Cassim Ladha

Cascom Ltd

Background Late-life depression (LLD) is associated with poor social functioning. However, previous research uses bias-prone self-report scales to measure social functioning and a more objective measure is lacking. We tested a novel wearable device to measure speech that participants encounter as an indicator of social interaction. Methods Twenty...

Animal shelters tend to be stressful environments for dogs because of the sights, sounds, odors, and schedules that characterize shelter living. Levels of activity, including the amount of time spent resting or engaging in sedentary behaviors, may provide insights into overall welfare, especially when comparing shelter dogs' activity patterns to th...

Canine obesity is usually managed with a combination of dietary caloric restriction and increasing physical activity, but no previous study has compared both of these strategies in a prospective randomised controlled trial. Thirteen overweight dogs (body condition score 6–9/9) were randomised to one of two interventions: dietary caloric restriction...

The ability to objectively measure episodes of rest has clear application for assessing health and well-being. Accelerometers afford a sensitive platform for doing so and have demonstrated their use in many human-based trials and interventions. Current state of the art methods for predicting sleep from accelerometer signals are either based on post...

Background: Accelerometer-based technologies could be useful in providing objective measures of canine ambulation, but most are either not tailored to the idiosyncrasies of canine gait, or, use un-validated or closed source approaches. The aim of this paper was to validate algorithms which could be applied to accelerometer data for i) counting the...

Background The ability to make objective measurements of physical activity in dogs has both clinical and research applications. Accelerometers offer a non-intrusive and convenient solution. Of the commercialy available sensors, measurements are commonly given in manufacturer bespoke units and calculated with closed source approaches. Furthermore, t...

It is understood gait has the potential to be used as a window into neurodegenerative disorders, identify markers of subclinical pathology, inform diagnostic algorithms of disease progression and measure the efficacy of interventions. Dogs' gaits are frequently assessed in a veterinary setting to detect signs of lameness. Despite this, a reliable,...

Background: Gait is a powerful tool to identify ageing and track disease progression. Yet, its high resolution measurement via traditional instruments remains restricted to the laboratory or bespoke clinical facilities. The potential for that to change is due to the advances in wearables where the synergy between devices and smart algorithms has pr...

Background Late-life depression (LLD) is associated with a decline in physical activity. Typically this is assessed by self-report questionnaires and, more recently, with actigraphy. We sought to explore the utility of a bespoke activity monitor to characterize activity profiles in LLD more precisely. Method The activity monitor was worn for 7 day...

Gait is an important clinical assessment tool since changes in gait may reflect changes in general health. Measurement of gait is a complex process which has been restricted to bespoke clinical facilities until relatively recently. The use of inexpensive wearable technologies is an attractive alternative and offers the potential to assess gait in a...

Social Practice Theory offers a theoretical approach to understanding habitual, mundane and tacitly enacted practices that are performed within the domestic environment. To support the practical adoption of this theory, this paper reports and reflects upon a methodological application of Social Practice Theory which was used to investigate the dome...

This paper describes the challenges and lessons learned in the experience-centered design (ECD) of the Spheres of Wellbeing, a technology to promote the mental health and wellbeing of a group of women, suffering from significant mental health problems and living in a medium secure hospital unit. First, we describe how our relationship with mental h...

Introduction: Obesity is a key economic and healthcare challenge for Europe. Effective interventions for weight loss are widely available, but few comprehensive solutions exist to help with weight loss maintenance (WLM) and most people regain lost weight. Research suggests promising evidence-based behaviour change techniques for WLM are self-monito...

Saving energy in residential and commercial buildings is of great interest due to diminishing resources. Heating ventilation and air conditioning systems, and electric lighting are responsible for a sig-nificant share of energy usage, which makes it desirable to optimise their operations while maintaining user comfort. Such optimisation requires ac...

A recently completed, EPSRC-funded project researched the use of low cost, pervasive sensing to monitor building environmental conditions and occupant interactions as a means to reduce the uncertainties associated with the creation of a building model for refurbishment options and smarter control appraisal. This paper gives a brief introduction to...

Health and wellbeing of dogs, either domesticated pets or service animals, are major concerns that are taken seriously for ethical, emotional, and financial reasons. Welfare as- sessments in dogs rely on objective observations of both fre- quency and variability of individual behaviour traits, which is often difficult to obtain in a dog’s everyday...

