Hardware for recognition of human activities: a review of smart home and AAL related technologies

Activity recognition (AR) from an applied perspective of ambient assisted living (AAL) and smart homes (SH) has become a subject of great interest. Promising a better quality of life, AR applied in contexts such as health, security, and energy consumption can lead to solutions capable of reaching even the people most in need. This study was strongly motivated because levels of development, deployment, and technology of AR solutions transferred to society and industry are based on software development, but also depend on the hardware devices used. The current paper identifies contributions to hardware uses for activity recognition through a scientific literature review in the Web of Science (WoS) database. This work found four dominant groups of technologies used for AR in SH and AAL—smartphones, wearables, video, and electronic components—and two emerging technologies: Wi-Fi and assistive robots. Many of these technologies overlap across many research works. Through bibliometric networks analysis, the present review identified some gaps and new potential combinations of technologies for advances in this emerging worldwide field and their uses. The review also relates the use of these six technologies in health conditions, health care, emotion recognition, occupancy, mobility, posture recognition, localization, fall detection, and generic activity recognition applications. The above can serve as a road map that allows readers to execute approachable projects and deploy applications in different socioeconomic contexts, and the possibility to establish networks with the community involved in this topic. This analysis shows that the research field in activity recognition accepts that specific goals cannot be achieved using one single hardware technology, but can be using joint solutions, this paper shows how such technology works in this regard

Frameworks applied in quality management - A systematic review

En este artículo se presenta una revisión sistemática de la literatura, realizado en las bases de datos PROQUEST, EBSCO, SCIENCE DIRECT, GOOGLE SCHOLAR, e IEEE Explorer, con el objetivo de identificar aplicaciones de Marcos o Frameworks, complementos a la Gestión de Calidad. La revisión contempla publicaciones en español e inglés, de los cuales se analizan distintos enfoques en cuanto a contribuciones, alcances geográficos, tipos de procesos, metodologías con las que fueron desarrollados, sectores de aplicación, herramientas de gestión de calidad utilizadas, y discusiones de cada uno de estos.This article presents a systematic review conducted in ProQuest, EBSCO, SCIENCE DIRECT, GOOGLE SCHOLAR, and IEEE Explorer, with the aim of identifying developments in Framework applied in Quality Management. The study includes articles written in Spanish and English and different approaches of contributions, countries, geographical scope, types of processes, methodologies, business sectors, models and tools of quality management are analyzed

Aula Touch Game: Digital Tablets and Their Incidence in the Development of Citizen Competences of Middle Education Students in the District of Barranquilla-Colombia

Citizen competences are considered as a fundamental aspect in the social development of man with his environment, which allows him to carry out actions that are articulated with the different guidelines established by law, which leads the citizen to live in a coherent and peaceful way in a nation that tends for freedom of thought framed in a democratic society. That is why it is considered of high importance that in educational establishments there are spaces that tend for training in peaceful coexistence framed in the law of the educated. This article resulted from the research project: “Social Appropriation of citizen and mathematical competences making use of MIDTablets”, in which the mediation of Information and Communication Technologies is proposed to support the training of citizens with competences citizens who ensure adequate behavior in society. This project was developed in 31 educational institutions in the district of Barranquilla-Colombia, with support from resources of both the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications (MinTic), and the Secretariat of District Education of Barranquilla, in compliance with national goals, departmental and district regarding the quality of education of the national populatio

Geographic information systems - GIS, a view from the water resource

This research paper presents an overview of the state of the art Geographic Information Systems - GIS, which has been defined and characterized important aspects about these systems and their contribution to the analysis of water bodies from various use and development, which allows the achievement of the Platform for water Resources Network of the Colombian Caribbea

Geographic information systems - GIS, a view from the water resource

This research paper presents an overview of the state of the art Geographic Information Systems - GIS, which has been defined and characterized important aspects about these systems and their contribution to the analysis of water bodies from various use and development, which allows the achievement of the Platform for water Resources Network of the Colombian Caribbea

