scholarly journals A Systematic Review of the Use of Technology to Monitor Welfare in Zoo Animals: Is There Space for Improvement?

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 3048
Author(s):  
Alessia Diana ◽  
Marina Salas ◽  
Zjef Pereboom ◽  
Michael Mendl ◽  
Tomas Norton

A top priority of modern zoos is to ensure good animal welfare (AW), thus, efforts towards improving AW monitoring are increasing. Welfare assessments are performed through more traditional approaches by employing direct observations and time-consuming data collection that require trained specialists. These limitations may be overcome through automated monitoring using wearable or remotely placed sensors. However, in this fast-developing field, the level of automated AW monitoring used in zoos is unclear. Hence, the aim of this systematic literature review was to investigate research conducted on the use of technology for AW assessment in zoos with a focus on real-time automated monitoring systems. The search led to 19 publications with 18 of them published in the last six years. Studies focused on mammals (89.5%) with elephant as the most studied species followed by primates. The most used technologies were camera (52.6%) and wearable sensors (31.6%) mainly used to measure behaviour, while the use of algorithms was reported in two publications only. This research area is still young in zoos and mainly focused on large mammals. Despite an increase in publications employing automated AW monitoring in the last years, the potential for this to become an extra useful tool needs further research.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Novia Novia ◽  
Anna Permanasari ◽  
Riandi Riandi ◽  
Ida Kaniawati

Paper ini memetakan berbagai perspektif tentang game edukasi dan pengaruhnya terhadap kreativitas serta menyatukan pemikiran terbaru di bidang ini. Tujuan utama penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui apakah penggunaan teknologi berupa educational game dapat meningkatkan kreativitas siswa dalam pembelajaran di kelas. Tinjauan Sistematis ini menggunakan 30 publikasi yang berasal indexed journal antara tahun 2010 hingga 2020 untuk menyoroti fokus bidang penelitian ini. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah systematic review dengan pedoman Kitchenham terhadap studi penggunaan educational game untuk meningkatkan kreativitas siswa. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan educational game memiliki efek aktif dalam memperkuat pemikiran kreatif siswa. Studi ini memberikan saran tentang bagaimanakah metode untuk meningkatkan kreativitas, memotivasi, dan meningkatkan hasil belajar serta mendemonstrasikan pembelajaran dengan educational game. Studi ini memberikan sebuah pandangan untuk peneliti, desainer game, pengembang di bidang educational game dan kreativitas. Research trend on the educational game to improve students’ creativity? A systematic review of the literature  AbstractThis paper maps different perspectives on educational games and their impact on creativity and brings together the latest thinking in this area. The main objective of this study was to determine whether the use of technology in the form of educational games could increase student creativity in classroom learning. This Systematic Review uses 30 publications from indexed journals between 2010 and 2020 to highlight the focus of this research area. The method used in this study is a systematic review of Kitchenham's guidelines on the study of the use of educational games to increase student creativity. The results of this study indicate that the use of educational games has an active effect in strengthening students' creative thinking. This study provides suggestions on how to increase creativity, motivate, and improve learning outcomes as well as demonstrate learning with educational games. This study provides a view for researchers, game designers, developers in the fields of educational games and creativity.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (21) ◽  
pp. 7249
Author(s):  
Denisse Bustos ◽  
Joana C. Guedes ◽  
João Santos Baptista ◽  
Mário P. Vaz ◽  
José Torres Costa ◽  
...  

The emergence of physiological monitoring technologies has produced exceptional opportunities for real-time collection and analysis of workers’ physiological information. To benefit from these safety and health prognostic opportunities, research efforts have explored the applicability of these devices to control workers’ wellbeing levels during occupational activities. A systematic review is proposed to summarise up-to-date progress in applying physiological monitoring systems for occupational groups. Adhering with the PRISMA Statement, five databases were searched from 2014 to 2021, and 12 keywords were combined, concluding with the selection of 38 articles. Sources of risk of bias were assessed regarding randomisation procedures, selective outcome reporting and generalisability of results. Assessment procedures involving non-invasive methods applied with health and safety-related goals were filtered. Working-age participants from homogeneous occupational groups were selected, with these groups primarily including firefighters and construction workers. Research objectives were mainly directed to assess heat stress and physiological workload demands. Heart rate related variables, thermal responses and motion tracking through accelerometry were the most common approaches. Overall, wearable sensors proved to be valid tools for assessing physiological status in working environments. Future research should focus on conducting sensor fusion assessments, engaging wearables in real-time evaluation methods and giving continuous feedback to workers and practitioners.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (9) ◽  
pp. 323-1-323-8
Author(s):  
Litao Hu ◽  
Zhenhua Hu ◽  
Peter Bauer ◽  
Todd J. Harris ◽  
Jan P. Allebach

Image quality assessment has been a very active research area in the field of image processing, and there have been numerous methods proposed. However, most of the existing methods focus on digital images that only or mainly contain pictures or photos taken by digital cameras. Traditional approaches evaluate an input image as a whole and try to estimate a quality score for the image, in order to give viewers an idea of how “good” the image looks. In this paper, we mainly focus on the quality evaluation of contents of symbols like texts, bar-codes, QR-codes, lines, and hand-writings in target images. Estimating a quality score for this kind of information can be based on whether or not it is readable by a human, or recognizable by a decoder. Moreover, we mainly study the viewing quality of the scanned document of a printed image. For this purpose, we propose a novel image quality assessment algorithm that is able to determine the readability of a scanned document or regions in a scanned document. Experimental results on some testing images demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.


