Information and communication technology solutions for outdoor navigation in dementia

INTRODUCTION: Information and communication technology (ICT) is potentially mature enough to empower outdoor and social activities in dementia. However, actual ICT-based devices have limited functionality and impact, mainly limited to safety. What is an ideal operational framework to enhance this field to support outdoor and social activities? METHODS: Review of literature and cross-disciplinary expert discussion. RESULTS: A situation-aware ICT requires a flexible fine-tuning by stakeholders of system usability and complexity of function, and of user safety and autonomy. It should operate by artificial intelligence/machine learning and should reflect harmonized stakeholder values, social context, and user residual cognitive functions. ICT services should be proposed at the prodromal stage of dementia and should be carefully validated within the life space of users in terms of quality of life, social activities, and costs. DISCUSSION: The operational framework has the potential to produce ICT and services with high clinical impact but requires substantial investment

Helmholtz’s Physiological Psychology

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) established results both controversial and enduring: analysis of mixed colors and of combination tones, arguments against nativism, and the analysis of sensation and perception using the techniques of natural science. The paper focuses on Helmholtz’s account of sensation, perception, and representation via “physiological psychology”. Helmholtz emphasized that external stimuli of sensations are causes, and sensations are their effects, and he had a practical and naturalist orientation toward the analysis of phenomenal experience. However, he argued as well that sensation must be interpreted to yield representation, and that representation is geared toward objective representation (the central thesis of contemporary intentionalism). The interpretation of sensation is based on “facts” revealed in experiment, but extends to the analysis of the quantitative, causal relationships between stimuli and responses. A key question for Helmholtz’s theory is the extent to which mental operations are to be ascribed a role in interpreting sensation

Do Marketing Strategies Impact Condom Sales in Uganda?

What attracts people to buy condoms? HIV/AIDS remain one of the biggest health dangers of the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. A lot of efforts have been pursued in the past two decades to drastically reduce prevalence of HIV and increase awareness about preventive mechanisms. In order to prevent relapse of success achieved so far, it is important to recognize transformation of consumer behavior due to growth in social networks, education and awareness over time. There are a lot of behavioral triggers captured by social marketing interventions in the field of public health. In an attempt to investigate the role of marketing strategies in condom uptake we conduct a randomized control trial in Kampala, Uganda with two different promotion techniques of selling condoms – Fear versus Pleasure, to see which has a higher impact on growth of condom sales. These strategies will be randomly assigned to BRAC’s Peer Educator (PEs) hired exclusively to sell condoms by means of regular sales trainings. We wish to see whether the growth in sales is influenced by the gender of the seller. We find that pleasure marketing suggests a positive growth in sales over time. Males have a mediating role in adding value in pleasure based marketing, while the opposite trend can be seen for females. Due to having few clusters in the study, we use the method of Wild Bootstrap-6 pt Randomisation Inference to discuss the statistical significance of our results

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Some philosophical reflections on perceptual content

The challenge presented by this paper is two fold; the first is to show that theories of perception ride a seesaw which is unsatisfactory, the second is to present a way to dismount the seesaw that these theories ride. The proposed dismount is suggested in the form of nonconceptual content of perceptual experiential states. In part A of the paper the seesaw metaphor is set up by showing that theories of perception concern themselves mainly with two questions. One of these questions is the epistemic question, which inquiries into the justificatory role played by perceptual experiential states. Such inquires conclude that the content of perceptual experiential states is conceptual. The other question is the descriptive question, which inquiries into the nature of perceptual experiential states. Such inquires conclude that the perceptual experiential states are not conceptual. The seesaw effect comes to play because theories of perception deal with the epistemic and the descriptive questions in isolation of each other. Part B of the paper shows how the theories of perception ride the seesaw. On the one side of the seesaw there are theories of perception that claim that perceptual experiential states are contentless. Bertrand Russell's account of sense-data is used to illustrate such theories. It is shown that while these theories are phenomenologically plausible they are incapable of accounting for the justificatory role perceptual experiential states need to play. On the other side of the seesaw there are theories of perception that claim that perceptual experiential states have content. The account of conceptualism by John McDowell is used to illustrate the position of such theories. These theories are inadequate in accounting for the phenomenological aspect of perceptual experiential states while they are able to account for the epistemological role played by perceptual states. This is what I call riding the seesaw. Riding the seesaw does not allow any room for progress for a theory of perception. Part C of this paper suggests a way of dismounting the seesaw by considering the notion of nonconceptual content of perceptual experiential states. The paper acknowledges that work is still necessary to sharpen the notion of nonconceptual content of perceptual states. However, nonconceptual content of perceptual experiential states is put forward as a better alternative in the light of the discussions in parts A andB

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? : some philosophical reflections on perceptual content

