Doctors currently diagnose
many neurological diseases by observing the gait of a patient; however, many
patients feel uncomfortable in the medical surroundings and do not behave
naturally. To remove this obstacle to diagnose, CITRIS researchers are
developing an automated diagnostic system that will enable various gait and movement
disorders to be quantitatively characterized. This system, which measures
inertia, will allow patients to collect information at their home and at other
locations that reflect their daily routine.
Pollution due to atmospheric particulates is a major cause of respiratory illnesses such as asthma particularly in California’s Central Valley which contains five of the ten most polluted cities in the United States. Real-time monitoring of the size and density of airborne particles is important for providing health advisories. Traditional monitoring techniques provide only sparse, localized measurements. This proposal seeks seed funding to investigate terrestrial remote sensing as a novel low-cost wide-coverage alternate to current approaches for monitoring atmospheric particulates.