Earth observing system. Data and information system. Volume 2A: Report of the EOS Data Panel

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1986-01-01

The purpose of this report is to provide NASA with a rationale and recommendations for planning, implementing, and operating an Earth Observing System data and information system that can evolve to meet the Earth Observing System's needs in the 1990s. The Earth Observing System (Eos), defined by the Eos Science and Mission Requirements Working Group, consists of a suite of instruments in low Earth orbit acquiring measurements of the Earth's atmosphere, surface, and interior; an information system to support scientific research; and a vigorous program of scientific research, stressing study of global-scale processes that shape and influence the Earth as a system. The Eos data and information system is conceived as a complete research information system that would transcend the traditional mission data system, and include additional capabilties such as maintaining long-term, time-series data bases and providing access by Eos researchers to relevant non-Eos data. The Working Group recommends that the Eos data and information system be initiated now, with existing data, and that the system evolve into one that can meet the intensive research and data needs that will exist when Eos spacecraft are returning data in the 1990s.

Information Integration for Concurrent Engineering (IICE) IDEF3 Process Description Capture Method Report

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-05-01

methodology, knowledge acquisition, 140 requirements definition, information systems, information engineering, 16. PRICE CODE systems engineering...and knowledge resources. Like manpower, materials, and machines, information and knowledge assets are recognized as vital resources that can be...evolve towards an information -integrated enterprise. These technologies are designed to leverage information and knowledge resources as the key

Analyzing Evolving Social Network 2 (EVOLVE2)

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-04-01

Facebook friendship graph. We simulated two different interaction models: one-to-one and one-to-many interactions . Both types of models revealed...to an unbiased random walk on the reweighed “ interaction graph” W with entries wij = αiAijαj . The generalized Laplacian framework is flexible enough...Information Intelligence Systems & Analysis Division Information Directorate This report is published in the interest of scientific and technical

From cues to signals: evolution of interspecific communication via aposematism and mimicry in a predator-prey system.

PubMed

Lehmann, Kenna D S; Goldman, Brian W; Dworkin, Ian; Bryson, David M; Wagner, Aaron P

2014-01-01

Current theory suggests that many signaling systems evolved from preexisting cues. In aposematic systems, prey warning signals benefit both predator and prey. When the signal is highly beneficial, a third species often evolves to mimic the toxic species, exploiting the signaling system for its own protection. We investigated the evolutionary dynamics of predator cue utilization and prey signaling in a digital predator-prey system in which prey could evolve to alter their appearance to mimic poison-free or poisonous prey. In predators, we observed rapid evolution of cue recognition (i.e. active behavioral responses) when presented with sufficiently poisonous prey. In addition, active signaling (i.e. mimicry) evolved in prey under all conditions that led to cue utilization. Thus we show that despite imperfect and dishonest signaling, given a high cost of consuming poisonous prey, complex systems of interspecific communication can evolve via predator cue recognition and prey signal manipulation. This provides evidence supporting hypotheses that cues may serve as stepping-stones in the evolution of more advanced communication and signaling systems that incorporate information about the environment.

From Cues to Signals: Evolution of Interspecific Communication via Aposematism and Mimicry in a Predator-Prey System

PubMed Central

Lehmann, Kenna D. S.; Goldman, Brian W.; Dworkin, Ian; Bryson, David M.; Wagner, Aaron P.

2014-01-01

Current theory suggests that many signaling systems evolved from preexisting cues. In aposematic systems, prey warning signals benefit both predator and prey. When the signal is highly beneficial, a third species often evolves to mimic the toxic species, exploiting the signaling system for its own protection. We investigated the evolutionary dynamics of predator cue utilization and prey signaling in a digital predator-prey system in which prey could evolve to alter their appearance to mimic poison-free or poisonous prey. In predators, we observed rapid evolution of cue recognition (i.e. active behavioral responses) when presented with sufficiently poisonous prey. In addition, active signaling (i.e. mimicry) evolved in prey under all conditions that led to cue utilization. Thus we show that despite imperfect and dishonest signaling, given a high cost of consuming poisonous prey, complex systems of interspecific communication can evolve via predator cue recognition and prey signal manipulation. This provides evidence supporting hypotheses that cues may serve as stepping-stones in the evolution of more advanced communication and signaling systems that incorporate information about the environment. PMID:24614755

A next generation advanced traveler information precursor system (ATIS 2.0 precursor system) use cases report.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2017-05-01

Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) have experienced significant growth since their initial inception in the 1990s. Technologies have continued to evolve at a rapid pace, enabling the integration of advanced solutions for traveler informatio...

Integrated Compliance Information System (ICIS)

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The purpose of ICIS is to meet evolving Enforcement and Compliance business needs for EPA and State users by integrating information into a single integrated data system that supports both management and programmatic requirements of the Enforcement and Compliance programs.

System Models of Information, Communication and Mass Communication: Revaluation of Some Basic Concepts of Communication.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wiio, Osmo A.

A more unified approach to communication theory can evolve through systems modeling of information theory, communication modes, and mass media operations. Such systematic analysis proposes, as is the case care here, that information models be based upon combinations of energy changes and exchanges and changes in receiver systems. The mass media is…

Genetic programming for evolving due-date assignment models in job shop environments.

PubMed

Nguyen, Su; Zhang, Mengjie; Johnston, Mark; Tan, Kay Chen

2014-01-01

Due-date assignment plays an important role in scheduling systems and strongly influences the delivery performance of job shops. Because of the stochastic and dynamic nature of job shops, the development of general due-date assignment models (DDAMs) is complicated. In this study, two genetic programming (GP) methods are proposed to evolve DDAMs for job shop environments. The experimental results show that the evolved DDAMs can make more accurate estimates than other existing dynamic DDAMs with promising reusability. In addition, the evolved operation-based DDAMs show better performance than the evolved DDAMs employing aggregate information of jobs and machines.

Visual information processing in the lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus): mental rotation or rotational invariance?

PubMed

Burmann, Britta; Dehnhardt, Guido; Mauck, Björn

2005-01-01

Mental rotation is a widely accepted concept indicating an image-like mental representation of visual information and an analogue mode of information processing in certain visuospatial tasks. In the task of discriminating between image and mirror-image of rotated figures, human reaction times increase with the angular disparity between the figures. In animals, tests of this kind yield inconsistent results. Pigeons were found to use a time-independent rotational invariance, possibly indicating a non-analogue information processing system that evolved in response to the horizontal plane of reference birds perceive during flight. Despite similar ecological demands concerning the visual reference plane, a sea lion was found to use mental rotation in similar tasks, but its processing speed while rotating three-dimensional stimuli seemed to depend on the axis of rotation in a different way than found for humans in similar tasks. If ecological demands influence the way information processing systems evolve, hominids might have secondarily lost the ability of rotational invariance while retreating from arboreal living and evolving an upright gait in which the vertical reference plane is more important. We therefore conducted mental rotation experiments with an arboreal living primate species, the lion-tailed macaque. Performing a two-alternative matching-to-sample procedure, the animal had to decide between rotated figures representing image and mirror-image of a previously shown upright sample. Although non-rotated stimuli were recognized faster than rotated ones, the animal's mean reaction times did not clearly increase with the angle of rotation. These results are inconsistent with the mental rotation concept but also cannot be explained assuming a mere rotational invariance. Our study thus seems to support the idea of information processing systems evolving gradually in response to specific ecological demands.

Policy-Based Middleware for QoS Management and Signaling in the Evolved Packet System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Good, Richard; Gouveia, Fabricio; Magedanz, Thomas; Ventura, Neco

The 3GPP are currently finalizing their Evolved Packet System (EPS) with the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) central to this framework. The EPC is a simplified, flat, all IP-based architecture that supports mobility between heterogeneous access networks and incorporates an evolved QoS concept based on the 3GPP Policy Control and Charging (PCC) framework. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is an IP service element within the EPS, introduced for the rapid provisioning of innovative multimedia services. The evolved PCC framework extends the scope of operation and defines new interactions - in particular the S9 reference point is introduced to facilitate inter-domain PCC communication. This paper proposes an enhancement to the IMS/PCC framework that uses SIP routing information to discover signaling and media paths. This mechanism uses standardized IMS/PCC operations and allows applications to effectively issue resource requests from their home domain enabling QoS-connectivity across multiple domains. Because the mechanism operates at the service control layer it does not require any significant transport layer modifications or the sharing of potentially sensitive internal topology information. The evolved PCC architecture and inter-domain route discovery mechanisms were implemented in an evaluation testbed and performed favorably without adversely effecting end user experience.

How TSPSM Implementation has Evolved at AV-8B

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-05-01

How TSPSM Implementation Has Evolved at AV-8B Chris Rickets AV-8B Joint Systems/Software Support Activity (JSSA) Brad Hodgins NAVAIR Systems...members need to be involved) NAVAIR Software/Systems Support Center (NSSC) Slide 40 Contact Information • Chris Rickets (AV-8B Sr. Software Engr...phone: (760) 939-5838 – e-mail: chris rickets @navy mil . . • Brad Hodgins (NAVAIR TSP Coach supporting AV-8B ) – phone: (760) 939-0666/4446 – e

Methodological approaches of health technology assessment.

PubMed

Goodman, C S; Ahn, R

1999-12-01

In this era of evolving health care systems throughout the world, technology remains the substance of health care. Medical informatics comprises a growing contribution to the technologies used in the delivery and management of health care. Diverse, evolving technologies include artificial neural networks, computer-assisted surgery, computer-based patient records, hospital information systems, and more. Decision-makers increasingly demand well-founded information to determine whether or how to develop these technologies, allow them on the market, acquire them, use them, pay for their use, and more. The development and wider use of health technology assessment (HTA) reflects this demand. While HTA offers systematic, well-founded approaches for determining the value of medical informatics technologies, HTA must continue to adapt and refine its methods in response to these evolving technologies. This paper provides a basic overview of HTA principles and methods.

Evolution of Bow-Tie Architectures in Biology

PubMed Central

Friedlander, Tamar; Mayo, Avraham E.; Tlusty, Tsvi; Alon, Uri

2015-01-01

Bow-tie or hourglass structure is a common architectural feature found in many biological systems. A bow-tie in a multi-layered structure occurs when intermediate layers have much fewer components than the input and output layers. Examples include metabolism where a handful of building blocks mediate between multiple input nutrients and multiple output biomass components, and signaling networks where information from numerous receptor types passes through a small set of signaling pathways to regulate multiple output genes. Little is known, however, about how bow-tie architectures evolve. Here, we address the evolution of bow-tie architectures using simulations of multi-layered systems evolving to fulfill a given input-output goal. We find that bow-ties spontaneously evolve when the information in the evolutionary goal can be compressed. Mathematically speaking, bow-ties evolve when the rank of the input-output matrix describing the evolutionary goal is deficient. The maximal compression possible (the rank of the goal) determines the size of the narrowest part of the network—that is the bow-tie. A further requirement is that a process is active to reduce the number of links in the network, such as product-rule mutations, otherwise a non-bow-tie solution is found in the evolutionary simulations. This offers a mechanism to understand a common architectural principle of biological systems, and a way to quantitate the effective rank of the goals under which they evolved. PMID:25798588

Anatomic pathology laboratory information systems: a review.

PubMed

Park, Seung Lyung; Pantanowitz, Liron; Sharma, Gaurav; Parwani, Anil Vasdev

2012-03-01

The modern anatomic pathology laboratory depends on a reliable information infrastructure to register specimens, record gross and microscopic findings, regulate laboratory workflow, formulate and sign out report(s), disseminate them to the intended recipients across the whole health system, and support quality assurance measures. This infrastructure is provided by the Anatomical Pathology Laboratory Information Systems (APLIS), which have evolved over decades and now are beginning to support evolving technologies like asset tracking and digital imaging. As digital pathology transitions from "the way of the future" to "the way of the present," the APLIS continues to be one of the key effective enablers of the scope and practice of pathology. In this review, we discuss the evolution, necessary components, architecture and functionality of the APLIS that are crucial to today's practicing pathologist and address the demands of emerging trends on the future APLIS.

Business Information Systems. Occupational Competency Analysis Profile.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ohio State Univ., Columbus. Vocational Instructional Materials Lab.

This Occupational Competency Analysis Profile (OCAP) for business information systems is an employer-verified competency list that evolved from a modified DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) job analysis process involving business, industry, labor, and community agency representatives throughout Ohio. The competency list consists of 10 units: (1) data…

Turning information into knowledge for rangeland management

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The kind of knowledge system that will be capable of meeting the needs of rangeland managers will evolve as scientists, technology specialists, managers, and biologists find ways to integrate the ever expanding array of information systems and tools to meet their needs. The tools and techniques high...

Women's health nursing in the context of the National Health Information Infrastructure.

PubMed

Jenkins, Melinda L; Hewitt, Caroline; Bakken, Suzanne

2006-01-01

Nurses must be prepared to participate in the evolving National Health Information Infrastructure and the changes that will consequently occur in health care practice and documentation. Informatics technologies will be used to develop electronic health records with integrated decision support features that will likely lead to enhanced health care quality and safety. This paper provides a summary of the National Health Information Infrastructure and highlights electronic health records and decision support systems within the context of evidence-based practice. Activities at the Columbia University School of Nursing designed to prepare nurses with the necessary informatics competencies to practice in a National Health Information Infrastructure-enabled health care system are described. Data are presented from electronic (personal digital assistant) encounter logs used in our Women's Health Nurse Practitioner program to support evidence-based advanced practice nursing care. Implications for nursing practice, education, and research in the evolving National Health Information Infrastructure are discussed.

Architecture Analysis of Evolving Complex Systems of Systems: Technical Presentation [and Executive Status Report

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lindvall, Mikael; Godfrey, Sally; Ackermann, Chris; Ray, Arnab; Yonkwa, Lyly; Ganesan, Dharma; Stratton, William C.; Sibol, Deane E.

2008-01-01

Analyze, Visualize, and Evaluate structure and behavior using static and dynamic information, individual systems as well as systems of systems. Next steps: Refine software tool support; Apply to other systems; and Apply earlier in system life cycle.

Integrating Intellectual Property Concepts into MIS Education: An Empirical Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mykytyn, Peter P., Jr.; Mykytyn, Kathleen; Harrison, David A.

2005-01-01

The evolving legal environment surrounding intellectual property (IP) and its impact on information systems, especially involving electronic commerce, and the type of education and training provided by management information systems (MIS) faculty to MIS students is a relationship that has not been investigated. Although organizations are…

Exploitation of Unintentional Information Leakage from Integrated Circuits

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cobb, William E.

2011-01-01

The information leakage of electronic devices, especially those used in cryptographic or other vital applications, represents a serious practical threat to secure systems. While physical implementation attacks have evolved rapidly over the last decade, relatively little work has been done to allow system designers to effectively counter the…

Meeting the Challenge of IS Curriculum Modernization: A Guide to Overhaul, Integration, and Continuous Improvement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McGann, Sean T.; Frost, Raymond D.; Matta, Vic; Huang, Wayne

2007-01-01

Information Systems (IS) departments are facing challenging times as enrollments decline and the field evolves, thus necessitating large-scale curriculum changes. Our experience shows that many IS departments are in such a predicament as they have not evolved content quickly enough to keep it relevant, they do a poor job coordinating curriculum…

Contextualizing Secure Information System Design: A Socio-Technical Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Charif, Abdul Rahim

2017-01-01

Secure Information Systems (SIS) design paradigms have evolved in generations to adapt to IS security needs. However, modern IS are still vulnerable and are far from secure. The development of an underlying IS cannot be reduced to "technological fixes" neither is the design of SIS. Technical security cannot ensure IS security.…

Toward a Concept of Operations for Aviation Weather Information Implementation in the Evolving National Airspace System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McAdaragh, Raymon M.

2002-01-01

The capacity of the National Airspace System is being stressed due to the limits of current technologies. Because of this, the FAA and NASA are working to develop new technologies to increase the system's capacity which enhancing safety. Adverse weather has been determined to be a major factor in aircraft accidents and fatalities and the FAA and NASA have developed programs to improve aviation weather information technologies and communications for system users The Aviation Weather Information Element of the Weather Accident Prevention Project of NASA's Aviation Safety Program is currently working to develop these technologies in coordination with the FAA and industry. This paper sets forth a theoretical approach to implement these new technologies while addressing the National Airspace System (NAS) as an evolving system with Weather Information as one of its subSystems. With this approach in place, system users will be able to acquire the type of weather information that is needed based upon the type of decision-making situation and condition that is encountered. The theoretical approach addressed in this paper takes the form of a model for weather information implementation. This model addresses the use of weather information in three decision-making situations, based upon the system user's operational perspective. The model also addresses two decision-making conditions, which are based upon the need for collaboration due to the level of support offered by the weather information provided by each new product or technology. The model is proposed for use in weather information implementation in order to provide a systems approach to the NAS. Enhancements to the NAS collaborative decision-making capabilities are also suggested.

FIA Estimation in the New Millennium

Treesearch

Francis A. Roesch

2001-01-01

In the new millennium, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) will deliver most of its database information directly to the users over the Internet. This assumption indicates the need for a GIS-based estimation system to support the information delivery system. Presumably, as the data set evolves, it will free FIA and the users from exclusive estimation within political...

Building A Cloud Based Distributed Active Data Archive Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ramachandran, Rahul; Baynes, Katie; Murphy, Kevin

2017-01-01

NASA's Earth Science Data System (ESDS) Program facilitates the implementation of NASA's Earth Science strategic plan, which is committed to the full and open sharing of Earth science data obtained from NASA instruments to all users. The Earth Science Data information System (ESDIS) project manages the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Data within EOSDIS are held at Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). One of the key responsibilities of the ESDS Program is to continuously evolve the entire data and information system to maximize returns on the collected NASA data.

OSD CALS Architecture Master Plan Study. Concept Paper. Indexing. Volume 30

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1989-06-01

An index identifies and reference information which is exchanged between multiple users and systems. The increased automation that will take place as CALS evolves will dictate an increased use of indexes for the successful exchange of information. Th...

Search for supporting methodologies - Or how to support SEI for 35 years

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Handley, Thomas H., Jr.; Masline, Richard C.

1991-01-01

Concepts relevant to the development of an evolvable information management system are examined in terms of support for the Space Exploration Initiative. The issues of interoperability within NASA and industry initiatives are studied including the Open Systems Interconnection standard and the operating system of the Open Software Foundation. The requirements of partitioning functionality into separate areas are determined with attention given to the infrastructure required to ensure system-wide compliance. The need for a decision-making context is a key to the distributed implementation of the program, and this environment is concluded to be next step in developing an evolvable, interoperable, and securable support network.

ADP Systems: Examination of Non-Federal Hospital Information Systems.

DTIC Science & Technology

1987-06-30

administrative and business management, and other purposes, such as research . In 1980, we reported1 that integrated hospital information systems evolved...Defense’s (DOD) and Veterans Administration’s (VA) efforts to develop and implement systems for federal hospitals. We used two methods to derive the...integrated in that they supported a variety of hospital activities and a uniform set of data access methods . The hospitals in our survey indicated that

Evolving Expert Knowledge Bases: Applications of Crowdsourcing and Serious Gaming to Advance Knowledge Development for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Floryan, Mark

2013-01-01

This dissertation presents a novel effort to develop ITS technologies that adapt by observing student behavior. In particular, we define an evolving expert knowledge base (EEKB) that structures a domain's information as a set of nodes and the relationships that exist between those nodes. The structure of this model is not the particularly novel…

A records system for a captive crane flock

USGS Publications Warehouse

Ellis, D.H.; Hartman, L.; Hereford, Scott G.; McMillen, J.L.; Harris, James

1991-01-01

Crane record keeping systems have been evolving at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (PWRC) since 1966 and at the International Crane Foundation (ICF) since 1974. The system we present here, a hybrid of the two systems, has been reorganized to promote easy access of information and to limit redundancy.

Specification and Design of Electrical Flight System Architectures with SysML

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McKelvin, Mark L., Jr.; Jimenez, Alejandro

2012-01-01

Modern space flight systems are required to perform more complex functions than previous generations to support space missions. This demand is driving the trend to deploy more electronics to realize system functionality. The traditional approach for the specification, design, and deployment of electrical system architectures in space flight systems includes the use of informal definitions and descriptions that are often embedded within loosely coupled but highly interdependent design documents. Traditional methods become inefficient to cope with increasing system complexity, evolving requirements, and the ability to meet project budget and time constraints. Thus, there is a need for more rigorous methods to capture the relevant information about the electrical system architecture as the design evolves. In this work, we propose a model-centric approach to support the specification and design of electrical flight system architectures using the System Modeling Language (SysML). In our approach, we develop a domain specific language for specifying electrical system architectures, and we propose a design flow for the specification and design of electrical interfaces. Our approach is applied to a practical flight system.

NASA's Earth Science Data Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ramapriyan, H. K.

2015-01-01

NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program has evolved over the last two decades, and currently has several core and community components. Core components provide the basic operational capabilities to process, archive, manage and distribute data from NASA missions. Community components provide a path for peer-reviewed research in Earth Science Informatics to feed into the evolution of the core components. The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is a core component consisting of twelve Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) and eight Science Investigator-led Processing Systems spread across the U.S. The presentation covers how the ESDS Program continues to evolve and benefits from as well as contributes to advances in Earth Science Informatics.

A database perspective of the transition from single-use (ancillary-based) systems to integrated models supporting clinical care and research in a MUMPS-based system.

PubMed

Siegel, J; Kirkland, D

1991-01-01

The Composite Health Care System (CHCS), a MUMPS-based hospital information system (HIS), has evolved from the Decentralized Hospital Computer Program (DHCP) installed within VA Hospitals. The authors explore the evolution of an ancillary-based system toward an integrated model with a look at its current state and possible future. The history and relationships between orders of different types tie specific patient-related data into a logical and temporal model. Diagrams demonstrate how the database structure has evolved to support clinical needs for integration. It is suggested that a fully integrated model is capable of meeting traditional HIS needs.

Needs and Implications for Information Technology Course Content

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Janicki, Thomas N.; Cummings, Jeffrey; Kline, Douglas

2014-01-01

As the demand for Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT) graduates remains strong, it is imperative that the curriculums in IS and IT programs meet employer needs. IS and IT educators encounter a continuing challenge to ensure that their courses and curriculum stay up to date with new and evolving technological changes in the…

Telemedicine for Access to Quality Care on Medical Practice and Continuing Medical Education in a Global Arena

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rafiq, Azhar; Merrell, Ronald C.

2005-01-01

Health care practices continue to evolve with technological advances integrating computer applications and patient information management into telemedicine systems. Telemedicine can be broadly defined as the use of information technology to provide patient care and share clinical information from one geographic location to another. Telemedicine…

EHR standards--A comparative study.

PubMed

Blobel, Bernd; Pharow, Peter

2006-01-01

For ensuring quality and efficiency of patient's care, the care paradigm moves from organization-centered over process-controlled towards personal care. Such health system paradigm change leads to new paradigms for analyzing, designing, implementing and deploying supporting health information systems including EHR systems as core application in a distributed eHealth environment. The paper defines the architectural paradigm for future-proof EHR systems. It compares advanced EHR architectures referencing them at the Generic Component Model. The paper introduces the evolving paradigm of autonomous computing for self-organizing health information systems.

Simulations of Living Cell Origins Using a Cellular Automata Model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ishida, Takeshi

2014-04-01

Understanding the generalized mechanisms of cell self-assembly is fundamental for applications in various fields, such as mass producing molecular machines in nanotechnology. Thus, the details of real cellular reaction networks and the necessary conditions for self-organized cells must be elucidated. We constructed a 2-dimensional cellular automata model to investigate the emergence of biological cell formation, which incorporated a looped membrane and a membrane-bound information system (akin to a genetic code and gene expression system). In particular, with an artificial reaction system coupled with a thermal system, the simultaneous formation of a looped membrane and an inner reaction process resulted in a more stable structure. These double structures inspired the primitive biological cell formation process from chemical evolution stage. With a model to simulate cellular self-organization in a 2-dimensional cellular automata model, 3 phenomena could be realized: (1) an inner reaction system developed as an information carrier precursor (akin to DNA); (2) a cell border emerged (akin to a cell membrane); and (3) these cell structures could divide into 2. This double-structured cell was considered to be a primary biological cell. The outer loop evolved toward a lipid bilayer membrane, and inner polymeric particles evolved toward precursor information carriers (evolved toward DNA). This model did not completely clarify all the necessary and sufficient conditions for biological cell self-organization. Further, our virtual cells remained unstable and fragile. However, the "garbage bag model" of Dyson proposed that the first living cells were deficient; thus, it would be reasonable that the earliest cells were more unstable and fragile than the simplest current unicellular organisms.

Simulations of living cell origins using a cellular automata model.

PubMed

Ishida, Takeshi

2014-04-01

Understanding the generalized mechanisms of cell self-assembly is fundamental for applications in various fields, such as mass producing molecular machines in nanotechnology. Thus, the details of real cellular reaction networks and the necessary conditions for self-organized cells must be elucidated. We constructed a 2-dimensional cellular automata model to investigate the emergence of biological cell formation, which incorporated a looped membrane and a membrane-bound information system (akin to a genetic code and gene expression system). In particular, with an artificial reaction system coupled with a thermal system, the simultaneous formation of a looped membrane and an inner reaction process resulted in a more stable structure. These double structures inspired the primitive biological cell formation process from chemical evolution stage. With a model to simulate cellular self-organization in a 2-dimensional cellular automata model, 3 phenomena could be realized: (1) an inner reaction system developed as an information carrier precursor (akin to DNA); (2) a cell border emerged (akin to a cell membrane); and (3) these cell structures could divide into 2. This double-structured cell was considered to be a primary biological cell. The outer loop evolved toward a lipid bilayer membrane, and inner polymeric particles evolved toward precursor information carriers (evolved toward DNA). This model did not completely clarify all the necessary and sufficient conditions for biological cell self-organization. Further, our virtual cells remained unstable and fragile. However, the "garbage bag model" of Dyson proposed that the first living cells were deficient; thus, it would be reasonable that the earliest cells were more unstable and fragile than the simplest current unicellular organisms.

Evolution of Implicit and Explicit Communication in Mobile Robots

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Greeff, Joachim; Nolfi, Stefano

This work investigates the conditions in which a population of embodied agents evolved for the ability to display coordinated/cooperative skills can develop an ability to communicate, whether and to what extent the evolved communication system can complexify during the course of the evolutionary process, and how the characteristics of such communication system varies evolutionarily. The analysis of the obtained results indicates that evolving robots develop a capacity to access/generate information which has a communicative value, an ability to produce different signals encoding useful regularities, and an ability to react appropriately to explicit and implicit signals. The analysis of the obtained results allows us to formulate detailed hypothesis on the evolution of communication for what concern aspects such us: (i) how communication can emerge from a population of initially non-communicating agents, (ii) how communication systems can complexify, (iii) how signals/meanings can originate and how they can be grounded in agents' sensory-motor states.

Adoption of Geospatial Systems towards evolving Sustainable Himalayan Mountain Development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Murthy, M. S. R.; Bajracharya, B.; Pradhan, S.; Shestra, B.; Bajracharya, R.; Shakya, K.; Wesselmann, S.; Ali, M.; Bajracharya, S.; Pradhan, S.

2014-11-01

Natural resources dependence of mountain communities, rapid social and developmental changes, disaster proneness and climate change are conceived as the critical factors regulating sustainable Himalayan mountain development. The Himalayan region posed by typical geographic settings, diverse physical and cultural diversity present a formidable challenge to collect and manage data, information and understands varied socio-ecological settings. Recent advances in earth observation, near real-time data, in-situ measurements and in combination of information and communication technology have transformed the way we collect, process, and generate information and how we use such information for societal benefits. Glacier dynamics, land cover changes, disaster risk reduction systems, food security and ecosystem conservation are a few thematic areas where geospatial information and knowledge have significantly contributed to informed decision making systems over the region. The emergence and adoption of near-real time systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), board-scale citizen science (crowd-sourcing), mobile services and mapping, and cloud computing have paved the way towards developing automated environmental monitoring systems, enhanced scientific understanding of geophysical and biophysical processes, coupled management of socio-ecological systems and community based adaptation models tailored to mountain specific environment. There are differentiated capacities among the ICIMOD regional member countries with regard to utilization of earth observation and geospatial technologies. The region can greatly benefit from a coordinated and collaborative approach to capture the opportunities offered by earth observation and geospatial technologies. The regional level data sharing, knowledge exchange, and Himalayan GEO supporting geospatial platforms, spatial data infrastructure, unique region specific satellite systems to address trans-boundary challenges would go a long way in evolving sustainable Himalayan livelihoods.

Using ESB and BPEL for Evolving Healthcare Systems Towards Pervasive, Grid-Enabled SOA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Koufi, V.; Malamateniou, F.; Papakonstantinou, D.; Vassilacopoulos, G.

Healthcare organizations often face the challenge of integrating diverse and geographically disparate information technology systems to respond to changing requirements and to exploit the capabilities of modern technologies. Hence, systems evolution, through modification and extension of the existing information technology infrastructure, becomes a necessity. Moreover, the availability of these systems at the point of care when needed is a vital issue for the quality of healthcare provided to patients. This chapter takes a process perspective of healthcare delivery within and across organizational boundaries and presents a disciplined approach for evolving healthcare systems towards a pervasive, grid-enabled service-oriented architecture using the enterprise system bus middleware technology for resolving integration issues, the business process execution language for supporting collaboration requirements and grid middleware technology for both addressing common SOA scalability requirements and complementing existing system functionality. In such an environment, appropriate security mechanisms must ensure authorized access to integrated healthcare services and data. To this end, a security framework addressing security aspects such as authorization and access control is also presented.

A Tralinet Guide to the Internet

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-02-01

Internet surfers often get stuck. The Internet is new, evolving, constantly changing, designed by computer system people rather than information retrieval...Librarians are already getting questions daily about Internet -accessible resources: providing information for their customers is about to get far...InterNIC. These are the best tools we have for looking up information about various Internet hosts. The DDN Network Information Center (NIC) is best for

New Directions in Legal Information Processing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chien, R. T.; And Others

The paper discusses some new developments that should evolve during the next decade in automating the handling of legal information. These new developments include: automated question-answering systems to provide quick and inexpensive answers to many non-controversial, but not necessarily simple legal questions to aid lawyers, social and welfare…

Query-Time Optimization Techniques for Structured Queries in Information Retrieval

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cartright, Marc-Allen

2013-01-01

The use of information retrieval (IR) systems is evolving towards larger, more complicated queries. Both the IR industrial and research communities have generated significant evidence indicating that in order to continue improving retrieval effectiveness, increases in retrieval model complexity may be unavoidable. From an operational perspective,…

Evaluating Organizational Performance: Rational, Natural, and Open System Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martz, Wes

2013-01-01

As the definition of organization has evolved, so have the approaches used to evaluate organizational performance. During the past 60 years, organizational theorists and management scholars have developed a comprehensive line of thinking with respect to organizational assessment that serves to inform and be informed by the evaluation discipline.…

Adaptive Memory: Survival Processing Enhances Retention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nairne, James S.; Thompson, Sarah R.; Pandeirada, Josefa N. S.

2007-01-01

The authors investigated the idea that memory systems might have evolved to help us remember fitness-relevant information--specifically, information relevant to survival. In 4 incidental learning experiments, people were asked to rate common nouns for their survival relevance (e.g., in securing food, water, or protection from predators); in…

Patterns-Based IS Change Management in SMEs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Makna, Janis; Kirikova, Marite

The majority of information systems change management guidelines and standards are either too abstract or too bureaucratic to be easily applicable in small enterprises. This chapter proposes the approach, the method, and the prototype that are designed especially for information systems change management in small and medium enterprises. The approach is based on proven patterns of changes in the set of information systems elements. The set of elements was obtained by theoretical analysis of information systems and business process definitions and enterprise architectures. The patterns were evolved from a number of information systems theories and tested in 48 information systems change management projects. The prototype presents and helps to handle three basic change patterns, which help to anticipate the overall scope of changes related to particular elementary changes in an enterprise information system. The use of prototype requires just basic knowledge in organizational business process and information management.

Evolving Systems and Adaptive Key Component Control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Frost, Susan A.; Balas, Mark J.

2009-01-01

We propose a new framework called Evolving Systems to describe the self-assembly, or autonomous assembly, of actively controlled dynamical subsystems into an Evolved System with a higher purpose. An introduction to Evolving Systems and exploration of the essential topics of the control and stability properties of Evolving Systems is provided. This chapter defines a framework for Evolving Systems, develops theory and control solutions for fundamental characteristics of Evolving Systems, and provides illustrative examples of Evolving Systems and their control with adaptive key component controllers.

Sleep-dependent memory triage: Evolving generalization through selective processing

PubMed Central

Stickgold, Robert; Walker, Matthew P.

2018-01-01

The brain does not retain all the information it encodes in a day. Much is forgotten, and of those memories retained, their subsequent “evolution” can follow any of a number of pathways. Emerging data makes clear that sleep is a compelling candidate for performing many of these operations. But how does the sleeping brain know which information to preserve and which to forget? What should sleep do with that information it chooses to keep? For information that is retained, sleep can integrate it into existing memory networks, look for common patterns and distill overarching rules, or simply stabilize and strengthen the memory exactly as it was learned. We suggest such “memory triage” lies at the heart of a sleep-dependent memory processing system that selects new information, in a discriminatory manner, and assimilates it into the brain’s vast armamentarium of evolving knowledge, helping guide each organism through its own, unique life. PMID:23354387

Adaptive Correction from Virtually Complex Dynamic Libraries: The Role of Noncovalent Interactions in Structural Selection and Folding.

