4,823 research outputs found

    Autonomous Radar-based Gait Monitoring System

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    Features related to gait are fundamental metrics of human motion [1]. Human gait has been shown to be a valuable and feasible clinical marker to determine the risk of physical and mental functional decline [2], [3]. Technologies that detect changes in people’s gait patterns, especially older adults, could support the detection, evaluation, and monitoring of parameters related to changes in mobility, cognition, and frailty. Gait assessment has the potential to be leveraged as a clinical measurement as it is not limited to a specific health care discipline and is a consistent and sensitive test [4]. A wireless technology that uses electromagnetic waves (i.e., radar) to continually measure gait parameters at home or in a hospital without a clinician’s participation has been proposed as a suitable solution [3], [5]. This approach is based on the interaction between electromagnetic waves with humans and how their bodies impact the surrounding and scattered wireless signals. Since this approach uses wireless waves, people do not need to wear or carry a device on their bodies. Additionally, an electromagnetic wave wireless sensor has no privacy issues because there is no video-based camera. This thesis presents the design and testing of a radar-based contactless system that can monitor people’s gait patterns and recognize their activities in a range of indoor environments frequently and accurately. In this thesis, the use of commercially available radars for gait monitoring is investigated, which offers opportunities to implement unobtrusive and contactless gait monitoring and activity recognition. A novel fast and easy-to-implement gait extraction algorithm that enables an individual’s spatiotemporal gait parameter extraction at each gait cycle using a single FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave) radar is proposed. The proposed system detects changes in gait that may be the signs of changes in mobility, cognition, and frailty, particularly for older adults in individual’s homes, retirement homes and long-term care facilities retirement homes. One of the straightforward applications for gait monitoring using radars is in corridors and hallways, which are commonly available in most residential homes, retirement, and long-term care homes. However, walls in the hallway have a strong “clutter” impact, creating multipath due to the wide beam of commercially available radar antennas. The multipath reflections could result in an inaccurate gait measurement because gait extraction algorithms employ the assumption that the maximum reflected signals come from the torso of the walking person (rather than indirect reflections or multipath) [6]. To address the challenges of hallway gait monitoring, two approaches were used: (1) a novel signal processing method and (2) modifying the radar antenna using a hyperbolic lens. For the first approach, a novel algorithm based on radar signal processing, unsupervised learning, and a subject detection, association and tracking method is proposed. This proposed algorithm could be paired with any type of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) or single-input multiple-output (SIMO) FMCW radar to capture human gait in a highly cluttered environment without needing radar antenna alteration. The algorithm functionality was validated by capturing spatiotemporal gait values (e.g., speed, step points, step time, step length, and step count) of people walking in a hallway. The preliminary results demonstrate the promising potential of the algorithm to accurately monitor gait in hallways, which increases opportunities for its applications in institutional and home environments. For the second approach, an in-package hyperbola-based lens antenna was designed that can be integrated with a radar module package empowered by the fast and easy-to-implement gait extraction method. The system functionality was successfully validated by capturing the spatiotemporal gait values of people walking in a hallway filled with metallic cabinets. The results achieved in this work pave the way to explore the use of stand-alone radar-based sensors in long hallways for day-to-day long-term monitoring of gait parameters of older adults or other populations. The possibility of the coexistence of multiple walking subjects is high, especially in long-term care facilities where other people, including older adults, might need assistance during walking. GaitRite and wearables are not able to assess multiple people’s gait at the same time using only one device [7], [8]. In this thesis, a novel radar-based algorithm is proposed that is capable of tracking multiple people or extracting walking speed of a participant with the coexistence of other people. To address the problem of tracking and monitoring multiple walking people in a cluttered environment, a novel iterative framework based on unsupervised learning and advanced signal processing was developed and tested to analyze the reflected radio signals and extract walking movements and trajectories in a hallway environment. Advanced algorithms were developed to remove multipath effects or ghosts created due to the interaction between walking subjects and stationary objects, to identify and separate reflected signals of two participants walking at a close distance, and to track multiple subjects over time. This method allows the extraction of walking speed in multiple closely-spaced subjects simultaneously, which is distinct from previous approaches where the speed of only one subject was obtained. The proposed multiple-people gait monitoring was assessed with 22 participants who participated in a bedrest (BR) study conducted at McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). The system functionality also was assessed for in-home applications. In this regard, a cloud-based system is proposed for non-contact, real-time recognition and monitoring of physical activities and walking periods within a domestic environment. The proposed system employs standalone Internet of Things (IoT)-based millimeter wave radar devices and deep learning models to enable autonomous, free-living activity recognition and gait analysis. Range-Doppler maps generated from a dataset of real-life in-home activities are used to train deep learning models. The performance of several deep learning models was evaluated based on accuracy and prediction time, with the gated recurrent network (GRU) model selected for real-time deployment due to its balance of speed and accuracy compared to 2D Convolutional Neural Network Long Short-Term Memory (2D-CNNLSTM) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models. In addition to recognizing and differentiating various activities and walking periods, the system also records the subject’s activity level over time, washroom use frequency, sleep/sedentary/active/out-of-home durations, current state, and gait parameters. Importantly, the system maintains privacy by not requiring the subject to wear or carry any additional devices

