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Recognition of physical and mental responses to stress is important for stress assessment and management as its negative effects in health can be prevented or reduced. Wearable technology, mainly using electroencephalogram (EEG), provides information such as tracking fitness activity, disease detection, and monitoring neurologicalstates of individuals. However, the recording of EEG signals from a wearable device is inconvenient, expensive, and uncomfortable during normal daily activities. This study introduces the application of tensor decomposition of non-EEG data for visualizing and classifying neurological statuses with application to human stress recognition. The multimodal dataset of non-EEG physiological signals publicly available from the PhysioNet database was used for testing the proposed method. To visualize the biosignals in a low dimensional feature space, the multi-way factorization technique known as the PARAFAC was applied for feature extraction. Results show visualizations that well separate the four groups of neurological statuses obtained from twenty healthy subjects. The extracted features were then used for pattern classification. Two statistical classifiers, which are the multinomial logit regression(MLR) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), were implemented. The results show that the MLR and LDA can identify the four neurological statuses with accuracies of 95% and 98.8%, respectively. This study suggests the potential application of tensor decomposition for the analysis of physiological measurements collected from multiple sensors. Moreover, the proposed study contributes to the advancement of wearable technology for human stress monitoring. With tensor decomposition of complex multi-sensor or multi-channel data, simple classification techniques can be employed to achieve similar results obtained using sophisticated machine-learning techniques.

Background Demands placed on individuals in occupational and social settings, as well as imbalances in personal traits and resources, can lead to chronic stress. The Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress (TICS) measures chronic stress while incorporating domain-specific aspects, and has been found to be a highly reliable and valid research tool. The aims of the present study were to confirm the German version TICS factorial structure in an English translation of the instrument (TICS-E) and to report its psychometric properties. Methods A random route sample of healthy participants (N = 483) aged 18–30 years completed the TICS-E. The robust maximum likelihood estimation with a mean-adjusted chi-square test statistic was applied due to the sample’s significant deviation from the multivariate normal distribution. Goodness of fit, absolute model fit, and relative model fit were assessed by means of the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and the Tucker Lewis Index (TLI). Results Reliability estimates (Cronbach’s α and adjusted split-half reliability) ranged from .84 to .92. Item-scale correlations ranged from .50 to .85. Measures of fit showed values of .052 for RMSEA (Cl = 0.50–.054) and .067 for SRMR for absolute model fit, and values of .846 (TLI) and .855 (CFI) for relative model-fit. Factor loadings ranged from .55 to .91. Conclusion The psychometric properties and factor structure of the TICS-E are comparable to the German version of the TICS. The instrument therefore meets quality standards for an adequate measurement of chronic stress.

The Master´s Thesis „Stress evaluation, coping and reduction” deals with analyzing stress in students, ordinary workers and top managers. The theoretical part analyzes stress, effects of stress, its impact on human health, his work / study results and overall his life. The practical part is concerned with the influence of stress on students, ordinary workers and top managers, using a questionnaire. On the basis of the analysis is specified what causes stress for the various groups, how most respondents solve the stress. The conclusion of the work includes the proposal of effective coping and stress reduction for each group of respondents.

As Sweden has moved towards an assessment-driven education system, an increase in studies reporting the decline of students’ well-being has also followed. The studies indicate a strong correlation between said decline and the potential negative effects of assessment such as stress and emotional distress. Defining well-being as a balance between the students’ abilities and their aims, this essay investigates how and why Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1991) can be used as a tool for identifying the possible impact of assessment on this   balance while simultaneously working towards both abstract and concrete goals of current curricula and the Education Act. Foucauldian theory is utilized as a way of identifying and dismantling structures of assessment with key factors such as surveillance, testing and categorization constituting the main foci in the analysis of Ender’s Game. The extremes of assessment at Card’s Battle School provide an excellent opportunity for students to gain awareness of their own situation at a safe distance while identifying potential similarities in the Swedish Education System and their effects on well-being.

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Monitoring and protection of power systems is a task that has manifold objectives. Amongst others, it involves performing data mining, optimizing available resources, assessing system stresses, and doing data conditioning. The role of PMUs in fulfilling these four objectives forms the basis of this dissertation. Classification and regression tree (CART) built using phasor data has been extensively used in power systems. The splits in CART are based on a single attribute or a combination of variables chosen by CART itself rather than the user. But as PMU data consists of complex numbers, both the attributes, should be considered simultaneously for making critical decisions. An algorithm is proposed here that expresses high dimensional, multivariate data as a single attribute in order to successfully perform splits in CART. In order to reap maximum benefits from placement of PMUs in the power grid, their locations must be selected judiciously. A gradual PMU placement scheme is developed here that ensures observability as well as protects critical parts of the system. In order to circumvent the computational burden of the optimization, this scheme is combined with a topology-based system partitioning technique to make it applicable to virtually any sized system. A power system is a dynamic being, and its health needs to be monitored at all times. Two metrics are proposed here to monitor stress of a power system in real-time. Angle difference between buses located across the network and voltage sensitivity of buses lying in the middle are found to accurately reflect the static and dynamic stress of the system. The results indicate that by setting appropriate alerts/alarm limits based on these two metrics, a more secure power system operation can be realized. A PMU-only linear state estimator is intrinsically superior to its predecessors with respect to performance and reliability. However, ensuring quality of the data stream that leaves this estimator is crucial. A methodology for performing synchrophasor data conditioning and validation that fits neatly into the existing linear state estimation formulation is developed here. The results indicate that the proposed methodology provides a computationally simple, elegant solution to the synchrophasor data quality problem. / Ph. D.

Background Demands placed on individuals in occupational and social settings, as well as imbalances in personal traits and resources, can lead to chronic stress. The Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress (TICS) measures chronic stress while incorporating domain-specific aspects, and has been found to be a highly reliable and valid research tool. The aims of the present study were to confirm the German version TICS factorial structure in an English translation of the instrument (TICS-E) and to report its psychometric properties. Methods A random route sample of healthy participants (N = 483) aged 18–30 years completed the TICS-E. The robust maximum likelihood estimation with a mean-adjusted chi-square test statistic was applied due to the sample’s significant deviation from the multivariate normal distribution. Goodness of fit, absolute model fit, and relative model fit were assessed by means of the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and the Tucker Lewis Index (TLI). Results Reliability estimates (Cronbach’s α and adjusted split-half reliability) ranged from .84 to .92. Item-scale correlations ranged from .50 to .85. Measures of fit showed values of .052 for RMSEA (Cl = 0.50–.054) and .067 for SRMR for absolute model fit, and values of .846 (TLI) and .855 (CFI) for relative model-fit. Factor loadings ranged from .55 to .91. Conclusion The psychometric properties and factor structure of the TICS-E are comparable to the German version of the TICS. The instrument therefore meets quality standards for an adequate measurement of chronic stress.

The Master’s thesis "Stress evaluation, coping and reduction" dealing with the currently very topical issue the stress acting on employee working conditions. It analyzes the types of stress, signs, symptoms and effects on health and work performance of employees. The thesis is focused on the factors causing stress, their identification and reduction of the company. The theoretical part is focused on theoretical analysis of the problems. The practical part is devoted to the measurement of stressors in the working environment for catering JHREST s.r.o. employees. The work conclusion includes a proposal of the stress factors reduction in the company.