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Background: The number of older people with unmet health care and support needs is increasing substantially due to the challenges facing health care systems worldwide. There are potentially great benefits to using the Internet of Things coupled with artificial intelligence to support independent living and the measurement of health risks, thus improving quality of life for the older adult population. Taking a co-design approach has the potential to ensure that these technological solutions are developed to address specific user needs and requirements., Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate stakeholders' perceptions of independent living and technology solutions, identify stakeholders' suggestions on how technology could assist older adults to live independently, and explore the acceptability and usefulness of a prototype Internet of Things solution called the NEX system to support independent living for an older adult population., Methods: The development of the NEX system was carried out in 3 key phases with a strong focus on diverse stakeholder involvement. The initial predesign exploratory phase recruited 17 stakeholders, including older adults and family caregivers, using fictitious personas and scenarios to explore initial perceptions of independent living and technology solutions. The subsequent co-design and testing phase expanded this to include a comprehensive web-based survey completed by 380 stakeholders, encompassing older adults, family caregivers, health care professionals, and home care support staff. This phase also included prototype testing at home by 7 older adults to assess technology needs, requirements, and the initial acceptability of the system. Finally, in the postdesign phase, workshops were held between academic and industry partners to analyze data collected from the earlier stages and to discuss recommendations for the future development of the system., Results: The predesign phase revealed 3 broad themes: loneliness and technology, aging and technology, and adopting and using technology. The co-design phase highlighted key areas where technology could assist older adults to live independently: home security, falls and loneliness, remote monitoring by family members, and communication with clients. Prototype testing revealed that the acceptability aspects of the prototype varied across technology types. Ambient sensors and voice-activated assistants were described as the most acceptable technology by participants. Last, the postdesign analysis process highlighted that ambient sensors have the potential for automatic detection of activities of daily living, resulting in key recommendations for future developments and deployments in this area., Conclusions: This study demonstrates the significance of incorporating diverse stakeholder perspectives in developing solutions that support independent living. Additionally, it emphasizes the advantages of prototype testing in home environments, offering crucial insights into the real-world experiences of users interacting with technological solutions., (© Claire M Timon, Emma Heffernan, Sophia Kilcullen, Louise Hopper, Hyowon Lee, Pamela Gallagher, Alan F Smeaton, Kieran Moran, Pamela Hussey, Catriona Murphy. Originally published in JMIR Aging (https://aging.jmir.org).)

Evaluating the quality of videos which have been automatically generated from text-to-video (T2V) models is important if the models are to produce plausible outputs that convince a viewer of their authenticity. This paper presents a dataset of 201 text prompts used to automatically generate 1,005 videos using 5 very recent T2V models namely Tune-a-Video, VideoFusion, Text-To-Video Synthesis, Text2Video-Zero and Aphantasia. The prompts are divided into short, medium and longer lengths. We also include the results of some commonly used metrics used to automatically evaluate the quality of those generated videos. These include each video's naturalness, the text similarity between the original prompt and an automatically generated text caption for the video, and the inception score which measures how realistic is each generated video. Each of the 1,005 generated videos was manually rated by 24 different annotators for alignment between the videos and their original prompts, as well as for the perception and overall quality of the video. The data also includes the Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) for alignment between the generated videos and the original prompts. The dataset of T2V prompts, videos and assessments can be reused by those building or refining text-to-video generation models to compare the accuracy, quality and naturalness of their new models against existing ones., (© 2024 The Author(s).)

The rapid expansion of 3D printing technologies has led to increased utilization in various industries and has also become pervasive in the home environment. Although the benefits are well acknowledged, concerns have arisen regarding potential health and safety hazards associated with emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulates during the 3D printing process. The home environment is particularly hazardous given the lack of health and safety awareness of the typical home user. This study aims to assess the safety aspects of 3D printing of PLA and ABS filaments by investigating emissions of VOCs and particulates, characterizing their chemical and physical profiles, and evaluating potential health risks. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was employed to profile VOC emissions, while a particle analyzer (WIBS) was used to quantify and characterize particulate emissions. Our research highlights that 3D printing processes release a wide range of VOCs, including straight and branched alkanes, benzenes, and aldehydes. Emission profiles depend on filament type but also, importantly, the brand of filament. The size, shape, and fluorescent characteristics of particle emissions were characterized for PLA-based printing emissions and found to vary depending on the filament employed. This is the first 3D printing study employing WIBS for particulate characterization, and distinct sizes and shape profiles that differ from other ambient WIBS studies were observed. The findings emphasize the importance of implementing safety measures in all 3D printing environments, including the home, such as improved ventilation, thermoplastic material, and brand selection. Additionally, our research highlights the need for further regulatory guidelines to ensure the safe use of 3D printing technologies, particularly in the home setting.

