In this document the humanoid robot “Arabot” will be presented. Arabot was built by the company Pal Technology as research platform in the field of service robots. The hardware design has the primary goal to achieve good dynamic performance and extreme lightweight. The specifications of the first prototype are described below. Pal Technology wants to participate to Robocup 2006 in the humanoid ...

Exercise is vital to maintaining good health, but many people neglect to work out regularly or often enough. One reason is the lack of will to take part in physical activities. We believe that interactive technologies can play a role in providing entertaining and implicitly educational mechanisms that will help people pursue healthy physical activities. As an example to our approach we present ...

Cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells release tissue plasminogen activator ft-PA) and type 1 plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAl-i ) in response to alpha thrombin stimulation. In order to study the mechanisms of thrombin stimulation, we measured changes in levels of mRNA for t-PA and PAl-i following exposure of endothelial cells to 3 U/mI alpha thrombin. Alpha thrombin causes a signi...

Although mitochondrial oxidative catabolism of fatty acid (FA) is a major energy source for the adult mammalian heart, cardiac lipotoxity resulting from elevated serum FA and enhanced FA use has been implicated in the pathogenesis of heart failure. To investigate the effects of intermediates of FA metabolism [palmitoyl-l-carnitine (Pal-car) and palmitoyl-CoA (Pal-CoA)] on mitochondrial function...

This study investigates how variations in students’ trajectories within the tutoring system, Writing Pal, varied as a function of individual differences and ultimately related to changes in the quality and linguistic properties of prompt-based essays. Fortytwo college students interacted freely with the computerized writing tutor for approximately 4 hours. Using a novel statistical technique (r...

BACKGROUND The Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) was used to explore which tests and their measures are able to detect cognitive change after a single dose of donepezil in Alzheimer disease (AD) patients. The aim of this study was to establish the ability of CANTAB tests and their measures to detect cognitive change after a single 5-mg dose of donepezil in treatment-n...

d-Amphetamine selectively promotes release of both dopamine (DA) and norepinephrine (NE) versus serotonin (5HT), and chronic d-amphetamine treatment decreases cocaine-taking behavior in rats, nonhuman primates, and humans. However, abuse liability limits the clinical utility of amphetamine maintenance for treating cocaine abuse. One strategy to improve safety and efficacy of monoamine releasers...

Wounding lettuce leaves induces the de novo synthesis of phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL, EC 4.3.1.5), the accumulation of phenolic compounds, and subsequent tissue browning. A brief heat-shock at 45 C reduces the rise in wound-induced PAL, the accumulation of phenolic compounds, and tissue browning. The activity of PAL measured 24 h after wounding and the content of phenolic compounds (absorb...