bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Brain Injury Screening Questionnaire: A Methodology to be Applied to Soldiers
Authors: Gordon Wayne A.
Published: February 2025

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is extremely prevalent in the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Although some soldiers in the United States are currently being screened for TBI both before and after they are deployed, there are many factors that limit the validity of these screenings. For example, many soldiers are reluctant to “step up” because they are concerned that a positive screen will delay their return home. Additionally, many of the symptoms of mild TBI may not emerge until the soldiers have returned home and picked up the fabric of their former life. This paper will review an approach to screening for TBI, the Brain Injury Screening Questionnaire (BISQ). Additionally, the development, validity and research on the BISQ, as well as its potential diverse clinical applications, will be reviewed.
A Prototype Implementation of Desktop Clouds
Authors: Devare Manoj  , Sheikhalishahi Mehdi  , Grandinetti Lucio
Published: February 2025

Nowadays cloud computing is a popular paradigm to provide software, platform and infrastructure as a service to the consumers. It has been observed that seldom the capacity of personal computers (PC) is fully utilized. Desktop cloud is a novel approach for resource harvesting in a heterogeneous non-dedicated desktop environment. This paper discusses a virtual infrastructure manager and a scheduling framework to leverage idle PCs, with the permission of PC owners. Prima facie, VirtualBox is the best suited hypervisor as a backbone of the private desktop cloud architecture. A consumer is able to submit a lease to be deployed on idle resources, to launch a computation abstracted as a virtual machine (VM) or a virtual cluster using virtualization. In this approach, the role of the Scheduler is to balance both requirements of resource provider and resource consumer of the cloud in a non-dedicated heterogeneous environment. In addition, the permission of PC owners is taken into account, and consumers expect the best possible performance during the whole session. From the consumer's point of view, a prototype implementation of desktop clouds is useful for submitting lease requirement to the scheduler e.g. for running HPC applications.
Development of a system that provides tailored feedback and advice to elderly people regarding physical functioning
Authors: Vermeulen J.  , Neyens J.  , Spreeuwenberg M.  , Van Rossum E.  , Sipers W.  , Hewson D.  , De Witte L.
Published: February 2025

Objective: To collaborate with relevant stakeholders and end-users to develop an innovative and feasible system that monitors physical functioning and provides tailored feedback and advice to community-dwelling elderly people.
End-user Participation in Developing the Assistive Technology Outcomes Profile for Mobility (ATOP/M)
Authors: Jutai Jeffrey W.
Published: February 2025

Objective. The Assistive Technology Outcomes Profile for Mobility (ATOP/M), is designed to measure the specific functional effects of mobility assistive devices, such as canes, orthotics, walkers and wheelchairs, on performance of mobility-related activities and participation as defined in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework. This paper described the development of the instrument and discusses the approach taken to faithfully capture the perspectives of device users.
End-user Involvement in the Development and Evaluation of the Caregiver Assistive Technology Outcome Measure
Authors: Mortenson William B.  , Demers Louise
Published: February 2025

Objective. This presentation describes caregiver and clinician involvement in the ongoing development and evaluation of the Caregiver Assistive Technology Outcome Measure (CATOM). This tool measures the impact of assistive technology interventions on the burden experienced by informal caregivers.
Assistive/Rehabilitation Technology, Disability, & Service Delivery Models: A Review and Suggested Framework for Understanding and Improving the Evidence-Base
Authors: Adya Meera  , Samant Deepti  , Scherer Marcia
Published: February 2025

Technology developments, as stimulated by the marketplace and by top-down governing bodies through standards, regulations, and fiscal incentives, rarely take into consideration the breadth of applicability of technologies for persons with disabilities in developed or developing countries. A review of the state of practice and state of science in the U.S. and internationally, reflects a disparate knowledge base which lacks a guiding theoretical framework. Ideal frameworks, that incorporate the multivariate perspective of disability, include the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning. In this article the multivariate aspects of disability, as represented in the CRPD and ICF, are related to the issue of assistive and rehabilitation technology service delivery. Assistive and rehabilitation technology mediates functional limitations of a person in their environments, thereby mitigating or eliminating a “disability's” impact on their functioning across contexts and ultimately increasing participation of persons with a “disability.” Several different models have developed for transferring AT to persons, but evaluations of the models' efficacy have been varied and this has resulted in a fragmented evidence base. While we briefly review different models of AT service delivery, particularly those in resource-limited environments, the thrust of this article is the proposal of a multi-perspective, multi-method framework for evaluating these and any other models that may develop, with an aim to creating a comprehensive evidence-base that permits a comparative effectiveness approach to aggregating findings and synthesizing the literature base.
The Psychologist's Role: A Neglected Presence in the Assistive Technology Assessment Process
Authors: Meloni Fabio  , Federici Stefano  , Stella Aldo
Published: February 2025

