376,687 research outputs found
TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2009
TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month
PLASC guidance for primary schools free breakfast initiative
Published in 2008, this information document sets out how the PLASC data for the Primary School Free Breakfast Initiative (PSFBI) is to be collected. These changes were designed to help reduce the overall burden that was associated with collecting data takeup on the Primary Schools Free Breakfast Initiative, reducing the amount of data collected, from a termly basis (3 times a year) to an annual basis
TechNews digests: Jan - Mar 2010
TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month
Internet Predictions
More than a dozen leading experts give their opinions on where the Internet is headed and where it will be in the next decade in terms of technology, policy, and applications. They cover topics ranging from the Internet of Things to climate change to the digital storage of the future. A summary of the articles is available in the Web extras section
One Water strategies for New Braunfels Utilities
INTRODUCTION:
In February of 2017, Boston Universityâs Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE) and the Cynthia and
George Mitchell Foundation (CGMF) initiated a multi-year project that aims to understand how water
utilities in Texas cities can apply the principles of One Water to address the challenges of increasing
urban populations, supply changes, and aging water infrastructure. Since summer 2018, the ISE team
has engaged with New Braunfels Utility (NBU) to understand the opportunities relating to One Water
for them as a mid-size utility serving a rapidly growing population.
The One Water paradigm spans potable water, wastewater, and storm water, and considers
opportunities for water sourcing, treatment, and use holistically. Discussions around One Water often
focus on supply side strategies, such as how water reuse or rainwater harvesting can provide alternate
sources of water. However, demand management and water conservation also play a role in One Water
by promoting sustainability, resilience, and reducing the need for additional gray infrastructure.
Ultimately, NBU may explore many strategies related to One Water. We chose to focus on demand
reduction due to the utilityâs concern over potentially large increases in New Braunfelsâ water demand
in the coming years. The ISE team analyzed meter-level data and also pumping data from NBU. We
benchmarked NBU water demand, analyzed the demand by type of account, and identified the
demand distribution by account. The findings led us to revisit projections of future water demand and
generate a new demand projection that suggests demand growth may be slower than previously
anticipated. While NBUâs supplies are more than sufficient to meet projected demand through 2030,
there are other benefits to effective demand management and water conservation practices.
Consequently, ISE developed recommendations for a targeted outreach program to high consumers
and to promote rebates to developers. We also drafted ordinance revisions related to watering
violations
Investigating and learning lessons from early experiences of implementing ePrescribing systems into NHS hospitals:a questionnaire study
Background: ePrescribing systems have significant potential to improve the safety and efficiency of healthcare, but they need to be carefully selected and implemented to maximise benefits. Implementations in English hospitals are in the early stages and there is a lack of standards guiding the procurement, functional specifications, and expected benefits. We sought to provide an updated overview of the current picture in relation to implementation of ePrescribing systems, explore existing strategies, and identify early lessons learned.Methods: a descriptive questionnaire-based study, which included closed and free text questions and involved both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data generated.Results: we obtained responses from 85 of 108 NHS staff (78.7% response rate). At least 6% (n = 10) of the 168 English NHS Trusts have already implemented ePrescribing systems, 2% (n = 4) have no plans of implementing, and 34% (n = 55) are planning to implement with intended rapid implementation timelines driven by high expectations surrounding improved safety and efficiency of care. The majority are unclear as to which system to choose, but integration with existing systems and sophisticated decision support functionality are important decisive factors. Participants highlighted the need for increased guidance in relation to implementation strategy, system choice and standards, as well as the need for top-level management support to adequately resource the project. Although some early benefits were reported by hospitals that had already implemented, the hoped for benefits relating to improved efficiency and cost-savings remain elusive due to a lack of system maturity.Conclusions: whilst few have begun implementation, there is considerable interest in ePrescribing systems with ambitious timelines amongst those hospitals that are planning implementations. In order to ensure maximum chances of realising benefits, there is a need for increased guidance in relation to implementation strategy, system choice and standards, as well as increased financial resources to fund local activitie
Mixing multi-core CPUs and GPUs for scientific simulation software
Recent technological and economic developments have led to widespread availability of
multi-core CPUs and specialist accelerator processors such as graphical processing units
(GPUs). The accelerated computational performance possible from these devices can be very
high for some applications paradigms. Software languages and systems such as NVIDIA's
CUDA and Khronos consortium's open compute language (OpenCL) support a number of
individual parallel application programming paradigms. To scale up the performance of some
complex systems simulations, a hybrid of multi-core CPUs for coarse-grained parallelism and
very many core GPUs for data parallelism is necessary. We describe our use of hybrid applica-
tions using threading approaches and multi-core CPUs to control independent GPU devices.
We present speed-up data and discuss multi-threading software issues for the applications
level programmer and o er some suggested areas for language development and integration
between coarse-grained and ne-grained multi-thread systems. We discuss results from three
common simulation algorithmic areas including: partial di erential equations; graph cluster
metric calculations and random number generation. We report on programming experiences
and selected performance for these algorithms on: single and multiple GPUs; multi-core CPUs;
a CellBE; and using OpenCL. We discuss programmer usability issues and the outlook and
trends in multi-core programming for scienti c applications developers
Worldwide open access: UK leadership?
The web is destined to become humankind's cognitive commons, where digital knowledge is jointly created and freely shared. The UK has been a leader in the global movement toward open access (OA) to research but recently its leadership has been derailed by the joint influence of the publishing industry lobby from without and well-intentioned but premature and unhelpful over-reaching from within the OA movement itself. The result has been the extremely counterproductive âFinch Reportâ followed by a new draft of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) OA mandate, downgrading the role of cost-free OA self-archiving of research publications (âgreen OAâ) in favor of paying subscription publishers over and above subscriptions, out of scarce research funds, in exchange for making single articles OA (âhybrid gold OAâ). The motivation of the new policy is to reform publication and to gain certain re-use rights (CC-BY), but the likely effect would be researcher resistance, very little OA and a waste of research funds. There is still time to fix the RCUK mandate and restore the UK's leadership by taking a few very specific steps to clarify and strengthen the green component by adding a mechanism for monitoring and verifying compliance, with consequences for non-compliance, along lines also being adopted in the EC and the US
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