In conditionally automated driving, the driver is free to disengage from controlling the vehicle, but they are expected to resume driving in response to certain situations or events that the system is not equipped to respond to. As the level of vehicle automation increases, drivers often engage in non-driving-related tasks (NDRTs), defined as any secondary task unrelated to the primary task of driving. This engagement can have a detrimental effect on the driver's situation awareness and attentional resources. NDRTs with resource demands that overlap with the driving task, such as visual or manual tasks, may be particularly deleterious. Therefore, monitoring the driver's state is an important safety feature for conditionally automated vehicles, and physiological measures constitute a promising means of doing this. The present systematic review and meta-analysis synthesises findings from 32 studies concerning the effect of NDRTs on drivers' physiological responses, in addition to the effect of NDRTs with a visual or a manual modality. Evidence was found that NDRT engagement led to higher physiological arousal, indicated by increased heart rate, electrodermal activity and a decrease in heart rate variability. There was mixed evidence for an effect of both visual and manual NDRT modalities on all physiological measures. Understanding the relationship between task performance and arousal during automated driving is of critical importance to the development of driver monitoring systems and improving the safety of this technology., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Many universities have wellness programs to promote overall health and well-being. Using students' own personal data as part of improving their own wellness would seem to be a natural fit given that most university students are already data and information literate. In this work, we aim to show how the interplay between health literacy and data literacy can be used and taught together. The method we use is the development and delivery of the FLOURISH module, an accredited, online-only but extra-curricular course that delivers practical tips in the areas that impact students' everyday wellness including sleep, nutrition, work habits, procrastination, relationships with others, physical activity, positive psychology, critical thinking, and more. For most of these topics, students gather personal data related to the topic and submit an analysis of their data for assessment thus demonstrating how students can use their personal data for their benefit. More than 350 students have taken the module and an analysis of the use of online resources, as well as feedback on the module experience, are presented. The contributions of this article are to further endorse the need for health literacy and digital literacy for students, and we demonstrate that these can be taught together making each literacy more appealing to the digital natives of Generation Z who make up the majority of students. The implications for public health research and practice are that two student literacies, health and digital, are not independent and for our students, they should be taught together.

Objective: The NEX project has developed an integrated Internet of Things (IoT) system coupled with data analytics to offer unobtrusive health and wellness monitoring supporting older adults living independently at home. Monitoring involves visualising a set of automatically detected activities of daily living (ADLs) for each participant. ADL detection allows the incorporation of additional participants whose ADLs are detected without system re-training., Methods: Following a user needs and requirements study involving 426 participants, a pilot trial and a friendly trial of the deployment, an action research cycle (ARC) trial was completed. This involved 23 participants over a 10-week period each with ∼ 20 IoT sensors in their homes. During the ARC trial, participants took part in two data-informed briefings which presented visualisations of their own in-home activities. The briefings also gathered training data on the accuracy of detected activities. Association rule mining was used on the combination of data from sensors and participant feedback to improve the automatic ADL detection., Results: Association rule mining was used to detect a range of ADLs for each participant independently of others and then used to detect ADLs across participants using a single set of rules for each ADL. This allows additional participants to be added without the necessity of them providing training data., Conclusions: Additional participants can be added to the NEX system without the necessity to re-train the system for automatic detection of their ADLs., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

