Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Impact of Housing Modification/Adaptation for Supporting Older People at Home: An Introduction

Foreword to Special Issue of Journal of Aging and Environment The desire of older people to age in place and government policies intended to support people living in their own homes suggests that future-proofing this environment is fundamental to improving person-environment congruence at a time of global aging. The UK-initiated genHOME network, founded by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, promoted the health and well-being of older and disabled people and their families through the co-ordination and dissemination of international research on home modification or adaptation and housing design. In 2017, researchers attached to the network from five developed countries with diverse housing types, tenure, space standards, regulations and funding opportunities took part in a symposium at the IAGG World Congress, debating empirical research and common priorities. The symposium was chaired by the editors of this Special Edition of the Journal of Aging and Environment. Aiming to inform national and international policy there is recognition of diversity in the evidence presented, and a need for consistent methodology and outcome measures (see Adams & Hodges, 2018). The introduction and discussion address the priorities raised, including: housing design and environmental barriers, financing adaptations (public and private), user satisfaction with adaptations, concern over housing assets, developing robust assessment tools, and the future of inclusive design. Finally, consideration is given to whether current understanding of culturally specific home adaptations can lead to wider discussion of more inclusive design and architectural practice for new build housing, and how this relates to population growth in times of climate change

Exergame design for elderly users: the case study of SilverBalance

In this paper, we discuss chances and challenges of game design for an elderly audience with a focus on the development of safe and usable exertion games for frail senior citizens. Based on an analysis of theoretical constraints, we conducted a case study which implements different balance tasks for elderly players featuring the Nintendo Wii Balance Board which encourages users to actively engage in game play. Furthermore, we tested the feasibility of the board as input device for our case study SilverBalance. Our results indicate that age-related impairments influence the use of video games among frail elderly in many respects, hence their needs have to be considered during the design process. In this context, our paper provides a foundation for future research regarding digital games for the elderly. © 2010 ACM

Wisdom at Work: The Importance of the Older and Experienced Nurse in the Workplace

Focuses on promising strategies and opportunities for retaining experienced nurses, one of many approaches the authors recommend to alleviate the current nurse shortage crisis

The Summit on Creativity and Aging in America

This report looks at how the federal government can leverage the arts to foster healthy aging and inclusive design for this growing population. This white paper features recommendations from the May 2015 Summit on Creativity and Aging in America, a convening of more than 70 experts hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Center for Creative Aging. The paper highlights recommendations on healthy aging, lifelong learning in the arts, and age-friendly community design. The summit was a precursor to the 2015 White House Conference on Aging, which addressed four major issues: retirement security, long-term services and supports, healthy aging, and elder abuse

Nuts and Bolts of a Realistic Stochastic Geometric Analysis of mmWave HetNets: Hardware Impairments and Channel Aging

© 2019 IEEE.Motivated by heterogeneous network (HetNet) design in improving coverage and by millimeter-wave (mmWave) transmission offering an abundance of extra spectrum, we present a general analytical framework shedding light on the downlink of realistic mmWave HetNets consisting of K tiers of randomly located base stations. Specifically, we model, by virtue of stochastic geometry tools, the multi-Tier multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) mmWave network degraded by the inevitable residual additive transceiver hardware impairments (RATHIs) and channel aging. Given this setting, we derive the coverage probability and the area spectral efficiency (ASE), and we subsequently evaluate the impact of residual transceiver hardware impairments and channel aging on these metrics. Different path-loss laws for line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight are accounted for the analysis, which are among the distinguishing features of mmWave systems. Among the findings, we show that the RATHIs have a meaningful impact at the high-signal-To-noise-ratio regime, while the transmit additive distortion degrades further than the receive distortion the system performance. Moreover, serving fewer users proves to be preferable, and the more directive the mmWaves are, the higher the ASE becomes.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Micropattern gas detector technologies and applications, the work of the RD51 collaboration

The RD51 collaboration was founded in April 2008 to coordinate and facilitate efforts for development of micropattern gaseous detectors (MPGDs). The 75 institutes from 25 countries bundle their effort, experience and resources to develop these emerging micropattern technologies. MPGDs are already employed in several nuclear and high-energy physics experiments, medical imaging instruments and photodetection applications; many more applications are foreseen. They outperform traditional wire chambers in terms of rate capability, time and position resolution, granularity, stability and radiation hardness. RD51 supports efforts to make MPGDs also suitable for large areas, increase cost-efficiency, develop portable detectors and improve ease-of-use. The collaboration is organized in working groups which develop detectors with new geometries, study and simulate their properties, and design optimized electronics. Among the common supported projects are creation of test infrastructure such as beam test and irradiation facilities, and the production workshop.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium 2010 Conference Recor

Types of dependence and time-dependent association between two lifetimes in single parameter copula models

Most publications on modeling insurance contracts on two lives, assuming dependence of the two lifetimes involved, focus on the time of inception of the contract. The dependence between the lifetimes is usually modeled through a copula and the effect of this dependence on the pricing of a joint life policy is measured. This paper investigates the effect of association at the outset on the mortality in the future. The conditional law of mortality of an individual, given his survival and given the life status of the partner is derived. The conditional joint survival distribution of a couple at any duration, given that the two lives are then alive, is also derived. We analyze how the degree of dependence between the two members of a couple varies throughout the duration of a contract. We will do that for (mainly Archimedean) copula models, with one parameter for the degree of dependence. The conditional distributions hence derived provide the basis for the calculation of prospective provisions

Aging concrete structures: a review of mechanics and concepts

The safe and cost-efficient management of our built infrastructure is a challenging task considering the expected service life of at least 50 years. In spite of time-dependent changes in material properties, deterioration processes and changing demand by society, the structures need to satisfy many technical requirements related to serviceability, durability, sustainability and bearing capacity. This review paper summarizes the challenges associated with the safe design and maintenance of aging concrete structures and gives an overview of some concepts and approaches that are being developed to address these challenges