bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The effects of natural and artificial UV exposure on the physical properties of synthetic turf used for various sports fields
Authors: Zuzarte Adriano Coutinho  , Kruger Deon
Published: February 2025

Since its induction at the Astrodome, in 1965 synthetic turf has been improved and adapted to now be accepted as a playing surface for a variety of sports. These sports include Rugby, Soccer and Field hockey. As synthetic turf is most likely destined for outdoor use it will be subject to Ultra Violet (UV) degradation in the form of Ultra Violet light band A (UVA), Ultra Violet light band B (UVB) or a combination of both. Synthetic turf is a polymer based material, specifically polyethylene for this study. For this reason it is useful to investigate how polyethylene degrades due to UV. Absorbed UV causes a break in the intermolecular bonds of the polyethylene, which leads to cracking, inhibiting the material to perform as initially intended. Colour change is also a consequence of extended exposure to UV. Various UV stabilizers are used, by manufacturers, in order to slow this process down. These however are largely dependent on the type of UV being exposed.
Mechanical properties of green concrete with Palm Nut Shell as low cost aggregate
Authors: Agbenyeku Emem-Obong Emmanuel  , Okonta Felix Ndubisi
Published: February 2025

The cost saving benefits of aggregate replacement in concrete works are well documented. The utilization of Supplementary Aggregate Materials (SAMs) in concrete engineering without compromising standards in concrete works remain very attractive to both infrastructure developers and design engineers. However, there is continual search for low cost beneficial substitute materials. The mechanical properties of green concrete produced from Palm Nut Shell (PNS) as coarse aggregate was investigated. The abundance of PNS (light weight waste product of palm oil production) in West Africa created the impetus for the study. Series of laboratory tests such as; Slump, Compaction factor, Density, Schmidt hammer and Compressive strength tests were conducted on specimens of 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50% replacements of dry weight of PNS as coarse aggregate and specimens of natural aggregate as control sample. The specimens were cured at relative humidity (RH) of 95-100% and temperature (T) of 22-25oC in a chamber for periods of 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. The results showed the PNS samples to have relatively medium to high workability ranging from 24-47 mm for slump height and values of 0.85 to 0.90 for compaction factors. A general strength development was observed across the different samples with the PNS sample reaching strength of 48.7 N/mm2at 28 days curing. The 50% replacement specimens which mobilized UCS of 28.7 N/mm2met the requirement for lightweight concrete however, 30% is the optimum for a partial aggregate replacement in green concrete as UCS of 39.2 N/mm2was mobilized in 28 days. Thus PNS is a suitable concrete constituent and can be a major cost reduction factor especially in low cost rural projects with streamlined loading requirements.
Analysis of coarse aggregate microtexture in polishing process
Authors: Wasilewska Marta
Published: February 2025

Road surface microtexture is essential for pavement skid resistance. Microtexture depends on the changes of coarse aggregate surface used for wearing coarse during the actual traffic conditions. Due to the fact that microtexture existis on a microscopic scale, it is very difficult to assess. An indirect method of assessing microtexture is PSV (Polished Stone Value) of coarse aggregates. However, it is difficult to explain the changes on aggregate surface during polishing process on the basis of PSV. The aim of experiment is to assess changes in the coarse aggregate microtexture with the polishing process based on the analysis of digital images, which are made by optical microscopy. Coarse aggregates from dolomite, granodioryte, gabbro, dolorite, sandstone were chosen for the tests. The polishing process of aggregate was divided into two phases and carried out in the accelerated polishing machine. The standard deviation σhfrom the histogram of intensities digital image of the surface is a measure of microtexture. During the polishing the asperities of mixrotexture change specific for each type of rock. It was noted that aggregates which included minerals of similar hardness (granodioryte, dolomite, dolerite) were more prone to polishing than others. Regeneration of the microtexture, the recovery to its original asperity, occurred in the case of sandstone.
Sulphate resistance of concrete made with moderately high alumina slag
Authors: Ekolu Stephen O.  , Ngwenya Adam
Published: February 2025

This paper reports findings of ongoing investigation into the effect of high alumina ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) on sulphate resistance of concrete. Slags used in most countries contain low alumina contents and provide high resistance to sulphate attack among other durability improvements. It is however known that slags of high alumina contents do not necessarily improve sulphate resistance but may otherwise adversely influence concrete performance. South African slags have moderately high alumina contents but hardly any studies have been conducted to determine its influence on sulphate resistance of concretes. In this investigation, commercially available slag widely used in South Africa was used. Mortar prisms 25 x 25 x 285 mm of 0.5 water-binder ratio incorporating 30%, 50%, 70% GGBS were prepared and immersed in sodium sulphate solutions of different concentrations of 28 g/L and 50 g/L as SO4.
Comparison of moisture equilibrium of cement-based materials in presence of slag and silica fume in different wetting and drying cycles
Authors: Seaidpour M.  , Wadsö L.
Published: February 2025

