Open Source Virtual Worlds and Low Cost Sensors for Physical Rehab of Patients with Chronic Diseases

For patients with chronic diseases, exercise is a key part of rehab to deal better with their illness. Some of them do rehabilitation at home with telemedicine systems. However, keeping to their exercising program is challenging and many abandon the rehabilitation. We postulate that information technologies for socializing and serious games can encourage patients to keep doing physical exercise and rehab. In this paper we present Virtual Valley, a low cost telemedicine system for home exercising, based on open source virtual worlds and utilizing popular low cost motion controllers (e.g. Wii Remote) and medical sensors. Virtual Valley allows patient to socialize, learn, and play group based serious games while exercising

Movimientos Compuestos en la Naturaleza

Descripción de actividades didácticas innovadoras en el área de la enseñanza de la Física en 1º de bachilleratoEsta memoria de Trabajo de Fin de Master presenta la mejora e innovación una parte de la unidad didáctica de 1º de Bachillerato “Cinemática del punto material. Elementos y magnitudes del movimiento” sobre la composición de movimientos. Primero se analizarán los referentes teóricos para seguidamente pasar al desarrollo de la unidad y sus conclusiones sobre una posible implantación en el ámbito docente real.89 página

Vulnerability and COVID-19 infection rates: A changing relationship during the first year of the pandemic

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain was one of the worst-hit countries, although not all areas and social groups were affected equally. This study focuses on Malaga, a cosmopolitan tourist destination located on the southern Mediterranean coast that has the sixth largest population in Spain. Specifically, it examines the relationship between multidimensional vulnerability and COVID-19 infection rates across the city’s census tracts for the period February 2020 to February 2021. The analysis uses high frequency (daily) data on the accumulated incidence of the disease at 14 days and shows that COVID-19 did not spread symmetrically across the census tracts of Malaga but had a greater impact on the most vulnerable neighbourhoods. However, the pattern of this relationship was not uniform in the period examined, with specific contextual factors driving the higher infection rates across time. Our findings show that pandemic containment regulations cannot overlook vulnerability considerations and universal restrictions to reduce the spread of disease should be supplemented by targeted regulations for specific areas.This work was supported by the Junta de Andalucía, under the grant FEDER-COVID (CV20-27760) for the project “Vulnerabilidad y resiliencia post-COVID en el área metropolitana de Málaga” and Universidad de Málaga. We thank the funding for open access charge to Universidad de Málaga / CBUA

A data-driven scheduler model for QoE assessment in a LTE radio network planning tool

The use of static system-level simulators is common practice for estimating the impact of re-planning actions in cellular networks. In this paper, a modification of a classical static Long Term Evolution (LTE) simulator is proposed to estimate the Quality of Experience (QoE) provided in each location on a per-service basis. The core of the simulator is the estimation of radio connection throughput on a location and service basis. For this purpose, a new analytical performance model for the packet scheduling process in a multi-service scenario is developed. Model parameters can easily be adjusted with information from radio connection traces available in the network management system. The simulation tool is validated with a large trace dataset taken from a live LTE network

Traffic Steering in B5G Sliced Radio Access Networks.

In 5G and beyond wireless systems, Network Slicing (NS) feature will enable the coexistence of extremely different services by splitting the physical infrastructure into several logical slices tailored for a specific tenant or application. In sliced Radio Access Networks (RANs), an optimal traffic sharing among cells is key to guarantee Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance while minimizing operation costs. The configuration of network functions leading to that optimal point may depend on the slice, claiming for slice-aware traffic steering strategies. This work presents the first data-driven algorithm for sliceaware traffic steering by tuning handover margins (a.k.a. mobility load balancing). The tuning process is driven by a novel indicator, derived from connection traces, showing the imbalance of SLA compliance among neighbor cells per slice. Performance assessment is carried out with a system-level simulator implementing a realistic sliced RAN offering services with different throughput, latency and reliability requirements. Results show that the proposed algorithm improves the overall SLA compliance by 9% in only 15 minutes of network activity compared to the case of not steering traffic, outperforming two legacy mobility load balancing approaches not driven by SLA

Statistical model for mobile user positioning based on social information.

