Sensor-driven agenda for intelligent home care of the elderly

The exponential increase of home-bound persons who live alone and are in need of continuous monitoring requires new solutions to current problems. Most of these cases present illnesses such as motor or psychological disabilities that deprive of a normal living. Common events such as forgetfulness or falls are quite common and have to be prevented or dealt with. This paper introduces a platform to guide and assist these persons (mostly elderly people) by providing multisensory monitoring and intelligent assistance. The platform operates at three levels. The lower level, denominated ‘‘Data acquisition and processing’’performs the usual tasks of a monitoring system, collecting and processing data from the sensors for the purpose of detecting and tracking humans. The aim is to identify their activities in an intermediate level called ‘‘activity detection’’. The upper level, ‘‘Scheduling and decision-making’’, consists of a scheduler which provides warnings, schedules events in an intelligent manner and serves as an interface to the rest of the platform. The idea is to use mobile and static sensors performing constant monitoring of the user and his/her environment, providing a safe environment and an immediate response to severe problems. A case study on elderly fall detection in a nursery home bedroom demonstrates the usefulness of the proposal.

Find It - An Assistant Home Agent

Cognitive impaired population face with innumerable problems in their daily life. Surprisingly, they are not provided with any help to perform those tasks for which they have difficulties. As a consequence, it is necessary to develop systems that allow those people to live independently and autonomously. Living in a technological era, people could take advantage of the available technology, being provided with some solutions to their needs. This paper presents a platform that assists users with remembering where their possessions are. Mainly, an object recognition process together with an intelligent scheduling applications are integrated in an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environment.

Faire l'Europe avec des langues diferentes

Revista Lusófona de Línguas, Culturas e Tradução

The Concept of Europe

Saberemos o que é a Europa? Talvez cada um de nós tenha a sua própria concepção que também guia as nossas actividades práticas. Mas estamos um pouco no escuro quando se trata de nos orientarmos no que é, apesar de tudo, um campo complexo. Poderíamos mesmo dizer que há muitas concepções de Europa - Irei discutir algumas e estas diferem bastante umas das outras. Para muitos de nós, teremos que admiti-lo, a Europa e a União Europeia são realidades cujos contornos estão longe de ser claros. A nossa confusão acerca da União Europeia é, em parte, alimentada por uma falta de clareza acerca do próprio conceito de Europa . Como e quando emergiu este conceito? É claro que este não é um conceito ou uma ideia única e que não existe uma resposta adequada e satisfatória para tal pergunta.

Seeking a Home in Portugal

Os indianos começam a chegar a Portugal desde a chegada de Vasco da Gama à Índia. O celebrado ourives Raulu Chatim na corte de D. Manuel era um deles. Houve outros para quem João de Barros escreveu uma cartilha para lhes ensinar a língua portuguesa. Os goeses começam a chegar a Portugal com regularidade com bolsas de estudos e como deputados na camara real dos deputados no periodo liberal. As bolsas eram pagas pelas camaras agrárias de Goa. Chegaram a Portugal os padres acusados de conjuração em 1787. Após a ocupação indiana de Goa o governos português facultou a viagem a todos os goeses que quisessem abandonar Goa. O maior número de sempre veio via Moçambique depois da independência daquele país em 1975. Alguns goeses têm chegado em tempos mais recentes após 25 de Abril e integração de Portugal na União Europeia.

Goa : Port of Call and Strangers at Home

The Portuguese were the last batch of strangers who sought to make Goa their home

A supervised versus home-based program effects on liver transplanted familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy patients: walking, fatigue and quality of life

Purpose: To evaluate the effects of a six months exercise training program on walking capacity, fatigue and health related quality of life (HRQL). Relevance: Familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy disease (FAP) is an autossomic neurodegenerative disease, related with systemic deposition of amyloidal fibre mainly on peripheral nervous system and mainly produced in the liver. FAP often results in severe functional limitations. Liver transplantation is used as the only therapy so far, that stop the progression of some aspects of this disease. Transplantation requires aggressive medication which impairs muscle metabolism and associated to surgery process and previous possible functional impairments, could lead to serious deconditioning. Reports of fatigue are common feature in transplanted patients. The effect of supervised or home-based exercise training programs in FAP patients after a liver transplant (FAPTX) is currently unknown.

Intermittent claudication and physical exercise: effectiveness of a home-based program

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) as a high incidence in general population and 12% to 20% of population with more than 60 years has already clinical symptoms, such as intermittent claudication (IC), pain, loss of strength and functional incapacity. There are already some studies who refer the possible positive effects of physical exercise in functional consequences of PAD.

A supervised versus home-based program effects on liver transplanted familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy patients: walking, fatigue and quality of life

Familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy is a systemic deposition of amyloidal fibre mainly on peripheral nervous system (but also in other systems like heart, gastrointestinal tract, kidneys, etc) and mainly produced in the liver. Purpose of this study: to evaluate the effects of a six months exercise training program(supervised or home-based) on walking capacity, fatigue and health related quality of life (HRQL) on Familial Amyloidotic Polyneuropathy patients submitted to a liver transplant.

Overview of the tuning template for radiography in Europe

HENRE II (Higher Education Network for Radiography in Europe)

The risk-return trade-off in Europe: A temporal and cross-sectional analysis

This paper analyzes the risk-return trade-off in European equities considering both temporal and cross-sectional dimensions. In our analysis, we introduce not only the market portfolio but also 15 industry portfolios comprising the entire market. Several bivariate GARCH models are estimated to obtain the covariance matrix between excess market returns and the industrial portfolios and the existence of a risk-return trade-off is analyzed through a cross-sectional approach using the information in all portfolios. It is obtained evidence for a positive and significant risk-return trade-off in the European market. This conclusion is robust for different GARCH specifications and is even more evident after controlling for the main financial crisis during the sample period.

Intermittent claudication and physical exercise: effectiveness of a home-based program

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) as a high incidence in general population and 12% to 20% of population with more than 60 years has already clinical symptoms, such as intermittent claudication (IC), pain, loss of strength and functional incapacity. There are already some studies that refer the possible positive effects of physical exercise in functional consequences of PAD. The purpose of this study was to verify the results of a home-based (HB) weekly supervised physical exercise program in patients with IC in consequence of PAD in lower limbs, and observe the medium number of diary steps walked by the subjects of our study.

The role of Lifelong Learning in the creation of a knowledge-based society for Europe: european policies

Link do editor: http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/role-lifelong-learning-creation-european/13314