Onychocryptosis: a retrospective study of clinical aspects, inflammation treatment and pain management using Ozoile as a hydrogel and cream formulation.

Ingrown toenails account for roughly 20% of all foot problems in primary care. It is most common in young men, with nail care habits and footwear being major contributors. Onychocryptosis is typically caused by self-treatment attempts to cure the condition in its early stages. Its clinical features are frequently confused with other osseous and soft tissue abnormalities. The goal of this study was to provide perspectives on the management of pain and inflammation in Onychocryptosis using an Ozoile-based hydrogel formulation in a semi-occlusive bandage for 14 days, while incorporating natural pharmacological solutions into established protocols. The primary outcomes measured were pain reduction on NRS and stadiation according to the Al Kline Classification. The reduction was statistically significant, with a mean decrease in VAS score from 10 to 4 (p < 0.05), and Al Kline classification decreased by an average of 1.6 stages. 42% of patients recovered within the first 15 days of treatment, and 93% by the end of the scheduled treatment.

Toward an optimal quantitative design method integrating user-centered qualitative attributes.

The determination of product features, which can be seen as design specifications, is a crucial problem that must be carried out upstream to quickly validate the product configuration according to some attributes in relation to the user perception. To this end, the design methods must evolve toward an analysis compatible with various kind of data that can be qualitative or quantitative. In this paper, a new approach is introduced able to take into account various kind of information in order to determine some quantitative design specifications in accordance with the users perception. This is done through a mathematical formulation that exploit different types of data coming from sensory analysis and physical quantities. This mathematical formulation is then used in an optimization procedure that takes into account a preference order over the sensory attributes. The solution of this optimization problem gives thus the best user-centered specifications that must be used for the conception of the final product.

Emotion Measurements Through the Touch of Materials Surfaces.

The emotion generated by the touch of materials is studied via a protocol based on blind assessment of various stimuli. The human emotional reaction felt toward a material is estimated through (i) explicit measurements, using a questionnaire collecting valence and intensity, and (ii) implicit measurements of the activity of the autonomic nervous system, via a pupillometry equipment. A panel of 25 university students (13 women, 12 men), aged from 18 to 27, tested blind twelve materials such as polymers, sandpapers, wood, velvet and fur, randomly ordered. After measuring the initial pupil diameter, taken as a reference, its variation during the tactile exploration was recorded. After each touch, the participants were asked to quantify the emotional value of the material. The results show that the pupil size variation follows the emotional intensity. It is significantly larger during the touch of materials considered as pleasant or unpleasant, than with the touch of neutral materials. Moreover, after a time period of about 0.5 s following the stimulus, the results reveal significant differences between pleasant and unpleasant stimuli, as well as differences according to gender, i.e., higher pupil dilatation of women than men. These results suggest (i) that the autonomic nervous system is initially sensitive to high arousing stimulation, and (ii) that, after a certain period, the pupil size changes according to the cognitive interest induced and the emotional regulation adopted. This research shows the interest of the emotional characterization of materials for product design.

Robust Design of Fuzzy Structured Controllers via a Moving Boundaries Process.

In this paper, we consider the design of a fuzzy structured controller for systems that can be well described by uncertain T-S fuzzy models. Finding such a controller is known to be computationally intractable by the conventional techniques. Therefore, to solve this design problem easily and directly, we utilize a moving boundary process together with a robust stability test, for finding a solution to the corresponding feasibility problem. Some design examples are presented to illustrate the main points introduced in this paper.

Robust structured controllers for piezoelectric microactuators.

This paper introduces a new control scheme which incorporates the concept of shaping filter together with the use of the ν-gap metric and the robust design of a structured controller. The main motivation in doing this is related to the development of efficient control laws for small size actuators. Designing a structured controller is known to be computationally intractable via the traditional H∞ method. This is mainly due to the non-convexity of the resulting control problem which is of fixed order or structure type. To solve this kind of control problem easily and directly, without using any complicated mathematical manipulations and without using too many "user defined" parameters, we utilize the heuristic Kalman algorithm (HKA) for the resolution of the underlying constrained non-convex optimization problem. The experimental results validate the proposed technique and demonstrate its convenience for the development of fast and precise positioning systems.

Heuristic Kalman algorithm for solving optimization problems.

The main objective of this paper is to present a new optimization approach, which we call heuristic Kalman algorithm (HKA). We propose it as a viable approach for solving continuous nonconvex optimization problems. The principle of the proposed approach is to consider explicitly the optimization problem as a measurement process designed to produce an estimate of the optimum. A specific procedure, based on the Kalman method, was developed to improve the quality of the estimate obtained through the measurement process. The efficiency of HKA is evaluated in detail through several nonconvex test problems, both in the unconstrained and constrained cases. The results are then compared to those obtained via other metaheuristics. These various numerical experiments show that the HKA has very interesting potentialities for solving nonconvex optimization problems, notably concerning the computation time and the success ratio.