Developments in Practice X: Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) - An Internet for Physical Objects

This paper explores the applications and future commercial impacts of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Its objective is to summarize the ways in which organizations and academics are thinking about these technologies and to stimulate strategic thinking about their possible uses and implications. It first provides an overview of this technology and how it works. Then it explores the surprisingly wide variety of current applications of RFID. Next it looks at several classes of potential RFID applications and how these might affect how organizations work. Finally, it examines the cost and implementation considerations of this technology. The paper concludes that RFID is a viable technology with many possible applications. However, only some of the impacts on organizations and society can be anticipated at present

Developments in Practice VI: Riding the Wave: Discovering the Value of P2P Technologies

Peer-to-peer (P2P) gurus suggest that inexpensive computing power, bandwidth, and storage will enable radically new enterprise forms that are driven by the distribution of interactive computing power more or less equally through the enterprise. Based on the capabilities of the Internet (as opposed to the web), which forms a vast network of computers that can be linked in many different ways, P2P has been called a third age in Internet time and the next logical evolution of the Internet . While such predictions may be somewhat hyper-optimistic, the speed with which this technology already spread from underground to mainstream is remarkable. Whether they like it or not, companies will soon need to determine how they are going to deal with P2P, just as they did with other major technology shifts (e.g., PCs, e-commerce). This paper is designed to help researchers and managers understand the challenges P2P technology poses for CIOs and organizations. It first gives an overview of these technologies, including their current status, probable applications and the opportunities and challenges involved in using them. Then, it discusses the strategic potential of P2P for organizations and explores some of the areas in which P2P could have a significant impact on how business and IT functions work. It concludes with some advice to CIOs about how to begin integrating P2P into their organization and some suggestions for researching the impacts of this technology on business

Association of plasma uric acid with ischaemic heart disease and blood pressure: mendelian randomisation analysis of two large cohorts

Objectives: To assess the associations between both uric acid levels and hyperuricaemia, with ischaemic heart disease and blood pressure, and to explore the potentially confounding role of body mass index. Design: Mendelian randomisation analysis, using variation at specific genes (SLC2A9 (rs7442295) as an instrument for uric acid; and FTO (rs9939609), MC4R (rs17782313), and TMEM18 (rs6548238) for body mass index). Setting: Two large, prospective cohort studies in Denmark. Participants: We measured levels of uric acid and related covariables in 58 072 participants from the Copenhagen General Population Study and 10 602 from the Copenhagen City Heart Study, comprising 4890 and 2282 cases of ischaemic heart disease, respectively. Main outcome: Blood pressure and prospectively assessed ischaemic heart disease. Results: Estimates confirmed known observational associations between plasma uric acid and hyperuricaemia with risk of ischaemic heart disease and diastolic and systolic blood pressure. However, when using genotypic instruments for uric acid and hyperuricaemia, we saw no evidence for causal associations between uric acid, ischaemic heart disease, and blood pressure. We used genetic instruments to investigate body mass index as a potentially confounding factor in observational associations, and saw a causal effect on uric acid levels. Every four unit increase of body mass index saw a rise in uric acid of 0.03 mmol/L (95% confidence interval 0.02 to 0.04), and an increase in risk of hyperuricaemia of 7.5% (3.9% to 11.1%). Conclusion: By contrast with observational findings, there is no strong evidence for causal associations between uric acid and ischaemic heart disease or blood pressure. However, evidence supports a causal effect between body mass index and uric acid level and hyperuricaemia. This finding strongly suggests body mass index as a confounder in observational associations, and suggests a role for elevated body mass index or obesity in the development of uric acid related conditions

Generative Multiple-Instance Learning Models For Quantitative Electromyography

We present a comprehensive study of the use of generative modeling approaches for Multiple-Instance Learning (MIL) problems. In MIL a learner receives training instances grouped together into bags with labels for the bags only (which might not be correct for the comprised instances). Our work was motivated by the task of facilitating the diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders using sets of motor unit potential trains (MUPTs) detected within a muscle which can be cast as a MIL problem. Our approach leads to a state-of-the-art solution to the problem of muscle classification. By introducing and analyzing generative models for MIL in a general framework and examining a variety of model structures and components, our work also serves as a methodological guide to modelling MIL tasks. We evaluate our proposed methods both on MUPT datasets and on the MUSK1 dataset, one of the most widely used benchmarks for MIL.Comment: Appears in Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2013

Use of legacy data in geomorphological research

This paper considers legacy data and data rescue within the context of geomorphology. Data rescue may be necessary dependent upon the storage medium (is it physically accessible) and the data format (e.g. digital file type); where either of these is not functional, intervention will be required in order to retrieve the stored data. Within geomorphological research, there are three scenarios that may utilize legacy data: to reinvestigate phenomena, to access information about a landform/process that no longer exists, and to investigate temporal change. Here, we present three case studies with discussion that illustrate these scenarios: striae records of Ireland were used to produce a palaeoglacial reconstruction, geomorphological mapping was used to compile a map of glacial landforms, and aerial photographs were used to analyze temporal change in river channel form and catchment land cover

A sample of radio-loud QSOs at redshift ~ 4

We obtained spectra of 60 red, starlike objects (E< 18.8) identified with FIRST radio sources, S_{1.4GHz} > 1 mJy. Eight are QSOs with redshift z> 3.6.Combined with our pilot search (Benn et al 2002), our sample of 121 candidates yields a total of 18 z > 3.6 QSOs (10 of these with z > 4.0). 8% of candidates with S_{1.4GHz} 10 mJy are QSOs with z > 3.6. The surface density of E 1mJy, z> 4 QSOs is 0.003 deg^{-2}. This is currently the only well-defined sample of radio-loud QSOs at z ~ 4 selected independently of radio spectral index. The QSOs are highly luminous in the optical (8 have M_B < -28, q_0 = 0.5, H_0 = 50 kms^{-1}Mpc^{-1}). The SEDs are as varied as those seen in optical searches for high-redshift QSOs, but the fraction of objects with weak (strongly self-absorbed) Ly alpha emission is marginally higher (3 out of 18) than for high-redshift QSOs from SDSS (5 out of 96).Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 9 pages, Latex, 5 postscript figures, 1 landscape table (postscript

Space Inversion of Spinors Revisited: A Possible Explanation of Chiral Behavior in Weak Interactions

We investigate a model in which spinors are considered as being embedded within the Clifford algebra that operates on them. In Minkowski space $M_{1,3}$, we have four independent 4-component spinors, each living in a different minimal left ideal of $Cl(1,3)$. We show that under space inversion, a spinor of one left ideal transforms into a spinor of another left ideal. This brings novel insight to the role of chirality in weak interactions. We demonstrate the latter role by considering an action for a generalized spinor field $\psi^{\alpha i}$ that has not only a spinor index $\alpha$ but also an extra index $i$ running over four ideals. The covariant derivative of $\psi^{\alpha i}$ contains the generalized spin connection, the extra components of which are interpreted as the SU(2) gauge fields of weak interactions and their generalization. We thus arrive at a system that is left-right symmetric due to the presence of a "parallel sector", postulated a long time ago, that contains mirror particles coupled to mirror SU(2) gauge fields.Comment: 13 pages; references and a note adde

1999 Quadrantids and the lunar Na atmosphere

Enhancements of the Na emission and temperature from the lunar atmosphere were reported during the Leonids meteor showers of 1995, 1997 and 1998. Here we report a search for similar enhancement during the 1999 Quadrantids, which have the highest mass flux of any of the major streams. No enhancements were detected. We suggest that different chemical-physical properties of the Leonid and Quadrantid streams may be responsible for the difference.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in MNRA