A Non-Intrusive Multi-Sensor RGB-D System for Preschool Classroom Behavior Analysis

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2017. Major: Computer Science. Advisor: Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos. 1 computer file (PDF); vii, 121 pages + 2 mp4 video filesMental health disorders are a leading cause of disability in North America and can represent a significant source of financial burden. Early intervention is a key aspect in treating mental disorders as it can dramatically increase the probability of a positive outcome. One key factor to early intervention is the knowledge of risk-markers -- genetic, neural, behavioral and/or social deviations -- that indicate the development of a particular mental disorder. Once these risk-markers are known, it is important to have tools for reliable identification of these risk-markers. For visually observable risk-markers, discovery and screening ideally should occur in a natural environment. However, this often incurs a high cost. Current advances in technology allow for the development of assistive systems that could aid in the detection and screening of visually observable risk-markers in every-day environments, like a preschool classroom. This dissertation covers the development of such a system. The system consists of a series of networked sensors that are able to collect data from a wide baseline. These sensors generate color images and depth maps that can be used to create a 3D point cloud reconstruction of the classroom. The wide baseline nature of the setup helps to minimize the effects of occlusion, since data is captured from multiple distinct perspectives. These point clouds are used to detect occupants in the room and track them throughout their activities. This tracking information is then used to analyze classroom and individual behaviors, enabling the screening for specific risk-markers and also the ability to create a corpus of data that could be used to discover new risk-markers. This system has been installed at the Shirley G. Moore Lab school, a research preschool classroom in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Recordings have been taken and analyzed from actual classes. No instruction or pre-conditioning was given to the instructors or the children in these classes. Portions of this data have also been manually annotated to create groundtruth data that was used to validate the efficacy of the proposed system

How primary schools really work: Architecture, use, and perspectives

Redacted version only, full version is under permanent embargo.Schools are an important class of architecture. This is for many reasons, not least because primary schools are the first public buildings that most children inhabit for a significant amount of their waking hours and are, thus, their first experience of what should be quality built environment design. To ensure this quality, occupied building evaluation should be an important endeavour in architectural practice. Recent school building performance evaluations have been undertaken from the perspective of facilities management, or building-science, using 'expert' judgement to assess the used built environment. This presents two concerns. First, these techno-economic positions assume that behaviour of users is predictable and logical over the life of the school building, and omits the variety of users, activities, and experience of the 'Architecture'. Second, by using so-called professional 'experts', building performance often omits the voice of users (staff and students) who are expert in their own environment. The primary objective of this inquiry was to, first, establish architectural research methods suitable for including primary school users in building performance evaluation and, second, apply it to investigate the context and user perspective of their school built environment. Five primary schools, located in the Adelaide, South Australia, were selected for recognised heritage, architectural, and educational facility values, and recruited to participate in a mixed-method case study inquiry, as critical cases. Because school architecture and school occupants form a building-occupant system, this inquiry needed a range of data collection methods to capture the system. Architectural assessment, physical (environmental monitoring) and social science (surveys, visual ethnography) data collection methods were integrated to create rich case study interpretations of the schools, at school and classroom units of analysis. It was observed that the building fabric, regardless of age or design intentions, was modified to introduce contemporary permanent technological and sustainability innovations, and also for transitory occupational needs. Data triangulation found that user perspectives of the primary school architecture differed between staff and students, and this difference was aligned with each cohort’s active use of different school facilities. Exploratory Principal Axis Factoring using student participant responses resulted in five factors loaded on variables grouped around wellbeing, smell, acoustics, vision, and satisfaction, in order of their contribution to variance. This suggests that their environment quality is particularly important to primary school students. This finding was confirmed when triangulated against the qualitative data collected. Given this, and the emergent findings from the triangulated staff perspectives with other methods, it was deduced that user perspectives could be grouped into four themes: Place/Architecture, Functionality, Wellbeing, and Environment. These are proposed as a new quality framework and used to as a lens to review the success of recent school technological and sustainability innovations. This research suggests that omitting user voices from building performance evaluation omits important sources of knowledge and design learning since, even with the best intentions, non-occupants, expert or not, cannot speak on behalf of primary school users. This flexible, technosocio paradigm also offers a framework for interdisciplinary research that integrates the knowledge of other disciplines into future architectural inquiries.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Architecture and Built Environment, 201

Investigation of mobile devices usage and mobile augmented reality applications among older people

Mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones have allow users to communicate, entertainment, access information and perform productivity. However, older people are having issues to utilise mobile devices that may affect their quality of life and wellbeing. There are some potentials of mobile Augmented Reality (AR) applications to increase older users mobile usage by enhancing their experience and learning. The study aims to investigate mobile devices potential barriers and influence factors in using mobile devices. It also seeks to understand older people issues in using AR applications

Library buildings around the world

"Library Buildings around the World" is a survey based on researches of several years. The objective was to gather library buildings on an international level starting with 1990

Emerging Technologies

This monograph investigates a multitude of emerging technologies including 3D printing, 5G, blockchain, and many more to assess their potential for use to further humanity’s shared goal of sustainable development. Through case studies detailing how these technologies are already being used at companies worldwide, author Sinan Küfeoğlu explores how emerging technologies can be used to enhance progress toward each of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to guarantee economic growth even in the face of challenges such as climate change. To assemble this book, the author explored the business models of 650 companies in order to demonstrate how innovations can be converted into value to support sustainable development. To ensure practical application, only technologies currently on the market and in use actual companies were investigated. This volume will be of great use to academics, policymakers, innovators at the forefront of green business, and anyone else who is interested in novel and innovative business models and how they could help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This is an open access book

KEER2022

Avanttítol: KEER2022. DiversitiesDescripció del recurs: 25 juliol 202

2005 BRAC Commission

Contains notes and research (Socio-economic issues raised by staff/Commissioners) Various States by Bob Cook of the INTERAGENCY Team

2018, UMaine News Press Releases

This is a catalog of press releases put out by the University of Maine Division of Marketing and Communications between March 2, 2018 and December 31, 2018

XXIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación - CACIC 2017 : Libro de actas

Trabajos presentados en el XXIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación (CACIC), celebrado en la ciudad de La Plata los días 9 al 13 de octubre de 2017, organizado por la Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI) y la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Друга міжнародна конференція зі сталого майбутнього: екологічні, технологічні, соціальні та економічні питання (ICSF 2021). Кривий Ріг, Україна, 19-21 травня 2021 року

Second International Conference on Sustainable Futures: Environmental, Technological, Social and Economic Matters (ICSF 2021). Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, May 19-21, 2021.Друга міжнародна конференція зі сталого майбутнього: екологічні, технологічні, соціальні та економічні питання (ICSF 2021). Кривий Ріг, Україна, 19-21 травня 2021 року