Public Health and Epidemiology Informatics: Recent Research and Trends in the United States

Objectives To survey advances in public health and epidemiology informatics over the past three years. Methods We conducted a review of English-language research works conducted in the domain of public health informatics (PHI), and published in MEDLINE between January 2012 and December 2014, where information and communication technology (ICT) was a primary subject, or a main component of the study methodology. Selected articles were synthesized using a thematic analysis using the Essential Services of Public Health as a typology. Results Based on themes that emerged, we organized the advances into a model where applications that support the Essential Services are, in turn, supported by a socio-technical infrastructure that relies on government policies and ethical principles. That infrastructure, in turn, depends upon education and training of the public health workforce, development that creates novel or adapts existing infrastructure, and research that evaluates the success of the infrastructure. Finally, the persistence and growth of infrastructure depends on financial sustainability. Conclusions Public health informatics is a field that is growing in breadth, depth, and complexity. Several Essential Services have benefited from informatics, notably, “Monitor Health,” “Diagnose & Investigate,” and “Evaluate.” Yet many Essential Services still have not yet benefited from advances such as maturing electronic health record systems, interoperability amongst health information systems, analytics for population health management, use of social media among consumers, and educational certification in clinical informatics. There is much work to be done to further advance the science of PHI as well as its impact on public health practice

Social robots in educational contexts: developing an application in enactive didactics

Due to advancements in sensor and actuator technology robots are becoming more and more common in everyday life. Many of the areas in which they are introduced demand close physical and social contact. In the last ten years the use of robots has also increasingly spread to the field of didactics, starting with their use as tools in STEM education. With the advancement of social robotics, the use of robots in didactics has been extended also to tutoring situations in which these \u201csocially aware\u201d robots interact with mainly children in, for example, language learning classes. In this paper we will give a brief overview of how robots have been used in this kind of settings until now. As a result it will become transparent that the majority of applications are not grounded in didactic theory. Recognizing this shortcoming, we propose a theory driven approach to the use of educational robots, centred on the idea that the combination of enactive didactics and social robotics holds great promises for a variety of tutoring activities in educational contexts. After defining our \u201cEnactive Robot Assisted Didactics\u201d approach, we will give an outlook on how the use of humanoid robots can advance it. On this basis, at the end of the paper, we will describe a concrete, currently on-going implementation of this approach, which we are realizing with the use of Softbank Robotics\u2019 Pepper robot during university lectures

HD 152246 - a new high-mass triple system and its basic properties

Analyses of multi-epoch, high-resolution (R ~ 50.000) optical spectra of the O-type star HD 152246 (O9 IV according to the most recent classification), complemented by a limited number of earlier published radial velocities, led to the finding that the object is a hierarchical triple system, where a close inner pair (Ba-Bb) with a slightly eccentric orbit (e = 0.11) and a period of 6.0049 days revolves in a 470-day highly eccentric orbit (e = 0.865) with another massive and brighter component A. The mass ratio of the inner system must be low since we were unable to find any traces of the secondary spectrum. The mass ratio A/(Ba+Bb) is 0.89. The outer system has recently been resolved using long-baseline interferometry on three occasions. The interferometry confirms the spectroscopic results and specifies elements of the system. Our orbital solutions, including the combined radial-velocity and interferometric solution indicate an orbital inclination of the outer orbit of 112{\deg} and stellar masses of 20.4 and 22.8 solar masses. We also disentangled the spectra of components A and Ba and compare them to synthetic spectra from two independent programmes, TLUSTY and FASTWIND. In either case, the fit was not satisfactory and we postpone a better determination of the system properties for a future study, after obtaining observations during the periastron passage of the outer orbit (the nearest chance being March 2015). For the moment, we can only conclude that component A is an O9 IV star with v*sin(i) = 210 +\- 10 km/s and effective temperature of 33000 +\- 500 K, while component Ba is an O9 V object with v*sin(i) = 65 +/- 3 km/s and T_eff = 33600 +\- 600 K.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Overview of the 2005 cross-language image retrieval track (ImageCLEF)

