Design of a Virtual Reality-based Framework for Supporting the Work Reintegration of Wheelchair Users

Accidents at work often lead the involved people to severe impairments, which can seriously compromise their life and their work activities. Various studies have proven that, for disabled people, being employed contributes to a better quality of life, thus it is important to give them the opportunity to continue their profes-sional career. This paper presents a framework aimed at supporting the training and the work-reintegration of people that, after an accident, are forced to use a wheelchair. In the proposed work, the Virtual Reality is the leading technology for allowing the wheelchair users to be trained in simulated environments where, in safe conditions, they become aware of their capabilities, while facing different challenging situations. More-over, the behaviour of the users is tracked during the whole training session for monitoring, processing and assessing, through semantic models, their functional level and the jobs that are still suitable for them

Roomfort: An ontology-based comfort management application for hotels

Business traveling is attracting growing attention due to the expansion of international markets. This fact calls for an increasing attention of the tourism sector toward the needs of business travellers, who often require services that are different from the ones desired by leisure tourists. The application of smart solutions coming from Context Awareness and Ambient Intelligence aimed at promoting guests' comfort and well-being, also in cases in which they have special needs, represents a promising solution to tackle business travellers' requirements and thus, to increase hotels attractiveness and incomes. In this context, this work introduces RoomFort, a smart comfort management system aimed at enhancing comfort of hotel room guests and leveraging on semantic representations of comfort, environment, and sensors. RoomFort provides a set of domain ontologies to formalize comfort-related metrics and to exploit the automatic reasoning capabilities provided by Semantic Web technologies, while gathering data through a network of sensors to ensure guests are provided with tailored comfort profiles during their stays in the hotel. Particular focus has been placed on visual comfort, since indoor lighting features constitute one of the main factors influencing the two main activities that most business travellers accomplish in their hotel room: working and relaxing

The Smart Home Simulator: a Semantic Mixed-Reality application for domestic environments configuration

This paper introduces the Smart Home Simulator (SHS), a mixed reality application supporting the design and the configuration of the smart objects (SOs) within a domestic environment, with the aim of answering to specific users’ needs. SHS finds its most suitable exploitation in the field of Ambient Assisted Living, providing tailored services to the home dwellers. In particular, it exploits the virtual and mixed reality features, which allow the simulation and testing of different SOs solutions. Smart objects are made interoperable taking advantage of semantic web technologies, which provide a comprehensive overview on the relevant aspects that must be considered to tailor the proposed solution to the end user’s needs, also including his/her health condition. The SHS is useful both during the “static” design phase, during which the Smart Home designer places the various SOs within the domestic environment, and during the “dynamic” design phase, in which the end user can actually test the SOs interaction through a properly simulated virtual scenario. Finally, the paper reports two use cases in order to show the potential of the herein introduced application

An ontology-based framework for a telehealthcare system to foster healthy nutrition and active lifestyle in older adults

In recent years, telehealthcare systems (TSs) have become more and more widespread, as they can contribute to promoting the continuity of care and managing chronic conditions efficiently. Most TSs and nutrition recommendation systems require much information to return appropriate suggestions. This work proposes an ontology-based TS, namely HeNuALs, aimed at fostering a healthy diet and an active lifestyle in older adults with chronic pathologies. The system is built on the formalization of users\u2019 health conditions, which can be obtained by leveraging existing stand-ards. This allows for modeling different pathologies via reusable knowledge, thus limiting the amount of information needed to retrieve nutritional indications from the system. HeNuALs is com-posed of (1) an ontological layer that stores patients and their data, food and its characteristics, and physical activity-related data, enabling the inference a series of suggestions based on the effects of foods and exercises on specific health conditions; (2) two applications that allow both the patient and the clinicians to access the data (with different permissions) stored in the ontological layer; and (3) a series of wearable sensors that can be used to monitor physical exercise (provided by the patient application) and to ensure patients' safety. HeNuALs inferences have been validated considering two different use cases. The system revealed the ability to determine suggestions for healthy, adequate, or unhealthy dishes for a patient with respiratory disease and for a patient with diabetes mellitus. Future work foresees the extension of the HeNuALs knowledge base by exploiting automatic knowledge retrieval approaches and validation of the whole system with target users

Different patterns of presentation and evolution of Non-Determined Leucoencephalopathy (NDLE) in HIV positive subjects.

