CAMMD: Context Aware Mobile Medical Devices

Telemedicine applications on a medical practitioners mobile device should be context-aware. This can vastly improve the effectiveness of mobile applications and is a step towards realising the vision of a ubiquitous telemedicine environment. The nomadic nature of a medical practitioner emphasises location, activity and time as key context-aware elements. An intelligent middleware is needed to effectively interpret and exploit these contextual elements. This paper proposes an agent-based architectural solution called Context-Aware Mobile Medical Devices (CAMMD). This framework can proactively communicate patient records to a portable device based upon the active context of its medical practitioner. An expert system is utilised to cross-reference the context-aware data of location and time against a practitioners work schedule. This proactive distribution of medical data enhances the usability and portability of mobile medical devices. The proposed methodology alleviates constraints on memory storage and enhances user interaction with the handheld device. The framework also improves utilisation of network bandwidth resources. An experimental prototype is presented highlighting the potential of this approach

Contact based void partitioning to assess filtration properties in DEM simulations

Discrete element method (DEM) simulations model the behaviour of a granular material by explicitly considering the individual particles. In principle, DEM analyses then provide a means to relate particle scale mechanisms with the overall, macro-scale response. However, interpretative algorithms must be applied to gain useful scientific insight using the very large amount of data available from DEM simulations. The particle and contact coordinates as well as the contact orientations can be directly obtained from a DEM simulation and the application of measures such as the coordination number and the fabric tensor to describe these data is now well-established. However, a granular material has two phases and a full description of the material also requires consideration of the voids. Quantitative analysis of the void space can give further insight into directional fabric and is also useful in assessing the filtration characteristics of a granular material. The void topology is not directly given by the DEM simulation data; rather it must be inferred from the geometry of particle phase. The current study considers the use of the contact coordinates to partition the void space for 3D DEM simulation datasets and to define individual voids as well as the boundaries or constrictions between the voids. The measured constriction sizes are comparable to those calculated using Delaunay-triangulation based methods, and the contact-based method has the advantage of being less subjective. In an example application, the method was applied to DEM models of reservoir sandstones to establish the relationship between particle and constriction sizes as well as the relationship between the void topology and the coordination number and the evolution of these properties during shearing

Mosaicking with cosmic microwave background interferometers

Measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies by interferometers offer several advantages over single-dish observations. The formalism for analyzing interferometer CMB data is well developed in the flat-sky approximation, valid for small fields of view. As the area of sky is increased to obtain finer spectral resolution, this approximation needs to be relaxed. We extend the formalism for CMB interferometry, including both temperature and polarization, to mosaics of observations covering arbitrarily large areas of the sky, with each individual pointing lying within the flat-sky approximation. We present a method for computing the correlation between visibilities with arbitrary pointing centers and baselines and illustrate the effects of sky curvature on the l-space resolution that can be obtained from a mosaic.Comment: 9 pages; submitted to Ap

Fermi-LAT and Suzaku Observations of the Radio Galaxy Centaurus B

Centaurus B is a nearby radio galaxy positioned in the Southern hemisphere close to the Galactic plane. Here we present a detailed analysis of about 43 months of accumulated Fermi-LAT data of the gamma-ray counterpart of the source initially reported in the 2nd Fermi-LAT catalog, and of newly acquired Suzaku X-ray data. We confirm its detection at GeV photon energies, and analyze the extension and variability of the gamma-ray source in the LAT dataset, in which it appears as a steady gamma-ray emitter. The X-ray core of Centaurus B is detected as a bright source of a continuum radiation. We do not detect however any diffuse X-ray emission from the known radio lobes, with the provided upper limit only marginally consistent with the previously claimed ASCA flux. Two scenarios that connect the X-ray and gamma-ray properties are considered. In the first one, we assume that the diffuse non-thermal X-ray emission component is not significantly below the derived Suzaku upper limit. In this case, modeling the inverse-Compton emission shows that the observed gamma-ray flux of the source may in principle be produced within the lobes. This association would imply that efficient in-situ acceleration of the radiating electrons is occurring and that the lobes are dominated by the pressure from the relativistic particles. In the second scenario, with the diffuse X-ray emission well below the Suzaku upper limits, the lobes in the system are instead dominated by the magnetic pressure. In this case, the observed gamma-ray flux is not likely to be produced within the lobes, but instead within the nuclear parts of the jet. By means of synchrotron self-Compton modeling we show that this possibility could be consistent with the broad-band data collected for the unresolved core of Centaurus B, including the newly derived Suzaku spectrum.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 11 page

