bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Artificial Neural Network Modeling for Predicting the Transient Thermal Distribution in a Stretching/Shrinking Longitudinal Fin
Authors: Varun Kumar R. S. , Sarris I. E. , Sowmya G. , Prasannakumara B. C. , Verma Amit
Published: March 2023

This study emphasizes the aspects of heat transfer and transient thermal distribution through a rectangular fin profile when a stretching or shrinking mechanism is mounted on the surface of the fin. Furthermore, the effects of radiation, internal heat generation, and convection are all considered when developing the corresponding fin problem. The simulated time-dependent heat transfer equation is a partial differential equation that can be represented by dimensionless arrangement using appropriate nondimensional terms. The nonlinear dimensionless problem concerning the stretching/shrinking of a fin is numerically solved using the finite difference method (FDM), and the Levenberg–Marquardt method of backpropagation artificial neural network (LMM-BANN) has been used in this investigation. By varying the stretching/shrinking parameter, a set of data for the presented artificial neural network (ANN) is produced to discuss stretching and shrinking scenarios. The testing, training, and validation procedure of LMM-BANN, as well as correlation for verification of the validity of the proposed approach, establish the approximate solution to stretching/shrinking scenarios. The suggested model LMM-BANN is then validated using regression interpretation, mean square error, and histogram explorations. The ANN results and the procured numerical values agree well with the current numerical results.
The Goldilocks Dilemma in Coaching: Women Coaches’ Experiences of Stereotypical Biases and a Two-Dimensional Approach to Combat Them
Authors: Gosai Jyoti , Jowett Sophia , Rhind Daniel J.A.
Published: March 2023

The purpose of this study was to explore through semistructured interviews (a) the experiences of women coaches in relation to the stereotypical biases they may encounter in their workplace and (b) the strategies women coaches and sport organizations have, or can potentially put in place, to raise awareness and address these stereotypical biases. Content analysis of the obtained qualitative data using a rudimentary framework based upon the two sections of the interview schedule (i.e., dilemmas and strategies) guided categorization of the data. Findings indicated that women coaches experienced three broad types of stereotypical dilemmas: (a) extreme perceptions (e.g., too soft or too tough); (b) the high competence threshold (e.g., higher standards with lower rewards); and (c) competent but disliked (e.g., competent or likeable but rarely both). In addition, the findings indicated that tackling these stereotypical dilemmas effectively required a two-dimensional approach: individual and organizational. Within this paper, the authors discuss the ways women coaches both experience and confront a range of stereotypical dilemmas while moving into and through the coaching system. Such dilemmas inevitably disadvantaged women coaches by either slowing down or holding back their progress compared with their men coach counterparts. Practical solutions are also discussed.
Complete Genome Sequence of the Thermophilic Enterococcus faecalis Strain K-4, Isolated from a Grass Silage in Thailand
Authors: Kuwabara Meimi , Irimajiri Rei , Togo Shun , Fujino Yasuhiro , Honsho Masanori , Mawatari Shiro , Fujino Takehiko , Doi Katsumi
Published: March 2023

The whole-genome sequence of strain K-4, isolated from grass silage in Thailand, which constitutes a chromosome and two plasmids, is 2,914,933 bp long, has a GC content of 37.5%, and contains 2,734 predicted protein-coding genes. Average nucleotide identity based on BLAST+ (ANIb) and digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH) values indicated that the strain K-4 was closely related to
Enterococcus faecalis
.
Greater Invasion and Persistence of
mcr-1-
Bearing Plasmids in Escherichia coli than in Klebsiella pneumoniae
Authors: Liu Yi-Yun , Zhu Xiao-Qing , Nang Sue C. , Xun Haoliang , Lv Luchao , Yang Jun , Liu Jian-Hua
Published: March 2023

As infections caused by multidrug-resistant “superbugs” are increasing globally, polymyxins are often the only viable therapeutic option. Alarmingly, the wide spread of the plasmid-mediated polymyxin resistance gene
mcr-1
is restricting the clinical utility of this last-line treatment option.
Trehalose Biosynthesis Gene
otsA
Protects against Stress in the Initial Infection Stage of
Burkholderia
-Bean Bug Symbiosis
Authors: Lee Junbeom , Jeong Bohyun , Bae Ha Ram , Jang Ho Am , Kim Jiyeun Kate
Published: March 2023

Symbiotic bacteria have to overcome stressful conditions present in association with the host. In the
Burkholderia
-bean bug symbiosis, we speculated that a stress-resistant function of
Burkholderia
is important and that trehalose, known as a stress protectant, plays a role in the symbiotic association.
Comparative Evaluation of Standard RT-PCR Assays and Commercial Real-Time RT-PCR Kits for Detection of Lassa Virus
Authors: Luo Xue-Lian , Zhang Xiu-Dan , Li Bei-Jie , Qin Tian , Cao Zhi-Jie , Fan Qian-Jin , Yang Jing , Jin Dong , Lu Shan , Zheng Ya-Yun , Xu Xue-Fang , Pu Ji , Xu Jianguo
Published: March 2023

