Informing versus generating a discussion: Comparing two approaches to encouraging mitigation of soil erosion among Maasai pastoralists

Soil erosion is a critical problem for pastoralist societies that rely on healthy grazing land for their livelihoods. Previous research suggests that unsustainable land management practice is one of the factors exacerbating soil erosion, and that willingness to adjust this practice is closely linked to community land protection norms. The present research explores approaches to building stronger community norms and intentions linked to mitigating soil erosion among Maasai pastoralists in Northern Tanzania. In particular, we compare two impact approaches based on the information deficit model (exposure to scientific information) and the social identity framework (a group-based discussion). The results demonstrate that the information deficit approach results in stronger perceived land protection norms and, indirectly, stronger intentions, as compared to the discussion-based approach. We discuss contextual features that should be taken into account when interpreting these findings and suggest these may be key for impact approach choices

Epilepsy Personal Assistant Device-A Mobile Platform for Brain State, Dense Behavioral and Physiology Tracking and Controlling Adaptive Stimulation

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, and it affects almost 1% of the population worldwide. Many people living with epilepsy continue to have seizures despite anti-epileptic medication therapy, surgical treatments, and neuromodulation therapy. The unpredictability of seizures is one of the most disabling aspects of epilepsy. Furthermore, epilepsy is associated with sleep, cognitive, and psychiatric comorbidities, which significantly impact the quality of life. Seizure predictions could potentially be used to adjust neuromodulation therapy to prevent the onset of a seizure and empower patients to avoid sensitive activities during high-risk periods. Long-term objective data is needed to provide a clearer view of brain electrical activity and an objective measure of the efficacy of therapeutic measures for optimal epilepsy care. While neuromodulation devices offer the potential for acquiring long-term data, available devices provide very little information regarding brain activity and therapy effectiveness. Also, seizure diaries kept by patients or caregivers are subjective and have been shown to be unreliable, in particular for patients with memory-impairing seizures. This paper describes the design, architecture, and development of the Mayo Epilepsy Personal Assistant Device (EPAD). The EPAD has bi-directional connectivity to the implanted investigational Medtronic Summit RC+S-TM device to implement intracranial EEG and physiological monitoring, processing, and control of the overall system and wearable devices streaming physiological time-series signals. In order to mitigate risk and comply with regulatory requirements, we developed a Quality Management System (QMS) to define the development process of the EPAD system, including Risk Analysis, Verification, Validation, and protocol mitigations. Extensive verification and validation testing were performed on thirteen canines and benchtop systems. The system is now under a first-in-human trial as part of the US FDA Investigational Device Exemption given in 2018 to study modulated responsive and predictive stimulation using the Mayo EPAD system and investigational Medtronic Summit RC+S-TM in ten patients with non-resectable dominant or bilateral mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. The EPAD system coupled with an implanted device capable of EEG telemetry represents a next-generation solution to optimizing neuromodulation therapy

Serial Concatenation of Reed Muller and LDPC Codes with Low Error Floor

In this paper, we propose a concatenated coding scheme involving an outer Reed-Muller (RM) code and an inner Finite Field low-density parity check (LDPC) code of medium length and high rate. It lowers the error floor of inner Finite Field LDPC code. This concatenation scheme offers flexibility in design and it is easy to implement. In addition, the decoding works in a serial turbo manner and has no harmful trapping sets of size smaller than the minimum distance of the outer code. The simulation results indicate that the proposed serial concatenation can eliminate the dominant trapping sets of the inner Finite Field LDPC code.NSF [ECCS-1500170]; Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) through the Joint Networked Center for Data Storage Research [JC-16-2014-US]This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Globally Coupled Finite Geometry and Finite Field LDPC Coding Schemes

This paper presents two types of concatenated LDPC coding schemes which are viewed as generalized globally coupled (GC) LDPC coding schemes in which outer codes serve as the local codes for correcting local errors and inner codes serve as global coupling codes to correct global errors. The first type of concatenated LDPC coding scheme globally couples a finite geometry (FG) LDPC code as the local code and a finite field (FF) LDPC code as the global coupling code. This type of global coupling, called GC-FG/FF-LDPC coupling, combines the distinct features of both FG- and FF-LDPC codes to achieve low error rates at a rapid decoding convergence and an error performance close to the Shannon limit. Decoding of a GC-FG/FF-LDPC code is carried out in two iterative phases, global/local or local/global. In the second type of concatenated LDPC coding scheme, both local and global coupling codes are FF-LDPC codes. If both local and global coupling codes are constructed from the same finite field and have the same graphical structures, a GC-FF/FF-LDPC code can be decoded in one phase or two phases iteratively, otherwise, it can be decoded in two phases. Construction of GC-FF/FF-LDPC codes is very flexible in lengths and rates. The proposed two-phase iterative decoding is practically implementable