1,347 research outputs found
Pro-peasant Resignification of Rurality: Rural University «Paulo Freire»
El medio rural se constituye hoy en día en un espacio de disputa entre diferentes agentes en pugna por sus recursos materiales e ideáticos y por la definición del contenido de la nueva ruralidad, una vez socavadas las bases y criterios tradicionales de la antigua. A su vez, en el contexto de la globalización, aparecen movimientos culturalistas que de manera consciente pugnan por crear identidades y modelos de vida que tengan una cultura como referente. La iniciativa de recuperación de la cultura campesina por parte del Universidad Rural Paulo Freire (URPF) sería uno de estos movimientos, con la Agroecología como referente teórico y con el medio rural español y su población como su problemática base territorial y sociológica para la creación de una nueva ruralidad campesinista. El objetivo del texto es analizar los procesos y herramientas que pone en juego este grupo social para reconstruir y resignificar la identidad campesina y sus prácticas como parte del intento de construcción de un sujeto político.The rural space is currently disputed between different actors who fight for its material and symbolic resources distribution as much as for the definition of rurality, considering that most bases and criterions of the traditional one have already been vanished. In this context, different culturalist movements appear among these actors, who consciously competing for the creation of identities and life styles with a certain culture as referent. Universidad Rural Paulo Freire (URPF) is proposed as one of these culturalist movements. In the way to recuperate the peasant culture, URPF use Agroecology as its theoretical and practical referent to build a new pro-peasant rurality in the spanish rural environment. The aim of the text is to analyze the processes and tools that a social group use to resignify and rebuild peasant identity and its practices as part of the attempt to build a political subject
An Experimental Study on Pitch Compensation in Pedestrian-Protection Systems for Collision Avoidance and Mitigation
This paper describes an improved stereovision system for the anticipated detection of car-to-pedestrian accidents. An improvement of the previous versions of the pedestrian-detection system is achieved by compensation of the camera's pitch angle, since it results in higher accuracy in the location of the ground plane and more accurate depth measurements. The system has been mounted on two different prototype cars, and several real collision-avoidance and collision-mitigation experiments have been carried out in private circuits using actors and dummies, which represents one of the main contributions of this paper. Collision avoidance is carried out by means of deceleration strategies whenever the accident is avoidable. Likewise, collision mitigation is accomplished by triggering an active hood system
Special Issue “Body Sensors Networks for E-Health Applications”
Body Sensor Networks (BSN) have emerged as a particularization of Wireless Sensor
Networks (WSN) in the context of body monitoring environments, closely linked to healthcare
applications. These networks are made up of smart biomedical sensors that allow the monitoring of
physiological parameters and serve as the basis for e-Health applications. This Special Issue collects
some of the latest developments in the field of BSN related to new developments in biomedical sensor
technologies, the design and experimental characterization of on-body/in-body antennas and new
communication protocols for BSN, including some review studies
Lessons Learned about the Design and Active Characterization of On-Body Antennas in the 2.4 GHz Frequency Band
This work addresses the design and experimental characterization of on-body antennas,
which play an essential role within Body Sensor Networks. Four antenna designs were selected
from a set of eighteen antenna choices and finally implemented for both passive and active
measurements. The issues raised during the process of this work (requirements study, technology
selection, development and optimization of antennas, impedance matching, unbalanced to balanced
transformation, passive and active characterization, off-body and on-body configurations, etc.) were
studied and solved, driving a methodology for the characterization of on-body antennas, including
transceiver effects. Despite the influence of the body, the antennas showed appropriate results for
an in-door environment. Another novelty is the proposal and validation of a phantom to emulate
human experimentation. The differences between experimental and simulated results highlight a set
of circumstances to be taken into account during the design process of an on-body antenna: more
comprehensive simulation schemes to take into account the hardware effects and a custom design
process that considers the application for which the device will be used, as well as the effects that can
be caused by the human body.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Instituto de Salud Carlos III) PI15/00306Junta de Andalucía PIN-0394-2017Unión Europea "FRAIL
Sensor Technologies to Manage the Physiological Traits of Chronic Pain: A Review
Non-oncologic chronic pain is a common high-morbidity impairment worldwide and
acknowledged as a condition with significant incidence on quality of life. Pain intensity is largely
perceived as a subjective experience, what makes challenging its objective measurement. However,
the physiological traces of pain make possible its correlation with vital signs, such as heart rate
variability, skin conductance, electromyogram, etc., or health performance metrics derived from daily
activity monitoring or facial expressions, which can be acquired with diverse sensor technologies
and multisensory approaches. As the assessment and management of pain are essential issues
for a wide range of clinical disorders and treatments, this paper reviews different sensor-based
approaches applied to the objective evaluation of non-oncological chronic pain. The space of available
technologies and resources aimed at pain assessment represent a diversified set of alternatives that
