Ambient Monitoring of Gait and Machine Learning Models for Dynamic and Short-Term Falls Risk Assessment in People With Dementia

Data consists of baseline clinical assessments of gait, mobility, and fall risk at the time of admission of 54 adults with dementia. Furthermore, it includes the participants' daily medication intake in three medication categories, and frequent assessments of gait performed via a computer vision-based ambient monitoring system.

Ambient Monitoring of Gait and Machine Learning Models for Dynamic and Short-Term Falls Risk Assessment in People With Dementia

Data consists of baseline clinical assessments of gait, mobility, and fall risk at the time of admission of 54 adults with dementia. Furthermore, it includes the participants' daily medication intake in three medication categories, and frequent assessments of gait performed via a computer vision-based ambient monitoring system.

Arsenic in Hair as a Marker of Exposure to Smoke from the Burning of Treated Wood in Domestic Wood Burners

Timber treated with the anti-fungal chemical copper chrome arsenate is used extensively in the New Zealand building industry. While illegal, the burning of treated timber is commonplace in New Zealand and presents a health risk. Outdoor ambient monitoring of arsenic in airborne particulate matter in New Zealand has identified levels that exceed the maximum standards of 5.5 ng m−3 (annual average) at some urban locations. In this study, two-week-old beard hair samples were collected during the winter months to establish individual exposure to arsenic using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry. These results were then compared with questionnaire data about wood burner use for the two weeks prior to sampling, and spatial trends in arsenic from ambient monitoring. Results suggest that the burning of construction timber that may contain arsenic is associated with a higher level of arsenic in hair than those who burn logs or coal exclusively. There is no association between the area-level density of wood burners and arsenic levels but a significant correlation with individual household choice of fuel as well as the smell of wood smoke in the community, suggesting very localised influences. Strategies are needed to raise awareness of the risks of burning treated timber and to provide economically-viable alternatives.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the book's thesis, goals, and structure. Allocations of authority to regulatory institutions and the relationships between them are poorly understood and underexplored in popular and academic debates about the administrative state. Attempts to create new regulatory programs or mend underperforming ones are routinely poorly designed. The book advances a framework for assessing how governmental authority may be structured along three dimensions: centralization, overlap, and coordination. It demonstrates how differentiating among these dimensions and among particular governmental functions (e.g., ambient monitoring, standard setting, planning, enforcement) better illuminates the tradeoffs of organizational alternatives. This framework (1) provides a common taxonomy for designing or assessing interjurisdictional relations; (2) develops explanatory insights about the nature of interjurisdictional relations that validate the value of the book's taxonomy; (3) provides preliminary normative postulates about the circumstances under which certain distributions of authority are most likely to be successful; (4) serves as a roadmap for the accumulation of empirical evidence about why certain institutional arrangements work and others fail; and (5) can, when combined with an adaptive governance infrastructure, transform regulation by being systematically integrated by both experts on government organization and policymakers into the design, assessment, and periodic redesign of regulatory institutions.