The value of eye-tracking technology in the analysis and interpretations of skeletal remains: A pilot study

This initial study is the first to use eye-trackers as a tool in order to study gaze pattern strategies and decision making processes involved in the assessment of skeletal remains. Three experienced participants were asked to wear eye-tracking glasses (Tobii Pro Glasses 2) when estimating sex and age-at-death of one set of skeletal remains from a known archeological sample. The study assessed participants' fixation points (the features of the skeleton focused on), fixation duration (the total time spent on each assessment and feature) as well as visit count and duration (the total number of visits and the duration of visits to particular areas). The preliminary results of this study identified differences in gaze “strategies” with regards to fixation points, visit duration, and visit counts between the participants. The data generated provide a starting point for assessing how such technologies could be used in order to more fully understand the decision making processes involved in forensic anthropological interpretations and their role in forensic reconstructions

Discovery of Oxygen Carriers by Mining a First-Principle Database

Chemical looping is an innovative technique that relies, to a large extent, on the possibility of finding new oxygen carriers. Until now, these materials have primarily been identified via experimental techniques and therefrom derived insights. However, this is both costly and time-consuming. To speed-up this process, we have applied a computational screening approach based on energetic data retrieved from the Open Quantum Materials Database. In particular, we have considered combinations of all mono-, bi-, and trimetallic alloys and mixed oxides with up to three distinctive phases. Here, we specifically focus on a technique referred to as chemical looping oxygen uncoupling, which is especially suitable for solid fuels, e.g., combustion of biomass for negative CO2 emissions. The formation energies obtained for the materials of interest were used to identify phase transitions that are likely to occur under conditions relevant for chemical looping oxygen uncoupling. Given these criteria, the initial list of 300000 materials is reduced by a factor of 20, and after filtering out rare, radioactive, toxic, or harmful elements only 1000 remain. When considering the abundance of elements in the ranking criteria, most of the highest ranking phases include Cu, Mn, and Fe. This adds credibility to the procedure, as many viable oxygen carriers for chemical looping oxygen uncoupling that have been studied experimentally contain these elements. While Cr-based materials have not been widely explored for this application, our study suggests that this might be worthwhile since these occur more frequently than Fe. Other elements that would be interesting as additional components include Ba, K, Na, Al, and Si

A five year perspective of traffic pattern evolution in a residential broadband access network

In this paper we describe a systematic study on long-term evolution of residential broadband Internet traffic covering 5 calendar years from June 2007 to May 2011. The traffic evolution is characterized both in the term of the total traffic volume, as well as the traffic volumes and shares for different application categories (file sharing, video streaming etc.), with the focus on comparing the traffic on the per IP user basis and among different broadband subscription groups. The results show that the average daily total traffic generated by each private end user increased only by about 33 % during the past 5 years. Further, the results show that the P2P filesharing has been dominating the network total traffic, but the daily file-sharing traffic volume per end user largely remains the same. Also, the daily streamingmedia traffic volume per end user has increased dramatically by over 500% during the studied period of time. In the meantime, the daily web-browsing traffic volume per end user has increased by about 300%. Finally, a further investigation among 4 different FTTH broadband subscription groups with 1, 10 , 30, and 100 Mbit/s symmetric access speeds shows that the lower the access speed, the more diversified the end user traffic tend to be

177 Lu-octreotate therapy for neuroendocrine tumours is enhanced by Hsp90 inhibition

Lu-177-octreotate is an FDA-approved radionuclide therapy for patients with gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) expressing somatostatin receptors. The Lu-177-octreotate therapy has shown promising results in clinical trials by prolonging progression-free survival, but complete responses are still uncommon. The aim of this study was to improve the Lu-177-octreotate therapy by means of combination therapy. To identify radiosensitising inhibitors, two cell lines, GOT1 and P-STS, derived from small intestinal neuroendocrine tumours (SINETs), were screened with 1224 inhibitors alone or in combination with external radiation. The screening revealed that inhibitors of Hsp90 can potentiate the tumour cell-killing effect of radiation in a synergistic fashion (GOT1; false discovery rate < 3.2 x 10(-11)). The potential for Hsp90 inhibitor ganetespib to enhance the anti-tumour effect of Lu-177-octreotate in an in vivo setting was studied in the somatostatin receptor-expressing GOT1 xenograft model. The combination led to a larger decrease in tumour volume relative to monotherapies and the tumour-reducing effect was shown to be synergistic. Using patient-derived tumour cells from eight metastatic SINETs, we could show that ganetespib enhanced the effect of Lu-177-octreotate therapy for all investigated patient tumours. Levels of Hsp90 protein expression were evaluated in 767 SINETs from 379 patients. We found that Hsp90 expression was upregulated in tumour cells relative to tumour stroma in the vast majority of SINETs. We conclude that Hsp90 inhibitors enhance the tumour-killing effect of Lu-177-octreotate therapy synergistically in SINET tumour models and suggest that this potentially promising combination should be further evaluated