Lassa virus (LASV) is a significant human pathogen causing hemorrhagic fever in West Africa. Increased traveling around the world raises the risk of imported cases to other countries.
Adapted Diabetes Complications Severity Index and Charlson Comorbidity Index in predicting all-cause and cause-specific mortality among patients with type 2 diabetes
Authors: Hu Yu-Wen , Yeh Chiu-Mei , Liu Chia-Jen , Chen Tzeng-Ji , Huang Nicole , Chou Yiing-Jenq
Published: March 2023

Introduction

Adapted Diabetes Complications Severity Index (aDCSI) is a commonly used severity measure based on the number and severity of diabetes complications using diagnosis codes. The validity of aDCSI in predicting cause-specific mortality has yet to be verified. Additionally, the performance of aDCSI in predicting patient outcomes compared with Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) remains unknown.

Research design and methods

Patients aged 20 years or older with type 2 diabetes prior to January 1, 2008 were identified from the Taiwan National Health Insurance claims data and were followed up until December 15, 2018. Complications for aDCSI including cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and peripheral vascular disease, metabolic disease, nephropathy, retinopathy and neuropathy, along with comorbidities for CCI, were collected. HRs of death were estimated using Cox regression. Model performance was evaluated by concordance index and Akaike information criterion.

Results

1,002,589 patients with type 2 diabetes were enrolled, with a median follow-up of 11.0 years. After adjusting for age and sex, aDCSI (HR 1.21, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.21) and CCI (HR 1.18, 1.17 to 1.18) were associated with all-cause mortality. The HRs of aDCSI for cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes mortality were 1.04 (1.04 to 1.05), 1.27 (1.27 to 1.28) and 1.28 (1.28 to 1.29), respectively, and the HRs of CCI were 1.10 (1.09 to 1.10), 1.16 (1.16 to 1.17) and 1.17 (1.16 to 1.17), respectively. The model with aDCSI had a better fit for all-cause, CVD and diabetes mortality with C-index of 0.760, 0.794 and 0.781, respectively. Models incorporating both scores had even better performance, but the HR of aDCSI for cancer (0.98, 0.97 to 0.98) and the HRs of CCI for CVD (1.03, 1.02 to 1.03) and diabetes mortality (1.02, 1.02 to 1.03) became neutral. When aDCSI and CCI were considered time-varying scores, the association with mortality was stronger. aDCSI had a strong correlation with mortality even after 8 years (HR 1.18, 1.17 to 1.18).

Conclusions

The aDCSI predicts all-cause, CVD and diabetes deaths but not cancer deaths better than the CCI. aDCSI is also a good predictor for long-term mortality.
What constitutes equitable data sharing in global health research? A scoping review of the literature on low-income and middle-income country stakeholders’ perspectives
Authors: Evertsz Natalia , Bull Susan , Pratt Bridget
Published: March 2023

Introduction

Despite growing consensus on the need for equitable data sharing, there has been very limited discussion about what this should entail in practice. As a matter of procedural fairness and epistemic justice, the perspectives of low-income and middle-income country (LMIC) stakeholders must inform concepts of equitable health research data sharing. This paper investigates published perspectives in relation to how equitable data sharing in global health research should be understood.

Methods

We undertook a scoping review (2015 onwards) of the literature on LMIC stakeholders’ experiences and perspectives of data sharing in global health research and thematically analysed the 26 articles included in the review.

Results

We report LMIC stakeholders’ published views on how current data sharing mandates may exacerbate inequities, what structural changes are required in order to create an environment conducive to equitable data sharing and what should comprise equitable data sharing in global health research.

Conclusions

In light of our findings, we conclude that data sharing under existing mandates to share data (with minimal restrictions) risks perpetuating a neocolonial dynamic. To achieve equitable data sharing, adopting best practices in data sharing is necessary but insufficient. Structural inequalities in global health research must also be addressed. It is thus imperative that the structural changes needed to ensure equitable data sharing are incorporated into the broader dialogue on global health research.
Using antioppressive teaching principles to transform a graduate global health course at Johns Hopkins University
Authors: Kalbarczyk Anna , Aqil Anushka , Sauer Molly , Chatterjee Pranab , Jacques Keilah A , Mooney Graham , Labrique Alain , Lee Krystal
Published: March 2023

Education systems and pedagogical practices in global public health are facing substantive calls for change during the current and ongoing ‘decolonising global health’ movement. Incorporating antioppressive principles into learning communities is one promising approach to decolonising global health education. We sought to transform a four-credit graduate-level global health course at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health using antioppressive principles. One member of the teaching team attended a year-long training designed to support changes in pedagogical philosophy, syllabus development, course design, course implementation, assignments, grading, and student engagement. We incorporated regular student self-reflections designed to capture student experiences and elicit constant feedback to inform real-time changes responsive to student needs. Our efforts at remediating the emerging limitations of one course in graduate global health education provide an example of overhauling graduate education to remain relevant in a rapidly changing global order.
Greener Operations: a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership to define research priorities in environmentally sustainable perioperative practice through a structured consensus approach
Authors: Clayton-Smith Max , Narayanan Hrishi , Shelton Clifford , Bates Louise , Brennan Fiona , Diedo Beck , Donnellon Mike , Dorey Jenny , Evans Bob , Gower Jonathan , Hamdaoui Yasmina , Hitchman John , Kinsella S Michael , Knagg Rebecca , Lawson Cathy , Morris Daniel , Pegna Victoria , Radcliffe Tracey , Schaff Olivia , Sheppard Tim , Strong Jennifer , Jones David
Published: March 2023

Objectives

To agree on the ‘top 10’ research priorities for environmentally sustainable perioperative practice.

