ADAPT: Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT

The creation of sensors allowing the collection of a high amount of data has been possible thanks to the evolution of information and communication technology. These data must be properly interpreted to deliver meaningful information and services. Context-aware reasoning plays an important role in this task, and it is considered as a hot topic to study in the development of solutions that can be categorised under the scope of Intelligent Environments. This research work studies the use of context-aware reasoning as a tool to provide support in the asthma management process. The contribution of this study is presented as the Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT (ADAPT), which can be used as a guideline to create solutions supporting asthma management in a personalised way. ADAPT proposes context-aware reasoning as an appropriate tool to achieve the personalisation that is required to address the heterogeneity of asthma. This heterogeneity makes people with asthma have different triggers provoking their exacerbations and to experience different symptoms when their exacerbations occur, which is considered as the most challenging characteristic of the condition when it comes to implementing asthma treatments. ADAPT context dimensions are the main contribution of the research work as they directly address the heterogeneity of asthma management by allowing the development of preventive and reactive features that can be customised depending on the characteristics of a person with asthma. The approach also provides support to people not knowing their triggers properly through case-based reasoning, and includes virtual assistant as a complementing technology supporting asthma management. The comprehensive nature of ADAPT motivates the study of the interaction between context-aware reasoning and case-based reasoning in Intelligent Environments, which is also reported as a key contribution of the research work. The inclusion of people with asthma, carers and experts in respiratory conditions in the experiments of the research project was possible to achieve thanks to the collaboration formed with Asthma UK

Finite state verifiers with both private and public coins

We consider the effects of allowing a finite state verifier in an interactive proof system to use a bounded number of private coins, in addition to "public" coins whose outcomes are visible to the prover. Although swapping between private and public-coin machines does not change the class of verifiable languages when the verifiers are given reasonably large time and space bounds, this distinction has well known effects for the capabilities of constant space verifiers. We show that a constant private-coin "budget" (independent of the length of the input) increases the power of public-coin interactive proofs with finite state verifiers considerably, and provide a new characterization of the complexity class $\rm P$ as the set of languages that are verifiable by such machines with arbitrarily small error in expected polynomial time.Comment: 18 pages, of which 5 pages are appendix, accepted for presentation in the conference ICTCS 2023, and is to be published in its proceeding

Intraspecific variation in thermal acclimation and tolerance between populations of the winter ant, Prenolepis imparis.

Thermal phenotypic plasticity, otherwise known as acclimation, plays an essential role in how organisms respond to short-term temperature changes. Plasticity buffers the impact of harmful temperature changes; therefore, understanding variation in plasticity in natural populations is crucial for understanding how species will respond to the changing climate. However, very few studies have examined patterns of phenotypic plasticity among populations, especially among ant populations. Considering that this intraspecies variation can provide insight into adaptive variation in populations, the goal of this study was to quantify the short-term acclimation ability and thermal tolerance of several populations of the winter ant, Prenolepis imparis. We tested for correlations between thermal plasticity and thermal tolerance, elevation, and body size. We characterized the thermal environment both above and below ground for several populations distributed across different elevations within California, USA. In addition, we measured the short-term acclimation ability and thermal tolerance of those populations. To measure thermal tolerance, we used chill-coma recovery time (CCRT) and knockdown time as indicators of cold and heat tolerance, respectively. Short-term phenotypic plasticity was assessed by calculating acclimation capacity using CCRT and knockdown time after exposure to both high and low temperatures. We found that several populations displayed different chill-coma recovery times and a few displayed different heat knockdown times, and that the acclimation capacities of cold and heat tolerance differed among most populations. The high-elevation populations displayed increased tolerance to the cold (faster CCRT) and greater plasticity. For high-temperature tolerance, we found heat tolerance was not associated with altitude; instead, greater tolerance to the heat was correlated with increased plasticity at higher temperatures. These current findings provide insight into thermal adaptation and factors that contribute to phenotypic diversity by revealing physiological variance among populations

Pressure-Driven Filling of Closed-End Microchannel: Realization of Comb-Shaped Transducers for Acoustofluidics