Background: The introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has significantly modified the pattern of HIV-related neurological diseases and the occurrence of opportunistic infections of the central nervous system (CNS). Among leucoencephalopathies, more and more cases have been reported where no viral agent was involved, being classified as NDLE. Methods: In our prospective study were enrolled HIV positive patients of the HIV Clinic in Pavia from May 2003 to June 2005, either asymptomatic but on HAART for at least 7 years or with neurological symptoms, possibly related to the presence of NDLE, regardless the duration of the infection. A neurological examination and a brain MRI were performed in eligible subjects. Patients presenting white matter lesions at the MRI underwent spinal puncture at baseline ad every six months. CSF was tested for JCV, CMV, HSV-1, HSV-2, EBV, VZV using PCR. NDLE was diagnosed in presence of lesions of white matter without the detection of any infectious cause. Results: 105 subjects were enrolled in the study, 26 of these being symptomatic. Fifteen patients had a positive MRI (2 neurotoxoplasmosis, 1 cryptococcal meningitis, 1lymphoma, Eleven cases of NDLE were identified, M/F ratio 5/6, median age: 41.3 years old, the median CD4 cells count at diagnosis was 324 cells/microl. Nine patients were classified as C3 according to CDC classification, one was B2 and one was A1. Plasma HIV RNA was undetectable in 9 patients, one patient was na\uefve and one was in stop therapy. The MRI lesions were hyperintense in T2 and isointense in T1, there was no perilesional oedema and gadolinium enhancement. The lesions had a heterogeneous distribution, the majority of them were multiple and involved more then one site. During the follow up (median: 20 months) 2 patients had a CNF positive for JCV virus and diagnosed with progressive multifocal leucoencephalopathy (PML). Only one of the nine subjects currently on follow up had a clinical progression of the neurological disease, the others are stable. Conclusions: In our study, 11/26 HIV positive patients with neurological symptoms presented white matter lesions, 9 of them being currently followed for NDLE. At the moment we can\u2019t exclude the possibility of further detection of other PML cases in our NDLE group of patient

Variação da composição química em cultivares de batata durante seu desenvolvimento Variation in the chemical composition of potato tubers of three cultivars during the growing season

Estudou-se no presente trabalho a dinâmica de acúmulo de substâncias de reserva e glicoalcalóides totais, durante o desenvolvimento de tubérculos de três cultivares de batata - Aracy (IAC-2), Itaiquara (IAC-3551) e Teberê (IAC-4489) - criados e selecionados pela Seção de Raízes e Tubérculos do Instituto Agronômico, no ano agrícola 1982/83, em plantio "das águas" (novembro-janeiro). Os resultados obtidos são referentes às amostragens realizadas aos 64, 79 e 111 dias após o plantio (DAP), e mostraram que o cultivar Aracy acumulou maior quantidade de matéria seca, proteínas, cinzas, polissacarídeos totais e açúcares solúveis por tubérculo.<br>In the rain season of 1982-1983 (November-January), it was studied the dynamics of accumulation of reserve substances and total glycoalkaloids in growing tubers of the Brazilian potato cultivars Aracy (IAC-2), Itaiquara (IAC-355 1) and Teberê (IAC-4489). Data are related to three sampling dates, 64, 79 and 111 days after planting (DAP). Tubers of Aracy (IAC-2) had the highest dry matter, protein, ash, total polisacharides and soluble e sugar contenta

A Semantic-Enabled Smart Home for AAL and Continuity of Care

The rise of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies provided the means to enable the smart home (SH), a residence aimed at anticipating and responding to its dwellers\u2019 needs and one of the most promising Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions. However, the massive adoption of monitoring techniques and some shortcomings in the field of security can hinder the adoption of IoT-based SH solutions. In this work, we describe how we have addressed the challenges arising from the fields of AAL and continuity of care, by creating the Smart Human-Centred Living Environment Lab, an innovative prototype of a SH that can address the specificities of each inhabitant. The system on which the SH relies is a knowledge-based system that leverages the semantic representations of relevant concepts and data, thus allowing for the customization of services according to each inhabitant\u2019s needs and preferences, without the need of continuous monitoring. A semantic middleware ensures the semantic interoperability of the information and thus the realization of an IoT-based architecture optimizing the provision of each service. Finally, digital applications and virtual reality-based systems are integrated in the SH to provide support to the activities of daily living and the execution of rehabilitative exercises, in the perspective of continuity of care. The system tries to address the issues of other SHs, in which privacy concerns, stigma, and ageism may hinder the use of innovative technologies in daily life. However, a few issues still remain: among these, the validation of the whole system in terms of users\u2019 acceptance and the possibility of providing such a service on a large scale