The caregiver perspective: an assistive AAL platform

The Ambient Assisted Living area has spawned several projects that aim to help the user on his/her daily activities. The AAL4ALL (ambient assisted living for all) project aims to develop a unified ecosystem using fully compatible devices and services. The UserAccess platform is part of the AAL4ALL and has as a goal to provide assistance to a type of actor that is commonly forgotten in the Ambient Assisted Living area, the caregiver. This paper presents the archi-tecture, implementation, and interfaces, along with a brief analysis of caregiver’s needs and work related issues.Project "AAL4ALL", co-financed by the European Community Fund FEDER, through COMPETE - Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade (POFC). Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Lisbon, Portugal, through Project PEst-C/CTM/LA0025/2013 and the project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2014. Project CAMCoF - Context-aware Multimodal Communication Framework funded by ERDF -European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980

An AAL collaborative system: the AAL4ALL and a mobile assistant case study

"15th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2014, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 6-8, 2014"The areas of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and Intelligent Systems (IS) are in full development, but there are still some issues to be resolved. One issue is the myriad of user oriented solutions that are rarely built to interact or integrate with other systems available in the market. In this paper we present the AAL4ALL project and the UserAccess implementation, showing a novel approach towards virtual organizations, interoperability and certification. The aim of this project is to provide a collaborative network of services and devices that connect every user and product from other developers, building a heterogeneous ecosystem. Thus establishing an environment for collaborative care systems, which may be available to the users in from of safety services, comfort services and healthcare services.Project "AAL4ALL", co-financed by the European Community Fund FEDER, through COMPETE - Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade (POFC). Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Lisbon, Portugal, through Project PEst-C/CTM/LA0025/2013 and the project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2014. Project CAMCoF - Context-aware Multimodal Communication Framework fund-ed by ERDF -European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Pro-gramme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980

Global Retinoblastoma Presentation and Analysis by National Income Level

Importance: Early diagnosis of retinoblastoma, the most common intraocular cancer, can save both a child's life and vision. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that many children across the world are diagnosed late. To our knowledge, the clinical presentation of retinoblastoma has never been assessed on a global scale. Objectives: To report the retinoblastoma stage at diagnosis in patients across the world during a single year, to investigate associations between clinical variables and national income level, and to investigate risk factors for advanced disease at diagnosis. Design, Setting, and Participants: A total of 278 retinoblastoma treatment centers were recruited from June 2017 through December 2018 to participate in a cross-sectional analysis of treatment-naive patients with retinoblastoma who were diagnosed in 2017. Main Outcomes and Measures: Age at presentation, proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, and tumor stage and metastasis. Results: The cohort included 4351 new patients from 153 countries; the median age at diagnosis was 30.5 (interquartile range, 18.3-45.9) months, and 1976 patients (45.4) were female. Most patients (n = 3685 84.7%) were from low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). Globally, the most common indication for referral was leukocoria (n = 2638 62.8%), followed by strabismus (n = 429 10.2%) and proptosis (n = 309 7.4%). Patients from high-income countries (HICs) were diagnosed at a median age of 14.1 months, with 656 of 666 (98.5%) patients having intraocular retinoblastoma and 2 (0.3%) having metastasis. Patients from low-income countries were diagnosed at a median age of 30.5 months, with 256 of 521 (49.1%) having extraocular retinoblastoma and 94 of 498 (18.9%) having metastasis. Lower national income level was associated with older presentation age, higher proportion of locally advanced disease and distant metastasis, and smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma. Advanced disease at diagnosis was more common in LMICs even after adjusting for age (odds ratio for low-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 17.92 95% CI, 12.94-24.80, and for lower-middle-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 5.74 95% CI, 4.30-7.68). Conclusions and Relevance: This study is estimated to have included more than half of all new retinoblastoma cases worldwide in 2017. Children from LMICs, where the main global retinoblastoma burden lies, presented at an older age with more advanced disease and demonstrated a smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, likely because many do not reach a childbearing age. Given that retinoblastoma is curable, these data are concerning and mandate intervention at national and international levels. Further studies are needed to investigate factors, other than age at presentation, that may be associated with advanced disease in LMICs. © 2020 American Medical Association. All rights reserved

Straightforward Specification of Adaptation-Architecture-Significant Requirements of IoT-enabled Cyber-Physical Systems

Adaptability is an inherent property in IoT-enabled cyber-physical systems because these should adjust themselves to evolving circumstances of their operation context. One key challenge for architects is the identification and specification of simple and concise architecture significant requirements centered on adaptation that provide straightforward information needed for de-riving appropriate architecture decisions. To address this challenge, we propose Adaptation Terms, which are blueprints comprising a sufficient set of information to properly architect adapt-able IoT-enabled cyber-physical systems. The approach has been used by professionals from the domains of agricultural and construction machinery, medical devices, and telecommunication systems, and a usage report describing the benefits and potential improvements of the approach are described in this paper

