WorldWideScience

Sample records for human mobility patterns

  1. Cascading walks model for human mobility patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Han, Xiao-Pu; Wang, Xiang-Wen; Yan, Xiao-Yong; Wang, Bing-Hong

    2015-01-01

    Uncovering the mechanism behind the scaling laws and series of anomalies in human trajectories is of fundamental significance in understanding many spatio-temporal phenomena. Recently, several models, e.g. the explorations-returns model (Song et al., 2010) and the radiation model for intercity travels (Simini et al., 2012), have been proposed to study the origin of these anomalies and the prediction of human movements. However, an agent-based model that could reproduce most of empirical observations without priori is still lacking. In this paper, considering the empirical findings on the correlations of move-lengths and staying time in human trips, we propose a simple model which is mainly based on the cascading processes to capture the human mobility patterns. In this model, each long-range movement activates series of shorter movements that are organized by the law of localized explorations and preferential returns in prescribed region. Based on the numerical simulations and analytical studies, we show more than five statistical characters that are well consistent with the empirical observations, including several types of scaling anomalies and the ultraslow diffusion properties, implying the cascading processes associated with the localized exploration and preferential returns are indeed a key in the understanding of human mobility activities. Moreover, the model shows both of the diverse individual mobility and aggregated scaling displacements, bridging the micro and macro patterns in human mobility. In summary, our model successfully explains most of empirical findings and provides deeper understandings on the emergence of human mobility patterns.

  2. Inferring human mobility using communication patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Palchykov, Vasyl; Mitrović, Marija; Jo, Hang-Hyun; Saramäki, Jari; Pan, Raj Kumar

    2014-08-01

    Understanding the patterns of mobility of individuals is crucial for a number of reasons, from city planning to disaster management. There are two common ways of quantifying the amount of travel between locations: by direct observations that often involve privacy issues, e.g., tracking mobile phone locations, or by estimations from models. Typically, such models build on accurate knowledge of the population size at each location. However, when this information is not readily available, their applicability is rather limited. As mobile phones are ubiquitous, our aim is to investigate if mobility patterns can be inferred from aggregated mobile phone call data alone. Using data released by Orange for Ivory Coast, we show that human mobility is well predicted by a simple model based on the frequency of mobile phone calls between two locations and their geographical distance. We argue that the strength of the model comes from directly incorporating the social dimension of mobility. Furthermore, as only aggregated call data is required, the model helps to avoid potential privacy problems.

  3. Spatiotemporal Patterns of Urban Human Mobility

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hasan, Samiul; Schneider, Christian M.; Ukkusuri, Satish V.; González, Marta C.

    2013-04-01

    The modeling of human mobility is adopting new directions due to the increasing availability of big data sources from human activity. These sources enclose digital information about daily visited locations of a large number of individuals. Examples of these data include: mobile phone calls, credit card transactions, bank notes dispersal, check-ins in internet applications, among several others. In this study, we consider the data obtained from smart subway fare card transactions to characterize and model urban mobility patterns. We present a simple mobility model for predicting peoples' visited locations using the popularity of places in the city as an interaction parameter between different individuals. This ingredient is sufficient to reproduce several characteristics of the observed travel behavior such as: the number of trips between different locations in the city, the exploration of new places and the frequency of individual visits of a particular location. Moreover, we indicate the limitations of the proposed model and discuss open questions in the current state of the art statistical models of human mobility.

  4. Understanding Spatiotemporal Patterns of Human Convergence and Divergence Using Mobile Phone Location Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiping Yang

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Investigating human mobility patterns can help researchers and agencies understand the driving forces of human movement, with potential benefits for urban planning and traffic management. Recent advances in location-aware technologies have provided many new data sources (e.g., mobile phone and social media data for studying human space-time behavioral regularity. Although existing studies have utilized these new datasets to characterize human mobility patterns from various aspects, such as predicting human mobility and monitoring urban dynamics, few studies have focused on human convergence and divergence patterns within a city. This study aims to explore human spatial convergence and divergence and their evolutions over time using large-scale mobile phone location data. Using a dataset from Shenzhen, China, we developed a method to identify spatiotemporal patterns of human convergence and divergence. Eight distinct patterns were extracted, and the spatial distributions of these patterns are discussed in the context of urban functional regions. Thus, this study investigates urban human convergence and divergence patterns and their relationships with the urban functional environment, which is helpful for urban policy development, urban planning and traffic management.

  5. Uncovering stable and occasional human mobility patterns: A case study of the Beijing subway

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yong, Nuo; Ni, Shunjiang; Shen, Shifei; Chen, Peng; Ji, Xuewei

    2018-02-01

    There have generally been two kinds of approaches to the empirical study of human mobility. At the group level, some valuable information might be submerged in statistical noise, while due to the diversity of individual purpose and preference, there is still no general statistical regularity of human mobility at the individual level. In this paper, we considered group-level human mobility as the combination of several basic patterns and analyzed the collective mobility by category. Utilizing matrix factorization and correlation analysis, we extracted some of the stable/occasional components from the collective human mobility in the Beijing subway and found that the departure and arrival mobility patterns have different characteristics, both in time and space, under various conditions. We classified individual records into different patterns and analyzed the most likely trip distance by category. The proposed method can decompose stable/occasional mobility patterns from the collective mobility and identify passengers belonging to different patterns, helping us to better understand the origin of different mobility patterns and provide guidance for emergency management of large crowds.

  6. Modelling human mobility patterns using photographic data shared online.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barchiesi, Daniele; Preis, Tobias; Bishop, Steven; Moat, Helen Susannah

    2015-08-01

    Humans are inherently mobile creatures. The way we move around our environment has consequences for a wide range of problems, including the design of efficient transportation systems and the planning of urban areas. Here, we gather data about the position in space and time of about 16 000 individuals who uploaded geo-tagged images from locations within the UK to the Flickr photo-sharing website. Inspired by the theory of Lévy flights, which has previously been used to describe the statistical properties of human mobility, we design a machine learning algorithm to infer the probability of finding people in geographical locations and the probability of movement between pairs of locations. Our findings are in general agreement with official figures in the UK and on travel flows between pairs of major cities, suggesting that online data sources may be used to quantify and model large-scale human mobility patterns.

  7. A Theoretical Basis for Entropy-Scaling Effects in Human Mobility Patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Osgood, Nathaniel D; Paul, Tuhin; Stanley, Kevin G; Qian, Weicheng

    2016-01-01

    Characterizing how people move through space has been an important component of many disciplines. With the advent of automated data collection through GPS and other location sensing systems, researchers have the opportunity to examine human mobility at spatio-temporal resolution heretofore impossible. However, the copious and complex data collected through these logging systems can be difficult for humans to fully exploit, leading many researchers to propose novel metrics for encapsulating movement patterns in succinct and useful ways. A particularly salient proposed metric is the mobility entropy rate of the string representing the sequence of locations visited by an individual. However, mobility entropy rate is not scale invariant: entropy rate calculations based on measurements of the same trajectory at varying spatial or temporal granularity do not yield the same value, limiting the utility of mobility entropy rate as a metric by confounding inter-experimental comparisons. In this paper, we derive a scaling relationship for mobility entropy rate of non-repeating straight line paths from the definition of Lempel-Ziv compression. We show that the resulting formulation predicts the scaling behavior of simulated mobility traces, and provides an upper bound on mobility entropy rate under certain assumptions. We further show that this formulation has a maximum value for a particular sampling rate, implying that optimal sampling rates for particular movement patterns exist.

  8. Human Mobility Patterns and Cholera Epidemics: a Spatially Explicit Modeling Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mari, L.; Bertuzzo, E.; Righetto, L.; Casagrandi, R.; Gatto, M.; Rodriguez-Iturbe, I.; Rinaldo, A.

    2010-12-01

    Cholera is an acute enteric disease caused by the ingestion of water or food contaminated by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Although most infected individuals do not develop severe symptoms, their stool may contain huge quantities of V.~cholerae cells. Therefore, while traveling or commuting, asymptomatic carriers can be responsible for the long-range dissemination of the disease. As a consequence, human mobility is an alternative and efficient driver for the spread of cholera, whose primary propagation pathway is hydrological transport through river networks. We present a multi-layer network model that accounts for the interplay between epidemiological dynamics, hydrological transport and long-distance dissemination of V.~cholerae due to human movement. In particular, building on top of state-of-the-art spatially explicit models for cholera spread through surface waters, we describe human movement and its effects on the propagation of the disease by means of a gravity-model approach borrowed from transportation theory. Gravity-like contact processes have been widely used in epidemiology, because they can satisfactorily depict human movement when data on actual mobility patterns are not available. We test our model against epidemiological data recorded during the cholera outbreak occurred in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa during years 2000--2001. We show that human mobility does actually play an important role in the formation of the spatiotemporal patterns of cholera epidemics. In particular, long-range human movement may determine inter-catchment dissemination of V.~cholerae cells, thus in turn explaining the emergence of epidemic patterns that cannot be produced by hydrological transport alone. We also show that particular attention has to be devoted to study how heterogeneously distributed drinking water supplies and sanitation conditions may affect cholera transmission.

  9. Patterns and Limitations of Urban Human Mobility Resilience under the Influence of Multiple Types of Natural Disaster.

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    Wang, Qi; Taylor, John E

    2016-01-01

    Natural disasters pose serious threats to large urban areas, therefore understanding and predicting human movements is critical for evaluating a population's vulnerability and resilience and developing plans for disaster evacuation, response and relief. However, only limited research has been conducted into the effect of natural disasters on human mobility. This study examines how natural disasters influence human mobility patterns in urban populations using individuals' movement data collected from Twitter. We selected fifteen destructive cases across five types of natural disaster and analyzed the human movement data before, during, and after each event, comparing the perturbed and steady state movement data. The results suggest that the power-law can describe human mobility in most cases and that human mobility patterns observed in steady states are often correlated with those in perturbed states, highlighting their inherent resilience. However, the quantitative analysis shows that this resilience has its limits and can fail in more powerful natural disasters. The findings from this study will deepen our understanding of the interaction between urban dwellers and civil infrastructure, improve our ability to predict human movement patterns during natural disasters, and facilitate contingency planning by policymakers.

  10. Human mobility: Models and applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barbosa, Hugo; Barthelemy, Marc; Ghoshal, Gourab; James, Charlotte R.; Lenormand, Maxime; Louail, Thomas; Menezes, Ronaldo; Ramasco, José J.; Simini, Filippo; Tomasini, Marcello

    2018-03-01

    Recent years have witnessed an explosion of extensive geolocated datasets related to human movement, enabling scientists to quantitatively study individual and collective mobility patterns, and to generate models that can capture and reproduce the spatiotemporal structures and regularities in human trajectories. The study of human mobility is especially important for applications such as estimating migratory flows, traffic forecasting, urban planning, and epidemic modeling. In this survey, we review the approaches developed to reproduce various mobility patterns, with the main focus on recent developments. This review can be used both as an introduction to the fundamental modeling principles of human mobility, and as a collection of technical methods applicable to specific mobility-related problems. The review organizes the subject by differentiating between individual and population mobility and also between short-range and long-range mobility. Throughout the text the description of the theory is intertwined with real-world applications.

  11. A Tale of Many Cities: Universal Patterns in Human Urban Mobility

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    Noulas, Anastasios; Scellato, Salvatore; Lambiotte, Renaud; Pontil, Massimiliano; Mascolo, Cecilia

    2012-01-01

    The advent of geographic online social networks such as Foursquare, where users voluntarily signal their current location, opens the door to powerful studies on human movement. In particular the fine granularity of the location data, with GPS accuracy down to 10 meters, and the worldwide scale of Foursquare adoption are unprecedented. In this paper we study urban mobility patterns of people in several metropolitan cities around the globe by analyzing a large set of Foursquare users. Surprisingly, while there are variations in human movement in different cities, our analysis shows that those are predominantly due to different distributions of places across different urban environments. Moreover, a universal law for human mobility is identified, which isolates as a key component the rank-distance, factoring in the number of places between origin and destination, rather than pure physical distance, as considered in some previous works. Building on our findings, we also show how a rank-based movement model accurately captures real human movements in different cities. PMID:22666339

  12. A tale of many cities: universal patterns in human urban mobility.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anastasios Noulas

    Full Text Available The advent of geographic online social networks such as Foursquare, where users voluntarily signal their current location, opens the door to powerful studies on human movement. In particular the fine granularity of the location data, with GPS accuracy down to 10 meters, and the worldwide scale of Foursquare adoption are unprecedented. In this paper we study urban mobility patterns of people in several metropolitan cities around the globe by analyzing a large set of Foursquare users. Surprisingly, while there are variations in human movement in different cities, our analysis shows that those are predominantly due to different distributions of places across different urban environments. Moreover, a universal law for human mobility is identified, which isolates as a key component the rank-distance, factoring in the number of places between origin and destination, rather than pure physical distance, as considered in some previous works. Building on our findings, we also show how a rank-based movement model accurately captures real human movements in different cities.

  13. How They Move Reveals What Is Happening: Understanding the Dynamics of Big Events from Human Mobility Pattern

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jean Damascène Mazimpaka

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The context in which a moving object moves contributes to the movement pattern observed. Likewise, the movement pattern reflects the properties of the movement context. In particular, big events influence human mobility depending on the dynamics of the events. However, this influence has not been explored to understand big events. In this paper, we propose a methodology for learning about big events from human mobility pattern. The methodology involves extracting and analysing the stopping, approaching, and moving-away interactions between public transportation vehicles and the geographic context. The analysis is carried out at two different temporal granularity levels to discover global and local patterns. The results of evaluating this methodology on bus trajectories demonstrate that it can discover occurrences of big events from mobility patterns, roughly estimate the event start and end time, and reveal the temporal patterns of arrival and departure of event attendees. This knowledge can be usefully applied in transportation and event planning and management.

  14. Entropic measures of individual mobility patterns

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gallotti, Riccardo; Bazzani, Armando; Rambaldi, Sandro; Esposti, Mirko Degli

    2013-01-01

    Understanding human mobility from a microscopic point of view may represent a fundamental breakthrough for the development of a statistical physics for cognitive systems and it can shed light on the applicability of macroscopic statistical laws for social systems. Even if the complexity of individual behaviors prevents a true microscopic approach, the introduction of mesoscopic models allows the study of the dynamical properties for the non-stationary states of the considered system. We propose to compute various entropy measures of the individual mobility patterns obtained from GPS data that record the movements of private vehicles in the Florence district, in order to point out new features of human mobility related to the use of time and space and to define the dynamical properties of a stochastic model that could generate similar patterns. Moreover, we can relate the predictability properties of human mobility to the distribution of time passed between two successive trips. Our analysis suggests the existence of a hierarchical structure in the mobility patterns which divides the performed activities into three different categories, according to the time cost, with different information contents. We show that a Markov process defined by using the individual mobility network is not able to reproduce this hierarchy, which seems the consequence of different strategies in the activity choice. Our results could contribute to the development of governance policies for a sustainable mobility in modern cities. (paper)

  15. Patterns, Entropy, and Predictability of Human Mobility and Life

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    Qin, Shao-Meng; Verkasalo, Hannu; Mohtaschemi, Mikael; Hartonen, Tuomo; Alava, Mikko

    2012-01-01

    Cellular phones are now offering an ubiquitous means for scientists to observe life: how people act, move and respond to external influences. They can be utilized as measurement devices of individual persons and for groups of people of the social context and the related interactions. The picture of human life that emerges shows complexity, which is manifested in such data in properties of the spatiotemporal tracks of individuals. We extract from smartphone-based data for a set of persons important locations such as “home”, “work” and so forth over fixed length time-slots covering the days in the data-set (see also [1], [2]). This set of typical places is heavy-tailed, a power-law distribution with an exponent close to −1.7. To analyze the regularities and stochastic features present, the days are classified for each person into regular, personal patterns. To this are superimposed fluctuations for each day. This randomness is measured by “life” entropy, computed both before and after finding the clustering so as to subtract the contribution of a number of patterns. The main issue that we then address is how predictable individuals are in their mobility. The patterns and entropy are reflected in the predictability of the mobility of the life both individually and on average. We explore the simple approaches to guess the location from the typical behavior, and of exploiting the transition probabilities with time from location or activity A to B. The patterns allow an enhanced predictability, at least up to a few hours into the future from the current location. Such fixed habits are most clearly visible in the working-day length. PMID:23300542

  16. Mobile Design Pattern Gallery UI Patterns for Mobile Applications

    CERN Document Server

    Neil, Theresa

    2012-01-01

    When you're under pressure to produce a well designed, easy-to-navigate mobile app, there's no time to reinvent the wheel. This concise book provides a handy reference to 70 mobile app design patterns, illustrated by more than 400 screenshots from current iOS, Android, BlackBerry, WebOS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian apps. User experience professional Theresa Neil (Designing Web Interfaces) walks you through design patterns in 10 separate categories, including anti-patterns. Whether you're designing a simple iPhone application or one that's meant to work for every popular mobile OS on the mark

  17. Exploring the significance of human mobility patterns in social link prediction

    KAUST Repository

    Alharbi, Basma Mohammed

    2014-01-01

    Link prediction is a fundamental task in social networks. Recently, emphasis has been placed on forecasting new social ties using user mobility patterns, e.g., investigating physical and semantic co-locations for new proximity measure. This paper explores the effect of in-depth mobility patterns. Specifically, we study individuals\\' movement behavior, and quantify mobility on the basis of trip frequency, travel purpose and transportation mode. Our hybrid link prediction model is composed of two modules. The first module extracts mobility patterns, including travel purpose and mode, from raw trajectory data. The second module employs the extracted patterns for link prediction. We evaluate our method on two real data sets, GeoLife [15] and Reality Mining [5]. Experimental results show that our hybrid model significantly improves the accuracy of social link prediction, when comparing to primary topology-based solutions. Copyright 2014 ACM.

  18. Inferring Human Mobility from Sparse Low Accuracy Mobile Sensing Data

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Cuttone, Andrea; Jørgensen, Sune Lehmann; Larsen, Jakob Eg

    2014-01-01

    Understanding both collective and personal human mobility is a central topic in Computational Social Science. Smartphone sensing data is emerging as a promising source for studying human mobility. However, most literature focuses on high-precision GPS positioning and high-frequency sampling, which...... is not always feasible in a longitudinal study or for everyday applications because location sensing has a high battery cost. In this paper we study the feasibility of inferring human mobility from sparse, low accuracy mobile sensing data. We validate our results using participants' location diaries......, and analyze the inferred geographical networks, the time spent at different places, and the number of unique places over time. Our results suggest that low resolution data allows accurate inference of human mobility patterns....

  19. Understanding the spreading patterns of mobile phone viruses

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    Wang, Pu; Gonzalez, Marta; Hidalgo, Cesar; Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo

    2009-03-01

    Mobile viruses are little more than a nuisance today, but given our increased reliance on wireless communication, in the near future they could pose more risk than their PC based counterparts. Despite of the more than three hundred mobile viruses known so far, little is known about their spreading pattern, partly due to a lack of data on the communication and travel patterns of mobile phone users. Starting from the traffic and the communication pattern of six million mobile phone users, we model the vulnerability of mobile communications against potential virus outbreaks. We show that viruses exploiting Bluetooth and multimedia messaging services (MMS) follow markedly different spreading patterns. The Bluetooth virus can reach all susceptible handsets, but spreads relatively slowly, as its spread is driven by human mobility. In contrast, an MMS virus can spread rapidly, but because the underlying social network is fragmented, it can reach only a small fraction of all susceptible users. This difference affects both their spreading rate, the number of infected users, as well as the defense measures one needs to take to protect the system against potential viral outbreak.

  20. Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Austin

    Full Text Available Fundamental laws governing human mobility have many important applications such as forecasting and controlling epidemics or optimizing transportation systems. These mobility patterns, studied in the context of out of home activity during travel or social interactions with observations recorded from cell phone use or diffusion of money, suggest that in extra-personal space humans follow a high degree of temporal and spatial regularity - most often in the form of time-independent universal scaling laws. Here we show that mobility patterns of older individuals in their home also show a high degree of predictability and regularity, although in a different way than has been reported for out-of-home mobility. Studying a data set of almost 15 million observations from 19 adults spanning up to 5 years of unobtrusive longitudinal home activity monitoring, we find that in-home mobility is not well represented by a universal scaling law, but that significant structure (predictability and regularity is uncovered when explicitly accounting for contextual data in a model of in-home mobility. These results suggest that human mobility in personal space is highly stereotyped, and that monitoring discontinuities in routine room-level mobility patterns may provide an opportunity to predict individual human health and functional status or detect adverse events and trends.

  1. Mobile usage and sleep patterns among medical students.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yogesh, Saxena; Abha, Shrivastava; Priyanka, Singh

    2014-01-01

    Exposure of humans to radio frequency electromagnetic field (EMF) both during receiving and transmitting the signals has amplified public and scientific debate about possible adverse effects on human health. The study was designed with the objective of assessing the extent of mobile phone use amongst medical students and finding correlation if any between the hours of usage of mobile to sleep pattern and quality. hundred medical students grouped as cases (n = 57) (> 2 hours/day of mobile usage) and control (n = 43) (≤ 2 hours/day of mobile usage) were examined for their sleep quality & pattern by Pittsburg sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Differences between groups were examined with the Mann Whitney "U" test for proportions (Quantitative values) and with Student't' test for continuous variables. The association of variables was analyzed by Spearman Rank's correlation. Probability was set at usage and sleep indices were observed in both genders (males r = 0.25; p = 0.04, females r = 0.31; p = 0.009). Evening usage of mobile phone in cases showed a statistically significant negative association (-0.606; p = 0.042) with Sleep quality (higher PSQI means sleep deprivation). Students using mobile for > 2 hours/day may cause sleep deprivation and day sleepiness affecting cognitive and learning abilities of medical students.

  2. Influence of sociodemographics on human mobility

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    Lenormand, Maxime; Louail, Thomas; Cantú-Ros, Oliva G.; Picornell, Miguel; Herranz, Ricardo; Arias, Juan Murillo; Barthelemy, Marc; Miguel, Maxi San; Ramasco, José J.

    2015-05-01

    Human mobility has been traditionally studied using surveys that deliver snapshots of population displacement patterns. The growing accessibility to ICT information from portable digital media has recently opened the possibility of exploring human behavior at high spatio-temporal resolutions. Mobile phone records, geolocated tweets, check-ins from Foursquare or geotagged photos, have contributed to this purpose at different scales, from cities to countries, in different world areas. Many previous works lacked, however, details on the individuals’ attributes such as age or gender. In this work, we analyze credit-card records from Barcelona and Madrid and by examining the geolocated credit-card transactions of individuals living in the two provinces, we find that the mobility patterns vary according to gender, age and occupation. Differences in distance traveled and travel purpose are observed between younger and older people, but, curiously, either between males and females of similar age. While mobility displays some generic features, here we show that sociodemographic characteristics play a relevant role and must be taken into account for mobility and epidemiological modelization.

  3. Exploring Multi-Scale Spatiotemporal Twitter User Mobility Patterns with a Visual-Analytics Approach

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    Junjun Yin

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Understanding human mobility patterns is of great importance for urban planning, traffic management, and even marketing campaign. However, the capability of capturing detailed human movements with fine-grained spatial and temporal granularity is still limited. In this study, we extracted high-resolution mobility data from a collection of over 1.3 billion geo-located Twitter messages. Regarding the concerns of infringement on individual privacy, such as the mobile phone call records with restricted access, the dataset is collected from publicly accessible Twitter data streams. In this paper, we employed a visual-analytics approach to studying multi-scale spatiotemporal Twitter user mobility patterns in the contiguous United States during the year 2014. Our approach included a scalable visual-analytics framework to deliver efficiency and scalability in filtering large volume of geo-located tweets, modeling and extracting Twitter user movements, generating space-time user trajectories, and summarizing multi-scale spatiotemporal user mobility patterns. We performed a set of statistical analysis to understand Twitter user mobility patterns across multi-level spatial scales and temporal ranges. In particular, Twitter user mobility patterns measured by the displacements and radius of gyrations of individuals revealed multi-scale or multi-modal Twitter user mobility patterns. By further studying such mobility patterns in different temporal ranges, we identified both consistency and seasonal fluctuations regarding the distance decay effects in the corresponding mobility patterns. At the same time, our approach provides a geo-visualization unit with an interactive 3D virtual globe web mapping interface for exploratory geo-visual analytics of the multi-level spatiotemporal Twitter user movements.

  4. On data processing required to derive mobility patterns from passively-generated mobile phone data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Feilong; Chen, Cynthia

    2018-01-01

    Passively-generated mobile phone data is emerging as a potential data source for transportation research and applications. Despite the large amount of studies based on the mobile phone data, only a few have reported the properties of such data, and documented how they have processed the data. In this paper, we describe two types of common mobile phone data: Call Details Record (CDR) data and sightings data, and propose a data processing framework and the associated algorithms to address two key issues associated with the sightings data: locational uncertainty and oscillation. We show the effectiveness of our proposed methods in addressing these two issues compared to the state of art algorithms in the field. We also demonstrate that without proper processing applied to the data, the statistical regularity of human mobility patterns—a key, significant trait identified for human mobility—is over-estimated. We hope this study will stimulate more studies in examining the properties of such data and developing methods to address them. Though not as glamorous as those directly deriving insights on mobility patterns (such as statistical regularity), understanding properties of such data and developing methods to address them is a fundamental research topic on which important insights are derived on mobility patterns. PMID:29398790

  5. Explaining the power-law distribution of human mobility through transportation modality decomposition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Kai; Musolesi, Mirco; Hui, Pan; Rao, Weixiong; Tarkoma, Sasu

    2015-03-01

    Human mobility has been empirically observed to exhibit Lévy flight characteristics and behaviour with power-law distributed jump size. The fundamental mechanisms behind this behaviour has not yet been fully explained. In this paper, we propose to explain the Lévy walk behaviour observed in human mobility patterns by decomposing them into different classes according to the different transportation modes, such as Walk/Run, Bike, Train/Subway or Car/Taxi/Bus. Our analysis is based on two real-life GPS datasets containing approximately 10 and 20 million GPS samples with transportation mode information. We show that human mobility can be modelled as a mixture of different transportation modes, and that these single movement patterns can be approximated by a lognormal distribution rather than a power-law distribution. Then, we demonstrate that the mixture of the decomposed lognormal flight distributions associated with each modality is a power-law distribution, providing an explanation to the emergence of Lévy Walk patterns that characterize human mobility patterns.

  6. Quantifying human mobility perturbation and resilience in Hurricane Sandy.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qi Wang

    Full Text Available Human mobility is influenced by environmental change and natural disasters. Researchers have used trip distance distribution, radius of gyration of movements, and individuals' visited locations to understand and capture human mobility patterns and trajectories. However, our knowledge of human movements during natural disasters is limited owing to both a lack of empirical data and the low precision of available data. Here, we studied human mobility using high-resolution movement data from individuals in New York City during and for several days after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. We found the human movements followed truncated power-law distributions during and after Hurricane Sandy, although the β value was noticeably larger during the first 24 hours after the storm struck. Also, we examined two parameters: the center of mass and the radius of gyration of each individual's movements. We found that their values during perturbation states and steady states are highly correlated, suggesting human mobility data obtained in steady states can possibly predict the perturbation state. Our results demonstrate that human movement trajectories experienced significant perturbations during hurricanes, but also exhibited high resilience. We expect the study will stimulate future research on the perturbation and inherent resilience of human mobility under the influence of hurricanes. For example, mobility patterns in coastal urban areas could be examined as hurricanes approach, gain or dissipate in strength, and as the path of the storm changes. Understanding nuances of human mobility under the influence of such disasters will enable more effective evacuation, emergency response planning and development of strategies and policies to reduce fatality, injury, and economic loss.

  7. Natural disasters and human mobility

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mbaye, L.; Zimmermann, K.

    2016-01-01

    This paper reviews the effect of natural disasters on human mobility or migration. Although there is an increase of natural disasters and migration recently and more patterns to observe, the relationship remains complex. While some authors find that disasters increase migration, others show that

  8. Modelling dengue epidemic spreading with human mobility

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barmak, D. H.; Dorso, C. O.; Otero, M.

    2016-04-01

    We explored the effect of human mobility on the spatio-temporal dynamics of Dengue with a stochastic model that takes into account the epidemiological dynamics of the infected mosquitoes and humans, with different mobility patterns of the human population. We observed that human mobility strongly affects the spread of infection by increasing the final size and by changing the morphology of the epidemic outbreaks. When the spreading of the disease is driven only by mosquito dispersal (flight), a main central focus expands diffusively. On the contrary, when human mobility is taken into account, multiple foci appear throughout the evolution of the outbreaks. These secondary foci generated throughout the outbreaks could be of little importance according to their mass or size compared with the largest main focus. However, the coalescence of these foci with the main one generates an effect, through which the latter develops a size greater than the one obtained in the case driven only by mosquito dispersal. This increase in growth rate due to human mobility and the coalescence of the foci are particularly relevant in temperate cities such as the city of Buenos Aires, since they give more possibilities to the outbreak to grow before the arrival of the low-temperature season. The findings of this work indicate that human mobility could be the main driving force in the dynamics of vector epidemics.

  9. Heterogeneous mobile phone ownership and usage patterns in Kenya.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wesolowski, Amy; Eagle, Nathan; Noor, Abdisalan M; Snow, Robert W; Buckee, Caroline O

    2012-01-01

    The rapid adoption of mobile phone technologies in Africa is offering exciting opportunities for engaging with high-risk populations through mHealth programs, and the vast volumes of behavioral data being generated as people use their phones provide valuable data about human behavioral dynamics in these regions. Taking advantage of these opportunities requires an understanding of the penetration of mobile phones and phone usage patterns across the continent, but very little is known about the social and geographical heterogeneities in mobile phone ownership among African populations. Here, we analyze a survey of mobile phone ownership and usage across Kenya in 2009 and show that distinct regional, gender-related, and socioeconomic variations exist, with particularly low ownership among rural communities and poor people. We also examine patterns of phone sharing and highlight the contrasting relationships between ownership and sharing in different parts of the country. This heterogeneous penetration of mobile phones has important implications for the use of mobile technologies as a source of population data and as a public health tool in sub-Saharan Africa.

  10. Tracking urban human activity from mobile phone calling patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Monsivais, Daniel; Ghosh, Asim; Bhattacharya, Kunal; Dunbar, Robin I M; Kaski, Kimmo

    2017-11-01

    Timings of human activities are marked by circadian clocks which in turn are entrained to different environmental signals. In an urban environment the presence of artificial lighting and various social cues tend to disrupt the natural entrainment with the sunlight. However, it is not completely understood to what extent this is the case. Here we exploit the large-scale data analysis techniques to study the mobile phone calling activity of people in large cities to infer the dynamics of urban daily rhythms. From the calling patterns of about 1,000,000 users spread over different cities but lying inside the same time-zone, we show that the onset and termination of the calling activity synchronizes with the east-west progression of the sun. We also find that the onset and termination of the calling activity of users follows a yearly dynamics, varying across seasons, and that its timings are entrained to solar midnight. Furthermore, we show that the average mid-sleep time of people living in urban areas depends on the age and gender of each cohort as a result of biological and social factors.

  11. Tracking urban human activity from mobile phone calling patterns.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Monsivais

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Timings of human activities are marked by circadian clocks which in turn are entrained to different environmental signals. In an urban environment the presence of artificial lighting and various social cues tend to disrupt the natural entrainment with the sunlight. However, it is not completely understood to what extent this is the case. Here we exploit the large-scale data analysis techniques to study the mobile phone calling activity of people in large cities to infer the dynamics of urban daily rhythms. From the calling patterns of about 1,000,000 users spread over different cities but lying inside the same time-zone, we show that the onset and termination of the calling activity synchronizes with the east-west progression of the sun. We also find that the onset and termination of the calling activity of users follows a yearly dynamics, varying across seasons, and that its timings are entrained to solar midnight. Furthermore, we show that the average mid-sleep time of people living in urban areas depends on the age and gender of each cohort as a result of biological and social factors.

  12. Spatiotemporal Analysis of Human Mobility in Manila Metropolitan Area with Person-Trip Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kai Liu

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available The metropolitan area can be regarded as a multi-functional structure consisting of plural coordinated urban nucleuses. This study aims to clarify the characteristics of urban nucleuses and a spatiotemporal pattern of human mobility in the Manila metropolitan area. Hourly density of human mobility from 00:00 to 24:00 in the whole study area is quantitatively studied. Urban nucleuses with six types: central city, business city, commuter town, south suburb, north suburb, and subcenter city, are identified. Differences of human mobility owing to different human behaviors or properties are also analyzed in 10 typical areas with different urban functions. Results prove that pattern of human mobility in each area depends on its human social division, population composition, infrastructure condition, and functional structure. This study provides an effective thinking on handling geo-tagged big data supported by MATLAB programming and GIS technology. Moreover, spatiotemporal analysis of human mobility also possesses a meaningful academic value for transport geography.

  13. Exploring the significance of human mobility patterns in social link prediction

    KAUST Repository

    Alharbi, Basma Mohammed; Zhang, Xiangliang

    2014-01-01

    Link prediction is a fundamental task in social networks. Recently, emphasis has been placed on forecasting new social ties using user mobility patterns, e.g., investigating physical and semantic co-locations for new proximity measure. This paper

  14. Latent Feature Models for Uncovering Human Mobility Patterns from Anonymized User Location Traces with Metadata

    KAUST Repository

    Alharbi, Basma Mohammed

    2017-04-10

    In the mobile era, data capturing individuals’ locations have become unprecedentedly available. Data from Location-Based Social Networks is one example of large-scale user-location data. Such data provide a valuable source for understanding patterns governing human mobility, and thus enable a wide range of research. However, mining and utilizing raw user-location data is a challenging task. This is mainly due to the sparsity of data (at the user level), the imbalance of data with power-law users and locations check-ins degree (at the global level), and more importantly the lack of a uniform low-dimensional feature space describing users. Three latent feature models are proposed in this dissertation. Each proposed model takes as an input a collection of user-location check-ins, and outputs a new representation space for users and locations respectively. To avoid invading users privacy, the proposed models are designed to learn from anonymized location data where only IDs - not geophysical positioning or category - of locations are utilized. To enrich the inferred mobility patterns, the proposed models incorporate metadata, often associated with user-location data, into the inference process. In this dissertation, two types of metadata are utilized to enrich the inferred patterns, timestamps and social ties. Time adds context to the inferred patterns, while social ties amplifies incomplete user-location check-ins. The first proposed model incorporates timestamps by learning from collections of users’ locations sharing the same discretized time. The second proposed model also incorporates time into the learning model, yet takes a further step by considering time at different scales (hour of a day, day of a week, month, and so on). This change in modeling time allows for capturing meaningful patterns over different times scales. The last proposed model incorporates social ties into the learning process to compensate for inactive users who contribute a large volume

  15. Complex human mobility dynamics on a network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Szell, M.

    2010-01-01

    Massive multiplayer online games provide a fascinating new way of observing hundreds of thousands of simultaneously interacting individuals engaged in virtual socio-economic activities. We have compiled a data set consisting of practically all actions of all players over a period of four years from an online game played by over 350,000 people. The universe of this online world is a lattice-like network on which players move in order to interact with other players. We focus on the mobility of human players on this network over a time-period of 500 days. We take a number of mobility measurements and compare them with measures of simulated random walkers on the same topology. Mobility of players is sub-diffusive - the mean squared displacement follows a power law with exponent 0.4 - and significantly deviates from mobility patterns of random walkers. Mean first passage times and transition counts relate via a power-law with slope -1/3. We compare our results with studies where human mobility was measured via mobile phone data and find striking similarities. (author)

  16. Understanding the Representativeness of Mobile Phone Location Data in Characterizing Human Mobility Indicators

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shiwei Lu

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The advent of big data has aided understanding of the driving forces of human mobility, which is beneficial for many fields, such as mobility prediction, urban planning, and traffic management. However, the data sources used in many studies, such as mobile phone location and geo-tagged social media data, are sparsely sampled in the temporal scale. An individual’s records can be distributed over a few hours a day, or a week, or over just a few hours a month. Thus, the representativeness of sparse mobile phone location data in characterizing human mobility requires analysis before using data to derive human mobility patterns. This paper investigates this important issue through an approach that uses subscriber mobile phone location data collected by a major carrier in Shenzhen, China. A dataset of over 5 million mobile phone subscribers that covers 24 h a day is used as a benchmark to test the representativeness of mobile phone location data on human mobility indicators, such as total travel distance, movement entropy, and radius of gyration. This study divides this dataset by hour, using 2- to 23-h segments to evaluate the representativeness due to the availability of mobile phone location data. The results show that different numbers of hourly segments affect estimations of human mobility indicators and can cause overestimations or underestimations from the individual perspective. On average, the total travel distance and movement entropy tend to be underestimated. The underestimation coefficient results for estimation of total travel distance are approximately linear, declining as the number of time segments increases, and the underestimation coefficient results for estimating movement entropy decline logarithmically as the time segments increase, whereas the radius of gyration tends to be more ambiguous due to the loss of isolated locations. This paper suggests that researchers should carefully interpret results derived from this type of

  17. Correlations between human mobility and social interaction reveal general activity patterns

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mollgaard, Anders; Jørgensen, Sune Lehmann; Mathiesen, Joachim

    2017-01-01

    activity types, namely communication, motion, and physical proximity by analyzing data collected from smartphones distributed among 638 individuals. We explore two central questions: Which underlying principles govern the formation of the activity patterns? Are the patterns specific to each individual...... or shared across the entire population? We find that statistics of the entire population allows us to successfully predict 71% of the activity and 85% of the inactivity involved in communication, mobility, and physical proximity. Surprisingly, individual level statistics only result in marginally better...... they be of social or of physical character....

  18. On the Use of Human Mobility Proxies for Modeling Epidemics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tizzoni, Michele; Bajardi, Paolo; Decuyper, Adeline; Kon Kam King, Guillaume; Schneider, Christian M.; Blondel, Vincent; Smoreda, Zbigniew; González, Marta C.; Colizza, Vittoria

    2014-01-01

    Human mobility is a key component of large-scale spatial-transmission models of infectious diseases. Correctly modeling and quantifying human mobility is critical for improving epidemic control, but may be hindered by data incompleteness or unavailability. Here we explore the opportunity of using proxies for individual mobility to describe commuting flows and predict the diffusion of an influenza-like-illness epidemic. We consider three European countries and the corresponding commuting networks at different resolution scales, obtained from (i) official census surveys, (ii) proxy mobility data extracted from mobile phone call records, and (iii) the radiation model calibrated with census data. Metapopulation models defined on these countries and integrating the different mobility layers are compared in terms of epidemic observables. We show that commuting networks from mobile phone data capture the empirical commuting patterns well, accounting for more than 87% of the total fluxes. The distributions of commuting fluxes per link from mobile phones and census sources are similar and highly correlated, however a systematic overestimation of commuting traffic in the mobile phone data is observed. This leads to epidemics that spread faster than on census commuting networks, once the mobile phone commuting network is considered in the epidemic model, however preserving to a high degree the order of infection of newly affected locations. Proxies' calibration affects the arrival times' agreement across different models, and the observed topological and traffic discrepancies among mobility sources alter the resulting epidemic invasion patterns. Results also suggest that proxies perform differently in approximating commuting patterns for disease spread at different resolution scales, with the radiation model showing higher accuracy than mobile phone data when the seed is central in the network, the opposite being observed for peripheral locations. Proxies should therefore be

  19. Where am I? Location archetype keyword extraction from urban mobility patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kostakos, Vassilis; Juntunen, Tomi; Goncalves, Jorge; Hosio, Simo; Ojala, Timo

    2013-01-01

    Can online behaviour be used as a proxy for studying urban mobility? The increasing availability of digital mobility traces has provided new insights into collective human behaviour. Mobility datasets have been shown to be an accurate proxy for daily behaviour and social patterns, and behavioural data from Twitter has been used to predict real world phenomena such as cinema ticket sale volumes, stock prices, and disease outbreaks. In this paper we correlate city-scale urban traffic patterns with online search trends to uncover keywords describing the pedestrian traffic location. By analysing a 3-year mobility dataset we show that our approach, called Location Archetype Keyword Extraction (LAKE), is capable of uncovering semantically relevant keywords for describing a location. Our findings demonstrate an overarching relationship between online and offline collective behaviour, and allow for advancing analysis of community-level behaviour by using online search keywords as a practical behaviour proxy.

  20. Scaling identity connects human mobility and social interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deville, Pierre; Song, Chaoming; Eagle, Nathan; Blondel, Vincent D; Barabási, Albert-László; Wang, Dashun

    2016-06-28

    Massive datasets that capture human movements and social interactions have catalyzed rapid advances in our quantitative understanding of human behavior during the past years. One important aspect affecting both areas is the critical role space plays. Indeed, growing evidence suggests both our movements and communication patterns are associated with spatial costs that follow reproducible scaling laws, each characterized by its specific critical exponents. Although human mobility and social networks develop concomitantly as two prolific yet largely separated fields, we lack any known relationships between the critical exponents explored by them, despite the fact that they often study the same datasets. Here, by exploiting three different mobile phone datasets that capture simultaneously these two aspects, we discovered a new scaling relationship, mediated by a universal flux distribution, which links the critical exponents characterizing the spatial dependencies in human mobility and social networks. Therefore, the widely studied scaling laws uncovered in these two areas are not independent but connected through a deeper underlying reality.

  1. Two-regime pattern in human mobility : evidence from GPS taxi trajectory data

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Zheng, Z.; Rasouli, S.; Timmermans, H.J.P.

    2016-01-01

    Research on complex systems has identified various aggregate relationships in phenomena that describe these systems. Travel length has been characterized by negative power distributions. Controversy, however, exists over whether mobility patterns can be modeled in terms of a simple power law (Lévy

  2. Where am I? Location archetype keyword extraction from urban mobility patterns.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vassilis Kostakos

    Full Text Available Can online behaviour be used as a proxy for studying urban mobility? The increasing availability of digital mobility traces has provided new insights into collective human behaviour. Mobility datasets have been shown to be an accurate proxy for daily behaviour and social patterns, and behavioural data from Twitter has been used to predict real world phenomena such as cinema ticket sale volumes, stock prices, and disease outbreaks. In this paper we correlate city-scale urban traffic patterns with online search trends to uncover keywords describing the pedestrian traffic location. By analysing a 3-year mobility dataset we show that our approach, called Location Archetype Keyword Extraction (LAKE, is capable of uncovering semantically relevant keywords for describing a location. Our findings demonstrate an overarching relationship between online and offline collective behaviour, and allow for advancing analysis of community-level behaviour by using online search keywords as a practical behaviour proxy.

  3. Human mobility in space from three modes of public transportation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Shixiong; Guan, Wei; Zhang, Wenyi; Chen, Xu; Yang, Liu

    2017-10-01

    The human mobility patterns have drew much attention from researchers for decades, considering about its importance for urban planning and traffic management. In this study, the taxi GPS trajectories, smart card transaction data of subway and bus from Beijing are utilized to model human mobility in space. The original datasets are cleaned and processed to attain the displacement of each trip according to the origin and destination locations. Then, the Akaike information criterion is adopted to screen out the best fitting distribution for each mode from candidate ones. The results indicate that displacements of taxi trips follow the exponential distribution. Besides, the exponential distribution also fits displacements of bus trips well. However, their exponents are significantly different. Displacements of subway trips show great specialties and can be well fitted by the gamma distribution. It is obvious that human mobility of each mode is different. To explore the overall human mobility, the three datasets are mixed up to form a fusion dataset according to the annual ridership proportions. Finally, the fusion displacements follow the power-law distribution with an exponential cutoff. It is innovative to combine different transportation modes to model human mobility in the city.

  4. Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development: A Pattern-Based Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-03-01

    TYPE AND DATES COVERED Master’s Thesis 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development: A Pattern-Based Approach 5. FUNDING...for public release; distribution is unlimited CROSS-PLATFORM MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT: A PATTERN-BASED APPROACH Christian G. Acord...occurring design problems. We then discuss common approaches to mobile development, including common aspects of mobile application development, including

  5. Correlations between human mobility and social interaction reveal general activity patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mollgaard, Anders; Lehmann, Sune; Mathiesen, Joachim

    2017-01-01

    A day in the life of a person involves a broad range of activities which are common across many people. Going beyond diurnal cycles, a central question is: to what extent do individuals act according to patterns shared across an entire population? Here we investigate the interplay between different activity types, namely communication, motion, and physical proximity by analyzing data collected from smartphones distributed among 638 individuals. We explore two central questions: Which underlying principles govern the formation of the activity patterns? Are the patterns specific to each individual or shared across the entire population? We find that statistics of the entire population allows us to successfully predict 71% of the activity and 85% of the inactivity involved in communication, mobility, and physical proximity. Surprisingly, individual level statistics only result in marginally better predictions, indicating that a majority of activity patterns are shared across our sample population. Finally, we predict short-term activity patterns using a generalized linear model, which suggests that a simple linear description might be sufficient to explain a wide range of actions, whether they be of social or of physical character.

  6. Analysis of Human Mobility Based on Cellular Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arifiansyah, F.; Saptawati, G. A. P.

    2017-01-01

    Nowadays not only adult but even teenager and children have then own mobile phones. This phenomena indicates that the mobile phone becomes an important part of everyday’s life. Based on these indication, the amount of cellular data also increased rapidly. Cellular data defined as the data that records communication among mobile phone users. Cellular data is easy to obtain because the telecommunications company had made a record of the data for the billing system of the company. Billing data keeps a log of the users cellular data usage each time. We can obtained information from the data about communication between users. Through data visualization process, an interesting pattern can be seen in the raw cellular data, so that users can obtain prior knowledge to perform data analysis. Cellular data processing can be done using data mining to find out human mobility patterns and on the existing data. In this paper, we use frequent pattern mining and finding association rules to observe the relation between attributes in cellular data and then visualize them. We used weka tools for finding the rules in stage of data mining. Generally, the utilization of cellular data can provide supporting information for the decision making process and become a data support to provide solutions and information needed by the decision makers.

  7. Mining the Relationship between Spatial Mobility Patterns and POIs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liping Huang

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Passengers move between urban places for diverse interests and drive the metropolitan regions as the aggregation of urban places to group into network communities. This paper aims to examine the relationship between the spatial patterns (represented by the network communities of mobility flows and places of interest (POIs. Furtherly, it intends to identify the categories of POIs that play the most significant role in shaping the spatial patterns of mobility flows. To achieve these purposes, we partition the study area into disjoint regions and construct the network with each partitioned region as a node and connection between them as links weighted by the mobility flows. The community detection algorithm is implemented on the network to discover spatial mobility patterns, and the multiclass classification based on the logistic regression method is adopted to classify spatial communities featured by POIs. Taking the taxi systems of Shanghai and Beijing as examples, we detect spatial communities based on the movement strengths among regions. Then we investigate their correlations with POIs. It finds that communities’ modularity correlates linearly with POIs; particularly governments, hotels, and the traffic facilities are of the most significance for generating the mobility patterns. This study can provide valuable insight into understanding the spatial mobility patterns from the perspective of POIs.

  8. Human Mobility Analysis for Extracting Local Interactions under Rapid Socio-Economic Transformation in Dawei, Myanmar

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Satomi Kimijima

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Understanding human mobility patterns provides knowledge about impacts of a socio-economic transformation in a rapidly urbanizing environment. This study assesses a long-term mobility data which uses a face-to-face questionnaire and GPS logger-based method of data collection for extracting socio-economic impacts from the rapid transformation. Conversion of mobility related information such as travel distance, direction, and time from the questionnaire survey into spatiotemporal information was carried out by developing an algorithm. To illustrate the proposed approach, a case study in Dawei Special Economic Zone, Myanmar was conducted. The results show that the questionnaire-based mobility data can be associated with GPS-based mobility data and diverse mobility patterns are found for different social groups in the stage of urban formation. The results enabled an understanding of the human dynamics in interactions, which can be used for monitoring rural sustainability and its challenges in the future with the background of the accelerated project development in the area.

  9. Mobile assemblies of Bennett linkages from four-crease origami patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xiao; Chen, Yan

    2018-02-01

    This paper deals with constructing mobile assemblies of Bennett linkages inspired by four-crease origami patterns. A transition technique has been proposed by taking the thick-panel form of an origami pattern as an intermediate bridge. A zero-thickness rigid origami pattern and its thick-panel form share the same sector angles and folding behaviours, while the thick-panel origami and the mobile assembly of linkages are kinematically equivalent with differences only in link profiles. Applying this transition technique to typical four-crease origami patterns, we have found that the Miura-ori and graded Miura-ori patterns lead to assemblies of Bennett linkages with identical link lengths. The supplementary-type origami patterns with different mountain-valley crease assignments correspond to different types of Bennett linkage assemblies with negative link lengths. And the identical linkage-type origami pattern generates a new mobile assembly. Hence, the transition technique offers a novel approach to constructing mobile assemblies of spatial linkages from origami patterns.

  10. Localization Using Magnetic Patterns for Autonomous Mobile Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Won Suk You

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we present a method of localization using magnetic landmarks. With this method, it is possible to compensate the pose error (xe, ye, θe of a mobile robot correctly and localize its current position on a global coordinate system on the surface of a structured environment with magnetic landmarks. A set of four magnetic bars forms total six different patterns of landmarks and these patterns can be read by the mobile robot with magnetic hall sensors. A sequential motion strategy for a mobile robot is proposed to find the geometric center of magnetic landmarks by reading the nonlinear magnetic field. The mobile robot first moves into the center region of the landmark where it can read the magnetic pattern, after which tracking and global localization can be easily achieved by recognizing the patterns of neighboring landmarks. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the sequential motion strategy for estimating the center of the first encountered landmark as well as the performance of tracking and global localization of the proposed system.

  11. Mobile human-computer interaction perspective on mobile learning

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Botha, Adèle

    2010-10-01

    Full Text Available Applying a Mobile Human Computer Interaction (MHCI) view to the domain of education using Mobile Learning (Mlearning), the research outlines its understanding of the influences and effects of different interactions on the use of mobile technology...

  12. Latent Feature Models for Uncovering Human Mobility Patterns from Anonymized User Location Traces with Metadata

    KAUST Repository

    Alharbi, Basma Mohammed

    2017-01-01

    In the mobile era, data capturing individuals’ locations have become unprecedentedly available. Data from Location-Based Social Networks is one example of large-scale user-location data. Such data provide a valuable source for understanding patterns

  13. Changing Trends in Modeling Mobility

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aarti Munjal

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available A phenomenal increase in the number of wireless devices has led to the evolution of several interesting and challenging research problems in opportunistic networks. For example, the random waypoint mobility model, an early, popular effort to model mobility, involves generating random movement patterns. Previous research efforts, however, validate that movement patterns are not random; instead, human mobility is predictable to some extent. Since the performance of a routing protocol in an opportunistic network is greatly improved if the movement patterns of mobile users can be somewhat predicted in advance, several research attempts have been made to understand human mobility. The solutions developed use our understanding of movement patterns to predict the future contact probability for mobile nodes. In this work, we summarize the changing trends in modeling human mobility as random movements to the current research efforts that model human walks in a more predictable manner. Mobility patterns significantly affect the performance of a routing protocol. Thus, the changing trend in modeling mobility has led to several changes in developing routing protocols for opportunistic networks. For example, the simplest opportunistic routing protocol forwards a received packet to a randomly selected neighbor. With predictable mobility, however, routing protocols can use the expected contact information between a pair of mobile nodes in making forwarding decisions. In this work, we also describe the previous and current research efforts in developing routing protocols for opportunistic networks.

  14. Climate-driven endemic cholera is modulated by human mobility in a megacity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perez-Saez, Javier; King, Aaron A.; Rinaldo, Andrea; Yunus, Mohammad; Faruque, Abu S. G.; Pascual, Mercedes

    2017-10-01

    Although a differential sensitivity of cholera dynamics to climate variability has been reported in the spatially heterogeneous megacity of Dhaka, Bangladesh, the specific patterns of spread of the resulting risk within the city remain unclear. We build on an established probabilistic spatial model to investigate the importance and role of human mobility in modulating spatial cholera transmission. Mobility fluxes were inferred using a straightforward and generalizable methodology that relies on mapping population density based on a high resolution urban footprint product, and a parameter-free human mobility model. In accordance with previous findings, we highlight the higher sensitivity to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the highly populated urban center than in the more rural periphery. More significantly, our results show that cholera risk is largely transmitted from the climate-sensitive core to the periphery of the city, with implications for the planning of control efforts. In addition, including human mobility improves the outbreak prediction performance of the model with an 11 month lead. The interplay between climatic and human mobility factors in cholera transmission is discussed from the perspective of the rapid growth of megacities across the developing world.

  15. How Big Data Fast Tracked Human Mobility Research and the Lessons for Animal Movement Ecology

    KAUST Repository

    Thums, Michele; Ferná ndez-Gracia, Juan; Sequeira, Ana M. M.; Eguí luz, Ví ctor M.; Duarte, Carlos M.; Meekan, Mark G.

    2018-01-01

    The rise of the internet coupled with technological innovations such as smartphones have generated massive volumes of geo-referenced data (big data) on human mobility. This has allowed the number of studies of human mobility to rapidly overtake those of animal movement. Today, telemetry studies of animals are also approaching big data status. Here, we review recent advances in studies of human mobility and identify the opportunities they present for advancing our understanding of animal movement. We describe key analytical techniques, potential bottlenecks and a roadmap for progress toward a synthesis of movement patterns of wild animals.

  16. How Big Data Fast Tracked Human Mobility Research and the Lessons for Animal Movement Ecology

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michele Thums

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available The rise of the internet coupled with technological innovations such as smartphones have generated massive volumes of geo-referenced data (big data on human mobility. This has allowed the number of studies of human mobility to rapidly overtake those of animal movement. Today, telemetry studies of animals are also approaching big data status. Here, we review recent advances in studies of human mobility and identify the opportunities they present for advancing our understanding of animal movement. We describe key analytical techniques, potential bottlenecks and a roadmap for progress toward a synthesis of movement patterns of wild animals.

  17. How Big Data Fast Tracked Human Mobility Research and the Lessons for Animal Movement Ecology

    KAUST Repository

    Thums, Michele

    2018-02-13

    The rise of the internet coupled with technological innovations such as smartphones have generated massive volumes of geo-referenced data (big data) on human mobility. This has allowed the number of studies of human mobility to rapidly overtake those of animal movement. Today, telemetry studies of animals are also approaching big data status. Here, we review recent advances in studies of human mobility and identify the opportunities they present for advancing our understanding of animal movement. We describe key analytical techniques, potential bottlenecks and a roadmap for progress toward a synthesis of movement patterns of wild animals.

  18. Human movement activity classification approaches that use wearable sensors and mobile devices

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaghyan, Sahak; Sarukhanyan, Hakob; Akopian, David

    2013-03-01

    Cell phones and other mobile devices become part of human culture and change activity and lifestyle patterns. Mobile phone technology continuously evolves and incorporates more and more sensors for enabling advanced applications. Latest generations of smart phones incorporate GPS and WLAN location finding modules, vision cameras, microphones, accelerometers, temperature sensors etc. The availability of these sensors in mass-market communication devices creates exciting new opportunities for data mining applications. Particularly healthcare applications exploiting build-in sensors are very promising. This paper reviews different approaches of human activity recognition.

  19. A MULTIDISCIPLINARY ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING ACTIVE MOBILITY PATTERNS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    D. Orellana

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Intermediate cities are urged to change and adapt their mobility systems from a high energy-demanding motorized model to a sustainable low-motorized model. In order to accomplish such a model, city administrations need to better understand active mobility patterns and their links to socio-demographic and cultural aspects of the population. During the last decade, researchers have demonstrated the potential of geo-location technologies and mobile devices to gather massive amounts of data for mobility studies. However, the analysis and interpretation of this data has been carried out by specialized research groups with relatively narrow approaches from different disciplines. Consequently, broader questions remain less explored, mainly those relating to spatial behaviour of individuals and populations with their geographic environment and the motivations and perceptions shaping such behaviour. Understanding sustainable mobility and exploring new research paths require an interdisciplinary approach given the complex nature of mobility systems and their social, economic and environmental impacts. Here, we introduce the elements for a multidisciplinary analytical framework for studying active mobility patterns comprised of three components: a Methodological, b Behavioural, and c Perceptual. We demonstrate the applicability of the framework by analysing mobility patterns of cyclists and pedestrians in an intermediate city integrating a range of techniques, including: GPS tracking, spatial analysis, auto-ethnography, and perceptual mapping. The results demonstrated the existence of non-evident spatial behaviours and how perceptual features affect mobility. This knowledge is useful for developing policies and practices for sustainable mobility planning.

  20. a Multidisciplinary Analytical Framework for Studying Active Mobility Patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Orellana, D.; Hermida, C.; Osorio, P.

    2016-06-01

    Intermediate cities are urged to change and adapt their mobility systems from a high energy-demanding motorized model to a sustainable low-motorized model. In order to accomplish such a model, city administrations need to better understand active mobility patterns and their links to socio-demographic and cultural aspects of the population. During the last decade, researchers have demonstrated the potential of geo-location technologies and mobile devices to gather massive amounts of data for mobility studies. However, the analysis and interpretation of this data has been carried out by specialized research groups with relatively narrow approaches from different disciplines. Consequently, broader questions remain less explored, mainly those relating to spatial behaviour of individuals and populations with their geographic environment and the motivations and perceptions shaping such behaviour. Understanding sustainable mobility and exploring new research paths require an interdisciplinary approach given the complex nature of mobility systems and their social, economic and environmental impacts. Here, we introduce the elements for a multidisciplinary analytical framework for studying active mobility patterns comprised of three components: a) Methodological, b) Behavioural, and c) Perceptual. We demonstrate the applicability of the framework by analysing mobility patterns of cyclists and pedestrians in an intermediate city integrating a range of techniques, including: GPS tracking, spatial analysis, auto-ethnography, and perceptual mapping. The results demonstrated the existence of non-evident spatial behaviours and how perceptual features affect mobility. This knowledge is useful for developing policies and practices for sustainable mobility planning.

  1. Mobile Handset Performance Evaluation Using Radiation Pattern Measurements

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Jesper Ødum; Pedersen, Gert Frølund

    2006-01-01

    The mean effective gain is an attractive performance measure of mobile handsets, since it incorporates both directional and polarization properties of the handset and environment. In this work the mean effective gain is computed from measured spherical radiation patterns of five different mobile...... pattern is reduced. Furthermore, the frequency dependence of the mean effective gain is investigated, and a method is proposed for reducing the required number of measurements on different frequencies....

  2. Exact solution of gyration radius of individual's trajectory for a simplified human mobility model

    OpenAIRE

    Yan, Xiao-Yong; Han, Xiao-Pu; Zhou, Tao; Wang, Bing-Hong

    2010-01-01

    Gyration radius of individual's trajectory plays a key role in quantifying human mobility patterns. Of particular interests, empirical analyses suggest that the growth of gyration radius is slow versus time except the very early stage and may eventually arrive to a steady value. However, up to now, the underlying mechanism leading to such a possibly steady value has not been well understood. In this Letter, we propose a simplified human mobility model to simulate individual's daily travel wit...

  3. Estimating mobility using sparse data: Application to human genetic variation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loog, Liisa; Mirazón Lahr, Marta; Kovacevic, Mirna; Manica, Andrea; Eriksson, Anders; Thomas, Mark G

    2017-11-14

    Mobility is one of the most important processes shaping spatiotemporal patterns of variation in genetic, morphological, and cultural traits. However, current approaches for inferring past migration episodes in the fields of archaeology and population genetics lack either temporal resolution or formal quantification of the underlying mobility, are poorly suited to spatially and temporally sparsely sampled data, and permit only limited systematic comparison between different time periods or geographic regions. Here we present an estimator of past mobility that addresses these issues by explicitly linking trait differentiation in space and time. We demonstrate the efficacy of this estimator using spatiotemporally explicit simulations and apply it to a large set of ancient genomic data from Western Eurasia. We identify a sequence of changes in human mobility from the Late Pleistocene to the Iron Age. We find that mobility among European Holocene farmers was significantly higher than among European hunter-gatherers both pre- and postdating the Last Glacial Maximum. We also infer that this Holocene rise in mobility occurred in at least three distinct stages: the first centering on the well-known population expansion at the beginning of the Neolithic, and the second and third centering on the beginning of the Bronze Age and the late Iron Age, respectively. These findings suggest a strong link between technological change and human mobility in Holocene Western Eurasia and demonstrate the utility of this framework for exploring changes in mobility through space and time. Copyright © 2017 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.

  4. a Three-Step Spatial-Temporal Clustering Method for Human Activity Pattern Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, W.; Li, S.; Xu, S.

