Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2022, Computer Science and Engineering PhD

Activities of Daily Living (ADL's) are the activities that people perform every day in their home as part of their typical routine. The in-home, automated monitoring of ADL's has broad utility for intelligent systems that enable independent living for the elderly and mentally or physically disabled individuals. With rising interest in electronic health (e-Health) and mobile health (m-Health) technology, opportunities abound for the integration of activity monitoring systems into these newer forms of healthcare. In this dissertation we propose a novel system for describing 's based on video collected from a wearable camera. Most in-home activities are naturally defined by interaction with objects. We leverage these object-centric activity definitions to develop a set of rules for a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) that uses video features and the identification of objects to identify and classify activities. Further, we demonstrate that the use of FIS enhances the reliability of the system and provides enhanced explainability and interpretability of results over popular machine-learning classifiers due to the linguistic nature of fuzzy systems.

Committee: Tanvi Banerjee Ph.D. (Advisor); Yong Pei Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Riley Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mateen Rizki Ph.D. (Committee Member); Thomas Wischgoll Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

The increasing population of elderly people has been one of the characteristics of this modern century. This ever-increasing population of elderly people is predicted to outnumber the population of youths and caregivers in a few years' time. Old age is mostly associated with a number of problems like memory issues, cognitive disabilities, disorganized behavior and many more, quite often leading to Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and other forms of disabilities which cause problems for elderly people to accomplish their daily routine activities. This increased need for healthcare and daily care services that is associated with old age, causes a huge burden on the world economy to sustain and meet the needs of elderly people worldwide. To ensure that these varying needs of elderly people arising from their differing diversities are met, and they have a better quality of life, it is essential for modern day technologies to adapt according to the specific needs of individual users and develop an assisted living environment that can improve both physical and mental wellbeing and foster independent living of older adults in the context of their day to day goals and tasks. The integration of Affect Aware Technologies with Activity Centric Computing in the context of Human-Computer Interaction and Internet of Things (IoT)-based technologies holds immense potential to act as a long-term solution to address these ever-increasing needs for elderly care. This serves as the primary interest for this research work. In this work, a Framework for a Context Aware Adaptive Intelligent Assistant for Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) has been proposed. This framework integrates methodologies for complex activity recognition, user performance augmentation for respective activities and complex activity recommendation, based on the users affective state and daily routine. The ability of this framework to adapt according to the dynamic needs of specific users and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Chia Han Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Wen-Ben Jone Ph.D. (Committee Member); Nan Niu Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2016, Environment and Natural Resources

The human-nature relationship is a topic of increasing interest among the fields of psychology, environment and natural resources, landscape architecture, conservation biology, and parks and recreation studies. These fields, each with their preferred conceptions of the topic and methods of inquiry and investigation have produced a body of literature as diverse as the fields themselves. As a result, there remains confusion over exactly what the human-nature relationship entails, how to quantify it, and the best method for measuring it. Other research has found many of these scales to be highly correlated, an indicator that they are likely measuring the same concept, but the characterization of connection to nature given with each of these scales can differ significantly. Scales can be characterized as cognitive, affective, or experiential, or some combination of the three. Of current interest is developing both a better definition of connection to nature as well as appropriate and valid measurement tools. The studies presented here make comparisons between three measures of connection to nature, the Implicit Association with Nature Test, the Inclusion of Nature in Self, and the Connectedness to Nature Scale. In examining both the demographic variables that impact connection to nature as well as the explanatory power of these measures, this work attempts to situate these measures within the larger fields of research concerned with interactions between humans and nature. This work brings together measures of connection to nature, environmental concern, environmental behaviors, and outdoor recreational experiences to better understand the relationships between each of them. These studies made use of survey data which was collected online from 199 undergraduate university students. Chapter 2 analyzes the data via multiple comparisons between groups based on college major, gender, childhood community, and political ideology. The comparisons are made in reference to thre (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kristi Lekies (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Education; Environmental Studies

Master of Gerontological Studies, Miami University, 2015, Gerontology

Using animal-assisted activities as a recreational program for older adults has long been practiced. Despite its utilization, there is limited research on this topic and no research has exclusively focused on rabbits. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore the meaning and experience of engaging in rabbit-assisted activities for older adults. A descriptive qualitative study was conducted involving direct observation, field notes and in-depth interviews. Thematic coding was used to analyze the data. Overall, participants' perceptual experience with rabbit-assisted activities seems to be positive and beneficial. No negative aspects to program participation were uncovered but instead some remarked on how the program was limited in its ability to provide meaning. This study suggests that older adults living in residential facilities may benefit from infrequent or brief interactions with rabbits. However, additional research is needed on visiting animal activity programs.

Committee: Sara McLaughlin PhD (Committee Chair); Kate de Medeiros PhD (Committee Member); Nancy Orel PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Gerontology

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2014, Leadership and Change

Wadla Woreda is located in North Wollo Zone, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia. The woreda is predominantly agrarian and the population produces mainly subsistence food crops with small amounts of cash crops. Access to basic social and economic services such as health, education, and employment for rural communities is limited due to poor development of rural infrastructure. Wadla is one of the food insecure woredas in the region. As a result some of the people are internally displaced and a portion of the population is included in safety-net programs. The Wadla Woreda is prone to famine due to severe droughts, soil degradation, primitive modes of production, religious and cultural attitudes toward work, and bad governance. Due to male domination, women are victims of social discrimination, gender-based violence, and other socio-economic barriers. In the woreda women have limited access to resources. Their employment rate and representation in local government are low. Their economic status is marginal. At times, their income generation is negative, meaning their returns are less than what they invested, leading them into absolute poverty. To redress existing economic problems and tendencies in relation to women, there are some initiatives organizing women in the woreda into groups and clusters so they can better tackle poverty themselves. The purpose of the study is to add empirical evidence to existing knowledge on Income Generating Activities (IGA) by identifying opportunities for women in the woreda and by sharing success stories of women's advancement while also identifying barriers. It is hoped that the results of this study will provide information to concerned stakeholders for scaling up IGAs and for enhanced social mobilization. The dissertation builds upon an earlier project I conducted that included income generating activities and advancement among the women. In this follow-up research study a qualitative methodology is used based on case study interviews (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Philomena Essed Ph.D (Committee Chair); Laura Morgan Roberts Ph.D (Committee Member); Norma Romm Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Area Planning and Development; Economics; Finance; Gender Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Geography

In the four decades of work in time geography, research has shed light on a number of social science topics related to human activity. Access to critical resources or spaces, patterns of behavior, and migration are subject areas that have benefited greatly from the time geographic framework. Since the field's inception in Sweden in the 1960s, some of the largest developments have been operationalizing the concepts of time geography in computerized systems, and an increase in the availability of human activity data. With activity data easier to acquire, it is likely that it will be collected in ever larger samples. Future research will need to handle these higher data volumes, or risk being overcome by large, complicated data sets. The analysis techniques useful for analyzing the space-time activity of an individual, or a small set of individuals, may not be efficient for analyzing data sets of thousands of individuals. This study begins with a literature review that covers the fundamentals of time geography, reviews important applications of the time geographic framework, and surveys the visualization and analysis methods utilized in the prior work. Next, a method is developed that combines successful elements of prior work with the space-time aquarium with a 3D points cloud-based visualization technique that may be suitable for large data volumes. Finally, a prototype analysis environment is created, and its capabilities in detecting behavioral patterns among a large volume of activity diary data is determined.

Committee: Mei-Po Kwan (Advisor); Desheng Liu (Committee Member); Alan Price (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography