Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have challenging behaviors, which are associated with difficulties in parenting. Deep pressure is a therapeutic modality in occupational therapy, and it was reported to produce a calming effect. This study aimed to determine whether the short-term use of an autism hug machine portable seat (AHMPS) improves behavioral and neurobiological stress in children with ASD, and to determine whether AHMPS with an inflatable wrap or manual pull is more effective. This study enrolled children with ASD who were administered with the inflatable wrap (group I) and manual pull (group II) for 20 min twice a week for 3 weeks. Conners’ Parent Rating Scale-48 (CPRS-48) was used to rate behavioral improvements, and galvanic skin response (GSR) was used to measure sympathetic stress response. A total of 20 children with ASD (14 boys and 6 girls; aged 7–13 years) were included. CPRS-48 presented conduct problems: behavior was significantly decreased in the inflatable group (p = 0.007) compared to the manual pull group. The GSR captured a significant reduction in sympathetic response (p = 0.01) only in group I. Neurobiological stress was reduced in children who were wearing the AHMPS inflatable wrap; therefore, AHMPS inflatable wrap is an effective method to reduce emotional arousal.
The sliding contact of soft material surface due to a rigid indenter is different from metal and some other polymers. A stick-slip motion is more frequently obtained than a smooth motion. By modeling the soft material as low damping viscoelastic material, this study proposes an analytical model to identify the stick-slip behavior of sliding system. The sliding system is a fixed rigid indenter that slides against on a moving soft material surface. A stick-slip model is developed and the motion of the sliding system is assumed to be in a solely tangential direction. By implementing the simple coulomb friction law, an exact solution is presented in the case of no damping of the sliding system. Results show that the periodic displacement of the stick-slip model is strongly depending on the friction force, sliding velocity and material stiffness. Furthermore, the effect of a viscous damping and velocity-dependent friction on the behaviour of the sliding system are discussed.
The relationship between the volume loss rate and the wear pattern along an abraded rubber surface has been confirmed. Experimentally, long and short pattern spacings are formed along the abraded direction that, respectively, represent the initial and final pattern spacings. By modelling the abrasion, or the sliding contact, as a vibration system, an analytical study to identify the pattern spacing is carried out. There are two proposed interaction models of the contact between the rubber surface and the abrader, i.e. separation and unification, thus, the interaction along the sliding contact is a combination of both. It is confirmed that the separation model is correlated to the initial pattern spacing. The results are obtained that the final pattern spacing not only depends on the static load of the abrader but also depends on the dynamic load due to the inertia effect of the moving parts of abrasion apparatus.
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