Mobile Sensing at the Service of Mental Well-being: a Large-scale Longitudinal Study

Measuring mental well-being with mobile sensing has been an increasingly active research topic. Pervasiveness of smartphones combined with the convenience of mobile app distribution platforms (e.g., Google Play) provide a tremendous opportunity to reach out to millions of users. However, the studies at the confluence of mental health and mobile sensing have been longitudinally limited, controlled, or confined to a small number of participants. In this paper we report on what we believe is the largest longitudinal in-the-wild study of mood through smartphones. We describe an Android app to collect participants’ self-reported moods and system triggered experience sampling data while passively measuring their physical activity, sociability, and mobility via their device’s sensors. We report the results of a large-scale analysis of the data collected for about three years from $\sim$ 18; 000 users. The paper makes three primary contributions. First, we show how we used physical and software sensors in smartphones to automatically and accurately identify routines. Then, we demonstrate the strong correlation between these routines and users’ personality, well-being perception, and other psychological variables. Finally, we explore predictability of users’ mood using their passive sensing data. Our findings show that, especially for weekends, mobile sensing can be used to predict users’ mood with an accuracy of about 70%. These results have the potential to impact the design of future mobile apps for mood/behavior tracking and interventions.This work was supported by the EPSRC through Grants UBHAVE (EP/I032673/1) and GALE (EP/K019392)

Diet diversity in pastoral and agro-pastoral households in Ugandan rangeland ecosystems

We explore how diet diversity differs with agricultural seasons and between households within pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihood systems, using variety of foods consumed as a less complex proxy indicator of food insecurity than benchmark indicators like anthropometry and serum nutrients. The study was in the central part of the rangelands in Uganda. Seventy nine households were monitored for three seasons, and eight food groups consumed during a 24 hour diet recall period used to create a household diet diversity score (HDDS). Mean HDDS was 3.2, varied significantly with gender, age, livelihood system and season (p < .001, F = 15.04), but not with household size or household head’s education level. Agro-pastoralists exhibited lower mean diet diversity than pastoralists (p < .01, F = 7.84) and among agro-pastoralists, households headed by persons over 65 years were most vulnerable (mean HDDS 2.1). This exploratory study raises issues requiring further investigation to inform policies on nutrition security in the two communities

Influencia del coeficiente estructural de una base reciclada con cemento sobre la deformación permanente en la subrasante – una aproximación con el método Sudrafricano

Trabajo de investigaciónEn la investigación se diseñaron pavimentos con una base reciclada con cemento, variando el módulo resiliente de la subrasante y el espesor de la sub-base granular, en cada caso. Para cada uno de los diseños se determinó la respuesta estructural (esfuerzo y deformación en la subrasante) a través de un software y con los resultados obtenidos se determinó la relación entre la deformación permanente en la subrasante y el número de ejes equivalentes correspondientes.1. INTRODUCCIÓN 2. PLANTEAMIENTO DEL PROBLEMA 3. OBJETIVOS 4. MARCO TEÓRICO 5. ESTADO DEL ARTE 6. PREGUNTA DE INVESTIGACIÓN 7. ALCANCES Y LIMITACIONES 8. METODOLOGÍA 9. CÁLCULOS Y RESULTADOS 10. ANÁLISIS DE RESULTADOS 11. CONCLUSIONES Y RECOMENDACIONES 12. BIBLIOGRAFÍAPregradoIngeniero Civi

Towards Automatic Detection of Child Pornography

This paper presents a child pornographic image detection system that identifies human skin tones in digital images, extracts features to detect explicit images and performs facial image based age classification. The novelty of the technique relies on the use of a robust and very fast skin color filter and a new set of facial features for improved identification of child faces. Tests on a dataset containing explicit images taken under different illuminations and reflecting a diversity of human skin tones, show that explicit images can be differentiated from benign images with around 90% accuracy. Similarly, tests performed on adult and child facial images yielded an accuracy of 80% in detecting child faces. Test conducted on 105 images involving semi-naked children (with no sexual context) revealed that the system has true positive rates of 83% in detecting explicit-like images and 96.5% in detecting child faces

Ideación suicida y cohesión familiar en estudiantes preuniversitarios entre 15 y 24 años, Lima 2005

Objetivos: Determinar la prevalencia de ideación suicida y su asociación con el pertenecer a familias de muy bajos muy altos niveles de cohesión familiar en estudiantes entre 15 y 24 años del Centro Preuniversitario de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (CEPUSM). Materiales y métodos: Estudio transversal analítico, se aplicó un cuestionario autoadministrado formado por la subescala de cohesión familiar del Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale III y cinco preguntas sobre conducta suicida del Cuestionario de Salud Mental adaptado. Se seleccionaron aleatoriamente 1500 estudiantes de una población de 4500 del CEPUSM, divididos en adolescentes (15 - 19 años) adultos jóvenes (20 - 24 años). Resultados: Prevalencias de vida: 48% de los encuestados presentó deseos pasivos de morir, 30% ideación suicida, 15% elaboró un plan suicida y 9% intentó suicidarse. La prevalencia de ideación suicida fue 15% en el último año y 6% en el último mes. Las familias fueron, según el nivel de cohesión familiar, desligada (22%), separada (32%), conectada (31%) y amalgamada (15%). Al asociar ideación suicida y familia desligada obtuvo un OR de 2,17 (IC95 1,26-3,74) en adolescentes y 1,35 (IC95 0.21-8.64) en adultos jóvenes. Se identificaron otros factores de riesgo en ambos subgrupos como el antecedente familiar de intento suicida y el hecho de vivir Conclusiones: Existe una prevalencia elevada de ideación suicida en estudiantes entre 15 y 24 años del CEPUSM está asociada, sólo en adolescentes, a pertenecer a familias con niveles muy bajos de cohesión familiar

Establishment of preventive measures against viral nervous necrosis (VNN) in finfish hatcheries

The establishment of preventive measures against viral nervous necrosis (VNN) at the finfish hatcheries of SEAFDEC Aquaculture Department in Iloilo, Philippines, was instituted primarily to minimize the impact of the viral infection in cultured stocks. Selection of VNN-negative broodstocks was conducted and the detection rate ranged from 25-56%. It was confirmed that all species of broodstocks are already contaminated with the virus with varying percentages. The combination of cell culture and RT-PCR in the detection of the virus proved to be more sensitive than the RT-PCR alone. The trash fish food was suspected as a main source of contamination and tests prove that most of the trash fish species were contaminated with the virus. The effect of chemical treatment was tested and a good result was obtained by using 5 and 7 ppm iodine. Several recommendations were formulated in the prevention and control of VNN in the hatchery phase: VNN-negative broodstocks should be selected by using cell culture and PCR; spawning of the selected broodstocks should be limited to only six times and these fertilized eggs should be used for larval productions; fertilized eggs should be washed and disinfected with iodine; and commercial broodstock feeds should be used instead of trash fish