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- A distributed multiagent system architecture for body area networks applied to healthcare monitoringPublication . Felisberto, Filipe; Laza, Rosalía; Fdez-Riverola, Florentino; Pereira, AntónioIn the last years the area of health monitoring has grown significantly, attracting the attention of both academia and commercial sectors. At the same time, the availability of new biomedical sensors and suitable network protocols has led to the appearance of a new generation of wireless sensor networks, the so-called wireless body area networks. Nowadays, these networks are routinely used for continuous monitoring of vital parameters, movement, and the surrounding environment of people, but the large volume of data generated in different locations represents a major obstacle for the appropriate design, development, and deployment of more elaborated intelligent systems. In this context, we present an open and distributed architecture based on a multiagent system for recognizing human movements, identifying human postures, and detecting harmful activities. The proposed system evolved from a single node for fall detection to a multisensor hardware solution capable of identifying unhampered falls and analyzing the users’ movement. The experiments carried out contemplate two different scenarios and demonstrate the accuracy of our proposal as a real distributed movement monitoring and accident detection system. Moreover, we also characterize its performance, enabling future analyses and comparisons with similar approaches.
- Removing Barriers to Promote Social Computing among Senior PopulationPublication . Marcelino, Isabel; Laza, Rosalía; Fdez-Riverola, Florentino; Pereira, AntónioSmartphones and tablets proliferation enabled by accessible prices and also by the inclusion of sensing abilities promotes their use in several areas, such as healthcare. It opens new horizons in the field of continuous and noninvasive monitoring and support to population, namely, to seniors. Despite the great benefits that mobile sensing and social computing could provide to increase elderly’s quality of life, many studies have shown that elderlies deal with difficulty with Information and Communication Technology (ICT). In this paper we present a solution to overcome barriers between elderlies and their ICT usage in order to potentiate all the benefits provided from mobile sensing and social computing. A survey on guidelines, standards, and advice regarding usability and accessibility issues when developing solutions for elderly people was carried out. This survey was made having in mind that senior population have singular requirements due to age related changes and also frequently technological illiteracy. We have identified and applied the most important guidelines to our solution. A prototype was made using responsive design in order to be adaptable to any type of devices. Regarding evaluation, usability tests and semistructured interviews were conducted in real scenario.
- The small world of efficient solutions: empirical evidence from the bi-objective {0,1}-knapsack problemPublication . Silva, Carlos Gomes da; Clímaco, João; Filho, Adiel AlmeidaThe small world phenomenon, Milgram (1967) has inspired the study of real networks such as cellular networks, telephone call networks, citation networks, power and neural networks, etc. The present work is about the study of the graphs produced by efficient solutions of the bi-objective {0,1}-knapsack problem. The experiments show that these graphs exhibit properties of small world networks. The importance of the supported and non-supported solutions in the entire efficient graph is investigated. The present research could be useful for developing more effective search strategies in both exact and approximate solution methods of {0,1} multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems.
- A multi-objective genetic algorithm applied to autonomous underwater vehicles for sewage outfall plume dispersion observationsPublication . Moura, Ana; Rijo, Rui; Silva, Pedro; Crespo, SidónioThis work presents a multi-objective genetic algorithm to solve route planning problem for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for interdisciplinary coastal research. AUVs are mobile unmanned platforms that carry their own energy and are able to move themselves in the water without intervention from an external operator. Using AUVs one can provide high-quality measurements of physical properties of effluent plumes in a very effective manner under real oceanic conditions. The AUV's route planning problem is a combinatorial optimization problem, where the vehicles must travel through a three-dimensional irregular space with all dimensions known. Therefore, minimization of the total travel distance while considering the maximum number of water samples is the main objective. Besides the AUV kinematics restrictions other considerations must be taken into account to the problem, like the ocean currents. The practical applications of this approach are the environmental monitoring missions which typically require the sampling of a volume of water with non-trivial geometry for which parallel line sweeping might be a costly solution. Some real-life test problems and related solutions are presented.
- Evaluation of soft possibilistic classifications with non-specificity uncertainty measuresPublication . Gonçalves, Luisa M. S.; Fonte, Cidália C.; Júlio, Eduardo N. B. S.; Caetano, MarioThe aim of this paper was to investigate the usefulness of non-specificity uncertainty measures to evaluate soft classifications of remote sensing images. In particular, we analysed whether these measures could be used to identify the difficulties found by the classifier and to estimate the classification accuracy. Two nonspecificity uncertainty measures were considered, the non-specificity measure (NSp) and the U-uncertainty measure, and their behaviour was analysed to evaluate which is the most appropriate for this application. To overcome the fact that these two measures have different ranges, a normalized version (Un) of the U-uncertainty measure was used. Both measures were applied to evaluate the uncertainty of a soft classification of a very high spatial resolution multispectral satellite image, performed with an object-oriented image analysis based on a fuzzy classification. The classification accuracy was evaluated using an error matrix and the user's and producer's accuracies were computed. Two uncertainty indexes are proposed for each measure, and the correlation between the information given by them and the user's and producer's accuracies was determined to assess the relationship and compatibility of both sources of information. The results show that there is a positive correlation between the information given by the uncertainty and accuracy indexes, but mainly between the uncertainty indexes and the user's accuracy, where the correlation achieved 77%. This study shows that uncertainty indexes may be used, along with the possibility distributions, as indicators of the classification performance, and may therefore be very useful tools.
