The use of provenance in information retrieval

The volume of electronic information that users accumulate is steadily rising. A recent study [2] found that there were on average 32,000 pieces of information (e-mails, web pages, documents, etc.) for each user. The problem of organizin

Gender and Resource Allocation Decisions in Farm Households: Evidence from a South African Land Reform Programme

I study whether South African farm households participating in a land reform program make Pareto efficient intrahousehold consumption decisions. Using evaluation survey data of beneficiary households participating in South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) program, I estimate and test the unitary and collective models of intrahousehold resource allocation. By estimating the households’ demand function’s responses to the size of land grant transfers going to resident men and women, I find evidence rejecting the income pooling hypothesis of the unitary model. On the other hand, I cannot reject the hypothesis that resource allocation is Pareto efficient, satisfying the test of the collective model. An alternative test of the collective model using the z-conditional demand approach proposed by Bourguignon, Browning and Chiappori (2009) also favours Pareto efficiency

Design and develop virtual reality games utilising the 'anti‐gravity' arm support for stroke rehabilitation therapy

Approximately 16,000 Australians each year are left with a disability as a direct consequence of stroke. The number of strokes that occur in Australia each year is increasing, putting a strong reliance on home and community based rehabilitation having an increasing role in the rehabilitation process. Strokes are caused by a sudden disruption to the flow of blood to parts of the brain. If an artery is blocked, the brain cells (neurons) cannot make enough energy and will eventually stop working. Stroke affects patients in a number of different ways depending on the severity of the stroke and the type of stroke in which the patient suffers from. There two main types of disabilities that are a result of stroke: hemiplegia and hemiparesis. The project aims to develop a virtual reality application to assist in the rehabilitation of the upper extremities of stoke patients who suffer from hemiparesis. The project will endeavour to design a low cost, home based system that will motivate patients by creating intermediate goals that can be adopted into the rehabilitation process. The project will utilise the 'anti‐gravity' arm support system to lessen the affect of reduced muscle strength and control. The project objectives are to: - Research relevant background information on the effects of stroke. - Research traditional methods of stroke rehabilitation and assessment of rehabilitation progression. - Implement hardware and program for position data acquisition. - Develop virtual reality application for exercise and rehabilitation assessment. The project is based around detecting the movement or the patients arm and creating a computer representation. This has been performed by monitoring the potentiometers on the 'anti‐gravity' arm support utilizing the PIC AXE microcontroller. The microcontroller to converts the signal into a digital integer and transfers them to the computer via a serial link. The games were designed around conventional physiotherapy exercises allowing the user to complete the exercises in a self motivating environment. The games were developed in both 2D and 3D environments utilizing Microsoft's XNA games studio. The project has been successful in accurately representing a user's movement within a virtual environment. This has been tested by use of advance 3D mapping techniques; however the project is still not a stage where it is practical to perform clinical trials

Propofol Waste Reduction in the Operating Room

Propofol is the most wasted intravenous medication used in anesthesia in the operating room (OR) (More, Dabhade, & Ghongane, 2015). Propofol, a sedative anxiolytic, is utilized as a continuous infusion in sedation procedures, or monitored anesthesia care (Nagelhout & Elisha, 2014). Inherent to these infusions is unpredictability in determining the amount of medication needed for the duration of a procedure. This project implemented customized propofol preparation charts consistent with the literature to aid the administering professional in determining the approximate milliliter requirement for the duration of a procedure. The pre-intervention steps consisted of voluntary data collection among anonymous anesthesia professionals in the OR regarding infusion characteristics. Patient weight, a commonly used infusion rate, and the duration of procedure were used in the calculation within customized charts. Post-intervention data collection was conducted in the same manner to capture the impact of the charts. This data was measured simultaneously at a local healthcare system’s main hospital and separate surgery center site, and waste reduction from baseline data was found to be 49% and 60%, respectively. This project was conducted over a four-month period and translates to a potential yearly savings of greater than $15,000 for the healthcare system. A culture of waste reduction leads to savings for anesthesia departments and healthcare organizations as a whole

