Multiple Rooms Research Articles

SAT223 Persistent Hypocalcemia After Thyroidectomy

Abstract Disclosure: R. Subramani: None. F. Manas: None. A. Kauser: None. S. Yavuz: None. Introduction: Hypocalcemia is one of the serious complications after total thyroidectomy with a reported incidence of 27.4% (transient)and 12.1% (permanent) probably related to iatrogenic parathyroidectomy. Here we report a case of hypocalcemia after thyroidectomy in the setting of normal parathyroid hormone levels. Summary: A 42-year-old female with medical history of multinodular goiter s/p thyroidectomy 2019 on thyroid hormone replacement presented with hypocalcemia since 2021. During the first-year post thyroidectomy, patient was doing well until she acquired COVID-19 in 2020 and started developing symptoms of paresthesia, and muscle spasms. Other parameters such as phosphorus, and 25 OH vitamin D were normal. Despite being on a high-dose calcium supplement 1200 mg every hour for 10 times daily and calcitriol 0.75 mg twice daily, her calcium levels were persistently low ranging between 7.1 to 8 mg/dl and normal albumin levels of 3.9 and 4.3, but parathyroid level (PTH) remained normal (27.7-37.5). The patient was also symptomatic. She was later switched to liquid calcium 1000 mg 6 times daily for better absorption. It is noted that she had recurrent symptomatic hypocalcemia episodes requiring multiple emergency room (ER) visits during times of stress such as viral illness. The patient was treated with a trial of teriparatide, after which her symptoms improved and there were no further ER visits. Her calcium level increased from 7.4 to 8.4 and calcium supplement requirement reduced to 1200 mg daily. During recent outpatient visit, the patient had hypocalcemia episodes after missing teriparatide doses as expected. Conclusion: Despite our patient had normal PTH levels, the parathyroids glands did not respond appropriately to hypocalcemia. Promberger et al studied a case of eight patients with hypocalcemia with normal PTH following thyroidectomy. All these patients had normal PTH levels during post-op period, but persistently low and ionized calcium levels 12 months after surgery. This suggests during persistent hypocalcemia normal parathyroid levels may indicate an inadequate PTH response. In our case, developing hypocalcemia long after surgery and relation to COVID-19 infection may suggest autoimmune phenomenon as developing PTH-antibodies or receptor malfunction, theory yet to be investigated. In cases of severe symptomatic hypocalcemia requiring significant amount of calcium supplement PTH analogs are very effective treatment. Presentation: Saturday, June 17, 2023

A novel audio-visual based beamformer using a 360° camera and planar microphone array system

Beamforming systems that rely only on microphone arrays may suffer from poor performance in complex acoustic environments with multiple sources and room reverberation. To overcome this limitation, we propose a novel method that combines a planar microphone array and a 360° camera to steer the beamformer. The camera provides visual information about the location and orientation of sound sources, which can be used to adjust the beamformer parameters. We will present results that compare the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the proposed method with a conventional beamforming microphone-based method in a simulated room with different source positions, orientations, and noise levels to investigate the benefit of visual information for beamforming in different environments. The proposed method has the potential to improve the performance of beamforming systems in applications such as speech enhancement, speech recognition, and speaker localization.

Discussions About Goals of Care and Advance Care Planning Among Adolescents and Young Adults With Cancer Approaching the End of Life.

Adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer receive high rates of medically intensive measures at the end of life. This study aimed to characterize the prevalence and timing of conversations about goals of care and advance care planning among AYAs at the end of life as one potential influence on care received. This was a review of electronic health data and medical records for 1,929 AYAs age 12-39 years who died after receiving care at one of three sites between 2003 and 2019, including documented conversations about goals of care and advance care planning, and care received. A majority of AYAs were female (54%) and White (61%); 12% were Asian, 8% Black, and 27% Hispanic. Most patients had documented discussions about prognosis (86%), goals of care (83%), palliative care (79%), hospice (79%), and preferred location of death (64%). When last documented goals of care were evaluated, 69% of patients wanted care focused on palliation; however, 29% of those with palliative goals spent time in the intensive care unit (ICU) in the last month of life, and 32% had multiple emergency room (ER) visits. When goals-of-care discussions happened earlier, >30 days before death, AYAs were less likely to receive chemotherapy in the last 14 days of life (P = .001), ICU care (P < .001), ER visits (P < .001), and hospitalizations in the last month (P < .001). High rates of medically intensive measures among AYAs near the end of life do not appear to be the result of a lack of discussions about goals of care and advance care planning. Although some interventions may be used to support palliative goals, earlier discussions have potential to reduce late-life intensive measures.

Operational and engineering experiences of gas injection to JET for TT and DT operational campaigns

Following the first deuterium–tritium experiment (DTE1) at UKAEA, modifications were investigated to the Joint European Torus’ (JET) gas introduction (GI) systems to increase the gas feed capabilities of the JET facility to better support future campaigns. The GI systems comprise the GI and gas distribution system in the Active Gas Handling System (AGHS), and neutral beam injection and the tritium injection modules on the torus. During DTE1 about 100 g of tritium was supplied from AGHS to JET users. During the second deuterium–tritium experiment (DTE2) and the tritium–tritium experiment (TT) just over 373 g and 630 g of tritium respectively was supplied to JET users for the campaigns. The tritium and deuterium gas supply systems of the fuel cycle can be underestimated as having fewer technical or scientific challenges based on the mechanical simplicity of equipment that they consist of. However, operational experience has shown these systems have the potential to bottleneck a campaign programme. This publication outlines the upgrade requirements foreseen, following DTE1, for operations in the DTE2 and TT campaigns, how these changes impacted the gas supply operations, and where limitations were encountered. The areas discussed include—challenges of upgrading and maintaining equipment designed for a short operating life; the impact of having differences between user requirements and gas supply capabilities; the logistics of gas supply involving multiple control room locations; communication routes between gas supply systems and teams; and safely controlling and tracking tritium gas movements. The latest JET tritium campaigns highlighted a number of challenges for future facilities looking to operate in both batch and continuous gas injection operational modes. The recommendations from this publication intend to provide a starting point for how to address these challenges and optimise gas supply in support of future fusion programmes. This work has been carried out within the framework of the contract for the operation of the JET Facilities and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.

Intensive care unit sinks are persistently colonized with multidrug resistant bacteria and mobilizable, resistance-conferring plasmids.

Contamination of hospital sinks with microbial pathogens presents a serious potential threat to patients, but our understanding of sink colonization dynamics is largely based on infection outbreaks. Here, we investigate the colonization patterns of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in intensive care unit sinks and water from two hospitals in the USA and Pakistan collected over 27 months of prospective sampling. Using culture-based methods, we recovered 822 bacterial isolates representing 104 unique species and genomospecies. Genomic analyses revealed long-term colonization by Pseudomonas spp. and Serratia marcescens strains across multiple rooms. Nanopore sequencing uncovered examples of long-term persistence of resistance-conferring plasmids in unrelated hosts. These data indicate that antibiotic resistance (AR) in Pseudomonas spp. is maintained both by strain colonization and horizontal gene transfer (HGT), while HGT maintains AR within Acinetobacter spp. and Enterobacterales, independent of colonization. These results emphasize the importance of proactive, genomic-focused surveillance of built environments to mitigate MDRO spread. IMPORTANCE Hospital sinks are frequently linked to outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Here, we used whole-genome sequencing to track the long-term colonization patterns in intensive care unit (ICU) sinks and water from two hospitals in the USA and Pakistan collected over 27 months of prospective sampling. We analyzed 822 bacterial genomes, representing over 100 different species. We identified long-term contamination by opportunistic pathogens, as well as transient appearance of other common pathogens. We found that bacteria recovered from the ICU had more antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in their genomes compared to matched community spaces. We also found that many of these ARGs are harbored on mobilizable plasmids, which were found shared in the genomes of unrelated bacteria. Overall, this study provides an in-depth view of contamination patterns for common nosocomial pathogens and identifies specific targets for surveillance.