PubMed

Lafuente, Maria; Atcher, Joan; Solà, Jordi; Alfonso, Ignacio

2015-11-16

The hierarchical self-assembling of complex molecular systems is dictated by the chemical and structural information stored in their components. This information can be expressed through an adaptive process that determines the structurally fittest assembly under given environmental conditions. We have set up complex disulfide-based dynamic covalent libraries of chemically and topologically diverse pseudopeptidic compounds. We show how the reaction evolves from very complex mixtures at short reaction times to the almost exclusive formation of a major compound, through the establishment of intramolecular noncovalent interactions. Our experiments demonstrate that the systems evolve through error-check and error-correction processes. The nature of these interactions, the importance of the folding and the effects of the environment are also discussed. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Firewall systems: the next generation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McGhie, Lynda L.

1996-01-01

To be competitive in today's globally connected marketplace, a company must ensure that their internal network security methodologies and supporting policies are current and reflect an overall understanding of today's technology and its resultant threats. Further, an integrated approach to information security should ensure that new ways of sharing information and doing business are accommodated; such as electronic commerce, high speed public broadband network services, and the federally sponsored National Information Infrastructure. There are many challenges, and success is determined by the establishment of a solid and firm baseline security architecture that accommodate today's external connectivity requirements, provides transitional solutions that integrate with evolving and dynamic technologies, and ultimately acknowledges both the strategic and tactical goals of an evolving network security architecture and firewall system. This paper explores the evolution of external network connectivity requirements, the associated challenges and the subsequent development and evolution of firewall security systems. It makes the assumption that a firewall is a set of integrated and interoperable components, coming together to form a `SYSTEM' and must be designed, implement and managed as such. A progressive firewall model will be utilized to illustrates the evolution of firewall systems from earlier models utilizing separate physical networks, to today's multi-component firewall systems enabling secure heterogeneous and multi-protocol interfaces.

Multipoint entanglement in disordered systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Magán, Javier M.; Paganelli, Simone; Oganesyan, Vadim

2017-02-01

We develop an approach to characterize excited states of disordered many-body systems using spatially resolved structures of entanglement. We show that the behavior of the mutual information (MI) between two parties of a many-body system can signal a qualitative difference between thermal and localized phases - MI is finite in insulators while it approaches zero in the thermodynamic limit in the ergodic phase. Related quantities, such as the recently introduced Codification Volume (CV), are shown to be suitable to quantify the correlation length of the system. These ideas are illustrated using prototypical non-interacting wavefunctions of localized and extended particles and then applied to characterize states of strongly excited interacting spin chains. We especially focus on evolution of spatial structure of quantum information between high temperature diffusive and many-body localized (MBL) phases believed to exist in these models. We study MI as a function of disorder strength both averaged over the eigenstates and in time-evolved product states drawn from continuously deformed family of initial states realizable experimentally. As expected, spectral and time-evolved averages coincide inside the ergodic phase and differ significantly outside. We also highlight dispersion among the initial states within the localized phase - some of these show considerable generation and delocalization of quantum information.

Towards Understanding and Managing Sustainable Complex, Dynamic Environmental/Economic/Social Systems - The Evolving Role of the Natural Sciences

EPA Science Inventory

Historically the natural sciences have played a major role in informing environmental management decisions. However, review of landmark cases like Love Canal, NY and Times Beach, MO have shown that the value of natural science information in decision making can be overwhelmed by ...

What Does God Know? Supernatural Agents' Access to Socially Strategic and Non-Strategic Information

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Purzycki, Benjamin G.; Finkel, Daniel N.; Shaver, John; Wales, Nathan; Cohen, Adam B.; Sosis, Richard

2012-01-01

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about…

Actors, Observers, and the Attribution of Intent in Conversation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ehrenhaus, Peter C.

A study examined the manner in which conversants and observers of conversants attribute intent to messages in ongoing information-seeking conversations. College students were used to evolve and test three scenarios, in which evasion was more or less likely, and a system of classifying intention in information seeking conversations. Fifty-four…

Exploring Healthcare Consumer Acceptance of Personal Health Information Management Technology through Personal Health Record Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Huijuan

2013-01-01

Healthcare technologies are evolving from a practitioner-centric model to a patient-centric model due to the increasing need for technology that directly serves healthcare consumers, including healthy people and patients. Personal health information management (PHIM) technology is one of the technologies designed to enhance an individual's ability…

Communication and Information Systems Infrastructure Skills.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maughan, George R.

2001-01-01

Asserts that users and managers of information technology (IT) in higher education institutions need evolving skills as well as an awareness of how changing technology makes them dependent on each other in new ways. Describes the roles and skills of the core IT workforce, department managers, and universal users, and addresses training needs. (EV)

Can ICT Reform Public Agencies?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jansen, Arild; Løvdal, Einar

This study examines the reorganisation of the administration of admission to higher education in Norway, which has also included the development of a nationwide, ICT-based case handling system. This reform process was initiated out of the need to provide politicians with information for control and regulatory purposes, and the reform resulted in a centralised management information system. This system, however, has evolved into a coordinated but also partly locally delegated decision-making instrument which processes most of the applications for admission to higher education in Norway.

Doing One Thing Well: Leveraging Microservices for NASA Earth Science Discovery and Access Across Heterogenous Data Sources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baynes, K.; Gilman, J.; Pilone, D.; Mitchell, A. E.

2015-12-01

The NASA EOSDIS (Earth Observing System Data and Information System) Common Metadata Repository (CMR) is a continuously evolving metadata system that merges all existing capabilities and metadata from EOS ClearingHOuse (ECHO) and the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) systems. This flagship catalog has been developed with several key requirements: fast search and ingest performance ability to integrate heterogenous external inputs and outputs high availability and resiliency scalability evolvability and expandability This talk will focus on the advantages and potential challenges of tackling these requirements using a microservices architecture, which decomposes system functionality into smaller, loosely-coupled, individually-scalable elements that communicate via well-defined APIs. In addition, time will be spent examining specific elements of the CMR architecture and identifying opportunities for future integrations.

Foundations for Systemic Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kemp, Jerrold E.; Lee, Sunnie; Pascoe, Daniel; Beabout, Brian; Watson, William; Moore, Stephanie

2006-01-01

It is important for all Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) members to understand the ways society is changing as people evolve deeper into the information age, and to recognize that these changes require a change in paradigm for education and training systems to be most effective in meeting the needs of individuals…

Invite Everyone in the Conversation about Our Common Future

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Taddei, Francois

Major evolutionary transitions have been described by J. Maynard Smith and E. Szathmary. In this nice synthesis of the history of life, the story ends with the invention of human language. In his book Sapiens, Yuval Harari starts exactly there and summarizes the historical transitions from that point on. If one looks at the complex transitions described by evolutionary biologists and historians one can see that some of those that had the most impact were transitions where the acquisition, analysis, evolution, replication, storage, transfer, and integration of information evolved together with new ways for these information to lead to evolving actions. When we see the technological developments of today that impact simultaneously all these dimensions of information, one is tempted to ask if we are not undergoing a historical and even evolutionary transition. Interestingly, we have the ability to become aware of this very transition, a situation that was not present when the first cells evolved for instance. This awareness may be combined with our understanding of complex systems and the previous transitions to help us make individual and collective choices that may impact our common future...

Lack of evolvability in self-sustaining autocatalytic networks constraints metabolism-first scenarios for the origin of life.

PubMed

Vasas, Vera; Szathmáry, Eörs; Santos, Mauro

2010-01-26

A basic property of life is its capacity to experience Darwinian evolution. The replicator concept is at the core of genetics-first theories of the origin of life, which suggest that self-replicating oligonucleotides or their similar ancestors may have been the first "living" systems and may have led to the evolution of an RNA world. But problems with the nonenzymatic synthesis of biopolymers and the origin of template replication have spurred the alternative metabolism-first scenario, where self-reproducing and evolving proto-metabolic networks are assumed to have predated self-replicating genes. Recent theoretical work shows that "compositional genomes" (i.e., the counts of different molecular species in an assembly) are able to propagate compositional information and can provide a setup on which natural selection acts. Accordingly, if we stick to the notion of replicator as an entity that passes on its structure largely intact in successive replications, those macromolecular aggregates could be dubbed "ensemble replicators" (composomes) and quite different from the more familiar genes and memes. In sharp contrast with template-dependent replication dynamics, we demonstrate here that replication of compositional information is so inaccurate that fitter compositional genomes cannot be maintained by selection and, therefore, the system lacks evolvability (i.e., it cannot substantially depart from the asymptotic steady-state solution already built-in in the dynamical equations). We conclude that this fundamental limitation of ensemble replicators cautions against metabolism-first theories of the origin of life, although ancient metabolic systems could have provided a stable habitat within which polymer replicators later evolved.

Empirical User Studies Inform the Design of an E-Notetaking and Information Assimilation System for Students in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reimer, Yolanda Jacobs; Brimhall, Erin; Cao, Chen; O'Reilly, Kevin

2009-01-01

The research presented in this paper reaches towards a better theoretical understanding of how students in higher education currently take notes, how this process is evolving in the digital age to include information assimilation, and the kinds of support students need to be successful with their changing academic tasks. To gain insight into these…

Accessing Earth science data from the EOS data and information system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mcdonald, Kenneth R.; Calvo, Sherri

1993-01-01

An overview of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is presented, concentrating on the users' interactions with the system and highlighting those features that are driven by the unique requirements of the Global Change Research Program and the supported science community. However, a basic premise of the EOSDIS is that the system must evolve to meet changes in user needs and to incorporate advances in data system technology. Therefore, the development process which is being used to accommodate these changes and some of the potential areas of change are also addressed.

Cross-terminology mapping challenges: a demonstration using medication terminological systems.

PubMed

Saitwal, Himali; Qing, David; Jones, Stephen; Bernstam, Elmer V; Chute, Christopher G; Johnson, Todd R

2012-08-01

Standardized terminological systems for biomedical information have provided considerable benefits to biomedical applications and research. However, practical use of this information often requires mapping across terminological systems-a complex and time-consuming process. This paper demonstrates the complexity and challenges of mapping across terminological systems in the context of medication information. It provides a review of medication terminological systems and their linkages, then describes a case study in which we mapped proprietary medication codes from an electronic health record to SNOMED CT and the UMLS Metathesaurus. The goal was to create a polyhierarchical classification system for querying an i2b2 clinical data warehouse. We found that three methods were required to accurately map the majority of actively prescribed medications. Only 62.5% of source medication codes could be mapped automatically. The remaining codes were mapped using a combination of semi-automated string comparison with expert selection, and a completely manual approach. Compound drugs were especially difficult to map: only 7.5% could be mapped using the automatic method. General challenges to mapping across terminological systems include (1) the availability of up-to-date information to assess the suitability of a given terminological system for a particular use case, and to assess the quality and completeness of cross-terminology links; (2) the difficulty of correctly using complex, rapidly evolving, modern terminologies; (3) the time and effort required to complete and evaluate the mapping; (4) the need to address differences in granularity between the source and target terminologies; and (5) the need to continuously update the mapping as terminological systems evolve. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Information of Complex Systems and Applications in Agent Based Modeling.

PubMed

Bao, Lei; Fritchman, Joseph C

2018-04-18

Information about a system's internal interactions is important to modeling the system's dynamics. This study examines the finer categories of the information definition and explores the features of a type of local information that describes the internal interactions of a system. Based on the results, a dual-space agent and information modeling framework (AIM) is developed by explicitly distinguishing an information space from the material space. The two spaces can evolve both independently and interactively. The dual-space framework can provide new analytic methods for agent based models (ABMs). Three examples are presented including money distribution, individual's economic evolution, and artificial stock market. The results are analyzed in the dual-space, which more clearly shows the interactions and evolutions within and between the information and material spaces. The outcomes demonstrate the wide-ranging applicability of using the dual-space AIMs to model and analyze a broad range of interactive and intelligent systems.

Facing the future: Memory as an evolved system for planning future acts

PubMed Central

Klein, Stanley B.; Robertson, Theresa E.; Delton, Andrew W.

2013-01-01

All organisms capable of long-term memory are necessarily oriented toward the future. We propose that one of the most important adaptive functions of long-term episodic memory is to store information about the past in the service of planning for the personal future. Because a system should have especially efficient performance when engaged in a task that makes maximal use of its evolved machinery, we predicted that future-oriented planning would result in especially good memory relative to other memory tasks. We tested recall performance of a word list, using encoding tasks with different temporal perspectives (e.g., past, future) but a similar context. Consistent with our hypothesis, future-oriented encoding produced superior recall. We discuss these findings in light of their implications for the thesis that memory evolved to enable its possessor to anticipate and respond to future contingencies that cannot be known with certainty. PMID:19966234

Personalized medicine. Closing the gap between knowledge and clinical practice.

PubMed

Anaya, Juan-Manuel; Duarte-Rey, Carolina; Sarmiento-Monroy, Juan C; Bardey, David; Castiblanco, John; Rojas-Villarraga, Adriana

2016-08-01

Personalized medicine encompasses a broad and evolving field informed by a patient distinctive information and biomarker profile. Although terminology is evolving and some semantic interpretations exist (e.g., personalized, individualized, precision), in a broad sense personalized medicine can be coined as: "To practice medicine as it once used to be in the past using the current biotechnological tools." A humanized approach to personalized medicine would offer the possibility of exploiting systems biology and its concept of P5 medicine, where predictive factors for developing a disease should be examined within populations in order to establish preventive measures on at-risk individuals, for whom healthcare should be personalized and participatory. Herein, the process of personalized medicine is presented together with the options that can be offered in health care systems with limited resources for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Doctor Is In, but Is Academia? Re-Tooling II Education for a New Era in Healthcare

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Andre; Moy, Lawrence; Kruck, S. E.; Rabang, Joshua

2015-01-01

Healthcare information technology is at a crossroads today. As legacy data systems converge with bleeding edge technologies, the technology environments of today's hospitals and clinics are evolving rapidly, producing new care delivery models. As a result, we need to reassess how information technology education is meeting the needs of healthcare…

Open-Source ERP: Is It Ripe for Use in Teaching Supply Chain Management?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huynh, Minh Q.; Chu, Hung W.

2011-01-01

The field of supply chain management has changed greatly and rapidly. With the advent of enterprise systems, supply chains are now operating with up-to-the-minute information. The value of the information flow is marked by speed, accessibility, accuracy, and most of all relevancy. As it continually evolves, the supply chain management curriculum…

Visual Links in the World-Wide Web: The Uses and Limitations of Image Maps.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cochenour, John J.; And Others

As information delivery systems on the Internet increasingly evolve into World Wide Web browsers, understanding key graphical elements of the browser interface is critical to the design of effective information display and access tools. Image maps are one such element, and this document describes a pilot study that collected, reviewed, and…

Evolvable synthetic neural system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Curtis, Steven A. (Inventor)

2009-01-01

An evolvable synthetic neural system includes an evolvable neural interface operably coupled to at least one neural basis function. Each neural basis function includes an evolvable neural interface operably coupled to a heuristic neural system to perform high-level functions and an autonomic neural system to perform low-level functions. In some embodiments, the evolvable synthetic neural system is operably coupled to one or more evolvable synthetic neural systems in a hierarchy.

Cross-terminology mapping challenges: A demonstration using medication terminological systems

PubMed Central

Saitwal, Himali; Qing, David; Jones, Stephen; Bernstam, Elmer; Chute, Christopher G.; Johnson, Todd R.

2015-01-01

Standardized terminological systems for biomedical information have provided considerable benefits to biomedical applications and research. However, practical use of this information often requires mapping across terminological systems—a complex and time-consuming process. This paper demonstrates the complexity and challenges of mapping across terminological systems in the context of medication information. It provides a review of medication terminological systems and their linkages, then describes a case study in which we mapped proprietary medication codes from an electronic health record to SNOMED-CT and the UMLS Metathesaurus. The goal was to create a polyhierarchical classification system for querying an i2b2 clinical data warehouse. We found that three methods were required to accurately map the majority of actively prescribed medications. Only 62.5% of source medication codes could be mapped automatically. The remaining codes were mapped using a combination of semi-automated string comparison with expert selection, and a completely manual approach. Compound drugs were especially difficult to map: only 7.5% could be mapped using the automatic method. General challenges to mapping across terminological systems include (1) the availability of up-to-date information to assess the suitability of a given terminological system for a particular use case, and to assess the quality and completeness of cross-terminology links; (2) the difficulty of correctly using complex, rapidly evolving, modern terminologies; (3) the time and effort required to complete and evaluate the mapping; (4) the need to address differences in granularity between the source and target terminologies; and (5) the need to continuously update the mapping as terminological systems evolve. PMID:22750536

Case for real-time systems development - Quo vadis?

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Erb, Dona M.

1991-01-01

The paper focuses on the distinctive issues of computer-aided software engineering (CASE) products for the development of real-time systems. CASE technologies and associated standardization efforts are evolving from sets of conflicting interests. The majority of case products are intended for use in the development of management information systems. CASE products to support the development of large, complex real-time systems must provide additional capabilities. Generic concerns include the quality of the implementation of the required method for the phase of the system's development and whether the vendor is stable and committed to evolving the products in parallel with nonproprietary standards. The CASE market is undergoing considerable consolidation. The paper describes the major forces, cooperating entities, and remaining uncertainties that need to be weighed in near-term CASE procurements to limit risk of loss of investment in project time, trianing, and money.

NASA's EOSDIS Cumulus: Ingesting, Archiving, Managing, and Distributing from Commercial Cloud

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baynes, K.; Ramachandran, R.; Pilone, D.; Quinn, P.; Schuler, I.; Gilman, J.; Jazayeri, A.

2017-12-01

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been working towards a vision of a cloud-based, highly-flexible, ingest, archive, management, and distribution system for its ever-growing and evolving data holdings. This system, Cumulus, is emerging from its prototyping stages and is poised to make a huge impact on how NASA manages and disseminates its Earth science data. This talk will outline the motivation for this work, present the achievements and hurdles of the past 18 months and will chart a course for the future expansion of the Cumulus expansion. We will explore on not just the technical, but also the socio-technical challenges that we face in evolving a system of this magnitude into the cloud and how we are rising to meet those challenges through open collaboration and intentional stakeholder engagement.

Meeting the information system demands of the future through outsourcing.

PubMed

Goldman, S J

1994-05-01

As managed care organizations work to meet the rigorous data and information requirements of a rapidly evolving health care system, many are recognizing the need to out-source their computer operations. Developing a cost-effective, efficient approach to outsourcing is a challenge to many organizations. This article offers an in-depth view of outsourcing as it relates to the managed health care industry as well as criteria for selecting an outsourcing consultant or vendor.

Using Financial Data to Support Student Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Data Quality Campaign, 2014

2014-01-01

Better information about how investments in education are influencing outcomes for students, schools, and districts is needed. The growing hunger for using financial data to answer more and evolving questions will require changes in systems, policy, practice, and culture. The problem at hand is that both people and systems have limited capacity to…

78 FR 13086 - Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request; Job Clubs...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-02-26

... ``job clubs'' have evolved into one of several important activities used by the public workforce system... are formally run through the public workforce system--including at Department of Labor funded American... communities; (2) documenting how they differ from and are similar to the job clubs operated by publicly...

Hospital charitable lotteries: taking a gamble on systems thinking.

PubMed

Reynolds, Jennifer

2013-12-01

The presence of lotteries can be witnessed worldwide. Charitable lotteries are often portrayed as 'good works', and recently, hospitals have utilized them as a popular fundraising vehicle to raise necessary funds to help achieve organizational goals and objectives. Research indicates that lotteries contribute to gambling-related harms; however, research into charitable lotteries has been underdeveloped. Both the gambling and the health care industries are complex and evolving, consisting of many interacting stakeholders with often different and competing interests. This article seeks to present systems thinking as a conceptual framework to help fill the gap in understanding the use of gambling within hospitals and its possible benefits and unforeseen negative consequences. Addressing the gap in knowledge is important to help inform decision making aimed at reducing gambling-related harms. This article proposes how the school of systems thinking, specifically framing hospitals as complex adaptive systems and system dynamics modelling, can be utilized to understand the policy implications of the adoption of lotteries as a revenue source for hospitals. Hospitals have a duty to care, inform and protect. Hospital charitable lotteries have become big business; however, its incorporation into critical funding strategies needs to be carefully understood. Systems thinking theory and methodologies provide an integrated approach to examine this dynamic and evolving fundraising initiative. Findings from this article can inform the development of action strategies, including policy development at multiple levels. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Risk-based framework using geographic information systems to identify transportation corridors vulnerable to development.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2008-01-01

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is increasingly involved with the land development process in evolving transportation corridors. This process includes consideration of real estate interests, rezoning and permitting approvals, site pl...

A Reference Architecture for Space Information Management

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mattmann, Chris A.; Crichton, Daniel J.; Hughes, J. Steven; Ramirez, Paul M.; Berrios, Daniel C.

2006-01-01

We describe a reference architecture for space information management systems that elegantly overcomes the rigid design of common information systems in many domains. The reference architecture consists of a set of flexible, reusable, independent models and software components that function in unison, but remain separately managed entities. The main guiding principle of the reference architecture is to separate the various models of information (e.g., data, metadata, etc.) from implemented system code, allowing each to evolve independently. System modularity, systems interoperability, and dynamic evolution of information system components are the primary benefits of the design of the architecture. The architecture requires the use of information models that are substantially more advanced than those used by the vast majority of information systems. These models are more expressive and can be more easily modularized, distributed and maintained than simpler models e.g., configuration files and data dictionaries. Our current work focuses on formalizing the architecture within a CCSDS Green Book and evaluating the architecture within the context of the C3I initiative.

GPS and GIS-Based Data Collection and Image Mapping in the Antarctic Peninsula

USGS Publications Warehouse

Sanchez, Richard D.

1999-01-01

High-resolution satellite images combined with the rapidly evolving global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information system (GIS) technology may offer a quick and effective way to gather information in Antarctica. GPS- and GIS-based data collection systems are used in this project to determine their applicability for gathering ground truthing data in the Antarctic Peninsula. These baseline data will be used in a later study to examine changes in penguin habitats resulting in part from regional climate warming. The research application in this study yields important information on the usefulness and limits of data capture and high-resolution images for mapping in the Antarctic Peninsula.

Information Processing in Living Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tkačik, Gašper; Bialek, William

2016-03-01

Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been possible to measure, directly, the flow of information in biological networks, or more generally where information-theoretic ideas have been used to guide the analysis of experiments. Systems of interest range from single molecules (the sequence diversity in families of proteins) to groups of organisms (the distribution of velocities in flocks of birds), and all scales in between. Many of these analyses are motivated by the idea that biological systems may have evolved to optimize the gathering and representation of information, and we review the experimental evidence for this optimization, again across a wide range of scales.

A Spacebased Ocean Surface Exchange Data Analysis System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tang, Wenqing; Liu, W. Timothy

2000-01-01

Emerging technologies have provided unprecedented opportunities to transform information into knowledge and disseminate them in a much faster, cheaper, and userfriendly mode. We have set up a system to produce and disseminate high level (gridded) ocean surface wind data from the NASA Scatterometer and European Remote Sensing missions. The data system is being expanded to produce real-time gridded ocean surface winds from an improved sensor SeaWinds on the Quikscat Mission. The wind field will be combined with hydrologic parameters from the Tropical Rain Measuring Mission to monitor evolving weather systems and natural hazard in real time. It will form the basis for spacebased Ocean Surface Exchange Data Analysis System (SOSEDAS) which will include the production of ocean surface momentum, heat, and water fluxes needed for interdisciplinary studies of ocean-atmosphere interaction. Various commercial or non-commercial software tools have been compared and selected in terms of their ability in database management, remote data accessing, graphical interface, data quality, storage needs and transfer speed, etc. Issues regarding system security and user authentication, distributed data archiving and accessing, strategy to compress large-volume geophysical and satellite data/image. and increasing transferring speed are being addressed. A simple and easy way to access information and derive knowledge from spacebased data of multiple missions is being provided. The evolving 'knowledge system' will provide relevant infrastructure to address Earth System Science, make inroads in educating an informed populace, and illuminate decision and policy making.

Towards an open grapevine information system

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Viticulture, like other fields of agriculture, is currently facing important challenges that will be addressed only through sustained, dedicated and coordinated research. While the methods used in biology have evolved tremendously in recent years and now involve the routine production of large datas...

Towards integrated crisis support of regional emergency networks.

PubMed

Caro, D H

1999-01-01

Emergency and crisis management pose multidimensional information systems challenges for communities across North America. In the quest to reduce mortality and morbidity risks and to increase the level of crisis preparedness, regional emergency management networks have evolved. Integrated Crisis Support Systems (ICSS) are enabling information technologies that assist emergency managers by enhancing the ability to strategically manage and control these regional emergency networks efficiently and effectively. This article underscores the ICCS development, control and leadership issues and their promising implications for regional emergency management networks.

How NASA is Building a Petabyte Scale Geospatial Archive in the Cloud

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pilone, Dan; Quinn, Patrick; Jazayeri, Alireza; Baynes, Kathleen; Murphy, Kevin J.

2018-01-01

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is working towards a vision of a cloud-based, highly-flexible, ingest, archive, management, and distribution system for its ever-growing and evolving data holdings. This free and open source system, Cumulus, is emerging from its prototyping stages and is poised to make a huge impact on how NASA manages and disseminates its Earth science data. This talk outlines the motivation for this work, present the achievements and hurdles of the past 18 months and charts a course for the future expansion of Cumulus. We explore not just the technical, but also the socio-technical challenges that we face in evolving a system of this magnitude into the cloud. The NASA EOSDIS archive is currently at nearly 30 PBs and will grow to over 300PBs in the coming years. We've presented progress on this effort at AWS re:Invent and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in 2017 and hope to have the opportunity to share with FOSS4G attendees information on the availability of the open sourced software and how NASA intends on making its Earth Observing Geospatial data available for free to the public in the cloud.

Medicaid information technology architecture: an overview.

PubMed

Friedman, Richard H

2006-01-01

The Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) is a roadmap and tool-kit for States to transform their Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) into an enterprise-wide, beneficiary-centric system. MITA will enable State Medicaid agencies to align their information technology (IT) opportunities with their evolving business needs. It also addresses long-standing issues of interoperability, adaptability, and data sharing, including clinical data, across organizational boundaries by creating models based on nationally accepted technical standards. Perhaps most significantly, MITA allows State Medicaid Programs to actively participate in the DHHS Secretary's vision of a transparent health care market that utilizes electronic health records (EHRs), ePrescribing and personal health records (PHRs).

Monitoring evolving urban cluster systems using DMSP/OLS nighttime light data: a case study of the Yangtze River Delta region, China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Zhao; Yang, Shan; Wang, Shuguang; Shen, Yan

2017-10-01

The assessment of the dynamic urban structure has been affected by lack of timely and accurate spatial information for a long period, which has hindered the measurements of structural continuity at the macroscale. Defense meteorological satellite program's operational linescan system (DMSP/OLS) nighttime light (NTL) data provide an ideal source for urban information detection with a long-time span, short-time interval, and wide coverage. In this study, we extracted the physical boundaries of urban clusters from corrected NTL images and quantitatively analyzed the structure of the urban cluster system based on rank-size distribution, spatial metrics, and Mann-Kendall trend test. Two levels of urban cluster systems in the Yangtze River Delta region (YRDR) were examined. We found that (1) in the entire YRDR, the urban cluster system showed a periodic process, with a significant trend of even distribution before 2007 but an unequal growth pattern after 2007, and (2) at the metropolitan level, vast disparities exist in four metropolitan areas for the fluctuations of Pareto's exponent, the speed of cluster expansion, and the dominance of core cluster. The results suggest that the extracted urban cluster information from NTL data effectively reflect the evolving nature of regional urbanization, which in turn can aid in the planning of cities and help achieve more sustainable regional development.

NASA's EOSDIS Cumulus: Ingesting, Archiving, Managing, and Distributing Earth Science Data from the Commercial Cloud

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Baynes, Katie; Ramachandran, Rahul; Pilone, Dan; Quinn, Patrick; Gilman, Jason; Schuler, Ian; Jazayeri, Alireza

2017-01-01

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been working towards a vision of a cloud-based, highly-flexible, ingest, archive, management, and distribution system for its ever-growing and evolving data holdings. This system, Cumulus, is emerging from its prototyping stages and is poised to make a huge impact on how NASA manages and disseminates its Earth science data. This talk will outline the motivation for this work, present the achievements and hurdles of the past 18 months and will chart a course for the future expansion of the Cumulus expansion. We will explore on not just the technical, but also the socio-technical challenges that we face in evolving a system of this magnitude into the cloud and how we are rising to meet those challenges through open collaboration and intentional stakeholder engagement.

A New Look at NASA: Strategic Research In Information Technology

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Alfano, David; Tu, Eugene (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

This viewgraph presentation provides information on research undertaken by NASA to facilitate the development of information technologies. Specific ideas covered here include: 1) Bio/nano technologies: biomolecular and nanoscale systems and tools for assembly and computing; 2) Evolvable hardware: autonomous self-improving, self-repairing hardware and software for survivable space systems in extreme environments; 3) High Confidence Software Technologies: formal methods, high-assurance software design, and program synthesis; 4) Intelligent Controls and Diagnostics: Next generation machine learning, adaptive control, and health management technologies; 5) Revolutionary computing: New computational models to increase capability and robustness to enable future NASA space missions.

How evolution learns to generalise: Using the principles of learning theory to understand the evolution of developmental organisation.

PubMed

Kouvaris, Kostas; Clune, Jeff; Kounios, Loizos; Brede, Markus; Watson, Richard A

2017-04-01

One of the most intriguing questions in evolution is how organisms exhibit suitable phenotypic variation to rapidly adapt in novel selective environments. Such variability is crucial for evolvability, but poorly understood. In particular, how can natural selection favour developmental organisations that facilitate adaptive evolution in previously unseen environments? Such a capacity suggests foresight that is incompatible with the short-sighted concept of natural selection. A potential resolution is provided by the idea that evolution may discover and exploit information not only about the particular phenotypes selected in the past, but their underlying structural regularities: new phenotypes, with the same underlying regularities, but novel particulars, may then be useful in new environments. If true, we still need to understand the conditions in which natural selection will discover such deep regularities rather than exploiting 'quick fixes' (i.e., fixes that provide adaptive phenotypes in the short term, but limit future evolvability). Here we argue that the ability of evolution to discover such regularities is formally analogous to learning principles, familiar in humans and machines, that enable generalisation from past experience. Conversely, natural selection that fails to enhance evolvability is directly analogous to the learning problem of over-fitting and the subsequent failure to generalise. We support the conclusion that evolving systems and learning systems are different instantiations of the same algorithmic principles by showing that existing results from the learning domain can be transferred to the evolution domain. Specifically, we show that conditions that alleviate over-fitting in learning systems successfully predict which biological conditions (e.g., environmental variation, regularity, noise or a pressure for developmental simplicity) enhance evolvability. This equivalence provides access to a well-developed theoretical framework from learning theory that enables a characterisation of the general conditions for the evolution of evolvability.

Physician's emerging roles relating to trends in health information technology.

PubMed

David Johnson, J

2014-08-12

Objective: To determine the new roles that physicians will adopt in the near future to adjust to accelerating trends from managed care to outcome-based practice to health care reform to health information technology to the evolving role of health consumers. Methods: Trends and related developments concerning the changing roles of physicians based on prior literature reviews. Results: Six possible roles, traditional, gatekeeper, coach, navigator, informatician and one voice among many, are discussed in terms of physician's centrality, patient autonomy, decision-making and uncertainty, information seeking, satisfaction and outcomes, particularly those related to compliance. Conclusion: A greater understanding of these emerging roles could lead to more efficacious outcomes in our ever changing, increasingly complex medical system. Patients often have little understanding of emerging trends that lead to the development of specialized roles such as hospitalist and navigators and, relatedly, the evolving roles of physicians.

Linking Research to Practice: FEWS NET and Its Use of Satellite Remote Sensing Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Brown, Molly E.; Brickley, Elizabeth B.

2011-01-01

The purpose of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is to collaborate with international, regional and national partners to provide timely and rigorous early warning and vulnerability information on emerging and evolving food security issues

Hardware Evolution of Analog Speed Controllers for a DC Motor

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gwaltney, David A.; Ferguson, Michael I.

2003-01-01

This viewgraph presentation provides information on the design of analog speed controllers for DC motors on aerospace systems. The presentation includes an overview of controller evolution, evolvable controller configuration, an emphasis on proportion integral (PI) controllers, schematic diagrams, and experimental results.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Tuxen, L.

The Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) is an electronic information system developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) containing information related to health risk assessment. IRIS is the Agency`s primary vehicle for communication of chronic health hazard information that represents Agency consensus following comprehensive review by intra-Agency work groups. The original purpose for developing IRIS was to provide guidance to EPA personnel in making risk management decisions. This original purpose for developing IRIS was to guidance to EPA personnel in making risk management decisions. This role has expanded and evolved with wider access and use of the system. IRISmore » contains chemical-specific information in summary format for approximately 500 chemicals. IRIS is available to the general public on the National Library of Medicine`s Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET) and on diskettes through the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).« less

Visualization of evolving laser-generated structures by frequency domain tomography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, Yenyu; Li, Zhengyan; Wang, Xiaoming; Zgadzaj, Rafal; Downer, Michael

2011-10-01

We introduce frequency domain tomography (FDT) for single-shot visualization of time-evolving refractive index structures (e.g. laser wakefields, nonlinear index structures) moving at light-speed. Previous researchers demonstrated single-shot frequency domain holography (FDH), in which a probe-reference pulse pair co- propagates with the laser-generated structure, to obtain snapshot-like images. However, in FDH, information about the structure's evolution is averaged. To visualize an evolving structure, we use several frequency domain streak cameras (FDSCs), in each of which a probe-reference pulse pair propagates at an angle to the propagation direction of the laser-generated structure. The combination of several FDSCs constitutes the FDT system. We will present experimental results for a 4-probe FDT system that has imaged the whole-beam self-focusing of a pump pulse propagating through glass in a single laser shot. Combining temporal and angle multiplexing methods, we successfully processed data from four probe pulses in one spectrometer in a single-shot. The output of data processing is a multi-frame movie of the self- focusing pulse. Our results promise the possibility of visualizing evolving laser wakefield structures that underlie laser-plasma accelerators used for multi-GeV electron acceleration.

The use and abuse of standard stars

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Garrison, R. F.

The 'mandate' of classification systems is examined with reference to spectral classification. In using a classification system, it is of the greatest importance to be aware of why it was created, how it was constructed, what its useful limits are, how it has evolved, and what credibility it has achieved in practice . . . all of which constitute the mandate of the system. In the particular case of the MK system of spectral classification, types are defined by the standard stars. They can be calibrated, and the calibration may evolve with time, but the types are relatively stable because they are defined by the standards. The autonomy of this powerful system is crucial to its success, but some astronomers do not understand the importance of this distinction. Recent suggestions to change the spectral type of the sun show an ignorance of the way the system works. The confrontation and complementary use of autonomous systems yield information which is not contained in any individual system.

Oak Ridge TNS Program: system description manual

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Reid, R.L.; Becraft, W.R.; Brown, T.G.

1979-05-01

This document provides a systems description of the Reference Design for The Next Step (TNS) evolved at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) during FY 1978. The description is presented on the basis of 24 individual device and facility systems. Additional information on these systems, the Reference Design, and the FY 1978 Oak Ridge TNS activities can be found in the associated technical memoranda, ORNL/TM-6720 and ORNL/TM-6722--ORNL/TM-6733.

A Markovian model market—Akerlof's lemons and the asymmetry of information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tilles, Paulo F. C.; Ferreira, Fernando F.; Francisco, Gerson; Pereira, Carlos de B.; Sarti, Flavia M.

2011-07-01

In this work we study an agent based model to investigate the role of asymmetric information degrees for market evolution. This model is quite simple and may be treated analytically since the consumers evaluate the quality of a certain good taking into account only the quality of the last good purchased plus her perceptive capacity β. As a consequence, the system evolves according to a stationary Markov chain. The value of a good offered by the firms increases along with quality according to an exponent α, which is a measure of the technology. It incorporates all the technological capacity of the production systems such as education, scientific development and techniques that change the productivity rates. The technological level plays an important role to explain how the asymmetry of information may affect the market evolution in this model. We observe that, for high technological levels, the market can detect adverse selection. The model allows us to compute the maximum asymmetric information degree before the market collapses. Below this critical point the market evolves during a limited period of time and then dies out completely. When β is closer to 1 (symmetric information), the market becomes more profitable for high quality goods, although high and low quality markets coexist. The maximum asymmetric information level is a consequence of an ergodicity breakdown in the process of quality evaluation.

Towards Evolving Electronic Circuits for Autonomous Space Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lohn, Jason D.; Haith, Gary L.; Colombano, Silvano P.; Stassinopoulos, Dimitris

2000-01-01

The relatively new field of Evolvable Hardware studies how simulated evolution can reconfigure, adapt, and design hardware structures in an automated manner. Space applications, especially those requiring autonomy, are potential beneficiaries of evolvable hardware. For example, robotic drilling from a mobile platform requires high-bandwidth controller circuits that are difficult to design. In this paper, we present automated design techniques based on evolutionary search that could potentially be used in such applications. First, we present a method of automatically generating analog circuit designs using evolutionary search and a circuit construction language. Our system allows circuit size (number of devices), circuit topology, and device values to be evolved. Using a parallel genetic algorithm, we present experimental results for five design tasks. Second, we investigate the use of coevolution in automated circuit design. We examine fitness evaluation by comparing the effectiveness of four fitness schedules. The results indicate that solution quality is highest with static and co-evolving fitness schedules as compared to the other two dynamic schedules. We discuss these results and offer two possible explanations for the observed behavior: retention of useful information, and alignment of problem difficulty with circuit proficiency.

Plasma Science and Innovation Center (PSI-Center) at Washington, Wisconsin, and Utah State, ARRA Supplement

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sovinec, Carl

The objective of the Plasma Science and Innovation Center (PSI-Center) is to develop and deploy computational models that simulate conditions in smaller, concept-exploration plasma experiments. The PSIC group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by Prof. Carl Sovinec, uses and enhances the Non-Ideal Magnetohydrodynamics with Rotation, Open Discussion (NIMROD) code, to simulate macroscopic plasma dynamics in a number of magnetic confinement configurations. These numerical simulations provide information on how magnetic fields and plasma flows evolve over all three spatial dimensions, which supplements the limited access of diagnostics in plasma experiments. The information gained from simulation helps explain how plasma evolves.more » It is also used to engineer more effective plasma confinement systems, reducing the need for building many experiments to cover the physical parameter space. The ultimate benefit is a more cost-effective approach to the development of fusion energy for peaceful power production. The supplemental funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 were used to purchase computer components that were assembled into a 48-core system with 256 Gb of shared memory. The system was engineered and constructed by the group's system administrator at the time, Anthony Hammond. It was successfully used by then graduate student, Dr. John O'Bryan, for computing magnetic relaxation dynamics that occur during experimental tests of non-inductive startup in the Pegasus Toroidal Experiment (pegasus.ep.wisc.edu). Dr. O'Bryan's simulations provided the first detailed explanation of how the driven helical filament of electrical current evolves into a toroidal tokamak-like plasma configuration.« less

User-Centered Indexing for Adaptive Information Access

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, James R.; Mathe, Nathalie

1996-01-01

We are focusing on information access tasks characterized by large volume of hypermedia connected technical documents, a need for rapid and effective access to familiar information, and long-term interaction with evolving information. The problem for technical users is to build and maintain a personalized task-oriented model of the information to quickly access relevant information. We propose a solution which provides user-centered adaptive information retrieval and navigation. This solution supports users in customizing information access over time. It is complementary to information discovery methods which provide access to new information, since it lets users customize future access to previously found information. It relies on a technique, called Adaptive Relevance Network, which creates and maintains a complex indexing structure to represent personal user's information access maps organized by concepts. This technique is integrated within the Adaptive HyperMan system, which helps NASA Space Shuttle flight controllers organize and access large amount of information. It allows users to select and mark any part of a document as interesting, and to index that part with user-defined concepts. Users can then do subsequent retrieval of marked portions of documents. This functionality allows users to define and access personal collections of information, which are dynamically computed. The system also supports collaborative review by letting users share group access maps. The adaptive relevance network provides long-term adaptation based both on usage and on explicit user input. The indexing structure is dynamic and evolves over time. Leading and generalization support flexible retrieval of information under similar concepts. The network is geared towards more recent information access, and automatically manages its size in order to maintain rapid access when scaling up to large hypermedia space. We present results of simulated learning experiments.

A Disk-Based System for Producing and Distributing Science Products from MODIS

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Masuoka, Edward; Wolfe, Robert; Sinno, Scott; Ye Gang; Teague, Michael

2007-01-01

Since beginning operations in 1999, the MODIS Adaptive Processing System (MODAPS) has evolved to take advantage of trends in information technology, such as the falling cost of computing cycles and disk storage and the availability of high quality open-source software (Linux, Apache and Perl), to achieve substantial gains in processing and distribution capacity and throughput while driving down the cost of system operations.

The evolving role of radiologists within the health care system.

PubMed

Knechtges, Paul Martin; Carlos, Ruth C

2007-09-01

The traditional view of radiologists as physicians who add value to the health care system solely by generating and interpreting diagnostic images is outdated. Radiologists' roles have expanded to encompass economic gatekeeping, political advocacy, public health delivery, patient safety, quality-of-care improvement, and information technology. It is through these roles that radiologists will continue to find new ways to add value to the health care system.

Hospital information management system: an evolutionary knowledge management perspective.

PubMed

Wadhwa, S; Saxena, Avneet; Wadhwa, Bharat

2007-01-01

The evolving paradigm shift resulting from IT, social and technological changes has created a need for developing an innovative knowledge-based healthcare system, which can effectively meet global healthcare system demands and also cater to future trends. The Hospital Information Management System (HIMS) is developed with this sole aim in mind, which helps in processing and management of hospital information not only inside the boundary, but also beyond the hospital boundary, e.g., telemedicine or e-healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to present such kind of functional HIMS, which can efficiently satisfy the current and future system requirements by using Knowledge Management (KM) and data management systems. The HIMS is developed in a KM context, wherein users can share and use the knowledge more effectively. The proposed system is fully compatible with future technical, social, managerial and economical requirements.

The Information Ecology of Personal Health Record Systems: Secure Messaging as Catalyst and Its Evolving Impact on Use and Consequences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nazi, Kim M.

2012-01-01

Personal Health Records (PHRs) and PHR systems have been designed as consumer-oriented tools to empower patients and improve health care. Despite significant consumer interest and anticipated benefits, adoption remains low. Understanding the consumer perspective is necessary, but insufficient by itself. Consumer PHR use also has broad implications…

Multidisciplinary approach to successful implementation of production information system (PRISM)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Shariff, M.R.; Gopalakrishnan, S.G.; Francis, N.

1995-12-31

A company wide corporate and regional production database supporting all production areas was envisaged critical to the current expansion within Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd (PCSB). A multi disciplinary project team was thus formed to analyze the requirements prior to developing, testing, implementing and training users. PCSB has currently evolved into a mature E & P company on par with other E & P companies within the region. This expansion necessitates a common Production Information System for the efficient dissemination of vital Production Information for Production Surveillance, Reservoir Management, Reserve Assessment, Special Studies and Standardized Group-wide Reporting. This paper will discussmore » all the phases involved in the project which includes Systems Requirement Study, Data Migration, System Development, System Implementation and Post-Implementation Plan.« less

Renormalization of concurrence: The application of the quantum renormalization group to quantum-information systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kargarian, M.; Jafari, R.; Langari, A.

2007-12-01

We have combined the idea of renormalization group and quantum-information theory. We have shown how the entanglement or concurrence evolve as the size of the system becomes large, i.e., the finite size scaling is obtained. Moreover, we introduce how the renormalization-group approach can be implemented to obtain the quantum-information properties of a many-body system. We have obtained the concurrence as a measure of entanglement, its derivatives and their scaling behavior versus the size of system for the one-dimensional Ising model in transverse field. We have found that the derivative of concurrence between two blocks each containing half of the system size diverges at the critical point with the exponent, which is directly associated with the divergence of the correlation length.

Specialized Laboratory Information Systems.

PubMed

Dangott, Bryan

2015-06-01

Some laboratories or laboratory sections have unique needs that traditional anatomic and clinical pathology systems may not address. A specialized laboratory information system (LIS), which is designed to perform a limited number of functions, may perform well in areas where a traditional LIS falls short. Opportunities for specialized LISs continue to evolve with the introduction of new testing methodologies. These systems may take many forms, including stand-alone architecture, a module integrated with an existing LIS, a separate vendor-supplied module, and customized software. This article addresses the concepts underlying specialized LISs, their characteristics, and in what settings they are found. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Specialized Laboratory Information Systems.

PubMed

Dangott, Bryan

2016-03-01

Some laboratories or laboratory sections have unique needs that traditional anatomic and clinical pathology systems may not address. A specialized laboratory information system (LIS), which is designed to perform a limited number of functions, may perform well in areas where a traditional LIS falls short. Opportunities for specialized LISs continue to evolve with the introduction of new testing methodologies. These systems may take many forms, including stand-alone architecture, a module integrated with an existing LIS, a separate vendor-supplied module, and customized software. This article addresses the concepts underlying specialized LISs, their characteristics, and in what settings they are found. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Space-Bounded Church-Turing Thesis and Computational Tractability of Closed Systems.

PubMed

Braverman, Mark; Schneider, Jonathan; Rojas, Cristóbal

2015-08-28

We report a new limitation on the ability of physical systems to perform computation-one that is based on generalizing the notion of memory, or storage space, available to the system to perform the computation. Roughly, we define memory as the maximal amount of information that the evolving system can carry from one instant to the next. We show that memory is a limiting factor in computation even in lieu of any time limitations on the evolving system-such as when considering its equilibrium regime. We call this limitation the space-bounded Church-Turing thesis (SBCT). The SBCT is supported by a simulation assertion (SA), which states that predicting the long-term behavior of bounded-memory systems is computationally tractable. In particular, one corollary of SA is an explicit bound on the computational hardness of the long-term behavior of a discrete-time finite-dimensional dynamical system that is affected by noise. We prove such a bound explicitly.

Systems Thinking for the Enterprise: A Thought Piece

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rebovich, George

This paper suggests a way of managing the acquisition of capabilities for large-scale government enterprises that is different from traditional "specify and build" approaches commonly employed by U.S. government agencies in acquiring individual systems or systems of systems (SoS). Enterprise capabilities evolve through the emergence and convergence of information and other technologies and their integration into social, institutional and operational organizations and processes. Enterprise capabilities evolve whether or not the enterprise has processes in place to actively manage them. Thus the critical role of enterprise system engineering (ESE) processes should be to shape, enhance and accelerate the "natural" evolution of enterprise capabilities. ESE processes do not replace or add a layer to traditional system engineering (TSE) processes used in developing individual systems or SoS. ESE processes should complement TSE processes by shaping outcome spaces and stimulating interactions among enterprise participants through marketlike mechanisms to reward those that create innovation which moves and accelerates the evolution of the enterprise.

The israeli virtual national health record: a robust national health information infrastructure based on a firm foundation of trust.

PubMed

Saiag, Esther

2005-01-01

In many developed countries, a coordinated effort is underway to build national and regional Health Information Infrastructures (HII) for the linking of disparate sites of care, so that an access to a comprehensive Health Record will be feasible when critical medical decisions are made [1]. However, widespread adoption of such national projects is hindered by a series of barriers- regulatory, technical, financial and cultural. Above all, a robust national HII requires a firm foundation of trust: patients must be assured that their confidential health information will not be misused and that there are adequate legal remedies in the event of inappropriate behavior on the part of either authorized or unauthorized parties[2].The Israeli evolving National HII is an innovative state of the art implementation of a wide-range clinical inter-organizational data exchange, based on a unique concept of virtually temporary sharing of information. A logically connection of multiple caregivers and medical organizations creates a patient-centric virtual repository, without centralization. All information remains in its original format, location, system and ownership. On demand, relevant information is instantly integrated and delivered to the point of care. This system, successfully covering more than half of Israel's population, is currently evolving from a voluntary private-public partnership (dbMOTION and CLALIT HMO) to a formal national reality. The governmental leadership, now taking over the process, is essential to achieve a full potential of the health information technology. All partners of the Israeli health system are coordinated in concert with each other, driven with a shared vision - realizing that a secured, private, confidential health information exchange is assured.

Is there a single origin of life?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soffen, Gerald A.

The emergence of the first life on the earth is now established as an early event, and closely related to the evolving earth. Laboratory experiments examining possible chemical events have revealed a multitude of plausible pathways. Lack of knowledge of the primitive terrestrial conditions contemporary with the evolving prebolic organic chemistry limits reconstruction techniques. The primitive earth's aqueous history is essential to unraveling this problem. Based on our current knowledge of other planets of the solar system, we do not expect close analogues to the early earth. We still do not know if there was a second origin or if only earth has life. This may depend upon the question of the survival of information bearing chemical systems in a dynamic or chaotic environment and the chemical protection afforded within such a system. Water is the central molecule of controversy: the blessing and the curse of the chemist. New and novel chemical mechanisms and systems abound.

Using Evolved Fuzzy Neural Networks for Injury Detection from Isokinetic Curves

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Couchet, Jorge; Font, José María; Manrique, Daniel

In this paper we propose an evolutionary fuzzy neural networks system for extracting knowledge from a set of time series containing medical information. The series represent isokinetic curves obtained from a group of patients exercising the knee joint on an isokinetic dynamometer. The system has two parts: i) it analyses the time series input in order generate a simplified model of an isokinetic curve; ii) it applies a grammar-guided genetic program to obtain a knowledge base represented by a fuzzy neural network. Once the knowledge base has been generated, the system is able to perform knee injuries detection. The results suggest that evolved fuzzy neural networks perform better than non-evolutionary approaches and have a high accuracy rate during both the training and testing phases. Additionally, they are robust, as the system is able to self-adapt to changes in the problem without human intervention.

Informatics Metrics and Measures for a Smart Public Health Systems Approach: Information Science Perspective

PubMed Central

Shea, Christopher Michael

2017-01-01

Public health informatics is an evolving domain in which practices constantly change to meet the demands of a highly complex public health and healthcare delivery system. Given the emergence of various concepts, such as learning health systems, smart health systems, and adaptive complex health systems, health informatics professionals would benefit from a common set of measures and capabilities to inform our modeling, measuring, and managing of health system “smartness.” Here, we introduce the concepts of organizational complexity, problem/issue complexity, and situational awareness as three codependent drivers of smart public health systems characteristics. We also propose seven smart public health systems measures and capabilities that are important in a public health informatics professional's toolkit. PMID:28167999

Informatics Metrics and Measures for a Smart Public Health Systems Approach: Information Science Perspective.

PubMed

Carney, Timothy Jay; Shea, Christopher Michael

2017-01-01

Public health informatics is an evolving domain in which practices constantly change to meet the demands of a highly complex public health and healthcare delivery system. Given the emergence of various concepts, such as learning health systems, smart health systems, and adaptive complex health systems, health informatics professionals would benefit from a common set of measures and capabilities to inform our modeling, measuring, and managing of health system "smartness." Here, we introduce the concepts of organizational complexity, problem/issue complexity, and situational awareness as three codependent drivers of smart public health systems characteristics. We also propose seven smart public health systems measures and capabilities that are important in a public health informatics professional's toolkit.

Systematic inquiry for design of health care information systems: an example of elicitation of the patient stakeholder perspective

PubMed Central

Eschler, Jordan; O’Leary, Katie; Kendall, Logan; Ralston, James D.; Pratt, Wanda

2017-01-01

The electronic health record (EHR) has evolved as a tool primarily dictated by the needs of health care clinicians and organizations, providing important functions supporting day to day work in health care. However, the EHR and supporting information systems contain the potential to incorporate patient workflows and tasks as well. Integrating patient needs into existing EHR and health management systems will require understanding of patients as direct stakeholders, necessitating observation and exploration of in situ EHR use by patients to envision new opportunities for future systems. In this paper, we describe the application of a theoretical framework (Vicente, 1999) to organize qualitative data during a multi-stage research study into patient engagement with EHRs. By using this method of systematic inquiry, we have more effectively elicited patient stakeholder needs and goals to inform the design of future health care information systems. PMID:29056874

Cyber-Informed Engineering

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Anderson, Robert S.; Benjamin, Jacob; Wright, Virginia L.

A continuing challenge for engineers who utilize digital systems is to understand the impact of cyber-attacks across the entire product and program lifecycle. This is a challenge due to the evolving nature of cyber threats that may impact the design, development, deployment, and operational phases of all systems. Cyber Informed Engineering is the process by which engineers are made aware of both how to use their engineering knowledge to positively impact the cyber security in the processes by which they architect and design components and the services and security of the components themselves.

Using grey literature to prepare pharmacy students for an evolving healthcare delivery system.

PubMed

Happe, Laura E; Walker, Desiree'

2013-05-13

To assess the impact of using "grey literature" (information internally produced in print or electronic format by agencies such as hospitals, government, businesses, etc) rather than a textbook in a course on healthcare delivery systems on students' perception of the relevance of healthcare delivery system topics and their ability to identify credible sources of this information. A reading from the grey literature was identified and assigned to the students for each topic in the course. Pre- and post-course survey instruments were used for the assessment. Students reported healthcare delivery systems topics to be moderately relevant to the profession of pharmacy on both the pre- and post-course survey instruments. Students' knowledge of current and credible sources of information on healthcare delivery system topics significantly improved based on self-reports and scores on objective assessments (p<0.05). Assignment of grey literature in a course on healthcare delivery systems can be used to ensure that information in the pharmacy school curriculum is the most current and credible information available.

Child Protection Services and Parents with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LaLiberte, Traci; Piescher, Kristine; Mickelson, Nicole; Lee, Mi Hwa

2017-01-01

Background: Information about parents with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in the child protection system (CPS) continues to evolve. This study examined characteristics, experiences and representation of parents with IDD across three CPS decision points, as compared to parents with other disabilities and parents without…

Basaltic Volcanism and Ancient Planetary Crusts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shervais, John W.

1993-01-01

The purpose of this project is to decipher the origin of rocks which form the ancient lunar crust. Our goal is to better understand how the moon evolved chemically and, more generally, the processes involved in the chemical fractionation of terrestrial planetoids. This research has implications for other planetary bodies besides the Moon, especially smaller planetoids which evolved early in the history of the solar system and are now thermally stable. The three main areas focused on in our work (lunar mare basalts, KREEP basalts, and plutonic rocks of the lunar highlands) provide complementary information on the lunar interior and the processes that formed it.

Evolution of an academic-public library partnership.

PubMed

Engeszer, Robert J; Olmstadt, William; Daley, Jan; Norfolk, Monique; Krekeler, Kara; Rogers, Monica; Colditz, Graham; Anwuri, Victoria V; Morris, Scott; Voorhees, Mychal; McDonald, Brenda; Bernstein, Jackie; Schoening, Paul; Williams, Lee

2016-01-01

A partnership to improve access to health information via an urban public library system was established in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2011. A multiyear project was outlined that included an information needs assessment, a training class for public library staff, information kiosks at library branches for delivering printed consumer health materials, and a series of health-related programming. The partnership evolved to include social service and community organizations to carry out project goals and establish a sustainable program that met the health and wellness interests of the community.

Directory of Industry and University Collaborations with a Focus on Software Engineering Education and Training, Version 6

DTIC Science & Technology

1997-11-01

of Computer Science and Information Systems. Membership American University is an independent, coeducational university with more than 11,000...The entire community profits as AIM members achieve common objectives. Corporate contribution is evolving into a benefit -based membership, providing...direct value or service to CMU/SEI-97-SR-018 the member, while strengthening the Nebraska information technology environment. Specific benefits to

Space-Bounded Church-Turing Thesis and Computational Tractability of Closed Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Braverman, Mark; Schneider, Jonathan; Rojas, Cristóbal

2015-08-01

We report a new limitation on the ability of physical systems to perform computation—one that is based on generalizing the notion of memory, or storage space, available to the system to perform the computation. Roughly, we define memory as the maximal amount of information that the evolving system can carry from one instant to the next. We show that memory is a limiting factor in computation even in lieu of any time limitations on the evolving system—such as when considering its equilibrium regime. We call this limitation the space-bounded Church-Turing thesis (SBCT). The SBCT is supported by a simulation assertion (SA), which states that predicting the long-term behavior of bounded-memory systems is computationally tractable. In particular, one corollary of SA is an explicit bound on the computational hardness of the long-term behavior of a discrete-time finite-dimensional dynamical system that is affected by noise. We prove such a bound explicitly.

The South Dakota cooperative land use effort: A state level remote sensing demonstration project

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tessar, P. A.; Hood, D. R.; Todd, W. J.

1975-01-01

Remote sensing technology can satisfy or make significant contributions toward satisfying many of the information needs of governmental natural resource planners and policy makers. Recognizing this potential, the South Dakota State Planning Bureau and the EROS Data Center together formulated the framework for an ongoing Land Use and Natural Resource Inventory and Information System Program. Statewide land use/land cover information is generated from LANDSAT digital data and high altitude photography. Many applications of the system are anticipated as it evolves and data are added from more conventional sources. The conceptualization, design, and implementation of the program are discussed.

Privacy as an enabler, not an impediment: building trust into health information exchange.

PubMed

McGraw, Deven; Dempsey, James X; Harris, Leslie; Goldman, Janlori

2009-01-01

Building privacy and security protections into health information technology systems will bolster trust in such systems and promote their adoption. The privacy issue, too long seen as a barrier to electronic health information exchange, can be resolved through a comprehensive framework that implements core privacy principles, adopts trusted network design characteristics, and establishes oversight and accountability mechanisms. The public policy challenges of implementing this framework in a complex and evolving environment will require improvements to existing law, new rules for entities outside the traditional health care sector, a more nuanced approach to the role of consent, and stronger enforcement mechanisms.

IAIMS and JCAHO: implications for hospital librarians. Integrated Academic Information Management Systems. Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

PubMed Central

Doyle, J D

1999-01-01

The roles of hospital librarians have evolved from keeping print materials to serving as a focal point for information services and structures within the hospital. Concepts that emerged from the Integrated Academic Information Management Systems (IAIMS) as described in the Matheson Report and the 1994 Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) standards have combined to propel hospital libraries into many new roles and functions. This paper will review the relationship of the two frameworks, provide a view of their commonalities, and establish the advantages of both for hospital librarianship as a profession. PMID:10550022

Big Data, Big Challenges: Implications for Chief Nurse Executives.

PubMed

Clancy, Thomas R; Reed, Laura

2016-03-01

As systems evolve over time, their natural tendency is to become increasingly more complex. Studies in the field of complex systems have generated new perspectives on the application of management strategies in health systems. Much of this research appears as a natural extension of the cross-disciplinary field of systems theory. In this edition, I begin a series of articles on the growing challenge faced by nurse administrators of finding value in the vast amounts of information collected by health systems today.

Emerging computer technologies and the news media of the future

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Vrabel, Debra A.

1993-01-01

The media environment of the future may be dramatically different from what exists today. As new computing and communications technologies evolve and synthesize to form a global, integrated communications system of networks, public domain hardware and software, and consumer products, it will be possible for citizens to fulfill most information needs at any time and from any place, to obtain desired information easily and quickly, to obtain information in a variety of forms, and to experience and interact with information in a variety of ways. This system will transform almost every institution, every profession, and every aspect of human life--including the creation, packaging, and distribution of news and information by media organizations. This paper presents one vision of a 21st century global information system and how it might be used by citizens. It surveys some of the technologies now on the market that are paving the way for new media environment.

The nature of the semantic/episodic memory distinction: A missing piece of the "working through" process.

PubMed

Klein, Stanley B; Markowitsch, Hans J

2015-01-01

The relations between the semantic and episodic-autobiographical memory systems are more complex than described in the target article. We argue that understanding the noetic/autonoetic distinction provides critical insights into the foundation of the delineation between the two memory systems. Clarity with respect to the criteria for classification of these two systems, and the evolving conceptualization of episodic memory, can further neuroscientifically informed therapeutic approaches.

Research Notes - An Introduction to Openness and Evolvability Assessment

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-08-01

importance of different business and technical characteristics that combine to achieve an open solution. The complexity of most large-scale systems of...process characteristic)  Granularity of the architecture (size of functional blocks)  Modularity (cohesion and coupling)  Support for multiple...Description)  OV-3 (Operational Information Exchange Matrix)  SV-1 (Systems Interface Description)  TV-1 ( Technical Standards Profile). Note that there

Emerging and Evolving Occupations in Texas. A Descriptive Analysis of Thirteen Targeted Industries in Texas with Listings of Emerging and Significantly Evolving Occupations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramsey, Terry; And Others

This report presents a process for identifying emerging and significantly evolving occupations within key Texas industries. It explains findings of a research project that provided a current information resource to help job seekers make informed career and training choices. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 examines the projected mismatch…

Quantitative geomorphology with geographical information systems (GIS) for evolving societies and science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gomez, C.; Oguchi, T.; Evans, I. S.

2016-05-01

Based on the two sessions on spatial analysis, GIS and geostatistics convened by T. Oguchi, I. Evans and C. Gomez at the 2013 International Association of Geomorphology in Paris, the conveners have edited two special issues on the topic: volume 242 and the present one.

Data Governance and Data Quality: Is It on Your Agenda?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Anne; McConkey, Kevin

2012-01-01

Data governance is a relatively new and evolving discipline. It encompasses the people who are responsible for data quality (the stewards); the policies and processes associated with collecting, managing, storing and reporting data; and the information technology systems and support that provide efficient infrastructure. Higher education…

A New Funding Model for Extension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Paul W.; Otto, Daniel M.; Ouart, Michael D.

2006-01-01

The traditional funding model of the Cooperative Extension System has been stretched to its limits by increasing demand for information and programs without concurrent increases in funding by the public sector. As the social, economic, and political environments have evolved and become more complex, extension is often asked to apply the expertise…

Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection. PISA. Revised

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2015

2015-01-01

Are there computers in the classroom? Does it matter? "Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection" examines how students' access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT) devices has evolved in recent years, and explores how education systems and schools are integrating ICT into students' learning…

The Social Shaping of Videotex: How Information Services for the Public Have Evolved.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Case, Donald O.

1994-01-01

Considers the origins and historical development of videotex over three decades, comparing various nationally sponsored and private systems in Europe and North America. Discusses problems, including the determination of transmission channels, display devices, standards, marketing strategies, and social, political, and economic elements in the…

Low field magnetic resonance imaging

DOEpatents

Pines, Alexander; Sakellariou, Dimitrios; Meriles, Carlos A.; Trabesinger, Andreas H.

2010-07-13

A method and system of magnetic resonance imaging does not need a large homogenous field to truncate a gradient field. Spatial information is encoded into the spin magnetization by allowing the magnetization to evolve in a non-truncated gradient field and inducing a set of 180 degree rotations prior to signal acquisition.

A Quantitative Approach to Assessing System Evolvability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Christian, John A., III

2004-01-01

When selecting a system from multiple candidates, the customer seeks the one that best meets his or her needs. Recently the desire for evolvable systems has become more important and engineers are striving to develop systems that accommodate this need. In response to this search for evolvability, we present a historical perspective on evolvability, propose a refined definition of evolvability, and develop a quantitative method for measuring this property. We address this quantitative methodology from both a theoretical and practical perspective. This quantitative model is then applied to the problem of evolving a lunar mission to a Mars mission as a case study.

Information technology: building nursing intellectual capital for the information age.

PubMed

Simpson, Roy L

2007-01-01

Healthcare is evolving from a task-based industry to a knowledge-based one. To gain and retain value as intellectual capital, nursing likewise must evolve from a vocation of task performers to a profession of knowledge-workers. Information technology can transform nursing tasks into nursing knowledge.

Evolution of Information Management at the GSFC Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC): 2006-2007

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kempler, Steven; Lynnes, Christopher; Vollmer, Bruce; Alcott, Gary; Berrick, Stephen

2009-01-01

Increasingly sophisticated National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth science missions have driven their associated data and data management systems from providing simple point-to-point archiving and retrieval to performing user-responsive distributed multisensor information extraction. To fully maximize the use of remote-sensor-generated Earth science data, NASA recognized the need for data systems that provide data access and manipulation capabilities responsive to research brought forth by advancing scientific analysis and the need to maximize the use and usability of the data. The decision by NASA to purposely evolve the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) and other information management facilities was timely and appropriate. The GES DISC evolution was focused on replacing the EOSDIS Core System (ECS) by reusing the In-house developed disk-based Simple, Scalable, Script-based Science Product Archive (S4PA) data management system and migrating data to the disk archives. Transition was completed in December 2007

Efficient Evaluation Functions for Multi-Rover Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Agogino, Adrian; Tumer, Kagan

2004-01-01

Evolutionary computation can be a powerful tool in cresting a control policy for a single agent receiving local continuous input. This paper extends single-agent evolutionary computation to multi-agent systems, where a collection of agents strives to maximize a global fitness evaluation function that rates the performance of the entire system. This problem is solved in a distributed manner, where each agent evolves its own population of neural networks that are used as the control policies for the agent. Each agent evolves its population using its own agent-specific fitness evaluation function. We propose to create these agent-specific evaluation functions using the theory of collectives to avoid the coordination problem where each agent evolves a population that maximizes its own fitness function, yet the system has a whole achieves low values of the global fitness function. Instead we will ensure that each fitness evaluation function is both "aligned" with the global evaluation function and is "learnable," i.e., the agents can readily see how their behavior affects their evaluation function. We then show how these agent-specific evaluation functions outperform global evaluation methods by up to 600% in a domain where a set of rovers attempt to maximize the amount of information observed while navigating through a simulated environment.

Viral mimicry of cytokines, chemokines and their receptors.

