Using Wii technology to explore real spaces via virtual environments for people who are blind

Purpose - Virtual environments (VEs) that represent real spaces (RSs) give people who are blind the opportunity to build a cognitive map in advance that they will be able to use when arriving at the RS. Design - In this research study Nintendo Wii based technology was used for exploring VEs via the Wiici application. The Wiimote allows the user to interact with VEs by simulating walking and scanning the space. Finding - By getting haptic and auditory feedback the user learned to explore new spaces. We examined the participants' abilities to explore new simple and complex places, construct a cognitive map, and perform orientation tasks in the RS. Originality – To our knowledge, this finding presents the first virtual environment for people who are blind that allow the participants to scan the environment and by this to construct map model spatial representations

n-Dimensional QoS Framework for Real-Time Service-Oriented Architectures

Service-Orientation has long provided an effective mechanism to integrate heterogeneous systems in a loosely coupled fashion as services. However, with the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) there is a growing need to facilitate the integration of real-time services executing in non-controlled, non-real-time, environments such as the Cloud. With the need to integrate both cyberphysical systems as hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) components and also with Simulation as a Service (SIMaaS) the execution performance and response-times of the services must be managed. This paper presents a mathematical framework that captures the relationship between the host execution environment and service performance allowing the estimation of Quality of Service (QoS) under dynamic Cloud workloads. A formal mathematical definition is provided and this is evaluated against existing techniques from both the Cloud and Real-Time Service Oriented Architecture (RT-SOA) domains. The proposed approach is evaluated against the existing techniques through simulation and demonstrates a reduction of QoS violation percentage by 22% with respect to response-times as well as reducing the number of Micro-Service (uS) instances with QoS violations by 27%

DIVIDER: Modelling and Evaluating Real-Time Service-Oriented Cyberphysical Co-Simulations

The ability to reliably distribute simulations across a distributed system and seamlessly integrate them as a workflow regardless of their level of abstraction is critical to improving the quality of product manufacturing. This paper presents the DIVIDER architecture for managing and maintaining real-time performance simulations integrated through SOAs. The described approach captures features present in complex workflow patterns such as asynchronous arbitrary cycles and estimates the worst case execution time in the context of the interfering execution environment

A service oriented virtual environment for complex system analysis: Preliminary report

Distributed virtual simulation is a capability that is increasing in demand within the automotive manufacturing industry. The distributed and networked approach to system level design and simulation stands to benefit from a unifying relational oriented modeling and simulation framework due to the large number of simulation technologies that must be integrated. This will also permit innovative use of existing independent simulations for increased concurrency in design and verification and validation. Through relational orientation, high level syntax and semantics for representing models and simulations have been developed for proof of concept analysis. This paper presents an approach to drive a process of analysis of the vehicle as a complex system through the combination of a relational trade-off analysis framework and a distributed simulation execution delivered through a service-oriented integration architecture. This promises to provide a rigorous, traceable and agile approach to early stage conceptual vehicle design and analysis

Changing practice to support self-management and recovery in mental illness: application of an implementation model

Author Version made available in accordance with the publisher's policyHealth services introducing practice changes need effective implementation methods. Within the setting of a community mental health service offering recovery-oriented psychosocial support for people with mental illness, we aimed to (a) identify a well-founded implementation model and (b) assess its practical usefulness in introducing a new program for recovery-oriented self-management support. We reviewed the literature to identify implementation models applicable to community mental health, and having corresponding measurement tools. We used one of these models to inform organisational change strategies. The literature review showed few models with corresponding tools. The Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) model and the related Organizational Readiness to Change Assessment (ORCA) tool were used. PARIHS proposes prerequisites for health service change and the ORCA measures the extent to which these prerequisites are present. Application of the ORCA at two time points during implementation of the new program showed strategy-related gains for some prerequisites but not for others, reflecting observed implementation progress. Additional strategies to address target prerequisites could be drawn from the PARIHS model. The PARIHS model and ORCA tool have potential in designing and monitoring practice change strategies in community mental health. Further practical use and testing of implementation models appears justified in overcoming barriers to change

The Internet of Simulation: Enabling Agile Model Based Systems Engineering for Cyber-Physical Systems

The expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in a complex cyber-physical system of systems that is continually evolving. With ever more complex systems being developed and changed there has been an increasing reliance on simulation as a vital part of the design process. There is also a growing need for simulation integration and co-simulation in order to analyse the complex interactions between system components. To this end we propose that the Internet of Simulation (IoS) as an extension of IoT can be used to meet these needs. The IoS allows for multiple heterogeneous simulations to be integrated together for co-simulation. It's effect on the engineer process is to facilitate agile practices without sacrificing rigour. An Industry 4.0 example case study is provided showing how IoS could be utilized

'The Brick' is not a brick : A comprehensive study of the structure and dynamics of the Central Molecular Zone cloud G0.253+0.016

