ADAPT: Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT

People with asthma have heterogeneous triggers and symptoms, which they need to be aware of in order to implement the strategies to manage their condition. Context-aware reasoning has the potential to provide the personalisation that is required to address the heterogeneity of asthma by helping people to define the information that is relevant considering the characteristics of their condition and delivering services based on this information. This research work proposes the Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT (ADAPT), whose aim is to facilitate the creation of solutions allowing the required customisation to address the heterogeneity of asthma. ADAPT is the result of the constant interaction with people affected by asthma throughout the research project, which was possible to achieve thanks to the collaboration formed with the Centre for Applied Research of Asthma UK. ADAPT context dimensions facilitate the development of preventive and reactive features that can be configured depending on the characteristics of the person with asthma. The approach also provides support to people not knowing their triggers through case-based reasoning and includes virtual assistant as a complementing technology supporting asthma management. ADAPT is validated by people with asthma, carers and experts in respiratory conditions, who evaluated a mobile application that was built based on the approach

Context-aware system for cardiac condition monitoring and management: a survey

Health monitoring assists physicians in the decision-making process, which in turn, improves quality of life. As technology advances, the usage and applications of context-aware systems continue to spread across different areas in patient monitoring and disease management. It provides a platform for healthcare professionals to assess the health status of patients in their care using multiple relevant parameters. In this survey, we consider context-aware systems proposed by researchers for health monitoring and management. More specifically, we investigate different technologies and techniques used for cardiac condition monitoring and management. This paper also propose "mCardiac", an enhanced context-aware decision support system for cardiac condition monitoring and management during rehabilitation

Training on prevention of violence against women in the medical curriculum at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Objectives. To determine the knowledge and skills of final-year medical students in managing victims of violence against women (VAW), and to describe the extent to which VAW is included in the undergraduate curriculum of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan.Method. A mixed-method study design was used that collected qualitative data through a review of curriculum documents and interviews of departmental heads (or their representatives) of 6 departments in the college. A semi-structured, self-administered questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from 109 final-year students.Results. The response rate was 85.1% and respondents’ mean age was 25.2±3.1 years. Physical, sexual, psychological and economic abuse was found by 73.8%, 72.6%, 54.8% and 44.0% respectively, of the students. Most students (77.4%) felt it was part of their duty to ask patients about abuse. Students with previous training about violence were more likely to be knowledgeable (odds ratio (OR) 1.64; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.61 - 4.42) and skilled (OR 1.27; 95% CI 0.53 - 3.05). Men had better knowledge and skills than women. VAW was not included as a topic in the curriculum.Conclusion. Most students were willing to ask patients about abuse but lacked the fundamental knowledge and skills to do so. Faculty at the college agreed to review the curriculum to improve students’ knowledge and management skills regarding VAW

Context-aware solutions for asthma condition management: a survey

The evolution of information technology has allowed the development of ubiquitous, user-centred, and context-aware solutions. This article considers existing context-aware systems supporting asthma management with the aim of describing their main benefits and opportunities for improvement. To achieve this, the main concepts related to asthma and context awareness are explained before describing and analysing the existing context-aware systems aiding asthma. The survey shows that the concept of personalisation is the key when developing context-aware solutions supporting asthma management because of the high level of heterogeneity of this condition. Hence, the benefits and challenges of context-aware systems supporting asthma management are strongly linked to contextual Just-In-Time information of internal and external factors related to a person and the heterogeneity it represents

Symmetry breaking in MAST plasma turbulence due to toroidal flow shear

The flow shear associated with the differential toroidal rotation of tokamak plasmas breaks an underlying symmetry of the turbulent fluctuations imposed by the up-down symmetry of the magnetic equilibrium. Using experimental Beam-Emission-Spectroscopy (BES) measurements and gyrokinetic simulations, this symmetry breaking in ion-scale turbulence in MAST is shown to manifest itself as a tilt of the spatial correlation function and a finite skew in the distribution of the fluctuating density field. The tilt is a statistical expression of the "shearing" of the turbulent structures by the mean flow. The skewness of the distribution is related to the emergence of long-lived density structures in sheared, near-marginal plasma turbulence. The extent to which these effects are pronounced is argued (with the aid of the simulations) to depend on the distance from the nonlinear stability threshold. Away from the threshold, the symmetry is effectively restored

A Queueing Analysis of Hashing With Lazy Deletion

Hashing with lazy deletion is a simple method for maintaining a dynamic dictionary: items are inserted and sought as usual in a separate-chaining hash table; however, items that no longer need to be in the data structure remain until a later insertion operation stumbles on them and removes them from the table. Because hashing with lazy deletion does not delete items as soon as possible, it keeps more items in the dictionary than methods that use more careful deletion strategies. On the other hand, its space overhead is much smaller than those more careful methods, so if the number of extra items is not too large, hashing with lazy deletion can be a practical algorithm when space is scarce. In this paper, we analyze the expected amount of excess space used by hashing with lazy deletion

Chenin blanc Wine Volatiles and the Intensity of a Guava-like Flavour

A guava-like flavour occurring in some South African Chenin blanc and Colombard dry white wines was investigated. Headspace volatiles of some of these wines, as well as those of fresh guava fruits, were analysed by means of a gas chromatograph equipped with a "sniffer-detector". In contrast to the headspace concentrate of guava fruits, no single fraction with a typical guava flavour was found in the wines analysed. The pattern recognition system "ARTHUR" was therefore used to investigate relationships between the more important wine volatiles and the intensity of a guava-like flavour of a set of wines originating from the same Chenin blanc must. Sensory scores for this flavour were used in both category and continuous property analysis in each case. Category and correlation to property plots were used to elucidate the results. Several promising variables and ratios between variables were singled out for further investigation, notably ethyl butyrate and the ratios ethyl butyrate/ethyl decanoate and ethyl butyrate/ethyl octanoate