PubMed

Alcami, Antonio

2003-01-01

Viruses have evolved elegant mechanisms to evade detection and destruction by the host immune system. One of the evasion strategies that have been adopted by large DNA viruses is to encode homologues of cytokines, chemokines and their receptors--molecules that have a crucial role in control of the immune response. Viruses have captured host genes or evolved genes to target specific immune pathways, and so viral genomes can be regarded as repositories of important information about immune processes, offering us a viral view of the host immune system. The study of viral immunomodulatory proteins might help us to uncover new human genes that control immunity, and their characterization will increase our understanding of not only viral pathogenesis, but also normal immune mechanisms. Moreover, viral proteins indicate strategies of immune modulation that might have therapeutic potential.

The genotype-phenotype map of an evolving digital organism.

PubMed

Fortuna, Miguel A; Zaman, Luis; Ofria, Charles; Wagner, Andreas

2017-02-01

To understand how evolving systems bring forth novel and useful phenotypes, it is essential to understand the relationship between genotypic and phenotypic change. Artificial evolving systems can help us understand whether the genotype-phenotype maps of natural evolving systems are highly unusual, and it may help create evolvable artificial systems. Here we characterize the genotype-phenotype map of digital organisms in Avida, a platform for digital evolution. We consider digital organisms from a vast space of 10141 genotypes (instruction sequences), which can form 512 different phenotypes. These phenotypes are distinguished by different Boolean logic functions they can compute, as well as by the complexity of these functions. We observe several properties with parallels in natural systems, such as connected genotype networks and asymmetric phenotypic transitions. The likely common cause is robustness to genotypic change. We describe an intriguing tension between phenotypic complexity and evolvability that may have implications for biological evolution. On the one hand, genotypic change is more likely to yield novel phenotypes in more complex organisms. On the other hand, the total number of novel phenotypes reachable through genotypic change is highest for organisms with simple phenotypes. Artificial evolving systems can help us study aspects of biological evolvability that are not accessible in vastly more complex natural systems. They can also help identify properties, such as robustness, that are required for both human-designed artificial systems and synthetic biological systems to be evolvable.

The genotype-phenotype map of an evolving digital organism

PubMed Central

Zaman, Luis; Wagner, Andreas

2017-01-01

To understand how evolving systems bring forth novel and useful phenotypes, it is essential to understand the relationship between genotypic and phenotypic change. Artificial evolving systems can help us understand whether the genotype-phenotype maps of natural evolving systems are highly unusual, and it may help create evolvable artificial systems. Here we characterize the genotype-phenotype map of digital organisms in Avida, a platform for digital evolution. We consider digital organisms from a vast space of 10141 genotypes (instruction sequences), which can form 512 different phenotypes. These phenotypes are distinguished by different Boolean logic functions they can compute, as well as by the complexity of these functions. We observe several properties with parallels in natural systems, such as connected genotype networks and asymmetric phenotypic transitions. The likely common cause is robustness to genotypic change. We describe an intriguing tension between phenotypic complexity and evolvability that may have implications for biological evolution. On the one hand, genotypic change is more likely to yield novel phenotypes in more complex organisms. On the other hand, the total number of novel phenotypes reachable through genotypic change is highest for organisms with simple phenotypes. Artificial evolving systems can help us study aspects of biological evolvability that are not accessible in vastly more complex natural systems. They can also help identify properties, such as robustness, that are required for both human-designed artificial systems and synthetic biological systems to be evolvable. PMID:28241039

Several necessary conditions for the evolution of complex forms of life in an artificial environment.

PubMed

Suzuki, Hideaki; Ono, Naoaki; Yuta, Kikuo

2003-01-01

In order for an artificial life (Alife) system to evolve complex creatures, an artificial environment prepared by a designer has to satisfy several conditions. To clarify this requirement, we first assume that an artificial environment implemented in the computational medium is composed of an information space in which elementary symbols move around and react with each other according to human-prepared elementary rules. As fundamental properties of these factors (space, symbols, transportation, and reaction), we present ten criteria from a comparison with the biochemical reaction space in the real world. Then, in the latter half of the article, we take several computational Alife systems one by one, and assess them in terms of the proposed criteria. The assessment can be used not only for improving previous Alife systems but also for devising new Alife models in which complex forms of artificial creatures can be expected to evolve.

Central American information system for energy planning (in English; Spanish)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Fonseca, M.G.; Lyon, P.C.; Heskett, J.C.

1991-04-01

SICAPE (Sistema de Information Centroamericano para Planificacion Energetica) is an expandable information system designed for energy planning. Its objective is to satisfy ongoing information requirements by means of a menu driver operational environment. SICAPE is as easily used by the novice computer user as those with more experience. Moreover, the system is capable of evolving concurrently with future requirements of the individual country. The expansion is accomplished by menu restructuring as data and user requirements change. The new menu configurations require no programming effort. The use and modification of SICAPE are separate menu-driven processes that allow for rapid data query,more » minimal training, and effortless continued growth. SICAPE's data is organized by country or region. Information is available in the following areas: energy balance, macro economics, electricity generation capacity, and electricity and petroleum product pricing. (JF)« less

Dynamic facial expressions of emotion transmit an evolving hierarchy of signals over time.

PubMed

Jack, Rachael E; Garrod, Oliver G B; Schyns, Philippe G

2014-01-20

Designed by biological and social evolutionary pressures, facial expressions of emotion comprise specific facial movements to support a near-optimal system of signaling and decoding. Although highly dynamical, little is known about the form and function of facial expression temporal dynamics. Do facial expressions transmit diagnostic signals simultaneously to optimize categorization of the six classic emotions, or sequentially to support a more complex communication system of successive categorizations over time? Our data support the latter. Using a combination of perceptual expectation modeling, information theory, and Bayesian classifiers, we show that dynamic facial expressions of emotion transmit an evolving hierarchy of "biologically basic to socially specific" information over time. Early in the signaling dynamics, facial expressions systematically transmit few, biologically rooted face signals supporting the categorization of fewer elementary categories (e.g., approach/avoidance). Later transmissions comprise more complex signals that support categorization of a larger number of socially specific categories (i.e., the six classic emotions). Here, we show that dynamic facial expressions of emotion provide a sophisticated signaling system, questioning the widely accepted notion that emotion communication is comprised of six basic (i.e., psychologically irreducible) categories, and instead suggesting four. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evolving Systems: Adaptive Key Component Control and Inheritance of Passivity and Dissipativity

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Frost, S. A.; Balas, M. J.

2010-01-01

We propose a new framework called Evolving Systems to describe the self-assembly, or autonomous assembly, of actively controlled dynamical subsystems into an Evolved System with a higher purpose. Autonomous assembly of large, complex flexible structures in space is a target application for Evolving Systems. A critical requirement for autonomous assembling structures is that they remain stable during and after assembly. The fundamental topic of inheritance of stability, dissipativity, and passivity in Evolving Systems is the primary focus of this research. In this paper, we develop an adaptive key component controller to restore stability in Nonlinear Evolving Systems that would otherwise fail to inherit the stability traits of their components. We provide sufficient conditions for the use of this novel control method and demonstrate its use on an illustrative example.

Evolving a NASA Digital Object Identifiers System with Community Engagement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wanchoo, L.; James, N.

2016-12-01

In 2010, NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project began investigating the assignment of unique identifiers to its suite of data products being stewarded at data centers distributed across the country. This process led to the use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and the development of an automated system for the registration of these DOIs. Since that time, the ESDIS DOI registration system has evolved to be fully functional with over 3000 publicly accessible DOIs and over 1000 being held in reserve status until the information required for registration is obtained. The goal is to assign DOIs to the entire 7000+ data collections under ESDIS management via its network of discipline-oriented data centers. A key factor in the successful evolution of the DOI registration system has been the incorporation of community input. Over the last 3 years, ESDIS has solicited community input for making the DOI registration process more efficient through three focus groups under NASA's Earth Science Data System Working Group (ESDSWG). These groups were largely composed of DOI submitters and data curators from the 12 data centers serving user communities of various science disciplines. The suggestions from these groups were formulated into recommendations for ESDIS consideration and implementation. This poster will describe the process and the activities of each focus group, their recommendations, and how these recommendations were implemented.

Cervical cancer data and data systems in limited-resource settings: Challenges and opportunities.

PubMed

Drummond, Jennifer L; Were, Martin C; Arrossi, Silvina; Wools-Kaloustian, Kara

2017-07-01

Appropriate collection and use of health information is critical to the planning, scaling up, and improvement of cervical cancer programs. The health information systems implementation landscape is unique to each country; however, systems serving cervical cancer programs in low-resource settings share characteristics that present common challenges. In response, many programs have taken innovative approaches to generating the quality information needed for decision making. Recent advances in health information technology also provide feasible solutions to challenges. This article draws from the experiences of the authors and from current literature to describe outstanding challenges and promising practices in the implementation of cervical cancer data systems, and to make recommendations for next steps. Recommendations include engaging all stakeholders-including providers, program managers, implementing partners, and donors-in promoting national, district, and community information systems; building on existing systems and processes, as well as introducing new technologies; and evolving data collection and data systems as programs advance. © 2017 The Authors. International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

Factors shaping the evolution of electronic documentation systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dede, Christopher J.; Sullivan, Tim R.; Scace, Jacque R.

1990-01-01

The main goal is to prepare the space station technical and managerial structure for likely changes in the creation, capture, transfer, and utilization of knowledge. By anticipating advances, the design of Space Station Project (SSP) information systems can be tailored to facilitate a progression of increasingly sophisticated strategies as the space station evolves. Future generations of advanced information systems will use increases in power to deliver environmentally meaningful, contextually targeted, interconnected data (knowledge). The concept of a Knowledge Base Management System is emerging when the problem is focused on how information systems can perform such a conversion of raw data. Such a system would include traditional management functions for large space databases. Added artificial intelligence features might encompass co-existing knowledge representation schemes; effective control structures for deductive, plausible, and inductive reasoning; means for knowledge acquisition, refinement, and validation; explanation facilities; and dynamic human intervention. The major areas covered include: alternative knowledge representation approaches; advanced user interface capabilities; computer-supported cooperative work; the evolution of information system hardware; standardization, compatibility, and connectivity; and organizational impacts of information intensive environments.

University participation via UNIDATA, part 1

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dutton, J.

1986-01-01

The UNIDATA Project is a cooperative university project, operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) with National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, aimed at providing interactive communication and computations to the university community in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences. The initial focus has been on providing access to data for weather analysis and prediction. However, UNIDATA is in the process of expanding and possibly providing access to the Pilot Climate Data System (PCDS) through the UNIDATA system in an effort to develop prototypes for an Earth science information system. The notion of an Earth science information system evolved from discussions within NASA and several advisory committees in anticipation of receiving data from the many Earth observing instruments on the space station complex (Earth Observing System).

Systemic Operational Design: Epistemological Bumpf or the Way Ahead for Operational Design?

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-05-25

facilitating the design of such architectural frames (meta-concepts), they are doomed to be trapped in a simplistic structuralist approach.”1...systems theory and complexity theory . SOD emerged and evolved in response to inherent challenges in the contemporary Israeli security environment...discussed in subsequent chapters. Theory . Theory is critical to this examination of the CEOD approach and SOD because theory underpins and informs

Toward the Language-Ready Brain: Biological Evolution and Primate Comparisons.

PubMed

Arbib, Michael A

2017-02-01

The approach to language evolution suggested here focuses on three questions: How did the human brain evolve so that humans can develop, use, and acquire languages? How can the evolutionary quest be informed by studying brain, behavior, and social interaction in monkeys, apes, and humans? How can computational modeling advance these studies? I hypothesize that the brain is language ready in that the earliest humans had protolanguages but not languages (i.e., communication systems endowed with rich and open-ended lexicons and grammars supporting a compositional semantics), and that it took cultural evolution to yield societies (a cultural constructed niche) in which language-ready brains could become language-using brains. The mirror system hypothesis is a well-developed example of this approach, but I offer it here not as a closed theory but as an evolving framework for the development and analysis of conflicting subhypotheses in the hope of their eventual integration. I also stress that computational modeling helps us understand the evolving role of mirror neurons, not in and of themselves, but only in their interaction with systems "beyond the mirror." Because a theory of evolution needs a clear characterization of what it is that evolved, I also outline ideas for research in neurolinguistics to complement studies of the evolution of the language-ready brain. A clear challenge is to go beyond models of speech comprehension to include sign language and models of production, and to link language to visuomotor interaction with the physical and social world.

Continuous quality improvement and medical informatics: the convergent synergy.

PubMed

Werth, G R; Connelly, D P

1992-01-01

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) and medical informatics specialists need to converge their efforts to create synergy for improving health care. Health care CQI needs medical informatics' expertise and technology to build the information systems needed to manage health care organizations according to quality improvement principles. Medical informatics needs CQI's philosophy and methods to build health care information systems that can evolve to meet the changing needs of clinicians and other stakeholders. This paper explores the philosophical basis for convergence of CQI and medical informatics efforts, and then examines a clinical computer workstation development project that is applying a combined approach.

Buckets: Smart Objects for Digital Libraries

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael L.

2001-01-01

Current discussion of digital libraries (DLs) is often dominated by the merits of the respective storage, search and retrieval functionality of archives, repositories, search engines, search interfaces and database systems. While these technologies are necessary for information management, the information content is more important than the systems used for its storage and retrieval. Digital information should have the same long-term survivability prospects as traditional hardcopy information and should be protected to the extent possible from evolving search engine technologies and vendor vagaries in database management systems. Information content and information retrieval systems should progress on independent paths and make limited assumptions about the status or capabilities of the other. Digital information can achieve independence from archives and DL systems through the use of buckets. Buckets are an aggregative, intelligent construct for publishing in DLs. Buckets allow the decoupling of information content from information storage and retrieval. Buckets exist within the Smart Objects and Dumb Archives model for DLs in that many of the functionalities and responsibilities traditionally associated with archives are pushed down (making the archives dumber) into the buckets (making them smarter). Some of the responsibilities imbued to buckets are the enforcement of their terms and conditions, and maintenance and display of their contents.

Artificially Expanded Genetic Information Systems for New Aptamer Technologies.

PubMed

Biondi, Elisa; Benner, Steven A

2018-05-09

Directed evolution was first applied to diverse libraries of DNA and RNA molecules a quarter century ago in the hope of gaining technology that would allow the creation of receptors, ligands, and catalysts on demand. Despite isolated successes, the outputs of this technology have been somewhat disappointing, perhaps because the four building blocks of standard DNA and RNA have too little functionality to have versatile binding properties, and offer too little information density to fold unambiguously. This review covers the recent literature that seeks to create an improved platform to support laboratory Darwinism, one based on an artificially expanded genetic information system (AEGIS) that adds independently replicating nucleotide “letters” to the evolving “alphabet”.

The Diverse Structures and Functions of Surfactant Proteins.

PubMed

Schor, Marieke; Reid, Jack L; MacPhee, Cait E; Stanley-Wall, Nicola R

2016-07-01

Surface tension at liquid-air interfaces is a major barrier that needs to be surmounted by a wide range of organisms; surfactant and interfacially active proteins have evolved for this purpose. Although these proteins are essential for a variety of biological processes, our understanding of how they elicit their function has been limited. However, with the recent determination of high-resolution 3D structures of several examples, we have gained insight into the distinct shapes and mechanisms that have evolved to confer interfacial activity. It is now a matter of harnessing this information, and these systems, for biotechnological purposes. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Web-based Tsunami Early Warning System with instant Tsunami Propagation Calculations in the GPU Cloud

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hammitzsch, M.; Spazier, J.; Reißland, S.

2014-12-01

Usually, tsunami early warning and mitigation systems (TWS or TEWS) are based on several software components deployed in a client-server based infrastructure. The vast majority of systems importantly include desktop-based clients with a graphical user interface (GUI) for the operators in early warning centers. However, in times of cloud computing and ubiquitous computing the use of concepts and paradigms, introduced by continuously evolving approaches in information and communications technology (ICT), have to be considered even for early warning systems (EWS). Based on the experiences and the knowledge gained in three research projects - 'German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System' (GITEWS), 'Distant Early Warning System' (DEWS), and 'Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises' (TRIDEC) - new technologies are exploited to implement a cloud-based and web-based prototype to open up new prospects for EWS. This prototype, named 'TRIDEC Cloud', merges several complementary external and in-house cloud-based services into one platform for automated background computation with graphics processing units (GPU), for web-mapping of hazard specific geospatial data, and for serving relevant functionality to handle, share, and communicate threat specific information in a collaborative and distributed environment. The prototype in its current version addresses tsunami early warning and mitigation. The integration of GPU accelerated tsunami simulation computations have been an integral part of this prototype to foster early warning with on-demand tsunami predictions based on actual source parameters. However, the platform is meant for researchers around the world to make use of the cloud-based GPU computation to analyze other types of geohazards and natural hazards and react upon the computed situation picture with a web-based GUI in a web browser at remote sites. The current website is an early alpha version for demonstration purposes to give the concept a whirl and to shape science's future. Further functionality, improvements and possible profound changes have to implemented successively based on the users' evolving needs.

Standards Advisor-Advanced Information Technology for Advanced Information Delivery

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hawker, J. Scott

2003-01-01

Developers of space systems must deal with an increasing amount of information in responding to extensive requirements and standards from numerous sources. Accessing these requirements and standards, understanding them, comparing them, negotiating them and responding to them is often an overwhelming task. There are resources to aid the space systems developer, such as lessons learned and best practices. Again, though, accessing, understanding, and using this information is often more difficult than helpful. This results in space systems that: 1. Do not meet all their requirements. 2. Do not incorporate prior engineering experience. 3. Cost more to develop. 4. Take longer to develop. The NASA Technical Standards Program (NTSP) web site at http://standards.nasa.gov has made significant improvements in making standards, lessons learned, and related material available to space systems developers agency-wide. The Standards Advisor was conceived to take the next steps beyond the current product, continuing to apply evolving information technology that continues to improve information delivery to space systems developers. This report describes the features of the Standards Advisor and suggests a technical approach to its development.

IS Benefit for Individuals: Expanded Conceptualization and Comprehensive Construct Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Jonghak

2010-01-01

Information systems benefits for individuals (ISBI) has been a key construct for the IS success model, which has evolved over the years to strengthen the theoretical foundation for the IS field. However, relatively little research has been done to explore, develop and validate the underlying theoretical dimensions for this crucial construct.…

The School Technology Primer: A Non-Technical Guide to Understanding School Technology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Little Inst. for School Facilities Research, Charlotte, NC.

This booklet is designed to provide educational administrators and planners with an easy guide to understanding the constantly evolving elements of school technology. The booklet presents a comprehensive overview of modern information systems in schools and how they can enhance the students' learning environment. Seven sections address a variety…

LCMS landscape change monitoring system—results from an information needs assessment

Treesearch

Kevin Megown; Brian Schwind; Don Evans; Mark Finco

2015-01-01

Understanding changes in land use and land cover over space and time provides an important means to evaluate complex interactions between human and biophysical systems, to project future conditions, and to design mitigation and adaptive management strategies. Assessing and monitoring landscape change is evolving into a foundational element of climate change adaptation...

An Evolving Research Culture: Analysis of Biomedical Publications from Libya, 2003-13

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahmed, Mohamed O.; Daw, Mohamed A.; van Velkinburgh, Jennifer C.

2017-01-01

Understanding the publication output of a country's biomedical research can provide information for strengthening its policies, economy, and educational systems. Yet, this is the first bibliometric study to date to analyze and provide an in-depth discussion of the biomedical research productivity from Libyan academic institutions. The biomedical…

High Tech Cooking: A Literature Review of Evolving Technologies for Teaching a Functional Skill

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mechling, Linda C.

2008-01-01

This review synthesizes the empirical literature (1986-2006) focusing on teaching cooking skills to persons with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. Twenty-two studies were identified which provided information on four forms of technologies currently being used to teach food preparation: (a) picture-based systems; (b) Palmtop personal…

Directional Communication in Evolved Multiagent Teams

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-10

decentralized localization proposed by Franchi et al. [9]. Overall, the significant advantage of directional communication over non- directional...reception benefits the evolution of communicating autonomous agents because it simplifies the language required to express positional information, which...systems. This paper hypothesizes that such directional reception benefits the evolution of communicating autonomous agents because it simplifies the

Left to Their Own Devices for Education Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kennedy, Mike

2012-01-01

The education system has changed dramatically over the years, but the basic process still involves teachers conveying information and insights to students. The tools and strategies that help teachers accomplish this goal have evolved, and schools are continually in search of the piece of equipment that will enable them to educate more students…

A comparative approach to the principal mechanisms of different memory systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rensing, Ludger; Koch, Michael; Becker, Annette

2009-12-01

The term “memory” applies not only to the preservation of information in neuronal and immune systems but also to phenomena observed for example in plants, single cells, and RNA viruses. We here compare the different forms of information storage with respect to possible common features. The latter may be characterized by (1) selection of pre-existing information, (2) activation of memory systems often including transcriptional, and translational, as well as epigenetic and genetic mechanisms, (3) subsequent consolidation of the activated state in a latent form ( standby mode), and (4) reactivation of the latent state of memory systems when the organism is exposed to the same (or conditioned) signal or to previous selective constraints. These features apparently also exist in the “evolutionary memory,” i.e., in evolving populations which have highly variable mutant spectra.

Evolution of an academic–public library partnership*

PubMed Central

Engeszer, Robert J.; Olmstadt, William; Daley, Jan; Norfolk, Monique; Krekeler, Kara; Rogers, Monica; Colditz, Graham; Anwuri, Victoria V.; Morris, Scott; Voorhees, Mychal; McDonald, Brenda; Bernstein, Jackie; Schoening, Paul; Williams, Lee

2016-01-01

A partnership to improve access to health information via an urban public library system was established in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2011. A multiyear project was outlined that included an information needs assessment, a training class for public library staff, information kiosks at library branches for delivering printed consumer health materials, and a series of health-related programming. The partnership evolved to include social service and community organizations to carry out project goals and establish a sustainable program that met the health and wellness interests of the community. PMID:26807055

Advances in spatial epidemiology and geographic information systems.

PubMed

Kirby, Russell S; Delmelle, Eric; Eberth, Jan M

2017-01-01

The field of spatial epidemiology has evolved rapidly in the past 2 decades. This study serves as a brief introduction to spatial epidemiology and the use of geographic information systems in applied research in epidemiology. We highlight technical developments and highlight opportunities to apply spatial analytic methods in epidemiologic research, focusing on methodologies involving geocoding, distance estimation, residential mobility, record linkage and data integration, spatial and spatio-temporal clustering, small area estimation, and Bayesian applications to disease mapping. The articles included in this issue incorporate many of these methods into their study designs and analytical frameworks. It is our hope that these studies will spur further development and utilization of spatial analysis and geographic information systems in epidemiologic research. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Earth Observatory Satellite system definition study. Report 5: System design and specifications. Volume 2: EOS-A system specification

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1974-01-01

The objectives of the Earth Observatory Satellite (EOS) program are defined. The system specifications for the satellite payload are examined. The broad objectives of the EOS-A program are as follows: (1) to develop space-borne sensors for the measurement of land resources, (2) to evolve spacecraft systems and subsystems which will permit earth observation with greater accuracy, coverage, spatial resolution, and continuity than existing systems, (3) to develop improved information processing, extraction, display, and distribution systems, and (4) to use space transportation systems for resupply and retrieval of the EOS.

Exploring health information technology education: an analysis of the research.

PubMed

Virgona, Thomas

2012-01-01

This article is an analysis of the Health Information Technology Education published research. The purpose of this study was to examine selected literature using variables such as journal frequency, keyword analysis, universities associated with the research and geographic diversity. The analysis presented in this paper has identified intellectually significant studies that have contributed to the development and accumulation of intellectual wealth of Health Information Technology. The keyword analysis suggests that Health Information Technology research has evolved from establishing concepts and domains of health information systems, technology and management to contemporary issues such as education, outsourcing, web services and security. The research findings have implications for educators, researchers, journal.

Modeling epidemics on adaptively evolving networks: A data-mining perspective.

PubMed

Kattis, Assimakis A; Holiday, Alexander; Stoica, Ana-Andreea; Kevrekidis, Ioannis G

2016-01-01

The exploration of epidemic dynamics on dynamically evolving ("adaptive") networks poses nontrivial challenges to the modeler, such as the determination of a small number of informative statistics of the detailed network state (that is, a few "good observables") that usefully summarize the overall (macroscopic, systems-level) behavior. Obtaining reduced, small size accurate models in terms of these few statistical observables--that is, trying to coarse-grain the full network epidemic model to a small but useful macroscopic one--is even more daunting. Here we describe a data-based approach to solving the first challenge: the detection of a few informative collective observables of the detailed epidemic dynamics. This is accomplished through Diffusion Maps (DMAPS), a recently developed data-mining technique. We illustrate the approach through simulations of a simple mathematical model of epidemics on a network: a model known to exhibit complex temporal dynamics. We discuss potential extensions of the approach, as well as possible shortcomings.

Nanocalorimetry-coupled time-of-flight mass spectrometry: identifying evolved species during high-rate thermal measurements.

PubMed

Yi, Feng; DeLisio, Jeffery B; Zachariah, Michael R; LaVan, David A

2015-10-06

We report on measurements integrating a nanocalorimeter sensor into a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) for simultaneous thermal and speciation measurements at high heating rates. The nanocalorimeter sensor was incorporated into the extraction region of the TOFMS system to provide sample heating and thermal information essentially simultaneously with the evolved species identification. This approach can be used to measure chemical reactions and evolved species for a variety of materials. Furthermore, since the calorimetry is conducted within the same proximal volume as ionization and ion extraction, evolved species detected are in a collision-free environment, and thus, the possibility exists to interrogate intermediate and radical species. We present measurements showing the decomposition of ammonium perchlorate, copper oxide nanoparticles, and sodium azotetrazolate. The rapid, controlled, and quantifiable heating rate capabilities of the nanocalorimeter coupled with the 0.1 ms temporal resolution of the TOFMS provides a new measurement capability and insight into high-rate reactions, such as those seen with reactive and energetic materials, and adsorption\\desorption measurements, critical for understanding surface chemistry and accelerating catalyst selection.

IDEF3 formalization report

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Menzel, Christopher; Mayer, Richard J.; Edwards, Douglas D.

1991-01-01

The Process Description Capture Method (IDEF3) is one of several Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) DEFinition methods developed by the Air Force to support systems engineering activities, and in particular, to support information systems development. These methods have evolved as a distillation of 'good practice' experience by information system developers and are designed to raise the performance level of the novice practitioner to one comparable with that of an expert. IDEF3 is meant to serve as a knowledge acquisition and requirements definition tool that structures the user's understanding of how a given process, event, or system works around process descriptions. A special purpose graphical language accompanying the method serves to highlight temporal precedence and causality relationships relative to the process or event being described.

Information system evolution at the French National Network of Seismic Survey (BCSF-RENASS)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Engels, F.; Grunberg, M.

2013-12-01

The aging information system of the French National Network of Seismic Survey (BCSF-RENASS), located in Strasbourg (EOST), needed to be updated to satisfy new practices from Computer science world. The latter means to evolve our system at different levels : development method, datamining solutions, system administration. The new system had to provide more agility for incoming projects. The main difficulty was to maintain old system and the new one in parallel the time to validate new solutions with a restricted team. Solutions adopted here are coming from standards used by the seismological community and inspired by the state of the art of devops community. The new system is easier to maintain and take advantage of large community to find support. This poster introduces the new system and choosen solutions like Puppet, Fabric, MongoDB and FDSN Webservices.

Safeguarding production agriculture and natural ecosystems against biological terrorism. A U.S. Department of Agriculture emergency response framework.

PubMed

Sequeira, R

1999-01-01

Foreign pest introductions and outbreaks represent threats to agricultural productivity and ecosystems, and, thus, to the health and national security of the United States. It is advisable to identify relevant techniques and bring all appropriate strategies to bear on the problem of controlling accidentally and intentionally introduced pest outbreaks. Recent political shifts indicate that the U.S. may be at increased risk for biological terrorism. The existing emergency-response strategies of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) will evolve to expand activities in coordination with other emergency management agencies. APHIS will evolve its information superstructure to include extensive application of simulation models for forecasting, meteorological databases and analysis, systems analysis, geographic information systems, satellite image analysis, remote sensing, and the training of specialized cadres within the emergency-response framework capable of managing the necessary information processing and analysis. Finally, the threat of key pests ranked according to perceived risk will be assessed with mathematical models and "what-if" scenarios analyzed to determine impact and mitigation practices. An infrastructure will be maintained that periodically surveys ports and inland regions for the presence of exotic pest threats and will identify trend abnormalities. This survey and monitoring effort will include cooperation from industry groups, federal and state organizations, and academic institutions.

Integrating cost information with health management support system: an enhanced methodology to assess health care quality drivers.

PubMed

Kohli, R; Tan, J K; Piontek, F A; Ziege, D E; Groot, H

1999-08-01

Changes in health care delivery, reimbursement schemes, and organizational structure have required health organizations to manage the costs of providing patient care while maintaining high levels of clinical and patient satisfaction outcomes. Today, cost information, clinical outcomes, and patient satisfaction results must become more fully integrated if strategic competitiveness and benefits are to be realized in health management decision making, especially in multi-entity organizational settings. Unfortunately, traditional administrative and financial systems are not well equipped to cater to such information needs. This article presents a framework for the acquisition, generation, analysis, and reporting of cost information with clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction in the context of evolving health management and decision-support system technology. More specifically, the article focuses on an enhanced costing methodology for determining and producing improved, integrated cost-outcomes information. Implementation issues and areas for future research in cost-information management and decision-support domains are also discussed.

Information processing and dynamics in minimally cognitive agents.

PubMed

Beer, Randall D; Williams, Paul L

2015-01-01

There has been considerable debate in the literature about the relative merits of information processing versus dynamical approaches to understanding cognitive processes. In this article, we explore the relationship between these two styles of explanation using a model agent evolved to solve a relational categorization task. Specifically, we separately analyze the operation of this agent using the mathematical tools of information theory and dynamical systems theory. Information-theoretic analysis reveals how task-relevant information flows through the system to be combined into a categorization decision. Dynamical analysis reveals the key geometrical and temporal interrelationships underlying the categorization decision. Finally, we propose a framework for directly relating these two different styles of explanation and discuss the possible implications of our analysis for some of the ongoing debates in cognitive science. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Department of Defense Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management. Volume 1-8: Overview. Version 3.0.

DTIC Science & Technology

1996-04-30

CJCS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff CMP Configuration Management Plan COTS Commercial-off-the-Shelf DA Data Administrator DASD (IM) Deputy...Staff ( CJCS ) representing the unified combatant commands. " Technical: The system can evolve (migrate) to be supported by the integrated, standards...s) (PSAs), or CJCS , having functional responsibility for the missions and functions supported by the system, with the participation of affected DoD

IT Acquisition: Expediting the Process to Deliver Business Capabilities to the DoD Enterprise. Revised Edition

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-07-01

effectively manage delivery of information capabilities. Under IT 360, they will need to incorporate constantly evolving, market -driven commercial systems...traditional acquisition system; under IT 360, these processes are largely obsolete and create oversight ambiguities. • Congress requires that funds be...2004). Furthermore, because the product is not available on the commercial market , the development of any complementary updates will also need to be

RICIS research

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mckay, Charles W.; Feagin, Terry; Bishop, Peter C.; Hallum, Cecil R.; Freedman, Glenn B.

1987-01-01

The principle focus of one of the RICIS (Research Institute for Computing and Information Systems) components is computer systems and software engineering in-the-large of the lifecycle of large, complex, distributed systems which: (1) evolve incrementally over a long time; (2) contain non-stop components; and (3) must simultaneously satisfy a prioritized balance of mission and safety critical requirements at run time. This focus is extremely important because of the contribution of the scaling direction problem to the current software crisis. The Computer Systems and Software Engineering (CSSE) component addresses the lifestyle issues of three environments: host, integration, and target.

The implications of e-health system delivery strategies for integrated healthcare: lessons from England.

