The Role of Ambient Intelligent Environments for Tracking Functional Decline

2015 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Usman Naeem ◽  
Richard Anthony ◽  
Abdel-Rahman Tawil ◽  
Muhammad Awais Azam ◽  
David Preston
Keyword(s):  
Activity Recognition ◽  
Functional Decline ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Ambient Intelligent ◽  
Rich Information

We live in a ubiquitous world where we are surrounded by context sensitive information and smart devices that are able to capture information about our surroundings unobtrusively. Making use of such rich information can enable recognition of activities conducted by elderly users, and in turn can allow the possibility of tracking any functional decline. This chapter highlights the current methods for unobtrusively recognising activities of daily living within a home environment for people with physical or cognitive disabilities. A main group for which this is important for are Alzheimer's patients. The chapter also bases the discussion of what makes a successful environment for carrying out accurate activity recognition, which is then followed by a proposed taxonomy of the key characteristics that are required for robust activity recognition within a smart environment, contextualised with real-life scenarios.

More About Operator Monitoring under Normal Operations: The Role of Workload Regulation and the Impact of Control Room Technology

1998 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-233
Author(s):  
Kim J. Vicente ◽  
Randall J. Mumaw ◽  
Emilie M. Roth
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Resource Constraints ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Control Room ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Control Rooms ◽  
The Impact

This paper is part of a research program that we have been conducting to better understand how operators monitor a nuclear power plant under normal operations. A field study was conducted in a modern plant that has more automation and more computer-based displays than the two plants that we had observed in previous studies. Eleven operators were observed for a total of approximately 88 hours. The findings suggest that operators actively adopt strategies to regulate their workload so as not to exceed their resource constraints. In addition, the results suggest that computer-based control rooms require operators to have more knowledge about the interface (not the plant itself) than do the older analog, hard-wired control rooms. Moreover, computer-based designs require operators to reduce the degrees of freedom in the design to have context-sensitive information, whereas hard-wired designs require operators to expand the degrees of freedom.

Neuropsychology in the Real World

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 233-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Peper ◽  
Simone N. Loeffler
Keyword(s):  
Neuropsychological Assessment ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Traditional Assessment ◽  
Life Data ◽  
Real Life Data ◽  
Assessment And Treatment

Current ambulatory technologies are highly relevant for neuropsychological assessment and treatment as they provide a gateway to real life data. Ambulatory assessment of cognitive complaints, skills and emotional states in natural contexts provides information that has a greater ecological validity than traditional assessment approaches. This issue presents an overview of current technological and methodological innovations, opportunities, problems and limitations of these methods designed for the context-sensitive measurement of cognitive, emotional and behavioral function. The usefulness of selected ambulatory approaches is demonstrated and their relevance for an ecologically valid neuropsychology is highlighted.

scholarly journals Calibrating the CreditRisk+ Model at Different Time Scales and in Presence of Temporal Autocorrelation †

Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (14) ◽  
pp. 1679
Author(s):  
Jacopo Giacomelli ◽  
Luca Passalacqua
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Default Risk ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Statistical Error ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Sampling Period ◽  
Calibration Procedure ◽  
Industry Standards ◽  
Default Rate

The CreditRisk+ model is one of the industry standards for the valuation of default risk in credit loans portfolios. The calibration of CreditRisk+ requires, inter alia, the specification of the parameters describing the structure of dependence among default events. This work addresses the calibration of these parameters. In particular, we study the dependence of the calibration procedure on the sampling period of the default rate time series, that might be different from the time horizon onto which the model is used for forecasting, as it is often the case in real life applications. The case of autocorrelated time series and the role of the statistical error as a function of the time series period are also discussed. The findings of the proposed calibration technique are illustrated with the support of an application to real data.

scholarly journals Calculators as Facilitators of Understanding Computational and Mathematical Contexts

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-183
Author(s):  
Jan Guncaga ◽  
Lilla Korenova ◽  
Jozef Hvorecky
Keyword(s):  
Soft Skills ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Learning To Learn ◽  
Life Problems ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractLearning is a complex phenomenon. Contemporary theories of education underline active participation of learners in their learning processes. One of the key arguments supporting this approach is the learner’s simultaneous and unconscious development of their ability of “learning to learn”. This ability belongs to the soft skills highly valued by employers today.For Mathematics Education, it means that teachers have to go beyond making calculations and memorizing formulas. We have to teach the subject in its social context. When the students start understanding the relationship between real-life problems and the role of numbers and formulas for their solutions, their learning becomes a part of their tacit knowledge. Below we explain the theoretical background of our approach and provide examples of such activities.

