Evaluating the Online Activity and Searching Behaviour of Users of a Medical Digital Library

The National electronic Library of Infection (NeLI) is a UK-based resource, providing free access to current best-available evidence in Infectious Disease for the public and professionals alike. The content of the NeLI is intended to be developed and maintained by an online community of professionals. The library is currently running as a pilot website and analysis of the behaviour of current users, in particular professionals in the field of infectious disease is necessary to inform development of the new NeLI website. A web log analysis was undertaken for the period January 2002 to June 2003. In particular use by hospital/National Health Service (NHS)-based users was evaluated. Results indicate an increase in activity during the period and an increase in the number of hospital/NHS-based users. Hospital/NHS-based users were more likely to return to the site, spend more time on the site and to view more pages than other users. In addition, a free text search facility was added in July 2003 and an analysis of the queries entered into this search has also informed further library development and will be evaluated in future research. Further research is now necessary to promote the library among professionals and develop the online community

Initial experience with developing communities of practice around the National electronic Library for Communicable Disease

The availability of the Internet among healthcare professionals in the UK in recent years has made online professional communities a viable vehicle for their professional communication, an information source for their everyday needs and an easy way of disseminating and sharing information. Busy healthcare professionals around the country can take advantage of online communities, which are becoming very popular and powerful alternatives to traditional personal ones. This paper discusses and defines the role of the NeLCD (National electronic Library for Communicable Disease, http://www.nelcd.co.uk/) in developing online communities of practice related specifically to communicable disease. The benefits of developing communities of practice, with reference to knowledge capture and transfer, the importance of identifying and meeting user needs, and their role in promoting evidence-based practice are discussed. Finally a strategy for developing and sustaining community building is outlined

Analysis of Energy Conservation Options for USDOE Child Development Center, Final Summary Report

This report presents the results of a study that verifies the energy savings due to the individual ECOs through the use of a calibrated DOE-2 simulation. The results show that roughly 73% of the savings estimated by the GSA architect can be accounted for by the calibrated simulation. This compares very well when one considers that the large differences were contributed by the envelope improvements and the clerestory windows. If these two ECOs were omitted, 90% of the savings can be accounted for by the calibrated simulation.The U.S.D.O.E. Forrestal Child Development Center (CDC) was designed to be a "showpiece" model building. Its construction included energy efficient features such as efficient lighting, a photovoltaic system, an energy management system, lighting controls, envelope improvements, clerestory windows, energy efficient heat pumps, and a solar hot water system. The architect's estimate of the energy savings from these measures totaled 31.6 million Watt-hours per year (MWh/yr), an annual savings of about $1,580 (at$0.05/kWh). This study calculated a total annual energy savings of 23.2 MWh per year for the CDC; a savings of $1,160

The NorduGrid architecture and tools

The NorduGrid project designed a Grid architecture with the primary goal to meet the requirements of production tasks of the LHC experiments. While it is meant to be a rather generic Grid system, it puts emphasis on batch processing suitable for problems encountered in High Energy Physics. The NorduGrid architecture implementation uses the \globus{} as the foundation for various components, developed by the project. While introducing new services, the NorduGrid does not modify the Globus tools, such that the two can eventually co-exist. The NorduGrid topology is decentralized, avoiding a single point of failure. The NorduGrid architecture is thus a light-weight, non-invasive and dynamic one, while robust and scalable, capable of meeting most challenging tasks of High Energy Physics.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 9 pages,LaTeX, 4 figures. PSN MOAT00

User Customisation of Agent Profiles in the National electronic Library for Communicable Disease

The Internet provides overwhelming amount of medical information. However, healthcare professionals often cannot find the information they need when they need it and if they do the quality may be uncertain. A new Internet digital library, the National electronic Library for Communicable Disease (NeLCD), is addressing this issue by providing a single-entry portal to evidence-based information on treatment, investigation and prevention of communicable disease. Autonomous Intelligent Agents are essential for the development and runtime of the NeLCD library as they perform autonomously a number of tasks related to the search, assist humans in information publishing, the document review process and data exchange. In this paper, we present an application of Intelligent Agents in user profiling and customisation. In particular, they allow users to personalise the search, modify the input controlled vocabulary and customize the search results to better meet their needs. In addition, they can autonomously alert users about new postings according to their interests. Profiling of Intelligent Search Agents (ISA) and Pro-active Alert Agents (PAA) allows extensive customisation of the library according to user’s personal preferences, professional background and medical specialty

