University Of Minnesota-Duluth Research Articles

Contactless fall detection with radio frequency sensors for the aging population

AbstractBackgroundFalls remain a primary concern for People with Dementia (PwD) living in long‐term care facilities (LTCFs) despite many prevention and intervention methods that have tried. Current fall detection monitoring systems use wearable or vision‐based sensors. The problem is research has shown that many seniors will not consistently wear a device on their body or allow cameras in their living space because of privacy concerns that severely limit the technology user acceptance. The current standard of care is self‐report or eyewitness and therefore fall events are often undetected and underreported due to human error. Hence, we are proposing a solution to address this unmet need with a novel fall management system engineered with radio frequency (RF) sensors that do not require an individual to wear or interact with a device.MethodSix healthy participants simulated three types of falls, medial and lateral, anterior and posterior, and collapse in the Dementia and Elderly Care Robotics and Sensing (DECRS) Lab, University of Minnesota Duluth. The sensor was installed in the lab as it would be in the resident room of an LCTF. The simulated room included a bed, chair, and mattress on the floor to protect the participants.ResultOur study found that the contactless fall detection and activity system identified falls at overall sensitivity rate of 89% with a specificity of 100% in 748 tests and activity was identified at 90%. Our system identified “medial and lateral” falls with a 92% sensitivity, “anterior and posterior” falls with a 91% sensitivity, and “collapse” falls with a 75% sensitivity.ConclusionContactless sensing holds tremendous potential for monitoring individuals living with AD/ADRD and the elderly population for aging in place. LTCFs that are short staffed could benefit by utilizing tools that augment the capabilities of nurses with a continuous collection of patient‐generated health data (PGHD) and a notification system that is integrated with existing workflows and only send alerts for potential events that would require immediate attention.

Contactless fall detection with radio frequency sensors for the aging population

AbstractBackgroundFalls remain a primary concern for People with Dementia (PwD) living in long‐term care facilities (LTCFs) despite many prevention and intervention methods that have tried. Current fall detection monitoring systems use wearable or vision‐based sensors. The problem is research has shown that many seniors will not consistently wear a device on their body or allow cameras in their living space because of privacy concerns that severely limit the technology user acceptance. The current standard of care is self‐report or eyewitness and therefore fall events are often undetected and underreported due to human error. Hence, we are proposing a solution to address this unmet need with a novel fall management system engineered with radio frequency (RF) sensors that do not require an individual to wear or interact with a device.MethodSix healthy participants simulated three types of falls, medial and lateral, anterior and posterior, and collapse in the Dementia and Elderly Care Robotics and Sensing (DECRS) Lab, University of Minnesota Duluth. The sensor was installed in the lab as it would be in the resident room of an LCTF. The simulated room included a bed, chair, and mattress on the floor to protect the participants.ResultOur study found that the contactless fall detection and activity system identified falls at overall sensitivity rate of 89% with a specificity of 100% in 748 tests and activity was identified at 90%. Our system identified “medial and lateral” falls with a 92% sensitivity, “anterior and posterior” falls with a 91% sensitivity, and “collapse” falls with a 75% sensitivity.ConclusionContactless sensing holds tremendous potential for monitoring individuals living with AD/ADRD and the elderly population for aging in place. LTCFs that are short staffed could benefit by utilizing tools that augment the capabilities of nurses with a continuous collection of patient‐generated health data (PGHD) and a notification system that is integrated with existing workflows and only send alerts for potential events that would require immediate attention.

Bridging Two Continents: Using Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) to Explore Healthcare Services

Intercultural competence is becoming necessary in all structures of life as our diversity grows and globalization continues to grow. Even in the field of business intercultural learning is equally vital domestically and internationally (Bennett, J. M. 2008). Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is a methodology in teaching and learning that continues to grow in use and can aid in filling this intercultural gap. The methodological COIL approach aids to building cultural competency and partnerships in the higher education community. Throughout this collaborative manuscript between three instructors at two universities, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) in the United Kingdom and University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) in the United States, discussions will be around the pedagogy of carrying out a COIL module and how COIL was completed in the Fall semester of 2021. Over the course of four weeks, NTU and UMD students worked together to complete key learning objectives of healthcare systems, alternative care, and COVID-19 response in the United Kingdom and the United States. NTU and UMD used technology such as Google My Maps, video recording presentations, and interview questions to further the learning around the key objectives. NTU and UMD each had separate final projects and grading rubrics for final grading and evaluation. Pre-and post-assessment data was collected to better understand student learning outcomes including, cultural learning and cross-cultural ambivalence within the COIL unit. The assessments also provided an overview of future considerations for the collaboration between future instructors in the COIL unit based on student feedback.

