Association between worldwide dietary and lifestyle patterns with total cholesterol concentrations and DALYs for infectious and cardiovascular diseases: An ecological analysis

Global dietary and lifestyle trends are primary risk factors for communicable and non-communicable diseases. An ecological analysis was conducted to examine the association of global dietary and lifestyle patterns with total cholesterol concentrations. This study also investigated whether total cholesterol modified the association between dietary and lifestyle habits with disability-adjusted-life-years-lost (DALYs) for infectious and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Country-specific mean total cholesterol concentrations and DALYs for infectious and CVDs were obtained. Data were then matched to country-specific food and energy availability for consumption and information on obesity, physical inactivity, urbanization, gross domestic product (GDP), life expectancy and smoking. Stepwise multiple regression models were developed to identify significant predictors of total cholesterol concentrations and DALYs for infectious and CVDs. Life expectancy and egg and meat consumption were significantly associated with cholesterol concentrations. DALYs for infectious diseases were associated with smoking, life expectancy and per capita GDP. Smoking was the only predictor of DALYs for CVDs. The improvement of socio-demographic conditions and economic growth is likely to reduce the burden of communicable diseases in developing countries. A concurring increase in non-communicable diseases is expected, and these results have, yet again, identified smoking as a primary risk factor for CVDs

Unique Thermal Properties of Clothing Materials.

Cloth wearing seems so natural that everyone is self-deemed knowledgeable and has some expert opinions about it. However, to clearly explain the physics involved, and hence to make predictions for clothing design or selection, it turns out to be quite challenging even for experts. Cloth is a multiphased, porous, and anisotropic material system and usually in multilayers. The human body acts as an internal heat source in a clothing situation, thus forming a temperature gradient between body and ambient. But unlike ordinary engineering heat transfer problems, the sign of this gradient often changes as the ambient temperature varies. The human body also perspires and the sweat evaporates, an effective body cooling process via phase change. To bring all the variables into analysis quickly escalates into a formidable task. This work attempts to unravel the problem from a physics perspective, focusing on a few rarely noticed yet critically important mechanisms involved so as to offer a clearer and more accurate depiction of the principles in clothing thermal comfort

Strengthening gamification studies: Current trends and future opportunities of gamification research

Gamification is now a well-established technique in Human-Computer Interaction. However, research on gamification still faces a variety of empirical and theoretical challenges. Firstly, studies of gamified systems typically focus narrowly on understanding individuals. short-term interactions with the system, ignoring more difficult to measure outcomes. Secondly, academic research on gamification has been slow to improve the techniques through which gamified applications are designed. Third, current gamification research lacks a critical lens capable of exploring unintended consequences of designs. The 14 articles published in this special issue face these challenges with great methodological rigor. We summarize them by identifying three main themes: the determination to improve the quality and usefulness of theory in the field of gamification, the improvements in design practice, and the adoption of a critical gaze to uncover side-effects of gamification designs. We conclude by providing an overview of the questions that we feel must be addressed by future work in gamification. Gamification studies would benefit from a wider use of theories to account for the complexity of human behavior, a more thorough exploration of the many opportunities coming from the world of games, and an ethical reflection on the use of game design elements in serious domains

Worldwide dietary and lifestyle factors associated with diabetes prevalence and total cholesterol levels: an ecological analysis

The worldwide epidemiology of diabetes and hypercholesterolemia is changing rapidly as a result of the diffusion of Westernised nutritional and lifestyle patterns. We conducted an ecological analysis to identify dietary, lifestyle and socio-economic factors associated with global distribution of diabetes prevalence and total cholesterol levels. Country-specific prevalence estimates of diabetes prevalence and total cholesterol levels were obtained from freely available electronic databases maintained and updated by established international organisations such asas the World Health Organisation (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Bank. Data on diabetes prevalence and cholesterol concentrations were then matched to year- and country-specific food and energy availability for consumption and to year-specific information on physical inactivity, urbanisation, gross domestic product (GDP), life expectancy, and smoking. Cluster analysis was used to derive typical dietary patterns of global food consumption and their association with diabetes prevalence and total cholesterol levels was evaluated. Socio-demographic and dietary predictors of diabetes prevalence and total cholesterol levels were identified using multiple regression models. Physical inactivity and eggs consumption emerged as predictors of diabetes and total cholesterol levels in fully-adjusted multiple regression models, respectively. Three dietary patterns (agricultural, transitional and westernised) were identified by the cluster analysis. A significant increase in diabetes prevalence and total cholesterol levels was observed as countries move from an agricultural to a westernised dietary pattern. Prevention of physical inactivity is a global priority as closely linked to worldwide diabetes burden. The role of global consumption of eggs as a worldwide predictor of total cholesterol levels is a novel finding which requires further validation in epidemiological studies conducted in developed and developing countries

