An Advanced Home ElderCare Service

With the increase of welfare cost all over the developed world, there is a need to resort to new technologies that could help reduce this enormous cost and provide some quality eldercare services. This paper presents a middleware-level solution that integrates monitoring and emergency detection solutions with networking solutions. The proposed system enables efficient integration between a variety of sensors and actuators deployed at home for emergency detection and provides a framework for creating and managing rescue teams willing to assist elders in case of emergency situations. A prototype of the proposed system was designed and implemented. Results were obtained from both computer simulations and a real-network testbed. These results show that the proposed system can help overcome some of the current problems and help reduce the enormous cost of eldercare service

Soybean Iron Deficiency Chlorosis: Quantitative Trait Locus Validation and Grain Yield Evaluation

Soybean production in most of the Northern Great Plain area has been challenged by iron deficiency chlorosis (IDC), which is a physiological problem with a plant grown in high pH, calcareous soil. Developing IDC-resistant cultivars is the best approach to meet this challenge. Currently, this approach is limited by lack of knowledge about genetic resources and mechanisms for resistance to IDC. The objectives of this research were to validate quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with IDC and to evaluate the effect of IDC on yield in soybean cultivars. To validate the QTL, a population of 201 recombinant inbred lines, which was developed from a cross between a cultivated (Glycine max) and a wild (G. soja) soybean line, was grown in a field with calcareous soil (pH 8.5) using a randomized complete block design with four replicates. Phenotypes of IDC were visually scored for individual lines at three-time points during the vegetative growth period starting from the V3 stage. Heritability estimates for IDC scores ranged from 0.26 to 0.71. A linkage map was constructed using 164 SSR markers and covers 2156 cM of the soybean genome a total of 11 QTL for Fe efficiency were detected, with six detected in more than one time points. One of the 11 QTL has the allele from the wild parent enhancing the resistance to IDC. Seven of the QTL were involved in digenic epistasis. Two of the QTL were involved in G-by-E interactions. The epistatic and G-by-E interactions demonstrate the importance of evaluating IDC responses in multiple environments. The validated QTL may contain useful genes for breeding IDC-resistant varieties by pyramiding of the Fe-efficiency alleles. Furthermore, to evaluate the effect of IDC on yield potential, twenty-three soybean cultivars were examined. The results showed the further need for improvement toward better resistance to IDC. The one-year yield test of five cultivars, bearing different levels of resistance to IDC, confirmed the effect of this stress on yield leading to a high yield of resistant cultivars under chlorotic soil and lower when grown on the non-chlorotic soil

“Islet equivalent” stem cells and diabetes

Type I diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder caused by an autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells in the islets of Langerhans. Despite insulin treatment, diabetes results in the development of micro and macro-vascular complications that are associated with a high rate of morbidity and mortality. Curing diabetes would be the best treatment option for these patients. Pancreas transplantation is limited by the shortage of organ donors and by the high risk associated with this surgical procedure. Islets transplantation is a more recent non-invasive technique with a low risk of complications. It is however restricted by the shortage of organs and has variable success rates. Additionally, it is well established that after infusion of islets, a substantial percentage of them are lost immediately post-transplant through the instant blood-mediated inflammatory reaction. A promising option would be the use of stem cells as ‘islet equivalents’. These cells have the ability to proliferate and the capacity to differentiate into insulin-secreting cells leading to islet repair and regeneration of new beta cells. The cell source would not be limited and the cells could be transplanted in a non-invasive method. This work examines the efficacy of two sources of stem cells in restoring euglycaemia in a diabetic animal model. It demonstrated the success of pancreas derived progenitor cells but not haematopoietic stem cells in reversing this diabetic phenotype. This work also examines whether these stem cells expressed tissue factor as a trigger for provoking coagulation leading to significant early cell loss. It demonstrated that both stem cell types are prothrombotic and that this effect can be mitigated by local treatment of these cells with anti-thrombin cytotopic agent. The results were however inconclusive whether this procoagulant effect was via TF-dependent or TF-independent mechanism. Finally, this work includes the completion of a phase I trial demonstrating the safety and tolerability of the infusion of autologous expanded progeny of an adult CD34+ stem cell subset to patients with type I diabetes mellitus and a successful renal transplant. However, there was no convincing evidence to suggest efficacy of these cells in reducing insulin requirements in these diabetic patients.Open Acces

