ICT SUPPORTING HEALTHCARE FOR CHINESE ELDERLY AT HOME: PERSPECTIVES OF INFORMAL CAREGIVERS AND PROFESSIONALS

Informal caregivers are a significant resource when elderly people need assistance and support to remain living at home. Today, state-of-the-art technology provides the possibilities of applying ways to ease the workload and make it possible to stay at home instead of living in an institutional care setting, such as hospitals or special sheltered accommodations. The current study analysed how information and communication technology (ICT) could support healthcare in Chinese homes from the perspectives of informal caregivers and healthcare professionals. The study focused on elderly people who benefit from caregiving or need personal assistance to help them live at home. A mapping study was conducted to identify existing ICT solutions, and qualitative semi-structured interviews were performed to obtain the perspectives of informal caregivers and professionals. The contributions were identified as objectives of using ICT solutions, relatives’ feedback on ICT solutions, opinions about popular ICT solutions and thoughts about future ICT solutions. The empirical study revealed that alarming, communication, monitoring, positioning and assistance are the most important reasons to acquire and apply ICT-based support for elderly people living at home

Team performance and large scale agile software development

Software development is a team work and largely dependent on open social interaction and continuous learning of individuals. Drawing on well established theoretical concepts proposed by social psychology and organizational science disciplines, we develop a theoretical framework proposing that team climate has a significant influence on team learning and ultimately affects team performance. Our study consists of two goals. First to understand the preconditions of team learning and second to investigate the relationship between team learning, psychological safety, and team performance in large scale agile software development projects. We plan to conduct a survey with software professionals in Sweden from three companies partners in pur large-scale agile research project.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, conference, ESEM, Register Repor

Phyto-Therapeutic and Nanomedicinal Approaches to Cure Alzheimer’s Disease: Present Status and Future Opportunities

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by cognitive inability manifested due to the accumulation of β-amyloid, formation of hyper phosphorylated neurofibrillary tangles, and a malfunctioned cholinergic system. The degeneration integrity of the neuronal network can appear long after the onset of the disease. Nanotechnology-based interventions have opened an exciting area via theranostics of AD in terms of tailored nanomedicine, which are able to target and deliver drugs across the blood–brain barrier (BBB). The exciting interface existing between medicinal plants and nanotechnology is an emerging marvel in medicine, which has delivered promising results in the treatment of AD. In order to assess the potential applications of the medicinal plants, their derived components, and various nanomedicinal approaches, a review of literature was deemed as necessary. In the present review, numerous phytochemicals and various feats in nanomedicine for the treatment of AD have been discussed mechanistically for the first time. Furthermore, recent trends in nanotechnology such as green synthesis of metal nanoparticles with reference to the treatment of AD have been elaborated. Foreseeing the recent progress, we hope that the interface of medicinal plants and nanotechnology will lead to highly effective theranostic strategies for the treatment of AD in the near future

POTENTIAL ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF DIFFERENT HONEY BRANDS FROM PAKISTAN: A QUEST FOR NATURAL REMEDY

Background: Besides a wholesome food, honey is known for its therapeutic implications. We investigated the antifungal activity of five honeys of different types from Pakistan against various pathogenic fungal strains. Antifungal properties of processed and non-processed honey were determined. Materials and Methods: The antifungal assay of honey was carried out against Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigates, Alterneria alternata, Fusarium solanai, Microsporum canis, Penicillium funiculosium and Rhizopus solanai. Different dilutions of honey samples were used (20%, 50%, 70%, 90% and 100% w/v so as to find out the minimum effective concentration of each honey type. Results: It was observed that all of the honey samples were highly active, with percent inhibition range of (3-81%) for Aspergillus niger, (2-82%) for Aspergillus flavus, (1-76%) for Aspergillus fumigates, (1-84%) for Alterneria alternata, (2- 67%) for Fusarium solanai, (1-87%) Microsporum canis, (2-78%) Penicillium funiculosium and (1-86%) for Rhizopus solanai. Conclusion: The study of Pakistani honey brands reveals that they possess a substantial antifungal nature. Therefore, they may be used in curing fungal infections along with antifungal drugs as a cheaper alternative natural remedy with no side effects

