China has developed a new national program for deceased-organ donation to address the need for organ transplantation in the country. The program adheres to the World Health Organization (WHO) guiding principles, is compliant with the Declaration of Istanbul, and respects the cultural and social values of the Chinese people. The experience of pilot trials conducted between 2010 and 2012 was evaluated to generate a comprehensive design of a national program of organ donation and transplantation for implementation throughout China. The legal framework for this program was established from a series of legislative steps since 2007. Accountable national committees have been established to oversee activities of organ donation and transplantation across the nation. The Ministry of Health (MOH) has accredited 164 organ transplant hospitals in China, each of which has an organ procurement organization (OPO) to conduct organ donation and organ recovery. National protocols for deceased-organ donation in China include category I (organ donation after brain death), category II (organ donation after circulatory death), and category III (organ donation after brain death followed by circulatory death). The China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS) has been developed to allocate organs equitably and transparently. Scientific registries have been established to evaluate the performance of transplant centers and OPOs. China is in the process of implementing a new national program for deceased-organ donation. The program includes a unique approach of organ donation, China category III, which will be promulgated throughout China and is intended to gain widespread acceptance of Chinese society.

No abstract

No abstract

Like most smart materials, such as piezoelectric materials and shape memory alloys, ion-exchange polymer-metal composite (IPMC), which is a kind of electroactive polymer material, exhibits the properties of hysteresis and creep. In this paper we explain the hysteresis and creep properties of IPMC, analyze the hysteresis using a discrete Prandtl-lshlinskii model, obtain a creep model of IPMC through modifying the creep model of piezoelectric material and present an inverse model of the hysteresis. For hysteresis and creep properties of IPMC changing with time at different rates, we applied the LMS (least mean square) algorithm to identify the hysteresis parameters online. An offline identification algorithm was used to obtain the creep parameters. An adaptive inverse strategy of control for IPMC actuators was set up on the basis of a superposition model of nonlinear hysteresis and linear creep, and we obtained good simulation and experiment results.

Soft robotic grippers with compliance have great superiority in grabbing objects with irregular shape or fragility compared with traditional rigid grippers. The main limitations of such systems are small grasping force resulted from properties of soft actuators and lacking variable stiffness of soft robotic grippers, which prevent them from a larger wide range of applications. This article proposes a shape-memory alloy (SMA)-based soft gripper with variable stiffness composed of three robotic fingers for grasping compliantly at low stiffness and holding robustly at high stiffness. Each robotic finger mainly consisted of stiff parts and two variable stiffness joints is installed on the base with a specific angle. The paraffin as a variable stiffness material in the joint can be heated or cooled to change the stiffness of the robotic fingers. Results of experiments have shown that a single robotic finger can approximately achieve 18-fold stiffness enhancement. Each finger with two joints can actively achieve multiple postures by both changing the corresponding stiffness of joints and actuating the SMA wire. Based on these principles, the gripper can be applied to grasp objects with different shapes and a large range of weights, and the maximum grasping force of the gripper is increased to about 10 times using the variable stiffness joints. The final experiment is conducted to validate variable stiffness of the proposed soft grippers grasping an object.