PubMed

Eason, Ken; Waterson, Patrick

2013-05-01

This paper explores the implications that different technical strategies for sharing patient information have for healthcare workers and, as a consequence, for the extent to which these systems provide support for integrated care. Four technical strategies were identified and the forms of coupling they made with healthcare agencies were classified. A study was conducted in England to examine the human and organizational implications of systems implemented by these four strategies. Results were used from evaluation reports of two systems delivered as part of the NPfIT (National Programme for Information Technology) and from user responses to systems delivered in two local health communities in England. In the latter study 40 clinical respondents reported the use of systems to support integrated care in six healthcare pathways. The implementation of a detailed care record system (DCRS) in the NPfIT was problematic because it could not meet the diverse needs of all healthcare agencies and it required considerable local customization. The programme evolved to allow different systems to be delivered for each local health community. A national Summary Care Record (SCR) was implemented but many concerns were raised about wide access to confidential patient information. The two technical strategies that required looser forms of coupling and were under local control led to wide user adoption. The systems that enabled data to be transferred between local systems were successfully used to support integrated care in specific healthcare pathways. The portal approach gave many users an opportunity to view patient data held on a number of databases and this system evolved over a number of years as a result of requests from the user community. The UK national strategy to deliver single shared database systems requires tight coupling between many users and has led to poor adoption because of the diverse needs of healthcare agencies. Sharing patient information has been more successful when local systems have been developed to serve particular healthcare pathways or when separate databases are viewable through a portal. On the basis of this evidence technical strategies that permit the local design of tight coupling are necessary if information systems are to support integrated care in healthcare pathways. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evolving Technology, Shifting Expectations: Cultivating Pedagogy for a Rapidly Changing GIS Landscape

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ricker, Britta; Thatcher, Jim

2017-01-01

As humans and natural processes continuously reshape the surface of the Earth, there is an unceasing need to document and analyze them through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The public is gaining more access to spatial technologies that were once only available to highly trained professionals. With technological evolution comes a…

An Evolving Learning Management System for New Educational Environments Using 2.0 Tools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conde, Miguel Á.; García-Peñalvo, Francisco J.; Rodríguez-Conde, María J.; Alier, Marc; Casany, María J.; Piguillem, Jordi

2014-01-01

The tools used in learning processes are in a continuous state of flux. One of the most significant changes is the application of Information and Communications technologies (ICTs) to educational contexts. This provides new possible ways to carry out learning activities, new learning services, the possibility to use new kinds of contents and…

The Mentoring Relationship as a Complex Adaptive System: Finding a Model for Our Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Rachel; Brown, Dot

2011-01-01

Mentoring theory and practice has evolved significantly during the past 40 years. Early mentoring models were characterized by the top-down flow of information and benefits to the protege. This framework was reconceptualized as a reciprocal model when scholars realized mentoring was a mutually beneficial process. Recently, in response to rapidly…

Surreptitious, Evolving and Participative Ontology Development: An End-User Oriented Ontology Development Methodology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bachore, Zelalem

2012-01-01

Ontology not only is considered to be the backbone of the semantic web but also plays a significant role in distributed and heterogeneous information systems. However, ontology still faces limited application and adoption to date. One of the major problems is that prevailing engineering-oriented methodologies for building ontologies do not…

Analysis of Information Requirements and Design of the Consolidated AFIT Database and Information System (CADIS) with an AFIT/CI Implementation Design.

DTIC Science & Technology

1982-12-01

management, plus the comments received from the faculty and staff. A major assumption in this thesis is that automated database tech- niques offer the...and major advantage of a DBMS is that of real-time, on- line data accessibility. Routine queries, reports and ad hoc queries caii be performed...used or as applications programs evolve. Such changes can have a major impact on the organization and storage of data and ultimately on the response

Evolving virtual creatures and catapults.

PubMed

Chaumont, Nicolas; Egli, Richard; Adami, Christoph

2007-01-01

We present a system that can evolve the morphology and the controller of virtual walking and block-throwing creatures (catapults) using a genetic algorithm. The system is based on Sims' work, implemented as a flexible platform with an off-the-shelf dynamics engine. Experiments aimed at evolving Sims-type walkers resulted in the emergence of various realistic gaits while using fairly simple objective functions. Due to the flexibility of the system, drastically different morphologies and functions evolved with only minor modifications to the system and objective function. For example, various throwing techniques evolved when selecting for catapults that propel a block as far as possible. Among the strategies and morphologies evolved, we find the drop-kick strategy, as well as the systematic invention of the principle behind the wheel, when allowing mutations to the projectile.

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System - Many Mechanisms for On-Going Evolution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ramapriyan, H. K.

2012-12-01

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System has been serving a broad user community since August 1994. As a long-lived multi-mission system serving multiple scientific disciplines and a diverse user community, EOSDIS has been evolving continuously. It has had and continues to have many forms of community input to help with this evolution. Early in its history, it had inputs from the EOSDIS Advisory Panel, benefited from the reviews by various external committees and evolved into the present distributed architecture with discipline-based Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), Science Investigator-led Processing Systems and a cross-DAAC search and data access capability. EOSDIS evolution has been helped by advances in computer technology, moving from an initially planned supercomputing environment to SGI workstations to Linux Clusters for computation and from near-line archives of robotic silos with tape cassettes to RAID-disk-based on-line archives for storage. The network capacities have increased steadily over the years making delivery of data on media almost obsolete. The advances in information systems technologies have been having an even greater impact on the evolution of EOSDIS. In the early days, the advent of the World Wide Web came as a game-changer in the operation of EOSDIS. The metadata model developed for the EOSDIS Core System for representing metadata from EOS standard data products has had an influence on the Federal Geographic Data Committee's metadata content standard and the ISO metadata standards. The influence works both ways. As ISO 19115 metadata standard has developed in recent years, EOSDIS is reviewing its metadata to ensure compliance with the standard. Improvements have been made in the cross-DAAC search and access of data using the centralized metadata clearing house (EOS Clearing House - ECHO) and the client Reverb. Given the diversity of the Earth science disciplines served by the DAACs, the DAACs have developed a number of software tools tailored to their respective user communities. Web services play an important part in improved access to data products including some basic analysis and visualization capabilities. A coherent view into all capabilities available from EOSDIS is evolving through the "Coherent Web" effort. Data are being made available in near real-time for scientific research as well as time-critical applications. On-going community inputs for infusion for maintaining vitality of EOSDIS come from technology developments by NASA-sponsored community data system programs - Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth System Science (ACCESS), Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) and Applied Information System Technology (AIST), as well as participation in Earth Science Data System Working Groups, the Earth Science Information Partners Federation and other interagency/international activities. An important source of community needs is the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index survey of EOSDIS users. Some of the key areas in which improvements are required and incremental progress is being made are: ease of discovery and access; cross-organizational interoperability; data inter-use; ease of collaboration; ease of citation of datasets; preservation of provenance and context and making them conveniently available to users.

A Practitioner's Perspective on Taxonomy, Ontology and Findability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Berndt, Sarah

2011-01-01

This slide presentation reviews the presenters perspective on developing a taxonomy for JSC to capitalize on the accomplishments of yesterday, while maintaining the flexibility needed for the evolving information of today. A clear vision and scope for the semantic system is integral to its success. The vision for the JSC Taxonomy is to connect information stovepipes to present a unified view for information and knowledge across the Center, across organizations, and across decades. Semantic search at JSC means seamless integration of disparate information sets into a single interface. Ever increasing use, interest, and organizational participation mark successful integration and provide the framework for future application.

Taxonomy, Ontology and Semantics at Johnson Space Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Berndt, Sarah Ann

2011-01-01

At NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), the Chief Knowledge Officer has been developing the JSC Taxonomy to capitalize on the accomplishments of yesterday while maintaining the flexibility needed for the evolving information environment of today. A clear vision and scope for the semantic system is integral to its success. The vision for the JSC Taxonomy is to connect information stovepipes to present a unified view for information and knowledge across the Center, across organizations, and across decades. Semantic search at JSC means seemless integration of disparate information sets into a single interface. Ever increasing use, interest, and organizational participation mark successful integration and provide the framework for future application.

The Next Generation of Interoperability Agents in Healthcare

PubMed Central

Cardoso, Luciana; Marins, Fernando; Portela, Filipe; Santos, Manuel ; Abelha, António; Machado, José

2014-01-01

Interoperability in health information systems is increasingly a requirement rather than an option. Standards and technologies, such as multi-agent systems, have proven to be powerful tools in interoperability issues. In the last few years, the authors have worked on developing the Agency for Integration, Diffusion and Archive of Medical Information (AIDA), which is an intelligent, agent-based platform to ensure interoperability in healthcare units. It is increasingly important to ensure the high availability and reliability of systems. The functions provided by the systems that treat interoperability cannot fail. This paper shows the importance of monitoring and controlling intelligent agents as a tool to anticipate problems in health information systems. The interaction between humans and agents through an interface that allows the user to create new agents easily and to monitor their activities in real time is also an important feature, as health systems evolve by adopting more features and solving new problems. A module was installed in Centro Hospitalar do Porto, increasing the functionality and the overall usability of AIDA. PMID:24840351

The Evolvement of Automobile Steering System Based on TRIZ

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Xinjun; Zhang, Shuang

Products and techniques pass through a process of birth, growth, maturity, death and quit the stage like biological evolution process. The developments of products and techniques conform to some evolvement rules. If people know and hold these rules, they can design new kind of products and forecast the develop trends of the products. Thereby, enterprises can grasp the future technique directions of products, and make product and technique innovation. Below, based on TRIZ theory, the mechanism evolvement, the function evolvement and the appearance evolvement of automobile steering system had been analyzed and put forward some new ideas about future automobile steering system.

Evolved differences in larval social behavior mediated by novel pheromones

PubMed Central

Mast, Joshua D; De Moraes, Consuelo M; Alborn, Hans T; Lavis, Luke D; Stern, David L

2014-01-01

Pheromones, chemical signals that convey social information, mediate many insect social behaviors, including navigation and aggregation. Several studies have suggested that behavior during the immature larval stages of Drosophila development is influenced by pheromones, but none of these compounds or the pheromone-receptor neurons that sense them have been identified. Here we report a larval pheromone-signaling pathway. We found that larvae produce two novel long-chain fatty acids that are attractive to other larvae. We identified a single larval chemosensory neuron that detects these molecules. Two members of the pickpocket family of DEG/ENaC channel subunits (ppk23 and ppk29) are required to respond to these pheromones. This pheromone system is evolving quickly, since the larval exudates of D. simulans, the sister species of D. melanogaster, are not attractive to other larvae. Our results define a new pheromone signaling system in Drosophila that shares characteristics with pheromone systems in a wide diversity of insects. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04205.001 PMID:25497433

Architecture for hospital information integration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chimiak, William J.; Janariz, Daniel L.; Martinez, Ralph

1999-07-01

The ongoing integration of hospital information systems (HIS) continues. Data storage systems, data networks and computers improve, data bases grow and health-care applications increase. Some computer operating systems continue to evolve and some fade. Health care delivery now depends on this computer-assisted environment. The result is the critical harmonization of the various hospital information systems becomes increasingly difficult. The purpose of this paper is to present an architecture for HIS integration that is computer-language-neutral and computer- hardware-neutral for the informatics applications. The proposed architecture builds upon the work done at the University of Arizona on middleware, the work of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, and the American College of Radiology. It is a fresh approach to allowing applications engineers to access medical data easily and thus concentrates on the application techniques in which they are expert without struggling with medical information syntaxes. The HIS can be modeled using a hierarchy of information sub-systems thus facilitating its understanding. The architecture includes the resulting information model along with a strict but intuitive application programming interface, managed by CORBA. The CORBA requirement facilitates interoperability. It should also reduce software and hardware development times.

Implementing Obstetric Early Warning Systems.

PubMed

Friedman, Alexander M; Campbell, Mary L; Kline, Carolyn R; Wiesner, Suzanne; D'Alton, Mary E; Shields, Laurence E

2018-04-01

Severe maternal morbidity and mortality are often preventable and obstetric early warning systems that alert care providers of potential impending critical illness may improve maternal safety. While literature on outcomes and test characteristics of maternal early warning systems is evolving, there is limited guidance on implementation. Given current interest in early warning systems and their potential role in care, the 2017 Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) Annual Meeting dedicated a session to exploring early warning implementation across a wide range of hospital settings. This manuscript reports on key points from this session. While implementation experiences varied based on factors specific to individual sites, common themes relevant to all hospitals presenting were identified. Successful implementation of early warnings systems requires administrative and leadership support, dedication of resources, improved coordination between nurses, providers, and ancillary staff, optimization of information technology, effective education, evaluation of and change in hospital culture and practices, and support in provider decision-making. Evolving data on outcomes on early warning systems suggest that maternal risk may be reduced. To effectively reduce maternal, risk early warning systems that capture deterioration from a broad range of conditions may be required in addition to bundles tailored to specific conditions such as hemorrhage, thromboembolism, and hypertension.

IAIMS Architecture

PubMed Central

Hripcsak, George

1997-01-01

Abstract An information system architecture defines the components of a system and the interfaces among the components. A good architecture is essential for creating an Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) that works as an integrated whole yet is flexible enough to accommodate many users and roles, multiple applications, changing vendors, evolving user needs, and advancing technology. Modularity and layering promote flexibility by reducing the complexity of a system and by restricting the ways in which components may interact. Enterprise-wide mediation promotes integration by providing message routing, support for standards, dictionary-based code translation, a centralized conceptual data schema, business rule implementation, and consistent access to databases. Several IAIMS sites have adopted a client-server architecture, and some have adopted a three-tiered approach, separating user interface functions, application logic, and repositories. PMID:9067884

Method and System for Hydrogen Evolution and Storage

DOEpatents

Thorn, David L.; Tumas, William; Hay, P. Jeffrey; Schwarz, Daniel E.; Cameron, Thomas M.

2008-10-21

A method and system for storing and evolving hydrogen employ chemical compounds that can be hydrogenated to store hydrogen and dehydrogenated to evolve hydrogen. A catalyst lowers the energy required for storing and evolving hydrogen. The method and system can provide hydrogen for devices that consume hydrogen as fuel.

Disgust: Evolved Function and Structure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tybur, Joshua M.; Lieberman, Debra; Kurzban, Robert; DeScioli, Peter

2013-01-01

Interest in and research on disgust has surged over the past few decades. The field, however, still lacks a coherent theoretical framework for understanding the evolved function or functions of disgust. Here we present such a framework, emphasizing 2 levels of analysis: that of evolved function and that of information processing. Although there is…

Intelligent Systems For Aerospace Engineering: An Overview

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

KrishnaKumar, K.

2003-01-01

Intelligent systems are nature-inspired, mathematically sound, computationally intensive problem solving tools and methodologies that have become extremely important for advancing the current trends in information technology. Artificially intelligent systems currently utilize computers to emulate various faculties of human intelligence and biological metaphors. They use a combination of symbolic and sub-symbolic systems capable of evolving human cognitive skills and intelligence, not just systems capable of doing things humans do not do well. Intelligent systems are ideally suited for tasks such as search and optimization, pattern recognition and matching, planning, uncertainty management, control, and adaptation. In this paper, the intelligent system technologies and their application potential are highlighted via several examples.

Intelligent Systems for Aerospace Engineering: An Overview

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Krishnakumar, Kalmanje

2002-01-01

Intelligent systems are nature-inspired, mathematically sound, computationally intensive problem solving tools and methodologies that have become extremely important for advancing the current trends in information technology. Artificially intelligent systems currently utilize computers to emulate various faculties of human intelligence and biological metaphors. They use a combination of symbolic and sub-symbolic systems capable of evolving human cognitive skills and intelligence, not just systems capable of doing things humans do not do well. Intelligent systems are ideally suited for tasks such as search and optimization, pattern recognition and matching, planning, uncertainty management, control, and adaptation. In this paper, the intelligent system technologies and their application potential are highlighted via several examples.

A Holistic Compliance Model for Capture Teams: A Grounded Theory Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Duane C.

2013-01-01

By the time a Department of Defense (DOD) Request for Proposal (RFP) is awarded, its initial targets have moved, in many cases so much as to render any replies by the defense industry to an RFP useless. Requirements tend to evolve during the development of systems specifications. This may be caused in part by new information acquired during the…

Framing Student Evaluations of University Learning and Teaching: Discursive Strategies and Textual Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ryan, Mary

2015-01-01

Evaluation in higher education is an evolving social practice; that is, it involves what people, institutions and broader systems do and say, how they do and say it, what they value, the effects of these practices and values, and how meanings are ascribed. The textual products (verbal, written, visual and gestural) that inform and are produced by,…

Integrated Sensing and Information Processing Theme-Based Redesign of the Undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineering Curriculum at Duke University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ybarra, Gary A.; Collins, Leslie M.; Huettel, Lisa G.; Brown, April S.; Coonley, Kip D.; Massoud, Hisham Z.; Board, John A.; Cummer, Steven A.; Choudhury, Romit Roy; Gustafson, Michael R.; Jokerst, Nan M.; Brooke, Martin A.; Willett, Rebecca M.; Kim, Jungsang; Absher, Martha S.

2011-01-01

The field of electrical and computer engineering has evolved significantly in the past two decades. This evolution has broadened the field of ECE, and subfields have seen deep penetration into very specialized areas. Remarkable devices and systems arising from innovative processes, exotic materials, high speed computer simulations, and complex…

A Case Study of the Development of WebPA: An Online Peer-Moderated Marking Tool

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loddington, Steve; Pond, Keith; Wilkinson, Nicola; Willmot, Peter

2009-01-01

Peer moderation of group work in higher education is rapidly advancing through the use of technological developments and is increasingly being informed by pedagogical research. The highly successful WebPA online assessment system has gone through a number of development phases over its 15-year history and has now evolved into a relatively mature…

Benefits and Risks of Electronic Medical Record (EMR): An Interpretive Analysis of Healthcare Consumers' Perceptions of an Evolving Health Information Systems Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, Chester D.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study is to explore healthcare consumers' perceptions of their Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). Although there have been numerous studies regarding EMRs, there have been minimal, if any, research that explores healthcare consumers' awareness of this technology and the social implications that result. As consumers' health…

Evolving Agents: Communication and Cognition

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-06-01

systems [11] and the first Chomsky ideas concerning mechanisms of language grammar related to deep structure [12] encountered CC of rules. Model-based...Perennial (2000) 3. Jackendoff, R.: Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar , Evolution. Oxford University Press, New York, NY (2002) 4. Pinker, S... University Press, Princeton, NJ (1961) 11. Minsky, M.L.: Semantic Information Processing. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1968) 12. Chomsky , N

Adaptive Memory: Determining the Proximate Mechanisms Responsible for the Memorial Advantages of Survival Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burns, Daniel J.; Burns, Sarah A.; Hwang, Ana J.

2011-01-01

J. S. Nairne, S. R. Thompson, and J. N. S. Pandeirada (2007) suggested that our memory systems may have evolved to help us remember fitness-relevant information and showed that retention of words rated for their relevance to survival is superior to that of words encoded under other deep processing conditions. The authors present 4 experiments that…

We're All in the Same Boat. A Multi-Cultural and Pre-Vocational ESL Curriculum for Intermediate ESL Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Batt, Karen

This curriculum manual combines the teaching of English as a second language (ESL) with multicultural and prevocational education. The materials provide students with information about immigration, how immigrants fit into the economic system and society, and how different cultures and races have evolved. Goals are to give students the opportunity…

Revisiting Robustness and Evolvability: Evolution in Weighted Genotype Spaces

PubMed Central

Partha, Raghavendran; Raman, Karthik

2014-01-01

Robustness and evolvability are highly intertwined properties of biological systems. The relationship between these properties determines how biological systems are able to withstand mutations and show variation in response to them. Computational studies have explored the relationship between these two properties using neutral networks of RNA sequences (genotype) and their secondary structures (phenotype) as a model system. However, these studies have assumed every mutation to a sequence to be equally likely; the differences in the likelihood of the occurrence of various mutations, and the consequence of probabilistic nature of the mutations in such a system have previously been ignored. Associating probabilities to mutations essentially results in the weighting of genotype space. We here perform a comparative analysis of weighted and unweighted neutral networks of RNA sequences, and subsequently explore the relationship between robustness and evolvability. We show that assuming an equal likelihood for all mutations (as in an unweighted network), underestimates robustness and overestimates evolvability of a system. In spite of discarding this assumption, we observe that a negative correlation between sequence (genotype) robustness and sequence evolvability persists, and also that structure (phenotype) robustness promotes structure evolvability, as observed in earlier studies using unweighted networks. We also study the effects of base composition bias on robustness and evolvability. Particularly, we explore the association between robustness and evolvability in a sequence space that is AU-rich – sequences with an AU content of 80% or higher, compared to a normal (unbiased) sequence space. We find that evolvability of both sequences and structures in an AU-rich space is lesser compared to the normal space, and robustness higher. We also observe that AU-rich populations evolving on neutral networks of phenotypes, can access less phenotypic variation compared to normal populations evolving on neutral networks. PMID:25390641

CLAIM (CLinical Accounting InforMation)--an XML-based data exchange standard for connecting electronic medical record systems to patient accounting systems.

PubMed

Guo, Jinqiu; Takada, Akira; Tanaka, Koji; Sato, Junzo; Suzuki, Muneou; Takahashi, Kiwamu; Daimon, Hiroyuki; Suzuki, Toshiaki; Nakashima, Yusei; Araki, Kenji; Yoshihara, Hiroyuki

2005-08-01

With the evolving and diverse electronic medical record (EMR) systems, there appears to be an ever greater need to link EMR systems and patient accounting systems with a standardized data exchange format. To this end, the CLinical Accounting InforMation (CLAIM) data exchange standard was developed. CLAIM is subordinate to the Medical Markup Language (MML) standard, which allows the exchange of medical data among different medical institutions. CLAIM uses eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as a meta-language. The current version, 2.1, inherited the basic structure of MML 2.x and contains two modules including information related to registration, appointment, procedure and charging. CLAIM 2.1 was implemented successfully in Japan in 2001. Consequently, it was confirmed that CLAIM could be used as an effective data exchange format between EMR systems and patient accounting systems.

Extended spider cognition.

PubMed

Japyassú, Hilton F; Laland, Kevin N

2017-05-01

There is a tension between the conception of cognition as a central nervous system (CNS) process and a view of cognition as extending towards the body or the contiguous environment. The centralised conception requires large or complex nervous systems to cope with complex environments. Conversely, the extended conception involves the outsourcing of information processing to the body or environment, thus making fewer demands on the processing power of the CNS. The evolution of extended cognition should be particularly favoured among small, generalist predators such as spiders, and here, we review the literature to evaluate the fit of empirical data with these contrasting models of cognition. Spiders do not seem to be cognitively limited, displaying a large diversity of learning processes, from habituation to contextual learning, including a sense of numerosity. To tease apart the central from the extended cognition, we apply the mutual manipulability criterion, testing the existence of reciprocal causal links between the putative elements of the system. We conclude that the web threads and configurations are integral parts of the cognitive systems. The extension of cognition to the web helps to explain some puzzling features of spider behaviour and seems to promote evolvability within the group, enhancing innovation through cognitive connectivity to variable habitat features. Graded changes in relative brain size could also be explained by outsourcing information processing to environmental features. More generally, niche-constructed structures emerge as prime candidates for extending animal cognition, generating the selective pressures that help to shape the evolving cognitive system.

Secure VM for Monitoring Industrial Process Controllers

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dasgupta, Dipankar; Ali, Mohammad Hassan; Abercrombie, Robert K

2011-01-01

In this paper, we examine the biological immune system as an autonomic system for self-protection, which has evolved over millions of years probably through extensive redesigning, testing, tuning and optimization process. The powerful information processing capabilities of the immune system, such as feature extraction, pattern recognition, learning, memory, and its distributive nature provide rich metaphors for its artificial counterpart. Our study focuses on building an autonomic defense system, using some immunological metaphors for information gathering, analyzing, decision making and launching threat and attack responses. In order to detection Stuxnet like malware, we propose to include a secure VM (or dedicatedmore » host) to the SCADA Network to monitor behavior and all software updates. This on-going research effort is not to mimic the nature but to explore and learn valuable lessons useful for self-adaptive cyber defense systems.« less

Modernizing Systems and Software: How Evolving Trends in Future Trends in Systems and Software Technology Bode Well for Advancing the Precision of Technology

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-04-23

of Code Need for increased functionality will be a forcing function to bring the fields of software and systems engineering... of Software-Intensive Systems is Increasing 3 How Evolving Trends in Systems and Software Technologies Bode Well for Advancing the Precision of ...Engineering in Continued Partnership 4 How Evolving Trends in Systems and Software Technologies Bode Well for Advancing the

The use of information theory in evolutionary biology.

PubMed

Adami, Christoph

2012-05-01

Information is a key concept in evolutionary biology. Information stored in a biological organism's genome is used to generate the organism and to maintain and control it. Information is also that which evolves. When a population adapts to a local environment, information about this environment is fixed in a representative genome. However, when an environment changes, information can be lost. At the same time, information is processed by animal brains to survive in complex environments, and the capacity for information processing also evolves. Here, I review applications of information theory to the evolution of proteins and to the evolution of information processing in simulated agents that adapt to perform a complex task. © 2012 New York Academy of Sciences.

Environmental Sensing of Expert Knowledge in a Computational Evolution System for Complex Problem Solving in Human Genetics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Greene, Casey S.; Hill, Douglas P.; Moore, Jason H.

The relationship between interindividual variation in our genomes and variation in our susceptibility to common diseases is expected to be complex with multiple interacting genetic factors. A central goal of human genetics is to identify which DNA sequence variations predict disease risk in human populations. Our success in this endeavour will depend critically on the development and implementation of computational intelligence methods that are able to embrace, rather than ignore, the complexity of the genotype to phenotype relationship. To this end, we have developed a computational evolution system (CES) to discover genetic models of disease susceptibility involving complex relationships between DNA sequence variations. The CES approach is hierarchically organized and is capable of evolving operators of any arbitrary complexity. The ability to evolve operators distinguishes this approach from artificial evolution approaches using fixed operators such as mutation and recombination. Our previous studies have shown that a CES that can utilize expert knowledge about the problem in evolved operators significantly outperforms a CES unable to use this knowledge. This environmental sensing of external sources of biological or statistical knowledge is important when the search space is both rugged and large as in the genetic analysis of complex diseases. We show here that the CES is also capable of evolving operators which exploit one of several sources of expert knowledge to solve the problem. This is important for both the discovery of highly fit genetic models and because the particular source of expert knowledge used by evolved operators may provide additional information about the problem itself. This study brings us a step closer to a CES that can solve complex problems in human genetics in addition to discovering genetic models of disease.

Levers and linkages: mechanical trade-offs in a power-amplified system.

PubMed

Anderson, Philip S L; Claverie, Thomas; Patek, S N

2014-07-01

Mechanical redundancy within a biomechanical system (e.g., many-to-one mapping) allows morphologically divergent organisms to maintain equivalent mechanical outputs. However, most organisms depend on the integration of more than one biomechanical system. Here, we test whether coupled mechanical systems follow a pattern of amplification (mechanical changes are congruent and evolve toward the same functional extreme) or independence (mechanisms evolve independently). We examined the correlated evolution and evolutionary pathways of the coupled four-bar linkage and lever systems in mantis shrimp (Stomatopoda) ultrafast raptorial appendages. We examined models of character evolution in the framework of two divergent groups of stomatopods-"smashers" (hammer-shaped appendages) and "spearers" (bladed appendages). Smashers tended to evolve toward force amplification, whereas spearers evolved toward displacement amplification. These findings show that coupled biomechanical systems can evolve synergistically, thereby resulting in functional amplification rather than mechanical redundancy. © 2014 The Author(s). Evolution © 2014 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

A study on building data warehouse of hospital information system.

PubMed

Li, Ping; Wu, Tao; Chen, Mu; Zhou, Bin; Xu, Wei-guo

2011-08-01

Existing hospital information systems with simple statistical functions cannot meet current management needs. It is well known that hospital resources are distributed with private property rights among hospitals, such as in the case of the regional coordination of medical services. In this study, to integrate and make full use of medical data effectively, we propose a data warehouse modeling method for the hospital information system. The method can also be employed for a distributed-hospital medical service system. To ensure that hospital information supports the diverse needs of health care, the framework of the hospital information system has three layers: datacenter layer, system-function layer, and user-interface layer. This paper discusses the role of a data warehouse management system in handling hospital information from the establishment of the data theme to the design of a data model to the establishment of a data warehouse. Online analytical processing tools assist user-friendly multidimensional analysis from a number of different angles to extract the required data and information. Use of the data warehouse improves online analytical processing and mitigates deficiencies in the decision support system. The hospital information system based on a data warehouse effectively employs statistical analysis and data mining technology to handle massive quantities of historical data, and summarizes from clinical and hospital information for decision making. This paper proposes the use of a data warehouse for a hospital information system, specifically a data warehouse for the theme of hospital information to determine latitude, modeling and so on. The processing of patient information is given as an example that demonstrates the usefulness of this method in the case of hospital information management. Data warehouse technology is an evolving technology, and more and more decision support information extracted by data mining and with decision-making technology is required for further research.

The motivation to control and the origin of mind: exploring the life-mind joint point in the Tree of Knowledge System.

PubMed

Geary, David C

2005-01-01

The evolved function of brain, cognitive, affective, conscious-psychological, and behavioral systems is to enable animals to attempt to gain control of the social (e.g., mates), biological (e.g., prey), and physical (e.g., nesting spots) resources that have tended to covary with survival and reproductive outcomes during the species' evolutionary history. These resources generate information patterns that range from invariant to variant. Invariant information is consistent across generations and within lifetimes (e.g., the prototypical shape of a human face) and is associated with modular brain and cognitive systems that coalesce around the domains of folk psychology, folk biology, and folk physics. The processing of information in these domains is implicit and results in automatic bottom-up behavioral responses. Variant information varies across generations and within lifetimes (e.g., as in social dynamics) and is associated with plastic brain and cognitive systems and explicit, consciously driven top-down behavioral responses. The fundamentals of this motivation-to-control model are outlined and links are made to Henriques' (2004) Tree of Knowledge System and Behavioral Investment Theory.

Method and system for hydrogen evolution and storage

DOEpatents

Thorn, David L.; Tumas, William; Hay, P. Jeffrey; Schwarz, Daniel E.; Cameron, Thomas M.

2012-12-11

A method and system for storing and evolving hydrogen (H.sub.2) employ chemical compounds that can be hydrogenated to store hydrogen and dehydrogenated to evolve hydrogen. A catalyst lowers the energy required for storing and evolving hydrogen. The method and system can provide hydrogen for devices that consume hydrogen as fuel.

Inter-computer communication architecture for a mixed redundancy distributed system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lala, Jaynarayan H.; Adams, Stuart J.

1987-01-01

The triply redundant intercomputer network for the Advanced Information Processing System (AIPS), an architecture developed to serve as the core avionics system for a broad range of aerospace vehicles, is discussed. The AIPS intercomputer network provides a high-speed, Byzantine-fault-resilient communication service between processing sites, even in the presence of arbitrary failures of simplex and duplex processing sites on the IC network. The IC network contention poll has evolved from the Laning Poll. An analysis of the failure modes and effects and a simulation of the AIPS contention poll, demonstrate the robustness of the system.

Stewardship of NASA's Earth Science Data and Ensuring Long-Term Active Archives

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ramapriyan, H.; Behnke, J.

2016-12-01

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been in operation since 1994. EOSDIS manages data from pre-EOS missions dating back to 1960s, EOS missions that started in 1997, and missions from the post-EOS era. Its data holdings come from many different sources - satellite and airborne instruments, in situ measures, field experiments, science investigations, etc. Since the beginning of the EOS Program, NASA has followed an open data policy, with non-discriminatory access to data with no period of exclusive access. NASA has well-established processes for assigning and/or accepting datasets into one of 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that are parts of EOSDIS. EOSDIS has been evolving through several information technology cycles, adapting to hardware and software changes in the commercial sector. NASA is responsible for maintaining Earth science data as long as users are interested in using them for research and applications, which is well beyond the life of the data gathering missions. For science data to remain useful over long periods of time, steps must be taken to preserve: 1. Data bits with no corruption, 2. Discoverability and access, 3. Readability, 4. Understandability, 5. Usability and 6. Reproducibility of results. NASA's Earth Science data and Information System (ESDIS) Project, along with the 12 EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), has made significant progress in each of these areas over the last decade, and continues to evolve its active archive capabilities. Particular attention is being paid in recent years to ensure that the datasets are "published" in an easily accessible and citable manner through a unified metadata model, a common metadata repository (CMR), a coherent view through the earthdata.gov website, and assignment of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) with well-designed landing/product information pages.

Integrated Care and Connected Health Approaches Leveraging Personalised Health through Big Data Analytics.

PubMed

Maglaveras, Nicos; Kilintzis, Vassilis; Koutkias, Vassilis; Chouvarda, Ioanna

2016-01-01

Integrated care and connected health are two fast evolving concepts that have the potential to leverage personalised health. From the one side, the restructuring of care models and implementation of new systems and integrated care programs providing coaching and advanced intervention possibilities, enable medical decision support and personalized healthcare services. From the other side, the connected health ecosystem builds the means to follow and support citizens via personal health systems in their everyday activities and, thus, give rise to an unprecedented wealth of data. These approaches are leading to the deluge of complex data, as well as in new types of interactions with and among users of the healthcare ecosystem. The main challenges refer to the data layer, the information layer, and the output of information processing and analytics. In all the above mentioned layers, the primary concern is the quality both in data and information, thus, increasing the need for filtering mechanisms. Especially in the data layer, the big biodata management and analytics ecosystem is evolving, telemonitoring is a step forward for data quality leverage, with numerous challenges still left to address, partly due to the large number of micro-nano sensors and technologies available today, as well as the heterogeneity in the users' background and data sources. This leads to new R&D pathways as it concerns biomedical information processing and management, as well as to the design of new intelligent decision support systems (DSS) and interventions for patients. In this paper, we illustrate these issues through exemplar research targeting chronic patients, illustrating the current status and trends in PHS within the integrated care and connected care world.

State Analysis Database Tool

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rasmussen, Robert; Bennett, Matthew

2006-01-01

The State Analysis Database Tool software establishes a productive environment for collaboration among software and system engineers engaged in the development of complex interacting systems. The tool embodies State Analysis, a model-based system engineering methodology founded on a state-based control architecture (see figure). A state represents a momentary condition of an evolving system, and a model may describe how a state evolves and is affected by other states. The State Analysis methodology is a process for capturing system and software requirements in the form of explicit models and states, and defining goal-based operational plans consistent with the models. Requirements, models, and operational concerns have traditionally been documented in a variety of system engineering artifacts that address different aspects of a mission s lifecycle. In State Analysis, requirements, models, and operations information are State Analysis artifacts that are consistent and stored in a State Analysis Database. The tool includes a back-end database, a multi-platform front-end client, and Web-based administrative functions. The tool is structured to prompt an engineer to follow the State Analysis methodology, to encourage state discovery and model description, and to make software requirements and operations plans consistent with model descriptions.

