Measuring Quality, Cost, and Value of IT Services

Longer version published at 2001 55th Annual Quality Congress, American Society for Quality, Charlotte, NC.Support for all users of computer hardware, software, and networks is crucial for full realization of the value that these digital intelligence amplifiers can offer a scholarly community. Bloated applications, opaque user manuals, infelicitous interactions among peripherals and the computers and networks to which they are attached, and short mean time-to-failure for some pieces of hardware provide challenges for even the most experienced users. Thus even in the beginning of the 21st Century, when it is asserted the technology has “matured,” the value that can be derived from use of IT services is directly proportional to the level of effective IT support that can be provided for the customers of these services. The focus of this narrative is how one maintains and continually improves the quality of that support

Complete genome sequences of three novel Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 bacteriophages, Noxifer, Phabio, and Skulduggery

Three novel bacteriophages, two of which are jumbophages, were isolated from compost in Auckland, New Zealand. Noxifer, Phabio, and Skulduggery are double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) phages with genome sizes of 278,136 bp (Noxifer), 309,157 bp (Phabio), and 62,978 bp (Skulduggery)

Text-mining as a methodology to assess eating disorder-relevant factors : comparing mentions of fitness tracking technology across online communities

Objective: Text-mining offers a technique to identify and extract information from a large corpus of textual data. As an example, this study presents the application of text-mining to assess and compare interest in fitness tracking technology across eating disorder and health-related online communities. Method: A list of fitness tracking technology terms was developed, and communities (i.e., ‘subreddits’) on a large online discussion platform (Reddit) were compared regarding the frequency with which these terms occurred. The corpus used in this study comprised all comments posted between May 2015 and January 2018 (inclusive) on six subreddits – three eating disorder-related, and three relating to either fitness, weight-management or nutrition. All comments relating to the same ‘thread’ (i.e., conversation) were concatenated, and formed the cases used in this study (N=377,276). Results: Within the eating disorder-related subreddits, the findings indicated that a ‘pro-eating disorder’ subreddit, which is less recovery focused than the other eating disorder subreddits, had the highest frequency of fitness tracker terms. Across all subreddits, the weight-management subreddit had the highest frequency of the fitness tracker terms’ occurrence, and MyFitnessPal was the most frequently mentioned fitness tracker. Discussion: The technique exemplified here can potentially be used to assess group differences to identify at-risk populations, generate and explore clinically relevant research questions in populations who are difficult to recruit, and scope an area for which there is little extant literature. The technique also facilitates methodological triangulation of research findings obtained through more ‘traditional’ techniques, such as surveys or interviews

Dark energy from quantum wave function collapse of dark matter

Dynamical wave function collapse models entail the continuous liberation of a specified rate of energy arising from the interaction of a fluctuating scalar field with the matter wave function. We consider the wave function collapse process for the constituents of dark matter in our universe. Beginning from a particular early era of the universe chosen from physical considerations, the rate of the associated energy liberation is integrated to yield the requisite magnitude of dark energy around the era of galaxy formation. Further, the equation of state for the liberated energy approaches $w \to -1$ asymptotically, providing a mechanism to generate the present acceleration of the universe.Comment: 5 pages in Elsevier style to match with version published in Phys. Lett.

Cluster M Mycobacteriophages Bongo, PegLeg, and Rey with Unusually Large Repertoires of tRNA Isotopes

Genomic analysis of a large set of phages infecting the common hostMycobacterium smegmatis mc2155 shows that they span considerable genetic diversity. There are more than 20 distinct types that lack nucleotide similarity with each other, and there is considerable diversity within most of the groups. Three newly isolated temperate mycobacteriophages, Bongo, PegLeg, and Rey, constitute a new group (cluster M), with the closely related phages Bongo and PegLeg forming subcluster M1 and the more distantly related Rey forming subcluster M2. The cluster M mycobacteriophages have siphoviral morphologies with unusually long tails, are homoimmune, and have larger than average genomes (80.2 to 83.7 kbp). They exhibit a variety of features not previously described in other mycobacteriophages, including noncanonical genome architectures and several unusual sets of conserved repeated sequences suggesting novel regulatory systems for both transcription and translation. In addition to containing transfer-messenger RNA and RtcB-like RNA ligase genes, their genomes encode 21 to 24 tRNA genes encompassing complete or nearly complete sets of isotypes. We predict that these tRNAs are used in late lytic growth, likely compensating for the degradation or inadequacy of host tRNAs. They may represent a complete set of tRNAs necessary for late lytic growth, especially when taken together with the apparent lack of codons in the same late genes that correspond to tRNAs that the genomes of the phages do not obviously encode

