Mobile Provision Research Articles

The Effect of Providing Power Mobility on Body Weight Change

To investigate whether the provision of power mobility would have an effect on body weight in adults who were first-time qualifiers for power mobility. This was a retrospective observational study of consecutive subjects, who served as their own controls. The medical records of 468 subjects who were approved for power mobility during a 17-mo period were reviewed. Three weight groups (12 mos before, at, and 12 mos after the power mobility evaluation) were evaluated with repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). The weight changes on subjects in different age groups (45-54, 55-64, 65-74, and >74), in geriatric vs. nongeriatric groups, and in different body mass index (BMI) groups were analyzed. Eighty-nine subjects met the inclusion criteria. They were obese (49.4%), and most of them were geriatric (64%). Congestive heart failure (30.34%) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (22.47%) were the two main presenting diagnoses. The repeated-measures ANOVA showed no significant weight change in the three studied weight groups. Similar results were seen in the age and BMI subgroups. There was no statistically significant weight change in adults who were first-time qualifiers and who used power mobility for 1 yr.

Cooperative and opportunistic transmission for wireless ad hoc networks

Moving toward 4G, wireless ad hoc networks receive growing interest due to users' provisioning of mobility, usability of services, and seamless communications. In ad hoc networks fading environments provide the opportunity to exploit variations in channel conditions, and transmit to the user with the currently best channel. In this article two types of opportunistic transmission, which leverage time diversity and multi-user diversity, respectively, are studied. Considering the co-channel interference and lack of a central controller in ad hoc networks, the and opportunistic concept is promoted. For opportunistic transmission that exploits time diversity, it is observed that the inequality in channel contention due to the hidden terminal phenomenon tends to result in energy inefficiency. Under this design philosophy, we propose a distributed cooperative rate adaptation (CRA) scheme to reduce overall system power consumption. Taking advantage of the time-varying channel among different users/receivers and being aware of the potential contention among neighboring transmissions, we propose a QoS-aware cooperative and opportunistic scheduling (COS) scheme to improve system performance while satisfying QoS requirements of individual flows. Simulation results show that by leveraging node cooperation, our proposed schemes, CRA and COS, achieve higher network throughput and provide better QoS support than existing work

Managing mobile provision for community healthcare support: issues and challenges

Purpose – This paper addresses some key management issues relating to developing mobile support for community healthcare (CHC) provision, such as support structures, service management and organization.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents three generic examples that draw out the heterogeneous nature of CHC support and the issues and challenges involved. The research is mostly qualitative, based on interviews with key health and social care professionals in the south of England, supported by desk‐based activity. The initial phase of the pilot involved six healthcare professionals, who were interviewed for approximately an hour and a half each using a semi‐structured questionnaire.Findings – It is clear that many CHC professionals, for the generic case examples, cannot do their community activity without some mobile technology support, such as a mobile telephone. More sophisticated support offers much potential to improve patient/client care in the community as well as efficiency benefits.Resear...

Architectural Digest for International Trade and Labor Law: Regional Free Trade Agreements and Minimum Criteria for Enforceable Social Clauses

In the past decade and a half, the negotiation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has dramatically increased. The number of party states and the range of level of development among party countries have expanded drastically. At the same time, the subject matter scope of these treaties has grown by leaps and bounds. Agreements are no longer limited to trade in goods, but increasingly cover trans-national provision of services and crossborder mobility of investment capital. Bilateral agreements are proliferating at an astounding pace, but even more significant are the agreements, much smaller in number, involving three or more countries. At the global level, the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose predecessor body began with a mandate limited to trade in goods, has now expanded into trade in services, as well as intellectual property, with frustrated efforts to add elements addressing investment and government procurement. Plurilateral agreements, such as the treaties establishing the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), combine more extensive coverage of goods, services, and capital, and constitute regional integration agreements. Separate from these types of trade-related agreements, there are international labor rights instruments binding many of the same countries, under the auspices of the

Mobility and QoS support in 4G wireless networks

Fourth-generation (4G) wireless networks will be the IP-based cellular networks integrating Internet with the existing cellular networks. Two important issues should be concerned in the IP-based cellular networks, IP mobility, and quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. In this paper, we proposed two mechanisms to solve the problems with IP mobility and RSVP-based QoS provisioning. First, virtual-IP (VIP) allocation scheme in areas with a large rate of handoff can minimize the wireless signaling overhead due to IP mobility. The access routers (ARs) create dynamically the VIP zone by using the measured handoff rate derived from the history of the handoff into neighboring ARs. We show that VIP allocation scheme reduces the binding update messages in the wireless link than hierarchical mobile IPv6. Second, the new advance resource reservation protocol called proportional aggregate RSVP (PA-RSVP) can minimize waste of bandwidth and soft state refresh overhead due to IP mobility. It allocates the bandwidth in advance between the mobility anchor point and neighboring ARs using proportional aggregate reservation. We also show that PA-RSVP provides an improved performance over existing protocols.