The neuroendocrine phenotype, genomic profile and therapeutic sensitivity of GEPNET cell lines

Experimental models of neuroendocrine tumour disease are scarce, and no comprehensive characterisation of existing gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumour (GEPNET) cell lines has been reported. In this study, we aimed to define the molecular characteristics and therapeutic sensitivity of these cell lines. We therefore performed immunophenotyping, copy number profiling, whole-exome sequencing and a large-scale inhibitor screening of seven GEPNET cell lines. Four cell lines, GOT1, P-STS, BON-1 and QGP-1, displayed a neuroendocrine phenotype while three others, KRJ-I, L-STS and H-STS, did not. Instead, these three cell lines were identified as lymphoblastoid. Characterisation of remaining authentic GEPNET cell lines by copy number rofiling showed that GOT1, among other chromosomal alterations, harboured losses on chromosome 18 encompassing the SMAD4 gene, while P-STS had a loss on 11q. BON-1 had a homozygous loss of CDKN2A and CDKN2B, and QGP-1 harboured amplifications of MDM2 and HMGA2. Whole-exome sequencing revealed both disease-characteristic mutations (e.g. ATRX mutation in QGP-1) and, for patient tumours, rare genetic events (e.g. TP53 mutation in P-STS, BON-1 and QGP-1). A large-scale inhibitor screening showed that cell lines from pancreatic NETs to a greater extent, when compared to small intestinal NETs, were sensitive to inhibitors of MEK. Similarly, neuroendocrine NET cells originating from the small intestine were considerably more sensitive to a group of HDAC inhibitors. Taken together, our results provide a comprehensive characterisation of GEPNET cell lines, demonstrate their relevance as neuroendocrine tumour models and explore their therapeutic sensitivity to a broad range of inhibitors

Long-Term Soil Structure Observatory for Monitoring Post-Compaction Evolution of Soil Structure

The projected intensification of agriculture to meet food targets of a rapidly growing world population are likely to accentuate already acute problems of soil compaction and deteriorating soil structure in many regions of the world. The key role of soil structure for soil functions, the sensitivity of soil structure to agronomic management practices, and the lack of reliable observations and metrics for soil structure recovery rates after compaction motivated the establishment of a long-term Soil Structure Observatory (SSO) at the Agroscope research institute in Zürich, Switzerland. The primary objective of the SSO is to provide long-term observation data on soil structure evolution after disturbance by compaction, enabling quantification of compaction recovery rates and times. The SSO was designed to provide information on recovery of compacted soil under different post-compaction soil management regimes, including natural recovery of bare and vegetated soil as well as recovery with and without soil tillage. This study focused on the design of the SSO and the characterization of the pre- and post-compaction state of the field. We deployed a monitoring network for continuous observation of soil state variables related to hydrologic and biophysical functions (soil water content, matric potential, temperature, soil air O2 and CO2 concentrations, O2 diffusion rates, and redox states) as well as periodic sampling and in situ measurements of infiltration, mechanical impedance, soil porosity, gas and water transport properties, crop yields, earthworm populations, and plot-scale geophysical measurements. Besides enabling quantification of recovery rates of compacted soil, we expect that data provided by the SSO will help improve our general understanding of soil structure dynamics

Coordination from an Awareness perspective : Mechanisms and techniques for Awareness based Coordination support.

