Investigating pricing strategies of hotel rooms in city centre: a case study

In this article, the pricing strategies among hotel rooms dwelling in the city centre are investigated. A sample of 25 hotels with star ratings from 2 to 4 are selected, all situated in the heart of Georgetown, Penang. The primary data is collected, in which hotel room prices were observed for December 2018 through online travel operator, agoda.com platform. A comparative study of four forecasting methods, i.e. simple moving average, adaptive response rate exponential smoothing and multiplicative decomposition method were used to investigate the patterns of pricing strategies for these hotel rooms, with their accuracies being measured. The findings revealed that the average pricing of the room is at its peak before the public holiday, with the seasonal pattern being present, in which the prices are higher on Fridays weekly. Room prices for a hotel with higher star rating were also observed to be more sensitive to holiday effects as opposed to the hotel with a lower star rating

A Validated Smartphone-Based Assessment of Gait and Gait Variability in Parkinson’s Disease

Background: A well-established connection exists between increased gait variability and greater fall likelihood in Parkinson’s disease (PD); however, a portable, validated means of quantifying gait variability (and testing the efficacy of any intervention) remains lacking. Furthermore, although rhythmic auditory cueing continues to receive attention as a promising gait therapy for PD, its widespread delivery remains bottlenecked. The present paper describes a smartphone-based mobile application (“SmartMOVE”) to address both needs. Methods: The accuracy of smartphone-based gait analysis (utilizing the smartphone’s built-in tri-axial accelerometer and gyroscope to calculate successive step times and step lengths) was validated against two heel contact–based measurement devices: heel-mounted footswitch sensors (to capture step times) and an instrumented pressure sensor mat (to capture step lengths). 12 PD patients and 12 age-matched healthy controls walked along a 26-m path during self-paced and metronome-cued conditions, with all three devices recording simultaneously. Results: Four outcome measures of gait and gait variability were calculated. Mixed-factorial analysis of variance revealed several instances in which between-group differences (e.g., increased gait variability in PD patients relative to healthy controls) yielded medium-to-large effect sizes (eta-squared values), and cueing-mediated changes (e.g., decreased gait variability when PD patients walked with auditory cues) yielded small-to-medium effect sizes—while at the same time, device-related measurement error yielded small-to-negligible effect sizes. Conclusion: These findings highlight specific opportunities for smartphone-based gait analysis to serve as an alternative to conventional gait analysis methods (e.g., footswitch systems or sensor-embedded walkways), particularly when those methods are cost-prohibitive, cumbersome, or inconvenient

Factors associated with nursing home placement of all patients admitted for inpatient rehabilitation in Singapore community hospitals from 1996 to 2005: A disease stratified analysis

10.1371/journal.pone.0082697PLoS ONE812-POLN

Neural network control of a rehabilitation robot by state and output feedback

In this paper, neural network control is presented for a rehabilitation robot with unknown system dynamics. To deal with the system uncertainties and improve the system robustness, adaptive neural networks are used to approximate the unknown model of the robot and adapt interactions between the robot and the patient. Both full state feedback control and output feedback control are considered in this paper. With the proposed control, uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed loop system is achieved in the context of Lyapunov’s stability theory and its associated techniques. The state of the system is proven to converge to a small neighborhood of zero by appropriately choosing design parameters. Extensive simulations for a rehabilitation robot with constraints are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control

Experiences of participating in a vocational rehabilitation program in Singapore

10.1080/09638288.2022.2159076Disability and Rehabilitation461139-14

The use of virtual reality-based therapy to augment poststroke upper limb recovery

SINGAPORE MEDICAL JOURNAL567127-13

A Pilot Project of Early Integrated Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation in Singapore

Objective. Document acute neurosurgical and rehabilitation parameters of patients of all traumatic brain injury (TBI) severities and determine whether early screening along with very early integrated TBI rehabilitation changes functional outcomes. Methods. Prospective study involving all patients with TBI admitted to a neurosurgical department of a tertiary hospital. They were assessed within 72 hours of admission by the rehabilitation team and received twice weekly rehabilitation reviews. Patients with further rehabilitation needs were then transferred to the attached acute inpatient TBI rehabilitation unit (TREATS) and their functional outcomes were compared against a historical group of patients. Demographic variables, acute neurosurgical characteristics, medical complications, and rehabilitation outcomes were recorded. Results. There were 298 patients screened with an average age of 61.8±19.1 years. The most common etiology was falls (77.5%). Most patients were discharged home directly (67.4%) and 22.8% of patients were in TREATS. The TREATS group functionally improved (P<0.001). Regression analysis showed by the intervention of TREATS, that there was a statistically significant FIM functional gain of 18.445 points (95% CI −30.388 to −0.6502, P=0.03). Conclusion. Our study demonstrated important epidemiological data on an unselected cohort of patients with TBI in Singapore and functional improvement in patients who further received inpatient rehabilitation