An Advanced Home ElderCare Service

With the increase of welfare cost all over the developed world, there is a need to resort to new technologies that could help reduce this enormous cost and provide some quality eldercare services. This paper presents a middleware-level solution that integrates monitoring and emergency detection solutions with networking solutions. The proposed system enables efficient integration between a variety of sensors and actuators deployed at home for emergency detection and provides a framework for creating and managing rescue teams willing to assist elders in case of emergency situations. A prototype of the proposed system was designed and implemented. Results were obtained from both computer simulations and a real-network testbed. These results show that the proposed system can help overcome some of the current problems and help reduce the enormous cost of eldercare service

Beyond Intra-modality: A Survey of Heterogeneous Person Re-identification

An efficient and effective person re-identification (ReID) system relieves the users from painful and boring video watching and accelerates the process of video analysis. Recently, with the explosive demands of practical applications, a lot of research efforts have been dedicated to heterogeneous person re-identification (Hetero-ReID). In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art Hetero-ReID methods that address the challenge of inter-modality discrepancies. According to the application scenario, we classify the methods into four categories -- low-resolution, infrared, sketch, and text. We begin with an introduction of ReID, and make a comparison between Homogeneous ReID (Homo-ReID) and Hetero-ReID tasks. Then, we describe and compare existing datasets for performing evaluations, and survey the models that have been widely employed in Hetero-ReID. We also summarize and compare the representative approaches from two perspectives, i.e., the application scenario and the learning pipeline. We conclude by a discussion of some future research directions. Follow-up updates are avaible at: https://github.com/lightChaserX/Awesome-Hetero-reIDComment: Accepted by IJCAI 2020. Project url: https://github.com/lightChaserX/Awesome-Hetero-reI

Adaptive service discovery on service-oriented and spontaneous sensor systems

Service-oriented architecture, Spontaneous networks, Self-organisation, Self-configuration, Sensor systems, Social patternsNatural and man-made disasters can significantly impact both people and environments. Enhanced effect can be achieved through dynamic networking of people, systems and procedures and seamless integration of them to fulfil mission objectives with service-oriented sensor systems. However, the benefits of integration of services will not be realised unless we have a dependable method to discover all required services in dynamic environments. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive and Efficient Peer-to-peer Search (AEPS) approach for dependable service integration on service-oriented architecture based on a number of social behaviour patterns. In the AEPS network, the networked nodes can autonomously support and co-operate with each other in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner to quickly discover and self-configure any services available on the disaster area and deliver a real-time capability by self-organising themselves in spontaneous groups to provide higher flexibility and adaptability for disaster monitoring and relief

HIV and AIDS in the Russian Federation : prisons as a case study of risk environments and agency

This thesis explores Russian prisons as risk environments for the spread of HIV through intravenous drug use. The Russian HIV epidemic is extremely fast growing, and though exact prevalence rates are unknown, the epidemic is now considered generalized as estimated prevalence rates exceed one percent of the Russian population. After decades of foreign-aid and interventions in African nations have largely failed to address the HIV epidemic, social scientists now attribute HIV infection to risk environments created by low levels of social cohesion and a lack of agency. Within my research, I explore Russian male prisons and the role risk environments and agency play in the spread of HIV. I review recently published literature, government statistics, as well as reports published by non-governmental organizations. I then analyze and interpret these data, draw conclusions and inferences regarding the spread of HIV within Russian prison risk environments.Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studie