Occupant-oriented demand response with multi-zone thermal building control

In future energy systems with high shares of renewable energy sources, the electricity demand of buildings has to react to the fluctuating electricity generation in view of stability. As buildings consume one-third of global energy and almost half of this energy accounts for Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, HVAC are suitable for shifting their electricity consumption in time. To this end, intelligent control strategies are necessary as the conventional control of HVAC is not optimized for the actual demand of occupants and the current situation in the electricity grid. In this paper, we present the novel multi-zone controller Price Storage Control (PSC) that not only considers room-individual Occupants’ Thermal Satisfaction (OTS), but also the available energy storage, and energy prices. The main feature of PSC is that it does not need a building model or forecasts of future demands to derive the control actions for multiple rooms in a building. For comparison, we use an ideal, error-free Model Predictive Control (MPC), a heuristic control approach from the literature (PC), and a conventional hysteresis-based two-point control as upper and lower benchmarks. We evaluate the four controllers in a multi-zone environment for heating a building in winter and consider two different scenarios that differ in how much the permitted temperatures vary. In addition, we compare the impact of model parameters with high and low thermal capacitance. The results show that PSC strongly outperforms the conventional control approach and PC in both scenarios and for both parameters concerning the electricity costs and OTS. For high capacitance, it leads to 22% costs reduction while the ideal MPC achieves cost reductions of more than 39%. Considering that PSC does not need any building model or forecast, as opposed to MPC, the results support the suitability of our developed control strategy for controlling HVAC systems in future energy systems.

The structural and spatial design of German intensive care units from the point of view of infection control measures : Survey among ICU-KISS participants

Intensive care unit (ICU) structural and spatial design may play arole in infection prevention and control. Between 09/2021 and 11/2021 we performed an online survey among ICUs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A total of 597 (40%) of the invited ICUs answered the survey; 20% of the ICUs were built before 1990. The median number of single rooms with interquartile range is 4(IQR 2-6). The median total room number is 8(IQR 6-12). The median room size is 19(IQR 16-22) m2 for single rooms and 31(26-37.5) m2 for multiple bed rooms. Furthermore, 80% of ICUs have sinks and 86.4% have heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) systems in patient rooms. 54.6% of ICUs must store materials outside of storage rooms due to lack of space and only 33.5% have aroom dedicated to disinfection and cleaning of used medical devices. Comparing ICUs built before 1990 and after 2011 we could show aslightly increase of single rooms (3[IQR 2-5] before 1990vs. 5[IQR 2-8] after 2011; p < 0.001). Alarge proportion of German ICUs do not meet the requirements of German professional societies regarding the number of single rooms and size of the patient rooms. Many ICUs lack storage space and other functional rooms. There is an urgent need to support the construction and renovation of intensive care units in Germany with adequate funding.

Aeromonas nosocomial cluster: Investigation review of possible modes of transmission

