Automatic recognition of human activities is one of the important and challenging research areas in proactive and ubiquitous computing. In this work, we present some preliminary results of recognizing human activities using augmented features extracted from the activity signals measured using a single triaxial accelerometer sensor and artificial neural nets. The features include autoregressive (AR) modeling coefficients of activity signals, signal magnitude areas (SMA), and title angles (TA). We have recognized four human activities using AR coefficients (ARC) only, ARC with SMA, and ARC with SMA and TA. With the last augmented features, we have achieved the recognition rate above 99% for all four activities including lying, standing, walking, and running. With our proposed technique, real time recognition of some human activities is possible.

Monitoring of physical activities is a growing field with potential applications such as lifecare and healthcare. Accelerometry shows promise in providing an inexpensive but effective means of long-term activity monitoring of elderly patients. However, even for the same physical activity the output of any body-worn Triaxial Accelerometer (TA) varies at different positions of a subject's body, resulting in a high within-class variance. Thus almost all existing TA-based human activity recognition systems require firm attachment of TA to a specific body part, making them impractical for long-term activity monitoring during unsupervised free living. Therefore, we present a novel hierarchical recognition model that can recognize human activities independent of TA's position along a human body. The proposed model minimizes the high within-class variance significantly and allows subjects to carry TA freely in any pocket without attaching it firmly to a body-part. We validated our model using six daily physical activities: resting (sit/stand), walking, walk-upstairs, walk-downstairs, running, and cycling. Activity data is collected from four most probable body positions of TA: chest pocket, front trousers pocket, rear trousers pocket, and inner jacket pocket. The average accuracy of about 95%illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed method.

S E T T I N G : Eleven referring hospitals in South Korea. O B J E C T I V E :To compare therapeutic responses in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) subgroups, classifi ed by diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide (DL CO ) and lung volume. D E S I G N : A total of 130 stable male COPD patients were classifi ed into four subgroups according to baseline DL CO and residual volume/total lung capacity (RV/TLC) ratio. We compared therapeutic responses to short acting β 2 -agonist (SABA) and 3-month combined inhalation of long-acting β 2 -agonist (LABA) and corticosteroid among patients with these subgroups. CHRONIC obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterised by chronic airfl ow limitation that is not fully reversible. 1 COPD is not a single disease but rather a group of conditions with variable clinical, physiological and radiographic manifestations. 2 S U M M A R YThe Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) guidelines recommend different treatment strategies based on the severity of airfl ow limitation, as assessed by post-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV 1 ) values. 1 Although FEV 1 is useful in the diagnosis and physiological staging of COPD, arbitrary stratifi cations of SDL and YMO contributed equally to this article.

THE DEVELOPMENT of pulmonary hypertension (PH) is often observed in advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and indicates a poor prognosis, with a 5-year survival rate of 20-36%. 1,2 PH primarily occurs in COPD patients with severe hypoxaemia; fortunately, however, the PH is typically mild. 3 Hypoxaemia increases pulmonary artery pres- S U M M A R Ysure (PAP) through hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction and vascular remodelling. 4 However, there is a poor correlation between lung function parameters and PAP, suggesting that factors other than airway obstruction and/or loss of alveolar surface may play a role in its aetiology.Recent studies have shown that a proportion of patients with only moderate airway obstruction have severe PH. 5,6 Disproportionate PH in COPD patients seems best defi ned as at least moderate elevation in SDL and YMO contributed equally to this article.

We developed a hybrid encapsulation method for PM‐OLED consisting of SiNx, polymeric film and cover glass. The PM‐OLED encapsulated with the proposed layers shows the similar degradation in emission efficiency with the PM‐OLED with a metal cap. The proposed structure does not need to have desiccant inside so that thin‐film encapsulation of PM‐OLED is possible.