4,765 research outputs found
Intelligent computing : the latest advances, challenges and future
Computing is a critical driving force in the development of human civilization. In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of intelligent computing, a new computing paradigm that is reshaping traditional computing and promoting digital revolution in the era of big data, artificial intelligence and internet-of-things with new computing theories, architectures, methods, systems, and applications. Intelligent computing has greatly broadened the scope of computing, extending it from traditional computing on data to increasingly diverse computing paradigms such as perceptual intelligence, cognitive intelligence, autonomous intelligence, and human computer fusion intelligence. Intelligence and computing have undergone paths of different evolution and development for a long time but have become increasingly intertwined in recent years: intelligent computing is not only intelligence-oriented but also intelligence-driven. Such cross-fertilization has prompted the emergence and rapid advancement of intelligent computing
An exploration of adherence and persistence in overactive bladder and other long-term conditions
Background and aims
Overactive bladder is a common, bothersome, and chronic condition associated with
symptoms of urinary urgency, incontinence, increased daytime micturition frequency and
nocturia. Despite exerting a significant burden on quality of life, adherence, and persistence
behaviours with OAB are particularly poor in comparison with other long-term conditions.
The aims of the present work were to explore themes relating to medicine-taking
behaviours in OAB and other long-term conditions and to suggest ways to improve them.
Methods
A systematic literature review was undertaken to understand the current landscape of
qualitative work exploring adherence and persistence with OAB patients. A qualitative study
involving 1:1 semi-structured interviews was conducted with OAB patients to explore the
context and drivers for adherence and persistence behaviours using thematic analysis. A
comparative analysis was then undertaken with qualitative papers exploring medicinetaking behaviours in a chronic bowel condition, type II diabetes, and multimorbidity to
explore the themes identified in the OAB study for convergence and divergence in other
conditions and to contextualise the learnings from the former study.
Results
The systematic literature review revealed a gap in the literature of qualitative exploration of
adherence and persistence behaviours in OAB patients. The OAB study found a range of
drivers for non-adherent behaviours including a perceived lack of treatment efficacy, side
effects, unclear instructions, and drug and condition hierarchies, as well as the rich context
within which these themes sit. The comparative analysis study supported the findings of the
OAB study demonstrating evidence of key themes transcending across conditions, including a perceived lack of treatment efficacy and side effects, as well as nuances associated with
the OAB experience.
Conclusions
The present work has identified key drivers for non-adherent behaviours in OAB patients
and sets out a number of recommendations categorised within the World Health
Organisation’s 5 dimensions of adherence. These include addressing the poor understanding
and illness perception of OAB by patients and others, by improving the provision and
availability of information, as well as the work of patient support groups; scrutiny on the
support within primary care to OAB patients before and after diagnosis; and the
encouragement of realistic expectations of the condition and treatment with mindful use of
prescriber’s language at the point of prescribing. The present work has further highlighted
the utility of conceptual models of adherence such as COM-B and the NCF in understanding
medicine-taking behaviours in the context of OAB
Enhancing primary care psychological therapy for clients with comorbid physical health conditions: A Critical Discourse Analysis investigation into interprofessional identity
Background / Aim: Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services are the largest provider in England of primary care psychological therapy for depression and anxiety disorders. Over recent years there has been increased recognition of the importance of therapists and their physical health colleagues (e.g. nurses, physiotherapists or other allied health professionals) integrating care for patients with comorbid long-term health conditions and common psychological disorders. Specialist teams have been creating differentiating Psychological Therapists as Core and Integrated. The aim is to investigate the implications of this shift for Therapists’ professional identity.
Method: A Critical Discourse Analysis was conducted based on five focus groups with eighteen professionals from Core IAPT, Integrated IAPT and physical healthcare backgrounds.
Key Findings: Discourses related to expertise, responsibility and innovation / creativity emerged from the corpora. The research highlights the niche set of behaviours, skills, values and attitudes under construction by Integrated Therapists and the way in which their role shapes and is shaped by their interactions with their counterparts.
Implications: The research makes recommendations for Integrated Therapists’ professional identity including to showcase niche skills and effective collaborative therapy. Future research recommendations are made regarding unheard voices and silenced discourses in professional identity reconstruction.