© 2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.In this paper we provide a comprehensive description of the internal dynamics of G0.253+0.016 (a.k.a. 'the Brick'); one of the most massive and dense molecular clouds in the Galaxy to lack signatures of widespread star formation. As a potential host to a future generation of high-mass stars, understanding largely quiescent molecular clouds like G0.253+0.016 is of critical importance. In this paper, we reanalyse Atacama Large Millimeter Array cycle 0 HNCO $J=4(0,4)-3(0,3)$ data at 3 mm, using two new pieces of software which we make available to the community. First, scousepy, a Python implementation of the spectral line fitting algorithm scouse. Secondly, acorns (Agglomerative Clustering for ORganising Nested Structures), a hierarchical n-dimensional clustering algorithm designed for use with discrete spectroscopic data. Together, these tools provide an unbiased measurement of the line of sight velocity dispersion in this cloud, $\sigma_{v_{los}, {\rm 1D}}=4.4\pm2.1$ kms$^{-1}$, which is somewhat larger than predicted by velocity dispersion-size relations for the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). The dispersion of centroid velocities in the plane of the sky are comparable, yielding $\sigma_{v_{los}, {\rm 1D}}/\sigma_{v_{pos}, {\rm 1D}}\sim1.2\pm0.3$. This isotropy may indicate that the line-of-sight extent of the cloud is approximately equivalent to that in the plane of the sky. Combining our kinematic decomposition with radiative transfer modelling we conclude that G0.253+0.016 is not a single, coherent, and centrally-condensed molecular cloud; 'the Brick' is not a \emph{brick}. Instead, G0.253+0.016 is a dynamically complex and hierarchically-structured molecular cloud whose morphology is consistent with the influence of the orbital dynamics and shear in the CMZ.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

"Our people has got to come to terms with that": changing perceptions of the digital rectal examination as a barrier to prostate cancer diagnosis in African-Caribbean men

Objective: African‐Caribbean men in the United Kingdom in comparison with other ethnicities have the highest incidence rate of prostate cancer. Psychosocial aspects related to screening and presentation impact on men's behavior, with previous studies indicating a range of barriers. This study explores one such barrier, the digital rectal examination (DRE), due to its prominence within UK African‐Caribbean men's accounts. Methods: African‐Caribbean men with prostate cancer (n = 10) and without cancer (n = 10) were interviewed about their perceptions of DRE. A synthetic discursive approach was employed to analyze the data. Results: Findings illustrate that an interpretative repertoire of homophobia in relation to the DRE is constructed as having an impact upon African‐Caribbean men's uptake of prostate cancer screening. However, the discursive focus on footing and accountability highlight deviations from this repertoire that are built up as pragmatic and orient to changing perceptions within the community. Conclusions: Health promotion interventions need to address the fear of homophobia and are best designed in collaboration with the community

Mapping the column density and dust temperature structure of IRDCs with Herschel

Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are cold and dense reservoirs of gas potentially available to form stars. Many of these clouds are likely to be pristine structures representing the initial conditions for star formation. The study presented here aims to construct and analyze accurate column density and dust temperature maps of IRDCs by using the first Herschel data from the Hi-GAL galactic plane survey. These fundamental quantities, are essential for understanding processes such as fragmentation in the early stages of the formation of stars in molecular clouds. We have developed a simple pixel-by-pixel SED fitting method, which accounts for the background emission. By fitting a grey-body function at each position, we recover the spatial variations in both the dust column density and temperature within the IRDCs. This method is applied to a sample of 22 IRDCs exhibiting a range of angular sizes and peak column densities. Our analysis shows that the dust temperature decreases significantly within IRDCs, from background temperatures of 20-30 K to minimum temperatures of 8-15 K within the clouds, showing that dense molecular clouds are not isothermal. Temperature gradients have most likely an important impact on the fragmentation of IRDCs. Local temperature minima are strongly correlated with column density peaks, which in a few cases reach NH2 = 1 x 10^{23} cm^{-2}, identifying these clouds as candidate massive prestellar cores. Applying this technique to the full Hi-GAL data set will provide important constraints on the fragmentation and thermal properties of IRDCs, and help identify hundreds of massive prestellar core candidates.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A Herschel special issu

Variations in the Galactic star formation rate and density thresholds for star formation

The conversion of gas into stars is a fundamental process in astrophysics and cosmology. Stars are known to form from the gravitational collapse of dense clumps in interstellar molecular clouds, and it has been proposed that the resulting star formation rate is proportional to either the amount of mass above a threshold gas surface density, or the gas volume density. These star-formation prescriptions appear to hold in nearby molecular clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy's disk as well as in distant galaxies where the star formation rates are often much larger. The inner 500 pc of our Galaxy, the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), contains the largest concentration of dense, high-surface density molecular gas in the Milky Way, providing an environment where the validity of star-formation prescriptions can be tested. Here we show that by several measures, the current star formation rate in the CMZ is an order-of-magnitude lower than the rates predicted by the currently accepted prescriptions. In particular, the region 1 deg < l < 3.5 deg, |b| < 0.5 deg contains ~10^7 Msun of dense molecular gas -- enough to form 1000 Orion-like clusters -- but the present-day star formation rate within this gas is only equivalent to that in Orion. In addition to density, another property of molecular clouds, such as the amplitude of turbulent motions, must be included in the star-formation prescription to predict the star formation rate in a given mass of molecular gas.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, submitted MNRA