Road anomaly detection is essential in road maintenance and management; however, continuously monitoring road anomalies (such as bumps and potholes) with a low-cost and high-efficiency solution remains a challenging research question. In this study, we put forward an enhanced mobile sensing solution to detect road anomalies using mobile sensed data. We first create a smartphone app to detect irregular vehicle vibrations that usually imply road anomalies. Then, the mobile sensed signals are analyzed through continuous wavelet transform to identify road anomalies and estimate their sizes. Next, we innovatively utilize a spatial clustering method to group multiple driving tests’ results into clusters based on their spatial density patterns. Finally, the optimized detection results are obtained by synthesizing each cluster’s member points. Results demonstrate that our proposed solution can accurately detect road surface anomalies (94.44%) with a high positioning accuracy (within 3.29 meters in average) and an acceptable size estimation error (with a mean error of 14 cm). This study suggests that implementing a crowdsensing solution could substantially improve the effectiveness of traditional road monitoring systems.

Computer science(CS) majors are in high demand and account for a large part of national computer and information technology job market applicants. Employment in this sector is projected to grow 12% between 2018 and 2028, which is faster than the average of all other occupations. Published data are available on traditional non-computer science-specific hiring processes. However, the hiring process for CS majors may be different. It is critical to have up-to-date information on questions such as “what positions are in high demand for CS majors?,” “what is a typical hiring process?,” and “what do employers say they look for when hiring CS graduates?” This article discusses the analysis of a survey of 218 recruiters hiring CS graduates in the United States. We used Atlas.ti to analyze qualitative survey data and report the results on what positions are in the highest demand, the hiring process, and the resume review process. Our study revealed that a software developer was the most common job the recruiters were looking to fill. We found that the hiring process steps for CS graduates are generally aligned with traditional hiring steps, with an additional emphasis on technical and coding tests. Recruiters reported that their hiring choices were based on reviewing resume’s experience, GPA, and projects sections. The results provide insights into the hiring process, decision making, resume analysis, and some discrepancies between current undergraduate CS program outcomes and employers’ expectations.

Human ecology has played an essential role in the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. With standing water as a significant factor contributing to mosquito breeding, artificial containers disposed of as trash—which are capable of holding standing water—provide suitable environments for mosquito larvae to develop. The development of these larvae further contributes to the possibility for local transmission of mosquito-borne diseases in urban areas such as Zika virus. One potential solution to address this issue involves leveraging unmanned aerial vehicles that are already systematically becoming more utilized in the field of geospatial technology. With higher pixel resolution in comparison to satellite imagery, as well as having the ability to update spatial data more frequently, we are interested in investigating the feasibility of unmanned aerial vehicles as a potential technology for efficiently mapping potential breeding grounds. Therefore, we conducted a comparative study that evaluated the performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle for identifying artificial containers to that of conventionally utilized GPS receivers. The study was designed to better inform researchers on the current viability of such devices for locating a potential factor (i.e., small form factor artificial containers that can host mosquito breeding grounds) in the local transmission of mosquito-borne diseases. By assessing the performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle against ground-truth global position system technology, we can determine the effectiveness of unmanned aerial vehicles on this problem through our selected metrics of: timeliness, sensitivity, and specificity. For the study, we investigated these effectiveness metrics between the two technologies of interest in surveying a study area: unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e., DJI Phantom 3 Standard) and global position system-based receivers (i.e., Garmin GPSMAP 76Cx and the Garmin GPSMAP 78). We first conducted a design study with nine external participants, who collected 678 waypoint data and 214 aerial images from commercial GPS receivers and UAV, respectively. The participants then processed these data with professional mapping software for visually identifying and spatially marking artificial containers between the aerial imagery and the ground truth GPS data, respectively. From applying statistical methods (i.e., two-tailed, paired t-test) on the participants’ data for comparing how the two technologies performed against each other, our data analysis revealed that the GPS method performed better than the UAV method for the study task of identifying the target small form factor artificial containers.

Children’s fine motor skills are linked not only to drawing ability but also to cognitive, social-emotional, self-regulatory, and academic development Suggate et al. Journal of Research in Reading, 41(1), 1–19 (2018), Benedetti et al. (2014), Liew et al. Early Education & Development, 22(4), 549–573 (2011), Liew (2012) and Xie et al. (2014). Current educators are assessing children’s fine motor skills by either determining their shape drawing correctness Meisels et al. (1997) or measuring their drawing time duration Kochanska et al. (1997) and Liew et al. (2011) through paper-based assessments. However, these methods involve human experts manually analyzing children’s fine motor skills, which can be time consuming and prone to human error or bias Kim et al. (2013) and Lotz et al. (2005). With many children using sketch-based applications on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets Anthony et al. (2012), computer-based fine motor skill assessment has the potential to address limitations of paper-based assessment by using automated measurements. In this work, we introduce a machine learning approach for analyzing aspects of children’s fine motor skill development. We performed a study with 60 young children (aged 3 to 8 years old), and we implemented classifiers that determine children’s age category based on features related to fine motor skill, predominantly for curvature- and corner-based drawing skills, surpassing the performance of our previous work Kim et al. (2013) and of human evaluators. We also present dedicated discussion and statistical testing of sketch recognition features which will further enhance automated fine motor assessment.

Background: Tracking the performance of activities of daily living (ADLs) using ADL recognition has the potential to facilitate aging-in-place strategies, allowing older adults to live in their homes longer and enabling their families and caregivers to monitor changes in health status. However, the ADL recognition literature historically has evaluated systems in controlled settings with data from younger populations, creating the question of whether these systems will work in real-world conditions for older populations. Objective: This scoping review seeks to establish the state-of-the-art for recognizing basic ADLs using wearable sensors. This primary goal will identify literature gaps and research needed to make ADL tracking viable for aging-in-place solutions. In addition, this paper will quantify how many publications include older adults. This secondary goal assesses how often studies evaluate their system with older adult participants, enhancing the trustworthiness of the approach. Methods: We conducted a scoping review using the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines. We identify studies focused on basic ADL recognition using wearable sensors within the PubMed, Association of Computing Machinery Digital Library (ACM DL), and Google Scholar databases using papers published in the last 5 calendar years (2019-2024) to identify current trends given the rapid changes in wearable technology devices. Publications must include at least one of the basic ADLs (ie, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, continence, and feeding) and include some sort of wearable sensor or device. Studies focusing on instrumental ADLs, general physical activity tracking, fall detection, or only using environmental devices are excluded. Studies that include older adults in the design or evaluation of their ADL recognition system are highlighted. Results: The database search identified 695 papers; 164 papers passed title screening. A total of 58 studies satisfied the inclusion criteria; only 8 studies included older adults despite most studies identifying this population as a focus for their research. Most studies focused on eating (n=27), hygiene (n=24), drinking (n=20), or transitions (n=13). Few works included toileting (n=3), dressing (n=2), or bathing (n=1) activities. Of the 8 studies that included older adults, 5 focused on recognition performance while 3 focused on user experience and system acceptability. Conclusions: Basic ADLs are unevenly covered in the literature; more research is needed for recognizing bathing, dressing, and toileting activities. Despite all studies stating the importance of tracking ADLs in older adults, only 14% (8/58) of the included works involve older adult participants. A commonality between these outcomes is difficulty collecting or obtaining adequate training data for ADL recognition systems. Many works are predominantly concerned with proving system feasibility and do not assess usability or real-world deployment. For these systems to move from academic experiments to actual systems with clinical utility, ADL recognition systems must consider the design requirements of being part of remote health monitoring systems.