The Daemo crowdsourcing marketplace

The success of crowdsourcing markets is dependent on a strong foundation of trust between workers and requesters. In current marketplaces, workers and requesters are often unable to trust each other’s quality, and their mental models of tasks are misaligned due to ambiguous instructions or confusing edge cases. This breakdown of trust typically arises from (1) flawed reputation systems which do not accurately reflect worker and requester quality, and from (2) poorly designed tasks. In this demo, we present how Boomerang and Prototype Tasks, the fundamental building blocks of the Daemo crowdsourcing marketplace, help restore trust between workers and requesters. Daemo’s Boomerang reputation system incentivizes alignment between opinion and ratings by determining the likelihood that workers and requesters will work together in the future based on how they rate each other. Daemo’s Prototype tasks require that new tasks go through a feedback iteration phase with a small number of workers so that requesters can revise their instructions and task designs before launch

Prototype tasks: Improving crowdsourcing results through rapid, iterative task design

Low-quality results have been a long-standing problem on microtask crowdsourcing platforms, driving away requesters and justifying low wages for workers. To date, workers have been blamed for low-quality results: they are said to make as little effort as possible, do not pay attention to detail, and lack expertise. In this paper, we hypothesize that requesters may also be responsible for low-quality work: they launch unclear task designs that confuse even earnest workers, under-specify edge cases, and neglect to include examples. We introduce prototype tasks, a crowdsourcing strategy requiring all new task designs to launch a small number of sample tasks. Workers attempt these tasks and leave feedback, enabling the requester to iterate on the design before publishing it. We report a field experiment in which tasks that underwent prototype task iteration produced higher-quality work results than the original task designs. With this research, we suggest that a simple and rapid iteration cycle can improve crowd work, and we provide empirical evidence that requester “quality” directly impacts result quality

Boomerang: Rebounding the consequences of reputation feedback on crowdsourcing platforms

Paid crowdsourcing platforms suffer from low-quality workand unfair rejections, but paradoxically, most workers and requesters have high reputation scores. These inflated scores, which make high-quality work and workers difficult to find,stem from social pressure to avoid giving negative feedback. We introduce Boomerang, a reputation system for crowdsourcing that elicits more accurate feedback by rebounding the consequences of feedback directly back onto the person who gave it. With Boomerang, requesters find that their highly rated workers gain earliest access to their future tasks, and workers find tasks from their highly-rated requesters at the top of their task feed. Field experiments verify that Boomerang causes both workers and requesters to provide feedback that is more closely aligned with their private opinions. Inspired by a game-theoretic notion of incentive-compatibility, Boomerang opens opportunities for interaction design to incentivize honest reporting over strategic dishonesty

Comparison of SPI [Standardized Precipitation Index] and IDSI [Integrated Drought Severity Index] applicability for agriculture drought monitoring in Sri Lanka

Increasing frequency of drought events coupled uncertainty imparted by climate change pose grave threat to agriculture and thereby overall food security. This is especially true in South Asian region where world’s largest concentration of people depends on agriculture for their livelihood. Indices derived from remote sensing datasets signifying different bio-physical aspects are increasingly used for operational drought monitoring. This study focuses on evaluating a newly created index for agricultural drought referred as Integrated Drought Severity Index (IDSI) in comparison with the traditional Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) primarily representing precipitation condition to delineate drought using custom created ArcGIS toolbox for a period of fourteen years (2001-2014) in Sri Lanka. SPI created using remotely sensed PERSIANN precipitation dataset was compared with the IDSI created using hybrid datasets. IDSI is created based on seamless mosaic of remotely sensed multi-sensor data that takes vegetation (computed from MODIS data product MOD09A1), temperature (MOD11A2) and precipitation (TRMM & GPM) status into consideration. The comparative study was made to assess the efficiency of newly created index and ArcGIS toolbox techniques for near real-time monitoring of spatio-temporal extent of agricultural drought. The result showed significant correlation of 0.85 between the two indices signifying the potential of using IDSI that integrates the response of agriculture drought variables (vegetation, rainfall, temperature and soil moisture) in monitoring shortterm drought and application in risk reduction measures

Gastric emptying and antral motility parameters in children with functional dyspepsia: association with symptom severity

Functional dyspepsia (FD) is an important gastrointestinal problem with obscure etiology. Abnormal gastric motility is suggested as a possible pathophysiological mechanism for symptoms. The main objective of this study was to assess gastric motility in Sri Lankan children with FD. Forty-one children (19 [46.3%] males, age 4-14 years, mean 7.5 years, SD 2.6 years) referred to the Gastroenterology Research Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, from January 2007 to December 2011, were screened. Those fulfilling Rome III criteria for FD were recruited. None had clinical or laboratory evidence of organic disorders. Twenty healthy children were recruited as controls (eight [40%] males, age 4-14 years, mean 8.4 years, SD 3.0 years). Liquid gastric emptying rate (GE) and antral motility parameters were assessed using an ultrasound-based method. Average GE (45.6% vs 66.2% in controls), amplitude of antral contractions (58.2% vs 89.0%) and antral motility index (5.1 vs 8.3) were lower and fasting antral area (1.5 cm(2) vs 0.6 cm(2)) was higher in patients with FD (P  < 0.01). Frequency of antral contractions (8.8 vs 9.3) did not show a significant difference (P = 0.07). Scores obtained for severity of abdominal pain negatively correlated with GE (r = -0.35, P = 0.025). Children with FD, exposed to stressful events had higher fasting antral area (1.9 cm(2)) than those not exposed to stress (1.0 cm(2)) (P = 0.02). GE and antral motility parameters were significantly impaired in children with FD compared with controls. GE negatively correlated with severity of symptoms. This study points to disturbances in gastric motility as an etiological factor for F

A case report of dengue haemorrhagic fever during the peripartum period: challenges in management and a case of vertical dengue transmission

Abstract Background Incidence of Dengue infection is on the increase in Sri Lanka with it being associated with significant maternal and neonatal morbidity in pregnancy. Case presentation A 33-year-old pregnant woman at 38 weeks of gestation, presented with acute onset of fever, was later diagnosed with Dengue illness. Due to the emergence of warning symptoms and signs and rapidly dropping platelet count, the baby was delivered by urgent caesarian section. She went into the critical phase during the postoperative period and due to concealed bleeding, required blood transfusion. On the 5th day of life, the neonate was also diagnosed with possible dengue by vertical transmission and required blood and PLT transfusions for recovery. Conclusions This case report illustrates how a high index of suspicion, early diagnosis, close monitoring, timely intervention and critical consideration of physiological changes of pregnancy when interpreting clinical situation, led to achieving a successful outcome