The matrix profile (MP) is a data structure computed from a time series which encodes the data required to locate motifs and discords, corresponding to recurring patterns and outliers respectively. When the time series contains noisy data then the conventional approach is to pre-filter it in order to remove noise but this cannot apply in unsupervised settings where patterns and outliers are not annotated. The resilience of the algorithm used to generate the MP when faced with noisy data remains unknown. We measure the similarities between the MP from original time series data with MPs generated from the same data with noisy data added under a range of parameter settings including adding duplicates and adding irrelevant data. We use three real world data sets drawn from diverse domains for these experiments Based on dissimilarities between the MPs, our results suggest that MP generation is resilient to a small amount of noise being introduced into the data but as the amount of noise increases this reslience disappears., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Hehir, Smeaton. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Level 3 automated driving systems involve the continuous performance of the driving task by artificial intelligence within set environmental conditions, such as a straight highway. The driver's role in Level 3 is to resume responsibility of the driving task in response to any departure from these conditions. As automation increases, a driver's attention may divert towards non-driving-related tasks (NDRTs), making transitions of control between the system and user more challenging. Safety features such as physiological monitoring thus become important with increasing vehicle automation. However, to date there has been no attempt to synthesise the evidence for the effect of NDRT engagement on drivers' physiological responses in Level 3 automation., Methods: A comprehensive search of the electronic databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and IEEE Explore will be conducted. Empirical studies assessing the effect of NDRT engagement on at least one physiological parameter during Level 3 automation, in comparison with a control group or baseline condition will be included. Screening will take place in two stages, and the process will be outlined within a PRISMA flow diagram. Relevant physiological data will be extracted from studies and analysed using a series of meta-analyses by outcome. A risk of bias assessment will also be completed on the sample., Conclusion: This review will be the first to appraise the evidence for the physiological effect of NDRT engagement during Level 3 automation, and will have implications for future empirical research and the development of driver state monitoring systems., Competing Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

Circadian rhythms are a process of the sleep-wake cycle that regulates the physical, mental and behavioural changes in all living beings with a period of roughly 24 h. Wearable accelerometers are typically used in livestock applications to record animal movement from which we can estimate the activity type. Here, we use the overall movement recorded by accelerometers worn on the necks of newborn calves for a period of 8 weeks. From the movement data, we calculate 24 h periodicity intensities corresponding to circadian rhythms, from a 7-day window that slides through up to 8-weeks of data logging. The strength or intensity of the 24 h periodicity is computed at intervals as the calves become older, which is an indicator of individual calf welfare. We observe that the intensities of these 24 h periodicities for individual calves, derived from movement data, increase and decrease synchronously in a herd of 19 calves. Our results show that external factors affecting the welfare of the herd can be observed by processing and visualising movement data in this way and our method reveals insights that are not observable from movement data alone.

Background: In a rapidly aging population, new and efficient ways of providing health and social support to older adults are required that not only preserve independence but also maintain quality of life and safety., Objective: The NEX project aims to develop an integrated Internet of Things system coupled with artificial intelligence to offer unobtrusive health and wellness monitoring to support older adults living independently in their home environment. The primary objective of this study is to develop and evaluate the technical performance and user acceptability of the NEX system. The secondary objective is to apply machine learning algorithms to the data collected via the NEX system to identify and eventually predict changes in the routines of older adults in their own home environment., Methods: The NEX project commenced in December 2019 and is expected to be completed by August 2022. Mixed methods research (web-based surveys and focus groups) was conducted with 426 participants, including older adults (aged ≥60 years), family caregivers, health care professionals, and home care workers, to inform the development of the NEX system (phase 1). The primary outcome will be evaluated in 2 successive trials (the Friendly trial [phase 2] and the Action Research Cycle trial [phase 3]). The secondary objective will be explored in the Action Research Cycle trial (phase 3). For the Friendly trial, 7 older adult participants aged ≥60 years and living alone in their own homes for a 10-week period were enrolled. A total of 30 older adult participants aged ≥60 years and living alone in their own homes will be recruited for a 10-week data collection period (phase 3)., Results: Phase 1 of the project (n=426) was completed in December 2020, and phase 2 (n=7 participants for a 10-week pilot study) was completed in September 2021. The expected completion date for the third project phase (30 participants for the 10-week usability study) is June 2022., Conclusions: The NEX project has considered the specific everyday needs of older adults and other stakeholders, which have contributed to the design of the integrated system. The innovation of the NEX system lies in the use of Internet of Things technologies and artificial intelligence to identify and predict changes in the routines of older adults. The findings of this project will contribute to the eHealth research agenda, focusing on the improvement of health care provision and patient support in home and community environments., International Registered Report Identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/35277., (©Claire M Timon, Emma Heffernan, Sophia M Kilcullen, Hyowon Lee, Louise Hopper, Joe Quinn, David McDonald, Pamela Gallagher, Alan F Smeaton, Kieran Moran, Pamela Hussey, Catriona Murphy. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 05.05.2022.)

