Towards a Practical Pedestrian Distraction Detection Framework using Wearables

Pedestrian safety continues to be a significant concern in urban communities and pedestrian distraction is emerging as one of the main causes of grave and fatal accidents involving pedestrians. The advent of sophisticated mobile and wearable devices, equipped with high-precision on-board sensors capable of measuring fine-grained user movements and context, provides a tremendous opportunity for designing effective pedestrian safety systems and applications. Accurate and efficient recognition of pedestrian distractions in real-time given the memory, computation and communication limitations of these devices, however, remains the key technical challenge in the design of such systems. Earlier research efforts in pedestrian distraction detection using data available from mobile and wearable devices have primarily focused only on achieving high detection accuracy, resulting in designs that are either resource intensive and unsuitable for implementation on mainstream mobile devices, or computationally slow and not useful for real-time pedestrian safety applications, or require specialized hardware and less likely to be adopted by most users. In the quest for a pedestrian safety system that achieves a favorable balance between computational efficiency, detection accuracy, and energy consumption, this paper makes the following main contributions: (i) design of a novel complex activity recognition framework which employs motion data available from users' mobile and wearable devices and a lightweight frequency matching approach to accurately and efficiently recognize complex distraction related activities, and (ii) a comprehensive comparative evaluation of the proposed framework with well-known complex activity recognition techniques in the literature with the help of data collected from human subject pedestrians and prototype implementations on commercially-available mobile and wearable devices

Role of Surface Proteins in Magnetotaxis-based Applications

Magnetospirillum magneticum (AMB-1) are a species of magnetotactic bacteria that are capable of orienting along the earth’s magnetic field lines through their organelles called magnetosomes. Many studies have shown that certain engineered-bacteria can infect the tumor cells resulting in a controlled death of a tumor. This work deals with a technique utilizing AMB-1 along a predefined path through magnetotaxis, which can pave a way for selective doping as well as isolation of the tumor cells from a group of healthy cells through a magnetic invasive assay (MIA). For such a control, tiny mesh of vertical electrical coils each having a diameter of ~ 5 mm is fabricated, which establishes the path for the bacteria to move along the magnetic field lines. The molecular dynamics simulations at the interface of the bacterial cell surface proteins (MSP-1 & flagellin) and Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell surface containing cytoplasmic and extracellular proteins (BSG, B2M, SDC1, AIMP1, and FOS) will establish an association between the invading AMB-1 and the host CHO cells. The experimental demonstration will involve the CHO invasion by the AMB-1 and isolation of selected CHO cells. Statistical analysis along with the relevant electron and force microscopy data will confirm the number of AMB-1 and CHO cells involved before and after invasion and the role of directional control

Prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among handloom weavers of Uttarakhand : an ergonomic study

Long hours of static work with awkward working postures at traditionally designed looms can cause high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among handloom weavers. Because of incompatible working situations handloom weaver in textile industries are confronting with many work related musculoskeletal problems related to pain and discomfort in upper and lower extremities. Keeping this in view, the present study was planned to assess the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and postural discomfort among handloom weavers. For this study, 64 (male and female) handloom weavers aged 20-55 years were selected randomly from Almora and Nainital districts of Uttarakhand state. To collect the information, standardized Nordic questionnaire was used to assess pain and discomfort in different body regions of handloom weavers. It was observed that those workers worked continuously in awkward postures during weaving activities. Consequently they suffered from high discomfort in their different body parts. High rate of pain and musculoskeletal disorder was most prevalent in right wrist, left wrist, hip/thigh, neck and lower back of the workers. The data reveled that since last 12 months, total 76.56 percent workers were suffered with pain and discomfort in right hand and 73.44 percent workers had pain and discomfort in both elbows. During last month, 73.44 percent workers were suffered with pain and discomfort in upper back because of awkward working postures whereas during 7 days, total 59.38 percent workers had pain in lower back. The study indicates that the traditional handloom weaving demands immediate ergonomic intervention in the workstation and process design

Using bispectral index and cerebral oximetry to guide hemodynamic therapy in high-risk surgical patients

