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Migraine is one of the most challenging diseases, putting a strain on health services and lowering the quality of life of those who suffer from it. By identifying the pre-symptoms of migraine and using self-measurement technology, detailed information can be collected, and health problems can be addressed. This study explored migraine patients’ perceptions of the benefits they perceive to be important when using technology applications in the self-care of their migraine condition. The aim of this study in the field of computer science was to investigate the technological solutions, the use, and the patients’ expectations of the benefits of wearable sensors. Previous studies have not combined these three perspectives. This study analysed the willingness of migraine patients to use wearable sensors to support self-care and the use of an electronic migraine diary for migraine management. The study was carried out using a qualitative multi-method study. The research data was based on 582 email survey responses, 12 qualitative interviews and user experiences of the Empatica E4 device. The study showed that migraine patients wanted wearable sensors to support self-care by identifying the pre-symptoms of migraine and an electronic migraine diary to monitor migraine attacks. Together, the wearable device and the electronic migraine diary support the patient’s self-care. The dissertation resulted in a perspective model of wearable sensors. The model provides new insights from three different perspectives: technologies and biosignals, user experiences and benefit expectations to support self-care of migraine patients., Tiivistelmä Migreeni on yksi haastavimmista sairauksista, joka kuormittaa terveydenhuollon palveluja ja laskee sitä sairastavien elämänlaatua. Migreenin ennakko-oireiden tunnistamisella ja itsensä mittaamisen teknologialla mahdollistetaan yksityiskohtaisen tiedon kerääminen ja terveysongelmiin vastaaminen. Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitettiin migreenipotilaiden käsityksiä siitä, mitä hyötyjä he itse pitävät tärkeänä teknisten sovellusten käytössä migreenisairautensa omahoidossa. Tämän tietojenkäsittelytieteenalaan kuuluvan tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli tutkia puettavien sensoreiden teknologiaratkaisuja, käyttöä ja potilaiden hyötyodotuksia. Aikaisemmat tutkimukset eivät ole yhdistäneet näitä kolmea näkökulmaa. Tässä tutkimuksessa analysoitiin migreenipotilaiden halukkuutta käyttää puettavia sensoreita omahoidon tukena ja sähköisen migreenipäiväkirjan hyödyntämistä migreenin hoidossa. Tutkimus toteutettiin laadullisella monimenetelmätutkimuksella. Tutkimusaineisto perustui 582 sähköpostikyselyn vastauksiin, 12 laadulliseen haastatteluun ja 11 Empatica E4 -laitteen käyttäjäkokemuksiin. Tutkimus osoitti, että migreenipotilaat toivoivat omahoidon tueksi puettavia sensoreita tunnistamaan migreenin ennakko-oireita sekä sähköisen migreenipäiväkirjan migreenikohtauksien seurantaan. Puettava laite ja sähköinen migreenipäiväkirja yhdessä tukevat potilaan omahoitoa. Väitöskirjan tuloksena syntyi puettavien sensoreiden näkökulmamalli, joka tuo uutta tietoa kolmesta eri näkökulmasta, jotka ovat teknologiat ja biosignaalit, käyttäjäkokemukset sekä hyötyodotukset migreenipotilaiden omahoidon tueksi.

The possibility of employing human enhancement interventions to aid in future space missions has been gaining attention lately. These possibilities have included one of the more controversial kinds of enhancements: biomedical moral enhancement. However, the discussion has thus far remained on a rather abstract level. In this paper we further this conversation by looking more closely at what type of interventions with what sort of effects we should expect when we are talking about biomedical moral enhancements. We suggest that a more grounded way to picture moral enhancement, at least in the near term, is to envision a form of cognitive enhancement that also provides some moral benefits by heightening the enhanced person’s capability for acting according to their own subjective moral code. While this concept of moral adherence enhancement also has relevance for the moral enhancement discussion more widely, in this paper we apply it specifically in the context of space missions. We argue that there are weighty reasons to consider making biomedical enhancements of the proposed kind a mandatory feature of early-phase long-distance space travel because these missions are high-stakes in nature and take place in an environment where the enhancement could be seen as conferring important advantages while negating many of the traditional arguments weighed against it.