Background:Aeromonas is a gram-negative rod known to be present in water, sewage and soil which may cause infections especially in immunocompromised hosts. Cases of Aeromonas gastroenteritis have been associated with warmer weather. In total, 3 patients with extensively drug resistant (XDR) Aeromonas were identified at our facility between August and September 2022 on 2 intensive care units (ICUs). Our infection prevention, microbiology, and facility teams investigated these cases to determine whether a common source could be the mode of transmission. Methods: To first determine whether patients’ Aeromonas specimens were related, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of the clinical isolates from 3 patients was performed using the Illumina DNA Prep Kit and Illumina MiSeq. Sequencing analysis was performed using CLC Genomics Workbench for de novo assembly, single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) calling, and tree generation, Geneious Prime for reference-based assembly, annotation, and quality assessment, KmerFinder for reference identification, and the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database for resistance gene detection via protein homology. Chart review revealed that patients occupied multiple rooms between 2 ICUs (Fig. 1). Because water is a known source of Aeromonas, facility records were reviewed for water intrusion events. This analysis identified several cases in the affected patient and surrounding rooms. Sinks and faucets from 10 rooms were swabbed followed by direct plating on blood, MacConkey agar, and Aeromonas-selective cefsulodin-Irgasan-novobiocin (CIN) agar plates. Lastly, the city temperatures before and after positive cases were reviewed to identify whether any correlation could be shown between temperature and timing of infection. Results: WGS analysis revealed that the 3 Aeromonas isolates (all identified as A. hydrophila) were not directly related (minimum distance, 934 SNPs) and harbored between 4 and 19 unique antimicrobial resistance genes, including co-occurring carbapenemases VIM-2 and KPC-3 in 1 isolate and OXA-232 in another. Of the 20 environmental samples, few gram-negative nonfermenting bacteria and no Aeromonas isolates were detected (Fig. 1). Elevated city did loosely proceed patient cases of Aeromonas, suggesting a possible role of higher temperature, which may have promoted the growth of Aeromonas during the periods of the 3 cases and thus may contribute to the nosocomial infections (Fig. 2). Conclusions: Although our investigation did not reveal a definitive cause for the Aeromonas cases, it did show the importance prompt identification and investigation can have on mitigating the spread of a cluster. Our facility has not identified any additional nosocomial cases. Monitoring water intrusion events and plans for remediation continue to be a priority.Disclosures: None

COPD Patients' Behaviour When Involved in the Choice of Inhaler Device.

Inhaler therapy plays a crucial role in controlling respiratory symptoms in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Incorrect or partially correct use of inhaler devices causes many chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients to continue to have respiratory symptoms due to poor drug deposition in the airways as a result of poor inhaler technique, leading to increased healthcare costs due to exacerbations and multiple emergency room presentations. Choosing the right inhaler device for each individual patient is a bigger challenge for doctors and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. The type of inhaler device and the correct inhaler technique depends on the control of symptoms in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Physicians treating patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) play a central role in educating patients about the correct use of inhalation devices. The steps for the correct use of inhalation devices should be taught to patients by doctors in the presence of the family so that if the patient has difficulties handling the device correctly, the family can support them. Our analysis included 200 subjects divided into two groups-recommended group (RG) and chosen group (CG)-and aimed primarily to identify the behaviour of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients when faced with deciding which type of inhaler device is most suitable for them. The two groups were monitored three times during the 12-month follow-up period. Monitoring required the physical presence of the patient at the investigating physician's office. The study included patients who were smokers, ex-smokers, and/or with significant exposure to occupational pollutants, aged over 40 years diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), risk group B and C according to the GOLD guideline staging, and on inhaled ICS+LABA treatment, although they had an indication for LAMA+LABA dual bronchodilation treatment. Patients presented for consultation on their own initiative for residual respiratory symptoms under background treatment with ICS+LABA. The investigating pulmonologist who offered consultations to all scheduled patients, on the occasion of the consultation, also checked the inclusion and exclusion criteria. If the patient did not meet the study entry criteria, they were assessed and received the appropriate treatment, and if the study entry criteria were met, the patient signed the consent and followed the steps recommended by the investigating pulmonologist. As a result, patient entry into the study was randomised 1:1, meaning that the first patient was recommended the inhaler device by the doctor and the next patient entered into the study was left to decide for themselves which type of device was most suitable for them. In both groups, the percentage of patients who had a different choice of inhaler device from that of their doctor was statistically significant. Compliance to treatment at T12 was found to be low, but compared to results previously published on compliance, in our analysis, compliance was higher and the only reasons identified as responsible for the better results were related to the selection of the target groups and the regular assessments, where, in addition to reviewing the inhaler technique, patients were encouraged to continue treatment, thus creating a strong bond between patient and doctor. Our analysis revealed that empowering patients by involving them in the inhaler selection process increases adherence to inhaler treatment, reduces the number of mistakes in inhaler use of the inhaler device, and implicitly the number of exacerbations.