Exploring the mycobacteriophage metaproteome: Phage genomics as an educational platform

Bacteriophages are the most abundant forms of life in the biosphere and carry genomes characterized by high genetic diversity and mosaic architectures. The complete sequences of 30 mycobacteriophage genomes show them collectively to encode 101 tRNAs, three tmRNAs, and 3,357 proteins belonging to 1,536 "phamilies" of related sequences, and a statistical analysis predicts that these represent approximately 50% of the total number of phamilies in the mycobacteriophage population. These phamilies contain 2.19 proteins on average; more than half (774) of them contain just a single protein sequence. Only six phamilies have representatives in more than half of the 30 genomes, and only three - encoding tape-measure proteins, lysins, and minor tail proteins - are present in all 30 phages, although these phamilies are themselves highly modular, such that no single amino acid sequence element is present in all 30 mycobacteriophage genomes. Of the 1,536 phamilies, only 230 (15%) have amino acid sequence similarity to previously reported proteins, reflecting the enormous genetic diversity of the entire phage population. The abundance and diversity of phages, the simplicity of phage isolation, and the relatively small size of phage genomes support bacteriophage isolation and comparative genomic analysis as a highly suitable platform for discovery-based education. © 2006 Hatfull et al

Inversion of the Lyman-α\alpha forest: 3D investigation of the intergalactic medium

We discuss the implementation of Bayesian inversion methods in order to recover the properties of the intergalactic medium from observations of the neutral hydrogen Lyman-$\alpha$ absorptions observed in the spectra of high redshift quasars (the so-called Lyman-$\alpha$ forest). We use two complementary schemes (i) a constrained Gaussian random field linear approach and (ii) a more general non-linear explicit Bayesian deconvolution method which offers in particular the possibility to constrain the parameters of the equation of state for the gas. While relying on prior assumption for the two-point correlation functions, we show how to recover, at least qualitatively, the 3D topology of the large scale structures in redshift space by inverting a suitable network of adjacent, low resolution lines of sight. We also discuss the inversion of single lines of sight observed at high spectral resolution. Our preliminary investigations suggest that the explicit Bayesian method can be used to derive quantitative information on the physical state of the gas. Redshift distortion is considered by simultaneous constrained reconstruction of the velocity and the density field in real space while assuming statistical correlation between the two fields. The method seems to work well in the strong prior regime where peculiar velocities are assumed to be the most likely realization in the density field. Finally, we investigate the effect of line of sight separation and number of lines of sight. Our analyses suggest that multiple low resolution lines of sight could be used to improve most likely velocity reconstruction on a high resolution line of sight.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, LateX (MN format), accepted for publication in MNRA

Cosmic Fluctuations and Dark Matter from Scalar Field Oscillations

Scale-invariant fluctuations and cold dark matter could originate from two different modes of a single scalar field, fluctuations from massless Goldstone oscillations and matter from massive Higgs modes. Matching the fluctuations and dark matter density observed requires a heavy scale ($\phi_0\approx 10^{16}$GeV) for the potential minimum and an extremely small self coupling ($\lambda\approx 10^{-83}$). Mode coupling causes the dark matter to form in lumps with nonnegligible velocities, leading to early collapse of dense dark matter ``miniclusters'' and halos on the scale of compact dwarf galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, REVTeX. Final version, published in Physical Review Letters 74, 3105, 199

Long-Range Autocorrelations of CpG Islands in the Human Genome

In this paper, we use a statistical estimator developed in astrophysics to study the distribution and organization of features of the human genome. Using the human reference sequence we quantify the global distribution of CpG islands (CGI) in each chromosome and demonstrate that the organization of the CGI across a chromosome is non-random, exhibits surprisingly long range correlations (10 Mb) and varies significantly among chromosomes. These correlations of CGI summarize functional properties of the genome that are not captured when considering variation in any particular separate (and local) feature. The demonstration of the proposed methods to quantify the organization of CGI in the human genome forms the basis of future studies. The most illuminating of these will assess the potential impact on phenotypic variation of inter-individual variation in the organization of the functional features of the genome within and among chromosomes, and among individuals for particular chromosomes