Belief in public efficacy, trust and attitudes to modern genetic science

The official published version can be accessed from the links below - Copyright @ 2007 Wiley-BlackwellGovernment and policymakers want to engage the public in a dialogue about the conduct and consequences of science and increasingly seek to actively involve citizens in decision-making processes. Implicit in this thinking is that greater transparency and public inclusion will help dispel fears associated with new scientific advancements, foster greater public trust in those accountable, and ultimately increase the acceptability of new technologies. Less understood, however, are public perceptions about such high-level involvement in science and how these map onto public trust and attitudes within a diverse population. This article uses the concept of public efficacy—the extent to which people believe that the public might be able to affect the course of decision making—to explore differences in trust, attentiveness, and attitudes toward modern genetic science. Using nationally representative data from the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey, we begin by examining the characteristics of those who have a positive belief about public involvement in this area of scientific inquiry. We then focus on how this belief maps on to indicators of public trust in key stakeholder groups, including the government and genetic scientists. Finally, we consider the relationship between public efficacy and trust and attitudes toward different applications of genetic technology. Our findings run contrary to assumptions that public involvement in science will foster greater trust and lead to a climate of greater acceptance for genetic technology. A belief in public efficacy does not uniformly equate with more trusting attitudes toward stakeholders but is associated with less trust in government rules. Whereas trust is positively correlated with more permissive attitudes about technologies such as cloning and gene therapy, people who believe in high-level public involvement are less likely to think that these technologies should be allowed than those who do not.The support of the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) is acknowledged. The work arises from the ESRC Attitudes to Genomics project L145251005

Application of serious games to sport, health and exercise

Use of interactive entertainment has been exponentially expanded since the last decade. Throughout this 10+ year evolution there has been a concern about turning entertainment properties into serious applications, a.k.a "Serious Games". In this article we present two set of Serious Game applications, an Environment Visualising game which focuses solely on applying serious games to elite Olympic sport and another set of serious games that incorporate an in house developed proprietary input system that can detect most of the human movements which focuses on applying serious games to health and exercise

Optimal Timer Based Selection Schemes

Timer-based mechanisms are often used to help a given (sink) node select the best helper node among many available nodes. Specifically, a node transmits a packet when its timer expires, and the timer value is a monotone non-increasing function of its local suitability metric. The best node is selected successfully if no other node's timer expires within a 'vulnerability' window after its timer expiry, and so long as the sink can hear the available nodes. In this paper, we show that the optimal metric-to-timer mapping that (i) maximizes the probability of success or (ii) minimizes the average selection time subject to a minimum constraint on the probability of success, maps the metric into a set of discrete timer values. We specify, in closed-form, the optimal scheme as a function of the maximum selection duration, the vulnerability window, and the number of nodes. An asymptotic characterization of the optimal scheme turns out to be elegant and insightful. For any probability distribution function of the metric, the optimal scheme is scalable, distributed, and performs much better than the popular inverse metric timer mapping. It even compares favorably with splitting-based selection, when the latter's feedback overhead is accounted for.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communications, uses stackrel.st

Retinal Vessel Segmentation Using the 2-D Morlet Wavelet and Supervised Classification

We present a method for automated segmentation of the vasculature in retinal images. The method produces segmentations by classifying each image pixel as vessel or non-vessel, based on the pixel's feature vector. Feature vectors are composed of the pixel's intensity and continuous two-dimensional Morlet wavelet transform responses taken at multiple scales. The Morlet wavelet is capable of tuning to specific frequencies, thus allowing noise filtering and vessel enhancement in a single step. We use a Bayesian classifier with class-conditional probability density functions (likelihoods) described as Gaussian mixtures, yielding a fast classification, while being able to model complex decision surfaces and compare its performance with the linear minimum squared error classifier. The probability distributions are estimated based on a training set of labeled pixels obtained from manual segmentations. The method's performance is evaluated on publicly available DRIVE and STARE databases of manually labeled non-mydriatic images. On the DRIVE database, it achieves an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.9598, being slightly superior than that presented by the method of Staal et al.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication in IEEE Trans Med Imag; added copyright notic

Reporting radiographers in Europe survey: Support, role satisfaction, and advanced clinical practice within the European federation of radiographer society (EFRS) member countries.

Increasing number of radiographers are undertaking image reporting throughout Europe. However, there are variations in practice and experience in European countries. The study aim was to investigate reporting radiographer's perceptions in relation to support for their role and workload satisfaction and elements of advanced practice that may also be undertaken. Following institutional ethical approval an online 34 item questionnaire survey was circulated via social media; Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in a 12-week period in 2022 across Europe. The survey data were managed by the online secure database REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture). Data was collected across a range of questions, of which those relating to support for, and barriers to radiographer reporting, role and job satisfaction, and other role elements are reported here. A response level of 345 individual reporting radiographers replied to the survey from 15 European countries; some questions were optional and therefore had a lower response rate. There was consensus about the need for support from radiologists and management, protected time, and funding to support the reporting role. The majority of respondents received additional pay for taking on this role and expressed satisfaction with their role and workload. In relation to elements of advanced practice, the majority of respondents were involved in educational and managerial activities, and there was interest, but limited involvement, in research. There was a consensus about the support needed, and perceived barriers to, radiographer reporting, between reporting radiographers from different countries. Whilst there is some commonality in relation to activities such as supervision and education, there was clearer variety in relation to opportunities for research between the respondents, perhaps reflecting the differences between reporting as a standalone role development and reporting as part of an advanced clinical practice role. As there is increasingly an emphasis on advanced clinical practice, reporting radiographers are likely to require support to develop their skills so that they can actively participate in the broader activities associated with this role, including education, leadership, and research. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.