Objective. According to the ideal model of an AT assessment (ATA) process in the centre for technical aid proposed by Scherer and Federici and colleagues [15, 16], this study puts forward a proposal for the precise placement of the clinical psychologist in the process of matching people and technology and outlines the skills required for each stage of the intervention.
Activity monitoring to support independent living in Dutch homecare support
Authors: Willems Charles G.  , Spreeuwenberg Marieke D.  , van der Heide Loek  , Glascock Anthony P.  , Kutzik David L.  , de Witte Luc  , Rietman John
Published: February 2025

Objective: Detecting changes in activity performance by persons living at home may provide to be a powerful tool to support them to live independently. To this end a new care arrangement had to be developed in which commercial available technology is used by a homecare organization and informal carers. The objective of this study is a) to organize the conditions needed to deliver care support to people living independently and b) to investigate the effectiveness thereof.
Vlibank: Flemish Information System on Assistive Technology
Authors: Wouters Marc
Published: February 2025

Context. With the support of assistive technology a person with a disability can do a lot of activities that were impossible otherwise. Knowing which devices exist and which device provides the best solution in an individual situation is a major problem. The Flemish government acknowledged this problem already in the late 1980's. It gave the organization Vlicht the task to develop and maintain a database on assistive technology. That database grew to a public service delivery system where people with a disability can find information about devices and are helped to choose and obtain the most suited device. Currently the system is maintained and supported by the Knowledge Center Assistive Technology (KOC) of the Flemish Agency for Disabled Persons (VAPH).
Towards a global information network: the European Assistive Technology Information Network and the World Alliance of AT Information Providers
Authors: Andrich Renzo
Published: February 2025

Objective. In many Countries, national information systems have been created to respond to information needs related to Assistive Technology products and services (AT). Recently the World Alliance of AT Information Providers was created to foster international exchange of experiences among all Institutions responsible for national information systems. Later, a number of Alliance members joined their efforts in a European project that led to the establishment of the EASTIN system (European Assistive Technology Information Network), the first living example of integration of AT information across many countries, languages and health/social systems.
Adaptation and validation of the modified KWAZO and EATS-2D instruments into Finnish circumstances
Authors: Ahtola Sirpa  , Heinonen Ari  , Haikonen Kari  , Anttila Heidi
Published: February 2025

Objective. User satisfaction and quality of life are important outcomes for evidence-based practices in health care. The “Kwaliteit van Zorg” (KWAZO) is a Dutch instrument to measure satisfaction of assistive technology (AT) service delivery. Efficiency of Assistive Technology and Services- questions (EATS-2D) is an extension to the standardized preference-based health-related quality of life measure EQ-5D. The aims of this study were: 1) to translate and adapt the modified KWAZO (renamed as Satisfaction of Assistive Technology Services, SATS) and EATS-2D into Finnish, 2) to investigate face and linguistic validity, and 3) the reliability of two administration modalities of the instruments.
The Economics of One Person's AT System: First Findings
Authors: Bringolf Jane  , Schraner Ingrid
Published: February 2025

This paper reports on the trial of a novel economic methodology to investigate and analyze the economics of an individual AT user's AT system. Various government reports in Australia have highlighted the inadequacies of government funded AT equipment schemes, many of which have budgetary constraints at their core. Yet delayed or inappropriate provision of AT causes additional monetary and health costs. Our concern here is that the methodologies commonly available to health economists are unable to give a realistic picture of the relationships between cost and effectiveness of complex, individualized systems. Our quest therefore was to develop a methodology that can encompass the complexities of measuring and costing a user's AT system and thereby provides a more realistic appraisal of the real costs associated with the provision and non-provision of optimal AT systems. Adopting a user-centered perspective and a novel use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), a seven step process was devised. The steps were trialed with one AT user. Most of the discussion here focuses on the third and fourth steps that deal with identifying and analyzing costs. In discussing the difficulties in steps three and four, particular emphasis is placed on those related to the public environment. The results revealed that whilst AT devices are essential for improving and maintaining independence, particularly in the domestic environment, the public environment and societal attitudes place major barriers to full participation in social, economic, recreational and civic activities. We conclude that the methodology holds much promise for dealing with the complexities that other economic methodologies tend to ignore, while acknowledging the resource intensity, which will limit the range of practical applications.
Reconciling Government Policies and Programs with Public Expectations: The Case of Innovation in Assistive Technology
Authors: Lane Joseph P.
Published: February 2025

