Development of “LvL UP”, a smartphone-based, conversational agent-delivered holistic lifestyle intervention for the prevention of non-communicable diseases and common mental disorders

Background: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and common mental disorders (CMDs) are the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Lifestyle interventions via mobile apps and conversational agents present themselves as low-cost, scalable solutions to prevent these conditions. This paper describes the rationale for, and development of, “LvL UP”, a digital lifestyle intervention aimed at preventing NCDs and CMDs.Materials and Methods: A multidisciplinary team led the intervention design process of LvL UP, involving four phases: (i) preliminary research (stakeholder consultations, systematic market reviews), (ii) selecting intervention components and developing the conceptual model, (iii) whiteboarding (prototype development), and (iv) testing and refinement. The Multiphase Optimization Strategy and the UK Medical Research Council framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions were used to guide the intervention development.Results: The first version of LvL UP features a scalable, smartphone-based, and conversational agent-delivered holistic lifestyle intervention built around three pillars: Move More (physical activity), Eat Well (nutrition and healthy eating), and Stress Less (emotional regulation and wellbeing). Intervention components include health literacy and psychoeducational coaching sessions, daily "Life Hacks” (healthy activity suggestions), breathing exercises, and journaling. Engagement components involve motivational interviewing and storytelling to deliver the coaching sessions, as well as progress feedback and gamification. Offline materials are also offered to allow users access to essential intervention content without needing a digital device.Conclusions: The development process of LvL UP led to an evidence-based and user-informed digital health intervention aimed at preventing NCDs and CMDs. LvL UP is designed to be a scalable, engaging, prevention-oriented, holistic intervention for adults at risk of NCDs and CMDs. A feasibility study, and subsequent optimisation and randomised-controlled trials are planned to further refine the intervention and establish effectiveness. The development process described here may prove helpful to other intervention developers

Sustainability in the logistics chain of the foreign trade at the example of Argentina´s beef export

The food industry is more complicated and interweaves become, so that more coordination efforts in the area of the quality and amount of meat exports are necessary. The trade success depends on the as strongly interweaving between the links of the logistics chain are. In the case of the organic meat means to understand the logistic exports process in order to suggest improvements in certain rings of the logistics chain. The cattle is under thrown during the load, traffic, unloading and slaughter in stress factors, so that the animal prosperity and the meat quality are more concerned. As economic consequences one counts important losses on macroeconomic as well as microeconomic levels (plain) (i.e. the cattle breeder). This work presents an overhaul about the animal prosperity during the traffic and the slaughter as well as its connection with amount and quality of the manufactured meat what concern the decision about its exports.The conquest other markets is possible only if the industrial procedure is seen of the point of view of the consumer: what is searched for product; which are the attraction factors and why becomes (or the decision is not met) to ask organic meat from Argentina. The result depends on the production capacity others sectors within de value chain in order to supply products with lasting application of limited resources.Fil: Dichiara, Raul Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales del Sur. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Economía. Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales del Sur; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur; ArgentinaFil: Viceconte, Maria Angelica. Universidad Nacional del Sur; ArgentinaFil: Castro, Nicolás. Universidad Nacional del Sur; Argentin

Building ontologies from folksonomies and linked data: Data structures and Algorithms

We present the data structures and algorithms used in the approach for building domain ontologies from folksonomies and linked data. In this approach we extracts domain terms from folksonomies and enrich them with semantic information from the Linked Open Data cloud. As a result, we obtain a domain ontology that combines the emergent knowledge of social tagging systems with formal knowledge from Ontologies

Design of a bench to allocate accelerometers and gyroscopes on a sailplane

El proyecto consiste en el diseño de unos soportes destinados a llevar acelerómetros y giroscopo en un planeador, con el objeto de poder realizar medidas relacionadas con su movimiento

Unidad de Negocios de Emprendimiento Empresarial Asociación Egresados de Economía de la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada ASECUM

Propuesta para ampliar la oferta de servicios de la Asociación Egresados de Economía de la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada - ASECUM, en beneficio de sus asociados, mediante la creación de la Unidad de Negocios de Emprendimiento Empresarial (UNEE) de apoyo a estudiantes de Economía de la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada y a egresados afiliados a Asecum.Proposal to expand offer services of the Association graduates of Economics of the Militar Nueva Granada University - ASECUM, for the benefit of its partners, through the creation of the business unit of business entrepreneurship (UNEE) of support to students of Economics of the Militar Nueva Granada University and alumni affiliated with Asecum

Active Reflection Absorption for a Three Dimensional Multidirectional Wave Generator

In order to implement an accurate system that allows for absorption of reflected waves impinging to a wave maker (Active Reflection Absorption), it was required to apply a method to estimate properly the direction of arrival of the waves that does it in the fastest way possible. Our wavemaker control system has been prepared to handle an algorithm provided by Bosch-Rexroth where the wave angle estimation is practically locked to a very narrow frequency band (spatial gain-mixer). The system was evaluated with physical tests in a 3D wave basin for different conditions of reflected waves arriving with an angle to the wavemaker front, and acceptable performance has been found for the 3D ARA mode. However, for certain conditions over-compensation or sub-compensation can develop resulting in a poor absorption. This is mainly related to not being able to determine accurately the direction from which the reflected waves travel towards the wavemaker. The present work employed concepts found in the areas of antenna array signal processing and signal propagation, which were applied to this problem. This approach coupled naturally with our wavemaker system since it was prepared with 48 gages that can be employed in an array antenna fashion. A program was codified from an algorithm found in literature to calculate the Direction of Arrival (DOA) of the reflected waves. The focus for the testing of this program was with regular waves. The tests were conducted to validate the program with different angles of incidence and show that for regular waves the program was able to detect accurately the DOA of these in as few as 5 snapshots, with a minimum of 7 gages used as the antenna input. With data obtained directly from the control system of our wavemaker using regular waves, the program was able to determine the DOA. The computational burden of the algorithm is not significant in the case of regular waves. A modification of the program is required to analyze the DOA of reflected irregular waves, which could increase the computational burden. Actual implementation of this program to our control system depends on cooperation with Bosch-Rexroth

Five Challenges for the Semantic Sensor Web

The combination of sensor networks with the Web, web services and database technologies, was named some years ago as the Sensor Web or the Sensor Internet. Most efforts in this area focused on the provision of platforms that could be used to build sensor-based applications more efficiently, considering some of the most important challenges in sensor-based data management and sensor network configuration. The introduction of semantics into these platforms provides the opportunity of going a step forward into the understanding, management and use of sensor-based data sources, and this is a topic being explored by ongoing initiatives. In this paper we go through some of the most relevant challenges of the current Sensor Web, and describe some ongoing work and open opportunities for the introduction of semantics in this context