mexico.Still, anti-abortion activists took the Johns Hopkins study as evidence that their success at severely limiting abortions in Texas had produced the desired effect: more pregnancies carried to term.“Every baby saved from elective abortion should be celebrated!” John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, said in a statement. “This new study highlights the significant success of our movement in the last two years, and we look forward to helping the mothers and families of our state care for their children.”

The international vaccine aid group agreed to provide developing countries with a new shot to prevent a global resurgence of the paralyzing virus.The NewsThe governing board of Gavi, the international organization that provides vaccines to developing countries, added a new shot to its roster this week that could help to eradicate polio worldwide and prevent its resurgence.The new vaccine does not contain the live viruses that are in the polio vaccines currently used in some low- and middle-income countries. It adds what’s known as an inactivated polio component into a multifaceted shot that is already being used to protect young children against five other dangerous infections. A similar shot is already available in the United States and some European countries. A child was marked after receiving the polio vaccine in Kabul, Afghanistan, in May.Samiullah Popal/EPA, via ShutterstockWhy It Matters: Combining vaccines could offer longevity.Oral polio vaccines, administered in droplet form, have driven down polio cases by more than 99 percent in recent decades. But because the drops contain live viruses — detectable in the excrement of children who get the vaccine — the virus can spread and cause new infections in countries with poor sanitation. The new vaccine won’t have this problem.“More children today, in 2023, are paralyzed from circulating vaccine-derived polio than wild polio,” said Dr. James Campbell, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who studies vaccine development. He called the Gavi approval an “important step” in quelling the virus globally because it will give children in low- and middle-income countries access to a product that pediatricians in the United States and Europe have long offered.The shot is also expected to help prevent infections because of its logistical ease. Since the polio vaccine will be wrapped into a combination product that is already being distributed to children, scientists say countries who use it will be less likely to see a resurgence of polio once the oral vaccines are scaled back.Background: Polio has remaining strongholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan.Polio, officially known as poliomyelitis, is a highly infectious viral disease transmitted mainly through feces in places with poor sanitation. The virus multiplies in the intestine and invades the nervous system, causing paralysis. Even a single existing case is problematic, experts say, because it could lead to a global resurgence.The United States has long used an inactivated polio vaccine, or IPV, instead of the oral drops, and Gavi has been helping lower income countries buy it for the past 10 years. But the new six-in-one vaccine, called a hexavalent, will also protect children against hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis.Adding polio protection to the existing five-component vaccine will raise its cost, but public health officials say the move is still economically advantageous. Fewer vaccine doses overall will help to decrease small expenses that add up, including syringes, serum refrigerators and appointments with health workers.What’s Next: A global rollout is on the horizon.Countries that Gavi serves will now be able to apply for funding for the vaccine, which could become available as soon as 2024. It is administered in three doses within the first months of life — plus a subsequent booster shot before age 2 — and UNICEF has estimated that the global market for the new vaccine could reach 100 million annual doses by 2030.

For people who have suffered neurotrauma such as a stroke, everyday tasks can be extremely challenging because of decreased coordination and strength in one or both upper limbs. These problems have spurred the development of robotic devices to help enhance their abilities. However, the rigid nature of these assistive devices can be problematic, especially for more complex tasks like playing a musical instrument.
A first-of-its-kind robotic glove is lending a “hand” and providing hope to piano players who have suffered a disabling stroke. Developed by researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, the soft robotic hand exoskeleton uses artificial intelligence to improve hand dexterity.
Combining flexible tactile sensors, soft actuators and AI, this robotic glove is the first to “feel” the difference between correct and incorrect versions of the same song and to combine these features into a single hand exoskeleton.
“Playing the piano requires complex and highly skilled movements, and relearning tasks involves the restoration and retraining of specific movements or skills,” said Erik Engeberg, Ph.D., senior author, a professor in FAU’s Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering within the College of Engineering and Computer Science, and a member of the FAU Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences and the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute. “Our robotic glove is composed of soft, flexible materials and sensors that provide gentle support and assistance to individuals to relearn and regain their motor abilities.”
Researchers integrated special sensor arrays into each fingertip of the robotic glove. Unlike prior exoskeletons, this new technology provides precise force and guidance in recovering the fine finger movements required for piano playing. By monitoring and responding to users’ movements, the robotic glove offers real-time feedback and adjustments, making it easier for them to grasp the correct movement techniques.
To demonstrate the robotic glove’s capabilities, researchers programmed it to feel the difference between correct and incorrect versions of the well-known tune, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” played on the piano. To introduce variations in the performance, they created a pool of 12 different types of errors that could occur at the beginning or end of a note, or due to timing errors that were either premature or delayed, and that persisted for 0.1, 0.2 or 0.3 seconds. Ten different song variations consisted of three groups of three variations each, plus the correct song played with no errors.