When a task becomes shared the need for coordination arises. One fundamental factor for coordination is awareness. This study aimed to answer the question of how awareness-based coordination support systems could increase the efficiency in the processing of tasks generated by the Customer Support Unit in Skellefteå municipality, ultimately creating a better work situation for the officers responsible for the handling of tasks and increasing the service level for the customers of their services. This question was answered by conducting interviews, observing system usage and through analysis of pre-existing interviews from earlier studies of the municipality’s CSU project. This study shows that there are aspects in the task management that are in need of coordination support and presents a task classification system based on the logistic nature of the task. Furthermore this paper identifies the main problems related to the current task management and from an awareness perspective discusses and outlines various mechanisms and techniques to address these problems. Alongside these problems the general lack of coordination support in the current Document and Workflow System (FlexiteBPMS) is approached. Furthermore all outlined proposals share the common aspiration of lessening the burden for the officers without simply shifting the workload onto other units in the workflow chain

Digital transformation : den materiella betydelsen av IT-resurser och dess politiska användning i strategiska informationssystem

As IT became ubiquitous, we recognized that IT was everywhere but in our theories. Despite significant efforts, Information System (IS) research is still in desperate search for the IT artifact. Recent reviews show that IS research first and foremost considers IT resources as a socio-technical and managerial concern. Analyses of inertia are restricted to cognitive limitations or technical challenges of IT development and use as separate activities. Hence, IS research assumes that more development resources, extended training, and better management could turn most failures into success. In this thesis, I posit that IS strategy research often treats normal failure as unexpected to maintain the rational idea that managers are in control and that IT does not matter in and of itself. I argue that planned and convergent views of change work well under stable and unitary conditions but in this way fail to account for the complexity of current IS strategy practice. To substantiate this claim, I demonstrate how IS research routinely neglects the material IT use story in the context of digital transformation (DT) studies and social informatics. Political conflict is a constant theme in IS strategy implementation research, yet few studies provided explanation for the apprehension that managers and workers display during the introduction of new IT resources; even as most managers remain men I found also no study that theorized gender politics as related to IS strategy outcomes. I argue in particular that the IS fields routine adherence to borrowed assumptions about the pace, linearity, and sequence of radical change have limited IS scholars to marginally improve on received DT narratives in which IT plays little or no part as IT appears as an agent mostly before and after DT. Though much is said about how IT triggers and enables organizational change, the actual processes and mechanisms that underlies IS strategy change enactments are thus poorly understood. To examine how the material roles of IT resources and their political use can be captured and explained, I summarize and synthesize insights grounded in empirics from four appended research papers. In this way, I chart avenues for material theorizing of micro-affordances and institutions, and develop an IS strategy-as-practice lens that attends IT use as a material practice. After developing this lens, I discuss how material practice perspectives afford deep understanding of the materialities through which actors create, sustain, and transform organizational practice with digital material, and highlight some opportunities to observe the social consequences of IT use in the context of critical studies on men and masculinities and digital gender

A model for strategic e-service implementation in the public sector : challenges for local governments in identifying potential candidates for e-service delivery

As more and more local governments begin to understand that the great promises of e-service delivery are harder than expected to realize, efficient use of ICT-resources have become increasingly important. Since simply providing more e-services is not the solution, the need to understand what constitutes a suitable e-service has arisen. Public services reach beyond the market domain; therefore, the complexities of public value must be dealt with when services are appraised. Furthermore, due to the heterogeneous nature of local government services it is impossible to evaluate all the options in depth; thus, there is a clear need for early-stage appraisal. However, existing methods of appraisal are burdened by intricacy, and associated with high costs. In response, this paper presents a model capable of reducing this intricacy. The model was developed through a participatory design process involving members on both operational and strategic level in the municipality of Skellefteå. The model implements state of the art into the workspace context while taking measures to reduce intricacy such as: incremental filtering, moving high intricacy elements to the end of the process, and exploitation of available data. As a result the organization is enabled to capture not only the low hanging fruit, but also the long tail of services. Furthermore, the improved understanding of e-service delivery has the potential to open up opportunities for new ways of business development and private-public partnerships. Finally, whereas the model presented is highly context-dependent, the implications outlined in this paper are not limited to this narrow scope.Models for Strategic Business Development in Public Servic