Optimizing the Introduction of Wearable Sensors Into the German Armed Forces for Military Medical Applications

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenz Scheit
Keyword(s):  
Wearable Sensors ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Medical Applications ◽  
Expert Interviews ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
Expert Interview ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
Interdisciplinary Networking ◽  
Modern Technologies

ABSTRACT Introduction A wide variety of different types of wearable sensors are being developed around the world and introduced into the armed forces for military purposes. Competing states must rapidly develop ready-to-use systems that are robust, functional, valid, and practical. There appears to be potential for optimizing the successful and effective introduction of wearable sensors into the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) for military medical applications. The purpose of this study was to identify specific options for improving and optimizing the introduction of modern technologies such as wearable sensors into the structures of the German armed forces. Materials and Methods Nine stakeholders were identified who could provide a qualified statement on the introduction of wearable sensors, of which six agreed to participate in an expert interview. The six qualitative expert interviews, which were conducted for a master’s thesis at the Bundeswehr University in Hamburg, were selected on the basis of their thematic involvement and readiness for an interview and provided the basis for exploring processes that can possibly optimize the introduction of wearable sensors into modern armed forces such as the Bundeswehr. These interviews were carried out and analyzed using the Lamnek’s method. Results Six expert interviews were analyzed and the most relevant statements were summarized and presented. Thirteen options for optimization were identified and included, for example, interdisciplinary networking, optimization of information flow, and strategic weighting. Conclusions Several potential options have been identified that can optimize the introduction of wearable sensors into the German armed forces to a greater or lesser extent. Bundeswehr experts agree that above all structurally relevant improvements such as “development of data analysis standards,” “legal requirements,” “interdisciplinarity,” “acceleration of development,” and “centralization and structured cooperation” should play an important role in the implementation of wearable sensors.

Bletchley Park’s Sturgeon—The Fish That Laid No Eggs

Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frode Weierud
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Engineering Problems ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

This chapter describes the Siemens & Halske T52 cipher machines and explains how Bletchley Park broke them. (See photograph 51.) Many authors have confused the T52 with the Tunny machine, and have erroneously linked the T52 to Colossus. The German armed forces employed three different types of teleprinter cipher machines during the Second World War: the Lorenz SZ40/42a/42b (Tunny), the Siemens & Halske Schlüs-selfernschreibmaschine (SFM—Cipher Teleprinter Machine) T52, and the one-time-tape machine T43, also manufactured by Siemens. The Siemens T52 existed in four functionally distinct models: T52a/b, T52c, T52d, and T52e (there was also the T52ca, a modified version of the T52c). At Bletchley Park all T52 models went under the code name ‘Sturgeon’. The Siemens T43 was probably the unbreakable machine that BP called ‘Thrasher’. (This came into use relatively late in the war, and appears to have been used only on a few selected links.) In 1964 Erik Boheman, the Swedish Under-Secretary of State, first revealed that Sweden had broken the T52 during the Second World War. The Swedish successes against the T52 are the topic of Chapter 26. It was only in 1984 that the British officially acknowledged that Bletchley Park had also enjoyed some success against the T52. Not only did BP intercept traffic enciphered on the T52; it also broke all the different models that it discovered. It was clear from the beginning that the T52 was a very difficult machine to break. Probably it would have remained unbroken had it not been for German security blunders in using the machines. The blame should not be put entirely on the German teleprinter operators, however: the designers of the machines at Siemens, who failed to listen to the advice of the German cryptographic experts, were also responsible. The Siemens engineers seem to have focused more on the engineering problems than on the cryptographic security of the machine. The T52a/b and the original T52c were machines with quite limited security. The T52c is an extraordinary example of how not to go about designing a cryptographic machine. The wheel-combining logic, which was meant to strengthen the machine, had exactly the opposite effect—it eased the task of breaking the machine.

The Germans and Air Power at Dieppe: The Raid and its Lessons from the ‘Other Side of the Hill’

2021 ◽  
pp. 096834452199586
Author(s):  
James Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Other ◽  
Air Power ◽  
Coastal Defence ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
Popular Interest ◽  
The Hill

Despite the vast academic and popular interest in the Dieppe raid of 19 August 1942, there remains a curious oversight of the German side of the story. This contribution interrogates German sources in order to explore the Dieppe air battle and its consequences from the perspective of the German armed forces. The paper ultimately demonstrates that the Germans learnt much about the role of air power in coastal defence from their experiences at Dieppe, but that the implementation of those lessons was lacking.

scholarly journals Reliability of activity monitors for physical activity assessment in patients with musculoskeletal disorders: A systematic review

