Perspectives on Traceability and BSE Testing in the U.S. Beef Industry

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

Hospital Ward Alarm Fatigue Reduction Through Integrated Medical Device and Hospital System Policy Instruction

The objective of this project is to reduce alarm fatigue in American hospital systems and improve patient care. This objective will be addressed by providing a secure online knowledge base of proper settings for medical devices in conjunction with hospital­specific policy about alarm protocol, at the point of care, to instruct clinical staff with accuracy and consistency

Nested, but Separate: Isolating Unrelated Critical Sections in Real-Time Nested Locking

Prior work has produced multiprocessor real-time locking protocols that ensure asymptotically optimal bounds on priority inversion, that support fine-grained nesting of critical sections, or that are independence-preserving under clustered scheduling. However, while several protocols manage to come with two out of these three desirable features, no protocol to date accomplishes all three. Motivated by this gap in capabilities, this paper introduces the Group Independence-Preserving Protocol (GIPP), the first protocol to support fine-grained nested locking, guarantee a notion of independence preservation for fine-grained nested locking, and ensure asymptotically optimal priority-inversion bounds. As a stepping stone, this paper further presents the Clustered k-Exclusion Independence-Preserving Protocol (CKIP), the first asymptotically optimal independence-preserving k-exclusion lock for clustered scheduling. The GIPP and the CKIP rely on allocation inheritance (a.k.a. migratory priority inheritance) as a key mechanism to accomplish independence preservation

Using digital elevation models to measure the surface and volumetric change of Athabasca Glacier, Alberta, Canada, 1919-1979

The Athabasca Glacier (52˚12\u27N, 117˚14\u27W) located at the Alberta-British Columbia border was studied to quantify its volumetric, area and elevation changes below 2400 m between 1919 and 1979. The data sources consist of maps produced using aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry in the years between 1919 and 1979. The maps were digitized and converted into raster digital elevation models (DEMs), the manipulation of which allowed values of surface and volumetric change to be calculated. These DEMs showed that between 1919 and 1979 the glacier lost 2.344 x 108m3 of volume and receded more than 1 km. Each of the source maps has a precision of vertical estimation associated with the photogrammetric process used to generate it. This imprecision was quantified and used to calculate, display and compare the uncertainty of volume and elevation change measures with the calculated volume and elevation change. The magnitude of uncertainty between maps was often larger than the change measured between the maps. many of the maps used to generate DEMs were used in a previous study to calculate volumetric and elevation change using planimetric methods. The software package which produced the DEMs and calculated output was used to recalculate volumetric change measures using the same methodology for the period 1969-1979. The recalculated results were similar to the planimetric results for that time period. Several other stories of Canadian glacier maps exist. It is recommended that a similar study be carried out using these data

Deducing topology of protein-protein interaction networks from experimentally measured sub-networks.

BackgroundProtein-protein interaction networks are commonly sampled using yeast two hybrid approaches. However, whether topological information reaped from these experimentally-measured sub-networks can be extrapolated to complete protein-protein interaction networks is unclear.ResultsBy analyzing various experimental protein-protein interaction datasets, we found that they are not random samples of the parent networks. Based on the experimental bait-prey behaviors, our computer simulations show that these non-random sampling features may affect the topological information. We tested the hypothesis that a core sub-network exists within the experimentally sampled network that better maintains the topological characteristics of the parent protein-protein interaction network. We developed a method to filter the experimentally sampled network to result in a core sub-network that more accurately reflects the topology of the parent network. These findings have fundamental implications for large-scale protein interaction studies and for our understanding of the behavior of cellular networks.ConclusionThe topological information from experimental measured networks network as is may not be the correct source for topological information about the parent protein-protein interaction network. We define a core sub-network that more accurately reflects the topology of the parent network

Beyond the noise: an exploration of informative sound design in video games

Informative sounds in video games are those that are played with a functional purpose. These sounds are meant to inform the player of some change in the state of the game, be it in their character???s status or something in the environment around them. This thesis seeks to deepen the understanding of this type of audio through a series of experiments measuring the play experience of a game as affected by different sonic conditions. The results show a need for informative audio feedback, and define the boundaries between abstract and non-abstract game sounds, showing that there is a contextual difference in effectiveness and experience between the two. There were, however, no statistically significant physiological effects relating to the absence or presence of these sounds. From these results, a set of sound design guidelines are contributed, as well as a deeper understanding of game sound and several areas for future research