Ontological Approaches to Modelling Narrative

We outline a simple taxonomy of approaches to modelling narrative, explain how these might be realised ontologically, and describe our continuing work to apply these techniques to the problem of Memories for Life

Adjunctive rifampicin for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (ARREST): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia is a common cause of severe community-acquired and hospital-acquired infection worldwide. We tested the hypothesis that adjunctive rifampicin would reduce bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death, by enhancing early S aureus killing, sterilising infected foci and blood faster, and reducing risks of dissemination and metastatic infection. METHODS: In this multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, adults (≥18 years) with S aureus bacteraemia who had received ≤96 h of active antibiotic therapy were recruited from 29 UK hospitals. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) via a computer-generated sequential randomisation list to receive 2 weeks of adjunctive rifampicin (600 mg or 900 mg per day according to weight, oral or intravenous) versus identical placebo, together with standard antibiotic therapy. Randomisation was stratified by centre. Patients, investigators, and those caring for the patients were masked to group allocation. The primary outcome was time to bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death (all-cause), from randomisation to 12 weeks, adjudicated by an independent review committee masked to the treatment. Analysis was intention to treat. This trial was registered, number ISRCTN37666216, and is closed to new participants. FINDINGS: Between Dec 10, 2012, and Oct 25, 2016, 758 eligible participants were randomly assigned: 370 to rifampicin and 388 to placebo. 485 (64%) participants had community-acquired S aureus infections, and 132 (17%) had nosocomial S aureus infections. 47 (6%) had meticillin-resistant infections. 301 (40%) participants had an initial deep infection focus. Standard antibiotics were given for 29 (IQR 18-45) days; 619 (82%) participants received flucloxacillin. By week 12, 62 (17%) of participants who received rifampicin versus 71 (18%) who received placebo experienced treatment failure or disease recurrence, or died (absolute risk difference -1·4%, 95% CI -7·0 to 4·3; hazard ratio 0·96, 0·68-1·35, p=0·81). From randomisation to 12 weeks, no evidence of differences in serious (p=0·17) or grade 3-4 (p=0·36) adverse events were observed; however, 63 (17%) participants in the rifampicin group versus 39 (10%) in the placebo group had antibiotic or trial drug-modifying adverse events (p=0·004), and 24 (6%) versus six (2%) had drug interactions (p=0·0005). INTERPRETATION: Adjunctive rifampicin provided no overall benefit over standard antibiotic therapy in adults with S aureus bacteraemia. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

Knowledge based Learning Experience Management on the Semantic Web

Learners engaged in informal learning tasks often find sharing their learning experience to be helpful. Informally, a learning experience describes what a learner has done, with what learning resources. We explore technological issues in a semantic web driven learning experience management architecture that supports collaborative learning, i.e., learning by reusing, sharing experience and building knowledge together within a particular domain. We demonstrate that by exploiting the semantic web technology, it is possible to manage the learning resources more intelligently through the use of semantically annotated learning experiences. Work has been done in line with the knowledge life cycle, from building ontology on learning experience, creating semantic annotation to reusing semantics for the learning experience management. Functionalities of ontology management, semantic annotation and reuse have been provided in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). We give a scenario in which the system can be used to assist collaborative learning in different domains through learning experience sharing and knowledge construction

Connecting Physical+Temporal Events to Digital Contexts

In this paper we present two versions of a system we deployed to consider how to support a light-weight interaction to ‘tag’ a temporally and physically located event for later, digital access. In each deployment, we chose similar kinds of events, used similar interactions to tag the artifacts/information at the events, and provided similar digital representations of the artifacts/information tagged. We explore how the differences in the context of each event affected the perceived usability of the system. We present a comparison of these differences towards the development of a design heuristics for pervasive systems interested in supporting persistent access to otherwise transient information that a user has actively selected as of interest

Standardizing Hypertext: Where Next for OHP?

Over the last six years the Open Hypermedia Systems Working Group (OHSWG) has been working in a coordinated effort to produce a protocol which will allow components of an Open Hypermedia System to talk to one another in a standardised manner. In this paper we reflect on this work and the knowledge that has come out of it, evaluating the different approaches to standardisation in the light of our experiences. We discuss the problems we encountered and redefine the goals of the effort to be more realistic, presenting the Fundamental Open Hypermedia Model (FOHM) as an example of this more realistic approach. Finally we describe a possible future path that encompasses the research interests of the OHSWG while still leading ultimately to interoperability

Abstract

Naming is a key issue in any distributed system. In particular, with the Open Hypermedia Systems Working Group's efforts towards openness and interoperability in Open Hypermedia Systems (OHS) resulting in the need for (globally) valid names for all types of resources the issue of naming has become increasingly important. In this position paper we examine the issues involved in naming and a present a proposal for naming to be used within th

FOHM: A Fundamental Open Hypertext Model for Investigating Interoperability between Hypertext Domains

The Open Hypermedia Systems community has been largely concerned with interoperability between hypertext systems which share the same paradigm. It has evolved a component based framework for this purpose, in which specific but incompatible middleware components are designed for each hypertext domain, such as navigational hypertext, spatial hypertext or taxonomic hypertext. This paper investigates the common features of these domains and introduces FOHM, a Fundamental Open Hypertext Model, which defines a common data model and set of related operations that are applicable for all three domains. Using this layer the paper explores the possible semantics of linking between different hypertext domains, and shows that each can introduce features which benefit the other domains

Integrating Service Quality into Customer-Centred Design Approach of E-Commerce Environments

With an increasing competition in the E-marketplace, generating experiences that exceed the customer's expectations of E-Commerce is important in order to acquire and then retain customers. A customer's experience with E-Commerce environments extends beyond the interaction with the Web site, including, delivery of products, post-sales support, and so on. It is this total experience that influences the customer's perceptions of value and service quality. Our research goal has been to investigate how Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategies can be incorporated into the design of E-Commerce. In our cross-disciplinary research programme in HCI and CRM, we have developed an empirically-grounded evaluation instrument called E-SEQUAL, and a generic set of customer personas and their task scenarios for E-Commerce. E-SEQUAL consists of CRM and usability heuristics which can be applied to integrate customers' perceived dimensions of service quality into the design and evaluation of E-Commerce. In this paper we describe a customer-centred design process for E-Commerce which integrates E-SEQUAL, customer personas, and task scenarios of the personas. E-SEQUAL: Customer-Centred Design Approach to Providing Value in E-Commerce Environments