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Francesco Negrini ◽  
Alessandro de Sire ◽  
Stefano Giuseppe Lazzarini ◽  
Federico Pennestrì ◽  
Salvatore Sorce ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Musculoskeletal Disorders ◽  
Wearable Sensors ◽  
Activity Monitors ◽  
Activity Assessment ◽  
Measurement Tools ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Measurement Units ◽  
Full Text Screening

BACKGROUND: Activity monitors have been introduced in the last years to objectively measure physical activity to help physicians in the management of musculoskeletal patients. OBJECTIVE: This systematic review aimed at describing the assessment of physical activity by commercially available portable activity monitors in patients with musculoskeletal disorders. METHODS: PubMed, Embase, PEDro, Web of Science, Scopus and CENTRAL databases were systematically searched from inception to June 11th, 2020. We considered as eligible observational studies with: musculoskeletal patients; physical activity measured by wearable sensors based on inertial measurement units; comparisons performed with other tools; outcomes consisting of number of steps/day, activity/inactivity time, or activity counts/day. RESULTS: Out of 595 records, after removing duplicates, title/abstract and full text screening, 10 articles were included. We noticed a wide heterogeneity in the wearable devices, that resulted to be 10 different types. Patients included suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, and fibromyalgia. Only 3 studies compared portable activity trackers with objective measurement tools. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, this systematic review showed that activity monitors might be considered as useful to assess physical activity in patients with musculoskeletal disorders, albeit, to date, the high device heterogeneity and the different algorithms still prevent their standardization.

scholarly journals Detecting Toe-Off Events Utilizing a Vision-Based Method

Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunqi Tang ◽  
Zhuorong Li ◽  
Huawei Tian ◽  
Jianwei Ding ◽  
Bingxian Lin
Keyword(s):  
Wearable Sensors ◽  
Gait Pattern ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Detection Methods ◽  
Detection Accuracy ◽  
Public Database ◽  
Video Frames ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Events Detection ◽  
Good Detection

Detecting gait events from video data accurately would be a challenging problem. However, most detection methods for gait events are currently based on wearable sensors, which need high cooperation from users and power consumption restriction. This study presents a novel algorithm for achieving accurate detection of toe-off events using a single 2D vision camera without the cooperation of participants. First, a set of novel feature, namely consecutive silhouettes difference maps (CSD-maps), is proposed to represent gait pattern. A CSD-map can encode several consecutive pedestrian silhouettes extracted from video frames into a map. And different number of consecutive pedestrian silhouettes will result in different types of CSD-maps, which can provide significant features for toe-off events detection. Convolutional neural network is then employed to reduce feature dimensions and classify toe-off events. Experiments on a public database demonstrate that the proposed method achieves good detection accuracy.

Suicides between 2010 and 2014 in the German Armed Forces—Comparison of Suicide Registry Data and a German Armed Forces Survey

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 1497-1509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd‐Dieter Willmund ◽  
Julius Heß ◽  
Christian Helms ◽  
Florian Wertenauer ◽  
Anja Seiffert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Registry Data ◽  
German Armed Forces

scholarly journals Measuring social networks in primates: wearable sensors versus direct observations

2020 ◽  
Vol 476 (2236) ◽  
pp. 20190737
Author(s):  
Valeria Gelardi ◽  
Jeanne Godard ◽  
Dany Paleressompoulle ◽  
Nicolas Claidiere ◽  
Alain Barrat
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Wearable Sensors ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Collection Method ◽  
Data Collection Method ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Data Yield

Network analysis represents a valuable and flexible framework to understand the structure of individual interactions at the population level in animal societies. The versatility of network representations is moreover suited to different types of datasets describing these interactions. However, depending on the data collection method, different pictures of the social bonds between individuals could a priori emerge. Understanding how the data collection method influences the description of the social structure of a group is thus essential to assess the reliability of social studies based on different types of data. This is however rarely feasible, especially for animal groups, where data collection is often challenging. Here, we address this issue by comparing datasets of interactions between primates collected through two different methods: behavioural observations and wearable proximity sensors. We show that, although many directly observed interactions are not detected by the sensors, the global pictures obtained when aggregating the data to build interaction networks turn out to be remarkably similar. Moreover, sensor data yield a reliable social network over short time scales and can be used for long-term studies, showing their important potential for detailed studies of the evolution of animal social groups.

scholarly journals Niemcy w polityce globalnej (Biała Księga)

2017 ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Miszczak
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Simultaneous Increase ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
The European Union ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
German Security Policy

