The AutoActive Research Environment

SoftwareX, 2019

The lack of open-source tools for physiological signal processing hinders the development of standardized pipelines in physiology. Researchers usually must rely on commercial software that, by implementing black-box algorithms, undermines the control on the analysis and prevents the comparison of the results, ultimately affecting the scientific reproducibility. We introduce pyphysio as a step towards a data science approach oriented to compute physiological indicators, in particular of the Autonomic Nervous System activity. pyphysio serves as a basis for machine learning modules and it implements a suite of combinable algorithms for processing of signals from either by wearable or medical-grade quality devices.

2022 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops)

Ubiquitous self-tracking technologies' (STTs) adoption has taken a quantum leap in recent years, leading to a rapid increase in terms of volume, variety, and variability of the generated data from their embedded sensors. Consequently, integrating data from different self-tracking devices for further exploration and analysis has become time-consuming. In addition, it requires advanced technical skills, hindering their widespread adoption in interdisciplinary scientific and industrial research. This paper introduces an extensible, open-source framework and tool called WearMerge that automates the integration and transformation into a common standard of STTs' data across different brands and models. WearMerge aims to help and ease practitioners and researchers on STTs' data analysis.

2008

Real time monitoring of the wellness of sportspersons, during their sporting activity and training, is important in order to maximise performance during the sporting event itself and during training, as well as being important for the health of the sportsperson overall. We have combined a suite of common, offthe-shelf sensors with specialist body sensing technology we are developing ourselves and constructed a software system for recording, analysing and presenting sensed data gathered from a single player during a sporting activity, a football match. We gather readings for heart rate, galvanic skin response, motion, heat flux, respiration, and location (GPS) using on-body sensors, while simultaneously tracking player activity using a combination of a playercam video and pitch-wide video recording. We have aggregated all this sensed data into a single overview of player performance and activity which can be reviewed, post-event. We are currently working on integrating other non-invasive methods for real-time on-body monitoring of sweat electrolytes and pH via a textile-based sweat sampling and analysis platform. Our work is heading in two directions; firstly from post-event data aggregation to real-time monitoring, and secondly, to convert raw sensor readings into performance indicators that are meaningful to practitioners in the field.

Mobile Information Systems

Gathering physiological data when they are performing experiments requires a great effort from researchers. Very often, a considerable time is required to prepare the signal acquisition equipment, conduct the experiments, and properly label the data of each participant. Nevertheless this data is valuable for the analysis of personal characteristics, such as behavior, health conditions, and preferences. With the aim of assisting researchers with such tedious tasks, we have developed the DAFIESKU system. This system serves to acquire several types of physiological data. DAFIESKU facilitates the creation of new datasets with physiological data by means of mobile and wearable devices. The usability of the system was evaluated in two case studies in a two-step iterative process. Before conducting the second case study, the whole system was improved using the feedback obtained from the first case study. The results achieved show that usability was enhanced in the second version of DAFIESKU.

Computing in Cardiology Conference (CinC)

To develop robust algorithms for automated diagnosis of medical conditions such as cardiac arrhythmias, researchers require large collections of data with human expert annotations. Currently, there is a lack of accessible, open-source platforms for human experts to collaboratively develop these annotated datasets through a web interface. In this work, we developed a flexible, generalizable, web-based framework to enable multiple users to create and share annotations on multi-channel physiological waveforms. Using the developed annotation platform, we carried out a pilot study to assess the validity of ventricular tachycardia (VT) alarms from multiple commercial monitors. Thus far, four clinical experts have used this annotation tool to annotate a total of 5,658 VT alarm events, among which approximately 44% (N=2,468) have been labeled by two independent annotators.

Telecare and home healthcare services are an increasing healthcare research sector. In this field a novel approach is based on wearable sensor devices which provide a user-friendly acquisition of vital signs and allow the implementation of pervasive and continuous healthcare monitoring systems. The amazing amount of data continuously provided by sensors, poses challenging issues to the systems which are in charge of their collection and processing. In this paper we present a platform allowing real-time monitoring of biomedical and environmental parameters able to collect, store and process data gathered from a wide variety of sources. The platform presents a modular architecture that easily allows its extension with additional sensors. The main feature of the proposed system is the adoption of a complex event processor to correlate and manage events extracted from the collected data. This allows a wider and more accurate knowledge of the patient’s health status. A proof-of-concept implementation of the proposed platform has been realized and its implementation is detailed in this paper.

