Acceptability of a real-time notification of stress and access to self-help therapies among law enforcement officers

Background Law enforcement officers (LEOs) are exposed to chronic stress throughout the course of their shift, which increases the risk of adverse events. Although there have been studies targeting LEO safety through enhanced training or expanded equipment provisions, there has been little attempt to leverage personal technology in the field to provide real-time notification of LEO stress. This study tests the acceptability of implementing of a brief, smart watch intervention to alleviate stress among LEOs. Methods We assigned smart watches to 22 patrol LEOs across two police departments: one suburban department and one large, urban department. At baseline, we measured participants’ resting heart rates (RHR), activated their watches, and educated them on brief wellness interventions in the field. LEOs were instructed to wear the watch during the entirety of their shift for 30 calendar days. When LEO’s heart rate or stress continuum reached the predetermined threshold for more than 10 min, the watch notified LEOs, in real time, of two stress reduction interventions: [1] a 1-min, guided breathing exercise; and [2] A Calm app, which provided a mix of guided meditations and mindfulness exercises for LEOs needing a longer decompression period. After the study period, participants were invited for semi-structured interviews to elucidate intervention components. Qualitative data were analyzed using an immersion-crystallization approach. Results LEOs reported three particularly useful intervention components: 1) a vibration notification when hearts rates remained high, although receipt of a notification was highly variable; 2) visualization of their heart rate and stress continuum in real time; and, 3) breathing exercises. The most frequently reported type of call for service when the watch vibrated was when a weapon was involved or when a LEO was in pursuit of a murder suspect/hostage. LEOs also recollected that their watch vibrated while reading dispatch notes or while on their way to work. Conclusions A smart watch can deliver access to brief wellness interventions in the field in a manner that is both feasible and acceptable to LEOs.

A Proposed Architecture f or Placement of Cloud Data Centre in Software Defined Network Environment

Emerging technologies like IoT (Internet of Things) and wearable devices like Smart Glass, Smart watch, Smart Bracelet and Smart Plaster produce delay sensitive traffic. Cloud computing services are emerging as supportive technologies by providing resources. Most services like IoT require minimum delay which is still an area of research. This paper is an effort towards the minimization of delay in delivering cloud traffic, by geographically localizing the cloud traffic through establishment of Cloud mini data centers. The anticipated architecture suggests a software defined network supported mini data centers connected together. The paper also suggests the use of segment routing for stitching the transport paths between data centers through Software defined Network Controllers.

A Practical and Efficient Node Blind SignCryption Scheme for the IoT Device Network

In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT for short) research has become one of the top ten most popular research topics. IoT devices also embed many sensing chips for detecting physical signals from the outside environment. In the wireless sensing network (WSN for short), a human can wear several IoT devices around her/his body such as a smart watch, smart band, smart glasses, etc. These IoT devices can collect analog environment data around the user’s body and store these data into memory after data processing. Thus far, we have discovered that some IoT devices have resource limitations such as power shortages or insufficient memory for data computation and preservation. An IoT device such as a smart band attempts to upload a user’s body information to the cloud server by adopting the public-key crypto-system to generate the corresponding cipher-text and related signature for concrete data security; in this situation, the computation time increases linearly and the device can run out of memory, which is inconvenient for users. For this reason, we consider that, if the smart IoT device can perform encryption and signature simultaneously, it can save significant resources for the execution of other applications. As a result, our approach is to design an efficient, practical, and lightweight, blind sign-cryption (SC for short) scheme for IoT device usage. Not only can our methodology offer the sensed data privacy protection efficiently, but it is also fit for the above application scenario with limited resource conditions such as battery shortage or less memory space in the IoT device network.

Vehicle Motion Planning for the Visually Challenged People Using Ant Colony Optimization

This paper presents a novel proposal to solve the problem of obstacle detection and path planning for visually challenged people based on simple Ant Colony Optimization Meta-heuristic (SACO-MH). The mission of the path planning problem is to enable the vehicle to move from the starting point to the target point while satisfying certain constraints. Constraint conditions are: not a collision with known or unknown obstacles, away from the obstacle as far as possible, determines the shortest path, shortest time and so on. Obstacle detection is made with the help of sensor technology and it is intimated to the user with the help of a smart watch. A voice based navigation system guides the user

Heart Fire: A Smart Watch-based Musician-Listener Interaction System for Online Live-streamed Concerts: A Pilot Study

<div>Purpose: Build new musician-listener interaction using smart watch for online music.</div><div>Tools: Smart Watch, Kinect, Touchdesigner<br></div>

Heart Fire: A Smart Watch-based Musician-Listener Interaction System for Online Live-streamed Concerts: A Pilot Study

<div>Purpose: Build new musician-listener interaction using smart watch for online music.</div><div>Tools: Smart Watch, Kinect, Touchdesigner<br></div>

Temporal-Sound based User Interface for Smart Home

We propose a gesture-based interface to control a smart home. Our system replaces existing physical controls with our temporal sound commands using accelerometer. In our preliminary experiments, we recorded the sounds generated by six different gestures (knocking the desk, mouse clicking, and clapping) and converted them into spectrogram images. Classification learning was performed on these images using a CNN. Due to the difference between the microphones used, the classification results are not successful for most of the data. We then recorded acceleration values, instead of sounds, using a smart watch. 5 types of motions were performed in our experiments to execute activity classification on these acceleration data using a machine learning library named Core ML provided by Apple Inc.. These results still have much room to be improved.

The Acceptability of a Palliative Care Mobile Application for Older Adults with Heart Failure and Caregivers (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Digital health provides opportunities for patients with advanced heart failure and their caregivers to engage in palliative care, but is relatively underexplored. OBJECTIVE To test the acceptability and usability of Convoy-Pal, a mobile palliative care solution for older adults and their family and informal caregivers, i.e., their “social convoy”. METHODS Convoy-Pal includes tablet based and smart watch tools facilitating self-management and access to palliative care resources. Older adults and convoy caregivers completed an acceptability and usability interview via Zoom including open ended questions and the Mobile Application Rating Scale: User Version (uMars). Descriptive analysis was conducted to summarize the results of open-ended feedback and self-reported acceptability and usability. RESULTS Overall, the feedback from users was good (uMars M=3.96, out of 5). Open ended feedback from the interviews included improving graphs and adding monitoring features. CONCLUSIONS Convoy-Pal is perceived acceptable with good usability for both older adults and their caregivers.