ATHENE : Assistive technologies for healthy living in elders : needs assessment by ethnography

Numerous assistive technologies to support independent living –including personal alarms, mobile phones, self-monitoring devices, mobility aids, software apps and home adaptations –have been developed over the years, but their uptake by older people, especially those from minority ethnic groups, is poor. This paper outlines the ways in which the ATHENE project seeks to redress this situation by producing a richer understanding of the complex and diverse living experiences and care needs of older people and exploring how industry, the NHS, social services and third sector can work with the older people themselves to ‘co-produce’ useful and useable ALT designs to meet their needs. In this paper, we provide an overview of the project methodology and discuss some of the issues it raises for the design and development process

Computer Theorem Proving and HoTT

Theorem-proving is a one-player game. The history of computer programs being the players goes back to 1956 and the ‘LT’ LOGIC THEORY MACHINE of Newell, Shaw and Simon. In game-playing terms, the ‘initial position’ is the core set of axioms chosen for the particular logic and the ‘moves’ are the rules of inference. Now, the Univalent Foundations Program at IAS Princeton and the resulting ‘HoTT’ book on Homotopy Type Theory have demonstrated the success of a new kind of experimental mathematics using computer theorem proving

Big Creek and Its Fishes

This book is a brief account of Big Creek: the stream, the life, the geology, the history. We hope that it will at least stimulate your appreciation of what Big Creek was and still is. Should you desire to learn more about the topics covered here, publications that served as our sources and those that cover the material in more detail are listed at the end of the book under the titles of the sections in the text.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/fort_hays_studies_series/1075/thumbnail.jp

P6_4 Tee Off Into Space

Our aim in this paper was explore the possibility of hitting a gold ball into orbit around various objects inthe solar system by using the orbital velocity equation. We found this to be possible around four moons,four dwarf planet candidates and a trojan of Jupiter with masses greater than 10^18kg

P6_5 Matrioshka Brain

The Matrioshka brain is a hypothetical structure originally proposed by Robert Bradbury in 1999[1]. It consists of layers of Dyson spheres around a star, generating energy through solar panels, to power a supercomputer. In this paper we look at the amount of energy and thus computational power that could be obtained from a Matrioshka brain at our current level of technology and then go on to discuss how it would not be feasible to build said structure

The ATHENE project:the importance of bricolage in personalising assisted living technologies

Introduction: An aging population is fueling interest in assisted living technologies (ALTs) to support independence at home. Numerous ALTs have been developed and deployed, but uptake and use has fallen short of levels predicted by policymakers. A key reason is a lack of understanding of users’ needs. In this paper we report findings from the ATHENE (Assistive Technologies for Healthy Living in Elders: Needs Assessment by Ethnography) project, which is funded by the Technology Strategy Board under its Assisted Living Innovation Platform programme. The project aims to produce a richer understanding of the lived experiences and needs of older people and explore how ALT stakeholders – suppliers, health and social care providers – can work with users and carers to ‘coproduce’ ALTs. We focus, in particular, on the role of ‘bricolage’ (pragmatic customisation, combining new with legacy devices) by informal carers, such as family members, in enabling ALTs to be personalised to individual needs. Bricolage allows users and family members to take the initiative in ‘coproducing’ ALTs. that making assisted living work relies on collaboration, involving not only formal carers, but also informal ones. We argue that a new research agenda is needed, focusing on solving challenges of involving users and their informal carers in the straightforward and dependable co-production of ALTs