An in-depth pilot study on patterns, destinations, and purposes of walking in Hong Kong older adults

Walking is a suitable activity for older adults and has physical and mental health benefits. To devise interventions that impact on levels of walking it is necessary to first understand the purposes for which people walk and the destinations to which they walk. Using a 7-day diary and accelerometry, this study investigated destinations and purposes of walking in older adult residents of an ultra-dense Asian city. Participants reported an average of 17.1 walking trips per week and total weekly accelerometer/diary determined trip walking time averaged 735 minutes per week, much higher than reported for older adults in non-Asian settings. The most common destinations were within the neighborhood: parks and streets for recreation walking and shops and eating places for transport-related walking. Errands and eating were the most common purposes for transportation trips. The study results can help inform urban design to encourage walking.

LGT/VOT tracking performance evaluation of depth images

This paper presents object tracking in depth, RGB and normal-maps images using LGT tracker. The depth and RGB images are rendered using depth imaging plugins. A series of experiments were held to evaluate the tracker performance in tracking objects in different image sequences. The experiments conducted were from the Visual Object Tracking (VOT) challenge that was arranged in association with ICCV'13 The accuracy was chosen as the evaluation measure, where the the tracker's bounding box was compared against the ground truth bounding box. Results show that tracking object using depth images gives better results and is more accurate than tracking using either the RGB or nomal maps images.

In-depth case study of Australian seating service experience: stakeholders' perspectives

The in-depth case study explores the Australian seating service experience from four stakeholders’ perspectives. To capture essential case study data, a qualitative approach collected the seating service experiences of eleven consumers, five care providers, 28 prescribing clinicians and 16 vendors. Sixty participants shared their experiences via an in-depth interview process of procuring specialised wheelchair-seating technology within the Australian seating service sector. The in-depth interviews were recorded, transcribed, and member-checked. The interview data builds on scant evidence of the seating service as experienced in Australia.

Using otolith microchemistry and shape to assess the habitat value of oil structures for reef fish

Over 7500 oil and gas structures (e.g. oil platforms) are installed in offshore waters worldwide and many will require decommissioning within the next two decades. The decision to remove such structures or turn them into reefs (i.e. 'rigs-to-reefs') hinges on the habitat value they provide, yet this can rarely be determined because the residency of mobile species is difficult to establish. Here, we test a novel solution to this problem for reef fishes; the use of otolith (earstone) properties to identify oil structures of residence. We compare the otolith microchemistry and otolith shape of a site-attached coral reef fish (Pseudanthias rubrizonatus) among four oil structures (depth 82-135 m, separated by 9.7-84.2 km) on Australia's North West Shelf to determine if populations developed distinct otolith properties during their residency. Microchemical signatures obtained from the otolith edge using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) differed among oil structures, driven by elements Sr, Ba and Mn, and to a lesser extent Mg and Fe. A combination of microchemical data from the otolith edge and elliptical Fourier (shape) descriptors allowed allocation of individuals to their 'home' structure with moderate accuracy (overall allocation accuracy: 63.3%, range: 45.5-78.1%), despite lower allocation accuracies for each otolith property in isolation (microchemistry: 47.5%, otolith shape: 45%). Site-specific microchemical signatures were also stable enough through time to distinguish populations during 3 separate time periods, suggesting that residence histories could be recreated by targeting previous growth zones in the otolith. Our results indicate that reef fish can develop unique otolith properties during their residency on oil structures which may be useful for assessing the habitat value of individual structures. The approach outlined here may also be useful for determining the residency of reef fish on artificial reefs, which would assist productivity assessments of these habitats.