Engineering planetary lasers for interstellar communication

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sherwood, Brent; Mumma, Michael J.; Donaldson, Bruce K.

1992-01-01

Spacefaring skills evolved in the twenty-first century will enable missions of unprecedented complexity. One such elaborate project might be to develop tools for efficient interstellar data transfer. Informational links to other star systems would facilitate eventual human expansion beyond our solar system, as well as intercourse with potential extraterrestrial intelligence. This paper reports the major findings of a 600-page, 3-year, NASA-funded study examining in quantitative detail the requirements, some seemingly feasible methods, and implications of achieving reliable extrasolar communications.

KSC-2009-4627

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , technicians monitor the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft as it is lowered to the orbital insertion system. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-4625

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft is lowered toward the orbital insertion system. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-4626

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , technicians monitor the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft as it is lowered to the orbital insertion system. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-4628

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft is lowered to the orbital insertion system. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-4624

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft is moved toward the orbital insertion system. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

Perspectives on the neuroscience of cognition and consciousness.

PubMed

Werner, Gerhard

2007-01-01

The origin and current use of the concepts of computation, representation and information in Neuroscience are examined and conceptual flaws are identified which vitiate their usefulness for addressing the problem of the neural basis of Cognition and Consciousness. In contrast, a convergence of views is presented to support the characterization of the Nervous System as a complex dynamical system operating in a metastable regime, and capable of evolving to configurations and transitions in phase space with potential relevance for Cognition and Consciousness.

Using Environmental DNA for Invasive Species Surveillance and Monitoring.

PubMed

Mahon, Andrew R; Jerde, Christopher L

2016-01-01

The method employed for environmental DNA (eDNA) surveillance for detection and monitoring of rare species in aquatic systems has evolved dramatically since its first large-scale applications. Both active (targeted) and passive (total diversity) surveillance methods provide helpful information for management groups, but each has a suite of techniques that necessitate proper equipment training and use. The protocols described in this chapter represent some of the latest iterations in eDNA surveillance being applied in aquatic and marine systems.

Automating Network Node Behavior Characterization by Mining Communication Patterns

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Carroll, Thomas E.; Chikkagoudar, Satish; Arthur-Durett, Kristine M.

Enterprise networks of scale are complex, dynamic computing environments that respond to evolv- ing business objectives and requirements. Characteriz- ing system behaviors in these environments is essential for network management and cyber security operations. Characterization of system’s communication is typical and is supported using network flow information (NetFlow). Related work has characterized behavior using theoretical graph metrics; results are often difficult to interpret by enterprise staff. We propose a different approach, where flow information is mapped to sets of tags that contextualize the data in terms of network principals and enterprise concepts. Frequent patterns are then extracted and are expressedmore » as behaviors. Behaviors can be com- pared, identifying systems expressing similar behaviors. We evaluate the approach using flow information collected by a third party.« less

Constructive Method for Detecting the Information Backflow of Non-Markovian Dynamics.

PubMed

Bylicka, Bogna; Johansson, Markus; Acín, Antonio

2017-03-24

We investigate the relation between two approaches to the characterization of quantum Markovianity, divisibility and lack of information backflow. We show that a bijective dynamical map is completely positive divisible if and only if a monotonic nonincrease of distinguishability is observed for two equiprobable states of the evolving system and an ancilla. Moreover, our proof is constructive: given any such map that is not completely positive divisible, we give an explicit construction of two states that, when taken with the same a priori probability, exhibit information backflow. Finally, while an ancilla is necessary for the equivalence to hold in general, we show that it is always possible to witness the non-Markovianity of bijective maps without using any entanglement between the system and ancilla.

AGIS: Evolution of Distributed Computing information system for ATLAS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Anisenkov, A.; Di Girolamo, A.; Alandes, M.; Karavakis, E.

2015-12-01

ATLAS, a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, produces petabytes of data annually through simulation production and tens of petabytes of data per year from the detector itself. The ATLAS computing model embraces the Grid paradigm and a high degree of decentralization of computing resources in order to meet the ATLAS requirements of petabytes scale data operations. It has been evolved after the first period of LHC data taking (Run-1) in order to cope with new challenges of the upcoming Run- 2. In this paper we describe the evolution and recent developments of the ATLAS Grid Information System (AGIS), developed in order to integrate configuration and status information about resources, services and topology of the computing infrastructure used by the ATLAS Distributed Computing applications and services.

Two Paths from the Same Place: Task Driven and Human Centered Evolution of a Group Information Surface

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Russell, Daniel M.; Trimble, Jay; Wales, Roxana; Clancy, Daniel (Technical Monitor)

2003-01-01

This is the tale of two different implementations of a collaborative information tool, that started from the same design source. The Blueboard, developed at IBM Research, is a tool for groups to use in exchanging information in a lightweight, informal collaborative way. It began as a large display surface for walk-by use in a corporate setting and has evolved in response to task demands and user needs. At NASA, the MERBoard is being designed to support surface operations for the upcoming Mars Exploration Rover Missions. The MERBoard is a tool that was inspired by the Blueboard design, extending this design to support the collaboration requirements for viewing, annotating, linking and distributing information for the science and engineering teams that will operate two rovers on the surface of Mars. The ways in which each group transformed the system reflects not only technical requirements, but also the needs of users in each setting and embedding of the system within the larger socio-technical environment. Lessons about how task requirements, information flow requirements and work practice drive the evolution of a system are illustrated.

Managing medical and insurance information through a smart-card-based information system.

PubMed

Lambrinoudakis, C; Gritzalis, S

2000-08-01

The continuously increased mobility of patients and doctors, in conjunction with the existence of medical groups consisting of private doctors, general practitioners, hospitals, medical centers, and insurance companies, pose significant difficulties on the management of patients' medical data. Inevitably this affects the quality of the health care services provided. The evolving smart card technology can be utilized for the implementation of a secure portable electronic medical record, carried by the patient herself/himself. In addition to the medical data, insurance information can be stored in the smart card thus facilitating the creation of an "intelligent system" supporting the efficient management of patient's data. In this paper we present the main architectural and functional characteristics of such a system. We also highlight how the security features offered by smart cards can be exploited in order to ensure confidentiality and integrity of the medical data stored in the patient cards.

Optimizing Search and Ranking in Folksonomy Systems by Exploiting Context Information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abel, Fabian; Henze, Nicola; Krause, Daniel

Tagging systems enable users to annotate resources with freely chosen keywords. The evolving bunch of tag assignments is called folksonomy and there exist already some approaches that exploit folksonomies to improve resource retrieval. In this paper, we analyze and compare graph-based ranking algorithms: FolkRank and SocialPageRank. We enhance these algorithms by exploiting the context of tags, and evaluate the results on the GroupMe! dataset. In GroupMe!, users can organize and maintain arbitrary Web resources in self-defined groups. When users annotate resources in GroupMe!, this can be interpreted in context of a certain group. The grouping activity itself is easy for users to perform. However, it delivers valuable semantic information about resources and their context. We present GRank that uses the context information to improve and optimize the detection of relevant search results, and compare different strategies for ranking result lists in folksonomy systems.

Performance monitor system functional simulator, environmental data, orbiter 101(HFT)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Parker, F. W.

1974-01-01

Information concerning the environment component of the space shuttle performance monitor system simulator (PMSS) and those subsystems operational on the shuttle orbiter 101 used for horizontal flight test (HFT) is provided, along with detailed data for the shuttle performance monitor system (PMS) whose software requirements evolve from three basic PMS functions: (1) fault detection and annunciation; (2) subsystem measurement management; and (3) subsystem configuration management. Information relative to the design and operation of Orbiter systems for HFT is also presented, and the functional paths are identified to the lowest level at which the crew can control the system functions. Measurement requirements are given which are necessary to adequately monitor the health status of the system. PMS process requirements, relative to the measurements which are necessary for fault detection and annunciation of a failed functional path, consist of measurement characteristics, tolerance limits, precondition tests, and correlation measurements.

Evolving approaches to the ethical management of genomic data.

PubMed

McEwen, Jean E; Boyer, Joy T; Sun, Kathie Y

2013-06-01

The ethical landscape in the field of genomics is rapidly shifting. Plummeting sequencing costs, along with ongoing advances in bioinformatics, now make it possible to generate an enormous volume of genomic data about vast numbers of people. The informational richness, complexity, and frequently uncertain meaning of these data, coupled with evolving norms surrounding the sharing of data and samples and persistent privacy concerns, have generated a range of approaches to the ethical management of genomic information. As calls increase for the expanded use of broad or even open consent, and as controversy grows about how best to handle incidental genomic findings, these approaches, informed by normative analysis and empirical data, will continue to evolve alongside the science. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Evolving Approaches to the Ethical Management of Genomic Data

PubMed Central

Boyer, Joy T.; Sun, Kathie Y.

2013-01-01

The ethical landscape in the field of genomics is rapidly shifting. Plummeting sequencing costs, along with ongoing advances in bioinformatics, now make it possible to generate an enormous volume of genomic data about vast numbers of people. The informational richness, complexity, and frequently uncertain meaning of these data, coupled with evolving norms surrounding the sharing of data and samples and persistent privacy concerns, have generated a range of approaches to the ethical management of genomic information. As calls increase for the expanded use of broad or even open consent, and as controversy grows about how best to handle incidental genomic findings, these approaches, informed by normative analysis and empirical data, will continue to evolve alongside the science. PMID:23453621

Wiki surveys: open and quantifiable social data collection.

PubMed

Salganik, Matthew J; Levy, Karen E C

2015-01-01

In the social sciences, there is a longstanding tension between data collection methods that facilitate quantification and those that are open to unanticipated information. Advances in technology now enable new, hybrid methods that combine some of the benefits of both approaches. Drawing inspiration from online information aggregation systems like Wikipedia and from traditional survey research, we propose a new class of research instruments called wiki surveys. Just as Wikipedia evolves over time based on contributions from participants, we envision an evolving survey driven by contributions from respondents. We develop three general principles that underlie wiki surveys: they should be greedy, collaborative, and adaptive. Building on these principles, we develop methods for data collection and data analysis for one type of wiki survey, a pairwise wiki survey. Using two proof-of-concept case studies involving our free and open-source website www.allourideas.org, we show that pairwise wiki surveys can yield insights that would be difficult to obtain with other methods.

Wiki Surveys: Open and Quantifiable Social Data Collection

PubMed Central

Salganik, Matthew J.; Levy, Karen E. C.

2015-01-01

In the social sciences, there is a longstanding tension between data collection methods that facilitate quantification and those that are open to unanticipated information. Advances in technology now enable new, hybrid methods that combine some of the benefits of both approaches. Drawing inspiration from online information aggregation systems like Wikipedia and from traditional survey research, we propose a new class of research instruments called wiki surveys. Just as Wikipedia evolves over time based on contributions from participants, we envision an evolving survey driven by contributions from respondents. We develop three general principles that underlie wiki surveys: they should be greedy, collaborative, and adaptive. Building on these principles, we develop methods for data collection and data analysis for one type of wiki survey, a pairwise wiki survey. Using two proof-of-concept case studies involving our free and open-source website www.allourideas.org, we show that pairwise wiki surveys can yield insights that would be difficult to obtain with other methods. PMID:25992565

Common Accounting System for Monitoring the ATLAS Distributed Computing Resources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karavakis, E.; Andreeva, J.; Campana, S.; Gayazov, S.; Jezequel, S.; Saiz, P.; Sargsyan, L.; Schovancova, J.; Ueda, I.; Atlas Collaboration

2014-06-01

This paper covers in detail a variety of accounting tools used to monitor the utilisation of the available computational and storage resources within the ATLAS Distributed Computing during the first three years of Large Hadron Collider data taking. The Experiment Dashboard provides a set of common accounting tools that combine monitoring information originating from many different information sources; either generic or ATLAS specific. This set of tools provides quality and scalable solutions that are flexible enough to support the constantly evolving requirements of the ATLAS user community.

Cyberspace Security Econometrics System (CSES)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

2012-07-27

Information security continues to evolve in response to disruptive changes with a persistent focus on information-centric controls and a healthy debate about balancing endpoint and network protection, with a goal of improved enterprise/business risk management. Economic uncertainty, intensively collaborative styles of work, virtualization, increased outsourcing and ongoing complance pressures require careful consideration and adaption. The CSES provides a measure (i.e. a quantitative indication) of reliability, performance, and/or safety of a system that accounts for the criticality of each requirement as a function of one or more stakeholders' interests in that requirement. For a given stakeholder, CSES accounts for the variancemore » that may exist among the stakes one attaches to meeting each requirement.« less

Spectral Gaps from Ordered to Disordered Systems.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lindner, John Florian

As is well known, the allowed energies of periodic electronic systems and the allowed frequencies of periodic elastic systems form banded sets (at least for certain idealized models). Recent work, by Werner Kirsch and others, demonstrates that this band-gap structure persists in disordered versions of these periodic systems. Here, I extend this result by showing that for specific "point" interactions, the spectrum of a generic disordered system is the union of the spectra of all possible pure systems formed from it. This permits the explicit construction of these spectral sets. This result is the outgrowth of a perspective I call "growing disorder." The idea is to evolve, or "grow," an ordered array (whose spectrum is known) into a disordered array (whose spectrum is sought). The trick is to evolve the spectrum along with it. The approach is very visual, lends itself readily to graphical presentation, and accounts in part for the unconventional but appropriate look of this thesis. The unconventional style also reflects an attempt to make the material easily accessible to a physics audience. It is inspired by the way in which physicists informally communicate ideas, namely, with words and pictures in front of a blackboard. Each page, or set of facing pages, of text and graphics is a unit to be assimilated before proceeding onto the next unit. There is, thus, no unique path through the thesis. An intuitive and straightforward approach, constructive proofs, an informal style, and some ingenuity simply communicate the ideas herein. However, the condensation inherent in the graphical presentation demands significant reader engagement!.

Spectral gaps from ordered to disordered systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lindner, John Florian

As is well known, the allowed energies of periodic electronic systems and the allowed frequencies of periodic elastic systems form banded sets (at least for certain idealized models). Recent work, by Werner Kirsch and others, demonstrates that this band-gap structure persists in disordered versions of these periodic systems. Here, I extend this result by showing that for specific "point" interactions, the spectrum of a generic disordered system is the union of the spectra of all possible pure systems formed from it. This permits the explicit construction of these spectral sets.This result is the outgrowth of a perspective I call "growing disorder." The idea is to evolve, or "grow," an ordered array (whose spectrum is known) into a disordered array (whose spectrum is sought). The trick is to evolve the spectrum along with it. The approach is very visual, lends itself readily to graphical presentation, and accounts in part for the unconventional but appropriate look of this thesis.The unconventional style also reflects an attempt to make the material easily accessible to a physics audience. It is inspired by the way in which physicists informally communicate ideas, namely, with words and picture in front of a blackboard. Each page, or set of text and graphics is a unit to be assimilated before proceeding onto the next unit. There is thus no unique path through the thesis.An intuitive and straightforward approach, constructive proofs, an informal style, and some ingenuity simply communicate the ideas herein. However, the condensation inherent in the graphical presentation demands significant reader engagement!

The ecology and evolution of avian alarm call signaling systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Billings, Alexis Chandon

Communication is often set up as a simple dyadic exchange between one sender and one receiver. However, in reality, signaling systems have evolved and are used with many forms and types of information bombarding multiple senders, who in turn send multiple signals of different modalities, through various environmental spaces, finally reaching multiple receivers. In order to understand both the ecology and evolution of a signaling system, we must examine all the facets of the signaling system. My dissertation focused on the alarm call signaling system in birds. Alarm calls are acoustic signals given in response to danger or predators. My first two chapters examine how information about predators alters alarm calls. In chapter one I found that chickadees make distinctions between predators of different hunting strategies and appear to encode information about predators differently if they are heard instead of seen. In my second chapter, I test these findings more robustly in a non-model bird, the Steller's jay. I again found that predator species matters, but that how Steller's jays respond if they saw or heard the predator depends on the predator species. In my third chapter, I tested how habitat has influenced the evolution of mobbing call acoustic structure. I found that habitat is not a major contributor to the variation in acoustic structure seen across species and that other selective pressures such as body size may be more important. In my fourth chapter I present a new framework to understand the evolution of multimodal communication across species. I identify a unique constraint, the need for overlapping sensory systems, thresholds and cognitive abilities between sender and receiver in order for different forms of interspecific communication to evolve. Taken together, these chapters attempt to understand a signaling system from both an ecological and evolutionary perspective by examining each piece of the communication scheme.

Evolving Systems: An Outcome of Fondest Hopes and Wildest Dreams

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Frost, Susan A.; Balas, Mark J.

2012-01-01

New theory is presented for evolving systems, which are autonomously controlled subsystems that self-assemble into a new evolved system with a higher purpose. Evolving systems of aerospace structures often require additional control when assembling to maintain stability during the entire evolution process. This is the concept of Adaptive Key Component Control that operates through one specific component to maintain stability during the evolution. In addition, this control must often overcome persistent disturbances that occur while the evolution is in progress. Theoretical results will be presented for Adaptive Key Component control for persistent disturbance rejection. An illustrative example will demonstrate the Adaptive Key Component controller on a system composed of rigid body and flexible body modes.

Integrating Title I and Title VII: The Evolving Model of Dearborn Public Schools, Michigan. NCBE Program Information Guide Series No. 21.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arraf, Shereen; And Others

This report offers insights on the experiences and techniques used in the Dearborn Public Schools effort to integrate Title VII and Chapter 1 programs prior to their reauthorization. The school system is located near metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, and has over 14,500 students representing 24 languages, many from the Middle East, Romania, and…

Using Information and Knowledge Required In Assessment and Management Applications for Sustainability

Treesearch

Albert Abee

2006-01-01

A broader concept of sustainability was introduced. Ted Heintz introduced the concept of sustainability as a life sustaining property of earth’s biosphere. Ted observed that Life in a wide variety of forms, interacting in networks of evolving relationships, has been sustained for nearly 4 billion years. Sustainability is a property of the system as a whole, a result of...

NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Mars Transit Habitat Refinement Point of Departure Design

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Simon, Matthew; Latorella, Kara; Martin, John; Cerro, Jeff; Lepsch, Roger; Jefferies, Sharon; Goodliff, Kandyce; McCleskey, Carey; Smitherman, David; Stromgren, Chel

2017-01-01

This paper describes the recently developed point of departure design for a long duration, reusable Mars Transit Habitat, which was established during a 2016 NASA habitat design refinement activity supporting the definition of NASA's Evolvable Mars Campaign. As part of its development of sustainable human Mars mission concepts achievable in the 2030s, the Evolvable Mars Campaign has identified desired durations and mass/dimensional limits for long duration Mars habitat designs to enable the currently assumed solar electric and chemical transportation architectures. The Advanced Exploration Systems Mars Transit Habitat Refinement Activity brought together habitat subsystem design expertise from across NASA to develop an increased fidelity, consensus design for a transit habitat within these constraints. The resulting design and data (including a mass equipment list) contained in this paper are intended to help teams across the agency and potential commercial, academic, or international partners understand: 1) the current architecture/habitat guidelines and assumptions, 2) performance targets of such a habitat (particularly in mass, volume, and power), 3) the driving technology/capability developments and architectural solutions which are necessary for achieving these targets, and 4) mass reduction opportunities and research/design needs to inform the development of future research and proposals. Data presented includes: an overview of the habitat refinement activity including motivation and process when informative; full documentation of the baseline design guidelines and assumptions; detailed mass and volume breakdowns; a moderately detailed concept of operations; a preliminary interior layout design with rationale; a list of the required capabilities necessary to enable the desired mass; and identification of any worthwhile trades/analyses which could inform future habitat design efforts. As a whole, the data in the paper show that a transit habitat meeting the 43 metric tons launch mass/trans-Mars injection burn limits specified by the Evolvable Mars Campaign is achievable near the desired timeframe with moderate strategic investments including maintainable life support systems, repurposable structures and packaging, and lightweight exercise modalities. It also identifies operational and technological options to reduce this mass to less than 41 metric tons including staging of launch structure/packaging and alternate structural materials.

The relative importance of information sources in consumers' choice of hospitals.

PubMed

Gooding, S K

1995-01-01

The research presented focuses on an examination of the relative importance of word-of-mouth, expert opinion, external communication, and past experience in the context of hospital choice. Past research has examined the effect of each individually and various combinations of the four sources, but not all four simultaneously. Results of the present study suggest that past experience plays a greater role in hospital choice than other information sources, including expert opinion. The strength of word-of-mouth as a source of information is also verified. The implications of this research include the following: (1) health care researchers need to incorporate word-of-mouth when investigating informations sources, and (2) local hospitals need to be aware of "negative perceptions" and strive for consumer satisfaction. Health care delivery systems incorporating consumer-based choice render these findings especially valuable as researchers and practitioners address the challenges that these evolving systems will bring.

Evaluation of need for ontologies to manage domain content for the Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System.

PubMed

Eilbeck, Karen L; Lipstein, Julie; McGarvey, Sunanda; Staes, Catherine J

2014-01-01

The Reportable Condition Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) is envisioned to be a single, comprehensive, authoritative, real-time portal to author, view and access computable information about reportable conditions. The system is designed for use by hospitals, laboratories, health information exchanges, and providers to meet public health reporting requirements. The RCKMS Knowledge Representation Workgroup was tasked to explore the need for ontologies to support RCKMS functionality. The workgroup reviewed relevant projects and defined criteria to evaluate candidate knowledge domain areas for ontology development. The use of ontologies is justified for this project to unify the semantics used to describe similar reportable events and concepts between different jurisdictions and over time, to aid data integration, and to manage large, unwieldy datasets that evolve, and are sometimes externally managed.

REACTOR - a Concept for establishing a System-of-Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haener, Rainer; Hammitzsch, Martin; Wächter, Joachim

2014-05-01

REACTOR is a working title for activities implementing reliable, emergent, adaptive, and concurrent collaboration on the basis of transactional object repositories. It aims at establishing federations of autonomous yet interoperable systems (Systems-of-Systems), which are able to expose emergent behaviour. Following the principles of event-driven service-oriented architectures (SOA 2.0), REACTOR enables adaptive re-organisation by dynamic delegation of responsibilities and novel yet coherent monitoring strategies by combining information from different domains. Thus it allows collaborative decision-processes across system, discipline, and administrative boundaries. Interoperability is based on two approaches that implement interconnection and communication between existing heterogeneous infrastructures and information systems: Coordinated (orchestration-based) communication and publish/subscribe (choreography-based) communication. Choreography-based communication ensures the autonomy of the participating systems to the highest possible degree but requires the implementation of adapters, which provide functional access to information (publishing/consuming events) via a Message Oriented Middleware (MOM). Any interconnection of the systems (composition of service and message cascades) is established on the basis of global conversations that are enacted by choreographies specifying the expected behaviour of the participating systems with respect to agreed Service Level Agreements (SLA) required by e.g. national authorities. The specification of conversations, maintained in commonly available repositories also enables the utilisation of systems for purposes (evolving) other than initially intended. Orchestration-based communication additionally requires a central component that controls the information transfer via service requests or event processing and also takes responsibility of managing business processes. Commonly available transactional object repositories are well suited to establish brokers, which mediate metadata and semantic information about the resources of all involved systems. This concept has been developed within the project Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises (TRIDEC) on the basis of semantic registries describing all facets of events and services utilisable for crisis management systems. The implementation utilises an operative infrastructure including an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), adapters to proprietary sensor systems, a workflow engine, and a broker-based MOM. It also applies current technologies like actor-based frameworks for highly concurrent, distributed, and fault tolerant event-driven applications. Therefore REACTOR implementations are well suited to be hosted in a cloud that provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). To provide low entry barriers for legacy and future systems, REACTOR adapts the principles of Design by Contract (DbC) as well as standardised and common information models like the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) or the JavaScript Object Notation for geographic features (GeoJSON). REACTOR has been applied exemplarily within two different scenarios, Natural Crisis Management and Industrial Subsurface Development.

System level mechanisms of adaptation, learning, memory formation and evolvability: the role of chaperone and other networks.

PubMed

Gyurko, David M; Soti, Csaba; Stetak, Attila; Csermely, Peter

2014-05-01

During the last decade, network approaches became a powerful tool to describe protein structure and dynamics. Here, we describe first the protein structure networks of molecular chaperones, then characterize chaperone containing sub-networks of interactomes called as chaperone-networks or chaperomes. We review the role of molecular chaperones in short-term adaptation of cellular networks in response to stress, and in long-term adaptation discussing their putative functions in the regulation of evolvability. We provide a general overview of possible network mechanisms of adaptation, learning and memory formation. We propose that changes of network rigidity play a key role in learning and memory formation processes. Flexible network topology provides ' learning-competent' state. Here, networks may have much less modular boundaries than locally rigid, highly modular networks, where the learnt information has already been consolidated in a memory formation process. Since modular boundaries are efficient filters of information, in the 'learning-competent' state information filtering may be much smaller, than after memory formation. This mechanism restricts high information transfer to the 'learning competent' state. After memory formation, modular boundary-induced segregation and information filtering protect the stored information. The flexible networks of young organisms are generally in a 'learning competent' state. On the contrary, locally rigid networks of old organisms have lost their 'learning competent' state, but store and protect their learnt information efficiently. We anticipate that the above mechanism may operate at the level of both protein-protein interaction and neuronal networks.

Information in the Biosphere: Biological and Digital Worlds.

PubMed

Gillings, Michael R; Hilbert, Martin; Kemp, Darrell J

2016-03-01

Evolution has transformed life through key innovations in information storage and replication, including RNA, DNA, multicellularity, and culture and language. We argue that the carbon-based biosphere has generated a cognitive system (humans) capable of creating technology that will result in a comparable evolutionary transition. Digital information has reached a similar magnitude to information in the biosphere. It increases exponentially, exhibits high-fidelity replication, evolves through differential fitness, is expressed through artificial intelligence (AI), and has facility for virtually limitless recombination. Like previous evolutionary transitions, the potential symbiosis between biological and digital information will reach a critical point where these codes could compete via natural selection. Alternatively, this fusion could create a higher-level superorganism employing a low-conflict division of labor in performing informational tasks. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Creating value: unifying silos into public health business intelligence.

PubMed

Davidson, Arthur J

2014-01-01

Through September 2014, federal investments in health information technology have been unprecedented, with more than 25 billion dollars in incentive funds distributed to eligible hospitals and providers. Over 85 percent of eligible United States hospitals and 60 percent of eligible providers have used certified electronic health record (EHR) technology and received Meaningful Use incentive funds (HITECH Act1). Certified EHR technology could create new public health (PH) value through novel and rapidly evolving data-use opportunities, never before experienced by PH. The long-standing "silo" approach to funding has fragmented PH programs and departments,2 but the components for integrated business intelligence (i.e., tools and applications to help users make informed decisions) and maximally reuse data are available now. Challenges faced by PH agencies on the road to integration are plentiful, but an emphasis on PH systems and services research (PHSSR) may identify gaps and solutions for the PH community to address. Technology and system approaches to leverage this information explosion to support a transformed health care system and population health are proposed. By optimizing this information opportunity, PH can play a greater role in the learning health system.

Explainable expert systems: A research program in information processing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Paris, Cecile L.

1993-01-01

Our work in Explainable Expert Systems (EES) had two goals: to extend and enhance the range of explanations that expert systems can offer, and to ease their maintenance and evolution. As suggested in our proposal, these goals are complementary because they place similar demands on the underlying architecture of the expert system: they both require the knowledge contained in a system to be explicitly represented, in a high-level declarative language and in a modular fashion. With these two goals in mind, the Explainable Expert Systems (EES) framework was designed to remedy limitations to explainability and evolvability that stem from related fundamental flaws in the underlying architecture of current expert systems.

XML Flight/Ground Data Dictionary Management

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wright, Jesse; Wiklow, Colette

2007-01-01

A computer program generates Extensible Markup Language (XML) files that effect coupling between the command- and telemetry-handling software running aboard a spacecraft and the corresponding software running in ground support systems. The XML files are produced by use of information from the flight software and from flight-system engineering. The XML files are converted to legacy ground-system data formats for command and telemetry, transformed into Web-based and printed documentation, and used in developing new ground-system data-handling software. Previously, the information about telemetry and command was scattered in various paper documents that were not synchronized. The process of searching and reading the documents was time-consuming and introduced errors. In contrast, the XML files contain all of the information in one place. XML structures can evolve in such a manner as to enable the addition, to the XML files, of the metadata necessary to track the changes and the associated documentation. The use of this software has reduced the extent of manual operations in developing a ground data system, thereby saving considerable time and removing errors that previously arose in the translation and transcription of software information from the flight to the ground system.

Engineering Lessons Learned and Systems Engineering Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gill, Paul S.; Garcia, Danny; Vaughan, William W.

2005-01-01

Systems Engineering is fundamental to good engineering, which in turn depends on the integration and application of engineering lessons learned and technical standards. Thus, good Systems Engineering also depends on systems engineering lessons learned from within the aerospace industry being documented and applied. About ten percent of the engineering lessons learned documented in the NASA Lessons Learned Information System are directly related to Systems Engineering. A key issue associated with lessons learned datasets is the communication and incorporation of this information into engineering processes. Systems Engineering has been defined (EINIS-632) as "an interdisciplinary approach encompassing the entire technical effort to evolve and verify an integrated and life-cycle balanced set of system people, product, and process solutions that satisfy customer needs". Designing reliable space-based systems has always been a goal for NASA, and many painful lessons have been learned along the way. One of the continuing functions of a system engineer is to compile development and operations "lessons learned" documents and ensure their integration into future systems development activities. They can produce insights and information for risk identification identification and characterization. on a new project. Lessons learned files from previous projects are especially valuable in risk

The TRIDEC System-of-Systems; Choreography of large-scale concurrent tasks in Natural Crisis Management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Häner, R.; Wächter, J.

2012-04-01

The project Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises (TRIDEC), co-funded by the European Commission in its Seventh Framework Programme aims at establishing a network of dedicated, autonomous legacy systems for large-scale concurrent management of natural crises utilising heterogeneous information resources. TRIDEC's architecture reflects the System-of- Systems (SoS) approach which is based on task-oriented systems, cooperatively interacting as a collective in a common environment. The design of the TRIDEC-SoS follows the principles of service-oriented and event-driven architectures (SOA & EDA) exceedingly focusing on a loose coupling of the systems. The SoS approach in combination with SOA and EDA has the distinction of being able to provide novel and coherent behaviours and features resulting from a process of dynamic self-organisation. Self-organisation is a process without the need for a central or external coordinator controlling it through orchestration. It is the result of enacted concurrent tasks in a collaborative environment of geographically distributed systems. Although the individual systems act completely autonomously, their interactions expose emergent structures of evolving nature. Particularly, the fact is important that SoS are inherently able to evolve on all facets of intelligent information management. This includes adaptive properties, e.g. seamless integration of new resource types or the adoption of new fields in natural crisis management. In the case of TRIDEC with various heterogeneous participants involved, concurrent information processing is of fundamental importance because of the achievable improvements regarding cooperative decision making. Collaboration within TRIDEC will be implemented with choreographies and conversations. Choreographies specify the expected behaviour between two or more participants; conversations describe the message exchange between all participants emphasising their logical relation. The TRIDEC choreography will be based on the definition of Behavioural Interfaces and Service Level Agreements, which describe the interactions of all participants involved in the collaborative process by binding the tasks of dedicated systems to high-level business processes. All methods of a Behavioural Interfaces can be assigned dynamically to the activities of a business process. This allows it to utilise a system during the run-time of a business process and thus, for example enabling task balancing or the delegation of responsibilities. Since the individual parts of a SoS are normally managed independently and operate autonomously because of their geographical distribution it is of vital importance to ensure the reliability (robustness and correctness) of their interactions which will be achieved by applying the Design by Contract (DbC) approach to the TRIDEC architecture. Key challenge for TRIDEC is establishing a reliable adaptive system which exposes an emergent behaviour, for example intelligent monitoring strategies or dynamic system adaptions even in case of partly system failures. It is essential for TRIDEC that for example redundant parts of the system can take over tasks from defect components in a process of re-organising its network.

Dispelling myths about rare disease registry system development

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Rare disease registries (RDRs) are an essential tool to improve knowledge and monitor interventions for rare diseases. If designed appropriately, patient and disease related information captured within them can become the cornerstone for effective diagnosis and new therapies. Surprisingly however, registries possess a diverse range of functionality, operate in different, often-times incompatible, software environments and serve various, and sometimes incongruous, purposes. Given the ambitious goals of the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) by 2020 and beyond, RDRs must be designed with the agility to evolve and efficiently interoperate in an ever changing rare disease landscape, as well as to cater for rapid changes in Information Communication Technologies. In this paper, we contend that RDR requirements will also evolve in response to a number of factors such as changing disease definitions and diagnostic criteria, the requirement to integrate patient/disease information from advances in either biotechnology and/or phenotypying approaches, as well as the need to adapt dynamically to security and privacy concerns. We dispel a number of myths in RDR development, outline key criteria for robust and sustainable RDR implementation and introduce the concept of a RDR Checklist to guide future RDR development. PMID:24131574

PSINET: Assisting HIV Prevention Amongst Homeless Youth by Planning Ahead

PubMed Central

Yadav, A.; Marcolino, L. S.; Rice, E.; Petering, R.; Winetrobe, H.; Rhoades, H.; Tambe, M.; Carmichael, H.