Personal wellness data collected using wearable devices is a valuable resource, potentially containing knowledge that goes beyond what the device and its the associated software application can tell the user. However, extracting such knowledge from the data requires expertise that an average user cannot be expected to have. To overcome this problem, the data owner could collaborate with a data analysis expert; for such a collaboration to succeed, the collaborators need to be able to find one another, communicate with one another and share datasets and analysis results with one another. In this paper we presents a process model for such collaborations, a domain ontology and software system developed to support the process, and the results of a user trial demonstrating collaborative analysis of sleep data. Unlike existing collaborative data analytics tools, the process and software have been specifically designed with the non-expert data owner in mind, enabling them to control their data and protect their privacy by selecting the data to be shared on a case-by-case basis. Theoretical analysis and empirical results suggest that the process and its implementation are valid as a proof of concept., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Using a collection of publicly available links to short form video clips of an average of 6 seconds duration each, 1275 users manually annotated each video multiple times to indicate both long-term and short-term memorability of the videos. The annotations were gathered as part of an online memory game and measured a participant's ability to recall having seen the video previously when shown a collection of videos. The recognition tasks were performed on videos seen within the previous few minutes for short-term memorability and within the previous 24 to 72 hours for long-term memorability. Data includes the reaction times for each recognition of each video. Associated with each video are text descriptions (captions) as well as a collection of image-level features applied to 3 frames extracted from each video (start, middle and end). Video-level features are also provided. The dataset was used in the Video Memorability task as part of the MediaEval benchmark in 2020., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships which have, or could be perceived to have, influenced the work reported in this article., (© 2021 The Author(s).)

Indoor air quality monitoring as it relates to the domestic setting is an integral part of human exposure monitoring and health risk assessment. Hence there is a great need for easy to use, fast and economical indoor air quality sensors to monitor the volatile organic compound composition of the air which is known to be significantly perturbed by the various source emissions from activities in the home. To meet this need, paper-based colorimetric sensor arrays were deployed as volatile organic compound detectors in a field study aiming to understand which activities elicit responses from these sensor arrays in household settings. The sensor array itself is composed of pH indicators and aniline dyes that enable molecular recognition of carboxylic acids, amines and carbonyl-containing compounds. The sensor arrays were initially deployed in different rooms in a single household having different occupant activity types and levels. Sensor responses were shown to differ for different room settings on the basis of occupancy levels and the nature of the room emission sources. Sensor responses relating to specific activities such as cooking, cleaning, office work, etc were noted in the temporal response. Subsequently, the colorimetric sensor arrays were deployed in a broader study across 9 different households and, using multivariate analysis, the sensor responses were shown to correlate strongly with household occupant activity and year of house build. Overall, this study demonstrates the significant potential for this type of simple approach to indoor air pollution monitoring in residential environments., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Consumer-level 3D printers are becoming increasingly prevalent in home settings. However, research shows that printing with these desktop 3D printers can impact indoor air quality (IAQ). This study examined particulate matter (PM) emissions generated by 3D printers in an indoor domestic setting. Print filament type, brand, and color were investigated and shown to all have significant impacts on the PM emission profiles over time. For example, emission rates were observed to vary by up to 150-fold, depending on the brand of a specific filament being used. Various printer settings (e.g., fan speed, infill density, extruder temperature) were also investigated. This study identifies that high levels of PM are triggered by the filament heating process and that accessible, user-controlled print settings can be used to modulate the PM emission from the 3D printing process. Considering these findings, a low-cost home IAQ sensor was evaluated as a potential means to enable a home user to monitor PM emissions from their 3D printing activities. This sensing approach was demonstrated to detect the timepoint where the onset of PM emission from a 3D print occurs. Therefore, these low-cost sensors could serve to inform the user when PM levels in the home become elevated significantly on account of this activity and furthermore, can indicate the time at which PM levels return to baseline after the printing process and/or after adding ventilation. By deploying such sensors at home, domestic users of 3D printers can assess the impact of filament type, color, and brand that they utilize on PM emissions, as well as be informed of how their selected print settings can impact their PM exposure levels.

