Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation simulation-based training: methods, drawbacks and a novel solution

Introduction: Patients under the error-prone and complication-burdened extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) are looked after by a highly trained, multidisciplinary team. Simulation-based training (SBT) affords ECMO centers the opportunity to equip practitioners with the technical dexterity required to manage emergencies. The aim of this article is to review ECMO SBT activities and technology followed by a novel solution to current challenges. ECMO simulation: The commonly-used simulation approach is easy-to-build as it requires a functioning ECMO machine and an altered circuit. Complications are simulated through manual circuit manipulations. However, scenario diversity is limited and often lacks physiological and/or mechanical authenticity. It is also expensive to continuously operate due to the consumption of highly specialized equipment. Technological aid: Commercial extensions can be added to enable remote control and to automate circuit manipulation, but do not improve on the realism or cost-effectiveness. A modular ECMO simulator: To address those drawbacks, we are developing a standalone modular ECMO simulator that employs affordable technology for high-fidelity simulation.Peer reviewe

Interviews via VoIP: benefits and disadvantages within a PhD study of SMEs

The benefits and disadvantages of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) are explored as part of a PhD study to conduct qualitative interviews to discuss risk management within records management. This was used in conjunction with an internet-based electronic whiteboard system to provide online collaboration between participant and researcher. This work describes interviews that were held separately with two participants from one small to medium enterprise (SME). An analysis of factors that might affect researcher choice of interview format is given, and the differences noted between other formats of ‘remote’ interview. Suggestions are made as to how other forms of e-communication may be used for interviews

Simulating Bandwidth Sharing with Pareto distributed File Sizes

The traffic on the internet has known to be heavy tailed: the size of file transfers through FTP or HTTP applications, as well as those transferred by P2P applications has been observed to have a very heavy tail. Typically modeled as Pareto distributed with parameter between 1.05 to 1.5, the file size has infinite variance. This is the source of many difficulties in simulating data traffic: convergence is very slow, simulations have to be very long, and the standard methods for deriving confidence intervals, based on the CLT, are not applicable here. We illustrate these well known problems through the simulation study of a processor sharing queue, which is often used to model session level resource sharing in the internet. We test bootstrap methods to accelerate convergence and improve the precision of simulations, and test a direct approach to obtain confidence interval based on the histogram of the empirical distributions. The conclusion drawn are then compared to those obtained when simulating in ns2 data transfer using TC

MAKING ENGLISH TOURISM WEBSITE FOR DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM AND CULTURE OF KARANGANYAR REGENCY

ABSTRACT Al Fathih Viqi Maksumah, 2016. Making English Tourism Website for Department of Tourism and Culture of Karanganyar Regency, English Diploma III Program, Faculty of Cultural and Sciences, Sebelas Maret University. This final project report was written based on the internship in Department of Tourism and Culture of Karanganyar Regency, during January 21st - March 1st, 2016. The objectives of this report are to explain the process of making English tourism website, the problems of making English website and the problem solving of making English tourism website. During the internship, I divided the process of making English tourism website into six steps. The steps were; 1) doing observation, 2) making promotional text, 3) editing the promotional text, 4) designing website, 5) presenting and simulating website, and 6) promoting website. There were some problems of making English tourism website. The problems were the difficulties in mapping out the location of observation, combining the persuasive and informative text, managing the time for editing the promotional text, choosing the design of the website, preparing the tools for presenting and simulating website, and promoting the website to foreigner and travel agency. Those problems can be solved by using Karanganyar tourism map that had been given by Department of Tourism and Culture of Karanganyar Regency to map out the location of observation, using internet to search the example of combination persuasive and informative text, making time table to arrange the time for editing promotional text, using the Internet to look for the design of the foreign tourism website, asking for help to the staff of Department of Tourism and Culture of Karanganyar Regency to prepare the tools of presentation, using social media, and cooperating with travel agency to promote the website to people in the wor

Recognizing Voice Over IP: A Robust Front-End for Speech Recognition on the World Wide Web

The Internet Protocol (IP) environment poses two relevant sources of distortion to the speech recognition problem: lossy speech coding and packet loss. In this paper, we propose a new front-end for speech recognition over IP networks. Specifically, we suggest extracting the recognition feature vectors directly from the encoded speech (i.e., the bit stream) instead of decoding it and subsequently extracting the feature vectors. This approach offers two significant benefits. First, the recognition system is only affected by the quantization distortion of the spectral envelope. Thus, we are avoiding the influence of other sources of distortion due to the encoding-decoding process. Second, when packet loss occurs, our front-end becomes more effective since it is not constrained to the error handling mechanism of the codec. We have considered the ITU G.723.1 standard codec, which is one of the most preponderant coding algorithms in voice over IP (VoIP) and compared the proposed front-end with the conventional approach in two automatic speech recognition (ASR) tasks, namely, speaker-independent isolated digit recognition and speaker-independent continuous speech recognition. In general, our approach outperforms the conventional procedure, for a variety of simulated packet loss rates. Furthermore, the improvement is higher as network conditions worsen.Publicad