Key Terms: Professional Identity; Integrated Therapy; Cognitive Behaviour Therapy; Long-Term Conditions and Medically Unexplained Symptoms (LTC/MUS
Examples of works to practice staccato technique in clarinet instrument
Klarnetin staccato tekniğini güçlendirme aşamaları eser çalışmalarıyla uygulanmıştır. Staccato
geçişlerini hızlandıracak ritim ve nüans çalışmalarına yer verilmiştir. Çalışmanın en önemli amacı
sadece staccato çalışması değil parmak-dilin eş zamanlı uyumunun hassasiyeti üzerinde de
durulmasıdır. Staccato çalışmalarını daha verimli hale getirmek için eser çalışmasının içinde etüt
çalışmasına da yer verilmiştir. Çalışmaların üzerinde titizlikle durulması staccato çalışmasının ilham
verici etkisi ile müzikal kimliğe yeni bir boyut kazandırmıştır. Sekiz özgün eser çalışmasının her
aşaması anlatılmıştır. Her aşamanın bir sonraki performans ve tekniği güçlendirmesi esas alınmıştır.
Bu çalışmada staccato tekniğinin hangi alanlarda kullanıldığı, nasıl sonuçlar elde edildiği bilgisine
yer verilmiştir. Notaların parmak ve dil uyumu ile nasıl şekilleneceği ve nasıl bir çalışma disiplini
içinde gerçekleşeceği planlanmıştır. Kamış-nota-diyafram-parmak-dil-nüans ve disiplin
kavramlarının staccato tekniğinde ayrılmaz bir bütün olduğu saptanmıştır. Araştırmada literatür
taraması yapılarak staccato ile ilgili çalışmalar taranmıştır. Tarama sonucunda klarnet tekniğin de
kullanılan staccato eser çalışmasının az olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Metot taramasında da etüt
çalışmasının daha çok olduğu saptanmıştır. Böylelikle klarnetin staccato tekniğini hızlandırma ve
güçlendirme çalışmaları sunulmuştur. Staccato etüt çalışmaları yapılırken, araya eser çalışmasının
girmesi beyni rahatlattığı ve istekliliği daha arttırdığı gözlemlenmiştir. Staccato çalışmasını yaparken
doğru bir kamış seçimi üzerinde de durulmuştur. Staccato tekniğini doğru çalışmak için doğru bir
kamışın dil hızını arttırdığı saptanmıştır. Doğru bir kamış seçimi kamıştan rahat ses çıkmasına
bağlıdır. Kamış, dil atma gücünü vermiyorsa daha doğru bir kamış seçiminin yapılması gerekliliği
vurgulanmıştır. Staccato çalışmalarında baştan sona bir eseri yorumlamak zor olabilir. Bu açıdan
çalışma, verilen müzikal nüanslara uymanın, dil atış performansını rahatlattığını ortaya koymuştur.
Gelecek nesillere edinilen bilgi ve birikimlerin aktarılması ve geliştirici olması teşvik edilmiştir.
Çıkacak eserlerin nasıl çözüleceği, staccato tekniğinin nasıl üstesinden gelinebileceği anlatılmıştır.
Staccato tekniğinin daha kısa sürede çözüme kavuşturulması amaç edinilmiştir. Parmakların
yerlerini öğrettiğimiz kadar belleğimize de çalışmaların kaydedilmesi önemlidir. Gösterilen azmin ve
sabrın sonucu olarak ortaya çıkan yapıt başarıyı daha da yukarı seviyelere çıkaracaktır
Learning disentangled speech representations
A variety of informational factors are contained within the speech signal and a single short recording of speech reveals much more than the spoken words. The best method to extract and represent informational factors from the speech signal ultimately depends on which informational factors are desired and how they will be used. In addition, sometimes methods will capture more than one informational factor at the same time such as speaker identity, spoken content, and speaker prosody.
The goal of this dissertation is to explore different ways to deconstruct the speech signal into abstract representations that can be learned and later reused in various speech technology tasks. This task of deconstructing, also known as disentanglement, is a form of distributed representation learning. As a general approach to disentanglement, there are some guiding principles that elaborate what a learned representation should contain as well as how it should function. In particular, learned representations should contain all of the requisite information in a more compact manner, be interpretable, remove nuisance factors of irrelevant information, be useful in downstream tasks, and independent of the task at hand. The learned representations should also be able to answer counter-factual questions.
