Search results for "LABOR"

An Ambient Intelligence System for Assisted Living

2017

Nowadays, the population's average age is constantly increasing, and thus the need for specialized home assistance is on the rise. Smart homes especially tailored to meet elderly and disabled people's needs can help them maintaining their autonomy, whilst ensuring their safety and well-being. This paper proposes a complete context-aware system for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), which infers user's actions and context, analyzing its past and current behavior to detect anomalies and prevent possible emergencies. The proposed system exploits Dynamic Bayesian Networks to merge raw data coming from heterogeneous sensors and infer user's behavior and health conditions. A rule-based reasoner is ab…

Toward a Quality Guide to Facilitate the Transference of Analytical Methods from Research to Testing Laboratories: A Case Study

2009

Abstract At present, there is no single viewpoint that defines QA strategies in analytical chemistry. On the other hand, there are no unique protocols defining a set of analytical tasks and decision criteria to be performed during the method development phase (e.g., by a single research laboratory) in order to facilitate the transference to the testing laboratories intending to adapt, validate, and routinely use this method. This study proposes general criteria, a priori valid for any developed method, recommended as a provisional quality guide containing the minimum internal tasks necessary to publish new analytical method results. As an application, the selection of some basic internal qu…

Improving Biological Dyes and Stains: Quality Testing Versus Standardization

1994

This paper discusses the impact of both standardization and quality testing of dyes and stains in biology and medicine. After the brief review of why standardized dyes and strains are not presently available commercially, two types of testing and ways of improving dye quality are described. National or international organizations could be established to define standardization of dyes and stains. Standardization would be specifically defined as a list of physico-chemical parameters such as elaborated in this paper. Commercial batches of comparable quality may be labeled by the supplier as "standard dye," a procedure currently performed by the European Council for Clinical and Laboratory Stan…

The EDNAP mitochondrial DNA population database (EMPOP) collaborative exercises: organisation, results and perspectives.

2003

This paper presents an overview of the organisation and the results of the collaborative exercises (CE) of the European DNA Profiling (EDNAP) Group's mitochondrial DNA population database project (EMPOP). The aim of the collaborative exercises was to determine whether uniformity of mtDNA sequencing results could be achieved among different laboratories. These were asked to sequence either the complete mtDNA control region or the two hypervariable regions HVI (16024-16365) and HVII (73-340) from DNA extracts, buccal swabs or bloodstains, proceeding in accordance with the protocol and strategies used in each individual laboratory. The results of the collaborative exercises were employed to id…

Paternity Testing Commission of the International Society of Forensic Genetics: recommendations on genetic investigations in paternity cases

2003

The International Society for Forensic Genetics (ISFG) has established a Paternity Testing Commission (PTC) with the purpose of formulating international recommendations concerning genetic investigations in paternity testing. The PTC recommends that paternity testing be performed in accordance with the ISO 17025 standards. The ISO 17025 standards are general standards for testing laboratories and the PTC offers explanations and recommendations concerning selected areas of special importance to paternity testing. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The role of the reporting framework MIATA within current efforts to advance immune monitoring

2014

Expert‑panel accreditation evaluation‑practices: an autoethnographic case study of the Community of Madrid

2017

Accreditation is defined by the European Higher Education Area quality‑assurance agencies as a key element in quality management and continuous improvement in university teaching‑learning processes, and is an institutional practice that started to be developed in 2014 in Spain. This article illustrates the case of the Community of Madrid Quality Agency, as case study analysis through my experience as a panel member for the accreditation of higher‑education qualifications. Methodologically, it is based on an autoethnographic approach and uses the theory of symbolic interactionism to reveal and analyse the evaluative process and culture. For this purpose, two analytical axes were drawn: stude…

An AMI System for User Daily Routine Recognition and Prediction

2014

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) defines a scenario involving people living in a smart environment enriched by pervasive sensory devices with the goal of assisting them in a proactive way to satisfy their needs. In a home scenario, an AmI system controls the environment according to a user’s lifestyle and daily routine. To achieve this goal, one fundamental task is to recognize the user’s activities in order to generate his daily activities profile. In this chapter, we present a simple AMI system for a home scenario to recognize and predict users’ activities. With this predictive capability, it is possible to anticipate their actions and improve their quality of life. Our approach uses a Hidden M…

The Social Exclusion Bench Tool (SEBT): A visual way of assessing interpersonal social exclusion

2021

People usually prefer to appear with an inclusive and positive attitude to others’ eyes. For this reason, the self-report scales assessing social exclusion intentions are often biased by social desirability. In this work, we present an innovative graphical tool, named Social Exclusion Bench Tool (SEBT), for assessing social exclusion not influenced by social desirability. The tool is based on the consistency between social distance and physical distance evaluation. The results showed that in two samples of adults from Italy (N = 252) and the UK (N = 254), the SEBT positively correlated with self-report measures of social exclusion, but not with the social desirability measure. The tool has …

Organizzazioni del terzo settore

2021

When referring to migrants, the collective representation sees them as recipients of services offered by the third sector and not, in the first instance, as actors actively engaged in associative processes. Addressing the issue of the relationship between migrants and the third sector implies, therefore, proposing a change of perspective that leads to think of migrants (also this rather wide category) not as direct beneficiaries, as victims in need, but as protagonists actively engaged in the institutions or as collaborators, experts, employees, therefore paid, or as volunteers, free of charge.