noteEd - A web-based lecture capture system

Electronic capture and playback of lectures has long been the aim of many academic projects. Synote is an application developed under MACFoB (Multimedia Annotation and Community Folksonomy Building) project to synchronise the playback of lecture materials. However, Synote provides no functionality to capture such multimedia. This project involves the creation of a system called noteEd, which will capture a range of multimedia from lectures and make them available to Synote. This report describes the evolution of the noteEd project throughout the design and implementation of the proposed system. The performance of the system was checked in a user acceptance test with the customer, which is discussed after screenshots of our solution. Finally, the project management is presented containing a final project evaluation

Cot-side imaging of functional connectivity in the developing brain during sleep using wearable high-density diffuse optical tomography

Studies of cortical function in newborn infants in clinical settings are extremely challenging to undertake with traditional neuroimaging approaches. Partly in response to this challenge, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has become an increasingly common clinical research tool but has significant limitations including a low spatial resolution and poor depth specificity. Moreover, the bulky optical fibres required in traditional fNIRS approaches present significant mechanical challenges, particularly for the study of vulnerable newborn infants. A new generation of wearable, modular, high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) technologies has recently emerged that overcomes many of the limitations of traditional, fibre-based and low-density fNIRS measurements. Driven by the development of this new technology, we have undertaken the first cot-side study of newborn infants using wearable HD-DOT in a clinical setting. We use this technology to study functional brain connectivity (FC) in newborn infants during sleep and assess the effect of neonatal sleep states, active sleep (AS) and quiet sleep (QS), on resting state FC. Our results demonstrate that it is now possible to obtain high-quality functional images of the neonatal brain in the clinical setting with few constraints. Our results also suggest that sleep states differentially affect FC in the neonatal brain, consistent with prior reports

Augmented Reality Technology to Facilitate Proficiency in Emergency Medical Procedures

Background: Augmented reality (AR) conveys an experience during which the user’s real-time environment is enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information; it is being investigated as a solution to enhance medical education and clinical practice. There is little literature on its utility for teaching emergency procedures. Methods: A within-subjects trial was performed comparing traditional training to AR guidance for two emergency procedures. Lay-subjects and emergency medical technicians received video training and AR guidance for performing bag-valve-mask ventilation and needle-decompression. Subjects performed both procedures in a simulation setting after each training modality. Subject performance, acceptability and usability were analyzed. Results: There was no difference in procedural performance between lay or EMT subjects for AR training, and no difference in subject-reported usefulness between the AR and control training. Conclusion: AR mediated guidance for emergency medical procedures is feasible and efficacious. Subject performance after AR training was statistically undistinguishable from a didactic educational modality

‘The Apex of Hipster XML GeekDOM’

If the notion of the methodological commons is as centrally located as we believe it to be in any visualization accurately depicting the intellectual structure of the digital humanities and digital literary studies (McCarty 2005, 119), then so, too, must be the community itself whose members provide that which populates the commons. As an interdiscipline, humanities computing has always well-understood its methodologies; indeed, the digital humanities (of which digital literary studies is a part), more generally, have made a virtue of the way in which they render explicit and tangible the theoretical models that govern the representative and analytical endeavour of their fields via computational application.  So, too, have those in the field understood and documented its formal structures and institutional manifestations, a chief example being the Text Encoding Initiative itself.  Less explicitly rendered and less formally documented–though intuited by its chief practitioners and builders–is the exact nature of the community itself, its depth and breadth, its own centre and, perhaps more important in a field whose embrace of interdisciplinarity is far from self-serving, its periphery and those aspects of which promise to become central. This article presents work carried out in conjunction with the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, a foundation of many digital literary studies projects, work that seeks to document the full nature of its community, from the institutional and research project groups that comprise the formal consortium at centre to those who appear on the other side of the easily-permeable periphery that separates it from the centre, largely individual practitioners in areas hitherto not closely identified with the digital humanities but clearly sharing methods and tools, thus suggesting their place in the same communities of practice, as they are members of the same methodological commons.  This methodological approach is drawn from marketing and organizational behavior, manifest in social networking, in the study of viral marketing campaigns conducted in online environments.  The method for this work was centred around a viral marketing experiment designed to showcase the TEI and novel ways that it can be used to encode different kinds of text.  At the heart of the experiment was a Bob Dylan song and its associated video which incorporated text; encoded text was overlaid and the video was posted to YouTube and a blog with links to the TEI website with analysis of traffic patterns carried out

Identifying safe care processes when GPs work in or alongside emergency departments: realist evaluation

Background: Increasing pressure on emergency services has led to the development of different models of care delivery including GPs working in or alongside emergency departments (EDs), but with a lack of evidence for patient safety outcomes. Aim: We aimed to explore how care processes work and how patient safety incidents associated with GPs working in ED settings may be mitigated. Design and Setting: We used realist methodology with a purposive sample of 13 EDs with different GP service models. We sought to understand the relationship between contexts, mechanisms and outcomes to develop theories about how and why patient safety incidents may occur, and how safe care was perceived to be delivered. Method: We collected qualitative data (observations, semi-structured audio-recorded staff interviews and local patient safety incident reports). We coded data using ‘if, then, because’ statements to refine initial theories developed from an earlier rapid realist literature review and analysis of a sample of national patient safety incident reports. Results: We developed a programme theory to describe how safe patient care was perceived to be delivered in these service models including: an experienced streaming nurse using local guidance and early warning scores; support for GPs’ clinical decision-making with clear governance processes relevant to the intended role (traditional GP approach or emergency medicine approach); and strong clinical leadership to promote teamwork and improve communication between services. Conclusion: Our findings can be used as a focus for more in-depth human factors investigations to optimise work conditions in this complex care delivery settin

Structural changes to resorbable calcium phosphate bioceramic aged <i>in vitro</i>

This work investigates the effect of mammalian cell culture conditions on 3D printed calcium phosphate scaffolds. The purpose of the studies presented was to characterise the changes in scaffold properties in physiologically relevant conditions. Differences in crystal morphologies were observed between foetal bovine serum-supplemented media and their unsupplemented analogues, but not for supplemented media containing tenocytes. Scaffold porosity was found to increase for all conditions studied, except for tenocyte-seeded scaffolds. The presence of tenocytes on the scaffold surface inhibited any increase in scaffold porosity in the presence of extracellular matrix secreted by the tenocytes. For acellular conditions the presence or absence of sera proteins strongly affected the rate of dissolution and the distribution of pore diameters within the scaffold. Exposure to high sera protein concentrations led to the development of significant numbers of sub-micron pores, which was otherwise not observed. The implication of these results for cell culture research employing calcium phosphate scaffolds is discussed