    2016-06-01

    How people move in cities and what they do in various locations at different times form human activity patterns. Human activity pattern plays a key role in in urban planning, traffic forecasting, public health and safety, emergency response, friend recommendation, and so on. Therefore, scholars from different fields, such as social science, geography, transportation, physics and computer science, have made great efforts in modelling and analysing human activity patterns or human mobility patterns. One of the essential tasks in such studies is to find the locations or places where individuals stay to perform some kind of activities before further activity pattern analysis. In the era of Big Data, the emerging of social media along with wearable devices enables human activity data to be collected more easily and efficiently. Furthermore, the dimension of the accessible human activity data has been extended from two to three (space or space-time) to four dimensions (space, time and semantics). More specifically, not only a location and time that people stay and spend are collected, but also what people "say" for in a location at a time can be obtained. The characteristics of these datasets shed new light on the analysis of human mobility, where some of new methodologies should be accordingly developed to handle them. Traditional methods such as neural networks, statistics and clustering have been applied to study human activity patterns using geosocial media data. Among them, clustering methods have been widely used to analyse spatiotemporal patterns. However, to our best knowledge, few of clustering algorithms are specifically developed for handling the datasets that contain spatial, temporal and semantic aspects all together. In this work, we propose a three-step human activity clustering method based on space, time and semantics to fill this gap. One-year Twitter data, posted in Toronto, Canada, is used to test the clustering-based method. The results show that the

  5. Analyzing Urban Human Mobility Patterns through a Thematic Model at a Finer Scale

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Faming Zhang

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Taxi trajectories reflect human mobility over a road network. Pick-up and drop-off locations in different time periods represent origins and destinations of trips, respectively, demonstrating the spatiotemporal characteristics of human behavior. Each trip can be viewed as a displacement in the random walk model, and the distribution of extracted trips shows a distance decay effect. To identify the spatial similarity of trips at a finer scale, this paper investigates the distribution of trips through topic modeling techniques. Firstly, trip origins and trip destinations were identified from raw GPS data. Then, different trips were given semantic information, i.e., link identification numbers with a semantic enrichment process. Each taxi trajectory was composed of a series of trip destinations corresponding to the same taxi. Subsequently, each taxi trajectory was analogous to a document consisting of different words, and all taxi’s trajectories could be regarded as document corpora, enabling a semantic analysis of massive trip destinations. Finally, we obtained different trip destination topics reflecting the spatial similarity and regional property of human mobility through LDA topic model training. The effectiveness of this approach was illustrated by a case study using a large dataset of taxi trajectories collected from 2 to 8 June 2014 in Wuhan, China.

  6. PATTERN OF MOBILE PHONE USE AND ITS EFFECT AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS

    OpenAIRE

    Anju; Pooja; Satyendra Kumar

    2016-01-01

    BACKGROUND Mobile phone use has been tremendously increased in the last decades. Although mobile phone is used by large section of society, but awareness about its adverse effects has not increased in the same proportion. Hence, the present study was taken up to focus the pattern and effect of mobile phone usage amongst medical students. AIM To study the pattern of use of mobile phone and its effects. STUDY DESIGN A cross-sectional study was carried out at Rama Medical ...

  7. Analyzing the distribution of human activity space from mobile phone usage - An individual and urban-oriented study

    OpenAIRE

    Yuan Y.; Raubal M.

    2016-01-01

    Travel activities are embodied as people’s needs to be physically present at certain locations. The development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs such as mobile phones) has introduced new data sources for modeling human activities. Based on the scattered spatiotemporal points provided in mobile phone datasets it is feasible to study the patterns (e.g. the scale shape and regularity) of human activities. In this paper we propose methods for analyzing the distribution of human...

  8. Discover Patterns and Mobility of Twitter Users—A Study of Four US College Cities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yue Li

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available Geo-tagged tweets provide useful implications for studies in human geography, urban science, location-based services, targeted advertising, and social network. This research aims to discover the patterns and mobility of Twitter users by analyzing the spatial and temporal dynamics in their tweets. Geo-tagged tweets are collected over a period of six months for four US Midwestern college cities: (1 West Lafayette, IN; (2 Bloomington, IN; (3 Ann Arbor, MI; (4 Columbus, OH. Various analytical and statistical methods are used to reveal the spatial and temporal patterns of tweets, and the tweeting behaviors of Twitter users. It is discovered that Twitter users are most active between 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm. In smaller cities, tweets aggregate at campuses and apartment complexes, while tweets in residential areas of bigger cities make up the majority of tweets. We also found that most Twitter users have two to four places of frequent visits. The mean mobility range of frequent Twitter users is linearly correlated to the size of the city, specifically, about 40% of the city radius. The research therefore confirms the feasibility and promising future for using geo-tagged microblogging services such as Twitter to understand human behavior patterns and carry out other geo-social related studies.

  9. A THREE-STEP SPATIAL-TEMPORAL-SEMANTIC CLUSTERING METHOD FOR HUMAN ACTIVITY PATTERN ANALYSIS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    W. Huang

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available How people move in cities and what they do in various locations at different times form human activity patterns. Human activity pattern plays a key role in in urban planning, traffic forecasting, public health and safety, emergency response, friend recommendation, and so on. Therefore, scholars from different fields, such as social science, geography, transportation, physics and computer science, have made great efforts in modelling and analysing human activity patterns or human mobility patterns. One of the essential tasks in such studies is to find the locations or places where individuals stay to perform some kind of activities before further activity pattern analysis. In the era of Big Data, the emerging of social media along with wearable devices enables human activity data to be collected more easily and efficiently. Furthermore, the dimension of the accessible human activity data has been extended from two to three (space or space-time to four dimensions (space, time and semantics. More specifically, not only a location and time that people stay and spend are collected, but also what people “say” for in a location at a time can be obtained. The characteristics of these datasets shed new light on the analysis of human mobility, where some of new methodologies should be accordingly developed to handle them. Traditional methods such as neural networks, statistics and clustering have been applied to study human activity patterns using geosocial media data. Among them, clustering methods have been widely used to analyse spatiotemporal patterns. However, to our best knowledge, few of clustering algorithms are specifically developed for handling the datasets that contain spatial, temporal and semantic aspects all together. In this work, we propose a three-step human activity clustering method based on space, time and semantics to fill this gap. One-year Twitter data, posted in Toronto, Canada, is used to test the clustering-based method. The

  10. Uncovering urban human mobility from large scale taxi GPS data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tang, Jinjun; Liu, Fang; Wang, Yinhai; Wang, Hua

    2015-11-01

    Taxi GPS trajectories data contain massive spatial and temporal information of urban human activity and mobility. Taking taxi as mobile sensors, the information derived from taxi trips benefits the city and transportation planning. The original data used in study are collected from more than 1100 taxi drivers in Harbin city. We firstly divide the city area into 400 different transportation districts and analyze the origin and destination distribution in urban area on weekday and weekend. The Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm is used to cluster pick-up and drop-off locations. Furthermore, four spatial interaction models are calibrated and compared based on trajectories in shopping center of Harbin city to study the pick-up location searching behavior. By extracting taxi trips from GPS data, travel distance, time and average speed in occupied and non-occupied status are then used to investigate human mobility. Finally, we use observed OD matrix of center area in Harbin city to model the traffic distribution patterns based on entropy-maximizing method, and the estimation performance verify its effectiveness in case study.

  11. Hunter-gatherer postcranial robusticity relative to patterns of mobility, climatic adaptation, and selection for tissue economy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stock, J T

    2006-10-01

    Human skeletal robusticity is influenced by a number of factors, including habitual behavior, climate, and physique. Conflicting evidence as to the relative importance of these factors complicates our ability to interpret variation in robusticity in the past. It remains unclear how the pattern of robusticity in the skeleton relates to adaptive constraints on skeletal morphology. This study investigates variation in robusticity in claviculae, humeri, ulnae, femora, and tibiae among human foragers, relative to climate and habitual behavior. Cross-sectional geometric properties of the diaphyses are compared among hunter-gatherers from southern Africa (n = 83), the Andaman Islands (n = 32), Tierra del Fuego (n = 34), and the Great Lakes region (n = 15). The robusticity of both proximal and distal limb segments correlates negatively with climate and positively with patterns of terrestrial and marine mobility among these groups. However, the relative correspondence between robusticity and these factors varies throughout the body. In the lower limb, partial correlations between polar second moment of area (J(0.73)) and climate decrease from proximal to distal section locations, while this relationship increases from proximal to distal in the upper limb. Patterns of correlation between robusticity and mobility, either terrestrial or marine, generally increase from proximal to distal in the lower and upper limbs, respectively. This suggests that there may be a stronger relationship between observed patterns of diaphyseal hypertrophy and behavioral differences between populations in distal elements. Despite this trend, strength circularity indices at the femoral midshaft show the strongest correspondence with terrestrial mobility, particularly among males.

  12. Critical regimes driven by recurrent mobility patterns of reaction-diffusion processes in networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gómez-Gardeñes, J.; Soriano-Paños, D.; Arenas, A.

    2018-04-01

    Reaction-diffusion processes1 have been widely used to study dynamical processes in epidemics2-4 and ecology5 in networked metapopulations. In the context of epidemics6, reaction processes are understood as contagions within each subpopulation (patch), while diffusion represents the mobility of individuals between patches. Recently, the characteristics of human mobility7, such as its recurrent nature, have been proven crucial to understand the phase transition to endemic epidemic states8,9. Here, by developing a framework able to cope with the elementary epidemic processes, the spatial distribution of populations and the commuting mobility patterns, we discover three different critical regimes of the epidemic incidence as a function of these parameters. Interestingly, we reveal a regime of the reaction-diffussion process in which, counter-intuitively, mobility is detrimental to the spread of disease. We analytically determine the precise conditions for the emergence of any of the three possible critical regimes in real and synthetic networks.

  13. Mobility patterns of persons at risk for drug-resistant tuberculosis in Mumbai, India.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conners, E; Garfein, R S; Rodwell, T C; Udwadia, Z F; Catanzaro, D G

    2016-12-01

    Tuberculosis (TB) hospital in Mumbai, India. To describe the mobility patterns of persons with suspected drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) and to assess whether there were significant differences in demographic or risk characteristics based on mobility. Observational cohort study of TB clinic patients at risk for DR-TB. Among 602 participants, 37% had ever moved from their place of birth; 14% were local movers (within state), and 23% were distant movers, between states or countries. Univariate multinomial logistic regression models showed that distant movers were more likely than non-movers to have lower income, less education, a greater number of previous TB episodes, and to have ever smoked. Compared to non-movers, local movers were more likely to have lower income and were more likely to have seen a doctor in the past 2 years. Clinical outcomes, including DR-TB, diabetes, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), did not differ between the three mobility groups. Mobility was common among patients at risk for DR-TB in Mumbai. TB programs should consider the implications of mobility on the protracted treatment for DR-TB in India.

  14. Recognition of periodic behavioral patterns from streaming mobility data

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Baratchi, Mitra; Meratnia, Nirvana; Havinga, Paul J.M.; Stojmenovic, Ivan; Cheng, Zixue; Guo, Song

    2014-01-01

    Ubiquitous location-aware sensing devices have facilitated collection of large volumes of mobility data streams from moving entities such as people and animals, among others. Extraction of various types of periodic behavioral patterns hidden in such large volume of mobility data helps in

  15. Using Radiation Pattern Measurements for Mobile Handset Performance Evaluation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Jesper Ødum; Pedersen, Gert Frølund

    2005-01-01

    The mean effective gain (MEG) is an attractive performance measure of mobile handsets, since it incorporates both directional and polarization properties of the handset and environment. In this work the MEG is computed from measured spherical radiation patterns of five different mobile handsets...... values obtained for different orientations of the handsets in the environments. For practical measurements it is important to minimize the measurement time. The paper includes a study of the variation in MEG when the number of samples in the spherical radiation pattern is reduced. Furthermore...

  16. The Ecology of Human Mobility

    KAUST Repository

    Meekan, Mark G.

    2017-02-03

    Mobile phones and other geolocated devices have produced unprecedented volumes of data on human movement. Analysis of pooled individual human trajectories using big data approaches has revealed a wealth of emergent features that have ecological parallels in animals across a diverse array of phenomena including commuting, epidemics, the spread of innovations and culture, and collective behaviour. Movement ecology, which explores how animals cope with and optimize variability in resources, has the potential to provide a theoretical framework to aid an understanding of human mobility and its impacts on ecosystems. In turn, big data on human movement can be explored in the context of animal movement ecology to provide solutions for urgent conservation problems and management challenges.

  17. Evidence of Levy walk foraging patterns in human hunter-gatherers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Raichlen, David A; Wood, Brian M; Gordon, Adam D; Mabulla, Audax Z P; Marlowe, Frank W; Pontzer, Herman

    2014-01-14

    When searching for food, many organisms adopt a superdiffusive, scale-free movement pattern called a Lévy walk, which is considered optimal when foraging for heterogeneously located resources with little prior knowledge of distribution patterns [Viswanathan GM, da Luz MGE, Raposo EP, Stanley HE (2011) The Physics of Foraging: An Introduction to Random Searches and Biological Encounters]. Although memory of food locations and higher cognition may limit the benefits of random walk strategies, no studies to date have fully explored search patterns in human foraging. Here, we show that human hunter-gatherers, the Hadza of northern Tanzania, perform Lévy walks in nearly one-half of all foraging bouts. Lévy walks occur when searching for a wide variety of foods from animal prey to underground tubers, suggesting that, even in the most cognitively complex forager on Earth, such patterns are essential to understanding elementary foraging mechanisms. This movement pattern may be fundamental to how humans experience and interact with the world across a wide range of ecological contexts, and it may be adaptive to food distribution patterns on the landscape, which previous studies suggested for organisms with more limited cognition. Additionally, Lévy walks may have become common early in our genus when hunting and gathering arose as a major foraging strategy, playing an important role in the evolution of human mobility.

  18. Patterns of Mobile Technology Use in Teaching: The Teacher Perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seifert, Tami

    2016-01-01

    The use of mobile learning spaces is an opportunity to break the boundaries of the classroom and to prepare teacher-educators and pre-service teachers for future school classes. The purpose of this study is to examine the implementation of mobile technology and usage patterns in the mobile technology space among lecturers in a teacher education…

  19. The Ecology of Human Mobility.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meekan, Mark G; Duarte, Carlos M; Fernández-Gracia, Juan; Thums, Michele; Sequeira, Ana M M; Harcourt, Rob; Eguíluz, Víctor M

    2017-03-01

    Mobile phones and other geolocated devices have produced unprecedented volumes of data on human movement. Analysis of pooled individual human trajectories using big data approaches has revealed a wealth of emergent features that have ecological parallels in animals across a diverse array of phenomena including commuting, epidemics, the spread of innovations and culture, and collective behaviour. Movement ecology, which explores how animals cope with and optimize variability in resources, has the potential to provide a theoretical framework to aid an understanding of human mobility and its impacts on ecosystems. In turn, big data on human movement can be explored in the context of animal movement ecology to provide solutions for urgent conservation problems and management challenges. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Multidimensional human dynamics in mobile phone communications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quadri, Christian; Zignani, Matteo; Capra, Lorenzo; Gaito, Sabrina; Rossi, Gian Paolo

    2014-01-01

    In today's technology-assisted society, social interactions may be expressed through a variety of techno-communication channels, including online social networks, email and mobile phones (calls, text messages). Consequently, a clear grasp of human behavior through the diverse communication media is considered a key factor in understanding the formation of the today's information society. So far, all previous research on user communication behavior has focused on a sole communication activity. In this paper we move forward another step on this research path by performing a multidimensional study of human sociality as an expression of the use of mobile phones. The paper focuses on user temporal communication behavior in the interplay between the two complementary communication media, text messages and phone calls, that represent the bi-dimensional scenario of analysis. Our study provides a theoretical framework for analyzing multidimensional bursts as the most general burst category, that includes one-dimensional bursts as the simplest case, and offers empirical evidence of their nature by following the combined phone call/text message communication patterns of approximately one million people over three-month period. This quantitative approach enables the design of a generative model rooted in the three most significant features of the multidimensional burst - the number of dimensions, prevalence and interleaving degree - able to reproduce the main media usage attitude. The other findings of the paper include a novel multidimensional burst detection algorithm and an insight analysis of the human media selection process.

  1. Multidimensional human dynamics in mobile phone communications.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christian Quadri

    Full Text Available In today's technology-assisted society, social interactions may be expressed through a variety of techno-communication channels, including online social networks, email and mobile phones (calls, text messages. Consequently, a clear grasp of human behavior through the diverse communication media is considered a key factor in understanding the formation of the today's information society. So far, all previous research on user communication behavior has focused on a sole communication activity. In this paper we move forward another step on this research path by performing a multidimensional study of human sociality as an expression of the use of mobile phones. The paper focuses on user temporal communication behavior in the interplay between the two complementary communication media, text messages and phone calls, that represent the bi-dimensional scenario of analysis. Our study provides a theoretical framework for analyzing multidimensional bursts as the most general burst category, that includes one-dimensional bursts as the simplest case, and offers empirical evidence of their nature by following the combined phone call/text message communication patterns of approximately one million people over three-month period. This quantitative approach enables the design of a generative model rooted in the three most significant features of the multidimensional burst - the number of dimensions, prevalence and interleaving degree - able to reproduce the main media usage attitude. The other findings of the paper include a novel multidimensional burst detection algorithm and an insight analysis of the human media selection process.

  2. Assessment of mobile phone use pattern among undergraduates in ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The finding on the average time spent on the Mobile Phone daily showed that 33.5% of the ... It further revealed that 26.7 % of the students uses the Mobile Phone during lecture to chat with ... Use ,Pattern, Undergraduates, University ... Browse By Country · List All Titles · Free To Read Titles This Journal is Open Access.

  3. Understanding predictability and exploration in human mobility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Cuttone, Andrea; Jørgensen, Sune Lehmann; González, Marta C.

    2018-01-01

    Predictive models for human mobility have important applications in many fields including traffic control, ubiquitous computing, and contextual advertisement. The predictive performance of models in literature varies quite broadly, from over 90% to under 40%. In this work we study which underlying...... strong influence on the accuracy of prediction. Finally we reveal that the exploration of new locations is an important factor in human mobility, and we measure that on average 20-25% of transitions are to new places, and approx. 70% of locations are visited only once. We discuss how these mechanisms...... are important factors limiting our ability to predict human mobility....

  4. Use of Design Patterns According to Hand Dominance in a Mobile User Interface

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al-Samarraie, Hosam; Ahmad, Yusof

    2016-01-01

    User interface (UI) design patterns for mobile applications provide a solution to design problems and can improve the usage experience for users. However, there is a lack of research categorizing the uses of design patterns according to users' hand dominance in a learning-based mobile UI. We classified the main design patterns for mobile…

  5. Heterogeneous Community-based mobility model for human opportunistic network

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hu, Liang; Dittmann, Lars

    2009-01-01

    a heterogeneous community-based random way-point (HC-RWP) mobility model that captures the four important properties of real human mobility. These properties are based on both intuitive observations of daily human mobility and analysis of empirical mobility traces. By discrete event simulation, we show HC...

  6. Patterning of high mobility electron gases at complex oxide interfaces

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Trier, Felix; Prawiroatmodjo, G. E. D. K.; von Soosten, Merlin

    2015-01-01

    Oxide interfaces provide an opportunity for electronics. However, patterning of electron gases at complex oxide interfaces is challenging. In particular, patterning of complex oxides while preserving a high electron mobility remains underexplored and inhibits the study of quantum mechanical effects...... of amorphous-LSM (a-LSM) thin films, which acts as a hard mask during subsequent depositions. Strikingly, the patterned modulation-doped interface shows electron mobilities up to ∼8 700 cm2/V s at 2 K, which is among the highest reported values for patterned conducting complex oxide interfaces that usually...... where extended electron mean free paths are paramount. This letter presents an effective patterning strategy of both the amorphous-LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (a-LAO/STO) and modulation-doped amorphous-LaAlO3/La7/8Sr1/8MnO3/SrTiO3 (a-LAO/LSM/STO) oxide interfaces. Our patterning is based on selective wet etching...

  7. Analysis of Log File Data to Understand Mobile Service Context and Usage Patterns

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bernhard Klein

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Several mobile acceptance models exist today that focus on user interface handling and usage frequency evaluation. Since mobile applications reach much deeper into everyday life, it is however important to better consider user behaviour for the service evaluation. In this paper we introduce the Behaviour Assessment Model (BAM, which is designed to gaining insights about how well services enable, enhance and replace human activities. More specifically, the basic columns of the evaluation framework concentrate on (1 service actuation in relation to the current user context, (2 the balance between service usage effort and benefit, and (3 the degree to which community knowledge can be exploited. The evaluation is guided by a process model that specifies individual steps of data capturing, aggregation, and final assessment. The BAM helps to gain stronger insights regarding characteristic usage hotspots, frequent usage patterns, and leveraging of networking effects showing more realistically the strengths and weaknesses of mobile services

  8. Predicting the Location and Time of Mobile Phone Users by Using Sequential Pattern Mining Techniques

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ozer, Mert; Keles, Ilkcan; Toroslu, Hakki

    2016-01-01

    In recent years, using cell phone log data to model human mobility patterns became an active research area. This problem is a challenging data mining problem due to huge size and non-uniformity of the log data, which introduces several granularity levels for the specification of temporal...... and spatial dimensions. This paper focuses on the prediction of the location of the next activity of the mobile phone users. There are several versions of this problem. In this work, we have concentrated on the following three problems: predicting the location and the time of the next user activity...... the success of these methods with real data obtained from one of the largest mobile phone operators in Turkey. Our results are very encouraging, since we were able to obtain quite high accuracy results under small prediction sets....

  9. Human engineering in mobile radwaste systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jones, D.; McMahon, J.; Motl, G.

    1988-01-01

    To a large degree, mobile radwaste systems are replacing installed plant systems at US nuclear plants due to regulatory obsolescence, high capital and maintenance costs, and increased radiation exposure. Well over half the power plants in the United States now use some sort of mobile system similar to those offered by LN Technologies Corporation. Human engineering is reflected in mobile radwaste system design due to concerns about safety, efficiency, and cost. The radwaste services business is so competitive that vendors must reflect human engineering in several areas of equipment design in order to compete. The paper discusses radiation exposure control, contamination control, compact components, maintainability, operation, and transportability

  10. Second home mobility in Finland: Patterns, practices and relations of leisure oriented mobile lifestyle

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mervi Johanna Hiltunen

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available The paper focuses on leisure oriented mobile lifestyle between urban home and rural second home in Finland which is one of the world’s leading countries in terms of second home ownership and tourism. Spatial patterns and social practices of physical mobility related to second home use are revealed by using triangulation of research methods and data. Analysis is based on GIS data, questionnaire survey results and national statistics. A relational approach is applied to conceptualise and contextualise second home mobility which is influenced by many bio-physical and socio-cultural processes and changes. Relational elements and processes interlinked to past, present and future of second home related physical mobility are identified. Natural amenities form the physical geographical basis for rural second home distribution which correlates with length of shoreline, distance to urban areas and local land use in second home environments. Second home related spatial mobility patterns differ and depend on size of the urban region of origin. Helsinki metropolitan dwellers have the longest trips to second homes which is explained not merely by environmental but by historical, societal and social reasons as well. Second home related social mobility practices are dependent on cottage owners’ and users’ life phase and standard of second homes. Retiring baby boom generation is the largest and most active cottager group and after retirement the use of second homes increases remarkably. The vast majority of second home owners and users travel the cottage trips by private cars and wish to spend at least as much time at rural second home as present. However, they do not intend to give up the urban home which leads to the conclusion that leisure related lifestyle mobility in between urban and rural living environments will continue to characterise second home owners’ and users’ way of life.

  11. The Causal Pattern of Mobile Phone Ownership and Implications for ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This paper examined a number of predictors of mobile phone ownership amongst fish and vegetable sellers in Yola Metropolis, Nigeria. Using regression path analysis, it identified the causal pattern of mobile phone ownership for Male and Female in the study area. Although there were few significant differences between ...

  12. A survey on pattern formation of autonomous mobile robots: asynchrony, obliviousness and visibility

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yamauchi, Yukiko

    2013-01-01

    A robot system consists of autonomous mobile robots each of which repeats Look-Compute-Move cycles, where the robot observes the positions of other robots (Look phase), computes the track to the next location (Compute phase), and moves along the track (Move phase). In this survey, we focus on self-organization of mobile robots, especially their power of forming patterns. The formation power of a robot system is the class of patterns that the robots can form, and existing results show that the robot system's formation power is determined by their asynchrony, obliviousness, and visibility. We briefly survey existing results, with impossibilities and pattern formation algorithms. Finally, we present several open problems related to the pattern formation problem of mobile robots

  13. Mobile human network management and recommendation by probabilistic social mining.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Min, Jun-Ki; Cho, Sung-Bae

    2011-06-01

    Recently, inferring or sharing of mobile contexts has been actively investigated as cell phones have become more than a communication device. However, most of them focused on utilizing the contexts on social network services, while the means in mining or managing the human network itself were barely considered. In this paper, the SmartPhonebook, which mines users' social connections to manage their relationships by reasoning social and personal contexts, is presented. It works like an artificial assistant which recommends the candidate callees whom the users probably would like to contact in a certain situation. Moreover, it visualizes their social contexts like closeness and relationship with others in order to let the users know their social situations. The proposed method infers the social contexts based on the contact patterns, while it extracts the personal contexts such as the users' emotional states and behaviors from the mobile logs. Here, Bayesian networks are exploited to handle the uncertainties in the mobile environment. The proposed system has been implemented with the MS Windows Mobile 2003 SE Platform on Samsung SPH-M4650 smartphone and has been tested on real-world data. The experimental results showed that the system provides an efficient and informative way for mobile social networking.

  14. Self-control and problematic mobile phone use in Chinese college students: the mediating role of mobile phone use patterns

    OpenAIRE

    Jiang, Zhaocai; Zhao, Xiuxin

    2016-01-01

    Background With the popularity of mobile phones, problematic mobile phone use is getting increasing attention in recent years. Although self-control was found to be a critical predictor of problematic mobile phone use, no study has ever explored the association between self-control and mobile phone use patterns as well as the possible pathway how self-control affects problematic mobile phone use. Methods Four hundred sixty-eight college students were randomly selected in this study. Data were...

  15. Exploring space-time structure of human mobility in urban space

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, J. B.; Yuan, J.; Wang, Y.; Si, H. B.; Shan, X. M.

    2011-03-01

    Understanding of human mobility in urban space benefits the planning and provision of municipal facilities and services. Due to the high penetration of cell phones, mobile cellular networks provide information for urban dynamics with a large spatial extent and continuous temporal coverage in comparison with traditional approaches. The original data investigated in this paper were collected by cellular networks in a southern city of China, recording the population distribution by dividing the city into thousands of pixels. The space-time structure of urban dynamics is explored by applying Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to the original data, from temporal and spatial perspectives between which there is a dual relation. Based on the results of the analysis, we have discovered four underlying rules of urban dynamics: low intrinsic dimensionality, three categories of common patterns, dominance of periodic trends, and temporal stability. It implies that the space-time structure can be captured well by remarkably few temporal or spatial predictable periodic patterns, and the structure unearthed by PCA evolves stably over time. All these features play a critical role in the applications of forecasting and anomaly detection.

  16. Scale of human mobility in the southern Andes (Argentina and Chile): A new framework based on strontium isotopes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barberena, Ramiro; Durán, Víctor A; Novellino, Paula; Winocur, Diego; Benítez, Anahí; Tessone, Augusto; Quiroga, María N; Marsh, Erik J; Gasco, Alejandra; Cortegoso, Valeria; Lucero, Gustavo; Llano, Carina; Knudson, Kelly J

    2017-10-01

    The goal of this article is to assess the scale of human paleomobility and ecological complementarity between the lowlands and highlands in the southern Andes during the last 2,300 years. By providing isotope results for human bone and teeth samples, we assess a hypothesis of "high residential mobility" suggested on the basis of oxygen isotopes from human remains. We develop an isotopic assessment of human mobility in a mountain landscape combining strontium and oxygen isotopes. We analyze bone and teeth samples as an approach to life-history changes in spatial residence. Human samples from the main geological units and periods within the last two millennia are selected. We present a framework for the analysis of bioavailable strontium based on the combination of the geological data with isotope results for rodent samples. The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values from human samples indicate residential stability within geological regions along life history. When comparing strontium and oxygen values for the same human samples, we record a divergent pattern: while δ 18 O values for samples from distant regions overlap widely, there are important differences in 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values. Despite the large socio-economic changes recorded, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values indicate a persisting scenario of low systematic mobility between the different geological regions. Our results suggest that strontium isotope values provide the most germane means to track patterns of human occupation of distinct regions in complex geological landscapes, offering a much higher spatial resolution than oxygen isotopes in the southern Andes. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  17. Coupled Human-Space Suit Mobility Studies

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — Current EVA mobility studies only allow for comparisons of how the suit moves when actuated by a human and how the human moves when unsuited. There are now new...

  18. Spatiotemporal property and predictability of large-scale human mobility

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Hai-Tao; Zhu, Tao; Fu, Dongfei; Xu, Bowen; Han, Xiao-Pu; Chen, Duxin

    2018-04-01

    Spatiotemporal characteristics of human mobility emerging from complexity on individual scale have been extensively studied due to the application potential on human behavior prediction and recommendation, and control of epidemic spreading. We collect and investigate a comprehensive data set of human activities on large geographical scales, including both websites browse and mobile towers visit. Numerical results show that the degree of activity decays as a power law, indicating that human behaviors are reminiscent of scale-free random walks known as Lévy flight. More significantly, this study suggests that human activities on large geographical scales have specific non-Markovian characteristics, such as a two-segment power-law distribution of dwelling time and a high possibility for prediction. Furthermore, a scale-free featured mobility model with two essential ingredients, i.e., preferential return and exploration, and a Gaussian distribution assumption on the exploration tendency parameter is proposed, which outperforms existing human mobility models under scenarios of large geographical scales.

  19. Collective human mobility pattern from taxi trips in urban area

    KAUST Repository

    Peng, Chengbin

    2012-04-18

    We analyze the passengers\\' traffic pattern for 1.58 million taxi trips of Shanghai, China. By employing the non-negative matrix factorization and optimization methods, we find that, people travel on workdays mainly for three purposes: commuting between home and workplace, traveling from workplace to workplace, and others such as leisure activities. Therefore, traffic flow in one area or between any pair of locations can be approximated by a linear combination of three basis flows, corresponding to the three purposes respectively. We name the coefficients in the linear combination as traffic powers, each of which indicates the strength of each basis flow. The traffic powers on different days are typically different even for the same location, due to the uncertainty of the human motion. Therefore, we provide a probability distribution function for the relative deviation of the traffic power. This distribution function is in terms of a series of functions for normalized binomial distributions. It can be well explained by statistical theories and is verified by empirical data. These findings are applicable in predicting the road traffic, tracing the traffic pattern and diagnosing the traffic related abnormal events. These results can also be used to infer land uses of urban area quite parsimoniously. 2012 Peng et al.

  20. Mobile phone use patterns and preferences in safety net office-based buprenorphine patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tofighi, Babak; Grossman, Ellie; Buirkle, Emily; McNeely, Jennifer; Gourevitch, Marc; Lee, Joshua D

    2015-01-01

    Integrating mobile phone technologies in addiction treatment is of increasing importance and may optimize patient engagement with their care and enhance the delivery of existing treatment strategies. Few studies have evaluated mobile phone and text message (TM) use patterns in persons enrolled in addiction treatment, and none have assessed the use in safety net, office-based buprenorphine practices. A 28-item, quantitative and qualitative semistructured survey was administered to opiate-dependent adults in an urban, publicly funded, office-based buprenorphine program. Survey domains included demographic characteristics, mobile phone and TM use patterns, and preferences pertaining to their recovery. Surveyors approached 73 of the 155 eligible subjects (47%); 71 respondents completed the survey. Nearly all participants reported mobile phone ownership (93%) and TM use (93%), and most reported "very much" or "somewhat" comfort sending TM (79%). Text message contact with 12-step group sponsors, friends, family members, and counselors was also described (32%). Nearly all preferred having their providers' mobile phone number (94%), and alerting the clinic via TM in the event of a potential relapse to receive both supportive TM and a phone call from their buprenorphine provider was also well received (62%). Mobile phone and TM use patterns and preferences among this sample of office-based buprenorphine participants highlight the potential of adopting patient-centered mobile phone-based interventions in this treatment setting.

  1. Variability in Regularity: Mining Temporal Mobility Patterns in London, Singapore and Beijing Using Smart-Card Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhong, Chen; Batty, Michael; Manley, Ed; Wang, Jiaqiu; Wang, Zijia; Chen, Feng; Schmitt, Gerhard

    2016-01-01

    To discover regularities in human mobility is of fundamental importance to our understanding of urban dynamics, and essential to city and transport planning, urban management and policymaking. Previous research has revealed universal regularities at mainly aggregated spatio-temporal scales but when we zoom into finer scales, considerable heterogeneity and diversity is observed instead. The fundamental question we address in this paper is at what scales are the regularities we detect stable, explicable, and sustainable. This paper thus proposes a basic measure of variability to assess the stability of such regularities focusing mainly on changes over a range of temporal scales. We demonstrate this by comparing regularities in the urban mobility patterns in three world cities, namely London, Singapore and Beijing using one-week of smart-card data. The results show that variations in regularity scale as non-linear functions of the temporal resolution, which we measure over a scale from 1 minute to 24 hours thus reflecting the diurnal cycle of human mobility. A particularly dramatic increase in variability occurs up to the temporal scale of about 15 minutes in all three cities and this implies that limits exist when we look forward or backward with respect to making short-term predictions. The degree of regularity varies in fact from city to city with Beijing and Singapore showing higher regularity in comparison to London across all temporal scales. A detailed discussion is provided, which relates the analysis to various characteristics of the three cities. In summary, this work contributes to a deeper understanding of regularities in patterns of transit use from variations in volumes of travellers entering subway stations, it establishes a generic analytical framework for comparative studies using urban mobility data, and it provides key points for the management of variability by policy-makers intent on for making the travel experience more amenable.

  2. Variability in Regularity: Mining Temporal Mobility Patterns in London, Singapore and Beijing Using Smart-Card Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhong, Chen; Batty, Michael; Manley, Ed; Wang, Jiaqiu; Wang, Zijia; Chen, Feng; Schmitt, Gerhard

    2016-01-01

    To discover regularities in human mobility is of fundamental importance to our understanding of urban dynamics, and essential to city and transport planning, urban management and policymaking. Previous research has revealed universal regularities at mainly aggregated spatio-temporal scales but when we zoom into finer scales, considerable heterogeneity and diversity is observed instead. The fundamental question we address in this paper is at what scales are the regularities we detect stable, explicable, and sustainable. This paper thus proposes a basic measure of variability to assess the stability of such regularities focusing mainly on changes over a range of temporal scales. We demonstrate this by comparing regularities in the urban mobility patterns in three world cities, namely London, Singapore and Beijing using one-week of smart-card data. The results show that variations in regularity scale as non-linear functions of the temporal resolution, which we measure over a scale from 1 minute to 24 hours thus reflecting the diurnal cycle of human mobility. A particularly dramatic increase in variability occurs up to the temporal scale of about 15 minutes in all three cities and this implies that limits exist when we look forward or backward with respect to making short-term predictions. The degree of regularity varies in fact from city to city with Beijing and Singapore showing higher regularity in comparison to London across all temporal scales. A detailed discussion is provided, which relates the analysis to various characteristics of the three cities. In summary, this work contributes to a deeper understanding of regularities in patterns of transit use from variations in volumes of travellers entering subway stations, it establishes a generic analytical framework for comparative studies using urban mobility data, and it provides key points for the management of variability by policy-makers intent on for making the travel experience more amenable. PMID:26872333

  3. Variability in Regularity: Mining Temporal Mobility Patterns in London, Singapore and Beijing Using Smart-Card Data.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chen Zhong

    Full Text Available To discover regularities in human mobility is of fundamental importance to our understanding of urban dynamics, and essential to city and transport planning, urban management and policymaking. Previous research has revealed universal regularities at mainly aggregated spatio-temporal scales but when we zoom into finer scales, considerable heterogeneity and diversity is observed instead. The fundamental question we address in this paper is at what scales are the regularities we detect stable, explicable, and sustainable. This paper thus proposes a basic measure of variability to assess the stability of such regularities focusing mainly on changes over a range of temporal scales. We demonstrate this by comparing regularities in the urban mobility patterns in three world cities, namely London, Singapore and Beijing using one-week of smart-card data. The results show that variations in regularity scale as non-linear functions of the temporal resolution, which we measure over a scale from 1 minute to 24 hours thus reflecting the diurnal cycle of human mobility. A particularly dramatic increase in variability occurs up to the temporal scale of about 15 minutes in all three cities and this implies that limits exist when we look forward or backward with respect to making short-term predictions. The degree of regularity varies in fact from city to city with Beijing and Singapore showing higher regularity in comparison to London across all temporal scales. A detailed discussion is provided, which relates the analysis to various characteristics of the three cities. In summary, this work contributes to a deeper understanding of regularities in patterns of transit use from variations in volumes of travellers entering subway stations, it establishes a generic analytical framework for comparative studies using urban mobility data, and it provides key points for the management of variability by policy-makers intent on for making the travel experience more

  4. Adaptive Human aware Navigation based on Motion Pattern Analysis

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tranberg, Søren; Svenstrup, Mikael; Andersen, Hans Jørgen

    2009-01-01

    Respecting people’s social spaces is an important prerequisite for acceptable and natural robot navigation in human environments. In this paper, we describe an adaptive system for mobile robot navigation based on estimates of whether a person seeks to interact with the robot or not. The estimates...... are based on run-time motion pattern analysis compared to stored experience in a database. Using a potential field centered around the person, the robot positions itself at the most appropriate place relative to the person and the interaction status. The system is validated through qualitative tests...

  5. Cell pattern in adult human corneal endothelium.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carlos H Wörner

    Full Text Available A review of the current data on the cell density of normal adult human endothelial cells was carried out in order to establish some common parameters appearing in the different considered populations. From the analysis of cell growth patterns, it is inferred that the cell aging rate is similar for each of the different considered populations. Also, the morphology, the cell distribution and the tendency to hexagonallity are studied. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that this phenomenon is analogous with cell behavior in other structures such as dry foams and grains in polycrystalline materials. Therefore, its driving force may be controlled by the surface tension and the mobility of the boundaries.

  6. Pemodelan dan Verifikasi Formal Pengaruh Mobility pattern Terhadap Handoff Latency pada Jaringan WiMAX

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I Nym Saputra Wahyu Wijaya

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available In order to decrease handoff latency and increase the successful of HHO conventional scheme, a development of handover scheme is done in standard protocol WiMAX IEEE 802.16e by adding mobility pattern. The superiority of handover scheme with mobility pattern can reduce handoff latency up to 50%, mean while the weakness of this scheme is a wrong act in determining target base station are often happen. Simulation can not showing the cause of that error. So, we do formal verification in to hard handover model with mobility pattern.             In this research, behaviour system is modeled with continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC. The model is foccused to aproximating the influence of mobility pattern in to handoff latency from WiMAX hard handover mechanism. In order to set up a series markov chain models handover system can follow steps, such as: represents the state space, give a number in all transitions, generate the rate transition matrix (infinitesimal generator.             Probabilistic model checking in the research are using quantitative properties and qualitative properties. Formal verification concerning properties has relation with handover in WiMAX network showing that 70% from mobile station which doing scanning with mobility pattern are success doing handover. 24% of them doing scanning conventional as a result of wrongness in act determining target base station, so handoff latency which is pictured will bigger than a system that is only use conventional scanning method.

  7. A Visual Analytics Approach for Extracting Spatio-Temporal Urban Mobility Information from Mobile Network Traffic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Euro Beinat

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we present a visual analytics approach for deriving spatio-temporal patterns of collective human mobility from a vast mobile network traffic data set. More than 88 million movements between pairs of radio cells—so-called handovers—served as a proxy for more than two months of mobility within four urban test areas in Northern Italy. In contrast to previous work, our approach relies entirely on visualization and mapping techniques, implemented in several software applications. We purposefully avoid statistical or probabilistic modeling and, nonetheless, reveal characteristic and exceptional mobility patterns. The results show, for example, surprising similarities and symmetries amongst the total mobility and people flows between the test areas. Moreover, the exceptional patterns detected can be associated to real-world events such as soccer matches. We conclude that the visual analytics approach presented can shed new light on large-scale collective urban mobility behavior and thus helps to better understand the “pulse” of dynamic urban systems.

  8. Social sensing of urban land use based on analysis of Twitter users' mobility patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soliman, Aiman; Soltani, Kiumars; Yin, Junjun; Padmanabhan, Anand; Wang, Shaowen

    2017-01-01

    A number of recent studies showed that digital footprints around built environments, such as geo-located tweets, are promising data sources for characterizing urban land use. However, challenges for achieving this purpose exist due to the volume and unstructured nature of geo-located social media. Previous studies focused on analyzing Twitter data collectively resulting in coarse resolution maps of urban land use. We argue that the complex spatial structure of a large collection of tweets, when viewed through the lens of individual-level human mobility patterns, can be simplified to a series of key locations for each user, which could be used to characterize urban land use at a higher spatial resolution. Contingent issues that could affect our approach, such as Twitter users' biases and tendencies at locations where they tweet the most, were systematically investigated using 39 million geo-located Tweets and two independent datasets of the City of Chicago: 1) travel survey and 2) parcel-level land use map. Our results support that the majority of Twitter users show a preferential return, where their digital traces are clustered around a few key locations. However, we did not find a general relation among users between the ranks of locations for an individual-based on the density of tweets-and their land use types. On the contrary, temporal patterns of tweeting at key locations were found to be coherent among the majority of users and significantly associated with land use types of these locations. Furthermore, we used these temporal patterns to classify key locations into generic land use types with an overall classification accuracy of 0.78. The contribution of our research is twofold: a novel approach to resolving land use types at a higher resolution, and in-depth understanding of Twitter users' location-related and temporal biases, promising to benefit human mobility and urban studies in general.

  9. Social sensing of urban land use based on analysis of Twitter users’ mobility patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soltani, Kiumars; Yin, Junjun; Padmanabhan, Anand; Wang, Shaowen

    2017-01-01

    A number of recent studies showed that digital footprints around built environments, such as geo-located tweets, are promising data sources for characterizing urban land use. However, challenges for achieving this purpose exist due to the volume and unstructured nature of geo-located social media. Previous studies focused on analyzing Twitter data collectively resulting in coarse resolution maps of urban land use. We argue that the complex spatial structure of a large collection of tweets, when viewed through the lens of individual-level human mobility patterns, can be simplified to a series of key locations for each user, which could be used to characterize urban land use at a higher spatial resolution. Contingent issues that could affect our approach, such as Twitter users’ biases and tendencies at locations where they tweet the most, were systematically investigated using 39 million geo-located Tweets and two independent datasets of the City of Chicago: 1) travel survey and 2) parcel-level land use map. Our results support that the majority of Twitter users show a preferential return, where their digital traces are clustered around a few key locations. However, we did not find a general relation among users between the ranks of locations for an individual—based on the density of tweets—and their land use types. On the contrary, temporal patterns of tweeting at key locations were found to be coherent among the majority of users and significantly associated with land use types of these locations. Furthermore, we used these temporal patterns to classify key locations into generic land use types with an overall classification accuracy of 0.78. The contribution of our research is twofold: a novel approach to resolving land use types at a higher resolution, and in-depth understanding of Twitter users’ location-related and temporal biases, promising to benefit human mobility and urban studies in general. PMID:28723936

  10. Next Place Prediction Based on Spatiotemporal Pattern Mining of Mobile Device Logs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Sungjun; Lim, Junseok; Park, Jonghun; Kim, Kwanho

    2016-01-23

    Due to the recent explosive growth of location-aware services based on mobile devices, predicting the next places of a user is of increasing importance to enable proactive information services. In this paper, we introduce a data-driven framework that aims to predict the user's next places using his/her past visiting patterns analyzed from mobile device logs. Specifically, the notion of the spatiotemporal-periodic (STP) pattern is proposed to capture the visits with spatiotemporal periodicity by focusing on a detail level of location for each individual. Subsequently, we present algorithms that extract the STP patterns from a user's past visiting behaviors and predict the next places based on the patterns. The experiment results obtained by using a real-world dataset show that the proposed methods are more effective in predicting the user's next places than the previous approaches considered in most cases.

  11. DYNAMIC MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF URBAN SPATIAL PATTERN (RESIDENTIAL CHOICE OF LOCATION: MOBILITY VS EXTERNALITY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rahma Fitriani

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Household’s residential choice of location determines urban spatial pattern (e.g sprawl. The static model which assumes that the choice has been affected by distance to the CBD and location specific externality, fails to capture the evoution of the pattern over time. Therefore this study proposes a dynamic version of the model. It analyses the effects of externalities on the optimal solution of development decision as function of time. It also derives the effect of mobility and externality on the rate of change of development pattern through time. When the increasing rate of utility is not as significant as the increasing rate of income, the externalities will delay the change of urban spatial pattern over time. If the mobility costs increase by large amount relative to the increase of income and inflation rate, then the mobility effect dominates the effects of externalities in delaying the urban expansion.

  12. Tracking Human Mobility Using WiFi Signals

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sapiezynski, Piotr; Stopczynski, Arkadiusz; Gatej, Radu

    2015-01-01

    We study six months of human mobility data, including WiFi and GPS traces recorded with high temporal resolution, and find that time series of WiFi scans contain a strong latent location signal. In fact, due to inherent stability and low entropy of human mobility, it is possible to assign location...... to WiFi access points based on a very small number of GPS samples and then use these access points as location beacons. Using just one GPS observation per day per person allows us to estimate the location of, and subsequently use, WiFi access points to account for 80% of mobility across a population....... These results reveal a great opportunity for using ubiquitous WiFi routers for high-resolution outdoor positioning, but also significant privacy implications of such side-channel location tracking....

  13. Spatiotemporal detection of unusual human population behavior using mobile phone data.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adrian Dobra

    Full Text Available With the aim to contribute to humanitarian response to disasters and violent events, scientists have proposed the development of analytical tools that could identify emergency events in real-time, using mobile phone data. The assumption is that dramatic and discrete changes in behavior, measured with mobile phone data, will indicate extreme events. In this study, we propose an efficient system for spatiotemporal detection of behavioral anomalies from mobile phone data and compare sites with behavioral anomalies to an extensive database of emergency and non-emergency events in Rwanda. Our methodology successfully captures anomalous behavioral patterns associated with a broad range of events, from religious and official holidays to earthquakes, floods, violence against civilians and protests. Our results suggest that human behavioral responses to extreme events are complex and multi-dimensional, including extreme increases and decreases in both calling and movement behaviors. We also find significant temporal and spatial variance in responses to extreme events. Our behavioral anomaly detection system and extensive discussion of results are a significant contribution to the long-term project of creating an effective real-time event detection system with mobile phone data and we discuss the implications of our findings for future research to this end.

  14. Middle Palaeolithic flint procurement in Central Mediterranean Iberia: Implications for human mobility

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aleix Eixea

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Different flint types from the Middle Palaeolithic site of Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva, Valencia are characterized,  both macro- and microscopically, and compared with types found at other localities in the region. Although procurement predominantly concerned the immediate vicinity of sites, our results show the presence of the same types in assemblages separated by distances of up to 120 km. The long distances involved are suggestive of a pattern of North-South mobility of human groups along the coastline of central Mediterranean Iberia.

  15. New approaches to human mobility: using mobile phones for demographic research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Palmer, John R B; Espenshade, Thomas J; Bartumeus, Frederic; Chung, Chang Y; Ozgencil, Necati Ercan; Li, Kathleen

    2013-06-01

    This article explores new methods for gathering and analyzing spatially rich demographic data using mobile phones. It describes a pilot study (the Human Mobility Project) in which volunteers around the world were successfully recruited to share GPS and cellular tower information on their trajectories and respond to dynamic, location-based surveys using an open-source Android application. The pilot study illustrates the great potential of mobile phone methodology for moving spatial measures beyond residential census units and investigating a range of important social phenomena, including the heterogeneity of activity spaces, the dynamic nature of spatial segregation, and the contextual dependence of subjective well-being.

  16. Supersampling and Network Reconstruction of Urban Mobility.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Oleguer Sagarra

    Full Text Available Understanding human mobility is of vital importance for urban planning, epidemiology, and many other fields that draw policies from the activities of humans in space. Despite the recent availability of large-scale data sets of GPS traces or mobile phone records capturing human mobility, typically only a subsample of the population of interest is represented, giving a possibly incomplete picture of the entire system under study. Methods to reliably extract mobility information from such reduced data and to assess their sampling biases are lacking. To that end, we analyzed a data set of millions of taxi movements in New York City. We first show that, once they are appropriately transformed, mobility patterns are highly stable over long time scales. Based on this observation, we develop a supersampling methodology to reliably extrapolate mobility records from a reduced sample based on an entropy maximization procedure, and we propose a number of network-based metrics to assess the accuracy of the predicted vehicle flows. Our approach provides a well founded way to exploit temporal patterns to save effort in recording mobility data, and opens the possibility to scale up data from limited records when information on the full system is required.

  17. Next Place Prediction Based on Spatiotemporal Pattern Mining of Mobile Device Logs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sungjun Lee

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Due to the recent explosive growth of location-aware services based on mobile devices, predicting the next places of a user is of increasing importance to enable proactive information services. In this paper, we introduce a data-driven framework that aims to predict the user’s next places using his/her past visiting patterns analyzed from mobile device logs. Specifically, the notion of the spatiotemporal-periodic (STP pattern is proposed to capture the visits with spatiotemporal periodicity by focusing on a detail level of location for each individual. Subsequently, we present algorithms that extract the STP patterns from a user’s past visiting behaviors and predict the next places based on the patterns. The experiment results obtained by using a real-world dataset show that the proposed methods are more effective in predicting the user’s next places than the previous approaches considered in most cases.

  18. Job characteristics and voluntary mobility in The Netherlands: Differential education and gender patterns?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gesthuizen, M.J.W.

    2009-01-01

    Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to address the impact of the subjective evaluation of job characteristics on voluntary mobility, the impact of voluntary mobility on changes in these job characteristics, and differential education and gender patterns. Design/methodology/approach - Ordered and

  19. The demographics of human and malaria movement and migration patterns in East Africa.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pindolia, Deepa K; Garcia, Andres J; Huang, Zhuojie; Smith, David L; Alegana, Victor A; Noor, Abdisalan M; Snow, Robert W; Tatem, Andrew J

    2013-11-05

    The quantification of parasite movements can provide valuable information for control strategy planning across all transmission intensities. Mobile parasite carrying individuals can instigate transmission in receptive areas, spread drug resistant strains and reduce the effectiveness of control strategies. The identification of mobile demographic groups, their routes of travel and how these movements connect differing transmission zones, potentially enables limited resources for interventions to be efficiently targeted over space, time and populations. National population censuses and household surveys provide individual-level migration, travel, and other data relevant for understanding malaria movement patterns. Together with existing spatially referenced malaria data and mathematical models, network analysis techniques were used to quantify the demographics of human and malaria movement patterns in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Movement networks were developed based on connectivity and magnitudes of flow within each country and compared to assess relative differences between regions and demographic groups. Additional malaria-relevant characteristics, such as short-term travel and bed net use, were also examined. Patterns of human and malaria movements varied between demographic groups, within country regions and between countries. Migration rates were highest in 20-30 year olds in all three countries, but when accounting for malaria prevalence, movements in the 10-20 year age group became more important. Different age and sex groups also exhibited substantial variations in terms of the most likely sources, sinks and routes of migration and malaria movement, as well as risk factors for infection, such as short-term travel and bed net use. Census and survey data, together with spatially referenced malaria data, GIS and network analysis tools, can be valuable for identifying, mapping and quantifying regional connectivities and the mobility of different demographic

  20. Usage Patterns of a Mobile Palliative Care Application.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Haipeng; Liu, David; Marks, Sean; Rickerson, Elizabeth M; Wright, Adam; Gordon, William J; Landman, Adam

    2018-06-01

    Fast Facts Mobile (FFM) was created to be a convenient way for clinicians to access the Fast Facts and Concepts database of palliative care articles on a smartphone or tablet device. We analyzed usage patterns of FFM through an integrated analytics platform on the mobile versions of the FFM application. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the usage data from FFM as a way to better understand user behavior for FFM as a palliative care educational tool. This is an exploratory, retrospective analysis of de-identified analytics data collected through the iOS and Android versions of FFM captured from November 2015 to November 2016. FFM App download statistics from November 1, 2015, to November 1, 2016, were accessed from the Apple and Google development websites. Further FFM session data were obtained from the analytics platform built into FFM. FFM was downloaded 9409 times over the year with 201,383 articles accessed. The most searched-for terms in FFM include the following: nausea, methadone, and delirium. We compared frequent users of FFM to infrequent users of FFM and found that 13% of all users comprise 66% of all activity in the application. Demand for useful and scalable tools for both primary palliative care and specialty palliative care will likely continue to grow. Understanding the usage patterns for FFM has the potential to inform the development of future versions of Fast Facts. Further studies of mobile palliative care educational tools will be needed to further define the impact of these educational tools.

  1. The Bacterial Mobile Resistome Transfer Network Connecting the Animal and Human Microbiomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hu, Yongfei; Yang, Xi; Li, Jing; Lv, Na; Liu, Fei; Wu, Jun; Lin, Ivan Y C; Wu, Na; Weimer, Bart C; Gao, George F; Liu, Yulan; Zhu, Baoli

    2016-11-15

    Horizontally acquired antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in bacteria are highly mobile and have been ranked as principal risk resistance determinants. However, the transfer network of the mobile resistome and the forces driving mobile ARG transfer are largely unknown. Here, we present the whole profile of the mobile resistome in 23,425 bacterial genomes and explore the effects of phylogeny and ecology on the recent transfer (≥99% nucleotide identity) of mobile ARGs. We found that mobile ARGs are mainly present in four bacterial phyla and are significantly enriched in Proteobacteria The recent mobile ARG transfer network, which comprises 703 bacterial species and 16,859 species pairs, is shaped by the bacterial phylogeny, while an ecological barrier also exists, especially when interrogating bacteria colonizing different human body sites. Phylogeny is still a driving force for the transfer of mobile ARGs between farm animals and the human gut, and, interestingly, the mobile ARGs that are shared between the human and animal gut microbiomes are also harbored by diverse human pathogens. Taking these results together, we suggest that phylogeny and ecology are complementary in shaping the bacterial mobile resistome and exert synergistic effects on the development of antibiotic resistance in human pathogens. The development of antibiotic resistance threatens our modern medical achievements. The dissemination of antibiotic resistance can be largely attributed to the transfer of bacterial mobile antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Revealing the transfer network of these genes in bacteria and the forces driving the gene flow is of great importance for controlling and predicting the emergence of antibiotic resistance in the clinic. Here, by analyzing tens of thousands of bacterial genomes and millions of human and animal gut bacterial genes, we reveal that the transfer of mobile ARGs is mainly controlled by bacterial phylogeny but under ecological constraints. We also found

  2. Capturing and analyzing wheelchair maneuvering patterns with mobile cloud computing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fu, Jicheng; Hao, Wei; White, Travis; Yan, Yuqing; Jones, Maria; Jan, Yih-Kuen

    2013-01-01

    Power wheelchairs have been widely used to provide independent mobility to people with disabilities. Despite great advancements in power wheelchair technology, research shows that wheelchair related accidents occur frequently. To ensure safe maneuverability, capturing wheelchair maneuvering patterns is fundamental to enable other research, such as safe robotic assistance for wheelchair users. In this study, we propose to record, store, and analyze wheelchair maneuvering data by means of mobile cloud computing. Specifically, the accelerometer and gyroscope sensors in smart phones are used to record wheelchair maneuvering data in real-time. Then, the recorded data are periodically transmitted to the cloud for storage and analysis. The analyzed results are then made available to various types of users, such as mobile phone users, traditional desktop users, etc. The combination of mobile computing and cloud computing leverages the advantages of both techniques and extends the smart phone's capabilities of computing and data storage via the Internet. We performed a case study to implement the mobile cloud computing framework using Android smart phones and Google App Engine, a popular cloud computing platform. Experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed mobile cloud computing framework.

  3. Job characteristics and voluntary mobility in the Netherlands : differential education and gender patterns?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gesthuizen, M.

    2009-01-01

    Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the impact of the subjective evaluation of job characteristics on voluntary mobility, the impact of voluntary mobility on changes in these job characteristics, and differential education and gender patterns. Design/methodology/approach – Ordered and

  4. Minimal mobile human computer interaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    el Ali, A.

    2013-01-01

    In the last 20 years, the widespread adoption of personal, mobile computing devices in everyday life, has allowed entry into a new technological era in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The constant change of the physical and social context in a user's situation made possible by the portability of

  5. A Novel Biometric Identification Based on a User's Input Pattern Analysis for Intelligent Mobile Devices

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hojin Seo

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available As intelligent mobile devices become more popular, security threats targeting them are increasing. The resource constraints of mobile devices, such as battery life and computing power, however, make it harder to handle such threats effectively. The existing physical and behavioural biometric identification methods - looked upon as good alternatives - are unsuitable for the current mobile environment. This paper proposes a specially designed biometric identification method for intelligent mobile devices by analysing the user's input patterns, such as a finger's touch duration, pressure level and the touching width of the finger on the touch screen. We collected the input pattern data of individuals to empirically test our method. Our testing results show that this method effectively identifies users with near a 100% rate of accuracy.

  6. The mobilize center: an NIH big data to knowledge center to advance human movement research and improve mobility.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ku, Joy P; Hicks, Jennifer L; Hastie, Trevor; Leskovec, Jure; Ré, Christopher; Delp, Scott L

    2015-11-01

    Regular physical activity helps prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic diseases, yet a broad range of conditions impair mobility at great personal and societal cost. Vast amounts of data characterizing human movement are available from research labs, clinics, and millions of smartphones and wearable sensors, but integration and analysis of this large quantity of mobility data are extremely challenging. The authors have established the Mobilize Center (http://mobilize.stanford.edu) to harness these data to improve human mobility and help lay the foundation for using data science methods in biomedicine. The Center is organized around 4 data science research cores: biomechanical modeling, statistical learning, behavioral and social modeling, and integrative modeling. Important biomedical applications, such as osteoarthritis and weight management, will focus the development of new data science methods. By developing these new approaches, sharing data and validated software tools, and training thousands of researchers, the Mobilize Center will transform human movement research. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.

  7. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Understanding Human Migration Patterns and their Utility in Forensic Human Identification Cases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anastasia Holobinko

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available Human migration patterns are of interest to scientists representing many fields. Theories have been posited to explain modern human evolutionary expansion, the diversity of human culture, and the motivational factors underlying an individual or group decision to migrate. Although the research question and subsequent approach may vary between disciplines, one thread is ubiquitous throughout most migration studies: why do humans migrate and what is the result of such an event? While the determination of individual attributes such as age, sex, and ancestry is often integral to migration studies, the positive identification of human remains is usually irrelevant. However, the positive identification of a deceased is paramount to a forensic investigation in which human remains have been recovered and must be identified. What role, if any, might the study of human movement patterns play in the interpretation of evidence associated with unidentified human remains? Due to increasing global mobility in the world's populations, it is not inconceivable that an individual might die far away from his or her home. If positive identification cannot immediately be made, investigators may consider various theories as to how or why a deceased ended up in a particular geographic location. While scientific evidence influences the direction of forensic investigations, qualitative evaluation can be an important component of evidence interpretation. This review explores several modern human migration theories and the methodologies utilized to identify evidence of human migratory movement before addressing the practical application of migration theory to forensic cases requiring the identification of human remains.

  8. Effects of mobile gaming patterns on learning outcomes: a literature review

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schmitz, Birgit; Klemke, Roland; Specht, Marcus

    2013-01-01

    Schmitz, B., Klemke, R., & Specht, M. (2012). Effects of mobile gaming patterns on learning outcomes: A literature review. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 4(5-6), 345-358. doi:10.1504/IJTEL.2012.051817

  9. Applying acoustic telemetry to understand contaminant exposure and bioaccumulation patterns in mobile fishes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taylor, Matthew D; van der Meulen, Dylan E; Brodie, Stephanie; Cadiou, Gwenaël; Knott, Nathan A

    2018-06-01

    Contamination in urbanised estuaries presents a risk to human health, and to the viability of populations of exploited species. Assessing animal movements in relation to contaminated areas may help to explain patterns in bioaccumulation, and assist in the effective management of health risks associated with consumption of exploited species. Using polychlorinated dibenzodioxin and polychlorinated dibenzofuran (PCDD/Fs) contamination in Sydney Harbour estuary as a case study, we present a study that links movement patterns resolved using acoustic telemetry to the accumulation of contaminants in mobile fish on a multi-species basis. Fifty-four individuals across six exploited species (Sea Mullet Mugil cephalus; Luderick Girella tricuspidata; Yellowfin Bream Acanthopagrus australis; Silver Trevally Pseudocaranx georgianus; Mulloway Argyrosomus japonicus; Yellowtail Kingfish Seriola lalandi) were tagged with acoustic transmitters, and their movements tracked for up to 3years. There was substantial inter-specific variation in fish distribution along the estuary. The proportion of distribution that overlapped with contaminated areas explained 84-98% of the inter-specific variation in lipid-standardised biota PCDD/F concentration. There was some seasonal variation in distribution along the estuary, but movement patterns indicated that Sea Mullet, Yellowfin Bream, Silver Trevally, and Mulloway were likely to be exposed to contaminated areas during the period of gonadal maturation. Acoustic telemetry allows examination of spatial and temporal patterns in exposure to contamination. When used alongside biota sampling and testing, this offers a powerful approach to assess exposure, bioaccumulation, and potential risks faced by different species, as well as human health risks associated with their consumption. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  10. Epidemic spreading in localized environments with recurrent mobility patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Granell, Clara; Mucha, Peter J.