Fiscal Competition, Capital-Skill Complementarity, and the Composition of Public Spending

Following Keen and Marchand (1997), the paper analyses the eect of fiscal competition on the composition of public spending. There are four factors of production: mobile capital, mobile skilled workers, immobile low skilled workers and land. Taxes are levied on capital and labour. Each group of workers benefits from a dierent kind of public good. Mobility of skilled workers provides an incentive for jurisdictions to spend ‘too much’ on public goods benefitting the skilled and ‘too little’ on those benefitting low skilled workers. In the case of capital-skill complementarity, this incentive is strengthened. The paper also discusses provision of public infrastructure and mobility of unskilled labour. JEL classification: H77, J24, J61.

Satisfaction with and use of assistive devices and services for outdoor mobility

In the Dutch decentralised delivery system, choices of technical aids and mobility services as provided by the Service for the Disabled Act are limited and the potential user population is diverse. In this study, the satisfaction with outdoor mobility provisions and the extent to which mobility problems were met were assessed with a retrospective questionnaire. Areas in the delivery process needing special attention were highlighted. Respondents (516 out of 973) received either a device, access to the shared taxi system or both types of provisions. These 3 groups differed significantly both in their respondent characteristics and the degree of satisfaction. In general, overall satisfaction was high but the percentage of users being ‘not fully satisfied’ varied from 0% to 83% between satisfaction items, combinations of mobility provisions and types of devices. Of the respondents, 23% felt that their mobility problem had not been solved as expected. Service delivery and waiting times for arrival of the taxi were frequent sources of not being fully satisfied.

Community-care waiting list for persons with spinal cord injury.

To disseminate the concept of community care waiting lists for spinal cord injury (SCI) patients with particular reference to carer support for management of neuropathic bladder by a regime of intermittent catheterisation. The surgical waiting list focuses only on operative procedures, and ignores the wider requirements for ensuring satisfactory rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injury in the community. A community-care waiting list for individuals with spinal cord injury should include the following aspects of community care: (1) Home adaptation; (2) Provision of appropriate mobility needs (including wheelchair and cushion); (3) Equipment for comfortable living (including provision of hoist, pressure relieving mattress); (4) Psychological support for spinal cord injury patients and their partners; (5) Nursing home or residential care placement where appropriate; (6) Carer support for global management of complex needs associated with spinal cord injury (eg neuropathic bladder and bowel). Whereas full physical adaptation of the home can wait for some time after discharge, carer support for intermittent catheterisation is required from the first day after discharge from a spinal unit. Lack of such support means that some SCI patients are discharged with long-term indwelling urinary catheters, even though clean intermittent catheterisation is known to be the safest regime for managing the neuropathic bladder. Therefore, the absence of a community care waiting list means that best practice cannot be achieved for some tetraplegic subjects. We believe that a community care waiting list for bladder management will help to provide optimum care for neuropathic bladder and, hopefully, reduce the complications related to long-term indwelling catheters in spinal cord injury patients.

Feasibility of mobile provision of health services: a study of child monitoring centres in The Netherlands.

In the Netherlands children up to the age of 4 years are regularly monitored. Several demographic and economic developments have led to the idea of using mobile child monitoring centres. Mobile units are expected to be flexible, effective and efficient but little information is available about the implications for the organization, the clients and other third parties involved. This paper outlines an approach for assessing the feasibility of mobile child monitoring centres. The focus is on the area Midden-Gelderland in the Netherlands and the implications of alternative options are compared on the basis of feasibility criteria or performance measures. The implementation of mobile units for child monitoring appears to be feasible with respect to most performance measures but there are also disadvantages. The approach taken proved to be a valuable exercise since it provided detailed information on all implications. It was decided that the mobile units would not be purchased but that some child monitoring centres could be closed without replacing them.

Urban Developments and Mobility Inequality of the Disadvantaged

AbstractThis paper investigates how the mobility inequality of the disadvantaged is negatively influenced by urban socio-economic and land-use development in Hong Kong. The first part reviews the concepts of equality, mobility and the influence of socio-economic and land-use development on the mobility of the disadvantaged. The latter part investigates mobility provisions of the Mass Transit Railway and bus services by means of route tests. The findings of the route tests show that mobility inequality existed among the disadvantaged and the better-off in Hong Kong. This paper concludes that mobility inequality of the disadvantaged is due to the negative influences of socio-economic and land-use policies and developments.

Teaching mobility to visually impaired children in a special school

The following article discusses the importance of mobility training for children and describes the comprehensive programme employed at The West of England School, Exeter. It brings out the present inadequacy of mobility provision in some mainstream schools and emphasises the need for more mobility officers trained to work with children.