ANGELAH: A Framework for Assisting Elders At Home

The ever growing percentage of elderly people within modern societies poses welfare systems under relevant stress. In fact, partial and progressive loss of motor, sensorial, and/or cognitive skills renders elders unable to live autonomously, eventually leading to their hospitalization. This results in both relevant emotional and economic costs. Ubiquitous computing technologies can offer interesting opportunities for in-house safety and autonomy. However, existing systems partially address in-house safety requirements and typically focus on only elder monitoring and emergency detection. The paper presents ANGELAH, a middleware-level solution integrating both ”elder monitoring and emergency detection” solutions and networking solutions. ANGELAH has two main features: i) it enables efficient integration between a variety of sensors and actuators deployed at home for emergency detection and ii) provides a solid framework for creating and managing rescue teams composed of individuals willing to promptly assist elders in case of emergency situations. A prototype of ANGELAH, designed for a case study for helping elders with vision impairments, is developed and interesting results are obtained from both computer simulations and a real-network testbed

Durable state rivals: Hezbollah and Lebanon

This research identifies the conditions that contribute to the rise of durable state rivals that persist over time and do not attempt to overthrow the state. I use a case study of Hezbollah in Lebanon and find that a weak state, foreign state sponsorship, and local support contribute to the rise of durable state rivals. The same conditions that enable the rise of a durable state rival make it more difficult for a durable state rival to overthrow the state. Durable state rivals exist within state borders, possess a high level of social control over a community within the state, and challenge the authority and legitimacy of the state, but they do not attempt to overthrow the state

Region-based Skin Color Detection.

Skin color provides a powerful cue for complex computer vision applications. Although skin color detection has been an active research area for decades, the mainstream technology is based on the individual pixels. This paper presents a new region-based technique for skin color detection which outperforms the current state-of-the-art pixel-based skin color detection method on the popular Compaq dataset (Jones and Rehg, 2002). Color and spatial distance based clustering technique is used to extract the regions from the images, also known as superpixels. In the first step, our technique uses the state-of-the-art non-parametric pixel-based skin color classifier (Jones and Rehg, 2002) which we call the basic skin color classifier. The pixel-based skin color evidence is then aggregated to classify the superpixels. Finally, the Conditional Random Field (CRF) is applied to further improve the results. As CRF operates over superpixels, the computational overhead is minimal. Our technique achieves 91.17% true positive rate with 13.12% false negative rate on the Compaq dataset tested over approximately 14,000 web images

Contextualizing Secure Information System Design: A Socio-Technical Approach

Secure Information Systems (SIS) design paradigms have evolved in generations to adapt to IS security needs. However, modern IS are still vulnerable and are far from secure. The development of an underlying IS cannot be reduced to “technological fixes” neither is the design of SIS. Technical security cannot ensure IS security. Generations of SIS design paradigms have evolved, all with their own sets of shortcomings. A SIS design paradigm must meet well-defined requirements, yet contemporary paradigms do not meet all these requirements. Current SIS design paradigms are not easily applicable to IS. They lack a comprehensive modeling support and ignore the socio-technical organizational role of IS security. This research introduced the use of action research in design science research. Design science paradigm was leveraged to introduce a meta-design artifact explaining how IS requirements including security requirements can be incorporated in the design of SIS. The introduced artifact CSIS provided design comprehensiveness to emergent and changing requirements to IS from a socio-technical perspective. The CSIS artifact meets secure system meta-design requirements. This study presented a secure IS design principle that ensures IS security