    2018-05-01

    The spreading of epidemics is very much determined by the structure of the contact network, which may be impacted by the mobility dynamics of the individuals themselves. In confined scenarios where a small, closed population spends most of its time in localized environments and has easily identifiable mobility patterns—such as workplaces, university campuses, or schools—it is of critical importance to identify the factors controlling the rate of disease spread. Here, we present a discrete-time, metapopulation-based model to describe the transmission of susceptible-infected-susceptible-like diseases that take place in confined scenarios where the mobilities of the individuals are not random but, rather, follow clear recurrent travel patterns. This model allows analytical determination of the onset of epidemics, as well as the ability to discern which contact structures are most suited to prevent the infection to spread. It thereby determines whether common prevention mechanisms, as isolation, are worth implementing in such a scenario and their expected impact.

  11. TelCoVis: Visual Exploration of Co-occurrence in Urban Human Mobility Based on Telco Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Wenchao; Xu, Jiayi; Zeng, Haipeng; Zheng, Yixian; Qu, Huamin; Ni, Bing; Yuan, Mingxuan; Ni, Lionel M

    2016-01-01

    Understanding co-occurrence in urban human mobility (i.e. people from two regions visit an urban place during the same time span) is of great value in a variety of applications, such as urban planning, business intelligence, social behavior analysis, as well as containing contagious diseases. In recent years, the widespread use of mobile phones brings an unprecedented opportunity to capture large-scale and fine-grained data to study co-occurrence in human mobility. However, due to the lack of systematic and efficient methods, it is challenging for analysts to carry out in-depth analyses and extract valuable information. In this paper, we present TelCoVis, an interactive visual analytics system, which helps analysts leverage their domain knowledge to gain insight into the co-occurrence in urban human mobility based on telco data. Our system integrates visualization techniques with new designs and combines them in a novel way to enhance analysts' perception for a comprehensive exploration. In addition, we propose to study the correlations in co-occurrence (i.e. people from multiple regions visit different places during the same time span) by means of biclustering techniques that allow analysts to better explore coordinated relationships among different regions and identify interesting patterns. The case studies based on a real-world dataset and interviews with domain experts have demonstrated the effectiveness of our system in gaining insights into co-occurrence and facilitating various analytical tasks.

  12. VisitSense: Sensing Place Visit Patterns from Ambient Radio on Smartphones for Targeted Mobile Ads in Shopping Malls

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Byoungjip; Kang, Seungwoo; Ha, Jin-Young; Song, Junehwa

    2015-01-01

    In this paper, we introduce a novel smartphone framework called VisitSense that automatically detects and predicts a smartphone user’s place visits from ambient radio to enable behavioral targeting for mobile ads in large shopping malls. VisitSense enables mobile app developers to adopt visit-pattern-aware mobile advertising for shopping mall visitors in their apps. It also benefits mobile users by allowing them to receive highly relevant mobile ads that are aware of their place visit patterns in shopping malls. To achieve the goal, VisitSense employs accurate visit detection and prediction methods. For accurate visit detection, we develop a change-based detection method to take into consideration the stability change of ambient radio and the mobility change of users. It performs well in large shopping malls where ambient radio is quite noisy and causes existing algorithms to easily fail. In addition, we proposed a causality-based visit prediction model to capture the causality in the sequential visit patterns for effective prediction. We have developed a VisitSense prototype system, and a visit-pattern-aware mobile advertising application that is based on it. Furthermore, we deploy the system in the COEX Mall, one of the largest shopping malls in Korea, and conduct diverse experiments to show the effectiveness of VisitSense. PMID:26193275

  13. VisitSense: Sensing Place Visit Patterns from Ambient Radio on Smartphones for Targeted Mobile Ads in Shopping Malls.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Byoungjip; Kang, Seungwoo; Ha, Jin-Young; Song, Junehwa

    2015-07-16

    In this paper, we introduce a novel smartphone framework called VisitSense that automatically detects and predicts a smartphone user's place visits from ambient radio to enable behavioral targeting for mobile ads in large shopping malls. VisitSense enables mobile app developers to adopt visit-pattern-aware mobile advertising for shopping mall visitors in their apps. It also benefits mobile users by allowing them to receive highly relevant mobile ads that are aware of their place visit patterns in shopping malls. To achieve the goal, VisitSense employs accurate visit detection and prediction methods. For accurate visit detection, we develop a change-based detection method to take into consideration the stability change of ambient radio and the mobility change of users. It performs well in large shopping malls where ambient radio is quite noisy and causes existing algorithms to easily fail. In addition, we proposed a causality-based visit prediction model to capture the causality in the sequential visit patterns for effective prediction. We have developed a VisitSense prototype system, and a visit-pattern-aware mobile advertising application that is based on it. Furthermore, we deploy the system in the COEX Mall, one of the largest shopping malls in Korea, and conduct diverse experiments to show the effectiveness of VisitSense.

  14. Challenges for coexistence of machine to machine and human to human applications in mobile network

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sanyal, R.; Cianca, E.; Prasad, Ramjee

    2012-01-01

    A key factor for the evolution of the mobile networks towards 4G is to bring to fruition high bandwidth per mobile node. Eventually, due to the advent of a new class of applications, namely, Machine-to-Machine, we foresee new challenges where bandwidth per user is no more the primal driver...... be evolved to address various nuances of the mobile devices used by man and machines. The bigger question is as follows. Is the state-of-the-art mobile network designed optimally to cater both the Human-to-Human and Machine-to-Machine applications? This paper presents the primary challenges....... As an immediate impact of the high penetration of M2M devices, we envisage a surge in the signaling messages for mobility and location management. The cell size will shrivel due to high tele-density resulting in even more signaling messages related to handoff and location updates. The mobile network should...

  15. Walking Pattern Generation of Dual-Arm Mobile Robot Using Preview Controller

    OpenAIRE

    P. Wu; W. Wu

    2012-01-01

    Based on the stability request of robot’s moving on the ground, the motion planning of dual-arm mobile robot when moving on the ground is studied and the preview control system is applied in the robot walking pattern generation. Direct question of robot kinematics in the extended task space is analyzed according to Degrees of Freedom configuration of the dual-arm mobile robot. It is proved that the preview control system could be used in the generation of robot Center of Mass forward trajecto...

  16. Predicting Human Mobility Patterns in Marine Ecosystems: Entropy and Home Range Calculations Based on High-Resolution Fishing Vessel Tracking Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Murawski, S. A.

    2016-02-01

    A number of recent studies have developed metrics of human mobility patterns based on georeferenced cell phone records. The studies generally indicate a high degree of predictability in human location and relatively narrow home ranges for most people. In marine ecosystems there are a number of important uses for such calculations including marine spatial planning and predicting the impacts of marine management options such as establishing marine protected areas (MPAs). In this study we use individual fishing vessel satellite tracking (VMS) records ( 30 million records) obtained from commercial reef fish fishing vessels in the Gulf of Mexico during 2006-2014. This period witnessed the establishment of a variety of new regulations including individual fishing quotas (IFQs) for snapper, grouper, and tilefish, establishment of spatial-area closures, and the temporary closure of as much as 85,000 nautical miles of productive fishing grounds associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill accident. Vessel positions were obtained, with a location frequency of one hour. From these VMS data we calculated three measures of entropy (degree of repeatability in spatial use), as well as calculated the axis of gyration (home range) for each vessel in the data set. These calculations were related to a variety of descriptor variables including vessel size, distance from home port to predominant fishing grounds, revenue generated on fishing trips, and fishing regulations. The applicability of these calculations to marine resource management applications is discussed.

  17. Multi-scale spatio-temporal analysis of human mobility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Alessandretti, Laura; Sapiezynski, Piotr; Jørgensen, Sune Lehmann

    2017-01-01

    The recent availability of digital traces generated by phone calls and online logins has significantly increased the scientific understanding of human mobility. Until now, however, limited data resolution and coverage have hindered a coherent description of human displacements across different...

  18. Unified underpinning of human mobility in the real world and cyberspace

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Yi-Ming; Zeng, An; Yan, Xiao-Yong; Wang, Wen-Xu; Lai, Ying-Cheng

    2016-05-01

    Human movements in the real world and in cyberspace affect not only dynamical processes such as epidemic spreading and information diffusion but also social and economical activities such as urban planning and personalized recommendation in online shopping. Despite recent efforts in characterizing and modeling human behaviors in both the real and cyber worlds, the fundamental dynamics underlying human mobility have not been well understood. We develop a minimal, memory-based random walk model in limited space for reproducing, with a single parameter, the key statistical behaviors characterizing human movements in both cases. The model is validated using relatively big data from mobile phone and online commerce, suggesting memory-based random walk dynamics as the unified underpinning for human mobility, regardless of whether it occurs in the real world or in cyberspace.

  19. Audio Technology and Mobile Human Computer Interaction

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Chamberlain, Alan; Bødker, Mads; Hazzard, Adrian

    2017-01-01

    Audio-based mobile technology is opening up a range of new interactive possibilities. This paper brings some of those possibilities to light by offering a range of perspectives based in this area. It is not only the technical systems that are developing, but novel approaches to the design...... and understanding of audio-based mobile systems are evolving to offer new perspectives on interaction and design and support such systems to be applied in areas, such as the humanities....

  20. Mobilization and Counter-mobilization Against LGBT Rights. Conservative Responses to the Recognition of Human Rights

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jairo Antonio López Pacheco

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available This article analyzes the counter-mobilization against the institutionalization of lgbt rights in Colombia and Mexico. From an analytical framework that integrates the dimension of mobilization and counter-mobilization in the conflicts for rights, we show that the conservative reaction in Colombia and Mexico is a coordinated and active response against the conquests of sexual minorities, led by the churches, which has slowed the progress of effective recognition of human rights. We have identified similar strategies of mobilization of demand frameworks, mobilization structures and collective action repertories in both cases that have raised the political costs of institutional changes through two mechanisms of conflict: street and electoral activism and institutional activism.

  1. VisitSense: Sensing Place Visit Patterns from Ambient Radio on Smartphones for Targeted Mobile Ads in Shopping Malls

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Byoungjip Kim

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we introduce a novel smartphone framework called VisitSense that automatically detects and predicts a smartphone user’s place visits from ambient radio to enable behavioral targeting for mobile ads in large shopping malls. VisitSense enables mobile app developers to adopt visit-pattern-aware mobile advertising for shopping mall visitors in their apps. It also benefits mobile users by allowing them to receive highly relevant mobile ads that are aware of their place visit patterns in shopping malls. To achieve the goal, VisitSense employs accurate visit detection and prediction methods. For accurate visit detection, we develop a change-based detection method to take into consideration the stability change of ambient radio and the mobility change of users. It performs well in large shopping malls where ambient radio is quite noisy and causes existing algorithms to easily fail. In addition, we proposed a causality-based visit prediction model to capture the causality in the sequential visit patterns for effective prediction. We have developed a VisitSense prototype system, and a visit-pattern-aware mobile advertising application that is based on it. Furthermore, we deploy the system in the COEX Mall, one of the largest shopping malls in Korea, and conduct diverse experiments to show the effectiveness of VisitSense.

  2. Cross-checking different sources of mobility information.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maxime Lenormand

    Full Text Available The pervasive use of new mobile devices has allowed a better characterization in space and time of human concentrations and mobility in general. Besides its theoretical interest, describing mobility is of great importance for a number of practical applications ranging from the forecast of disease spreading to the design of new spaces in urban environments. While classical data sources, such as surveys or census, have a limited level of geographical resolution (e.g., districts, municipalities, counties are typically used or are restricted to generic workdays or weekends, the data coming from mobile devices can be precisely located both in time and space. Most previous works have used a single data source to study human mobility patterns. Here we perform instead a cross-check analysis by comparing results obtained with data collected from three different sources: Twitter, census, and cell phones. The analysis is focused on the urban areas of Barcelona and Madrid, for which data of the three types is available. We assess the correlation between the datasets on different aspects: the spatial distribution of people concentration, the temporal evolution of people density, and the mobility patterns of individuals. Our results show that the three data sources are providing comparable information. Even though the representativeness of Twitter geolocated data is lower than that of mobile phone and census data, the correlations between the population density profiles and mobility patterns detected by the three datasets are close to one in a grid with cells of 2×2 and 1×1 square kilometers. This level of correlation supports the feasibility of interchanging the three data sources at the spatio-temporal scales considered.

  3. Sensing expressive lips with a mobile phone

    OpenAIRE

    ur Réhman, Shafiq; Liu, Li

    2008-01-01

    Considering potential benefits of vibrations in mobile phones,we propose an intuitive method to render human emotions for the vi-sually impaired. A mobile phone is "synchronized" with emotional in-formation extracted from human lips dynamics. By holding the mobilephone, the user will be able to get on-line emotion information of others.Experimental results based on usability evaluation of the system are encouraging. The user studies show a perfect pattern recognition accuracy on the designed ...

  4. Identifying seasonal mobility profiles from anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data. Application in food security.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zufiria, Pedro J; Pastor-Escuredo, David; Úbeda-Medina, Luis; Hernandez-Medina, Miguel A; Barriales-Valbuena, Iker; Morales, Alfredo J; Jacques, Damien C; Nkwambi, Wilfred; Diop, M Bamba; Quinn, John; Hidalgo-Sanchís, Paula; Luengo-Oroz, Miguel

    2018-01-01

    We propose a framework for the systematic analysis of mobile phone data to identify relevant mobility profiles in a population. The proposed framework allows finding distinct human mobility profiles based on the digital trace of mobile phone users characterized by a Matrix of Individual Trajectories (IT-Matrix). This matrix gathers a consistent and regularized description of individual trajectories that enables multi-scale representations along time and space, which can be used to extract aggregated indicators such as a dynamic multi-scale population count. Unsupervised clustering of individual trajectories generates mobility profiles (clusters of similar individual trajectories) which characterize relevant group behaviors preserving optimal aggregation levels for detailed and privacy-secured mobility characterization. The application of the proposed framework is illustrated by analyzing fully anonymized data on human mobility from mobile phones in Senegal at the arrondissement level over a calendar year. The analysis of monthly mobility patterns at the livelihood zone resolution resulted in the discovery and characterization of seasonal mobility profiles related with economic activities, agricultural calendars and rainfalls. The use of these mobility profiles could support the timely identification of mobility changes in vulnerable populations in response to external shocks (such as natural disasters, civil conflicts or sudden increases of food prices) to monitor food security.

  5. Identifying seasonal mobility profiles from anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data. Application in food security.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pedro J Zufiria

    Full Text Available We propose a framework for the systematic analysis of mobile phone data to identify relevant mobility profiles in a population. The proposed framework allows finding distinct human mobility profiles based on the digital trace of mobile phone users characterized by a Matrix of Individual Trajectories (IT-Matrix. This matrix gathers a consistent and regularized description of individual trajectories that enables multi-scale representations along time and space, which can be used to extract aggregated indicators such as a dynamic multi-scale population count. Unsupervised clustering of individual trajectories generates mobility profiles (clusters of similar individual trajectories which characterize relevant group behaviors preserving optimal aggregation levels for detailed and privacy-secured mobility characterization. The application of the proposed framework is illustrated by analyzing fully anonymized data on human mobility from mobile phones in Senegal at the arrondissement level over a calendar year. The analysis of monthly mobility patterns at the livelihood zone resolution resulted in the discovery and characterization of seasonal mobility profiles related with economic activities, agricultural calendars and rainfalls. The use of these mobility profiles could support the timely identification of mobility changes in vulnerable populations in response to external shocks (such as natural disasters, civil conflicts or sudden increases of food prices to monitor food security.

  6. Factors associated with patterns of mobile technology use among persons who inject drugs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Collins, Kelly M; Armenta, Richard F; Cuevas-Mota, Jazmine; Liu, Lin; Strathdee, Steffanie A; Garfein, Richard S

    2016-01-01

    New and innovative methods of delivering interventions are needed to further reduce risky behaviors and increase overall health among persons who inject drugs (PWID). Mobile health (mHealth) interventions have potential for reaching PWID; however, little is known about mobile technology use (MTU) in this population. In this study, the authors identify patterns of MTU and identified factors associated with MTU among a cohort of PWID. Data were collected through a longitudinal cohort study examining drug use, risk behaviors, and health status among PWID in San Diego, California. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to define patterns of MTU (i.e., making voice calls, text messaging, and mobile Internet access). Multinomial logistic regression was then used to identify demographic characteristics, risk behaviors, and health indicators associated with mobile technology use class. In LCA, a 4-class solution fit the data best. Class 1 was defined by low MTU (22%, n = 100); class 2, by PWID who accessed the Internet using a mobile device but did not use voice or text messaging (20%, n = 95); class 3, by primarily voice, text, and connected Internet use (17%, n = 91); and class 4, by high MTU (41%, n = 175). Compared with low MTU, high MTU class members were more likely to be younger, have higher socioeconomic status, sell drugs, and inject methamphetamine daily. The majority of PWID in San Diego use mobile technology for voice, text, and/or Internet access, indicating that rapid uptake of mHealth interventions may be possible in this population. However, low ownership and use of mobile technology among older and/or homeless individuals will need to be considered when implementing mHealth interventions among PWID.

  7. Designing Interactions in Tourism Mediascape: Identification of Patterns for Mobile 2.0 Platform

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tussyadiah, Iis; Fesenmaier, Daniel R.; Yoo, Youngjin

    2008-01-01

    This study uses pattern language theory in order to identify patterns of tourists’ interactions within their social networks while they are experiencing tourism destinations. The patterns were conceptualized from sequences of tourists’ stories and observers’ field notes through narrative analysis....... The identified patterns were then organized into a typical scenario of tourism experiences. The Mobile 2.0 platform is then characterized as an interactive mediascape that mediates tourists in situ.......This study uses pattern language theory in order to identify patterns of tourists’ interactions within their social networks while they are experiencing tourism destinations. The patterns were conceptualized from sequences of tourists’ stories and observers’ field notes through narrative analysis...

  8. Weather Effects on the Patterns of People's Everyday Activities: A Study Using GPS Traces of Mobile Phone Users

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leong, Tuck W.; Sekimoto, Yoshihide; Shibasaki, Ryosuke

    2013-01-01

    This study explores the effects that the weather has on people's everyday activity patterns. Temperature, rainfall, and wind speed were used as weather parameters. People's daily activity patterns were inferred, such as place visited, the time this took place, the duration of the visit, based on the GPS location traces of their mobile phones overlaid upon Yellow Pages information. Our analysis of 31,855 mobile phone users allowed us to infer that people were more likely to stay longer at eateries or food outlets, and (to a lesser degree) at retail or shopping areas when the weather is very cold or when conditions are calm (non-windy). When compared to people's regular activity patterns, certain weather conditions affected people's movements and activities noticeably at different times of the day. On cold days, people's activities were found to be more diverse especially after 10AM, showing greatest variations between 2PM and 6PM. A similar trend is observed between 10AM and midnight on rainy days, with people's activities found to be most diverse on days with heaviest rainfalls or on days when the wind speed was stronger than 4 km/h, especially between 10AM–1AM. Finally, we observed that different geographical areas of a large metropolis were impacted differently by the weather. Using data of urban infrastructure to characterize areas, we found strong correlations between weather conditions upon people's accessibility to trains. This study sheds new light on the influence of weather conditions on human behavior, in particular the choice of daily activities and how mobile phone data can be used to investigate the influence of environmental factors on urban dynamics. PMID:24367481

  9. On the analysis of human mobility model for content broadcasting in 5G networks

    KAUST Repository

    Lau, Chun Pong

    2018-02-15

    Today\\'s mobile service providers aim at ensuring end-to-end performance guarantees. Hence, ensuring an efficient content delivery to end users is highly required. Currently, transmitting popular contents in modern mobile networks rely on unicast transmission. This result into a huge underutilization of the wireless bandwidth. The urban scale mobility of users is beneficial for mobile networks to allocate radio resources spatially and temporally for broadcasting contents. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive analysis on a human activity/mobility model and the content broadcasting system in 5G mobile networks. The objective of this work is to describe how human daily activities could improve the content broadcasting efficiency. We achieve the objective by analyzing the transition probabilities of a user traveling over several places according to the change of states of daily human activities. Using a reallife simulation, we demonstrate the relationship between the human mobility and the optimization objective of the content broadcasting system.

  10. Mobile Robots in Human Environments

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Svenstrup, Mikael

    intelligent mobile robotic devices capable of being a more natural and sociable actor in a human environment. More specific the emphasis is on safe and natural motion and navigation issues. First part of the work focus on developing a robotic system, which estimates human interest in interacting......, lawn mowers, toy pets, or as assisting technologies for care giving. If we want robots to be an even larger and more integrated part of our every- day environments, they need to become more intelligent, and behave safe and natural to the humans in the environment. This thesis deals with making...... as being able to navigate safely around one person, the robots must also be able to navigate in environments with more people. This can be environments such as pedestrian streets, hospital corridors, train stations or airports. The developed human-aware navigation strategy is enhanced to formulate...

  11. Energy-Efficient Crowdsensing of Human Mobility and Signal Levels in Cellular Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foremski, Paweł; Gorawski, Michał; Grochla, Krzysztof; Polys, Konrad

    2015-01-01

    The paper presents a practical application of the crowdsensing idea to measure human mobility and signal coverage in cellular networks. Currently, virtually everyone is carrying a mobile phone, which may be used as a sensor to gather research data by measuring, e.g., human mobility and radio signal levels. However, many users are unwilling to participate in crowdsensing experiments. This work begins with the analysis of the barriers for engaging people in crowdsensing. A survey showed that people who agree to participate in crowdsensing expect a minimum impact on their battery lifetime and phone usage habits. To address these requirements, this paper proposes an application for measuring the location and signal strength data based on energy-efficient GPS tracking, which allows one to perform the measurements of human mobility and radio signal levels with minimum energy utilization and without any engagement of the user. The method described combines measurements from the accelerometer with effective management of the GPS to monitor the user mobility with the decrease in battery lifetime by approximately 20%. To show the applicability of the proposed platform, the sample results of signal level distribution and coverage maps gathered for an LTE network and representing human mobility are shown. PMID:26340633

  12. Estimating Human Predictability From Mobile Sensor Data

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Bjørn Sand; Larsen, Jakob Eg; Jensen, Kristian

    2010-01-01

    Quantification of human behavior is of prime interest in many applications ranging from behavioral science to practical applications like GSM resource planning and context-aware services. As proxies for humans, we apply multiple mobile phone sensors all conveying information about human behavior....... Using a recent, information theoretic approach it is demonstrated that the trajectories of individual sensors are highly predictable given complete knowledge of the infinite past. We suggest using a new approach to time scale selection which demonstrates that participants have even higher predictability...

  13. Environmental Change and Human Mobility: Trends, Law and Policy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Susan F. Martin

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Enhancing the protection of persons displaced by natural disasters and the impacts of climate change will require sustained attention. This article identifies practical solutions, many of which are currently under consideration by governments and international organizations, to improve the lives of millions of people affected by environmental crises. It begins with a brief overview of why people move, the nature of those movements, and the relationship between human mobility and adaptation to environmental change by highlighting three types of mobility – migration, displacement and planned relocation. Next, the international and regional level will be discussed, with particular focus on legislative and policy frameworks for addressing human mobility in the context of environmental change. The article identifies gaps in existing frameworks as well as recent efforts to address them, particularly through mini-multilateral initiatives aimed at identifying principles and practices that should guide governmental action. The article concludes that efforts to improve responses require a better evidence base than currently exists on issues such as the environmental determinants of migration, displacement and planned relocation; the multi-faceted ways in which environmental factors relate to the many other causes of population movements in the cases of human mobility; and the impact of such movements on the well-being of migrants, communities of origin, and communities of destination.

  14. Shifting Patterns of Transnational Academic Mobility: A Comparative and Historical Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Terri

    2009-01-01

    This article is an initial attempt to illustrate how patterns of academic mobility in the history of universities have been framed by the international politics of particular time periods. The article briefly looks at "the medieval period" and then at the emergent colonial and nationalist periods, including the ways that institutions as…

  15. From human behavior to the spread of mobile phone viruses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Pu

    Percolation theory was initiated some 50 years ago as a mathematical framework for the study of random physical processes such as the flow of a fluid through a disordered porous medium. It has been proved to be a remarkably rich theory, with applications from thermodynamic phase transitions to complex networks. In this dissertation percolation theory is used to study the diffusion process of mobile phone viruses. Some methodologies widely used in statistical physics are also applied to uncover the underlying statistical laws of human behavior and simulate the spread of mobile phone viruses in a large population. I find that while Bluetooth viruses can reach all susceptible handsets with time, they spread slowly due to human mobility, offering ample opportunities to deploy antiviral software. In contrast, viruses utilizing multimedia messaging services (MMS) could infect all users in hours, but currently a phase transition on the underlying call graph limits them to only a small fraction of the susceptible users. These results explain the lack of a major mobile virus breakout so far and predict that once a mobile operating system's market share reaches the phase transition point, viruses will pose a serious threat to mobile communications. These studies show how the large datasets and tools of statistical physics can be used to study some specific and important problems, such as the spread of mobile phone viruses.

  16. Patterns of geographic mobility predict barriers to engagement in HIV care and antiretroviral treatment adherence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taylor, Barbara S; Reyes, Emily; Levine, Elizabeth A; Khan, Shah Z; Garduño, L Sergio; Donastorg, Yeycy; Hammer, Scott M; Brudney, Karen; Hirsch, Jennifer S

    2014-06-01

    Migration and geographic mobility increase risk for HIV infection and may influence engagement in HIV care and adherence to antiretroviral therapy. Our goal is to use the migration-linked communities of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and New York City, New York, to determine the impact of geographic mobility on HIV care engagement and adherence to treatment. In-depth interviews were conducted with HIV+Dominicans receiving antiretroviral therapy, reporting travel or migration in the past 6 months and key informants (n=45). Mobility maps, visual representations of individual migration histories, including lifetime residence(s) and all trips over the past 2 years, were generated for all HIV+ Dominicans. Data from interviews and field observation were iteratively reviewed for themes. Mobility mapping revealed five distinct mobility patterns: travel for care, work-related travel, transnational travel (nuclear family at both sites), frequent long-stay travel, and vacation. Mobility patterns, including distance, duration, and complexity, varied by motivation for travel. There were two dominant barriers to care. First, a fear of HIV-related stigma at the destination led to delays seeking care and poor adherence. Second, longer trips led to treatment interruptions due to limited medication supply (30-day maximum dictated by programs or insurers). There was a notable discordance between what patients and providers perceived as mobility-induced barriers to care and the most common barriers found in the analysis. Interventions to improve HIV care for mobile populations should consider motivation for travel and address structural barriers to engagement in care and adherence.

  17. Seasonal Patterns of Community Participation and Mobility of Wheelchair Users Over an Entire Year.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Borisoff, Jaimie F; Ripat, Jacquie; Chan, Franco

    2018-03-23

    To describe how people who use wheelchairs participate and move at home and in the community over an entire yearlong period, including during times of inclement weather conditions. Longitudinal mixed-methods research study. Urban community in Canada. People who use a wheelchair for home and community mobility (N=11). Not applicable. Use of a global positioning system (GPS) tracker for movement in community (number of trips per day), use of accelerometer for bouts of wheeling mobility (number of bouts per day, speed, distance, and duration), prompted recall interviews to identify supports and barriers to mobility and participation. More trips per day were taken during the summer (P= .03) and on days with no snow and temperatures above 0°C. Participants reliant on public transportation demonstrated more weather-specific changes in their trip patterns. The number of daily bouts of mobility remained similar across seasons; total daily distance wheeled, duration, and speed were higher on summer days, days with no snow, and days with temperatures above 0°C. A higher proportion of outdoor wheeling bouts occurred in summer (P=.02) and with temperatures above 0°C (P=.03). Inaccessible public environments were the primary barrier to community mobility and participation; access to social supports and private transportation were the primary supports. Objective support is provided for the influence of various seasonal weather conditions on community mobility and participation for people who use a wheelchair. Longitudinal data collection provided a detailed understanding of the patterns of, and influences on, wheelchair mobility and participation within wheelchair users' own homes and communities. Copyright © 2018 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Does Human Capital Investment Impact the Earning Mobility of the Near Poor?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Karasik, Bradley

    2012-01-01

    This secondary analysis of the earning mobility of the near poor examined the impact of human capital investment on the earning mobility of the near poor between 2005 and 2009. The theory framing this study is Human Capital Theory (Shultz, 1961). Other demographic and socioeconomic variables were included in this study to further explore factors…

  19. Implications of Mobility Patterns and HIV Risks for HIV Prevention Among Migrant Market Vendors in Kazakhstan

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gilbert, Louisa; Terlikbayeva, Assel; West, Brooke; Bearman, Peter; Wu, Elwin; Zhussupov, Baurzhan; Platais, Ingrida; Brisson, Anne

    2011-01-01

    Objectives. We examined the relationships between mobility characteristics and sexual risk behaviors among male and female migrant market vendors in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Methods. Participants completed a structured interview covering sociodemographics, mobility characteristics, sexual behaviors, and biomarkers for HIV, HCV, and syphilis. We used multivariate analyses to examine associations between mobility patterns and HIV risks after adjusting for sociodemographics. Results. Longer duration of a participant's last trip outside Almaty increased the odds of reporting multiple sexual partners. More frequent travel to visit family or friends was associated with multiple sexual partners and unprotected sex with steady partners. More frequent travel to buy goods in the past year was associated with multiple sexual partners. Men who traveled more often to buy goods were more likely to have purchased sex within the previous 90 days. Conclusions. Relationships between mobility patterns and sexual risk behaviors underscore the need for HIV-prevention strategies targeting the specific transmission dynamics that migrant vendors are likely to present. PMID:21493929

  20. Depth camera driven mobile robot for human localization and following

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skordilis, Nikolaos; Vidakis, Nikolaos; Triantafyllidis, Georgios

    2014-01-01

    In this paper the design and the development of a mobile robot able to locate and then follow a human target is described. Both the integration of the required mechatronics components and the development of appropriate software are covered. The main sensor of the developed mobile robot is an RGB-...

  1. Demonstration of Mobile Auto-GPS for Large Scale Human Mobility Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Horanont, Teerayut; Witayangkurn, Apichon; Shibasaki, Ryosuke

    2013-04-01

    The greater affordability of digital devices and advancement of positioning and tracking capabilities have presided over today's age of geospatial Big Data. Besides, the emergences of massive mobile location data and rapidly increase in computational capabilities open up new opportunities for modeling of large-scale urban dynamics. In this research, we demonstrate the new type of mobile location data called "Auto-GPS" and its potential use cases for urban applications. More than one million Auto-GPS mobile phone users in Japan have been observed nationwide in a completely anonymous form for over an entire year from August 2010 to July 2011 for this analysis. A spate of natural disasters and other emergencies during the past few years has prompted new interest in how mobile location data can help enhance our security, especially in urban areas which are highly vulnerable to these impacts. New insights gleaned from mining the Auto-GPS data suggest a number of promising directions of modeling human movement during a large-scale crisis. We question how people react under critical situation and how their movement changes during severe disasters. Our results demonstrate a case of major earthquake and explain how people who live in Tokyo Metropolitan and vicinity area behave and return home after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011.

  2. Cooperative mobility systems: The human factor challenges.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Martens, Marieke; Kroon, Elisabeth

    2014-01-01

    This paper presents a vision on cooperative mobility systems from a human factors perspective. To create a common ground for future developments, it’s important to define the common research themes and knowledge gaps. This article presents what steps need to be taken in order to come to proper

  3. Modelling cholera epidemics: the role of waterways, human mobility and sanitation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mari, L; Bertuzzo, E; Righetto, L; Casagrandi, R; Gatto, M; Rodriguez-Iturbe, I; Rinaldo, A

    2012-02-07

    We investigate the role of human mobility as a driver for long-range spreading of cholera infections, which primarily propagate through hydrologically controlled ecological corridors. Our aim is to build a spatially explicit model of a disease epidemic, which is relevant to both social and scientific issues. We present a two-layer network model that accounts for the interplay between epidemiological dynamics, hydrological transport and long-distance dissemination of the pathogen Vibrio cholerae owing to host movement, described here by means of a gravity-model approach. We test our model against epidemiological data recorded during the extensive cholera outbreak occurred in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa during 2000-2001. We show that long-range human movement is fundamental in quantifying otherwise unexplained inter-catchment transport of V. cholerae, thus playing a key role in the formation of regional patterns of cholera epidemics. We also show quantitatively how heterogeneously distributed drinking water supplies and sanitation conditions may affect large-scale cholera transmission, and analyse the effects of different sanitation policies.

  4. Modelling cholera epidemics: the role of waterways, human mobility and sanitation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mari, L.; Bertuzzo, E.; Righetto, L.; Casagrandi, R.; Gatto, M.; Rodriguez-Iturbe, I.; Rinaldo, A.

    2012-01-01

    We investigate the role of human mobility as a driver for long-range spreading of cholera infections, which primarily propagate through hydrologically controlled ecological corridors. Our aim is to build a spatially explicit model of a disease epidemic, which is relevant to both social and scientific issues. We present a two-layer network model that accounts for the interplay between epidemiological dynamics, hydrological transport and long-distance dissemination of the pathogen Vibrio cholerae owing to host movement, described here by means of a gravity-model approach. We test our model against epidemiological data recorded during the extensive cholera outbreak occurred in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa during 2000–2001. We show that long-range human movement is fundamental in quantifying otherwise unexplained inter-catchment transport of V. cholerae, thus playing a key role in the formation of regional patterns of cholera epidemics. We also show quantitatively how heterogeneously distributed drinking water supplies and sanitation conditions may affect large-scale cholera transmission, and analyse the effects of different sanitation policies. PMID:21752809

  5. EVALUATION OF EMF EXPOSURE OF MOBILE PHONES ON HUMAN HEAD

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    N. I. Vtornikova

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Introduction. Mobile phones are worldwide spread nowadays. Smartphones penetration is growing year after year. Numerous studies indicate the negative effect of EMF exposure of these devices on humans. Therefore, it is important to study the peculiarities of their influence on the target organ-the brain. It is important for solving this problem to find out the real situation of the distribution of energy flux density (EFD of EMF exposure near the front panel of the apparatus.The aim of the study is to determine and compare EMF exposure from smartphones and classic mobile phones on human head.Material and methods. The original method patented in the Russian Federation was used in this study. The used original measuring setup is also patented, developed and assembled by the authors of the study. The object of the study was classical mobile phones and smartphones widespread at the time of work.Results. We got the graphic of matrices of distribution of energy flux density (EFD of EMF exposure in the plane against the front panel of 10 apparatus corresponding to the topography of a human head. The study revealed peculiarities of this distribution in smartphones and the classic mobile phones and got the values of energy flux density (EFD of EMF exposure in the investigated devices acting primarily on the brain.Conclusions. The design of smartphones and mobile phones determines the overall picture of distribution of EFD of EMF exposure in the plane against the front panel for devices of a particular type. This picture must be taken into account when planning epidemiological and experimental studies to obtain comparable results. Progress in the development of mobile communication technologies has led to an increase in the electromagnetic load on users of modern devices.

  6. The opportunistic transmission of wireless worms between mobile devices

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rhodes, C. J.; Nekovee, M.

    2008-12-01

    The ubiquity of portable wireless-enabled computing and communications devices has stimulated the emergence of malicious codes (wireless worms) that are capable of spreading between spatially proximal devices. The potential exists for worms to be opportunistically transmitted between devices as they move around, so human mobility patterns will have an impact on epidemic spread. The scenario we address in this paper is proximity attacks from fleetingly in-contact wireless devices with short-range communication range, such as Bluetooth-enabled smart phones. An individual-based model of mobile devices is introduced and the effect of population characteristics and device behaviour on the outbreak dynamics is investigated. The model uses straight-line motion to achieve population, though it is recognised that this is a highly simplified representation of human mobility patterns. We show that the contact rate can be derived from the underlying mobility model and, through extensive simulation, that mass-action epidemic models remain applicable to worm spreading in the low density regime studied here. The model gives useful analytical expressions against which more refined simulations of worm spread can be developed and tested.

  7. HUMAN FOLLOWING ON ROS FRAMEWORK A MOBILE ROBOT

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gigih Priyandoko

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available Service mobile robot is playing a more critical role in today's society as more people such as a disabled person or the elderly are in need of mobile robot assistance. An autonomous person following ability shows great importance to the overall role of service mobile robot in assisting human. The objective of this paper focuses on developing a robot follow a person. The robot is equipped with the necessary sensors such as a Microsoft Kinect sensor and a Hokuyo laser sensor. Four suitable tracking methods are introduced in this project which is implemented and tested on the person following algorithm. The tracking methods implemented are face detection, leg detection, color detection and person blob detection. All of the algorithms implementations in this project is performed using Robot Operating System (ROS. The result showed that the mobile robot could track and follow the target person based on the person movement.

  8. The Human Central Pattern Generator for Locomotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Minassian, Karen; Hofstoetter, Ursula S; Dzeladini, Florin; Guertin, Pierre A; Ijspeert, Auke

    2017-03-01

    The ability of dedicated spinal circuits, referred to as central pattern generators (CPGs), to produce the basic rhythm and neural activation patterns underlying locomotion can be demonstrated under specific experimental conditions in reduced animal preparations. The existence of CPGs in humans is a matter of debate. Equally elusive is the contribution of CPGs to normal bipedal locomotion. To address these points, we focus on human studies that utilized spinal cord stimulation or pharmacological neuromodulation to generate rhythmic activity in individuals with spinal cord injury, and on neuromechanical modeling of human locomotion. In the absence of volitional motor control and step-specific sensory feedback, the human lumbar spinal cord can produce rhythmic muscle activation patterns that closely resemble CPG-induced neural activity of the isolated animal spinal cord. In this sense, CPGs in humans can be defined by the activity they produce. During normal locomotion, CPGs could contribute to the activation patterns during specific phases of the step cycle and simplify supraspinal control of step cycle frequency as a feedforward component to achieve a targeted speed. Determining how the human CPGs operate will be essential to advance the theory of neural control of locomotion and develop new locomotor neurorehabilitation paradigms.

  9. An Efficient and Secure m-IPS Scheme of Mobile Devices for Human-Centric Computing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Young-Sik Jeong

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Recent rapid developments in wireless and mobile IT technologies have led to their application in many real-life areas, such as disasters, home networks, mobile social networks, medical services, industry, schools, and the military. Business/work environments have become wire/wireless, integrated with wireless networks. Although the increase in the use of mobile devices that can use wireless networks increases work efficiency and provides greater convenience, wireless access to networks represents a security threat. Currently, wireless intrusion prevention systems (IPSs are used to prevent wireless security threats. However, these are not an ideal security measure for businesses that utilize mobile devices because they do not take account of temporal-spatial and role information factors. Therefore, in this paper, an efficient and secure mobile-IPS (m-IPS is proposed for businesses utilizing mobile devices in mobile environments for human-centric computing. The m-IPS system incorporates temporal-spatial awareness in human-centric computing with various mobile devices and checks users’ temporal spatial information, profiles, and role information to provide precise access control. And it also can extend application of m-IPS to the Internet of things (IoT, which is one of the important advanced technologies for supporting human-centric computing environment completely, for real ubiquitous field with mobile devices.

  10. Road Signs: Geosemiotics and Human Mobility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hamid, Salmiah Binti Abdul

    In order to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art developments, this thesis presents a theoretical lens that is used to anchor the subjects of the studies of ‘people’, ‘road signs’ and ‘built environment’ through the theories of geosemiotics and mobility. The fields of geosemiotics and mobi......In order to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art developments, this thesis presents a theoretical lens that is used to anchor the subjects of the studies of ‘people’, ‘road signs’ and ‘built environment’ through the theories of geosemiotics and mobility. The fields of geosemiotics...... and mobility are important aspects of this research; they provide another theoretical challenge in the form of merging these two disciplines in the analysis in order to enhance a dialogue between the fields of urban design and graphic design practices. Thus, the interrelation between the two theories will help...... to answer the question of whether road signs have significant impact on human behaviour when moving in an urban environment. Selected cities in Denmark and Scotland were used as study areas in this research project. The methods were conducted within urban settings as well as controlled settings...

  11. Human mobility, cognition and GISc

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Welcome to Human Mobility, Cognition and GISc’ - a conference hosted by the University of Copenhagen on November 9, 2015. The present document encloses the abstracts contributed by five invited speakers and eight submitted as responses to a public call made on June 1st 2015. In GIS and related...... the psychological/cognitive and neurophysiological background of our spatial behavior - including our abilities to perceive, memorize, apply and communicate spatial knowledge. It is the aim of the conference to bring together professionals from cognitive, analytical and geo-technical sciences (including...

  12. The tomography of human mobility - what do shortest-path trees reveal?

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Thiemann, Christian [Eng. Sci. and Appl. Math, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (United States); Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Goettingen (Germany); Grady, Daniel; Brockmann, Dirk [Eng. Sci. and Appl. Math, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (United States)

    2010-07-01

    Similar to illustrating the anatomy of organs using pictures of tissue slices taken at various depths, we construct shortest-path trees of different nodes to create tomograms of large-scale human mobility networks. This tomography allows us to measure global properties of the system conditioned on a reference location in the network to gain a fuller characterization of a node. It also suggests a canonical coordinate system for representing complex networks and dynamical processes thereon in a simplified way, revealing a new symmetry in the human mobility networks we investigated. Furthermore, introducing the notion of tree similarity, we devised a new technique for clustering nodes with similar topological footprint, yielding a unique and efficient method for community identification and topological backbone extraction. We applied these methods to a multi-scale human mobility network obtained from the dollar-bill-tracking site wheresgoerge.com and to the U.S. and world-wide air transportation network.

  13. Assessing mobility and redistribution patterns of sand and oil agglomerates in the surf zone

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dalyander, P. Soupy; Long, Joesph W.; Plant, Nathaniel G.; Thompson, David M.

    2014-01-01

    Heavier-than-water sand and oil agglomerates that formed in the surf zone following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill continued to cause beach re-oiling 3 years after initial stranding. To understand this phenomena and inform operational response now and for future spills, a numerical method to assess the mobility and alongshore movement of these “surface residual balls” (SRBs) was developed and applied to the Alabama and western Florida coasts. Alongshore flow and SRB mobility and potential flux were used to identify likely patterns of transport and deposition. Results indicate that under typical calm conditions, cm-size SRBs are unlikely to move alongshore, whereas mobility and transport is likely during storms. The greater mobility of sand compared to SRBs makes burial and exhumation of SRBs likely, and inlets were identified as probable SRB traps. Analysis of field data supports these model results.

  14. The use of mobile phones for demographic surveillance of mobile pastoralists and their animals in Chad: proof of principle.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jean-Richard, Vreni; Crump, Lisa; Moto Daugla, Doumagoum; Hattendorf, Jan; Schelling, Esther; Zinsstag, Jakob

    2014-01-01

    Demographic information is foundational for the planning and management of social programmes, in particular health services. The existing INDEPTH network surveillance sites are limited to coverage of sedentary populations. Including mobile populations in this approach would be expensive, time consuming and possibly low in accuracy. Very little is known about the demography of mobile pastoralists and their animals, so innovative approaches are urgently needed. To test and evaluate a mobile demographic surveillance system for mobile pastoralist households, including livestock herds, using mobile phones. Mobile pastoralist camps were monitored (10 for 12 months and 10 for 18 months) using biweekly mobile phone calls with camp leaders and their wives to conduct interviews about the households and livestock. The collected information was validated through personal visits, GPS data and a livestock demographic model. The study showed the feasibility of mobile phone surveillance for mobile pastoralist camps, providing usable, valid information on human and livestock population structures, pregnancy outcomes and herd dynamics, as well as migration patterns. The approach was low-cost and applicable with the existing local resources. Demographic surveillance in mobile populations is feasible using mobile phones. Expansion of the small-scale system into a full mobile demographic surveillance system is warranted and would likely lead to improved planning and provision of human and animal health care.

  15. Local Optimization Strategies in Urban Vehicular Mobility.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pierpaolo Mastroianni

    Full Text Available The comprehension of vehicular traffic in urban environments is crucial to achieve a good management of the complex processes arising from people collective motion. Even allowing for the great complexity of human beings, human behavior turns out to be subject to strong constraints--physical, environmental, social, economic--that induce the emergence of common patterns. The observation and understanding of those patterns is key to setup effective strategies to optimize the quality of life in cities while not frustrating the natural need for mobility. In this paper we focus on vehicular mobility with the aim to reveal the underlying patterns and uncover the human strategies determining them. To this end we analyze a large dataset of GPS vehicles tracks collected in the Rome (Italy district during a month. We demonstrate the existence of a local optimization of travel times that vehicle drivers perform while choosing their journey. This finding is mirrored by two additional important facts, i.e., the observation that the average vehicle velocity increases by increasing the travel length and the emergence of a universal scaling law for the distribution of travel times at fixed traveled length. A simple modeling scheme confirms this scenario opening the way to further predictions.

  16. Detection of chaotic dynamics in human gait signals from mobile devices

    Science.gov (United States)

    DelMarco, Stephen; Deng, Yunbin

    2017-05-01

    The ubiquity of mobile devices offers the opportunity to exploit device-generated signal data for biometric identification, health monitoring, and activity recognition. In particular, mobile devices contain an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that produces acceleration and rotational rate information from the IMU accelerometers and gyros. These signals reflect motion properties of the human carrier. It is well-known that the complexity of bio-dynamical systems gives rise to chaotic dynamics. Knowledge of chaotic properties of these systems has shown utility, for example, in detecting abnormal medical conditions and neurological disorders. Chaotic dynamics has been found, in the lab, in bio-dynamical systems data such as electrocardiogram (heart), electroencephalogram (brain), and gait data. In this paper, we investigate the following question: can we detect chaotic dynamics in human gait as measured by IMU acceleration and gyro data from mobile phones? To detect chaotic dynamics, we perform recurrence analysis on real gyro and accelerometer signal data obtained from mobile devices. We apply the delay coordinate embedding approach from Takens' theorem to reconstruct the phase space trajectory of the multi-dimensional gait dynamical system. We use mutual information properties of the signal to estimate the appropriate delay value, and the false nearest neighbor approach to determine the phase space embedding dimension. We use a correlation dimension-based approach together with estimation of the largest Lyapunov exponent to make the chaotic dynamics detection decision. We investigate the ability to detect chaotic dynamics for the different one-dimensional IMU signals, across human subject and walking modes, and as a function of different phone locations on the human carrier.

  17. Collective human mobility pattern from taxi trips in urban area

    KAUST Repository

    Peng, Chengbin; Jin, Xiaogang; Wong, Ka-Chun; Shi, Meixia; Liò , Pietro

    2012-01-01

    explained by statistical theories and is verified by empirical data. These findings are applicable in predicting the road traffic, tracing the traffic pattern and diagnosing the traffic related abnormal events. These results can also be used to infer land

  18. The evolution of human mobility based on the public goods game

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, Shiqing

    2017-07-01

    We explore the evolution of human mobility behavior based on public goods game. By using mean field method, the population distribution in different regions is theoretical calculated. Numerical simulation results show that the correlation between the region's degree and its final population is not significant under a larger human migration rate. Human mobility could effectively promote cooperative behavior and the population balance of different regions. Therefore, encouraging individuals to migrate may increase the total benefits of the whole society. Moreover, increasing the cooperation cost could reduce the number of cooperators, and that would happen to the correlation between the region's degree and its final population. The results indicate the total population could not dramatically rise with the region's degree under an unfair society.

  19. Educational Mismatches and Earnings: Extensions of Occupational Mobility Theory and Evidence of Human Capital Depreciation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rubb, Stephen

    2006-01-01

    Using a human capital theory framework, this study examines the impact of educational mismatches on earnings and occupational mobility. Occupational mobility theory suggests that overeducated workers observe greater upward occupational mobility and undereducated workers observe lower upward occupational mobility. By extension, this leads to…

  20. Human mobility and the spatial transmission of influenza in the United States

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Charu, Vivek; Zeger, Scott; Gog, Julia

    2017-01-01

    Seasonal influenza epidemics offer unique opportunities to study the invasion and re-invasion waves of a pathogen in a partially immune population. Detailed patterns of spread remain elusive, however, due to lack of granular disease data. Here we model high-volume city-level medical claims data...... and human mobility proxies to explore the drivers of influenza spread in the US during 2002–2010. Although the speed and pathways of spread varied across seasons, seven of eight epidemics likely originated in the Southern US. Each epidemic was associated with 1–5 early long-range transmission events, half...... of which sparked onward transmission. Gravity model estimates indicate a sharp decay in influenza transmission with the distance between infectious and susceptible cities, consistent with spread dominated by work commutes rather than air traffic. Two early-onset seasons associated with antigenic novelty...

  1. Impact of radiofrequency radiation on DNA damage and antioxidants in peripheral blood lymphocytes of humans residing in the vicinity of mobile phone base stations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zothansiama; Zosangzuali, Mary; Lalramdinpuii, Miriam; Jagetia, Ganesh Chandra

    2017-01-01

    Radiofrequency radiations (RFRs) emitted by mobile phone base stations have raised concerns on its adverse impact on humans residing in the vicinity of mobile phone base stations. Therefore, the present study was envisaged to evaluate the effect of RFR on the DNA damage and antioxidant status in cultured human peripheral blood lymphocytes (HPBLs) of individuals residing in the vicinity of mobile phone base stations and comparing it with healthy controls. The study groups matched for various demographic data including age, gender, dietary pattern, smoking habit, alcohol consumption, duration of mobile phone use and average daily mobile phone use. The RF power density of the exposed individuals was significantly higher (p base stations, showed significantly (p base station/s. The analysis of various antioxidants in the plasma of exposed individuals revealed a significant attrition in glutathione (GSH) concentration (p < 0.01), activities of catalase (CAT) (p < 0.001) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) (p < 0.001) and rise in lipid peroxidation (LOO) when compared to controls. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed a significant association among reduced GSH concentration (p < 0.05), CAT (p < 0.001) and SOD (p < 0.001) activities and elevated MN frequency (p < 0.001) and LOO (p < 0.001) with increasing RF power density.

  2. Spatial Heterogeneity and Population Mobility in India

    OpenAIRE

    Jajati Keshari Parida; S Madheswaran

    2010-01-01

    Mobility is one of the important aspects of human nature, which is often guided by socio-economic, political as well as environmental factors. The nature, pattern and direction of population mobility may vary across the space. The dynamics of internal migration in India plays an important role in the process of economic development and social transformation and shows an increasing trend of rural to urban flow over the years. At the same time, it shows falling trends in all other streams of mi...

  3. Electrophoretic mobility patterns of collagen following laser welding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bass, Lawrence S.; Moazami, Nader; Pocsidio, Joanne O.; Oz, Mehmet C.; LoGerfo, Paul; Treat, Michael R.

    1991-06-01

    Clinical application of laser vascular anastomosis in inhibited by a lack of understanding of its mechanism. Whether tissue fusion results from covalent or non-covalent bonding of collagen and other structural proteins is unknown. We compared electrophoretic mobility of collagen in laser treated and untreated specimens of rat tail tendon (>90% type I collagen) and rabbit aorta. Welding was performed, using tissue shrinkage as the clinical endpoint, using the 808 nm diode laser (power density 14 watts/cm2) and topical indocyanine green dye (max absorption 805 nm). Collagen was extracted with 8 M urea (denaturing), 0.5 M acetic acid (non-denaturing) and acetic acid/pepsin (cleaves non- helical protein). Mobility patterns on gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) after urea or acetic acid extraction were identical in the lasered and control tendon and vessel (confirmed by optical densitometry), revealing no evidence of formation of novel covalent bonds. Alpha and beta band intensity was diminished in pepsin incubated lasered specimens compared with controls (optical density ratio 0.00 +/- 9 tendon, 0.65 +/- 0.12 aorta), indicating the presence of denatured collagen. With the laser parameters used, collagen is denatured without formation of covalent bonds, suggesting that non-covalent interaction between denatured collagen molecules may be responsible for the weld. Based on this mechanism, welding parameters can be chosen which produce collagen denaturation without cell death.

  4. The use of census migration data to approximate human movement patterns across temporal scales.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wesolowski, Amy; Buckee, Caroline O; Pindolia, Deepa K; Eagle, Nathan; Smith, David L; Garcia, Andres J; Tatem, Andrew J

    2013-01-01

    Human movement plays a key role in economies and development, the delivery of services, and the spread of infectious diseases. However, it remains poorly quantified partly because reliable data are often lacking, particularly for low-income countries. The most widely available are migration data from human population censuses, which provide valuable information on relatively long timescale relocations across countries, but do not capture the shorter-scale patterns, trips less than a year, that make up the bulk of human movement. Census-derived migration data may provide valuable proxies for shorter-term movements however, as substantial migration between regions can be indicative of well connected places exhibiting high levels of movement at finer time scales, but this has never been examined in detail. Here, an extensive mobile phone usage data set for Kenya was processed to extract movements between counties in 2009 on weekly, monthly, and annual time scales and compared to data on change in residence from the national census conducted during the same time period. We find that the relative ordering across Kenyan counties for incoming, outgoing and between-county movements shows strong correlations. Moreover, the distributions of trip durations from both sources of data are similar, and a spatial interaction model fit to the data reveals the relationships of different parameters over a range of movement time scales. Significant relationships between census migration data and fine temporal scale movement patterns exist, and results suggest that census data can be used to approximate certain features of movement patterns across multiple temporal scales, extending the utility of census-derived migration data.

  5. Human Capital of Family and Social Mobility in Rural Areas-Evidence from China

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    ZHANG Jin-hua; YU Mei-lian; WU Fang-wei; CHEN Wei

    2013-01-01

    This research focuses on the impact of family’s human capital on social mobility in China’s rural community. Empirical research is conducted based on data from surveying a typical rural community in the past 20 yr. The study indicates that social mobility in rural area is active in the past 20 yr, and the human capital of family, represented by primary labor’s education level, has played an essential role in mobility of low social class. Meanwhile, socio-economic development and the change of supply and demand in labor market dims the signaling role of degree education, but the impact of occupational training is increasingly remarkable. Therefore, the change from sole degree education to multi-leveled education including occupational education and training is a main way for China’s rural families in low class to realize social mobility.

  6. VA Enterprise Design Patterns - 5.1 (Mobility) Mobile

    Data.gov (United States)

    Department of Veterans Affairs — First of a set of guidance documents that establish the architectural foundation for mobile computing in the VA. This document outlines the enterprise capabilities...

  7. SWARM-BOT: Pattern Formation in a Swarm of Self-Assembling Mobile Robots

    OpenAIRE

    El Kamel, A.; Mellouli, K.; Borne, P.; Sahin, E.; Labella, T.H.; Trianni, V.; Deneubourg, J.-L.; Rasse, P.; Floreano, D.; Gambardella, L.M.; Mondada, F.; Nolfi, S.; Dorigo, M.

    2002-01-01

    In this paper we introduce a new robotic system, called swarm-bot. The system consists of a swarm of mobile robots with the ability to connect to/disconnect from each other to self-assemble into different kinds of structures. First, we describe our vision and the goals of the project. Then we present preliminary results on the formation of patterns obtained from a grid-world simulation of the system.

  8. Daily Rhythms in Mobile Telephone Communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aledavood, Talayeh; López, Eduardo; Roberts, Sam G B; Reed-Tsochas, Felix; Moro, Esteban; Dunbar, Robin I M; Saramäki, Jari

    2015-01-01

    Circadian rhythms are known to be important drivers of human activity and the recent availability of electronic records of human behaviour has provided fine-grained data of temporal patterns of activity on a large scale. Further, questionnaire studies have identified important individual differences in circadian rhythms, with people broadly categorised into morning-like or evening-like individuals. However, little is known about the social aspects of these circadian rhythms, or how they vary across individuals. In this study we use a unique 18-month dataset that combines mobile phone calls and questionnaire data to examine individual differences in the daily rhythms of mobile phone activity. We demonstrate clear individual differences in daily patterns of phone calls, and show that these individual differences are persistent despite a high degree of turnover in the individuals' social networks. Further, women's calls were longer than men's calls, especially during the evening and at night, and these calls were typically focused on a small number of emotionally intense relationships. These results demonstrate that individual differences in circadian rhythms are not just related to broad patterns of morningness and eveningness, but have a strong social component, in directing phone calls to specific individuals at specific times of day.

  9. Shifting Patterns of Student Mobility in Asia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chan, Sheng-Ju

    2012-01-01

    During the past decade, Asia--traditionally one of the largest exporters of mobile students--has experienced major changes in student mobility within higher education. As the worldwide competition for international students has escalated, many Asian countries have adopted a wide range of mechanisms and strategies in facilitating student mobility.…

  10. Environmental change and human mobility in the digital age

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Boas, Ingrid

    2017-01-01

    This intervention argues for the need of research to examine how information and communication technologies (ICTs) shape human mobility in the context of environmental change. ICTs are becoming increasingly central in the daily lives of migrants and communities at risk of environmental events.

  11. Articular dysfunction patterns in patients with mechanical low back pain: A clinical algorithm to guide specific mobilization and manipulation techniques.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dewitte, V; Cagnie, B; Barbe, T; Beernaert, A; Vanthillo, B; Danneels, L

    2015-06-01

    Recent systematic reviews have demonstrated reasonable evidence that lumbar mobilization and manipulation techniques are beneficial. However, knowledge on optimal techniques and doses, and its clinical reasoning is currently lacking. To address this, a clinical algorithm is presented so as to guide therapists in their clinical reasoning to identify patients who are likely to respond to lumbar mobilization and/or manipulation and to direct appropriate technique selection. Key features in subjective and clinical examination suggestive of mechanical nociceptive pain probably arising from articular structures, can categorize patients into distinct articular dysfunction patterns. Based on these patterns, specific mobilization and manipulation techniques are suggested. This clinical algorithm is merely based on empirical clinical expertise and complemented through knowledge exchange between international colleagues. The added value of the proposed articular dysfunction patterns should be considered within a broader perspective. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Harmful effects of mobile phone waves on blood tissues of the human body

    OpenAIRE

    Kumar, Vijay; Ahmad, Mushtaq; Sharma, A. K.

    2013-01-01

      Abstract. Penetration of electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phones into human skin and blood was studied. The transmitted waves from these mobile phones were exposed to the human body and were penetrated into the body where field was reduced exponentially with depth. As the reduction in field was due to absorption of power, specific absorption rate was calculated and compared with permissible limit given by International Commission on Non-ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) and Worl...

  13. Mobile Phone Use and Human-Wildlife Conflict in Northern Tanzania

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lewis, Ashley L.; Baird, Timothy D.; Sorice, Michael G.

    2016-07-01

    Throughout the developing world, mobile phones are spreading rapidly into rural areas where subsistence livelihoods, biodiversity conservation, and human-wildlife conflict (HWC) are each common. Despite this trend, little is known about the relationship between mobile phones and HWC in conservation landscapes. This paper examines this relationship within ethnically Maasai communities in northern Tanzania on the border of Tarangire National Park. Mixed qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis are used to (1) describe how Maasai agro-pastoralists use phones to manage human-wildlife interactions; and (2) assess the relationship between phone use and measures of HWC, controlling for other factors. The findings indicate that households use phones to reduce the number and severity of HWC events and that the relationship between phones and HWC varies according to the type of HWC.

  14. Articular dysfunction patterns in patients with mechanical neck pain: a clinical algorithm to guide specific mobilization and manipulation techniques.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dewitte, Vincent; Beernaert, Axel; Vanthillo, Bart; Barbe, Tom; Danneels, Lieven; Cagnie, Barbara

    2014-02-01

    In view of a didactical approach for teaching cervical mobilization and manipulation techniques to students as well as their use in daily practice, it is mandatory to acquire sound clinical reasoning to optimally apply advanced technical skills. The aim of this Masterclass is to present a clinical algorithm to guide (novice) therapists in their clinical reasoning to identify patients who are likely to respond to mobilization and/or manipulation. The presented clinical reasoning process is situated within the context of pain mechanisms and is narrowed to and applicable in patients with a dominant input pain mechanism. Based on key features in subjective and clinical examination, patients with mechanical nociceptive pain probably arising from articular structures can be categorized into specific articular dysfunction patterns. Pending on these patterns, specific mobilization and manipulation techniques are warranted. The proposed patterns are illustrated in 3 case studies. This clinical algorithm is the corollary of empirical expertise and is complemented by in-depth discussions and knowledge exchange with international colleagues. Consequently, it is intended that a carefully targeted approach contributes to an increase in specificity and safety in the use of cervical mobilizations and manipulation techniques as valuable adjuncts to other manual therapy modalities. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. Integration of hormonal signaling networks and mobile microRNAs is required for vascular patterning in Arabidopsis roots

    KAUST Repository

    Muraro, D.