Estado del arte del proyecto

The aim of REMIND is to create an International and Intersectoral network to facilitate the exchange of staff to progress developments in reminding technologies for persons with dementia that can be deployed in smart environments. The consortium is comprised of an International network of 7 academic beneficiaries, 5 nonacademic beneficiaries and 4 partners from Third Countries, all of whom are committed to progressing the notion of reminding technologies within smart environments. The focus of REMIND is to develop staff and beneficiary/partner skills in the areas of user centered design and behavioral science coupled with improved computational techniques which in turn will offer more appropriate and efficacious reminding solutions. This will be further supported through research involving user centric studies into the use of reminding technologies and the theory of behaviour change to improve compliance of usage. Research objectives will be focused within the domain of smart environments. A smart environment can be viewed as having the ability to sense its surroundings through embedded sensors and following processing of the sensed information, adjust the environment through actuators to offer an improved experience for the inhabitant. Even though the availability, cost, size and battery life of sensing technology have all improved in recent years, the uptake of real smart environments has been limited. This is mainly related to the effort required to support the technical deployments and the lack of a business model to support a service provider capable of offering support to a large number of environments. In addition, there is a limit to the amount of scenarios which can be facilitated by such environments; this limit is directly related to the number of sensors availabl

Diagnostic tool for radical improvement in business processes

The present work presents a diagnostic tool applicable in any business sector; it works as a support to managers for decision-making towards the need for a radical improvement of processes. A literary review was conducted to collect case studies in order to identify the problems it addresses and the impacts generated by the process of reengineering application in organizations. Through conceptual modeling and synthesization, some diagnostic questions were formulated related to the problems that reengineering has addressed in the literature, and an evaluation model was built that allows organizations to identify what type of problem the organization has, its processes or departments, which should be approached from a radical improvement approach. Finally a diagnostic tool with an evaluation method was formulated, to recommend initiate process improvement either organization, departments o process, formulated fully integrable with PDCA cycle and evaluation or monitoring phases for systems like business activity monitoring based on IT systems, relevant in today's contexts when most of the nowadays organization are technology-based, and progressive improvements do not become a pragmatic and agile alternative in the business context

Kaasasündinud N-glükosüülimise haigused Eestis

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsiooneKaasasündinud glükosüülimise haigused (KGH) moodustavad kiirelt areneva ainevahetushaiguste grupi ning on põhjustatud valkude ja lipiididega seotud glükaanide häirunud sünteesist. Erinevad valkude N-glükosüülimise haigused on enim diagnoositavad KGH-d ja PMM2-CDG on kõige sagedasem N-glükosüülimise haigus. KGH sümptomid on mittespetsiifilised ja multisüsteemsed. Valikmeetod KGH skriinimiseks on seerumi transferriini isoelektriline fokuseerimine (IEF). Käesoleva uuringu eesmärk oli juurutada Eestis KGH diagnostikaks transferriini IEF ja hinnata kolme aasta jooksul N-glükosüülimise haiguste esinemist meie patsientide hulgas. Kuuel patsiendil 1230-st esines KGH skriiningul positiivne tulemus, mis leidis molekulaarse kinnituse. Esmalt näitasime, et kõige sagedasem KGH Eestis on PMM2-CDG, mida diagnoositi neljal patsiendil kahest perekonnast. Ühe pere lastel väljendub haigus kerge neuroloogilise vormina, kuid normaalse kognitiivse arenguga, mida PMM2-CDG patsientide hulgas esineb harva. Eesti PMM2-CDG patsientidel oli kõige sagedasem variant PMM2 geenis p.Val131Met. Teiseks, esitasime tulemused PMM2-CDG eeldatava sageduse kohta, kasutades Tartu Ülikooli Eesti Geenivaramu andmeid. Leidsime viis erinevat PMM2 heterosügootset mutatsiooni. Kõige sagedasem geenivariant on p.Arg141His kandlussagedusega 1/224. p.Val131Met kandlussagedus on 1/449. Eeldatav PMM2-CDG sagedus Eestis on 1/77,000. Kolmandaks, kirjeldasime patsienti KGH alatüübiga SLC35A2-CDG ning võrdlesime tema fenotüüpi ja genotüüpi 14 rahvusvahelise patsiendi kliiniliste andmetega. Patsientidele on iseloomulik mittespetsiifiline neuroloogiline haigus üldise arengu hilistumise, lihashüpotoonia, krampide ning epileptilise entsefalopaatiaga, düsmorfsed tunnused ja lühike kasv. Lisaks võib transferriini IEF olla vale-negatiivne. Neljandaks, kirjeldasime multisüsteemsete kliiniliste sümptomitega ning uue, seni kirjeldamata KGH alatüübiga patsienti, kellel on KGH alatüübi põhjuseks tõenäoliselt haiguspõhjuslik homosügootne muutus STX5 geenis. Käesolev uuring näitas, et Eesti patsientide puhul on transferriini IEF on tulemuslik meetod KGH diagnostikas. Skriiningu rakendamine võimaldas lisada uusi kliinilisi ja epidemioloogilisi andmeid erinevate teadaolevate ning uue KGH alatüübi kohta.Congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG) are an expanding group of inherited metabolic diseases caused by impaired synthesis and attachment of glycans on proteins and lipids. Disorders affecting the N-glycosylation pathway form the most common CDG subgroup, and the most common N-glycosylation disorder is PMM2-CDG. The symptoms of different CDG are often non-specific and multisystem. Serum transferrin isoelectric focusing (Tf IEF) is a routine method to screen CDG. The aim of this study was to implement Tf IEF in Estonian clinical practice and to study the presence of N-glycosylation defects among Estonian patients in a three-year screening period. Altogether, positive CDG screening with subsequent molecular confirmation was detected in six patients among 1230 subjects screened. First, the most frequent CDG in Estonia is PMM2-CDG as we diagnosed this disorder in four patients from two families. In one family, the siblings show a mild neurological phenotype with normal-borderline cognitive development, which has previously been seldom described. Among PMM2-CDG patients, the most common variant in PMM2 gene is p.Val131Met. Second, we reported the expected frequency of PMM2-CDG based on the Estonian population data. In this cohort, we identified five different heterozygous variants in PMM2 gene. The most frequent variant is p.Arg141His with carrier frequency 1/224. The carrier frequency for p.Val131Met based on the Estonian population data is 1/449. The expected frequency of PMM2-CDG is 1/77,000. Third, we described a patient with SLC35A2-CDG and compared his phenotype-genotype with 14 international SLC35A2-CDG patients. This type of CDG presents as a non-specific neurological syndrome with global developmental delay, hypotonia, seizures and epileptic encephalopathy, together with dysmorphic features and short stature. In addition, Tf IEF can show a normal profile. Fourth, we presented a patient with multisystem clinical CDG features and a novel type II CDG likely caused by homozygous variant in STX5. In conclusion, Tf IEF proved to be an effective method to detect CDG among Estonian patients. Our results led to many findings, which have helped to add new clinical and epidemiological data about different known types of CDG, but also to expand the group of CDG by the discovery of a new type of CDG