Objective. This paper compares the expectations of the public with the policies driving government programs in research and development.
Designing the marriage of Open Innovation and User Participation
Authors: Cudd Peter  , Draffan E.A.  , Wald Mike  , Lee Steve
Published: February 2025

Objective. To explore and resolve any philosophical differences and pragmatic implementation issues to make the best of open innovation and end user participation in the Assistive Technology(AT) field. From this inform the design of the REALISE online open innovation community tool.
Development of an Assistive Home User Interface together with Older Users
Authors: Werner Katharina  , Oberzaucher Johannes  , Panek Paul  , Beck Christian  , Mayer Peter
Published: February 2025

Objective. It is commonly known that older people have different requirements concerning the interfaces of ICT-solutions than other user groups. In this context the objective was to develop an ICT-based user interface meeting the needs of older people that can easily be applied to other applications. A strong participatory design approach and testing in real user environments was implemented to achieve this.
Contribution to the study of assisted interactions between an autistic child and a therapist by the way of a mobile robot in a play situation
Authors: Etche Ogeli Ramia  , Pradel Gilbert  , Malen Jean Pierre
Published: February 2025

Objective: the project “RobAutisTIC”, works is conducted to evaluate the potential of a multimodal mobile robot to improve interactions and to study the child's social-communicative behaviours in this situation. The robot is used in a fun way to encourage interactive behaviours between the child and the therapist. We consider that child-therapist interactions are far more important than the child-robot interactions. The protocol we set up does not favour direct control of the robot by the child but only allows this control by the therapist. So, if the child wants to play with the robot, he/she must pass through a request to the therapist. The protocol uses 3 phases to i) demonstrate the robot's abilities, ii) show that the therapist may play with the robot, iii) encourage the triadic play.
Supporting the learning process – more than a Braille transcription
Authors: Mascret Bruno  , Mille Alain
Published: February 2025

Objective. This article gives an analysis of what a good automatic Braille transcribing tool should propose to be suitable for inclusive education. We criticize actual technologies and we present NAT Braille, a free software solution designed to respond to pedagogical specific needs.
Copyright and www.braillemusic.eu on line music service
Authors: Nicotra Giuseppe  , Ruzza Elisa
Published: February 2025

The topic of this presentation concerns the problems related to the Copyright issues and the safeguard of the accessible digital material, that can be provided by an online distribution service for disabled users.
Contextual Work-In-Progress ETA Prototypes For The Visually Impaired
Authors: Calder David J.
Published: February 2025

Objective. An Electronic Travel Aid (ETA) or navigation aid for the visually impaired is a portable electronic device that is incorporated into a long cane, hand-held or worn by the client, which warns of obstacles ahead. Many commercial aids suffer from a number of design flaws, the most important of which are related to the human interface that conveys information to the user. Most aids use vibrating buttons or sound alerts to warn of upcoming obstacles, a method which is only capable of conveying very crude information regarding direction and proximity to the nearest object. Some of the more sophisticated devices use a complex audio interface in order to deliver more detailed information, but this often compromises the user's hearing, a critical impairment for a blind user. The author's objective has been to produce an original design and working prototype which is a major first step in addressing these faults in current production solutions for the blind.
Review and Classification of Human Gait Training and Rehabilitation Devices
Authors: Martins Maria  , Frizera Anselmo  , Santos Cristina P.  , Ceres Ramón
Published: February 2025

The number of people with reduced mobility capabilities increases every year. This reduction arises mainly due to spinal cord injuries; strokes which caused hemiparesis; or due to an advanced age. This decrease in mobility is a factor that influences both their quality of life and their dependence of others in daily life.
The evaluation of accessibility and usability in Home for All-project
Authors: Kuusinen Jere
Published: February 2025

Objective. The study has the objective of creating a barrier-free residential environment for elderly as well as for persons with movement disabilities.
Easy-To-Use Social Network Service for People with Cognitive or Speech and Language Impairments
Authors: Sillanpää Niina  , Älli Sami  , Övermark Timo
Published: February 2025

Social media has become an important tool for social networking. However, most social networking services are very challenging for people with learning disabilities or cognitive impairments. The problems are mostly related to understanding the different concepts of the environment and related terminology, but the accessibility and usability problems common to all internet services also apply.
Windsurfing for all– Increasing Participation and Accessibility Through Equipment Modification
Authors: Karinharju Kati  , Laurila Antti  , Rämä Heikki
Published: February 2025

Objective. The Sataesteetön project responds to the needs of a society and supports everyone to have an independent and unrestricted life in every stage of their life. Yyteri for all is part of this project and its objective is to examine and develop accessibility and increase participation in the area of the Yyteri beach in Pori, Finland. This research presents the ways of developing windsurfing suitable for persons surfing in the seated position.
CentraList
Authors: Badr Georges  , Raynal Mathieu
Published: February 2025

