Lessons on Collecting Data from Autistic Children Using Wrist-Worn Sensors

Autism is a diverse neurodevelopmental condition that has a hugely varying impact of the lives of autistic people. It is only in the last decades that a greater understanding and public awareness of the autism spectrum has come about, in-part thanks to a growing body of research into the condition. Wearable technology offers great promise in furthering autism research by providing an ability to do detailed behavioral analysis in real-life settings, such as in schools, with minimal intrusion. Such work is particularly crucial in exploring behaviours of those with complex needs and intellectual disabilities, a group who traditionally have been under-served. To achieve this there is a need for wearables that are both practical and acceptable to the individuals being studied. This paper presents our findings from a human-centred design approach to developing and deploying wrist-worn sensors among a diverse population of 16 autistic and 12 neurotypical children over a period of several months. Findings and recommendations from this work highlight the need to take both sensory factors and emotional dysregulation into account when designing wearables for autism. Individual aesthetic and social considerations are particularly important for older children. Equally, a period of sensor desensitisation is necessary when working among those with more complex needs

Comprehensive geriatric assessment in men aged 70 years or older with localised prostate cancer undergoing radical radiotherapy

Aims Treatment decisions for men aged 70 years or over with localised prostate cancer need to take into account the risk of death from competing causes and fitness for the proposed treatment. Objective assessments such as those included in a comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) might help to inform the decision-making process. The aim of this study was to describe the CGA scores of a cohort of older men with prostate cancer, evaluate potential screening tools in this population and assess whether any CGA component predicts significant acute radiotherapy toxicity. Materials and methods This was a prospective cohort study undertaking pretreatment CGA, Vulnerable Elders Survey (VES-13) and G8 assessment in patients aged 70 years and over with localised prostate cancer planned to undergo radical external beam radiotherapy. Results In total, 178 participants were recruited over a 3 year period and underwent a CGA. Fifty-five (30.1%) participants were defined as having health needs identified by their CGA. Both VES-13 and G8 screening tools showed a statistically significant association with CGA needs (P < 0.001 and X2 = 15.02, P < 0.001, respectively), but their sensitivity was disappointing. There was no association between a CGA (or its components) and significant acute radiotherapy toxicity. Conclusions Many older men with localised prostate cancer are vulnerable according to a CGA. The screening tools evaluated were not sufficiently sensitive to identify this group. CGA outcome does not predict for significant acute radiotherapy toxicity

Guessing imagined and live chance events: adults behave like children with live events

An established finding is that adults prefer to guess before rather than after a chance event has happened. This is interpreted in terms of aversion to guessing when relatively incompetent: After throwing, the fall could be known. Adults (N=71, mean age 18;11, N=28, mean age 48;0) showed this preference with imagined die-throwing as in the published studies. With live die-throwing, children (N=64, aged 6 and 8 years; N=50, aged 5 and 6 years) and 15-year-olds (N=93, 46) showed the opposite preference, as did 17 adults. Seventeen-year-olds (N=82) were more likely to prefer to guess after throwing with live rather than imagined die-throwing. Reliance on imagined situations in the literature on decision-making under uncertainty ignores the possibility that adults imagine inaccurately how they would really feel: After a real die has been thrown, adults, like children, may feel there is less ambiguity about the outcome

