In favorable climates and building types, employing natural ventilation can lead to significant energy savings health benefits. However, in cold or conditions, the use of could result heat loss and, consequently, excessive heating bills. This is further exacerbated when windows are left unintentionally open by occupants during season, causing unnecessary consumption wastage, which compromises h...

Though the high prevalence of biomass fuel use in the developing world is widely known, the use of burning biomass for cooking and heating in the developed world is under-recognized. Combustion materials including coal and wood are also used for heating in some areas of the United States. We conducted a pilot study to assess the feasibility of conducting indoor environmental monitoring in rural...

Interventions are needed to protect the health of children who live with smokers. We pilot-tested a real-time intervention for promoting behavior change in homes that reduces second hand tobacco smoke (SHS) levels. The intervention uses a monitor and feedback system to provide immediate auditory and visual signals triggered at defined thresholds of fine particle concentration. Dynamic graphs of...

Nursing homes provide long-term care services and can help preserve the quality of life of elderly people subject to physical and cognitive impairments. In this chapter, we explore the role of intelligent technologies as a supplement to human care-giving and the potential to improve quality of life for both older adults and their caregivers in nursing homes. A study was conducted on elderly peo...

background: previous studies have demonstrated the value of serum procalcitonin (pct) as a marker of bacterial infection, as well as the rapid decrease in its concentration with appropriate antibiotic treatment. the aim of this study was to determine the variation in serum pct levels over time during the treatment of acute bacterial meningitis (abm) in adults. methods: in this prospective analy...

The quality of learnt natural language grammars can be enhanced by exploiting the linguistic devices that comprise a corpus. This paper considers one such device, namely punctuation. After brieey considering the linguistics of punctuation, a model capturing some of these properties is presented. Following this, a series of experiments learning uniication-based natural language grammars, using t...

BACKGROUND This study estimates the potential population health burden from exposure to combustion-derived particulate air pollution in domestic settings in Ireland and Scotland. METHODS The study focused on solid fuel combustion used for heating and the use of gas for cooking. PM2.5 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter < 2.5 μm) was used as the pollutant mixture indicator. Measur...

BACKGROUND Around the world, populations are aging and there is a growing concern about ways that older adults can maintain their health and well-being while living in their homes. OBJECTIVES The aim of this paper was to conduct a systematic literature review to determine: (1) the levels of technology readiness among older adults and, (2) evidence for smart homes and home-based health-monitor...