Background: To explore how the efficacy of product trials for skin cosmetics can be improved through the use of consumer-level images taken by volunteers using a conventional smartphone., Materials and Methods: 12 women aged 30-60 years participated in a product trial and had close-up images of the cheek and temple regions of their faces taken with a high-resolution Antera 3D CS camera at the start and end of a 4-week period. Additionally, they each had "selfies" of the same regions of their faces taken regularly throughout the trial period. Automatic image analysis to identify changes in skin colour used three kinds of colour normalisation and analysis for wrinkle composition identified edges and calculated their magnitude., Results: Images taken at the start and end of the trial acted as baseline ground truth for normalisation of smartphone images and showed large changes in both colour and wrinkle magnitude during the trial for many volunteers., Conclusions: Results demonstrate that regular use of selfie smartphone images within trial periods can add value to interpretation of the efficacy of the trial., (© 2020 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

To elucidate the core executive function profile (strengths and weaknesses in inhibition, updating, and switching) associated with dyslexia, this study explored executive function in 27 children with dyslexia and 29 age matched controls using sensitive z-mean measures of each ability and controlled for individual differences in processing speed. This study found that developmental dyslexia is associated with inhibition and updating, but not switching impairments, at the error z-mean composite level, whilst controlling for processing speed. Inhibition and updating (but not switching) error composites predicted both dyslexia likelihood and reading ability across the full range of variation from typical to atypical. The predictive relationships were such that those with poorer performance on inhibition and updating measures were significantly more likely to have a diagnosis of developmental dyslexia and also demonstrate poorer reading ability. These findings suggest that inhibition and updating abilities are associated with developmental dyslexia and predict reading ability. Future studies should explore executive function training as an intervention for children with dyslexia as core executive functions appear to be modifiable with training and may transfer to improved reading ability.

Background: Over the past three decades the global prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity has increased by 47%. Marketing of energy-dense nutrient-poor foods and beverages contributes to this worldwide increase. Previous research on food marketing to children largely uses self-report, reporting by parents, or third-party observation of children's environments, with the focus mostly on single settings and/or media. This paper reports on innovative research, Kids'Cam, in which children wore cameras to examine the frequency and nature of everyday exposure to food marketing across multiple media and settings., Methods: Kids'Cam was a cross-sectional study of 168 children (mean age 12.6 years, SD = 0.5) in Wellington, New Zealand. Each child wore a wearable camera on four consecutive days, capturing images automatically every seven seconds. Images were manually coded as either recommended (core) or not recommended (non-core) to be marketed to children by setting, marketing medium, and product category. Images in convenience stores and supermarkets were excluded as marketing examples were considered too numerous to count., Results: On average, children were exposed to non-core food marketing 27.3 times a day (95% CI 24.8, 30.1) across all settings. This was more than twice their average exposure to core food marketing (12.3 per day, 95% CI 8.7, 17.4). Most non-core exposures occurred at home (33%), in public spaces (30%) and at school (19%). Food packaging was the predominant marketing medium (74% and 64% for core and non-core foods) followed by signs (21% and 28% for core and non-core). Sugary drinks, fast food, confectionary and snack foods were the most commonly encountered non-core foods marketed. Rates were calculated using Poisson regression., Conclusions: Children in this study were frequently exposed, across multiple settings, to marketing of non-core foods not recommended to be marketed to children. The study provides further evidence of the need for urgent action to reduce children's exposure to marketing of unhealthy foods, and suggests the settings and media in which to act. Such action is necessary if the Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity's vision is to be achieved.