To classify the song variations, Random Forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithms were trained with data from the tactile sensors in the fingertips. Feeling the differences between correct and incorrect versions of the song was done with the robotic glove independently and while worn by a person. The accuracy of these algorithms was compared to classify the correct and incorrect song variations with and without the human subject.
Results of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI, demonstrated that the ANN algorithm had the highest classification accuracy of 97.13 percent with the human subject and 94.60 percent without the human subject. The algorithm successfully determined the percentage error of a certain song as well as identified key presses that were out of time. These findings highlight the potential of the smart robotic glove to aid individuals who are disabled to relearn dexterous tasks like playing musical instruments.
Researchers designed the robotic glove using 3D printed polyvinyl acid stents and hydrogel casting to integrate five actuators into a single wearable device that conforms to the user’s hand. The fabrication process is new, and the form factor could be customized to the unique anatomy of individual patients with the use of 3D scanning technology or CT scans.
“Our design is significantly simpler than most designs as all the actuators and sensors are combined into a single molding process,” said Engeberg. “Importantly, although this study’s application was for playing a song, the approach could be applied to myriad tasks of daily life and the device could facilitate intricate rehabilitation programs customized for each patient.”
Clinicians could use the data to develop personalized action plans to pinpoint patient weaknesses, which may present themselves as sections of the song that are consistently played erroneously and can be used to determine which motor functions require improvement. As patients progress, more challenging songs could be prescribed by the rehabilitation team in a game-like progression to provide a customizable path to improvement.
“The technology developed by professor Engeberg and the research team is truly a gamechanger for individuals with neuromuscular disorders and reduced limb functionality,” said Stella Batalama, Ph.D., dean of the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science. “Although other soft robotic actuators have been used to play the piano; our robotic glove is the only one that has demonstrated the capability to ‘feel’ the difference between correct and incorrect versions of the same song.”
Study co-authors are Maohua Lin, first author and a Ph.D. student; Rudy Paul, a graduate student; and Moaed Abd, Ph.D., a recent graduate; all from the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science; James Jones, Boise State University; Darryl Dieujuste, a graduate research assistant, FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science; and Harvey Chim, M.D., a professor in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of Florida.
This research was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Aging of the NIH and the National Science Foundation. This research was supported in part by a seed grant from the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science and the FAU Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering (I-SENSE).

An analysis on the positive effects of exercise on blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes shows that while all exercise helps, certain activities — and their timing — are extremely good for people’s health.
The study, published in The American Journal of Medicine, provides a comprehensive but straightforward summary of the benefits of exercise on controlling blood glucose levels in people with Type 2 diabetes.
“The challenge with this is that most, if not all, people know exercise is good for them but they don’t know the best approach,” said Steven Malin, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences and an author of the study. “We targeted this issue by focusing on a few key parameters: the utility of aerobics versus weightlifting, the time of day that is optimal for exercise, whether to exercise before or after meals and whether we have to lose weight to get benefits or not.”
As part of the analysis, researchers sifted through dozens of studies and extracted common conclusions. Some of the key findings include: Habitual aerobic exercise: Physical activity, such as cycling, swimming and walking, that increases the heart rate and the body’s use of oxygen helps manage blood glucose. Resistance exercise: Working muscles using an opposing force such as dumbbells, resistance bands or a person’s own body weight benefits insulin sensitivity in those with Type 2 diabetes. Movement throughout the day by breaking up sitting time benefits blood glucose control and insulin levels. Performing exercise later in the day can result in better control of blood sugar levels as well as improve insulin sensitivity.”In short, any movement is good and more is generally better,” Malin said. “The combination of aerobic exercise and weightlifting is likely better than either alone. Exercise in the afternoon might work better than exercise in the morning for glucose control, and exercise after a meal may help slightly more than before a meal. And, you don’t have to lose weight to see the benefits of exercise. That is because exercise can lower body fat and increase muscle mass.”
More than 37 million Americans have diabetes, and between 90 and 95 percent have Type 2 diabetes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People with Type 2 diabetes are insulin resistant, meaning that their cells don’t respond normally to insulin, a hormone that controls the level of sugar, or glucose, in the blood. High blood sugar is damaging to the body and can cause serious health issues.
While insulin resistance is harmful, scientists believe increased insulin sensitivity is beneficial. High insulin sensitivity allows the cells of the body to use blood glucose more effectively, reducing blood sugar.
Malin researches insulin sensitivity and teaches kinesiology, the study of human movement. He and several other faculty members at Rutgers support the concept of “exercise as medicine.” The idea, which is supported by the American College of Sports Medicine and is increasingly being borne out by research, is that exercise can be considered a first-line therapy.
“I’m one of those individuals who subscribes to that notion, and in that way, I think of exercise as a drug,” Malin said.
Malin and colleagues authored the study to offer the medical community up-to-date practical advice for their patients.
“Together, this idea of exercise timing and type is important because it helps medical professionals more accurately recommend exercise prescriptions to combat high blood glucose,” Malin said.
Other Rutgers researchers on the study included: Afsheen Syeda, a graduate student in the Department of Nutritional Sciences in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; Daniel Battillo, a graduate student in the Department of Kinesiology and Health; and Aayush Visaria, an internal medicine resident at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He conducted the research as a postdoctoral fellow with the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research.