Patients' satisfaction and opinions of their experiences during admission in a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan – a cross sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It is often felt that developing countries need to improve their quality of healthcare provision. This study hopes to generate data that can help managers and doctors to improve the standard of care they provide in line with the wishes of the patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>It was a cross sectional study carried out at a major tertiary care hospital of Karachi. Patients between the ages of 18 and 80 years admitted to the hospital for at least one day were included. Patients in the maternity, psychiatry and chemotherapy wards and those in the ICU/CCU were excluded. A pretested, peer reviewed translation of a validated patient satisfaction scale developed by the Picker Institute of Europe was administered.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 173 patients (response rate: 78.6 %) filled the questionnaire. Patient satisfaction was at levels comparable to European surveys for most aspects of hospital care. However, nearly half the patients (48%) felt they had to wait too long to get a bed in the hospital after presenting to the ER. 68.6% of the patients said that they were never asked for views on the quality of care provided. 20% of the patients did not find anyone in the staff to talk to about their worries and fears while 27.6% felt that they were given emotional support to only some extent. Up to one third of the patients said they were not provided enough information regarding their operative procedures beforehand.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although several components of patient care equal the quality levels of the west, many sections require considerable improvement in order to improve health care provision. The healthcare team needs to get more involved with the patients, providing them greater support and keeping them informed and involved with their medical treatment. Efforts should be made to get regular feedback from the patients.</p

The Pandora's box of social, process, and people debts in software engineering

In software engineering, technical debt (TD) has been widely investigated, but debt regarding social issues, people, and processes has not been explored as much. It should be noted here that we use nontechnical debt (NTD) as an umbrella term to cover social, process, and people debts. Although the number of studies on NTD in software is increasing, the majority of them are descriptive rather than rigorous, and there is no systematic development of cumulative knowledge. As a result, identifying the fundamental causes of NTD and the associated mitigation techniques in software engineering is challenging. Therefore, this study investigates the scientific evidence regarding NTD till date by conducting a systematic mapping review of software engineering research between January 2000 and October 2021. The search strategy resulted in 175 studies, 17 of which were identified as unique and relevant primary papers. The primary studies show that NTD and TD are inextricably linked. In addition, this study also captured a plethora of causes and mitigation strategies for managing NTD and thus makes four important contributions: (i) highlighting state-of-the-art NTD research; (ii) identification of the reported causes and mitigation strategies in the primary papers; and (iii) determination of opportunities for future NTD research

Fake News Detection Using Machine Learning Ensemble Methods

The advent of the World Wide Web and the rapid adoption of social media platforms (such as Facebook and Twitter) paved the way for information dissemination that has never been witnessed in the human history before. With the current usage of social media platforms, consumers are creating and sharing more information than ever before, some of which are misleading with no relevance to reality. Automated classification of a text article as misinformation or disinformation is a challenging task. Even an expert in a particular domain has to explore multiple aspects before giving a verdict on the truthfulness of an article. In this work, we propose to use machine learning ensemble approach for automated classification of news articles. Our study explores different textual properties that can be used to distinguish fake contents from real. By using those properties, we train a combination of different machine learning algorithms using various ensemble methods and evaluate their performance on 4 real world datasets. Experimental evaluation confirms the superior performance of our proposed ensemble learner approach in comparison to individual learners