UMAP 2018 HUM (Holistic User Modeling) Workshop Chairs’ Preface & Organization

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the UMAP 2018 HUM (Holistic User Modeling) Workshop. According to a recent claim by IBM, 90% of the data available today have been created in the last two years. This exponential growth of online information has given new life to research in the area of user modeling and personalization, since information about users' preferences, sentiment and opinions, as well as signals describing their physical and psychological state, can now be obtained by mining data gathered from many heterogeneous sources. We can distinguish two important classes of such data sources. One of these comes from recent trends in Quantified Self (QS) and Personal Informatics, which has emphasized the use of technology to collect personal data on different aspects of people's daily lives. These data can be internal states (such as mood or glucose level) or indicators of performance (such as the kilometers run). The purpose of collecting these data is self-monitoring, performed to gain self-knowledge or to obtain some change or improvement (behavioral, psychological, therapeutic, etc.). Often these data are also exploited for behavior change purposes, for example to increase the user's physical activity. The other key category comes from the enormous amount of textual content that is continuously spread on social networks. This has driven a strong research effort to investigate to what extent such data can be exploited to infer user interests, personality traits, emotions, and knowledge. Moreover, the recent phenomenon of (Linked) Open Data fueled this research line by making available a huge amount of machine-readable textual data that can be used to connect all the data points spread in different data silos under a uniform representation formalism. The main goal of the workshop is to investigate whether techniques for advanced content representation and methodologies for gathering and modeling personal data (e.g. physiological, behavioral) can be exploited to build a new generation of personalized and intelligent systems in domains as diverse as health, learning, behavior change, e-government, smart cities (e.g., by combining mood data and music preferences data to provide recommendations on music to be listened)

The exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation ALICE: dynamic analysis and control system evaluation using Hamilton quaternions

[EN] A robotic exoskeleton is an electromechanical device that can be worn by a person to increase its physical capacity, to assist locomotion or for gait rehabilitation processes. In the case of rehabilitation exoskeletons, the control system is required to be smooth and capable to match accurately with the patients’ evolution in order to optimize the eciency of their recovery, this implies the design of robust and precise controllers. In this paper, kinematic analysis, dynamic analysis and control system evaluation for ALICE rehabilitation exoskeleton is presented. Among the control techniques used are: the PD controller, adaptive PD, and the sliding mode controller. In addition, a stability analysis using the Lyapunov criterion is performed. To test the performance of the controllers, gait data obtained by the ONCE School of  Physiotherapy in Madrid, which correspond to healthy people and people with multiple sclerosis, are used. MATLAB as simulation software and programming language is used.[ES] Un exoesqueleto robótico es un dispositivo electromecánico utilizado para aumentar la capacidad física de una persona, como ayuda a la locomoción o para procesos de rehabilitación de la marcha. En el caso de los exoesqueletos de rehabilitación se requiere que el sistema de control sea capaz de adaptarse adecuadamente a la evolución del paciente con el fin de optimizar su recuperación, esto implica el diseño de controladores robustos y precisos. En este trabajo se presenta el análisis cinemático, análisis dinámico y evaluación del sistema de control del exoesqueleto de rehabilitación ALICE. Dentro de las técnicas de control presentadas se encuentran: el controlador PD, PD adaptativo, y el controlador en modo deslizante. Además, se realiza un análisis de estabilidad utilizando el criterio de Lyapunov. Para probar el rendimiento de los reguladores, se utiliza un conjunto de datos de la Escuela de Fisioterapia de la ONCE de Madrid, correspondiente a personas sanas y personas con esclerosis múltiple. Se utiliza MATLAB como software de simulación y lenguaje de programación.Manuel Cardona agradece a la Fundación Carolina y a la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, España, por el apoyo para la realización de esta investigación gracias a la beca de Doctorado otorgada en el marco del convenio con la Universidad Don Bosco, El Salvador.Cardona, M.; Serrano, F.; Martín, JA.; Rausell, E.; Saltaren, R.; García-Cena, C. (2020). El exoesqueleto de rehabilitación de la marcha ALICE: análisis dinámico y evaluación del sistema de control utilizando cuaternios de Hamilton. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática industrial. 18(1):48-57. https://doi.org/10.4995/riai.2020.12558OJS4857181Abolvafaei, M., Ganjefar, S., 2019. 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VIII Latin American Conference on Biomedical Engineering and XLII National Conference on Biomedical Engineering. CLAIB 2019. IFMBE Proceedings, Springer 75, 955-963. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30648-9_124Chong, L., Jianfeng, S., Linhong, J., 2013. Lower limb rehabilitation robots: A review. In: World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. IFMBE Proceedings. Vol. 39. p. 2042-2045. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29305-4_536Eker, I., 2010. Second-order sliding mode control with experimental application. ISA Transactions 49 (3), 394 - 405. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2010.03.010He, W., Li, Z., Dong, Y., Zhao, T., Jan 2019. Design and adaptive control for an upper limb robotic exoskeleton in presence of input saturation. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems 30 (1), 97-108. DOI: 10.1109/TNNLS.2018.2828813 https://doi.org/10.1109/TNNLS.2018.2828813Kapandji, A., 2010. Fisiología Articular, 6th Edition. Vol. 2. Editorial Panamericana, France.Maciejasz, P., Eschweiler, J., Gerlach-Hahn, K., et.al., 2014. "A survey on robotic devices for upper limb rehabilitation". https://doi.org/10.1186/1743-0003-11-3Proietti, T., Jarrasse, N., Roby-Brami, A., Morel, G., April 2015. Adaptive control of a robotic exoskeleton for neurorehabilitation. In: 2015 7th International IEEE/EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering (NER). pp. 803-806. https://doi.org/10.1109/NER.2015.7146745Reinkensmeyer, D. J., 2003. How to retrain movement after neurologic injury: a computational rationale for incorporating robot (or therapist) assistance. In: Proceedings of the 25th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37439). Vol. 2. pp. 1479-1482 Vol.2.Reinkensmeyer, D. J., Aoyagi, D., Emken, J., Galvez, J., Ichinose W, W., etal, Aug-Sep 2006. Tools for understanding and optimizing robotic gait training. J Rehabil Res Dev 43 (5), 657-70. https://doi.org/10.1682/JRRD.2005.04.0073Riener, R., Guidali, M., Keller, U., Duschau-Wicke, A., et.al., 2014. "a survey on robotic devices for upper limb rehabilitation".Serrano, F. E., Rossell, J. M., 2015. Complete kinematic analysis of the stewartgough platform by unit quaternions. Mechanics and Control (Vol, 34, no. 4), 59-69.Spong, M., Hutchinson, S., Vidyasagar, M., 2006. Robot Modeling and Control. John Wiley and Sons.Wang, J.-Y., Liang, H.-Z., Sun, Z.-W., Wu, S.-N., Zhang, S.-J., 2013. Relative motion coupled control based on dual quaternion. Aerospace Science and Technology 25 (1), 102 - 113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ast.2011.12.013Wu, Q., Chen, B., Wu, H., 2019. Rbfn-based adaptive backstepping sliding mode control of an upper-limb exoskeleton with dynamic uncertainties. IEEE Access 7, 134635-134646. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2941973Yakub, F., Khudzari, A., Mori, Y., March 2014. 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Nonparametric Information Geometry

