Ashu Marasinghe

Feasibility of standardized injury surveillance and reporting: a comparison of data from four Asian nations

Background: To address the increasing number of injuries in developing countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) encourages the establishment of hospital-based surveillance systems and systematic data collection. Although a computerized system is preferable in terms of efficiency, many developing countries have difficulty accessing the appropriate resources. Objectives: To assess the possibility of comparing and sharing data among countries, and then to discuss the possibility of establishing an international data management system through the internet. Methods: A point-by-point comparison of data directories from injury surveillance systems in Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Japan was conducted using guidelines published by WHO as the standard. Results: Thailand, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka used data items that are comparable to each other and to WHO guidelines, with few, readily amenable, differences. The Japanese system used quite different data items. Conclusions: Data comparability suggests the feasibility of a global data management system that can store data from various countries. Such a system, if made accessible over the internet, would benefit resource-constrained countries by providing them with a ready-made framework to implement a surveillance system at low cost.

Developing a Smart City Model that Ensures the Optimum Utilization of Existing Resources in Cities of All Sizes

The concept of Smart Cities is currently gaining high popularity among city authorities around the world while attracting leading companies to collaborate with government bodies as it is now moving from pilot projects and towards creating high business value. Though the existing literature provides evidence for various attempts made in defining the term Smart City and in developing models for the realization of Smart Cities, they are largely focusing on heavily digitized cities with well-established infrastructure. Therefore this paper attempts to address the unattended need of developing a Smart City model that could equally be applied to small and emerging cities especially in developing countries, with the aim of optimizing the utilization of existing city resources. Maslows hierarchy of needs serves as the base on which the model is developed and the associated cyclic behavior is due to the emphasis placed on the participation of citizens in city governance through their feedback which is further inspired by the advent of new technologies including web 2.0 technologies. Universal design is integrated to the model further making the cities accessible and livable for all.

Observed Stent's anti-Hebbian postulate on dynamic stochastic computational synapses

Unconstrained growth of synaptic connectivity and the lack of references to synaptic depression in Hebbs postulate has diminished its value as a learning algorithm. While spike timing dependent plasticity and other synaptic scaling mechanisms have been studying the possibility of regulating synaptic activity on neuronal level, we studied the possibility of regulating the synaptic activity of Hebbs neurons on dynamic stochastic computational synapses. The study was conducted on fully connected network with four artificial neurons where each neuron consisted of thousands of artificial stochastic synapses that are modeled with transmitters and receptors. The synapses updated their stochastic states dynamically according to the spike arrival time to that synapses. The activity of these synapses was regulated by a new stability promoting mechanism. Results support the following findings: (i) the synchronous activity between presynaptic (cell A) and postsynaptic (cell B) neuron increases the activity of A. (ii) Asynchronous activation of these two neurons decreases As activity if one of the following conditions are satisfied (a). if activity of the other presynaptic neurons of the postsynaptic neuron B is asynchronous with the As activity or (b) if B is in a depressed state when activity of presynaptic neuron A is increased. (iii) the introduced stability promoting mechanism exhibited similar to the Homeostatic synaptic plasticity process and encouraged the emergence of Hebbs postulate and its anti-Hebbian mechanisms. Further, we demonstrated the metabolic changes that could occur inside Hebbs neurons when such an activity takes place on a dynamic stochastic neural network.

Planning Smart Meal in a Smart City for a Smart Living

The quality of services and products is the main indicator of smart city. Last few years it has been showing a rapid development and much fashionable achievements with high technology because the smart city implementation can be expressed as a sign of development or sustainability of country but except the quality of society which has been established by smart city concept. The developing countries are also having a problem of achieving the smart city concept encompasses high technology with complex concepts. Due to paucity of literature, the ultimate goal of this paper is to innervate effective concept for achieve a Smart City. Furthermore using sophisticated information processing system to analyze their citizens plan for arrange relevant services and products smart city is very convenient way to achieve quality life through smart city concept for any country. As an initial step, this paper explains way of smart planning for Smart Meal and arrangement of related services to succeed the approach. To increase the accuracy and efficiency of our approach we use results of a questionnaire. Furthermore as an initial step this paper propose a structure of information processing system to getting smart meal for quality life in smart city.

