arXiv subjects

Iuliana Marin

Publications and source records attributed to Iuliana Marin.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Learning about the reduction of food waste using Blockchain technology

Farmers need to be efficient and dedicate a lot of time in order to sustain the quality of their animals which are in their care. The most convenient and good quality - price ratio should be chosen for the feed of animals. Blockchain is used in a virtual space to store and share information over a network of users. This is done using the open source Hyperledger Fabric platform. The transactions can be viewed by all the other users in real time. These transactions are stored as JSONs inside CouchDB NoSQL database which supports queries on a large volume of data. When using this technology, the farmer can know with whom the supplier for animal feed collaborated with. The history of the transactions are not saved in just one place. In this way, it is more difficult to hack and provide implausible information. An e-learning platform was created where the farm's user can post information, respectively new blocks about the animal's birth, vaccinations, medicines, including the location of the livestock. The same e-learning platform is accessible from the mobile phone. By using the blockchain technology, anyone, including the client from the shop can know a lot about the origin of the products. Fake origins of food are much more difficult to hide. Fraud is also limited. The system monitored the traceability of dairy products inside a Romanian farm. Data about fodder provider and quality, cow productive performances and health and dairy products process were obtained and analyzed by students who will become specialists at all the levels of the food chain. Blockchain is the technology which in case of a dairy products contamination, the origin of the farm is traced in just a couple of seconds. In this way just a batch of dairy products is removed from distribution, leading to the reduction of food waste.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

Study of mental health and learning engagement during COVID-19 pandemic based on an electroencephalogram headset

The COVID pandemic and the measures which were taken had effect over the mental health of persons. The current paper proposes a concept that supports the performance of students by analyzing three ways of distance learning, namely text, text and illustrations, including charts, video. An electroencephalogram headset allows the detection of brainwaves and the developed web application enhances the process of distance learning. The electrodes of the headset are placed at contact with the user head and monitor the activity of the left and right frontal regions, along with the temporal lobe. Mood, focus, stress, relaxation, engagement, excitement and interest are triggered as numerical values by using the headset. The users provide information about their daily activities, including learning and evaluation processes. According to the study, users had the highest long term attention while using text and illustrations, followed by watching videos. This is caused by the fact that the text contained the code for the programs which were presented in the video. Also, the users feel comfortable while using the application and they started to pay more attention to the connection between stress, health, education and well being. The results triggered by the headset had higher values while students studied for the first time using videos. When they wanted to remember the information, the text and illustrations way of learning was the best option. Based on the study outcomes, the instructional design can be enhanced. Moreover, the results improved as the students became more equilibrated and confident in themselves. Teachers, professors and parents are able to collaborate and enhance training. While studying online under lockdown, students have found the proposed solution to be good because their inner state influences their productivity while solving problems.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2020

Intelligent Luminaire based Real-time Indoor Positioning for Assisted Living

This paper presents an experimental evaluation on the accuracy of indoor localisation. The research was carried out as part of a European Union project targeting the creation of ICT solutions for older adult care. Current expectation is that advances in technology will supplement the human workforce required for older adult care, improve their quality of life and decrease healthcare expenditure. The proposed approach is implemented in the form of a configurable cyber-physical system that enables indoor localization and monitoring of older adults living at home or in residential buildings. Hardware consists of custom developed luminaires with sensing, communication and processing capabilities. They replace the existing lighting infrastructure, do not look out of place and are cost effective. The luminaires record the strength of a Bluetooth signal emitted by a wearable device equipped by the monitored user. The system's software server uses trilateration to calculate the person's location based on known luminaire placement and recorded signal strengths. However, multipath fading caused by the presence of walls, furniture and other objects introduces localisation errors. Our previous experiments showed that room-level accuracy can be achieved using software-based filtering for a stationary subject. Our current objective is to assess system accuracy in the context of a moving subject, and ascertain whether room-level localization is feasible in real time.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

Cyber-Physical Platform for Preeclampsia Detection

Hypertension-related conditions are the most prevalent complications of pregnancy worldwide. They manifest in up to 8% of cases and if left untreated, can lead to serious detrimental effects. Early detection of their sudden onset can help physicians alleviate the condition and improve outcomes for both would-be mother and baby. Today's prevalence of smartphones and cost-effective wearable technology provide new opportunities for individualized medicine. Existing devices promote heart health, they monitor and encourage physical activity and measure sleep quality. This builds interest and encourages users to require more advanced features. We believe these aspects form suitable conditions to create and market specialized wearable devices. The present paper details a cyber-physical system built around an intelligent bracelet for monitoring hypertension-related conditions tailored to pregnant women. The bracelet uses a microfluidic layer that is compressed by the blood pressing against the arterial wall. Integrated sensors register the waveform and send it to the user's smartphone, where the systolic and diastolic values are determined. The system is currently developed under European Union research funding, and includes a software server where data is stored and further processing is carried out through machine learning.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

Indoor Localization Techniques Within a Home Monitoring Platform

This paper details a number of indoor localization techniques developed for real-time monitoring of older adults. These were developed within the framework of the i-Light research project that was funded by the European Union. The project targeted the development and initial evaluation of a configurable and cost-effective cyber-physical system for monitoring the safety of older adults who are living in their own homes. Localization hardware consists of a number of custom-developed devices that replace existing luminaires. In addition to lighting capabilities, they measure the strength of a Bluetooth Low Energy signal emitted by a wearable device on the user. Readings are recorded in real time and sent to a software server for analysis. We present a comparative evaluation of the accuracy achieved by several server-side algorithms, including Kalman filtering, a look-back heuristic as well as a neural network-based approach. It is known that approaches based on measuring signal strength are sensitive to the placement of walls, construction materials used, the presence of doors as well as existing furniture. As such, we evaluate the proposed approaches in two separate locations having distinct building characteristics. We show that the proposed techniques improve the accuracy of localization. As the final step, we evaluate our results against comparable existing approaches.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2017

Improved Adaptive Resolution Molecular Dynamics Simulation

-Molecular simulations allow the study of properties and interactions of molecular systems. This article presents an improved version of the Adaptive Resolution Scheme that links two systems having atomistic (also called fine-grained) and coarse-grained resolutions using a force interpolation scheme. Interactions forces are obtained based on the Hamiltonian derivation for a given molecular system. The new algorithm was implemented in GROMACS molecular dynamics software package and tested on a butane system. The MARTINI coarse-grained force field is applied between the coarse-grained particles of the butane system. The molecular dynamics package GROMACS and the Message Passing Interface allow the simulation of such a system in a reasonable amount of time.

cs.CE↗