    2013-12-31

    As multicellular organisms grow, positional information is continually needed to regulate the pattern in which cells are arranged. In the Arabidopsis root, most cell types are organized in a radially symmetric pattern; however, a symmetry-breaking event generates bisymmetric auxin and cytokinin signaling domains in the stele. Bidirectional cross-talk between the stele and the surrounding tissues involving a mobile transcription factor, SHORT ROOT (SHR), and mobile microRNA species also determines vascular pattern, but it is currently unclear how these signals integrate. We use a multicellular model to determine a minimal set of components necessary for maintaining a stable vascular pattern. Simulations perturbing the signaling network show that, in addition to the mutually inhibitory interaction between auxin and cytokinin, signaling through SHR, microRNA165/6, and PHABULOSA is required to maintain a stable bisymmetric pattern. We have verified this prediction by observing loss of bisymmetry in shr mutants. The model reveals the importance of several features of the network, namely the mutual degradation of microRNA165/6 and PHABULOSA and the existence of an additional negative regulator of cytokinin signaling. These components form a plausible mechanism capable of patterning vascular tissues in the absence of positional inputs provided by the transport of hormones from the shoot.

  16. Integration of hormonal signaling networks and mobile microRNAs is required for vascular patterning in Arabidopsis roots

    KAUST Repository

    Muraro, D.; Mellor, N.; Pound, M. P.; Help, H.; Lucas, M.; Chopard, J.; Byrne, H. M.; Godin, C.; Hodgman, T. C.; King, J. R.; Pridmore, T. P.; Helariutta, Y.; Bennett, M. J.; Bishopp, A.

    2013-01-01

    As multicellular organisms grow, positional information is continually needed to regulate the pattern in which cells are arranged. In the Arabidopsis root, most cell types are organized in a radially symmetric pattern; however, a symmetry-breaking event generates bisymmetric auxin and cytokinin signaling domains in the stele. Bidirectional cross-talk between the stele and the surrounding tissues involving a mobile transcription factor, SHORT ROOT (SHR), and mobile microRNA species also determines vascular pattern, but it is currently unclear how these signals integrate. We use a multicellular model to determine a minimal set of components necessary for maintaining a stable vascular pattern. Simulations perturbing the signaling network show that, in addition to the mutually inhibitory interaction between auxin and cytokinin, signaling through SHR, microRNA165/6, and PHABULOSA is required to maintain a stable bisymmetric pattern. We have verified this prediction by observing loss of bisymmetry in shr mutants. The model reveals the importance of several features of the network, namely the mutual degradation of microRNA165/6 and PHABULOSA and the existence of an additional negative regulator of cytokinin signaling. These components form a plausible mechanism capable of patterning vascular tissues in the absence of positional inputs provided by the transport of hormones from the shoot.

  17. Active and reactive behaviour in human mobility: the influence of attraction points on pedestrians

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gutiérrez-Roig, M.; Sagarra, O.; Oltra, A.; Palmer, J. R. B.; Bartumeus, F.; Díaz-Guilera, A.; Perelló, J.

    2016-07-01

    Human mobility is becoming an accessible field of study, thanks to the progress and availability of tracking technologies as a common feature of smart phones. We describe an example of a scalable experiment exploiting these circumstances at a public, outdoor fair in Barcelona (Spain). Participants were tracked while wandering through an open space with activity stands attracting their attention. We develop a general modelling framework based on Langevin dynamics, which allows us to test the influence of two distinct types of ingredients on mobility: reactive or context-dependent factors, modelled by means of a force field generated by attraction points in a given spatial configuration and active or inherent factors, modelled from intrinsic movement patterns of the subjects. The additive and constructive framework model accounts for some observed features. Starting with the simplest model (purely random walkers) as a reference, we progressively introduce different ingredients such as persistence, memory and perceptual landscape, aiming to untangle active and reactive contributions and quantify their respective relevance. The proposed approach may help in anticipating the spatial distribution of citizens in alternative scenarios and in improving the design of public events based on a facts-based approach.

  18. Active and reactive behaviour in human mobility: the influence of attraction points on pedestrians.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gutiérrez-Roig, M; Sagarra, O; Oltra, A; Palmer, J R B; Bartumeus, F; Díaz-Guilera, A; Perelló, J

    2016-07-01

    Human mobility is becoming an accessible field of study, thanks to the progress and availability of tracking technologies as a common feature of smart phones. We describe an example of a scalable experiment exploiting these circumstances at a public, outdoor fair in Barcelona (Spain). Participants were tracked while wandering through an open space with activity stands attracting their attention. We develop a general modelling framework based on Langevin dynamics, which allows us to test the influence of two distinct types of ingredients on mobility: reactive or context-dependent factors, modelled by means of a force field generated by attraction points in a given spatial configuration and active or inherent factors, modelled from intrinsic movement patterns of the subjects. The additive and constructive framework model accounts for some observed features. Starting with the simplest model (purely random walkers) as a reference, we progressively introduce different ingredients such as persistence, memory and perceptual landscape, aiming to untangle active and reactive contributions and quantify their respective relevance. The proposed approach may help in anticipating the spatial distribution of citizens in alternative scenarios and in improving the design of public events based on a facts-based approach.

  19. Human Pacman: A Mobile Augmented Reality Entertainment System Based on Physical, Social, and Ubiquitous Computing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cheok, Adrian David

    This chapter details the Human Pacman system to illuminate entertainment computing which ventures to embed the natural physical world seamlessly with a fantasy virtual playground by capitalizing on infrastructure provided by mobile computing, wireless LAN, and ubiquitous computing. With Human Pacman, we have a physical role-playing computer fantasy together with real human-social and mobile-gaming that emphasizes on collaboration and competition between players in a wide outdoor physical area that allows natural wide-area human-physical movements. Pacmen and Ghosts are now real human players in the real world experiencing mixed computer graphics fantasy-reality provided by using the wearable computers on them. Virtual cookies and actual tangible physical objects are incorporated into the game play to provide novel experiences of seamless transitions between the real and virtual worlds. This is an example of a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.

  20. An Mobility Typology of US Cities

    Science.gov (United States)

    KC, B.; Stewart, R.; King, A. W.

    2017-12-01

    Urban mobility is a pressing problem and one growing with urbanization. Urban mobility, for example, accounts for 28 % of all CO2 emissions from road transport and restrictions in urban mobility have economic and social consequences. Occupational flow, movement to and from work, plays a vital role in shaping urban mobility patterns and is dependent on urban infrastructures as well as the geographical distribution of households and occupations. Urban mobility varies among different population subgroups such as race, age, and income in complex multivariate patterns. To explore and quantify these patterns, we use multivariate clustering to build a typology of urban mobility for the Metropolitan Statistical Areas of the United States using the occupational flow data from US Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics- Origin-Destination Employment Statistics. We use characteristics such as work radius, connectivity, and number of jobs for different population subgroups such as income, age, and industry to define the typology, objectively classifying metropolitan areas with similar mobility patterns as belonging to the same mobility type. The mobility typology addresses whether urban areas with similar transportation infrastructure have similar mobility patterns. Additionally, similarities and differences in the mobility typology of the demographic groups provides valuable insights into overall mobility experience which can help transportation planners design equitable and sustainable transportation infrastructures.

  1. Dietary Assessment on a Mobile Phone Using Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Techniques: Algorithm Design and System Prototyping

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yasmine Probst

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Dietary assessment, while traditionally based on pen-and-paper, is rapidly moving towards automatic approaches. This study describes an Australian automatic food record method and its prototype for dietary assessment via the use of a mobile phone and techniques of image processing and pattern recognition. Common visual features including scale invariant feature transformation (SIFT, local binary patterns (LBP, and colour are used for describing food images. The popular bag-of-words (BoW model is employed for recognizing the images taken by a mobile phone for dietary assessment. Technical details are provided together with discussions on the issues and future work.

  2. The use of census migration data to approximate human movement patterns across temporal scales.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amy Wesolowski

    Full Text Available Human movement plays a key role in economies and development, the delivery of services, and the spread of infectious diseases. However, it remains poorly quantified partly because reliable data are often lacking, particularly for low-income countries. The most widely available are migration data from human population censuses, which provide valuable information on relatively long timescale relocations across countries, but do not capture the shorter-scale patterns, trips less than a year, that make up the bulk of human movement. Census-derived migration data may provide valuable proxies for shorter-term movements however, as substantial migration between regions can be indicative of well connected places exhibiting high levels of movement at finer time scales, but this has never been examined in detail. Here, an extensive mobile phone usage data set for Kenya was processed to extract movements between counties in 2009 on weekly, monthly, and annual time scales and compared to data on change in residence from the national census conducted during the same time period. We find that the relative ordering across Kenyan counties for incoming, outgoing and between-county movements shows strong correlations. Moreover, the distributions of trip durations from both sources of data are similar, and a spatial interaction model fit to the data reveals the relationships of different parameters over a range of movement time scales. Significant relationships between census migration data and fine temporal scale movement patterns exist, and results suggest that census data can be used to approximate certain features of movement patterns across multiple temporal scales, extending the utility of census-derived migration data.

  3. Velocity-curvature patterns limit human-robot physical interaction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maurice, Pauline; Huber, Meghan E; Hogan, Neville; Sternad, Dagmar

    2018-01-01

    Physical human-robot collaboration is becoming more common, both in industrial and service robotics. Cooperative execution of a task requires intuitive and efficient interaction between both actors. For humans, this means being able to predict and adapt to robot movements. Given that natural human movement exhibits several robust features, we examined whether human-robot physical interaction is facilitated when these features are considered in robot control. The present study investigated how humans adapt to biological and non-biological velocity patterns in robot movements. Participants held the end-effector of a robot that traced an elliptic path with either biological (two-thirds power law) or non-biological velocity profiles. Participants were instructed to minimize the force applied on the robot end-effector. Results showed that the applied force was significantly lower when the robot moved with a biological velocity pattern. With extensive practice and enhanced feedback, participants were able to decrease their force when following a non-biological velocity pattern, but never reached forces below those obtained with the 2/3 power law profile. These results suggest that some robust features observed in natural human movements are also a strong preference in guided movements. Therefore, such features should be considered in human-robot physical collaboration.

  4. Pattern Recognition as a Human Centered non-Euclidean Problem

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Duin, R.P.W.

    2010-01-01

    Regularities in the world are human defined. Patterns in the observed phenomena are there because we define and recognize them as such. Automatic pattern recognition tries to bridge the gap between human judgment and measurements made by artificial sensors. This is done in two steps: representation

  5. A Smartphone App Reveals Erratic Diurnal Eating Patterns in Humans that Can Be Modulated for Health Benefits.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gill, Shubhroz; Panda, Satchidananda

    2015-11-03

    A diurnal rhythm of eating-fasting promotes health, but the eating pattern of humans is rarely assessed. Using a mobile app, we monitored ingestion events in healthy adults with no shift-work for several days. Most subjects ate frequently and erratically throughout wakeful hours, and overnight fasting duration paralleled time in bed. There was a bias toward eating late, with an estimated 35% after 6 p.m. "Metabolic jetlag" resulting from weekday/weekend variation in eating pattern akin to travel across time zones was prevalent. The daily intake duration (95% interval) exceeded 14.75 hr for half of the cohort. When overweight individuals with >14 hr eating duration ate for only 10-11 hr daily for 16 weeks assisted by a data visualization (raster plot of dietary intake pattern, "feedogram") that we developed, they reduced body weight, reported being energetic, and improved sleep. Benefits persisted for a year. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Impact of human mobility on the emergence of dengue epidemics in Pakistan

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wesolowski, Amy; Qureshi, Taimur; Boni, Maciej F.; Sundsøy, Pål Roe; Johansson, Michael A.; Rasheed, Syed Basit; Engø-Monsen, Kenth; Buckee, Caroline O.

    2015-01-01

    The recent emergence of dengue viruses into new susceptible human populations throughout Asia and the Middle East, driven in part by human travel on both local and global scales, represents a significant global health risk, particularly in areas with changing climatic suitability for the mosquito vector. In Pakistan, dengue has been endemic for decades in the southern port city of Karachi, but large epidemics in the northeast have emerged only since 2011. Pakistan is therefore representative of many countries on the verge of countrywide endemic dengue transmission, where prevention, surveillance, and preparedness are key priorities in previously dengue-free regions. We analyze spatially explicit dengue case data from a large outbreak in Pakistan in 2013 and compare the dynamics of the epidemic to an epidemiological model of dengue virus transmission based on climate and mobility data from ∼40 million mobile phone subscribers. We find that mobile phone-based mobility estimates predict the geographic spread and timing of epidemics in both recently epidemic and emerging locations. We combine transmission suitability maps with estimates of seasonal dengue virus importation to generate fine-scale dynamic risk maps with direct application to dengue containment and epidemic preparedness. PMID:26351662

  7. Suppressed carrier density for the patterned high mobility two-dimensional electron gas at γ-Al2O3/SrTiO3 heterointerfaces

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Niu, Wei; Gan, Yulin; Christensen, Dennis Valbjørn

    2017-01-01

    The two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the non-isostructural interface between spinel γ-Al2O3 and perovskite SrTiO3 is featured by a record electron mobility among complex oxide interfaces in addition to a high carrier density up to the order of 1015 cm-2. Herein, we report on the patterning...... is found to be approximately 3×1013 cm-2, much lower than that of the unpatterned sample (~1015 cm-2). Remarkably, a high electron mobility of approximately 3,600 cm2V-1s-1 was obtained at low temperatures for the patterned 2DEG at a carrier density of ~ 7×1012 cm-2, which exhibits clear Shubnikov-de Hass...... quantum oscillations. The patterned high-mobility 2DEG at the γ-Al2O3/SrTiO3 interface paves the way for the design and application of spinel/perovskite interfaces for high-mobility all-oxide electronic devic...

  8. Mobile PHRs compliance with Android and iOS usability guidelines.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cruz Zapata, Belén; Hernández Niñirola, Antonio; Idri, Ali; Fernández-Alemán, José Luis; Toval, Ambrosio

    2014-08-01

    Mobile Personal Health Records (PHRs) have achieved a particularly strong market share since the appearance of more powerful mobile devices and popular worldwide mobile application markets such as Apple's App Store and Android's Google Play. However, Android and Apple have a set of recommendations on design and usability targeted towards developers who wish to publish apps in their stores: Android Design Guidelines and iOS Human Interface Guidelines. This paper aims to evaluate compliance with these guidelines by assessing the usability recommendations of a set of 24 selected mobile PHR applications. An analysis process based on a well-known Systematic Literature Review (SLR) protocol was used. The results show that the 24 mobile PHR applications studied are not suitably structured. 46 % of these applications do not use any of the recommended patterns, using instead lists or springboards, which are deprecated patterns for top-level menus. 70 % of the PHRs require a registration to be able to test the application when these interactions should be delayed. Our study will help both PHR users to select user-friendly mobile PHRs and PHR providers and developers to identify the good usability practices implemented by the applications with the highest scores.

  9. Fundamental and future prospects of printed ambipolar fluorene-type polymer light-emitting transistors for improved external quantum efficiency, mobility, and emission pattern

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kajii, Hirotake

    2018-05-01

    In this review, we focus on the improved external quantum efficiency, field-effect mobility, and emission pattern of top-gate-type polymer light-emitting transistors (PLETs) based on ambipolar fluorene-type polymers. A low-temperature, high-efficiency, printable red phosphorescent PLET based on poly(alkylfluorene) with modified alkyl side chains fabricated by a film transfer process is demonstrated. Device fabrication based on oriented films leads to an improved EL intensity owing to the increase in field-effect mobility. There are three factors that affect the transport of carriers, i.e., the energy level, threshold voltage, and mobility of each layer for heterostructure PLETs, which result in various emission patterns such as the line-shaped, multicolor and in-plane emission pattern in the full-channel area between source and drain electrodes. Fundamentals and future prospects in heterostructure devices are discussed and reviewed.

  10. Classification and Evaluation of Mobility Metrics for Mobility Model Movement Patterns in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

    OpenAIRE

    Santosh Kumar S C Sharma Bhupendra Suman

    2011-01-01

    A mobile ad hoc network is collection of self configuring and adaption of wireless link between communicating devices (mobile devices) to form an arbitrary topology and multihop wireless connectivity without the use of existing infrastructure. It requires efficient dynamic routing protocol to determine the routes subsequent to a set of rules that enables two or more devices to communicate with each others. This paper basically classifies and evaluates the mobility metrics into two categories-...

  11. Dynamic assessment of exposure to air pollution using mobile phone data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dewulf, Bart; Neutens, Tijs; Lefebvre, Wouter; Seynaeve, Gerdy; Vanpoucke, Charlotte; Beckx, Carolien; Van de Weghe, Nico

    2016-04-21

    Exposure to air pollution can have major health impacts, such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Traditionally, only the air pollution concentration at the home location is taken into account in health impact assessments and epidemiological studies. Neglecting individual travel patterns can lead to a bias in air pollution exposure assessments. In this work, we present a novel approach to calculate the daily exposure to air pollution using mobile phone data of approximately 5 million mobile phone users living in Belgium. At present, this data is collected and stored by telecom operators mainly for management of the mobile network. Yet it represents a major source of information in the study of human mobility. We calculate the exposure to NO2 using two approaches: assuming people stay at home the entire day (traditional static approach), and incorporating individual travel patterns using their location inferred from their use of the mobile phone network (dynamic approach). The mean exposure to NO2 increases with 1.27 μg/m(3) (4.3%) during the week and with 0.12 μg/m(3) (0.4%) during the weekend when incorporating individual travel patterns. During the week, mostly people living in municipalities surrounding larger cities experience the highest increase in NO2 exposure when incorporating their travel patterns, probably because most of them work in these larger cities with higher NO2 concentrations. It is relevant for health impact assessments and epidemiological studies to incorporate individual travel patterns in estimating air pollution exposure. Mobile phone data is a promising data source to determine individual travel patterns, because of the advantages (e.g. low costs, large sample size, passive data collection) compared to travel surveys, GPS, and smartphone data (i.e. data captured by applications on smartphones).

  12. Using Human Gestures and Generic Skills to Instruct a Mobile Robot Arm in a Feeder Filling Scenario

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pedersen, Mikkel Rath; Høilund, Carsten; Krüger, Volker

    2012-01-01

    Mobile robots that have the ability to cooperate with humans are able to provide new possibilities to manufac- turing industries. In this paper, we discuss our mobile robot arm that a) can provide assistance at different locations in a factory and b) that can be programmed using complex human...... actions such as pointing in Take this object. In this paper, we discuss the use of the mobile robot for a feeding scenario where a human operator specifies the parts and the feeders through pointing gestures. The system is partially built using generic robotic skills. Through extensive experiments, we...

  13. Subversive Mobilities

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Thelle, Mikkel

    2013-01-01

    The article approaches mobility through a cultural history of urban conflict. Using a case of “The Copenhagen Trouble,“ a series of riots in the Danish capital around 1900, a space of subversive mobilities is delineated. These turn-of-the-century riots points to a new pattern of mobile gathering...

  14. Mobility Divides

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Ole B.

    Contemporary mobilities are cultural and social manifestations, and the mobile practices in the everyday life of billions of humans are re-configuring senses of place, self, other and relationships to the built environment. The way ‘mobile situations’ are staged in designed and built environments......’ in the everyday life and cast light on how design and ‘materialities of mobilites’ are creating differential mobilities across societies, social networks, and communities of practices.......Contemporary mobilities are cultural and social manifestations, and the mobile practices in the everyday life of billions of humans are re-configuring senses of place, self, other and relationships to the built environment. The way ‘mobile situations’ are staged in designed and built environments...

  15. Ringxiety and the Mobile Phone Usage Pattern among the Students of a Medical College in South India

    Science.gov (United States)

    Subba, Sonu H.; Mandelia, Chetan; Pathak, Vaibhav; Reddy, Divya; Goel, Akanksha; Tayal, Ayushi; Nair, Swati; Nagaraj, Kondagunta

    2013-01-01

    Aims: Technologies like mobile phones may not always work positively but they may have unforeseen adverse effects. This study was conducted to find the proportion of students who experienced ringxiety (phantom ringing) and other perceived effects, as well as the pattern of the mobile phone usage among college students. Method: A cross-sectional study was carried out at Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, south India, among 336 medical students by using a pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire. Results: Among the total number of students, 335 students possessed mobile phones. Mostly, the persons whom they talked to on their phones were parents for 220 (51%) of the students. 48% (150) talked for less than half hour in a day and 41% (137) were high volume message users. “Ringxiety” was experienced by 34.5% (116) of the students and they were more likely to use their phones at restricted places like classrooms (99%) and libraries (60.3%). A significantly larger proportion of ringxiety sufferers also complained of hampered studies. Conclusion: The pattern of mobile phone use among the medical students appeared to be problematic, as a fairly large proportion suffered from ringxiety, they reported getting very upset and they used their phones at restricted times and places. This problem needs to be recognized, all stakeholders must be made aware of the symptoms and measures must be taken to reduce it. PMID:23542709

  16. Tool support for detection and analysis of following and leadership behavior of pedestrians from mobile sensing data

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kjærgaard, M.B.; Blunck, H.

    2014-01-01

    The vast availability of mobile phones with built-in movement and location sensors enables the collection of detailed information about human movement even indoors. As mobility is a key element of many processes and activities, an interesting class of information to extract is movement patterns t...

  17. Human Robot Interaction for Hybrid Collision Avoidance System for Indoor Mobile Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mazen Ghandour

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, a novel approach for collision avoidance for indoor mobile robots based on human-robot interaction is realized. The main contribution of this work is a new technique for collision avoidance by engaging the human and the robot in generating new collision-free paths. In mobile robotics, collision avoidance is critical for the success of the robots in implementing their tasks, especially when the robots navigate in crowded and dynamic environments, which include humans. Traditional collision avoidance methods deal with the human as a dynamic obstacle, without taking into consideration that the human will also try to avoid the robot, and this causes the people and the robot to get confused, especially in crowded social places such as restaurants, hospitals, and laboratories. To avoid such scenarios, a reactive-supervised collision avoidance system for mobile robots based on human-robot interaction is implemented. In this method, both the robot and the human will collaborate in generating the collision avoidance via interaction. The person will notify the robot about the avoidance direction via interaction, and the robot will search for the optimal collision-free path on the selected direction. In case that no people interacted with the robot, it will select the navigation path autonomously and select the path that is closest to the goal location. The humans will interact with the robot using gesture recognition and Kinect sensor. To build the gesture recognition system, two models were used to classify these gestures, the first model is Back-Propagation Neural Network (BPNN, and the second model is Support Vector Machine (SVM. Furthermore, a novel collision avoidance system for avoiding the obstacles is implemented and integrated with the HRI system. The system is tested on H20 robot from DrRobot Company (Canada and a set of experiments were implemented to report the performance of the system in interacting with the human and avoiding

  18. Socio-Psychological Dimensions of Mobile Phone Addiction and Usage Patterns amongst Teenagers in Higher Institutions of Learning in Kwara State

    Science.gov (United States)

    Titilope, Afolayan Oluyinka

    2014-01-01

    Mobile phone addiction is now a common phenomenon in the 21st century, especially among teenagers due to the unusual cravings in the use of technological devices. In view of this phenomenon, the study examined the socio-psychological dimensions of mobile phone addiction and usage patterns amongst teenagers in three Higher Institutions of Learning…

  19. Mobile app for human-interaction with sitter robots

    Science.gov (United States)

    Das, Sumit Kumar; Sahu, Ankita; Popa, Dan O.

    2017-05-01

    Human environments are often unstructured and unpredictable, thus making the autonomous operation of robots in such environments is very difficult. Despite many remaining challenges in perception, learning, and manipulation, more and more studies involving assistive robots have been carried out in recent years. In hospital environments, and in particular in patient rooms, there are well-established practices with respect to the type of furniture, patient services, and schedule of interventions. As a result, adding a robot into semi-structured hospital environments is an easier problem to tackle, with results that could have positive benefits to the quality of patient care and the help that robots can offer to nursing staff. When working in a healthcare facility, robots need to interact with patients and nurses through Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) that are intuitive to use, they should maintain awareness of surroundings, and offer safety guarantees for humans. While fully autonomous operation for robots is not yet technically feasible, direct teleoperation control of the robot would also be extremely cumbersome, as it requires expert user skills, and levels of concentration not available to many patients. Therefore, in our current study we present a traded control scheme, in which the robot and human both perform expert tasks. The human-robot communication and control scheme is realized through a mobile tablet app that can be customized for robot sitters in hospital environments. The role of the mobile app is to augment the verbal commands given to a robot through natural speech, camera and other native interfaces, while providing failure mode recovery options for users. Our app can access video feed and sensor data from robots, assist the user with decision making during pick and place operations, monitor the user health over time, and provides conversational dialogue during sitting sessions. In this paper, we present the software and hardware framework that

  20. Truncated Levy flights and agenda-based mobility are useful for the assessment of personal human exposure

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schlink, Uwe; Ragas, Ad M.J.

    2011-01-01

    Receptor-oriented approaches can assess the individual-specific exposure to air pollution. In such an individual-based model we analyse the impact of human mobility to the personal exposure that is perceived by individuals simulated in an exemplified urban area. The mobility models comprise random walk (reference point mobility, RPM), truncated Levy flights (TLF), and agenda-based walk (RPMA). We describe and review the general concepts and provide an inter-comparison of these concepts. Stationary and ergodic behaviour are explained and applied as well as performance criteria for a comparative evaluation of the investigated algorithms. We find that none of the studied algorithm results in purely random trajectories. TLF and RPMA prove to be suitable for human mobility modelling, because they provide conditions for very individual-specific trajectories and exposure. Suggesting these models we demonstrate the plausibility of their results for exposure to air-borne benzene and the combined exposure to benzene and nonane. - Highlights: → Human exposure to air pollutants is influenced by a person's movement in the urban area. → We provide a simulation study of approaches to modelling personal exposure. → Agenda-based models and truncated Levy flights are recommended for exposure assessment. → The procedure is demonstrated for benzene exposure in an urban region. - Truncated Levy flights and agenda-based mobility are useful for the assessment of personal human exposure.

  1. Aplikasi Pembelajaran Berbasis Mobile Untuk Tuna Aksara

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Muhammad Irwan Padli Nasution

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract - Learning is a process of transformation that is initially not knowing to knowing. Has developed a lot of learning strategies from simple to more complex models even complicated and required a lot of tools in its application. Literacy is a basic of knowledge for humans.  They can read by improving their quality, which leads to the high intellect of a person. Especially at this time humanity has entered the information age. The phenomenon of globalization is happening now accelerating so quickly, as the impact of  application of Hi-tech society (high-tech society, which causes humans followed on interaction patterns very quickly. Using Information and Communication Technology (ICT could be developed multimedia teaching materials with the concept of learning by playing fun and implemented on a mobile based learning applications. The use of mobile devices that is easy and flexibility is very useful to support the learning process for the illiterate.

  2. Correlations between human mobility and social interaction reveal general activity patterns

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mollgaard, Anders; Jørgensen, Sune Lehmann; Mathiesen, Joachim

    2017-01-01

    A day in the life of a person involves a broad range of activities which are common across many people. Going beyond diurnal cycles, a central question is: to what extent do individuals act according to patterns shared across an entire population? Here we investigate the interplay between differe...... they be of social or of physical character....

  3. Adjustment of Daily Activities: the Influence of Smartphone Adoption on the Travel Pattern of Mobile Professionals in the Greater Jakarta Area

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gloriani Novita Christin

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The swift augmentation in the adoption of smartphones, the gadget that resulted from the convergence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT, potentially transforms people's life in myriad dimensions. One potential change induced by smartphones, is how people restructure their daily agenda and consecutively influence their travel pattern. To understand it, this study theoretically reviews mobile professional work, smartphone adoption, and how people conduct their mobile interaction, planning and execution of daily activities. Mobile professionals, the cohort of professionals that spend more than 20% of their total working time moving around out of their work environment; they are important beneficiaries of smartphones and have been chosen as the target of this study. Empirical results of mobile professionals´ experiences in the Greater Jakarta Area are presented at this juncture. Furthermore, their adjustment of activities as a dynamic response to receiving extensive information via smartphones is also analysed. The results indicate that there is a strong adjustment of daily activities by mobile professionals. Through those changes, the transformation of daily travel patterns related to the activity is also brought about by the use of this high-end ICT contrivance.

  4. Impact of land use on urban mobility patterns, emissions and air quality in a Portuguese medium-sized city.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bandeira, Jorge M; Coelho, Margarida C; Sá, Maria Elisa; Tavares, Richard; Borrego, Carlos

    2011-02-15

    The main objective of this work was to evaluate the impact of urban development trends in mobility patterns of a medium sized Portuguese city and air quality consequences, using a sequential modeling process, comprising i) land use and transportation, TRANUS model; ii) road traffic air pollutants emissions, TREM model and; iii) air quality, TAPM model. This integrated methodology was applied to a medium sized Portuguese city. In order to evaluate the implementation of the methodology, a preliminary study was performed, which consisted on the comparison of modeled mobility patterns and CO and PM(10) concentrations with measured data used in the definition of the current scenario. The comparison between modeled and monitored mobility patterns at the morning peak hour for a weekday showed an RMSE of 31%. Regarding CO concentrations, an underestimation of the modeled results was observed. Nevertheless, the modeled PM(10) concentrations were consistent with the monitored data. Overall, the results showed a reasonable consistency of the modeled data, which allowed the use of the integrated modeling system for the study scenarios. The future scenarios consisted on the definition of different mobility patterns and vehicle technology characteristics, according to two main developing trends: (1) "car pooling" scenario, which imposes a mean occupancy rate of 3 passengers by vehicle and (2) the "Euro 6" scenario, which establishes that all vehicles accomplish at least the Euro 6 standard technology. Reductions of 54% and 83% for CO, 44% and 95% for PM(10), 44% and 87% for VOC and 44% and 79% for NO(x) emissions were observed in scenarios 1 and 2, respectively. Concerning air quality, a reduction of about 100 μg m(-3) of CO annual average concentration was observed in both scenarios. The results of PM(10) annual concentrations showed a reduction of 1.35 μg m(-3) and 2.7 μg m(-3) for scenarios 1 and 2 respectively. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  5. Is human saliva an indicator of the adverse health effects of using mobile phones?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hamzany, Yaniv; Feinmesser, Raphael; Shpitzer, Thomas; Mizrachi, Aviram; Hilly, Ohad; Hod, Roy; Bahar, Gideon; Otradnov, Irina; Gavish, Moshe; Nagler, Rafael M

    2013-02-20

    Increasing use of mobile phones creates growing concerns regarding harmful effects of radiofrequency nonionizing electromagnetic radiation on human tissues located close to the ear, where phones are commonly held for long periods of time. We studied 20 subjects in the mobile-phone group who had a mean duration of mobile phone use of 12.5 years (range 8-15) and a mean time use of 29.6 h per month (range 8-100). Deaf individuals served as controls. We compared salivary outcomes (secretion, oxidative damage indices, flow rate, and composition) between mobile phone users and nonusers. We report a significant increase in all salivary oxidative stress indices studied in mobile phone users. Salivary flow, total protein, albumin, and amylase activity were decreased in mobile phone users. These observations lead to the hypothesis that the use of mobile phones may cause oxidative stress and modify salivary function.

  6. Mobile phone radiofrequency exposure has no effect on DNA double strand breaks (DSB) in human lymphocytes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Danese, Elisa; Lippi, Giuseppe; Buonocore, Ruggero; Benati, Marco; Bovo, Chiara; Bonaguri, Chiara; Salvagno, Gian Luca; Brocco, Giorgio; Roggenbuck, Dirk; Montagnana, Martina

    2017-07-01

    The use of mobile phones has been associated with an increased risk of developing certain type of cancer, especially in long term users. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the potential genotoxic effect of mobile phone radiofrequency exposure on human peripheral blood mononuclear cells in vitro. The study population consisted in 14 healthy volunteers. After collection of two whole blood samples, the former was placed in a plastic rack, 1 cm from the chassis of a commercial mobile phone (900 MHz carrier frequency), which was activated by a 30-min call. The second blood sample was instead maintained far from mobile phones or other RF sources. The influence of mobile phone RF on DNA integrity was assessed by analyzing γ-H2AX foci in lymphocytes using immunofluorescence staining kit on AKLIDES. No measure of γ-H2AX foci was significantly influenced by mobile phone RF exposure, nor mobile phone exposure was associated with significant risk of genetic damages in vitro (odds ratio comprised between 0.27 and 1.00). The results of this experimental study demonstrate that exposure of human lymphocytes to a conventional 900 MHz RF emitted by a commercial mobile phone for 30 min does not significantly impact DNA integrity.

  7. On the analysis of human mobility model for content broadcasting in 5G networks

    KAUST Repository

    Lau, Chun Pong; Alabbasi, Abdulrahman; Shihada, Basem

    2018-01-01

    by analyzing the transition probabilities of a user traveling over several places according to the change of states of daily human activities. Using a reallife simulation, we demonstrate the relationship between the human mobility and the optimization objective

  8. Managing travel demand: Location recommendation for system efficiency based on mobile phone data

    OpenAIRE

    Leng, Yan; Rudolph, Larry; Pentland, Alex 'Sandy'; Zhao, Jinhua; Koutsopolous, Haris N.

    2016-01-01

    Growth in leisure travel has become increasingly significant economically, socially, and environmentally. However, flexible but uncoordinated travel behaviors exacerbate traffic congestion. Mobile phone records not only reveal human mobility patterns, but also enable us to manage travel demand for system efficiency. In this paper, we propose a location recommendation system that infers personal preferences while accounting for constraints imposed by road capacity in order to manage travel dem...

  9. Neuron-Enriched Gene Expression Patterns are Regionally Anti-Correlated with Oligodendrocyte-Enriched Patterns in the Adult Mouse and Human Brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tan, Powell Patrick Cheng; French, Leon; Pavlidis, Paul

    2013-01-01

    An important goal in neuroscience is to understand gene expression patterns in the brain. The recent availability of comprehensive and detailed expression atlases for mouse and human creates opportunities to discover global patterns and perform cross-species comparisons. Recently we reported that the major source of variation in gene transcript expression in the adult normal mouse brain can be parsimoniously explained as reflecting regional variation in glia to neuron ratios, and is correlated with degree of connectivity and location in the brain along the anterior-posterior axis. Here we extend this investigation to two gene expression assays of adult normal human brains that consisted of over 300 brain region samples, and perform comparative analyses of brain-wide expression patterns to the mouse. We performed principal components analysis (PCA) on the regional gene expression of the adult human brain to identify the expression pattern that has the largest variance. As in the mouse, we observed that the first principal component is composed of two anti-correlated patterns enriched in oligodendrocyte and neuron markers respectively. However, we also observed interesting discordant patterns between the two species. For example, a few mouse neuron markers show expression patterns that are more correlated with the human oligodendrocyte-enriched pattern and vice-versa. In conclusion, our work provides insights into human brain function and evolution by probing global relationships between regional cell type marker expression patterns in the human and mouse brain.

  10. Patterned control of human locomotion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lacquaniti, Francesco; Ivanenko, Yuri P; Zago, Myrka

    2012-01-01

    There is much experimental evidence for the existence of biomechanical constraints which simplify the problem of control of multi-segment movements. In addition, it has been hypothesized that movements are controlled using a small set of basic temporal components or activation patterns, shared by several different muscles and reflecting global kinematic and kinetic goals. Here we review recent studies on human locomotion showing that muscle activity is accounted for by a combination of few basic patterns, each one timed at a different phase of the gait cycle. Similar patterns are involved in walking and running at different speeds, walking forwards or backwards, and walking under different loading conditions. The corresponding weights of distribution to different muscles may change as a function of the condition, allowing highly flexible control. Biomechanical correlates of each activation pattern have been described, leading to the hypothesis that the co-ordination of limb and body segments arises from the coupling of neural oscillators between each other and with limb mechanical oscillators. Muscle activations need only intervene during limited time epochs to force intrinsic oscillations of the system when energy is lost. PMID:22411012

  11. Patterned control of human locomotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lacquaniti, Francesco; Ivanenko, Yuri P; Zago, Myrka

    2012-05-15

    There is much experimental evidence for the existence of biomechanical constraints which simplify the problem of control of multi-segment movements. In addition, it has been hypothesized that movements are controlled using a small set of basic temporal components or activation patterns, shared by several different muscles and reflecting global kinematic and kinetic goals. Here we review recent studies on human locomotion showing that muscle activity is accounted for by a combination of few basic patterns, each one timed at a different phase of the gait cycle. Similar patterns are involved in walking and running at different speeds, walking forwards or backwards, and walking under different loading conditions. The corresponding weights of distribution to different muscles may change as a function of the condition, allowing highly flexible control. Biomechanical correlates of each activation pattern have been described, leading to the hypothesis that the co-ordination of limb and body segments arises from the coupling of neural oscillators between each other and with limb mechanical oscillators. Muscle activations need only intervene during limited time epochs to force intrinsic oscillations of the system when energy is lost.

  12. Effect of mobile phone station on micronucleus frequency and chromosomal aberrations in human blood cells.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yildirim, M S; Yildirim, A; Zamani, A G; Okudan, N

    2010-01-01

    The use of mobile telephones has rapidly increased worldwide as well as the number of mobile phone base stations that lead to rise low level radiofrequency emissions which may in turn have possible harm for human health. The national radiation protection board has published the known effects of radio waves exposure on humans living close to mobile phone base stations. However, several studies have claimed that the base station has detrimental effects on different tissues. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effects of mobile phone base stations on the micronucleus (MN) frequency and chromosomal aberrations on blood in people who were living around mobile phone base stations and healthy controls. Frequency of MN and chromosomal aberrations in study and control groups was 8.96 +/- 3.51 and 6.97 +/- 1.52 (p: 0.16); 0.36 +/- 0.31 and 0.75 +/- 0.61 (p: 0.07), respectively. Our results show that there was not a significant difference of MN frequency and chromosomal aberrations between the two study groups. The results claim that cellular phones and their base stations do not produce important carcinogenic changes.

  13. Functional Mobility Testing: A Novel Method to Establish Human System Interface Design Requirements

    Science.gov (United States)

    England, Scott A.; Benson, Elizabeth A.; Rajulu, Sudhakar

    2008-01-01

    Across all fields of human-system interface design it is vital to posses a sound methodology dictating the constraints on the system based on the capabilities of the human user. These limitations may be based on strength, mobility, dexterity, cognitive ability, etc. and combinations thereof. Data collected in an isolated environment to determine, for example, maximal strength or maximal range of motion would indeed be adequate for establishing not-to-exceed type design limitations, however these restraints on the system may be excessive over what is basally needed. Resources may potentially be saved by having a technique to determine the minimum measurements a system must accommodate. This paper specifically deals with the creation of a novel methodology for establishing mobility requirements for a new generation of space suit design concepts. Historically, the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station vehicle and space hardware design requirements documents such as the Man-Systems Integration Standards and International Space Station Flight Crew Integration Standard explicitly stated that the designers should strive to provide the maximum joint range of motion capabilities exhibited by a minimally clothed human subject. In the course of developing the Human-Systems Integration Requirements (HSIR) for the new space exploration initiative (Constellation), an effort was made to redefine the mobility requirements in the interest of safety and cost. Systems designed for manned space exploration can receive compounded gains from simplified designs that are both initially less expensive to produce and lighter, thereby, cheaper to launch.

  14. Accelerometer-Derived Pattern of Sedentary and Physical Activity Time in Persons with Mobility Disability: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003 to 2006.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manns, Patricia; Ezeugwu, Victor; Armijo-Olivo, Susan; Vallance, Jeff; Healy, Genevieve N

    2015-07-01

    To describe objectively determined sedentary and activity outcomes (volume and pattern) and their associations with cardiometabolic risk biomarkers in individuals with and without mobility disability. Cross-sectional. Population based. Community-dwelling older adults (≥60) living in the United States who were participants in the 2003 to 2004 or 2005 to 2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Participants were classified as with or without mobility disability according to responses to self-reported questions about ability to walk, climb stairs, and/or use of ambulatory aids. Accelerometer-derived sedentary and activity variables for volume (time in sedentary (activity and pattern (number of breaks from sedentary time, duration of sedentary bouts, duration of activity bouts). Survey-weighted regression models, adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, education, and smoking, were used to examine the associations between pattern of activity and cardiometabolic health risk factors (blood pressure, waist circumference, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol). Of the 2,017 participants, 547 were classified as having a mobility disability. Participants with mobility disability had more sedentary time and less active time than those without. Sedentary bouts were longer and active bouts shorter in those with disability. The total number of sedentary breaks (transitions from sedentary to nonsedentary) differed between groups after adjustment for total sedentary time. Fewer breaks, longer sedentary bouts, and shorter activity bouts were associated with higher average waist circumference regardless of disability status. This study provides rationale for the development and testing of interventions to change the pattern of activity (e.g., include more breaks and longer activity bout durations) in older adults with mobility disability. © 2015, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation © 2015, The American Geriatrics Society.

  15. Weight Loss Associated With Different Patterns of Self-Monitoring Using the Mobile Phone App My Meal Mate.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carter, Michelle C; Burley, Victoria J; Cade, Janet E

    2017-02-02

    Obesity is a major global public health issue due to its association with a number of serious chronic illnesses and its high economic burden to health care providers. Self-monitoring of diet has been consistently linked to weight loss. However, there is limited evidence about how frequently individuals need to monitor their diet for optimal weight loss. The aim of this paper is to describe app usage frequency and pattern in the mobile phone arm of a previously conducted randomized controlled trial. The relationship between frequency and pattern of electronic dietary self-monitoring and weight loss is also investigated. A randomized pilot trial comparing three methods of self-monitoring (mobile phone app, paper diary, Web-based) was previously conducted. Trial duration was 6 months. The mobile phone app My Meal Mate features an electronic food diary and encourages users to self-monitor their dietary intake. All food consumption data were automatically uploaded with a time and date stamp. Post hoc regression analysis of app usage patterns was undertaken in the My Meal Mate group (n=43; female: 77%, 33/43; white: 100%, 43/43; age: mean 41, SD 9 years; body mass index: mean 34, SD 4 kg/m 2 ) to explore the relationship between frequency and pattern of electronic dietary self-monitoring and weight loss. Baseline characteristics of participants were also investigated to identify any potential predictors of dietary self-monitoring. Regression analysis showed that those in the highest frequency-of-use category (recorded ≥129 days on the mobile phone app) had a -6.4 kg (95% CI -10.0 to -2.9) lower follow-up weight (adjusted for baseline weight) than those in the lowest frequency-of-use category (recorded ≤42 days; Pweight loss than other patterns of electronic self-monitoring (ie, monitoring over the short or moderate term and stopping and consistently monitoring over consecutive days). Participant characteristics such as age, baseline weight, sex, ethnicity

  16. Modelling Behaviour Patterns of Pedestrians for Mobile Robot Trajectory Generation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yusuke Tamura

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available Robots are expected to be operated in environments where they coexist with humans, such as shopping malls and offices. Both the safety and efficiency of a robot are necessary in such environments. To achieve this, pedestrian behaviour should be accurately predicted. However, the behaviour is uncertain and cannot be easily predicted. This paper proposes a probabilistic method of determining pedestrian trajectory based on an estimation of pedestrian behaviour patterns. The proposed method focuses on the specific behaviour of pedestrians around the robot. The proposed model classifies the behaviours of pedestrians into definite patterns. The behaviour patterns, distribution of the positions of the pedestrians, and the direction of each behaviour pattern are determined by learning through observation. The behaviour pattern of a pedestrian can be estimated correctly by a likelihood calculation. A robot decides to move with an emphasis on either safety or efficiency depending on the result of the pattern estimation. If the pedestrian trajectory follows a known behaviour pattern, the robot would move with an emphasis on efficiency because the pedestrian trajectory can be predicted. Otherwise, the robot would move with an emphasis on safety because the behaviour of the pedestrian cannot be predicted. Experimental results show that robots can move efficiently and safely when passing by a pedestrian by applying the proposed method.

  17. European mobility cultures

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Haustein, Sonja; Nielsen, Thomas A. Sick

    2016-01-01

    More targeted European policies promoting green travel patterns require better knowledge on differing mobility cultures across European regions. As a basis for this, we clustered the EU population into eight mobility styles based on Eurobarometer data. The mobility styles - including, for example...... positions on the path towards sustainable mobility and therefore different requirements towards European platforms and support measures, e.g. for 'Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans'. The country clusters can provide a starting point for future communication and targeting of European efforts in sustainable...

  18. Compressed sensing method for human activity recognition using tri-axis accelerometer on mobile phone

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Song Hui; Wang Zhongmin

    2017-01-01

    The diversity in the phone placements of different mobile users' dailylife increases the difficulty of recognizing human activities by using mobile phone accelerometer data.To solve this problem,a compressed sensing method to recognize human activities that is based on compressed sensing theory and utilizes both raw mobile phone accelerometer data and phone placement information is proposed.First,an over-complete dictionary matrix is constructed using sufficient raw tri-axis acceleration data labeled with phone placement information.Then,the sparse coefficient is evaluated for the samples that need to be tested by resolving L1 minimization.Finally,residual values are calculated and the minimum value is selected as the indicator to obtain the recognition results.Experimental results show that this method can achieve a recognition accuracy reaching 89.86%,which is higher than that of a recognition method that does not adopt the phone placement information for the recognition process.The recognition accuracy of the proposed method is effective and satisfactory.

  19. Mobile Africa : changing patterns of movement in Africa and beyond

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bruijn, de M.E.; Dijk, van R.A.; Foeken, D.W.J.

    2001-01-01

    The case studies in this book on mobility in sub-Saharan Africa critically discuss dichotomous interpretations of mobility and reject the idea that migration indicates a breakdown in society. They adopt the approach that sedentary and mobile worlds converge and that mobility is part of the

  20. Human Security and the Governmentality of Neo-Liberal Mobility : A Feminist Perspective

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    T-D. Truong (Thanh-Dam)

    2006-01-01

    textabstractTransnational migration and its implications for human security as a policy field constitute one of the most complex issues of our time. Current experiences of displacement and security spans between a cyber world characterized by hyper mobility of finance, technology, information and

  1. Clonal mobility and its implications for spatio-temporal patterns of plant communities: what do we need to know next?

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Zobel, M.; Moora, M.; Herben, Tomáš

    2010-01-01

    Roč. 119, č. 5 (2010), s. 802-806 ISSN 0030-1299 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z60050516 Keywords : clonal mobility * spatio-temporal patterns * plant communities Subject RIV: EF - Botanics Impact factor: 3.393, year: 2010

  2. Exploring Intracity Taxi Mobility during the Holidays for Location-Based Marketing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wen-jun Wang

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Taxi mobility information can be considered as an important source of mobile location-based information for making marketing decisions. So, studying the behavioral patterns of taxis in a Chinese city during the holidays using the global positioning system (GPS can yield remarkable insights into people’s holiday travel patterns, as well as the odd-even day vehicle prohibition system. This paper studies the behavioral patterns of taxis during specific holidays in terms of pick-up and drop-off locations, travel distance, mobile step length, travel direction, and radius of gyration on the basis of GPS data. Our results support the idea of a polycentric city. It is concluded from the reporting results that there are no significant changes in the distribution of pick-up and drop-off locations, travel distance, or travel direction during holidays in comparison to work days. The results suggest that human travel by taxi has a stable regularity. However, the radius of gyration of movement by most of the taxis becomes significantly larger during holidays that indicate more long-distance travels. The current study will be helpful for location-based marketing during the holidays.

  3. First human hNT neurons patterned on parylene-C/silicon dioxide substrates: Combining an accessible cell line and robust patterning technology for the study of the pathological adult human brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Unsworth, C P; Graham, E S; Delivopoulos, E; Dragunow, M; Murray, A F

    2010-12-15

    In this communication, we describe a new method which has enabled the first patterning of human neurons (derived from the human teratocarcinoma cell line (hNT)) on parylene-C/silicon dioxide substrates. We reveal the details of the nanofabrication processes, cell differentiation and culturing protocols necessary to successfully pattern hNT neurons which are each key aspects of this new method. The benefits in patterning human neurons on silicon chip using an accessible cell line and robust patterning technology are of widespread value. Thus, using a combined technology such as this will facilitate the detailed study of the pathological human brain at both the single cell and network level. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Learning in a self-managed management career : the relation between managers' HRD-patterns, psychological career contracts and mobility perpectives

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lankhuijzen, E.S.K.

    2002-01-01

    This thesis focuses on the significance of managers HRD-activities (learning activities) in modern career contexts. Based on literature study and several pre-studies, a conceptual research model was developed containing three main elements: HRD-pattern, psychological career contract and mobility

  5. The zinc-loss effect and mobility enhancement of DUV-patterned sol-gel IGZO thin-film transistors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Kuan-Hsun; Zan, Hsiao-Wen; Soppera, Olivier

    2018-03-01

    We investigate the composition of the DUV-patterned sol-gel indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) and observe a significant zinc loss effect during developing when the DUV exposure is insufficient. The zinc loss, however, is beneficial for increasing the mobility. Reducing zinc to indium composition ratio from 0.5 to 0.02 can effectively increase mobility from 0.27 to 7.30 cm2 V-1 s-1 when the gallium to indium ratio is fixed as 0.25 and the post annealing process is fixed as 300 °C for 2 h. On the other hand, an IGO TFT fails to deliver a uniform film and a reproducible TFT performance, revealing the critical role of zinc in forming homogeneous IGZO TFTs.

  6. Parameter Scaling for Epidemic Size in a Spatial Epidemic Model with Mobile Individuals.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chiyori T Urabe

    Full Text Available In recent years, serious infectious diseases tend to transcend national borders and widely spread in a global scale. The incidence and prevalence of epidemics are highly influenced not only by pathogen-dependent disease characteristics such as the force of infection, the latent period, and the infectious period, but also by human mobility and contact patterns. However, the effect of heterogeneous mobility of individuals on epidemic outcomes is not fully understood. Here, we aim to elucidate how spatial mobility of individuals contributes to the final epidemic size in a spatial susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR model with mobile individuals in a square lattice. After illustrating the interplay between the mobility parameters and the other parameters on the spatial epidemic spreading, we propose an index as a function of system parameters, which largely governs the final epidemic size. The main contribution of this study is to show that the proposed index is useful for estimating how parameter scaling affects the final epidemic size. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed index, we show that there is a positive correlation between the proposed index computed with the real data of human airline travels and the actual number of positive incident cases of influenza B in the entire world, implying that the growing incidence of influenza B is attributed to increased human mobility.

  7. The Pattern of Mobile Phone Use and Prevalence of Self-Reported Symptoms in Elementary and Junior High School Students in Shiraz, Iran

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mortazavi, Seyed Mohammad Javad; Atefi, Mohammad; Kholghi, Fatemeh

    2011-01-01

    Background: The use of mobile phone by children is increasing drastically. Children are likely to accumulate many years of exposure during their lives. Furthermore, as nervous systems in children are developing, children may be at a greater risk compared to adults. In this light, some scientists have suggested that the use of mobile phones should be restricted in high-risk groups such as children. This study is an attempt to explore the pattern of mobile phone use and its health effects among students from the city of Shiraz, Iran. Methods: A total of 469 (235 males and 234 females; 250 elementary and 219 junior high school) healthy students participated in this study. The students were randomly selected from three different educational districts of the city. For each student, a questionnaire regarding the possible sources of exposure to electromagnetic fields or microwave radiation, specially the pattern of mobile phone use, medical history and life style was filled out by interviewers. Results: Only 31.42% of the students used to use mobile phones. The average daily time of using mobile phones in talk mode was 7.08±21.42 minutes. Not only the relative frequency of mobile phone ownership in boys was significantly more than the girls, but also the boys used their mobile phones more frequently. Statistically significant associations were found between the time mobile phones were used in talk mode and some symptoms. Furthermore, a statistically significant association was found between the time mobile phones were used in talk mode and the number of headaches per month, number of vertigo per month, or number of sleeping problem per month. Conclusion: Results obtained in this study show that a large proportion of children in the city of Shiraz use mobile phones. A significant increase was found in some self-reported symptoms among users of mobile phones. These findings are in line with what is widely believed regarding the higher vulnerability of children to exhibit

  8. The pattern of mobile phone use and prevalence of self-reported symptoms in elementary and junior high school students in shiraz, iran.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mortazavi, Seyed Mohammad Javad; Atefi, Mohammad; Kholghi, Fatemeh

    2011-06-01

    The use of mobile phone by children is increasing drastically. Children are likely to accumulate many years of exposure during their lives. Furthermore, as nervous systems in children are developing, children may be at a greater risk compared to adults. In this light, some scientists have suggested that the use of mobile phones should be restricted in high-risk groups such as children. This study is an attempt to explore the pattern of mobile phone use and its health effects among students from the city of Shiraz, Iran. A total of 469 (235 males and 234 females; 250 elementary and 219 junior high school) healthy students participated in this study. The students were randomly selected from three different educational districts of the city. For each student, a questionnaire regarding the possible sources of exposure to electromagnetic fields or microwave radiation, specially the pattern of mobile phone use, medical history and life style was filled out by interviewers. Only 31.42% of the students used to use mobile phones. The average daily time of using mobile phones in talk mode was 7.08±21.42 minutes. Not only the relative frequency of mobile phone ownership in boys was significantly more than the girls, but also the boys used their mobile phones more frequently. Statistically significant associations were found between the time mobile phones were used in talk mode and some symptoms. Furthermore, a statistically significant association was found between the time mobile phones were used in talk mode and the number of headaches per month, number of vertigo per month, or number of sleeping problem per month. RESULTS obtained in this study show that a large proportion of children in the city of Shiraz use mobile phones. A significant increase was found in some self-reported symptoms among users of mobile phones. These findings are in line with what is widely believed regarding the higher vulnerability of children to exhibit symptoms from using mobile phones. The

  9. The Pattern of Mobile Phone Use and Prevalence of Self-Reported Symptoms in Elementary and Junior High School Students in Shiraz, Iran

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Seyed Mohammad Javad Mortazavi

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available Background: The use of mobile phone by children is increasing drastically. Children are likely to accumulate many years of exposure during their lives. Furthermore, as nervous systems in children are developing, children may be at a greater risk compared to adults. In this light, some scientists have suggested that the use of mobile phones should be restricted in high-risk groups such as children. This study is an attempt to explore the pattern of mobile phone use and its health effects among students from the city of Shiraz, Iran. Methods: A total of 469 (235 males and 234 females; 250 elementary and 219 junior high school healthy students participated in this study. The students were randomly selected from three different educational districts of the city. For each student, a questionnaire regarding the possible sources of exposure to electromagnetic fields or microwave radiation, specially the pattern of mobile phone use, medical history and life style was filled out by interviewers. Results: Only 31.42% of the students used to use mobile phones. The average daily time of using mobile phones in talk mode was 7.08±21.42 minutes. Not only the relative frequency of mobile phone ownership in boys was significantly more than the girls, but also the boys used their mobile phones more frequently. Statistically significant associations were found between the time mobile phones were used in talk mode and some symptoms. Furthermore, a statistically significant association was found between the time mobile phones were used in talk mode and the number of headaches per month, number of vertigo per month, or number of sleeping problem per month. Conclusion: Results obtained in this study show that a large proportion of children in the city of Shiraz use mobile phones. A significant increase was found in some self-reported symptoms among users of mobile phones. These findings are in line with what is widely believed regarding the higher vulnerability of

  10. Social, Spatial and Legislative Strategy to Shift Urban Mobility Patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Branea, Ana-Maria; Gaman, Marius; Badescu, Stefana

    2017-10-01

    A city’s predominant transportation mode is crucial in determining its type of urban tissue. A denser and more compact urban development is generated through pedestrian, bicycle and public transit while car based developments tend to be dispersed, characterized by unsustainable low densities. However, a clear implementation strategy eludes many urban planning practitioners and public administrations, thus highlighting the need for further research. Following an international trend, Timisoara’s mobility strategy over the past two decades, has been to accommodate an ever-increasing number of vehicles on its underdeveloped infrastructure at the expense of green areas, pedestrian lanes and even travel-turned-parking lanes. Despite the latest, slight, shift towards inner city urban development only 11% of the proposed Urban Mobility Strategy’s policies are not centred on cars. Through a 15 criteria analysis of the main means of transportation, pedestrian, bicycle, public transit and car, the authors determined the most sustainable and efficient mode based on the distance - duration relationship as being bicycles, for a city of Timisoara’s size and characteristics. Yet, the city’s infrastructure scored poorly on safety and comfort due to its incoherence and numerous dysfunctionalities. To better illustrate and understand Timisoara’s current state and proposed mobility strategy, the authors undertook a comparative analysis of Timisoara’s and Utrecht’s bike lane infrastructure. Similarities in size and number of inhabitants were only secondary selection criteria compared to Utrecht’s aspiring to model status. The aim of this study is to present the long term, multi-tier implementation strategy proposed to reorient Timisoara’s urban development towards a more compact, sustainable typology. Comprising social-educational, spatial and legislative objectives the strategy aspires to modify local behaviour towards and perception of alternative modes of

  11. Superior Pattern Processing is the Essence of the Evolved Human Brain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mark eMattson

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available Humans have long pondered the nature of their mind/brain and, particularly why its capacities for reasoning, communication and abstract thought are far superior to other species, including closely related anthropoids. This article considers superior pattern processing (SPP as the fundamental basis of most, if not all, unique features of the human brain including intelligence, language, imagination, invention, and the belief in imaginary entities such as ghosts and gods. SPP involves the electrochemical, neuronal network-based, encoding, integration, and transfer to other individuals of perceived or mentally-fabricated patterns. During human evolution, pattern processing capabilities became increasingly sophisticated as the result of expansion of the cerebral cortex, particularly the prefrontal cortex and regions involved in processing of images. Specific patterns, real or imagined, are reinforced by emotional experiences, indoctrination and even psychedelic drugs. Impaired or dysregulated SPP is fundamental to cognitive and psychiatric disorders. A broader understanding of SPP mechanisms, and their roles in normal and abnormal function of the human brain, may enable the development of interventions that reduce irrational decisions and destructive behaviors.

  12. A Multiscale Survival Process for Modeling Human Activity Patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Tianyang; Cui, Peng; Song, Chaoming; Zhu, Wenwu; Yang, Shiqiang

    2016-01-01

    Human activity plays a central role in understanding large-scale social dynamics. It is well documented that individual activity pattern follows bursty dynamics characterized by heavy-tailed interevent time distributions. Here we study a large-scale online chatting dataset consisting of 5,549,570 users, finding that individual activity pattern varies with timescales whereas existing models only approximate empirical observations within a limited timescale. We propose a novel approach that models the intensity rate of an individual triggering an activity. We demonstrate that the model precisely captures corresponding human dynamics across multiple timescales over five orders of magnitudes. Our model also allows extracting the population heterogeneity of activity patterns, characterized by a set of individual-specific ingredients. Integrating our approach with social interactions leads to a wide range of implications.

  13. Human progenitor cells rapidly mobilized by AMD3100 repopulate NOD/SCID mice with increased frequency in comparison to cells from the same donor mobilized by granulocyte colony stimulating factor

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hess, David A; Bonde, Jesper; Craft, Timothy P

    2007-01-01

    ) or purified CD34(+) cells was compared at limiting dilution into NOD/SCID mice. Human AMD3100-mobilized MNC possessed enhanced repopulating frequency in comparison to G-CSF-mobilized MNC from paired donors, and purified CD34(+) progenitors were at least as efficient as the G-CSF mobilized cells....... The frequencies of NOD/SCID repopulating cells (SRC) were 1 SRC in 8.7 x 10(6) AMD3100-mobilized MNC compared to 1 SRC in 29.0 x 10(6) G-CSF-mobilized MNC, and 1 SRC in 1.2 x 10(5) AMD3100-mobilized CD34(+) cells compared to 1 SRC in 1.8 x 10(5) G-CSF-mobilized CD34(+) cells. Hematopoietic differentiation...

  14. PATTERN-BASED AND REUSE-DRIVEN ARCHITECTING OF MOBILE CLOUD SOFTWARE

    OpenAIRE

    Aakash Ahmad1 , Ahmed B. Altamimi1 , Abdulrahman Alreshidi1 , Mohammad T. Alshammari1 , Numra Saeed2 , Jamal M. Aqib1

    2018-01-01

    Context: Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) represents the state-of-the-art technology that unifies mobile computing and cloud computing to develop systems that are portable yet resource sufficient. Mobile computing allows portable communication and context-aware computation, however, due to the energy and resource constraints mobile computing lacks performance for computationally intensive tasks. Cloud computing model uses the ‘as a service’ model - providing hardware and software services - to of...

