Enriched elderly virtual profiles by means of a multidimensional integrated assessment platform

The pressure over Healthcare systems is increasing in most developed countries. The generalized aging of the population is one of the main causes. This situation is even worse in underdeveloped, sparsely populated regions like Extremadura in Spain or Alentejo in Portugal. The authors propose to use the Situational-Context, a technique to seamlessly adapt Internet of Things systems to the needs and preferences of their users, for virtually modeling the elderly. These models could be used to enhance the elderly experience when using those kind of systems without raising the need for technical skills or the costs of implementing such systems by the regional healthcare systems. In this paper, the integration of a multidimensional integrated assessment platform with such virtual profiles is presented. The assessment platform provides and additional source of information for the virtual profiles that is used to better adapt existing systems to the elders needs

The golden years dilemma

With 3.2 million baby boomers eligible to retire this year, how many will be able to meet daily financial needs and still preserve home equity? The author advises seniors to plan carefully and learn about the many forms of assistance available.Retirement income ; Home equity loans ; Baby boom generation ; Population aging - New England

An agent-based architecture for managing the provision of community care - the INCA (Intelligent Community Alarm) experience

Community Care is an area that requires extensive cooperation between independent agencies, each of which needs to meet its own objectives and targets. None are engaged solely in the delivery of community care, and need to integrate the service with their other responsibilities in a coherent and efficient manner. Agent technology provides the means by which effective cooperation can take place without compromising the essential security of both the client and the agencies involved as the appropriate set of responses can be generated through negotiation between the parties without the need for access to the main information repositories that would be necessary with conventional collaboration models. The autonomous nature of agents also means that a variety of agents can cooperate together with various local capabilities, so long as they conform to the relevant messaging requirements. This allows a variety of agents, with capabilities tailored to the carers to which they are attached to be developed so that cost-effective solutions can be provided. </p

Exploring The Responsibilities Of Single-Inhabitant Smart Homes With Use Cases

DOI: 10.3233/AIS-2010-0076This paper makes a number of contributions to the field of requirements analysis for Smart Homes. It introduces Use Cases as a tool for exploring the responsibilities of Smart Homes and it proposes a modification of the conventional Use Case structure to suit the particular requirements of Smart Homes. It presents a taxonomy of Smart-Home-related Use Cases with seven categories. It draws on those Use Cases as raw material for developing questions and conclusions about the design of Smart Homes for single elderly inhabitants, and it introduces the SHMUC repository, a web-based repository of Use Cases related to Smart Homes that anyone can exploit and to which anyone may contribute

Agency From A Stone: Shelley’s Posthumanist Experiments In Mont Blanc

This article reads Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’ as an extended exploration into possible modes of relationship linking the human mind to the material world. The modes of relationship considered by Shelley anticipate many of the structures and strategies developed by posthumanist theory, including structural coupling, strategic anthropomorphism, imagistic translation, and human-nonhuman assemblages. After summarizing Kantian and post-Kantian readings of ‘Mont Blanc,’ the essay works through an extended close reading of the poem to elucidate its proto-posthumanist elements

Can Health Care Services Attract Retirees And Contribute to the Economic Sustainability of Rural Places?

The search for engines to power rural economic growth has gone beyond the traditional boundaries of the food and fiber sector to industries such as tourism and to schemes such as attracting metropolitan workers to commuter communities with rural amenities. A group that has been somewhat overlooked is retirees, who may wish to trade in urban or suburban life-styles for a more peaceful rural retirement. An industry that has been neglected is the health care industry, which is the most rapidly growing industry nationally and of particular interest to retirees and aging populations. This paper examines the importance of rural health care services in attracting migrants age 65+ to rural counties in Michigan. Results indicate that the number of health care workers has a positive effect on net in-migration, and that this effect is large and statistically significant for the 70+ age group. Implications for rural development strategies are discussed.elder migration, health care, rural development, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Ontology based robot reasoning in the elderly care domain - the EUROAGE projects

This paper describes the actions developed and currently in development within the EUROAGE projects related to the ontology-based robot reasoning in the elderly care domain. Recent ontology-based standards were developed (IEEE 1872-2015; IEEE 1872.2-2021; IEEE 7007-2021), and others are currently in development (IEEE P1872.1; IEEE P1872.3) to improve robot performance while executing tasks. This is a very hot topic in current standardization efforts worldwide. The elderly care domain has special characteristics related to interactions with humans and robots living in the same workspace. As such, robots must also commit to social and ethical norms (IEEE 7007-2021). The robot and the actions it can perform in such interactions are defined according to the IEEE 1872-2015. Moreover, a semantic map of the environment was developed (using some concepts from the IEEE 1872.2- 2021) where the robot can interact with the elder and the sensors in the smart home. In this environment, an ontology-based platform was developed that allows the robot to interact with the objects, e.g., to pick a cell phone or bottle of water, using semantic information from that environment to solve demanded tasks. Ongoing efforts are underway to thoroughly add to the reasoning framework of the previously stated standards and the concepts from the IEEE 7007-2021 to ensure that the robot's actions are ethically and socially correct.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio