A review of smart homes in healthcare

The technology of Smart Homes (SH), as an instance of ambient assisted living technologies, is designed to assist the homes’ residents accomplishing their daily-living activities and thus having a better quality of life while preserving their privacy. A SH system is usually equipped with a collection of inter-related software and hardware components to monitor the living space by capturing the behaviour of the resident and understanding his activities. By doing so the system can inform about risky situations and take actions on behalf of the resident to his satisfaction. The present survey will address technologies and analysis methods and bring examples of the state of the art research studies in order to provide background for the research community. In particular, the survey will expose infrastructure technologies such as sensors and communication platforms along with artificial intelligence techniques used for modeling and recognizing activities. A brief overview of approaches used to develop Human–Computer interfaces for SH systems is given. The survey also highlights the challenges and research trends in this area

Modeling Interaction in Multi-Resident Activities

In this paper we investigate the problem of modeling multi-resident activities. Specifically, we explore different approaches based on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to deal with parallel activities and cooperative activities. We propose an HMM-based method, called CL-HMM, where activity labels as well as observation labels of different residents are combined to generate the corresponding sequence of activities as well as the corresponding sequence of observations on which a conventional HMM is applied. We also propose a Linked HMM (LHMM) in which activities of all residents are linked at each time step. We compare these two models to baseline models which are Coupled HMM (CHMM) and Parallel HMM (PHMM). The experimental results show that the proposed models outperform CHMM and PHMM when tested on parallel and cooperative activities

Synthesis and characterization of a new Organic - Inorganic sulfate (C5H6N2O)2[Co(H2O)6]3(SO4)4.2H2O

crystals of a new hybrid compound, (C5H6N2O)2[Co(H2O)6]3(SO4)4.2H2O, were synthesized in aqueous solution and characterized. This compound crystallizes in the triclinic system with the space group P-1, the unit cell :a=6.632(3) Å, b=11.769(5) Å, c=14.210(6) Å, α=67.86(4)°, β=81.32(4)°, γ=85.18(4)° and V=1015.14(8) Å3 . Its crystal structure can be described as a packing of alternated inorganic and organic layers. The different components are connected by a three-dimensional network of O-H...O and N-H...O hydrogen bonds

Possibilities of chemical weed control in horse bean (Vicia faba L. var. minor) cultivated under irrigation and rainfed regimes

Trois essais ont été installés durant la campagne agricole 2010-11 à Sefrou en irrigué (pivot), à Meknès et à Rommani en bour. Six herbicides (pendiméthaline (1050 g/ha), linuron (500 g/ha), métribuzine (420 g/ha), s-métolachlore (1440 g/ha), bentazone (960 g/ha) et paraquate (400 g/ha)) ont été utilisés seuls en prélevée ou en post-levée ou en séquences. La flore adventice relevée dans les trois sites a été relativement diversifiée. Elle était composée de 18 espèces (15 dicotylédones et 3 graminées) appartenant à 12 familles botaniques. En général, les traitements de prélevée (métribuzine, pendiméthaline et smétolachlore) ont donné de bonnes efficacités sur les dicotylédones et/ou les graminées selon le site d’essai avec une suprématie de métribuzine. Cependant, la métribuine n’était pas totalement sélective de la féverole. L’utilisation de bentazone et du paraquate en post émergence avait causé une légère phytotoxicité de la féverole. L’utilisation du bentazone seul n’était pas satisfaisante. Des efficacités qualifiées de bonnes à excellentes ont été obtenues avec quelques séquences d’herbicides. Généralement, la séquence de pendiméthaline suivie du paraquate (entre les lignes) reste la plus efficace et la plus économique des séquences testées.Three trials were conducted during the 2011-11 growing season at Sefrou under irrigation regime, Meknès and Rommani under rainfed conditions. Six herbicides (pendimethalin (1050 g/ha), linuron (500 g/ha), metribuzin (420 g/ha), S-metolachlore (1440 g/ha), bentazon (960 g/ha) and paraquat (400 g/ha)) were tested alone as pre-emergence or postemergence or as sequence of treatments. The weed flora of three sites was relatively diversified and composed of 18 species (15 broadleaved and 3 grasses) belonging to 12 botanical families. In general, the pre-emergence treatment (pendimethalin, linuron, metribuzin and S-metolachlore) gave good efficacies on broadleaved and/or grass species according to the experimental site. Metribuzin provided higher efficacies. However, metribuzin was not totally selective to horse bean. Applied as post-emergence treatment, bentazon and paraquat showed a slight crop injury. Used alone, bentazon efficacy was not sufficient. Good to excellent efficacies were obtained with some herbicides sequences. Generally, pendimethalin followed by paraquat (between rows) sequence remains the most efficient and economical among the tested treatments sequences

Sub-Riemannian Fast Marching in SE(2)