Introduction: This paper reports on a new methodology to objectively study the world in which children live. The primary research study (Kids'Cam Food Marketing) illustrates the method; numerous ancillary studies include exploration of children's exposure to alcohol, smoking, "blue" space and gambling, and their use of "green" space, transport, and sun protection., Methods: One hundred sixty-eight randomly selected children (aged 11-13 years) recruited from 16 randomly selected schools in Wellington, New Zealand used wearable cameras and GPS units for 4 days, recording imagery every 7 seconds and longitude/latitude locations every 5 seconds. Data were collected from July 2014 to June 2015. Analysis commenced in 2015 and is ongoing. Bespoke software was used to manually code images for variables of interest including setting, marketing media, and product category to produce variables for statistical analysis. GPS data were extracted and cleaned in ArcGIS, version 10.3 for exposure spatial analysis., Results: Approximately 1.4 million images and 2.2 million GPS coordinates were generated (most were usable) from many settings including the difficult to measure aspects of exposures in the home, at school, and during leisure time. The method is ethical, legal, and acceptable to children and the wider community., Conclusions: This methodology enabled objective analysis of the world in which children live. The main arm examined the frequency and nature of children's exposure to food and beverage marketing and provided data on difficult to measure settings. The methodology will likely generate robust evidence facilitating more effective policymaking to address numerous public health concerns., (Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Periodicities (repeating patterns) are observed in many human behaviors. Their strength may capture untapped patterns that incorporate sleep, sedentary, and active behaviors into a single metric indicative of better health. We present a framework to detect periodicities from longitudinal wrist-worn accelerometry data. GENEActiv accelerometer data were collected from 20 participants (17 men, 3 women, aged 35-65) continuously for 64.4 ± 26.2 (range: 13.9 to 102.0) consecutive days. Cardiometabolic risk biomarkers and health-related quality of life metrics were assessed at baseline. Periodograms were constructed to determine patterns emergent from the accelerometer data. Periodicity strength was calculated using circular autocorrelations for time-lagged windows. The most notable periodicity was at 24 h, indicating a circadian rest-activity cycle; however, its strength varied significantly across participants. Periodicity strength was most consistently associated with LDL-cholesterol (r's = 0.40-0.79, P's < 0.05) and triglycerides (r's = 0.68-0.86, P's < 0.05) but also associated with hs-CRP and health-related quality of life, even after adjusting for demographics and self-rated physical activity and insomnia symptoms. Our framework demonstrates a new method for characterizing behavior patterns longitudinally which captures relationships between 24 h accelerometry data and health outcomes.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a reaction time based categorization task that measures the differential associative strength between bipolar targets and evaluative attribute concepts as an approach to indexing implicit beliefs or biases. An open question exists as to what exactly the IAT measures, and here EEG (Electroencephalography) has been used to investigate the time course of ERPs (Event-related Potential) indices and implicated brain regions in the IAT. IAT-EEG research identifies a number of early (250-450 ms) negative ERPs indexing early-(pre-response) processing stages of the IAT. ERP activity in this time range is known to index processes related to cognitive control and semantic processing. A central focus of these efforts has been to use IAT-ERPs to delineate the implicit and explicit factors contributing to measured IAT effects. Increasing evidence indicates that cognitive control (and related top-down modulation of attention/perceptual processing) may be components in the effective measurement of IAT effects, as factors such as physical setting or task instruction can change an IAT measurement. In this study we further implicate the role of proactive cognitive control and top-down modulation of attention/perceptual processing in the IAT-EEG. We find statistically significant relationships between D-score (a reaction-time based measure of the IAT-effect) and early ERP-time windows, indicating where more rapid word categorizations driving the IAT effect are present, they are at least partly explainable by neural activity not significantly correlated with the IAT measurement itself. Using LORETA, we identify a number of brain regions driving these ERP-IAT relationships notably involving left-temporal, insular, cingulate, medial frontal and parietal cortex in time regions corresponding to the N2- and P3-related activity. The identified brain regions involved with reduced reaction times on congruent blocks coincide with those of previous studies.

Ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies can provide assistance and support to persons with dementia. They might allow them the possibility of living at home for longer whilst maintaining their comfort and security as well as offering a way towards reducing the huge economic and personal costs forecast as the incidence of dementia increases worldwide over coming decades. However, the development, introduction and use of AAL technologies also trigger serious ethical issues. This paper is a systematic literature review of the on-going scholarly debate about these issues. More specifically, we look at the ethical issues involved in research and development, clinical experimentation, and clinical application of AAL technologies for people with dementia and related stakeholders. In the discussion we focus on: (1) the value of the goals of AAL technologies, (2) the special vulnerability of persons with dementia in their private homes, (3) the complex question of informed consent for the usage of AAL technologies.