Case study of construction issues affecting speech privacy in legal offices

During the design phase of a project, theoretical calculations for how a space will acoustically perform are often used. However, improper construction practices and other factors such as incompatible manufacturer combinations can lead to large discrepancies between theoretical performance and field-tested performance. The project in question consisted of a renovation of an existing legal office suite with a waffle ceiling and wide window spans. The primary acoustical concern was sound isolation from office to office and from private offices to open office space. A confidential level of speech privacy was the design goal as the suite contained multiple legal consultation rooms. Existing exterior glazings spanned the length of multiple offices, so an acoustical mullion was specified. Full perimeter door seals and automatic door bottoms were also installed. This paper details how the measured performance of this suite of offices was significantly lower than the designed Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating due to issues with the acoustic mullion installation as well as different door seal, door frame, and door manufacturer incompatibilities.

An Outer Approximation Method for Scheduling Elective Surgeries with Sequence Dependent Setup Times to Multiple Operating Rooms

In this paper, operating room planning and scheduling problems have been studied. In operating room planning, the allocation of patients to operating rooms and their sequencing are critical in determining the performance of operating rooms. In this paper, three surgery scheduling decisions are considered, including the number of operating rooms to open, the allocation of surgeries to operating rooms, and the sequencing of surgeries in allocated operating rooms. All the surgeries under consideration are elective, and surgery durations are considered deterministic. Further, it is considered that the surgeries have different specialties, and each operating room can accommodate a particular specialty of surgeries, i.e., heterogeneous operating rooms are considered in the current study. Before performing a surgery, setup time is required for operating room turnover and sterilization, and it is considered sequence dependent. A mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is developed to minimize the overtime costs of operating rooms for allocation and surgery sequencing with sequence dependent setup times. An outer approximation (OA) method is proposed to solve the problem near optimally. Experiments are conducted to compare the performance of the proposed OA method with the standard mixed integer nonlinear programming model. Computational results show the efficiency of the proposed OA method. Later, a case data from a case hospital is collected and a case study is solved.

Web-Based Multistate Disaster Rehearsal of Concepts Exercises

Introduction:The Mountain Plains Regional Disaster Health Response System (Mountain Plains RDHRS) works to build disaster capacity across US Federal Region VIII, a rural western six-state region. It conducts an annual rehearsal of concepts and exercises to identify gaps and inform policy development. In 2022, a multi-state exercise was conducted involving responders from individual hospitals coordinating with Healthcare Coalitions and State Public Health. These responses rolled up to a multi-state emergency operations center overseen by the Mountain Plains RDHRS.Method:A fictitious mass multi-state botulism incident generated a pediatric surge across the region. Individual patient cards with demographic information were given to a set of hospitals in participating states. The communication pathways within states were identified. Communication between local and regional pediatric transfer centers were assessed. Overall situational awareness was tracked.The exercise format was incident occurrence and notifications by normal channels and a Zoom conference call held on day one. Situational awareness and patient movement occurred in multiple Zoom rooms on day two. An after-exercise review occurred by Zoom on day three including all participants from the exercise.Results:There was generally good information flow within states, but minimal information exchange across states There was poor regional situational awareness with a lack of complete patient lists and transfers. The Mountain Plains RDHRS planned to exceed the hospital’s patient capacities with a large number of pediatric patients to practice patient movement across state lines. Instead the hospitals showed a surprising willingness to keep and manage critical pediatric patients instead of transferring to tertiary care pediatric centers. This was identified as a consequence of the COVID-19 experience.Conclusion:Web-based exercises vertically spanning responses from individual hospitals to multi-state regional entities are feasible. This exercise demonstrated multiple gaps in regional disaster response.