This study analysed how migraine patients assume to improve their daily life if wearable sensors provide them pre-warnings of approaching or impending migraine attacks. The study analysed the use of new technology in identifying pre-symptoms in migraine patients using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) focusing on the assumed usefulness of a wearable device. The study added understanding of getting migraine patients to accept smart technology to support their own treatments. The results were drawn from a sample of altogether 582 migraine patients with or without an aura. The difference between migraine with aura and without aura is that migraine with aura precedes physical symptoms like visual disturbances, numbness, and difficulty in speech, while there are no pre-symptoms in migraine without aura. The assumed wearable device (WBAN) notifies, however, the bio-signals of an oncoming migraine attack. Due to current achievements with available digitalised tools to monitor health and wellbeing, also self-care is benefiting. Pre-migraine symptoms are among the biggest challenges in identifying migraine. Noting this, our study addressed the value of wearable sensors in early recognition of migraine attacks.

A combined pretreatment based on alkaline deep eutectic solvent (DES) of K₂CO₃ and glycerol and sequential acid fractionation was developed to extract reactive lignin from wheat straw biomass. This process exhibited excellent purification performance in lignin isolation, and the lignin fractionated at low pH displayed high reactivity, having hydroxyl and carboxyl groups up to 9.60 and 2.52 mmol/g, respectively. Silica was selectively separated and removed during the precipitation stage, avoiding the “silica interference”. Moreover, DES-lignin nanospheres created by self-assembly using lignin fractions obtained by acid precipitation possessed a high zeta potential, large particle size and high content of hydrophilic groups. Overall, the findings related to the dissociation mechanism and fractionation of reactive lignin during alkaline DES pretreatment and the acid sequence precipitation are crucial for facilitating lignin valorization in high-added value products.

We present CARE, a context-aware tool for nurses in nursing homes. The system utilises a sensors infrastructure to quantify the behaviour and wellbeing (e.g.,activity, mood, social and nurse interactions) of elderly residents. The sensor data is offloaded, processed and analysed in the cloud, to generate daily and long-term summaries of residents’ health. These insights are then presented to nurses via an Android tablet application. We aim to create a tool that can assist nurses and increase their awareness to residents’ needs. We deployed CARE in a local nursing home for two months and evaluated the system through apost-hocexploratory analysis and interviews with the nurses. The results indicate that CARE can reveal essential insights on the wellbeing of elderly residents and improve the care service. In the discussion, we reflect on our understanding and potential impact of future integrated technology in elderly care environments.

Amblyopia is a developmental disorder associated with abnormal visual experience during early childhood commonly arising from strabismus and/or anisometropia and leading to dysfunctions in visual cortex and to various visual deficits. The different forms of neuronal activity that are attenuated in amblyopia have been only partially characterized. In electrophysiological recordings of healthy human brain, the presentation of visual stimuli is associated with event-related activity and oscillatory responses. It has remained poorly understood whether these forms of activity are reduced in amblyopia and whether possible dysfunctions would arise from lower- or higher-order visual areas. We recorded neuronal activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) from anisometropic amblyopic patients and control participants during two visual tasks presented separately for each eye and estimated neuronal activity from source-reconstructed MEG data. We investigated whether event-related and oscillatory responses would be reduced for amblyopia and localized their cortical sources. Oscillation amplitudes and evoked responses were reduced for stimuli presented to the amblyopic eye in higher-order visual areas and in parietal and prefrontal cortices. Importantly, the reduction of oscillation amplitudes but not that of evoked responses was correlated with decreased visual acuity in amblyopia. These results show that attenuated oscillatory responses are correlated with visual deficits in anisometric amblyopia.