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Charles J. Fountaine, Ph.D., FACSM,is a professor and the program coordinator of the Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences major at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Dr. Fountaine teaches courses in research methods and the science of resistance training. He was an associate editor for the 11th edition of ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription.

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Charles J. Fountaine, Ph.D., FACSM,is a professor and the program coordinator of the Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences major at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Dr. Fountaine teaches courses in research methods and the science of resistance training. He was an associate editor for the 11th edition of ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription.

A Healthcare Systems Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Section between the University of Minnesota Duluth and Nottingham Trent University

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). COIL is a great way to aid students to assimilate towards different cultures, socioeconomic environments, and meet peers from around the world. COIL provides an opportunity for students to collaborate with other students and experts in their field of study. In this paper, we will show you one of our COIL projects that were developed and implemented through a course at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) and Nottingham Trent University in Fall 2020. We will discuss what COIL is all about and some challenges that may be faced when implementing a COIL section. We will discuss our COIL section, including the technology used, and what was covered during our sections related to healthcare systems and alternative care. We will provide information from the course, and the pre-assessment and post-assessment results related to empathy, cultural geography, and cultural awareness. Finally, we will wrap up with information related to challenges that you may face as a COIL instructor partnered with a university in another country. The goal is to provide some detailed, beneficial information for people who are implementing COIL, in the hopes that you can form relationships and global opportunities without having to leave your home.

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Charles J. Fountaine, Ph.D., FACSM,is a professor and the program coordinator of the Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences major at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Dr. Fountaine teaches courses in research methods and the science of resistance training. He was an associate editor for the 11th edition of ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription.

Technical practices used by information literacy and media information literacy services to enable academic libraries to handle the COVID-19 pandemic

This study analyses the techniques and procedures that were developed and the changes that took place in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), both in Mexico, and the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), in the United States of America. To face the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, librarians in these institutions improved their Information Literacy (IL) and Media Information Literacy (MIL) programmes. Design / methodology / approach: This study has a mixed methodology with a comparative analysis. For this purpose, data shows the universities’ contexts: the communities of students, teachers, researchers, and librarians, and the e-learning strategies of IL and MIL programmes. Findings: As part of the results of the crowdsourcing collaboration between the UMD, UNAM and BUAP, the study shows the different online learning communities and their innovations. Originality: Although there is theoretical knowledge about IL and MIL in Mexican universities and University of Minnesota Duluth, the e-learning strategies used by their librarians in this document sought to provide technical solutions and other options for a virtual work scheme that responded to the specific problems presented by COVID-19. In this case, the framework for creating online library services was designed by their librarians for their communities in the context of the current crisis, even when online services had already been established for more than ten years. Research limitations / implications: The technological infrastructure, the professionalisation of the library staff and a lack of knowledge of the new virtual teaching-learning needs. Practical implications: Analysis of tools for virtual teaching-learning services, description of strategies used by library staff, results and feedback. Social implications: IL and MIL strategies created in a variety of contexts can be enhanced by library collaboration in a fully virtual setting. Libraries with better technological infrastructure play a decisive role.

Preface

Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Editors of the Proceedings Dr.G. Geetha, Advanced Computing Research Society, Chennai, India geetha@advancedcomputingresearchsociety.org Dr. Vincenzo Piuri, University of Milan, Italy vincenzo.piuri@unimi.it Dr. Debao Zhou, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA dzhou@d.umn.edu Preface We are honoured and glad to welcome you at the Second International Conference on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence 2021 organized by Advanced Computing Research Society on 29th and 30th November 2021. Initially, this conference was planned to be held in Chennai. Later on, due to the covid-19 pandemic situation and travel restrictions imposed by various Governments, the options available was to either postpone, cancel or conduct in virtual mode. Postponement was too unsure, since it was not clear when normalcy will be restored, conducive for physical conference. Cancellation of the conference will upset and disappoint people who have contributed to the conference. Hence the committee decided to go for online mode on the same dates as planned earlier. The organizers hosted the conference from Chennai, India. Keynote Speakers were : Dr. Jagannathan Sarangapani Rutledge Emerson Distinguished Professor and NSF I/UCRC Site Director Director, Embedded Control Systems and Networking Laboratory Missouri University Of Science And Technology, USA Dr. Ashwin Ashok Department of Computer Science Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia, USA Dr. Ramamohanarao Kothagiri Former Professor, Head of the Department and Research Director School of School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Australia This conference and these proceedings are a unique opportunity for sharing ideas and achievements, discoveries and innovation for growing together our knowledge and contribute to expand the knowledge of humanity. The conference covers topics on robotics, artificial intelligence, computational science, mathematical physics and electronics and devices. We received 48 papers and after peer review 22 papers were accepted and presented in this conference. The papers were evaluated on the basis of completeness, relevance to the conference, originality, sufficiently novel, technical quality, structure and presentation of the paper and adequate references to previous work. Every paper was reviewed by at least 2 reviewers and the review comments were shared with the authors for incorporating the suggestions and comments. The conference had participation from various countries – India, Hongkong, Australia, Romania, United Arab Emirates, United States of America and Peru. Total number of participants were 48. On the day of the conference, all the presenters were able to present online and the sessions were held smoothly as per the schedule. 22 papers were presented in 3 sessions. Each presenter was given 15 minutes for presentation, followed by question-and-answer session. A networking session was also arranged, which enabled the participants to interact, learn and network with each other. We used “Google Meet” as conference platform. We are thankful to the IOP Journal of Physics : Conference Series and its editor for accepting our proposal, for providing valuable guidance and for publishing this conference proceedings. We also thank the Morressier Conference submission and review management for providing software services which enabled timely peer review. We thank all the Committee members for their valuable inputs and time, for making this conference very successful. We thank all the authors and presenters for disseminating their research outcomes through this conference. We appreciate each and everyone who have made this conference meaningful. List of Committees, Technical Program Committee, Budget and Finance Committee are available in this Pdf.

