Off-line evaluation of indoor positioning systems in different scenarios: the experiences from IPIN 2020 competition

Every year, for ten years now, the IPIN competition has aimed at evaluating real-world indoor localisation systems by testing them in a realistic environment, with realistic movement, using the EvAAL framework. The competition provided a unique overview of the state-of-the-art of systems, technologies, and methods for indoor positioning and navigation purposes. Through fair comparison of the performance achieved by each system, the competition was able to identify the most promising approaches and to pinpoint the most critical working conditions. In 2020, the competition included 5 diverse off-site off-site Tracks, each resembling real use cases and challenges for indoor positioning. The results in terms of participation and accuracy of the proposed systems have been encouraging. The best performing competitors obtained a third quartile of error of 1 m for the Smartphone Track and 0.5 m for the Foot-mounted IMU Track. While not running on physical systems, but only as algorithms, these results represent impressive achievements.Track 3 organizers were supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Grant 813278 (A-WEAR: A network for dynamic WEarable Applications with pRivacy constraints), MICROCEBUS (MICINN, ref. RTI2018-095168-B-C55, MCIU/AEI/FEDER UE), INSIGNIA (MICINN ref. PTQ2018-009981), and REPNIN+ (MICINN, ref. TEC2017-90808-REDT). We would like to thanks the UJI’s Library managers and employees for their support while collecting the required datasets for Track 3. Track 5 organizers were supported by JST-OPERA Program, Japan, under Grant JPMJOP1612. Track 7 organizers were supported by the Bavarian Ministry for Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology through the Center for Analytics-Data-Applications (ADA-Center) within the framework of “BAYERN DIGITAL II. ” Team UMinho (Track 3) was supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope under Grant UIDB/00319/2020, and the Ph.D. Fellowship under Grant PD/BD/137401/2018. Team YAI (Track 3) was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan under Grant MOST 109-2221-E-197-026. Team Indora (Track 3) was supported in part by the Slovak Grant Agency, Ministry of Education and Academy of Science, Slovakia, under Grant 1/0177/21, and in part by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract APVV-15-0091. Team TJU (Track 3) was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61771338 and in part by the Tianjin Research Funding under Grant 18ZXRHSY00190. Team Next-Newbie Reckoners (Track 3) were supported by the Singapore Government through the Industry Alignment Fund—Industry Collaboration Projects Grant. This research was conducted at Singtel Cognitive and Artificial Intelligence Lab for Enterprises (SCALE@NTU), which is a collaboration between Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Team KawaguchiLab (Track 5) was supported by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant JP17H01762. Team WHU&AutoNavi (Track 6) was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2016YFB0502202. Team YAI (Tracks 6 and 7) was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan under Grant MOST 110-2634-F-155-001

Off-Line Evaluation of Indoor Positioning Systems in Different Scenarios: The Experiences From IPIN 2020 Competition