Water vapor sorption isotherms are essential data in models to predict the service life of the cement based structures. The knowledge about sorption isotherms in the presence of supplementary cementitous materials (SCMs) is limited. This study investigates the influence of water to cement ratio (0.4, 0.5 and 0.6), and the presence of two SCMs (70% slag and 10% silica fume) on sorption isotherm in hygroscopic and above hygroscope RH ranges for paste and mortars. Dynamic vapor balance in hygroscopic rang and pressure plates above hygroscopic range are used to generate sorption isotherms. Based on Jennings model (CM-II) for C-S-H structure, desorption isotherms are divided to different parts in which different pores are emptied. The samples with silica fume and slag have higher moisture content than OPC, but, with higher amount of gel pores and lower amount of capillary pores. At low RH intervals all samples have very similar desorption curves and introduction of SCMs induce slightly increase on BET surface area. Above 30% RH, samples have different desorption curves and the initial desorption is higher than following desorption for all samples.
Design and properties of ultra-high performance concrete
Authors: Shi Caijun  , Wu Zemei  , Wang Dehui  , Wu Linmei
Published: February 2025

Ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) is a a composite material that consists of Portland cement, silica fume, ultra-fine quartz powder, superplasticizer and small sized steel fibers with low water to binder ratio and absence of coarse aggregates. Compared to conventional concrete, UHPC has superior properties such as strength, toughness and durability. In this paper, the principles for mixture design and properties including mechanical properties, dimensional stability and durability of UHPC were reviewed.
Facilitating Re-use of Legal Data in Applications—Finnish Law as a Linked Open Data Service
Authors: Frosterus Matias  , Tuominen Jouni  , Hyvönen Eero
Published: February 2025

Juridical information is important to organizations and individuals alike and is needed in all walks of life. The Finnish government has therefore published Finnish law and related juridical documents on the Web as a service called Finlex. However, even if the documents there are openly available for humans to read, the underlying data has not been open, is based on a traditional XML schema, and does not conform to new semantic metadata standards and Linked Data principles. As a result, the data is difficult to re-use in applications, the datasets are not interoperable with each other, are difficult to link to external data sources, and lots of manual work is needed in producing and using the data. To mitigate these problems, this paper presents Semantic Finlex, the first attempt at publishing Finnish law as a Linked Open Data service, with an analysis and examples of benefits and challenges encountered when applying the technology.
Towards Graph-based and Semantic Search in Legal Information Access Systems
Authors: Mimouni Nada  , Nazarenko Adeline  , Paul Ève  , Salotti Sylvie
Published: February 2025

This paper argues that legal information access systems could be extended to allow for semantic but also graph-based search. The challenge is to find documents not only on the basis of the intertextual relationships they share but also based on their content descriptors. The paper presents a simple graph-based query language defined to meet the needs of the French Légilocal project.
Contract Automata with Reparations
Authors: Azzopardi Shaun  , Pace Gordon J.  , Schapachnik Fernando
Published: February 2025

Although contract reparations have been extensively studied in the context of deontic logics, there is not much literature using reparations in automata-based deontic approaches. Contract automata is a recent approach to modelling the notion of contract-based interaction between different parties using synchronous composition. However, it lacks the notion of reparations for contract violations. In this article we look into, and contrast different ways reparation can be added to an automaton- and state-based contract approach, extending contract automata with two forms of such clauses: catch-all reparations for violation and reparations for specific violations.
Abstract Dialectical Frameworks for Legal Reasoning
Authors: Al-Abdulkarim Latifa  , Atkinson Katie  , Bench-Capon Trevor
Published: February 2025

In recent years a powerful generalisation of Dung's abstract argumentation frameworks, Abstract Dialectical Frameworks (ADF), has been developed. ADFs generalise the abstract argumentation frameworks introduced by Dung by replacing Dung's single acceptance condition (that all attackers be defeated) with acceptance conditions local to each particular node. Such local acceptance conditions allow structured argumentation to be straightforwardly incorporated. Related to ADFs are prioritised ADFs, which allow for reasons pro and con a node. In this paper we show how these structures provide an excellent framework for representing a leading approach to reasoning with legal cases.
Punishments, Rewards, and the Production of Evidence
Authors: Boer Alexander
Published: February 2025

In legal knowledge acquisition, the threat of punishment remains an important litmus test for categorizing legal rules: something is a real duty if it is backed – directly or indirectly – by a threat of punishment. In practice, no accounts of how enforcement design patterns are superposed on representations of specific legal rules exist in our field, and the litmus test does not work in modeling legal rules. This paper considers the distinction between punishments and rewards, and points to a more obvious connection with production of evidence, and allocation of burden of proof. Since this work was done in the context of a knowledge acquisition methodology based on petri net markup language diagrams, the result is a generic enforcement pattern expressed as a petri net diagram.
Icon Recognition and Usability for Requirements Engineering
Authors: Khanom Sukanya  , Heimbürger Anneli  , Kärkkäinen Tommi
Published: February 2025

When we introduce icon-based language into the context of requirements engineering, we must take into account that what users perceive as recognizable and usable depends on their background. In this paper, we argue that it is not possible to provide a single set of visual notations that appeal to all of stakeholders. Instead, we suggest an adaptable preference framework, which generates personalized notations that correspond to personal background. We present and evaluate icon-based language: a new kind of approach to requirements engineering work to explore its possibility and usability. In an initial evaluation of students residing in Finland, results reveal that users are able to recognize a group of icons fairly well. Our findings show that an icon-based language could probably be a positive means in improving awareness of requirements engineering as it tends to take advantages of icons which are intuitively understandable to represent traditional textual requirements.
Review and Challenges of Brain Analysis through DTI Measurements
Authors: Garin-Muga Alba  , Borro Diego
Published: February 2025

Medical images are being studied to analyse the brain in neurological disorders. Measurements extracted from Diffusion tensor image (DTI) such as Fractional Anisotropy (FA) describe the brain changes caused by diseases. However, there is no single best method for the quantitative brain analysis. This paper presents a review of the existing methods and software tools for brain analysis through DTI measurements. It also states some challenges that current software tools still have to meet in order to improve automation and usability and become smarter software tools.
The Social Robot as ‘Charismatic Leader’: A Phenomenology of Human Submission to Nonhuman Power
Authors: Gladden Matthew E.
Published: February 2025

Much has been written about the possibility of human trust in robots. In this article we consider a more specific relationship: that of a human follower's obedience to a social robot who leads through the exercise of referent power and what Weber described as ‘charismatic authority.’ By studying robotic design efforts and literary depictions of robots, we suggest that human beings are striving to create charismatic robot leaders that will either (1) inspire us through their display of superior morality; (2) enthrall us through their possession of superhuman knowledge; or (3) seduce us with their romantic allure. Rejecting a contractarian-individualist approach which presumes that human beings will be able to consciously ‘choose’ particular robot leaders, we build on the phenomenological-social approach to trust in robots to argue that charismatic robot leaders will emerge naturally from our world's social fabric, without any rational decision on our part. Finally, we argue that the stability of these leader-follower relations will hinge on a fundamental, unresolved question of robotic intelligence: is it possible for synthetic intelligences to exist that are morally, intellectually, and emotionally sophisticated enough to exercise charismatic authority over human beings—but not so sophisticated that they lose the desire to do so?
Massive Parallel Computing of Super-Resolution with Sparse Representation
Authors: Ding Hao-Rong  , Kuo Chih-Hung  , Kuo Po-Hung  , Chuang Yan-Tse
Published: February 2025

Among Super-Resolution reconstruction methods, the patch-based computation to find the sparse prior can achieve better reconstruction results. The computing for this method is time-consuming. To overcome this problem, we propose a GPU(Graphic Processing Unit) based algorithm to speed up the process and achieve 7.2 times faster than the original method. We also implement the method of modified LASSO(Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator) to find sparse priors, which can achieve 13.9 times faster.
A Robust Vision-Based Heart Rate Evaluation
Authors: Lin Kuan-Yi  , Chen Duan-Yu  , Lee Suh-Yin
Published: February 2025

Monitoring heart rates using conventional electrocardiogram (ECG) equipment requires patients to wear adhesive gel patches or chest straps that can cause skin irritation and discomfort. Commercially-available pulse oximetry sensors that attach to the fingertips or earlobes also cause inconvenience for patients and the spring-loaded clips can be painful to use. Therefore, a novel robust face-based heart rate monitoring technique is proposed to allow for the evaluation of heart rate variation without physical contact with the patient. Face reflectance is first decomposed from a single image and then heart rate evaluation is conducted from consecutive frames according to the periodic variation of reflectance strength resulting from changes to hemoglobin absorptivity across the visible light spectrum as heartbeats cause changes to blood volume in the blood vessels in the face. To achieve a robust evaluation, ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) of the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) is used to acquire the primary heart rate signal while reducing the effect of ambient light changes. Our proposed approach is found to outperform the current state-of-the-art, providing greater measurement accuracy with smaller variance and is shown to be feasible in real-world environments.
An Efficient Algorithm to Solve the Nearest Neighbor Searching Problem
Authors: Shieh Yi Kung  , Lee R.C.T.
Published: February 2025

In this research, we propose the nearest neighbor searching problem and we give an algorithm to solve the problem. Roughly speaking, the nearest neighbor searching problem is defined as follows: Give a text string T=t1t2…tnand a pattern string P=p1p2…pm, find all substrings in T whose edit distances with respect to P are the smallest among all substrings of T. Our algorithm is based upon two concepts: (1) There is a special property of dynamic programming matrix which is used to solve the approximate string matching problem. We call this property the small change property. (2) Values on the D matrix can be computed along the diagonals. Our experimental results showed that our algorithm is quite efficient.
Rain Removal Using Single Image based on Non-negative Matrix Factorization
Authors: Liu Pin-Hsian  , Lin Chih-Yang  , Yeh Chia-Hung  , Kang Li-Wei  , Lo Kyle Shih-Huang  , Hwang Tai-Hwei  , Kuo Chia-Chen
Published: February 2025

Rain streak in an image can degrade the human vision, as well as the image's quality. However, the rain removal of a single image is a challenging problem, because the rain is moving fast and may become torrential. In this paper, a single image rain removal process based on the non-negative matrix factorization is proposed. In the proposed method, the rain image is decomposed into a low-frequency part and a high-frequency part by a Gaussian filter. Therefore, the rain component, which is usually in the middle frequency, could be discarded in high and low frequency domains. In this paper, the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) method is applied to deal with the rain streak in the low frequency; while in the high frequency part, the concept of Canny edge detection and block copy strategy are utilized separately to remove the rain hidden in high frequency and improve the image quality. By comparing with the state-of-the-art approaches, our proposed method does not need the extra image database to train the desirable dictionary, but still reaches similar results.
Energy-Efficient Multimedia Multicast Transmission Scheduling using Scalable Video Coding in LTE-Advanced Wireless Networks
Authors: Wang Wei-Wen  , Wu Shih-Lin
Published: February 2025

In recent years, people use multimedia applications which have become increasingly, such as watching IPTV or video streaming by smart phone. However, wireless user equipment (UE) is powered by battery which could only operate in a limited time. According those reasons, reducing the energy consumption of user equipment for communications is a major challenge. But in operator's opinion, they wish that users' throughput could as high as possible because they can have much more benefit. In this paper, we design a two-step algorithm which use scalable video coding technique to transmit multimedia data. First step, we allocate limited radio resource and not only maximize the total system throughput but also satisfy all of users as much as possible. Second step, we schedule the video layers which are already getting the radio resource and minimize total user equipment energy consumption. The simulation result shows that our proposed method can reduce much more energy consumption and increase throughput comparing with the existing method.
Phased Array and Image Enhancement Method Based Structural Health Monitoring
Authors: Ji Sai  , Li Lu  , Guo Ping  , Shen Jian  , Wang Jin  , Sun Yajie
Published: February 2025

The process of phased array theory and image enhancement methods based structural health monitoring is introduced. Phased array theory based structural health monitoring can scan the structure in a certain range of 0°~ 180°. It is realized by controlling the time delay of the excitation signals and the response signals. Because of the imperfect of the original mapped image, the image enhancement method is used to ameliorate the image quality, to enhance image identifiable degrees, and to improve the image resolution. The proposed method is verified by experiment in Al plate. The phased array based SHM method is effective to identify the damage position in the structure and the image enhancement method is able to enhance the mapped image quality.
A Transaction-based Design Model and Its MPEG-2 Encoder Design
Authors: Chen Chun-Yu  , Lee Yun-Lung  , Jou Jer Min
Published: February 2025

The speculative circuit is one kind of special parallelizing circuits; it may execute in parallel some of its functions out of their serial order and allows that although there are several data dependencies and control dependencies existing on those functions, some of whose external inputs (i.e. external dependencies) which are produced by other functions in a serial order may be produced by a predictive mechanism (or circuit). The predictive circuit cannot ensure that those speculative values are surely correct, and the results of speculatively executing functional units will be recovered when the speculative values are false; therefore, the suitable conflict management mechanism and the suitable data synchronization mechanism is needed when design a speculative circuit. In this paper, we present a new design model called “Transactional Speculative Circuit Model” (TSCM), which is based on the concept of transactional memory (TM), to design the speculative circuits and the circuits with variable executing latencies and executing in parallel. Moreover, this model also can be used to design non-speculative parallelizing circuits. By using TSCM we had designed a new speculative MPEG-2 encoder with a good performance improvement.
A Data Migration Approach for L1 Cache Design with SRAM and Volatile STT-RAM
Authors: Cheng Wei-Kai  , Ciou Yen-Heng
Published: February 2025

Spin-Transfer Torque RAM (STT-RAM) has the advantages of circuit density and ignorable leakage power. However, it suffers from the bad write latency and poor write power consumption. Relaxing the retention time of STT-RAM cell can improve the write performance, but volatile STT-RAM would dissipate extra energy due to frequent refresh operations. In this paper, we propose a methodology for L1 cache design with integrated SRAM and volatile STT-RAM architecture. Data block is mapped to SRAM firstly to reduce write latency, and is moved to volatile STT-RAM to reduce leakage power consumption. After a time period when there is no access of a data block in the volatile STT-RAM, we then stop its refresh operations to further reduce power consumption. Experimental results show that we get better energy consumption than fully SRAM based cache design because of less leakage energy, and also we have better memory access latency than fully STT-RAM cache architecture because of compatible write performance with SRAM.
PFBF: Pre-Filtered Bloom Filters
Authors: Liu Ssu-Ting  , Wang Sheng-De
Published: February 2025

In this paper we focus on improving the false positive rate of a bloom filter with a pre-filtering scheme. By applying this scheme on a bloom filter, we can quickly screen out lots of input before entering the bloom filter and hence improve the result of false positives. We demonstrate with experiments that this approach can yield at least 4 times and at most 45 times better results than a standard bloom filter implementation, meanwhile using the same amount of memory requirement as a standard one. The proposed approach, called the pre-filtered bloom filter (PFBF), outperforms existing approaches in most of the cases. Especially, our approach is attractive to those applications which have limited amount of memory with a lot of patterns to check, since, in this case we can get the most improvement out of it.
Machine to Machine Service Capability Architecture for LTE Communication System
Authors: Chang Yao-Chung
Published: February 2025

In order to meet the growing demand of higher data rate for mobile Internet services in mobile communication environments, the Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) of 3G Partnership Project (3GPP) is identified as Next-Generation Mobile Communication Technologies based on IP network architecture. According to the definition of 3GPP TS 22.68, Machine to Machine (M2M) and Machine Type Communication (MTC) are the new type of data communication which contains of direction communication between machines and devices without human interactions. The objective of this work is to study and examine the architecture of M2M service capability for intelligent LTE M2M communication system. How to promote the performance of network access in the LTE M2M communication network is the key innovation of this study. The NS3 simulator is used to simulate the LTE core network architecture. Finally, issues of M2M service capability model are illustrated in this work.
Forecasting Price Volatility Range of Crude Palm Oil by Mining the Historical Data Using Hybrid Range Model
Authors: Sim Kwan Hua  , Goh Isaac Yung Shen  , Sim Kwan Yong  , Tan Yiing Chee
Published: February 2025

Volatile price fluctuation of crude palm oil has been a major challenge faced by planters, plantation companies, investors, and even downstream industry. Severe price volatility over the past few years has negatively been impacting the decision making process of risk hedging and mitigation. This paper discusses various models that are generally used to forecast price and volatility in financial time series. A hybrid range model is proposed to forecast the possible future price volatility range by mining the historical price data of crude palm oil. Experiment was conducted on the historical data of futures crude palm oil for the period of twenty seven years to assess the competency of the hybrid model. The outcome of the experiment reveals a promising performance demonstrating the relevancy of the proposed hybrid range model. This study constitutes a novel approach using standard deviation to quantify price equilibrium of crude palm oil by mining the distribution and dispersion of historical price data points. Thus, the possible future range of price fluctuation can be postulated to aid the crucial financial decision making process.
A New Investigation Approach for Tracing Source IP in DDoS attack from Proxy Server
Authors: Sun Jia-Rong  , Hwang Min-Shiang
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we proposed an investigation approach to trace the source IP address hiding which use proxy servers, and reduce the steps of the classical investigation method. Furthermore, it does not need to execute search and seizure to perpetrators, but it still obtains the key digital evidences from a third party. The obtained key digital evidences have the same probative force with the classical investigation, and it can used to discover the perpetrator whether he hides his IP address and the criminal acts. In this paper, first, we proposed an approach that makes the case related people not be examined, searched and seized; second, the true criminal cannot evade punishments and trial by hiding his IP address, so the investigation procedure is hard to execute; third, the investigation approach we proposed will reduce wasting judicial resources and protect human rights effectively.
Information Hiding Scheme based on Replace Function and Wavelet Transform
Authors: Lu Tzu-Chuen  , Hsueh Sue-Chen  , Tseng Chun-Ya  , Chen Pei-Lun
Published: February 2025

This paper proposes an information hiding method that ex-ploits the Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) and Replace Function. First, the cover image is transformed into frequency coefficients through the IWT. Then, Run-Length Encoding (RLE) technique is used to compress the secret message. Furthermore, the compression result is embedded into the frequency coefficients by using the Modulus Function and Least Significant Bit (LSB) Matching. When the receiver receives the stego image, the compression result can be obtained from the frequency coefficients of the stego image by using the Modulus Function and Binary Function. In the experimental result, embedding capacity of the secret message and the quality of the stego image are good.
Using Heart Rate Variability for Automated Identification of Exercise Exertion Levels
Authors: Finkelstein Joseph  , Jeong In cheol
Published: February 2025

Heart rate monitoring is being used to estimate activity of autonomous nervous system by analysing heart rate variability (HRV). HRV has been recently shown to be effective means to monitor efficacy of exercise in patients with cardiovascular conditions and older adults. Whether HRV can be used to identify exercise exertion levels is unknown. There are multiple approaches to analyse HRV however it is not clear which approach is optimal in assessing cycling exercise. Previous studies demonstrated potential of analysis of short-term sequences of beat-by-beat heart rate data in a time domain for continuous monitoring of levels of physiological stress. The goal of this study was to assess the potential value of short-term HRV analysis during cycling exercise for automated identification of exercise exertion level. HRV indices were compared during rest, height of exercise exertion, and exercise recovery. Comparative analysis of HRV during cycling exercise demonstrated responsiveness of time-domain indices to different phases of an exercise program. Using discriminant analysis, canonical discriminant functions were built which correctly identified 100% of ‘highest level of exertion’ and 80.0% of ‘rest’ episodes. HRV demonstrated high potential in monitoring autonomic balance and exercise exertion during cycling exercise program.
A Platform to Collect Structured Data from Multiple EMRs
Authors: Ghany Ahmad  , Keshavjee Karim
Published: February 2025

Adoption and use of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) is continuing to rise across Canada, leading to more data being generated. These data, however, are not being captured in a standardized manner, they are not available for research, surveillance or health system management, and they are not having a real-time impact on healthcare providers at the point of care. Multiple stakeholders, including researchers and system evaluators, require easy access to high quality, structured data. As current EMRs are not able to effectively meet their needs, we engaged multiple stakeholders to assist in designing a solution. A total of 90 stakeholders from various backgrounds participated in an iterative joint design process. After incorporating the feedback of all stakeholders, we developed the design for a scalable platform for capturing structured, evidence-based data from all EMRs in Canada for research, health system management, clinical decision support and other purposes. We discuss the design specification for our proposed solution and explain how, using clinical forms, we can not only capture structured, high quality data from multiple EMRs, but also provide real-time guideline advice to providers at the point of care. The scalability of this proposed solution across multiple diseases and multiple EMRs is also explained. We further discuss the benefits and limitations of this proposed solution to several key stakeholder groups and address issues of privacy and security.
A Novel Design for Seat Cushion of Vision Robot by Using ANFIS
Authors: Mon Yi-Jen  , Tsai Chiung-Chiou  , Chen Jung-Hong  , Zheng Min-Jei
Published: February 2025

The paper is to use two sensors mounted on the seat cushion of vision robot, respectively, to get data from pressure sensing and infrared sensing. The signal is sent to the microprocessor (MCU) to do calculations then decide the human's activities. This is a two input-output intelligent health management for posture cushion of vision robot which is designed by fuzzy logic method such as to avoid some unnecessary false decision. The implementation results show that it possesses good commercial applications. This cushion of vision robot is ideal and effective and it can improve the health management for patients.
Digital Information and Communication in the Ageing Society
Authors: Chan Jonathan H.
Published: February 2025

With the proliferation of high speed internet access and rapid developments in telecommunication technology, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is fast transforming the way of life for many people globally, especially for the so-called urbanites. This is especially true in how information is gathered and communicated among us. In particular, timely and reliable access to information about health and health-care is of special interest to the aged. Elderly people face physical and mental impairment such as deterioration of movement, vision, hearing, and cognition. These conditions is put into consideration when designing tools and assistive technologies for elderly people. They should not need much knowledge and skills to operate the new tools. In general, it would be beneficial to gain more understanding on how to deal with the process of aging and recognize the concept of “Active Aging” in order to improve the Quality of Life (QoL) of the aged.
A Comparative Analysis of Pruning Methods for C4.5 and Fuzzy C4.5
Authors: Naseer Tayyeba  , Asghar Sohail  , Zhuang Yan  , Fong Simon
Published: February 2025

The decision tree is an illustrious classification technique used for the pre-diction of the future data based on past experience. The decision tree is constructed using three major steps, first – constructing the decision tree to classify the data, second – pruning the decision tree to improve statistic certainty, third process the pruned decision tree to improve intelligibility. In this paper, we focus on second steps – pruning. Two famous algorithms are used for creating a decision tree, i.e. C4.5 and fuzzy C4.5. It presents the comparison of five well-known pruning methods. The performance of different pruning algorithm is evaluated using two main criteria size and classification errors after pruning decision trees. Different pruning methods have different impacts on decision tree.
Telehomecare Reduces ER Use and Hospitalizations at William Osler Health System
Authors: Mierdel Sandra  , Owen Kirk
Published: February 2025

The Ontario Telemedicine Network's Telehomecare initiative brings together specially trained clinicians and technology to coach patients with COPD and/or heart failure to monitor vital signs and manage their health at home. The objective of the study was to evaluate pre- and post-enrollment and post discharge data captured by Telehomecare host William Osler Health System (WOHS). Results demonstrate a 46% reduction in emergency department use and a 53% reduction in hospitalizations post-enrollment compared to pre-enrollment. Average length of stay (LOS) dropped by 25% of a day compared to pre-enrollment. In addition, six months after Telehomecare discharge, inpatient admissions and emergency department visits continued to decline, by 65% and 57% respectively, compared to pre-enrollment. While average LOS increased between pre-enrollment and post-discharge, the reduction in acute inpatient episodes created a net reduction in accumulated inpatient days of 563.16 days (63% reduction). The WOHS Telehomecare results strongly support the positive influence of the program on health system utilization and the development of effective long-term self-management skills. Next steps could include reviewing, more closely, the reasons for hospital utilization and undertaking a cost-benefit analysis to support further expansion of the program to address other chronic illness and care needs.
Design, development and first validation of a transcoding system from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10 in the IT.DRG Italian project
Authors: Della Mea Vincenzo  , Vuattolo Omar  , Frattura Lucilla  , Munari Flavia  , Verdini Eleonora  , Zanier Loris  , Arcangeli Laura  , Carle Flavia
Published: February 2025

In Italy, ICD-9-CM is currently used for coding health conditions at hospital discharge, but ICD-10 is being introduced thanks to the IT-DRG Project. In this project, one needed component is a set of transcoding rules and associated tools for easing coders work in the transition. The present paper illustrates design and development of those transcoding rules, and their preliminary testing on a subset of Italian hospital discharge data.
Simulating Realistic Enough Patient Records
Authors: Cunningham James  , Ainsworth John
Published: February 2025

Information systems for storing, managing and manipulating electronic medical records must place an emphasis on maintaining the privacy and security of those records. Though the design, development and testing of such systems also requires the use of data, the developers of these systems, rarely also their final end users, are unlikely to have ethical or governance approval to use real data. Alternative test data is commonly either randomly produced or taken from carefully anonymised subsets of records. In both cases there are potential shortcomings that can impact on the quality of the product being developed. We have addressed these shortcomings with a tool and methodology for efficiently simulating large amounts of realistic enough electronic patient records which can underpin the development of data-centric electronic healthcare systems.
Evaluation of compliance with recommendations of prevention of thromboembolism in atrial fibrillation in the elderly, by data reuse of electronic health records
Authors: Ferret Laurie  , Beuscart Jean-Baptiste  , Ficheur Grégoire  , Beuscart Régis  , Luyckx Michel  , Chazard Emmanuel
Published: February 2025

Under-prescription of anticoagulants in the elderly with atrial fibrillation (AF) has been described in several studies, showing that only 15 to 44% of them receive anticoagulants. However, the European Society of Cardiology recommendations state that anticoagulants should be systematically prescribed. In case of refusal of the treatment by the patient, a platelet aggregation inhibitor should be prescribed in monotherapy or bitherapy according to the HAS-BLED bleeding risk score. In all the cases the patient should receive an antithrombotic treatment. In this work we observe the adequacy of prescription practices to the recommendations for AF in the elderly by data reuse on a monocentric observational retrospective cohort. Data of a 222 beds French community hospital were extracted for the year 2013. The patients aged over 75 years and presenting AF were selected. The HAS-BLED score was calculated and the consistency of the prescriptions with the recommendations of the European Society of Cardiology was verified. Then the compliance rate to the recommendations was calculated. The rules detected 433 patients with AF and aged over 75 years. From those patients, 45% received an anticoagulant, 32.1% received platelet aggregation inhibitors and 22.9% did not receive any antithrombotic treatment. When a platelet aggregation inhibitor was prescribed the recommendation for bitherapy was not followed in 97% of the cases. The compliance rate to the recommendations was 47.8%. This work highlights a major problem of quality of the prescriptions in the hospital field and shows how data reuse can help describing this type of issues.
Development of Hypertension Management Mobile Application based on Clinical Practice Guidelines
Authors: Kang H.  , Park H.A.
Published: February 2025

