A smart wearable sensor system for counter-fighting overweight in teenagers

PEGASO is a FP7-funded project whose goal is to develop an ICT and mobile-based platform together with an appropriate strategy to tackle the diffusion of obesity and other lifestyle-related illnesses among teenagers. Indeed, the design of an engaging strategy, leveraging a complementary set of technologies, is the approach proposed by the project to promote the adoption of healthy habits such as active lifestyle and balanced nutrition and to effectively counter-fight the emergence of overweight and obesity in the younger population. A technological key element of such a strategy sees the adoption of wearable sensors to monitor teenagersâ\u80\u99 activities, which is at the basis of developing awareness about the current lifestyle. This paper describes the experience carried out in the framework of the PEGASO project in developing and evaluating wearable monitoring systems addressed to adolescents. The paper describes the methodological approach based on the co-designing of such a wearable system and the main results that, in the first phase, involved a total of 407 adolescents across Europe in a series of focus groups conducted in three countries for the requirements definition phase. Moreover, it describes an evaluation process of signal reliability during the usage of the wearable system. The main results described here are: (a) a prototype of the standardized experimental protocol that has been developed and applied to test signal reliability in smart garments; (b) the requirements definition methodology through a co-design activity and approach to address user requirements and preferences and not only technological specifications. Such co-design approach is able to support a higher system acceptance and usability together with a sustained adoption of the solution with respect to the traditional technology push system development strategy

Role of the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) in the epidemiology of urban visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil

Zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL) is a serious public health problem in several Brazilian cities. Although the proximity of chicken houses is often cited as a risk factor in studies of urban ZVL, the role chickens play in the epidemiology of the disease has not been defined. Chickens attract both male and female sand flies (Lutzomyia longripalpis) but are unable to sustain Leishmania infections, and their presence may exert a zooprophylactic effect. We discuss environmental, physiologic, socioeconomic, and cultural factors related to chicken raising that could influence Le. infantum transmission in Brazilian cities and evaluate whether this practice significantly affects the risk of acquiring ZVL

The City of Care

Three quarters of the European population is concentrated in cities, with urbanization continuing to grow at high speed. In contemporary cities, living is more and more based on “mobile lives”. Young people live a significant evolutionary dynamic phase characterized by increasing both experiences opportunities and uncertainties. Starting from the design of interiors, a reflection on the development of the urban context is needed to understand, encompass and balance the ongoing social transformations and the lifestyle evolution. The overlapping, contamination and fertilization between different architectural typologies and functional solutions as well as new using ways allows the development of a new system called hybrid spaces. The paper investigates the emerging topic of care, highlights its potential relevance for the future generations and outlines the contribution that design, with a specific focus on the interior design approach, can offer to post-industrial society

A didactic experience in designing smart systems for mhealth services

The aim of this paper is to present a didactic experience in designing mobile health systems during a Bachelor Degree class in Industrial Design. The scope is to prove the role of Design in the innovation process and how its approach and methodologies connect research, innovation and technology. As case studies, two projects are presented. In the first one, the students have developed a training suite for figure skating; the second one is related to the development of a system that detects and counts instruments and sterile dressings in the operating suites

Service discovery and composition in body area networks

In pervasive environments, Body Area Networks (BANs) are characterized by the mobility of their users. BANs can continuously interact with each other, thus enabling the provision of new applications and services at runtime. New complex services can be provided by composing simpler services available on neighbouring network nodes. However, since the topology of BANs is continuously changing due to users' movements, it is unfeasible to specify a-priori all possible configurations under which a given complex service can be composed. In order to address this issue, we introduce a two-layered service discovery and composition architecture, that proactively notifies a distributed service directory with changes in service availability. In order to cope with the network mobility and intermittent connectivity, our approach is to cluster nodes in the sensor network based on their connectivity patterns. We use a multi-agent state machine to recognize the availability of complex services and to provide them. Our solution is validated by a prototype implementation of our architecture, by the study of the statistical model of complex services, and by experimental evaluations