In this paper we propose a novel predictive text entry system with a new distribution of its keys around a word list. Our aim is to optimize the use of software keyboards allied to prediction list. A prediction list is generally used to reduce effort by presenting a list of candidate words that may continue the prefix of the user. However, this technique may tire the user by adding additional cognitive and perceptual efforts. The user has to search continuously for his aimed word in the list, moving his eye-gaze between the list and the keyboard. Our new design allows the user not to lose his focus from the keyboard, no from the list, as well as reducing the movements of the cursor. We also present the experiments carried out to compare our new system to the classical alphabetically ordered keyboard with a list next to the keys.
Biometrics in Healthcare – A Research Overview
Authors: Modi Shimon K.
Published: February 2025

Digitization of the healthcare sector has been a major impetus for rapid adoption of biometric technologies, ranking it only behind the financial sector in consumer facing applications. The highly critical nature of healthcare records, the legal and medical risks associated with mis-identification, and the requirement of quick access to user information makes biometrics a preferred technology. The body of research supporting the theoretical effectiveness and efficiency of biometric technologies is quite substantial but users, the deployment environment and the type of biometric technology heavily impact its actual effectiveness and efficiency. Biometric technologies open up unprecedented opportunities in ambient assisted living (AAL) applications, but they also raise some unanswered questions. The aim of this chapter is to provide its readers with a basic understanding of biometric technologies and processes, discuss research in this area, and future challenges and use of biometric technologies in the healthcare environment, and specifically AAL applications.
AAL in the Health Space – A Reflection
Authors: Roberts Jean
Published: February 2025

Exemplars of operational AAL deployment in the healthspace are relatively few but increasing. This short reflective piece considers the reasons why, notes underpinning drivers for the future, outlines the increasing research-based activity and sets the context for the following papers that consider the current field from different perspectives across the globe. Firstly research-based (O'Kane, O'Donoghue, Gallagher, Aftab, Caseyand Courtney), then Zayas-Caban and colleague propose a methodology for design and implementation, followed by a description of operational piloting (MacGinnis). The next two papers look at progress – in Taiwan (Tsai-Ya and Jenn-Hwan) from the historic development forwards, and comparatively (Shao-Huai and Jui-Chen) in Japan describing a novel incentivisation model. Both of these papers make observations that could be applied globally, as do all the contributors in this section. Wild and Boise then conclude the section by focusing on attitudes to and uses of AAL for a particular target group of potential recipients of assistive technology, Older Persons. Evaluated AAL practical applications are emerging in the health space but the pace of roll-out could be speeded up if frequently observed constraints and some practical lessons learnt from deployment, which have been brought into focus by these papers, were addressed more effectively. There are however some additional refreshing and emerging European and global eHealth initiatives that look set to also facilitate progress.
Delivering Technology Enriched Health and Social Care: Policy Context for User Focused Research
Authors: Martin Suzanne  , Mulvenna Maurice
Published: February 2025

Implementation of ICT within Health and Social Care requires an aligned blend of strategic policy alongside research to promote innovation and creativity within services. This chapter explores the strategic context of developments within Europe, with a focus on the United Kingdom. In addition the value and opportunity for service orientated research as a mode to achieve high impact and sustainable implementation is proposed, thereby supporting evidence-based healthcare in this domain.
Smart Homes as a Vehicle for AAL
Authors: Augusto Juan Carlos
Published: February 2025

The chapters in this section provide good examples of developments which facilitate Ambient Assisted Living at home and consider the technologies and challenges involved in the development of such systems as well as the way they complement traditional healthcare systems provision.
Supporting Wellbeing Through Improving Interactions and Understanding in Self-Monitoring Systems
Authors: Pavel Dana  , Callaghan Vic  , Dey Anind K.
Published: February 2025

We use computing devices at work, at home and on the go. We generate huge amount of data that is stored (either temporarily or permanent) on our machines or on remote servers. There is a lot of value in this information and some of it is already further exploited by many external parties. So, if others consider our information important why don't we take proper advantage of it? How can we use the information we generate to our own advantage? How can we use this information to improve our lives and support our wellbeing? And how can we create better environments that will be able to offer more personalized and engaging interfaces supporting such diversity of information? We offer here our answer to such questions by presenting the MyRoR system with its main goals of better supporting self-understanding and offer more natural interfaces for information visualizations, based on personalized and interactive stories.
Sensor Selection to Support Practical Use of Health-Monitoring Smart Environments
Authors: Cook Diane J.  , Holder Lawrence B.
Published: February 2025

