Optimizing text-intesive documents for on-screen viewing using the model of the Portable Document Format

Document portability programs transform electronic documents into a state that allows information to be viewed, annotated, and printed by any computer system, regardless of the original computer platform or software application used to create the primary document. In addition, portable documents maintain formatting, fonts and graphics as they appear in the original. Despite the unique opportunity these programs offer for distributing information, most portable document developers do not use the technology effectively. Poor font rendering and page sizes too large for easy navigation or comfortable monitor viewing make most portable documents impractical for pure electronic use. When a document is presented on screen, it no longer has the same properties as a printed page. Though the information contained within it may not have changed, the reader has less control over the conditions under which the document will be read. It becomes the responsibility of the creator to present that information in a useful manner, if he or she wishes the information to reach its audience. The purpose of this study was to determine whether it is possible, through simple formulaic reformatting, to create highly legible text intensive documents for on screen viewing using a document portability program, specifically Adobes Portable Document Format. This objective was achieved by determining the factors that con tribute to legibility and creating and testing various documents based on those findings. Three experiments were conducted to determine whether the portable document format is a viable medium for viewing text intensive documents on screen. It was found that though the portable document format has revolutionary specific uses, and if documents are formatted specifically for the medium users prefer them over nonoptimized documents, users still prefer to read text intensive documents on paper

Does aid help improve economic institutions ?

Aid is expected to promote better living standards by raising investment and growth. But aid may also affect institutions directly. In theory, these effects may or may not work in the same direction as those on investment. The authors examine the effect of aid on economic institutions and find that aid has neither a positive nor a negative impact on existing measures of economic institutions. They find the results using pooled data for non-overlapping five-year periods, confirmed by pooled annual regressions for a large panel of countries and by pure cross-section regressions. The authors explicitly allow for time invariant effects that are country specific and find the results to be robust to model specifications, estimation methods, and different data sets.Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Public Institution Analysis&Assessment,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance,School Health

Dynamic workflow management for large scale scientific applications

The increasing computational and data requirements of scientific applications have made the usage of large clustered systems as well as distributed resources inevitable. Although executing large applications in these environments brings increased performance, the automation of the process becomes more and more challenging. The use of complex workflow management systems has been a viable solution for this automation process. In this thesis, we study a broad range of workflow management tools and compare their capabilities especially in terms of dynamic and conditional structures they support, which are crucial for the automation of complex applications. We then apply some of these tools to two real-life scientific applications: i) simulation of DNA folding, and ii) reservoir uncertainty analysis. Our implementation is based on Pegasus workflow planning tool, DAGMan workflow execution system, Condor-G computational scheduler, and Stork data scheduler. The designed abstract workflows are converted to concrete workflows using Pegasus where jobs are matched to resources; DAGMan makes sure these jobs execute reliably and in the correct order on the remote resources; Condor-G performs the scheduling for the computational tasks and Stork optimizes the data movement between different components. Integrated solution with these tools allows automation of large scale applications, as well as providing complete reliability and efficiency in executing complex workflows. We have also developed a new site selection mechanism on top of these systems, which can choose the most available computing resources for the submission of the tasks. The details of our design and implementation, as well as experimental results are presented

Creation of an open data federated platform

The goal of this thesis is to design and build a web platform that integrates access to data from several Open Data portals. This platform will be used as a tool to explore and showcase the results of different techniques of data discovery, with the goal of developing and implementing a method to efficiently detect similarities and datasets that can be joined. This thesis is highly practical, and is focused on explaining the technical decisions and implementation details behind the final tool developed. With the popularization of Open Data platforms the amount of data available on the internet is growing exponentially, and with it the question of how to extract value of such large amounts of data. This project not only looks for a way to unify the data in a single place, but also for ways to be able to explore this data, making special emphasis on ways to detect similarities between datasets. The project initially revolved around the data provided from the municipal open data portals from Barcelona and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, but the final solution is meant to be scalable and easily adaptable to other data sources. The initial idea for this thesis was to be focused mainly on exploring methods for detecting similarity and joinability between datasets based on profiles, but during development, it became obvious that the infrastructure required to unify all the datasets and provide a tool to explore the data was not simple at all. So in the end, a big part of the thesis consists of the discussion of technical decisions made and details of the tool built for the project

A Literature Review: Stress Management in The Family of Intensive Care Patients

ABSTRACT Introduction: Intensive care unit is a unit with a complex case and a stressor strainer. When patients enter intensive care families have a variety of stressors such as rapid decision making and costs are not small. The role of nurse as educator is very important in reducing family anxiety with patients treated in intesive units. Mothers of intensive care babies feel a great deal of anxiety over their child's condition, so there needs to be a good system support for the healing of her and her baby. Various ways nurses do in reducing stress experienced by the patient's family such as good communication between nurses and families of patients with intensive care. This review aims to get a picture of stress management that can be done on the family of intensive care patients. Methods: A literature review was conducted in the fields of ebscho, sience direct, elseiver, sage journals, scopus, and proquest, limited the range of the last 10 years from 2007-2017. The final sample included 18 articles. Results: The literature found that the causes of family stressors include rapid decision-making, fear of family emergency conditions, maintenance costs and length of care. Good communication and good information and skill support can decrease the stress experienced by intensive care patients' families. Conclussions: Intensive care is a unit with high complexity, unstable conditions and sophisticated technology. Conditions that require rigorous monitoring not only cause stressors for the patient, but become a stressor for the patient's family

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Developing new products for emerging markets: a competency based approach

Emerging markets as represented by BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries signify an enormous growth opportunity and a must win market for MNCs (multinational companies). It is estimated that by 2013, the middle class in BRIC countries will be larger than the population of Western Europe, USA and Japan combined. For companies focusing on developing new products, emerging markets represent a large and potentially attractive new customer base. Unfortunately, MNCs are strategically disadvantaged in developing new products for the emerging markets. Compared to developed markets, emerging markets have significant geographical, economic, social, culture, infrastructure and governmental differences. The problem is exacerbated as MNCs continue to rely on predictable business models that have been built on years of experience in developed markets. To become a market leader, MNCs must seriously challenge their existing business model and strategic framework to address the nuances of emerging markets. BRIC should be viewed through a different lens and the deeply embedded values, processes and resources modified to win in emerging markets