Monintoring Student Depression by Mobile Devices with Autoencoder Networks

The timely assessment of mental health is difficult since we lack the objective measurements of symptoms, especially for the Covid-19 pandemic quarantined students. Fortunately, smart phones can capture the real-world data such as the GPS traces and the phone active time et.al that link the behavioral patterns to the mental health. However, recent studies are based on a very small size of participants and only collect fewer phone features, which means that the effective predicting models which require various features are hardly adopted. In this paper, we develop an android application to record multidimensional data of users as well as a PHQ-9 and a SAS questionary, and we distribute it to 176 college students to collect larger scale data when in quarantine period. To address the unprecise problem of handcrafted feature extraction, we design an autoencoder machine learning model to monitor the student mental health. Extensive experiments indicate that the performance of the proposed method improves its F-1 score for PHQ-9 and SAS by 5% and 6% to the state of the current studies, respectively. © 2023 IEEE.

Effect of facemasks on speech intelligibility

With the advent of COVID, the wearing of face covering has been obligatory in both medical and everyday life. This paper describes three experiments undertaken to establish the effect of face coverings on speech sound power, speech directivity and speech intelligibility. The experiments used two different approaches: acoustic measurements and word scores. The face coverings assessed were a 'standard blue' surgical mask, a typical fabric mask, a prototype clear mask and a plastic transparent visor. The study showed that non-native English speakers had by far the most difficulty in comprehending English language speech when face coverings were worn during phonetically-balanced word list tests. All the masks were found to noticeably affect speech intelligibility, with the surgical mask having the least detrimental effect. The results are also compared to objective measurements of their physical acoustic characteristics to establish their performance. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

Demo Paper: A Package Of Objective Measurement Tools For Physical And Social Exertional Activities For Patients With Illness-limiting Capacities

Patients with several incompletely diagnosed and understood chronic diseases suffer from symptoms that limit their functional capacity. In particular, chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) and long covid syndromes lead to variable fatigue, malaise, poor and unrefreshing sleep, delayed sleep, and post-exertional exacerbation. There are no specific tests for these patients to diagnose their diseases properly. This paper presents a foot-insole sensor system for detecting and measuring physical leg activity, a wrist and arm motion sensor system for dominant arm and hand activity, and a cell phone system for measuring social interaction and noise exposure. © 2022 ACM.

Individual-Level Interventions for Decreasing Job-Related Stress and Enhancing Coping Strategies Among Nurses: A Systematic Review.

Background: Nurses are facing unprecedented amounts of pressure because of the ongoing global health challenges. Improving nurses' resilience to job-related stress and enhancing their strategies to cope effectively with stressors are key issues facing many health care institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. This literature review aimed to: a) provide a thorough overview of individual-level interventions for stress management among nurses, b) identify measurement tools utilized to evaluate nurses' stress level, and c) provide the best evidence-based recommendations for future research and practice adapted to the current restrictions. Design: Systematic review. Data Sources: Studies published between January 2000 and October 2020 were retrieved from the following sources: EBSCOhost, Dortmund University Library, PubMed, Medline, Google Scholar, Applied Nursing Research, and reference lists from relevant articles. Review methods: Individual-level interventions with a control group or a placebo intervention were included in the final sample. Primary outcome was defined as a change in individual stress level or stress symptoms which were measured by objective or subjective instruments with evidence of validity. Articles published in English or German were included in the present review. Results: In total, 27 relevant studies were included into the current review. There are some indications that technology-delivered interventions with relaxation and stress management interventions comprising cognitive-behavioral components might be effective in decreasing stress among nurses and improving their well-being. Furthermore, although there were some attempts to collect objectively measured parameters for assessing the primary outcome of stress, the majority of the interventions utilized self-reported stress scales. Conclusion: A wide range of interventions are available for nurses. However, it is of utmost importance to develop and implement stress management programs that are conveniently accessible in the workplace and above all, meet the current restrictions for minimizing human contacts. To this end, innovative interventions delivered through digital technology, such as virtual reality, seem to be a promising solution for combating the detrimental impact of stress on nurses. Special attention should be also paid to applying standardized objective measurement tools to allow the assessment of sensitive physiological indices and the generalizability of scientific knowledge.