Pascal Bruegger: Resident Monitoring System

Abstract:

The situation in hospitals, nursing homes and homes for patients suffering from mental illnesses is increasingly challenging. The medical staff and special educators are often responsible for a large (and growing) number of residents, for which there is only a very limited time for one-to-one care. The risk of not being able to respond promptly to problems increases with the number of residents per medical staff. Moreover, elderly people find challenging giving and up independence when moving into a nursing home. Overnight, they find themselves in a place where care activities are structured, and at fixed times, with little freedom. However, many of these people either need regular medical care or are unable to live independently. The risk of injuries, falls, loss of consciousness or simply not being able to manage their health (e.g. take medication) leads to the decision to place the person in a socio-medical environment.

To be able to monitor residents in a nonintrusive manner would provide a certain degree of independence, safety and well-being for the residents and also relieve some of the pressure on nurses and educators. The ideal monitoring system should in fact be an ecosystem that includes sensors that can localise and detect resident’s activities and collect physiological data, a way of sending regular updates about the situation of the residents they take care of medical staff and a central monitoring system for both residents and medical staff and a logic to decide the most appropriate available person to intervene in case of problems with a resident. We propose an exploration of solutions that blend new technologies with a respect for human relationships in the context of a nursing home. This is to be achieved through an intelligent environment that monitors a resident’s general well-being unobstrusively, meaning both the physiological state, the activity and the location of the person.

Speaker Bio:

Pascal Bruegger is a Professor in Computer Science at the School of Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg – University of Applied Sciences, Western Switzerland since 2013. He is responsible of the mobile technologies and applications curriculum in his department. His PhD subject was the creation of a holistic framework to design and implement ubiquitous computing systems supporting user activity and situation. With the widespread availability of smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, his research interest is oriented toward smart environments integrating mobile technologies. His goal is to gather different user data through mobile sensors in order to propose context base systems helping users carrying out their daily activities. For two years, Pascal, with his background in biology, has focused his research in physiological data and activities. Experienced in humanitarian ICT, Pascal has work many years for the International Committee of the Red Cross and has made several long-term missions across Africa and Asia. He managed large scale IT infrastructures and organised training seminars for specialists in humanitarian ICT. He is also ICT specialist in the Swiss rescue team.

Event details

  • When: 23rd October 2018 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33b
  • Format: Seminar

Bridging the Gap between Formal Argumentation and Actual Human Reasoning

Later this week Dr Alice Toniolo will be an invited speaker at “Bridging the Gap between Formal Argumentation and Actual Human Reasoning” taking place at the Institute for Philosophy II, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her talk will focus on argumentation-based support for human sensemaking of conflicting information. See abstract below for more information.

Abstract: Models of argumentation have increasingly been employed in human decision-making systems to facilitate good reasoning. Sensemaking of conflicting and incomplete information is one application where argumentation-based tools have the potential to help users reduce the cognitive load in identifying hypotheses about a situation. To improve the effectiveness of systems that employ computational models of argumentation, however, there is a real need to evaluate their use in human decision support. In this talk, we seek to better understand the link between human reasoning, argumentation schemes and preferred extensions in supporting sensemaking of conflicting information. An application will be presented in the context of intelligence analysis which employs argumentation schemes to construct hypotheses about the world and counteract cognitive biases. Preferred extensions are linked to different possible world explanations and help analysts reduce the cognitive effort in identifying what is coherent in a situation. However, using argumentation-based tools to support reasoning about the world opens questions on how people engage with and understand these approaches. A set of experiments with human participants is presented to investigate the use of argumentation schemes and preferred extensions in identifying plausible explanations. Initial results show that argumentation schemes are a reliable method to structure inferences and draw plausible conclusions from incomplete information with potential for supporting the identification of biases. On the other hand, preferred extensions can be seen as capturing different possible world explanations affecting the degree of believability of a conclusion. Results from the experiments show that the degree of believability of a conclusion may be associated with the number of preferred extensions in which the conclusion is credulously accepted with similar heuristics as those employed in understanding probabilities.

School Seminar – Professor Patrick Olivier – Digital Civics: Infrastructuring Participatory Citizenship

Title:  Digital Civics: Infrastructuring Participatory Citizenship

Abstract:  Firstly, this is not technical talk, its a talk about a research initiative in “Digital Civics” that Open Lab is undertaking primarily with partners in the North East of England, but also nationally and internationally. Digital Civics proposes the use of digital technologies in the provision of relational models of public services, that is, models that take as a starting point the potential of digital technologies to support citizen-focused sharing of knowledge, experience and resources. By framing government as more than simply the provider of uniform and mechanistic services, digital civics aims to leverage technology to foster environments in which local agents (e.g. charities, local businesses, citizens) are able to solve problems together. Digital Civics research is inherently cross-disciplinary, action-oriented and place-based, and this requires us (as academic researchers) to configure ourselves differently to the communities with whom we conduct our research. In this talk I will be describing examples of our digital civics research, from applications in community engagement and education to public health and social justice, as well as the trajectory and pragmatics of the overall endeavour.