We propose a Fast Marching based implementation for computing sub-Riemanninan (SR) geodesics in the roto-translation group SE(2), with a metric depending on a cost induced by the image data. The key ingredient is a Riemannian approximation of the SR-metric. Then, a state of the art Fast Marching solver that is able to deal with extreme anisotropies is used to compute a SR-distance map as the solution of a corresponding eikonal equation. Subsequent backtracking on the distance map gives the geodesics. To validate the method, we consider the uniform cost case in which exact formulas for SR-geodesics are known and we show remarkable accuracy of the numerically computed SR-spheres. We also show a dramatic decrease in computational time with respect to a previous PDE-based iterative approach. Regarding image analysis applications, we show the potential of considering these data adaptive geodesics for a fully automated retinal vessel tree segmentation.Comment: CIARP 201

Effet des pratiques de conservation du sol sur la croissance et les composantes du rendement du mais dans le bassin versant de Lokogba au Benin

Les pratiques d’une agriculture de conservation visant une couverture permanente du sol suivie de la réduction du travail du sol pourrait être une innovation dans les stratégies paysannes pour une agriculture durable. La présente étude a pour objectif d’évaluer l’effet du mode de travail du sol et du mulching sur les performances agronomiques du maïs semé sur le bassin versant de Lokogba, à Aplahoué. Un essai en Bloc Complètement Randomisé à quatre répétitions et 8 traitements (Semis direct, Minimum labour, Labour à plat, Billonnage, Semis direct + Mulch en surface, Minimum labour + Mulch en surface, Labour à plat + Mulch en surface, Billonnage + Mulch surface) a été installé. Les résultats indiquent que le travail du sol a affecté significativement les performances agronomiques du maïs au seuil de 5 %. Le semis direct a enregistré les valeurs les plus faibles des paramètres (2,66 cm/j de vitesse de croissance, 65,81 cm2 d’indice foliaire, 797,8 kg MS/ha de grains et 911,8 kg MS/ha de pailles de maïs) contre le billonnage qui a enregistré les meilleures performances (3,62 cm/j de vitesse de croissance, 120 cm2 d’indice foliaire, 2175,4 kg MS/ha de grains et 2475,4 kg MS/ha de pailles de maïs). L’indice de récolte et le diamètre au collet des plants les plus élevés 0,4 % et 1,37 cm, respectivement, ont été obtenus avec le labour à plat. Le mulching a amélioré le diamètre au collet des plants de 1,28 à 1,37 cm, l’indice foliaire de 73,05 à 114,02 cm2 (p < 0,0001) et la vitesse de croissance des plants de 2,91 à 3,75 cm/j (p < 0,0001). Le rendement en grains est passé de 1020,5 kg MS/ha sans couverture de mulch à 2138,1 kg MS/ha avec couverture de mulch et l’indice de récolte de 31,1 à 41,1 p.c. La combinaison des deux facteurs n’a toujours pas donné un effet significatif sur les performances agronomiques du maïs. Quels que soient le mode de travail du sol et la couverture ou non de mulch, le rendement en grains dépend significativement de l’indice de récolte, des spathes et des pailles du maïs (100r2 = 95,34).Mots clés: Semis direct, labour, mulching, maïs, bassin versantEnglish Title: Effect of soil conservation practices on maize productivity in Lokogba watershed in BeninEnglish AbstractConservation agriculture with permanent soil covering could be an innovation in farming practices dealing to sustainable agriculture. This study aims to evaluate the effect of tillage and mulching on the agronomic performance of maize, planted in the watershed of Lokogba in Aplahoué. A randomized completed bloc design with four replications was chosen. Eight treatments were concerned in the trial as followed: Direct sowing, Minimum tillage, Tillage, Conventional tillage, Direct sowing + Mulch on surface, Minimum tillage + Mulch on surface, Tillage + Mulch on surface, Conventional tillage + Mulch on surface. Results indicated that tillage significantly affected the agronomic performance of maize. Direct seeding recorded the lowest parameters (2.66 cm.day-1 of growth rate and 65.81 cm2 of leaf area index, 797.8 kg DM.ha-1 of grain and 911.8 kg DM.ha-1 of maize straw) against conventional tillage with the best performance (3.62 cm.day-1 of growth rate and 120 cm2 of leaf area index, 2175.4 kg DM.ha-1 of grain and 2475.4 kg DM.ha-1 of maize straw). The  highest harvest index and collar diameter of plants (0.4% and 1.37 cm, respectively) were obtained with the tillage. Mulching improved the collar diameter of plants from 1.28 to 1.37 cm (but no significantly), the leaf area index from 73.05 to 114.02 cm2 (p < 0.0001) and the growth rate from 2.91 to 3.75 cm.day-1 (p < 0.0001). The grain yield increased from 1020.5 kg DM.ha-1 without mulch to 2138.1 kg DM.ha-1 with mulch and harvest index from 31.1 to 41.1 %. The combination of both factors have not a significant effect on the agronomic performance of maize. Whatever the type of tillage and with or without mulch, the grain yield significantly depends on the harvest index, husk and maize straw (100r2 = 95.34).Keywords: Direct seeding, tillage, mulching, maize, watershe

A Tree-structure Convolutional Neural Network for Temporal Features Exaction on Sensor-based Multi-resident Activity Recognition

With the propagation of sensor devices applied in smart home, activity recognition has ignited huge interest and most existing works assume that there is only one habitant. While in reality, there are generally multiple residents at home, which brings greater challenge to recognize activities. In addition, many conventional approaches rely on manual time series data segmentation ignoring the inherent characteristics of events and their heuristic hand-crafted feature generation algorithms are difficult to exploit distinctive features to accurately classify different activities. To address these issues, we propose an end-to-end Tree-Structure Convolutional neural network based framework for Multi-Resident Activity Recognition (TSC-MRAR). First, we treat each sample as an event and obtain the current event embedding through the previous sensor readings in the sliding window without splitting the time series data. Then, in order to automatically generate the temporal features, a tree-structure network is designed to derive the temporal dependence of nearby readings. The extracted features are fed into the fully connected layer, which can jointly learn the residents labels and the activity labels simultaneously. Finally, experiments on CASAS datasets demonstrate the high performance in multi-resident activity recognition of our model compared to state-of-the-art techniques.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Snail protein inhibition by drug repositioning for recurrent breast cancer: an in-silico study

Objective: Snail is a transcription factor that promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and facilitates tumor progression and metastasis in breast cancer. Therefore, it is a promising target for the development of anticancer agents. The objective of this study was to identify FDA-approved drugs that can be repurposed as Snail inhibitors. Materials and Methods: Using a virtual screening strategy, three molecules were selected among 1615 (Stivarga, Paritaprevir and Sorafenib). Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation were performed to examine Snail-drugs interactions. Results: Our docking analysis identified Stivarga and Sorafenib, two antineoplastic drugs, as potential repositioning drugs to treat recurrent breast cancer due to their low free binding energy values. Additional molecular dynamics simulations of the Snail-drug systems revealed that Sorafenib was the most stable, lasting from 30 to 120 ns and forming 2-4 hydrogen bonds. Conclusions: The antineoplastic drugs Stivarga and Sorafenib have better affinity and inhibition of Snail and could be a simple drug therapy for recurrent breast cancer

Anthropogenic radionuclides in the water column and a sediment core from the Alboran Sea: application to radiometric dating and reconstruction of historical water column radionuclide concentrations

Global fallout is the main source of anthropogenic radionuclides in the Mediterranean Sea. This work presents 137Cs, 239+240Pu and 241Am concentrations in the water column in the southwest Alboran Sea, which was sampled in December 1999. A sediment core was taken at 800 m depth in the area (35°47′ N, 04°48′ W). 210Pb, 226Ra, 137Cs and 239+240Pu specific activities were measured at multiple depths in the core for dating purposes. 137Cs and 239+240Pu profiles did not show defined peaks that could be used as time markers, and they extended up to depths for which the 210Pb-based constant rate of supply (CRS) dating model provided inconsistent dates. These profiles can be useful to test dating models, understood as particular solutions of a general advection–diffusion problem, if the time series of radionuclide inputs into the sediment is provided. Thus, historical records of depth-averaged 137Cs and 239+240Pu concentrations in water, and their corresponding fluxes into the sediment, were reconstructed. A simple water-column model was used for this purpose, involving atmospheric fallout, measured distribution coefficient (k d) values, and a first-estimate of sedimentation rates. A dating model of constant mixing with constant sedimentation rate was applied successfully to three independent records (unsupported 210Pb, 137Cs and 239+240Pu), and provided the objective determination of mixing parameters and mass sedimentation rate. These results provide some insight into the fate of atmospheric inputs to this marine environment and, particularly, into the contribution from the Chernobyl accident.International Atomic Energy Agency Research Project RAF/7/00

Acoustic assessment of erygmophonic speech of Moroccan laryngectomized patients

Introduction: Acoustic evaluation of alaryngeal voices is among the most prominent issues in speech analysis field. In fact, many methods have been developed to date to substitute the classic perceptual evaluation. The Aim of this study is to present our experience in erygmophonic speech objective assessment and to discuss the most widely used methods of acoustic speech appraisal. through a prospective case-control study we have measured acoustic parameters of speech quality during one year of erygmophonic rehabilitation therapy of Moroccan laryngectomized patients. Methods: We have assessed acoustic parameters of erygmophonic speech samples of eleven laryngectomized patients through the speech rehabilitation therapy. Acoustic parameters were obtained by perturbation analysis method and linear predictive coding algorithms also through the broadband spectrogram. Results: Using perturbation analysis methods, we have found erygmophonic voice to be significantly poorer than normal speech and it exhibits higher formant frequency values. However, erygmophonic voice shows also higher and extremely variable Error values that were greater than the acceptable level. And thus, live a doubt on the reliability of those analytic methods results. Conclusion: Acoustic parameters for objective evaluation of alaryngeal voices should allow a reliable representation of the perceptual evaluation of the quality of speech. This requirement has not been fulfilled by the common methods used so far. Therefore, acoustical assessment of erygmophonic speech needs more investigations