An overview of the most advanced frameworks for bridge asset management

During this paper it will be discussed some important novelties related to the topic of bridge asset management. In a first step, it will be covered the problematic of bridge assessment through the use of Key Performance Indicators. An emphasis will be made to the outcomes from the COST Action TU 1406 (www.tu1406.eu). Then, it will be discussed how these indicators can be used in the management of existing bridge stock. It will be introduced the problematic of performance predictive models and how maintainability could be integrated for the Life Cycle Cost analysis. At the end it will be discussed the difference between the management of a single and a network of bridges, what type of optimization models and decision-support algorithms can be used. An example is shown through the main results from the research and development project SustIMS – Sustainable Infrastructure Management Systems. The main objective is to show operators how the standardization of this procedure, and how these frameworks would contribute for a more sustainable and efficient management of their bridge stock.This article is based upon the work from COST Action TU1406, Quality specifications for roadway bridges, standardization at a European level (BridgeSpec), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fasting Reduces the Incidence of Delayed-Type Vomiting Associated with Doxorubicin Treatment in Dogs with Lymphoma.

Fasting reduces gastrointestinal cellular proliferation rates through G1 cycle blockade and can promote cellular protection of normal but not cancer cells through altered cell signaling including down-regulation of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Consequently, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of fasting on delayed-type chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting in dogs receiving doxorubicin. This prospective randomized crossover study involved intended administration of two doses of doxorubicin. Cancer-bearing dogs were randomized to be fasted for 24 hours beginning at 6 P.M. the night before the first or second doxorubicin administration, and all treatments were administered within an hour before or after 12 P.M. Dogs were fed normally before the alternate dose. Circulating IGF-1 concentrations were determined from serum samples obtained immediately before each doxorubicin treatment. Data from 35 doses were available from 20 dogs enrolled. Dogs that were fasted exhibited a significantly lower incidence of vomiting, when compared to fed dogs (10% compared to 67%, P = .020). Furthermore, among the 15 dogs that completed crossover dosing, vomiting was abrogated in four of five dogs that experienced doxorubicin-induced vomiting when fed normally (P = .050). No differences in other gastrointestinal, constitutional, or bone marrow toxicities or serum IGF-1 levels were observed

Shift-Robust Molecular Relational Learning with Causal Substructure

Recently, molecular relational learning, whose goal is to predict the interaction behavior between molecular pairs, got a surge of interest in molecular sciences due to its wide range of applications. In this work, we propose CMRL that is robust to the distributional shift in molecular relational learning by detecting the core substructure that is causally related to chemical reactions. To do so, we first assume a causal relationship based on the domain knowledge of molecular sciences and construct a structural causal model (SCM) that reveals the relationship between variables. Based on the SCM, we introduce a novel conditional intervention framework whose intervention is conditioned on the paired molecule. With the conditional intervention framework, our model successfully learns from the causal substructure and alleviates the confounding effect of shortcut substructures that are spuriously correlated to chemical reactions. Extensive experiments on various tasks with real-world and synthetic datasets demonstrate the superiority of CMRL over state-of-the-art baseline models. Our code is available at https://github.com/Namkyeong/CMRL.Comment: KDD 202

Health information portals: How can we improve the user\u27s search experience?

Health information portals (HIP) are now common place. Governments and other health agencies are using HIPs extensively to reduce costs and distribute information more effectively. Generally, HIPs are not very technically sophisticated specifically in terms of options for improving searching. There are many ways in which searching and retrieving relevant information can be improved. This paper presents an exploratory study which investigated five HIPs. Each HIP offered a range of features and functionality to assist with searching. Our research explored the features and functionality of each HIP. Through usability evaluations we compared the response of users to each HIP and identified users’ preferences for improved searching. We found that HIPs with improved search functionality and other features that assisted searching were better received by the users. Users regarded these portals as easier to understand, easier to use, required fewer steps in retrieving information and were more likely to say they would return. Comments from users are provided to illustrate further the importance of providing effective functionality. The paper concludes with recommendations for Health Information Portal builders on what is needed to improve the user search experience

Flipping the context: ICT4D, the next grand challenge for is research and practice