    Full Issue: Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 7, Issue 1, Spring 2023

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    The full-length Spring 2023 issue (Volume 7, Issue 1) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence Access the online Pressbooks version (with downloadable EPUB format) here. The Spring 2023 issue presents research and guidance on topics related to student self-reflection, participatory learning, and returning to the in-person learning following the COVID-19 pandemic. The first article takes a critical approach to understanding pedagogy with adult learners by involving students in the creation of course syllabi as a way to challenge ideologies related the roles of instructor and students. The second article blends research and narrative to explore how the experiences of the COVID-19 shift to online learning can be translated to in-person learning environments to redefine what participation looks like and to advance faculty collaboration. The third article continues to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic can lead to opportunities for improved course development and delivery as faculty and students return to the classroom, particularly in the areas of communication, equity, and inclusion. The fourth article presents a selection of prompts used to promote student learning through written reflection tasks and describes how such tasks can be applied to various teaching contexts. The fifth article describes the use of a digital poverty simulation with business students and examines how the activity affected the students\u27 attitudes toward poverty

    Testing SOAR Tools in Use

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    Modern security operation centers (SOCs) rely on operators and a tapestry of logging and alerting tools with large scale collection and query abilities. SOC investigations are tedious as they rely on manual efforts to query diverse data sources, overlay related logs, and correlate the data into information and then document results in a ticketing system. Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) tools are a new technology that promise to collect, filter, and display needed data; automate common tasks that require SOC analysts' time; facilitate SOC collaboration; and, improve both efficiency and consistency of SOCs. SOAR tools have never been tested in practice to evaluate their effect and understand them in use. In this paper, we design and administer the first hands-on user study of SOAR tools, involving 24 participants and 6 commercial SOAR tools. Our contributions include the experimental design, itemizing six characteristics of SOAR tools and a methodology for testing them. We describe configuration of the test environment in a cyber range, including network, user, and threat emulation; a full SOC tool suite; and creation of artifacts allowing multiple representative investigation scenarios to permit testing. We present the first research results on SOAR tools. We found that SOAR configuration is critical, as it involves creative design for data display and automation. We found that SOAR tools increased efficiency and reduced context switching during investigations, although ticket accuracy and completeness (indicating investigation quality) decreased with SOAR use. Our findings indicated that user preferences are slightly negatively correlated with their performance with the tool; overautomation was a concern of senior analysts, and SOAR tools that balanced automation with assisting a user to make decisions were preferred

    Authoritarianism and Subject Formation in Post-Independence Egypt: Egyptian Literature and Western Social Theory in Dialogue