2015-01-01

Homeless youth are prone to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) due to their engagement in high risk behavior such as unprotected sex, sex under influence of drugs, etc. Many non-profit agencies conduct interventions to educate and train a select group of homeless youth about HIV prevention and treatment practices and rely on word-of-mouth spread of information through their social network. Previous work in strategic selection of intervention participants does not handle uncertainties in the social network’s structure and evolving network state, potentially causing significant shortcomings in spread of information. Thus, we developed PSINET, a decision support system to aid the agencies in this task. PSINET includes the following key novelties: (i) it handles uncertainties in network structure and evolving network state; (ii) it addresses these uncertainties by using POMDPs in influence maximization; and (iii) it provides algorithmic advances to allow high quality approximate solutions for such POMDPs. Simulations show that PSINET achieves ~60% more information spread over the current state-of-the-art. PSINET was developed in collaboration with My Friend’s Place (a drop-in agency serving homeless youth in Los Angeles) and is currently being reviewed by their officials. PMID:27642227

Deep space telecommunications, navigation, and information management. Support of the space exploration initiative

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hall, Justin R.; Hastrup, Rolf C.

The United States Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) calls for the charting of a new and evolving manned course to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. This paper discusses key challenges in providing effective deep space telecommunications, navigation, and information management (TNIM) architectures and designs for Mars exploration support. The fundamental objectives are to provide the mission with means to monitor and control mission elements, acquire engineering, science, and navigation data, compute state vectors and navigate, and move these data efficiently and automatically between mission nodes for timely analysis and decision-making. Although these objectives do not depart, fundamentally, from those evolved over the past 30 years in supporting deep space robotic exploration, there are several new issues. This paper focuses on summarizing new requirements, identifying related issues and challenges, responding with concepts and strategies which are enabling, and, finally, describing candidate architectures, and driving technologies. The design challenges include the attainment of: 1) manageable interfaces in a large distributed system, 2) highly unattended operations for in-situ Mars telecommunications and navigation functions, 3) robust connectivity for manned and robotic links, 4) information management for efficient and reliable interchange of data between mission nodes, and 5) an adequate Mars-Earth data rate.

Amyloid and the origin of life: self-replicating catalytic amyloids as prebiotic informational and protometabolic entities.

PubMed

Maury, Carl Peter J

2018-05-01

A crucial stage in the origin of life was the emergence of the first molecular entity that was able to replicate, transmit information, and evolve on the early Earth. The amyloid world hypothesis posits that in the pre-RNA era, information processing was based on catalytic amyloids. The self-assembly of short peptides into β-sheet amyloid conformers leads to extraordinary structural stability and novel multifunctionality that cannot be achieved by the corresponding nonaggregated peptides. The new functions include self-replication, catalytic activities, and information transfer. The environmentally sensitive template-assisted replication cycles generate a variety of amyloid polymorphs on which evolutive forces can act, and the fibrillar assemblies can serve as scaffolds for the amyloids themselves and for ribonucleotides proteins and lipids. The role of amyloid in the putative transition process from an amyloid world to an amyloid-RNA-protein world is not limited to scaffolding and protection: the interactions between amyloid, RNA, and protein are both complex and cooperative, and the amyloid assemblages can function as protometabolic entities catalyzing the formation of simple metabolite precursors. The emergence of a pristine amyloid-based in-put sensitive, chiroselective, and error correcting information-processing system, and the evolvement of mutualistic networks were, arguably, of essential importance in the dynamic processes that led to increased complexity, organization, compartmentalization, and, eventually, the origin of life.

Development and Implementation of Sepsis Alert Systems.

PubMed

Harrison, Andrew M; Gajic, Ognjen; Pickering, Brian W; Herasevich, Vitaly

2016-06-01

Development and implementation of sepsis alert systems is challenging, particularly outside the monitored intensive care unit (ICU) setting. Barriers to wider use of sepsis alerts include evolving clinical definitions of sepsis, information overload, and alert fatigue, due to suboptimal alert performance. Outside the ICU, barriers include differences in health care delivery models, charting behaviors, and availability of electronic data. Current evidence does not support routine use of sepsis alert systems in clinical practice. Continuous improvement in the afferent and efferent aspects will help translate theoretic advantages into measurable patient benefit. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

CIO in a Service Economy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sorenson, Paul G.

The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has evolved considerably since its inception in the 1980s. This paper begins with a brief review of the evolution of this role and sets the stage for future change brought about by the rise of the service economy. The enterprise of the future is then characterized based on an important global study by IBM. Using this characterization, the future challenges for CIOs in areas such as strategic planning, governance and operations management of information technology services are assessed from the perspectives of the four major elements of a service system (technology, people, organization and shared information). The paper concludes with a summary of the important findings, pointing to the challenge that CIOs of the future must be the leaders in their organizations in the delivery of smarter, on-demand service systems to smarter customers.

Combining rules, background knowledge and change patterns to maintain semantic annotations.

PubMed

Cardoso, Silvio Domingos; Chantal, Reynaud-Delaître; Da Silveira, Marcos; Pruski, Cédric

2017-01-01

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) play a key role in enriching biomedical information in order to make it machine-understandable and shareable. This is done by annotating medical documents, or more specifically, associating concept labels from KOS with pieces of digital information, e.g., images or texts. However, the dynamic nature of KOS may impact the annotations, thus creating a mismatch between the evolved concept and the associated information. To solve this problem, methods to maintain the quality of the annotations are required. In this paper, we define a framework based on rules, background knowledge and change patterns to drive the annotation adaption process. We evaluate experimentally the proposed approach in realistic cases-studies and demonstrate the overall performance of our approach in different KOS considering the precision, recall, F1-score and AUC value of the system.

Combining rules, background knowledge and change patterns to maintain semantic annotations

PubMed Central

Cardoso, Silvio Domingos; Chantal, Reynaud-Delaître; Da Silveira, Marcos; Pruski, Cédric

2017-01-01

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) play a key role in enriching biomedical information in order to make it machine-understandable and shareable. This is done by annotating medical documents, or more specifically, associating concept labels from KOS with pieces of digital information, e.g., images or texts. However, the dynamic nature of KOS may impact the annotations, thus creating a mismatch between the evolved concept and the associated information. To solve this problem, methods to maintain the quality of the annotations are required. In this paper, we define a framework based on rules, background knowledge and change patterns to drive the annotation adaption process. We evaluate experimentally the proposed approach in realistic cases-studies and demonstrate the overall performance of our approach in different KOS considering the precision, recall, F1-score and AUC value of the system. PMID:29854115

REIS: phase II, report I. An overview of the REIS system. [State of Minnesota

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Chervany, N.L.; Naumann, J.D.; Visness, R.D.

1975-07-01

The Regional Energy Information System (REIS) is being designed and implemented to collect, organize, store, and report data from the energy supply/distribution/consumption chain in the state of Minnesota. This system will contain: identification data, energy flow data, and end-use data. The REIS system will allow users to have access to the data base in a variety of ways (i.e., periodic reporting, special request reporting, direct access/browsing capabilities, and the creation of machine readable files). The self-contained language feature of SYSTEM 2000 gives the REIS system the flexibility and evolvability necessary to meet the changing data needs of energy management problems.more » (GRA)« less

Discrimination of time-dependent inflow properties with a cooperative dynamical system.

PubMed

Ueno, Hiroshi; Tsuruyama, Tatsuaki; Nowakowski, Bogdan; Górecki, Jerzy; Yoshikawa, Kenichi

2015-10-01

Many physical, chemical, and biological systems exhibit a cooperative or sigmoidal response with respect to the input. In biochemistry, such behavior is called an allosteric effect. Here, we demonstrate that a system with such properties can be used to discriminate the amplitude or frequency of an external periodic perturbation. Numerical simulations performed for a model sigmoidal kinetics illustrate that there exists a narrow range of frequencies and amplitudes within which the system evolves toward significantly different states. Therefore, observation of system evolution should provide information about the characteristics of the perturbation. The discrimination properties for periodic perturbation are generic. They can be observed in various dynamical systems and for different types of periodic perturbation.

NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services: Past, Present and Future

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baynes, K.; Boller, R. A.; Roberts, J. T.; Cechini, M. F.; Alarcon, C.; Pilone, D.

2016-12-01

NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) provides quick access to almost 500 satellite imagery products, covering every part of the world in a free, open, and interoperable manner. Much of the imagery is available with a few hours after satellite overpass and some products span over 15 years. This imagery has been used for a diverse array of applications including wildfire monitoring, air quality research, education, and soaring above the Earth through immersive planetarium shows. In addition to describing GIBS and its origins and showcasing these applications, this talk will describe the process of how new layers are integrated into the system through interfacing with data providers, how the GIBS team has evolved use cases from the community for new functionality, such as vector data and vertical profile information, and how the GIBS team is pushing forward with research and development aimed at bringing data and imagery together in a seamless manner. Finally, we will discuss new layers currently being integrated into the system and an on-going prototype to evolve the system into a cloud environment.

Integrated Information and State Differentiation

PubMed Central

Marshall, William; Gomez-Ramirez, Jaime; Tononi, Giulio

2016-01-01

Integrated information (Φ) is a measure of the cause-effect power of a physical system. This paper investigates the relationship between Φ as defined in Integrated Information Theory and state differentiation (D), the number of, and difference between potential system states. Here we provide theoretical justification of the relationship between Φ and D, then validate the results using a simulation study. First, we show that a physical system in a state with high Φ necessarily has many elements and specifies many causal relationships. Furthermore, if the average value of integrated information across all states is high, the system must also have high differentiation. Next, we explore the use of D as a proxy for Φ using artificial networks, evolved to have integrated structures. The results show a positive linear relationship between Φ and D for multiple network sizes and connectivity patterns. Finally we investigate the differentiation evoked by sensory inputs and show that, under certain conditions, it is possible to estimate integrated information without a direct perturbation of its internal elements. In concluding, we discuss the need for further validation on larger networks and explore the potential applications of this work to the empirical study of consciousness, especially concerning the practical estimation of Φ from neuroimaging data. PMID:27445896

Evolving Digital Divides in Information Literacy and Learning Outcomes: A BYOD Journey in a Scondary School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adhikari, Janak; Scogings, Chris; Mathrani, Anuradha; Sofat, Indu

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to seek answers to questions on how equity of information literacy and learning outcomes have evolved with the ongoing advances in technologies in teaching and learning across schools. The authors' report on a five-year long bring your own device (BYOD) journey of one school, which was one of the earliest…

Early experiences in evolving an enterprise-wide information model for laboratory and clinical observations.

PubMed

Chen, Elizabeth S; Zhou, Li; Kashyap, Vipul; Schaeffer, Molly; Dykes, Patricia C; Goldberg, Howard S

2008-11-06

As Electronic Healthcare Records become more prevalent, there is an increasing need to ensure unambiguous data capture, interpretation, and exchange within and across heterogeneous applications. To address this need, a common, uniform, and comprehensive approach for representing clinical information is essential. At Partners HealthCare System, we are investigating the development and implementation of enterprise-wide information models to specify the representation of clinical information to support semantic interoperability. This paper summarizes our early experiences in: (1) defining a process for information model development, (2) reviewing and comparing existing healthcare information models, (3) identifying requirements for representation of laboratory and clinical observations, and (4) exploring linkages to existing terminology and data standards. These initial findings provide insight to the various challenges ahead and guidance on next steps for adoption of information models at our organization.

Experiences Using Lightweight Formal Methods for Requirements Modeling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Easterbrook, Steve; Lutz, Robyn; Covington, Rick; Kelly, John; Ampo, Yoko; Hamilton, David

1997-01-01

This paper describes three case studies in the lightweight application of formal methods to requirements modeling for spacecraft fault protection systems. The case studies differ from previously reported applications of formal methods in that formal methods were applied very early in the requirements engineering process, to validate the evolving requirements. The results were fed back into the projects, to improve the informal specifications. For each case study, we describe what methods were applied, how they were applied, how much effort was involved, and what the findings were. In all three cases, formal methods enhanced the existing verification and validation processes, by testing key properties of the evolving requirements, and helping to identify weaknesses. We conclude that the benefits gained from early modeling of unstable requirements more than outweigh the effort needed to maintain multiple representations.

Human-Computer Interaction and Information Management Research Needs

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-10-01

Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be...hand-held personal digital assistants, networked sensors and actuators, and low-power computers on satellites. 5 most complex tools that humans have...calculations using data on external media such as tapes evolved into our multi-functional 21st century systems. More ideas came as networks of computing

A Study on User Interface Design of Knowledge Management Groupware in Selected Leading Organizations of Pakistan

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-06-01

Information Systems, Faculty of ICT, International Islamic University, Malaysia . Abstract. Several techniques for evaluating a groupware...inspection based techniques couldn’t be carried out in other parts of Pakistan where the IT industry has mushroomed in the past few years. Nevertheless...there are no set standards for using any particular technique. Evaluating a groupware interface is an evolving process and requires more investigation

The scaling of geographic ranges: implications for species distribution models

USGS Publications Warehouse

Yackulic, Charles B.; Ginsberg, Joshua R.

2016-01-01

There is a need for timely science to inform policy and management decisions; however, we must also strive to provide predictions that best reflect our understanding of ecological systems. Species distributions evolve through time and reflect responses to environmental conditions that are mediated through individual and population processes. Species distribution models that reflect this understanding, and explicitly model dynamics, are likely to give more accurate predictions.

Eyes Wide Shut: the impact of dim-light vision on neural investment in marine teleosts.

PubMed

Iglesias, Teresa L; Dornburg, Alex; Warren, Dan L; Wainwright, Peter C; Schmitz, Lars; Economo, Evan P

2018-05-28

Understanding how organismal design evolves in response to environmental challenges is a central goal of evolutionary biology. In particular, assessing the extent to which environmental requirements drive general design features among distantly related groups is a major research question. The visual system is a critical sensory apparatus that evolves in response to changing light regimes. In vertebrates, the optic tectum is the primary visual processing centre of the brain and yet it is unclear how or whether this structure evolves while lineages adapt to changes in photic environment. On one hand, dim-light adaptation is associated with larger eyes and enhanced light-gathering power that could require larger information processing capacity. On the other hand, dim-light vision may evolve to maximize light sensitivity at the cost of acuity and colour sensitivity, which could require less processing power. Here, we use X-ray microtomography and phylogenetic comparative methods to examine the relationships between diel activity pattern, optic morphology, trophic guild and investment in the optic tectum across the largest radiation of vertebrates-teleost fishes. We find that despite driving the evolution of larger eyes, enhancement of the capacity for dim-light vision generally is accompanied by a decrease in investment in the optic tectum. These findings underscore the importance of considering diel activity patterns in comparative studies and demonstrate how vision plays a role in brain evolution, illuminating common design principles of the vertebrate visual system. © 2018 European Society For Evolutionary Biology. Journal of Evolutionary Biology © 2018 European Society For Evolutionary Biology.

Ranking in evolving complex networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liao, Hao; Mariani, Manuel Sebastian; Medo, Matúš; Zhang, Yi-Cheng; Zhou, Ming-Yang

2017-05-01

Complex networks have emerged as a simple yet powerful framework to represent and analyze a wide range of complex systems. The problem of ranking the nodes and the edges in complex networks is critical for a broad range of real-world problems because it affects how we access online information and products, how success and talent are evaluated in human activities, and how scarce resources are allocated by companies and policymakers, among others. This calls for a deep understanding of how existing ranking algorithms perform, and which are their possible biases that may impair their effectiveness. Many popular ranking algorithms (such as Google's PageRank) are static in nature and, as a consequence, they exhibit important shortcomings when applied to real networks that rapidly evolve in time. At the same time, recent advances in the understanding and modeling of evolving networks have enabled the development of a wide and diverse range of ranking algorithms that take the temporal dimension into account. The aim of this review is to survey the existing ranking algorithms, both static and time-aware, and their applications to evolving networks. We emphasize both the impact of network evolution on well-established static algorithms and the benefits from including the temporal dimension for tasks such as prediction of network traffic, prediction of future links, and identification of significant nodes.

Molecular insights into the origin of the Hox-TALE patterning system

PubMed Central

Hudry, Bruno; Thomas-Chollier, Morgane; Volovik, Yael; Duffraisse, Marilyne; Dard, Amélie; Frank, Dale; Technau, Ulrich; Merabet, Samir

2014-01-01

Despite tremendous body form diversity in nature, bilaterian animals share common sets of developmental genes that display conserved expression patterns in the embryo. Among them are the Hox genes, which define different identities along the anterior–posterior axis. Hox proteins exert their function by interaction with TALE transcription factors. Hox and TALE members are also present in some but not all non-bilaterian phyla, raising the question of how Hox–TALE interactions evolved to provide positional information. By using proteins from unicellular and multicellular lineages, we showed that these networks emerged from an ancestral generic motif present in Hox and other related protein families. Interestingly, Hox-TALE networks experienced additional and extensive molecular innovations that were likely crucial for differentiating Hox functions along body plans. Together our results highlight how homeobox gene families evolved during eukaryote evolution to eventually constitute a major patterning system in Eumetazoans. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01939.001 PMID:24642410

Molecular insights into the origin of the Hox-TALE patterning system.

PubMed

Hudry, Bruno; Thomas-Chollier, Morgane; Volovik, Yael; Duffraisse, Marilyne; Dard, Amélie; Frank, Dale; Technau, Ulrich; Merabet, Samir

2014-03-18

Despite tremendous body form diversity in nature, bilaterian animals share common sets of developmental genes that display conserved expression patterns in the embryo. Among them are the Hox genes, which define different identities along the anterior-posterior axis. Hox proteins exert their function by interaction with TALE transcription factors. Hox and TALE members are also present in some but not all non-bilaterian phyla, raising the question of how Hox-TALE interactions evolved to provide positional information. By using proteins from unicellular and multicellular lineages, we showed that these networks emerged from an ancestral generic motif present in Hox and other related protein families. Interestingly, Hox-TALE networks experienced additional and extensive molecular innovations that were likely crucial for differentiating Hox functions along body plans. Together our results highlight how homeobox gene families evolved during eukaryote evolution to eventually constitute a major patterning system in Eumetazoans. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01939.001.

Recommendation in evolving online networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Xiao; Zeng, An; Shang, Ming-Sheng

2016-02-01

Recommender system is an effective tool to find the most relevant information for online users. By analyzing the historical selection records of users, recommender system predicts the most likely future links in the user-item network and accordingly constructs a personalized recommendation list for each user. So far, the recommendation process is mostly investigated in static user-item networks. In this paper, we propose a model which allows us to examine the performance of the state-of-the-art recommendation algorithms in evolving networks. We find that the recommendation accuracy in general decreases with time if the evolution of the online network fully depends on the recommendation. Interestingly, some randomness in users' choice can significantly improve the long-term accuracy of the recommendation algorithm. When a hybrid recommendation algorithm is applied, we find that the optimal parameter gradually shifts towards the diversity-favoring recommendation algorithm, indicating that recommendation diversity is essential to keep a high long-term recommendation accuracy. Finally, we confirm our conclusions by studying the recommendation on networks with the real evolution data.

Earthdata Cloud Analytics Project

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ramachandran, Rahul; Lynnes, Chris

2018-01-01

This presentation describes a nascent project in NASA to develop a framework to support end-user analytics of NASA's Earth science data in the cloud. The chief benefit of migrating EOSDIS (Earth Observation System Data and Information Systems) data to the cloud is to position the data next to enormous computing capacity to allow end users to process data at scale. The Earthdata Cloud Analytics project will user a service-based approach to facilitate the infusion of evolving analytics technology and the integration with non-NASA analytics or other complementary functionality at other agencies and in other nations.

The chemosensory brain requires a distributed cellular mechanism to harness information and resolve conflicts - is consciousness the forum?

PubMed

Lathe, Richard

2016-01-01

The central nervous system (CNS) evolved from a chemosensory epithelium, but a simple epithelium has limited means to resolve conflicts between early drives (e.g., approach vs. avoid). Understanding the role of "consciousness" as a resolution device, with specific focus on chemosensation and the olfactory system, is of appeal. I argue that consciousness is not the adjudicator, but is instead the forum that brings conflicting (conscious) inputs into a form that allows them to be (unconsciously) compared/contrasted, guiding rational action.

Metal stable isotopes in low-temperature systems: A primer

USGS Publications Warehouse

Bullen, T.D.; Eisenhauer, A.

2009-01-01

Recent advances in mass spectrometry have allowed isotope scientists to precisely determine stable isotope variations in the metallic elements. Biologically infl uenced and truly inorganic isotope fractionation processes have been demonstrated over the mass range of metals. This Elements issue provides an overview of the application of metal stable isotopes to low-temperature systems, which extend across the borders of several science disciplines: geology, hydrology, biology, environmental science, and biomedicine. Information on instrumentation, fractionation processes, data-reporting terminology, and reference materials presented here will help the reader to better understand this rapidly evolving field.

KSC-2009-4629

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , technicians check equipment on the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft after it was lowered onto the orbital insertion system. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

Creating Value: Unifying Silos into Public Health Business Intelligence

PubMed Central

Davidson, Arthur J.

2014-01-01

Introduction: Through September 2014, federal investments in health information technology have been unprecedented, with more than 25 billion dollars in incentive funds distributed to eligible hospitals and providers. Over 85 percent of eligible United States hospitals and 60 percent of eligible providers have used certified electronic health record (EHR) technology and received Meaningful Use incentive funds (HITECH Act1). Technology: Certified EHR technology could create new public health (PH) value through novel and rapidly evolving data-use opportunities, never before experienced by PH. The long-standing “silo” approach to funding has fragmented PH programs and departments,2 but the components for integrated business intelligence (i.e., tools and applications to help users make informed decisions) and maximally reuse data are available now. Systems: Challenges faced by PH agencies on the road to integration are plentiful, but an emphasis on PH systems and services research (PHSSR) may identify gaps and solutions for the PH community to address. Conclusion: Technology and system approaches to leverage this information explosion to support a transformed health care system and population health are proposed. By optimizing this information opportunity, PH can play a greater role in the learning health system. PMID:25995989

Data is the currency of R&D, and that currency is now generated and traded globally.

PubMed

Brown, Frank K; Maliski, Edward; Waller, Chris

2010-05-01

Changes in the understanding of biological science, translational research and corporate business models require a corresponding change in the approach to chemical and biological information management. The concept of operations being partitioned into discrete departments for drug discovery is beginning to be replaced by a translational approach to this process. Pharmaceutical business and organizational models are also constantly evolving. Traditional approaches to transactional systems, transferring data up to a departmental data warehouse, are no longer meeting the needs of pharmaceutical scientists and, thus, IT departments are not considered as relevant to the business. These changes and their impact on information systems, as well as some solutions to the challenges faced, are discussed in this editorial.

Enhanced Traceability for Bulk Processing of Sentinel-Derived Information Products

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lankester, Thomas; Hubbard, Steven; Knowelden, Richard

2016-08-01

The advent of widely available, systematically acquired and advanced Earth observations from the Sentinel platforms is spurring development of a wide range of derived information products. Whilst welcome, this rapid rate of development inevitably leads to some processing instability as algorithms and production steps are required to evolve accordingly. To mitigate this instability, the provenance of EO-derived information products needs to be traceable and transparent.Airbus Defence and Space (Airbus DS) has developed the Airbus Processing Cloud (APC) as a virtualised processing farm for bulk production of EO-derived data and information products. The production control system of the APC transforms internal configuration control information into an INSPIRE metadata file containing a stepwise set of processing steps and data source elements that provide the complete and transparent provenance of each product generated.

Can multilayer brain networks be a real step forward?. Comment on "Network science of biological systems at different scales: A review" by M. Gosak et al.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buldú, Javier M.; Papo, David

2018-03-01

Over the last two decades Network Science has become one of the most active fields in science, whose growth has been supported by four fundamental pillars: statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, graph theory and Big Data [1]. Initially concerned with analyzing the structure of networks, Network Science rapidly turned its attention, focused on the implications of network topology, on the dynamics of and processes unfolding on networked systems, greatly improving our understanding of diffusion, synchronization, epidemics and information transmission in complex systems [2]. The network approach typically considered complex systems as evolving in a vacuum; however real networks are generally not isolated systems, but are in continuous and evolving contact with other networks, with which they interact in multiple qualitative different and typically time-varying ways. These systems can then be represented as a collection of subsystems with connectivity layers, which are simply collapsed when considering the traditional monolayer representation. Surprisingly, such an "unpacking" of layers has proven to bear profound consequences on the structural and dynamical properties of networks, leading for instance to counter-intuitive synchronization phenomena, where maximization synchronization is achieved through strategies opposite of those maximizing synchronization in isolated networks [3].

Evolution and possible storage of information in a magnetite system of significance for brain development.

PubMed

Størmer, Fredrik C; Mysterud, Ivar; Slagsvold, Tore

2011-06-01

The initial evolutionary electromagnetic steps in the history of brain development are still unknown, although such knowledge might be of high relevance in understanding human degenerative diseases. All prokaryote organisms, one-celled or multicellular, must have an inherited system to process and store information activating instincts and reflexes, in order to give a quick response to external stimuli. We argue that magnetite is an obvious compound to be evaluated as an initial precursor from prebiotic Earth history in the evolution of such a system. Magnetite is a stable ferrimagnetic compound, present in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. It occurred naturally in the early Earth environment and was later synthesized de novo in biotic organisms. We suggest that the use of magnetite has evolved to represent the main storage system for learned memory in all organisms living today. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Force Health Protection: the mission and political context of the longitudinal health record.

PubMed

Collmann, Jeff

2009-05-01

Drawing upon an extensive search of publically available literature and discussions at the "National Forum on the Future of the Defense Health Information System," this article documents the evolving mission and political context of the longitudinal health record (LHR) as an instrument for Force Health Protection (FHP). Because of the Gulf War syndrome controversy, the Department of Defense (DoD) launched an ambitious, complex series of programs designed to create a comprehensive, integrated defense health surveillance capability to assure FHP and keep faith with the American people. This "system of systems" includes individual component systems to perform specific functions such as disease surveillance, battlefield assessment, and patient care and consolidates these diverse types of information into centrally accessible archives that serve the interests of occupational health, preventive medicine, medical strategic planning, and longitudinal patient health care. After 25 years of effort and major accomplishments, progress toward a LHR remains uneven and controversy persists.

Extending and expanding the Darwinian synthesis: the role of complex systems dynamics.

PubMed

Weber, Bruce H

2011-03-01

Darwinism is defined here as an evolving research tradition based upon the concepts of natural selection acting upon heritable variation articulated via background assumptions about systems dynamics. Darwin's theory of evolution was developed within a context of the background assumptions of Newtonian systems dynamics. The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, or neo-Darwinism, successfully joined Darwinian selection and Mendelian genetics by developing population genetics informed by background assumptions of Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Currently the Darwinian Research Tradition is changing as it incorporates new information and ideas from molecular biology, paleontology, developmental biology, and systems ecology. This putative expanded and extended synthesis is most perspicuously deployed using background assumptions from complex systems dynamics. Such attempts seek to not only broaden the range of phenomena encompassed by the Darwinian Research Tradition, such as neutral molecular evolution, punctuated equilibrium, as well as developmental biology, and systems ecology more generally, but to also address issues of the emergence of evolutionary novelties as well as of life itself. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Primordial evolvability: Impasses and challenges.

PubMed

Vasas, Vera; Fernando, Chrisantha; Szilágyi, András; Zachár, István; Santos, Mauro; Szathmáry, Eörs

2015-09-21

While it is generally agreed that some kind of replicating non-living compounds were the precursors of life, there is much debate over their possible chemical nature. Metabolism-first approaches propose that mutually catalytic sets of simple organic molecules could be capable of self-replication and rudimentary chemical evolution. In particular, the graded autocatalysis replication domain (GARD) model, depicting assemblies of amphiphilic molecules, has received considerable interest. The system propagates compositional information across generations and is suggested to be a target of natural selection. However, evolutionary simulations indicate that the system lacks selectability (i.e. selection has negligible effect on the equilibrium concentrations). We elaborate on the lessons learnt from the example of the GARD model and, more widely, on the issue of evolvability, and discuss the implications for similar metabolism-first scenarios. We found that simple incorporation-type chemistry based on non-covalent bonds, as assumed in GARD, is unlikely to result in alternative autocatalytic cycles when catalytic interactions are randomly distributed. An even more serious problem stems from the lognormal distribution of catalytic factors, causing inherent kinetic instability of such loops, due to the dominance of efficiently catalyzed components that fail to return catalytic aid. Accordingly, the dynamics of the GARD model is dominated by strongly catalytic, but not auto-catalytic, molecules. Without effective autocatalysis, stable hereditary propagation is not possible. Many repetitions and different scaling of the model come to no rescue. Despite all attempts to show the contrary, the GARD model is not evolvable, in contrast to reflexively autocatalytic networks, complemented by rare uncatalyzed reactions and compartmentation. The latter networks, resting on the creation and breakage of chemical bonds, can generate novel ('mutant') autocatalytic loops from a given set of environmentally available compounds. Real chemical reactions that make or break covalent bonds, rather than mere incorporation of components, are necessary for open-ended evolvability. The issue of whether or not several concrete chemical systems (rather than singular curiosities) could realize reflexively autocatalytic macromolecular networks will ultimately determine the relevance of metabolism-first approaches to the origin of life, as stepping stones towards true open-endedness that requires the combination of rich combinatorial chemistry controlled by information stored in template replicators. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Investing in health information management: The right people, in the right place, at the right time.

PubMed

Ayodeji Makinde, Olusesan; Mami, Mohammed Ibrahim; Oweghoro, Benson Macaulay; Oyediran, Kolawole Azeez; Mullen, Stephanie

2016-08-01

To describe the process adopted to review the academic curriculum for training health information management professionals in Nigeria. Health information management professionals are responsible for managing patients' health service records and hospital information systems across health facilities in Nigeria. An assessment found many are inadequately skilled in information and communications technology (ICT) skills believed to be needed for them to play leadership roles in hospital information systems and function effectively. This was traced to a dearth of relevant ICT courses in their academic training curriculum. A review of the curriculum for training health information management professionals was instituted following an agreed need to address these issues. Health records management is evolving across the world including the developing countries. This advancement requires evolution of training programs to meet the increasing application of ICT in this sector. After several sessions, a new curriculum that addresses all the identified educational deficiencies has been developed. It is believed that this step will help improve the quality of training programs. © The Author(s) 2016.

BioSYNTHESIS: access to a knowledge network of health sciences databases.

PubMed

Broering, N C; Hylton, J S; Guttmann, R; Eskridge, D

1991-04-01

Users of the IAIMS Knowledge Network at the Georgetown University Medical Center have access to multiple in-house and external databases from a single point of entry through BioSYNTHESIS. The IAIMS project has developed a rich environment of biomedical information resources that represent a medical decision support system for campus physicians and students. The BioSYNTHESIS system is an information navigator that provides transparent access to a Knowledge Network of over a dozen databases. These multiple health sciences databases consist of bibliographic, informational, diagnostic, and research systems which reside on diverse computers such as DEC VAXs, SUN 490, AT&T 3B2s, Macintoshes, IBM PC/PS2s and the AT&T ISN and SYTEK network systems. Ethernet and TCP/IP protocols are used in the network architecture. BioSYNTHESIS also provides network links to the other campus libraries and to external institutions. As additional knowledge resources and technological advances have become available. BioSYNTHESIS has evolved from a two phase to a three phase program. Major components of the system including recent achievements and future plans are described.

Application of an enhanced spill management information system to inland waterways.

PubMed

Camp, Janey S; LeBoeuf, Eugene J; Abkowitz, Mark D

2010-03-15

Spill response managers on inland waterways have indicated the need for an improved decision-support system, one that provides advanced modeling technology within a visual framework. Efforts to address these considerations led the authors to develop an enhanced version of the Spill Management Information System (SMIS 2.0). SMIS 2.0 represents a state-of-the-art 3D hydrodynamic and chemical spill modeling system tool that provides for improved predictive spill fate and transport capability, combined with a geographic information systems (GIS) spatial environment in which to communicate propagation risks and locate response resources. This paper focuses on the application of SMIS 2.0 in a case study of several spill scenarios involving the release of diesel fuel and trichloroethylene (TCE) that were simulated on the Kentucky Lake portion of the Tennessee River, each analyzed at low, average, and high flow conditions. A discussion of the decision-support implications of the model results is also included, as are suggestions for future enhancements to this evolving platform. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Composable Analytic Systems for next-generation intelligence analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

DiBona, Phil; Llinas, James; Barry, Kevin

2015-05-01

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (LM ATL) is collaborating with Professor James Llinas, Ph.D., of the Center for Multisource Information Fusion at the University at Buffalo (State of NY), researching concepts for a mixed-initiative associate system for intelligence analysts to facilitate reduced analysis and decision times while proactively discovering and presenting relevant information based on the analyst's needs, current tasks and cognitive state. Today's exploitation and analysis systems have largely been designed for a specific sensor, data type, and operational context, leading to difficulty in directly supporting the analyst's evolving tasking and work product development preferences across complex Operational Environments. Our interactions with analysts illuminate the need to impact the information fusion, exploitation, and analysis capabilities in a variety of ways, including understanding data options, algorithm composition, hypothesis validation, and work product development. Composable Analytic Systems, an analyst-driven system that increases flexibility and capability to effectively utilize Multi-INT fusion and analytics tailored to the analyst's mission needs, holds promise to addresses the current and future intelligence analysis needs, as US forces engage threats in contested and denied environments.

