Comparative ergonomic workflow and user experience analysis of MRI versus fluoroscopy-guided vascular interventions:an iliac angioplasty exemplar case study

Purpose A methodological framework is introduced to assess and compare a conventional fluoroscopy protocol for peripheral angioplasty with a new magnetic resonant imaging (MRI)-guided protocol. Different scenarios were considered during interventions on a perfused arterial phantom with regard to time-based and cognitive task analysis, user experience and ergonomics. Methods Three clinicians with different expertise performed a total of 43 simulated common iliac angioplasties (9 fluoroscopic, 34 MRI-guided) in two blocks of sessions. Six different configurations for MRI guidance were tested in the first block. Four of them were evaluated in the second block and compared to the fluoroscopy protocol. Relevant stages’ durations were collected, and interventions were audio-visually recorded from different perspectives. A cued retrospective protocol analysis (CRPA) was undertaken, including personal interviews. In addition, ergonomic constraints in the MRI suite were evaluated. Results Significant differences were found when comparing the performance between MRI configurations versus fluoroscopy. Two configurations [with times of 8.56 (0.64) and 9.48 (1.13) min] led to reduce procedure time for MRI guidance, comparable to fluoroscopy [8.49 (0.75) min]. The CRPA pointed out the main influential factors for clinical procedure performance. The ergonomic analysis quantified musculoskeletal risks for interventional radiologists when utilising MRI. Several alternatives were suggested to prevent potential low-back injuries. Conclusions This work presents a step towards the implementation of efficient operational protocols for MRI-guided procedures based on an integral and multidisciplinary framework, applicable to the assessment of current vascular protocols. The use of first-user perspective raises the possibility of establishing new forms of clinical training and education

Data analytics and algorithms in policing in England and Wales: Towards a new policy framework

RUSI was commissioned by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) to conduct an independent study into the use of data analytics by police forces in England and Wales, with a focus on algorithmic bias. The primary purpose of the project is to inform CDEI’s review of bias in algorithmic decision-making, which is focusing on four sectors, including policing, and working towards a draft framework for the ethical development and deployment of data analytics tools for policing. This paper focuses on advanced algorithms used by the police to derive insights, inform operational decision-making or make predictions. Biometric technology, including live facial recognition, DNA analysis and fingerprint matching, are outside the direct scope of this study, as are covert surveillance capabilities and digital forensics technology, such as mobile phone data extraction and computer forensics. However, because many of the policy issues discussed in this paper stem from general underlying data protection and human rights frameworks, these issues will also be relevant to other police technologies, and their use must be considered in parallel to the tools examined in this paper. The project involved engaging closely with senior police officers, government officials, academics, legal experts, regulatory and oversight bodies and civil society organisations. Sixty nine participants took part in the research in the form of semi-structured interviews, focus groups and roundtable discussions. The project has revealed widespread concern across the UK law enforcement community regarding the lack of official national guidance for the use of algorithms in policing, with respondents suggesting that this gap should be addressed as a matter of urgency. Any future policy framework should be principles-based and complement existing police guidance in a ‘tech-agnostic’ way. Rather than establishing prescriptive rules and standards for different data technologies, the framework should establish standardised processes to ensure that data analytics projects follow recommended routes for the empirical evaluation of algorithms within their operational context and evaluate the project against legal requirements and ethical standards. The new guidance should focus on ensuring multi-disciplinary legal, ethical and operational input from the outset of a police technology project; a standard process for model development, testing and evaluation; a clear focus on the human–machine interaction and the ultimate interventions a data driven process may inform; and ongoing tracking and mitigation of discrimination risk

Comprehensive framework for human health risk assessment of nanopesticides

Nanopesticides are not only in an advanced state of research and development but have started to appear on the market. Industry and regulatory agencies need a consolidated and comprehensive framework and guidance for human health risk assessments. In this perspective we develop such a comprehensive framework by exploring two case studies from relevant product types: an active ingredient delivered with a nanocarrier system, and a nanoparticle as an active ingredient. For a nanocarrier system, three entities are tracked during the assessment: the nanocarrier–active ingredient complex, the empty nanocarrier remaining after the complete release of the active ingredient, and the released active ingredient. For the nanoparticle of pure active ingredient, only two entities are relevant: the nanoparticle and the released ions. We suggest important adaptations of the existing pesticide framework to determine the relevant nanopesticide entities and their concentrations for toxicity testing. Depending on the nature of the nanopesticides, additional data requirements, such as those pertaining to durability in biological media and potential for crossing biological barriers, have also been identified. Overall, our framework suggests a tiered approach for human health risk assessment, which is applicable for a range of nanopesticide products to support regulators and industry in making informed decisions on nanopesticide submissions. Brief summaries of suitable methods including references to existing standards (if available) have been included together with an analysis of current knowledge gaps. Our study is an important step towards a harmonized approach accepted by regulatory agencies for assessing nanopesticides