The differential-geometric structure of the set of positive densities on a given measure space has raised the interest of many mathematicians after the discovery by C.R. Rao of the geometric meaning of the Fisher information. Most of the research is focused on parametric statistical models. In series of papers by author and coworkers a particular version of the nonparametric case has been discussed. It consists of a minimalistic structure modeled according the theory of exponential families: given a reference density other densities are represented by the centered log likelihood which is an element of an Orlicz space. This mappings give a system of charts of a Banach manifold. It has been observed that, while the construction is natural, the practical applicability is limited by the technical difficulty to deal with such a class of Banach spaces. It has been suggested recently to replace the exponential function with other functions with similar behavior but polynomial growth at infinity in order to obtain more tractable Banach spaces, e.g. Hilbert spaces. We give first a review of our theory with special emphasis on the specific issues of the infinite dimensional setting. In a second part we discuss two specific topics, differential equations and the metric connection. The position of this line of research with respect to other approaches is briefly discussed.Comment: Submitted for publication in the Proceedings od GSI2013 Aug 28-30 2013 Pari

Preface to the special issue on harnessing personal tracking data for personalization and sense-making

Increasingly, people are making use of diverse digital services that create many types of personal data. The most recent addition to such services are self-tracking devices that are capable of creating very detailed personal activity records. The focus of this special issue is to explore how such activity records can be exploited to provide user-centric personalization services

Genotoxicity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes at occupationally relevant doses

Carbon nanotubes are commercially-important products of nanotechnology; however, their low density and small size makes carbon nanotube respiratory exposures likely during their production or processing. We have previously shown mitotic spindle aberrations in cultured primary and immortalized human airway epithelial cells exposed to single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT). In this study, we examined whether multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) cause mitotic spindle damage in cultured cells at doses equivalent to 34 years of exposure at the NIOSH Recommended Exposure Limit (REL). MWCNT induced a dose responsive increase in disrupted centrosomes, abnormal mitotic spindles and aneuploid chromosome number 24 hours after exposure to 0.024, 0.24, 2.4 and 24 μg/cm2 MWCNT. Monopolar mitotic spindles comprised 95% of disrupted mitoses. Three-dimensional reconstructions of 0.1 μm optical sections showed carbon nanotubes integrated with microtubules, DNA and within the centrosome structure. Cell cycle analysis demonstrated a greater number of cells in S-phase and fewer cells in the G2 phase in MWCNT-treated compared to diluent control, indicating a G1/S block in the cell cycle. The monopolar phenotype of the disrupted mitotic spindles and the G1/S block in the cell cycle is in sharp contrast to the multi-polar spindle and G2 block in the cell cycle previously observed following exposure to SWCNT. One month following exposure to MWCNT there was a dramatic increase in both size and number of colonies compared to diluent control cultures, indicating a potential to pass the genetic damage to daughter cells. Our results demonstrate significant disruption of the mitotic spindle by MWCNT at occupationally relevant exposure levels