1,707 research outputs found
Voicing values: Laying foundations for ageing people to participate in design
© 2016 ACM. This paper discusses Participatory Design workshops that sought to enable ageing people to articulate their core values in relation to their experiences of ageing. Our motivations were to better understand how ageing people decide whether or not to adopt and use particular technologies, and to gain insights into the kinds of technologies that might support their aspirations as they age. We contribute to current understandings of ageing people's values, including a range of values that were most important to our participants, insights into how these values are expressed and experienced in everyday lives, the interrelatedness of values in action, and how the three social dimensions of self, friends and family, as well as community influence the expression of values. The workshops demonstrated how engaged ageing people are with others and the broader communities they inhabit. We reflect on the processes, methods and tools that were useful when supporting people to voice their values and how this approach can support the participation of ageing people in design
Positive Ageing: Elements and factors for design
Copyright © 2015 ACM. A significant number of models and frameworks have introduced, and been used to support, positive approaches to ageing. They include Successful Ageing, Active Ageing and Ageing in Place, among others. The number of models can create confusion for technology designers who wish to incorporate such models into practice. This paper reviews different models of positive ageing in order to distil a comprehensive list of elements and factors that are important to, and supportive of, positive ageing. This list offers designers a useful source for considering the design of technology to support positive ageing. Finally, we discuss some gaps found in existing models and offer some insights into how designers could use this paper as a resource for design
Mutual learning as a resource for research design
Copyright 2014 ACM. Mutual learning processes provide the context for this paper. We reflect on the early research design process of an ongoing project that is investigating the potential contributions of the Internet of Things (IoT) to ageing well. While mutual learning is assumed and embedded in Participatory Design tools and methods, it was only when we explicitly used mutual learning processes, as a resource in the research design of the project, that we could make clear and accountable decisions about how to proceed. The paper ends with a reaffirmation of the importance of mutual learning processes in Participatory Design, noting the opportunities, even imperatives, for foregrounding mutual learning processes in the design of IoT applications
The interface between silicon and a high-k oxide
The ability to follow Moore's Law has been the basis of the tremendous
success of the semiconductor industry in the past decades. To date, the
greatest challenge for device scaling is the required replacement of silicon
dioxide-based gate oxides by high-k oxides in transistors. Around 2010 high-k
oxides are required to have an atomically defined interface with silicon
without any interfacial SiO2 layer. The first clean interface between silicon
and a high-K oxide has been demonstrated by McKee et al. Nevertheless, the
interfacial structure is still under debate. Here we report on first-principles
calculations of the formation of the interface between silicon and SrTiO3 and
its atomic structure. Based on insights into how the chemical environment
affects the interface, a way to engineer seemingly intangible electrical
properties to meet technological requirements is outlined. The interface
structure and its chemistry provide guidance for the selection process of other
high-k gate oxides and for controlling their growth. Our study also shows that
atomic control of the interfacial structure can dramatically improve the
electronic properties of the interface. The interface presented here serves as
a model for a variety of other interfaces between high-k oxides and silicon.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures (one color
Testing special relativity with geodetic VLBI
Geodetic Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) measures the group delay in
the barycentric reference frame. As the Earth is orbiting around the Solar
system barycentre with the velocity of 30 km/s, VLBI proves to be a handy
tool to detect the subtle effects of the special and general relativity theory
with a magnitude of . The theoretical correction for the
second order terms reaches up to 300~ps, and it is implemented in the geodetic
VLBI group delay model. The total contribution of the second order terms splits
into two effects - the variation of the Earth scale, and the deflection of the
apparent position of the radio source. The Robertson-Mansouri-Sexl (RMS)
generalization of the Lorenz transformation is used for many modern tests of
the special relativity theory. We develop an alteration of the RMS formalism to
probe the Lorenz invariance with the geodetic VLBI data. The kinematic approach
implies three parameters (as a function of the moving reference frame velocity)
and the standard Einstein synchronisation. A generalised relativistic model of
geodetic VLBI data includes all three parameters that could be estimated.