IRGAN: A Minimax Game for Unifying Generative and Discriminative Information Retrieval Models

This paper provides a unified account of two schools of thinking in information retrieval modelling: the generative retrieval focusing on predicting relevant documents given a query, and the discriminative retrieval focusing on predicting relevancy given a query-document pair. We propose a game theoretical minimax game to iteratively optimise both models. On one hand, the discriminative model, aiming to mine signals from labelled and unlabelled data, provides guidance to train the generative model towards fitting the underlying relevance distribution over documents given the query. On the other hand, the generative model, acting as an attacker to the current discriminative model, generates difficult examples for the discriminative model in an adversarial way by minimising its discrimination objective. With the competition between these two models, we show that the unified framework takes advantage of both schools of thinking: (i) the generative model learns to fit the relevance distribution over documents via the signals from the discriminative model, and (ii) the discriminative model is able to exploit the unlabelled data selected by the generative model to achieve a better estimation for document ranking. Our experimental results have demonstrated significant performance gains as much as 23.96% on Precision@5 and 15.50% on MAP over strong baselines in a variety of applications including web search, item recommendation, and question answering.Comment: 12 pages; appendix adde

A framework for the corporate governance of ICT in local government

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become critical and pervasive in any well-run modern enterprise across all sectors, which include local government. As a result, ICT demands to be managed and governed in a sustainable manner. Therefore, local government should accept the responsibility of implementing good Corporate Governance of ICT (CGICT). Without sound CGICT, ICT is unable to support local government in the achievement of their strategic objectives. This will most likely result in local government not being able to serve the interests of the community. Even though local government is aware of their responsibility regarding CGICT, the Auditor-General reports that their attempts are unsatisfactory, in this regard. This is most probably due to the fact that ample information exists on guiding local government with `what' they should do towards good CGICT, but unfortunately a lack of guidance on `how' to achieve it. Thus, it is imperative for local government to adopt a CGICT framework which provides guidance not only on what they must do towards implementing good CGICT but also on how they should achieve it. In doing so, local government would most likely be able to properly manage and govern ICT and support the needs of the community. Therefore, the aim of this study is to report on research undertaken, in order to assist local government with a CGICT framework that is relevant to their unique environment. Accordingly, this CGICT framework aims to be usable and scallable to the needs of any sized local government entity. As a result, the CGICT framework aims to be simplistic in nature to promote self-implementation of sound CGICT in local government

Curriculum Collaboration: Combining Strengths to Develop Student Learning

McKinney, Wood and Little (2009) point out the value of working with other professionals in ‘a coherent pedagogic framework’ and how this ’offers significant personal and professional rewards.’ As Learner Developers we work in partnership with a range of different colleagues (for example, subject specialists, librarians, learning technologists, technicians and student services) to develop learning and integrate academic skills into the curriculum, but the framework is not always clear and well defined to have the impact on student learning we work towards. This workshop will share our experiences of collaborations through different case study examples, illustrating both the advantages and difficulties we face in providing timely and relevant learning development opportunities within a predetermined curriculum. These case studies range from one-off interventions through to carefully designed input which has been integrated into the curriculum based on a framework which maps the progression of learning development through the three years of a degree programme. Through group activities, we will invite participants to share and analyse their experiences of collaboration from being ‘parachuted in’ to becoming an integrated member of a teaching team. The aim is to provide an insight and work towards developing guidance as to what can make these collaborative ventures more successful

