This letter introduces a novel regression model structure for the inflated Rayleigh distribution, which effectively models high dynamic amplitude pixel values in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The proposed model estimates the mean of inflated Rayleigh distribution signals by a structure that includes a set of regressors and a link function. The inflated Rayleigh distribution combines the Rayleigh and a degenerate distribution, assigning non-null probability specifically for observed values equal to zero. Null pixel values in amplitude SAR images can be randomly distributed within the image, especially in low-intensity areas; a model capable of incorporating these values is essential to avoid changes in image statistics. Extensive evaluations are conducted using simulated and real SAR images to validate the proposed model, specifically focusing on ground-type detection in high dynamic amplitude pixel values scenarios. The performance of the proposed inflated Rayleigh regression model is compared with traditional Gaussian-based regression models, excelling in terms of ground-type detection in a SAR image obtained from the ICEYE radar. 

Background: The growing presence of digital technologies in health care requires the health workforce to have proficiency in subjects such as informatics. This has implications in the education of nursing students, as their preparedness to use these technologies in clinical situations is something that course administrators need to consider. Thus, students’ attitudes toward technology could be investigated to assess their needs regarding this proficiency.

Objective: This study aims to investigate attitudes (enthusiasm and anxiety) toward technology among nursing students and to identify factors associated with those attitudes. Methods: Nursing students at 2 universities in Sweden and 1 university in Poland were invited to answer a questionnaire. Data about attitudes (anxiety and enthusiasm) toward technology, eHealth literacy, electronic device skills, and frequency of using electronic devices and sociodemographic data were collected. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the data. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient and Mann-Whitney U test were used for statistical inferences.

Results: In total, 646 students answered the questionnaire—342 (52.9%) from the Swedish sites and 304 (47.1%) from the Polish site. It was observed that the students’ technology enthusiasm (techEnthusiasm) was on the higher end of the Technophilia instrument (score range 1-5): 3.83 (SD 0.90), 3.62 (SD 0.94), and 4.04 (SD 0.78) for the whole sample, Swedish students, and Polish students, respectively. Technology anxiety (techAnxiety) was on the midrange of the Technophilia instrument: 2.48 (SD 0.96), 2.37 (SD 1), and 2.60 (SD 0.89) for the whole sample, Swedish students, and Polish students, respectively. Regarding techEnthusiasm among the nursing students, a negative correlation with age was found for the Swedish sample (P<.001; ρSwedish=−0.201) who were generally older than the Polish sample, and positive correlations with the eHealth Literacy Scale score (P<.001; ρall=0.265; ρSwedish=0.190; ρPolish=0.352) and with the perceived skill in using computer devices (P<.001; ρall=0.360; ρSwedish=0.341; ρPolish=0.309) were found for the Swedish, Polish, and total samples. Regarding techAnxiety among the nursing students, a positive correlation with age was found in the Swedish sample (P<.001; ρSwedish=0.184), and negative correlations with eHealth Literacy Scale score (P<.001; ρall=−0.196; ρSwedish=−0.262; ρPolish=−0.133) and with the perceived skill in using computer devices (P<.001; ρall=−0.209; ρSwedish=−0.347; ρPolish=−0.134) were found for the Swedish, Polish, and total samples and with the semester only for the Swedish sample (P<.001; ρSwedish=−0.124). Gender differences were found regarding techAnxiety in the Swedish sample, with women exhibiting a higher mean score than men (2.451, SD 1.014 and 1.987, SD 0.854, respectively).

Conclusions: This study highlights nursing students’ techEnthusiasm and techAnxiety, emphasizing correlations with various factors. With health care’s increasing reliance on technology, integrating health technology–related topics into education is crucial for future professionals to address health care challenges effectively.

©Ana Luiza Dallora, Ewa Kazimiera Andersson, Bruna Gregory Palm, Doris Bohman, Gunilla Björling, Ludmiła Marcinowicz, Louise Stjernberg, Peter Anderberg.

The combination of a large number of students and a diverse student population poses additional pedagogical challenges in higher education courses. The teacher's perception of student engagement becomes more challenging in a large group, and students may experience reduced motivation despite the teacher's efforts and pedagogical approach. This paper discusses the challenges of teaching approaches and students' motivation in large groups. For that, a survey at Blekinge Tekniska Hogskola (BTH) in Sweden was performed to evaluate and discuss learning improvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) courses attended by Swedish and international students. The survey explores how teachers can encourage student motivation in large classes, and it was based on related works reporting teaching methods and common issues in teaching STEM courses. Based on the survey's result analysis, we can observe that the physical learning environment and teaching style do not play an essential role in the student's motivation. However, the teacher and student interaction influences their motivation. These findings provide insight into the diverse perceptions of students regarding the connections between teaching style, feedback, learning environment, and motivation, for example. The conclusions derived from the survey are expected to serve as guidelines for improving student performance in large STEM groups. © 2024 IEEE.

This work confronts the complex issue of cross-interference in Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radars, a critical concern that has become more pronounced with the proliferation of automotive radar systems. The study intro-duces a two-dimensional autoregressive (AR) modeling technique for signal reconstruction in the time domain, tailored specifically for the textured nature of FMCW radar frames composed of fast- time (Range bin) and slow-time (Doppler bin) signals. According to the simulations conducted in this study, the proposed 2-D AR model (of order 3) exhibits superior performance compared to its 1-D counterpart (of order 5). This is evidenced by a slightly lower Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) during model training and a higher Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) for the reconstructed signal, suggesting that the 2-D model requires less frequent temporal sampling. The study further investigates different sampling strategies and evaluates the influence of model order on signal reconstruction. Based on these assessments, a third-order 2-D AR is recommended as a suitable trade-off model for interference mitigation of FMCW radars for the evaluated scenarios. This paper is structured as follows: Section I defines the interference problem in FM CW radars and the latest solutions to this problem are discussed. Sections II and III include the working principles of FMCW radar and theoretical backgrounds about multi-dimension auto-regressive modeling, respectively. Eventually, the mitigation techniques and numerical evaluations of the proposed approach are presented in Sections IV and V. © 2024 Warsaw University of Technology.

