Building on faults:how to represent controversies with digital methods

In a previous article appeared in this journal, I introduced Bruno Latour’s cartography of controversies and I discussed half of it, namely how to observe techno-scientific controversies. In this article I will concentrate on the remaining half: how to represent the complexity of social debates in a legible form. In my previous paper, we learnt how to explore the richness of collective existence through Actor-Network Theory. In this one, I will discuss how to render such complexity through an original visualization device: the controversy-website. Capitalizing on the potential of digital technologies, the controversy-website has been developed as a multilayered toolkit to trace and aggregate information on public debates

Workshop proceedings: Information Systems for Space Astrophysics in the 21st Century, volume 1

The Astrophysical Information Systems Workshop was one of the three Integrated Technology Planning workshops. Its objectives were to develop an understanding of future mission requirements for information systems, the potential role of technology in meeting these requirements, and the areas in which NASA investment might have the greatest impact. Workshop participants were briefed on the astrophysical mission set with an emphasis on those missions that drive information systems technology, the existing NASA space-science operations infrastructure, and the ongoing and planned NASA information systems technology programs. Program plans and recommendations were prepared in five technical areas: Mission Planning and Operations; Space-Borne Data Processing; Space-to-Earth Communications; Science Data Systems; and Data Analysis, Integration, and Visualization

The use of reversible logic gates in the design of residue number systems

Reversible computing is an emerging technique to achieve ultra-low-power circuits. Reversible arithmetic circuits allow for achieving energy-efficient high-performance computational systems. Residue number systems (RNS) provide parallel and fault-tolerant additions and multiplications without carry propagation between residue digits. The parallelism and fault-tolerance features of RNS can be leveraged to achieve high-performance reversible computing. This paper proposed RNS full reversible circuits, including forward converters, modular adders and multipliers, and reverse converters used for a class of RNS moduli sets with the composite form {2k, 2p-1}. Modulo 2n-1, 2n, and 2n+1 adders and multipliers were designed using reversible gates. Besides, reversible forward and reverse converters for the 3-moduli set {2n-1, 2n+k, 2n+1} have been designed. The proposed RNS-based reversible computing approach has been applied for consecutive multiplications with an improvement of above 15% in quantum cost after the twelfth iteration, and above 27% in quantum depth after the ninth iteration. The findings show that the use of the proposed RNS-based reversible computing in convolution results in a significant improvement in quantum depth in comparison to conventional methods based on weighted binary adders and multipliers

Self-Control in Cyberspace: Applying Dual Systems Theory to a Review of Digital Self-Control Tools

Many people struggle to control their use of digital devices. However, our understanding of the design mechanisms that support user self-control remains limited. In this paper, we make two contributions to HCI research in this space: first, we analyse 367 apps and browser extensions from the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores to identify common core design features and intervention strategies afforded by current tools for digital self-control. Second, we adapt and apply an integrative dual systems model of self-regulation as a framework for organising and evaluating the design features found. Our analysis aims to help the design of better tools in two ways: (i) by identifying how, through a well-established model of self-regulation, current tools overlap and differ in how they support self-control; and (ii) by using the model to reveal underexplored cognitive mechanisms that could aid the design of new tools.Comment: 11.5 pages (excl. references), 6 figures, 1 tabl

Tracing sources of design uncertainty and controversy in Web 2.0 facilitated collaborative design process

The integration of Internet-based collaborative tools such as Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate the design process has rendered collaborative design a chaotic practice filled with controversy and uncertainty, with the inevitable risk of unintended consequences. The purpose of this study was to trace the sources of design controversy in a Web 2.0 facilitated collaborative design process. The study employed an Actor Network Theory (ANT) methodological framework to explore design controversy in five design teams comprising of 4 to 6 undergraduate engineering students. Data was constituted by following the traces left by the actors, both human and nonhumans, their actions and the associations they made and broke as they worked to provide a solution to a design problem. All of these traces were captured on a Web platform. Our position was that of non-participant observers to allow the participants to speak for themselves. In addition, some key participants (spokespersons) were interviewed to allow them to explain their actions. The findings of the study demonstrate that Web 2.0 technologies played a critical role in illuminating controversies encountered during the design process from the design group formation, design problem analysis, as well as the generation and realization of the design solution stages of the process. Web 2.0 technology enabled the tracing of the rich interactions among designers which allowed the mapping of provisional ties, and the translations that made these ties durable and seemingly irreversible

Hypoxia and hypotension in patients intubated by physician staffed helicopter emergency medical services - a prospective observational multi-centre study

Background The effective treatment of airway compromise in trauma and non-trauma patients is important. Hypoxia and hypotension are predictors of negative patient outcomes and increased mortality, and may be important quality indicators of care provided by emergency medical services. Excluding cardiac arrests, critical trauma and non-trauma patients remain the two major groups to which helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) are dispatched. Several studies describe the impact of pre-hospital hypoxia or hypotension on trauma patients, but few studies compare this in trauma and non-trauma patients. The primary aim was to describe the incidence of pre-hospital hypoxia and hypotension in the two groups receiving pre-hospital tracheal intubation (TI) by physician-staffed HEMS. Methods Data were collected prospectively over a 12-month period, using a uniform Utstein-style airway template. Twenty-one physician-staffed HEMS in Europe and Australia participated. We compared peripheral oxygen saturation and systolic blood pressure before and after definitive airway management. Data were analysed using Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel methods and mixed-effects models. Results Eight hundred forty three trauma patients and 422 non-trauma patients receiving pre-hospital TI were included. Non-trauma patients had significantly lower predicted mean pre-intervention SpO2 compared to trauma patients. Post-intervention and admission SpO2 for the two groups were comparable. However, 3% in both groups were still hypoxic at admission. For hypotension, the differences between the groups were less prominent. However, 9% of trauma and 10% of non-trauma patients were still hypotensive at admission. There was no difference in short-term survival between trauma (97%) and non-trauma patients (95%). Decreased level of consciousness was the most frequent indication for TI, and was associated with increased survival to hospital (cOR 2.8; 95% CI: 1.4–5.4). Conclusions Our results showed that non-trauma patients had a higher incidence of hypoxia before TI than trauma patients, but few were hypoxic at admission. The difference for hypotension was less prominent, but one in ten patients were still hypotensive at admission. Further investigations are needed to identify reversible causes that may be corrected to improve haemodynamics in the pre-hospital setting. We found high survival rates to hospital in both groups, suggesting that physician-staffed HEMS provide high-quality emergency airway management in trauma and non-trauma patients.publishedVersio