The problem of interpretation in vignette methodology in research with young people

In this paper we explore how interpretation is dealt with by researchers using a vignette methodology. Researchers using vignette methodology often struggle with interpretation: how to interpret the responses when participants shift between discussing the vignettes as themselves, taking the perspective of the character in the vignette and commenting on what ‘ought’ to happen. We argue that by foregrounding a consideration of the method with an explicitly articulated theoretical position of dialogicality, issues inherent in interpretation become a valuable addition to the research rather than an obstacle to be overcome. In the paper we discuss ‘Louise’ a young carer, detailing the various positions she takes in her talk about the vignette of Mary, a fictitious young carer, to illustrate how a perspective based in dialogical theory contributed to the analysis of her various moves through different identity positions

Glucose Gel as a Potential Alternative Treatment to Infant Formula for Neonatal Hypoglycaemia in Australia

Infant formula is often used as a treatment for neonatal hypoglycaemia in Australia; however, there are concerns that this may jeopardise mother-baby bonding and breastfeeding. Successful use of glucose gel as an alternative treatment for hypoglycaemia has been reported. We wanted to investigate in a pilot study whether the use of glucose gel has the potential to quickly and safely restore normoglycaemia in the infants of diabetic mothers in an Australian setting. Infants with asymptomatic hypoglycaemia were treated with glucose gel (n = 36) and compared to a historical group of infants which had been treated with infant formula (n = 24). Within 15 min of the first treatment, the gel group had a mean blood glucose level (BGL) of 2.6 mmol/L, and 2.7 mmol/L 30 min after the second treatment. This was lower than the BGL after the first treatment for the formula group, which rose to a mean of 2.8 then to 3.2 mmol/L after the second treatment (p = 0.003). In successfully treated infants, administration of the gel resulted in normoglycaemia within 30 min. The likelihood of special care nursery admission was not significantly different between the groups, although we had a small sample size, and our findings should be interpreted with caution. These pilot results provide support for further investigations into the use of glucose gel as an alternative treatment to infant formula

The Rate of Homogenous Nucleation of Ice in Supercooled Water.

The homogeneous freezing of water is of fundamental importance to a number of fields, including that of cloud formation. However, there is considerable scatter in homogeneous nucleation rate coefficients reported in the literature. Using a cold stage droplet system designed to minimize uncertainties in temperature measurements, we examined the freezing of over fifteen hundred pure water droplets with diameters between 4 and 24 μm. Under the assumption that nucleation occurs within the bulk of the droplet, nucleation rate coefficients fall within the spread of literature data and are in good agreement with a subset of more recent measurements. To quantify the relative importance of surface and volume nucleation in our experiments, where droplets are supported by a hydrophobic surface and surrounded by oil, comparison of droplets with different surface area to volume ratios was performed. From our experiments it is shown that in droplets larger than 6 µm diameter (between 234.6 and 236.5 K), nucleation in the interior is more important than nucleation at the surface. At smaller sizes we cannot rule out a significant contribution of surface nucleation, and in order to further constrain surface nucleation experiments with smaller droplets are necessary. Nevertheless, in our experiments, it is dominantly volume nucleation controlling the observed nucleation rate

Logarithmic behavior of degradation dynamics in metal--oxide semiconductor devices

In this paper the authors describe a theoretical simple statistical modelling of relaxation process in metal-oxide semiconductor devices that governs its degradation. Basically, starting from an initial state where a given number of traps are occupied, the dynamics of the relaxation process is measured calculating the density of occupied traps and its fluctuations (second moment) as function of time. Our theoretical results show a universal logarithmic law for the density of occupied traps $\bar{} \sim \phi (T,E_{F}) (A+B \ln t)$, i.e., the degradation is logarithmic and its amplitude depends on the temperature and Fermi Level of device. Our approach reduces the work to the averages determined by simple binomial sums that are corroborated by our Monte Carlo simulations and by experimental results from literature, which bear in mind enlightening elucidations about the physics of degradation of semiconductor devices of our modern life

Time, institutional support and quality of decision making in child protection:A cross-country analysis

This paper examines perceptions of time and institutional support for decision making and staff confidence in child welfare staffs ultimate decisions – examining differences and similarities between and within the service-oriented Nordic countries (Norway and Finland) and the risk-oriented Anglo-American countries (England and California). The study identifies a high degree of work pressure across all the countries, lines of predominantly vertical institutional support and relatively high confidence in decisions. Finland stands out with higher perceived work pressure and with a horizontal support line, whereas England stands out with workers having a lower degree of confidence in their own and others’ decisions