Design

Surveys and literature review; final consensus workshop using a nominal group technique.

Setting

UK-based setting.

Participants

Healthcare professionals, patients, carers and the public.

Outcome measures

Initial survey—suggested research questions; interim survey—shortlist of ‘indicative’ questions (the 20 most frequently nominated by patients, carers and the public, and healthcare professionals); final workshop—ranked research priorities.

Results

Initial survey—1926 suggestions by 296 respondents, refined into 60 indicative questions. Interim survey—325 respondents. Final workshop—21 participants agreed the ‘top 10’: (1) How can more sustainable reusable equipment safely be used during and around the time of an operation? (2) How can healthcare organisations more sustainably procure (obtain) medicines, equipment and items used during and around the time of an operation? (3) How can healthcare professionals who deliver care during and around the time of an operation be encouraged to adopt sustainable actions in practice? (4) Can more efficient use of operating theatres and associated practices reduce the environmental impact of operations? (5) How can the amount of waste generated during and around the time of an operation be minimised? (6) How do we measure and compare the short-term and long-term environmental impacts of surgical and non-surgical treatments for the same condition? (7) What is the environmental impact of different anaesthetic techniques (eg, different types of general, regional and local anaesthesia) used for the same operation? (8) How should the environmental impact of an operation be weighed against its clinical outcomes and financial costs? (9) How can environmental sustainability be incorporated into the organisational management of operating theatres? (10) What are the most sustainable forms of effective infection prevention and control used around the time of an operation (eg, personal protective equipment, drapes, clean air ventilation)?

Conclusions

A broad range of ‘end-users’ have identified research priorities for sustainable perioperative care.
Generalised urticaria and angioedema complicating switch back from subcutaneous to intravenous vedolizumab therapy
Authors: Chauhan Dipesh , Prabhu Anil , Cripps Sarah , Misbah Siraj , Griffiths Kate , Roseman Alice , Walsh Alissa , Satsangi Jack
Published: March 2023

We report a unique case of a 34-year-old man with ulcerative colitis, previously in complete remission with intravenous vedolizumab monotherapy, who developed an urticarial injection-site reaction on switching to a subcutaneous preparation and thereafter experienced a new hypersensitivity reaction on switch back to intravenous vedolizumab, necessitating complete discontinuation from this drug. This case highlights the need for vigilance on switching back to intravenous preparations of vedolizumab, in response to injection-site reactions with a subcutaneous preparation, even if the intravenous preparation had been previously well tolerated by the patient.
A LANDIS-II extension for simulating forest road networks
Authors: Hardy Clément , Messier Christian , Valeria Osvaldo , Filotas Elise
Published: March 2023

Forest roads are an important part of forest management, both in terms of cost and impact on surrounding ecosystems. Existing tools to simulate the construction of forest roads have been designed for tactical or operational planning purposes, for relatively small areas (<10 000 ha) and small-scale topographic information. Hence, no forest road simulation tool properly exists to assist forest landscape ecology and management research. Here, we present the Forest Roads Simulation (FRS) extension for the LANDIS-II model—a spatially explicit landscape simulation model of forest succession and disturbances. The FRS extension simulates forest road networks via a least-cost path algorithm accounting for landscape structure, decision inputs, and forest road types. We demonstrate the accuracy with which the FRS extension reproduces several key characteristics of existing road networks in two managed regions in Quebec, Canada: road density, road position, and fragmentation of the landscape. The FRS extension is easy to parameterize, proposing many options for researchers to simulate forest road networks at a strategic level in managed landscapes. It can tackle new research questions investigating the effects of forest roads within management strategies, such as the cost of road construction and habitat fragmentation, across large management units and long planning horizons.
Energizing gamma ray bursts via $$Z^{\prime }$$ mediated neutrino heating
Authors: Poddar Tanmay Kumar , Goswami Srubabati , Mishra Arvind Kumar
Published: March 2023

The pair annihilation of neutrinos $$(\nu {\overline{\nu }}\rightarrow e^+e^-)$$

(
ν

ν
¯

→

e
+

e
-

)

can energize violent stellar explosions such as gamma ray bursts (GRBs). The energy in this neutrino heating mechanism can be further enhanced by modifying the background spacetime over that of Newtonian spacetime. However, one cannot attain the maximum GRB energy $$(\sim 10^{52}~\text {erg})$$

