There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Summary Background Since December, 2019, Wuhan, China, has experienced an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of patients with COVID-19 have been reported but risk factors for mortality and a detailed clinical course of illness, including viral shedding, have not been well described. Methods In this retrospective, multicentre cohort study, we included all adult inpatients (≥18 years old) with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from Jinyintan Hospital and Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital (Wuhan, China) who had been discharged or had died by Jan 31, 2020. Demographic, clinical, treatment, and laboratory data, including serial samples for viral RNA detection, were extracted from electronic medical records and compared between survivors and non-survivors. We used univariable and multivariable logistic regression methods to explore the risk factors associated with in-hospital death. Findings 191 patients (135 from Jinyintan Hospital and 56 from Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital) were included in this study, of whom 137 were discharged and 54 died in hospital. 91 (48%) patients had a comorbidity, with hypertension being the most common (58 [30%] patients), followed by diabetes (36 [19%] patients) and coronary heart disease (15 [8%] patients). Multivariable regression showed increasing odds of in-hospital death associated with older age (odds ratio 1·10, 95% CI 1·03–1·17, per year increase; p=0·0043), higher Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score (5·65, 2·61–12·23; p Interpretation The potential risk factors of older age, high SOFA score, and d-dimer greater than 1 μg/mL could help clinicians to identify patients with poor prognosis at an early stage. Prolonged viral shedding provides the rationale for a strategy of isolation of infected patients and optimal antiviral interventions in the future. Funding Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences; National Science Grant for Distinguished Young Scholars; National Key Research and Development Program of China; The Beijing Science and Technology Project; and Major Projects of National Science and Technology on New Drug Creation and Development.

Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult inpatients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: a retrospective cohort study

With digital equipment becoming increasingly networked, either on wired or wireless networks, for personal and professional use alike, distributed software systems have become a crucial element in information and communications technologies. The study of these systems forms the core of the ARLES' work, which is specifically concerned with defining new system software architectures, based on the use of emerging networking technologies. In this context, we concentrate on the study of distributed systems which bring to life the vision of ubiquitous computing systems, also known as ambient intelligence.

반도체 공정 overview

Background: About a third of home-dwelling older people fall each year, and institutionalized older people even report a two- or threefold higher rate for falling

Sensitivity and false alarm rate of a fall sensor in long-term fall detection in the elderly

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated and the latest generation of smart cell phones now incorporates many diverse and powerful sensors These sensors include GPS sensors, vision sensors (ie, cameras), audio sensors (ie, microphones), light sensors, temperature sensors, direction sensors (ie, magnetic compasses), and acceleration sensors (ie, accelerometers) The availability of these sensors in mass-marketed communication devices creates exciting new opportunities for data mining and data mining applications In this paper we describe and evaluate a system that uses phone-based accelerometers to perform activity recognition, a task which involves identifying the physical activity a user is performing To implement our system we collected labeled accelerometer data from twenty-nine users as they performed daily activities such as walking, jogging, climbing stairs, sitting, and standing, and then aggregated this time series data into examples that summarize the user activity over 10- second intervals We then used the resulting training data to induce a predictive model for activity recognition This work is significant because the activity recognition model permits us to gain useful knowledge about the habits of millions of users passively---just by having them carry cell phones in their pockets Our work has a wide range of applications, including automatic customization of the mobile device's behavior based upon a user's activity (eg, sending calls directly to voicemail if a user is jogging) and generating a daily/weekly activity profile to determine if a user (perhaps an obese child) is performing a healthy amount of exercise

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Activity recognition using cell phone accelerometers

A small trial was conducted to examine the feasibility of detecting falls using a combination of ambient passive infrared (PIR) and pressure mat (PM) sensors in a home with multiple occupants. The key tracking method made use of graph theoretical concepts to track each individual in the residence and to monitor them independently for falls. The proposed algorithm attempts to recognize falls where the subject experiences a hard fall on an indoor surface that leads to loss of consciousness or an inability to get up from the floor without assistance, due to severe injuries. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the algorithm in detecting falls are 85.00%, 80.00% and 82.86%, respectively.

Design of an unobtrusive system for fall detection in multiple occupancy residences

Reduction of crosstalk in parallel stimulation of the retina is a major issue in improving the performance of retinal prostheses. A three-dimensional (3D) microelectrode array (MEA) has been proposed to mitigate the effect of the electric crosstalk. The efficacy of this configuration in focal electrical stimulation of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) was investigated by way of an inhomogeneous but isotropic passive model of the retina. The effect of electrode diameter, height of chamber cavity and distance between electrode and RGCs on restricting the spread of electric fields within the retina was investigated. Finite element simulation demonstrated that in comparison with planar microelectrode arrays, an optimal 3D MEA configuration decreased the electric crosstalk and had the capacity to improve the spatial resolution of perceived images. Increasing chamber cavity height was found to become more effective in achieving simulated activation with closer proximity to the target RGCs.

Electrode design to optimize ganglion cell activation in a retinal neuroprosthesis: A modeling study

A curvilinear gradient path method for optimization of biological systems models

Retinal neuroprostheses or ‘bionic eyes’, aim to restore patterned vision to those with vision loss by electrically stimulating the remaining neurons in the degenerate retina. Despite considerable progress over the last two decades, such devices generally stimulate indiscriminately both the ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’ visual pathways in the retina, conveying highly non-physiological signals to the brain.

Mimicking natural neural encoding through retinal electrostimulation

It is now well recognized that achieving international best practice in the primary health sector will require the development of methods based on a fundamental integration of communications and information technologies with clinical practice This will have far reaching effects, both on the pattern of medical practice and domiciliary care and on patient outcomes In the past, information and communications technology has been presented as a tool for management, rather than as a tool for supporting, improving, and making more efficient the professional practice of medicine and the delivery of health care to the patient and the community In this paper, we propose that an essential element for the achievement of international best practice in the health sector is the development and widespread use of information, measurement, and communications technology targeted towards the clinical practice of medicine, the provision of health services and domiciliary care in the community, and the analysis of morbidity patterns and health care outcomes A key element of this strategy is the development of an integrated Clinical Workstation specifically designed for the general practitioner, practice nurses, and domiciliary care nurses in their professional tasks of measurement, diagnosis, management, and delivery of health care to the community We will present our work on the design of an integrated Clinical Workstation for Primary Health Care The Workstation is Windows based, has a sophisticated user interface, and supports a wide range of computing platforms, from desktop to laptop to hand-held notebook computers The Workstation will be modular and expandable, both in its software and hardware components, so that users may select only those modules appropriate to their own roles, clinical practice, and levels of expertise The design will focus on the provision of clinical services and will integrate the following key components: Patient records and basic practice management; Clinical records Based on ICD10, ICPC, or Read Code classifications; Clinical measurements Blood pressure, spirometry, ECG, and basic hematology and biochemistry; Clinical decision support Based on epidemiologic data, protocols, and medical expert systems; Domiciliary care and evaluation of the functional health status of the elderly; Communications and networks Wireless LAN, modem, and fax; Clinical reporting Morbidity profiles prescribing profiles, and laboratory services and procedures Implementation of these requirements will ultimately take the form of an untethered, portable notepad computer supporting a communications link via modem, LAN, or wireless LAN, and removable instrumentation and clinical measurement modules

Nigel H. Lovell

Papers

Design of an unobtrusive system for fall detection in multiple occupancy residences

Electrode design to optimize ganglion cell activation in a retinal neuroprosthesis: A modeling study

A curvilinear gradient path method for optimization of biological systems models

Mimicking natural neural encoding through retinal electrostimulation

Implementation of a clinical workstation for general practice.