High-risk surgery represents 12.5% of cases but contributes 80% of deaths in the elderly population. Reduction in morbidity and mortality by the use of intervention strategies could result in thousands of lives being saved and savings of up to £400m per annum in the UK. This has resulted in the drive towards goal-directed therapy and intraoperative flow optimization of high-risk surgical patients being advocated by authorities such as the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. Conventional intraoperative monitoring gives little insight into the profound physiological changes occurring as a result of anesthesia and surgery. The build-up of an oxygen debt is associated with a poor outcome and strategies have been developed in the postoperative period to improve outcomes by repayment of this debt. New monitoring technologies such as minimally invasive cardiac output, depth of anesthesia and cerebral oximetry can minimize oxygen debt build-up. This has the potential to reduce complications and lessen the need for postoperative optimization in high-dependency areas. Flow monitoring has thus emerged as essential during intraoperative monitoring in high-risk surgery. However, evidence suggests that current optimization strategies of deliberately increasing flow to meet predefined targets may not reduce mortality. Could the addition of depth of anesthesia and cerebral and tissue oximetry monitoring produce a further improvement in outcomes? Retrospective studies indicate a combination of excessive depth of anesthesia hypotension and low anesthesia requirement results in increased mortality and length of hospital stay. Near infrared technology allows assessment and maintenance of cerebral and tissue oxygenation, a strategy, which has been associated with improved outcomes. The suggestion that the brain is an index organ for tissue oxygenation, especially in the elderly, indicates a role for this technology in the intraoperative period to assess the adequacy of oxygen delivery and reduce the build-up of an oxygen debt. The aim of this article is to make the case for depth of anesthesia and cerebral oximetry alongside flow monitoring as a strategy for reducing oxygen debt during high-risk surgery and further improve outcomes in high-risk surgical patients

Mechanistic Modeling of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection in Murine Models for Drug and Vaccine Efficacy Studies.

Tuberculosis (TB) drug, regimen, and vaccine development rely heavily on preclinical animal experiments, and quantification of bacterial and immune response dynamics is essential for understanding drug and vaccine efficacy. A mechanism-based model was built to describe Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv infection over time in BALB/c and athymic nude mice, which consisted of bacterial replication, bacterial death, and adaptive immune effects. The adaptive immune effect was best described by a sigmoidal function on both bacterial load and incubation time. Applications to demonstrate the utility of this baseline model showed (i) the important influence of the adaptive immune response on pyrazinamide (PZA) drug efficacy, (ii) a persistent adaptive immune effect in mice relapsing after chemotherapy cessation, and (iii) the protective effect of vaccines after M. tuberculosis challenge. These findings demonstrate the utility of our model for describing M. tuberculosis infection and corresponding adaptive immune dynamics for evaluating the efficacy of TB drugs, regimens, and vaccines

The prevalence of oral mucosal lesions in the patients visiting a dental school in Northern India in relation to sex, site and distribution: A retrospective study.

Objective: To determine the distribution of oro-mucosal lesions in patients of Maharishi Markendeshwer College of Dental Sciences and Research, (MMCDSR), Mullana. Further to identify sex predilection and different sites which are more susceptible to different oro-mucosal lesions. Materials and methods: A hospital based retrospective study was carried out from 1st January 2007 till 31st December 2009 at (MMCDSR), Mullana. A total of 451 biopsy reports were studied. Distribution and prevalence of oro-mucosal lesions among the data were analyzed using SPSS software package version 13. Results: There was no mention of habits in the biopsy reports of 85.4 % (385 patients) of the subjects. Out of the 66 subjects whose habits were mentioned, 71.2 % (47 patients) used to smoke tobacco in one form or the other. 21.2 % (14 patients) used to chew tobacco, 4.5 % (3 patients) of the subjects were in the habit of both smoking and chewing tobacco. More percentage of females 53.1 % were present in the age-group of 11-20 years as compared to males 46.9 % whereas in all other age-groups males were more in number. Regarding the distribution of oral lesions in the oral cavity, buccal mucosa was the common site for the presence of potentially malignant disorders in 16.8 % of the subjects and it was also the most common site for all the lesions. Conclusion: Lesion prevalence differed significantly by age, sex, and tobacco use. Individual demographic details such as age, gender, occupation, food habits, other deleterious oral habits, religion and oral hygiene measures should have a provision in biopsy request sheet and should be duly filled which will help in identifying risk-groups. Community programmes should be taken for public health to get them screened for any oral-mucosal lesions by availing pathological lab facilities

Does biological relatedness affect child survival?

Objective: We studied child survival in Rakai, Uganda where many children are fostered out or orphaned. Methods: Biological relatedness is measured as the average of the Wright’s coefficients between each household member and the child. Instrumental variables for fostering include proportion of adult males in household, age and gender of household head. Control variables include SES, religion, polygyny, household size, child age, child birth size, and child HIV status. Results: Presence of both parents in the household increased the odds of survival by 28%. After controlling for the endogeneity of child placement decisions in a multivariate model we found that lower biological relatedness of a child was associated with statistically significant reductions in child survival. The effects of biological relatedness on child survival tend to be stronger for both HIV- and HIV+ children of HIV+ mothers. Conclusions: Reductions in the numbers of close relatives caring for children of HIV+ mothers reduce child survival.AIDS/HIV, child survival, fostering, orphans, Uganda