The data mining and pervasive sensing technologies found in smart homes offer unprecedented opportunities for providing health monitoring and assistance to individuals experiencing difficulties living independently at home. In order to monitor the functional health of smart home residents, we need to design technologies that recognize and track activities that people normally perform as part of their daily routines. One question that frequently arises, however, is how many smart home sensors are needed and where should they be placed in order to accurately recognize activities? We employ data mining techniques to look at the problem of sensor selection for activity recognition in smart homes. We analyze the results based on six data sets collected in five distinct smart home environments.
Utilization of Cloud Infrastructures for Pervasive Healthcare Applications
Authors: Doukas Charalampos  , Pliakas Thomas  , Maglogiannis Ilias
Published: February 2025

Cloud computing has been receiving much attention as an alternative to both specialized grids and to owning and managing data centers. It represents a new way, in some cases a more cost effective way, of delivering enterprise IT. Ambient Assistive Living Applications (AAL) and pervasive health application require also the collection and processing of heterogeneous data from various data sources. In this context cloud computing provides an attractive IT platform to reduce the cost of building e-health or AAL systems and in terms of both ownership and IT maintenance burdens for many medical practices and to enable techniques for advance process of their data without the need of hosting the processing power. The concept of cloud computing complies with the emerging trend to move from the economy of ownership to the economy of use. The field of pervasive and ubiquitous healthcare services requires that resources and information can be available anywhere and anytime, since the rapid and safe exchange and disposal of large amounts of information at the point of care is needed. Enabling the access to healthcare ubiquitously not only will help to improve healthcare as the data will always be accessible from anywhere at any time, but also it helps reducing the costs drastically. In this chapter we provide an overview of the cloud computing architectures that enable pervasive health applications and discuss the medical data management issues that arise in the cloud. Finally a prototype application called @HealthCloud is presented. The specific application enables pervasive healthcare information management system for mobile devices utilizing Cloud Computing and Android Operating System (OS).
Social Spaces for Reseach and Innovation (SSRI): Users Leading Research and Innovation in Ambient Assisted Living
Authors: Garcia Robles Ana  , Garcia Guzman Javier  , Bourg Lorena  , Ojel J. Manuel  , Madrid R. Ignacio
Published: February 2025

This paper introduces and describes with several examples a new research and innovation instrument and approach called Social Space for Research and Innovation (SSRI) that is generating good results in rural and urban communities working on ehealth and independent living. The SSRI is a multi-agent approach that places the beneficiary social communities at the forefront of the research and innovation process and where human, social, technological, economical, ethical and legal factors are considered all the way through said process. SSRI approach is growing rapidly at a national level in Spain and it is rapidly moving into the European and International scene.
New Ambient Assistive Technologies: The Users' Perspectives
Authors: Mestheneos Elizabeth
Published: February 2025

The effectiveness of new technologies from older people's perspectives depends on motivation, support, cost, safety, security and ethics. The human rights of older people inform approaches to the development and use of new AAL technologies.
In-Home Monitoring Technologies: Perspectives and Priorities of Older Adults
Authors: Wild Katherine  , Boise Linda
Published: February 2025

A burgeoning area of investigation in the wake of advances in in-home technology has been the application of those new technologies to enhance the health and independence of older adults without the constraints and expenses of the traditional health care system. Increasingly, researchers are using home monitoring and assistive technologies to identify changes in health and behavior in home settings, and to facilitate successful adaptation to those changes. The successful application of assistive and monitoring technologies depends on receptivity of potential users, i.e. the older adults, family members, health care providers and others. In this chapter, we will review the current state of research in older adults' perceptions, attitudes, and priorities regarding in-home technology designed for health monitoring and/or maintenance of independence. Further, we will summarize current thoughts regarding ethical issues in the application of these technologies to older adults as end users.
Introduction Studies on Counterterrorism and Diversity
Authors: Ekici Sıddık
Published: February 2025

This chapter reflects the thoughts and ideas in research presented at the NATO workshop “Counter terrorism in culturally and linguistically diverse communities” held in Antalya/Turkey on 8-9 May, 2011 where seventeen countries were represented by scholars and practitioners during the two days meetings. Presentations are categorized under four sub- topics: Terrorism Problem, Terrorism Prevention, Community Oriented Counter Terrorism and Case Studies on Counter Terrorism.
Information Technologies in Support to Counterterrorism in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities
Authors: Shalamanov Velizar  , Minchev Zlatogor
Published: February 2025