  15. PATTERN-BASED AND REUSE-DRIVEN ARCHITECTING OF MOBILE CLOUD SOFTWARE

    OpenAIRE

    Aakash Ahmad

    2017-01-01

    Context: Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) represents the state-of-the-art technology that unifies mobile computing and cloud computing to develop systems that are portable yet resource sufficient. Mobile computing allows portable communication and context-aware computation, however, due to the energy and resource constraints mobile computing lacks performance for computationally intensive tasks. Cloud computing model uses the ‘as a service’ model - providing hardware and software services - to of...

  16. CityMobil : Human factor issues regarding highly automated vehicles on eLane

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Toffetti, A.; Wilschut, E.S.; Martens, M.H.; Schieben, A.; Rambaldini, A.; Merat, N.; Flemisch, F.

    2009-01-01

    There are several human factor concerns with highly autonomous or semiautonomous driving, such as transition of control, loss of skill, and dealing with automated system errors. Four CityMobil experiments studied the eLane concept for dual-mode cars, and the results of one are described. The open

  17. Cultural, Economic and Societal Impacts on Users’ Behaviour and Mobile Broadband Adoption Trends

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mahdi H. Miraz

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available The diverse range of Internet enabled devices both mobile and fixed has not only impacted the global economy but the very fabric of human communications and lifestyles. The ease of access and lowered cost has enabled hitherto diametrically opposed people to interact and influence each other globally. The consequence of which is the dire need to address the way culture affects interaction with information systems across the world. The many facets of which encompasses human behaviour, socio-economic and cultural factors including lifestyles and the way of interaction with the information system. The study group involved participants from Bangladesh and the United Kingdom to ascertain the users’ behavioural patterns and mobile broadband technology diffusion trends.

  18. Biophysical evaluation of radiofrequency electromagnetic field effects on male reproductive pattern.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kesari, Kavindra Kumar; Kumar, Sanjay; Nirala, Jayprakash; Siddiqui, Mohd Haris; Behari, Jitendra

    2013-03-01

    There are possible hazardous health effects of exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiations emitted from mobile phone on the human reproductive pattern. It is more effective while keeping mobile phones in pocket or near testicular organs. Present review examines the possible concern on radio frequency radiation interaction and biological effects such as enzyme induction, and toxicological effects, including genotoxicity and carcinogenicity, testicular cancer, and reproductive outcomes. Testicular infertility or testicular cancer due to mobile phone or microwave radiations suggests an increased level of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Though generation of ROS in testis has been responsible for possible toxic effects on physiology of reproduction, the reviews of last few decades have well established that these radiations are very harmful and cause mutagenic changes in reproductive pattern and leads to infertility. The debate will be focused on bio-interaction mechanism between mobile phone and testicular cancer due to ROS formation. This causes the biological damage and leads to several changes like decreased sperm count, enzymatic and hormonal changes, DNA damage, and apoptosis formation. In the present review, physics of mobile phone including future research on various aspects has been discussed.

  19. Influence of Humans on Evolution and Mobilization of Environmental Antibiotic Resistome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gaze, William H.; Krone, Stephen M.; Larsson, D.G. Joakim; Li, Xian-Zhi; Robinson, Joseph A.; Simonet, Pascal; Smalla, Kornelia; Timinouni, Mohammed; Topp, Ed; Wellington, Elizabeth M.; Zhu, Yong-Guan

    2013-01-01

    The clinical failure of antimicrobial drugs that were previously effective in controlling infectious disease is a tragedy of increasing magnitude that gravely affects human health. This resistance by pathogens is often the endpoint of an evolutionary process that began billions of years ago in non–disease-causing microorganisms. This environmental resistome, its mobilization, and the conditions that facilitate its entry into human pathogens are at the heart of the current public health crisis in antibiotic resistance. Understanding the origins, evolution, and mechanisms of transfer of resistance elements is vital to our ability to adequately address this public health issue. PMID:23764294

  20. Calling patterns in human communication dynamics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Zhi-Qiang; Xie, Wen-Jie; Li, Ming-Xia; Podobnik, Boris; Zhou, Wei-Xing; Stanley, H Eugene

    2013-01-29

    Modern technologies not only provide a variety of communication modes (e.g., texting, cell phone conversation, and online instant messaging), but also detailed electronic traces of these communications between individuals. These electronic traces indicate that the interactions occur in temporal bursts. Here, we study intercall duration of communications of the 100,000 most active cell phone users of a Chinese mobile phone operator. We confirm that the intercall durations follow a power-law distribution with an exponential cutoff at the population level but find differences when focusing on individual users. We apply statistical tests at the individual level and find that the intercall durations follow a power-law distribution for only 3,460 individuals (3.46%). The intercall durations for the majority (73.34%) follow a Weibull distribution. We quantify individual users using three measures: out-degree, percentage of outgoing calls, and communication diversity. We find that the cell phone users with a power-law duration distribution fall into three anomalous clusters: robot-based callers, telecom fraud, and telephone sales. This information is of interest to both academics and practitioners, mobile telecom operators in particular. In contrast, the individual users with a Weibull duration distribution form the fourth cluster of ordinary cell phone users. We also discover more information about the calling patterns of these four clusters (e.g., the probability that a user will call the c(r)-th most contact and the probability distribution of burst sizes). Our findings may enable a more detailed analysis of the huge body of data contained in the logs of massive users.

  1. Patterns of differences in brain morphology in humans as compared to extant apes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aldridge, Kristina

    2011-01-01

    Although human evolution is characterized by a vast increase in brain size, it is not clear whether or not certain regions of the brain are enlarged disproportionately in humans, or how this enlargement relates to differences in overall neural morphology. The aim of this study is to determine whether or not there are specific suites of features that distinguish the morphology of the human brain from that of apes. The study sample consists of whole brain, in vivo magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) and five ape species (gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos). Twenty-nine 3D landmarks, including surface and internal features of the brain were located on 3D MRI reconstructions of each individual using MEASURE software. Landmark coordinate data were scaled for differences in size and analyzed using Euclidean Distance Matrix Analysis (EDMA) to statistically compare the brains of each non-human ape species to the human sample. Results of analyses show both a pattern of brain morphology that is consistently different between all apes and humans, as well as patterns that differ among species. Further, both the consistent and species-specific patterns include cortical and subcortical features. The pattern that remains consistent across species indicates a morphological reorganization of 1) relationships between cortical and subcortical frontal structures, 2) expansion of the temporal lobe and location of the amygdala, and 3) expansion of the anterior parietal region. Additionally, results demonstrate that, although there is a pattern of morphology that uniquely defines the human brain, there are also patterns that uniquely differentiate human morphology from the morphology of each non-human ape species, indicating that reorganization of neural morphology occurred at the evolutionary divergence of each of these groups. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Human Exploration Systems and Mobility Capability Roadmap Progress Review

    Science.gov (United States)

    Culbert, Chris; Taylor, Jeff

    2005-01-01

    Contents include the following: Capability Roadmap Team. Capability Description and Capability Breakdown Structure. Benefits of the Human Systems and Mobility Capability. Roadmap Process and Approach. Drivers and Assumptions for the whole team. Current State-of-the-Art, Assumptions and Requirements will be covered in the appropriate sections. Capability Presentations by Leads under Roadmap (Repeated for each capability under roadmap). Capability Description, Benefits, Current State-of-the-Art. Capability Requirements and Assumptions. Roadmap for Capability. Capability Readiness Level. Technology Readiness Level. Figures of Merit. Summary of Top Level Capability. Significant Technical Challenges. Summary and Forward Work.

  3. Survey of the Use Pattern and Satisfaction of Mobile Picture Archiving and Communication System Users with Tablet Personal Computer

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kim, Ji Hyun; Park, Hee Jin; Lee, So Yeon; Chung, Eun Chul; Park, Hae Won [Dept. of f Radiology, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Jeon, Yong Hwan; Kim, Sam Soo [Dept. of f Radiology, School of Medicine, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon (Korea, Republic of); Park, Hyo Soon [Dept. of Laboratory Medicine, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

    2013-01-15

    The purpose of this study is to investigate the use pattern, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and general opinion of the physicians from mobile Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) use with galaxy tab 10.1. A survey questionnaire was distributed to 146 physicians of one medical center, and a total of 105 physicians responded. The questionnaire aimed to investigate of the physicians' use pattern, convenience, discomforts, satisfaction, degree of help to diagnose and treat, general opinion, and other opinions. The responses elicited, as well as discrepancies among the departments, and ages were assessed. Chi-square and Fisher's exact were used to determine the value of data. The frequency of usage of the mobile PACS by the medical (75%) and surgical (78%) clinicians was higher than the supporting clinicians (48%) (p = 0.017). The uses and time of utilizing showed statistically significant difference among ages (p = 0.011, p 0.038). Most of the young group (< 45) used after work on dealing with patients of the emergency room and inpatients. However, old group ({>=} 45) used at work more than young group, and most of them used on dealing with the inpatients. The mean satisfaction score regarding the degree of help and about the satisfaction were 3.1 and 3.4, respectively. The frequency of the use of the mobile PACS by medical and surgical clinicians was higher than supporting clinicians. There were statistically significant differences in the times and uses between the young and old groups, but not among the clinical departments. The satisfaction of the use of mobile PACS was moderate degree.

  4. Survey of the Use Pattern and Satisfaction of Mobile Picture Archiving and Communication System Users with Tablet Personal Computer

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kim, Ji Hyun; Park, Hee Jin; Lee, So Yeon; Chung, Eun Chul; Park, Hae Won; Jeon, Yong Hwan; Kim, Sam Soo; Park, Hyo Soon

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to investigate the use pattern, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and general opinion of the physicians from mobile Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) use with galaxy tab 10.1. A survey questionnaire was distributed to 146 physicians of one medical center, and a total of 105 physicians responded. The questionnaire aimed to investigate of the physicians' use pattern, convenience, discomforts, satisfaction, degree of help to diagnose and treat, general opinion, and other opinions. The responses elicited, as well as discrepancies among the departments, and ages were assessed. Chi-square and Fisher's exact were used to determine the value of data. The frequency of usage of the mobile PACS by the medical (75%) and surgical (78%) clinicians was higher than the supporting clinicians (48%) (p = 0.017). The uses and time of utilizing showed statistically significant difference among ages (p = 0.011, p 0.038). Most of the young group (< 45) used after work on dealing with patients of the emergency room and inpatients. However, old group (≥ 45) used at work more than young group, and most of them used on dealing with the inpatients. The mean satisfaction score regarding the degree of help and about the satisfaction were 3.1 and 3.4, respectively. The frequency of the use of the mobile PACS by medical and surgical clinicians was higher than supporting clinicians. There were statistically significant differences in the times and uses between the young and old groups, but not among the clinical departments. The satisfaction of the use of mobile PACS was moderate degree.

  5. Mobile phone call data as a regional socio-economic proxy indicator.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sanja Šćepanović

    Full Text Available The advent of publishing anonymized call detail records opens the door for temporal and spatial human dynamics studies. Such studies, besides being useful for creating universal models for mobility patterns, could be also used for creating new socio-economic proxy indicators that will not rely only on the local or state institutions. In this paper, from the frequency of calls at different times of the day, in different small regional units (sub-prefectures in Côte d'Ivoire, we infer users' home and work sub-prefectures. This division of users enables us to analyze different mobility and calling patterns for the different regions. We then compare how those patterns correlate to the data from other sources, such as: news for particular events in the given period, census data, economic activity, poverty index, power plants and energy grid data. Our results show high correlation in many of the cases revealing the diversity of socio-economic insights that can be inferred using only mobile phone call data. The methods and the results may be particularly relevant to policy-makers engaged in poverty reduction initiatives as they can provide an affordable tool in the context of resource-constrained developing economies, such as Côte d'Ivoire's.

  6. Socioeconomic mobility and tobacco consumption patterns in fish industry workers in Udupi District of coastal Karnataka.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Acharya, Shashidhar; Pentapati, Kalyana Chakravarthy; Acharya, Shruthi

    2014-01-01

    The aim of this study was to understand the tobacco consumption patterns and their relationship with life course socioeconomic mobility among fish industry workers as this could provide important information in dealing with the tobacco problem in this very vulnerable population. Socioeconomic life course data and information about tobacco habits was collected from 102 fish industry workers. A subject was considered to be upwardly mobile if the family head's educational attainment and the number of earning members increased and the number of children and dependents decreased since childhood in his or her household. Oral examination was also done for malignant/premalignant lesions. Of the 102 subjects, 64 regularly consumed tobacco either in smoking or smokeless forms and the common reasons for the habit were the co-workers' influence and to keep awake at work. Fourteen subjects had premalignant lesions in the oral cavity and all them were in the buccal mucosa. The prevalence of the tobacco habit was much lesser (25%) among the upwardly mobile group when compared to the minimal or no improvement group (75%). A majority of those free from the habit (73.7%) were belonging to the group, which showed improved educational attainment. Among those with good social mobility, the percentage of workers with high frequency of tobacco consumption and those with a longer duration of the tobacco habit was low when compared to the minimal social mobility group. A holistic approach consisting of efforts to improve the overall socioeconomic conditions can be more effective than piecemeal solutions in dealing with the tobacco menace.

  7. Similar Fracture Patterns in Human Nose and Gothic Cathedral.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Shu Jin; Tse, Kwong Ming; Lee, Heow Pueh

    2015-10-01

    This study proposes that the bony anatomy of the human nose and masonry structure of the Gothic cathedral are geometrically similar, and have common fracture patterns. We also aim to correlate the fracture patterns observed in patients' midface structures with those seen in the Gothic cathedral using computational approach. CT scans of 33 patients with facial fractures were examined and compared with computer simulations of both the Gothic cathedral and human nose. Three similar patterns were found: (1) Cracks of the nasal arch with crumpling of the vertical buttresses akin to the damage seen during minor earthquakes; (2) lateral deviation of the central nasal arch and collapse of the vertical buttresses akin to those due to lateral forces from wind and in major earthquakes; and (3) Central arch collapse seen as a result of collapse under excessive dead weight. Interestingly, the finding of occult nasal and septal fractures in the mandible fractures with absence of direct nasal trauma highlights the possibility of transmission of forces from the foundation to the arch leading to structural failure. It was also found that the structural buttresses of the Gothic cathedral delineate the vertical buttresses in the human midface structure. These morphologic similarities between the human nose and Gothic cathedral will serve as a basis to study the biomechanics of nasal fractures. Identification of structural buttresses in a skeletal structure has important implications for reconstruction as reestablishment of structural continuity restores normal anatomy and architectural stability of the human midface structure. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

  8. Human Factors for Nursing: From In-Situ Testing to Mobile Usability Engineering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kushniruk, Andre W; Borycki, Elizabeth M; Solvoll, Terje; Hullin, Carola

    2016-01-01

    The tutorial goal is to familiarize participants with human aspects of health informatics and human-centered approaches to the design, evaluation and deployment of both usable and safe healthcare information systems. The focus will be on demonstrating and teaching practical and low-cost methods for evaluating mobile applications in nursing. Basic background to testing methods will be provided, followed by live demonstration of the methods. Then the audience will break into small groups to explore the application of the methods to applications of interest (there will be a number of possible applications that will be available for applications in areas such as electronic health records and decision support, however, if the groups have applications of specific interest to them that will be possible). The challenges of conducting usability testing, and in particular mobile usability testing will be discussed along with practical solutions. The target audience includes practicing nurses and nurse researchers, nursing informatics specialists, nursing students, nursing managers and health informatics professionals interested in improving the usability and safety of healthcare applications.

  9. Student mobility and doctoral education in South Africa | Sehoole ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This article analyses doctoral education programmes in South Africa with a particular focus on student mobility. It investigates pull and push factors as a conceptual framework, arguing that the patterns of student mobility in doctoral education programmes in South Africa follow the patterns of international student mobility ...

  10. Fragmenting pastoral mobility: Changing grazing patterns in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carol Kerven; Ilya Ilych Alimaev; Roy Behnke; Grant Davidson; Nurlan Malmakov; Aidos Smailov; Iain Wright

    2006-01-01

    Kazak nomads were seasonally mobile in the pre-Soviet period, in response to climate variability and landscape heterogeneity. The scale of these movements was interrupted during the Soviet period, but some degree of mobility remained. Mobility virtually ceased in the post-Soviet 1990s, but is reemerging as flock numbers rebound from the mid 1990s population crash.

  11. Rising Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility: The Role of Public Investments in Human Capital.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aizer, Anna

    2014-06-01

    One consequence of the rise in inequality witnessed over the past 40 years is its potentially negative impact on intergenerational mobility if parents at the bottom of the income distribution invest significantly less in their children's human capital. I consider whether public investments in children can potentially offset the inequality of private investments. Specifically, examining changes in public spending in 25 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 2000-2009, I find that increases in spending on health are most strongly associated with reductions in the importance of family background and declines in inequality in the production of child human capital as measured by the Program for International Student Assessment test scores among 15-year-olds. Public spending on family support, housing, and education are also moderately related. In contrast, increased spending on the elderly is associated with increases in the importance of parental background and inequality of child test scores. These results suggest that public investments in child human capital have the potential to offset the potentially negative impact of increasing income inequality on intergenerational mobility and inequality of the next generation. Further research firmly establishing a causal relationship is needed.

  12. Rising Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility: The Role of Public Investments in Human Capital

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aizer, Anna

    2014-01-01

    One consequence of the rise in inequality witnessed over the past 40 years is its potentially negative impact on intergenerational mobility if parents at the bottom of the income distribution invest significantly less in their children's human capital. I consider whether public investments in children can potentially offset the inequality of private investments. Specifically, examining changes in public spending in 25 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 2000–2009, I find that increases in spending on health are most strongly associated with reductions in the importance of family background and declines in inequality in the production of child human capital as measured by the Program for International Student Assessment test scores among 15-year-olds. Public spending on family support, housing, and education are also moderately related. In contrast, increased spending on the elderly is associated with increases in the importance of parental background and inequality of child test scores. These results suggest that public investments in child human capital have the potential to offset the potentially negative impact of increasing income inequality on intergenerational mobility and inequality of the next generation. Further research firmly establishing a causal relationship is needed. PMID:25419203

  13. In silico pattern-based analysis of the human cytomegalovirus genome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rigoutsos, Isidore; Novotny, Jiri; Huynh, Tien; Chin-Bow, Stephen T; Parida, Laxmi; Platt, Daniel; Coleman, David; Shenk, Thomas

    2003-04-01

    More than 200 open reading frames (ORFs) from the human cytomegalovirus genome have been reported as potentially coding for proteins. We have used two pattern-based in silico approaches to analyze this set of putative viral genes. With the help of an objective annotation method that is based on the Bio-Dictionary, a comprehensive collection of amino acid patterns that describes the currently known natural sequence space of proteins, we have reannotated all of the previously reported putative genes of the human cytomegalovirus. Also, with the help of MUSCA, a pattern-based multiple sequence alignment algorithm, we have reexamined the original human cytomegalovirus gene family definitions. Our analysis of the genome shows that many of the coded proteins comprise amino acid combinations that are unique to either the human cytomegalovirus or the larger group of herpesviruses. We have confirmed that a surprisingly large portion of the analyzed ORFs encode membrane proteins, and we have discovered a significant number of previously uncharacterized proteins that are predicted to be G-protein-coupled receptor homologues. The analysis also indicates that many of the encoded proteins undergo posttranslational modifications such as hydroxylation, phosphorylation, and glycosylation. ORFs encoding proteins with similar functional behavior appear in neighboring regions of the human cytomegalovirus genome. All of the results of the present study can be found and interactively explored online (http://cbcsrv.watson.ibm.com/virus/).

  14. Diet and Mobility in the Corded Ware of Central Europe.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Karl-Göran Sjögren

    Full Text Available Isotopic investigations of two cemetery populations from the Corded Ware Culture in southern Germany reveal new information on the dating of these graves, human diet during this period, and individual mobility. Corded Ware Culture was present across much of temperate Europe ca. 2800-2200 cal. BC and is represented by distinctive artifacts and burial practices. Corded Ware was strongly influenced by the Yamnaya Culture that arose in the steppes of eastern Europe and western Eurasia after 3000 BC, as indicated by recent aDNA research. However, the development of CW on different chronological and spatial scales has to be evaluated. Examination of the CW burials from southern Germany supports an argument for substantial human mobility in this period. Several burials from gravefields and larger samples from two large cemeteries at Lauda-Königshofen "Wöllerspfad" and at Bergheinfeld "Hühnerberg" contributed the human remains for our study of bone and tooth enamel from the Corded Ware Culture. Our results suggest that Corded Ware groups in this region at least were subsisting on a mix of plant and animal foods and were highly mobile, especially the women. We interpret this as indicating a pattern of female exogamy, involving different groups with differing economic strategies.

  15. Diet and Mobility in the Corded Ware of Central Europe.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sjögren, Karl-Göran; Price, T Douglas; Kristiansen, Kristian

    2016-01-01

    Isotopic investigations of two cemetery populations from the Corded Ware Culture in southern Germany reveal new information on the dating of these graves, human diet during this period, and individual mobility. Corded Ware Culture was present across much of temperate Europe ca. 2800-2200 cal. BC and is represented by distinctive artifacts and burial practices. Corded Ware was strongly influenced by the Yamnaya Culture that arose in the steppes of eastern Europe and western Eurasia after 3000 BC, as indicated by recent aDNA research. However, the development of CW on different chronological and spatial scales has to be evaluated. Examination of the CW burials from southern Germany supports an argument for substantial human mobility in this period. Several burials from gravefields and larger samples from two large cemeteries at Lauda-Königshofen "Wöllerspfad" and at Bergheinfeld "Hühnerberg" contributed the human remains for our study of bone and tooth enamel from the Corded Ware Culture. Our results suggest that Corded Ware groups in this region at least were subsisting on a mix of plant and animal foods and were highly mobile, especially the women. We interpret this as indicating a pattern of female exogamy, involving different groups with differing economic strategies.

  16. Fuzzy Modelling for Human Dynamics Based on Online Social Networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuenca-Jara, Jesus; Terroso-Saenz, Fernando; Valdes-Vela, Mercedes; Skarmeta, Antonio F

    2017-08-24

    Human mobility mining has attracted a lot of attention in the research community due to its multiple implications in the provisioning of innovative services for large metropolises. In this scope, Online Social Networks (OSN) have arisen as a promising source of location data to come up with new mobility models. However, the human nature of this data makes it rather noisy and inaccurate. In order to deal with such limitations, the present work introduces a framework for human mobility mining based on fuzzy logic. Firstly, a fuzzy clustering algorithm extracts the most active OSN areas at different time periods. Next, such clusters are the building blocks to compose mobility patterns. Furthermore, a location prediction service based on a fuzzy rule classifier has been developed on top of the framework. Finally, both the framework and the predictor has been tested with a Twitter and Flickr dataset in two large cities.

  17. Mobile Semiotics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Ole B.

    2013-01-01

    This chapter aims to understand the mobile condition of contemporary life with a particular view to the signifying dimension of the environment and its ‘readability’. The chapter explores the potentials of semiotics and its relationship to the new mobilities literature. What takes place...... is a ‘mobile sense making’ where signs and materially situated meanings connect to the moving human body and thus create particular challenges and complexities of making sense of the world. The chapter includes notions of mobility systems and socio-technical networks in order to show how a ‘semiotic layer’ may...... work to afford or restrict mobile practices....

  18. Intensive mobilities

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vannini, Phillip; Bissell, David; Jensen, Ole B.

    with fieldwork conducted in Canada, Denmark and Australia to develop our understanding of the experiential politics of long distance workers. Rather than focusing on the extensive dimensions of mobilities that are implicated in patterns and trends, our paper turns to the intensive dimensions of this experience......This paper explores the intensities of long distance commuting journeys as a way of exploring how bodily sensibilities are being changed by the mobilities that they undertake. The context of this paper is that many people are travelling further to work than ever before owing to a variety of factors...... which relate to transport, housing and employment. Yet we argue that the experiential dimensions of long distance mobilities have not received the attention that they deserve within geographical research on mobilities. This paper combines ideas from mobilities research and contemporary social theory...

  19. Human preferences for colorful birds: Vivid colors or pattern?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lišková, Silvie; Landová, Eva; Frynta, Daniel

    2015-04-29

    In a previous study, we found that the shape of a bird, rather than its color, plays a major role in the determination of human preferences. Thus, in the present study, we asked whether the preferences of human respondents towards uniformly shaped, colorful birds are determined by pattern rather than color. The experimental stimuli were pictures of small passerine birds of the family Pittidae possessing uniform shape but vivid coloration. We asked 200 participants to rank 43 colored and 43 identical, but grayscaled, pictures of birds. To find the traits determining human preferences, we performed GLM analysis in which we tried to explain the mean preference ranks and PC axes by the following explanatory variables: the overall lightness and saturation, edges (pattern), and the portion of each of the basic color hues. The results showed that the mean preference ranks of the grayscale set is explained mostly by the birds' pattern, whereas the colored set ranking is mostly determined by the overall lightness. The effect of colors was weaker, but still significant, and revealed that people liked blue and green birds. We found no significant role of the color red, the perception of which was acquired relatively recently in evolution.

  20. Human Preferences for Colorful Birds: Vivid Colors or Pattern?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Silvie Lišková

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available In a previous study, we found that the shape of a bird, rather than its color, plays a major role in the determination of human preferences. Thus, in the present study, we asked whether the preferences of human respondents towards uniformly shaped, colorful birds are determined by pattern rather than color. The experimental stimuli were pictures of small passerine birds of the family Pittidae possessing uniform shape but vivid coloration. We asked 200 participants to rank 43 colored and 43 identical, but grayscaled, pictures of birds. To find the traits determining human preferences, we performed GLM analysis in which we tried to explain the mean preference ranks and PC axes by the following explanatory variables: the overall lightness and saturation, edges (pattern, and the portion of each of the basic color hues. The results showed that the mean preference ranks of the grayscale set is explained mostly by the birds' pattern, whereas the colored set ranking is mostly determined by the overall lightness. The effect of colors was weaker, but still significant, and revealed that people liked blue and green birds. We found no significant role of the color red, the perception of which was acquired relatively recently in evolution.

  1. A Generalized Radiation Model for Human Mobility: Spatial Scale, Searching Direction and Trip Constraint.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chaogui Kang

    Full Text Available We generalized the recently introduced "radiation model", as an analog to the generalization of the classic "gravity model", to consolidate its nature of universality for modeling diverse mobility systems. By imposing the appropriate scaling exponent λ, normalization factor κ and system constraints including searching direction and trip OD constraint, the generalized radiation model accurately captures real human movements in various scenarios and spatial scales, including two different countries and four different cities. Our analytical results also indicated that the generalized radiation model outperformed alternative mobility models in various empirical analyses.

  2. Real-time multiple human perception with color-depth cameras on a mobile robot.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Hao; Reardon, Christopher; Parker, Lynne E

    2013-10-01

    The ability to perceive humans is an essential requirement for safe and efficient human-robot interaction. In real-world applications, the need for a robot to interact in real time with multiple humans in a dynamic, 3-D environment presents a significant challenge. The recent availability of commercial color-depth cameras allow for the creation of a system that makes use of the depth dimension, thus enabling a robot to observe its environment and perceive in the 3-D space. Here we present a system for 3-D multiple human perception in real time from a moving robot equipped with a color-depth camera and a consumer-grade computer. Our approach reduces computation time to achieve real-time performance through a unique combination of new ideas and established techniques. We remove the ground and ceiling planes from the 3-D point cloud input to separate candidate point clusters. We introduce the novel information concept, depth of interest, which we use to identify candidates for detection, and that avoids the computationally expensive scanning-window methods of other approaches. We utilize a cascade of detectors to distinguish humans from objects, in which we make intelligent reuse of intermediary features in successive detectors to improve computation. Because of the high computational cost of some methods, we represent our candidate tracking algorithm with a decision directed acyclic graph, which allows us to use the most computationally intense techniques only where necessary. We detail the successful implementation of our novel approach on a mobile robot and examine its performance in scenarios with real-world challenges, including occlusion, robot motion, nonupright humans, humans leaving and reentering the field of view (i.e., the reidentification challenge), human-object and human-human interaction. We conclude with the observation that the incorporation of the depth information, together with the use of modern techniques in new ways, we are able to create an

  3. Android Based Mobile Environment for Moodle Users

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Clunie, Gisela T.; Clunie, Clifton; Castillo, Aris; Rangel, Norman

    2013-01-01

    This paper is about the development of a platform that eases, throughout Android based mobile devices, mobility of users of virtual courses at Technological University of Panama. The platform deploys computational techniques such as "web services," design patterns, ontologies and mobile technologies to allow mobile devices communicate…

  4. Inferring Human Activity in Mobile Devices by Computing Multiple Contexts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Ruizhi; Chu, Tianxing; Liu, Keqiang; Liu, Jingbin; Chen, Yuwei

    2015-08-28

    This paper introduces a framework for inferring human activities in mobile devices by computing spatial contexts, temporal contexts, spatiotemporal contexts, and user contexts. A spatial context is a significant location that is defined as a geofence, which can be a node associated with a circle, or a polygon; a temporal context contains time-related information that can be e.g., a local time tag, a time difference between geographical locations, or a timespan; a spatiotemporal context is defined as a dwelling length at a particular spatial context; and a user context includes user-related information that can be the user's mobility contexts, environmental contexts, psychological contexts or social contexts. Using the measurements of the built-in sensors and radio signals in mobile devices, we can snapshot a contextual tuple for every second including aforementioned contexts. Giving a contextual tuple, the framework evaluates the posteriori probability of each candidate activity in real-time using a Naïve Bayes classifier. A large dataset containing 710,436 contextual tuples has been recorded for one week from an experiment carried out at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi with three participants. The test results demonstrate that the multi-context solution significantly outperforms the spatial-context-only solution. A classification accuracy of 61.7% is achieved for the spatial-context-only solution, while 88.8% is achieved for the multi-context solution.

  5. Mobile phone radiation induces reactive oxygen species production and DNA damage in human spermatozoa in vitro.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Geoffry N De Iuliis

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: In recent times there has been some controversy over the impact of electromagnetic radiation on human health. The significance of mobile phone radiation on male reproduction is a key element of this debate since several studies have suggested a relationship between mobile phone use and semen quality. The potential mechanisms involved have not been established, however, human spermatozoa are known to be particularly vulnerable to oxidative stress by virtue of the abundant availability of substrates for free radical attack and the lack of cytoplasmic space to accommodate antioxidant enzymes. Moreover, the induction of oxidative stress in these cells not only perturbs their capacity for fertilization but also contributes to sperm DNA damage. The latter has, in turn, been linked with poor fertility, an increased incidence of miscarriage and morbidity in the offspring, including childhood cancer. In light of these associations, we have analyzed the influence of RF-EMR on the cell biology of human spermatozoa in vitro. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Purified human spermatozoa were exposed to radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR tuned to 1.8 GHz and covering a range of specific absorption rates (SAR from 0.4 W/kg to 27.5 W/kg. In step with increasing SAR, motility and vitality were significantly reduced after RF-EMR exposure, while the mitochondrial generation of reactive oxygen species and DNA fragmentation were significantly elevated (P<0.001. Furthermore, we also observed highly significant relationships between SAR, the oxidative DNA damage bio-marker, 8-OH-dG, and DNA fragmentation after RF-EMR exposure. CONCLUSIONS: RF-EMR in both the power density and frequency range of mobile phones enhances mitochondrial reactive oxygen species generation by human spermatozoa, decreasing the motility and vitality of these cells while stimulating DNA base adduct formation and, ultimately DNA fragmentation. These findings have clear implications

  6. Hormone patterns in early human gestation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mishell, D.R. Jr.; Thorneycroft, I.H.; Nagata, Y.; Murata, T.; Nakamura, R.M.

    1974-01-01

    Accurate measurement of the low concentration of gonadotropins and steroid hormones present in human serum has been made possible by the development of sensitive radioimmunoassay (RIA) techniques. With the use of RIA FSH and LH, progesterone and 17OH-progesterone have been previously measured in early normal pregnancy. In order to determine the daily pattern of hormone levels in early normal pregnancy, gonadotropins as well as steroid hormone levels were measured in serum samples obtained daily from three women from the time of the last menstrual period prior to conception throughout the first few months of gestation. To further identify the steroid hormone pattern in early normal pregnancy, concentrations of estradiol, progesterone, and 17OH-progesterone were measured in individual serum samples obtained from a group of 158 women with apparently normal gestations who subsequently had therapeutic abortions. (auth)

  7. Modelling cholera epidemics: the role of waterways, human mobility and sanitation

    OpenAIRE

    Mari, L.; Bertuzzo, E.; Righetto, L.; Casagrandi, R.; Gatto, M.; Rodriguez-Iturbe, I.; Rinaldo, A.

    2011-01-01

    We investigate the role of human mobility as a driver for long-range spreading of cholera infections, which primarily propagate through hydrologically controlled ecological corridors. Our aim is to build a spatially explicit model of a disease epidemic, which is relevant to both social and scientific issues. We present a two-layer network model that accounts for the interplay between epidemiological dynamics, hydrological transport and long-distance dissemination of the pathogen Vibrio choler...

  8. Spatial patterns of close relationships across the lifespan

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jo, Hang-Hyun; Saramäki, Jari; Dunbar, Robin I. M.; Kaski, Kimmo

    2014-11-01

    The dynamics of close relationships is important for understanding the migration patterns of individual life-courses. The bottom-up approach to this subject by social scientists has been limited by sample size, while the more recent top-down approach using large-scale datasets suffers from a lack of detail about the human individuals. We incorporate the geographic and demographic information of millions of mobile phone users with their communication patterns to study the dynamics of close relationships and its effect in their life-course migration. We demonstrate how the close age- and sex-biased dyadic relationships are correlated with the geographic proximity of the pair of individuals, e.g., young couples tend to live further from each other than old couples. In addition, we find that emotionally closer pairs are living geographically closer to each other. These findings imply that the life-course framework is crucial for understanding the complex dynamics of close relationships and their effect on the migration patterns of human individuals.

  9. Human brain wave activity during exposure to radiofrequency field emissions from mobile phones

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    D'Costa, H.; Cosic, I.

    2003-01-01

    The aim of this study was to determine whether there is an effect of mobile phone electromagnetic field emissions on the human electroencephalograph (EEG). EEG recordings from ten awake subjects were taken during exposure to radiofrequency (RF) emissions from a mobile phone positioned behind the head. Two experimental trials were conducted. In the first trial, RF exposures were generated by a GSM mobile phone with the speaker disabled and configured to transmit at full-radiated power. During the second trial, exposures were generated by a non-modified GSM mobile phone in active standby mode. For each trial, subjects were exposed in five minute intervals to a randomized, interrupted sequence of five active and five sham exposures. The experiment was conducted under single-blind conditions. The average EEG band power in active exposure recordings was compared to corresponding sham recordings. Statistical tests indicated significant difference in the full-power mode trial within the EEG alpha (8-13 Hz) and beta (13-32 Hz) bands. A subsequent statistical analysis of median spectral power in discrete EEG rhythms revealed significant differences in 7 of the 32 distinct frequencies overall. In conclusion, the results of this study lend support to EEG effects from mobile phones activated in talk-mode. Copyright (2003) Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine

  10. Resource Optimization of Mobile Intelligent System with heart MPLS network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohammed Elkoutbi

    2009-10-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we introduce the original Mobile Intelligent System (MIS in embeded FPGA architecture. This node will allow the construction of autonomous mobile network units which can move in unknowns, inaccessible or hostile environnement for human being, in order to collect data by various sensors and transmits them by routing to a unit of distant process. In the sake of improving the performance of transmission, we propose a global schema of QoS management using DiffServ/MPLS backbones. We provide an evaluation of several scenarios for combining QoS IP networks with MIS access network. We conclude with a study on interoperability between QoS patterns in access and backbone networks.

  11. Staging Mobilities / Designing Mobilities

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Ole B.

    2015-01-01

    , and systems 'hosting' these multiple and complex mobilities are designed and how they are staging these in terms of their physical layout. By analysing specific cases of ‘mobilities design’ related to the four modes of moving; Walk, Bike, Train, and Car, the book uncover important and until now neglected...... is more than movement between point A and B. It explores how the movement of people, goods, information, and signs influences human understandings of self, other and the built environment. Moving towards a new understanding of the relationship between movement, interaction and environments, the project...

  12. Phenotypic and genotypic characterization of antioxidant enzyme system in human population exposed to radiation from mobile towers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gulati, Sachin; Yadav, Anita; Kumar, Neeraj; Priya, Kanu; Aggarwal, Neeraj K; Gupta, Ranjan

    2018-03-01

    In the present era, cellular phones have changed the life style of human beings completely and have become an essential part of their lives. The number of cell phones and cell towers are increasing in spite of their disadvantages. These cell towers transmit radiation continuously without any interruption, so people living within 100s of meters from the tower receive 10,000 to 10,000,000 times stronger signal than required for mobile communication. In the present study, we have examined superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzyme activity, catalase (CAT) enzyme activity, lipid peroxidation assay, and effect of functional polymorphism of SOD and CAT antioxidant genes against mobile tower-induced oxidative stress in human population. From our results, we have found a significantly lower mean value of manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) enzyme activity, catalase (CAT) enzyme activity, and a high value of lipid peroxidation assay in exposed as compared to control subjects. Polymorphisms in antioxidant MnSOD and CAT genes significantly contributed to its phenotype. In the current study, a significant association of genetic polymorphism of antioxidant genes with genetic damage has been observed in human population exposed to radiations emitted from mobile towers.

  13. Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 evolution in vivo tracked by DNA heteroduplex mobility assays

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Delwart, E. L.; Sheppard, H. W.; Walker, B. D.; Goudsmit, J.; Mullins, J. I.

    1994-01-01

    High mutation rates and strong selective pressures imposed on human immunodeficiency viruses in vivo result in the formation of pools of genetic variants known as quasispecies. DNA heteroduplex mobility and tracking analyses were used to monitor the generation of HIV sequence diversity, to estimate

  14. Rates and Patterns of Professional Mobility in Student Personnel Work

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sherburne, Paul Rogers

    1970-01-01

    This study piloted the recently developed technique known in business as mobilography." Methods can be adapted to study the mobility among student personnel workers. Greater mobility can be expected within the entrance level. (Author)

  15. Exploring Human Activity Patterns Using Taxicab Static Points

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bin Jiang

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper explores the patterns of human activities within a geographical space by adopting the taxicab static points which refer to the locations with zero speed along the tracking trajectory. We report the findings from both aggregated and individual aspects. Results from the aggregated level indicate the following: (1 Human activities exhibit an obvious regularity in time, for example, there is a burst of activity during weekend nights and a lull during the week. (2 They show a remarkable spatial drifting pattern, which strengthens our understanding of the activities in any given place. (3 Activities are heterogeneous in space irrespective of their drifting with time. These aggregated results not only help in city planning, but also facilitate traffic control and management. On the other hand, investigations on an individual level suggest that (4 activities witnessed by one taxicab will have different temporal regularity to another, and (5 each regularity implies a high level of prediction with low entropy by applying the Lempel-Ziv algorithm.

  16. Micro-patterned graphene-based sensing skins for human physiological monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Long; Loh, Kenneth J.; Chiang, Wei-Hung; Manna, Kausik

    2018-03-01

    Ultrathin, flexible, conformal, and skin-like electronic transducers are emerging as promising candidates for noninvasive and nonintrusive human health monitoring. In this work, a wearable sensing membrane is developed by patterning a graphene-based solution onto ultrathin medical tape, which can then be attached to the skin for monitoring human physiological parameters and physical activity. Here, the sensor is validated for monitoring finger bending/movements and for recognizing hand motion patterns, thereby demonstrating its future potential for evaluating athletic performance, physical therapy, and designing next-generation human-machine interfaces. Furthermore, this study also quantifies the sensor’s ability to monitor eye blinking and radial pulse in real-time, which can find broader applications for the healthcare sector. Overall, the printed graphene-based sensing skin is highly conformable, flexible, lightweight, nonintrusive, mechanically robust, and is characterized by high strain sensitivity.

  17. Population mobility reductions associated with travel restrictions during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone: use of mobile phone data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peak, Corey M; Wesolowski, Amy; Zu Erbach-Schoenberg, Elisabeth; Tatem, Andrew J; Wetter, Erik; Lu, Xin; Power, Daniel; Weidman-Grunewald, Elaine; Ramos, Sergio; Moritz, Simon; Buckee, Caroline O; Bengtsson, Linus

    2018-06-26

    Travel restrictions were implementeded on an unprecedented scale in 2015 in Sierra Leone to contain and eliminate Ebola virus disease. However, the impact of epidemic travel restrictions on mobility itself remains difficult to measure with traditional methods. New 'big data' approaches using mobile phone data can provide, in near real-time, the type of information needed to guide and evaluate control measures. We analysed anonymous mobile phone call detail records (CDRs) from a leading operator in Sierra Leone between 20 March and 1 July in 2015. We used an anomaly detection algorithm to assess changes in travel during a national 'stay at home' lockdown from 27 to 29 March. To measure the magnitude of these changes and to assess effect modification by region and historical Ebola burden, we performed a time series analysis and a crossover analysis. Routinely collected mobile phone data revealed a dramatic reduction in human mobility during a 3-day lockdown in Sierra Leone. The number of individuals relocating between chiefdoms decreased by 31% within 15 km, by 46% for 15-30 km and by 76% for distances greater than 30 km. This effect was highly heterogeneous in space, with higher impact in regions with higher Ebola incidence. Travel quickly returned to normal patterns after the restrictions were lifted. The effects of travel restrictions on mobility can be large, targeted and measurable in near real-time. With appropriate anonymization protocols, mobile phone data should play a central role in guiding and monitoring interventions for epidemic containment.

  18. Entrepreneurial Team: How Human and Social Capital Influence Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification and Mobilization of External Resources

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ahlem Omri

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Entrepreneurial teams play an extremely important role in the development of any country, especially in developing countries. To understand entrepreneurial teams that operate in a low-technology industry, we rely on the network and human perspective on entrepreneurship. In this paper, we investigate how the social and human capital of entrepreneurial team members influences their ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities and mobilize external resources. We extend prior research in two ways. First, by using the ordered probit method to measure the identified entrepreneurial opportunities number at the level of entrepreneurial teams. Second, to our knowledge, there is a very small number of studies that have theoretically and empirically investigated the mobilization of external resources, especially at the level of entrepreneurial teams.

  19. Individual differences in the effects of mobile phone exposure on human sleep: rethinking the problem.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loughran, Sarah P; McKenzie, Raymond J; Jackson, Melinda L; Howard, Mark E; Croft, Rodney J

    2012-01-01

    Mobile phone exposure-related effects on the human electroencephalogram (EEG) have been shown during both waking and sleep states, albeit with slight differences in the frequency affected. This discrepancy, combined with studies that failed to find effects, has led many to conclude that no consistent effects exist. We hypothesised that these differences might partly be due to individual variability in response, and that mobile phone emissions may in fact have large but differential effects on human brain activity. Twenty volunteers from our previous study underwent an adaptation night followed by two experimental nights in which they were randomly exposed to two conditions (Active and Sham), followed by a full-night sleep episode. The EEG spectral power was increased in the sleep spindle frequency range in the first 30 min of non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep following Active exposure. This increase was more prominent in the participants that showed an increase in the original study. These results confirm previous findings of mobile phone-like emissions affecting the EEG during non-REM sleep. Importantly, this low-level effect was also shown to be sensitive to individual variability. Furthermore, this indicates that previous negative results are not strong evidence for a lack of an effect and, given the far-reaching implications of mobile phone research, we may need to rethink the interpretation of results and the manner in which research is conducted in this field. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  20. Application of Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) Patterns to Reduce Crew Operations (RCO)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shively, R. Jay; Brandt, Summer L.; Lachter, Joel; Matessa, Mike; Sadler, Garrett; Battiste, Henri

    2016-01-01

    Unmanned aerial systems, robotics, advanced cockpits, and air traffic management are all examples of domains that are seeing dramatic increases in automation. While automation may take on some tasks previously performed by humans, humans will still be required, for the foreseeable future, to remain in the system. The collaboration with humans and these increasingly autonomous systems will begin to resemble cooperation between teammates, rather than simple task allocation. It is critical to understand this human-autonomy teaming (HAT) to optimize these systems in the future. One methodology to understand HAT is by identifying recurring patterns of HAT that have similar characteristics and solutions. This paper applies a methodology for identifying HAT patterns to an advanced cockpit project.

  1. Evolutionary paths towards the mobility patterns of the future

    CERN Document Server

    Fornahl, Dirk

    2014-01-01

    This edited volume presents new insights and challenges in the field of electric mobility in relation to new mobility and infrastructure concepts as well as to renewable energies. The book covers the socio-economic view on the topic as well as technical aspects and thus offers valuable knowledge for future business models. It primarily addresses practitioners and researchers in the field but may also be of use to graduate students.

  2. Mobile Applications for Patient-centered Care Coordination: A Review of Human Factors Methods Applied to their Design, Development, and Evaluation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baysari, M T; Westbrook, J I

    2015-08-13

    To examine if human factors methods were applied in the design, development, and evaluation of mobile applications developed to facilitate aspects of patient-centered care coordination. We searched MEDLINE and EMBASE (2013-2014) for studies describing the design or the evaluation of a mobile health application that aimed to support patients' active involvement in the coordination of their care. 34 papers met the inclusion criteria. Applications ranged from tools that supported self-management of specific conditions (e.g. asthma) to tools that provided coaching or education. Twelve of the 15 papers describing the design or development of an app reported the use of a human factors approach. The most frequently used methods were interviews and surveys, which often included an exploration of participants' current use of information technology. Sixteen papers described the evaluation of a patient application in practice. All of them adopted a human factors approach, typically an examination of the use of app features and/or surveys or interviews which enquired about patients' views of the effects of using the app on their behaviors (e.g. medication adherence), knowledge, and relationships with healthcare providers. No study in our review assessed the impact of mobile applications on health outcomes. The potential of mobile health applications to assist patients to more actively engage in the management of their care has resulted in a large number of applications being developed. Our review showed that human factors approaches are nearly always adopted to some extent in the design, development, and evaluation of mobile applications.

  3. Modelling and assessment of the electric field strength caused by mobile phone to the human head.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buckus, Raimondas; Strukcinskiene, Birute; Raistenskis, Juozas; Stukas, Rimantas

    2016-06-01

    Electromagnetic field exposure is the one of the most important physical agents that actively affects live organisms and environment. Active use of mobile phones influences the increase of electromagnetic field radiation. The aim of the study was to measure and assess the electric field strength caused by mobile phones to the human head. In this paper the software "COMSOL Multiphysics" was used to establish the electric field strength created by mobile phones around the head. The second generation (2G) Global System for Mobile (GSM) phones that operate in the frequency band of 900 MHz and reach the power of 2 W have a stronger electric field than (2G) GSM mobile phones that operate in the higher frequency band of 1,800 MHz and reach the power up to 1 W during conversation. The third generation of (3G) UMTS smart phones that effectively use high (2,100 MHz) radio frequency band emit the smallest electric field strength values during conversation. The highest electric field strength created by mobile phones is around the ear, i.e. the mobile phone location. The strength of mobile phone electric field on the phantom head decreases exponentially while moving sidewards from the center of the effect zone (the ear), and constitutes 1-12% of the artificial head's surface. The highest electric field strength values of mobile phones are associated with their higher power, bigger specific energy absorption rate (SAR) and lower frequency of mobile phone. The stronger electric field emitted by the more powerful mobile phones takes a higher percentage of the head surface. The highest electric field strength created by mobile phones is distributed over the user's ear.

  4. Spatial and temporal patterns of human Puumala virus (PUUV infections in Germany

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sarah Cunze

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Background Worldwide, the number of recorded human hantavirus infections as well as the number of affected countries is on the rise. In Europe, most human hantavirus infections are caused by the Puumala virus (PUUV, with bank voles (Myodes glareolus as reservoir hosts. Generally, infection outbreaks have been related to environmental conditions, particularly climatic conditions, food supply for the reservoir species and land use. However, although attempts have been made, the insufficient availability of environmental data is often hampering accurate temporal and spatially explicit models of human hantavirus infections. Methods In the present study, dynamics of human PUUV infections between 2001 and 2015 were explored using ArcGIS in order to identify spatio-temporal patterns. Results Percentage cover of forest area was identified as an important factor for the spatial pattern, whereas beech mast was found explaining temporal patterns of human PUUV infections in Germany. High numbers of infections were recorded in 2007, 2010 and 2012 and areas with highest records were located in Baden-Wuerttemberg (southwest Germany and North Rhine-Westphalia (western Germany. Conclusion More reliable data on reservoir host distribution, pathogen verification as well as an increased awareness of physicians are some of the factors that should improve future human infection risk assessments in Germany.

  5. Who's afraid of Patterns?: The Particular versus the Universal and the Meaning of Humanities 3.0

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rens Bod

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available The advent of Digital Humanities has enabled scholars to identify previously unknown patterns in the arts and letters; but the notion of pattern has also been subject to debate. In my response to the authors of this Forum, I argue that ‘pattern’ should not be confused with universal pattern. The term pattern itself is neutral with respect to being either particular or universal. Yet the testing and discovery of patterns – be they local or global – is greatly aided by digital tools. While such tools have been beneficial for the humanities, numerous scholars lack a sufficient grasp of the underlying assumptions and methods of these tools. I argue that in order to criticise and interpret the results of digital humanities properly, scholars must acquire a good working knowledge of the underlying tools and methods. Only then can digital humanities be fully integrated (humanities 3.0 with time-honoured (humanities 1.0 tools of hermeneutics and criticism.

  6. Spatio-temporal flow maps for visualizing movement and contact patterns

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bing Ni

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available The advanced telecom technologies and massive volumes of intelligent mobile phone users have yielded a huge amount of real-time data of people’s all-in-one telecommunication records, which we call telco big data. With telco data and the domain knowledge of an urban city, we are now able to analyze the movement and contact patterns of humans in an unprecedented scale. Flow map is widely used to display the movements of humans from one single source to multiple destinations by representing locations as nodes and movements as edges. However, it fails the task of visualizing both movement and contact data. In addition, analysts often need to compare and examine the patterns side by side, and do various quantitative analysis. In this work, we propose a novel spatio-temporal flow map layout to visualize when and where people from different locations move into the same places and make contact. We also propose integrating the spatiotemporal flow maps into existing spatiotemporal visualization techniques to form a suite of techniques for visualizing the movement and contact patterns. We report a potential application the proposed techniques can be applied to. The results show that our design and techniques properly unveil hidden information, while analysis can be achieved efficiently. Keywords: Spatio-temporal data, Flow map, Urban mobility

  7. Mobile phone usage pattern among undergraduate medical students at a Medical College of Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bobby Paul

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available AbstractObjective: Mobile phone usage has reached all ages across all segments of society, and its radiofrequency waves are an increasing concern among the general population. To find out the pattern of mobile phone usage among undergraduate medical students and their perceived symptoms and awareness about negative health effects due to their exposure to the radiofrequency waves. Methods: A descriptive type of epidemiological study was conducted among 295 undergraduate medical students in the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata, in August 2012 after obtaining Institutional Ethical Clearance. Data were collected by a pre-designed and pre-tested, semi structured questionnaire and analyzed with SPSS software, version 19.0. Results: Among the 1st semester students, browsing of the internet became the predominant activity; while listening to music and radio was the preferred activity among the 3rd, 5th and 7th semester students. In lecture class, 1st semester students (62.5% switch off; 40.6% of 5th semester students receive and 63.63% of 7th semester students keep the phone in silence mode. Duration of mobile phone usage was maximum among students who perceived headache as a side effect of usage. About 62.3% study subjects cited accidents as a harmful effect, followed by lack of concentration. Conclusions: Regulatory bodies should lay down specific regulations and guidelines regarding mobile phone usage in class as well as during patient care. Further research is needed to comment on long term health outcome keeping in view its usage and popularity among younger people. Keywords: Mobile phone use, medical students, hazard awareness 

  8. Enhancing On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocols using Mobility Prediction in Mobile Ad-hoc Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nermin Makhlouf

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET is a self-organizing wireless communication network in which mobile devices are based on no infrastructure like base stations or access points. Minimal configuration and quick deployment make ad hoc networks suitable for emergency situations like disaster recovery or military conflict. Since node mobility may cause links to be broken frequently, a very important issue for routing in MANETs is how to set reliable paths which can last as long as possible. To solve this problem, non-random behaviors for the mobility patterns that mobile users exhibit are exploited. This paper introduces a scheme to improve On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP performances by using mobility prediction. 

  9. Playful Mobility Choices: Motivating informed mobility decision making by applying game mechanics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    A. Millonig

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Motivating people to change their mobility behaviour patterns towards more sustainable forms of mobility is one of the major challenges regarding climate change and quality of life. Recently, an increasing amount of attempts to use gamification for triggering such behavioural changes can be observed. However, little is known about the actual impact of using game elements. This contribution describes a concept for systematically analysing the group-specific effects of different game mechanics on mobility decision processes (e.g. mode and route choice. Based on theoretical findings concerning player types and mobility styles we developed a framework for identifying effective game mechanics motivating users to explore mobility alternatives and take more informed and more sustainable mode or route choice decisions. The results will form the basis for implementing game mechanics in mobility information services motivating users to explore unfamiliar but more sustainable mobility options.

  10. Medical Information Exchange: Pattern of Global Mobile Messenger Usage among Otolaryngologists.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Siegal, Gil; Dagan, Elad; Wolf, Michael; Duvdevani, Shay; Alon, Eran E

    2016-11-01

    Information technology has revolutionized health care. However, the development of dedicated mobile health software has been lagging, leading to the use of general mobile applications to fill in the void. The use of such applications has several legal, ethical, and regulatory implications. We examined the experience and practices governing the usage of a global mobile messenger application (WhatsApp) for mobile health purposes in a national cohort of practicing otolaryngologists in Israel, a known early adaptor information technology society. Cross-sectional data were collected from practicing otolaryngologists and otolaryngology residents via self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was composed of a demographic section, a section surveying the practices of mobile application use, mobile health application use, and knowledge regarding institutional policies governing the transmission of medical data. The sample included 22 otolaryngology residents and 47 practicing otolaryngologists. Of the physicians, 83% worked in academic centers, and 88% and 40% of the physicians who worked in a hospital setting or a community clinic used WhatsApp for medical use, respectively. Working with residents increased the medical usage of WhatsApp from 50% to 91% (P = .006). Finally, 72% were unfamiliar with any institutional policy regarding the transfer of medical information by personal smartphones. Mobile health is becoming an integral part of modern medical systems, improving accessibility, efficiency, and possibly quality of medical care. The need to incorporate personal mobile devices in the overall information technology standards, guidelines, and regulation is becoming more acute. Nonetheless, practices must be properly instituted to prevent unwanted consequences. © American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery Foundation 2016.

  11. Assessment of human respiration patterns via noncontact sensing using Doppler multi-radar system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gu, Changzhan; Li, Changzhi

    2015-03-16

    Human respiratory patterns at chest and abdomen are associated with both physical and emotional states. Accurate measurement of the respiratory patterns provides an approach to assess and analyze the physical and emotional states of the subject persons. Not many research efforts have been made to wirelessly assess different respiration patterns, largely due to the inaccuracy of the conventional continuous-wave radar sensor to track the original signal pattern of slow respiratory movements. This paper presents the accurate assessment of different respiratory patterns based on noncontact Doppler radar sensing. This paper evaluates the feasibility of accurately monitoring different human respiration patterns via noncontact radar sensing. A 2.4 GHz DC coupled multi-radar system was used for accurate measurement of the complete respiration patterns without any signal distortion. Experiments were carried out in the lab environment to measure the different respiration patterns when the subject person performed natural breathing, chest breathing and diaphragmatic breathing. The experimental results showed that accurate assessment of different respiration patterns is feasible using the proposed noncontact radar sensing technique.

  12. Human capital identification process: linkage for family medicine and community medicine to mobilize the community.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tanasugarn, Chanuantong; Thongbunjob, Krid

    2012-06-01

    Community diagnosis and approach has shifted from a professional focus to a community focus. The information system has also been developed to reflect socio-cultural information. This new system has been established throughout the country and is being recorded in the computer system. However these data still lack human capital information to promote community mobilization. The present study aims to develop a process which reflects human capital from the insider and outsider points of view and which builds on the existing work system of primary care service, family medicine, and community medicine. The present study applies the participatory action research design with mixed methods including community grand-tour, household survey socio-metric questionnaire and focus group discussion in order to gather insider view of human capital. A key instrument developed in the present study is the socio-metric questionnaire which was designed according to the community grand tour and household survey results. The findings indicate that the process is feasible and the insider point of view given a longer evidence based list of the human capital. The model enhanced a closer relationship between professional and community people and suggested the realistic community mobilizer name list. Human capital identification process is feasible and should be recommended to integrate in the existing work process of the health staff in family and community practice.

  13. Mobile Phone and Pakistani Youth:A Gender perspective

    OpenAIRE

    Zarqa Shaheen Ali

    2013-01-01

    This research was designed to open a window on youngsters’ use of mobile phone. The present study examined the purposes and patterns of usage of mobile phone use– in both male and female students of undergraduate and graduate level at seven public sector universities of the Province of Punjab (Pakistan).The study examined and reviewed the literature to understand the patterns and purposes of  mobile phone use from a global perspective in both developed and developing societies.  This provided...

  14. Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Human Activities in Indoor Environments through Mobile Sensing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prentow, Thor Siiger

    with the intuition and personal experience of the planners. Lack of real-time information on task execution has made it difficult to adapt to changes in the schedules, such as delays or suddenly occurring urgent tasks. The recent advances in methods and devices for mobile sensing provides opportunities...... methods for spatio-temporal analysis of human activities in indoor environments based on mobile sensing. The methods aim to improve scheduling and facility utilization by providing information on the used route networks, transportation modes, travel times, and the flow of people through buildings....... The methods are based on large-scale real-time indoor positioning through the use of existing WiFi infrastructures, which allows for easy deployment even in very large building complexes. The methods are designed for real-time operation, which enables them to detect and adjust to changes as they occur...

  15. CERN Mobility Survey

    CERN Multimedia

    GS Department

    2011-01-01

    The Institute of Shipping and Transport of the University of the Aegean and the National Technical University of Athens are partners with CERN in a study of mobility patterns between and within the CERN sites and to that effect have realized a mobility survey dedicated to the CERN community.         The study aims to understand: How you presently get around the CERN sites; What problems you encounter regarding mobility; What your needs are; What improvements you’d like to see; What measures you would like to see implemented most. The replies we receive will enable us to define a general policy promoting the diversity of mobility at CERN and to establish and quantify the strategic actions to be implemented for both the short and medium term. The objectives of the transport mobility plans are to: Facilitate mobility within and between the CERN sites by identifying adequate solutions in response to individual ...

  16. RF measurement made over 24 hours around mobile telephone base station (MTBS) in Malaysia

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rozaimah Abdul Rahim; Mohd Yusof Mohd Ali; Roha Tukimin; Mohd Amirul Nizam; Ahmad Fadzli

    2007-01-01

    The fact that so many people use of mobile phone has been accompanied by public debate about possible adverse effects on human health. The concern relate to the emissions of radiofrequency (RF) radiation from the mobile phone and from the MTBS that receive and transmit the signal. A study had been carried out by Nuclear Malaysia with aims to assess the levels of radiofrequency radiation and to analyze the radiation pattern against time for period of 24 hours. The finding of this study confirms that the MTBS transmit radiofrequency radiation with low level and vary against time. (Author)

  17. HANPP Collection: Global Patterns in Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP)

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The Global Patterns in Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) portion of the HANPP Collection represents a digital map of human appropriation of net...

  18. Modelling and assessment of the electric field strength caused by mobile phone to the human head

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Buckus Raimondas

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Background/Aim. Electromagnetic field exposure is the one of the most important physical agents that actively affects live organisms and environment. Active use of mobile phones influences the increase of electromagnetic field radiation. The aim of the study was to measure and assess the electric field strength caused by mobile phones to the human head. Methods. In this paper the software “COMSOL Multiphysics” was used to establish the electric field strength created by mobile phones around the head. Results. The second generation (2G Global System for Mobile (GSM phones that operate in the frequency band of 900 MHz and reach the power of 2 W have a stronger electric field than (2G GSM mobile phones that operate in the higher frequency band of 1,800 MHz and reach the power up to 1 W during conversation. The third generation of (3G UMTS smart phones that effectively use high (2,100 MHz radio frequency band emit the smallest electric field strength values during conversation. The highest electric field strength created by mobile phones is around the ear, i.e. the mobile phone location. The strength of mobile phone electric field on the phantom head decreases exponentially while moving sidewards from the center of the effect zone (the ear, and constitutes 1-12% of the artificial head’s surface. Conclusion. The highest electric field strength values of mobile phones are associated with their higher power, bigger specific energy absorption rate (SAR and lower frequency of mobile phone. The stronger electric field emitted by the more powerful mobile phones takes a higher percentage of the head surface. The highest electric field strength created by mobile phones is distributed over the user ear.