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    The study grew out of a desire to examine how it feels to be denied what Hannah Arendt famously referred to as the ‘right to have rights,’ including the right to disobey. More specifically, this study seeks to understand how people living under particular regimes of power—characterised by distinct politics of fear, uncertainty, and silence—feel, define, and express themselves in relation to power, whether in the form of submission or resistance. In other words: How do authoritarian power dynamics affect individuals’ perception of self and how does it play into and shape the everyday life of the individual? At the heart of this inquiry is the notion of the subject, which forms both the conceptual foundation and the central focus of this study. The study draws primarily on the theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt on the interplay of power, resistance, and subjectivity. To frame the discussion, a socio-historical examination of post-independence power practices in Egypt and their impact on the constitution of the political subject is conducted. Research data is generated through an art-inspired qualitative research approach, primarily using Egyptian novels as a source of data to uncover the nuances and interiorities of the process of subject formation. Through a dialogue between Western social theory and Egyptian literature, the study provides an understanding of power practice in Egypt from 1952 to the present, particularly at the level of the inner panorama of the self in society and expands it into a reading of social and political theories on the question of power, subjectivity, resistance, and agency. The study is divided into six main chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Each empirical chapter of this study tells the story of a particular episode in time and is somewhat self-contained, yet all chapters are connected into a large coherent reading of modern Egyptian power practices. Just as the novels examined in this study tell a story with their words, so does my research. The study concludes that the process of subject formation in Egypt should be understood as an artefact of historical continuity that connects the past to the present, not necessarily in a linear fashion, but in a way that gives it a genealogical context, and as a dynamic process of shifting subject positions. The study further argues for the limitations of the status conception of citizenship as a defining framework for the state—society relationship in the context under study and proposes instead the use of the power—subject framework as a substitute. Last but not least, the study suggests that the connection between theory and method, expressed in the very structure of the research, reveals the epistemic relevance of literature to the conceptual imagination, contributing in a sense, to the discussion of the decolonisation of knowledge production. In some ways, this interdisciplinarity underscores the sheer breadth and hybridity of the concept of subject formation that has become apparent throughout this analysis. Keywords— Power, Subject Formation, Subjectivity, Egyptian Literature, Resistance, Agenc

    A Behavioural Decision-Making Framework For Agent-Based Models

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    In the last decades, computer simulation has become one of the mainstream modelling techniques in many scientific fields. Social simulation with Agent-based Modelling (ABM) allows users to capture higher-level system properties that emerge from the interactions of lower-level subsystems. ABM is itself an area of application of Distributed Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems (MAS). Despite that, researchers using ABM for social science studies do not fully benefit from the development in the field of MAS. It is mainly because the MAS architectures and frameworks are built upon cognitive and computer science foundations and principles, creating a gap in concepts and methodology between the two fields. Building agent frameworks based on behaviour theory is a promising direction to minimise this gap. It can provide a standard practice in interdisciplinary teams and facilitate better usage of MAS technological advancement in social research. From our survey, Triandis' Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour (TIB) was chosen due to its broad set of determinants and inclusion of an additive value function to calculate utility values of different outcomes. As TIB's determinants can be organised in a tree-like structure, we utilise layered architectures to formalise the agent's components. The additive function of TIB is then used to combine the utilities of different level determinants. The framework is then applied to create models for different case studies from various domains to test its ability to explain the importance of multiple behavioural aspects and environmental properties. The first case study simulates the mobility demand for Swiss households. We propose an experimental method to test and investigate the impact of core determinants in the TIB on the usage of different transportation modes. The second case study presents a novel solution to simulate trust and reputation by applying subjective logic as a metric to measure an agent's belief about the consequence(s) of action, which can be updated through feedback. The third case study investigates the possibility of simulating bounded rationality effects in an agent's decision-making scheme by limiting its capability of perceiving information. In the final study, a model is created to simulate migrants' choice of activities in centres by applying our framework in conjunction with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The experiment can then be used to test the impact of different combinations of core determinants on the migrants' activities. Overall, the design of different components in our framework enables adaptations for various contexts, including transportation modal choice, buying a vehicle or daily activities. Most of the work can be done by changing the first-level determinants in the TIB's model based on the phenomena simulated and the available data. Several environmental properties can also be considered by extending the core components or employing other theoretical assumptions and concepts from the social study. The framework can then serve the purpose of theoretical exposition and allow the users to assess the causal link between the TIB's determinants and behaviour output. This thesis also highlights the importance of data collection and experimental design to capture better and understand different aspects of human decision-making

