Long-term behavioural change detection through pervasive sensing

The paper proposes an information generation and summarisation algorithm to detect behavioural change in applications such as long-term monitoring of vulnerable people. The algorithm learns the monitored subject's behaviour autonomously post-deployment and provides time-suppressed summaries of the activity types engaged with by the subject over the course of their day to day life. It transmits updates to external observers only when the summary changes by more than a defined threshold. This technique substantially reduces the number of transmission required by a wearable monitoring system, both through summarisation of the raw data into useful information and by preventing transmission of duplicated or predictable data and information. Based on evaluation using simulated activity data, the proposed algorithm results in an average of one transmission per month following an initial convergence period (reaching less than 1 transmission per day after only three days) and detects a change in behaviour after an average of 1.1 days.<br/

Long Term Unemployment

[Excerpt] Even in a strong labor market, many people become unemployed for short periods as they enter the labor force or change jobs. But some people take many months to find a job. Over the past several decades, the percentage of unemployment spells lasting more than six months has increased. Such long-term unemployment may result in serious problems for the unemployed individuals themselves as well as for the overall economy. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper—prepared at the request of the Chairmen of the House Budget and House Ways and Means Committees—uses data from a national survey to examine the extent to which unemployment is concentrated among workers who experienced spells lasting more than six months. It also examines the characteristics of those workers, their sources of income, and their subsequent activities. In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this paper makes no recommendations

Long Term Preservation

Electronic Records: A Workbook For Archivists (ICA Study no. 16 ) is a manual produced by the ICA Committee on Current Records in an Electronic Environment (CER, 2000-2004). It addresses the consequences of the fact that, throughout the world, records of all sorts are increasingly produced in electronic form. It takes a practical approach to managing and preserving electronic records throughout their lifecycle. This chapter (Chapter 5) deals with long-term preservation

Long-Term Relations Among Prosocial-Media Use, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior

Despite recent growth of research on the effects of prosocial media, processes underlying these effects are not well understood. Two studies explored theoretically relevant mediators and moderators of the effects of prosocial media on helping. Study 1 examined associations among prosocial- and violent-media use, empathy, and helping in samples from seven countries. Prosocial-media use was positively associated with helping. This effect was mediated by empathy and was similar across cultures. Study 2 explored longitudinal relations among prosocial-video-game use, violent-video-game use, empathy, and helping in a large sample of Singaporean children and adolescents measured three times across 2 years. Path analyses showed significant longitudinal effects of prosocial- and violent-video-game use on prosocial behavior through empathy. Latent-growth-curve modeling for the 2-year period revealed that change in video-game use significantly affected change in helping, and that this relationship was mediated by change in empathy

Trends in long-term prescribing of dependence forming medicines

Using patient-level primary care data to estimate the extent to which antidepressant medicines are prescribed to people continuously for long periods of time. Aim This descriptive research used patient-level primary care data to estimate the extent to which antidepressant medicines are prescribed to people continuously for long periods of time. The study also drew on survey data and data on the number of prescriptions dispensed. Findings - The number of antidepressant prescriptions dispensed each year in England doubled between 2008 and 2018 - Survey data show that the proportion of adults reporting use of antidepressants in the past year increased in the 1990s, and again between 2007 and 2014 - The average length of time that antidepressants are continuously prescribed to people for has increased over time. - Some types of antidepressants (for example, tricyclics and other antidepressants) tend to be prescribed for longer periods than other types (such as SSRIs). - In 2014, one in twelve prescribing periods for tricyclics and other antidepressants lasted for three years or more Methods The analyses in this report are descriptive and show the overall prevalence of long-term prescribing in each year. We used a sample of around 50,000 patients prescribed at least one antidepressant medicine between 2000 and 2017. This was drawn from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). The CPRD contains data about prescriptions issued by GPs (including the length and size of prescription) and characteristics of the patients prescribed to (such as their age, sex, and area where they live). Medicines were grouped for analysis into: tricyclics, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and other ADMs. The length of individual prescriptions and continuous prescribing periods were derived using information on consultation dates, the quantity of tablets prescribed, and the numeric daily dose

Long Term Care in Romania

The increasing life expectancy and the alarming growth in the incidence of chronic illness make long term care services in high demand and in dire need of change and innovation. As part of the ANCIEN initiative, which aims to comprise a database of European approaches for dealing with long term care, this document creates an overview of the health systems organized in Romania which target individuals with long term care needs. The method of governance, the people’s needs and the available services are presented herein. For the most part, the services provided in this field are covered through the efforts of the family of those in need and are therefore difficult to quantify or analyze. Public services are either insufficient (in terms of quality or accessibility) and the moral stigma associated to using them prevents families from making this choice. However, due to a high demand and a low supply of high quality LTC services, the private market of nursing homes has exploded in the last few years, funded either privately, through NGOs or external donations. The quality and number of available services has greatly improved but the accessibility is still low. At this moment, Romania still does not have an integrated long term care system neither from the legal or the organization of services being offered. There are social and medical services that are run, provided and legislated independently. The current national strategy is to coordinate these services and to create an integrated system with multidisciplinary teams which would include different types of medical specialists and nurses but still maintain and improve the services offered formally or informally as a home based care package

Understanding Czech Long-Term Unemployment

[email protected] potential impact of the looming EU accession of Central European economies is unemployment hysteresis working through long-term unemployment (LTU). In this paper, we explore the mechanisms of LTU by providing a detailed description of the recent rise in Czech LTU following the recession of 1997. We place the Czech evidence in international perspective using, e.g., VAR-based simulations, and focus on the role of welfare benefits in driving LTU.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39883/3/wp498.pd

Modeling Maintenance of Long-Term Potentiation in Clustered Synapses, Long-Term Memory Without Bistability

Memories are stored, at least partly, as patterns of strong synapses. Given molecular turnover, how can synapses maintain strong for the years that memories can persist? Some models postulate that biochemical bistability maintains strong synapses. However, bistability should give a bimodal distribution of synaptic strength or weight, whereas current data show unimodal distributions for weights and for a correlated variable, dendritic spine volume. Bistability of single synapses has also never been empirically demonstrated. Thus it is important for models to simulate both unimodal distributions and long-term memory persistence. Here a model is developed that connects ongoing, competing processes of synaptic growth and weakening to stochastic processes of receptor insertion and removal in dendritic spines. The model simulates long-term (in excess of 1 yr) persistence of groups of strong synapses. A unimodal weight distribution results. For stability of this distribution it proved essential to incorporate resource competition between synapses organized into small clusters. With competition, these clusters are stable for years. These simulations concur with recent data to support the clustered plasticity hypothesis, which suggests clusters, rather than single synaptic contacts, may be a fundamental unit for storage of long-term memory. The model makes empirical predictions, and may provide a framework to investigate mechanisms maintaining the balance between synaptic plasticity and stability of memory.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure