MobSens: Making Smart Phones Smarter

In this article, we discuss experiences and lessons learned from deploying four mobile sensing applications on off-the-shelf mobile phones within a recreational framework called MobSens that contains elements of health, social, and environmental sensing at both individual and community levels. We describe the main components of our applications, which facilitate logging and external communications. We also outline the challenges faced when building and testing these applications and describe our strategies for overcoming them.     

Practice, systems and technology for seniors

This paper explores how research teams in Intel’s Digital Health Group are using ethnography to identify ‘designable moments’—spaces, times, objects, issues and practices which suggest opportunities for appropriate interventions. It argues that technology innovation should aim to incorporate the views, experiences and practices of users from the start of the design process to support independent living and develop culturally sensitive enhancements that contribute towards wellbeing and a life of quality for local older populations.     

Objective functional assessment of total hip arthroplasty following two common surgical approaches: the posterior and direct lateral approaches

Despite the high number of total hip arthroplasty (THA) procedures performed each year, there is no common consensus on the best surgical approach. Gait is known to improve following THA although it does not return to what is typically quantified as normal, and surgical approach is believed to be a contributing factor. The current study evaluates postoperative hip function and provides an objective assessment following two common surgical approaches: the McFarland-Osborne direct lateral and the southern posterior. Faced with the common problem of providing an objective comparison from the wealth of data collected using motion analysis techniques, the current study investigates the application of an objective classification tool to provide information on the effectiveness of each surgery and to differentiate between the characteristics of hip function following the two approaches. Seven inputs for the classifier were determined through statistical analysis of the biomechanical data. The posterior approach group exhibited greater characteristics of non-pathological gait and displayed a greater range of functional ability as compared with the lateral approach cohort. The classification tool has proved to be successful in characterizing non-pathological and THA function but was insufficient in distinguishing between the two surgical cohorts.     

Photonic Reactions Leading to Fluorescence in a Polymeric System Induced by the Photothermal Effect of Magnetite Nanoparticles Using a 780 nm Multiphoton Laser

Recently, polymer‐coated magnetite (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticles (NPs) are extensively studied for applications in therapeutics or diagnostics using photothermal effect. Therefore, it is essential to understand the interactions between Fe₃O₄ NPs and polymers when optical stimuli are applied. Herein, the photonic reactions of Fe₃O₄ NPs and polymer composites upon application of a 780 nm multiphoton laser are analyzed. The photonic reactions produce unique results including fluorescence from conformationally changed polymer and low‐temperature phase transformation of Fe₃O₄ NPs. Typically, π‐conjugated chains are formed, inducing fluorescence through a series of main and side‐chain cleavage reactions of polymers with the aliphatic chain. In addition, fluorescence is detected in the cellular system by photonic reactions between Fe₃O₄ NPs and biomolecules. After multiphoton laser irradiation, light emission is detected near the intracellular Fe₃O₄ NPs, and a stronger intensity is observed in large‐sized NPs.     

Managing supply systems with partial information on shipment locations

This paper studies a supply system for a retailer who orders a single product from one manufacturer. Orders filled by the manufacturer pass through multiple transportation stages before reaching the retailer. Each stage represents either a physical location or a step in the delivery process. The lead time for a new order depends on the location of shipments against prior orders in transit. Shipments are not allowed to cross over in time. Thus, the movement of each shipment depends on the movements of shipments ahead of it and the resulting congestion. The retailer is able to track shipments as they move through the transportation channel. The retailer adopts an ordering policy that minimises the sum of his one-period holding and shortage costs, using available status information of shipments already in transit. The case where practical constraints prevent the retailer from obtaining a complete status of shipments at all stages in the transportation channel is considered. The methodology developed evaluates the value of partial shipment tracking information, and uses it to determine the optimal placement of a limited number of tracking devices. The methodology can also be used to evaluate the cost–benefit of placing additional tracking devices in the supply system.     

Isolation and characterization of a monoclonal anti-quadruplex DNA antibody from autoimmune "viable motheaten" mice

A cell line that produces an autoantibody specific for DNA quadruplex structures has been isolated and cloned from a hybridoma library derived from 3-month-old nonimmunized autoimmune, immunodeficient "viable motheaten" mice. This antibody has been tested extensively in vitro and found to bind specifically to DNA quadruplex structures formed by two biologically relevant sequence motifs. Scatchard and nonlinear regression analyses using both one- and two-site models were used to derive association constants for the antibody-DNA binding reactions. In both cases, quadruplexes had higher association constants than triplex and duplex molecules. The anti-quadruplex antibody binds to the quadruplex formed by the promoter-region-derived oligonucleotide d(CGCG4GCG) (Ka = 3.3 x 10(6) M-1), and has enhanced affinity for telomere-derived quadruplexes formed by the oligonucleotides d(TG4) and d(T2G4T2G4T2G4T2G4) (Ka = 5.38 x 10(6) and 1.66 x 10(7) M-1, respectively). The antibody binds both types of quadruplexes but has preferential affinity for the parallel four-stranded structure. In vitro radioimmunofilter binding experiments demonstrated that purified anti-DNA quadruplex antibodies from anti-quadruplex antibody-producing tissue culture supernatants have at least 10-fold higher affinity for quadruplexes than for triplex and duplex DNA structures of similar base composition and length. The antibody binds intramolecular DNA triplexes formed by d(G4T3G4T3C4) and d(C4T3G4T3G4), and the duplex d(CGCGCGCGCG)2 with an affinities of 6. 76 x 10(5), 5.59 x 10(5), and 8.26 x 10(5) M-1, respectively. Competition experiments showed that melted quadruplexes are not effective competitors for antibody binding when compared to native structures, confirming that the quadruplex is bound structure-specifically. To our knowledge, this is the first immunological reagent known to specifically recognize quadruplex structures. Subsequent sequence analysis demonstrates homologies between the antibody complementarity determining regions and sequences from Myb family telomere binding proteins, which are hypothesized to control cell aging via telomeric DNA interactions. The presence of this antibody in the autoimmune repertoire suggests a possible linkage between autoimmunity, telomeric DNA binding proteins, and aging.     

Analysis of error-correction constraints in an optical disk

The compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM) is a mature storage medium with complex error control. It comprises four levels of Reed Solomon codes allied to a sequence of sophisticated interleaving strategies and 8:14 modulation coding. New storage media are being developed and introduced that place still further demands on signal processing for error correction. It is therefore appropriate to explore thoroughly the limit of existing strategies to assess future requirements. We describe a simulation of all stages of the CD-ROM coding, modulation, and decoding. The results of decoding the burst error of a prescribed number of modulation bits are discussed in detail. Measures of residual uncorrected error within a sector are displayed by C1, C2, P, and Q error counts and by the status of the final cyclic redundancy check (CRC). Where each data sector is encoded separately, it is shown that error-correction performance against burst errors depends critically on the position of the burst within a sector. The C1 error measures the burst length, whereas C2 errors reflect the burst position. The performance of Reed Solomon product codes is shown by the P and Q statistics. It is shown that synchronization loss is critical near the limits of error correction. An example is given of miscorrection that is identified by the CRC check.     

New GOES imager algorithms for cloud and active fire detection and fire radiative power assessment across North, South and Central America

Vegetation fires are a key global terrestrial disturbance factor and a major source of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols. Therefore, many earth-system science and operational monitoring applications require access to repetitive, frequent and well-characterized information on fire emissions source strengths. Geostationary imagers offer important temporal advantages when studying rapidly changing phenomena such as vegetation fires. Here we present a new algorithm for detecting and characterising active fires burning within the imager footprints of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), including consideration of cloud-cover and calculation of fire radiative power (FRP), a metric shown to be strongly related to fuel consumption and smoke emission rates. The approach is based on a set of algorithms now delivering near real time (NRT) operational FRP products from the Meteosat Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-Red Imager (SEVIRI) imager (available from http://landsaf.meteo.pt/), and the GOES processing chain presented here is designed to deliver a compatible fire product to complete geostationary coverage of the Western hemisphere. Results from the two GOES imagers are intercompared, and are independently verified against the well regarded MODIS cloud mask and active fire products. We find that the detection of cloud and active fires from GOES matches that of MODIS very well for fire pixels having FRP > 30 MW, when the GOES omission error falls to less than 10%. The FRP of fire clusters detected near simultaneously by both GOES and MODIS have a bias of only 22 MW, and a similar bias is found when comparing near-simultaneous GOES East and GOES West FRP observations. However, many fire pixels having FRP < 30 MW remain undetected by GOES, probably unavoidably since it has a much coarser spatial resolution than MODIS. Adjustment using data from the less frequent but more accurate views obtained from high spatial resolution polar orbiting imagers could be used to bias correct regional FRP totals. Temporal integration of the GOES FRP record indicates that during the summer months, biomass burning combusts thousands of millions of tonnes of fuel daily across the Americas. Comparison of these results to those of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFEDv2) indicate strong linear relationships (r² > 0.9), suggesting that the timely FRP data available from a GOES real-time data feed is likely to be a suitable fire emissions source strength term for inclusion in schemes aiming to forecast the concentrations of atmospheric constituents affected by biomass burning.