A Mobile ECG Monitoring System with Context Collection

An objective of a health process is one where patients can stay healthy with the support of expert medical advice when they need it, at any location and any time. An associated aim would be the development of a system which places increased emphasis on preventative measures as a first point of contact with the patient. This research is a step along the road towards this type of preventative healthcare for cardiac patients. It seeks to develop a smart mobile ECG monitoring system that requests and records context information about what is happening around the subject when an arrhythmia event occurs. Context information about the subject’s activities of daily living will, it is hoped, provide an enriched data set for clinicians and so improve clinical decision making. As a first step towards a mobile cardiac wellness guidelines system, the focus of this work is to develop a system that can receive bio-signals wirelessly, analyzing and storing the bio-signal in a handheld device and can collect context information when there are significant changes in bio-signs. For this purpose the author will use a low cost development environment to program a state of the art wireless prototype on a handheld computer that detects and responds to changes in the heart rate as calculated form the interval between successive heart beats. Although the general approach take in this work could be applied to a wide range of bio-signals, the research will focus on ECG signals. The pieces of the system are, A wireless receiver, data collection and storage module An efficient real time ECG beat detection algorithm A rule based (Event-Condition-Action) interactive system A simple user interface, which can request additional information form the user. A selection of real-time ECG detection algorithms have been investigated and one algorithm was implemented in MATLAB [110] and then in Java [142] for this project. In order to collect ECG signals (and in principle any signals) the generalised data collection architecture has also been developed utilizing Java [142] and Bluetooth [5] technology. This architecture uses an implementation of the abstract factory pattern [91] to ensure that the communication channel can be changed conveniently. Another core part of this project is a “wellness” guideline based on Event-Condition-Action (E-C-A) [68] production rule approach that originated in active databases. The work also focuses on design of a guideline based expert system which an E-C-A based implementation will be fully event driven using the Java programming language. Based on the author’s experience and the literature review, some important issues in mobile healthcare along with the corresponding reasons, consequences and possible solutions will be presented

Guarding America: Security Guards and U.S. Critical Infrastructure Protection

CRSRL32670.pdf: 1543 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Documenting the Oral Narratives of Transient Punks

The uninitiated do not realize the complexity of the punk rock sub-culture. Outsiders may find it hard to distinguish the subtle lines by which differentiation occurs within the so-called subculture. The punk rock subculture is a misnomer; it is not a salient community. The experience of being punk is fractal; what it means to be punk and what classifies one as punk is in constant redefinition and there are various different communities with varying ideologies and identities. The punk subculture has absorbed various epistemologies in its 40+ years of existence, modified them, and made them their own. Within this milieu of experience there is a segment of the punk rock population that takes the anti-authoritarian, do-it-yourself ethos of the subculture to its logical conclusion: they drop out of society and hit the streets relying upon their wits, the good nature of strangers, and a vast interconnected support network of peers for their survival. There is very little documentation of the lives of this unique population and due to the precarious circumstance that they live in (i.e., the far margins of society), the risk of losing their history is a real threat. To understand why these punks became transient, one must ask them about their life history, ideological beliefs, views on life, family history, and personal experiences within the community (i.e., their story). My unit of analysis is the transient punk community. I have created a qualitative analysis of this community by collecting oral narratives of self identifying transients via participant observation. Data was collected by utilizing informal interviews and by snowball sampling

Gendering migratory social spaces in Upper Egypt

Male out migration especially to Gulf countries is a well-established phenomenon in Upper Egypt. It is considered the easy way out of poverty and unemployment. Moreover, remittances represent the only monetary source for most migratory families. This thesis explores the impact of male out migration on their community of origin with a special focus on its impact on women. Fieldwork has been conducted in the village of Hekma, Qena, Upper Egypt where everything is influenced by the absence of men. A gendered approach is utilized to understand the everyday life of this community. This thesis consists of three main parts. The first part investigates how the social space is influenced by the absence of men. The second part explores remittances as a process and its role in the economic life with special attention to the role of women in this process. In addition, it discusses women’s empowerment from the understanding of Hekma women. The third part investigates the impact of remittances on consumption at the household level, as well as the difference between remittance receiving and non-receiving households. This thesis contributes to the gender and migration discourse as it offers a new understanding of social space, remittances and consumption in an Upper Egyptian context

The incorporation of indigenous healers in the fight against HIV/AIDS : an exploratory case study of the collaboration between Izangomas and the formal health system operating through the Valley Trust.

Thesis (M.Dev. Studies)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.The purpose of this study was to get a better sense of what collaborative efforts between the allopathic and indigenous health systems to address HIV/ AIDS look like 'on the ground' with the hope that revealed successes and failures could inform other initiatives. The pilot investigation took the form of a small case study of the Community Health and HIV/AIDS project at the Valley Trust in KwaZulu Natal's Valley of a Thousand Hills where HIV/AIDS collaboration with traditional healers has taken primarily three forms: 1) incorporation in the formal primary health care system as CHWs (TH/CHWs); 2) formal short-term HIV/AIDS training (Trained); and 3) informal second-hand HIV/AIDS training or information sharing (Untrained). The investigation focused primarily on how the indigenous healers' involvement in the Valley Trust's varying training programs affected their knowledge ofthe disease, their engagement in HIV/ AIDS awareness and prevention efforts, their treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, and their perception and relationship with the formal medical system. The findings show that collaboration between traditional and formal health services, in the form of the Valley Trust's training, results in 'better' HIV/AIDS work by participating traditional healers through enhanced performance on HIV/AIDS knowledge tests. As indicated by their superior performance on correlating knowledge indices, TH/CHWs engaged in the most effectual community prevention activities of the three groups. Additionally, the TH/CHW group appeared to have the most confidence and experience in treating patients with HIV/AIDS. Additionally as compared to the other two groups, their treatment methods were more varied, induding psycho-spiritual ceremonies, diet, traditional medicinal herbs, and support of biomedical efforts. Given the comparative success of TH/CHWs, it was ironic that only the healers' themselves indicated wanting more izangomas to serve as Community Health Workers. As leaders among participating healers, TH/CHWs were critical to the success of the Valley Trust's collaborative project. The findings of this case study suggest that the nature of the varying trainings offered by the Valley Trust accounted for the primary difference in the effectiveness of the healers' subsequent HIV/AIDS work. The study implies that both the skills-based nature and long-term supervision of the CHW training were instrumental in their superior performance. These findings point to the fact that indigenous healers can not function effectively as extension services without investment in infrastructure development and ongoing support. In terms of the collaboration between biomedical and indigenous health systems operating at the Valley Trust, the primary point of contention between the participating parties was the collaboration's unidirectional referral system (healers would refer patients to the clinic and not vice versa). Discrepancies in the collaborative partners' perceptions of one another, which were revealed in the study, point to the need for greater dialogue and formal linkages between participating groups. A referral system of some content and magnitude appears to be the most critical and pressing issue the new structure needs to address