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Charles Fountaine, Ph.D., FACSM, is a professor and the program coordinator of the Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences major at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Dr. Fountaine teaches courses in research methods and the science of resistance training. He was an associate editor for the 11th edition of ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription.

Establishment of Regional Phytoremediation Buffer Systems for Ecological Restoration in the Great Lakes Basin, USA. II. New Clones Show Exceptional Promise

Poplar tree improvement strategies are needed to enhance ecosystem services’ provisioning and achieve phytoremediation objectives. We evaluated the establishment potential of new poplar clones developed at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) from sixteen phytoremediation buffer systems (phyto buffers) (buffer groups: 2017 × 6; 2018 × 5; 2019 × 5) throughout the Lake Superior and Lake Michigan watersheds. We divided clones into Experimental (testing stage genotypes) and Common (commercial and/or research genotypes) clone groups and compared them with each other and each NRRI clone (NRRI group) at the phyto buffers. We tested for differences in clone groups, phyto buffers, and their interactions for survival, health, height, diameter, and volume from ages one to four years. First-year survival was 97.1%, with 95.5%, 96.2%, and 99.6% for the 2017, 2018, and 2019 buffer groups, respectively. All trees had optimal health. Fourth-year mean annual increment of 2017 buffer group trees ranged from 2.66 ± 0.18 to 3.65 ± 0.17 Mg ha−1 yr−1. NRRI clones ‘99038022’ and ‘9732-31’ exhibited exceptional survival and growth across eleven and ten phyto buffers, respectively, for all years. These approaches advance poplar tree improvement efforts throughout the region, continent, and world, with methods informing clonal selection for multiple end-uses, including phytotechnologies.

Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence

PrefaceEditors of the Proceedings:Dr.G.GeethaPresident and CEOAdvanced Computing Research SocietyChennai, Tamilnadu,IndiaEmail – geetha@advancedcomputingresearchsociety.orgDr.Debao ZhouProfessor,University of Minnesota Duluth,Minnesota 55812United States of AmericaEmail - dzhou@d.umn.eduDr.Vincenzo PiuriProfessorUniversity of MilanItalyEmail - vincenzo.piuri@unimi.itWe are honoured and glad to welcome you at the International Conference on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence organised by Advanced Computing Research Society, India. Sharing advanced knowledge on theory, technology, methodology, and applications of robotics and artificial intelligence is essential since they are the basis of innovation in an increasing number of applications areas, from services to e-commerce, from e-government to smart cities, from industry manufacturing to aerospace, from biomedical applications to assisted living, from entertainment to consumer electronics, and many more. They are the foundations on which we can build new products, services, and solutions.List of Committees are available in this pdf.

Larry C. Thompson

Larry C. Thompson, 85, died Sept. 15 in Scarborough, Maine. “Larry was an esteemed professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) for 43 years. He was pivotal in creating the university’s master of science degree program in chemistry. He served for 13 years as the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry head. He collaborated on and published research papers with international lanthanide researchers, and he was widely known as an expert in the coordination chemistry and spectroscopy of rare-earth elements. A generous mentor, Larry helped countless students become scientists, doctors, and engineers.”—Family of Larry C. Thompson Most recent title: Emeritus professor of chemistry, University of Minnesota Duluth Education: BS, chemistry, Willamette University, 1957; PhD, inorganic chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1960 Survivors: Wife, Hongming Wang; daughters, Martha Thompson and Whitney Crettol; stepdaughter, Jin Valaperta; eight grandchildren To recognize your late loved one or colleague, submit obituary information at cenm.ag/obits

Creative Economy Teaching and Learning–A Collaborative Online International Learning Case