Personalized federated learning on NLOS acoustic signal classification

AbstractTo identify non‐line‐of‐sight, acoustics‐based indoor positioning needs to collect audio recordings of sound fields in multiple rooms and upload them to the central server for training. However, if the transmission process or the server‐side suffers from malicious attacks, private data may be leaked. To address both training difficulties and privacy issues simultaneously, a novel model for personalized federated learning is proposed. This model incorporates user frequency and room data capacity while also taking into account significant differences in positioning data and room layout. The proposed model can accurately identify differences between various room data during aggregation on the server‐side. By collecting data in actual indoor environments and comparing it with existing algorithms, the proposed method achieved 90% accuracy in verifying data for unfamiliar rooms.

Self-Organizing Hydraulic Textiles for Multiple Room Use

Self-Organizing Hydraulic Textiles for Multiple Room Use

1415 NOVEL APPROACHES TO POST DISCHARGE CARE. REMOTE HEALTHCARE MONITORING SYSTEMS FOLLOWING TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY IN OLDER ADULTS

Abstract Introduction Major trauma including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is an increasingly common cause of hospitalisation in older adults (OAs). We studied post-discharge recovery from TBI using a remote healthcare monitoring system that captures data on activity and sleep. We aim to assess the feasibility and acceptability of this technology to monitor recovery at home following a significant acute health event in OAs. Methods We installed Minder, a remote healthcare monitoring system, in recently discharged patients &amp;gt;60 years with moderate-severe TBI. We present descriptive analyses of post-discharge recovery for two males, corroborating data from Minder against verified activities and events. We recorded semi-structured interviews assessing acceptability. Both participants have similar household set-up, multimorbidity profiles and clinical frailty scores; however, one participant has prior cognitive impairment (PAT1), and one does not (PAT2). Results We present 10 weeks of sleep and activity data from Minder and feedback from interviews. Data observed from PAT1 revealed habitual patterns of activity and sleep. These remained stable, despite discrete clinical events. Conversely, PAT2's data revealed irregular sleep patterns that became increasingly fragmented. Activity was detected in multiple rooms throughout the house at night, consistent with carer reports of night-time wandering. Increased overnight activity coincided with multiple falls, prompting increased care provision. Initial feedback from interviews was the technology helped participants and those involved in their care feel supported. Conclusions As pressure on services mounts, novel approaches to post-discharge care are of increasing importance. Remote healthcare monitoring can provide high temporal resolution data offering ‘real world’ insights into the effects of significant health events in OAs. Our provisional results support our hypothesis that use of this technology is feasible and acceptable for frail, multimorbid participants and highlights the substantial potential of this technology to help clinicians improve community-based care and more effectively monitor interventions and chronic conditions.

"There Are Just Too Many Rooms Here!" Perception of Clients and Health Care Workers on the Implementation of Test and Treat Strategy at Area 25 Health Center in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Background: Malawi adopted World Health Organisation test-and-treat policy in 2016. The policy initiates early antiretroviral treatment to all clients diagnosed with HIV, irrespective of their CD4 count. However, some facilities record low linkage following the strategy. Perceptions of clients and health care workers on the implementation of test-and-treat strategy were explored in Malawi. Methods: A descriptive qualitative approach was conducted in which 21 in-depth interviews, 9 key informant interviews, and 15 non-participatory observations were conducted. Data were analyzed following thematic approach. Results: Most participants had positive perceptions of the test-and-treat strategy. However, negative perceptions stemmed from the fragmented structure of the facility with multiple rooms in which the client navigates through as well as limited privacy. Conclusion: Optimal implementation of the test-and-treat strategy will need to strengthen privacy and minimize unintended disclosure that is inherent in the organization of services.