  19. Weight Loss Associated With Different Patterns of Self-Monitoring Using the Mobile Phone App My Meal Mate

    OpenAIRE

    Carter, MC; Burley, VJ; Cade, JE

    2017-01-01

    Background Obesity is a major global public health issue due to its association with a number of serious chronic illnesses and its high economic burden to health care providers. Self-monitoring of diet has been consistently linked to weight loss. However, there is limited evidence about how frequently individuals need to monitor their diet for optimal weight loss. Objective The aim of this paper is to describe app usage frequency and pattern in the mobile phone arm of a previously conducted r...

  20. Territory, Rights and Mobility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zhang, Chenchen

    2014-01-01

    The overarching objective of this dissertation is to conceptualise the spatiality of citizenship through an exposure to its various others – especially to mobile subjectivity. In particular, it examines the changing patterns of territorialising space, distributing rights and regulating mobility...... to the universal, the other legitimating the particular. The politics of mobility is also seen as an endeavour of producing alternative spaces against the territorialised state-centric space to which the imagination of citizenship is usually limited. In discussing a possible global ethics, however, I argue...

  1. Global dispersal pattern of HIV type 1 subtype CRF01-AE : A genetic trace of human mobility related to heterosexual sexual activities centralized in southeast Asia

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Angelis, Konstantinos; Albert, Jan; Mamais, Ioannis; Magiorkinis, Gkikas; Hatzakis, Angelos; Hamouda, Osamah; Struck, Daniel; Vercauteren, Jurgen; Wensing, Annemarie M J; Alexiev, Ivailo; Åsjö, Birgitta; Balotta, Claudia; Camacho, Ricardo J.; Coughlan, Suzie; Griskevicius, Algirdas; Grossman, Zehava; Horban, Andrzej; Kostrikis, Leondios G.; Lepej, Snjezana; Liitsola, Kirsi; Linka, Marek; Nielsen, Claus; Otelea, Dan; Paredes, Roger; Poljak, Mario; Puchhammer-Stöckl, Elisabeth; Schmit, Jean Claude; Sönnerborg, Anders; Staneková, Danica; Stanojevic, Maja; Boucher, Charles A B; Kaplan, Lauren; Vandamme, Anne Mieke; Paraskevis, Dimitrios

    2015-01-01

    Background. Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) subtype CRF01-AE originated in Africa and then passed to Thailand, where it established a major epidemic. Despite the global presence of CRF01-AE, little is known about its subsequent dispersal pattern. Methods. We assembled a global data set

  2. Programming the Mobile Web

    CERN Document Server

    Firtman, Maximiliano

    2010-01-01

    Today's market for mobile apps goes beyond the iPhone to include BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Phone, and smartphones powered by Android, webOS, and other platforms. If you're an experienced web developer, this book shows you how to build a standard app core that you can extend to work with specific devices. You'll learn the particulars and pitfalls of building mobile apps with HTML, CSS, and other standard web tools. You'll also explore platform variations, finicky mobile browsers, Ajax design patterns for mobile, and much more. Before you know it, you'll be able to create mashups using Web 2.

  3. Mobile phone social harms (mobile phone, communicative device or ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    One of the human inventions created in order to facilitate life but it became scourge for him is mobile phone. Ignorance on quality of using mobile phone and conscious use of it in inappropriate way will have consequences that it seems that it gradually becomes as social problem and harm. Author of this paper aims to warns ...

  4. A periodic pattern of SNPs in the human genome

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Madsen, Bo Eskerod; Villesen, Palle; Wiuf, Carsten

    2007-01-01

    By surveying a filtered, high-quality set of SNPs in the human genome, we have found that SNPs positioned 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 bp apart are more frequent than SNPs positioned 3, 5, 7, or 9 bp apart. The observed pattern is not restricted to genomic regions that are known to cause sequencing...... periodic DNA. Our results suggest that not all SNPs in the human genome are created by independent single nucleotide mutations, and that care should be taken in analysis of SNPs from periodic DNA. The latter may have important consequences for SNP and association studies....... or alignment errors, for example, transposable elements (SINE, LINE, and LTR), tandem repeats, and large duplicated regions. However, we found that the pattern is almost entirely confined to what we define as "periodic DNA." Periodic DNA is a genomic region with a high degree of periodicity in nucleotide usage...

  5. Mobilities, Futures & the City

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Freudendal-Pedersen, Malene; Kesselring, Sven

    2016-01-01

    significant attention to these shifts in societies’ discursive patterns and structures. For making up powerful and strong visions and policies for sustainable cities, ‘collaborative storytelling’ plays a key role. The theoretical outset for the research project ‘Mobilities, Futures & the City’, which grounds......The future of cities and regions will be strongly shaped by the mobilities of people, goods, modes of transport, waste and information. In many ways, the ‘why and ‘for what’ often get lost in discourses on planning and designing mobilities. The predominant planning paradigm still conceptualizes...... the future of cities and mobilities as a matter of rather more efficient technologies than of social cohesion, integration and connectivity. Sustainable mobility needs the mobilities of ideas and concepts and the reflexivity of policies. Communicative planning theory and the ‘argumentative turn’ have given...

  6. Why men matter: mating patterns drive evolution of human lifespan.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shripad D Tuljapurkar

    2007-08-01

    Full Text Available Evolutionary theory predicts that senescence, a decline in survival rates with age, is the consequence of stronger selection on alleles that affect fertility or mortality earlier rather than later in life. Hamilton quantified this argument by showing that a rare mutation reducing survival is opposed by a selective force that declines with age over reproductive life. He used a female-only demographic model, predicting that female menopause at age ca. 50 yrs should be followed by a sharp increase in mortality, a "wall of death." Human lives obviously do not display such a wall. Explanations of the evolution of lifespan beyond the age of female menopause have proven difficult to describe as explicit genetic models. Here we argue that the inclusion of males and mating patterns extends Hamilton's theory and predicts the pattern of human senescence. We analyze a general two-sex model to show that selection favors survival for as long as men reproduce. Male fertility can only result from matings with fertile females, and we present a range of data showing that males much older than 50 yrs have substantial realized fertility through matings with younger females, a pattern that was likely typical among early humans. Thus old-age male fertility provides a selective force against autosomal deleterious mutations at ages far past female menopause with no sharp upper age limit, eliminating the wall of death. Our findings illustrate the evolutionary importance of males and mating preferences, and show that one-sex demographic models are insufficient to describe the forces that shape human senescence.

  7. Mobility Charters and Manifestos

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Ole B.

    2010-01-01

    This paper explore a number of different cases of articulating notions of ‘correct’ mobility behavior and practice by looking into charters, manifestos and codes of mobility regulation. Within such discourses of ‘correct mobility’ more or less subtle expressions of power as well as normative and ...... ‘Highway Code Booklets’ from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, the ‘City Slow Charter’, the ‘New Urbanism Charter’ as attempts to codify and order mobility and mobile practices.......This paper explore a number of different cases of articulating notions of ‘correct’ mobility behavior and practice by looking into charters, manifestos and codes of mobility regulation. Within such discourses of ‘correct mobility’ more or less subtle expressions of power as well as normative...... and ethical positions on mobility prevail. Such ‘imagined correct mobility behavior’ are drawing on larger issues of societal change that need to be brought out in a critical analysis and discussion reflecting the attempts to control, design and orchestrate mobility patterns. The paper therefore argues within...

  8. Portraying Urban Functional Zones by Coupling Remote Sensing Imagery and Human Sensing Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wei Tu

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Portraying urban functional zones provides useful insights into understanding complex urban systems and establishing rational urban planning. Although several studies have confirmed the efficacy of remote sensing imagery in urban studies, coupling remote sensing and new human sensing data like mobile phone positioning data to identify urban functional zones has still not been investigated. In this study, a new framework integrating remote sensing imagery and mobile phone positioning data was developed to analyze urban functional zones with landscape and human activity metrics. Landscapes metrics were calculated based on land cover from remote sensing images. Human activities were extracted from massive mobile phone positioning data. By integrating them, urban functional zones (urban center, sub-center, suburbs, urban buffer, transit region and ecological area were identified by a hierarchical clustering. Finally, gradient analysis in three typical transects was conducted to investigate the pattern of landscapes and human activities. Taking Shenzhen, China, as an example, the conducted experiment shows that the pattern of landscapes and human activities in the urban functional zones in Shenzhen does not totally conform to the classical urban theories. It demonstrates that the fusion of remote sensing imagery and human sensing data can characterize the complex urban spatial structure in Shenzhen well. Urban functional zones have the potential to act as bridges between the urban structure, human activity and urban planning policy, providing scientific support for rational urban planning and sustainable urban development policymaking.

  9. A mobile Nursing Information System based on human-computer interaction design for improving quality of nursing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Su, Kuo-Wei; Liu, Cheng-Li

    2012-06-01

    A conventional Nursing Information System (NIS), which supports the role of nurse in some areas, is typically deployed as an immobile system. However, the traditional information system can't response to patients' conditions in real-time, causing delays on the availability of this information. With the advances of information technology, mobile devices are increasingly being used to extend the human mind's limited capacity to recall and process large numbers of relevant variables and to support information management, general administration, and clinical practice. Unfortunately, there have been few studies about the combination of a well-designed small-screen interface with a personal digital assistant (PDA) in clinical nursing. Some researchers found that user interface design is an important factor in determining the usability and potential use of a mobile system. Therefore, this study proposed a systematic approach to the development of a mobile nursing information system (MNIS) based on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (M-HCI) for use in clinical nursing. The system combines principles of small-screen interface design with user-specified requirements. In addition, the iconic functions were designed with metaphor concept that will help users learn the system more quickly with less working-memory. An experiment involving learnability testing, thinking aloud and a questionnaire investigation was conducted for evaluating the effect of MNIS on PDA. The results show that the proposed MNIS is good on learning and higher satisfaction on symbol investigation, terminology and system information.

  10. Reciprocity of mobile phone calls

    OpenAIRE

    Kovanen, Lauri; Saramaki, Jari; Kaski, Kimmo

    2010-01-01

    We present a study of the reciprocity of human behaviour based on mobile phone usage records. The underlying question is whether human relationships are mutual, in the sense that both are equally active in keeping up the relationship, or is it on the contrary typical that relationships are lopsided, with one party being significantly more active than the other. We study this question with the help of a mobile phone data set consisting of all mobile phone calls between 5.3 million customers of...

  11. High mobility group A1 enhances tumorigenicity of human cholangiocarcinoma and confers resistance to therapy

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Quintavalle, Cristina; Burmeister, Katharina; Piscuoglio, Salvatore

    2017-01-01

    High mobility group A1 (HMGA1) protein has been described to play an important role in numerous types of human carcinoma. By the modulation of several target genes HMGA1 promotes proliferation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition of tumor cells. However, its role in cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) has...

  12. Mobile Instruments Measure Atmospheric Pollutants

    Science.gov (United States)

    2009-01-01

    As a part of NASA's active research of the Earth s atmosphere, which has included missions such as the Atmospheric Laboratory of Applications and Science (ATLAS, launched in 1992) and the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS, launched on the Earth Probe satellite in 1996), the Agency also performs ground-based air pollution research. The ability to measure trace amounts of airborne pollutants precisely and quickly is important for determining natural patterns and human effects on global warming and air pollution, but until recent advances in field-grade spectroscopic instrumentation, this rapid, accurate data collection was limited and extremely difficult. In order to understand causes of climate change and airborne pollution, NASA has supported the development of compact, low power, rapid response instruments operating in the mid-infrared "molecular fingerprint" portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. These instruments, which measure atmospheric trace gases and airborne particles, can be deployed in mobile laboratories - customized ground vehicles, typically - to map distributions of pollutants in real time. The instruments must be rugged enough to operate rapidly and accurately, despite frequent jostling that can misalign, damage, or disconnect sensitive components. By measuring quickly while moving through an environment, a mobile laboratory can correlate data and geographic points, revealing patterns in the environment s pollutants. Rapid pollutant measurements also enable direct determination of pollutant sources and sinks (mechanisms that remove greenhouse gases and pollutants), providing information critical to understanding and managing atmospheric greenhouse gas and air pollutant concentrations.

  13. Evaluation of camouflage pattern performance of textiles by human observers and CAMAELEON

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heinrich, Daniela H.; Selj, Gorm K.

    2017-10-01

    Military textiles with camouflage pattern are an important part of the protection measures for soldiers. Military operational environments differ a lot depending on climate and vegetation. This requires very different camouflage pattern to achieve good protection. To find the best performing pattern for given environments we have in earlier evaluations mainly applied observer trials as evaluation method. In these camouflage evaluation test human observers were asked to search for targets (in natural settings) presented on a high resolution PC screen, and the corresponding detection times were recorded. Another possibility is to base the evaluation on simulations. CAMAELEON is a licensed tool that ranks camouflaged targets by their similarity with local backgrounds. The similarity is estimated through the parameters local contrast, orientation of structures in the pattern and spatial frequency, by mimicking the response and signal processing in the visual cortex of the human eye. Simulations have a number of advantages over observer trials, for example, that they are more flexible, cheaper, and faster. Applying these two methods to the same images of camouflaged targets we found that CAMAELEON simulation results didn't match observer trial results for targets with disruptive patterns. This finding now calls for follow up studies in order to learn more about the advantages and pitfalls of CAMAELEON. During recent observer trials we studied new camouflage patterns and the effect of additional equipment, such as combat vests. In this paper we will present the results from a study comparing evaluation results of human based observer trials and CAMAELEON.

  14. Changing Academic Mobility Patterns and International Migration: What Will Academic Mobility Mean in the 21St Century?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoffman, David M.

    2009-01-01

    Several scholars have underlined connections between academic mobility and international migration. This qualitative study explores a spectrum of academic mobility articulated by Teichler that empirically contributes to consideration of these connections. This analysis of e-mail excerpts from 20 migrant academics, living in seven countries,…

  15. Capturing human movement patterns in public spaces

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Søren Zebitz; Gade, Rikke

    2014-01-01

    Non-intrusive and non-privacy violating tracking of people by the use of thermal cameras and Computer Vision The video shows examples of data collection of pedestrian tracks in an urban plaza using a thermal camera. The data is used in my PhD project on Human Movement Patterns in Smart Cities....... The recording and analysis of the thermal videos has been made in collaboration with Rikke Gade from the Visual Analytics of People Lab at Aalborg University....

  16. Mobility Models for Systems Evaluation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Musolesi, Mirco; Mascolo, Cecilia

    Mobility models are used to simulate and evaluate the performance of mobile wireless systems and the algorithms and protocols at the basis of them. The definition of realistic mobility models is one of the most critical and, at the same time, difficult aspects of the simulation of applications and systems designed for mobile environments. There are essentially two possible types of mobility patterns that can be used to evaluate mobile network protocols and algorithms by means of simulations: traces and synthetic models [130]. Traces are obtained by means of measurements of deployed systems and usually consist of logs of connectivity or location information, whereas synthetic models are mathematical models, such as sets of equations, which try to capture the movement of the devices.

  17. Cooperative Position Aware Mobility Pattern of AUVs for Avoiding Void Zones in Underwater WSNs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Javaid, Nadeem; Ejaz, Mudassir; Abdul, Wadood; Alamri, Atif; Almogren, Ahmad; Niaz, Iftikhar Azim; Guizani, Nadra

    2017-03-13

    In this paper, we propose two schemes; position-aware mobility pattern (PAMP) and cooperative PAMP (Co PAMP). The first one is an optimization scheme that avoids void hole occurrence and minimizes the uncertainty in the position estimation of glider's. The second one is a cooperative routing scheme that reduces the packet drop ratio by using the relay cooperation. Both techniques use gliders that stay at sojourn positions for a predefined time, at sojourn position self-confidence (s-confidence) and neighbor-confidence (n-confidence) regions that are estimated for balanced energy consumption. The transmission power of a glider is adjusted according to those confidence regions. Simulation results show that our proposed schemes outperform the compared existing one in terms of packet delivery ratio, void zones and energy consumption.

  18. Exploring Entrainment Patterns of Human Emotion in Social Media.

    Science.gov (United States)

    He, Saike; Zheng, Xiaolong; Zeng, Daniel; Luo, Chuan; Zhang, Zhu

    2016-01-01

    Emotion entrainment, which is generally defined as the synchronous convergence of human emotions, performs many important social functions. However, what the specific mechanisms of emotion entrainment are beyond in-person interactions, and how human emotions evolve under different entrainment patterns in large-scale social communities, are still unknown. In this paper, we aim to examine the massive emotion entrainment patterns and understand the underlying mechanisms in the context of social media. As modeling emotion dynamics on a large scale is often challenging, we elaborate a pragmatic framework to characterize and quantify the entrainment phenomenon. By applying this framework on the datasets from two large-scale social media platforms, we find that the emotions of online users entrain through social networks. We further uncover that online users often form their relations via dual entrainment, while maintain it through single entrainment. Remarkably, the emotions of online users are more convergent in nonreciprocal entrainment. Building on these findings, we develop an entrainment augmented model for emotion prediction. Experimental results suggest that entrainment patterns inform emotion proximity in dyads, and encoding their associations promotes emotion prediction. This work can further help us to understand the underlying dynamic process of large-scale online interactions and make more reasonable decisions regarding emergency situations, epidemic diseases, and political campaigns in cyberspace.

  19. The Virtual Teacher (VT) Paradigm: Learning New Patterns of Interpersonal Coordination Using the Human Dynamic Clamp.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kostrubiec, Viviane; Dumas, Guillaume; Zanone, Pier-Giorgio; Kelso, J A Scott

    2015-01-01

    The Virtual Teacher paradigm, a version of the Human Dynamic Clamp (HDC), is introduced into studies of learning patterns of inter-personal coordination. Combining mathematical modeling and experimentation, we investigate how the HDC may be used as a Virtual Teacher (VT) to help humans co-produce and internalize new inter-personal coordination pattern(s). Human learners produced rhythmic finger movements whilst observing a computer-driven avatar, animated by dynamic equations stemming from the well-established Haken-Kelso-Bunz (1985) and Schöner-Kelso (1988) models of coordination. We demonstrate that the VT is successful in shifting the pattern co-produced by the VT-human system toward any value (Experiment 1) and that the VT can help humans learn unstable relative phasing patterns (Experiment 2). Using transfer entropy, we find that information flow from one partner to the other increases when VT-human coordination loses stability. This suggests that variable joint performance may actually facilitate interaction, and in the long run learning. VT appears to be a promising tool for exploring basic learning processes involved in social interaction, unraveling the dynamics of information flow between interacting partners, and providing possible rehabilitation opportunities.

  20. Psychophysics of human vision: The key to improved camouflage pattern design

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Baumbach, J

    2010-11-01

    Full Text Available determined by the factors mentioned above, but also by the (possible) observer/enemy. The human visual system (which includes the brain) is one of the most powerful observation systems. This paper examined the eye-brain interaction, and how... these properties could aid camouflage pattern development. 2. The Human Visual System The human visual system is very complex, therefore this study was undertaken in order to better understand the human eye-brain interaction. It also assisted in forming a...

  1. Movement patterns in women at risk for perinatal depression: use of a mood-monitoring mobile application in pregnancy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faherty, Laura J; Hantsoo, Liisa; Appleby, Dina; Sammel, Mary D; Bennett, Ian M; Wiebe, Douglas J

    2017-07-01

    To examine, using a smartphone application, whether mood is related to daily movement patterns in pregnant women at risk for perinatal depression. Thirty-six women with elevated depression symptoms (PHQ-9 ≥ 5) in pregnancy used the application for 8 weeks. Mood was reported using application-administered surveys daily (2 questions) and weekly (PHQ-9 and GAD-7). The application measured daily mobility (distance travelled on foot) and travel radius. Generalized linear mixed-effects regression models estimated the association between mood and movement. Women with milder depression symptoms had a larger daily radius of travel (2.7 miles) than women with more severe symptoms (1.9 miles), P  = .04. There was no difference in mobility. A worsening of mood from the prior day was associated with a contracted radius of travel, as was being in the group with more severe symptoms. No significant relationships were found between anxiety and either mobility or radius. We found that the association of mood with radius of travel was more pronounced than its association with mobility. Our study also demonstrated that a change in mood from the prior day was significantly associated with radius but not mood on the same day that mobility and radius were measured. This study lays the groundwork for future research on how smartphone mood-monitoring applications can combine actively and passively collected data to better understand the relationship between the symptoms of perinatal depression and physical activity that could lead to improved monitoring and novel interventions. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

  2. Application of Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) Patterns to Reduced Crew Operations (RCO)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shively, R. Jay; Brandt, Summer L.; Lachter, Joel; Matessa, Mike; Sadler, Garrett; Battiste, Henri

    2016-01-01

    As part of the Air Force - NASA Bi-Annual Research Council Meeting, slides will be presented on recent Reduced Crew Operations (RCO) work. Unmanned aerial systems, robotics, advanced cockpits, and air traffic management are all examples of domains that are seeing dramatic increases in automation. While automation may take on some tasks previously performed by humans, humans will still be required, for the foreseeable future, to remain in the system. The collaboration with humans and these increasingly autonomous systems will begin to resemble cooperation between teammates, rather than simple task allocation. It is critical to understand this human-autonomy teaming (HAT) to optimize these systems in the future. One methodology to understand HAT is by identifying recurring patterns of HAT that have similar characteristics and solutions. A methodology for identifying HAT patterns to an advanced cockpit project is discussed.

  3. Beagle: an appropriate experimental animal for extrapolating the organ distribution pattern of Th in humans

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Singh, N.P.; Zimmerman, C.J.; Taylor, G.N.; Wrenn, M.E.

    1988-01-01

    The concentrations and the organ distribution patterns of 228Th, 230Th and 232Th in two 9-y-old dogs of our beagle colony were determined. The dogs were exposed only to background environmental levels of Th isotopes through ingestion (food and water) and inhalation as are humans. The organ distribution patterns of the isotopes in the beagles were compared to the organ distribution patterns in humans to determine if it is appropriate to extrapolate the beagle organ burden data to humans. Among soft tissues, only the lungs, lymph nodes, kidney and liver, and skeleton contained measurable amounts of Th isotopes. The organ distribution pattern of Th isotopes in humans and dog are similar, the majority of Th being in the skeleton of both species. The average skeletal concentrations of 228Th in dogs were 30 to 40 times higher than the average skeletal concentrations of the parent 232Th, whereas the concentration of 228Th in human skeleton was only four to five times higher than 232Th. This suggests that dogs have a higher intake of 228Ra through food than humans. There is a similar trend in the accumulations of 232Th, 230Th and 228Th in the lungs of dog and humans. The percentages of 232Th, 230Th and 228Th in human lungs are 26, 9.7 and 4.8, respectively, compared to 4.2, 2.6 and 0.48, respectively, in dog lungs. The larger percentages of Th isotopes in human lungs may be due simply to the longer life span of humans. If the burdens of Th isotopes in human lungs are normalized to an exposure time of 9.2 y (mean age of dogs at the time of sacrifice), the percent burden of 232Th, 230Th and 228Th in human lungs are estimated to be 3.6, 1.3 and 0.66, respectively. These results suggest that the beagle may be an appropriate experimental animal for extrapolating the organ distribution pattern of Th in humans

  4. Restricted Mobilities

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Mette; Lassen, Claus

    2012-01-01

    communities and shopping centres through mobility lenses. The article shows how different mobility systems enable and restrict the public access to private-public spaces, and it points out that proprietary communities create an unequal potential for human movement and access in the city. The main argument......Privatisation of public spaces in the contemporary city has increased during the last decades but only few studies have approached this field from a mobility perspective. Therefore the article seeks to rectify this by exploring two Australian examples of private spaces in the city; gated...... and stratification mechanisms. In conclusion the article therefore suggests that future urban research and planning also needs a mobile understanding of spaces in the cities and how different mobility systems play an important role to sustain the exclusiveness that often characterises the private/public spaces...

  5. A Complex Network Approach for the Estimation of the Energy Demand of Electric Mobility.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mureddu, Mario; Facchini, Angelo; Scala, Antonio; Caldarelli, Guido; Damiano, Alfonso

    2018-01-10

    We study how renewable energy impacts regional infrastructures considering the full deployment of electric mobility at that scale. We use the Sardinia Island in Italy as a paradigmatic case study of a semi-closed system both by energy and mobility point of view. Human mobility patterns are estimated by means of census data listing the mobility dynamics of about 700,000 vehicles, the energy demand is estimated by modeling the charging behavior of electric vehicle owners. Here we show that current renewable energy production of Sardinia is able to sustain the commuter mobility even in the theoretical case of a full switch from internal combustion vehicles to electric ones. Centrality measures from network theory on the reconstructed network of commuter trips allows to identify the most important areas (hubs) involved in regional mobility. The analysis of the expected energy flows reveals long-range effects on infrastructures outside metropolitan areas and points out that the most relevant unbalances are caused by spatial segregation between production and consumption areas. Finally, results suggest the adoption of planning actions supporting the installation of renewable energy plants in areas mostly involved by the commuting mobility, avoiding spatial segregation between consumption and generation areas.

  6. The Economics of Human Development and Social Mobility *

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heckman, James J.; Mosso, Stefano

    2014-01-01

    This paper distills and extends recent research on the economics of human development and social mobility. It summarizes the evidence from diverse literatures on the importance of early life conditions in shaping multiple life skills and the evidence on critical and sensitive investment periods for shaping different skills. It presents economic models that rationalize the evidence and unify the treatment effect and family influence literatures. The evidence on the empirical and policy importance of credit constraints in forming skills is examined. There is little support for the claim that untargeted income transfer policies to poor families significantly boost child outcomes. Mentoring, parenting, and attachment are essential features of successful families and interventions to shape skills at all stages of childhood. The next wave of family studies will better capture the active role of the emerging autonomous child in learning and responding to the actions of parents, mentors and teachers. PMID:25346785

  7. HotMobile 2008: Postconference Report

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hong, J.; Lindqvist, J.; Pawar, P.; Stuntebeck, E.

    2008-01-01

    HotMobile 2008 presented a two-day program on mobile computing systems and applications. The authors focuses on the sessions on sensors, modularity, wireless, security, systems, and screens. The mobile device is the most amazing invention in history and that it has had the largest impact on human

  8. Pattern of human chorionic gonadotropin binding in the polycystic ovary

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Brawer, J.; Richard, M.; Farookhi, R.

    1989-01-01

    The histologic evolution of polycystic ovaries in the estradiol valerate-treated rat coincides with the development of a unique plasma pattern of luteinizing hormone. To assess the role of luteinizing hormone in polycystic ovaries, it is necessary to evaluate the luteinizing hormone sensitivity of the specific tissues in the polycystic ovary. Therefore, we examined the pattern of luteinizing hormone binding sites in polycystic ovaries. Rats at 4 or 8 weeks after estradiol valerate treatment each received an intrajugular injection of iodine 125-labeled human chorionic gonadotropin. Some rats also received a 1000-fold excess of unlabeled human chorionic gonadotropin in the same injection. Ovaries were prepared for autoradiography. Dense accumulations of grains occurred over the theca of normal and atretic secondary follicles in all ovaries and over clusters of secondary interstitial cells. The iodine label was variable over the typically hypertrophied theca of precystic follicles. The theca of definitive cysts showed little or no label. These results indicate that cyst formation coincides with the loss of luteinizing hormone/human chorionic gonadotropin binding to the affected follicles

  9. Pattern of human chorionic gonadotropin binding in the polycystic ovary

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Brawer, J.; Richard, M.; Farookhi, R. (McGill Univ., Montreal, Quebec (Canada))

    1989-08-01

    The histologic evolution of polycystic ovaries in the estradiol valerate-treated rat coincides with the development of a unique plasma pattern of luteinizing hormone. To assess the role of luteinizing hormone in polycystic ovaries, it is necessary to evaluate the luteinizing hormone sensitivity of the specific tissues in the polycystic ovary. Therefore, we examined the pattern of luteinizing hormone binding sites in polycystic ovaries. Rats at 4 or 8 weeks after estradiol valerate treatment each received an intrajugular injection of iodine 125-labeled human chorionic gonadotropin. Some rats also received a 1000-fold excess of unlabeled human chorionic gonadotropin in the same injection. Ovaries were prepared for autoradiography. Dense accumulations of grains occurred over the theca of normal and atretic secondary follicles in all ovaries and over clusters of secondary interstitial cells. The iodine label was variable over the typically hypertrophied theca of precystic follicles. The theca of definitive cysts showed little or no label. These results indicate that cyst formation coincides with the loss of luteinizing hormone/human chorionic gonadotropin binding to the affected follicles.

  10. Exposure to Radiofrequency Radiation Emitted from Common Mobile Phone Jammers Alters the Pattern of Muscle Contractions: an Animal Model Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rafati A.

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: The rapid growth of wireless communication technologies has caused public concerns regarding the biological effects of electromagnetic radiations on human health. Some early reports indicated a wide variety of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation on amphibians such as the alterations of the pattern of muscle extractions. This study is aimed at investigating the effects of exposure to radiofrequency (RF radiation emitted from mobile phone jammers on the pulse height of contractions, the time interval between two subsequent contractions and the latency period of frog’s isolated gastrocnemius muscle after stimulation with single square pulses of 1V (1 Hz. Materials and Methods: Frogs were kept in plastic containers in a room. Animals in the jammer group were exposed to radiofrequency (RF radiation emitted from a common Jammer at a distance of 1m from the jammer’s antenna for 2 hours while the control frogs were only sham exposed. Then animals were sacrificed and isolated gastrocnemius muscles were exposed to on/off jammer radiation for 3 subsequent 10 minute intervals. Isolated gastrocnemius muscles were attached to the force transducer with a string. Using a PowerLab device (26-T, the pattern of muscular contractions was monitored after applying single square pulses of 1V (1 Hz as stimuli. Results: The findings of this study showed that the pulse height of muscle contractions could not be affected by the exposure to electromagnetic fields. However, the latency period was effectively altered in RF-exposed samples. However, none of the experiments could show an alteration in the time interval between two subsequent contractions after exposure to electromagnetic fields. Conclusion: These findings support early reports which indicated a wide variety of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation on amphibians including the effects on the pattern of muscle extractions.

  11. Exposure to Radiofrequency Radiation Emitted from Common Mobile Phone Jammers Alters the Pattern of Muscle Contractions: an Animal Model Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rafati, A; Rahimi, S; Talebi, A; Soleimani, A; Haghani, M; Mortazavi, S M J

    2015-09-01

    The rapid growth of wireless communication technologies has caused public concerns regarding the biological effects of electromagnetic radiations on human health. Some early reports indicated a wide variety of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation on amphibians such as the alterations of the pattern of muscle extractions. This study is aimed at investigating the effects of exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted from mobile phone jammers on the pulse height of contractions, the time interval between two subsequent contractions and the latency period of frog's isolated gastrocnemius muscle after stimulation with single square pulses of 1V (1 Hz). Frogs were kept in plastic containers in a room. Animals in the jammer group were exposed to radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted from a common Jammer at a distance of 1m from the jammer's antenna for 2 hours while the control frogs were only sham exposed. Then animals were sacrificed and isolated gastrocnemius muscles were exposed to on/off jammer radiation for 3 subsequent 10 minute intervals. Isolated gastrocnemius muscles were attached to the force transducer with a string. Using a PowerLab device (26-T), the pattern of muscular contractions was monitored after applying single square pulses of 1V (1 Hz) as stimuli. The findings of this study showed that the pulse height of muscle contractions could not be affected by the exposure to electromagnetic fields. However, the latency period was effectively altered in RF-exposed samples. However, none of the experiments could show an alteration in the time interval between two subsequent contractions after exposure to electromagnetic fields. These findings support early reports which indicated a wide variety of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation on amphibians including the effects on the pattern of muscle extractions.

  12. Predictability of Mobile Phone Associations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Bjørn Sand; Larsen, Jan; Hansen, Lars Kai

    2010-01-01

    Prediction and understanding of human behavior is of high importance in many modern applications and research areas ranging from context-aware services, wireless resource allocation to social sciences. In this study we collect a novel dataset using standard mobile phones and analyze how the predi...... representation, and general behavior. This is of vital interest in the development of context-aware services which rely on forecasting based on mobile phone sensors.......Prediction and understanding of human behavior is of high importance in many modern applications and research areas ranging from context-aware services, wireless resource allocation to social sciences. In this study we collect a novel dataset using standard mobile phones and analyze how...... the predictability of mobile sensors, acting as proxies for humans, change with time scale and sensor type such as GSM and WLAN. Applying recent information theoretic methods, it is demonstrated that an upper bound on predictability is relatively high for all sensors given the complete history (typically above 90...

  13. The Effects of Trust Transference, Mobile Attributes and Enjoyment on Mobile Trust

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cristiane Junqueira Giovannini

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Trust is essential in building relationships. In mobile commerce, as in electronic commerce, trust is even more valuable given the absence of human contact and direct observation of the service provider. Despite the importance of trust for mobile commerce, there has been little academic effort to study the relationships between mobile devices unique components of interactivity and customer trust, or the relationship between offline, online and mobile trust. This study proposes a trust-mediated model for customer attitude and transaction intentions in mobile commerce contexts that incorporates trust transference and unique factors present in mobile commerce. Data were collected in an online survey and analyzed via structural equations modeling. Results suggest that trust transferred from online contexts and ease of use have significant effects on mobile trust formation, while also indicating that mobile trust influences consumers’ attitudes and intentions to purchase using mobile devices.

  14. Decision Tree-Based Contextual Location Prediction from Mobile Device Logs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Linyuan Xia

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Contextual location prediction is an important topic in the field of personalized location recommendation in LBS (location-based services. With the advancement of mobile positioning techniques and various sensors embedded in smartphones, it is convenient to obtain massive human mobile trajectories and to derive a large amount of valuable information from geospatial big data. Extracting and recognizing personally interesting places and predicting next semantic location become a research hot spot in LBS. In this paper, we proposed an approach to predict next personally semantic place with historical visiting patterns derived from mobile device logs. To address the problems of location imprecision and lack of semantic information, a modified trip-identify method is employed to extract key visit points from GPS trajectories to a more accurate extent while semantic information are added through stay point detection and semantic places recognition. At last, a decision tree model is adopted to explore the spatial, temporal, and sequential features in contextual location prediction. To validate the effectiveness of our approach, experiments were conducted based on a trajectory collection in Guangzhou downtown area. The results verified the feasibility of our approach on contextual location prediction from continuous mobile devices logs.

  15. Analysis of spatial mobility in subjects from a Dengue endemic urban locality in Morelos State, Mexico.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Falcón-Lezama, Jorge Abelardo; Santos-Luna, René; Román-Pérez, Susana; Martínez-Vega, Ruth Aralí; Herrera-Valdez, Marco Arieli; Kuri-Morales, Ángel Fernando; Adams, Ben; Kuri-Morales, Pablo Antonio; López-Cervantes, Malaquías; Ramos-Castañeda, José

    2017-01-01

    Mathematical models and field data suggest that human mobility is an important driver for Dengue virus transmission. Nonetheless little is known on this matter due the lack of instruments for precise mobility quantification and study design difficulties. We carried out a cohort-nested, case-control study with 126 individuals (42 cases, 42 intradomestic controls and 42 population controls) with the goal of describing human mobility patterns of recently Dengue virus-infected subjects, and comparing them with those of non-infected subjects living in an urban endemic locality. Mobility was quantified using a GPS-data logger registering waypoints at 60-second intervals for a minimum of 15 natural days. Although absolute displacement was highly biased towards the intradomestic and peridomestic areas, occasional displacements exceeding a 100-Km radius from the center of the studied locality were recorded for all three study groups and individual displacements were recorded traveling across six states from central Mexico. Additionally, cases had a larger number of visits out of the municipality´s administrative limits when compared to intradomestic controls (cases: 10.4 versus intradomestic controls: 2.9, p = 0.0282). We were able to identify extradomestic places within and out of the locality that were independently visited by apparently non-related infected subjects, consistent with houses, working and leisure places. Results of this study show that human mobility in a small urban setting exceeded that considered by local health authority's administrative limits, and was different between recently infected and non-infected subjects living in the same household. These observations provide important insights about the role that human mobility may have in Dengue virus transmission and persistence across endemic geographic areas that need to be taken into account when planning preventive and control measures. Finally, these results are a valuable reference when setting the

  16. Visual analytics of geo-social interaction patterns for epidemic control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Wei

    2016-08-10

    Human interaction and population mobility determine the spatio-temporal course of the spread of an airborne disease. This research views such spreads as geo-social interaction problems, because population mobility connects different groups of people over geographical locations via which the viruses transmit. Previous research argued that geo-social interaction patterns identified from population movement data can provide great potential in designing effective pandemic mitigation. However, little work has been done to examine the effectiveness of designing control strategies taking into account geo-social interaction patterns. To address this gap, this research proposes a new framework for effective disease control; specifically this framework proposes that disease control strategies should start from identifying geo-social interaction patterns, designing effective control measures accordingly, and evaluating the efficacy of different control measures. This framework is used to structure design of a new visual analytic tool that consists of three components: a reorderable matrix for geo-social mixing patterns, agent-based epidemic models, and combined visualization methods. With real world human interaction data in a French primary school as a proof of concept, this research compares the efficacy of vaccination strategies between the spatial-social interaction patterns and the whole areas. The simulation results show that locally targeted vaccination has the potential to keep infection to a small number and prevent spread to other regions. At some small probability, the local control strategies will fail; in these cases other control strategies will be needed. This research further explores the impact of varying spatial-social scales on the success of local vaccination strategies. The results show that a proper spatial-social scale can help achieve the best control efficacy with a limited number of vaccines. The case study shows how GS-EpiViz does support the design

  17. Mobile work: Ergonomics in a rapidly changing work environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Honan, Meg

    2015-01-01

    Places of work have been completely transformed by innovations in mobile work tools and ever-present access to internet data. This article characterizes use patterns and provides preliminary considerations for productive and comfortable use of common mobile devices. Two surveys described trends in mobile work. In the first, ergonomics professionals who oversee programs reported common mobile devices, their users and what data is accessed. The second, an end user survey, explored common activities performed on mobile devices, duration of use and locations where mobile work is common. The survey results provide a baseline data point for the status of mobile work in early 2014. Research indicates that additional risks have been introduced to the neck, thumbs and hands when using mobile devices. Possible trends regarding device use and work locations emerge. Intervention studies provide some direction for the practitioner. Practical strategies are outlined to reduce exposure intensity and duration. Contemporary mobile work presents tremendous change and opportunity for ergonomists and researchers to keep pace with fitting the changing models of work to the person. Continued research is needed on current mobile device use patterns to better understand ergonomic risk exposure in this rapidly changing realm.

  18. The Network of International Student Mobility (Working Title)

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Voegtle, E.; Windzio, M.

    2016-07-01

    In a previous paper (see Vögtle and Windzio 2016) we investigated the impact of membership in the Bologna Process on patterns and driving forces of cross-national student mobility. Student exchange flows were analysed for almost all Bologna Process member states and nonBologna OECD members over a ten-year period (from 2000 to 2009). We applied a Social Network Approach focusing on outbound diploma-mobility to identify positions of countries in the network of cross-national student exchange. Based on social network analyses, we first visualized the exchange patterns between sampled countries. In doing so, we analysed the student exchange linkages to gain descriptive insights into the development of the network (see Figure 1). Second, we used Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) to test which factors determine patterns of transnational student mobility. The results of this network analyses reveal that cross-national student exchange networks are stable over time. At the core of these networks are the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany; they attract the highest shares of students from the remaining countries in our sample. Moreover, the results of the ERGM demonstrate that homophily between countries determines student exchange patterns. The most relevant ties exist between bordering countries. Moreover, membership in the Bologna Process impacts on mobility patterns, and the effect size increases over the periods investigated. (Author)

  19. Phenomenology of Mobile Phone Users’ Experiences About Mobilization in Social Relationships

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Mokhtari

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Technology has important role in communications and shapes people’s relations but also imposes its principles on these relationships. The term “Mobilization” refers to special form of life style characterized by properties such as speed and quantity. This investigation aimed at studying user experiences with regard to mobilization in human relationships. To this purpose, we conducted a phenomenological approach and arranged in-depth interviews with 12 users of mobile phones focusing on different virtual spaces. The use of mobile and virtual networks was researched with the view of "satisfaction and happiness."The obtained data were analyzed with Colaizzi’s 7 steps method and the results revealed 2 themes: “experience from technology” and “relational experiences” with more detailed sub-themes. Results showed that users pass through the stages of “experience from technology” i.e., from “familiarity”, to “attraction”, then “drown to nakedness, “to” pointlessness,” and ultimately “control”. Also participants’ communication experiences showed different types of confounded relationships. This process called mobilization, in which the characteristics, application context, and specific nature of the mobile phone use enter the human relationships and change them. Indeed, mobilization is not a technologic process but is a cultural one. The problem is not the invention but is the feel and urge to use this technology.

  20. Hierarchical coordination control of mobile robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Adinandra, S.

    2012-01-01

    In the last decade, robotic systems have penetrated human life more than human can imagine. In particular, the multi-mobile robotic systems have faced a fast growing due to the fact that by deploying a large collection of mobile robots the overall system has a high redundancy and offers the

  1. An autonomous, automated and mobile device to concurrently assess several cognitive functions in group-living non-human primates.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fizet, Jonas; Rimele, Adam; Pebayle, Thierry; Cassel, Jean-Christophe; Kelche, Christian; Meunier, Hélène

    2017-11-01

    Research methods in cognitive neuroscience using non-human primates have undergone notable changes over the last decades. Recently, several research groups have described freely accessible devices equipped with a touchscreen interface. Two characteristics of such systems are of particular interest: some apparatuses include automated identification of subjects, while others are mobile. Here, we designed, tested and validated an experimental system that, for the first time, combine automatization and mobility. Moreover, our system allows autonomous learning and testing of cognitive performance in group-living subjects, including follow-up assessments. The mobile apparatus is designed to be available 24h a day, 7days a week, in a typical confined primate breeding and housing facility. Here we present as proof of concept, the results of two pilot studies. We report that rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) learned the tasks rapidly and achieved high-level of stable performance. Approaches of this kind should be developed for future pharmacological and biomedical studies in non-human primates. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Exploring Entrainment Patterns of Human Emotion in Social Media

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Chuan; Zhang, Zhu

    2016-01-01

    Emotion entrainment, which is generally defined as the synchronous convergence of human emotions, performs many important social functions. However, what the specific mechanisms of emotion entrainment are beyond in-person interactions, and how human emotions evolve under different entrainment patterns in large-scale social communities, are still unknown. In this paper, we aim to examine the massive emotion entrainment patterns and understand the underlying mechanisms in the context of social media. As modeling emotion dynamics on a large scale is often challenging, we elaborate a pragmatic framework to characterize and quantify the entrainment phenomenon. By applying this framework on the datasets from two large-scale social media platforms, we find that the emotions of online users entrain through social networks. We further uncover that online users often form their relations via dual entrainment, while maintain it through single entrainment. Remarkably, the emotions of online users are more convergent in nonreciprocal entrainment. Building on these findings, we develop an entrainment augmented model for emotion prediction. Experimental results suggest that entrainment patterns inform emotion proximity in dyads, and encoding their associations promotes emotion prediction. This work can further help us to understand the underlying dynamic process of large-scale online interactions and make more reasonable decisions regarding emergency situations, epidemic diseases, and political campaigns in cyberspace. PMID:26953692

  3. Exploring Entrainment Patterns of Human Emotion in Social Media.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Saike He

    Full Text Available Emotion entrainment, which is generally defined as the synchronous convergence of human emotions, performs many important social functions. However, what the specific mechanisms of emotion entrainment are beyond in-person interactions, and how human emotions evolve under different entrainment patterns in large-scale social communities, are still unknown. In this paper, we aim to examine the massive emotion entrainment patterns and understand the underlying mechanisms in the context of social media. As modeling emotion dynamics on a large scale is often challenging, we elaborate a pragmatic framework to characterize and quantify the entrainment phenomenon. By applying this framework on the datasets from two large-scale social media platforms, we find that the emotions of online users entrain through social networks. We further uncover that online users often form their relations via dual entrainment, while maintain it through single entrainment. Remarkably, the emotions of online users are more convergent in nonreciprocal entrainment. Building on these findings, we develop an entrainment augmented model for emotion prediction. Experimental results suggest that entrainment patterns inform emotion proximity in dyads, and encoding their associations promotes emotion prediction. This work can further help us to understand the underlying dynamic process of large-scale online interactions and make more reasonable decisions regarding emergency situations, epidemic diseases, and political campaigns in cyberspace.

  4. Cooperative Position Aware Mobility Pattern of AUVs for Avoiding Void Zones in Underwater WSNs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Javaid, Nadeem; Ejaz, Mudassir; Abdul, Wadood; Alamri, Atif; Almogren, Ahmad; Niaz, Iftikhar Azim; Guizani, Nadra

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, we propose two schemes; position-aware mobility pattern (PAMP) and cooperative PAMP (Co PAMP). The first one is an optimization scheme that avoids void hole occurrence and minimizes the uncertainty in the position estimation of glider’s. The second one is a cooperative routing scheme that reduces the packet drop ratio by using the relay cooperation. Both techniques use gliders that stay at sojourn positions for a predefined time, at sojourn position self-confidence (s-confidence) and neighbor-confidence (n-confidence) regions that are estimated for balanced energy consumption. The transmission power of a glider is adjusted according to those confidence regions. Simulation results show that our proposed schemes outperform the compared existing one in terms of packet delivery ratio, void zones and energy consumption. PMID:28335377

  5. Cooperative Position Aware Mobility Pattern of AUVs for Avoiding Void Zones in Underwater WSNs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nadeem Javaid

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we propose two schemes; position-aware mobility pattern (PAMP and cooperative PAMP (Co PAMP. The first one is an optimization scheme that avoids void hole occurrence and minimizes the uncertainty in the position estimation of glider’s. The second one is a cooperative routing scheme that reduces the packet drop ratio by using the relay cooperation. Both techniques use gliders that stay at sojourn positions for a predefined time, at sojourn position self-confidence (s-confidence and neighbor-confidence (n-confidence regions that are estimated for balanced energy consumption. The transmission power of a glider is adjusted according to those confidence regions. Simulation results show that our proposed schemes outperform the compared existing one in terms of packet delivery ratio, void zones and energy consumption.

  6. Weight loss efficacy of a novel mobile Diabetes Prevention Program delivery platform with human coaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michaelides, Andreas; Raby, Christine; Wood, Meghan; Farr, Kit

    2016-01-01

    Objective To evaluate the weight loss efficacy of a novel mobile platform delivering the Diabetes Prevention Program. Research Design and Methods 43 overweight or obese adult participants with a diagnosis of prediabetes signed-up to receive a 24-week virtual Diabetes Prevention Program with human coaching, through a mobile platform. Weight loss and engagement were the main outcomes, evaluated by repeated measures analysis of variance, backward regression, and mediation regression. Results Weight loss at 16 and 24 weeks was significant, with 56% of starters and 64% of completers losing over 5% body weight. Mean weight loss at 24 weeks was 6.58% in starters and 7.5% in completers. Participants were highly engaged, with 84% of the sample completing 9 lessons or more. In-app actions related to self-monitoring significantly predicted weight loss. Conclusions Our findings support the effectiveness of a uniquely mobile prediabetes intervention, producing weight loss comparable to studies with high engagement, with potential for scalable population health management. PMID:27651911

  7. Adjustment of Daily Activities: the Influence of Smartphone Adoption on the Travel Pattern of Mobile Professionals in the Greater Jakarta Area

    OpenAIRE

    Christin, Gloriani Novita; Tamin, Ofyar Z; Santosa, Idwan; Miharja, Miming

    2014-01-01

    The swift augmentation in the adoption of smartphones, the gadget that resulted from the convergence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), potentially transforms people's life in myriad dimensions. One potential change induced by smartphones, is how people restructure their daily agenda and consecutively influence their travel pattern. To understand it, this study theoretically reviews mobile professional work, smartphone adoption, and how peop...

  8. Neural Activity Patterns in the Human Brain Reflect Tactile Stickiness Perception

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Junsuk; Yeon, Jiwon; Ryu, Jaekyun; Park, Jang-Yeon; Chung, Soon-Cheol; Kim, Sung-Phil

    2017-01-01

    Our previous human fMRI study found brain activations correlated with tactile stickiness perception using the uni-variate general linear model (GLM) (Yeon et al., 2017). Here, we conducted an in-depth investigation on neural correlates of sticky sensations by employing a multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) on the same dataset. In particular, we statistically compared multi-variate neural activities in response to the three groups of sticky stimuli: A supra-threshold group including a set of sticky stimuli that evoked vivid sticky perception; an infra-threshold group including another set of sticky stimuli that barely evoked sticky perception; and a sham group including acrylic stimuli with no physically sticky property. Searchlight MVPAs were performed to search for local activity patterns carrying neural information of stickiness perception. Similar to the uni-variate GLM results, significant multi-variate neural activity patterns were identified in postcentral gyrus, subcortical (basal ganglia and thalamus), and insula areas (insula and adjacent areas). Moreover, MVPAs revealed that activity patterns in posterior parietal cortex discriminated the perceptual intensities of stickiness, which was not present in the uni-variate analysis. Next, we applied a principal component analysis (PCA) to the voxel response patterns within identified clusters so as to find low-dimensional neural representations of stickiness intensities. Follow-up clustering analyses clearly showed separate neural grouping configurations between the Supra- and Infra-threshold groups. Interestingly, this neural categorization was in line with the perceptual grouping pattern obtained from the psychophysical data. Our findings thus suggest that different stickiness intensities would elicit distinct neural activity patterns in the human brain and may provide a neural basis for the perception and categorization of tactile stickiness. PMID:28936171

  9. Spatial point pattern analysis of human settlements and geographical associations in eastern coastal China - a case study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Zhonghao; Xiao, Rui; Shortridge, Ashton; Wu, Jiaping

    2014-03-10

    Understanding the spatial point pattern of human settlements and their geographical associations are important for understanding the drivers of land use and land cover change and the relationship between environmental and ecological processes on one hand and cultures and lifestyles on the other. In this study, a Geographic Information System (GIS) approach, Ripley's K function and Monte Carlo simulation were used to investigate human settlement point patterns. Remotely sensed tools and regression models were employed to identify the effects of geographical determinants on settlement locations in the Wen-Tai region of eastern coastal China. Results indicated that human settlements displayed regular-random-cluster patterns from small to big scale. Most settlements located on the coastal plain presented either regular or random patterns, while those in hilly areas exhibited a clustered pattern. Moreover, clustered settlements were preferentially located at higher elevations with steeper slopes and south facing aspects than random or regular settlements. Regression showed that influences of topographic factors (elevation, slope and aspect) on settlement locations were stronger across hilly regions. This study demonstrated a new approach to analyzing the spatial patterns of human settlements from a wide geographical prospective. We argue that the spatial point patterns of settlements, in addition to the characteristics of human settlements, such as area, density and shape, should be taken into consideration in the future, and land planners and decision makers should pay more attention to city planning and management. Conceptual and methodological bridges linking settlement patterns to regional and site-specific geographical characteristics will be a key to human settlement studies and planning.

  10. Human-Centered Design and Evaluation of Haptic Cueing for Teleoperation of Multiple Mobile Robots.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Son, Hyoung Il; Franchi, Antonio; Chuang, Lewis L; Kim, Junsuk; Bulthoff, Heinrich H; Giordano, Paolo Robuffo

    2013-04-01

    In this paper, we investigate the effect of haptic cueing on a human operator's performance in the field of bilateral teleoperation of multiple mobile robots, particularly multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Two aspects of human performance are deemed important in this area, namely, the maneuverability of mobile robots and the perceptual sensitivity of the remote environment. We introduce metrics that allow us to address these aspects in two psychophysical studies, which are reported here. Three fundamental haptic cue types were evaluated. The Force cue conveys information on the proximity of the commanded trajectory to obstacles in the remote environment. The Velocity cue represents the mismatch between the commanded and actual velocities of the UAVs and can implicitly provide a rich amount of information regarding the actual behavior of the UAVs. Finally, the Velocity+Force cue is a linear combination of the two. Our experimental results show that, while maneuverability is best supported by the Force cue feedback, perceptual sensitivity is best served by the Velocity cue feedback. In addition, we show that large gains in the haptic feedbacks do not always guarantee an enhancement in the teleoperator's performance.

  11. Human Technology and Human Affects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Fausing, Bent

    2009-01-01

    Human Technology and Human Affects  This year Samsung introduced a mobile phone with "Soul". It was made with a human touch and included itself a magical touch. Which function does technology and affects get in everyday aesthetics like this, its images and interactions included this presentation...... will ask and try to answer. The mobile phone and its devices are depicted as being able to make a unique human presence, interaction, and affect. The medium, the technology is a necessary helper to get towards this very special and lost humanity. Without the technology, no special humanity - soul....... The paper will investigate how technology, humanity, affects, and synaesthesia are presented and combined with examples from everyday aesthetics, e.g. early computer tv-commercial, net-commercial for mobile phones. Technology and affects point, is the conclusion, towards a forgotten pre-human and not he...

  12. Mobile Tower Radiation Protection System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jabbar Slman Hussein

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Clean environment is one of the most necessarily needs for Human life. So what about mobile effect and its towers pollution? It's effect on public health? Effect of huge groan of mobile networks. In counting of these dangers that will harm us from mobile towers in the far run, was the reasons for writing this research, came this study to look at the mobile towers and mobile effects possible health harm for the purpose of diagnosis of these effects and to suggest ways that can be used to avoid or minimize the risks.  Faraday Cage, is the solution suggested here, also there are many other solutions for this problem, a Faraday cage is a metallic enclosure that stops the entry or escape of an EM field. Also, two experiments are accomplished, first one showing the effect of Faraday cage on preventing the EMR from mobile cellphone, and the second  experiment gives the effect of Faraday cage on preventing the EMR from mobile tower EMR on human health listed in the research, that have been done by using conducting shell (grid design according the EM wavelength used by three company's mobile working in Iraq, the result show good isolations.

  13. Automated classification of immunostaining patterns in breast tissue from the human protein atlas.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Swamidoss, Issac Niwas; Kårsnäs, Andreas; Uhlmann, Virginie; Ponnusamy, Palanisamy; Kampf, Caroline; Simonsson, Martin; Wählby, Carolina; Strand, Robin

    2013-01-01

    The Human Protein Atlas (HPA) is an effort to map the location of all human proteins (http://www.proteinatlas.org/). It contains a large number of histological images of sections from human tissue. Tissue micro arrays (TMA) are imaged by a slide scanning microscope, and each image represents a thin slice of a tissue core with a dark brown antibody specific stain and a blue counter stain. When generating antibodies for protein profiling of the human proteome, an important step in the quality control is to compare staining patterns of different antibodies directed towards the same protein. This comparison is an ultimate control that the antibody recognizes the right protein. In this paper, we propose and evaluate different approaches for classifying sub-cellular antibody staining patterns in breast tissue samples. The proposed methods include the computation of various features including gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) features, complex wavelet co-occurrence matrix (CWCM) features, and weighted neighbor distance using compound hierarchy of algorithms representing morphology (WND-CHARM)-inspired features. The extracted features are used into two different multivariate classifiers (support vector machine (SVM) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifier). Before extracting features, we use color deconvolution to separate different tissue components, such as the brownly stained positive regions and the blue cellular regions, in the immuno-stained TMA images of breast tissue. We present classification results based on combinations of feature measurements. The proposed complex wavelet features and the WND-CHARM features have accuracy similar to that of a human expert. Both human experts and the proposed automated methods have difficulties discriminating between nuclear and cytoplasmic staining patterns. This is to a large extent due to mixed staining of nucleus and cytoplasm. Methods for quantification of staining patterns in histopathology have many

  14. Automated classification of immunostaining patterns in breast tissue from the human protein Atlas

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Issac Niwas Swamidoss

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: The Human Protein Atlas (HPA is an effort to map the location of all human proteins (http://www.proteinatlas.org/. It contains a large number of histological images of sections from human tissue. Tissue micro arrays (TMA are imaged by a slide scanning microscope, and each image represents a thin slice of a tissue core with a dark brown antibody specific stain and a blue counter stain. When generating antibodies for protein profiling of the human proteome, an important step in the quality control is to compare staining patterns of different antibodies directed towards the same protein. This comparison is an ultimate control that the antibody recognizes the right protein. In this paper, we propose and evaluate different approaches for classifying sub-cellular antibody staining patterns in breast tissue samples. Materials and Methods: The proposed methods include the computation of various features including gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM features, complex wavelet co-occurrence matrix (CWCM features, and weighted neighbor distance using compound hierarchy of algorithms representing morphology (WND-CHARM-inspired features. The extracted features are used into two different multivariate classifiers (support vector machine (SVM and linear discriminant analysis (LDA classifier. Before extracting features, we use color deconvolution to separate different tissue components, such as the brownly stained positive regions and the blue cellular regions, in the immuno-stained TMA images of breast tissue. Results: We present classification results based on combinations of feature measurements. The proposed complex wavelet features and the WND-CHARM features have accuracy similar to that of a human expert. Conclusions: Both human experts and the proposed automated methods have difficulties discriminating between nuclear and cytoplasmic staining patterns. This is to a large extent due to mixed staining of nucleus and cytoplasm. Methods for

  15. Dedicated mobile volumetric cone-beam computed tomography for human brain imaging: A phantom study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ryu, Jong-Hyun; Kim, Tae-Hoon; Jeong, Chang-Won; Jun, Hong-Young; Heo, Dong-Woon; Lee, Jinseok; Kim, Kyong-Woo; Yoon, Kwon-Ha

    2015-01-01

    Mobile computed tomography (CT) with a cone-beam source is increasingly used in the clinical field. Mobile cone-beam CT (CBCT) has great merits; however, its clinical utility for brain imaging has been limited due to problems including scan time and image quality. The aim of this study was to develop a dedicated mobile volumetric CBCT for obtaining brain images, and to optimize the imaging protocol using a brain phantom. The mobile volumetric CBCT system was evaluated with regards to scan time and image quality, measured as signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise-ratio (CNR), spatial resolution (10% MTF), and effective dose. Brain images were obtained using a CT phantom. The CT scan took 5.14 s at 360 projection views. SNR and CNR were 5.67 and 14.5 at 120 kV/10 mA. SNR and CNR values showed slight improvement as the x-ray voltage and current increased (p < 0.001). Effective dose and 10% MTF were 0.92 mSv and 360 μ m at 120 kV/10 mA. Various intracranial structures were clearly visible in the brain phantom images. Using this CBCT under optimal imaging acquisition conditions, it is possible to obtain human brain images with low radiation dose, reproducible image quality, and fast scan time.

  16. Exploring the potential of open big data from ticketing websites to characterize travel patterns within the Chinese high-speed rail system.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sheng Wei

    Full Text Available Big data have contributed to deepen our understanding in regards to many human systems, particularly human mobility patterns and the structure and functioning of transportation systems. Resonating the recent call for 'open big data,' big data from various sources on a range of scales have become increasingly accessible to the public. However, open big data relevant to travelers within public transit tools remain scarce, hindering any further in-depth study on human mobility patterns. Here, we explore ticketing-website derived data that are publically available but have been largely neglected. We demonstrate the power, potential and limitations of this open big data, using the Chinese high-speed rail (HSR system as an example. Using an application programming interface, we automatically collected the data on the remaining tickets (RTD for scheduled trains at the last second before departure in order to retrieve information on unused transit capacity, occupancy rate of trains, and passenger flux at stations. We show that this information is highly useful in characterizing the spatiotemporal patterns of traveling behaviors on the Chinese HSR, such as weekend traveling behavior, imbalanced commuting behavior, and station functionality. Our work facilitates the understanding of human traveling patterns along the Chinese HSR, and the functionality of the largest HSR system in the world. We expect our work to attract attention regarding this unique open big data source for the study of analogous transportation systems.

  17. The relationship between landscape patterns and human-caused fire occurrence in Spain

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Castafreda-Aumedes, S.; Garcia-Martin, A.; Vega-Garcia, C.

    2013-05-01

    Aim of study: Human settlements and activities have completely modified landscape structure in the Mediterranean region. Vegetation patterns show the interactions between human activities and natural processes on the territory, and allow understanding historical ecological processes and socioeconomic factors. The arrangement of land uses in the rural landscape can be perceived as a proxy for human activities that often lead to the use, and escape, of fire, the most important disturbance in our forest landscapes. In this context, we tried to predict human-caused fire occurrence in a 5-year period by quantifying landscape patterns. Area of study: This study analyses the Spanish territory included in the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands (497,166 km{sup 2}). Material and Methods: We evaluated spatial pattern applying a set of commonly used landscape ecology metrics to landscape windows of 10x10 sq km (4751 units in the UTM grid) overlaid on the Forest Map of Spain, MFE200. Main results: The best logistic regression model obtained included Shannon's Diversity Index, Mean Patch Edge and Mean Shape Index as explicative variables and the global percentage of correct predictions was 66.3 %. Research highlights: Our results suggested that the highest probability of fire occurrence at that time was associated with areas with a greater diversity of land uses and with more compact patches with fewer edges. (Author) 58 refs.