Program Management for Large Scale Engineering Programs

The goal of this whitepaper is to summarize the LAI research that applies to program management. The context of most of the research discussed in this whitepaper are large-scale engineering programs, particularly in the aerospace & defense sector. The main objective is to make a large number of LAI publications – around 120 – accessible to industry practitioners by grouping them along major program management activities. Our goal is to provide starting points for program managers, program management staff and system engineers to explore the knowledge accumulated by LAI and discover new thoughts and practical guidance for their everyday challenges. The whitepaper begins by introducing the challenges of programs in section 4, proceeds to define program management in section 5 and then gives an overview of existing program management frameworks in section 6. In section 7, we introduce a new program management framework that is tailored towards describing the early program management phases – up to the start of production. This framework is used in section 8 to summarize the relevant LAI research

A guide to the development of regulatory frameworks for microbial biopesticides in Sub-Saharan Africa

This is the final version of the guidance document on Regulatory Frameworks for Microbial Biopesticides in Sub-Saharan Africa as commissioned by AATF through the assistance of USDA-FAS. The project to develop this guidance took its origins from an exploratory meeting of relevant stakeholders, in Zanzibar, Tanzania in June 2012 and was hereafter formerly initiated in November of that year, and continued with a meeting to review progress (completion of 'zero draft') in Nairobi early in 2013. Subsequent drafts were reviewed by a TWG convened for that purpose by teleconference and email exchanges. The document begins (chapter one) with an introduction that includes background on regulatory principles involved in registration of microbial biopesticides. Chapter two completes the preliminary part of the guidance by considering how legal form and force could be given to the non-legal regulatory guidance provided. Chapter 3 gives an account of the more practical part of the document including definitions of legal terms, followed by recommended registration procedures for registration authorities (chapter four) and guidance for registrants (chapter 5). An Annotated Bibliography is followed by five annexes with further guidance (annex 1), data requirements, model forms/certificates and other technical details (annexes 2-4), and a checklist for primary law provisions on pesticides (annex 5). The regulatory framework developed was used and 'road tested' in a trilateral meeting (Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia) for registration of a microbial biopesticide for aflatoxin control. These three countries are in tier one for adoption of the framework by national authorities but on a harmonised basis. As an outcome of the trilateral meeting an addendum was added on models for harmonised registration of microbial biopesticides. Next steps for wider adoption of the framework at national and REC level are under discussion. Provision is made for the eventual demand for registration of microbial biopesticides that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), requiring their approval by the appropriate biosafety regulatory agency in the country of registration. This is the recommended approach towards such products. However, given the sensitivities towards GMOs in some countries, relevant passages are indicated for omission altogether if deemed necessary

A Guide to the Development of Regulatory Frameworks for Microbial Biopesticides in Southern Africa

This is the final version of the guidance document on Regulatory Frameworks for Microbial Biopesticides in Sub-Saharan Africa as commissioned by AATF through the assistance of USDA-FAS. The project to develop this guidance took its origins from an exploratory meeting of relevant stakeholders, in Zanzibar, Tanzania in June 2012 and was thereafter formerly initiated in November of that year, and continued with a meeting to review progress (completion of ‘zero draft’) in Nairobi early in 2013. Subsequent drafts were reviewed by a TWG convened for that purpose by teleconference and email exchanges. The document begins (chapter one) with an introduction that includes background on regulatory principles involved in registration of microbial biopesticides. Chapter two completes the preliminary part of the guidance by considering how legal form and force could be given to the non-legal regulatory guidance provided. Chapter 3 gives an account of the more practical part of the document including definitions of legal terms, followed by recommended registration procedures for registration authorities (chapter four) and guidance for registrants (chapter 5). An Annotated Bibliography is followed by five annexes with further guidance (annex 1), data requirements, model forms/certificates and other technical details (annexes 2-4), and a checklist for primary law provisions on pesticides (annex 5). The regulatory framework developed was used and ‘road tested’ in a trilateral meeting (Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia) for registration of a microbial biopesticide for aflatoxin control. These three countries are in tier one for adoption of the framework by national authorities but on a harmonised basis. As an outcome of the trilateral meeting an addendum was added on models for harmonised registration of microbial biopesticides. Next steps for wider adoption of the framework at national and REC level are under discussion. Provision is made for the eventual demand for registration of microbial biopesticides that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), requiring their approval by the appropriate biosafety regulatory agency in the country of registration. This is the recommended approach towards such products. However, given the sensitivities towards GMOs in some countries, relevant passages are indicated for omission altogether if deemed necessary