SoDIS SEPIA - collaborative partnerships in software engineering research

The Centre for Information Technology Research (CITRUS) launched in 2002 had the goal of encouraging collaborative research that is industry and community linked, at regional and national levels within the NACCQ sector. The research programme into Software Development Impact Statements being conducted by the Software Engineering Practice Improvement Alliance, (SoDIS SEPIA) represents one model towards achieving this goal. Initiated in 2001, this programme of research has developed increasing momentum from small beginnings, and is beginning to attract funding and a growing body of research partners committed to its goals. Bootstrapping a research programme from scratch is nonetheless a difficult undertaking. This paper outlines the goals of the programme; the strategies applied to build a collaborative network of researchers in educational and commercial organizations in New Zealand, Australia and the United States; reviews the successes and failures in the process so far; and makes some recommendations for developing successful research partnerships

Sub-lunar Tap-Yielding eXplorer, STYX

To diversify the idea pool that NASA has to draw from for future manned and unmanned missions to the Moon and Mars, a design/build competition has been posed to collegiate teams across the country. The challenge is to reach, extract, and purify underground ice reserves in a setting analogous to mars. Along the way, teams will be collecting telemetry to mimic prospecting objectives on the moon. The Sublunar Tap-Yielding eXplorer, STYX, is the team’s proposed design for the 2020 NASA RASC-AL competition. Some novel design features STYX will use are a rotary tool changer with swappable tools, a sleeve driving mode, and a pivoting heating probe. The STYX drill head will translate on two axes, use a rotary hammer drill to bore holes, sleeve boreholes with pipe to prevent collapse, and deliver water via a peristaltic pump and a two stage filtration system. Several of these design elements are innovative and conceptually proven through preliminary testing. These efforts are expected to net increased performance and differentiate STYX from other prototype submissions

Informative material for patient empowerment in sensitive situations

Women diagnosed with HPV face a hard-to-understand disease that may impact their psychological and physical health and may pose challenges communicating with healthcare providers in sensitive settings. We posit patient empowerment through targeted educational materials can improve sensitive communication and lead to better health outcomes. This study measured the impact of a patient-empowerment process used in a gynecology clinic for HPV patients to improve sensitive communication during medical-related meetings and on subsequent patient empowerment outcomes. The empowerment process was based on expert-vetted informative material made accessible in the physician’s waiting room on tablet devices. Communication between physicians and patients was measured during medical visits via a direct observation, encoding process. Empowerment items were tested following medical visits. The results were compared to a control group that received non-medical, lifestyle material. 237 female, gynecology patients from a large, private clinic participated. Using expert-vetted, relevant material to enhance patient education in a clinical setting results in higher levels of patient empowerment. Physician interaction impacts patient empowerment as do various communication behaviors and this can lead to positive health outcomes. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Patient, Family & Community Engagement lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework (https://theberylinstitute.org/experience-framework/). Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this lens

A review on the relation between simulation and improvement in hospitals

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Simulation applications on operations management in hospitals are frequently published and claim to support decision-making on operations management subjects. However, the reported implementation rates of recommendations are low and the actual impact of the changes recommended by the modeler has hardly been examined. This paper examines: 1) the execution rate of simulation study recommendations, 2) the research methods used to evaluate implementation of recommendations, 3) factors contributing to implementation, and 4) the differences regarding implementation between literature and practice.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Altogether 16 hospitals executed the recommendations (at least partially). Implementation results were hardly reported upon; 1 study described a before-and-after design, 2 a partial before and after design. Factors that help implementation were grouped according to 1) technical quality, of which data availability, validation/verification with historic data/expert opinion, and the development of the conceptual model were mentioned most frequently 2) process quality, with client involvement and 3) outcome quality with, presentation of results. The survey response rate of traceable authors was 61%, 18 authors implemented the results at least partially. Among these responses, evaluation methods were relatively better with 3 time series designs and 2 before-and-after designs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Although underreported in literature, implementation of recommendations seems limited; this review provides recommendations on project design, implementation conditions and evaluation methods to increase implementation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A literature review in PubMed and Business Source Elite on stochastic simulation applications on operations management in individual hospitals published between 1997 and 2008. From those reporting implementation, cross references were added. In total, 89 papers were included. A scoring list was used for data extraction. Two reviewers evaluated each paper separately; in case of discrepancies, they jointly determined the scores. The findings were validated with a survey to the original authors.</p

Sensory and Cognitive Factors Underlying Self-Perceived Listening Difficulties in Adults with Normal Hearing Thresholds

One in ten adults seeking help at audiology clinics present with a primary complaint of listening difficulties yet have normal hearing thresholds. These adults with complaints of listening difficulties particularly struggle with speech perception in noise, which requires a combination of bottom-up and top-down processes. Prior research has largely focused on dysfunctions in bottom-up processing, yet it remains unclear how top-down processes, like decisional and linguistic processes, may contribute to self-perceived listening difficulties (SPLDs) in adults with normal hearing thresholds. Therefore, there is a critical need to understand the extent to which top-down decisional and linguistic processes during speech perception underlie SPLDs in order for clinicians to provide targeted interventions for SPLDs. In this dissertation, I examined SPLDs in adults ages 18-53 with normal hearing thresholds across two studies. In Study 1, I examined decisional processes that support speech categorization in a phoneme in noise categorization task using a computational modeling approach. I found that the rate at which listeners accumulate critical sensory evidence to make a categorization decision increases when there is less interference from background noise. Moreover, individuals with fewer SPLDs benefit from more supportive listening contexts to a greater extent than those with more SPLDs. In study 2, I examined the extent to which listeners with more SPLDs relied on different types of linguistic information to aid speech comprehension using more naturalistic stimuli in an electroencephalography experiment. I found that speech comprehension performance did not differ based on SPLDs. However, listeners with more SPLDs had increased representations of sentence-level information during listening, relative to those with fewer SPLDs. These findings suggest that listeners with more SPLDs may rely on sentence-level information as a compensatory strategy to aid comprehension performance. Taken together, the findings from this dissertation demonstrate that listeners with more SPLDs have different approaches to listening. These results encourage further investigation into SPLDs in adults with normal hearing thresholds

Combining pupillometry and drift-diffusion models reveals auditory category learning dynamics

This project modified a behavioral learning task to increase interpretability of pupillary responses during learning of rule-based categorie

SoDIS SEPIA - collaborative partnerships in software engineering research

The Centre for Information Technology Research (CITRUS) launched in 2002 had the goal of encouraging collaborative research that is industry and community linked, at regional and national levels within the NACCQ sector. The research programme into Software Development Impact Statements being conducted by the Software Engineering Practice Improvement Alliance, (SoDIS SEPIA) represents one model towards achieving this goal. Initiated in 2001, this programme of research has developed increasing momentum from small beginnings, and is beginning to attract funding and a growing body of research partners committed to its goals. Bootstrapping a research programme from scratch is nonetheless a difficult undertaking. This paper outlines the goals of the programme; the strategies applied to build a collaborative network of researchers in educational and commercial organizations in New Zealand, Australia and the United States; reviews the successes and failures in the process so far; and makes some recommendations for developing successful research partnerships