The challenge presented by this paper is twofold; the first is to show that theories of perception ride a seesaw which is unsatisfactory, the second is to present a way to dismount the seesaw that these theories ride. The proposed dismount is suggested in the form of nonconceptual content of perceptual experiential states. In part A of the paper the seesaw metaphor is set up by showing that theories of perception concern themselves mainly with two questions. One of these questions is the epistemic question, which inquiries into the justificatory role played by perceptual experiential states. Such inquires conclude that the content of perceptual experiential states is conceptual. The other question is the descriptive question, which inquiries into the nature of perceptual experiential states. Such inquires conclude that the perceptual experiential states are not conceptual. The seesaw effect comes to play because theories of perception deal with the epistemic and the descriptive questions in isolation of each other. Part B of the paper shows how the theories of perception ride the seesaw. On the one side of the seesaw there are theories of perception that claim that perceptual experiential states are contentless. Bertrand Russell's account of sense-data is used to illustrate such theories. It is shown that while these theories are phenomenologically plausible, they are incapable of accounting for the justificatory role perceptual experiential states need to play. On the other side of the seesaw there are theories of perception that claim that perceptual experiential states have content. The account of conceptualism by John McDowell is used to illustrate the position of such theories. These theories are inadequate in accounting for the phenomenological aspect of perceptual experiential states while they are able to account for the epistemological role played by perceptual states. This is what I call riding the seesaw. Riding the seesaw does not allow any room for progress for a theory of perception. Part C of this paper suggests a way of dismounting the seesaw by considering the notion of nonconceptual content of perceptual experiential states. The paper acknowledges that work is still necessary to sharpen the notion of nonconceptual content of perceptual states. However, nonconceptual content of perceptual experiential states is put forward as a better alternative in the light of the discussions in parts A and B

Investigation of an intelligent personalised service recommendation system in an IMS based cellular mobile network

Success or failure of future information and communication services in general and mobile communications in particular is greatly dependent on the level of personalisations they can offer. While the provision of anytime, anywhere, anyhow services has been the focus of wireless telecommunications in recent years, personalisation however has gained more and more attention as the unique selling point of mobile devices. Smart phones should be intelligent enough to match user’s unique needs and preferences to provide a truly personalised service tailored for the individual user. In the first part of this thesis, the importance and role of personalisation in future mobile networks is studied. This is followed, by an agent based futuristic user scenario that addresses the provision of rich data services independent of location. Scenario analysis identifies the requirements and challenges to be solved for the realisation of a personalised service. An architecture based on IP Multimedia Subsystem is proposed for mobility and to provide service continuity whilst roaming between two different access standards. Another aspect of personalisation, which is user preference modelling, is investigated in the context of service selection in a multi 3rd party service provider environment. A model is proposed for the automatic acquisition of user preferences to assist in service selection decision-making. User preferences are modelled based on a two-level Bayesian Metanetwork. Personal agents incorporating the proposed model provide answers to preference related queries such as cost, QoS and service provider reputation. This allows users to have their preferences considered automatically

Design and implementation of a multi-agent opportunistic grid computing platform

Opportunistic Grid Computing involves joining idle computing resources in enterprises into a converged high performance commodity infrastructure. The research described in this dissertation investigates the viability of public resource computing in offering a plethora of possibilities through seamless access to shared compute and storage resources. The research proposes and conceptualizes the Multi-Agent Opportunistic Grid (MAOG) solution in an Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) initiative to address some limitations prevalent in traditional distributed system implementations. Proof-of-concept software components based on JADE (Java Agent Development Framework) validated Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) as an important tool for provisioning of Opportunistic Grid Computing platforms. Exploration of agent technologies within the research context identified two key components which improve access to extended computer capabilities. The first component is a Mobile Agent (MA) compute component in which a group of agents interact to pool shared processor cycles. The compute component integrates dynamic resource identification and allocation strategies by incorporating the Contract Net Protocol (CNP) and rule based reasoning concepts. The second service is a MAS based storage component realized through disk mirroring and Google file-system’s chunking with atomic append storage techniques. This research provides a candidate Opportunistic Grid Computing platform design and implementation through the use of MAS. Experiments conducted validated the design and implementation of the compute and storage services. From results, support for processing user applications; resource identification and allocation; and rule based reasoning validated the MA compute component. A MAS based file-system that implements chunking optimizations was considered to be optimum based on evaluations. The findings from the undertaken experiments also validated the functional adequacy of the implementation, and show the suitability of MAS for provisioning of robust, autonomous, and intelligent platforms. The context of this research, ICT4D, provides a solution to optimizing and increasing the utilization of computing resources that are usually idle in these contexts

Perceptual Experience

This book offers an account of perceptual experience—its intrinsic nature, its engagement with the world, its relations to mental states of other kinds, and its role in epistemic norms. One of the book’s main claims is that perceptual experience constitutively involves representations of worldly items. A second claim is that the relevant form of representation can be explained in broadly biological terms. After defending these foundational doctrines, the book proceeds to give an account of perceptual appearances and how they are related to the objective world. Appearances turn out to be relational, viewpoint dependent properties of external objects. There is also a complementary account of how the objects that possess these properties are represented. Another major concern is the phenomenological dimension of perception. The book maintains that perceptual phenomenology can be explained reductively in terms of the representational contents of experiences, and it uses this doctrine to undercut the traditional arguments for dualism. This treatment of perceptual phenomenology is then expanded to encompass cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of moods and emotions, and the phenomenology of pain. The next topic is the various forms of consciousness that perceptual experience can possess. A principal aim is to show that phenomenology is metaphysically independent of these forms of consciousness, and another is to de-mystify the form known as phenomenal consciousness. The book concludes by discussing the relations of various kinds that perceptual experiences bear to higher level cognitive states, including relations of format, content, and justification or support

Finding maximum k-cliques faster using lazy global domination

No abstract available