6,607 research outputs found

    Open source and consumption

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    This article illuminates the common concepts and widely-observed practices concerning open source. Positioning 'open-source' as a common practice and a viable methodology for collaborative participatory co-production in today's knowledge society, the article explains how open-source co-production participatory methods, now also seen in mundane cultural, food and beverage production and consumption, evolve from the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement, what motivate people to participate, and how such practices implicate in different sectors in contemporary societies. This article argues that the open-source practices resemble the amateur DIY cultures and can be considered as a lifestyle, elected and subscribed by some. Open source suggests that consumption is no longer simply a passive activity; it could be a personal statement, a liberating, creative and varied experience

    Energy Deposition in the Breast During CT Scanning: Quantification and Implications for Dose Reduction

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    Studies suggest that dose to the breast leads to a higher lifetime attributable cancer incidence risk from a chest CT scan for women compared to men. Numerous methods have been proposed for reducing dose to the breast during CT scanning, including bismuth shielding, tube current modulation, partial-angular scanning, and reduced kVp. These methods differ in how they alter the spectrum and fluence across projection angle. This study used Monte Carlo CT simulations of a voxelized female phantom to investigate the energy (dose) deposition in the breast as a function of both photon energy and projection angle. The resulting dose deposition matrix was then used to investigate several questions regarding dose reduction to the breast: (1) Which photon energies deposit the most dose in the breast, (2) How does increased filtration compare to tube current reduction in reducing breast dose, and (3) Do reduced kVp scans reduce dose to breast, and if so, by what mechanism? The results demonstrate that while high-energy photons deposit more dose per emitted photon, the low-energy photons deposit more dose to the breast for a 120 kVp acquisition. The results also demonstrate that decreasing the tube current for the AP views to match the fluence exiting a shield deposits nearly the same dose to the breast as when using a shield (within ~1%). Finally, results suggest that the dose reduction observed during lower kVp scans is caused by reduced photon fluence rather than the elimination of high-energy photons from the beam. Overall, understanding the mechanisms of dose deposition in the breast as a function of photon energy and projection angle enables comparisons of dose reduction methods and facilitates further development of optimized dose reduction schemes

    Abstract State Machines 1988-1998: Commented ASM Bibliography

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    An annotated bibliography of papers which deal with or use Abstract State Machines (ASMs), as of January 1998.Comment: Also maintained as a BibTeX file at http://www.eecs.umich.edu/gasm

    Spectroscopic Analysis in the Virtual Observatory Environment with SPLAT-VO

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    SPLAT-VO is a powerful graphical tool for displaying, comparing, modifying and analyzing astronomical spectra, as well as searching and retrieving spectra from services around the world using Virtual Observatory (VO) protocols and services. The development of SPLAT-VO started in 1999, as part of the Starlink StarJava initiative, sometime before that of the VO, so initial support for the VO was necessarily added once VO standards and services became available. Further developments were supported by the Joint Astronomy Centre, Hawaii until 2009. Since end of 2011 development of SPLAT-VO has been continued by the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, and the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. From this time several new features have been added, including support for the latest VO protocols, along with new visualization and spectra storing capabilities. This paper presents the history of SPLAT-VO, it's capabilities, recent additions and future plans, as well as a discussion on the motivations and lessons learned up to now.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Computin

    Co-creating a tailored public health intervention to reduce older adults’ sedentary behaviour

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    Objective: The increasing health care costs associated with an ageing population and chronic disease burden are largely attributable to modifiable lifestyle factors that are complex and vary between individuals and settings. Traditional approaches to promoting healthy lifestyles have so far had limited success. Recently, co-creating public health interventions with end-users has been advocated to provide more effective and sustainable solutions. The aim of this study was to document and evaluate the co-creation of a public health intervention to reduce sedentary behaviour in older adults. Design: Community-dwelling older adults (N = 11, mean age = 74 years) and academic researchers attended 10 interactive co-creation workshops together. Setting: Workshops took place on university campus and the co-creators completed fieldwork tasks outside the workshops. Method: Workshops were informed by the Participatory and Appreciative Action and Reflection methodology. Data were collected using field notes, video recording and worksheet tasks. Analysis was conducted using a qualitative content analysis approach. Results: The co-creators developed a tailored intervention delivered through a mode congruent with older adults' lives. Key elements of the intervention included (1) education on sedentary behaviour, (2) resources to interrupt sedentary behaviour, (3) self-monitoring, (4) action planning and (5) evaluating the benefits of interrupting sedentary behaviour. Conclusion: Co-creation is a feasible approach to develop public health interventions; however, it is limited by the lack of a systematic framework to guide the process. Future work should aim to develop principles and recommendations to ensure co-creation can be conducted in a more scientific and reproducible way. The effectiveness and scalability of the intervention should be assessed

    Designing Traceability into Big Data Systems

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    Providing an appropriate level of accessibility and traceability to data or process elements (so-called Items) in large volumes of data, often Cloud-resident, is an essential requirement in the Big Data era. Enterprise-wide data systems need to be designed from the outset to support usage of such Items across the spectrum of business use rather than from any specific application view. The design philosophy advocated in this paper is to drive the design process using a so-called description-driven approach which enriches models with meta-data and description and focuses the design process on Item re-use, thereby promoting traceability. Details are given of the description-driven design of big data systems at CERN, in health informatics and in business process management. Evidence is presented that the approach leads to design simplicity and consequent ease of management thanks to loose typing and the adoption of a unified approach to Item management and usage.Comment: 10 pages; 6 figures in Proceedings of the 5th Annual International Conference on ICT: Big Data, Cloud and Security (ICT-BDCS 2015), Singapore July 2015. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1402.5764, arXiv:1402.575
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