(
∼

10
52

erg
)

in either the Newtonian background or Schwarzschild and Hartle–Thorne background. On the other hand, using modified gravity theories or the Quintessence field as background geometries, the maximum GRB energy can be reached. In this paper, we consider extending the standard model by an extra $$U(1)_{{\mathrm{B-L}}}$$

U

(
1
)

B
-
L

gauge group and augmenting the energy deposition by neutrino pair annihilation process including contributions mediated by the $$Z^{\prime }$$

Z
′

gauge boson belonging to this model. From the observed energy of GRB, we obtain constraints on $$U(1)_{{\mathrm{B-L}}}$$

U

(
1
)

B
-
L

gauge coupling in different background spacetimes. We find that the bounds on gauge coupling in modified gravity theories and quintessence background are stronger than those coming from the neutrino-electron scattering experiments in the limit of small gauge boson masses. Future GRB observations with better accuracy can further strengthen these bounds.
Observable features of charged Kiselev black hole with non-commutative geometry under various accretion flow
Authors: Saleem Rabia , Aslam M. Israr
Published: March 2023

The light passing near the black hole (BH) is deflected due to the gravitational effect, producing the BH shadow, a dark inner region that is often surrounded by a bright ring, whose optical appearance comes directly from BH’s mass and its angular momentum. We mainly study the shadow and observable features of non-commutative (NC) charged Kiselev BH, surrounded by various profiles of accretions. To obtain the BH shadow profile, we choose specific values of the model parameters and concluded that the variations of each parameter directly vary the light trajectories and size of BH. For thin disk accretion, which includes direct lensing and photon rings emissions, we analyze that the profile of BH contains the dark interior region and bright photon ring. However, their details depends upon the emissions, generally, direct emission plays significant role in the total observed luminosity, while lensing ring has a small contribution and the photon ring makes a negligible contribution, as usual, the latter can be ignored safely. Moreover, we also consider the static and infalling accretion matters and found that the location of the photon sphere is almost the same for both cases. However, the specific intensity which is observed from BH profile found to be darker for infalling accretion case due to the Doppler effect of the infalling motion as compared to the static one.
ENTREPRENEURIAL SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID: A SUPPLY CHAIN RESOURCE ORCHESTRATION PERSPECTIVE
Authors: AGRAWAL BINDU , JENKINS MATTHEW , CADOTTE ERNEST
Published: March 2023

Bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) markets include an estimated 689 million people living in extreme poverty and, with some controversy, are frequently lauded as the “next frontier” for economic prosperity. In this context, supply chain resource orchestration (SCRO) could be a game changer; however, not enough is known about SCRO at the BOP. We examine SCRO theory and practice and identify strategies to enable more BOP players to achieve sustainable social and economic benefits. Our methodology involves: (1) a critical review of extant supply chain BOP literature to develop a SCRO model, (2) a content analysis with interview data triangulation that examines 21 case studies of business ventures at the BOP, (3) abstraction of a typology of common SCRO strategies, (4) development of a classification pyramid and SCRO process model that illustrate SCRO tactics across pyramid levels and (5) creation of a classification matrix, which encapsulates our observed connections among motivations, strategies, tactics and outcomes across the case studies. The research sheds light on opportunities for future scholars to examine supply chains and SCRO at the BOP level. It also provides practical guidance on how to orchestrate a successful BOP supply chain and suggests the SCRO strategies propagating from the grass roots level tend to benefit the most people.
Speculators’ dominance in the Index futures market during COVID-19
Authors: Karnatak Udayan
Published: March 2023

A recent study shows that index futures prices are influenced by the index’s liquidity. This research describes the state of the index futures market following the epidemic as seen by index futures mispricing affected by liquidity and volatility during the outbreak.
Narrative-Based Visual Feedback to Encourage Sustained Physical Activity
Authors: Murnane Elizabeth L. , Glazko Yekaterina S. , Costa Jean , Yao Raymond , Zhao Grace , Moya Paula M. L. , Landay James A.
Published: March 2023

Stories are a core way human beings make meaning and sense of the world and our lived experiences, including our behaviors, desires, and goals. Narrative structures, both visual and textual, help us understand and act on information, while also evoking strong emotions. Focusing on the health context, this research examines the effectiveness of narrative-based feedback in motivating physical activity behaviors and underlying attitudes over longitudinal periods. After collecting two weeks of baseline physical activity levels, N=39 participants installed our smartphone application, WhoIsZuki. The WhoIsZuki app supports goal setting and semi-automated activity tracking, and it provides an ambient display that visually encodes these tracked activities as well as progress toward goals. Half of participants received a version of the interface that supplied behavioral feedback in the form of a multi-chapter episodic narrative, while the other half received a control condition version that provided an aesthetically-similar visualization but without any characterization, episodic structure, dramatic effect, or other narrative elements. After interacting with these versions for four months, our analysis showed that participants receiving the multi-chapter narrative feedback performed more physical activity, achieved more goals, experienced more positive psychological shifts, and overall engaged more meaningfully with the digital intervention.
ViSig
Authors: Cao Yifeng , Dhekne Ashutosh , Ammar Mostafa
Published: March 2023