In spite of the vast set of measurements provided by current mobile networks, cellular operators have problems to pinpoint problematic locations because the origin of such measurements (i.e., user location) is usually not registered. At the same time, social networks generate a huge amount of data that can be used to infer population density. In this work, a data-driven model is proposed to deduce the statistical distribution of connections, exploiting the knowledge of network layout and population density in the sceario. Due to the absence of GPS measurements, the proposed method combines data from radio connection traces stored in the network management system and geolocated posts from social networks. This information is enriched with user context information inferred from their traffic attributes. The method is tested with a large trace dataset from a live Long Term Evolution (LTE) network and a database of geotagged messages from two social networks (Twitter and Flickr).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

An intelligent electronic fuse for selective isolation of faulty switching cells in power electronic converter legs to guarantee continuous operation

© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksThis article proposes a novel device designated as an intelligent electronic fuse (iFuse) intended to be connected in series with any current-bidirectional voltage-unidirectional active switch present in a power converter. The iFuse duty is to selectively isolate its series-associated switch from the rest of the converter circuit immediately after detecting that this switch has failed in short circuit. Nonetheless, it maintains the reverse (free-wheeling) current path originally offered by the failed switch. The failure detection is typically performed when the failed switch causes a shoot-through event. Therefore, the iFuse is able to block large currents. The iFuse allows increasing the power-converter fault tolerance and reliability with regard to switch short-circuit failures (SCFs), as in converters featuring switches in parallel, redundant legs, and multilevel neutral-point-clamped topologies. The reliability model analysis of a two-level converter leg with two parallel switches per position reveals that its reliability can be increased up to four times when an iFuse is implemented in series with each switch. The iFuse device feasibility and good performance are verified through experimental tests, proving that it can detect and isolate the associated-switch failure in 6 µs , while stopping short-circuit currents of up to 1 kA without incurring in harmful di / dt values.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Virtual Worlds to enhance Ambient-Assisted Living

In this paper we discuss about the integration of Ambient-Assisted Living (AAL) with virtual worlds. The integration of sensors from the AAL environment (e.g. vital signs, motion sensors) in the Virtual World can enhance the provision of in-world eHealth services, such as telerehabilitation, and taking advance of the social nature of virtual worlds. An implementation of a virtual world integrated in an AAL environment for tele-rehabilitation is described in this paper. At this time, all of the system’s modules have been developed and we are currently integrating them in a fully functional version. The system will be tested with real users during 2010 in the Sport Medical Unit of The University of Seville. This paper describes the architecture and functionalities of the system.Junta de Andalucía P06-TIC-229

Content Validation of an Instrument for the Assessment of School Teachers’ Levels of Knowledge of Diabetes through Expert Judgment

The objective of this study was to describe the content validation, through expert judgment, of a questionnaire for determining the level of knowledge that school teachers have of diabetes in order to design relevant educational interventions to improve the health of school-aged children. This psychometric study involved 15 experts who assessed each of the items in the instrument. The results revealed that the strength of agreement shown by the questionnaire ranged from substantial to almost perfect in its four dimensions, with the characteristics of “su ciency” and “relevance” having the highest scores (0.982 and 0.903, respectively) based on the judgments made by the participating experts. Regarding statistical significance, the characteristics “su ciency”, with p < 0.001, and “relevance”, with p = 0.001, were particularly relevant. The overall degree of understandability for the new version of the instrument was high (91.54%). The psychometric results obtained from validation of the “grado de conocimientos sobre diabetes en docentes del ámbito escolar” (Spanish for “level of knowledge of diabetes in school teachers”)—GCDDaE questionnaire through expert judgment and the pre-test indicate that it is recommended for use as it is both relevant and quick and easy to administer