Every year, for ten years now, the IPIN competition has aimed at evaluating real-world indoor localisation systems by testing them in a realistic environment, with realistic movement, using the EvAAL framework. The competition provided a unique overview of the state-of-the-art of systems, technologies, and methods for indoor positioning and navigation purposes. Through fair comparison of the performance achieved by each system, the competition was able to identify the most promising approaches and to pinpoint the most critical working conditions. In 2020, the competition included 5 diverse off-site off-site Tracks, each resembling real use cases and challenges for indoor positioning. The results in terms of participation and accuracy of the proposed systems have been encouraging. The best performing competitors obtained a third quartile of error of 1 m for the Smartphone Track and 0.5 m for the Foot-mounted IMU Track. While not running on physical systems, but only as algorithms, these results represent impressive achievements.Track 3 organizers were supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Grant 813278 (A-WEAR: A network for dynamic WEarable Applications with pRivacy constraints), MICROCEBUS (MICINN, ref. RTI2018-095168-B-C55, MCIU/AEI/FEDER UE), INSIGNIA (MICINN ref. PTQ2018-009981), and REPNIN+ (MICINN, ref. TEC2017-90808-REDT). We would like to thanks the UJI’s Library managers and employees for their support while collecting the required datasets for Track 3. Track 5 organizers were supported by JST-OPERA Program, Japan, under Grant JPMJOP1612. Track 7 organizers were supported by the Bavarian Ministry for Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology through the Center for Analytics-Data-Applications (ADA-Center) within the framework of “BAYERN DIGITAL II. ” Team UMinho (Track 3) was supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope under Grant UIDB/00319/2020, and the Ph.D. Fellowship under Grant PD/BD/137401/2018. Team YAI (Track 3) was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan under Grant MOST 109-2221-E-197-026. Team Indora (Track 3) was supported in part by the Slovak Grant Agency, Ministry of Education and Academy of Science, Slovakia, under Grant 1/0177/21, and in part by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract APVV-15-0091. Team TJU (Track 3) was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61771338 and in part by the Tianjin Research Funding under Grant 18ZXRHSY00190. Team Next-Newbie Reckoners (Track 3) were supported by the Singapore Government through the Industry Alignment Fund—Industry Collaboration Projects Grant. This research was conducted at Singtel Cognitive and Artificial Intelligence Lab for Enterprises (SCALE@NTU), which is a collaboration between Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Team KawaguchiLab (Track 5) was supported by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant JP17H01762. Team WHU&AutoNavi (Track 6) was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2016YFB0502202. Team YAI (Tracks 6 and 7) was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan under Grant MOST 110-2634-F-155-001.Peer reviewe

Effect of Long-Term Benzodiazepines for Chronic Insomnia on Cognitive Function and Waking Electroencephalography: A Case-Control Study

Objective The relationship between benzodiazepine use and cognitive decline in insomnia patients has been reported, but still conflicting. Thus, we tried to determine whether long-term exposure of benzodiazepine might be associated with changes of cognition and electroencephalography (EEG) findings in patients with chronic insomnia. Methods Insomniacs using benzodiazepines (n=29), drug-free insomniacs (n=27), and age- and sex-matched controls (n=28) were recruited. Neurocognitive function tested with Korean version of the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Packet Neuropsychological Assessment Battery, quantitative EEG in awake state, and information of benzodiazepine usage were obtained. Results Drug-free insomniacs reported more severe symptoms than insomniacs using benzodiazepine (p<0.001). Insomniacs using benzodiazepine showed a decrease of executive function in Trail Making Test A than drug-free insomniacs and controls (0.73 +/- 0.66 vs. 1.27 +/- 0.38 vs. 1.09 +/- 0.47, p<0.001) and in categorical fluency than drug-free insomniacs (-0.01 +/- 0.99 vs. 1.26 +/- 0.97, p=0.002). However, such decrease of executive function was not proportional to daily dose or cumulative dose of benzodiazepine. The EEG was not significantly different between insomniacs using benzodiazepine and drug-free insomniacs, while EEG of insomniacs showed low relative theta power in frontal and parietal regions but high relative beta power in frontal region than that of controls. Conclusion Benzodiazepine users with chronic insomnia showed an impairment of executive function compared to drug-free insomniacs and controls although they showed relatively decreased severity of insomnia symptoms. Chronic insomniacs showed a hyper-arousal manifestation in front-parietal region of brain regardless of benzodiazepine exposure.N