In a lifelog, data from various sources are combined to form a record from which one can retrieve information about oneself and the environment in which one is situated. It could be considered similar to an automated biography. Lifelog technology is still at an early stage of development. However, the history of lifelogs so far shows a clear academic, corporate and governmental interest. Therefore, a thorough inquiry into the ethical aspects of lifelogs could prove beneficial to the responsible development of this field. This article maps the main ethically relevant challenges and opportunities associated with the further development of lifelog technologies as discussed in the scholarly literature. By identifying challenges and opportunities in the current debate, we were able to identify other challenges and opportunities left unmentioned. Some of these challenges are partly explained by a blind spot in the current debate. Whilst the current debate focuses mainly on lifelogs held by individuals, lifelogs held by governmental institutions and corporations pose idiosyncratic ethical concerns as well. We have provided a brief taxonomy of lifelog technology to show the variety in uses for lifelogs. In addition, we provided a general approach to alleviate the ethical challenges identified in the critical analysis.

The objective of this work is to develop an understanding of the relationship between mobility metrics obtained outside of the clinic or laboratory and the context of the external environment. Ten subjects walked with an inertial sensor on each shank and a wearable camera around their neck. They were taken on a thirty minute walk in which they mobilized over the following conditions; normal path, busy hallway, rough ground, blind folded and on a hill. Stride time, stride time variability, stance time and peak shank rotation rate during swing were calculated using previously published algorithms. Stride time was significantly different between several of the conditions. Technological advances mean that gait variables can now be captured as patients go about their daily lives. The results of this study show that the external environment has a significant impact on the quality of gait metrics. Thus, context of external walking environment is an important consideration when analyzing ambulatory gait metrics from the unsupervised home and community setting.

Background: The Microsoft SenseCam, a small camera that is worn on the chest via a lanyard, increasingly is being deployed in health research. However, the SenseCam and other wearable cameras are not yet in widespread use because of a variety of factors. It is proposed that the ubiquitous smartphones can provide a more accessible alternative to SenseCam and similar devices., Purpose: To perform an initial evaluation of the potential of smartphones to become an alternative to a wearable camera such as the SenseCam., Methods: In 2012, adults were supplied with a smartphone, which they wore on a lanyard, that ran life-logging software. Participants wore the smartphone for up to 1 day and the resulting life-log data were both manually annotated and automatically analyzed for the presence of visual concepts. The results were compared to prior work using the SenseCam., Results: In total, 166,000 smartphone photos were gathered from 47 individuals, along with associated sensor readings. The average time spent wearing the device across all users was 5 hours 39 minutes (SD=4 hours 11 minutes). A subset of 36,698 photos was selected for manual annotation by five researchers. Software analysis of these photos supports the automatic identification of activities to a similar level of accuracy as for SenseCam images in a previous study., Conclusions: Many aspects of the functionality of a SenseCam largely can be replicated, and in some cases enhanced, by the ubiquitous smartphone platform. This makes smartphones good candidates for a new generation of wearable sensing devices in health research, because of their widespread use across many populations. It is envisioned that smartphones will provide a compelling alternative to the dedicated SenseCam hardware for a number of users and application areas. This will be achieved by integrating new types of sensor data, leveraging the smartphone's real-time connectivity and rich user interface, and providing support for a range of relatively sophisticated applications., (Copyright © 2013 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Concept based video retrieval often relies on imperfect and uncertain concept detectors. We propose a general ranking framework to define effective and robust ranking functions, through explicitly addressing detector uncertainty. It can cope with multiple concept-based representations per video segment and it allows the re-use of effective text retrieval functions which are defined on similar representations. The final ranking status value is a weighted combination of two components: the expected score of the possible scores, which represents the risk-neutral choice, and the scores' standard deviation, which represents the risk or opportunity that the score for the actual representation is higher. The framework consistently improves the search performance in the shot retrieval task and the segment retrieval task over several baselines in five TRECVid collections and two collections which use simulated detectors of varying performance.

Environmental monitoring is evolving towards large-scale and low-cost sensor networks operating reliability and autonomously over extended periods of time. Sophisticated analytical instrumentation such as chemo-bio sensors present inherent limitations because of the number of samples that they can take. In order to maximize their deployment lifetime, we propose the coordination of multiple heterogeneous information sources. We use rainfall radar images and information from a water depth sensor as input to a neural network (NN) to dictate the sampling frequency of a phosphate analyzer at the River Lee in Cork, Ireland. This approach shows varied performance for different times of the year but overall produces output that is very satisfactory for the application context in question. Our study demonstrates that even with limited training data, a system for controlling the sampling rate of the nutrient sensor can be set up and can improve the efficiency of the more sophisticated nodes of the sensor network.

