An artificial elastic finger for grasping an object, which we call an “artificial finger skin” is designed. Characteristics of the artificial finger skin are as follows: First, it has ridges at the surface and tactile sensors distributed underneath the ridges same as finger of human. Second, it has a curved surface in broad perspective. Third, it is made of an elastic silicone rubber so as to t...

One simple and widespread method to create engineered zinc fingers targeting the desired DNA sequences is to modularly assemble multiple finger modules pre-selected to recognize each DNA triplet. However, it has become known that a sufficient DNA binding affinity is not always obtained. In order to create successful zinc finger proteins, it is important to understand the context-dependent contr...

Two-button computer mouse users may exhibit sustained, static finger lifting behaviours to prevent inadvertent activations by avoiding finger pressure on the buttons, which leads to prolonged, static finger extensor muscle loading. One hundred graduate students were observed during normal computer work in a university computer facility to qualify and quantify the prevalence of lifted finger beh...

Using morphological data describing the physiological curvature morphology of the corresponding articulating surfaces in each finger joint, it is shown that a) the flexion of each finger joint is described by two angles of flexion; b) in each finger joint, a "pump mechanism" for synovial fluid is present whose function is to lubricate and nourish the joint cartilage and c) finger posture has si...

An artificial elastic finger skin for robot fingers is developed for controlling grasp force when weight and frictional coefficient of the grasped object is unknown. The elastic finger skin has ridges at the surface to divide the stick/slip area. It also has a pair of tactile sensors embedded per one ridge same as finger of human. Surface of the whole finger is curved so that reaction force dis...

Our research goal is to improve stylus operability by utilizing the human knowledge and skills applied when a user uses a pen. Such knowledge and skills include, for example, the way a person holds a pen to apply a generous amount of ink to draw a thick line with a brush pen. We propose a form of interaction, Finger Action, which uses input operations applying such knowledge and skills. Finger ...

BACKGROUND People with diabetes mellitus are instructed to clean their skin prior to self-monitoring of blood glucose to remove any dirt or food residue that might affect the reading. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers have become popular when soap and water are not available. The aim of this study was to determine whether a hand sanitizer is compatible with glucose meter testing and effective for t...

Problem statement: Underactuated finger mechanism is beneficial in the anthropomorphic applications in which it reduces the finger size, weight and power consumption due to the less number of actuators compared to its number of Degree Of Freedom (DOF). However, the currently existing underactuated finger is limited to grasping operations only and unable to pinch with the finger tip. Moreover, t...

Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) have been used for genome engineering in a wide variety of organisms; however, it remains challenging to design effective ZFNs for many genomic sequences using publicly available zinc-finger modules. This limitation is in part because of potential finger-finger incompatibility generated on assembly of modules into zinc-finger arrays (ZFAs). Herein, we describe the v...