Infrared Monitoring of Oxygenation Process Generated by Robotic Verticalization in Bedridden People.

Bedridden people, especially at home, suffer from diverse pathologies beyond the main one that brings them to a specific position. Long-term cares are suitable at home to avoid congestions within hospital facilities. There are different technologies available to improve such people's conditions in their daily life. The standing posture is the key solution to enhance people's wellness amid the psychological burden due to the almost impossibility to be completely healed. The paper proposes the use of a polyfunctional and robotic bed capable of displaying many positions namely vertical, tilting, anti-trendelenburg with necessary graduation. A three-year monitoring of a patient, using a polyfunctional and robotic bed, suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), has been investigated. Different physiological parameters have been measured and, particularly, the variation of temperature has been measured in presence of body position connected to the robotic bed rotation that provokes biomechanical effort. It is demonstrated that certain body positions correspond to major and minor physical effort, hence major and minor oxygenation. An infrared camera has been used. As a positive result, the variation of posture has been delaying the increase of the pathological signs, because of better conditions.

Emissions of maritime transport: a European reference system.

Emissions from ships have recently received more attention since they have become a significant concern for air quality in harbours and port cities. This paper presents the methodology for a comprehensive maritime transport database of activity data, specific energy consumption, emission factors, and total emissions that have been developed within the European EX-TREMIS project. The model is built upon 3 modules: the fleet module, the transport activity module, and the emission module. The fleet module defines the ship categories, the loading capacities, and the engine characteristics of the different vessels by using EUROSTAT data, Sea Web Lloyd's database, and international literature. The transport activity module transforms total cargo handled (mainly based on EUROSTAT data and CEMT statistics) into ship-equivalents. These ship-equivalents are further transformed into ship-hours. The emission module calculates energy uses and CO(2), NO(X), SO(2), CO, HC, CH(4), NMHC, PM emissions from the resulting maritime activities. We have used technology based emission factors to take into account the technological evolution of vessels. To illustrate this new methodology, we present some results (emissions, fuel consumption and emission factors) for different countries. The overall methodology as well as the results and the country specific energy consumption and emission factors per ship type and size class can be extracted from the EX-TREMIS website (www.ex-tremis.eu). Our results contribute to more accurate estimates of emissions and air quality assessments in coastal cities and ports.