We often talk about a flipped classroom in online learning, which flips the traditional concept of learning on its head. As senior editors for this special issue on “Information and communication technology for development (ICT4D): the next grand challenge for information systems”, we asked ourselves: “What if we flipped the context of ICT4D research on its head? What if we reimagined ICT4D not simply as a niche area for IS, but as an opportunity for learning for mainstream IS?”. We sought not only to showcase high-quality ICT4D research but also to demonstrate that this area of research has come of age and can contribute to all IS research. Thus, this special issue focuses on 1) improving how we understand “development” as more than an arena for empirical research, and instead as a vehicle to substantively analyze how ICT can foster and 2) challenging authors to identify learning in their work in the ICT4D discipline that could inform and contribute to the evolution of the broader IS discipline. The first focus responds to various scholars’ calls (e.g., Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001; Davison & Martinsons, 2014) to be more precise about both the primary object and context of research in general. The second focus stands in stark contrast to earlier recommendations (Walsham, 2017) that the ICT4D discipline should engage with and learn from theoretical and methodological developments in mainstream IS. The emergence of “reverse innovations” from which mainstream IS can learn from ICT4D research not only reflects the steadily increasing maturity of the ICT4D discipline but also highlights the importance of development as a phenomenon, that concerns each and everyone in the world and not only those living in so-called “developing countries”. Thus, this special issue is timely given a global context that features great complexity, uncertainty, and new challenges (e.g., security, migration, and, climate change to name a few) and the IS discipline’s need to cumulatively evolve to better support these challenges. We hope we can inspire more IS researchers to consider this changing global context and join ICT4D researchers in a quest to achieve social impact beyond the traditional confines of IS research. By conveying this important message through this journal’s pages, we hope we can help to galvanize a larger community of researchers to contribute to both the research and practice of ICT4D. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2, we briefly trace the historical evolution of the two domains (ICT4D and mainstream IS), which, despite attempts to develop closer links between the two, many researchers see as following divergent paths. In Section 3, we argue that this is dichotomy is false and suggest that we adopt a more synergistic view that the IS research community take on ICT4D as a “grand challenge”. In Section 4, we describe the process of how this special issue came into being and introduce the four papers in the issue, which all focus on the conceptualization of development and the emerging reverse innovations. In Section 5, we discuss the systemic challenges that researchers in ICT4D experience and how we need to address them to make research contributions more relevant and insightful for the IS discipline as a whole

Designing an information system for updating land records in Bangladesh: action design ethnographic research (ADER)

Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Information Systems (IS) has developed through adapting, generating and applying diverse methodologies, methods, and techniques from reference disciplines. Further, Action Design Research (ADR) has recently developed as a broad research method that focuses on designing and redesigning IT and IS in organizational contexts. This paper reflects on applying ADR in a complex organizational context in a developing country. It shows that ADR requires additional lens for designing IS in such a complex organizational context. Through conducting ADR, it is seen that an ethnographic framework has potential complementarities for understanding complex contexts thereby enhancing the ADR processes. This paper argues that conducting ADR with an ethnographic approach enhances design of IS and organizational contexts. Finally, this paper aims presents a broader methodological framework, Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER), for designing artefacts as well as IS. This is illustrated through the case of a land records updating service in Bangladesh

An investigation into the perspectives of providers and learners on MOOC accessibility

An effective open eLearning environment should consider the target learner’s abilities, learning goals, where learning takes place, and which specific device(s) the learner uses. MOOC platforms struggle to take these factors into account and typically are not accessible, inhibiting access to environments that are intended to be open to all. A series of research initiatives are described that are intended to benefit MOOC providers in achieving greater accessibility and disabled learners to improve their lifelong learning and re-skilling. In this paper, we first outline the rationale, the research questions, and the methodology. The research approach includes interviews, online surveys and a MOOC accessibility audit; we also include factors such the risk management of the research programme and ethical considerations when conducting research with vulnerable learners. Preliminary results are presented from interviews with providers and experts and from analysis of surveys of learners. Finally, we outline the future research opportunities. This paper is framed within the context of the Doctoral Consortium organised at the TEEM'17 conference

Penilaian analisa enzim dan isoenzim dalam diagnosa penyakit infarksi miokardia

Reference ranges for the following 1 cardiac 1 enzymes and isoenzymes were established, using sera from 99 patients attending the USM outpatients departments: Creatine kinase (CK),lactate dehydrogenase (LD),aspartate aminotransferase (AST),creatine kinase-MB isoenzyme (CKMB) and 5 lactate dehydrogenase isoenzymes (LD1,LD2,LD4 and LD5).The reference ranges for LD1/LD2 ratio, LD1 expressed as percentage of total LD ( LD1%); and LD1 expressed as enzyme activity in International Units LD (IU) were also determined.67 patients who were admitted to the cardiac care unit with suspicion of myocardial infarction were analysed for the above "cardiac" enzymes and isoenzymes. Out of the 67 patients who were admitted to the cardiac care unit ·40 were diagnosed positive and 27 as negative for myocardial infarction. Using the established reference ranges and the diagnoses (positive or negative for myocardial infarction), we determined the sensitivities, specificities and efficiencies for each of the above enzyme/isoenzyme/isoenzyme ratios, at 0-12 hr, 13-24 hr,25-48 hr, and 49-92 hr after the onset of chest pain.For all the above enzymatic parameters the sensitivities were low (42.4 to 68.6) at the interval 0-12 hr, and progressively increased at 13-24 hr (58.7 to 87.1), 25-48 hr (81.1 to 96.9), and 49-92 hr (82.4 to 100) after onset of chest pain. The specificities were higher than sensitivities at 0-12 hr (74.1-100), and 13-24 hr (89.5-96.6). Beyond 25 hr after the onset of chest pain, the specificities were camparable to 13-24 hr except for LD and ID1 ( IU), which had lower specificities compared to earlier pericxis. In general, the best combinations of sensitivities and specificities was during 13-48 hr after onset of chest pain.Based on our data on sensitivities and specificies, it would appear that routine determination of CK-M8 or LD isoenzymes may not be necessary in the diagnosis of most cases of myocardial infarction