Bridging the Gap between Architecture Specifications and Simulation Models

One of the key architecture-related activities is the evaluation of the architecture drivers and design, and simulation is one mean to automatically assess architecture-significant aspects such as performance. Despite the maturity of the existing architecture specification and simulation techniques, the proper simulation of architecture models is still effort-intensive and time-consuming. This is caused by the usual informality of the architecture specification on the one hand, and by the formalisms required for proper execution of architecture simulations on the other hand. To bridge this gap, we present in this paper a semi-automated approach to support the specification and simulation of architecture drivers and design. The approach has been used in different industrial projects in the field of transportation and smart factories. In this paper, we present an anonymized example centered on the security of software deployment and execution in the transportation domain

The software system for the Control and Data Acquisition for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), as the next generation ground-based very high-energy gamma-ray observatory, is defining new areas beyond those related to physics. It is also creating new demands on the control and data acquisition system. CTA will consist of two installations, one in each hemisphere, containing tens of telescopes of different sizes. The ACTL (array control and data acquisition) system will consist of the hardware and software that is necessary to control and monitor the CTA array, as well as to time-stamp, read-out, filter and store the scientific data at aggregated rates of a few GB/s. The ACTL system must implement a flexible software architecture to permit the simultaneous automatic operation of multiple sub-arrays of telescopes with a minimum personnel effort on site. In addition ACTL must be able to modify the observation schedule on timescales of a few tens of seconds, to account for changing environmental conditions or to prioritize incoming scientific alerts from time-critical transient phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. This contribution summarizes the status of the development of the software architecture and the main design choices and plans

Global Retinoblastoma Presentation and Analysis by National Income Level

This cross-sectional analysis reports the retinoblastoma stage at diagnosis across the world during a single year, investigates associations between clinical variables and national income level, and investigates risk factors for advanced disease at diagnosis. Key PointsQuestionIs the income level of a country of residence associated with the clinical stage of presentation of patients with retinoblastoma? FindingsIn this cross-sectional analysis that included 4351 patients with newly diagnosed retinoblastoma, approximately half of all new retinoblastoma cases worldwide in 2017, 49.1\% of patients from low-income countries had extraocular tumor at time of diagnosis compared with 1.5\% of patients from high-income countries. MeaningThe clinical stage of presentation of retinoblastoma, which has a major influence on survival, significantly differs among patients from low-income and high-income countries, which may warrant intervention on national and international levels. ImportanceEarly diagnosis of retinoblastoma, the most common intraocular cancer, can save both a child's life and vision. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that many children across the world are diagnosed late. To our knowledge, the clinical presentation of retinoblastoma has never been assessed on a global scale. ObjectivesTo report the retinoblastoma stage at diagnosis in patients across the world during a single year, to investigate associations between clinical variables and national income level, and to investigate risk factors for advanced disease at diagnosis. Design, Setting, and ParticipantsA total of 278 retinoblastoma treatment centers were recruited from June 2017 through December 2018 to participate in a cross-sectional analysis of treatment-naive patients with retinoblastoma who were diagnosed in 2017. Main Outcomes and MeasuresAge at presentation, proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, and tumor stage and metastasis. ResultsThe cohort included 4351 new patients from 153 countries; the median age at diagnosis was 30.5 (interquartile range, 18.3-45.9) months, and 1976 patients (45.4\%) were female. Most patients (n=3685 {[}84.7\%]) were from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Globally, the most common indication for referral was leukocoria (n=2638 {[}62.8\%]), followed by strabismus (n=429 {[}10.2\%]) and proptosis (n=309 {[}7.4\%]). Patients from high-income countries (HICs) were diagnosed at a median age of 14.1 months, with 656 of 666 (98.5\%) patients having intraocular retinoblastoma and 2 (0.3\%) having metastasis. Patients from low-income countries were diagnosed at a median age of 30.5 months, with 256 of 521 (49.1\%) having extraocular retinoblastoma and 94 of 498 (18.9\%) having metastasis. Lower national income level was associated with older presentation age, higher proportion of locally advanced disease and distant metastasis, and smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma. Advanced disease at diagnosis was more common in LMICs even after adjusting for age (odds ratio for low-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 17.92 {[}95\% CI, 12.94-24.80], and for lower-middle-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 5.74 {[}95\% CI, 4.30-7.68]). Conclusions and RelevanceThis study is estimated to have included more than half of all new retinoblastoma cases worldwide in 2017. Children from LMICs, where the main global retinoblastoma burden lies, presented at an older age with more advanced disease and demonstrated a smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, likely because many do not reach a childbearing age. Given that retinoblastoma is curable, these data are concerning and mandate intervention at national and international levels. Further studies are needed to investigate factors, other than age at presentation, that may be associated with advanced disease in LMICs