The Break-Time Barometer is a social awareness system which was developed as part of an exploratory study of the use of situated sensing and displays to promote cohesion in a newly-dispersed workplace. The Break-Time Barometer specif- ically aims to use an ambient persuasion approach in order to encourage people to join existing breaks which take p...

In recent years the sport of climbing has seen consistent in- crease in popularity. Climbing requires a complex skill set for successful and safe exercising. While elite climbers re- ceive intensive expert coaching to refine this skill set, this progression approach is not viable for the amateur popu- lation. We have developed ClimbAX – a climbing...

We present a novel approach to graspable interfaces using Touchbugs, actuated physical objects for interacting with interactive surface computing applications. Touchbugs are active tangibles that are able to move across surfaces by employing vibrating motors and can communicate with camera based multi-touch surfaces using infrared LEDs. Touchbug's...

INTRODUCTION: As designs of accelerometers shift towards uncompressed and unfiltered data capture, researchers are developing device insensitive algorithms. However, to ensure proper interoperability, steps need to be taken to support compensation for differences in construction. To support this step a shaker table characterization was made using t...

INTRODUCTION: As designs of accelerometers shift towards uncompressed and unfiltered data capture, researchers are developing device insensitive algorithms. However, to ensure proper interoperability, steps need to be taken to support compensation for differences in construction. To support this step a shaker table characterization was made using t...

There is an increasing desire to remain connected when physically distant and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is one means of satisfying this desire. In particular, there is a growing trend for individuals to use commercially available technology to connect with friends and family in social and leisure settings. Drawing on this trend, perform...

We describe the development, application and evaluation of a design method tailored for working with people with mild to moderate dementia. Our experiences with the approach highlighted areas where designers and participants held radically different views. The tenet of our approach was that to overcome these differences we needed to create an empat...

Wellbeing is an underlying theme in many local and national policies and procedures outlined by governments and health care services. In recent years a person's wellbeing has been largely monitored through the use of subjective rating scales or other retrospective interview methods. This position paper considers how technology can help to monitor w...

We present the development of a socially acceptable cueing device for drooling in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sialorrhea, or drooling, is a significant problem associated with PD and has a strong negative emotional impact on those who experience it. Previous studies have shown the potential for managing drooling by using a cueing device. However, the...

Research has demonstrated that a lack of cooking competence can be a significant barrier to healthier eating. We present two studies from which we develop a set of requirements for a pervasive sensor infrastructure that will enable our Ambient Kitchen environment to measure cooking competence in an unobtrusive manner. From the first study we derive...

We present the development of a socially acceptable cueing device for drooling in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Sialorrhea, or drooling, is a significant problem associated with PD and has a strong negative emotional impact on those who experience it. Previous studies have shown the potential for managing drooling by using a cueing device. However, the...

The augmentation of tabletop multi-touch surfaces with physical objects is a well visited approach for the realisation of tangible user interfaces. Interaction with objects on a multi-touch surface is often limited to spatial manipulation and common marker-based techniques for object tracking typically provide little more than position and orientat...

The augmentation of tabletop multi-touch surfaces with physical objects is a well visited approach for the realisation of tangible user interfaces. Interaction with objects on a multi-touch surface is often limited to spatial manipulation and common marker-based techniques for object tracking typically provide little more than position and orientat...

Making distance measurements with RSS can be challenging in indoor environments. The effect of multipath and shadowing introduces ambiguity into the readings, leading to a range of distances that can be inferred from a single measurement. This contribution highlights the frequency dependancy of these effects. Lower and upper bounding constraints ar...

In wireless sensor networks, the use of energy efficient infrastructure such as clustering may be used to lengthen the network lifetime and prevent network connectivity degradation. In such systems, the performance of the clustering scheme is generally influenced by the cluster head selection method and the number of clusters. This paper presents a...

Implementing positioning systems for indoor environments is notoriously difficult. The vast array of interacting parameters such as furniture, room shape and materials mean that the simulation of such an environment is of limited value. We present in this paper results from an empirical investigation as to the attainable accuracy of a Radio Frequen...

Ubiquitous computing technologies are defining an emerging cultural fabric that is becoming interwoven into everyday life and giving form to ‘digital culture’, through which human meaning and communication derives from the potentials of such technologies. As the pervasive and ambient computing agendas move forward, the possible augmentation of both...