Recent Advances in Social Data and Artificial Intelligence 2019

The importance and usefulness of subjects and topics involving social data and artificial intelligence are becoming widely recognized. This book contains invited review, expository, and original research articles dealing with, and presenting state-of-the-art accounts pf, the recent advances in the subjects of social data and artificial intelligence, and potentially their links to Cyberspace

Extraction of Text from Images and Videos

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Developing complex information systems: The use of a geometric data structure to aid the specification of a multi-media information environment.

The enormous computing power available today has resulted in the acceptance of information technology into a wide range of applications, the identification or creation of numerous problem areas, and the considerable tasks of finding problem solutions. Using computers for handling the current data manipulation tasks which characterise modern information processing requires considerably more sophisticated hardware and software technologies. Yet the development of more 'enhanced' packages frequently requires hundreds of man-years. Similarly, computer hardware design has become so complicated that only by using existing computers is it possible to develop newer machines. The common characteristic of such data manipulation tasks is that much larger amounts of information in evermore complex arrangements are being handled at greater speeds. Instead of being 'concrete' or 'black and white', issues at the higher levels of information processing can appear blurred - there may be much less precision because situations, perspectives and circumstances can vary. Most current packages focus on specific task areas, but the modern information processing environment actually requires a broader range of functions that cooperate in integrating and relating information handling activities in a manner far beyond that normally offered. It would seem that a fresh approach is required to examine all of the constituent problems. This report describes the research work carried out during such a consideration, and details the specification and development of a suggested method for enhancing information systems by specifying a multimedia information environment. This thesis develops a statement of the perceived problems, using extensive references to the current state of information system technologies. Examples are given of how some current systems approach the multiple tasks of processing and sharing data and applications. The discussion then moves to consider further what the underlying objectives of information handling - and a suitable integration architecture - should perhaps be, and shows how some current systems do not really meet these aims, although they incorporate certain of the essential fundamentals that contribute towards more enhanced information handling. The discussion provides the basis for the specification and construction of complete, integrated Information Environment applications. The environments are used to describe not only the jobs which the user wishes to carry out, but also the circumstances under which the job is being performed. The architecture uses a new geometric data structure to facilitate manipulation of the working data, relationships, and the environment description. The manipulation is carried out spatially, and this allows the user to work using a geometric representation of the data components, thus supporting the abstract nature of some information handling tasks

Better medical apps for healthcare practitioners through interdisciplinary collaboration: lessons from transfusion medicine

Mobile applications (“apps”) are increasingly used in medical education and practice. However, many medical apps are of variable quality, lack supporting evidence and fall outside the remit of regulators. In this thesis, I explore how the quality and credibility of apps for healthcare practitioners could be improved. I argue that interdisciplinary collaboration throughout the app life-cycle is critical and discuss how this can be facilitated. My argument rests on prior work in eHealth and neighbouring disciplines, and on original research in transfusion medicine. Blood transfusion can be a life-saving medical treatment. However, it also carries risks. Failures to provide irradiated and cytomegalovirus-negative blood components according to guidelines are frequently reported in the UK. Such incidents put patients at risk of serious complications. Haemovigilance data indicates that enhancing practitioner knowledge may reduce mistakes. Thus, I worked with medical experts to develop and evaluate the Special Blood Components (SBC) mobile learning app. To facilitate this work, I created two tools: the Web App Editor (WAE) and the Web App Trial (WAT). The former is a collaborative editor for building apps in a web browser and the latter is a system for conducting online randomised controlled app trials. The results are reported in five studies. Studies 1 and 2, based on interviews with seven practitioners, revealed shortcomings in an existing transfusion app and the SBC prototype. Study 3 demonstrated how students using theWAE were able to collaborate on apps, including an app in stroke medicine. Study 4, an evaluation of the revised SBC app with 54 medical students, established the ease of use as acceptable. In study 5, a WAT pilot study with 61 practitioners, the SBC app doubled scores on a knowledge test and was rated more favourably than existing hospital guidelines. In conclusion, creating high quality medical apps that are supported by evidence is a considerable undertaking and depends on a mix of knowledges and skills. It requires that healthcare practitioners, software developers and otherswork together effectively. Hence, the WAE and WAT are key research outcomes. They enabled participants to contribute improvements and assess the usability and efficacy of the SBC app. The results suggest that the SBC app is easy to use and can improve practitioner knowledge. Further work remains to pilot and evaluate the SBC app in a hospital setting