Effects of Melatonin-Rich Milk on Mild Insomnia Symptoms

Background and Objective Insomnia symptoms are common in the general population. This study evaluated the effects of melatonin-rich milk, which contains 10 times more melatonin than usual milk, on insomnia symptoms. Methods Double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial was performed. A total of 91 subjects aged 21−69 years with mild insomnia symptoms were recruited from the community. All the subjects underwent baseline studies for insomnia severity index, Pittsburgh sleep questionnaire index, Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), Beck depression inventory and a sleep satisfaction scale (range 1−10). For two weeks, the subjects consumed a cup of either melatonin-rich milk or usual milk before going to sleep. Two weeks later, they completed the same questionnaires used in the baseline. Changes in the questionnaire scores for each group were calculated, after which we compared the differences between the two groups. Results Among 91 subjects (male 18, female 73, age 42.1 ± 14.1 years), 44 subjects drank the melatonin-rich milk and 47 drank the usual milk. There was no statistical difference in demographic variables between the two groups. Subjects consuming the melatonin-rich milk reported an improvement in sleep satisfaction scale than the usual milk group (p = 0.023), with significant improvement observed in the subjects aged 20−30 years (p = 0.048). In the ESS Scale, the subjects who had daytime sleepiness showed significant improvement difference between the two groups (p = 0.014), especially in the 20−30 years age group (p = 0.031). Conclusion sMelatonin-rich milk could be an easy and beneficial regimen for young people suffering from mild insomnia, by preventing the development of chronic insomnia

Signature of cytokines and angiogenic factors (CAFs) defines a clinically distinct subgroup of gastric cancer

Background Little is known about cytokine and angiogenic factors (CAFs) in gastric cancer (GC) in terms of tumor classification and prognostic value. Here, we aimed to correlate CAF signature with overall survival (OS) in GC. We measured pretreatment serum levels of 52 kinds of CAFs in 68 GC patients who were treated with fluoropyrimidine and platinum combination chemotherapy using multiplex bead immunoassays and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. We evaluated correlations between CAF levels and pathological features and OS. Three distinct patient groups were identified: one with high levels of proangiogenic factors, another with high levels of proinflammatory factors, and the other with high levels of both factors. Eleven CAFs [interleukin (IL)-2 receptor-alpha, growth-regulated alpha protein, hepatocyte growth factor, macrophage colony-stimulating factor, stromal cell-derived factor, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, interferon-gamma, vascular endothelial growth factor, and osteopontin] were independently correlated with poor OS. Clustering analysis of these 11 CAFs revealed distinct high and low 11-CAF signature groups. High 11-CAF signature was associated with shorter OS (10.1 vs. 17.9 months, p = 0.026) along with poor performance status, and the presence of signet ring cell components in multivariate analysis of OS (HR 1.76, p = 0.029). The patients' traditional clinicopathological characteristics were not significantly different between the high and low 11-CAF signature groups. Serum CAF profiling differentiated GC patient groups. A high 11-CAF signature could identify GC patients with a poor prognosis when treated with standard chemotherapy who need urgent new treatment strategies

The distinct signatures of VEGF and soluble VEGFR2 increase prognostic implication in gastric cancer

Recently, an anti-angiogenic strategy to treat gastric cancer (GC) has been successful with the use of ramucirumab. The comprehensive network of VEGF, soluble VEGF receptor-2 (sVEGFR2) and cytokines and other angiogenic factors (CAF) in GC has not been reported. We aimed to reveal the CAF signature associated with VEGF and sVEGFR2, and to explore their prognostic implication in GC. We measured pretreatment serum levels of 52 CAFs, including VEGF and sVEGFR2, using multiplex bead immunoassays and ELISA, in 70 GC patients treated with palliative chemotherapy. Linear regression analysis for correlating CAFs with VEGF and sVEGFR2, and survival analysis were performed. Results from the current analysis showed the VEGF signature was shown to be associated with seven CAFs (IL-7, IL-12p70, IL-2Ra, IL-10, stem cell factor, FGF2b, IL-3). The sVEGFR2 signature was associated with IL-4 and PDGFb. VEGF and sVEGFR2 showed no association with each other. High VEGF was associated with worse OS (11.2 months, high-VEGF versus 16.7 months, low-VEGF; P = 0.061). However, among patients with high-sVEGFR2, OS was not different according to VEGF (12.1 months, high-VEGF versus 15.1 months, low-VEGF; P = 0.546). In patients with low-sVEGFR2, OS was significantly different according VEGF (10.9 months, high-VEGF versus 16.8 months, low-VEGF, P = 0.036). In multivariate analysis, a high VEGF/sVEGFR2 ratio was significantly correlated with worse OS (HR 1.78 [95% CI 1.08-2.94], P = 0.024). In conclusion, VEGF and sVEGFR2 had distinct CAF signatures in GC. Consideration of both VEGF and sVEGFR2 confers more accurate prognostic implication compared with VEGF alone in GC