Effect of the Grain Size on the Energy per Unit Volume at the Onset of Liquefaction

Recent exploratory work by the authors indicated the feasibility of relating the development of the pore water pressure leading to liquefaction of soils subjected to earthquake loading to the amount of unit energy imparted to the soil during the dynamic motion. This research also showed that regardless of the mode of stress application, sinusoidal or random, the unit energy needed to initiate liquefaction is nearly constant for a given effective confining stress and a specific relative density, demonstrating that the unit energy is independent of the shear strain amplitude. Data obtained during torsional shear tests on a given soil made possible the development of relationships between the unit energy required for liquefaction (as the dependent variable) and the effective confining pressure and the relative density (as the independent variables). This paper examines the effect of grain size, and in particular that of the amount of silt contained in the liquefiable soil, on the amount of unit energy required for liquefaction. The soils selected for study included soils that liquefied during the recent Northridge Earthquake (Lower San Fernando Valley Dam). Understanding the effect of grain size on the amount of unit energy needed to initiate liquefaction is fundamental if an energy-based method to determine the liquefaction potential of a soil deposit is to implemented

Field Verification of the Energy-Based Procedure to Predict the Liquefaction Potential of Soil Deposits

This paper presents field evidence in support of the energy-base procedure to predict the liquefaction potential of soil deposits. Two recorded earthquake events which occurred at the Wildlife Site: Elmore Ranch earthquake (11/23/1987) and Superstition Hills earthquake (11/24/1987), representing nonliquefaction and liquefaction case histories respectively, were utilized to verify the energybased procedure in field situations. The nonlinearity and the degradation of shear stiffness and strength of soil deposits subjected to earthquake loading under undrained conditions were incorporated in the reconstruction of the shear stress-stain response. The effects of multi-directional excitation on the liquefaction potential and the build-up of pore water pressure were also investigated. Finally, a unit energy-pore pressure model was confirmed by the comparison of the calculated and recorded pore ressure time histories

Using the Internet to influence public knowledge and attitudes about health

The increasing availability of evidence-based medical information on the Internet has great potential to empower patients and health professionals and equip them for better decision-making, improving health outcomes. However, previous research has only evaluated the quality and accessibility of online information rather than the impact this information is having on the user. With these new technologies, are we actually empowering patients and professionals, improving their knowledge and changing their attitudes in a way that will impact on their behaviour? This paper presents the results of a pilot study investigating whether information within a medical digital library changes user knowledge and attitudes. The study had positive results with significant changes recorded. We conclude that digital libraries have the potential to change knowledge and attitudes of a range of users, but we need to evaluate this impact to inform digital library design in order to maximise the impact on users

Evaluating the changes in knowledge and attitudes of digital library users

Medical digital libraries are essentially life-critical applications providing timely access for professionals and the public to current medical knowledge and practice. This paper presents a new methodology for evaluating the impact of the knowledge within a medical digital library on users by testing their knowledge improvements and attitude changes. Using pre and post-use questionnaires we tested the impact of a small medical information website acting as an interface to the National electronic Library for Communicable Disease. The changes in user attitudes and the correlation with knowledge improvements observed indicate the potential for this methodology to be applied as a general evaluation technique of digital libraries and the impact of online information on user learning

Lessons learned from evaluation of the use of the National electronic Library of Infection

The National electronic Library of Infection (NeLI: http://www.neli.org.uk) in the UK is a freely available portal to key evidence and guidelines in the infectious disease field. This paper discusses 5 years of evaluation of the pilot library and how this evaluation informed design of the new library website. The importance of combining qualitative and quantitative evaluation is highlighted and the results of web access logs analysis, free text search query analysis and an online user survey are compared. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned for future development and evaluation of this Internet digital library