scholarly journals DOLARS, a Distributed On-Line Activity Recognition System by Means of Heterogeneous Sensors in Real-Life Deployments—A Case Study in the Smart Lab of The University of Almería

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 405
Author(s):  
Marcos Lupión ◽  
Javier Medina-Quero ◽  
Juan F. Sanjuan ◽  
Pilar M. Ortigosa
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Activity Recognition ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Heterogeneous Sensors ◽  
On Line ◽  
The University

Activity Recognition (AR) is an active research topic focused on detecting human actions and behaviours in smart environments. In this work, we present the on-line activity recognition platform DOLARS (Distributed On-line Activity Recognition System) where data from heterogeneous sensors are evaluated in real time, including binary, wearable and location sensors. Different descriptors and metrics from the heterogeneous sensor data are integrated in a common feature vector whose extraction is developed by a sliding window approach under real-time conditions. DOLARS provides a distributed architecture where: (i) stages for processing data in AR are deployed in distributed nodes, (ii) temporal cache modules compute metrics which aggregate sensor data for computing feature vectors in an efficient way; (iii) publish-subscribe models are integrated both to spread data from sensors and orchestrate the nodes (communication and replication) for computing AR and (iv) machine learning algorithms are used to classify and recognize the activities. A successful case study of daily activities recognition developed in the Smart Lab of The University of Almería (UAL) is presented in this paper. Results present an encouraging performance in recognition of sequences of activities and show the need for distributed architectures to achieve real time recognition.

Adherence, Persistence, and Effectiveness in Real Life. Multicenter Long-Term Study on the Use of Pirfenidone and Nintedanib in the Treatment of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

2021 ◽  
pp. 089719002110086
Author(s):  
Fiorenzo Santoleri ◽  
Luigia Auriemma ◽  
Antonella Spacone ◽  
Stefano Marinari ◽  
Fabio Esposito ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis ◽  
Pulmonary Fibrosis ◽  
Pharmacological Study ◽  
Functional Decline ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Response To Treatment ◽  
First Year ◽  
Long Term Study ◽  
Second Year

Background: In the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), nintedanib and pirfenidone, with their different mechanisms of action, lead to a reduction in the rate of progression of the fibrosis process measured by the reduction of functional decline, and, in particular, the decrease in forced vital capacity (FVC) and of the diffusion capacity of the lungs for carbon monoxide (DLCO). The objective of this study was to analyze real-life adherence, persistence and efficacy in the use of pirfenidone and nintedanib in the treatment of IPF. Methods: A non-interventional multicenter retrospective observational pharmacological study in real-life treat-ment at 1 and 2 years was conducted. Furthermore, we analyzed the levels of FVC and DLCO at 6 and 12 months, respectively, from the start of treatment. Results: We identified 144 patients in the period between January 2013 and April 2019. From the point of view of adherence, there is no difference between the two drugs, even though patients who used pirfenidone had increasingly higher values: 0.90 vs 0.89, in the first year, and 0.91 vs 0.84, in the second year. In the first year of treatment, the percentage of persistent patients was 67% and 76%, while in the second year, it dropped to 47% and 53% for pirfenidone and nintedanib, respectively. Conclusion: The stratification of the adherence values as a function of the response to treatment in terms of FVC at 12 months for both study drugs showed that patients with optimal response scored adherence of more than 90%.

scholarly journals Healthy Ageing and Vaccines: Application of the P4 Medicine Concept to Immunizations

Gerontology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Michel ◽  
Fiona Ecarnot
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Functional Decline ◽  
Healthy Ageing ◽  
Renal Diseases ◽  
P4 Medicine ◽  
Community Protection

In today’s tormented world, it appears useful to take advantage of communication channels to promote life-course immunization and affirm its major role in healthy ageing. Instead of developing the argument of chronological age, we demonstrate the life-course principle here based on the P4 medicine concept. Are vaccines “preventive, personalized, predictive, and participatory?” Based on detailed analysis of research findings, we successively demonstrate the seminal role of vaccines on preventable infectious diseases, post-sepsis functional decline, non-communicable diseases (cardio-neuro-vascular, respiratory, and renal diseases), community protection, antimicrobial resistance, and perhaps even old-age dementia. Healthy ageing and the promotion of immunization are closely dependent on health literacy and provision of information by skilled health-care professionals. However, personal autonomy and individual freedom are influenced by psycho-cognitive hurdles (cultural approaches, beliefs, emotions, and behaviours), the opinions of the public/family/friends, and the increasing role of social media, which challenges scientific evidence. A similar phenomenon exists when dealing with the issue of healthy ageing, whose success depends greatly on life-course immunization.

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