    The assertive presidency – understanding preemptive executive pressure on foreign policy legislation in the US

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    The specter of an increasingly uneven distribution of power between the Executive Branch and Congress looms large in scholarship on the separation of powers in American government. This is particularly evident in the design and exercise of foreign policy. While the presidents’ use of legislative powers like the veto has been studied extensively, I argue that preemptive presidential interventions during the process of lawmaking are a subtler and less politically costly tool that is more important than scholars realized. This project focuses on American foreign policy lawmaking and examines the extent to which it is characterized by presidential assertiveness communicated to Congress through a hitherto understudies tool of executive intervention. Specifically, I seek to understand how contemporary presidents use Statements of Administration Policy (SAPs), a relatively new class of executive communications designed to preemptively intervene in key legislation as it is drafted in Congress. Delivered at a crucial intervention point along the legislative process, these communications provide a key opportunity for presidents to challenge specific provisions. Embedded in the broader discourse on struggling congressional checks on the executive, this project fills a gap in the understanding of the dynamics that shape the balance of power between Congress and the president. I find that interbranch confrontations increased significantly after the critical juncture of 9/11 and that Congress gradually expanded the use of its authorization leverage over time. In addition, two contextual predictors of increasing presidential assertiveness in preemptive messages to Congress stand out: divided government and presidential election years. My results indicate that presidents still cannot achieve many of their foreign policy goal without negotiating with Congress within contested bargaining procedures. Overall, my dissertation makes three principal contributions to the ongoing research on domestic underpinnings of US foreign policy: First, my findings quality the image of unchecked presidential discretion and highlight the continuous relevance of interbranch contestation in foreign policy. Second, I show that the mechanisms of change as laid out by historical institutionalism are useful for explaining long-term shifts in interbranch dynamics. Third, I introduce a novel assertiveness-score based on a relatively new source of presidential position language, which can be adapted for other research purposes

    Advances in Binders for Construction Materials

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    The global binder production for construction materials is approximately 7.5 billion tons per year, contributing ~6% to the global anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 emissions. Reducing this carbon footprint is a key aim of the construction industry, and current research focuses on developing new innovative ways to attain more sustainable binders and concrete/mortars as a real alternative to the current global demand for Portland cement.With this aim, several potential alternative binders are currently being investigated by scientists worldwide, based on calcium aluminate cement, calcium sulfoaluminate cement, alkali-activated binders, calcined clay limestone cements, nanomaterials, or supersulfated cements. This Special Issue presents contributions that address research and practical advances in i) alternative binder manufacturing processes; ii) chemical, microstructural, and structural characterization of unhydrated binders and of hydrated systems; iii) the properties and modelling of concrete and mortars; iv) applications and durability of concrete and mortars; and v) the conservation and repair of historic concrete/mortar structures using alternative binders.We believe this Special Issue will be of high interest in the binder industry and construction community, based upon the novelty and quality of the results and the real potential application of the findings to the practice and industry

    2023-2024 Undergraduate Catalog

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    2023-2024 undergraduate catalog for Morehead State University

    Soviet Legacy of Vietnam's Intellectual Property Law: Big Brother is (No Longer) Watching You

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    How did intellectual property (IP), a private right born out of European Enlightenment ideals, take root in Vietnam's socialist legal framework, and what influence does Vietnam's Soviet legacy still have on its IP law? The clandestine triumph of IP rights in Vietnam is remarkable, given the system's former propensity for collective ownership and limited private property rights. Vietnam's approach to IP rights has changed with economic liberalisation: while external pressure prompted the initial adoption of IP laws, national interest and global reputation enhancement are now driving the effort. At the height of communism in the 1980s and under Soviet domination, IP laws reflected socialist ideology and the characteristics of a command economy. Amid Vietnam's quest for technological advancement, the importance of patents has grown. However, public perceptions of the unreliability of the legal system to resolve IP disputes persist, pushing civil disputes towards the government rather than the judiciary. As Vietnam opened economically, its IP regime moved away from overt communism, but communist values are still implicitly incorporated in general principles. Today, adherence to free trade agreements, which require robust IP protection, is driving the modernisation of Vietnam's IP infrastructure
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