The challenge of taking care of aged patients who lost control of their bladders and bowel movements is to respond to the patients’ needs in a timely manner, which often requires a caretaker (e.g. a family member or a hired assistant) to stay on watch 24/7. In light of advance in cloud computing, we present a real-time low-cost monitoring and notification system that can continuously monitor the patients bedding condition, detect the conditions that help is needed and notify the care-takers. The system consists of TI SensorTags, Raspberry Pis, and IBM Bluemix. The TI SensorTag is a sensing device, while Raspberry Pi acts as a messenger receiving data collected by TI SensorTags via Bluetooth technology and transmitting the data to Bluemix, a cloud-based platform developed by IBM, via WiFi.

The system frequently senses bedding conditions of patients. Data is uploaded to a server residing on IBM Cloud, which processes data and sends appropriate notifications. The availability of cloud technology and small signal processing units, as well as advance in sensor technologies, allow us to build a low-cost system that can help caregivers address the patients’ needs effectively. As a result, the quality of care for patients is improved.

Personality psychologists often apply clustering techniques on questionnaire data to model personality structure. Inspired by this work, we apply techniques from topological data analysis (TDA) to understand the structure of this data. The data comes from Cattell’s Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (collected by Bell, Rose, & Damon in 1972). Subjects were 969 adult male volunteers divided into three age groups: 25 to 34, 35 to 54, and 55 to 82. We use persistent homology (a TDA tool) to cluster the data and identify that personality structure is slightly different between the age groups. It is also curious to note that data from the youngest age group appears to have a topological “hole”, which raises questions of the psychological significance. This work suggests that additional research, including applying TDA tools to other questionnaire data sets can provide insights to the study of personality.

Background: There have been many food waste studies done in elementary schools around the country. Several studies have determined that main entrées contribute significantly to plate waste in elementary school food programs, but studies relating the use of condiments and their influence on food waste need further exploration.
Objectives: Determine the correlation between the addition of condiments and the amount of plate waste from a chicken entrée.
Methods: In Phase I, data was collected in an elementary afterschool meal program. Researchers evaluated plate waste for the chicken entrée once a week for a total of four weeks. Chicken entrée plate waste was evaluated by weight and visual assessment. The waste weight was compared to the weight of one serving of the chicken entrée. A photograph of the total plate waste was taken each week for visual comparison. Researchers compared the total number of servings prepared to the number of servings leftover. In Phase II of the study a condiment (ketchup) was added to the menu when the chicken entrée was served. A marketing campaign was implemented with flyers to advertise the addition of the condiment. For the remaining four weeks, plate waste was documented using the same methods utilized during Phase I.
Results: In Phase I, an average of 26.7% of chicken entrées was wasted. In Phase II, an average of 20.8% of chicken entrées was wasted. No statistically significant difference was found in the percentage of food leftover between Phase I and Phase II (p<0.06). After adjusting for differences in initial portion size, there was still no statistically significant difference in weight of entrée left over (p<0.3).
Conclusion: Though there was no significant difference, the amount of waste is large enough to draw attention to the problem of waste in school foodservice. More research is necessary to determine what factors are leading to food waste.

Birdsong, like human speech, is a vocal behavior that requires birds to precisely coordinate the activation of respiratory and vocal organ motor systems in order to generate sufficient subsyringeal air pressure for phonation. In both juvenile and adult songbirds, ablation or inactivation of HVC (proper name) neural activity disrupts temporal features of song. Consistent with the role of respiration in controlling song tempo, we have previously demonstrated that HVC contributes to song respiratory features in adult male Bengalese finches (Lonchura striata domestica, Urbano & Cooper, 2015). Here we further explored these findings by recording subsyringeal air sac pressure in singing birds prior to, during, and following recovery from HVC inactivation. Dialysis probes were implanted into either left or right HVC in adult male Bengalese finches (N=5), allowing for reversible suppression of neural activity (muscimol, 1.5 mg/mL, 1.125mg/mL, 0.75 mg/mL, 0.375 mg/mL). In all animals, mean air sac pressure and initial (10 ms) slope of song-related expiratory pulses (EPs) dropped significantly during HVC inactivation and recovered (Amplitude: F(2,8) = 12.8, p = 0.003; Slope: F(2,8) = 15.3, p = 0.002). We observed that, independent of the drug concentration, peak song EP amplitude exhibited a similar pattern of non-linear recovery over time while muscimol remained in the dialysis probe and continued to diffuse into HVC. In a subset of the data, we used an already established measure of efficacy (Beggs & Dobrovolny 2015) to model the change in peak song EP amplitude during HVC inactivation and we were able to produce consistent estimates for the variables in our model. We then ran a Monte Carlo simulation and parameter stability analysis to determine that the chosen model is robust and truth-conducive in predicting future values for peak EP amplitude under continued diffusion of muscimol into the tissue. We tested this model against simpler models to rule out alternative explanations. These results suggest that prolonged exposure to muscimol (4-6 h) induces mechanisms that reduce the efficacy of muscimol and result in gradual recovery of peak song EP amplitude.

Abstract: Problem: Although the current political landscape is divisive, some politicians have adopted the strategy of delivering the message of hope in their speeches. For instance, conservatives are striving to make America great again, implying a temporal return to some idyllic moment in American history. Conversely, liberals are more focused on moving forward by echoing the appeals of change to be a better country in the future. The current study was interested in whether these thematic differences in speech could influence nostalgic thinking, predict candidate support for both real and fake political candidates, whether it would matter if it was a liberal or conservative was giving the speech, and whether political nostalgia would interact with frame of reference and speech type to predict candidate support for the current election. Method: Participants consisted of both undergraduate students as well as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) workers. Persons completed individual difference measures such as self-compassion, nostalgia proneness, national nostalgia, religious fundamentalism, and social dominance. Participants then received a speech excerpt from a fake gubernatorial candidate in the upcoming election who was either a Democrat or Republican. The speech itself was either past or future oriented in language style. Individuals then rated their state nostalgia, support for the fake candidate, filled out some additional political questions, and then indicated their support for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Data analysis plan: Data will be analyzed using moderated regression in SPSS to look at potential interactions between political reference, speech, nostalgia, and one’s political party on candidate support. Differences between the fake candidate and real candidates are expected in the same direction. Interestingly, preliminary analyses of the results are demonstrating that Republican participants express greater feelings of nostalgia in response to a past-orientated speech from a Republican candidate; whereas, Democrats experience more nostalgia in response to a future-orientated Republican candidate’s speech. Conclusion: It is hypothesized that past oriented speeches will be capable of producing increases in nostalgic thinking. These predicted results would be the first to demonstrate the interaction between political preferences and nostalgic thinking. Additionally, if nostalgic thought is more tied to conservative support and future oriented speeches are linked with liberal support, this would importantly demonstrate that liberals and conservatives rely on different temporal modes of thinking about America values. These findings would be important for future political campaigns and by elucidating the different psychological strategies that can be utilized to motive candidate support among liberals and conservatives respectively.