Climate Change Games as Boundary Objects: Fostering Dialogic Communication within Stakeholder Engagement

Rising waters and the increasing devastation of flood events make coastal resilience a significant issue in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, particularly in the city of Norfolk. Enhancing resilience requires ongoing stakeholder engagement designed to invite dialogue while encouraging cross-jurisdictional collaboration and comprehensive problem-solving. Climate change games have been employed to support these endeavors. This dissertation provides a response to the following research questions: 1) What is the origin of the climate change game genre? 2) Why are key stakeholders in coastal resilience using climate change games? And 3) how do these games operate for these key stakeholders? To answer these questions, I focused on two games used in resilience-related stakeholder engagement workshops in 2018 in Coastal Virginia: the Multi-hazard Tournament (MHT) and the Game of Floods. I conducted semistructured observational field notes and survey research, including interview and questionnaires, followed by thematic analysis according to notions of Susan Leigh Star and James Griesemer’s (1989) boundary objects. Designed for a wide range of contexts, including public outreach, education, training, and stakeholder engagement, I found that the CC game genre emerges from (and is a manifestation of) a number of related traditions: technical communication, urban planning, modeling and simulation, and game studies—fields that are, themselves, intertwined with a broad array of disciplines. These games are complex and idiosyncratic; while no one disciplinary tradition can adequately explain their work, the notion of boundary objects can. These games are boundary objects (a manifestation of a range of disciplinary traditions), and they operate as boundary objects for these key stakeholders (encouraging dialogic communication among diverse audiences). I merge multidisciplinary scholarship with data from survey research to generate a rhetorical boundary work heuristic that articulates the goals of these games: foster boundary work for varied audiences within intense design periods using charrette and game design strategies. I analyze the MHT and the Game of Floods according to this heuristic, demonstrating that, while both games work toward these goals, more could be done to enhance their boundary work, and I close with key takeaways for practitioners to use as they continue developing and employing CC games

Search literacy: learning to search to learn

People can often find themselves out of their depth when they face knowledge-based problems, such as faulty technology, or medical concerns. This can also happen in everyday domains that users are simply inexperienced with, like cooking. These are common exploratory search conditions, where users don’t quite know enough about the domain to know if they are submitting a good query, nor if the results directly resolve their need or can be translated to do so. In such situations, people turn to their friends for help, or to forums like StackOverflow, so that someone can explain things to them and translate information to their specific need. This short paper describes work-in-progress within a Google-funded project focusing on Search Literacy in these situations, where improved search skills will help users to learn as they search, to search better, and to better comprehend the results. Focusing on the technology-problem domain, we present initial results from a qualitative study of questions asked and answers given in StackOverflow, and present plans for designing search engine support to help searchers learn as they search

A pilot study of respiratory rate derived from a wearable biosensor compared with capnography in emergency department patients

© 2019 Li et al. Purpose: Respiratory rate is assessed less frequently than other vital signs, and documented respiratory rates are often erroneous. This pilot study compared respiratory rates derived from a wearable biosensor to those derived from capnography. Methods: Emergency department patients with respiratory complaints were enrolled and had capnography via nasal cannula and a wireless, wearable biosensor from Philips applied for approximately one hour. Respiratory rates were obtained from both of these methods. We determined the difference between median respiratory rates obtained from the biosensor and capnography and the proportion of biosensor-derived respiratory rates that were within three breaths/minute of the capnography-derived respiratory rates for each patient. A Spearman correlation coefficient was calculated to assess the strength of the correlation between mean respiratory rates derived from both methods. Plots of minute-by-minute respiratory rates, per patient, for each monitoring method were shown to two physicians. The physicians identified time periods in which the respiratory rates appeared invalid. The proportion of time with invalid respiratory rates for each patient, for each method, was calculated and averaged. Results: We analyzed data for 17 patients. Median biosensor-derived respiratory rate was 20 breaths/minute (range: 7-40 breaths/minute) and median capnography-derived respiratory rate was 25 breaths/minute (range: 0-58 breaths/minute). Overall, 72.8% of biosensorderived respiratory rates were within three breaths per minute of the capnography-derived respiratory rates. Overall mean difference was 3.5 breaths/minute (±5.2 breaths/minute). Respiratory rates appeared invalid 0.7% of the time for the biosensor and 5.0% of the time for capnography. Conclusion: Our pilot study suggests that the Philips wearable biosensor can continuously obtain respiratory rates that are comparable to capnography-derived respiratory rates among emergency department patients with respiratory complaints

LOW-VOLTAGE CATHODOLUMINESCENT PROPERTIES OF BLUE-EMITTING YTTRIUM SILICATES DOPED WITH CERIUM

ABSTRACT Yttrium silicate activated with Ce 3+ , (Y 1-x Ce x ) 2 SiO 5 , has been found to be an efficient phosphor that can potentially be used as the blue-emitting component in field emission flat panel displays. This highly refractory powder can be synthesized by combustion synthesis, a low cost technique used to fabricate multicomponent oxide powders in a single step process. The effect of activator concentration and post-synthesis annealing was examined on the fluorescent properties. The powders were found to be monoclinic space group P2 1 /c in the as-synthesized state, and transformed to monoclinic space group C2/c after annealing. The maximum luminous emission intensity was reached after a one hour anneal at 1350 C for x=0.0075, with the peak Ce 3+ emission wavelength between 420 and 450 nm. When co-doped with Gd 3+ , no increase in the emission intensity was observed

An Exploratory Initiative for Improving Low-Cost Housing in Texas

In 1996 the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University released a report indicating that the population of Texas would double in the next 30 years and that a majority of the 18 million new Texans would be have low to very-low incomes. In order to house that many low income persons, it is apparent that a significant number of affordable housing units must be built in a relatively short time frame. Based on these predictions, our interdisciplinary team made a proposal in the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Strategic Initiatives Program to explore technologies related to the production of affordable housing. The purpose of the work is to identify opportunities for research into systems, materials, and processes that might contribute to the development of a low-cost housing industry in Texas that could meet state housing needs and might create export possibilities. The proposal was funded by the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, the Center for Housing and Urban Development, and the College of Architecture Research Fund. This report summarizes the results of the effort

Professionalization of a nonstate actor

Can nonstate militants professionalize? That is the core question of this piece. Discussions of professionalism have spread to the state military from civilian professions such as education, medicine, and law. This piece examines whether nonstate actors exhibit the same fundamental processes found within these state-based organizations. These fundamentals are the creation of a recognized internal ethos, which acts as a collective standard for those involved. A commitment to expertise and the punishment of those who do not reach these collective expectations reinforce this ethos. To answer this question, this piece examines the development of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) during the Troubles. It highlights consistencies and inconsistencies with traditional forces and argues that groups like the PIRA can professionalize and increase their effectiveness in doing so. This widens the field of professionalism studies and provides an additional lens through which to examine nonstate groups

Specialist multidisciplinary input maximises rare disease diagnoses from whole genome sequencing

Diagnostic whole genome sequencing (WGS) is increasingly used in rare diseases. However, standard, semi-automated WGS analysis may overlook diagnoses in complex disorders. Here, we show that specialist multidisciplinary analysis of WGS, following an initial 'no primary findings' (NPF) report, improves diagnostic rates and alters management. We undertook WGS in 102 adults with diagnostically challenging primary mitochondrial disease phenotypes. NPF cases were reviewed by a genomic medicine team, thus enabling bespoke informatic approaches, co-ordinated phenotypic validation, and functional work. We enhanced the diagnostic rate from 16.7% to 31.4%, with management implications for all new diagnoses, and detected strong candidate disease-causing variants in a further 3.9% of patients. This approach presents a standardised model of care that supports mainstream clinicians and enhances diagnostic equity for complex disorders, thereby facilitating access to the potential benefits of genomic healthcare. This research was made possible through access to the data and findings generated by the 100,000 Genomes Project: http://www.genomicsengland.co.uk