Visual body signals are designated body poses that deliver an application-specific message. Such signals are widely used for fast message communication in sports (signaling by umpires and referees), transportation (naval officers and aircraft marshallers), and construction (signaling by riggers and crane operators), to list a few examples. Automatic interpretation of such signals can help maintaining safer operations in these industries, help in record-keeping for auditing or accident investigation purposes, and function as a score-keeper in sports. When automation of these signals is desired, it is traditionally performed from a viewer's perspective by running computer vision algorithms on camera feeds. However, computer vision based approaches suffer from performance deterioration in scenarios such as lighting variations, occlusions, etc., might face resolution limitations, and can be challenging to install. Our work, ViSig, breaks with tradition by instead deploying on-body sensors for signal interpretation. Our key innovation is the fusion of ultra-wideband (UWB) sensors for capturing on-body distance measurements, inertial sensors (IMU) for capturing orientation of a few body segments, and photodiodes for finger signal recognition, enabling a robust interpretation of signals. By deploying only a small number of sensors, we show that body signals can be interpreted unambiguously in many different settings, including in games of Cricket, Baseball, and Football, and in operational safety use-cases such as crane operations and flag semaphores for maritime navigation, with > 90% accuracy. Overall, we have seen substantial promise in this approach and expect a large body of future follow-on work to start using UWB and IMU fused modalities for the more general human pose estimation problems.
A Data-Driven Context-Aware Health Inference System for Children during School Closures
Authors: Jiang Zhihan , Lin Lin , Zhang Xinchen , Luan Jianduo , Zhao Running , Chen Longbiao , Lam James , Yip Ka-Man , So Hung-Kwan , Wong Wilfred H.S. , Ip Patrick , Ngai Edith C.H.
Published: March 2023

Many countries have implemented school closures due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has inevitably affected children's physical and mental health. It is vital for parents to pay special attention to their children's health status during school closures. However, it is difficult for parents to recognize the changes in their children's health, especially without visible symptoms, such as psychosocial functioning in mental health. Moreover, healthcare resources and understanding of the health and societal impact of COVID-19 are quite limited during the pandemic. Against this background, we collected real-world datasets from 1,172 children in Hong Kong during four time periods under different pandemic and school closure conditions from September 2019 to January 2022. Based on these data, we first perform exploratory data analysis to explore the impact of school closures on six health indicators, including physical activity intensity, physical functioning, self-rated health, psychosocial functioning, resilience, and connectedness. We further study the correlation between children's contextual characteristics (i.e., demographics, socioeconomic status, electronic device usage patterns, financial satisfaction, academic performance, sleep pattern, exercise habits, and dietary patterns) and the six health indicators. Subsequently, a health inference system is designed and developed to infer children's health status based on their contextual features to derive the risk factors of the six health indicators. The evaluation and case studies on real-world datasets show that this health inference system can help parents and authorities better understand key factors correlated with children's health status during school closures.
Exergy
Authors: Park Jung Wook , Sun Sienna Xin , Cheng Tingyu , Yoo Dong Whi , Zhou Jiawei , Do Youngwook , Abowd Gregory D. , Arriaga Rosa I.
Published: March 2023

Energy harvesting reduces the burden of power source maintenance and promises to make computing systems genuinely ubiquitous. Researchers have made inroads in this area, but their novel energy harvesting materials and fabrication techniques remain inaccessible to the general maker communities. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a toolkit that makes energy harvesting accessible to novices. In Study 1, we investigate the challenges and opportunities associated with devising energy harvesting technology with experienced researchers and makers (N=9). Using the lessons learned from this investigation, we design a wind energy harvesting toolkit, Exergy, in Study 2. It consists of a simulator, hardware tools, a software example, and ideation cards. We apply it to vehicle environments, which have yet to be explored despite their potential. In Study 3, we conduct a two-phase workshop: hands-on experience and ideation sessions. The results show that novices (N=23) could use Exergy confidently and invent self-sustainable energy harvesting applications creatively.
Genie in the Model
Authors: Wang Yanfei , Yu Zhiwen , Liu Sicong , Zhou Zimu , Guo Bin
Published: March 2023

Advances in deep neural networks (DNNs) have fostered a wide spectrum of intelligent mobile applications ranging from voice assistants on smartphones to augmented reality with smart-glasses. To deliver high-quality services, these DNNs should operate on resource-constrained mobile platforms and yield consistent performance in open environments. However, DNNs are notoriously resource-intensive, and often suffer from performance degradation in real-world deployments. Existing research strives to optimize the resource-performance trade-off of DNNs by compressing the model without notably compromising its inference accuracy. Accordingly, the accuracy of these compressed DNNs is bounded by the original ones, leading to more severe accuracy drop in challenging yet common scenarios such as low-resolution, small-size, and motion-blur. In this paper, we propose to push forward the frontiers of the DNN performance-resource trade-off by introducing human intelligence as a new design dimension. To this end, we explore human-in-the-loop DNNs (H-DNNs) and their automatic performance-resource optimization. We present H-Gen, an automatic H-DNN compression framework that incorporates human participation as a new hyperparameter for accurate and efficient DNN generation. It involves novel hyperparameter formulation, metric calculation, and search strategy in the context of automatic H-DNN generation. We also propose human participation mechanisms for three common DNN architectures to showcase the feasibility of H-Gen. Extensive experiments on twelve categories of challenging samples with three common DNN structures demonstrate the superiority of H-Gen in terms of the overall trade-off between performance (accuracy, latency), and resource (storage, energy, human labour).
DisPad
Authors: Chen Xiaowei , Jiang Xiao , Fang Jiawei , Guo Shihui , Lin Juncong , Liao Minghong , Luo Guoliang , Fu Hongbo
Published: March 2023