SenseCams have many potential applications as tools for lifelogging, including the possibility of use as a memory rehabilitation tool. Given that a SenseCam can log hundreds of thousands of images per year, it is critical that these be presented to the viewer in a manner that supports the aims of memory rehabilitation. In this article we report a software browser constructed with the aim of using the characteristics of memory to organise SenseCam images into a form that makes the wealth of information stored on SenseCam more accessible. To enable a large amount of visual information to be easily and quickly assimilated by a user, we apply a series of automatic content analysis techniques to structure the images into "events", suggest their relative importance, and select representative images for each. This minimises effort when browsing and searching. We provide anecdotes on use of such a system and emphasise the need for SenseCam images to be meaningfully sorted using such a browser.

Most previous research on golf swing mechanics has focused on the driver club. The aim of this study was to identify the kinematic factors that contribute to greater hitting distance when using the 5 iron club. Three-dimensional marker coordinate data were collected (250 Hz) to calculate joint kinematics at eight key swing events, while a swing analyser measured club swing and ball launch characteristics. Thirty male participants were assigned to one of two groups, based on their ball launch speed (high: 52.9 ± 2.1 m · s(-1); low: 39.9 ± 5.2 m · s(-1)). Statistical analyses were used to identify variables that differed significantly between the two groups. Results showed significant differences were evident between the two groups for club face impact point and a number of joint angles and angular velocities, with greater shoulder flexion and less left shoulder internal rotation in the backswing, greater extension angular velocity in both shoulders at early downswing, greater left shoulder adduction angular velocity at ball contact, greater hip joint movement and X Factor angle during the downswing, and greater left elbow extension early in the downswing appearing to contribute to greater hitting distance with the 5 iron club.

Typically BCI (Brain Computer Interfaces) are found in rehabilitative or restorative applications, often allowing users a medium of communication that is otherwise unavailable through conventional means. Recently, however, there is growing interest in using BCI to assist users in searching for images. A class of neural signals often leveraged in common BCI paradigms are ERPs (Event Related Potentials), which are present in the EEG (Electroencephalograph) signals from users in response to various sensory events. One such ERP is the P300, and is typically elicited in an oddball experiment where a subject's attention is orientated towards a deviant stimulus among a stream of presented images. It has been shown that these types of neural responses can be used to drive an image search or labeling task, where we can rank images by examining the presence of such ERP signals in response to the display of images. To date, systems like these have been demonstrated when presenting sequences of images containing targets at up to 10 Hz, however, the target images in these tasks do not necessitate any kind of eye movement for their detection because the targets in the images are quite salient. In this paper we analyse the presence of discriminating EEG signals when they are offset to the time of eye fixations in a visual search task where detection of target images does require eye fixations.

The cost of monitoring greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites is of major concern for regulatory authorities. The current monitoring procedure is recognised as labour intensive, requiring agency inspectors to physically travel to perimeter borehole wells in rough terrain and manually measure gas concentration levels with expensive hand-held instrumentation. In this article we present a cost-effective and efficient system for remotely monitoring landfill subsurface migration of methane and carbon dioxide concentration levels. Based purely on an autonomous sensing architecture, the proposed sensing platform was capable of performing complex analytical measurements in situ and successfully communicating the data remotely to a cloud database. A web tool was developed to present the sensed data to relevant stakeholders. We report our experiences in deploying such an approach in the field over a period of approximately 16 months.

The sporting domain has traditionally been used as a testing ground for new technologies which subsequently make their way into the public domain. This includes sensors. In this article a range of physical and biological sensors deployed in a 64 hour ultra-endurance non-stop cycling race are described. A novel algorithm to estimate the energy expenditure while cycling and resting during the event are outlined. Initial analysis in this noisy domain of "sensors in the field" are very encouraging and represent a first with respect to cycling.

In sensor research we take advantage of additional contextual sensor information to disambiguate potentially erroneous sensor readings or to make better informed decisions on a single sensor's output. This use of additional information reinforces, validates, semantically enriches, and augments sensed data. Lifelog data is challenging to augment, as it tracks one's life with many images including the places they go, making it non-trivial to find associated sources of information. We investigate realising the goal of pervasive user-generated content based on sensors, by augmenting passive visual lifelogs with "Web 2.0" content collected by millions of other individuals.