  18. A MapReduce-Based Parallel Frequent Pattern Growth Algorithm for Spatiotemporal Association Analysis of Mobile Trajectory Big Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dawen Xia

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Frequent pattern mining is an effective approach for spatiotemporal association analysis of mobile trajectory big data in data-driven intelligent transportation systems. While existing parallel algorithms have been successfully applied to frequent pattern mining of large-scale trajectory data, two major challenges are how to overcome the inherent defects of Hadoop to cope with taxi trajectory big data including massive small files and how to discover the implicitly spatiotemporal frequent patterns with MapReduce. To conquer these challenges, this paper presents a MapReduce-based Parallel Frequent Pattern growth (MR-PFP algorithm to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of taxi operating using large-scale taxi trajectories with massive small file processing strategies on a Hadoop platform. More specifically, we first implement three methods, that is, Hadoop Archives (HAR, CombineFileInputFormat (CFIF, and Sequence Files (SF, to overcome the existing defects of Hadoop and then propose two strategies based on their performance evaluations. Next, we incorporate SF into Frequent Pattern growth (FP-growth algorithm and then implement the optimized FP-growth algorithm on a MapReduce framework. Finally, we analyze the characteristics of taxi operating in both spatial and temporal dimensions by MR-PFP in parallel. The results demonstrate that MR-PFP is superior to existing Parallel FP-growth (PFP algorithm in efficiency and scalability.

  19. Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hill, Kim R; Walker, Robert S; Bozicević, Miran; Eder, James; Headland, Thomas; Hewlett, Barry; Hurtado, A Magdalena; Marlowe, Frank; Wiessner, Polly; Wood, Brian

    2011-03-11

    Contemporary humans exhibit spectacular biological success derived from cumulative culture and cooperation. The origins of these traits may be related to our ancestral group structure. Because humans lived as foragers for 95% of our species' history, we analyzed co-residence patterns among 32 present-day foraging societies (total n = 5067 individuals, mean experienced band size = 28.2 adults). We found that hunter-gatherers display a unique social structure where (i) either sex may disperse or remain in their natal group, (ii) adult brothers and sisters often co-reside, and (iii) most individuals in residential groups are genetically unrelated. These patterns produce large interaction networks of unrelated adults and suggest that inclusive fitness cannot explain extensive cooperation in hunter-gatherer bands. However, large social networks may help to explain why humans evolved capacities for social learning that resulted in cumulative culture.

  20. Inspiratory flow pattern in humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lafortuna, C L; Minetti, A E; Mognoni, P

    1984-10-01

    The theoretical estimation of the mechanical work of breathing during inspiration at rest is based on the common assumption that the inspiratory airflow wave is a sine function of time. Different analytical studies have pointed out that from an energetic point of view a rectangular wave is more economical than a sine wave. Visual inspection of inspiratory flow waves recorded during exercise in humans and various animals suggests that a trend toward a rectangular flow wave may be a possible systematic response of the respiratory system. To test this hypothesis, the harmonic content of inspiratory flow waves that were recorded in six healthy subjects at rest, during exercise hyperventilation, and during a maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV) maneuver were evaluated by a Fourier analysis, and the results were compared with those obtained on sinusoidal and rectangular models. The dynamic work inherent in the experimental waves and in the sine-wave model was practically the same at rest; during exercise hyperventilation and MVV, the experimental wave was approximately 16-20% more economical than the sinusoidal one. It was concluded that even though at rest the sinusoidal model is a reasonably good approximation of inspiratory flow, during exercise and MVV, a physiological controller is probably operating in humans that can select a more economical inspiratory pattern. Other peculiarities of airflow wave during hyperventilation and some optimization criteria are also discussed.

  1. Correlation between social proximity and mobility similarity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fan, Chao; Liu, Yiding; Huang, Junming; Rong, Zhihai; Zhou, Tao

    2017-09-20

    Human behaviors exhibit ubiquitous correlations in many aspects, such as individual and collective levels, temporal and spatial dimensions, content, social and geographical layers. With rich Internet data of online behaviors becoming available, it attracts academic interests to explore human mobility similarity from the perspective of social network proximity. Existent analysis shows a strong correlation between online social proximity and offline mobility similarity, namely, mobile records between friends are significantly more similar than between strangers, and those between friends with common neighbors are even more similar. We argue the importance of the number and diversity of common friends, with a counter intuitive finding that the number of common friends has no positive impact on mobility similarity while the diversity plays a key role, disagreeing with previous studies. Our analysis provides a novel view for better understanding the coupling between human online and offline behaviors, and will help model and predict human behaviors based on social proximity.

  2. A comparative analysis of the statistical properties of large mobile phone calling networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Ming-Xia; Jiang, Zhi-Qiang; Xie, Wen-Jie; Miccichè, Salvatore; Tumminello, Michele; Zhou, Wei-Xing; Mantegna, Rosario N

    2014-05-30

    Mobile phone calling is one of the most widely used communication methods in modern society. The records of calls among mobile phone users provide us a valuable proxy for the understanding of human communication patterns embedded in social networks. Mobile phone users call each other forming a directed calling network. If only reciprocal calls are considered, we obtain an undirected mutual calling network. The preferential communication behavior between two connected users can be statistically tested and it results in two Bonferroni networks with statistically validated edges. We perform a comparative analysis of the statistical properties of these four networks, which are constructed from the calling records of more than nine million individuals in Shanghai over a period of 110 days. We find that these networks share many common structural properties and also exhibit idiosyncratic features when compared with previously studied large mobile calling networks. The empirical findings provide us an intriguing picture of a representative large social network that might shed new lights on the modelling of large social networks.

  3. Including the Other: Regulation of the Human Rights of Mobile Students in a Nation-Bound World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marginson, Simon

    2012-01-01

    The world's three million cross-border international students are located in a "gray zone" of regulation with incomplete human rights, security and capabilities. Like other mobile persons such as short-term business and labour entrants, and refugees, students located on foreign soil do not enjoy the same protections and entitlements as…

  4. Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Nepal: Patterns of Human Fatalities and Injuries Caused by Large Mammals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Acharya, Krishna Prasad; Paudel, Prakash Kumar; Neupane, Prem Raj; Köhl, Michael

    2016-01-01

    Injury and death from wildlife attacks often result in people feeling violent resentment and hostility against the wildlife involved and, therefore, may undermine public support for conservation. Although Nepal, with rich biodiversity, is doing well in its conservation efforts, human-wildlife conflicts have been a major challenge in recent years. The lack of detailed information on the spatial and temporal patterns of human-wildlife conflicts at the national level impedes the development of effective conflict mitigation plans. We examined patterns of human injury and death caused by large mammals using data from attack events and their spatiotemporal dimensions collected from a national survey of data available in Nepal over five years (2010-2014). Data were analyzed using logistic regression and chi-square or Fisher's exact tests. The results show that Asiatic elephants and common leopards are most commonly involved in attacks on people in terms of attack frequency and fatalities. Although one-horned rhinoceros and bears had a higher frequency of attacks than Bengal tigers, tigers caused more fatalities than each of these two species. Attacks by elephants peaked in winter and most frequently occurred outside protected areas in human settlements. Leopard attacks occurred almost entirely outside protected areas, and a significantly greater number of attacks occurred in human settlements. Attacks by one-horned rhinoceros and tigers were higher in the winter, mainly in forests inside protected areas; similarly, attacks by bears occurred mostly within protected areas. We found that human settlements are increasingly becoming conflict hotspots, with burgeoning incidents involving elephants and leopards. We conclude that species-specific conservation strategies are urgently needed, particularly for leopards and elephants. The implications of our findings for minimizing conflicts and conserving these imperiled species are discussed.

  5. Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Nepal: Patterns of Human Fatalities and Injuries Caused by Large Mammals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Acharya, Krishna Prasad; Paudel, Prakash Kumar; Neupane, Prem Raj; Köhl, Michael

    2016-01-01

    Injury and death from wildlife attacks often result in people feeling violent resentment and hostility against the wildlife involved and, therefore, may undermine public support for conservation. Although Nepal, with rich biodiversity, is doing well in its conservation efforts, human-wildlife conflicts have been a major challenge in recent years. The lack of detailed information on the spatial and temporal patterns of human-wildlife conflicts at the national level impedes the development of effective conflict mitigation plans. We examined patterns of human injury and death caused by large mammals using data from attack events and their spatiotemporal dimensions collected from a national survey of data available in Nepal over five years (2010–2014). Data were analyzed using logistic regression and chi-square or Fisher's exact tests. The results show that Asiatic elephants and common leopards are most commonly involved in attacks on people in terms of attack frequency and fatalities. Although one-horned rhinoceros and bears had a higher frequency of attacks than Bengal tigers, tigers caused more fatalities than each of these two species. Attacks by elephants peaked in winter and most frequently occurred outside protected areas in human settlements. Leopard attacks occurred almost entirely outside protected areas, and a significantly greater number of attacks occurred in human settlements. Attacks by one-horned rhinoceros and tigers were higher in the winter, mainly in forests inside protected areas; similarly, attacks by bears occurred mostly within protected areas. We found that human settlements are increasingly becoming conflict hotspots, with burgeoning incidents involving elephants and leopards. We conclude that species-specific conservation strategies are urgently needed, particularly for leopards and elephants. The implications of our findings for minimizing conflicts and conserving these imperiled species are discussed. PMID:27612174

  6. Virulence-associated gene pattern of porcine and human Yersinia enterocolitica biotype 4 isolates.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schneeberger, M; Brodard, I; Overesch, G

    2015-04-02

    Yersinia enterocolitica 4/O:3 is the most important human pathogenic bioserotype in Europe and the predominant pathogenic bioserotype in slaughter pigs. Although many studies on the virulence of Y. enterocolitica strains have showed a broad spectrum of detectable factors in pigs and humans, an analysis based on a strict comparative approach and serving to verify the virulence capability of porcine Y. enterocolitica as a source for human yersiniosis is lacking. Therefore, in the present study, strains of biotype (BT) 4 isolated from Swiss slaughter pig tonsils and feces and isolates from human clinical cases were compared in terms of their spectrum of virulence-associated genes (yadA, virF, ail, inv, rovA, ymoA, ystA, ystB and myfA). An analysis of the associated antimicrobial susceptibility pattern completed the characterization. All analyzed BT 4 strains showed a nearly similar pattern, comprising the known fundamental virulence-associated genes yadA, virF, ail, inv, rovA, ymoA, ystA and myfA. Only ystB was not detectable among all analyzed isolates. Importantly, neither the source of the isolates (porcine tonsils and feces, humans) nor the serotype (ST) had any influence on the gene pattern. From these findings, it can be concluded that the presence of the full complement of virulence genes necessary for human infection is common among porcine BT 4 strains. Swiss porcine BT 4 strains not only showed antimicrobial susceptibility to chloramphenicol, cefotaxime, ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin, colistin, florfenicol, gentamicin, kanamycin, nalidixic acid, sulfamethoxazole, streptomycin, tetracycline and trimethoprim but also showed 100% antibiotic resistance to ampicillin. The human BT 4 strains revealed comparable results. However, in addition to 100% antibiotic resistance to ampicillin, 2 strains were resistant to chloramphenicol and nalidixic acid. Additionally, 1 of these strains was resistant to sulfamethoxazole. The results demonstrated that Y. enterocolitica BT 4

  7. Sherlock Holmes and the Curious Case of the Human Locomotor Central Pattern Generator.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klarner, Taryn; Zehr, E Paul

    2018-03-14

    Evidence first described in reduced animal models over 100 years ago led to deductions about the control of locomotion through spinal locomotor central pattern generating (CPG) networks. These discoveries in nature were contemporaneous with another form of deductive reasoning found in popular culture-that of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective "Sherlock Holmes". Since the invasive methods used in reduced non-human animal preparations are not amenable to study in humans, we are left instead with deducing from other measures and observations. Using the deductive reasoning approach of Sherlock Holmes as a metaphor for framing research into human CPGs, we speculate and weigh the evidence that should be observable in humans based on knowledge from other species. This review summarizes indirect inference to assess "observable evidence" of pattern generating activity which leads to the logical deduction of CPG contributions to arm and leg activity during locomotion in humans. The question of where a CPG may be housed in the human nervous system remains incompletely resolved at this time. Ongoing understanding, elaboration and application of functioning locomotor CPGs in humans is important for gait rehabilitation strategies in those with neurological injuries.

  8. Agricultural activity shapes the communication and migration patterns in Senegal

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martin-Gutierrez, S.; Borondo, J.; Morales, A. J.; Losada, J. C.; Tarquis, A. M.; Benito, R. M.

    2016-06-01

    The communication and migration patterns of a country are shaped by its socioeconomic processes. The economy of Senegal is predominantly rural, as agriculture employs over 70% of the labor force. In this paper, we use mobile phone records to explore the impact of agricultural activity on the communication and mobility patterns of the inhabitants of Senegal. We find two peaks of phone calls activity emerging during the growing season. Moreover, during the harvest period, we detect an increase in the migration flows throughout the country. However, religious holidays also shape the mobility patterns of the Senegalese people. Hence, in the light of our results, agricultural activity and religious holidays are the primary drivers of mobility inside the country.

  9. The influence of population mobility on human settlements

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cleophas Lado

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available This paper examines some of the characteristics of world's population mobility, cultural environment and changing societies. Some of the national and international problems associated with population data collection and enumeration are explored including transient and temporary population movements. In analyzing population mobility and demographic transition, Zelinky's hypothesis is used as a conceptual framework applicable in both Developed and Developing countries. The findings of the study focused mainly on some of government policies and implications essential for rural-orientated and urban-orientated development programmes. It is emphasized that to achieve some of the socio-economic development objectives in any nation, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of all the processes of mobility to match the various government policies of the redistribution.

  10. Patterning human neuronal networks on photolithographically engineered silicon dioxide substrates functionalized with glial analogues.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hughes, Mark A; Brennan, Paul M; Bunting, Andrew S; Cameron, Katherine; Murray, Alan F; Shipston, Mike J

    2014-05-01

    Interfacing neurons with silicon semiconductors is a challenge being tackled through various bioengineering approaches. Such constructs inform our understanding of neuronal coding and learning and ultimately guide us toward creating intelligent neuroprostheses. A fundamental prerequisite is to dictate the spatial organization of neuronal cells. We sought to pattern neurons using photolithographically defined arrays of polymer parylene-C, activated with fetal calf serum. We used a purified human neuronal cell line [Lund human mesencephalic (LUHMES)] to establish whether neurons remain viable when isolated on-chip or whether they require a supporting cell substrate. When cultured in isolation, LUHMES neurons failed to pattern and did not show any morphological signs of differentiation. We therefore sought a cell type with which to prepattern parylene regions, hypothesizing that this cellular template would enable secondary neuronal adhesion and network formation. From a range of cell lines tested, human embryonal kidney (HEK) 293 cells patterned with highest accuracy. LUHMES neurons adhered to pre-established HEK 293 cell clusters and this coculture environment promoted morphological differentiation of neurons. Neurites extended between islands of adherent cell somata, creating an orthogonally arranged neuronal network. HEK 293 cells appear to fulfill a role analogous to glia, dictating cell adhesion, and generating an environment conducive to neuronal survival. We next replaced HEK 293 cells with slower growing glioma-derived precursors. These primary human cells patterned accurately on parylene and provided a similarly effective scaffold for neuronal adhesion. These findings advance the use of this microfabrication-compatible platform for neuronal patterning. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  11. Spatial Point Pattern Analysis of Human Settlements and Geographical Associations in Eastern Coastal China — A Case Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Zhonghao; Xiao, Rui; Shortridge, Ashton; Wu, Jiaping

    2014-01-01

    Understanding the spatial point pattern of human settlements and their geographical associations are important for understanding the drivers of land use and land cover change and the relationship between environmental and ecological processes on one hand and cultures and lifestyles on the other. In this study, a Geographic Information System (GIS) approach, Ripley’s K function and Monte Carlo simulation were used to investigate human settlement point patterns. Remotely sensed tools and regression models were employed to identify the effects of geographical determinants on settlement locations in the Wen-Tai region of eastern coastal China. Results indicated that human settlements displayed regular-random-cluster patterns from small to big scale. Most settlements located on the coastal plain presented either regular or random patterns, while those in hilly areas exhibited a clustered pattern. Moreover, clustered settlements were preferentially located at higher elevations with steeper slopes and south facing aspects than random or regular settlements. Regression showed that influences of topographic factors (elevation, slope and aspect) on settlement locations were stronger across hilly regions. This study demonstrated a new approach to analyzing the spatial patterns of human settlements from a wide geographical prospective. We argue that the spatial point patterns of settlements, in addition to the characteristics of human settlements, such as area, density and shape, should be taken into consideration in the future, and land planners and decision makers should pay more attention to city planning and management. Conceptual and methodological bridges linking settlement patterns to regional and site-specific geographical characteristics will be a key to human settlement studies and planning. PMID:24619117

  12. Mobile phones and sleep - A review

    Science.gov (United States)

    Supe, Sanjay S.

    2010-01-01

    The increasing use of mobile phones has raised concerns regarding the potential health effects of exposure to the radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. An increasing amount research related to mobile phone use has focussed on the possible effects of mobile phone exposure on human brain activity and function. In particular, the use of sleep research has become a more widely used technique for assessing the possible effects of mobile phones on human health and wellbeing especially in the investigation of potential changes in sleep architecture resulting from mobile phone use. Acute exposure to a mobile phone prior to sleep significantly enhances electroencephalogram spectral power in the sleep spindle frequency range. This mobile phone-induced enhancement in spectral power is largely transitory and does not linger throughout the night. Furthermore, a reduction in rapid eye movement sleep latency following mobile phone exposure was also found, although interestingly, neither this change in rapid eye movement sleep latency or the enhancement in spectral power following mobile phone exposure, led to changes in the overall quality of sleep. In conclusion, a short exposure to the radiofrequency electromagnetic fields emitted by a mobile phone handset immediately prior to sleep is sufficient to induce changes in brain activity in the initial part of sleep. The consequences or functional significance of this effect are currently unknown and it would be premature to draw conclusions about possible health consequences.

  13. Effect of Bluetooth headset and mobile phone electromagnetic fields on the human auditory nerve.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mandalà, Marco; Colletti, Vittorio; Sacchetto, Luca; Manganotti, Paolo; Ramat, Stefano; Marcocci, Alessandro; Colletti, Liliana

    2014-01-01

    The possibility that long-term mobile phone use increases the incidence of astrocytoma, glioma and acoustic neuroma has been investigated in several studies. Recently, our group showed that direct exposure (in a surgical setting) to cell phone electromagnetic fields (EMFs) induces deterioration of auditory evoked cochlear nerve compound action potential (CNAP) in humans. To verify whether the use of Bluetooth devices reduces these effects, we conducted the present study with the same experimental protocol. Randomized trial. Twelve patients underwent retrosigmoid vestibular neurectomy to treat definite unilateral Ménière's disease while being monitored with acoustically evoked CNAPs to assess direct mobile phone exposure or alternatively the EMF effects of Bluetooth headsets. We found no short-term effects of Bluetooth EMFs on the auditory nervous structures, whereas direct mobile phone EMF exposure confirmed a significant decrease in CNAPs amplitude and an increase in latency in all subjects. The outcomes of the present study show that, contrary to the finding that the latency and amplitude of CNAPs are very sensitive to EMFs produced by the tested mobile phone, the EMFs produced by a common Bluetooth device do not induce any significant change in cochlear nerve activity. The conditions of exposure, therefore, differ from those of everyday life, in which various biological tissues may reduce the EMF affecting the cochlear nerve. Nevertheless, these novel findings may have important safety implications. © 2013 The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc.

  14. Intensities of Mobility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bissell, David; Vannini, Phillip; Jensen, Ole B.

    2017-01-01

    This paper explores the intensities of long-distance commuting journeys in order to understand how bodily sensibilities become attuned to the regular mobilities which they undertake. More people are travelling farther to and from work than ever before, owing to a variety of factors which relate...... to complex social and geographical dynamics of transport, housing, lifestyle, and employment. Yet, the experiential dimensions of long-distance commuting have not received the attention that they deserve within research on mobilities. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Australia, Canada, and Denmark...... this paper aims to further develop our collective understanding of the experiential particulars of long-distance workers or ‘supercommuters’. Rather than focusing on the extensive dimensions of mobilities that are implicated in broad social patterns and trends, our paper turns to the intensive dimensions...

  15. Latent variables definition for a new mobility model in Barcelona

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Puignau, S.A.; Ciommo, F. di; Sauri, S.

    2016-07-01

    Based on the recent travel behaviour literature, time and space perceptions and the awareness of shared economy seem to gain importance in mobility patterns. The objective of this article is to evaluate how far the behaviour of new generations brings about different mobility patterns in Barcelona. For this purpose, we have designed a web-based survey that provides innovative revealed-preference data. (Author)

  16. A cross-sectional study of travel patterns of older adults in the USA during 2015: implications for mobility and traffic safety.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shen, Sijun; Koech, Wilson; Feng, Jing; Rice, Thomas M; Zhu, Motao

    2017-08-11

    With an ever increasing population of older adults (65+ years) in the USA, a better understanding of this population's travel patterns is needed to improve travel mobility and transportation safety. In this study, we described the travel patterns of older adults in the USA during 2015. Travel patterns of older adults (65-74 and 75+ years) were compared with younger adults (25-64 years) by frequency and proportion of daily trips. The daily trips of various age groups were estimated using the 2015 American Time Use Survey. The percentage of daily travellers was 88% for adults (25-64 years), 75% for adults (65-74 years) and 68% for adults (75+ years). While the percentage of privately owned vehicle (POV) drivers and average time of driving POVs decreased, the percentage of POV passengers increased as adults aged. Females were less likely to drive POVs and had decreased average daily driving time, but they were more likely to ride in POVs as passengers and had longer average daily riding times than their male counterparts across all age groups. Older adults were more likely to travel in the mornings and early afternoons (from 8:00 to 15:59) while younger adults were more likely to travel in the late afternoons and early evenings (from 16:00 to 19:59). POV use is the predominant mode of transit in the USA. As adults age, the percentages of daily travellers and POV drivers decrease. This pattern is more apparent among females than males. This study delineated travel patterns of older adults using a 2015 national survey, and the findings facilitate traffic systems designers and policy-makers to develop and implement initiatives to accommodate older adults' mobility needs and improve traffic safety. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

  17. Mobile Systems Development: An Empirical Study

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hosbond, J. H.

    As part of an ongoing study on mobile systems development (MSD), this paper presents preliminary findings of research-in-progress. The debate on mobility in research has so far been dominated by mobile HCI, technological innovations, and socio-technical issues related to new and emerging mobile...... work patterns. This paper is about the development of mobile systems.Based on an on-going empirical study I present four case studies of companies each with different products or services to offer and diverging ways of establishing and sustaining a successful business in the mobile industry. From...... the case studies I propose a five-layered framework for understanding the structure and segmentation of the industry. This leads to an analysis of the different modes of operation within the mobile industry, exemplified by the four case studies.The contribution of this paper is therefore two-fold: (1) I...

  18. Data mining mobile devices

    CERN Document Server

    Mena, Jesus

    2013-01-01

    With today's consumers spending more time on their mobiles than on their PCs, new methods of empirical stochastic modeling have emerged that can provide marketers with detailed information about the products, content, and services their customers desire.Data Mining Mobile Devices defines the collection of machine-sensed environmental data pertaining to human social behavior. It explains how the integration of data mining and machine learning can enable the modeling of conversation context, proximity sensing, and geospatial location throughout large communities of mobile users

  19. Plant polyphenols mobilize nuclear copper in human peripheral lymphocytes leading to oxidatively generated DNA breakage: implications for an anticancer mechanism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shamim, Uzma; Hanif, Sarmad; Ullah, M F; Azmi, Asfar S; Bhat, Showket H; Hadi, S M

    2008-08-01

    It was earlier proposed that an important anti-cancer mechanism of plant polyphenols may involve mobilization of endogenous copper ions, possibly chromatin-bound copper and the consequent pro-oxidant action. This paper shows that plant polyphenols are able to mobilize nuclear copper in human lymphocytes, leading to degradation of cellular DNA. A cellular system of lymphocytes isolated from human peripheral blood and comet assay was used for this purpose. Incubation of lymphocytes with neocuproine (a cell membrane permeable copper chelator) inhibited DNA degradation in intact lymphocytes. Bathocuproine, which is unable to permeate through the cell membrane, did not cause such inhibition. This study has further shown that polyphenols are able to degrade DNA in cell nuclei and that such DNA degradation is inhibited by neocuproine as well as bathocuproine (both of which are able to permeate the nuclear pore complex), suggesting that nuclear copper is mobilized in this reaction. Pre-incubation of lymphocyte nuclei with polyphenols indicates that it is capable of traversing the nuclear membrane. This study has also shown that polyphenols generate oxidative stress in lymphocyte nuclei which is inhibited by scavengers of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and neocuproine. These results indicate that the generation of ROS occurs through mobilization of nuclear copper resulting in oxidatively generated DNA breakage.

  20. Mobility assessment of a rural population in the Netherlands using GPS measurements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klous, Gijs; Smit, Lidwien A M; Borlée, Floor; Coutinho, Roel A; Kretzschmar, Mirjam E E; Heederik, Dick J J; Huss, Anke

    2017-08-09

    The home address is a common spatial proxy for exposure assessment in epidemiological studies but mobility may introduce exposure misclassification. Mobility can be assessed using self-reports or objectively measured using GPS logging but self-reports may not assess the same information as measured mobility. We aimed to assess mobility patterns of a rural population in the Netherlands using GPS measurements and self-reports and to compare GPS measured to self-reported data, and to evaluate correlates of differences in mobility patterns. In total 870 participants filled in a questionnaire regarding their transport modes and carried a GPS-logger for 7 consecutive days. Transport modes were assigned to GPS-tracks based on speed patterns. Correlates of measured mobility data were evaluated using multiple linear regression. We calculated walking, biking and motorised transport durations based on GPS and self-reported data and compared outcomes. We used Cohen's kappa analyses to compare categorised self-reported and GPS measured data for time spent outdoors. Self-reported time spent walking and biking was strongly overestimated when compared to GPS measurements. Participants estimated their time spent in motorised transport accurately. Several variables were associated with differences in mobility patterns, we found for instance that obese people (BMI > 30 kg/m 2 ) spent less time in non-motorised transport (GMR 0.69-0.74) and people with COPD tended to travel longer distances from home in motorised transport (GMR 1.42-1.51). If time spent walking outdoors and biking is relevant for the exposure to environmental factors, then relying on the home address as a proxy for exposure location may introduce misclassification. In addition, this misclassification is potentially differential, and specific groups of people will show stronger misclassification of exposure than others. Performing GPS measurements and identifying explanatory factors of mobility patterns may assist

  1. Mobile medical device connectivity: real world solutions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pettus, Dan

    2004-01-01

    Mobile medical devices, such as infusion pumps, provide an important therapeutic function. They are also valuable sources of information about treatment patterns at the point of care. However, these mobile devices have been independent islands of valuable information, unable to share the data they gather with other hospital information resources on a real time basis. Although data from these devices can provide significant improvements for medical safety and vital information needed for clinical best practice development, gathering that data poses significant challenges when interfacing with hospital information systems. Mobile medical devices move from place to place as independent actors, raising a series of security and identification issues when they need to be disconnected and reconnected using traditional tethered cable connections. The continuing lack of accepted communications protocol standards, in spite of the concentrated efforts of organizations like the IEEE and the Medical Information Bus (IEEE 1073) to establish them, has made integration into the hospital information system a complex and non-standard task. The rapid spread in availability and adoption of high-speed 802.11 wireless systems in hospitals offers a realistic connectivity solution for mobile medical devices. Inspite of this, the 802.11 standard is still evolving, and current security methods designed for user-based products like PDAs and laptop computers are not ideal for unmanned mobile medical devices because they assume the availability of a human operator to authenticate a wireless session. In the absence of accepted standards, manufacturers have created practical and innovative solutions to support the collection of clinical data from mobile medical devices and the integration of that data with hospital information systems. This paper will explore the potential benefits of integrating mobile medical devices into the hospital information system, and describe the challenges in

  2. No place to hide? The ethics and analytics of tracking mobility using mobile phone data

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Taylor, L.

    2016-01-01

    This paper examines the ethical and methodological problems with tracking human mobility using data from mobile phones, focusing on research involving low- and middle-income countries. Such datasets are becoming accessible to an increasingly broad community of researchers and data scientists, with a

  3. From Humanizing the Educational Process to Professionally Mobile Specialists Training

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    T. A. Fugelova

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Training professional mobile specialists capable of responding flexibly to dynamic changes in society is considered to be the most important issue of the modern educational system. The paper justifies the idea that technical universities should take responsibility for solving this problem by means of humanization of technical education, which implies reconsidering its values and general notions. For overcoming the technocratic trends, the author recommends to cultivate the value of professionalism in the humanization context.Professionalism is defined by using the «professional service» idea as a «purpose acknowledgment, supertask, even a mission». The main components of the above attitude lie in finding the harmony with the world and its basic values. Therefore, technical universities face the challenge of training people of intelligence with a high moral and business responsibility. The basic value of such a person is regarded as «dedication to the cause» - the constant desire to improve the world and leave behind them- selves something of value to society. For training such specialists, the educational process should provide teachers dialogue and collaboration with students to facilitate the process of self-determination and self-development of the prospective specialists. 

  4. Spatial Point Pattern Analysis of Human Settlements and Geographical Associations in Eastern Coastal China — A Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhonghao Zhang

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Understanding the spatial point pattern of human settlements and their geographical associations are important for understanding the drivers of land use and land cover change and the relationship between environmental and ecological processes on one hand and cultures and lifestyles on the other. In this study, a Geographic Information System (GIS approach, Ripley’s K function and Monte Carlo simulation were used to investigate human settlement point patterns. Remotely sensed tools and regression models were employed to identify the effects of geographical determinants on settlement locations in the Wen-Tai region of eastern coastal China. Results indicated that human settlements displayed regular-random-cluster patterns from small to big scale. Most settlements located on the coastal plain presented either regular or random patterns, while those in hilly areas exhibited a clustered pattern. Moreover, clustered settlements were preferentially located at higher elevations with steeper slopes and south facing aspects than random or regular settlements. Regression showed that influences of topographic factors (elevation, slope and aspect on settlement locations were stronger across hilly regions. This study demonstrated a new approach to analyzing the spatial patterns of human settlements from a wide geographical prospective. We argue that the spatial point patterns of settlements, in addition to the characteristics of human settlements, such as area, density and shape, should be taken into consideration in the future, and land planners and decision makers should pay more attention to city planning and management. Conceptual and methodological bridges linking settlement patterns to regional and site-specific geographical characteristics will be a key to human settlement studies and planning.

  5. The Role of Governance in Mobile Phones for Inclusive Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

    OpenAIRE

    Asongu, Simplice A; Nwachukwu, Jacinta

    2016-01-01

    This study assesses the synergy effects of governance in mobile phone penetration for inclusive human development in Sub-Saharan Africa with data for the period 2000-2012 by employing a battery of interactive estimation techniques, namely: Fixed effects (FE), Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) and Tobit regressions. Concepts of political (voice & accountability and political stability/no violence), economic (government effectiveness and regulation quality) and institutional (corruption-contr...

  6. Identification of Mobile Phones Using the Built-In Magnetometers Stimulated by Motion Patterns

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gianmarco Baldini

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available We investigate the identification of mobile phones through their built-in magnetometers. These electronic components have started to be widely deployed in mass market phones in recent years, and they can be exploited to uniquely identify mobile phones due their physical differences, which appear in the digital output generated by them. This is similar to approaches reported in the literature for other components of the mobile phone, including the digital camera, the microphones or their RF transmission components. In this paper, the identification is performed through an inexpensive device made up of a platform that rotates the mobile phone under test and a fixed magnet positioned on the edge of the rotating platform. When the mobile phone passes in front of the fixed magnet, the built-in magnetometer is stimulated, and its digital output is recorded and analyzed. For each mobile phone, the experiment is repeated over six different days to ensure consistency in the results. A total of 10 phones of different brands and models or of the same model were used in our experiment. The digital output from the magnetometers is synchronized and correlated, and statistical features are extracted to generate a fingerprint of the built-in magnetometer and, consequently, of the mobile phone. A SVM machine learning algorithm is used to classify the mobile phones on the basis of the extracted statistical features. Our results show that inter-model classification (i.e., different models and brands classification is possible with great accuracy, but intra-model (i.e., phones with different serial numbers and same model classification is more challenging, the resulting accuracy being just slightly above random choice.

  7. Individual Differences in Spatial Pattern Separation Performance Associated with Healthy Aging in Humans

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stark, Shauna M.; Yassa, Michael A.; Stark, Craig E. L.

    2010-01-01

    Rodent studies have suggested that "pattern separation," the ability to distinguish among similar experiences, is diminished in a subset of aged rats. We extended these findings to the human using a task designed to assess spatial pattern separation behavior (determining at time of test whether pairs of pictures shown during the study were in the…

  8. Mobile news - a review and model of journalism in an age of mobile media

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Westlund, Oscar

    2012-01-01

    The technological convergence of mobile “phones” and multimedia has been taking place since the 1990s, but it was not until the commercial birth of touchscreen-enabled mobile devices, offered with flat-rate subscriptions for mobile internet, that widespread production and use of news....... This article explores the production of mobile news, by discussing and synthesising the findings of the contemporary literature found in the nexus of journalism and mobile media. It posits a model of journalism focusing on the roles of humans and technology in activities characterised by customising......-related content and services began to flourish. Accessing mobile news has gained traction in the everyday life of the public. In parallel, legacy news media have in recent years developed news provision, by repurposing or customising journalistic content published for mobile sites and/or applications...

  9. Mobility Model for Self-Organizing and Cooperative MSN and MANET Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrzej Sikora

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available Self-organization mechanisms are used for building scalable systems consisting of a huge number of subsystems. In computer networks, self-organizing is especially important in ad hoc networking. A self-organizing ad hoc network is a collection of wireless devices that collaborate with each other to form a network system that adapts to achieve a goal or goals. Such network is often built from mobile devices that may spontaneously create a network and dynamically adapted to changes in an unknown environment. Mobility pattern is a critical element that influences the performance characteristics of mobile sensor networks (MSN and mobile ad hoc networks (MANET. In this paper, we survey main directions to mobility modeling. We describe a novel algorithm for calculating mobility patterns for mobile devices that is based on a cluster formation and an artificial potential function. Finally, we present the simulation results of its application to a rescue mission planning.

  10. The spatial structure of transnational human activity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deutschmann, Emanuel

    2016-09-01

    Starting from conflictive predictions of hitherto disconnected debates in the natural and social sciences, this article examines the spatial structure of transnational human activity (THA) worldwide (a) across eight types of mobility and communication and (b) in its development over time. It is shown that the spatial structure of THA is similar to that of animal displacements and local-scale human motion in that it can be approximated by Lévy flights with heavy tails that obey power laws. Scaling exponent and power-law fit differ by type of THA, being highest in refuge-seeking and tourism and lowest in student exchange. Variance in the availability of resources and opportunities for satisfying associated needs appears to explain these differences. Over time (1960-2010), the Lévy-flight pattern remains intact and remarkably stable, contradicting the popular notion that socio-technological trends lead to a "death of distance." Humans have not become more "global" over time, they rather became more mobile in general, i.e. they move and communicate more at all distances. Hence, it would be more adequate to speak of "mobilization" than of "globalization." Longitudinal change occurs only in some types of THA and predominantly at short distances, indicating regional rather than global shifts. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Context-awareness and Mobile HCI

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Qin, Xiangang; Tan, Chee Wee; Clemmensen, Torkil

    2017-01-01

    -awareness has been employed broadly in developing applications and services on mobile platform, has had a huge impact on mobile user experience, and has altered the interaction between humans and computers by giving the latter a more active role to play. The significance of context-awareness in the usage......Context-awareness endows mobile devices and services with the capability of interacting with users in an efficient, intelligent, natural and smart fashion. Consequently, context-awareness makes a significant difference to mobile HCI. However, the challenges brought by context-awareness to users...... of mobile devices are rarely examined in depth. In this paper, previous conceptions of context and their contribution to context-awareness in mobile HCI is scrutinized and a preliminary context-computer interaction (CCI) model is advanced to illustrate the interaction characterized by mobile context...

  12. Mobile Robotics Activities in DOE Laboratories

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ron Lujan; Jerry Harbour; John T. Feddema; Sharon Bailey; Jacob Barhen; David Reister

    2005-03-01

    This paper will briefly outline major activities in Department of Energy (DOE) Laboratories focused on mobile platforms, both Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV’s) as well as Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV’s). The activities will be discussed in the context of the science and technology construct used by the DOE Technology Roadmap for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (RIM)1 published in 1998; namely, Perception, Reasoning, Action, and Integration. The activities to be discussed span from research and development to deployment in field operations. The activities support customers in other agencies. The discussion of "perception" will include hyperspectral sensors, complex patterns discrimination, multisensor fusion and advances in LADAR technologies, including real-world perception. "Reasoning" activities to be covered include cooperative controls, distributed systems, ad-hoc networks, platform-centric intelligence, and adaptable communications. The paper will discuss "action" activities such as advanced mobility and various air and ground platforms. In the RIM construct, "integration" includes the Human-Machine Integration. Accordingly the paper will discuss adjustable autonomy and the collaboration of operator(s) with distributed UGV’s and UAV’s. Integration also refers to the applications of these technologies into systems to perform operations such as perimeter surveillance, large-area monitoring and reconnaissance. Unique facilities and test beds for advanced mobile systems will be described. Given that this paper is an overview, rather than delve into specific detail in these activities, other more exhaustive references and sources will be cited extensively.

  13. Patterns of Quality Of Life among Older Urban Dwellers with Mobility Disability in Malaysia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nik Nairan Abdullah

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Mobility disability affects the quality of life for the older urban population. The objectives of this research paper were to determine the burden of mobility disability and explore influential factors affecting the quality of life of urban community aged 50 and above with mobility disability. Total of 481 participants who were randomly selected from two urban health centres have been interviewed using structured questionnaire in December 2014. The prevalence of mobility disability was 23.1%. All domains quality of life of older urbanites with mobility disability were significantly affected as compared with those without. These factors need to be emphasized in future planning for elderly.

  14. Hemopathologic consequences of protracted gamma irradiation: alterations in granulocyte reserves and granulocyte mobilization

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Seed, T.M.; Cullen, S.M.; Kaspar, L.V.; Tolle, D.V.; Fritz, T.E.

    1980-01-01

    Aplastic anemia and myelogenous leukemia are prominent pathologic effects in beagles exposed to continuous, daily, low-dose gamma irradiation. In the present work, granulocyte reserves and related mobilization functions have been sequentially assessed by the endotoxin stress assay during the preclinical and clinical phases of these hemopoietic disorders. Characteristic patterns of granulocyte reserve mobilization are described that reflect given stages of pathologic progression. For radiation-induced leukemia, a five-stage pattern has been proposed. In contrast, a simple pattern of progressive, time-dependent contraction of granulocyte reserves and mobilization capacity was noted in the development of terminal aplastic anemia. Early preclinical phases of radiation-induced leukemia appear to involve an extensive depletion of the granulocyte reserves (phase I) during the first approx. 200 days of exposure followed by a partial renewal of the reserves and associated mobilization functions between approx. 200 and 400 days (phase II). Sustained, subnormal granulocyte mobilizations (phase III) following endotoxin stress typify the responses of dogs during the intermediate phase, whereas late preclinical, preleukemic stages (phase IV) are characterized by a further expansion of the reserves and in the mobilization capacities, particularly of the less mature granulocytes. Such late alterations in the pattern of granulocyte mobilization, together with other noted cellular aberrancies in the peripheral blood and marrow, appear to indicate leukemia (phase V) onset

  15. Exploring the use patterns of a mobile health application for alcohol addiction before the initial lapse after detoxification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chih, Ming-Yuan

    2014-01-01

    How patients used Addiction-Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (A-CHESS)1, a mobile health intervention, while quitting drinking is worthy exploring. This study is to explore A-CHESS use patterns prior to the initial lapse reported after discharge from inpatient detoxification programs. 142 patients with alcohol addiction from two treatment agencies in the U.S. were included. A comprehensive set of A-CHESS use measures were developed based on a three-level system use framework and three A-CHESS service categories. In latent profile analyses, three A-CHESS system use patterns-inactive, passive, and active users-were found. Compared to the passive users (with the highest chance of the initial lapse), the active users (with the lowest chance of such behavior) participated more in online social activities, used more sessions, viewed more pages, and used A-CHESS longer. However, the chances of the initial lapse between A-CHESS user profiles were not statistically different. Implications of this finding were provided.

  16. A Comparison of Non-Typhoidal Salmonella from Humans and Food Animals Using Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sandt, Carol H.; Fedorka-Cray, Paula J.; Tewari, Deepanker; Ostroff, Stephen; Joyce, Kevin; M’ikanatha, Nkuchia M.

    2013-01-01

    Salmonellosis is one of the most important foodborne diseases affecting humans. To characterize the relationship between Salmonella causing human infections and their food animal reservoirs, we compared pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of non-typhoidal Salmonella isolated from ill humans in Pennsylvania and from food animals before retail. Human clinical isolates were received from 2005 through 2011 during routine public health operations in Pennsylvania. Isolates from cattle, chickens, swine and turkeys were recovered during the same period from federally inspected slaughter and processing facilities in the northeastern United States. We found that subtyping Salmonella isolates by PFGE revealed differences in antimicrobial susceptibility patterns and, for human Salmonella, differences in sources and invasiveness that were not evident from serotyping alone. Sixteen of the 20 most common human Salmonella PFGE patterns were identified in Salmonella recovered from food animals. The most common human Salmonella PFGE pattern, Enteritidis pattern JEGX01.0004 (JEGX01.0003ARS), was associated with more cases of invasive salmonellosis than all other patterns. In food animals, this pattern was almost exclusively (99%) found in Salmonella recovered from chickens and was present in poultry meat in every year of the study. Enteritidis pattern JEGX01.0004 (JEGX01.0003ARS) was associated with susceptibility to all antimicrobial agents tested in 94.7% of human and 97.2% of food animal Salmonella isolates. In contrast, multidrug resistance (resistance to three or more classes of antimicrobial agents) was observed in five PFGE patterns. Typhimurium patterns JPXX01.0003 (JPXX01.0003 ARS) and JPXX01.0018 (JPXX01.0002 ARS), considered together, were associated with resistance to five or more classes of antimicrobial agents: ampicillin, chloramphenicol, streptomycin, sulfonamides and tetracycline (ACSSuT), in 92% of human and 80% of food

  17. "Mobile Fashion" Application

    OpenAIRE

    Kashanipour, Morvarid

    2012-01-01

    This master thesis investigates studies on fashion oriented people according to the "Outfit-Centric Accessories" concept. The outfit-centric accessories concept originated from recent research study by Juhlin and Zhang (2011) about mobile phone representation in fashion and Aesthetic of Interaction area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The term outfit-centric accessories originated from clothing and wearer. In this concept an outfit is playing a role as the centerpiece and a mobile phone ...

  18. Children, mobility, and space

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Christensen, Pia; Mikkelsen, Miguel Romero; Nielsen, Thomas Alexander Sick

    2011-01-01

    This article discusses the potentials of a mixed methods approach to the study of children’s mobility patterns. The methodology presented here combined ethnographic fieldwork with global positioning system technology and an interactive questionnaire that children completed via mobile phone....... This innovative methodology allowed the researchers to generate a rich understanding of children’s everyday movements. The study combined documentation of children’s subjective experiences with systematic observations, mapping, and survey data. The article sets out lessons learned for future mixed methods...... research into children’s everyday mobility. One such lesson was that it required the interdisciplinary research team to cooperate closely through dialogue, support, and coordination of activities and perspectives. The approach also promoted the children’s commitment to the study....

  19. SAR and Mobile Phone Radiation Hazard. How Aware are College Students in Delhi?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daminee Saini

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available Mobile phones have become the most common gadget in the world today and are found in the hands of students most of the time. With advancement in mobile technology, usage of mobile phones has increased significantly. Mobile phone functioning uses electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range, which may be harmful to human health. Research has focused on this aspect since the invention of mobile phones and there seems to be a consensus that mobile phone radiations have an impact on human beings. However, no concrete scientific assessment of the impact of mobile phone radiation (MPR on human beings has been made available. As a result, impact of MPR on human health is a research area requiring greater investigation. The following research contribution attempts to assess the awareness of undergraduate student community about radiation threat posed by the usage of mobile phones. We find that while students are concerned about various specifications of their mobile phones, the knowledge and awareness about MPRs is wanting.

  20. Tooth enamel oxygen "isoscapes" show a high degree of human mobility in prehistoric Britain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pellegrini, Maura; Pouncett, John; Jay, Mandy; Pearson, Mike Parker; Richards, Michael P

    2016-10-07

    A geostatistical model to predict human skeletal oxygen isotope values (δ 18 O p ) in Britain is presented here based on a new dataset of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age human teeth. The spatial statistics which underpin this model allow the identification of individuals interpreted as 'non-local' to the areas where they were buried (spatial outliers). A marked variation in δ 18 O p is observed in several areas, including the Stonehenge region, the Peak District, and the Yorkshire Wolds, suggesting a high degree of human mobility. These areas, rich in funerary and ceremonial monuments, may have formed focal points for people, some of whom would have travelled long distances, ultimately being buried there. The dataset and model represent a baseline for future archaeological studies, avoiding the complex conversions from skeletal to water δ 18 O values-a process known to be problematic.

  1. Professional mobile application development

    CERN Document Server

    McWherter, Jeff

    2012-01-01

    Create applications for all major smartphone platforms Creating applications for the myriad versions and varieties of mobile phone platforms on the market can be daunting to even the most seasoned developer. This authoritative guide is written in such as way that it takes your existing skills and experience and uses that background as a solid foundation for developing applications that cross over between platforms, thereby freeing you from having to learn a new platform from scratch each time. Concise explanations walk you through the tools and patterns for developing for all the mobile platfo

  2. Prediction of Human Activity by Discovering Temporal Sequence Patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Kang; Fu, Yun

    2014-08-01

    Early prediction of ongoing human activity has become more valuable in a large variety of time-critical applications. To build an effective representation for prediction, human activities can be characterized by a complex temporal composition of constituent simple actions and interacting objects. Different from early detection on short-duration simple actions, we propose a novel framework for long -duration complex activity prediction by discovering three key aspects of activity: Causality, Context-cue, and Predictability. The major contributions of our work include: (1) a general framework is proposed to systematically address the problem of complex activity prediction by mining temporal sequence patterns; (2) probabilistic suffix tree (PST) is introduced to model causal relationships between constituent actions, where both large and small order Markov dependencies between action units are captured; (3) the context-cue, especially interactive objects information, is modeled through sequential pattern mining (SPM), where a series of action and object co-occurrence are encoded as a complex symbolic sequence; (4) we also present a predictive accumulative function (PAF) to depict the predictability of each kind of activity. The effectiveness of our approach is evaluated on two experimental scenarios with two data sets for each: action-only prediction and context-aware prediction. Our method achieves superior performance for predicting global activity classes and local action units.

  3. Developing a comprehensive measure of mobility: mobility over varied environments scale (MOVES).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirsch, Jana A; Winters, Meghan; Sims-Gould, Joanie; Clarke, Philippa J; Ste-Marie, Nathalie; Ashe, Maureen; McKay, Heather A

    2017-05-25

    While recent work emphasizes the multi-dimensionality of mobility, no current measure incorporates multiple domains of mobility. Using existing conceptual frameworks we identified four domains of mobility (physical, cognitive, social, transportation) to create a "Mobility Over Varied Environments Scale" (MOVES). We then assessed expected patterns of MOVES in the Canadian population. An expert panel identified survey items within each MOVES domain from the Canadian Community Health Survey- Healthy Aging Cycle (2008-2009) for 28,555 (weighted population n = 12,805,067) adults (≥45 years). We refined MOVES using principal components analysis and Cronbach's alpha and weighted items so each domain was 10 points. Expected mobility trends, as assessed by average MOVES, were examined by sociodemographic and health factors, and by province, using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). MOVES ranged from 0 to 40, where 0 represents individuals who are immobile and 40 those who are fully mobile. Mean MOVES was 29.58 (95% confidence interval (CI) 29.49, 29.67) (10th percentile: 24.17 (95% CI 23.96, 24.38), 90th percentile: 34.70 (CI 34.55, 34.85)). MOVES scores were lower for older, female, and non-white Canadians with worse health and lower socioeconomic status. MOVES was also lower for those who live in less urban areas. MOVES is a holistic measure of mobility for characterizing older adult mobility across populations. Future work should examine individual or neighborhood predictors of MOVES and its relationship to broader health outcomes. MOVES holds utility for research, surveillance, evaluation, and interventions around the broad factors influencing mobility in older adults.

  4. Reproducible pattern of microRNA in normal human skin

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Holst, Line; Kaczkowski, Bogumil; Gniadecki, Robert

    2010-01-01

    RNA expression pattern in normal human skin. Here we investigated miRNA expression profiles from skin biopsies of 8 healthy volunteers taken from sun protected and mildly photo damaged skin using the modified protocol for miRNA extraction. We were able to show a constant pattern of miRNA expression between......MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate cell growth, differentiation and apoptosis via specific targeting of messenger RNA (mRNA). Aberrant mRNA expression contributes to pathological processes such as carcinogenesis. To take advantage of miRNA profiling in skin disease it is essential to investigate mi...... different individuals. We did not find any significant differences in miRNA expression between sun protected and mildly photodamaged skin. These results may be valuable for future design of studies on miRNA expression in skin disease....

  5. Reproducible pattern of microRNA in normal human skin

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Holst, Line; Kaczkowski, Bogumil; Gniadecki, Robert

    2010-01-01

    RNA expression pattern in normal human skin. Here we investigated miRNA expression profiles from skin biopsies of 8 healthy volunteers taken from sun protected and mildly photo damaged skin using the modified protocol for miRNA extraction. We were able to show a constant pattern of miRNA expression between...... different individuals. We did not find any significant differences in miRNA expression between sun protected and mildly photodamaged skin. These results may be valuable for future design of studies on miRNA expression in skin disease.......MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate cell growth, differentiation and apoptosis via specific targeting of messenger RNA (mRNA). Aberrant mRNA expression contributes to pathological processes such as carcinogenesis. To take advantage of miRNA profiling in skin disease it is essential to investigate mi...

  6. A New Classification Technique in Mobile Robot Navigation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bambang Tutuko

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a novel pattern recognition algorithm that use weightless neural network (WNNs technique.This technique plays a role of situation classifier to judge the situation around the mobile robot environment and makes control decision in mobile robot navigation. The WNNs technique is choosen due to significant advantages over conventional neural network, such as they can be easily implemented in hardware using standard RAM, faster in training phase and work with small resources. Using a simple classification algorithm, the similar data will be grouped with each other and it will be possible to attach similar data classes to specific local areas in the mobile robot environment. This strategy is demonstrated in simple mobile robot powered by low cost microcontrollers with 512 bytes of RAM and low cost sensors. Experimental result shows, when number of neuron increases the average environmental recognition ratehas risen from 87.6% to 98.5%.The WNNs technique allows the mobile robot to recognize many and different environmental patterns and avoid obstacles in real time. Moreover, by using proposed WNNstechnique mobile robot has successfully reached the goal in dynamic environment compare to fuzzy logic technique and logic function, capable of dealing with uncertainty in sensor reading, achieving good performance in performing control actions with 0.56% error rate in mobile robot speed.

  7. Social Network Analysis of International Student Mobility: Uncovering the Rise of Regional Hubs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kondakci, Yasar; Bedenlier, Svenja; Zawacki-Richter, Olaf

    2018-01-01

    Research on the patterns of international student mobility and the dynamics shaping these patterns has been dominated by studies reflecting a Western orientation, discourse, and understanding. Considering political, economic, cultural, historical, and ecological factors, this study argues that international student mobility is not only an issue of…

  8. International Degree Mobility in Library andInformation Science

    OpenAIRE

    Hillebrand, Vera; Greifeneder, Elke

    2017-01-01

    This study explores patterns of the geographical mobility for researchers in Library and Information Science and shows that there are clear patterns towards the United States in particular, and more general to countries offering an English language education.

  9. Dynamic properties of blood flow and leukocyte mobilization in infected flaps

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Feng, L.J.; Price, D.C.; Mathes, S.J.; Hohn, D.

    1990-01-01

    Two aspects of the inflammatory response to infection--blood flow alteration and leukocyte mobilization--are investigated in the canine model. The elevation of paired musculocutaneous (MC) and random pattern (RP) flaps allowed comparison of healing flaps with significant differences in blood flow (lower in random pattern flaps) and resistance to infection (greater in musculocutaneous flaps). Blood flow changes as determined by radioactive xenon washout were compared in normal skin and distal flap skin both after elevation and following bacterial inoculation. Simultaneous use of In-111 labeled leukocytes allowed determination of leukocyte mobilization and subsequent localization in response to flap infection. Blood flow significantly improved in the musculocutaneous flap in response to infection. Although total leukocyte mobilization in the random pattern flap was greater, the leukocytes in the musculocutaneous flap were localized around the site of bacterial inoculation within the dermis. Differences in the dynamic blood flow and leukocyte mobilization may, in part, explain the greater reliability of musculocutaneous flaps when transposed in the presence of infection

  10. MotionFlow: Visual Abstraction and Aggregation of Sequential Patterns in Human Motion Tracking Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jang, Sujin; Elmqvist, Niklas; Ramani, Karthik

    2016-01-01

    Pattern analysis of human motions, which is useful in many research areas, requires understanding and comparison of different styles of motion patterns. However, working with human motion tracking data to support such analysis poses great challenges. In this paper, we propose MotionFlow, a visual analytics system that provides an effective overview of various motion patterns based on an interactive flow visualization. This visualization formulates a motion sequence as transitions between static poses, and aggregates these sequences into a tree diagram to construct a set of motion patterns. The system also allows the users to directly reflect the context of data and their perception of pose similarities in generating representative pose states. We provide local and global controls over the partition-based clustering process. To support the users in organizing unstructured motion data into pattern groups, we designed a set of interactions that enables searching for similar motion sequences from the data, detailed exploration of data subsets, and creating and modifying the group of motion patterns. To evaluate the usability of MotionFlow, we conducted a user study with six researchers with expertise in gesture-based interaction design. They used MotionFlow to explore and organize unstructured motion tracking data. Results show that the researchers were able to easily learn how to use MotionFlow, and the system effectively supported their pattern analysis activities, including leveraging their perception and domain knowledge.

  11. Replication Banding Patterns in Human Chromosomes Detected Using 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine Incorporation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hoshi, Osamu; Ushiki, Tatsuo

    2011-01-01

    A novel technique using the incorporation of 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) into replicating DNA is described for the analysis of replicating banding patterns of human metaphase chromosomes. Human lymphocytes were synchronized with excess thymidine and treated with EdU during the late S phase of the cell cycle. The incorporated EdU was then detected in metaphase chromosomes using Alexa Fluor® 488 azides, through the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction of organic azides with the terminal acetylene group of EdU. Chromosomes with incorporated EdU showed a banding pattern similar to G-banding of normal human chromosomes. Imaging by atomic force microscopy (AFM) in liquid conditions showed that the structure of the chromosomes was well preserved even after EdU treatment. Comparison between fluorescence microscopy and AFM images of the same chromosome 1 indicated the presence of ridges and grooves in the chromatid arm, features that have been previously reported in relation to G-banding. These results suggest an intimate relationship between EdU-induced replication bands and G- or R-bands in human chromosomes. This technique is thus useful for analyzing the structure of chromosomes in relation to their banding patterns following DNA replication in the S phase

  12. Factors associated with mobile health information seeking among Singaporean women.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Leanne; Chiuan Yen, Ching; Xue, Lishan; Choo Tai, Bee; Chuan Chan, Hock; Been-Lirn Duh, Henry; Choolani, Mahesh

    2017-01-01

    This study examined effects of age and social psychological factors on women's willingness to be mobile health information seekers. A national survey of 1,878 Singaporean women was conducted to obtain information on women's mobile phone usage, experiences of health information seeking, and appraisals of using mobile phones to seek health information. Results showed that young, middle-aged, and older women exhibited distinct mobile phone usage behaviors, health information-seeking patterns, and assessments of mobile health information seeking. Factors that accounted for their mobile information-seeking intention also varied. Data reported in this study provide insights into mobile health interventions in the future.

  13. Non-thermal activation of the hsp27/p38MAPK stress pathway by mobile phone radiation in human endothelial cells: molecular mechanism for cancer- and blood-brain barrier-related effects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leszczynski, Dariusz; Joenväärä, Sakari; Reivinen, Jukka; Kuokka, Reetta

    2002-05-01

    We have examined whether non-thermal exposures of cultures of the human endothelial cell line EA.hy926 to 900 MHz GSM mobile phone microwave radiation could activate stress response. Results obtained demonstrate that 1-hour non-thermal exposure of EA.hy926 cells changes the phosphorylation status of numerous, yet largely unidentified, proteins. One of the affected proteins was identified as heat shock protein-27 (hsp27). Mobile phone exposure caused a transient increase in phosphorylation of hsp27, an effect which was prevented by SB203580, a specific inhibitor of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38MAPK). Also, mobile phone exposure caused transient changes in the protein expression levels of hsp27 and p38MAPK. All these changes were non-thermal effects because, as determined using temperature probes, irradiation did not alter the temperature of cell cultures, which remained throughout the irradiation period at 37 +/- 0.3 degrees C. Changes in the overall pattern of protein phosphorylation suggest that mobile phone radiation activates a variety of cellular signal transduction pathways, among them the hsp27/p38MAPK stress response pathway. Based on the known functions of hsp27, we put forward the hypothesis that mobile phone radiation-induced activation of hsp27 may (i) facilitate the development of brain cancer by inhibiting the cytochrome c/caspase-3 apoptotic pathway and (ii) cause an increase in blood-brain barrier permeability through stabilization of endothelial cell stress fibers. We postulate that these events, when occurring repeatedly over a long period of time, might become a health hazard because of the possible accumulation of brain tissue damage. Furthermore, our hypothesis suggests that other brain damaging factors may co-participate in mobile phone radiation-induced effects.

  14. Intracellular calcium mobilization in human lymphocytes in the presence of synthetic IgG Fc peptides

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Plummer, J.M.; Panahi, Y.P.; McClurg, M.R.; Hahn, G.S.; Naemura, J.R.

    1986-01-01

    Certain synthetic peptides derived from the Fc region of human IgG can suppress the mixed lymphocyte response. These peptides were tested for the ability to induce intracellular calcium mobilization in human lymphocytes using fura-2/calcium fluorescence. T cells were isolated by rosetting and were > 90% OKT3 positive. Lymphocytes were incubated with the acetoxymethyl ester of fura-2 (10 μM) for 60 minutes at 37 0 C. Fluorescence intensity changes at 505 nm were monitored at an excitation lambda of 340 nm. Fura-2 was not cytotoxic compared to quin-2 since fura-2 loaded mononuclear cells incorporated 3 H-thymidine when stimulated by PHA, succinyl Con A, PWM or LPS-STM whereas quin-2 loaded cells showed a dose dependent inhibition of proliferation. Those synthetic peptides (5 to 400 μg/ml) that suppressed the MLR induced a dose dependent increase in intracellular calcium in mononuclear cells, lymphocytes, non-T cells and T cells. The fura-2 calcium fluorescence time course response was similar for peptide, PHA and succinyl Con A. These results suggest that these immunoregulatory peptides suppress 3 H-thymidine incorporation at a point after intracellular calcium mobilization and that fura-2 has advantages over quin-2 in measuring intracellular calcium levels in lymphocytes

  15. Assessing the Quality of Steady-state Visual-evoked Potentials for Moving Humans Using a Mobile Electroencephalogram Headset

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yuan-Pin eLin

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Recent advances in mobile electroencephalogram (EEG systems, featuring non-prep dry electrodes and wireless telemetry, have urged the needs of mobile brain-computer interfaces (BCIs for applications in our daily life. Since the brain may behave differently while people are actively situated in ecologically-valid environments versus highly-controlled laboratory environments, it remains unclear how well the current laboratory-oriented BCI demonstrations can be translated into operational BCIs for users with naturalistic movements. Understanding inherent links between natural human behaviors and brain activities is the key to ensuring the applicability and stability of mobile BCIs. This study aims to assess the quality of steady-state visual-evoked potentials (SSVEPs, which is one of promising channels for functioning BCI systems, recorded using a mobile EEG system under challenging recording conditions, e.g., walking. To systemati-cally explore the effects of walking locomotion on the SSVEPs, this study instructed subjects to stand or walk on a treadmill running at speeds of 1, 2, and 3 mile (s per hour (MPH while con-currently perceiving visual flickers (11 and 12 Hz. Empirical results of this study showed that the SSVEP amplitude tended to deteriorate when subjects switched from standing to walking. Such SSVEP suppression could be attributed to the walking locomotion, leading to distinctly deteriorated SSVEP detectability from standing (84.87±13.55% to walking (1 MPH: 83.03±13.24%, 2 MPH: 79.47±13.53%, and 3 MPH: 75.26±17.89%. These findings not only demonstrated the applicability and limitations of SSVEPs recorded from freely behaving humans in realistic environments, but also provide useful methods and techniques for boosting the translation of the BCI technology from laboratory demonstrations to practical applications.