The last few decades have witnessed an emerging trend of wearable soft sensors; however, there are important signal-processing challenges for soft sensors that still limit their practical deployment. They are error-prone when displaced, resulting in significant deviations from their ideal sensor output. In this work, we propose a novel prototype that integrates an elbow pad with a sparse network of soft sensors. Our prototype is fully bio-compatible, stretchable, and wearable. We develop a learning-based method to predict the elbow orientation angle and achieve an average tracking error of 9.82 degrees for single-user multi-motion experiments. With transfer learning, our method achieves the average tracking errors of 10.98 degrees and 11.81 degrees across different motion types and users, respectively. Our core contributions lie in a solution that realizes robust and stable human joint motion tracking across different device displacements.
NF-Heart
Authors: Huang Yandao , Qiu Minghui , Chen Lin , Peng Zhencan , Zhang Qian , Wu Kaishun
Published: March 2023

The increasingly remote workforce resulting from the global coronavirus pandemic has caused unprecedented cybersecurity concerns to organizations. Considerable evidence has shown that one-pass authentication fails to meet security needs when the workforce work from home. The recent advent of continuous authentication (CA) has shown the potential to solve this predicament. In this paper, we propose NF-Heart, a physiological-based CA system utilizing a ballistocardiogram (BCG). The key insight is that the BCG measures the body's micro-movements produced by the recoil force of the body in reaction to the cardiac ejection of blood, and we can infer cardiac biometrics from BCG signals. To measure BCG, we deploy a lightweight accelerometer on an office chair, turning the common chair into a smart continuous identity "scanner". We design multiple stages of signal processing to decompose and transform the distorted BCG signals so that the effects of motion artifacts and dynamic variations are eliminated. User-specific fiducial features are then extracted from the processed BCG signals for authentication. We conduct comprehensive experiments on 105 subjects in terms of verification accuracy, security, robustness, and long-term availability. The results demonstrate that NF-Heart achieves a mean balanced accuracy of 96.45% and a median equal error rate of 3.83% for CA. The proposed signal processing pipeline is effective in addressing various practical disturbances.
GlucoScreen
Authors: Waghmare Anandghan , Parizi Farshid Salemi , Hoffman Jason , Wang Yuntao , Thompson Matthew , Patel Shwetak
Published: March 2023

Blood glucose measurement is commonly used to screen for and monitor diabetes, a chronic condition characterized by the inability to effectively modulate blood glucose that can lead to heart disease, vision loss, and kidney failure. Early detection of prediabetes can forestall or reverse more serious illness if healthy lifestyle adjustments or medical interventions are made in a timely manner. Current diabetes screening methods require visits to a healthcare facility and use of over-the-counter glucose-testing devices (glucometers), both of which are costly or inaccessible for many populations, reducing the chances of early disease detection. We therefore developed GlucoScreen, a readerless glucose test strip that enables affordable, single-use, at-home glucose testing, leveraging the user's touchscreen cellphone for reading and displaying results. By integrating minimal, low-cost electronics with commercially available blood glucose testing strips, the GlucoScreen prototype introduces a new type of low-cost, battery-free glucose testing tool that works with any smartphone, obviating the need to purchase a separate dedicated reader. Our key innovation is using the phone's capacitive touchscreen for the readout of the minimally modified commercially available glucose test strips. In an in vitro evaluation with artificial glucose solutions, we tested GlucoScreen with five different phones and compared the findings to two common glucometers, AccuChek and True Metrix. The mean absolute error (MAE) for our GlucoScreen prototype was 4.52 mg/dl (Accu-Chek test strips) and 3.7 mg/dl (True Metrix test strips), compared to 4.98 mg/dl and 5.44 mg/dl for the AccuChek glucometer and True Metrix glucometer, respectively. In a clinical investigation with 75 patients, GlucoScreen had a MAE of 10.47 mg/dl, while the AccuChek glucometer had a 9.88 mg/dl MAE. These results indicate that GlucoScreen's performance is comparable to that of commonly available over-the-counter blood glucose testing devices. With further development and validation, GlucoScreen has the potential to facilitate large-scale and lower cost diabetes screening. This work employs GlucoScreen's smartphone-based technology for glucose testing, but it could be extended to build other readerless electrochemical assays in the future.
FocalPoint
Authors: Ma Jiaju , Qian Jing , Zhou Tongyu , Huang Jeff
Published: March 2023