The purpose of this paper is to outline efforts from the 2005 CLEF crosslanguage image retrieval campaign (ImageCLEF). The aim of this CLEF track is to explore the use of both text and content-based retrieval methods for cross-language image retrieval. Four tasks were offered in the ImageCLEF track: a ad-hoc retrieval from an historic photographic collection, ad-hoc retrieval from a medical collection, an automatic image annotation task, and a user-centered (interactive) evaluation task that is explained in the iCLEF summary. 24 research groups from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities (14 countries) participated in ImageCLEF. In this paper we describe the ImageCLEF tasks, submissions from participating groups and summarise the main fndings

Rainfall threshold for hillslope outflow: an emergent property of flow pathway connectivity

Nonlinear relations between rain input and hillslope outflow are common observations in hillslope hydrology field studies. In this paper we use percolation theory to model the threshold relationship between rainfall amount and outflow and show that this nonlinear relationship may arise from simple linear processes at the smaller scale. When the rainfall amount exceeds a threshold value, the underlying elements become connected and water flows out of the base of the hillslope. The percolation approach shows how random variations in storage capacity and connectivity at the small spatial scale cause a threshold relationship between rainstorm amount and hillslope outflow. <br><br> As a test case, we applied percolation theory to the well characterized experimental hillslope at the Panola Mountain Research Watershed. Analysing the measured rainstorm events and the subsurface stormflow with percolation theory, we could determine the effect of bedrock permeability, spatial distribution of soil properties and initial water content within the hillslope. The measured variation in the relationship between rainstorm amount and subsurface flow could be reproduced by modelling the initial moisture deficit, the loss of free water to the bedrock, the limited size of the system and the connectivity that is a function of bedrock topography and existence of macropores. The values of the model parameters were in agreement with measured values of soil depth distribution and water saturation

The non-destructive study of museums objects by means of neutrons imaging methods and results of investigations

Based on experience from many kinds of investigations with neutron imaging methods (radiography, tomography, time-dependent studies) and in comparison to conventional X-ray methods, the authors discuss the potential of future improved studies for cultural-heritage purposes. Whereas the focus of the paper is on the imaging aspect, other established techniques as neutron activation analysis (NAA), prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA), neutron-induced autoradiography and neutron scattering are mentioned too. Although a great potential for studies similar to those described in the paper exists, a considerable effort is needed to define the best-suited methods for the dedicated cultural historical request. A real barrier between the experts at large research facilities (as, e.g., neutron sources are) and the partners from the museums side has to be overcome in order to solve the problems. A joint European approach will help in this respect

A new method for the spectroscopic identification of stellar non-radial pulsation modes. II. Mode identification of the Delta Scuti star FG Virginis

We present a mode identification based on new high-resolution time-series spectra of the non-radially pulsating Delta Scuti star FG~Vir (HD 106384, V = 6.57, A5V). From 2002 February to June a global Delta Scuti Network (DSN) campaign, utilizing high-resolution spectroscopy and simultaneous photometry has been conducted for FG~Vir in order to provide a theoretical pulsation model. In this campaign we have acquired 969 Echelle spectra covering 147 hours at six observatories. The mode identification was carried out by analyzing line profile variations by means of the Fourier parameter fit method, where the observational Fourier parameters across the line are fitted with theoretical values. This method is especially well suited for determining the azimuthal order m of non-radial pulsation modes and thus complementary with the method of Daszynska-Daszkiewicz (2002) which does best at identifying the degree l. 15 frequencies between 9.2 and 33.5 c/d were detected spectroscopically. We determined the azimuthal order m of 12 modes and constrained their harmonic degree l. Only modes of low degree (l <= 4) were detected, most of them having axisymmetric character mainly due to the relatively low projected rotational velocity of FG Vir. The detected non-axisymmetric modes have azimuthal orders between -2 and 1. We derived an inclination of 19 degrees, which implies an equatorial rotational rate of 66 km/s.Comment: 14 pages, 26 figure

A New Renormalization Scheme of Fermion Fields in Electroweak Standard Model

This paper has been withdrawn by the author,due a immature idea.Comment: 6 page