We present CARE, a context-aware tool for nurses in nursing homes. The system utilises a sensors infrastructure to quantify the behaviour and wellbeing (e.g., activity, mood, social and nurse interactions) of elderly residents. The sensor data is offloaded, processed and analysed in the cloud, to generate daily and long-term summaries of residents’ health. These insights are then presented to nurses via an Android tablet application. We aim to create a tool that can assist nurses and increase their awareness to residents’ needs. We deployed CARE in a local nursing home for two months and evaluated the system through a post-hoc exploratory analysis and interviews with the nurses. The results indicate that CARE can reveal essential insights on the wellbeing of elderly residents and improve the care service. In the discussion, we reflect on our understanding and potential impact of future integrated technology in elderly care environments.

This paper reports how interaction between family members and caregivers as perceived by family members could be improved via context-aware, imperceptible internet of things (IoT)-based solutions. The study focused on investigating experiences of the family members and the communication between caretakers in sheltered accommodation. Interviews including both open and closed questions revealed that there is high need for improving the communication, adding to the sparse earlier knowledge. The study revealed that the family members were willing to adopt an application to improve the communication that currently was experienced as too limited and vague. The results provide a fruitful base for further actions to improve communication between family members and professional caretakers.

Migraine is a long-term failure mode including a risk of disease-related deficits that lead to social exclusion. The study was conducted among members of the Finnish Society for Migraine, and it aimed to determine and recognize the migraine patients with pre-symptoms and whether they would be willing to use wearable sensors in identifying pre-symptoms of migraine. The survey received responses from 565 persons, and more than 90 per cent of the respondents were willing to use the wearable sensors for the measurement of pre-symptoms, as well as to support the treatment. Moreover, the study revealed that 87.8 percent of migraine patients identified migraine early symptoms. The most common symptoms are tiredness, slow thinking, difficulty to find words and visual disturbances. Most of the respondents wanted the device placed on wrist as a watch, wristband or a skin patch.

While the population is aging the role of information and communication technology (ICT) has grown in elderly care. This development has brought versatile ICT-related supportive systems to professionals and laymen working with aging people. The current study analyzed how professionals in elderly care perceived their workflow challenges before new ICT is developed and implemented to support their work. The results of this study are set to inform the design of a novel ICT system for a sheltered care home.

Migraine is a long-term failure mode, including a risk of disease-related deficits, that leads to social exclusion. The study was conducted among members of the Finnish Migraine Association and was aimed at identifying migraine patients with pre-symptoms and whether they would be willing to use wearable sensors to detect pre-symptoms. The survey received responses from 565 persons, 90% of whom were willing to use wearable sensors to measure pre-symptoms and support treatment. Moreover, the study revealed that 87.8% of migraine patients identified migraine’s early symptoms, the most common of which are tiredness, slow thinking, difficulty finding words and visual disturbances. Most of the respondents wanted the device placed on their wrist as a watch, wristband or skin patch.

Elderly care is a pressing societal challenge: government’s financial burden is expected to exponentially increase in the next 20 years as the population is aging rapidly. Solutions to mitigate this challenge include the use of IoT and software solutions to minimise the effort of elderly care, in care centres and at home. To accomplish this, we set to quantify what are the most important elderly care metrics (i.e., what is important to support caregivers’ work) through field observations and interviews at a local care centre housing 14 old adults. We designed iteratively and evaluated the usefulness of a mobile application with 8 caregivers, to summarise and communicate the care metrics, juxtaposed with wellbeing data (e.g., social interaction, mobility and others), part of a larger elderly care support platform, CARE. The goal of the mobile application is to enable a better care service by raising awareness to daily needs and routines of the elderly and to provide quick access to their wellbeing information. Our findings advocate that our design could positively benefit the care personnel and assist them carrying out the daily duties at the care centre.

We present an assistive healthcare platform, CARE, which aims to provide daily support for elderly caregivers with context-aware, unobtrusive, and actionable information. This information is collected through a plethora of IoT sensors installed strategically at an elderly care centre and is accessed through an Android tablet application. The application’s goal is to empower nurses with a better understanding of elderly needs and ultimately, improve the care service. We investigate how IoT devices and sensors can enable a pervasive healthcare system, and discuss a wide-range of important parameters for integration of elderly care practices.