We propose FocalPoint, a direct manipulation technique in smartphone augmented reality (AR) for selecting small densely-packed objects within reach, a fundamental yet challenging task in AR due to the required accuracy and precision. FocalPoint adaptively and continuously updates a cylindrical geometry for selection disambiguation based on the user's selection history and hand movements. This design is informed by a preliminary study which revealed that participants preferred selecting objects appearing in particular regions of the screen. We evaluate FocalPoint against a baseline direct manipulation technique in a 12-participant study with two tasks: selecting a 3 mm wide target from a pile of cubes and virtually decorating a house with LEGO pieces. FocalPoint was three times as accurate for selecting the correct object and 5.5 seconds faster on average; participants using FocalPoint decorated their houses more and were more satisfied with the result. We further demonstrate the finer control enabled by FocalPoint in example applications of robot repair, 3D modeling, and neural network visualizations.
Mood Measurement on Smartphones
Authors: Torkamaan Helma
Published: March 2023

Mood, often studied using smartphones, influences human perception, judgment, thought, and behavior. Mood measurements on smartphones face challenges concerning the selection of a proper mood measure and its transfer, or translation, into a digital application (app) that is user-engaging. Addressing these challenges, researchers sometimes end up developing a new interaction design and modifying the classic mood measure for an app. However, the extent to which such design alterations can impact user compliance, user experience, and the accuracy of mood measurements throughout a mood self-tracking study is unclear. In this paper, we explore and investigate how the selection of a mood measure (from two widely used measures) and its design alteration (from three options of classic, chatbot, and interactive designs) impact the (i) validity, (ii) user compliance, and (iii) user experience of mood measurement apps. For this purpose, we conducted a hybrid study with a mixed design in three parts. The first part suggests that a measure's validity can be susceptible to design modifications and introduces the concept of measure's resilience which can be essential when modifying the interaction design of a measurement tool. The second part discovers that both the type and design of the chosen measure can impact user compliance. This part also portrays a more complete picture of user compliance by demonstrating the use of several variables to investigate compliance. This investigation reveals that user compliance is not just about the response duration or length of a measurement tool. The final part finds that a measure or its design does not significantly influence the user experience for a well-designed app. In this part, we also discover which user experience criteria are more impactful for improving user compliance when designing mood tracking (or mood self-tracking) tools. Our results further suggest that, for a resilient measure, the interactive design is more likely to attract users and have higher user compliance and satisfaction as a whole. Ultimately, choosing a measure or design alternative would be a three-way trade-off between the measure's validity (or accuracy), user compliance, and user satisfaction, which researchers have to prioritize. A successful mood measurement with a smartphone needs to balance both concepts of app quality and assessment quality.
Mites
Authors: Boovaraghavan Sudershan , Chen Chen , Maravi Anurag , Czapik Mike , Zhang Yang , Harrison Chris , Agarwal Yuvraj
Published: March 2023

There is increasing interest in deploying building-scale, general-purpose, and high-fidelity sensing to drive emerging smart building applications. However, the real-world deployment of such systems is challenging due to the lack of system and architectural support. Most existing sensing systems are purpose-built, consisting of hardware that senses a limited set of environmental facets, typically at low fidelity and for short-term deployment. Furthermore, prior systems with high-fidelity sensing and machine learning fail to scale effectively and have fewer primitives, if any, for privacy and security. For these reasons, IoT deployments in buildings are generally short-lived or done as a proof of concept. We present the design of Mites, a scalable end-to-end hardware-software system for supporting and managing distributed general-purpose sensors in buildings. Our design includes robust primitives for privacy and security, essential features for scalable data management, as well as machine learning to support diverse applications in buildings. We deployed our Mites system and 314 Mites devices in Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Hall at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a fully occupied, five-story university building. We present a set of comprehensive evaluations of our system using a series of microbenchmarks and end-to-end evaluations to show how we achieved our stated design goals. We include five proof-of-concept applications to demonstrate the extensibility of the Mites system to support compelling IoT applications. Finally, we discuss the real-world challenges we faced and the lessons we learned over the five-year journey of our stack's iterative design, development, and deployment.
3D Deformation Capture via a Configurable Self-Sensing IMU Sensor Network
Authors: Zhou Zihong , Chen Pei , Lu Yinyu , Cui Qiang , Pan Deying , Liu Yilun , Li Jiaji , Zhang Yang , Tao Ye , Liu Xuanhui , Sun Lingyun , Wang Guanyun
Published: March 2023