can be exploited to address the multidimensional nature of pain.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Instituto de Salud Carlos III) PI15/00306Junta de Andalucía PIN-0394-2017Unión Europea "FRAIL
Smart Device for the Determination of Heart Rate Variability in Real Time
This work presents a first approach to the design, development, and implementation of a smart device for the real-time
measurement and detection of alterations in heart rate variability (HRV). The smart device follows a modular design scheme,
which consists of an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal acquisition module, a processing module and a wireless communications
module. From five-minute ECG signals, the processing module algorithms perform a spectral estimation of the HRV. The
experimental results demonstrate the viability of the smart device and the proposed processing algorithms.Fundación Pública Andaluza Progreso y Salud. Gobierno de Andalucía PI-0010-2013 y PI-0041-2014Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Instituto de Salud Carlos III) PI15 / 00306 y DTS15 / 00195CIBER-BBN INT-2-CAR
Smart vest for respiratory rate monitoring of COPD patients based on non-contact capacitive sensing
In this paper, a first approach to the design of a portable device for non-contact monitoring
of respiratory rate by capacitive sensing is presented. The sensing system is integrated into a smart
vest for an untethered, low-cost and comfortable breathing monitoring of Chronic Obstructive
Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients during the rest period between respiratory rehabilitation
exercises at home. To provide an extensible solution to the remote monitoring using this sensor and
other devices, the design and preliminary development of an e-Health platform based on the Internet
of Medical Things (IoMT) paradigm is also presented. In order to validate the proposed solution,
two quasi-experimental studies have been developed, comparing the estimations with respect to the
golden standard. In a first study with healthy subjects, the mean value of the respiratory rate error,
the standard deviation of the error and the correlation coefficient were 0.01 breaths per minute (bpm),
0.97 bpm and 0.995 (p < 0.00001), respectively. In a second study with COPD patients, the values
were -0.14 bpm, 0.28 bpm and 0.9988 (p < 0.0000001), respectively. The results for the rest period
show the technical and functional feasibility of the prototype and serve as a preliminary validation of
the device for respiratory rate monitoring of patients with COPD.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PI15/00306Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DTS15/00195Junta de Andalucía PI-0010-2013Junta de Andalucía PI-0041-2014Junta de Andalucía PIN-0394-201
3D Visual Odometry for Road Vehicles
This paper describes a method for estimating the vehicle global position in a network of roads by means of visual odometry. To do so, the ego-motion of the vehicle relative to the road is computed using a stereo-vision system mounted next to the rear view mirror of the car. Feature points are matched between pairs of frames and linked into 3D trajectories. Vehicle motion is estimated using the non-linear, photogrametric approach based on RANSAC. This iterative technique enables the formulation of a robust method that can ignore large numbers of outliers as encountered in real traffic scenes. The resulting method is defined as visual odometry and can be used in conjunction with other sensors, such as GPS, to produce accurate estimates of the vehicle global position. The obvious application of the method is to provide on-board driver assistance in navigation tasks, or to provide a means for autonomously navigating a vehicle. The method has been tested in real traffic conditions without using prior knowledge about the scene nor the vehicle motion. We provide examples of estimated vehicle trajectories using the proposed method and discuss the key issues for further improvement
A Sensor-Based mHealth Platform for Remote Monitoring and Intervention of Frailty Patients at Home
Frailty syndrome is an independent risk factor for serious health episodes, disability,
hospitalization, falls, loss of mobility, and cardiovascular disease. Its high reversibility demands
personalized interventions among which exercise programs are highly efficient to contribute to its
delay. Information technology-based solutions to support frailty have been recently approached, but
most of them are focused on assessment and not on intervention. This paper describes a sensor-based
mHealth platform integrated in a service-based architecture inside the FRAIL project towards the
remote monitoring and intervention of pre-frail and frail patients at home. The aim of this platform is
constituting an efficient and scalable system for reducing both the impact of aging and the advance of
frailty syndrome. Among the results of this work are: (1) the development of elderly-focused sensors
and platform; (2) a technical validation process of the sensor devices and the mHealth platform
with young adults; and (3) an assessment of usability and acceptability of the devices with a set of
pre-frail and frail patients. After the promising results obtained, future steps of this work involve
performing a clinical validation in order to quantify the impact of the platform on health outcomes of
frail patients.Consejería de Conocimiento, Investigación y Universidad P18-TPJ-307
Design and Implementation of a Smart Sensor for Respiratory Rate Monitoring
This work presents the design, development and implementation of a smart sensor to monitor the respiratory rate. This sensor is aimed at overcoming the drawbacks of other systems currently available in market, namely, devices that are costly, uncomfortable, difficult-to-install, provide low detection sensitivity, and little-to-null patient-to-patient calibration. The device is based on capacitive sensing by means of an LC oscillator. Experimental results show that the sensor meets the necessary requirements, making feasible the proposed monitoring system with the technology usedMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación y Unión Europea FPA2010-22131-C02-02Consejo Andaluz de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa P08-TIC-04069 y P10-TIC- 631
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