Information Fusion, 2014

Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) have emerged as the most effective technology enabling not only new e-Health methods and systems but also novel applications in human-centered areas such as electronic health care, fitness/welness systems, sport performance monitoring, interactive games, factory workers monitoring, and social physical interaction. Despite their enormous potential, they are currently mostly used only to monitor single individuals. Indeed, BSNs can proactively interact and collaborate to foster novel BSN applications centered on collaborative groups of individuals. In this paper, C-SPINE, a framework for Collaborative BSNs (CBSNs), is proposed. CBSNs are BSNs able to collaborate with each other to fulfill a common goal. They can support the development of novel smart wearable systems for cyberphysical pervasive computing environments. Collaboration therefore relies on interaction and synchronization among the CBSNs and on collaborative distributed computing atop the collaborating CBSNs. Specifically, collaboration is triggered upon CBSN proximity and relies on service-specific protocols allowing for managing services among the collaborating CBSNs. C-SPINE also natively supports multi-sensor data fusion among CBSNs to enable joint data analysis such as filtering, time-dependent data integration and classification. To demonstrate its effectiveness, C-SPINE is used to implement e-Shake, a collaborative CBSN system for the detection of emotions. The system is based on a multisensor data fusion schema to perform automatic detection of handshakes between two individuals and capture of possible heart-rate-based emotion reactions due to the individuals' meeting.

Jurnal Dirosah Islamiyah

This research can provide better insight into how education can help people overcome various social and economic problems, as well as how education can adapt to the social changes taking place in Indonesia. Thus, this research can make a significant contribution in improving the quality of education in Indonesia and helping people achieve better social and economic progress. The purpose of writing this article is to know and understand how important the role of education is in facing and preparing for the social changes that happen. with literature study data collection techniques, such as scientific papers, journals, and so on. Literature study is by understanding and examining various scientific papers that are relevant and related to the focus of the discussion. From various sources obtained and studied, resulted in an understanding that education is a very important thing in life. The important role of education in life and in social change is to equip and prepare us to be bette...

the Horizon 2020 project ‘RESPOND Multilevel Governance of Migration and Beyond’ (770564)., 2018

This country report focuses on developments that took place during the period of 2011-2017 in the field of migration in Turkey. Traditionally a country of emigration, starting from the early 1990s, it has also become an important country of immigration, asylum, and transit. Most recently, the increasing pressure of the refugee challenge, particularly given the high number of arrivals from Syria, has put the country once again under international spotlights. This report provides relevant migration statistics that are available as open source data. It briefly reviews the socio-economic, political and cultural characteristic of the country as well as its brief migration history. The report also delves into a detailed analysis of the constitutional, legal and institutional framework of Turkey’s national migration management system, which has gone through a significant transition in the last few years. The report points out that due to Turkey’s geographical limitation to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention), and its associated 1967 Protocol; Turkey does not grant refugee status to people fleeing from conflicts and persecution in non-European countries. But it does provide ‘conditional refugee status’ along with ‘refugee’ and ‘subsidiary’ protection. The introduction of new sets of legislation, including the Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP) in 2013, and Temporary Protection Regulation (TPR) in 2014, together with the development of new state agency to deal with migration affairs, the Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM), paved the way for a more centrally organised national migration governance system. Moreover, the legal framework created with the LFIP and the TPR also established clearly defined migration categories such as regular migrant, irregular migrant, forced migrant and it set the criteria for granting temporary protection status. The report reveals a key duality regarding European and non-European asylum seekers to be an important characteristic of Turkey’s asylum system. The first group can obtain ‘refugee’ status’; while the second group can only obtain ‘conditional refugee status’. However, regardless of their nationality, due to the Syrian mass migration, Syrian refugees are given another international protection status, which is called ‘temporary protection’. Thus, together the LFIP and the TPR created a legal basis for asylum seekers from Syria and those from other countries to be the subject of two different asylum regimes in Turkey, with distinct sets of procedural rules, reception provisions and detention considerations (Refugee Rights Turkey, 2015, p.11). The report concludes by highlighting that part of Turkey’s recent migration policy efforts is tied to encouragement coming from the EU for Turkey to improve conditions regarding access to the asylum process and status determination as well as enhancement of its facilities for asylum-seekers’ protection. Although these developments bring Turkey closer to satisfying the EU demands on migration and asylum policy, Turkey is still expected to abolish the geographical limitation of the 1951 Convention to create a full-fledged asylum system and to solve remaining implementation problems. Ensuring equal and fair access to asylum procedures and facilitating the full access of asylum-seekers to legal aid remain priorities still to be achieved.