Exploring Kanban in software engineering

Abstract To gain competitive advantage and thrive in the market, companies have introduced Kanban in software development. Kanban has been used in the manufacturing industry for over six decades. In the software engineering domain, Kanban was introduced in 2004 to increase flexibility in coping with dynamic requirements, bring visibility to workflow and related tasks, improve communication, and promote the pull system. However, the existing scientific literature lacks empirical evidence of the use of Kanban in software companies. This doctoral thesis aims to improve the understanding of the use of Kanban in software engineering. The research was performed in two phases: 1) analysis of scientific literature on Kanban in software engineering and industrial engineering and 2) investigation of Kanban implementation trends in software companies. The data was collected through systematic literature reviews, survey and semi-structured interviews. The results were synthesized to draw conclusions and outline implications for research and practice. The results indicate growing interest in the use of Kanban in software companies. The findings suggest that Kanban is applicable to software development, software maintenance, and portfolio management in software companies. Kanban brings visibility to task and offering status, limits work in progress at any given time gives people greater control over their work and limit task switching. Although Kanban offers several benefits, as reported in this dissertation, the findings show that software companies find it challenging to implement Kanban incrementally.Tiivistelmä Ohjelmistoteollisuudessa Kanbanin käyttö on yleistynyt vuodesta 2004 alkaen. Sillä pyritään tuomaan joustavuutta muuttuvien vaatimusten hallintaan, tuomaan näkyvyyttä työnkulkuun ja toisiinsa liittyviin tehtäviin, parantamaan kommunikaatiota sekä edistämään imuohjauksen hyödyntämistä. Kanbania on käytetty valmistavassa teollisuudessa jo yli kuuden vuosikymmenen ajan. Olemassa olevassa tieteellisessä kirjallisuudessa on kuitenkin esitetty hyvin vähän empiirisiä tutkimustuloksia Kanbanin käytöstä ohjelmistoyrityksissä. Väitöskirjan tavoitteena on parantaa ymmärrystä Kanbanin käytöstä ohjelmistotuotannossa. Tutkimus toteutettiin kahdessa vaiheessa: 1) Kirjallisuusanalyysi Kanbanin käytöstä ohjelmistotuotannossa ja tuotantotekniikassa ja 2) Empiirinen tutkimus Kanbanin käyttöönoton trendeistä ohjelmistoyrityksissä. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin systemaattisten kirjallisuuskatsausten, kyselytutkimuksen ja puolistrukturoitujen teemahaastattelujen kautta. Tutkimustulosten synteesin pohjalta tehtiin johtopäätöksiä Kanbanin käytöstä ohjelmistotuotannossa sekä niiden merkityksestä alan tutkimukselle ja Kanbanin käytölle yrityksissä. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat kasvavaa kiinnostusta Kanbanin käyttöä kohtaan ohjelmistoyrityksissä. Tulosten perusteella Kanban soveltuu käytettäväksi ohjelmistokehityksessä, ohjelmistojen ylläpidossa sekä tuoteportfolion hallinnassa. Kanban tuo näkyvyyttä ohjelmistokehitykseen, niin meneillään olevien tehtävien kuin portfoliotarjoaman osalta. Se myös auttaa rajoittamaan työtehtävien ruuhkautumista ja antaa kehittäjille paremman tavan hallita työtään rajoittamalla työtehtävien vaihtoa. Vaikka Kanbanin käytöllä on mahdollista saavuttaa väitöskirjatutkimuksessa esitettyjä hyötyjä, tulokset osoittavat, että ohjelmistoyrityksillä on haasteita Kanbanin inkrementaalisessa käyttöönotossa

Understanding business analytics continuance in agile information system development projects: an expectation-confirmation perspective

Purpose: This paper seeks to examine how expectations from business analytics (BA) by members of agile information systems development (ISD) teams affect their perceptions and continuous use of BA in ISD projects. Design/methodology/approach: Data was collected from 153 respondents working in agile ISD projects and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling techniques (PLS-SEM). Findings: Perceived usefulness and technological compatibility are the most salient factors that affect BA continuance intention in agile ISD projects. The proposed model explains 48.4% of the variance for BA continuance intention, 50.6% of the variance in satisfaction, 36.7% of the variance in perceived usefulness and 31.9% of the variance in technological compatibility. Research limitations/implications: First, this study advances understanding of the factors that affect the continuous use of BA in agile ISD projects; second, it contextualizes the expectation-confirmation model by integrating technological compatibility in the context of agile ISD projects. Originality/value: This is the first study to investigate BA continuance intention from an employee perspective in the context of agile ISD projects

A Generalized Deep Learning Approach to Seismic Activity Prediction

Seismic activity prediction has been a challenging research domain: in this regard, accurate prediction using historical data is an intricate task. Numerous machine learning and traditional approaches have been presented lately for seismic activity prediction; however, no generalizable model exists. In this work, we consider seismic activity predication as a binary classification problem, and propose a deep neural network architecture for the classification problem, using historical data from Chile, Hindukush, and Southern California. After obtaining the data for the three regions, a data cleaning process was used, which was followed by a feature engineering step, to create multiple new features based on various seismic laws. Afterwards, the proposed model was trained on the data, for improved prediction of the seismic activity. The performance of the proposed model was evaluated and compared with extant techniques, such as random forest, support vector machine, and logistic regression. The proposed model achieved accuracy scores of 98.28%, 95.13%, and 99.29% on the Chile, Hindukush, and Southern California datasets, respectively, which were higher than the current benchmark model and classifiers. In addition, we also conducted out-sample testing, where the evaluation metrics confirmed the generality of our proposed approach