Enabling Personalized Composition and Adaptive Provisioning of Web Services

The proliferation of interconnected computing devices is fostering the emergence of environments where Web services made available to mobile users are a commodity. Unfortunately, inherent limitations of mobile devices still hinder the seamless access to Web services, and their use in supporting complex user activities. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a distributed, adaptive, and context-aware framework for personalized service composition and provisioning adapted to mobile users. Users specify their preferences by annotating existing process templates, leading to personalized service-based processes. To cater for the possibility of low bandwidth communication channels and frequent disconnections, an execution model is proposed whereby the responsibility of orchestrating personalized processes is spread across the participating services and user agents. In addition, the execution model is adaptive in the sense that the runtime environment is able to detect exceptions and react to them according to a set of rules

The cost-effectiveness of antenatal and postnatal education and support interventions for women aimed at promoting breastfeeding in the UK

Background: Breastfeeding is associated with health benefits to mothers and babies and cost-savings to the health service. Breastfeeding rates in the UK are low for various reasons including cultural barriers, inadequate support to initiate and sustain breastfeeding, lack of information, or choice not to breastfeed. Education and support interventions have been developed aiming at promoting breastfeeding rates. The objective of this study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of such interventions for women, initiated antenatally or in the first 8 weeks postnatally, aiming at improving breastfeeding rates, in the UK. Methods: A decision-analytic model was constructed to compare costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) of a breastfeeding intervention from the perspective of health and personal social services in England. Data on intervention effectiveness and the benefits of breastfeeding were derived from systematic reviews. Other model input parameters were obtained from published sources, supplemented by expert opinion. Results: The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of the modelled intervention added on standard care versus standard care was £51,946/QALY, suggesting that the intervention is not cost-effective under National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) criteria in England. Sensitivity analysis suggested that the cost-effectiveness of the intervention improved as its effectiveness increased and intervention cost decreased. At the base-case effect (increase in breastfeeding rates 16–26 weeks after birth by 19%), the intervention was cost-effective (<£20,000/QALY) if its cost per woman receiving the intervention became ≈£40–£45. At the base-case cost (£84), the intervention was cost-effective if it increased breastfeeding rates by at least 35–40%. Conclusions: Available breastfeeding interventions do not appear to be cost-effective under NICE criteria in England. Future breastfeeding interventions need to have higher effectiveness or lower cost compared with currently available interventions in order to become cost-effective. Public health and other societal interventions that protect, promote and support breastfeeding may be key in improving breastfeeding rates in the UK

The Tourist Experience of Heritage Urban Spaces: Valletta as a Case Study

This article provides an understanding of how tourists experience heritage urban spaces by investigating features that influence tourist experiences most. It is framed within urban design literature which refers to three elements of urban space namely physical setting (or form), activity, and meaning. These elements are used to explore how urban spaces are experienced by tourists. Its findings are derived from an in-depth qualitative analysis of interviews with tourists to Valletta, Malta. The research suggests that the intrinsic qualities of the space are relevant to the tourist experience but what is even more relevant are the interactions of the tourist with different elements within that space, namely interactions with surroundings, interactions with others, and interactions with self/meaning. Within this broad conceptual model, the research identifies important sub-themes. Some of these reinforce the findings of existing work on tourist experiences, but others are often under-estimated or neglected

Misty, Spellbound and the lost Gothic of British girls’ comics.

This article is a case study of the 1970s British girls’ comics Spellbound (DC Thomson, 1976–1977) and Misty (IPC, 1978–1980). These mystery anthology comics followed the more famous American horror comics from publishers like EC Comics - but were aimed at pre-teen girls. The article situates these comics with respect to Gothic critical theory and within the wider landscape of British girls’ comics. Firstly, it closely considers and compares the structure and content of their stories with respect to theories of the terror and horror Gothic. It discovers that both comics offer similar fare, with a subversive streak that undercuts established horror archetypes. The article then looks closely at both titles’ aesthetics and their use of the page to draw comparisons. It uses comics theory and Gothic cinematic theory to demonstrate that the appearance of Misty is more strongly Gothic than the aesthetic of Spellbound. Finally, it considers a selection of stories from both comics and analyses their common themes using Gothic critical theory. It argues that both comics rework Gothic themes into new forms that are relevant to their pre-teen and teenage readers. It concludes by summarising the study’s findings and suggesting that these comics offer a “Gothic for Girls” that is part cautionary tale and part bildungsroman. This article is published as part of a collection on Gothic and horror

Monsters: interdisciplinary explorations in monstrosity

There is a continued fascination with all things monster. This is partly due to the popular reception of Mary Shelley’s Monster, termed a “new species” by its overreaching but admiringly determined maker Victor Frankenstein in the eponymous novel first published in 1818. The enduring impact of Shelley’s novel, which spans a plethora of subjects and genres in imagery and themes, raises questions of origin and identity, death, birth and family relationships as well as the contradictory qualities of the monster. Monsters serve as metaphors for anxieties of aberration and innovation. Stephen Asma (2009) notes that monsters represent evil or moral transgression and each epoch, to speak with Michel Foucault, evidences a “particular type of monster” (2003, 66). Academic debates tend to explore how social and cultural threats come to be embodied in the figure of a monster and their actions literalize our deepest fears. Monsters in contemporary culture, however, have become are more humane than ever before. Monsters are strong, resilient, creative and sly creatures. Through their playful and invigorating energy they can be seen to disrupt and unsettle. They still cater to the appetite for horror, but they also encourage us to feel empathy. The encounter with a monster can enable us to stop, wonder and change our attitudes towards technology and our body and each other. This commentary article considers the use of the concepts of ‘monsters’ or ‘monstrosity’ in literature, contemporary research, culture and teaching contexts at the intersection of the Humanities and the Social Sciences

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Fragmenting and becoming double": Supplementary twins and abject bodies in Helen Oyeyemi's the Icarus Girl

© 2016 SAGE Publications. This article uses readings of the abject body and writing as supplement in Helen Oyeyemi's novel, The Icarus Girl (2005) to argue against a critical trend that reads the postcolonial Bildungsroman as promising a positively transformed postcolonial identity. Through our reading of Oyeyemi's novel, we suggest that locating the debates and tropes conventionally mobilized within postcolonial gothic in the former colonial centre complicates subject formations and constructions of alterity. The Icarus Girl weaves together a Western literary tradition of gothic with the postcolonial Bildungsroman and we suggest that the interaction of these forms produces a reading focused on the abject, both in terms of physical abjection mapped onto bodies and places, and in the way writing functions as abject supplement. When bodies, borders, and writing disintegrate, the reading of the novel becomes a difficult process, one not easily co-opted into a critical discourse that tends to value a psycho-symbolic reading of the postcolonial gothic Bildungsroman and to promise a positively transformed postcolonial identity. Accordingly, we argue that The Icarus Girl is unable to find comforting resolutions, disrupt oppositional structures, and create a utopian hybrid space or to bring about a unified sense of self, meaning that it resists a redemptive or cathartic ending. We draw upon Kristeva's theories of the abject and Derrida's notion of the supplement in order to establish how Oyeyemi's novel resists the construction of a stable identity through its emphasis upon expulsion and disintegration. Unlike the majority of criticism on postcolonial gothic, which focuses on texts emanating from formerly colonized countries, this article considers what happens to postcolonial gothic when it is written within and about the former colonial centre. In The Icarus Girl the repercussions of the colonial period are experienced in the present day through experiences of racism, dislocation, and alienation within Britain

Global Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Cerebral Venous Thrombosis and Mortality

Background and purpose: Recent studies suggested an increased incidence of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We evaluated the volume of CVT hospitalization and in-hospital mortality during the 1st year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the preceding year. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional retrospective study of 171 stroke centers from 49 countries. We recorded COVID-19 admission volumes, CVT hospitalization, and CVT in-hospital mortality from January 1, 2019, to May 31, 2021. CVT diagnoses were identified by International Classification of Disease-10 (ICD-10) codes or stroke databases. We additionally sought to compare the same metrics in the first 5 months of 2021 compared to the corresponding months in 2019 and 2020 (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04934020). Results: There were 2,313 CVT admissions across the 1-year pre-pandemic (2019) and pandemic year (2020); no differences in CVT volume or CVT mortality were observed. During the first 5 months of 2021, there was an increase in CVT volumes compared to 2019 (27.5%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 24.2 to 32.0; P&lt;0.0001) and 2020 (41.4%; 95% CI, 37.0 to 46.0; P&lt;0.0001). A COVID-19 diagnosis was present in 7.6% (132/1,738) of CVT hospitalizations. CVT was present in 0.04% (103/292,080) of COVID-19 hospitalizations. During the first pandemic year, CVT mortality was higher in patients who were COVID positive compared to COVID negative patients (8/53 [15.0%] vs. 41/910 [4.5%], P=0.004). There was an increase in CVT mortality during the first 5 months of pandemic years 2020 and 2021 compared to the first 5 months of the pre-pandemic year 2019 (2019 vs. 2020: 2.26% vs. 4.74%, P=0.05; 2019 vs. 2021: 2.26% vs. 4.99%, P=0.03). In the first 5 months of 2021, there were 26 cases of vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), resulting in six deaths. Conclusions: During the 1st year of the COVID-19 pandemic, CVT hospitalization volume and CVT in-hospital mortality did not change compared to the prior year. COVID-19 diagnosis was associated with higher CVT in-hospital mortality. During the first 5 months of 2021, there was an increase in CVT hospitalization volume and increase in CVT-related mortality, partially attributable to VITT