Culture plays a central role in the creative economy, not only in terms of developing creative products and services but also in terms of shaping the processes by which products are crafted. Among various pedagogical approaches for the development of creative products, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) emerges as a promising vehicle. Educators can leverage audio, visual, and written communications technologies to connect learners from geographically distant cultures and place culture at the center of the creative product development processes. The University of Minnesota Duluth’s introductory class on cultural entrepreneurship, CUE 1001, hosted a semester-long COIL project with Ocean University of China’s Cultural Industries Management program to facilitate such innovation in cross-cultural teams. An ex-post evaluation of the project suggests that learners can appreciate the overall significance of culture when conceptualizing creative services and products. They develop an intercultural mindset and acquire the tools to work effectively in cross-cultural settings. Institutions of higher education can leverage COIL in a variety of domains, while studies comparing traditional and COIL-based approaches can further add to the body of knowledge regarding intercultural awareness and the internationalization of learning in higher education.

Announcements

Announcements

Rethinking the teaching of grammar from the perspective of corpus linguistics

Despite calls from many composition and rhetoric scholars for instructors of writing to stop teaching prescriptive grammar, a vast number of handbooks intended for college writing classes encourage this tradition. For example, Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual has a section on grammar with instructions for students on how to write appropriately. While Hacker may not intend for her instructions to be taken as dictums, they often are, and much time is spent in many classrooms teaching students these rules of grammar. This article uses the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) to support the calls from composition and rhetoric scholars that prescriptive instruction in grammar is more a hindrance to writing instruction than a benefit. Focusing on a few specifics from frequently used grammar handbooks and illustrating how big data shows the “rules” are incorrect at best, this article argues that, just as scholars of English have begun using big data to better understand literary history, scholars of rhetoric and composition might better understand how to help students to write by understanding patterns within big data. Certainly, this argument recognizes that “common usage” may not necessarily be the most eloquent usage. In making this argument, this article focuses on the [neither or either of X] + Verb construction, where the Verb may have either a plural or a singular form. Our findings illustrate that the “real world” writing is different from what textbooks dictate, and we suggest the data-driven observations need to be appropriately incorporated in writing classes. (University of Minnesota Duluth)

Spatiotemporal Traffic Flow Prediction with KNN and LSTM

The traffic flow prediction is becoming increasingly crucial in Intelligent Transportation Systems. Accurate prediction result is the precondition of traffic guidance, management, and control. To improve the prediction accuracy, a spatiotemporal traffic flow prediction method is proposed combined with k-nearest neighbor (KNN) and long short-term memory network (LSTM), which is called KNN-LSTM model in this paper. KNN is used to select mostly related neighboring stations with the test station and capture spatial features of traffic flow. LSTM is utilized to mine temporal variability of traffic flow, and a two-layer LSTM network is applied to predict traffic flow respectively in selected stations. The final prediction results are obtained by result-level fusion with rank-exponent weighting method. The prediction performance is evaluated with real-time traffic flow data provided by the Transportation Research Data Lab (TDRL) at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) Data Center. Experimental results indicate that the proposed model can achieve a better performance compared with well-known prediction models including autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), support vector regression (SVR), wavelet neural network (WNN), deep belief networks combined with support vector regression (DBN-SVR), and LSTM models, and the proposed model can achieve on average 12.59% accuracy improvement.

Career Ladder: Jonathan Schroden

1980 A love for math Jonathan Schroden was raised in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with a teacher mother and a social worker father. “Growing up I was always interested in math, and I always liked to read and to learn,” he recalls. “And that still carries through to today.” But Schroden never thought his love of math would form the basis of his career. 1998 Getting a physical chemistry PhD Inspired by a high school physics and chemistry teacher who focused on hands-on learning, Schroden pursued those two subjects in college at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He went on to earn a PhD in physical chemistry at Cornell University, where he studied the basic physics behind chemical reactions that might help improve metal-based catalysts for industry. Originally, Schroden wanted to become a professor of chemistry. But when he was about to finish graduate school, he couldn’t think of a project

Project Spotlight: Molin Concrete builds precast concrete teaching tool at UMD

Working together, Molin Concrete Products of Lino Lakes, Minn., and the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) designed a teaching tool that helps engineering stu¬dents understand more than precast concrete design concepts. The precast concrete demonstration structure allows students to observe, touch, and visualize concepts in real time.

Lead your department to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth, development

When asked about the biggest challenges he's faced as an athletics director, Josh Berlo first stops to emphasize that he would instead prefer to see the challenges as “opportunities” for growth and improvement. Those opportunities have come in the form of “difficult staff and coaching changes, significant financial realities, and the need to elevate the departmental culture,” said Berlo, AD at the University of Minnesota Duluth.