We demonstrate the complete filling of both deionized water (DI water) and liquid metal (eutectic gallium-indium, EGaIn) into closed-end microchannels driven by a constant pressure at the inlet. A mathematical model based on gas diffusion through a porous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) wall is developed to unveil the physical mechanism in the filling process. The proposed theoretical analysis based on our model agrees well with the experimental observations. We also successfully generate traveling surface acoustic waves by actuating interdigitated microchannels filled with EGaIn. Our work provides significant insights into the fabrication of liquid electrodes that can be used for various acustofluidics applicationsAustralian Research Council DE170100600National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants No. 11472094, No. 11772259, No. U1613227, No. B1703

ANALISIS KESIAPAN PEMERINTAH KABUPATEN MANGGARAI DALAM PENERAPAN e-GOVERNMENT

Electronic Government adalah upaya penyelenggaraan kepemerintahan yang berbasis elektronik dalam rangka meningkatkan kualitas layanan publik secara efektif dan efisien. Atas tuntutan perubahan paradigma pelayanan publik ini, Pemerintah Kabupaten Manggarai mulai menerapkan e-Government dalam memberikan pelayanan publik guna memberikan pelayanan publik yang transparan, efektif, dan efisien. Namun dalam pelaksanaannya terdapat banyak kendala yang dihadapi Pemerintah Kabupaten Manggarai. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana kesiapan Pemerintah Kabupaten Manggarai dalam Penerapan e-government, kendala-kendala dalam pelaksanaannya dan bagaimana Proyeksi penerapan e-government di Kabupaten Manggarai ke depannya. Penelitian ini menggunakan Teori Darcy dalam Indrajit (2002) tentang indikator penerapan e-government khususnya e-planning dan e-budgeting, yaitu: Political Enviroment, Leadership, Planning, Stakeholders, Transparency/Visibility, Budgets, dan Technology. Penelitian ini adalah jenis penelitian kualitatif dengan paradigma post positivisme. Lokasi Penelitian di Kabupaten Manggarai, dengan teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan observasi, wawancara dan studi dokumentasi. Analisis data menggunakan model Miles dan Huberman yaitu pengumpulan data, reduksi data, penyajian data, dan verifikasi serta menggunakan analisis SWOT. Hasil yang diperoleh dari penelitian ini adalah Rendahnya tingkat kesiapan Pemerintah Kabupaten Manggarai dalam penerapan e-government, dengan temuan dalam rise tyaitu: Belum terbentuknya kerangka hukum yang mengatur penerapan e-government di Kabupaten Manggarai, Rendahnya komitmen Pemerintah dalam penerapan e-government, Belum maksimalnya pemanfaatan Teknologi Informasi, dan komunikasi di Kabupaten Manggarai, Belum memadainya SDM, belum memadainya sarana dan prasarana pendukung penerapan e-government, dan anggaran untuk e-government yang masih minim. Dari hasil penelitian yang dilakukan maka direkomendasikan agar Pemerintah Kabupaten Manggarai dapat lebih mengoptimalkan pemanfaatan e-government dengan mengalokasikan anggaran khusus untuk untuk penyediaan sumber daya yang mendukung dalam penerapan e-government agar terwujudnya Pemerintahan berbasis elektronik yang efektif, efisien, dan tranparan

Agility in responding to disruptive digital innovation: Case study of an SME

Disruptive digital innovation (DDI) often creates hypercompetitive market environment that forces firms to be agile to survive and remain competitive. Whereas most studies have focused on larger firms' effort to be agile, few have looked at how small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) respond to DDI. The study attempts to answer the research question of how SMEs achieve agility to respond to DDI. Drawing on a case study of an innovative SME, our study develops a framework on agility based on the processes of mitigating organizational rigidity, developing innovative capabilities, and balancing the tension of organizational ambidexterity. Specifically, our findings show that for SMEs, mitigating organizational rigidity is enabled by the mechanism of achieving boundary openness while developing innovative capability is enabled by the mechanism of achieving organizational adaptability. At the same time, given the inherent challenges of resource constraints, SMEs also need to balance the tension of organizational ambidexterity