Surgeries ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-230
Author(s):  
Andrew A. Gumbs ◽  
Manana Gogol ◽  
Gaya Spolverato ◽  
Hebatallah Taher ◽  
Elie K. Chouillard

Introduction: Integrative medicine (IM) is a relatively new field where non-traditional therapies with peer-reviewed evidence are incorporated or integrated with more traditional approaches. Methods: A systematic review of the literature from the last 10 years was done by searching clinical trials and randomized-controlled trials on Pubmed that discuss nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle changes associated with “Pancreatic Cancer.” Results: Only 50 articles ultimately met the inclusion criteria for this review. A total of 15 articles discussed the role of obesity and 10 discussed the influence of stress in increasing the risk of pancreatic cancer. Six discussed the potential beneficial role of Vitamins, 5 of cannabinoids, 4 an anti-inflammatory diet, 3 of nut consumption, 2 of green tea consumption, 2 of curcumin supplementation, 1 role of melatonin, and 1 of probiotics. One article each was found on the theoretical benefits of adhering to either a Mediterranean or ketogenic diet. Discussion: As more surgeons become interested in IM, it is hoped that more diseases where the curative treatment is mainly surgical can benefit from the all-encompassing principles of IM in an effort to improve quality of life and survival in patients with pancreatic cancer.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 2727
Author(s):  
Hari Prasanth ◽  
Miroslav Caban ◽  
Urs Keller ◽  
Grégoire Courtine ◽  
Auke Ijspeert ◽  
...  

Gait analysis has traditionally been carried out in a laboratory environment using expensive equipment, but, recently, reliable, affordable, and wearable sensors have enabled integration into clinical applications as well as use during activities of daily living. Real-time gait analysis is key to the development of gait rehabilitation techniques and assistive devices such as neuroprostheses. This article presents a systematic review of wearable sensors and techniques used in real-time gait analysis, and their application to pathological gait. From four major scientific databases, we identified 1262 articles of which 113 were analyzed in full-text. We found that heel strike and toe off are the most sought-after gait events. Inertial measurement units (IMU) are the most widely used wearable sensors and the shank and foot are the preferred placements. Insole pressure sensors are the most common sensors for ground-truth validation for IMU-based gait detection. Rule-based techniques relying on threshold or peak detection are the most widely used gait detection method. The heterogeneity of evaluation criteria prevented quantitative performance comparison of all methods. Although most studies predicted that the proposed methods would work on pathological gait, less than one third were validated on such data. Clinical applications of gait detection algorithms were considered, and we recommend a combination of IMU and rule-based methods as an optimal solution.


Author(s):  
Gaojian Huang ◽  
Christine Petersen ◽  
Brandon J. Pitts

Semi-autonomous vehicles still require drivers to occasionally resume manual control. However, drivers of these vehicles may have different mental states. For example, drivers may be engaged in non-driving related tasks or may exhibit mind wandering behavior. Also, monitoring monotonous driving environments can result in passive fatigue. Given the potential for different types of mental states to negatively affect takeover performance, it will be critical to highlight how mental states affect semi-autonomous takeover. A systematic review was conducted to synthesize the literature on mental states (such as distraction, fatigue, emotion) and takeover performance. This review focuses specifically on five fatigue studies. Overall, studies were too few to observe consistent findings, but some suggest that response times to takeover alerts and post-takeover performance may be affected by fatigue. Ultimately, this review may help researchers improve and develop real-time mental states monitoring systems for a wide range of application domains.


Author(s):  
Francesco Negrini ◽  
Alessandro de Sire ◽  
Stefano Giuseppe Lazzarini ◽  
Federico Pennestrì ◽  
Salvatore Sorce ◽  
...  

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.


Author(s):  
Grainne Vavasour ◽  
Oonagh M. Giggins ◽  
Julie Doyle ◽  
Daniel Kelly

Abstract Background Globally the population of older adults is increasing. It is estimated that by 2050 the number of adults over the age of 60 will represent over 21% of the world’s population. Frailty is a clinical condition associated with ageing resulting in an increase in adverse outcomes. It is considered the greatest challenge facing an ageing population affecting an estimated 16% of community-dwelling populations worldwide. Aim The aim of this systematic review is to explore how wearable sensors have been used to assess frailty in older adults. Method Electronic databases Medline, Science Direct, Scopus, and CINAHL were systematically searched March 2020 and November 2020. A search constraint of articles published in English, between January 2010 and November 2020 was applied. Papers included were primary observational studies involving; older adults aged > 60 years, used a wearable sensor to provide quantitative measurements of physical activity (PA) or mobility and a measure of frailty. Studies were excluded if they used non-wearable sensors for outcome measurement or outlined an algorithm or application development exclusively. The methodological quality of the selected studies was assessed using the Appraisal Tool for Cross-sectional Studies (AXIS). Results Twenty-nine studies examining the use of wearable sensors to assess and discriminate between stages of frailty in older adults were included. Thirteen different body-worn sensors were used in eight different body-locations. Participants were community-dwelling older adults. Studies were performed in home, laboratory or hospital settings. Postural transitions, number of steps, percentage of time in PA and intensity of PA together were the most frequently measured parameters followed closely by gait speed. All but one study demonstrated an association between PA and level of frailty. All reports of gait speed indicate correlation with frailty. Conclusions Wearable sensors have been successfully used to evaluate frailty in older adults. Further research is needed to identify a feasible, user-friendly device and body-location that can be used to identify signs of pre-frailty in community-dwelling older adults. This would facilitate early identification and targeted intervention to reduce the burden of frailty in an ageing population.


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