Exercise Promotion System for Single Households Based on Agent-Oriented IoT Architecture.

People living alone encounter well-being challenges due to unnoticed personal situations. Thus, it is essential to monitor their activities and encourage them to adopt healthy lifestyle habits without imposing a mental burden, aiming to enhance their overall well-being. To realize such a support system, its components should be simple and loosely coupled to handle various internet of things (IoT)-based smart home applications. In this study, we propose an exercise promotion system for individuals living alone to encourage them to adopt good lifestyle habits. The system comprises autonomous IoT devices as agents and is realized using an agent-oriented IoT architecture. It estimates user activity via sensors and offers exercise advice based on recognized conditions, surroundings, and preferences. The proposed system accepts user feedback to improve status estimation accuracy and offers better advice. The proposed system was evaluated from three perspectives through experiments with subjects. Initially, we demonstrated the system's operation through agent cooperation. Then, we showed it adapts to user preferences within two weeks. Third, the users expressed satisfaction with the detection accuracy regarding their stay-at-home status and the relevance of the advice provided. They were also motivated to engage in exercise based on a subjective evaluation, as indicated by preliminary results.

VORTEX: Network-Driven Opportunistic Routing for Ad Hoc Networks.

The potential of ad hoc networks, which enable flexible and dynamic network establishment only by mobile terminals equipped with wireless communication devices, has recently attracted attention for the coming IoT era. Although the nature of ad hoc networks shows the advantages of their autonomous and distributed network management, a manifestation of drawbacks owing to the nature of wireless communication and the mobility of terminals are inevitable. Many routing protocols have already been proposed to address the issues by adapting to nature and achieving a certain level of improvement. However, the routing protocols still suffer from difficulties in information collection for routing and adaptive route management during communication. Moreover, there is another issue that end pair-based routing procedures prevent other end pairs from reusing the routing information effectively. To address the drawbacks of conventional routing protocols, this paper proposes VORTEX, a novel routing protocol that employs an opportunistic routing strategy using hierarchization. One of the characteristic features of VORTEX is its network-driven opportunistic forwarding, in which packets travel toward destination terminals using hierarchy as a guide without conventional route discovery procedures. Moreover, another characteristic feature of VORTEX is that the hierarchical structure also contributes to adapting to communication environment changes in an autonomous manner. In other words, VORTEX enables flexible network-wide information-based routing only with the locally collected information. The simulation results show that the proposed VORTEX could provide better service quality and reliability with improved efficiency compared to the conventional routing protocols. Furthermore, the most significant contribution is not only in the communication performance but also VORTEX omits route discovery or route maintenance from routing protocols, and formed networks themselves have a function to deliver packets toward destination terminals.

Interaction of platinum agents, cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin against albumin in vivo rats and in vitro study using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometory.

The protein binding rates (PBR) of platinum-containing agents cisplatin (CDDP), carboplatin (CBDCA) and oxaliplatin (L-OHP) have been reported as 98%, 25-50% and 98%, respectively. To investigate the protein-binding properties of albumin with cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was used to measure their plasma concentration in rats over time. The study also examined the effects of cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin-binding on albumin in vitro, using CD spectrometry and native-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (native PAGE). The ratios of PBR to irreversible PBR, of cisplatin and oxaliplatin were 98%:98% and 90%:87%, respectively, indicating a higher affinity for irreversible binding with albumin. That of carboplatin was 25%:10%, indicating 60-70% reversible binding with albumin. The plasma protein binding rate concentrations of cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin after in vivo administration were 96%, 15% and 80%, respectively. The CD spectrometry of albumin was unaffected by cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin binding. Though similar protein binding rates were observed with oxaliplatin and cisplatin, oxaliplatin had a higher mobility rate during PAGE. It was confirmed that the binding of cisplatin and oxaliplatin with albumin affected its electric charge but not the structure. In conclusion, cisplatin and oxaliplatin bind irreversibly with albumin in plasma and may irreversibly interact with tissue protein and/or DNA. The difficulties involved with predicting the tissue concentrations of cisplatin and oxaliplatin from their plasma concentration inhibits their therapeutic drug monitoring. On the contrary, carboplatin, like some generic drugs, reversibly binds to plasma proteins. It is, therefore, possible to conduct therapeutic drug monitoring for carboplatin.

Liquid-Infused Smooth Surface for Improved Condensation Heat Transfer.

Control of vapor condensation properties is a promising approach to manage a crucial part of energy infrastructure conditions. Heat transfer by vapor condensation on superhydrophobic coatings has garnered attention, because dropwise condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces with rough structures leads to favorable heat-transfer performance. However, pinned condensed water droplets within the rough structure and a high thermodynamic energy barrier for nucleation of superhydrophobic surfaces limit their heat-transfer increase. Recently, slippery liquid-infused surfaces (SLIPS) have been investigated, because of their high water sliding ability and surface smoothness originating from the liquid layer. However, even on SLIPS, condensed water droplets are eventually pinned to degrade their heat-transfer properties after extended use, because the rough base layer is exposed as infused liquid is lost. Herein, we report a liquid-infused smooth surface named "SPLASH" (surface with π electron interaction liquid adsorption, smoothness, and hydrophobicity) to overcome the problems derived from the rough structures in previous approaches to obtain stable, high heat-transfer performance. The SPLASH displayed a maximum condensation heat-transfer coefficient that was 175% higher than that of an uncoated substrate. The SPLASH also showed higher heat-transfer performance and more stable dropwise condensation than superhydrophobic surfaces and SLIPS from the viewpoints of condensed water droplet mobility and the thermodynamic energy barrier for nucleation. The effects of liquid-infused surface roughness and liquid viscosity on condensation heat transfer were investigated to compare heat-transfer performance. This research will aid industrial applications using vapor condensation.

Droplet Motion Control on Dynamically Hydrophobic Patterned Surfaces as Multifunctional Liquid Manipulators.

In this letter, we introduce a novel liquid manipulation strategy to design dynamically hydrophobic and statically hydrophobic/hydrophilic patterned surfaces using an "omniphobicity"-based technique. The surfaces guide the sliding direction of a droplet in the presence of a statically hydrophilic area where the droplet does not stick on the transport path significantly enhancing the fluidic system transport efficiency. The concept of dynamically hydrophobic and statically hydrophobic/hydrophilic patterned surfaces in conjunction with omniphobic patterning techniques having surface multifunctionality, we believe, has potential not only for fluidic applications but also for future material engineering development.