Though, since the modern laboratory Michelson-Morley and Kennedy-Thorndike
experiments are more accurate than VLBI technique, the presented equations may
be used to test the VLBI group delay model itself.Comment: Proceedings of the IAG 2017 Scientific Meeting, Kobe, Japa
Staphylococcus aureus in the oral cavity: a three-year retrospective analysis of clinical laboratory data
OBJECTIVE: A retrospective analysis of laboratory data to investigate the isolation of Staphylococcus aureus from the oral cavity and facial area in specimens submitted to a regional diagnostic oral microbiology laboratory. METHODS: A hand search of laboratory records for a three-year period (1998-2000) was performed for specimens submitted to the regional diagnostic oral microbiology laboratory based at Glasgow Dental Hospital and School. Data were collected from forms where S. aureus was isolated. These data included demographics, referral source, specimen type, methicillin susceptibility and clinical details. RESULTS: For the period 1998-2000, there were 5,005 specimens submitted to the laboratory. S. aureus was isolated from 1,017 specimens, of which 967 (95%) were sensitive to methicillin (MSSA) and 50 (5%) were resistant to methicillin (MRSA). The 1,017 specimens were provided from 615 patients. MRSA was isolated from 37 (6%) of patients. There was an increasing incidence of S. aureus with age, particularly in the greater than 70 years age group. The most common specimen from which MSSA was isolated was an oral rinse (38%) whilst for MRSA isolates this was a tongue swab (28%). The clinical condition most commonly reported for MSSA isolates was angular cheilitis (22%). Erythema, swelling, pain or burning of the oral mucosa was the clinical condition most commonly reported for MRSA isolates (16%). Patients from whom the MSSA isolates were recovered were most commonly (55%) seen in the oral medicine clinic at the dental hospital, whilst patients with MRSA were more commonly seen in primary care settings such as nursing homes, hospices and general dental practice (51%). CONCLUSION: In line with more recent surveys, this retrospective study suggests that S. aureus may be a more frequent isolate from the oral cavity than hitherto suspected. A small proportion of the S. aureus isolates were MRSA. There were insufficient data available to determine whether the S. aureus isolates were colonising or infecting the oral cavity. However, the role of S. aureus in several diseases of the oral mucosa merits further investigation
The incidence and clinical burden of respiratory syncytial virus disease identified through hospital outpatient presentations in Kenyan children
There is little information that describe the burden of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) associated disease in the tropical African outpatient setting.
Methods
We studied a systematic sample of children aged <5 years presenting to a rural district hospital in Kenya with acute respiratory infection (ARI) between May 2002 and April 2004. We collected clinical data and screened nasal wash samples for RSV antigen by immunofluorescence. We used a linked demographic surveillance system to estimate disease incidence.
Results
Among 2143 children tested, 166 (8%) were RSV positive (6% among children with upper respiratory tract infection and 12% among children with lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). RSV was more likely in LRTI than URTI (p<0.001). 51% of RSV cases were aged 1 year or over. RSV cases represented 3.4% of hospital outpatient presentations. Relative to RSV negative cases, RSV positive cases were more likely to have crackles (RR = 1.63; 95% CI 1.34–1.97), nasal flaring (RR = 2.66; 95% CI 1.40–5.04), in-drawing (RR = 2.24; 95% CI 1.47–3.40), fast breathing for age (RR = 1.34; 95% CI 1.03–1.75) and fever (RR = 1.54; 95% CI 1.33–1.80). The estimated incidence of RSV-ARI and RSV-LRTI, per 100,000 child years, among those aged <5 years was 767 and 283, respectively.
Conclusion
The burden of childhood RSV-associated URTI and LRTI presenting to outpatients in this setting is considerable. The clinical features of cases associated with an RSV infection were more severe than cases without an RSV diagnosis
From Nonspecific DNA–Protein Encounter Complexes to the Prediction of DNA–Protein Interactions
©2009 Gao, Skolnick. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000341DNA–protein interactions are involved in many essential biological activities. Because there is no simple mapping code between DNA base pairs and protein amino acids, the prediction of DNA–protein interactions is a challenging problem. Here, we present a novel computational approach for predicting DNA-binding protein residues and DNA–protein interaction modes without knowing its specific DNA target sequence. Given the structure of a DNA-binding protein, the method first generates an ensemble of complex structures obtained by rigid-body docking with a nonspecific canonical B-DNA. Representative models are subsequently selected through clustering and ranking by their DNA–protein interfacial energy. Analysis of these encounter complex models suggests that the recognition sites for specific DNA binding are usually favorable interaction sites for the nonspecific DNA probe and that nonspecific DNA–protein interaction modes exhibit some similarity to specific DNA–protein binding modes. Although the method requires as input the knowledge that the protein binds DNA, in benchmark tests, it achieves better performance in identifying DNA-binding sites than three previously established methods, which are based on sophisticated machine-learning techniques. We further apply our method to protein structures predicted through modeling and demonstrate that our method performs satisfactorily on protein models whose root-mean-square Ca deviation from native is up to 5 Å from their native structures. This study provides valuable structural insights into how a specific DNA-binding protein interacts with a nonspecific DNA sequence. The similarity between the specific DNA–protein interaction mode and nonspecific interaction modes may reflect an important sampling step in search of its specific DNA targets by a DNA-binding protein
Impaired perceptual learning in a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome is mediated by parvalbumin neuron dysfunction and is reversible.
To uncover the circuit-level alterations that underlie atypical sensory processing associated with autism, we adopted a symptom-to-circuit approach in the Fmr1-knockout (Fmr1-/-) mouse model of Fragile X syndrome. Using a go/no-go task and in vivo two-photon calcium imaging, we find that impaired visual discrimination in Fmr1-/- mice correlates with marked deficits in orientation tuning of principal neurons and with a decrease in the activity of parvalbumin interneurons in primary visual cortex. Restoring visually evoked activity in parvalbumin cells in Fmr1-/- mice with a chemogenetic strategy using designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs was sufficient to rescue their behavioral performance. Strikingly, human subjects with Fragile X syndrome exhibit impairments in visual discrimination similar to those in Fmr1-/- mice. These results suggest that manipulating inhibition may help sensory processing in Fragile X syndrome
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