Nowadays, terrorism happens to be an inevitable challenge for the new 21stcentury modern globalized society. Within this context this paper reveals multiple aspects of IT being a key enabler for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities' operationalization of the Comprehensive Approach – considered as a tool for countering terrorism. Apart from this, some positive examples of multinational project activities are given based on the latest NATO governance experience, including the new idea for ‘smart defense’ and addressing the modern world resilient societies' security approaches.
A Framework for Utilizing Cultural Competency in Community Policing: Serving Immigrant and Culturally/Linguistically Diverse Communities
Authors: Rice Mitchell F.
Published: February 2025

Police now find themselves serving communities that have different cultures and speak multiple or different languages. Police are also encountering many immigrant residents who are both linguistically different and have a special, cultural fear of police. As a result, community policing utilizing a cultural competency approach has become the recent development. This paper offers a framework for utilizing cultural competency in community policing programs and services. Following a review of community policing models, this paper discusses the meanings of the concepts culture, competence, and cultural competency and then moves to a discussion of the concept of cultural competency. The paper then addresses a number of cultural competency steps that community policing can take in dealing with increasing immigrant and culturally/linguistically diverse populations. The paper concludes by noting that for police, a shift in philosophy from client-centered programs to more culturally specific, community-based programs may be necessary to achieve organizational cultural competency. This philosophy suggests that compatibility between the police's organizational policies, structures, and processes and the community's cultural/linguistic characteristics would lead to better and more effective community policing service outcomes.
The Challenges and Prospects of Effective Counter Terrorism in Africa
Authors: Bavon Al
Published: February 2025

National governments have always faced new and demanding challenges that they have to address. In today's globalized world, these challenges have taken on additional dimensions as governments now face constant challenges to their country's national security. The purpose of this paper is to explore opportunities and challenges of responding effectively to terrorist attacks in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The paper will first identify and explain the factors that facilitate the development of violent extremism and terrorism on the African continent. It examines some of the unique challenges facing Africa and how these impact regional and global security. It also examines the unique opportunities that Africa offers in addressing terrorism.
Pervasive and Passive Wellness Monitoring and its Impact on Health Costs
Authors: Felder Robin A.
Published: February 2025

Successful pervasive wellness programs require subject compliance and receptivity to personalized wellness information and advice. Novel technology focused approaches can leverage ubiquitous physiologic sensing, the power of data mining and informatics that can “nudge” subjects toward health positive lifestyles. We developed a ubiquitous wellness monitoring system embedded in a home environment (termed “telehomecare”) that measured cardiovascular/pulmonary parameters, body temperature, gait, breathing, mood, and socialization passively (termed “passive wellness monitoring”). The direct result of employing pervasive wellness monitoring programs are reduced costs of healthcare since it delays or avoids many of the outcomes of chronic disease, reduced medical interventions, an improvement in mental health, and a reduction in caregiver burdens.
Why It's Not Yet “Plug and Play” in the United Kingdom
Authors: Curry Richard
Published: February 2025

There are two main barriers stifling the development of telehomecare in the UK. First, the complexity of providing an end-to-end service from referral to response and second the lack of a large scale market to drive investment. This chapter identifies the “prescribed” market and the “elective” market, the former being within the public sector and the latter a new and potentially very large service for those not covered by public sector provision. The elective market includes preventative care thus addressing important public health agendas. To realise its potential, telehomecare needs to become part of the fabric of life. It will not do so until there is a robust delivery infrastructure, interoperable products and a clear regulatory framework. This chapter discusses some of these issues.
Barriers and Challenges to Implementing Telehomecare for Long Term Conditions
Authors: Brownsell Simon  , Haywood Annette  , Mawson Susan
Published: February 2025

There is an ever increasing number of people with Long Term Conditions for which telehomecare is being promoted to offer support. In this emerging area little attention has been given to the barriers and challenges faced when introducing such systems. Yet it is important to avoid known pitfalls as well as building upon known successes. This chapter discusses barriers often encountered with particular attention given to lessons categorized under the following headings.(1) Structural – determining whether telehomecare should be embraced; (2) Implementation – obstacles experienced when implementing telehomecare, (3) Adoption – difficulties translating small scale initiatives to mainstream service delivery. In so doing, we trust initiatives prove to be more ‘successful’, better health care is delivered, and a more accurate and reliable evidence base is generated.
The Business of Telehomecare: Sensors, Servers and Protocols in Zones 1 and 2
Authors: Kutzik David M.
Published: February 2025

Using Five Zone Telehomecare model, this chapter traces the data flow from sensors in the residences of monitored individuals (Zone 1) through its translation into actionable information on the remote server (Zone 2). Special attention is paid to the role and business models of technology companies that create, implement and support the Telehomecare infrastructure. Using the case example of the QuietCare® behavioral monitoring system, the business and technological challenges and potential barriers to successful implementation are analyzed in detail.
Country Perspectives: Issues and Approaches for Addressing Nuclear Security
Authors: Puig Diva  , Benarbia Ahmed  , Kovalev Konstantin  , Pshakin Gennadiy  , Sandström Björn  , Kondratov Sergiy
Published: February 2025