AIUCD 2021 - Book of Extended Abstracts

Il decimo convegno annuale dell'Associazione per l’Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale ha nell’edizione 2021 un titolo peculiare e importante: "DH per la società: e-guaglianza, partecipazione, diritti e valori nell’era digitale". Questo volume raccoglie gli abstract estesi e sottoposti a review per la conferenza di AIUCD2021 tenutasi in forma virtuale a Pisa

Resonant connections: Twitter, the novel, and Diamedia Literary Practice

The research represented by this thesis was prompted by a keynote speech given by author Teju Cole in 2013, wherein he suggested that, in relation to experimental prose, Twitter is one of the futures of the novel. As a novelist already publishing literary works on the platform at the time of his speech, both Cole’s keynote and literary practice raised a number of pressing questions for literary and media studies, principal among which provides this thesis with its main impetus: if indeed Twitter is a future of the novel, as Cole asserts, then what does this mean in practical terms for the novelist, the novel, and Twitter? It is this central question that this thesis addresses, not only with regard to Cole but also the three other best-known novelists to have published literary works on Twitter: Jennifer Egan, David Mitchell, and Tao Lin. While existing critical studies of Cole’s, Egan’s, Mitchell’s, and Lin’s Twitter-based literary practice have focused almost exclusively on their Twitter works without examining them as part of the author’s wider literary practice, this thesis places the novelist at the centre of the study and embeds Twitter literature in a broader context of literary practice, showing that the authors’ separate yet connected works on the Twitter platform and in the novel form constitute a prototypical form of literary practice inexplicable in existing critical vocabularies. Consequently, the thesis proposes a new term to conceptualise this prototypical form of literary practice: “Diamedia Literary Practice.” This is intended to refer to a type of literary practice where an author operates strategically, systematically, and symbiotically across and through print and digital media environments in the production of two (or more) literary works, where each work is written with the specific form and medium in mind but where there is also a meaningful practical, narrative, or thematic connection between the works. Here, the prefix “dia-” is pointedly used to mutually emphasise both “across” and “through” media in response to the theoretical frameworks predominantly deployed in existing criticism of Twitter literature, which have represented only one of the two analytical perspectives applicable to literary practice in print and digital forms: either “across” or “through” media. In order to theoretically underpin this new “diamedia” formulation, the thesis makes use of Marshall McLuhan’s media studies. Born of his training as literary scholar, McLuhan’s media studies combine the critical modalities of both media and literary studies and, particularly through his tetradic “laws of media”, synthesise both “across” and “through” media-oriented perspectives, properly articulating Diamedia Literary Practice in its distinct, dynamic, and dialogic complexity. Through the formulation of Diamedia Literary Practice and by utilising McLuhan’s media studies, the thesis indicates that Twitter is indeed a future of the novel, but one constituted by a more complex connection than Cole’s keynote initially implied and one in which the novelist is more explicitly engaged. More precisely, the thesis argues that Twitter is a future of the novel specifically in the sense that Diamedia Literary Practice suggests; that is, one in which the forms and media are resonantly connected, where the novelist publishing on the platform explores and leverages the tension between the two, and where there is also an ongoing, underlying dialogue between print and digital media. In its analysis of Cole’s, Egan’s, Mitchell’s, and Lin’s literary practice, it establishes that, for each author, Twitter represented a way of simultaneously extending an aspect of their novelistic practice, retrieving an obsolesced form originally linked to print media, testing the platform’s literary potential, and creating an experimental prose work on Twitter. These findings further emphasise the inadequacies of current critical vocabularies and theoretical frameworks, signifying, as the thesis ultimately argues, that the new critical perspective it demonstrates in answering the research questions extrapolated from Cole’s keynote, in formulating Diamedia Literary Practice, and in utilising McLuhan’s media studies, is necessary not only for the future of literary and media studies but is rather a necessary new critical perspective for literary and media studies now

Automation of America's Offices, 1985-2000

An assessment by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) that "assesses the consequences of the continuing and rapid introduction of information and telecommunications technologies in offices" (p. iii)