Motion capture technologies reconstruct human movements and have wide-ranging applications. Mainstream research on motion capture can be divided into vision-based methods and inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based methods. The vision-based methods capture complex 3D geometrical deformations with high accuracy, but they rely on expensive optical equipment and suffer from the line-of-sight occlusion problem. IMU-based methods are lightweight but hard to capture fine-grained 3D deformations. In this work, we present a configurable self-sensing IMU sensor network to bridge the gap between the vision-based and IMU-based methods. To achieve this, we propose a novel kinematic chain model based on the four-bar linkage to describe the minimum deformation process of 3D deformations. We also introduce three geometric priors, obtained from the initial shape, material properties and motion features, to assist the kinematic chain model in reconstructing deformations and overcome the data sparsity problem. Additionally, to further enhance the accuracy of deformation capture, we propose a fabrication method to customize 3D sensor networks for different objects. We introduce origami-inspired thinking to achieve the customization process, which constructs 3D sensor networks through a 3D-2D-3D digital-physical transition. The experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves comparable performance with state-of-the-art methods.
PARROT
Authors: Alhirabi Nada , Beaumont Stephanie , Llanos Jose Tomas , Meedeniya Dulani , Rana Omer , Perera Charith
Published: March 2023

Internet of Things (IoT) applications typically collect and analyse personal data that is categorised as sensitive or special category of personal data. These data are subject to a higher degree of protection under data privacy laws. Regardless of legal requirements to support privacy practices, such as in Privacy by Design (PbD) schemes, these practices are not yet commonly followed by software developers. The difficulty of developing privacy-preserving applications emphasises the importance of exploring the problems developers face to embed privacy techniques, suggesting the need for a supporting tool. An interactive IoT application design tool - PARROT (PrivAcy by design tool foR inteRnet Of Things) - is presented. This tool helps developers to design privacy-aware IoT applications, taking account of privacy compliance during the design process and providing real-time feedback on potential privacy violations. A user study with 18 developers was conducted, comprising a semi-structured interview and a design exercise to understand how developers typically handle privacy within the design process. Collaboration with a privacy lawyer was used to review designs produced by developers to uncover privacy limitations that could be addressed by developing a software tool. Based on the findings, a proof-of-concept prototype of PARROT was implemented and evaluated in two controlled lab studies. The outcome of the study indicates that IoT applications designed with PARROT addressed privacy concerns better and managed to reduce several of the limitations identified. From a privacy compliance perspective, PARROT helps developers to address compliance requirements throughout the design and testing process. This is achieved by incorporating privacy specific design features into the IoT application from the beginning rather than retrospectively. (Demo Video).
Microbubbles in Food Technology
Authors: Lu Jiakai , Jones Owen G. , Yan Weixin , Corvalan Carlos M.
Published: March 2023

Microbubbles are largely unused in the food industry yet have promising capabilities as environmentally friendly cleaning and supporting agents within products and production lines due to their unique physical behaviors. Their small diameters increase their dispersion throughout liquid materials, promote reactivity because of their high specific surface area, enhance dissolution of gases into the surrounding liquid phase, and promote the generation of reactive chemical species. This article reviews techniques to generate microbubbles, their modes of action to enhance cleaning and disinfection, their contributions to functional and mechanical properties of food materials, and their use in supporting the growth of living organisms in hydroponics or bioreactors. The utility and diverse applications of microbubbles, combined with their low intrinsic ingredient cost, strongly encourage their increased adoption within the food industry in coming years.
Greater resting muscle sympathetic nerve activity reduces cold pressor autonomic reactivity in older women but not older men
Authors: Akins John D. , Okada Yoshiyuki , Hendrix Joseph M. , Vongpatanasin Wanpen , Fu Qi
Published: March 2023

Previous work demonstrates augmented muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) responses to the cold pressor test (CPT) in older women. Given its interindividual variability, however, the influence of baseline MSNA on CPT reactivity in older adults remains unknown. Sixty volunteers (60–83 yr; 30 women) completed testing where MSNA (microneurography), blood pressure (BP), and heart rate (HR) were recorded during baseline and a 2-min CPT (∼4°C). Participant data were terciled by baseline MSNA ( n = 10/group); comparisons were made between the high baseline men (HM) and women (HW), and low baseline men (LM) and women (LW). By design, HM and HW, versus LM and LW, had greater baseline MSNA burst frequency (37 ± 5 and 38 ± 3 vs. 9 ± 4 and 15 ± 5 bursts/min) and burst incidence (59 ± 14 and 60 ± 8 vs. 16 ± 10 and 23 ± 7 bursts/100 hbs; both P < 0.001). However, baseline BP and HR were not different between the groups (all P > 0.05). During the CPT, there were no differences in the increase in BP and HR (all P > 0.05). Conversely, ΔMSNA burst frequency was lower in HW versus LW (8 ± 9 vs. 22 ± 12 bursts/min; P = 0.012) yet was similar in HM vs. LM (17 ± 12 vs. 19 ± 10 bursts/min, P = 0.994). Furthermore, ΔMSNA burst incidence was lower in HW versus LW (9 ± 13 vs. 28 ± 16 bursts/100 hbs; P = 0.020), with no differences between HM versus LM (21 ± 17 vs. 31 ± 17 bursts/100 hbs; P = 0.455). Our findings suggest that heightened baseline activity in older women attenuates the typical CPT-mediated increase in MSNA without changing cardiovascular reactivity. Although the underlying mechanisms remain unknown, altered sympathetic recruitment or neurovascular transduction may contribute to these disparate responses.