An unsupervised behavioral modeling and alerting system based on passive sensing for elderly care

Artificial Intelligence in combination with the Internet of Medical Things enables remote healthcare services through networks of environmental and/or personal sensors. We present a remote healthcare service system which collects real-life data through an environmental sensor package, including binary motion, contact, pressure, and proximity sensors, installed at households of elderly people. Its aim is to keep the caregivers informed of subjects’ health-status progressive trajectory, and alert them of health-related anomalies to enable objective on-demand healthcare service delivery at scale. The system was deployed in 19 households inhabited by an elderly person with post-stroke condition in the Emilia–Romagna region in Italy, with maximal and median observation durations of 98 and 55 weeks. Among these households, 17 were multi-occupancy residences, while the other 2 housed elderly patients living alone. Subjects’ daily behavioral diaries were extracted and registered from raw sensor signals, using rule-based data pre-processing and unsupervised algorithms. Personal behavioral habits were identified and compared to typical patterns reported in behavioral science, as a quality-of-life indicator. We consider the activity patterns extracted across all users as a dictionary, and represent each patient’s behavior as a ‘Bag of Words’, based on which patients can be categorized into sub-groups for precision cohort treatment. Longitudinal trends of the behavioral progressive trajectory and sudden abnormalities of a patient were detected and reported to care providers. Due to the sparse sensor setting and the multi-occupancy living condition, the sleep profile was used as the main indicator in our system. Experimental results demonstrate the ability to report on subjects’ daily activity pattern in terms of sleep, outing, visiting, and health-status trajectories, as well as predicting/detecting 75% hospitalization sessions up to 11 days in advance. 65% of the alerts were confirmed to be semantically meaningful by the users. Furthermore, reduced social interaction (outing and visiting), and lower sleep quality could be observed during the COVID-19 lockdown period across the cohort

Determination of ochratoxin A at part-per-trillion level in Italian salami by immunoaffinity clean-up and high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescrence detection

A fast high-performance liquid chromatography method has been devised for the determination of ochratoxin A (OTA) in Italian salami in the low part-per-trillion (pg/g) level. The samples were extracted with ethyl acetate and purified by immunoaffinity column (IAC). The IAC eluate could be directly injected or previously concentrated 10-fold. Recovery at 0.5 and 1 ng/g was 77±4%. The between-day coefficient of variation measured over 5 days on samples spiked at 1 ng/g was 8%. The developed method required a relatively small volume of nonhalogenated organic solvent and the whole procedure was simpler and faster compared to other existing procedures. The limit of detection was 0.06 ng/g that could be even lowered using a preconcentration step. A total of 30 salami samples were analysed using this procedure; the most contaminated sample was found to have OTA concentration at 0.4 ng/g level

Valutazioni sulla presenza di cromo nel latte vaccino e ovino

È stata eseguita la ricerca del Cromo nel latte vaccino ed ovino prodotto in Puglia, al fine di verificare una eventuale somministrazione volontaria di cromo, (come integratore dei mangimi per il miglioramento delle produzioni. I dati ottenuti hanno evidenziato in alcuni campioni di latte sia vaccino che ovino, concentrazioni elevate di cromo e gli AA., pertanto, avanzano il sospetto di una probabile presenza di cromo nei mangimi e sui pascoli dovuta a contaminazione ambientale ed evidenziano da un parte la necessità di stabilire valori limite per la presenza di cromo nei mangimi e nei foraggi, dall'altra l'opportunità che l'U.E. indichi il limite di assunzione di cromo con gli alimenti, che possa ritenersi sicuro per la salute umana

Metodo analitico per la ricerca di Sudan I in matrici alimentari complesse

The EU Commission Decision on emergency measures concerning hot chilli and red hot chilli products coming into any EC member state, requires that the consignments of such products should be accompanied by an analytical report showing that they are free from Sudan I. This paper proposes an HPLC-DAD method useful for a rapid and reliable identification and quantification of Sudan I in different food products

Quantitative and legislative aspects related to the presence of canthaxanthin and astaxanthin in smoked salmon fillets

The legal decree of 29/11/94 allows feed supplemented with canthaxanthin to be used for the farming of trout, salmon and chicken. This law is in contrast to legal decree n. 209 of 1996 which on the basis of directives n. 94/34/CE, n. 94/35/CE, n. 94/36/CE, n. 95/2/CE and n. 95/31/CE, concerning the use of food additives permitted in food, prohibits the treatment of smoked fish with canthaxanthin. Thirty-five packages of smoked salmon fillets were analysed by HPLC for the presence of canthaxanthin and astaxanthin to assess whether or not they conform to the Italian Legislation. Carotenoids were found in 40% of the samples, with values ranging from 0.19 to 2.92 mg/kg wet weight for canthaxanthin and 0.14 to 2.48 mg/kg wet weight for astaxanthin. The remaining 60% of the samples contained only astaxanthin with values ranging from 0.10 to 4.92 mg/kg wet weight

Ochratoxin A determination in paired kidneys and muscle samples from swines slaughtered in southern Italy

A survey on 54 paired kidneys and muscle samples from pigs slaughtered in Southern Italy, has been carried out in order to check the presence of ochratoxin A. Both competitive indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (CI-ELISA) and high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FD) were used to determine ochratoxin levels. Mean and median value for OTA in kidneys were 0.29 and 0.25 ng/g, respectively. Mean and median values found for muscle (0.024 and 0.01 ng/g) are significantly lower than those reported in other studies demonstrating that, irrespective of the geographical provenance of pigs, OTA incidence is far from representing a real concern for consumers. Results obtained plotting ELISA vs. HPLC results show that ELISA tends to slightly underestimate the OTA content compared to HPLC; nevertheless, ELISA remains an invaluable tool as rapid screening semiquantitative technique