Speaker biography:  Patrick Olivier is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computing, Newcastle University, UK. He founded and leads Open Lab, Newcastle University’s centre for cross-disciplinary research in digital technologies. His research interests span interaction design, social computing and ubiquitous computing, particularly in public service and civic application contexts (education, public health and social justice). He is director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics (55 cross-disciplinary PhD students) and the EPSRC Digital Economy Research Centre (a multidisciplinary five-year project involving 25 postdocs).

Google scholar:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=CUu9heMAAAAJ

ORCID:

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2841-7580

Open Lab:

https://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/

Digital Civics:

https://digitalcivics.io/

Event details

  • When: 18th October 2018 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

Young Software Engineer of the Year 2018 Awards

Congratulations to Keno Schwalb, a runner-up at last night’s Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards. His final year project IDS test comparison of intrusion detection systems using malware samples was shortlisted earlier in September.

The Young Software Engineer of the Year accolades are awarded to the best undergraduate software projects from students studying computer science and software engineering in Scotland.

The awards were announced at the closing event of ScotSoft, Scotland’s leading tech conference at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

Previous finalists and prize winners have included, Gala Malbasic, Simone Ivan Conte, Sam Elliott,Thomas Grimes, Alistair Scott, Craig Paul, Angus MacDonald, Ben Catherall, Graeme Bell and Ian Miguel. The number of finalists is further testament to the quality of talented students graduating from the School of Computer Science at St Andrews.

Dasip 2018 Keynote: Professor Simon Dobson

Head of School Simon Dobson will deliver a keynote at Dasip, the Conference on Design and Architectures for Signal and Image Processing in October in Porto. Dasip provides an international forum for innovation and developments in the field of embedded signal processing systems. Simon’s keynote will focus on making the transition from sensors to sensor systems software.

Abstract: Signal processing underpins everything we do with sensors. The physical limits of sensors, and the effects of their exposure to their environment, in turn constrain their accuracy, and therefore affect the trust we can place in sensor-driven systems. But this is a long pipeline, and it’s by no means clear how to trace from low-level errors and inaccuracies to their high-level consequences. In this talk I will try to tease-out some of the desiderata we might look for in such a pipeline, with a view to understanding how we can go about building sensor systems that deserve our trust.

MSc and Honours receptions 2018

After a busy week of orientation, advising and module talks, MSc and Honours students are pictured socialising during their welcome receptions on Tuesday and Thursday evening last week. The popular and lively events highlight the friendly student community within the School and provide a chance to chat to staff and students before a semester of hard work begins.

Images courtesy of Xu Zhu and Sylvia Laesecke

Computer Science orientation and welcome 2018

After advising and induction events, staff and students are pictured enjoying a welcome reception and orientation activities, coordinated by Alice Toniolo. The annual gaming session proved as popular as ever and offered retro classic digital games and traditional board games. The gaming session was closely followed by a well attended welcome reception for First Year students.

Images courtesy of Lisa Dow and Andrew Wong

Google@St Andrews

Next Wednesday, October 3rd between 2 and 4pm, Google will be hosting an event at St Andrews. Come along to the Purdie building (Lecture Theatre A) to learn the ins and outs of technical roles at Google. You’ll learn about software and site reliability engineering, product management, and engineering at Google in general. You’ll also get insights into the technical interviewing process, and learn about the internships and scholarships available to students.

When: Oct 3rd, 2018 2-4pm

Where: Purdie Lecture Theatre A

Register: https://goo.gl/qjaHgE

Register by Oct 1st for the chance to be invited to an technical interview workshop 6-8pm on Oct 3rd.

Event details

  • When: 3rd October 2018 14:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Purdie Bldg

An Academic’s Observations from a Sabbatical at Google

Professor Adam Barker is featured in this month’s Communications of the ACM Magazine (CACM) discussing his recent Visiting Faculty appointment at Google. The Viewpoints article summarises his experiences working in software engineering on the Borgmaster team, and some of the core lessons which can be brought back to academia.

Borg is Google’s cluster management framework, which runs hundreds of thousands of jobs, across a number of clusters each with up to tens of thousands of machines.