  16. Mobile devices in the operating rooms: intended and unintended consequences for nurses’ work

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sergeeva, A.; Aij, K.H.; van den Hooff, B.J.; Huysman, M.H.

    2016-01-01

    This article reports the results of a case study of the consequences of mobile device use for the work practices of operating room nurses. The study identifies different patterns of mobile technology use by operating room nurses, including both work-related and non-work-related use. These patterns

  17. Plutonium detection in humans using octagonal computer-generated color patterns

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Phillips, W.G.; Curtis, S.P.

    1985-01-01

    Routine analysis of humans for plutonium lung burdens is accomplished with two phoswich low-energy gamma detectors. The analysis of data from each detector provides the spectroscopist with a total of eight parameters. These parameters are normalized and displayed as an octagonal histogram over laid against the historical analyses of uncontaminated humans similar in body geometry, i.e., weight, height, and chest thickness. Subjects containing lung burdens of plutonium within (one standard deviation) of the historical average yield data which are displayed on a color graphics terminal as a green octagon. Analyses which yield values greater than 1 sigma above the historical average produce a distorted yellow, orange, or red display. Thus, through color and pattern recognition, the analyst may see at a glance if the current data statistically indicate human contamination

  18. Mining Users Mobility at Public Transportation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    joao ferreira

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available In this research work we propose a new approach to estimate the number of passengers in a public transportation and determinate the users’ route path based on a passive approach without user intervention. The method is based on the probe requests of users mobile device through the collected data in wireless access point. This data is manipulated to extract the information about the numbers of users with mobile devices and track their route path and time. This data can be manipulated to extract useful knowledge related with users’ habits at public transportation and extract user mobility patterns.

  19. Is There a Mobile Social Presence?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tu, Chih-Hsiung; McIsaac, Marina; Sujo-Montes, Laura; Armfield, Shadow

    2012-01-01

    Mobile learning environments are human networks that afford the opportunity to participate in creative endeavors, social networking, organize/reorganize social contents, and manage social acts at anytime, anywhere through mobile technologies. Social acts that elicit identities, develop awareness, cement relationships, ensure connections, and…

  20. Disease containment strategies based on mobility and information dissemination

    OpenAIRE

    Pejović, Veljko; Lima, Antonio; De Domenico, Manlio; Musolesi, Mirco

    2016-01-01

    Human mobility and social structure are at the basis of disease spreading. Disease containment strategies are usually devised from coarse-grained assumptions about human mobility. Cellular networks data, however, provides finer-grained information, not only about how people move, but also about how they communicate. In this paper we analyze the behavior of a large number of individuals in Ivory Coast using cellular network data. We model mobility and communication between individuals by means...

  1. Low cost, patterning of human hNT brain cells on parylene-C with UV & IR laser machining.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Raos, Brad J; Unsworth, C P; Costa, J L; Rohde, C A; Doyle, C S; Delivopoulos, E; Murray, A F; Dickinson, M E; Simpson, M C; Graham, E S; Bunting, A S

    2013-01-01

    This paper describes the use of 800nm femtosecond infrared (IR) and 248nm nanosecond ultraviolet (UV) laser radiation in performing ablative micromachining of parylene-C on SiO2 substrates for the patterning of human hNT astrocytes. Results are presented that support the validity of using IR laser ablative micromachining for patterning human hNT astrocytes cells while UV laser radiation produces photo-oxidation of the parylene-C and destroys cell patterning. The findings demonstrate how IR laser ablative micromachining of parylene-C on SiO2 substrates can offer a low cost, accessible alternative for rapid prototyping, high yield cell patterning.

  2. Tooth enamel oxygen “isoscapes” show a high degree of human mobility in prehistoric Britain

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pellegrini, Maura; Pouncett, John; Jay, Mandy; Pearson, Mike Parker; Richards, Michael P.

    2016-10-01

    A geostatistical model to predict human skeletal oxygen isotope values (δ18Op) in Britain is presented here based on a new dataset of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age human teeth. The spatial statistics which underpin this model allow the identification of individuals interpreted as ‘non-local’ to the areas where they were buried (spatial outliers). A marked variation in δ18Op is observed in several areas, including the Stonehenge region, the Peak District, and the Yorkshire Wolds, suggesting a high degree of human mobility. These areas, rich in funerary and ceremonial monuments, may have formed focal points for people, some of whom would have travelled long distances, ultimately being buried there. The dataset and model represent a baseline for future archaeological studies, avoiding the complex conversions from skeletal to water δ18O values-a process known to be problematic.

  3. How do walkers behave when crossing the way of a mobile robot that replicates human interaction rules?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vassallo, Christian; Olivier, Anne-Hélène; Souères, Philippe; Crétual, Armel; Stasse, Olivier; Pettré, Julien

    2018-02-01

    Previous studies showed the existence of implicit interaction rules shared by human walkers when crossing each other. Especially, each walker contributes to the collision avoidance task and the crossing order, as set at the beginning, is preserved along the interaction. This order determines the adaptation strategy: the first arrived increases his/her advance by slightly accelerating and changing his/her heading, whereas the second one slows down and moves in the opposite direction. In this study, we analyzed the behavior of human walkers crossing the trajectory of a mobile robot that was programmed to reproduce this human avoidance strategy. In contrast with a previous study, which showed that humans mostly prefer to give the way to a non-reactive robot, we observed similar behaviors between human-human avoidance and human-robot avoidance when the robot replicates the human interaction rules. We discuss this result in relation with the importance of controlling robots in a human-like way in order to ease their cohabitation with humans. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Does sex matter? Temporal and spatial patterns of cougar-human conflict in British Columbia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teichman, Kristine J; Cristescu, Bogdan; Nielsen, Scott E

    2013-01-01

    Wildlife-human conflicts occur wherever large carnivores overlap human inhabited areas. Conflict mitigation can be facilitated by understanding long-term dynamics and examining sex-structured conflict patterns. Predicting areas with high probability of conflict helps focus management strategies in order to proactively decrease carnivore mortality. We investigated the importance of cougar (Puma concolor) habitat, human landscape characteristics and the combination of habitat and human features on the temporal and spatial patterns of cougar-human conflicts in British Columbia. Conflicts (n = 1,727; 1978-2007) involved similar numbers of male and female cougars with conflict rate decreasing over the past decade. Conflicts were concentrated within the southern part of the province with the most conflicts per unit area occurring on Vancouver Island. For both sexes, the most supported spatial models for the most recent (1998-2007) conflicts contained both human and habitat variables. Conflicts were more likely to occur close to roads, at intermediate elevations and far from the northern edge of the cougar distribution range in British Columbia. Male cougar conflicts were more likely to occur in areas of intermediate human density. Unlike cougar conflicts in other regions, cattle density was not a significant predictor of conflict location. With human populations expanding, conflicts are expected to increase. Conservation tools, such as the maps predicting conflict hotspots from this study, can help focus management efforts to decrease carnivore-human conflict.

  5. SHER: A Colored Petri Net Based Random Mobility Model for Wireless Communications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khan, Naeem Akhtar; Ahmad, Farooq; Khan, Sher Afzal

    2015-01-01

    In wireless network research, simulation is the most imperative technique to investigate the network’s behavior and validation. Wireless networks typically consist of mobile hosts; therefore, the degree of validation is influenced by the underlying mobility model, and synthetic models are implemented in simulators because real life traces are not widely available. In wireless communications, mobility is an integral part while the key role of a mobility model is to mimic the real life traveling patterns to study. The performance of routing protocols and mobility management strategies e.g. paging, registration and handoff is highly dependent to the selected mobility model. In this paper, we devise and evaluate the Show Home and Exclusive Regions (SHER), a novel two-dimensional (2-D) Colored Petri net (CPN) based formal random mobility model, which exhibits sociological behavior of a user. The model captures hotspots where a user frequently visits and spends time. Our solution eliminates six key issues of the random mobility models, i.e., sudden stops, memoryless movements, border effect, temporal dependency of velocity, pause time dependency, and speed decay in a single model. The proposed model is able to predict the future location of a mobile user and ultimately improves the performance of wireless communication networks. The model follows a uniform nodal distribution and is a mini simulator, which exhibits interesting mobility patterns. The model is also helpful to those who are not familiar with the formal modeling, and users can extract meaningful information with a single mouse-click. It is noteworthy that capturing dynamic mobility patterns through CPN is the most challenging and virulent activity of the presented research. Statistical and reachability analysis techniques are presented to elucidate and validate the performance of our proposed mobility model. The state space methods allow us to algorithmically derive the system behavior and rectify the

  6. Survey of the Effects of Exposure to 900 MHz Radiofrequency Radiation Emitted by a GSM Mobile Phone on the Pattern of Muscle Contractions in an Animal Model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mortazavi, S M J; Rahimi, S; Talebi, A; Soleimani, A; Rafati, A

    2015-09-01

    The rapid development of wireless telecommunication technologies over the past decades, has led to significant changes in the exposure of the general public to electromagnetic fields. Nowadays, people are continuously exposed to different sources of electromagnetic fields such as mobile phones, mobile base stations, cordless phones, Wi-Fi routers, and power lines. Therefore, the last decade witnessed a rapidly growing concern about the possible health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted by these sources. In this study that was aimed at investigating the effects of exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by a GSM mobile phone on the pattern of contraction in frog's isolated gastrocnemius muscle after stimulation with single square pulses of 1V (1 Hz), pulse height of contractions, the time interval between two subsequent contractions and the latency period were measured. Our findings showed that the pulse height of contractions muscle could be affected by the exposure to electromagnetic fields. Especially, the latency period was effectively altered in RF-exposed samples. However, none of the experiments could show an alteration in the time interval between two subsequent contractions after exposure to electromagnetic fields. These findings support early reports which indicated a wide variety of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation on amphibians including the effects on the pattern of muscle extractions.

  7. Prolonging herd immunity to cholera via vaccination: Accounting for human mobility and waning vaccine effects.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Corey M Peak

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Oral cholera vaccination is an approach to preventing outbreaks in at-risk settings and controlling cholera in endemic settings. However, vaccine-derived herd immunity may be short-lived due to interactions between human mobility and imperfect or waning vaccine efficacy. As the supply and utilization of oral cholera vaccines grows, critical questions related to herd immunity are emerging, including: who should be targeted; when should revaccination be performed; and why have cholera outbreaks occurred in recently vaccinated populations?We use mathematical models to simulate routine and mass oral cholera vaccination in populations with varying degrees of migration, transmission intensity, and vaccine coverage. We show that migration and waning vaccine efficacy strongly influence the duration of herd immunity while birth and death rates have relatively minimal impacts. As compared to either periodic mass vaccination or routine vaccination alone, a community could be protected longer by a blended "Mass and Maintain" strategy. We show that vaccination may be best targeted at populations with intermediate degrees of mobility as compared to communities with very high or very low population turnover. Using a case study of an internally displaced person camp in South Sudan which underwent high-coverage mass vaccination in 2014 and 2015, we show that waning vaccine direct effects and high population turnover rendered the camp over 80% susceptible at the time of the cholera outbreak beginning in October 2016.Oral cholera vaccines can be powerful tools for quickly protecting a population for a period of time that depends critically on vaccine coverage, vaccine efficacy over time, and the rate of population turnover through human mobility. Due to waning herd immunity, epidemics in vaccinated communities are possible but become less likely through complementary interventions or data-driven revaccination strategies.

  8. Lipid mobilization from human abdominal, subcutaneous adipose tissue is independent of sex during steady-state exercise

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bülow, Jens; Gjeraa, Kirsten; Enevoldsen, Lotte Hahn

    2006-01-01

    The aim of the study was to elucidate whether there are sex differences of significant biological importance in the human abdominal, subcutaneous adipose tissue lipid metabolism when studied by Fick's Principle during rest and exercise in steady-state conditions. The net mobilization of fatty acids...... intensity, and for another 60 min during post-exercise recovery. The results show that there are not significant sex differences with respect to the steady-state fatty acid and glycerol mobilizations neither during resting condition nor during exercise....... and glycerol from the abdominal, subcutaneous adipose tissue was measured by arterio-venous catheterizations and simultaneous measurements of adipose tissue blood flow with the local Xe-clearance technique in 16 healthy, young normal weight men and women during rest, during 1 h of exercise at moderate...

  9. Probing the reaching-grasping network in humans through multivoxel pattern decoding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Di Bono, Maria Grazia; Begliomini, Chiara; Castiello, Umberto; Zorzi, Marco

    2015-11-01

    The quest for a putative human homolog of the reaching-grasping network identified in monkeys has been the focus of many neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies in recent years. These studies have shown that the network underlying reaching-only and reach-to-grasp movements includes the superior parieto-occipital cortex (SPOC), the anterior part of the human intraparietal sulcus (hAIP), the ventral and the dorsal portion of the premotor cortex, and the primary motor cortex (M1). Recent evidence for a wider frontoparietal network coding for different aspects of reaching-only and reach-to-grasp actions calls for a more fine-grained assessment of the reaching-grasping network in humans by exploiting pattern decoding methods (multivoxel pattern analysis--MVPA). Here, we used MPVA on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to assess whether regions of the frontoparietal network discriminate between reaching-only and reach-to-grasp actions, natural and constrained grasping, different grasp types, and object sizes. Participants were required to perform either reaching-only movements or two reach-to-grasp types (precision or whole hand grasp) upon spherical objects of different sizes. Multivoxel pattern analysis highlighted that, independently from the object size, all the selected regions of both hemispheres contribute in coding for grasp type, with the exception of SPOC and the right hAIP. Consistent with recent neurophysiological findings on monkeys, there was no evidence for a clear-cut distinction between a dorsomedial and a dorsolateral pathway that would be specialized for reaching-only and reach-to-grasp actions, respectively. Nevertheless, the comparison of decoding accuracy across brain areas highlighted their different contributions to reaching-only and grasping actions. Altogether, our findings enrich the current knowledge regarding the functional role of key brain areas involved in the cortical control of reaching-only and reach-to-grasp actions

  10. Deterministic patterned growth of high-mobility large-crystal graphene: a path towards wafer scale integration

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miseikis, Vaidotas; Bianco, Federica; David, Jérémy; Gemmi, Mauro; Pellegrini, Vittorio; Romagnoli, Marco; Coletti, Camilla

    2017-06-01

    We demonstrate rapid deterministic (seeded) growth of large single-crystals of graphene by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) utilising pre-patterned copper substrates with chromium nucleation sites. Arrays of graphene single-crystals as large as several hundred microns are grown with a periodicity of up to 1 mm. The graphene is transferred to target substrates using aligned and contamination- free semi-dry transfer. The high quality of the synthesised graphene is confirmed by Raman spectroscopy and transport measurements, demonstrating room-temperature carrier mobility of 21 000 cm2 V-1 s-1 when transferred on top of hexagonal boron nitride. By tailoring the nucleation of large single-crystals according to the desired device geometry, it will be possible to produce complex device architectures based on single-crystal graphene, thus paving the way to the adoption of CVD graphene in wafer-scale fabrication.

  11. Understanding the complexity of the Lévy-walk nature of human mobility with a multi-scale cost∕benefit model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scafetta, Nicola

    2011-12-01

    Probability distributions of human displacements have been fit with exponentially truncated Lévy flights or fat tailed Pareto inverse power law probability distributions. Thus, people usually stay within a given location (for example, the city of residence), but with a non-vanishing frequency they visit nearby or far locations too. Herein, we show that an important empirical distribution of human displacements (range: from 1 to 1000 km) can be well fit by three consecutive Pareto distributions with simple integer exponents equal to 1, 2, and (>) 3. These three exponents correspond to three displacement range zones of about 1 km ≲Δr≲10 km, 10 km ≲Δr≲300 km, and 300 km ≲Δr≲1000 km, respectively. These three zones can be geographically and physically well determined as displacements within a city, visits to nearby cities that may occur within just one-day trips, and visit to far locations that may require multi-days trips. The incremental integer values of the three exponents can be easily explained with a three-scale mobility cost∕benefit model for human displacements based on simple geometrical constrains. Essentially, people would divide the space into three major regions (close, medium, and far distances) and would assume that the travel benefits are randomly∕uniformly distributed mostly only within specific urban-like areas. The three displacement distribution zones appear to be characterized by an integer (1, 2, or >3) inverse power exponent because of the specific number (1, 2, or >3) of cost mechanisms (each of which is proportional to the displacement length). The distributions in the first two zones would be associated to Pareto distributions with exponent β = 1 and β = 2 because of simple geometrical statistical considerations due to the a priori assumption that most benefits are searched in the urban area of the city of residence or in the urban area of specific nearby cities. We also show, by using independent records of

  12. Understanding the complexity of the Lévy-walk nature of human mobility with a multi-scale cost/benefit model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scafetta, Nicola

    2011-12-01

    Probability distributions of human displacements have been fit with exponentially truncated Lévy flights or fat tailed Pareto inverse power law probability distributions. Thus, people usually stay within a given location (for example, the city of residence), but with a non-vanishing frequency they visit nearby or far locations too. Herein, we show that an important empirical distribution of human displacements (range: from 1 to 1000 km) can be well fit by three consecutive Pareto distributions with simple integer exponents equal to 1, 2, and (>≈) 3. These three exponents correspond to three displacement range zones of about 1km ≲Δr ≲10 km, 10km ≲Δr ≲300 km, and 300km ≲Δr ≲1000 km, respectively. These three zones can be geographically and physically well determined as displacements within a city, visits to nearby cities that may occur within just one-day trips, and visit to far locations that may require multi-days trips. The incremental integer values of the three exponents can be easily explained with a three-scale mobility cost/benefit model for human displacements based on simple geometrical constrains. Essentially, people would divide the space into three major regions (close, medium, and far distances) and would assume that the travel benefits are randomly/uniformly distributed mostly only within specific urban-like areas. The three displacement distribution zones appear to be characterized by an integer (1, 2, or >≈ 3) inverse power exponent because of the specific number (1, 2, or >≈ 3) of cost mechanisms (each of which is proportional to the displacement length). The distributions in the first two zones would be associated to Pareto distributions with exponent β = 1 and β = 2 because of simple geometrical statistical considerations due to the a priori assumption that most benefits are searched in the urban area of the city of residence or in the urban area of specific nearby cities. We also show, by using independent records of human

  13. An Integrated Mobile Phone Payment System Based on 3G Network

    OpenAIRE

    Weihui Dai; Xiang Cai; Haifeng Wu; Weidong Zhao; Xuan Li

    2011-01-01

    Along with globally approaching of the 3G era, the progress of mobile communication technology and the development of mobile terminal devices will rapidly promote the mobilization development of traditional E-commerce. In order to ensure it to achieve further development, secure, flexible and reliable mobile payment system is becoming more and more important. Compared with the payment pattern of ordinary commerce, there will be profound changes in the mobile payment, such as special payment c...

  14. Understanding the Functionality of Human Activity Hotspots from Their Scaling Pattern Using Trajectory Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tao Jia

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Human activity hotspots are the clusters of activity locations in space and time, and a better understanding of their functionality would be useful for urban land use planning and transportation. In this article, using trajectory data, we aim to infer the functionality of human activity hotspots from their scaling pattern in a reliable way. Specifically, a large number of stopping locations are extracted from trajectory data, which are then aggregated into activity hotspots. Activity hotspots are found to display scaling patterns in terms of the sublinear scaling relationships between the number of stopping locations and the number of points of interest (POIs, which indicates economies of scale of human interactions with urban land use. Importantly, this scaling pattern remains stable over time. This finding inspires us to devise an allometric ruler to identify the activity hotspots, whose functionality could be reliably estimated using the stopping locations. Thereafter, a novel Bayesian inference model is proposed to infer their urban functionality, which examines the spatial and temporal information of stopping locations covering 75 days. Experimental results suggest that the functionality of identified activity hotspots are reliably inferred by stopping locations, such as the railway station.

  15. Energy-Efficient Real-Time Human Activity Recognition on Smart Mobile Devices

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jin Lee

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Nowadays, human activity recognition (HAR plays an important role in wellness-care and context-aware systems. Human activities can be recognized in real-time by using sensory data collected from various sensors built in smart mobile devices. Recent studies have focused on HAR that is solely based on triaxial accelerometers, which is the most energy-efficient approach. However, such HAR approaches are still energy-inefficient because the accelerometer is required to run without stopping so that the physical activity of a user can be recognized in real-time. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for HAR process that controls the activity recognition duration for energy-efficient HAR. We investigated the impact of varying the acceleration-sampling frequency and window size for HAR by using the variable activity recognition duration (VARD strategy. We implemented our approach by using an Android platform and evaluated its performance in terms of energy efficiency and accuracy. The experimental results showed that our approach reduced energy consumption by a minimum of about 44.23% and maximum of about 78.85% compared to conventional HAR without sacrificing accuracy.

  16. Microwaves from GSM mobile telephones affect 53BP1 and gamma-H2AX foci in human lymphocytes from hypersensitive and healthy persons.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Markovà, Eva; Hillert, Lena; Malmgren, Lars; Persson, Bertil R R; Belyaev, Igor Y

    2005-09-01

    The data on biologic effects of nonthermal microwaves (MWs) from mobile telephones are diverse, and these effects are presently ignored by safety standards of the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). In the present study, we investigated effects of MWs of Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) at different carrier frequencies on human lymphocytes from healthy persons and from persons reporting hypersensitivity to electromagnetic fields (EMFs). We measured the changes in chromatin conformation, which are indicative of stress response and genotoxic effects, by the method of anomalous viscosity time dependence, and we analyzed tumor suppressor p53-binding protein 1 (53BP1) and phosphorylated histone H2AX (gamma-H2AX), which have been shown to colocalize in distinct foci with DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), using immunofluorescence confocal laser microscopy. We found that MWs from GSM mobile telephones affect chromatin conformation and 53BP1/gamma-H2AX foci similar to heat shock. For the first time, we report here that effects of MWs from mobile telephones on human lymphocytes are dependent on carrier frequency. On average, the same response was observed in lymphocytes from hypersensitive and healthy subjects.

  17. Self-Employment Dynamics, State Dependence and Cross-Mobility Patterns

    OpenAIRE

    Caliendo, Marco; Uhlendorff, Arne

    2008-01-01

    This paper analyzes the mobility between self-employment, wage employment and non-employment. Using data for men in West Germany, we find strong true state dependence in all three states. Moreover, compared to wage employment, non-employment increases the probability of self-employment significantly, and self-employment goes along with a higher risk of future non-employment.

  18. Measuring sustainable accessibility potential using the mobility infrastructure's network configuration

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gil, J.; Read, S.

    2012-01-01

    This paper is an exploration into the analysis of public transport networks using space syntax approaches combined with concepts of sustainable accessibility. Present urban development policy aims to achieve sustainable mobility patterns, shifting mobility to soft transportation modes such as

  19. Authoring and Enactment of Mobile Pyramid-Based Collaborative Learning Activities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manathunga, Kalpani; Hernández-Leo, Davinia

    2018-01-01

    Collaborative learning flow patterns (CLFPs) formulate best practices for the orchestration of activity sequences and collaboration mechanisms that can elicit fruitful social interactions. Mobile technology features offer opportunities to support interaction mediation and content accessibility. However, existing mobile collaborative learning…

  20. Pattern Analyses Reveal Separate Experience-Based Fear Memories in the Human Right Amygdala.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Braem, Senne; De Houwer, Jan; Demanet, Jelle; Yuen, Kenneth S L; Kalisch, Raffael; Brass, Marcel

    2017-08-23

    Learning fear via the experience of contingencies between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) is often assumed to be fundamentally different from learning fear via instructions. An open question is whether fear-related brain areas respond differently to experienced CS-US contingencies than to merely instructed CS-US contingencies. Here, we contrasted two experimental conditions where subjects were instructed to expect the same CS-US contingencies while only one condition was characterized by prior experience with the CS-US contingency. Using multivoxel pattern analysis of fMRI data, we found CS-related neural activation patterns in the right amygdala (but not in other fear-related regions) that dissociated between whether a CS-US contingency had been instructed and experienced versus merely instructed. A second experiment further corroborated this finding by showing a category-independent neural response to instructed and experienced, but not merely instructed, CS presentations in the human right amygdala. Together, these findings are in line with previous studies showing that verbal fear instructions have a strong impact on both brain and behavior. However, even in the face of fear instructions, the human right amygdala still shows a separable neural pattern response to experience-based fear contingencies. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In our study, we addressed a fundamental problem of the science of human fear learning and memory, namely whether fear learning via experience in humans relies on a neural pathway that can be separated from fear learning via verbal information. Using two new procedures and recent advances in the analysis of brain imaging data, we localized purely experience-based fear processing and memory in the right amygdala, thereby making a direct link between human and animal research. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/378116-15$15.00/0.

  1. Human Walking Pattern Recognition Based on KPCA and SVM with Ground Reflex Pressure Signal

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhaoqin Peng

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Algorithms based on the ground reflex pressure (GRF signal obtained from a pair of sensing shoes for human walking pattern recognition were investigated. The dimensionality reduction algorithms based on principal component analysis (PCA and kernel principal component analysis (KPCA for walking pattern data compression were studied in order to obtain higher recognition speed. Classifiers based on support vector machine (SVM, SVM-PCA, and SVM-KPCA were designed, and the classification performances of these three kinds of algorithms were compared using data collected from a person who was wearing the sensing shoes. Experimental results showed that the algorithm fusing SVM and KPCA had better recognition performance than the other two methods. Experimental outcomes also confirmed that the sensing shoes developed in this paper can be employed for automatically recognizing human walking pattern in unlimited environments which demonstrated the potential application in the control of exoskeleton robots.

  2. SAR and Mobile Phone Radiation Hazard. How Aware are College Students in Delhi?

    OpenAIRE

    Daminee Saini

    2017-01-01

    Mobile phones have become the most common gadget in the world today and are found in the hands of students most of the time. With advancement in mobile technology, usage of mobile phones has increased significantly. Mobile phone functioning uses electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range, which may be harmful to human health. Research has focused on this aspect since the invention of mobile phones and there seems to be a consensus that mobile phone radiations have an impact on human bei...

  3. Factors Affecting Mobile Banking Adoption in the United States

    Science.gov (United States)

    Engwanda, Michel Ndongola

    2014-01-01

    Mobile banking (m-banking) allows consumers to conduct financial transactions without temporal and spatial constraints through Internet-enabled mobile devices such as smartphones. The adoption patterns are of particular research interest because m-banking penetration has been relatively low even though smartphones are the most dominant forms of…

  4. Does sex matter? Temporal and spatial patterns of cougar-human conflict in British Columbia.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kristine J Teichman

    Full Text Available Wildlife-human conflicts occur wherever large carnivores overlap human inhabited areas. Conflict mitigation can be facilitated by understanding long-term dynamics and examining sex-structured conflict patterns. Predicting areas with high probability of conflict helps focus management strategies in order to proactively decrease carnivore mortality. We investigated the importance of cougar (Puma concolor habitat, human landscape characteristics and the combination of habitat and human features on the temporal and spatial patterns of cougar-human conflicts in British Columbia. Conflicts (n = 1,727; 1978-2007 involved similar numbers of male and female cougars with conflict rate decreasing over the past decade. Conflicts were concentrated within the southern part of the province with the most conflicts per unit area occurring on Vancouver Island. For both sexes, the most supported spatial models for the most recent (1998-2007 conflicts contained both human and habitat variables. Conflicts were more likely to occur close to roads, at intermediate elevations and far from the northern edge of the cougar distribution range in British Columbia. Male cougar conflicts were more likely to occur in areas of intermediate human density. Unlike cougar conflicts in other regions, cattle density was not a significant predictor of conflict location. With human populations expanding, conflicts are expected to increase. Conservation tools, such as the maps predicting conflict hotspots from this study, can help focus management efforts to decrease carnivore-human conflict.

  5. Impact of Bursty Human Activity Patterns on the Popularity of Online Content

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qiang Yan

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available The dynamics of online content popularity has attracted more and more researches in recent years. In this paper, we provide a quantitative, temporal analysis about the dynamics of online content popularity in a massive system: Sina Microblog. We use time-stamped data to investigate the impact of bursty human comment patterns on the popularity of online microblog news. Statistical results indicate that the number of news and comments exhibits an exponential growth. The strength of forwarding and comment is characterized by bursts, displaying fat-tailed distribution. In order to characterize the dynamics of popularity, we explore the distribution of the time interval Δt between consecutive comment bursts and find that it also follows a power-law. Bursty patterns of human comment are responsible for the power-law decay of popularity. These results are well supported by both the theoretical analysis and empirical data.

  6. Broad-scale recombination patterns underlying proper disjunction in humans.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adi Fledel-Alon

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available Although recombination is essential to the successful completion of human meiosis, it remains unclear how tightly the process is regulated and over what scale. To assess the nature and stringency of constraints on human recombination, we examined crossover patterns in transmissions to viable, non-trisomic offspring, using dense genotyping data collected in a large set of pedigrees. Our analysis supports a requirement for one chiasma per chromosome rather than per arm to ensure proper disjunction, with additional chiasmata occurring in proportion to physical length. The requirement is not absolute, however, as chromosome 21 seems to be frequently transmitted properly in the absence of a chiasma in females, a finding that raises the possibility of a back-up mechanism aiding in its correct segregation. We also found a set of double crossovers in surprisingly close proximity, as expected from a second pathway that is not subject to crossover interference. These findings point to multiple mechanisms that shape the distribution of crossovers, influencing proper disjunction in humans.

  7. Mobile phone addiction among students’s at a South African university

    OpenAIRE

    Hilda Bongazana Mahlangu; Ufuoma Akpojivi

    2013-01-01

    The paper presents the results of research carried out to examine mobile phone addiction among students at a South African University. The results suggest that students exhibited addiction tendencies. Of the top sources of addiction were; a feeling of loss when students did not have their mobile phones with them, reduction in sleep patterns, use of mobile phones longer than intended, feeling of restlessness and irritability when not using mobile phone and use of mobile phones to escape from p...

  8. Mobility and language change in real time

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Monka, Malene

    Diachronic studies of the interrelationship between mobility and language change leave us with some unanswered questions of causation. The most important question is whether language change is caused by mobility, or if mobile informants mark themselves linguistically different than their non-mobi...... mobile and non-mobile informants. I also suggest a human geographic approach to place to explain the differences between the language change of the mobile informants (e.g. Britain 2009; Johnstone 2004).......Diachronic studies of the interrelationship between mobility and language change leave us with some unanswered questions of causation. The most important question is whether language change is caused by mobility, or if mobile informants mark themselves linguistically different than their non......-mobile peers prior to being geographically and socially mobile (e.g. Andersson & Thelander 1994). In the presentation I discuss this question by presenting a real time panel-study of language change in 23 speakers from three municipalities in distinct dialect areas in Denmark. The language change of six mobile...

  9. Gas Source Localization via Behaviour Based Mobile Robot and Weighted Arithmetic Mean

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yeon, Ahmad Shakaff Ali; Kamarudin, Kamarulzaman; Visvanathan, Retnam; Mamduh Syed Zakaria, Syed Muhammad; Zakaria, Ammar; Munirah Kamarudin, Latifah

    2018-03-01

    This work is concerned with the localization of gas source in dynamic indoor environment using a single mobile robot system. Algorithms such as Braitenberg, Zig-Zag and the combination of the two were implemented on the mobile robot as gas plume searching and tracing behaviours. To calculate the gas source location, a weighted arithmetic mean strategy was used. All experiments were done on an experimental testbed consisting of a large gas sensor array (LGSA) to monitor real-time gas concentration within the testbed. Ethanol gas was released within the testbed and the source location was marked using a pattern that can be tracked by a pattern tracking system. A pattern template was also mounted on the mobile robot to track the trajectory of the mobile robot. Measurements taken by the mobile robot and the LGSA were then compared to verify the experiments. A combined total of 36.5 hours of real time experimental runs were done and the typical results from such experiments were presented in this paper. From the results, we obtained gas source localization errors between 0.4m to 1.2m from the real source location.

  10. Classifying Human Activity Patterns from Smartphone Collected GPS data: a Fuzzy Classification and Aggregation Approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wan, Neng; Lin, Ge

    2016-12-01

    Smartphones have emerged as a promising type of equipment for monitoring human activities in environmental health studies. However, degraded location accuracy and inconsistency of smartphone-measured GPS data have limited its effectiveness for classifying human activity patterns. This study proposes a fuzzy classification scheme for differentiating human activity patterns from smartphone-collected GPS data. Specifically, a fuzzy logic reasoning was adopted to overcome the influence of location uncertainty by estimating the probability of different activity types for single GPS points. Based on that approach, a segment aggregation method was developed to infer activity patterns, while adjusting for uncertainties of point attributes. Validations of the proposed methods were carried out based on a convenient sample of three subjects with different types of smartphones. The results indicate desirable accuracy (e.g., up to 96% in activity identification) with use of this method. Two examples were provided in the appendix to illustrate how the proposed methods could be applied in environmental health studies. Researchers could tailor this scheme to fit a variety of research topics.

  11. FY1995 community support by mobile agents; 1995 nendo mobile agent ni yoru community keisei shien

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    1997-03-01

    The purpose is to develop fundamental technologies for navigation systems and mobile computing systems in museums, theme parks and cities. Concretely, we implement software agents into the mobile computing environment which consists of PHS, mobile computers and mobile robots, and realize various functions to access regional information. We have studied on Communityware which supports human activities and communities by using mobile agents implemented into mobile computers and town robots. The mobile agents, which intelligently process information obtained in physical and virtual worlds, access regional information which is omnipresent in the environment. With respect to the approach using mobile computers, we have provided one hundred mobile computers in the international conference on multiagent systems 1996 and carried out the first experimentation of mobile computing in the world. The mobile computer has two functions: Community Viewer which displays interactions between members of communities and Social Matchmaker which supports to hold meetings by searching for people who have common interests. With respect to the approach using town robots, we have developed a robot system which can robustly behave in a complex outdoor environment by using vision agents embedded in the environment. The system aims at support of people in streets. (NEDO)

  12. Spatio-Temporal Pattern Mining on Trajectory Data Using Arm

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khoshahval, S.; Farnaghi, M.; Taleai, M.

    2017-09-01

    Preliminary mobile was considered to be a device to make human connections easier. But today the consumption of this device has been evolved to a platform for gaming, web surfing and GPS-enabled application capabilities. Embedding GPS in handheld devices, altered them to significant trajectory data gathering facilities. Raw GPS trajectory data is a series of points which contains hidden information. For revealing hidden information in traces, trajectory data analysis is needed. One of the most beneficial concealed information in trajectory data is user activity patterns. In each pattern, there are multiple stops and moves which identifies users visited places and tasks. This paper proposes an approach to discover user daily activity patterns from GPS trajectories using association rules. Finding user patterns needs extraction of user's visited places from stops and moves of GPS trajectories. In order to locate stops and moves, we have implemented a place recognition algorithm. After extraction of visited points an advanced association rule mining algorithm, called Apriori was used to extract user activity patterns. This study outlined that there are useful patterns in each trajectory that can be emerged from raw GPS data using association rule mining techniques in order to find out about multiple users' behaviour in a system and can be utilized in various location-based applications.

  13. Identifying the Relevant Local Population for Environmental Impact Assessments of Mobile Marine Fauna

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Delphine B. H. Chabanne

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Environmental impact assessments must be addressed at a scale that reflects the biological organization for the species affected. It can be challenging to identify the relevant local wildlife population for impact assessment for those species that are continuously distributed and highly mobile. Here, we document the existence of local communities of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus inhabiting coastal and estuarine waters of Perth, Western Australia, where major coastal developments have been undertaken or are proposed. Using sighting histories from a 4-year photo-identification study, we investigated fine-scale, social community structure of dolphins based on measures of social affinity, and network (Half-Weight Index—HWI, preferred dyadic association tests, and Lagged Association Rates—LAR, home ranges, residency patterns (Lagged Identification Rates—LIR, and genetic relatedness. Analyses revealed four socially and spatially distinct, mixed-sex communities. The four communities had distinctive social patterns varying in strength, site fidelity, and residency patterns. Overlap in home ranges and relatedness explained little to none of the association patterns between individuals, suggesting complex local social structures. The study demonstrated that environmental impact assessments for mobile, continuously distributed species must evaluate impacts in light of local population structure, especially where proposed developments may affect core habitats of resident communities or sub-populations. Here, the risk of local extinction is particularly significant for an estuarine community because of its small size, limited connectivity with adjacent communities, and use of areas subject to intensive human use. In the absence of information about fine-scale population structure, impact assessments may fail to consider the appropriate biological context.

  14. A Computer Clone of Human Expert for Mobility Management Scheme (E-MMS): Step toward Green Transportation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Resdiansyah; O. K Rahmat, R. A.; Ismail, A.

    2018-03-01

    Green transportation refers to a sustainable transport that gives the least impact in terms of social and environmental but at the same time is able to supply energy sources globally that includes non-motorized transport strategies deployment to promote healthy lifestyles, also known as Mobility Management Scheme (MMS). As construction of road infrastructure cannot help solve the problem of congestion, past research has shown that MMS is an effective measure to mitigate congestion and to achieve green transportation. MMS consists of different strategies and policies that subdivided into categories according to how they are able to influence travel behaviour. Appropriate selection of mobility strategies will ensure its effectiveness in mitigating congestion problems. Nevertheless, determining appropriate strategies requires human expert and depends on a number of success factors. This research has successfully developed a computer clone system based on human expert, called E-MMS. The process of knowledge acquisition for MMS strategies and the next following process to selection of strategy has been encode in a knowledge-based system using a shell expert system. The newly developed computer cloning system was successfully verified, validated and evaluated (VV&E) by comparing the result output with the real transportation expert recommendation in which the findings suggested Introduction

  15. Occupational and Sectoral Mobility in the Czech Republic and its Changes during the Economic Recession

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tereza Vavřinová

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available This paper reveals the scope and patterns of mobility on the labour market in the Czech Republic in between 2002 and 2013. Occupational and sectoral mobility are analysed using the data from the Labour Force Survey. The LFS data were adjusted into a form of longitudinal data enabling to follow an individual in four consecutive quarters. The frequency of mobility on the Czech labour market and its development during different phases of business cycle is studied. The level of mobility is examined in the entire population of the employed as well as among subgroups defined predominantly by socioeconomic characteristics. Patterns of labour mobility revealed by this paper are discussed in the light of similarly focused studies from abroad and theoretical approaches toward labour mobility.

  16. Culture, mobility and human rights: considerations on social occupational therapy in the context of immigrants municipal policy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Miki Takao Sato

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available This article aims to discuss the need to revise education and professional action, in the context of social occupational therapy, facing the growing phenomenon of international migration, especially in the current construction of the municipal policy for immigrant populations in São Paulo, SP. The discussion is methodologically structured into three complementary lines of analysis results from documentary research accompanied by field study, visits, participations in meetings, inter-institutional forums, public hearings, thematic debates, in addition to literature review. In the first analysis axis, we discuss the current legislation in Brazil, the construction of migration policy at the municipal level and civil society articulations about human mobility, understood as a fundamental right. In the second, we discuss people care services, families and groups in migratory situation in São Paulo, SP. Finally, on the third axis, we discuss the cultural developments in social occupational therapy for professional action and training in the field of human mobility. As a result it was observed that the current panorama poses new professional challenges, forcing the occupational therapist to review its technical-political position face to the new realities of the contemporary world.

  17. Response of human corneal fibroblasts on silk film surface patterns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gil, Eun Seok; Park, Sang-Hyug; Marchant, Jeff; Omenetto, Fiorenzo; Kaplan, David L

    2010-06-11

    Transparent, biodegradable, mechanically robust, and surface-patterned silk films were evaluated for the effect of surface morphology on human corneal fibroblast (hCF) cell proliferation, orientation, and ECM deposition and alignment. A series of dimensionally different surface groove patterns were prepared from optically graded glass substrates followed by casting poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) replica molds. The features on the patterned silk films showed an array of asymmetric triangles and displayed 37-342 nm depths and 445-3 582 nm widths. hCF DNA content on all patterned films were not significantly different from that on flat silk films after 4 d in culture. However, the depth and width of the grooves influenced cell alignment, while the depth differences affected cell orientation; overall, deeper and narrower grooves induced more hCF orientation. Over 14 d in culture, cell layers and actin filament organization demonstrated that confluent hCFs and their cytoskeletal filaments were oriented along the direction of the silk film patterned groove axis. Collagen type V and proteoglycans (decorin and biglycan), important markers of corneal stromal tissue, were highly expressed with alignment. Understanding corneal stromal fibroblast responses to surface features on a protein-based biomaterial applicable in vivo for corneal repair potential suggests options to improve corneal tissue mimics. Further, the approaches provide fundamental biomaterial designs useful for bioengineering oriented tissue layers, an endemic feature in most biological tissue structures that lead to critical tissue functions.

  18. A Study of Age and Gender seen through Mobile Phone Usage Patterns in Mexico

    OpenAIRE

    Sarraute, Carlos; Blanc, Pablo; Burroni, Javier

    2015-01-01

    Mobile phone usage provides a wealth of information, which can be used to better understand the demographic structure of a population. In this paper we focus on the population of Mexican mobile phone users. Our first contribution is an observational study of mobile phone usage according to gender and age groups. We were able to detect significant differences in phone usage among different subgroups of the population. Our second contribution is to provide a novel methodology to predict demogra...

  19. Mobile evolution insights on connectivity and service

    CERN Document Server

    Thalanany, Sebastian

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this book is to provide information and guidelines pertaining to the strategies and technologies associated with the next-generation mobile ecosystem. The intersection of human communications, next-generation mobile technologies and IP multimedia services demand an identification and distillation of the characteristics of both the human dimension and the technology dimension to examine the unique enabling considerations in the formulation of a vision and a strategy that are relevant for communities, businesses and leadership.

  20. International Mobility of Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Doctoral Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knight, Jane; Madden, Meggan

    2010-01-01

    International academic mobility is an aspect of internationalization that is changing rapidly in terms of volume, scope, and impact. Although much of the attention and research on mobility has focused on undergraduate students participating in short-term study abroad, internships, and exchange experiences, the new push to develop international…

  1. The binding patterns of antisera to sex steroids and human gonadotropins on human and rhesus monkey spermatozoa.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Allag, I S; Das, R P; Roy, S

    1983-01-01

    The presence of different hormones on the surface of ejaculated spermatozoa was determined by immunofluorescence studies of the binding patterns of specific antisera to these hormones. There were striking similarities in the binding pattern of antisera to steroid hormones found on human and monkey spermatozoa. Assuming the intensity of fluorescence is proportional to the concentration of the hormone, concentrations of testosterone on the acrosomal and the postacrosomal regions were higher than levels of progesterone and estrogens. Spermatozoa with a "tapering head" had more hCG bound on the acrosomal and postacrosomal regions than spermatozoa with "normal head" (oval shaped). Correlating these findings to the functions of spermatozoa will require further studies.

  2. Survey of the Effects of Exposure to 900 MHz Radiofrequency Radiation Emitted by a GSM Mobile Phone on the Pattern of Muscle Contractions in an Animal Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mortazavi S. M. J.

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Background: The rapid development of wireless telecommunication technologies over the past decades, has led to significant changes in the exposure of the general public to electromagnetic fields. Nowadays, people are continuously exposed to different sources of electromagnetic fields such as mobile phones, mobile base stations, cordless phones, Wi-Fi routers, and power lines. Therefore, the last decade witnessed a rapidly growing concern about the possible health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted by these sources. Materials and Methods: In this study that was aimed at investigating the effects of exposure to radiofrequency (RF radiation emitted by a GSM mobile phone on the pattern of contraction in frog’s isolated gastrocnemius muscle after stimulation with single square pulses of 1V (1 Hz, pulse height of contractions, the time interval between two subsequent contractions and the latency period were measured. Results: Our findings showed that the pulse height of contractions muscle could be affected by the exposure to electromagnetic fields. Especially, the latency period was effectively altered in RF-exposed samples. However, none of the experiments could show an alteration in the time interval between two subsequent contractions after exposure to electromagnetic fields. Conclusion: These findings support early reports which indicated a wide variety of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation on amphibians including the effects on the pattern of muscle extractions

  3. The U-Shapes of Occupational Mobility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Groes, Fane; Kircher, Philipp; Manovskii, Iourii

    Using administrative panel data on the entire Danish population we document a new set of facts characterizing occupational mobility. For most occupations, mobility is U-shaped and directional: both low and high wage earners within an occupation have a particularly large probability of leaving...... theories that are used to account for endogeneity in occupational choice, but it is shown analytically that the patterns are explained consistently within a theory of sorting under absolute advantage that includes learning about workers’ abilities....

  4. An association of genotypes and antimicrobial resistance patterns among Salmonella isolates from pigs and humans in Taiwan.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hung-Chih Kuo

    Full Text Available We collected 110 Salmonella enterica isolates from sick pigs and determined their serotypes, genotypes using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE, and antimicrobial susceptibility to 12 antimicrobials and compared the data with a collection of 18,280 isolates obtained from humans. The pig isolates fell into 12 common serovars for human salmonellosis in Taiwan; S. Typhimurium, S. Choleraesuis, S. Derby, S. Livingstone, and S. Schwarzengrund were the 5 most common serovars and accounted for a total of 84% of the collection. Of the 110 isolates, 106 (96% were multidrug resistant (MDR and 48 (44% had PFGE patterns found in human isolates. S. Typhimurium, S. Choleraesuis, and S. Schwarzengrund were among the most highly resistant serovars. The majority of the 3 serovars were resistant to 8-11 of the tested antimicrobials. The isolates from pigs and humans sharing a common PFGE pattern displayed identical or very similar resistance patterns and Salmonella strains that caused severe infection in pigs were also capable of causing infections in humans. The results indicate that pigs are one of the major reservoirs to human salmonellosis in Taiwan. Almost all of the pig isolates were MDR, which highlights the necessity of strictly regulating the use of antimicrobials in the agriculture sector in Taiwan.

  5. An association of genotypes and antimicrobial resistance patterns among Salmonella isolates from pigs and humans in Taiwan.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuo, Hung-Chih; Lauderdale, Tsai-Ling; Lo, Dan-Yuan; Chen, Chiou-Lin; Chen, Pei-Chen; Liang, Shiu-Yun; Kuo, Jung-Che; Liao, Ying-Shu; Liao, Chun-Hsing; Tsao, Chi-Sen; Chiou, Chien-Shun

    2014-01-01

    We collected 110 Salmonella enterica isolates from sick pigs and determined their serotypes, genotypes using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and antimicrobial susceptibility to 12 antimicrobials and compared the data with a collection of 18,280 isolates obtained from humans. The pig isolates fell into 12 common serovars for human salmonellosis in Taiwan; S. Typhimurium, S. Choleraesuis, S. Derby, S. Livingstone, and S. Schwarzengrund were the 5 most common serovars and accounted for a total of 84% of the collection. Of the 110 isolates, 106 (96%) were multidrug resistant (MDR) and 48 (44%) had PFGE patterns found in human isolates. S. Typhimurium, S. Choleraesuis, and S. Schwarzengrund were among the most highly resistant serovars. The majority of the 3 serovars were resistant to 8-11 of the tested antimicrobials. The isolates from pigs and humans sharing a common PFGE pattern displayed identical or very similar resistance patterns and Salmonella strains that caused severe infection in pigs were also capable of causing infections in humans. The results indicate that pigs are one of the major reservoirs to human salmonellosis in Taiwan. Almost all of the pig isolates were MDR, which highlights the necessity of strictly regulating the use of antimicrobials in the agriculture sector in Taiwan.

  6. Future Scenarios for Mobile Science Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burden, Kevin; Kearney, Matthew

    2016-04-01

    This paper adopts scenario planning as a methodological approach and tool to help science educators reconceptualise their use of mobile technologies across various different futures. These `futures' are set out neither as predictions nor prognoses but rather as stimuli to encourage greater discussion and reflection around the use of mobile technologies in science education. Informed by the literature and our empirical data, we consider four alternative futures for science education in a mobile world, with a particular focus on networked collaboration and student agency. We conclude that `seamless learning', whereby students are empowered to use their mobile technologies to negotiate across physical and virtual boundaries (e.g. between school and out-of-school activities), may be the most significant factor in encouraging educators to rethink their existing pedagogical patterns, thereby realizing some of the promises of contextualised participatory science learning.

  7. Mobility and language change in Denmark

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Monka, Malene

    featured substantial amounts of dialect features (Kristensen 1980; Pedersen 1986). In 2005 to 2010, researchers at the Danish National Research Center for Language Change in Real Time (LANCHART) and the University of Southern Denmark re-interviewed informants, thus providing data for investigating language......Mobility and language change in Denmark This paper demonstrates how mobility affects language change in real time and reports on the results of my PhD-thesis. In the thesis I made a real time panel study in three towns in distinct dialect areas in Denmark and examined language change in 23 speakers...... recorded in 1978 to 2010. The results emphasize the advantages of approaching mobility from different angles when investigating patterns of language change. The present paper focuses on six geographically and socially mobile informants. At the time of the early recordings, the three towns were in different...

  8. Systematic analysis of gene expression patterns associated with postmortem interval in human tissues.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Yizhang; Wang, Likun; Yin, Yuxin; Yang, Ence

    2017-07-14

    Postmortem mRNA degradation is considered to be the major concern in gene expression research utilizing human postmortem tissues. A key factor in this process is the postmortem interval (PMI), which is defined as the interval between death and sample collection. However, global patterns of postmortem mRNA degradation at individual gene levels across diverse human tissues remain largely unknown. In this study, we performed a systematic analysis of alteration of gene expression associated with PMI in human tissues. From the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) database, we evaluated gene expression levels of 2,016 high-quality postmortem samples from 316 donors of European descent, with PMI ranging from 1 to 27 hours. We found that PMI-related mRNA degradation is tissue-specific, gene-specific, and even genotype-dependent, thus drawing a more comprehensive picture of PMI-associated gene expression across diverse human tissues. Additionally, we also identified 266 differentially variable (DV) genes, such as DEFB4B and IFNG, whose expression is significantly dispersed between short PMI (S-PMI) and long PMI (L-PMI) groups. In summary, our analyses provide a comprehensive profile of PMI-associated gene expression, which will help interpret gene expression patterns in the evaluation of postmortem tissues.

  9. Mobile and context: divide or conquer?

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Botha, Adèle

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available The interdisciplinary field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), having barely matured past its adolescent shoes, now faces the challenge of meaningfully integrating Mobile Human Computer Interaction (MHCI). MHCI however, when viewed as an emerging...

  10. Mapping Oyster Reef Habitats in Mobile Bay

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bolte, Danielle

    2011-01-01

    Oyster reefs around the world are declining rapidly, and although they haven t received as much attention as coral reefs, they are just as important to their local ecosystems and economies. Oyster reefs provide habitats for many species of fish, invertebrates, and crustaceans, as well as the next generations of oysters. Oysters are also harvested from many of these reefs and are an important segment of many local economies, including that of Mobile Bay, where oysters rank in the top five commercial marine species both by landed weight and by dollar value. Although the remaining Mobile Bay oyster reefs are some of the least degraded in the world, projected climate change could have dramatic effects on the health of these important ecosystems. The viability of oyster reefs depends on water depth and temperature, appropriate pH and salinity levels, and the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water. Projected increases in sea level, changes in precipitation and runoff patterns, and changes in pH resulting from increases in the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans could all affect the viability of oyster reefs in the future. Human activities such as dredging and unsustainable harvesting practices are also adversely impacting the oyster reefs. Fortunately, several projects are already under way to help rebuild or support existing or previously existing oyster reefs. The success of these projects will depend on the local effects of climate change on the current and potential habitats and man s ability to recognize and halt unsustainable harvesting practices. As the extent and health of the reefs changes, it will have impacts on the Mobile Bay ecosystem and economy, changing the resources available to the people who live there and to the rest of the country, since Mobile Bay is an important national source of seafood. This project identified potential climate change impacts on the oyster reefs of Mobile Bay, including the possible addition of newly viable

  11. Constructing activity–mobility trajectories of college students based on smart card transaction data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Negin Ebadi

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In this research, we use UB card as a convenient source of combined smart transaction data in order to define a campus-wide model for constructing students’ activity–mobility trajectories in time–space dimension. UB Card is a student’s official ID at the University at Buffalo and is used across campus for various activities including Stampedes and Shuttles (on-campus bus system, facilities access, library services, dining, shopping, and etc. Two activity–mobility trajectory construction algorithms are developed. The base algorithm constructs students’ activity–mobility patterns in space–time dimension using a set of smart card transaction data points as the only inputs. The modified individualized algorithm constructs activity–mobility patterns with prior knowledge of students’ previous patterns as they have similar patterns for certain days of the week. A database of 37 students’ travel survey and UB card transactions that contains a period of 5 days have been used to illustrate the results of the study. Three measures of errors have been proposed to capture the time allocation, location deviation, and activity sequences. These errors present an acceptable accuracy (12–25% error ranges for activity types and average 0.04–0.16 miles of error for location predictions and show the potential of inferring activity–mobility behaviors based on smart card transaction type data sets.

  12. A first look at mobile internet use in township communities in South Africa

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Phokeer, A

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available data to gain insights about mobile data usage patterns and the underlying reasons for user behavior concerning mobile data usage. Due to the limited availability of public free Wi-Fi and despite the relatively high cost of mobile data, we find that a...

  13. Security and Trust in Mobile Cloud Computing

    OpenAIRE

    Le Vinh , Thinh

    2017-01-01

    As living in the cyber era, we admit that a dozen of new technologies have been born every day with the promises that making a human life be more comfortable, convenient and safe. In the forest of new technologies, mobile computing is raise as an essential part of human life. Normally, mobile devices have become the best companions in daily activities. They have served us from the simple activities like entertainment to the complicated one as business operations. As playing the important role...

  14. Atrial natriuretic peptide regulates lipid mobilization and oxygen consumption in human adipocytes by activating AMPK

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Souza, Sandra C. [Translational Sciences - Translational Medicine, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Inc., 220 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States); Chau, Mary D.L.; Yang, Qing [Cardiovascular and Metabolism Disease Area, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Inc., 100 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States); Gauthier, Marie-Soleil [Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02140 (United States); Clairmont, Kevin B.; Wu, Zhidan; Gromada, Jesper [Cardiovascular and Metabolism Disease Area, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Inc., 100 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States); Dole, William P., E-mail: bill.dole@novartis.com [Translational Sciences - Translational Medicine, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Inc., 220 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)

    2011-07-08

    Highlights: {yields} Treatment of differentiated human adipocytes with atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) increased lipolysis and oxygen consumption by activating AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). {yields} ANP stimulated lipid mobilization by selective activation of the alpha2 subunit of AMPK and increased energy utilization through activation of both the alpha1 and alpha2 subunits of AMPK. {yields} ANP enhanced adipocyte mitochondrial oxidative capacity as evidenced by induction of oxidative mitochondrial genes and increase in oxygen consumption. {yields} Exposure of human adipocytes to fatty acids and (TNF{alpha}) induced insulin resistance and decreased expression of mitochondrial genes which was restored to normal by ANP. -- Abstract: Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) has been shown to regulate lipid and carbohydrate metabolism providing a possible link between cardiovascular function and metabolism by mediating the switch from carbohydrate to lipid mobilization and oxidation. ANP exerts a potent lipolytic effect via cGMP-dependent protein kinase (cGK)-I mediated-stimulation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Activation of the ANP/cGK signaling cascade also promotes muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and fat oxidation. Here we demonstrate that ANP regulates lipid metabolism and oxygen utilization in differentiated human adipocytes by activating the alpha2 subunit of AMPK. ANP treatment increased lipolysis by seven fold and oxygen consumption by two fold, both of which were attenuated by inhibition of AMPK activity. ANP-induced lipolysis was shown to be mediated by the alpha2 subunit of AMPK as introduction of dominant-negative alpha2 subunit of AMPK attenuated ANP effects on lipolysis. ANP-induced activation of AMPK enhanced mitochondrial oxidative capacity as evidenced by a two fold increase in oxygen consumption and induction of mitochondrial genes, including carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A (CPT1a) by 1.4-fold, cytochrome C (CytC) by 1.3-fold, and

  15. Atrial natriuretic peptide regulates lipid mobilization and oxygen consumption in human adipocytes by activating AMPK

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Souza, Sandra C.; Chau, Mary D.L.; Yang, Qing; Gauthier, Marie-Soleil; Clairmont, Kevin B.; Wu, Zhidan; Gromada, Jesper; Dole, William P.

    2011-01-01

    Highlights: → Treatment of differentiated human adipocytes with atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) increased lipolysis and oxygen consumption by activating AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). → ANP stimulated lipid mobilization by selective activation of the alpha2 subunit of AMPK and increased energy utilization through activation of both the alpha1 and alpha2 subunits of AMPK. → ANP enhanced adipocyte mitochondrial oxidative capacity as evidenced by induction of oxidative mitochondrial genes and increase in oxygen consumption. → Exposure of human adipocytes to fatty acids and (TNFα) induced insulin resistance and decreased expression of mitochondrial genes which was restored to normal by ANP. -- Abstract: Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) has been shown to regulate lipid and carbohydrate metabolism providing a possible link between cardiovascular function and metabolism by mediating the switch from carbohydrate to lipid mobilization and oxidation. ANP exerts a potent lipolytic effect via cGMP-dependent protein kinase (cGK)-I mediated-stimulation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Activation of the ANP/cGK signaling cascade also promotes muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and fat oxidation. Here we demonstrate that ANP regulates lipid metabolism and oxygen utilization in differentiated human adipocytes by activating the alpha2 subunit of AMPK. ANP treatment increased lipolysis by seven fold and oxygen consumption by two fold, both of which were attenuated by inhibition of AMPK activity. ANP-induced lipolysis was shown to be mediated by the alpha2 subunit of AMPK as introduction of dominant-negative alpha2 subunit of AMPK attenuated ANP effects on lipolysis. ANP-induced activation of AMPK enhanced mitochondrial oxidative capacity as evidenced by a two fold increase in oxygen consumption and induction of mitochondrial genes, including carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A (CPT1a) by 1.4-fold, cytochrome C (CytC) by 1.3-fold, and peroxisome proliferator

  16. International student mobility literature review

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    King, R.; Findlay, A.; Ahrens, J.

    2010-01-01

    To bring their understanding of patterns in students' study and work abroad up to date, HEFCE and the British Council, the UK National Agency for Erasmus, commissioned a review of international student mobility. Professor Russell King and Jill Ahrens of the University of Sussex, and Professor Allan

  17. Mobile social networking an innovative approach

    CERN Document Server

    Zhang, Daqing

    2014-01-01

    The use of contextually aware, pervasive, distributed computing, and sensor networks to bridge the gap between the physical and online worlds is the basis of mobile social networking. This book shows how applications can be built to provide mobile social networking, the research issues that need to be solved to enable this vision, and how mobile social networking can be used to provide computational intelligence that will improve daily life. With contributions from the fields of sociology, computer science, human-computer interaction and design, this book demonstrates how mobile social networks can be inferred from users' physical interactions both with the environment and with others, as well as how users behave around them and how their behavior differs on mobile vs. traditional online social networks.

  18. Conceptualising business mobilities: towards an analytical framework

    OpenAIRE

    Jones, A.

    2013-01-01

    Existing research into business travel and mobility within the social sciences has largely focused on measurement and the identification of patterns to this phenomenon. However, a growing body of research has also identified the complex nature of and reasons behind business mobility. It is clear that business travel fulfils many different functions and the drivers behind it vary considerably between industry, job role and organizational context. This contributes to a lack of clarity in defini...

  19. Exploring Mobility Options for Children with Physical Disabilities: A Focus on Powered Mobility

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wiart, Lesley

    2011-01-01

    The study by Tefft et al. (2011, in this issue) is one of the few studies that have explored the impact of pediatric powered mobility on families. The parents who participated in their study reported increased satisfaction with their children's social and play skills, ability to move independently, sleeping patterns, and public perception of their…

  20. On Population Mobility in Market Economy

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Yu Xianzhong

    2005-01-01

    Regular and extensive social population mobility in natural economy is neither necessary nor possible while in a planned economic system, social population distribution is necessary but social population mobility is unlikely. Modern market economy as a highly mobile economy has a free-mobile population characteristic of market economy, which is fundamental to optimize human resource distribution. The rule for the modern market-based population movement is as follows: If the mobile population is the rational behavior choosers, under the permissive developmental environment as arranged by the social system, they tend to move from low profit-making fields to high income fields when there exists comparable difference of income in different regions and different industries, and various potential and practical profit-making chances. The degree of difference in comparable income is positively co-relative to the velocity and flux of mobile population.