Hardware for Recognition of Human Activities: A Review of Smart Home and AAL Related Technologies

Activity recognition (AR) from an applied perspective of ambient assisted living (AAL) and smart homes (SH) has become a subject of great interest. Promising a better quality of life, AR applied in contexts such as health, security, and energy consumption can lead to solutions capable of reaching even the people most in need. This study was strongly motivated because levels of development, deployment, and technology of AR solutions transferred to society and industry are based on software development, but also depend on the hardware devices used. The current paper identifies contributions to hardware uses for activity recognition through a scientific literature review in the Web of Science (WoS) database. This work found four dominant groups of technologies used for AR in SH and AAL—smartphones, wearables, video, and electronic components—and two emerging technologies: Wi-Fi and assistive robots. Many of these technologies overlap across many research works. Through bibliometric networks analysis, the present review identified some gaps and new potential combinations of technologies for advances in this emerging worldwide field and their uses. The review also relates the use of these six technologies in health conditions, health care, emotion recognition, occupancy, mobility, posture recognition, localization, fall detection, and generic activity recognition applications. The above can serve as a road map that allows readers to execute approachable projects and deploy applications in different socioeconomic contexts, and the possibility to establish networks with the community involved in this topic. This analysis shows that the research field in activity recognition accepts that specific goals cannot be achieved using one single hardware technology, but can be using joint solutions, this paper shows how such technology works in this regard

Correlation Analysis of Different Measurement Places of Galvanic Skin Response in Test Groups Facing Pleasant and Unpleasant Stimuli

The galvanic skin response (GSR; also widely known as electrodermal activity (EDA)) is a signal for stress-related studies. Given the sparsity of studies related to the GSR and the variety of devices, this study was conducted at the Human Health Activity Laboratory (H2AL) with 17 healthy subjects to determine the variability in the detection of changes in the galvanic skin response among a test group with heterogeneous respondents facing pleasant and unpleasant stimuli, correlating the GSR biosignals measured from different body sites. We experimented with the right and left wrist, left fingers, the inner side of the right foot using Shimmer3GSR and Empatica E4 sensors. The results indicated the most promising homogeneous places for measuring the GSR, namely, the left fingers and right foot. The results also suggested that due to a significantly strong correlation among the inner side of the right foot and the left fingers, as well as the moderate correlations with the right and left wrists, the foot may be a suitable place to homogenously measure a GSR signal in a test group. We also discuss some possible causes of weak and negative correlations from anomalies detected in the raw data possibly related to the sensors or the test group, which may be considered to develop robust emotion detection systems based on GRS biosignals.Validerad;2021;Nivå 2;2021-06-21 (alebob)MSCA-RISE REMIN