- Wireless Body Area Networks for Healthcare Applications: Protocol Stack ReviewPublication . Filipe, Luis; Fdez-Riverola, Florentino; Costa, Nuno; Pereira, AntónioWireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) supporting healthcare applications are in early development stage but offer valuable contributions at monitoring, diagnostic, or therapeutic levels. They cover real-time medical information gathering obtained from different sensors with secure data communication and low power consumption. As a consequence of the increasing interest in the application of this type of networks, several articles dealing with different aspects of such systems have been published recently. In this paper, we compile and compare technologies and protocols published in the most recent researches, seeking WBAN issues for medical monitoring purposes to select the most useful solutions for this area of networking. The most important features under consideration in our analysis include wireless communication protocols, frequency bands, data bandwidth, transmission distance, encryption, authentication methods, power consumption, and mobility. Our study demonstrates that some characteristics of surveyed protocols are very useful to medical appliances and patients in a WBAN domain.
- Dynamics parameters estimation of an asynchronous machine plus mechanical shaft set through orbit frequency response analysisPublication . Oliveira, F.; Donsión, M. P.; Peláez, G.This paper presents some of the results obtained upon the experimental study of the behaviour of a prototype mechanical shaft driven by an induction electric machine. The main focus of this paper will be on the mechanical response of the set, based on the measurement of a number of mechanical variables and its integration in well-known mechanical models, allowing a more accurate estimation of the actual parameters of the prototype machine. The results thus obtained can then be used to test the theoretical models, estimate mechanical parameters more accurately and generally increase knowledge on the mechanical response of the prototype set.
- Using the eServices Platform for Detecting Behavior Patterns Deviation in the Elderly Assisted Living: A Case StudyPublication . Marcelino, Isabel; Lopes, David; Reis, Michael; Silva, Fernando; Laza, Rosalía; Pereira, AntónioWorld’s aging population is rising and the elderly are increasingly isolated socially and geographically. As a consequence, in many situations, they need assistance that is not granted in time. In this paper, we present a solution that follows the CRISP-DM methodology to detect the elderly’s behavior pattern deviations that may indicate possible risk situations. To obtain these patterns, many variables are aggregated to ensure the alert system reliability and minimize eventual false positive alert situations. These variables comprehend information provided by body area network (BAN), by environment sensors, and also by the elderly’s interaction in a service provider platform, called eServices—Elderly Support Service Platform. eServices is a scalable platform aggregating a service ecosystem developed specially for elderly people. This pattern recognition will further activate the adequate response. With the system evolution, it will learn to predict potential danger situations for a specified user, acting preventively and ensuring the elderly’s safety and well-being. As the eServices platform is still in development, synthetic data, based on real data sample and empiric knowledge, is being used to populate the initial dataset. The presented work is a proof of concept of knowledge extraction using the eServices platform information. Regardless of not using real data, this work proves to be an asset, achieving a good performance in preventing alert situations.
- Text Mining Applied to Electronic Medical RecordsPublication . Pereira, Luis; Rijo, Rui, Rui Pedro Charters Lopes; Silva, Catarina; Martinho, RicardoThe analysis of medical records is a major challenge, considering they are generally presented in plain text, have a very specific technical vocabulary and are nearly always unstructured. It is an interdisciplinary work that requires knowledge from several fields. The analysis may have several goals, such as assistance on clinical decision, classification of medical procedures, and to support hospital management decisions. This work presents the concepts involved, the relevant existent related work, and the main open issues for future research within the analysis of electronic medical records, using data and text mining techniques. It provides a comprehensive contextualization to all those who wish to perform an analytical work of medical records, enabling the identification of fruitful research fields. With the digitalization of medical records and the large amount of medical data available, this is an area of wide research potential.
- No polarization–Expected Values of Climate Change Impacts among European Forest Professionals and ScientistsPublication . Persson, Johannes; Blennow, Kristina; Gonçalves, Luisa; Borys, Alexander; Dutcă, Ioan; Hynynen, Jari; Janeczko, Emilia; Lyubenova, Mariyana; Martel, Simon; Merganic, Jan; Merganičová, Katarína; Peltoniemi, Mikko; Petr, Michal; Reboredo, Fernando H.; Vacchiano, Giorgio; Reyer, Christopher P. O.The role of values in climate-related decision-making is a prominent theme of climate communication research. The present study examines whether forest professionals are more driven by values than scientists are, and if this results in value polarization. A questionnaire was designed to elicit and assess the values assigned to expected effects of climate change by forest professionals and scientists working on forests and climate change in Europe. The countries involved covered a north-to-south and west-to-east gradient across Europe, representing a wide range of bio-climatic conditions and a mix of economic-social-political structures. We show that European forest professionals and scientists do not exhibit polarized expectations about the values of specific impacts of climate change on forests in their countries. In fact, few differences between forest professionals and scientists were found. However, there are interesting differences in the expected values of forest professionals with regard to climate change impacts across European countries. In Northern European countries, the aggregated values of the expected effects are more neutral than they are in Southern Europe, where they are more negative. Expectations about impacts on timber production, economic returns, and regulatory ecosystem services are mostly negative, while expectations about biodiversity and energy production are mostly positive.
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