The aim of this article is to analyse the global and European foreign, security and defence policies of the Federal Republic of Germany and their implications for the broad international environment of Germany. Special attention is paid to the issues of Germany’s emancipation in the international order after the end of the East-West conflict, when it became clear that the regional conflicts and their transnational impact gained a new and multidimensional character for the German security policy. Given this evolution of the international system, Germany has gradually changed its former foreign and security policies. The state currently intends to take greater responsibility for international politics, which translates into a simultaneous increase in its political and economic power in the international arena. This new global role of the Federal Republic of Germany is manifested by the so-called White Paper on German Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr approved on 13 July 2016. This document presents primarily the hierarchy of threats in today’s world, their definitions and attempts to neutralize them in compliance with German interests. Instruments to ensure a smooth achievement of this goal include the modernization of the German armed forces, the creation of intervention troops and their participation in multinational military operations conducted by NATO and the European Union.

scholarly journals Epidemic conjunctivitis in Germany, 2004

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 7-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Schrauder ◽  
D Altmann ◽  
G Laude ◽  
H Claus ◽  
K Wegner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Age Groups ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Surveillance Data ◽  
Local Health ◽  
National Surveillance ◽  
Epidemic Keratoconjunctivitis ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
Laboratory Confirmation ◽  
Future Challenges

Epidemic conjunctivitis can be associated with viral or bacterial pathogens, whereas epidemic keratoconjunctivitis is caused mainly by adenoviruses type 8,19 and 37. In Germany, the incidence of adenovirus conjunctivitis cases increased from 0.2 per 100 000 inhabitants (in 2001 and 2002) eventually to 0.5 in 2003 and 0.8 in 2004. The detection of adenovirus in conjunctival swabs is notifiable to the local health departments. Data about cases with positive conjunctival swabs are then transmitted to the Robert Koch-Institut. Quality control of data takes place and national surveillance data of confirmed cases with adenovirus conjunctivitis are published. From January to April 2004 the national surveillance system captured an outbreak with 1024 cases (131 laboratory confirmed). Analysis of the national surveillance data showed that in March 2004 the group primarily affected by epidemic keratoconjunctivitis was young men between 18 -29 years old followed by an increased number of notifications from women in the same age group. Meanwhile the German Armed Forces experienced an outbreak of conjunctivitis, almost exclusively without laboratory confirmation, affecting 6378 soldiers. Despite the small number of laboratory confirmed cases it became clear from the analysis of the national surveillance data that person-to-person transmission between young men and similar age groups of the population did occur. Whether the outbreak started within the garrisons of the German Armed Forces or whether it was triggered within these accommodations, there is clearly a need for the national and the military public health institutions to work together on guidelines to handle future challenges.

Towards a design theory of computer-supported organizational participation

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Wagenknecht ◽  
René Filpe ◽  
Christof Weinhardt
Keyword(s):  
Design Theory ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Work Conditions ◽  
Information Management System ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Expert Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Organizational Participation ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Expert Interview

Purpose Employees demand high responsibility and empowerment, while keeping their work communal and flexible. Initiatives that foster organizational participation (OP) can contribute to the fulfillment of such work conditions. Research in sociology and psychology demonstrated positive effects on job satisfaction as well as on productivity. However, adoption of social software is widely spread in firms, research on the determinants of computer-supported OP is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to describe the elements to consider when designing OP processes that aim to be beneficial for both the employer as well as the employees. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted 20 guided expert interviews to propose a nascent design theory, following a socio-technical approach that promotes democratic and humanistic principles. Findings Building on the expert interview, the process model includes a topic horizon and a collaboration phase, which creates proposals that have to be decided in order to produce results. The authors show how employee competence and leadership commitment are as important as the workload and support as well as an option for anonymous communication. The authors propose a set of features and explain principles of implementation. Research limitations/implications Despite the authors’ best efforts to diversify the authors’ set of experts, the findings have a limited generalizability as the authors only interviewed a few selected German experts that were either members of the board, HR or IT managers, often concerned with organizing rather than only participating in computer-supported organizational participation (CSOP) processes. Besides testing the model in practise, future research should also consider surveying a broader (and more international) set of employers and employees. Practical implications The authors propose a step-by-step procedure to introduce CSOP. Despite identifying many pitfalls, the research demonstrates that CSOP promises a wide variety of benefits to both employers as well as the employees of an organization, including increased satisfaction as well as productivity. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to propose a nascent design theory for CSOP. The authors derive a number of requirements to consider when implementing an information management system that seeks to improve both the efficiency and equality of employers and employees and lead to a win-win situation for both. The authors describe valid constructs for firms with spatially and timely dispersed teams and more than 50 employees. The research is based on 20 expert interviews, conducted with senior managers of medium and large German enterprises.

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