SUPPORTING AGING IN PLACE WITH MOBILITY IMPAIRMENTS THROUGH ANNOTATED TELEPRESENCE TECHNOLOGY

Abstract Most smarthome and smartphone technologies are designed with younger adults in mind, even though many older adults can benefit greatly from their use. Through our examination of how to make these technologies more accessible to adults aging in place with mobility impairments, we have found remote troubleshooting to be a possible solution to many problems. However, we have found most current teleconferencing solutions to be lacking in the limited perspectives of a single webcam, as well as from a lack of ability to point out specific items and locations within a camera view. As such, Our team developed a prototype system that used multiple desk space and room space views, as well as on screen annotations, to facilitate remote troubleshooting and social interactions through a teleconferencing service. This prototype was then evaluated with adults aging in place with mobility impairments, as well as accessibility experts, in order to see what parts of the system could be utilized for troubleshooting, as well as to see where the system was lacking. The studies tested the system’s ability to be used for troubleshooting, as well as their uses in games and social interactions. We have gathered positive feedback for these prototypes in the areas of troubleshooting, socialization, games, and for use in other accessibility studies. From these results, we have begun development of a mobile deployment kit for use of our teleconferencing solution in other accessibility studies.

Money and a Room of One’s Own

Abstract Inhabitants of expansive, densely populated convents in colonial Latin America often enjoyed surprisingly luxurious, privately owned accommodations. Although known as cells (celdas), these dwellings consisted of multiple rooms occupied by nuns, their female relatives, servants, slaves, and young girls sent to the convents for their educations. Kathryn Santner takes the convent of Santa Catalina de Sena in Arequipa, Peru, as a case study in Money and a Room of One’s Own: Convent Cells and Self-Fashioning in Colonial Peru, examining two spaces within convent cells in particular: the estrado (women’s sitting room) and the oratory. These spaces reveal the role of convent cells in individual nuns’ self-fashioning within the cloister as well as the variety of social practices that took place within the multigenerational, multiethnic households of the colonial celda.

Data-driven local average room transfer function estimation for multi-point equalization.

Multi-point room equalization (EQ) aims to achieve a desired sound quality within a wider listening area than single-point EQ. However, multi-point EQ necessitates the measurement of multiple room impulse responses at a listener position, which may be a laborious task for an end-user. This article presents a data-driven method that estimates a spatially averaged room transfer function (RTF) from a single-point RTF in the low-frequency region. A deep neural network (DNN) is trained using only simulated RTFs and tested with both simulated and measured RTFs. It is demonstrated that the DNN learns a spatial smoothing operation: notches across the spectrum are smoothed out while the peaks of the single-point RTF are preserved. An EQ framework based on a finite impulse response filter is used to evaluate the room EQ performance. The results show that while not fully reaching the level of multi-point EQ performance, the proposed data-driven local average RTF estimation method generally brings improvement over single-point EQ.

Aspect-based sentiment analysis for hotel reviews using an improved model of long short-term memory

Advances in information technology have given rise to online hotel reservation options. The user review feature is an important factor during the online booking of hotels. Generally, most online hotel booking service providers provide review and rating features for assessing hotels. However, not all service providers provide rating features or recap reviews for every aspect of the hotel services offered. Therefore, we propose a method to summarise reviews based on multiple aspects, including food, room, service, and location. This method uses long short-term memory (LSTM), together with hidden layers and automation of the optimal number of hidden neurons. The F1-measure value of 75.28% for the best model was based on the fact that (i) the size of the first hidden layer is 1,200 neurons with the tanh activation function, and (ii) the size of the second hidden layer is 600 neurons with the ReLU activation function. The proposed model outperforms the baseline model (also known as standard LSTM) by 10.16%. It is anticipated that the model developed through this study can be accessed by users of online hotel booking services to acquire a review recap on more specific aspects of services offered by hotels