Redes e parcerias na indústria têxtil e de vestuário em Portugal

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia IndustrialA inovação é o pilar de crescimento de uma organização, e cada vez mais percebida como uma obrigatoriedade continua e não apenas uma exigência do cliente, pelo facto da realização de atividades de inovação, através do desenvolvimento de novos produtos e processos, ou da melhoria dos já existentes, proporcionar às empresas vantagens competitivas. Também é amplamente assumido que não há inovação sem novo conhecimento, sendo este um recurso de extrema importância na economia. Ao conhecimento está associada a aprendizagem, que é um processo predominantemente interativo. Como tal, a inovação não deve ser vista como o produto de um único agente, mas sim como o resultado da interação entre vários parceiros, quer institucionais quer organizacionais. Este projeto de investigação pretende contribuir para a discussão da temática da inovação, tendo como objetivo perceber o funcionamento da rede de inovação na Indústria Têxtil e de Vestuário em Portugal (ITVP), constituída pelos seguintes parceiros: (1) clientes; (2) fornecedores; (3) centros tecnológicos; (4) associações industriais; (5) organizações de capital financeiro; (6) universidades; e (7) centros de investigação. Para tal utilizou-se um questionário que foi respondido por 90 empresas da ITVP. Constatou-se, que independentemente da dimensão da empresa, o tipo de inovação mais realizada é a inovação de produto, seguindo-se a inovação de processo, a inovação organizacional e a inovação de marketing. Ao analisar os parceiros de inovação da ITVP, os resultados sugerem que os mais frequentes são os clientes, seguidos pelos fornecedores de matérias-primas e fornecedores de equipamentos e maquinaria. Os parceiros de inovação menos frequentes são as universidades, os centros de investigação e as organizações de capital financeiro. Ao considerar o efeito da dimensão da empresa, os resultados indicaram que as grandes empresas tendem a colaborar mais frequentemente com os diferentes parceiros de inovação do que as pequenas empresas. Também é possível constatar que as grandes empresas colaboram mais frequentemente com centros de investigação, universidades, organizações de capital financeiro, associações industriais e concorrentes. Por sua vez, as pequenas empresas relacionam-se essencialmente com clientes e fornecedores.Innovation is the growth pillar of an organization, and increasingly perceived as a continuing obligation and not just a requirement of the customer, through the performance of innovation activities, through the development of new products and processes, or through the improvement of already existing, provide companies with competitive advantages. It is also widely assumed that there is no innovation without new knowledge, and this is an extremely important resource in the economy. Knowledge is associated with learning, which is a predominantly interactive process. As such, innovation should not be seen as the product of a single agent, but as the result of the interaction between various partners, both institutional and organizational. This research project aims to contribute to the discussion of the innovation theme, aiming to understand the operation of the innovation network in the Textile and Clothing Industry in Portugal (ITVP), made up of the following partners: (1) customers; (2) suppliers; (3) technology centers; (4) industrial associations; (5) financial capital organizations; (6) universities; and (7) research centers. For this purpose a questionnaire was used, which was answered by 90 ITVP companies. It was found that, regardless of the size of the company, the most innovated type of innovation is product innovation, followed by process innovation, organizational innovation and marketing innovation. When analyzing ITVP's innovation partners, the results suggest that customers are the most frequent, followed by suppliers of raw materials and suppliers of equipment and machinery. Less frequent innovation partners are universities, research centers and financial capital organizations. When considering the effect of company size, the results indicated that large firms tend to collaborate more frequently with different innovation partners than small firms. It is also possible to see that large companies collaborate more frequently with research centers, universities, financial capital organizations, industrial associations and competitors. In turn, small businesses are essentially related to customers and suppliers

Low-Intrusion Techniques and Sensitive Information Management for Warhead Counting and Verification: FY2012 Annual Report

Progress in the second year of this project is described by the series of technical reports and manuscripts that make up the content of this report. These documents summarize successes in our goals to develop our robust image-hash templating and material-discrimination techniques and apply them to test image data

A Hexagonal Theory of Flavor

We construct a supersymmetric theory of flavor based on the discrete gauge group (D_6)^2, where D_6 describes the symmetry of a regular hexagon under proper rotations in three dimensions. The representation structure of the group allows one to distinguish the third from the lighter two generations of matter fields, so that in the symmetry limit only the top quark Yukawa coupling is allowed and scalar superpartners of the first two generations are degenerate. Light fermion Yukawa couplings arise from a sequential breaking of the flavor symmetry, and supersymmetric flavor-changing processes remain adequately suppressed. We contrast our model with others based on non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries described in the literature, and discuss the challenges in constructing more minimal flavor models based on this approach.Comment: 19 pages, ReVTeX, 1 eps figur

Exploring pig trade patterns to inform the design of risk-based disease surveillance and control strategies

An understanding of the patterns of animal contact networks provides essential information for the design of risk-based animal disease surveillance and control strategies. This study characterises pig movements throughout England and Wales between 2009 and 2013 with a view to characterising spatial and temporal patterns, network topology and trade communities. Data were extracted from the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA)’s RADAR (Rapid Analysis and Detection of Animal-related Risks) database, and analysed using descriptive and network approaches. A total of 61,937,855 pigs were moved through 872,493 movements of batches in England and Wales during the 5-year study period. Results show that the network exhibited scale-free and small-world topologies, indicating the potential for diseases to quickly spread within the pig industry. The findings also provide suggestions for how risk-based surveillance strategies could be optimised in the country by taking account of highly connected holdings, geographical regions and time periods with the greatest number of movements and pigs moved, as these are likely to be at higher risk for disease introduction. This study is also the first attempt to identify trade communities in the country, information which could be used to facilitate the pig trade and maintain disease-free status across the country in the event of an outbreak

On Self-Dual Gravity I

(One typo corrected and one incorrect statement removed. Extra details on conserved quantities and symmetry algebras added).Comment: 17 pages, Latex, DAMTP-R92/4

Maximal Neutrino Mixing from a Minimal Flavor Symmetry

We study a number of models, based on a non-Abelian discrete group, that successfully reproduce the simple and predictive Yukawa textures usually associated with U(2) theories of flavor. These models allow for solutions to the solar and atmospheric neutrino problems that do not require altering successful predictions for the charged fermions or introducing sterile neutrinos. Although Yukawa matrices are hierarchical in the models we consider, the mixing between second- and third-generation neutrinos is naturally large. We first present a quantitative analysis of a minimal model proposed in earlier work, consisting of a global fit to fermion masses and mixing angles, including the most important renormalization group effects. We then propose two new variant models: The first reproduces all important features of the SU(5)xU(2) unified theory with neither SU(5) nor U(2). The second demonstrates that discrete subgroups of SU(2) can be used in constructing viable supersymmetric theories of flavor without scalar universality even though SU(2) by itself cannot.Comment: 34 pages LaTeX, 1 eps figure, minor revisions and references adde