Volume 59, Issue 11 -

The paper presents new approaches for the control of an extracorporeal ventricular assist device. It is based on a cascaded control of two subsystems. In the first subsystem a non-linear mode-based control approach was applied. In the outer loop, the control is based on a model prediction of the controlled variable, since no measurements are available. The proposed control of the pump volume adapts to time-variant, not directly measurable patient parameters.

In the past decade, alteration of cardiovascular autonomic function has been identified as a powerful predictor of fatal outcome in patients after myocardial infarction. The following studies were performed to detect individual risks in cardio surgical patients. The time coarse during the first postoperative 24 hours, the preoperative autonomous status and different kinds of surgical graftings showed influences on alterations in postoperative cardiovascular regulation. Therefore, a future cardiovascular perioperative risk stratification should also consider these ranges.

Currently, essential skills for minimal access surgery can be practised on a virtual reality-simulator outside the operating room. For effective training, it is important to assess the training process. Therefore, new methods are introduced to develop an assessment system for an automated evaluation of trainees. Two different studies demonstrate the quality of the new concept.

Zebrafish were established as model organisms for biological studies of embryonic development and toxicology testing. Automated manipulation and microscopy of living organisms is needed in all process steps and several new robots have been developed in the last years. The impact of abiotic stress factors like low and high ambient temperatures on zebrafish embryo development have been quantified thoroughly in the past. However, very little is known about the impact of mechanical stress or irradiation with artficial bright daylight that occurs during manipulation and microscopy of living organisms. In this study no evidence was found for a negative impact of bright white light on zebrafish embryo development. Additionally the maximum pressure was evaluated to fixate an zebrafish egg with a vacuum gripper without doing harm to the chorion.