BACKGROUND The usability of inhalation devices depends on several factors, eg, the drug to inhale, device handling, and patients' training. Usability is then presumed to have economic consequences. AIM To assess and compare the cost of patients' training for proper usability of Breezhaler and Genuair (both dry powder inhalers) and Respimat (a soft mist inhaler) in asthma and chronic obstructi...

This paper presents a concept evaluation for a passive ball handling device for autonomous robots that enables the robot to ”feel” the ball. A combination of a capacitive and a pressure sensor delivers accurate information of the ball position and movement within the ball handling deviceeven without touching it. Inspired by the human reflex the sensor values are evaluated to implement a low-lev...

In this paper we propose an XML-based adaptive multiagent system for handling e-commerce activities. More specifically, our system aims at supporting a customer, visiting an e-commerce site, in the search of products and/or services present therein and appearing to be appealing according to her/his past interests and behaviour. The system is adaptive w.r.t. the profile of both the customer and ...

It has been widely recognized that the testing of Linux kernel is important. However, error handling code is one of the places where testing is difficult. In this paper, a new block I/O test tool is introduced. This makes testing of error handling codes easy. The new test tool has driver level fault injectors which have flexible and fully controllable interface for user level programs to simula...

We found chronic pneumoperitoneum in two continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis patients from two different hospitals. Both patients used the Stay.Safe® system and bicaVera solution, whose extension tubing is not primed with fluid but air-filled, unlike that of the conventional solution bags. This fact, together with a handling fault common to both patients, resulted in the inflow of the air...

An automated system is described for the sensor-based precision docking and manipulation of large objects. Past work in the remote handling of large nuclear waste containers is extensible to the problems associated with the handling of large objects such as coils of flat steel in industry. Computer vision and ultrasonic proximity sensing as described here are used to control the precision docki...