Prognostic implication of antitumor immunity measured by the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and serum cytokines and angiogenic factors in gastric cancer

The neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is associated with a poor prognosis in many cancers but the biological mechanisms involved are unknown. Since cytokines and angiogenic factors (CAFs) are reflected by various immune responses, we analyzed the association between the NLR and CAFs and their prognostic implications in gastric cancer (GC). Of 745 GC patients who were enrolled in NLR analysis, 70 underwent NLR and CAF association analyses. Pretreatment serum levels of 52 CAFs were measured by means of multiplex bead immunoassays and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Linear regression analysis and survival analysis of the NLR with each CAF were performed. Metastatic organ numbers and carbohydrate antigen 19-9 levels were significantly higher in patients with a high NLR [greater than 2.42 (median): P = 0.047 and P < 0.001 respectively]. The overall survival was significantly worse in the high NLR group (17.8 months vs 11.2 months, P < 0.001). In CAF analysis, osteopontin (R (2) = 0.337, P < 0.001) and interleukin-6 (R (2) = 0.141, P = 0.001) were significantly associated with the NLR. Stromal-cell-derived factor 1 (SDF-1) was a significant poor prognostic factor independently of the NLR. Consideration of both the NLR and SDF-1 divided patient groups with different overall survival (both low, 21.0 months; either high, 15.8 months; both high, 8.2 months). The NLR is a significant poor prognostic factor in advanced GC. The NLR is mainly associated with osteopontin and interleukin-6. Besides the NLR, SDF-1 is an independent poor prognostic factor in GC. Consideration of both the NLR and SDF-1 might give insights into antitumor immunity in GC

Table_1_Validation of the Grief Support in Healthcare Scale among frontline nursing professionals working in COVID-19 inpatient wards in Korea.docx

IntroductionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) have been exposed to higher levels of anxiety and psychological stress than the general population. Nurses who cared for COVID patients could not avoid repeated mourning as they witnessed the deaths of their patients. Therefore, tools are needed to evaluate whether there is adequate support for the grieving process of HCWs in both qualitative and quantitative manners.MethodsData from 229 nurses who witnessed the deaths of COVID-19 inpatients were analyzed using an online survey of nurses working in three tertiary hospitals. Factor analysis was conducted to validate the 10-item Korean version of Grief Support in Healthcare Scale (GSHCS). Stress and Anxiety to Viral Epidemics-9 was used to measure stress and anxiety caused by coronavirus, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 was used to measure overall anxiety, and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 was used for depression. Convergent validity correlation analysis was also performed with GSHCS.ResultsThe two-factor model showed a good fit for the 10-item GSHCS (χ2 = 35.233, df = 34, p = 0.410, CFI = 0.999, TLI = 0.990, RMSEA = 0.013, SRMR = 0.064). Cronbach’s alpha is 0.918 and McDonald’s omega is 0.913, suggesting that the 10-item version of the GSHCS is reliable for determining psychometric properties.ConclusionAccording to this study, the 10-item Korean version of the GSHCS is a reliable and valid measure of psychological support for grief among frontline nursing professionals who have witnessed the deaths of patients they cared for while working in COVID-19 inpatient wards. A two-factor model of the GSHCS has a good model fit and good convergent validity with other rating scales that measure viral anxiety, depression, and general anxiety.</p