Research at Rutgers
Archived article from Mar 1, 2002
Putting on the gloves against stroke
Though a stroke may occur in an instant, its effects can last a lifetime. Now virtual reality is offering new hope for stroke patients, even years after the damage has been done.
Grigore Burdea, who heads the Human-Machine Interface Labor-atory at the Center for Advanced Information Processing (CAIP), has developed a new rehabilitation system. Burdea is already well-known for his work in virtual reality therapy for hand and ankle injuries.
Currently under patent review, the stroke rehabilitation system uses sensor-equipped gloves connected to a PC to provide both therapy and a way for the therapist to chart progress. The patient's gloved hand is linked to a virtual hand on the PC monitor -- the patient's actual hand movements are mimicked on-screen. By interacting and playing with various on-screen graphics -- including fluttering butterflies, piano keyboards and mechanical hands -- the patient performs intensive rehab exercises without drudgery.
Burdea's research team tested four patients with hand impairment suffered in strokes from one to four years prior to the study. After three weeks of the new, unconventional therapy, the researchers found up to a 140 percent improvement in range of motion for the thumb and up to a 118 percent improvement in the ability to move one finger at a time.
"We found that virtual reality alone could be used to improve the condition of chronic stroke patients without the use of traditional rehab exercises," said Burdea. "It provides a way for patients to completely immerse themselves in rehab and actually look forward to treatment. As a consequence, the results are fast and dramatic."
No one's saying the word "revolution" yet, but the early tests show that the therapy works without traditional rehabilitation and could be undertaken at home via computer link to the therapist. Burdea said the next step is to perform statistically relevant, large-scale clinical studies and validate the findings through third-party testing.
-- Bill Haduch
Getting out of a hole
It's a classic nightmare -- the ground opening up and swallowing a child or an adult. And thanks to abandoned wells, sinkholes and job-site missteps, falls into narrow spaces are a surprisingly frequent occurrence. It happens often enough that the New Brunswick Fire Department trains annually for "confined space rescue."
Now, a senior class assignment guided by Professor E.A. Elsayed, Assistant Professor David Coit and Visiting Professor Basily A. Basily, all of the industrial engineering department, may provide some new life-saving options. Five of the professors' students designed and constructed a "Rescue Device from a Well Shaft" that has received a thumbs-up from local firefighters, as well as extensive coverage in the media.
The device was demonstrated at the third annual Design of Engineering presentations of student projects in December. The students had worked closely with the New Brunswick Fire Department during early design, and then tested the device with about 10 firefighters at the department's training center during the fall. "It's a pretty neat design," said firefighter Vince Inzano.
-- Bill Haduch
No-show snow
A snow drought under way in the Northern Hemisphere is a piece of convincing evidence for climate change on a global scale, according to Professor David Robinson, chair of the department of geography and New Jersey state climatologist.
Robinson presented his findings during a symposium at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Using satellite monitoring of the Northern Hemisphere over the past three decades, combined with earlier historical records gathered from surface stations, Robinson found that the amount of annual snow cover in North America and Eurasia has been shrinking over the years and melting earlier. This early loss of snow has contributed significantly to higher spring temperatures that dry and warm the ground and, in turn, warm the atmosphere. The trend over time closely parallels some computer model projections of greenhouse-enhanced warming.
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