In this chapter, representatives in different organizations involved with the NPT summarize the current stage of nuclear development in their respective countries, address their interpretation of security culture and measures of domestic branches to tackle elements of protection, and outline individual needs and concerns for the future. Diva Puig (Uruguay) comments on the necessity of nuclear protection in regards to national and regional security, pointing to his knowledge of examples of nuclear projects in Latin America. Ahmed Benarbia (Morocco) declares the importance of building a stronger network of anti-terrorist practices and information sharing between countries, reminding the audience of Morocco's own terrorist attack after September 11th. Kornstantin Kovalev (Russia) argues for the improvement of the oversight process in nuclear facilities as it can reveal violations in the system and therefore help to eliminate them. Gennadiy Pshakin (Russia) highlights how nuclear terrorism is impossible if terrorists have no access to nuclear material, and therefore a greater implementation of teaching official agencies responsible for nuclear accounting control and protection is necessary to strengthen security culture. Bjorn Sandstrom (Sweden) discusses how Swedish nuclear safety and security culture evolved from strong radiation protection research in the country, highlighting how vast knowledge built the successful future framework for its nuclear system. Sergiy Kondratov (Ukraine) stresses the importance of international assistance in nuclear security, considering all states do not have the same capacity to execute particular reformations due to political instability or lack of funding.
Decision Support Process In Business Intelligence: Some Views
Authors: Meparishvili Badri  , Kervalishvili George  , Janelidze Gulnara
Published: February 2025

The business management in any contemporary organization requires the making of decisions, the coordinating of activities, the handling of people, and the evaluation of performance directed toward group objectives. Thus, this problem cannot be solved without system approach, such as synergetic, system modeling and complexity theory. The role of system sciences is more and more determined in the viewpoint of behavioral modeling of the most complex system. This article discusses the management of information systems in support of businesses. In general business intelligence systems address the needs of different types of complex organizations, including agencies of public administration and associations. Business intelligence represents the complex iterative and interactive, pyramid-like hierarchical multi-stage process. By moving up one level in the pyramid we find optimization models that allow us to determine the best solution out of a set of alternative actions, which is usually fairly extensive and sometimes even infinite. The top of the pyramid corresponds to the choice and the actual adoption of a specific decision, and in some way represents the natural conclusion of the decision-making process. In this paper, we present a new approach for a decision making process with respect to the viewpoint of system dynamics, agent-based modeling and simulation-based optimization, that is conditioned by the existence of nonlinear economic or organizational behavioral factors in human society. Originality of this work is in the system model adaptability by structure reconfiguration or self-assembly when multi-agent organization is evolving its way to a better structure. Every simulation-based solution can be considered as new knowledge. From the point of view of the Artificial Intelligence, technological problems of data mining and knowledge discovery has been discussed.
Boolean Satisfiability Solvers: Techniques and Extensions
Authors: Weissenbacher Georg  , Malik Sharad
Published: February 2025

Contemporary satisfiability solvers are the corner-stone of many successful applications in domains such as automated verification and artificial intelligence. The impressive advances of SAT solvers, achieved by clever engineering and sophisticated algorithms, enable us to tackle Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) problem instances with millions of variables – which was previously conceived as a hopeless problem. We provide an introduction to contemporary SAT-solving algorithms, covering the fundamental techniques that made this revolution possible. Further, we present a number of extensions of the SAT problem, such as the enumeration of all satisfying assignments (ALL-SAT) and determining the maximum number of clauses that can be satisfied by an assignment (MAX-SAT). We demonstrate how SAT solvers can be leveraged to solve these problems. We conclude the chapter with an overview of applications of SAT solvers and their extensions in automated verification.
Socio-economic Benefits from the Prevention of Desertification in Morocco and Mauritania Using Satellite Monitoring
Authors: Popov Mikhail A.  , Stankevich Sergey A.  , Kozlova Anna A.  , Luk'yanchuk Igor  , Mezzane Daoud  , El Bah Menny Ould
Published: February 2025

Land degradation and desertification prevention is an emerging problem for the African continent. The methodology of desertification satellite monitoring, mapping and change detection is applied to test sites in the two Maghreb countries, namely Morocco and Mauritania. The changes in vegetation cover and soil erosion are used as desertification drivers. The socio-economic benefits of desertification prevention in Morocco and Mauritania are considered.
Declarative Parallel Programming for GPUs
Authors: Holk Eric  , Byrd William  , Mahajan Nilesh  , Willcock Jeremiah  , Chauhan Arun  , Lumsdaine Andrew
Published: February 2025