When Children Sense in Colours: Determinants of Colour - Emotion Associations

It is an accepted fact that children are easy to impress but hard to content. Unlike adults, children have such a dynamic like and dislike patterns. Even though it is not clear why children cannot cling to one idea for a longer period of time it is obvious that their curiosity tempts to experience a bit of everything. While competing with the dynamic nature of childs mind this research extends the previous work on childrens colour selection into a new direction; inquiring what are the determinants of childrens colour mapping with emotions? This research argues on two phenomena and exposes the readers mind to a third. Three hypotheses were raised. First; culture influence on detecting affective relations towards colour. Second; Nature influence on detecting affective colour relations. Finally whether there is a trace for an unknown third dimension to grasp the affective reaction towards colour.

Appraisal and guideline to utilise colours in interactive learning environments based on Kansei engineering

This paper appraises the significance of psychological effect of colours in interface designing, utilising a Kansei assessing system. A group of Japanese children age between 10-11 years took part in the research work. The experiment addressed children|s colour emotion associations in the context of interactive, learning environment. Significance of result proved that colour plays a major role in a child|s world and plays an important influential role when interacting with computers. Moreover, using the results of the study, this paper highlights the importance of affective dimension in colour design and effective way of using it.

Supporting user interaction of social network mobile application with multimodal interaction

Developing commercial multimodal interfaces to date has been accommodation of the practical aspect of usability of the application. The advent of advanced mobile devices in combination with new interaction modalities and methods, opens new possibilities in user interface adaptation. In this paper we propose a framework to enhance the user interaction of a social network mobile application with multimodal adaptation. Our approach integrates the multimodality adaptation for both input and output modality interaction according to user needs.

Real-time rendering of colour-shift effect of metallic materials

The directional-dependent effects of the materials are responsible for our perception of certain materials being realistic or not. Some materials consist of colour pigments, and these cause directional-dependent colour variations (or colour-shifts). For instance, we can observe a colour-shift effect of metallic materials, which means the changing of colour from metallic colour to pigment colour depending on the direction of incident illumination and direction of view. The most common criticism of existing analytical Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) models is that these models are inadequate to generate colour-shift effect of materials for realistic real-time rendering. This paper introduces a visually plausible shading model to generate colour-shift effect of metallic materials by modifying specular component with illumination and view dependent sheen. The developed shaders have intuitive parameters, which can generate different kinds of metallic effects for real-time rendering, including visually plausible gold, brass, silver, bronze and copper effects for real-time rendering.

Insight into Kansei Color Combinations in Interactive User Interface Designing

Color has a major impact on Human Computer Interaction. Although there is a very thin line between appropriate and inappropriate use of color, if used properly, color can be a powerful tool to improve the usefulness of an interactive interface in a wide variety of areas. On the contrary the excessive or inappropriate use of color can severely hinder the functionality and usability of an interface accordingly. A good visual design provides higher level of user satisfaction and further aids with conveying the intended message to its audience. In this paper we focus on one requisite aspect of visual design as such the Color, revealing one hidden dimension of color; Affectivity, by acquiring prospective users concealed color aesthetic preferences, employing Kansei Engineering Assessing System with respect to interactive Interfaces.

Synaptic Plasticity as Agent Communication

Neurons are considered as main computational units of the human brain, are working together with millions of synapses to convey information. The processes of information decoding and neurons’ communication mechanisms are still in a debate. Apart from the numerous researches into those areas, significant attention has given to the synaptic plasticity, which is suspected to have direct relationship with information processing of neurons. As per the biology, synaptic computation can be mainly divided into three plasticity processes, homeostasis, short-term and long-term. The long-term plasticity is considered as the main phenomena related to learning and memory formation; the roles of short-term plasticity and homeostasis plasticity have direct influences to synaptic efficacy and thereby to long-term plasticity. A few researches are being carried out to in cooperate the homeostasis plasticity to Artificial Neural Networks, are still unable to find real integrated mechanism without damaging to learning process. This paper proposes a new model for synaptic computation. In our approach, we understand the neurons as agents consisting of large number of constituent agents those play the roles of synapses, as transmitters or receivers. The statuses of these constituent agents are subjected to homeostasis and short-term plasticity. The number of active transmitters is an in-parameter for the learning processes. With the proposed model, through the active number of transmitters, learning can be explained as integrated process of three plasticity processes.