In some cases, learned speech representations can be re-assembled in different ways according to the requirements of downstream applications. For example, in a voice conversion task, the speech content is retained while the speaker identity is changed. And in a content-privacy task, some targeted content may be concealed without affecting how surrounding words sound. While there is no single-best method to disentangle all types of factors, some end-to-end approaches demonstrate a promising degree of generalization to diverse speech tasks.
This thesis explores a variety of use-cases for disentangled representations including phone recognition, speaker diarization, linguistic code-switching, voice conversion, and content-based privacy masking. Speech representations can also be utilised for automatically assessing the quality and authenticity of speech, such as automatic MOS ratings or detecting deep fakes. The meaning of the term "disentanglement" is not well defined in previous work, and it has acquired several meanings depending on the domain (e.g. image vs. speech). Sometimes the term "disentanglement" is used interchangeably with the term "factorization". This thesis proposes that disentanglement of speech is distinct, and offers a viewpoint of disentanglement that can be considered both theoretically and practically
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Into the Multiverse: Methods for Studying Developmental Neuroscience
One major challenge in developmental neuroscience research is the sheer number of choices researchers face when addressing even a single research question. Even once data collection is complete, the journey from raw data to interpretation of findings may depend on numerous decisions. To address this issue, this dissertation explores “multiverse” analysis techniques for following many analytical paths at once in the same dataset.
In chapter 1, multiverses are used to examine which analyses of age-related change in amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex circuitry are robust versus sensitive to researcher decisions. Chapter 2 uses multiverse analysis to identify optimal solutions for mitigating breathing-induced artifacts in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Chapter 3 uses a variety of model specifications to characterize simultaneous reward learning strategies in youth contingent on both visual task cues and spatial-motor information.
Despite varied approaches and goals, each of the three studies highlight the benefits of conducting multiple parallel analyses for both addressing questions in developmental neuroscience and deepening understanding of the methods used to address them
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Credible to Whom? The Organizational Politics of Credibility in International Relations
Why do foreign policy decision makers care about the credibility of their own state’s commitments? How does organizational identity shape policymakers’ concern for credibility, and in turn, their willingness to use force during crises? While much previous research examines how decision makers assess others’ credibility, only recently have scholars questioned when and why leaders or their advisers prioritize their own state’s credibility.
Building on classic scholarship in bureaucratic politics, I argue that organizational identity affects the dimensions of credibility that national security officials value, and ultimately, their policy advocacy around the use of force. Particular differences arise between military and diplomatic organizations; while military officials equate credibility with hard military capabilities, diplomats view credibility in terms of reputation, or demonstrating reliability and resolve to external parties.
During crises, military officials confine their advice on the use of force to what can be achieved given current capabilities, while diplomats exhibit higher willingness to use force as a signal of a strong commitment. I test these propositions using text analysis of archival records from two collections of U.S. national security policy documents, eight case studies of American, British, and French crisis decision making, and an original survey experiment involving more than 400 current or former U.S. national security officials. I demonstrate that credibility concerns affect the balance of hawkishness in advice that diplomats and military officials deliver to leaders as a function of organizational identity
Modern Folk Devils
The devilish has long been integral to myths, legends, and folklore, firmly located in the relationships between good and evil, and selves and others. But how are ideas of evil constructed in current times and framed by contemporary social discourses? Modern Folk Devils builds on and works with Stanley Cohen’s theory on folk devils and moral panics to discuss the constructions of evil. The authors present an array of case-studies that illustrate how the notion of folk devils nowadays comes into play and animates ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world. Examining current fears and perceived threats, this volume investigates and analyzes how and why these devils are constructed. The chapters discuss how the devilish may take on many different forms: sometimes they exist only as a potential threat, other times they are a single individual or phenomenon or a visible group, such as refugees, technocrats, Roma, hipsters, LGBT groups, and rightwing politicians. Folk devils themselves are also given a voice to offer an essential complementary perspective on how panics become exaggerated, facts distorted, and problems acutely angled.;Bringing together researchers from anthropology, sociology, political studies, ethnology, and criminology, the contributions examine cases from across the world spanning from Europe to Asia and Oceania
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