Integrating rich user feedback into intelligent user interfaces

The potential for machine learning systems to improve via a mutually beneficial exchange of information with users has yet to be explored in much detail. Previously, we found that users were willing to provide a generous amount of rich feedback to machine learning systems, and that the types of some of this rich feedback seem promising for assimilation by machine learning algorithms. Following up on those findings, we ran an experiment to assess the viability of incorporating real-time keyword-based feedback in initial training phases when data is limited. We found that rich feedback improved accuracy but an initial unstable period often caused large fluctuations in classifier behavior. Participants were able to give feedback by relying heavily on system communication in order to respond to changes. The results show that in order to benefit from the user’s knowledge, machine learning systems must be able to absorb keyword-based rich feedback in a graceful manner and provide clear explanations of their predictions

Bacterial inactivation, photoreactivation and dark repair post flow-through pulsed UV disinfection

Pulsed UV (PUV) technology is accepted commercially for disinfection within the food packaging industry, but has yet to be deployed by the water/wastewater sector. This is partly due to a lack of robust, independently validated data for submerged or flow-through treatment applications. This study evaluated the efficacy of PUV for water disinfection under flow-through conditions. Bacterial pathogens of interest in the food and water/wastewater sector, namely Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria innocua (surrogate for L. monocytogenes) were used to investigate the potential for photoreactivation and/or dark repair post PUV flow-through disinfection. A continuous-flow low-pressure UV was also analysed under similar experimental conditions. Bacterial inactivation via flow-through PUV was dependant on energy output with E. coli exhibiting greatest sensitivity to PUV treatment (5.3 log 10 inactivation after treatment at 1539 mJ/cm 2 - output in UV range < 300 nm); L. innocua exhibited the highest PUV resistance (3.0 log 10 inactivation after treatment at 1539 mJ/cm 2 – output in UV range < 300 nm) under similar treatment conditions. Greater photoreactivation occurred at lower PUV outputs for both S. aureus and E. coli after flow-through PUV treatment. Thus exposure of treated bacteria to natural light, immediately post flow-through PUV treatment, should be avoided to minimise photoreactivation. The LPUV demonstrated inactivation of all bacteria below the limit of detection (1 CFU/mL) and inhibited the occurrence of photoreactivation. This study highlights the importance of considering bacterial repair potential and the need for further development of PUV technology for such applicationsThe authors would like to acknowledge the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine of Ireland (Ref: 13-F-507) for funding this research. Dr. Val del Rio was supported by the Spanish Government (CTM2014-55397-JIN project co-funded by FEDER) and Xunta de Galicia postdoctoral fellowshipS

Hyaluronic Acid: Its Versatile Use in Ocular Drug Delivery with a Specific Focus on Hyaluronic Acid-Based Polyelectrolyte Complexes.

Extensive research is currently being conducted into novel ocular drug delivery systems (ODDS) that are capable of surpassing the limitations associated with conventional intraocular anterior and posterior segment treatments. Nanoformulations, including those synthesised from the natural, hydrophilic glycosaminoglycan, hyaluronic acid (HA), have gained significant traction due to their enhanced intraocular permeation, longer retention times, high physiological stability, inherent biocompatibility, and biodegradability. However, conventional nanoformulation preparation methods often require large volumes of organic solvent, chemical cross-linkers, and surfactants, which can pose significant toxicity risks. We present a comprehensive, critical review of the use of HA in the field of ophthalmology and ocular drug delivery, with a discussion of the physicochemical and biological properties of HA that render it a suitable excipient for drug delivery to both the anterior and posterior segments of the eye. The pivotal focus of this review is a discussion of the formation of HA-based nanoparticles via polyelectrolyte complexation, a mild method of preparation driven primarily by electrostatic interaction between opposing polyelectrolytes. To the best of our knowledge, despite the growing number of publications centred around the development of HA-based polyelectrolyte complexes (HA-PECs) for ocular drug delivery, no review articles have been published in this area. This review aims to bridge the identified gap in the literature by (1) reviewing recent advances in the area of HA-PECs for anterior and posterior ODD, (2) describing the mechanism and thermodynamics of polyelectrolyte complexation, and (3) critically evaluating the intrinsic and extrinsic formulation parameters that must be considered when designing HA-PECs for ocular application