This study aims to develop and evaluate a mobile application for hypertension management based on Clinical Practice Guidelines. The application was developed according to Web-Roadmap methodology. In planning phase, we defined the tasks and product of each phase, selected clinical practice guidelines and extracted intervention items for hypertension management. In analysis phase, we analysed intervention items and made data dictionary, rules, use-case diagram, hypertension management ontology and tailored recommendations for the application. In design phase, we developed an entity-relations diagram, algorithm, and user interface and coded them in the implementation phase. In evaluation phase, first, the knowledge-base was evaluated for its accuracy by experts and they proposed three more detailed recommendations, which were added to the application. Second, mobile heuristics were evaluated. The evaluators pointed out 33 usability-related problems on mobile heuristics items. Out of these, three problems were solved by reflecting evaluators' comments.
A Medical Application to Bridge the Gap between Clinicians and Clinical Data
Authors: Finkelstein Mark  , Bilal Khawaja H.  , Palese Michael
Published: February 2025

There currently exists a gap between medical data and the clinicians who wish to use the data as the foundation for evidence-based medicine. The current disjointed workflow often requires statisticians to act as bridges in order to answer inquiries from clinicians. This can lead to suboptimal results as due to a gap between the fundamental understanding of clinical underpinnings and formal statistical interpretation of the data. To address this challenge, we have created a multi-platform application that allows clinicians to quickly and easily navigate and analyse the data. This application has been successfully implemented and tested within the Urology department at Mount Sinai Hospital for comprehensive analysis of complex urological data.
A Big Data-driven Model for the Optimization of Healthcare Processes
Authors: Koufi Vassiliki  , Malamateniou Flora  , Vassilacopoulos George
Published: February 2025

Healthcare organizations increasingly navigate a highly volatile, complex environment in which technological advancements and new healthcare delivery business models are the only constants. In their effort to out-perform in this environment, healthcare organizations need to be agile enough in order to become responsive to these increasingly changing conditions. To act with agility, healthcare organizations need to discover new ways to optimize their operations. To this end, they focus on healthcare processes that guide healthcare delivery and on the technologies that support them. Business process management (BPM) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) can provide a flexible, dynamic, cloud-ready infrastructure where business process analytics can be utilized to extract useful insights from mountains of raw data, and make them work in ways beyond the abilities of human brains, or IT systems from just a year ago. This paper presents a framework which provides healthcare professionals gain better insight within and across your business processes. In particular, it performs real-time analysis on process-related data in order reveal areas of potential process improvement.
Using EHR-Linked Biobank Data to Study Metformin Pharmacogenomics
Authors: Breitenstein Matthew K.  , Simon Gyorgy  , Ryu Euijung  , Armasu Sebastian M.  , Weinshilboum Richard M.  , Wang Liewei  , Pathak Jyotishman
Published: February 2025

Metformin is a commonly prescribed diabetes medication whose mechanism of action is poorly understood. In this study we utilized EHR-linked biobank data to elucidate the impact of genomic variation on glycemic response to metformin. Our study found significant gene- and SNP-level associations within the beta-2 subunit of the heterotrimeric adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase complex. Using EHR phenotypes where were able to add additional clarity to ongoing metformin pharmacogenomic dialogue.
Grey Influence Factor Analysis of Eye-Mask Aromatherapy
Authors: Lee Ya-Ting  , Huang Yi-Chun  , Hwang Chii-Fang
Published: February 2025

The theme of this paper is to analyze the effect of the eye-mask soothing aromatherapy treatment by using the grey model theory. The eye mask agent is made of stress relief floral water, and we lay it over two eyes to relax stress of subjects. Although traditional alterative medicine describes that the floral water can be transported through the blood circulation from the skin to the various organs, and finally reaches the central nervous system, it is lacked scientific verification. Thus, this paper measures the heart rate variability of subjects and finds the relation between the stress relief and eye-mask aromatherapy. The grey GM(0,N) model theory is applied to find the activity relationship of the pressure index to influence factors: heart rate, standard deviation of all normal to normal intervals, total power, very low frequency power, low-frequency power, and high-frequency power. Based on the grey analysis, the action of the eye-mask aromatherapy is constructed with more scientific study than previous works. The results can be a reference to aromatherapy alterative medicine.
An Improved Dyna-Q Algorithm Based in Reverse Model Learning
Authors: Tseng Yi-Jia  , Hwang Kao-Shing  , Jiang Wei-Cheng  , Huang Tsung-Chuan  , Chen Song-Shyong
Published: February 2025

Q-Learning is one of the well-known model-free RL methods. When it discovers a good reward, it needs much iteration to diffuse the information. In this paper, we used an adaptive model learning method based on tree structure to imitate experience. Predictions let agent have extra experience to learn policy indirectly. Agent can use the tree-model to imitate the transition between two states. However, when model is not accurate, it may get through absorbing states. Getting through absorbing states influence the learning efficiency. In order to solve this problem, we propose two methods to enhance the tree-model. For demonstrating the proposed method, we introduce two simulations to verify the proposed methods. The simulation results demonstrate that the training rate of our method can improve obviously.