This study proposes a zero-inflated Rayleigh seasonal autoregressive moving average model with exogenous regressors (iRSARMAX) to model and forecast non-negative time series, accommodating the presence of zero values. The proposed iRSARMAX models the conditional mean of the continuous part of the mixture distribution by using a dynamic structure that considers stochastic seasonality, autoregressive and moving average terms, exogenous regressors, and a link function. It also models the mixture parameters related to the inflated (zero) values with a parsimonious dynamic structure. Furthermore, the analytical score vector was deduced and considered in the conditional maximum likelihood estimation of the introduced model parameters. The analytical Fisher information matrix was obtained and used for hypothesis testing and interval inferences for the parameters of the proposed model. Randomized quantile residuals were considered, and goodness-of-fit tests were implemented to validate the model. An extensive simulation study was performed to evaluate the performance of conditional likelihood inference over the model parameters for finite sample sizes. The proposed model excelled compared to the traditional seasonal autoregressive and moving average model and the Holt-Winters filtering in forecasting influent flow. In addition, it outperformed competitors in predicting synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image data. 

This paper presents an iterative change detection (CD) method based on Bayes&#x2019; theorem for very high-frequency (VHF) ultra-wideband (UWB) SAR images considering commonly used clutter-plus-noise statistical models. The proposed detection technique uses the information of the detected changes to iteratively update the data and distribution information, obtaining more accurate clutter-plus-noise statistics resulting in false alarm reduction. The Bivariate Rayleigh and Bivariate Gaussian distributions are investigated as candidates to model the clutter-plus-noise, and the Anderson-Darling goodness-of-fit test is used to investigate three scenarios of interest. Different aspects related to the distributions are discussed, the observed mismatches are analyzed, and the impact of the distribution chosen for the proposed iterative change detection method is analyzed. Finally, the proposed iterative method performance is assessed in terms of the probability of detection and false alarm rate and compared with other competitive solutions. The experimental evaluation uses data from real measurements obtained using the CARABAS II SAR system. Results show that the proposed iterative CD algorithm performs better than the other methods. Author

Older adults need to participate in the digital society, as societal and personal changes and what they do with the remaining time that they have in their older years has an undeniable effect on motivation, cognition and emotion. Changes in personality traits were investigated in older adults over the period 2019–2021. Technology enthusiasm and technology anxiety are attitudes that affect the relationship to the technology used. The changes in the score of technology enthusiasm and technology anxiety were the dependent variables. They were investigated with personality traits, age, gender, education, whether someone lives alone, cognitive function, digital social participation (DSP) and health literacy as predictors of the outcome. The Edwards-Nunnally index and logistic regression were used. The results indicated that DSP, lower age, lower neuroticism and higher education were indicative of less technology anxiety. High DSP and high extraversion are indicative of technology enthusiasm. DSP and attitude towards technology seem to be key in getting older adults to stay active online. © The Author(s) 2023.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are widely used for remote sensing applications, such as change detection and environmental monitoring. This paper presents a recent measurement campaign for SAR images using the LORA system and investigates the applicability of the collected data for change detection. The region of interest in this study is a busy commercial harbour area in the south of Sweden. During the measurements, there were significant changes on the ground in the parking lot as trucks were disembarking a ship. The obtained SAR images were first filtered to have similar regions of interest in the Fourier domain to increase the coherence magnitude. Then, a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) algorithm was employed to detect changes with respect to trucks. In addition, optical aerial images were collected during this measurement campaign and were utilized to adjust the CFAR detection threshold. As a result, all the changed and unchanged regions corresponding to the selected targets were detected successfully. Moreover, a pattern of trucks’ utilization of the harbour’s parking lot during this peak time was obtained. The results demonstrate the applicability of the data from the ongoing measurement campaign and the possibility of further algorithm development for target detection and classification.

Due to the extensive coastal area of Brazil, pattern recognition techniques based on artificial intelligence can search for targets at sea faster for surveillance, rescue, or illicit combat activities. This article presents a hyperparameter analysis of machine learning techniques to classify targets in SAR images. We considered a data set with vertical horizontal polarization SAR images from Campos Basin, Rio de Janeiro, to classify oil platforms and ships. The classification attributes are extracted through a convolutional neural network VGG-16 pre-trained with the ImageNet data set. Then, four machine learning techniques are evaluated, random forest, decision tree, k-nearest-neighbors, and logistic regression. As a metric for assessing the classifiers, accuracy (Acc) and area under the curve (AUC) are used. The grid search technique is used to identify the best combination of parameters of the classifiers with the highest Acc and AUC. Finally, the best result is the logistic regression classifier.

This paper describes a new measurement campaign for SAR images. The data consists of images collected by the Swedish LORA system associated with VHF-band (19-90 MHz). Due to the system frequency, detecting targets concealed in a forest is possible. Thus, this paper aims to share with the community the results of utilizing new VHF-band SAR data that allows the development of new methods for target and other change detection. In particular, to show the applicability of the new data set, a simple change detection method was performed to detect targets in a forest, resulting in 100% of detection, associated with no false alarm in a particular region of interest.