The recent rise in the popularity of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) has been fueled by software frameworks, such as NVIDIA's Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) and Khronos Group's OpenCL that make GPUs available for general purpose computing. However, CUDA and OpenCL are still low-level approaches that require users to handle details about data layout and movement across levels of memory hierarchy. We propose a declarative approach to coordinating computation and data movement between CPU and GPU, through a domain-specific language that we called Harlan. Not only does a declarative language obviate the need for the programmer to write low-level error-prone boilerplate code, by raising the abstraction of specifying GPU computation it also allows the compiler to optimize data movement and overlap between CPU and GPU computation. By focusing on the “what”, and not the “how”, of data layout, data movement, and computation scheduling, the language eliminates the sources of many programming errors related to correctness and performance.
Open Trace Format 2: The Next Generation of Scalable Trace Formats and Support Libraries
Authors: Eschweiler Dominic  , Wagner Michael  , Geimer Markus  , Knüpfer Andreas  , Nagel Wolfgang E.  , Wolf Felix
Published: February 2025

A well designed event trace data format is the basis of all trace-based analysis methods. In this paper, we introduce the Open Trace Format Version 2 (OTF2). It is a major re-design based on the experiences of its predecessor formats, the Open Trace Format (Version 1) and the EPILOG trace format. It comes with a new file encoding, a close integration in the trace recording system Score-P, and a number of improvements for performance and scalability. Besides the actual format, it consists of a read/write support library with a powerful API plus supportive tools, which are distributed as Open Source software. Furthermore, OTF2 will serve as a joint data source for the analysis tools Scalasca and Vampir in the near future.
Benchmarks Based on Anti-Parallel Patterns for the Evaluation of GPUs
Authors: Cornelis Jan G.  , Lemeire Jan
Published: February 2025

We put forward “anti-parallel patterns” to guide the parallel performance analysis process. Anti-parallel patterns or APPs are common parts of parallel programs that cause these programs to have less than ideal performance, where the ideal speedup equals the number of processors. We present benchmarks to model the behavior of APPson parallel platforms. Each benchmark contains only one APP and is configurable to mimic all its instances. We show how benchmarks can be used to qualitatively and quantitatively understand and compare parallel hardware. Experiments with NVIDIA and AMD GPUs reveal their differences.
Homegrown Terrorism as a Challenge for Homeland Security
Authors: Simeunovic Dragan
Published: February 2025

This article addresses the issue of homegrown terrorism by addressing the term itself, the process of radicalization that seems to be at the heart of homegrown terrorism, and then looking at specific cases of homegrown terrorism. The article concludes that Western policymakers must focus on the heart of the problem to counter this important and growing problem.
Ideological Rehabilitation: A Necessary Component of the Counterterrorism Strategy in Singapore
Authors: Jerard Jolene
Published: February 2025

This paper will attempt to evaluate the impact and success of the counterterrorism measures initiated by Singapore against the preeminent threat of terrorism to its homeland security. The establishment of the RRG is a step in the right direction and reflects the maturity and foresight in understanding and mitigating the threat to terrorism. Obstacles that need to be addressed however include the broad aims of the state in its attempts to address this complex threat, the difficulty in measuring success and the limitations of counterterrorism measures initiated. While some obstacles are easier to overcome, there remains an overarching sense that there are necessary limitations that any state will have to endure in the fight against a dynamic enemy – even Singapore. Singapore has managed to put into motion one of the most rigorous counterterrorism efforts in SEA, but much of the success achieved has the seeds in the decisive and continuous efforts undertaken by the Singapore government to mitigate the constantly changing and dynamic security environment with strategic measures to counteract these potentially devastating scenarios.
A Step Towards Emotion Aware Joking AI: Multiagent Humor-Equipped Conversational System
Authors: Dybala Pawel  , Ptaszynski Michal  , Sayama Kohichi
Published: February 2025

Humor processing is quite an innovative area in intelligent agent technologies. In this chapter we present the results of our work on a multiagent joking conversational system, which is able to use humor during non-constrained conversations with humans, in reaction to their particular emotional states. Thus, this work combines the areas of humor processing, emotiveness analysis and dialogue agent technologies, being the first one to do so. We first describe the background of our study, including state of the art of research in the field of humor-equipped agents. We describe our multiagent system's general construction and algorithms of each constituent agent, i.e. a chatterbot, a humor generator and emotion detector. Two evaluation experiments: user-oriented and automatic, showed that the humor-equipped system was evaluated as more friendly, making users feel better and was generally more likable than a similar system without humor. These results are discussed and some ideas for the future are given.