System development guidelines from a review of motion-based technology for people with MCI or dementia

As the population ages and the number of people living with dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) continues to increase, it is critical to identify creative and innovative ways to support and improve their quality of life. Motion-based technology has shown significant potential for people living with dementia or MCI by providing opportunities for cognitive stimulation, physical activity and participation in meaningful leisure activities, while simultaneously functioning as a useful tool for research and development of interventions. However, many of the current systems created using motion-based technology have not been designed specifically for people with dementia or MCI. Additionally, the usability and accessibility of these systems for these populations has not been thoroughly considered. This paper presents a set of system development guidelines derived from a review of the state of the art of motion-based technologies for people with dementia or MCI. These guidelines highlight three overarching domains of consideration for systems targeting people with dementia or MCI: (i) cognitive, (ii) physical, and (iii) social. We present the guidelines in terms of relevant design and use considerations within these domains and the emergent design themes within each domain. Our hope is that these guidelines will aid in designing motion-based software to meet the needs of people with dementia or MCI such that the potential of these technologies can be realized

A review of the effectiveness of lower limb orthoses used in cerebral palsy

To produce this review, a systematic literature search was conducted for relevant articles published in the period between the date of the previous ISPO consensus conference report on cerebral palsy (1994) and April 2008. The search terms were 'cerebral and pals* (palsy, palsies), 'hemiplegia', 'diplegia', 'orthos*' (orthoses, orthosis) orthot* (orthotic, orthotics), brace or AFO

Towards trusted volunteer grid environments

Intensive experiences show and confirm that grid environments can be considered as the most promising way to solve several kinds of problems relating either to cooperative work especially where involved collaborators are dispersed geographically or to some very greedy applications which require enough power of computing or/and storage. Such environments can be classified into two categories; first, dedicated grids where the federated computers are solely devoted to a specific work through its end. Second, Volunteer grids where federated computers are not completely devoted to a specific work but instead they can be randomly and intermittently used, at the same time, for any other purpose or they can be connected or disconnected at will by their owners without any prior notification. Each category of grids includes surely several advantages and disadvantages; nevertheless, we think that volunteer grids are very promising and more convenient especially to build a general multipurpose distributed scalable environment. Unfortunately, the big challenge of such environments is, however, security and trust. Indeed, owing to the fact that every federated computer in such an environment can randomly be used at the same time by several users or can be disconnected suddenly, several security problems will automatically arise. In this paper, we propose a novel solution based on identity federation, agent technology and the dynamic enforcement of access control policies that lead to the design and implementation of trusted volunteer grid environments.Comment: 9 Pages, IJCNC Journal 201

Immersive Virtual Reality for the Management of Pain in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

Immersive virtual reality (VR) can provide a high level of engagement and distraction analgesia to address pain. However, community-based applications of this technology for older adults have not been studied. The objective of this study was to examine the applicability and effectiveness of an immersive VR intervention for pain, depression, and quality of life (QOL) in older adults. This pretest–posttest, mixed-methods design included senior center members (n = 12) with pain that interfered with daily functioning. The outcomes included the Numeric Pain Rating Scale, Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) depression scale, World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale Brief Version (WHO QOL-BREF), and open-ended questions. The VR intervention (15- to 45-min sessions, 12 sessions over 6 weeks) was well accepted with no dropouts. There was a significant decrease in pain (p =.002, d = −1.54) with no effect on depression and QOL. There were no adverse effects, and positive perceptions of VR were reported. The 6-week immersive VR intervention was applicable and effective in reducing pain intensity for community-dwelling older adults

VANET Applications: Hot Use Cases

Current challenges of car manufacturers are to make roads safe, to achieve free flowing traffic with few congestions, and to reduce pollution by an effective fuel use. To reach these goals, many improvements are performed in-car, but more and more approaches rely on connected cars with communication capabilities between cars, with an infrastructure, or with IoT devices. Monitoring and coordinating vehicles allow then to compute intelligent ways of transportation. Connected cars have introduced a new way of thinking cars - not only as a mean for a driver to go from A to B, but as smart cars - a user extension like the smartphone today. In this report, we introduce concepts and specific vocabulary in order to classify current innovations or ideas on the emerging topic of smart car. We present a graphical categorization showing this evolution in function of the societal evolution. Different perspectives are adopted: a vehicle-centric view, a vehicle-network view, and a user-centric view; described by simple and complex use-cases and illustrated by a list of emerging and current projects from the academic and industrial worlds. We identified an empty space in innovation between the user and his car: paradoxically even if they are both in interaction, they are separated through different application uses. Future challenge is to interlace social concerns of the user within an intelligent and efficient driving