Next Generation Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Processing at NASA CDDIS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Michael, B. P.; Noll, C. E.

2016-12-01

The Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS) has been providing access to space geodesy and related data sets since 1982, and in particular, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) data and derived products since 1992. The CDDIS became one of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) archive centers in 2007. As such, CDDIS has evolved to offer a broad range of data ingest services, from data upload, quality control, documentation, metadata extraction, and ancillary information. With a growing understanding of the needs and goals of its science users CDDIS continues to improve these services. Due to the importance of GNSS data and derived products in scientific studies over the last decade, CDDIS has seen its ingest volume explode to over 30 million files per year or more than one file per second from over hundreds of simultaneous data providers. In order to accommodate this increase and to streamline operations and fully automate the workflow, CDDIS has recently updated the data submission process and GNSS processing. This poster will cover this new ingest infrastructure, workflow, and the agile techniques applied in its development and current operations.

Scientific Digital Libraries, Interoperability, and Ontologies

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hughes, J. Steven; Crichton, Daniel J.; Mattmann, Chris A.

2009-01-01

Scientific digital libraries serve complex and evolving research communities. Justifications for the development of scientific digital libraries include the desire to preserve science data and the promises of information interconnectedness, correlative science, and system interoperability. Shared ontologies are fundamental to fulfilling these promises. We present a tool framework, some informal principles, and several case studies where shared ontologies are used to guide the implementation of scientific digital libraries. The tool framework, based on an ontology modeling tool, was configured to develop, manage, and keep shared ontologies relevant within changing domains and to promote the interoperability, interconnectedness, and correlation desired by scientists.

Modeling evolution of crosstalk in noisy signal transduction networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tareen, Ammar; Wingreen, Ned S.; Mukhopadhyay, Ranjan

2018-02-01

Signal transduction networks can form highly interconnected systems within cells due to crosstalk between constituent pathways. To better understand the evolutionary design principles underlying such networks, we study the evolution of crosstalk for two parallel signaling pathways that arise via gene duplication. We use a sequence-based evolutionary algorithm and evolve the network based on two physically motivated fitness functions related to information transmission. We find that one fitness function leads to a high degree of crosstalk while the other leads to pathway specificity. Our results offer insights on the relationship between network architecture and information transmission for noisy biomolecular networks.

Advancing the Vision of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems: a European Perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Edwards, A. W.; Craglia, M.; Nativi, S.

2012-12-01

The purpose of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), a network of Earth observation and information systems, contributed on a voluntary basis by Members and Participating Organisations of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO), is to achieve comprehensive, coordinated and sustained observations of the Earth system, in order to improve monitoring of the state of the Earth, increase understanding of Earth processes, and enhance prediction of the behaviour of the Earth system. Such a global research effort requires an integrated multi-disciplinary effort that is underpinned by a cyber-infrastructure which is able to discover and access vast quantities of data across heterogeneous information systems and many disciplines. As GEO develops and the implementation of the GEOSS gathers pace, it is becoming common practice for groups to be organised at national, regional and international level to address critical issues. In many cases these groups evolve to become "communities", organising themselves to carry out tasks of interest to that community. In most cases, communities develop their own "community portal" to provide a focal point on the web for their activities. The data and information held by the members of a specific community can normally be discovered via their particular "community portal". There is now a clear recognition that the many thematic community initiatives, each with their own information system and portal, need to be fully connected into the overall GEOSS architecture. With the introduction of a brokering capability this becomes possible. The value of the brokering approach has been demonstrated within the European Union funded EuroGEOSS research project. The EuroGEOSS brokering capability has now been incorporated into the GEOSS information system, (known as the GEOSS Common Infrastructure, or GCI) and renamed the GEOSS Discovery and Access Broker. In a matter of a few months the GEOSS DAB has enabled the GEOSS to extend the data resources available from a few hundred to over 28 million. The brokering approach also considerably lowers User and Data Producers entry barriers, offering the opportunity to support real bottom-up infrastructure, building on existing capacities (supplementing, but not supplanting them). Differently from other conceptual approaches, such as federated systems, within the brokering approach heterogeneity is addressed by focusing on mediation rather than standardisation. Moving toward a Broker-based infrastructure offers a greater level of flexibility than other architectural solutions. This adds not only an avenue for innovation as technology evolves, but also provides the potential for interoperability with cultural, social and economic information that will ultimately play a role in decision making, for example within citizens observatories. This presentation will focus on the opportunities that brokering offers to facilitate truly multi-disciplinary big data science and address the scientific challenges of our time.

The interoperability force in the ERP field

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boza, Andrés; Cuenca, Llanos; Poler, Raúl; Michaelides, Zenon

2015-04-01

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems participate in interoperability projects and this participation sometimes leads to new proposals for the ERP field. The aim of this paper is to identify the role that interoperability plays in the evolution of ERP systems. To go about this, ERP systems have been first identified within interoperability frameworks. Second, the initiatives in the ERP field driven by interoperability requirements have been identified from two perspectives: technological and business. The ERP field is evolving from classical ERP as information system integrators to a new generation of fully interoperable ERP. Interoperability is changing the way of running business, and ERP systems are changing to adapt to the current stream of interoperability.

Toward an integrated knowledge environment to support modern oncology.

PubMed

Blake, Patrick M; Decker, David A; Glennon, Timothy M; Liang, Yong Michael; Losko, Sascha; Navin, Nicholas; Suh, K Stephen

2011-01-01

Around the world, teams of researchers continue to develop a wide range of systems to capture, store, and analyze data including treatment, patient outcomes, tumor registries, next-generation sequencing, single-nucleotide polymorphism, copy number, gene expression, drug chemistry, drug safety, and toxicity. Scientists mine, curate, and manually annotate growing mountains of data to produce high-quality databases, while clinical information is aggregated in distant systems. Databases are currently scattered, and relationships between variables coded in disparate datasets are frequently invisible. The challenge is to evolve oncology informatics from a "systems" orientation of standalone platforms and silos into an "integrated knowledge environments" that will connect "knowable" research data with patient clinical information. The aim of this article is to review progress toward an integrated knowledge environment to support modern oncology with a focus on supporting scientific discovery and improving cancer care.

Evaluation of need for ontologies to manage domain content for the Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System

PubMed Central

Eilbeck, Karen L.; Lipstein, Julie; McGarvey, Sunanda; Staes, Catherine J.

2014-01-01

The Reportable Condition Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) is envisioned to be a single, comprehensive, authoritative, real-time portal to author, view and access computable information about reportable conditions. The system is designed for use by hospitals, laboratories, health information exchanges, and providers to meet public health reporting requirements. The RCKMS Knowledge Representation Workgroup was tasked to explore the need for ontologies to support RCKMS functionality. The workgroup reviewed relevant projects and defined criteria to evaluate candidate knowledge domain areas for ontology development. The use of ontologies is justified for this project to unify the semantics used to describe similar reportable events and concepts between different jurisdictions and over time, to aid data integration, and to manage large, unwieldy datasets that evolve, and are sometimes externally managed. PMID:25954354

EarthCube as an information resource marketplace; the GEAR Project conceptual design

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Richard, S. M.; Zaslavsky, I.; Gupta, A.; Valentine, D.

2015-12-01

Geoscience Architecture for Research (GEAR) is approaching EarthCube design as a complex and evolving socio-technical federation of systems. EarthCube is intended to support the science research enterprise, for which there is no centralized command and control, requirements are a moving target, the function and behavior of the system must evolve and adapt as new scientific paradigms emerge, and system participants are conducting research that inherently implies seeking new ways of doing things. EarthCube must address evolving user requirements and enable domain and project systems developed under different management and for different purposes to work together. The EC architecture must focus on creating a technical environment that enables new capabilities by combining existing and newly developed resources in various ways, and encourages development of new resource designs intended for re-use and interoperability. In a sense, instead of a single architecture design, GEAR provides a way to accommodate multiple designs tuned to different tasks. This agile, adaptive, evolutionary software development style is based on a continuously updated portfolio of compatible components that enable new sub-system architecture. System users make decisions about which components to use in this marketplace based on performance, satisfaction, and impact metrics collected continuously to evaluate components, determine priorities, and guide resource allocation decisions by the system governance agency. EC is designed as a federation of independent systems, and although the coordinator of the EC system may be named an enterprise architect, the focus of the role needs to be organizing resources, assessing their readiness for interoperability with the existing EC component inventory, managing dependencies between transient subsystems, mechanisms of stakeholder engagement and inclusion, and negotiation of standard interfaces, rather than actual specification of components. Composition of components will be developed by projects that involve both domain scientists and CI experts for specific research problems. We believe an agile, marketplace type approach is an essential architectural strategy for EarthCube.

Integration of Bim, Web Maps and Iot for Supporting Comfort Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gunduz, M.; Isikdag, U.; Basaraner, M.

2017-11-01

The use of the Internet is expanding and the technological capabilities of electronic devices are evolving. Today, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions can be developed that were never even imaginable before. In this paper, a case study is presented on the joint use of Building Information Model (BIM), Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. It is a part of an ongoing study that intends to overcome some problems about the management of complex facilities. In the study, a BIM has been converted and displayed in 2D on Google Maps, and information on various sensors have been represented on the web with geographic coordinates in real-time.

Early evolution of efficient enzymes and genome organization

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Cellular life with complex metabolism probably evolved during the reign of RNA, when it served as both information carrier and enzyme. Jensen proposed that enzymes of primordial cells possessed broad specificities: they were generalist. When and under what conditions could primordial metabolism run by generalist enzymes evolve to contemporary-type metabolism run by specific enzymes? Results Here we show by numerical simulation of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction chain that specialist enzymes spread after the invention of the chromosome because protocells harbouring unlinked genes maintain largely non-specific enzymes to reduce their assortment load. When genes are linked on chromosomes, high enzyme specificity evolves because it increases biomass production, also by reducing taxation by side reactions. Conclusion The constitution of the genetic system has a profound influence on the limits of metabolic efficiency. The major evolutionary transition to chromosomes is thus proven to be a prerequisite for a complex metabolism. Furthermore, the appearance of specific enzymes opens the door for the evolution of their regulation. Reviewers This article was reviewed by Sándor Pongor, Gáspár Jékely, and Rob Knight. PMID:23114029

Evolution of synchronization and desynchronization in digital organisms.

PubMed

Knoester, David B; McKinley, Philip K

2011-01-01

We present a study in the evolution of temporal behavior, specifically synchronization and desynchronization, through digital evolution and group selection. In digital evolution, a population of self-replicating computer programs exists in a user-defined computational environment and is subject to instruction-level mutations and natural selection. Group selection links the survival of the individual to the survival of its group, thus encouraging cooperation. Previous approaches to engineering synchronization and desynchronization algorithms have taken inspiration from nature: In the well-known firefly model, the only form of communication between agents is in the form of flash messages among neighbors. Here we demonstrate that populations of digital organisms, provided with a similar mechanism and minimal information about their environment, are capable of evolving algorithms for synchronization and desynchronization, and that the evolved behaviors are robust to message loss. We further describe how the evolved behavior for synchronization mimics that of the well-known Ermentrout model for firefly synchronization in biology. In addition to discovering self-organizing behaviors for distributed computing systems, this result indicates that digital evolution may be used to further our understanding of synchronization in biology.

Addressing Health Insurance Literacy Gaps in an Urban African American Population: A Qualitative Study.

PubMed

Ali, Nida M; Combs, Ryan M; Muvuka, Baraka; Ayangeakaa, Suur D

2018-06-20

Health insurance and health systems literacy needs are evolving with changes to the U.S. healthcare system. Following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, many residents in West Louisville, Kentucky, a predominantly African American community, gained health insurance coverage for the first time. A qualitative study was conducted to assess residents' health insurance and health systems needs and to identify ways of assisting residents with navigating the healthcare system and utilizing their health insurance coverage. Twelve focus groups were conducted with a total of eighty-seven residents. Round one explored participants' experiences with health insurance, and round two examined their health information delivery preferences. An inductive thematic analysis was performed. Participants revealed the complexity of the health insurance system, many citing difficulty understanding health insurance concepts and finding suitable healthcare providers. High costs, mistrust in the healthcare system, and perceived public-private disparities were barriers to effective health insurance utilization. Health insurance materials in their current form have limited value in translating health insurance and health systems information to the West Louisville population. Alternative forms of information delivery, such as locally accessible and culturally competent community health workers may be better received and more successfully utilized by the community.

Strategic relevance and accountability expectations: new perspectives for health care information technology design.

PubMed

Tan, J K; Modrow, R E

1999-05-01

In this article, we discuss the traditional systems analysis perspective on end-user information requirements analysis and extend it to merge with the new accountability expectations perspective to guide the future planning and design of health organization information systems. Underlying the strategic relevance of health care information technology (HCIT) are three critical questions: (1) What is the ideal HCIT model for the health organization in terms of achieving strategic expertise and competitive advantage? Specifically, how does this model link industry performance standards with organizational performance and accountability expectations? (2) How should the limitations of past HCIT models be reconciled to the benefits presented by the superior arrangement of the ideal model in the context of changing accountability expectations? (3) How should alternative HCIT solutions be evaluated in light of evidence-based accountability and organizational performance benchmarking? Insights into these questions will ensure that health care managers, HCIT practitioners and researchers can continue to focus on the most critical issues in harnessing today's fast-paced changing technologies for evolving strategically relevant, performance-based health organization systems.

Taking it to the streets: delivering on deployment.

PubMed

Carr, Dafna; Welch, Vickie; Fabik, Trish; Hirji, Nadir; O'Connor, Casey

2009-01-01

From inception to deployment, the Wait Time Information System (WTIS) project faced significant challenges associated with time, scope and complexity. It involved not only the creation and deployment of two large-scale province-wide systems (the WTIS and Ontario's Client Registry/Enterprise Master Patient Index) within aggressive time frames, but also the active engagement of 82 Ontario hospitals, scores of healthcare leaders and several thousand clinicians who would eventually be using the new technology and its data. The provincial WTIS project team (see Figure 1) also had to be able to adapt and evolve their planning in an environment that was changing day-by-day. This article looks at the factors that allowed the team to take the WTIS out to the field and shares the approach, processes and tools used to deploy this complex and ambitious information management and information technology (IM/IT) initiative.

Through evolution's eyes: extracting mate preferences by linking visual attention to adaptive design.

PubMed

Krupp, Daniel Brian

2008-02-01

Information is crucial to decision-making, including mate choice decisions. Perceptual systems, such as attention, evolved in part to forage for reproductive information; consequently, these systems can be used to reveal mate preferences. Here, I consider the place of visual information in human mate choice and provide a rationale for pressing into service methods drawn from the attention literature for the study of mate choice decisions. Because visual attention is allocated automatically and selectively, it may be used to complement common methods of mate preference assessment, such as self-report questionnaires and measures of genital arousal, while avoiding some of the pitfalls of these methods. Beyond the utility of increasing confidence in extant research findings by employing relatively unobtrusive methods, visual attention paradigms can also allow researchers to explore a variety of questions that are rarely asked, such as those concerned with signal efficiency and tradeoffs in the assessment of mate value.

Commonality and Variability Analysis for Xenon Family of Separation Virtual Machine Monitors (CVAX)

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-07-18

technical approach is a systematic application of Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE). A systematic application requires describing the family and... engineering Software family September 2016 – October 2016 OSD/OUSD/ATL/ASD(R&E)/RDOffice of Information Systems & Cyber Security RD / ASD(R&E) / AT&L...by the evolving open-source Xen hypervisor. The technical approach is a systematic application of Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE). A

Modelling Team Adversarial Actions in UAV Operations

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-11-01

support for the dynamic creation and destruction of entities is the history dependent automata ( HDA ) [9] which evolved from an algorithmic structure for...checking bi-similarity of π- calculus agents. The authors define HDA as automata which perform actions that can carry information generated in the...past history of the system. The states, transitions and labels of the HDA are enriched with sets of local names. Thus, each transition can refer to the

Development of an Android App for notification and reporting of natural disaster such as earthquakes and tsunamis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Richter, Steffen; Hammitzsch, Martin

2013-04-01

Disasters like the Tohoku tsunami in March 2011 and the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, have shown clearly that the rapid detection of possible negative impact on population and infrastructure is crucial for the rapid organization of effective counter measures integration activities. It has turned out that effective planning of relief and rescue measures requires both information provided by governmental authorities and feedback of the general public. Every citizen experiencing the events directly on site becomes a potential witness and can provide valuable information about the disaster. Citizens can use various information channels to communicate and share their experiences. During the last years, the crowdsourcing approach has gained the attention of users of modern communication and information systems. The term crowdsourcing describes the interactive collaboration of voluntary users on the Internet, working on a common topic. A similar approach is mobile crowdsourcing which evolved in the quickly growing community of smartphone users: Crowdsourcing platforms provide additional application scenarios for modern smartphone. Smartphone users are enabled to compose and share reports immediately at the scene of the disaster. A growing number of modern smartphones also includes sensors for taking pictures and to determine the current geographical position. This additional content can significantly enhance the value of a disaster event report. The project Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision-Support in Evolving Crises (TRIDEC), co-funded by the European Commission in its Seventh Framework Programme, is focused on the management of crisis situations. Part of the project is the development of an application for the Android smartphone platform. This application enables access to an continuously updated situation report for current natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis based on incoming crowdsourced reports. The App is used to immediately sent eyewitness reports, to an instance of the crowd mapping platform Ushahidi, which is used repeatedly since the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti to collect eyewitness reports in natural disasters and thus optimally supplements the conventional sensors and sensor systems. Crisis reports which include geographical information can be directly visualized in a geographic information system for the benefit of the crowdsourcing community and the individual user as well as national and international authorities.

In search of meta-knowledge

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lopez, Antonio M., Jr.

1993-01-01

Development of an Intelligent Information System (IIS) involves application of numerous artificial intelligence (AI) paradigms and advanced technologies. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is interested in an IIS that can automatically collect, classify, store and retrieve data, as well as develop, manipulate and restructure knowledge regarding the data and its application (Campbell et al., 1987, p.3). This interest stems in part from a NASA initiative in support of the interagency Global Change Research program. NASA's space data problems are so large and varied that scientific researchers will find it almost impossible to access the most suitable information from a software system if meta-information (metadata and meta-knowledge) is not embedded in that system. Even if more, faster, larger hardware is used, new innovative software systems will be required to organize, link, maintain, and properly archive the Earth Observing System (EOS) data that is to be stored and distributed by the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) (Dozier, 1990). Although efforts are being made to specify the metadata that will be used in EOSDIS, meta-knowledge specification issues are not clear. With the expectation that EOSDIS might evolve into an IIS, this paper presents certain ideas on the concept of meta-knowledge and demonstrates how meta-knowledge might be represented in a pixel classification problem.

An evolutionary view of chromatography data systems used in bioanalysis.

PubMed

McDowall, R D

2010-02-01

This is a personal view of how chromatographic peak measurement and analyte quantification for bioanalysis have evolved from the manual methods of 1970 to the electronic working possible in 2010. In four decades there have been major changes from a simple chart recorder output (that was interpreted and quantified manually) through simple automation of peak measurement, calculation of standard curves and quality control values and instrument control to the networked chromatography data systems of today that are capable of interfacing with Laboratory Information Management Systems and other IT applications. The incorporation of electronic signatures to meet regulatory requirements offers a great opportunity for business improvement and electronic working.

Intelligent fault-tolerant controllers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Huang, Chien Y.

1987-01-01

A system with fault tolerant controls is one that can detect, isolate, and estimate failures and perform necessary control reconfiguration based on this new information. Artificial intelligence (AI) is concerned with semantic processing, and it has evolved to include the topics of expert systems and machine learning. This research represents an attempt to apply AI to fault tolerant controls, hence, the name intelligent fault tolerant control (IFTC). A generic solution to the problem is sought, providing a system based on logic in addition to analytical tools, and offering machine learning capabilities. The advantages are that redundant system specific algorithms are no longer needed, that reasonableness is used to quickly choose the correct control strategy, and that the system can adapt to new situations by learning about its effects on system dynamics.

Public Health Surveillance Systems: Recent Advances in Their Use and Evaluation.

PubMed

Groseclose, Samuel L; Buckeridge, David L

2017-03-20

Surveillance is critical for improving population health. Public health surveillance systems generate information that drives action, and the data must be of sufficient quality and with a resolution and timeliness that matches objectives. In the context of scientific advances in public health surveillance, changing health care and public health environments, and rapidly evolving technologies, the aim of this article is to review public health surveillance systems. We consider their current use to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the public health system, the role of system stakeholders, the analysis and interpretation of surveillance data, approaches to system monitoring and evaluation, and opportunities for future advances in terms of increased scientific rigor, outcomes-focused research, and health informatics.

Methods for Analyzing the Benefits and Costs of Distributed Photovoltaic Generation to the U.S. Electric Utility System

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Denholm, P.; Margolis, R.; Palmintier, B.

This report outlines the methods, data, and tools that could be used at different levels of sophistication and effort to estimate the benefits and costs of DGPV. In so doing, we identify the gaps in current benefit-cost-analysis methods, which we hope will inform the ongoing research agenda in this area. The focus of this report is primarily on benefits and costs from the utility or electricity generation system perspective. It is intended to provide useful background information to utility and regulatory decision makers and their staff, who are often being asked to use or evaluate estimates of the benefits andmore » cost of DGPV in regulatory proceedings. Understanding the technical rigor of the range of methods and how they might need to evolve as DGPV becomes a more significant contributor of energy to the electricity system will help them be better consumers of this type of information. This report is also intended to provide information to utilities, policy makers, PV technology developers, and other stakeholders, which might help them maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of integrating DGPV into a changing electricity system.« less

The Difference between Uncertainty and Information, and Why This Matters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nearing, G. S.

2016-12-01

Earth science investigation and arbitration (for decision making) is very often organized around a concept of uncertainty. It seems relatively straightforward that the purpose of our science is to reduce uncertainty about how environmental systems will react and evolve under different conditions. I propose here that approaching a science of complex systems as a process of quantifying and reducing uncertainty is a mistake, and specifically a mistake that is rooted in certain rather hisoric logical errors. Instead I propose that we should be asking questions about information. I argue here that an information-based perspective facilitates almost trivial answers to environmental science questions that are either difficult or theoretically impossible to answer when posed as questions about uncertainty. In particular, I propose that an information-centric perspective leads to: Coherent and non-subjective hypothesis tests for complex system models. Process-level diagnostics for complex systems models. Methods for building complex systems models that allow for inductive inference without the need for a priori specification of likelihood functions or ad hoc error metrics. Asymptotically correct quantification of epistemic uncertainty. To put this in slightly more basic terms, I propose that an information-theoretic philosophy of science has the potential to resolve certain important aspects of the Demarcation Problem and the Duhem-Quine Problem, and that Hydrology and other Earth Systems Sciences can immediately capitalize on this to address some of our most difficult and persistent problems.

Querying databases of trajectories of differential equations: Data structures for trajectories

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Grossman, Robert

1989-01-01

One approach to qualitative reasoning about dynamical systems is to extract qualitative information by searching or making queries on databases containing very large numbers of trajectories. The efficiency of such queries depends crucially upon finding an appropriate data structure for trajectories of dynamical systems. Suppose that a large number of parameterized trajectories gamma of a dynamical system evolving in R sup N are stored in a database. Let Eta is contained in set R sup N denote a parameterized path in Euclidean Space, and let the Euclidean Norm denote a norm on the space of paths. A data structure is defined to represent trajectories of dynamical systems, and an algorithm is sketched which answers queries.

Humanoid Flight Metabolic Simulator Project

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ross, Stuart

2015-01-01

NASA's Evolvable Mars Campaign (EMC) has identified several areas of technology that will require significant improvements in terms of performance, capacity, and efficiency, in order to make a manned mission to Mars possible. These include crew vehicle Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), EVA suit Portable Life Support System (PLSS) and Information Systems, autonomous environmental monitoring, radiation exposure monitoring and protection, and vehicle thermal control systems (TCS). (MADMACS) in a Suit can be configured to simulate human metabolism, consuming crew resources (oxygen) in the process. In addition to providing support for testing Life Support on unmanned flights, MADMACS will also support testing of suit thermal controls, and monitor radiation exposure, body zone temperatures, moisture, and loads.

Development and implementation of sepsis alert systems

PubMed Central

Harrison, Andrew M.; Gajic, Ognjen; Pickering, Brian W.; Herasevich, Vitaly

2016-01-01

Synopsis/Summary Development and implementation of sepsis alert systems is challenging, particularly outside the monitored intensive care unit (ICU) setting. Important barriers to wider use of sepsis alerts include evolving clinical definitions of sepsis, information overload & alert fatigue, due to suboptimal alert performance. Outside the ICU, additional barriers include differences in health care delivery models, charting behaviors, and availability of electronic data. Currently available evidence does not support routine use of sepsis alert systems in clinical practice. However, continuous improvement in both the afferent (data availability and accuracy of detection algorithms) and efferent (evidence-based decision support and smoother integration into clinical workflow) limbs of sepsis alert systems will help translate theoretical advantages into measurable patient benefit. PMID:27229639

A new approach for designing self-organizing systems and application to adaptive control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ramamoorthy, P. A.; Zhang, Shi; Lin, Yueqing; Huang, Song

1993-01-01

There is tremendous interest in the design of intelligent machines capable of autonomous learning and skillful performance under complex environments. A major task in designing such systems is to make the system plastic and adaptive when presented with new and useful information and stable in response to irrelevant events. A great body of knowledge, based on neuro-physiological concepts, has evolved as a possible solution to this problem. Adaptive resonance theory (ART) is a classical example under this category. The system dynamics of an ART network is described by a set of differential equations with nonlinear functions. An approach for designing self-organizing networks characterized by nonlinear differential equations is proposed.

Evolving network simulation study. From regular lattice to scale free network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Makowiec, D.

2005-12-01

The Watts-Strogatz algorithm of transferring the square lattice to a small world network is modified by introducing preferential rewiring constrained by connectivity demand. The evolution of the network is two-step: sequential preferential rewiring of edges controlled by p and updating the information about changes done. The evolving system self-organizes into stationary states. The topological transition in the graph structure is noticed with respect to p. Leafy phase a graph formed by multiple connected vertices (graph skeleton) with plenty of leaves attached to each skeleton vertex emerges when p is small enough to pretend asynchronous evolution. Tangling phase where edges of a graph circulate frequently among low degree vertices occurs when p is large. There exist conditions at which the resulting stationary network ensemble provides networks which degree distribution exhibit power-law decay in large interval of degrees.

The Department of Energy Nuclear Criticality Safety Program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Felty, James R.

2005-05-01

This paper broadly covers key events and activities from which the Department of Energy Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) evolved. The NCSP maintains fundamental infrastructure that supports operational criticality safety programs. This infrastructure includes continued development and maintenance of key calculational tools, differential and integral data measurements, benchmark compilation, development of training resources, hands-on training, and web-based systems to enhance information preservation and dissemination. The NCSP was initiated in response to Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Recommendation 97-2, Criticality Safety, and evolved from a predecessor program, the Nuclear Criticality Predictability Program, that was initiated in response to Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Recommendation 93-2, The Need for Critical Experiment Capability. This paper also discusses the role Dr. Sol Pearlstein played in helping the Department of Energy lay the foundation for a robust and enduring criticality safety infrastructure.

A unitary model of the black hole evaporation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feng, Yu-Lei; Chen, Yi-Xin

2014-12-01

A unitary effective field model of the black hole evaporation is proposed to satisfy almost the four postulates of the black hole complementarity (BHC). In this model, we enlarge a black hole-scalar field system by adding an extra radiation detector that couples with the scalar field. After performing a partial trace over the scalar field space, we obtain an effective entanglement between the black hole and the detector (or radiation in it). As the whole system evolves, the S-matrix formula can be constructed formally step by step. Without local quantum measurements, the paradoxes of the information loss and AMPS's firewall can be resolved. However, the information can be lost due to quantum decoherence, as long as some local measurement has been performed on the detector to acquire the information of the radiation in it. But unlike Hawking's completely thermal spectrum, some residual correlations can be found in the radiations. All these considerations can be simplified in a qubit model that provides a modified quantum teleportation to transfer the information via an EPR pairs.

Characterizing semantic mappings adaptation via biomedical KOS evolution: a case study investigating SNOMED CT and ICD.

PubMed

Dos Reis, Julio Cesar; Pruski, Cédric; Da Silveira, Marcos; Reynaud-Delaître, Chantal

2013-01-01

Mappings established between Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) increase semantic interoperability between biomedical information systems. However, biomedical knowledge is highly dynamic and changes affecting KOS entities can potentially invalidate part or the totality of existing mappings. Understanding how mappings evolve and what the impacts of KOS evolution on mappings are is therefore crucial for the definition of an automatic approach to maintain mappings valid and up-to-date over time. In this article, we study variations of a specific KOS complex change (split) for two biomedical KOS (SNOMED CT and ICD-9-CM) through a rigorous method of investigation for identifying and refining complex changes, and for selecting representative cases. We empirically analyze and explain their influence on the evolution of associated mappings. Results point out the importance of considering various dimensions of the information described in KOS, like the semantic structure of concepts, the set of relevant information used to define the mappings and the change operations interfering with this set of information.

Characterizing Semantic Mappings Adaptation via Biomedical KOS Evolution: A Case Study Investigating SNOMED CT and ICD

PubMed Central

Reis, Julio Cesar Dos; Pruski, Cédric; Da Silveira, Marcos; Reynaud-Delaître, Chantal

2013-01-01

Mappings established between Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) increase semantic interoperability between biomedical information systems. However, biomedical knowledge is highly dynamic and changes affecting KOS entities can potentially invalidate part or the totality of existing mappings. Understanding how mappings evolve and what the impacts of KOS evolution on mappings are is therefore crucial for the definition of an automatic approach to maintain mappings valid and up-to-date over time. In this article, we study variations of a specific KOS complex change (split) for two biomedical KOS (SNOMED CT and ICD-9-CM) through a rigorous method of investigation for identifying and refining complex changes, and for selecting representative cases. We empirically analyze and explain their influence on the evolution of associated mappings. Results point out the importance of considering various dimensions of the information described in KOS, like the semantic structure of concepts, the set of relevant information used to define the mappings and the change operations interfering with this set of information. PMID:24551341

An Interoperable, Agricultural Information System Based on Satellite Remote Sensing Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Teng, William; Chiu, Long; Doraiswamy, Paul; Kempler, Steven; Liu, Zhong; Pham, Long; Rui, Hualan

2005-01-01

Monitoring global agricultural crop conditions during the growing season and estimating potential seasonal production are critically important for market development of US. agricultural products and for global food security. The Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center Distributed Active Archive Center (GES DISC DAAC) is developing an Agricultural Information System (AIS), evolved from an existing TRMM Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS), which will operationally provide satellite remote sensing data products (e.g., rainfall) and services. The data products will include crop condition and yield prediction maps, generated from a crop growth model with satellite data inputs, in collaboration with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. The AIS will enable the remote, interoperable access to distributed data, by using the GrADS-DODS Server (GDS) and by being compliant with Open GIS Consortium standards. Users will be able to download individual files, perform interactive online analysis, as well as receive operational data flows. AIS outputs will be integrated into existing operational decision support systems for global crop monitoring, such as those of the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service and the U.N. World Food Program.

Strategies and methods for aligning current and best medical practices. The role of information technologies.

PubMed

Schneider, E C; Eisenberg, J M

1998-05-01

Rapid change in American medicine requires that physicians adjust established behaviors and acquire new skills. In this article, we address three questions: What do we know about how to change physicians' practices? How can physicians take advantage of new and evolving information technologies that are likely to have an impact on the future practice of medicine? and What strategic educational interventions will best enable physicians to show competencies in information management and readiness to change practice? We outline four guiding principles for incorporating information systems tools into both medical education and practice, and we make eight recommendations for the development of a new medical school curriculum. This curriculum will produce a future medical practitioner who is capable of using information technologies to systematically measure practice performance, appropriateness, and effectiveness while updating knowledge efficiently.

Using hub technology to facilitate information system integration in a health-care enterprise.

PubMed

Gendler, S M; Friedman, B A; Henricks, W H

1996-04-01

The deployment and maintenance of multiple point-to-point interfaces between a clinical information system, such as a laboratory information system, and other systems within a healthcare enterprise is expensive and time consuming. Moreover, the demand for such interfaces is increasing as hospitals consolidate and clinical laboratories participate in the development of regional laboratory networks and create host-to-host links with laboratory outreach clients. An interface engine, also called a hub, is an evolving technology that could replace multiple point-to-point interfaces from a laboratory information system with a single interface to the hub, preferably HL7 based. The hub then routes and translates laboratory information to other systems within the enterprise. Changes in application systems in an enterprise where a centralized interface engine has been implemented then amount to thorough analysis, an update of the enterprise's data dictionary, purchase of a single new vendor-supported interface, and table-based parameter changes on the hub. Two other features of an interface engine, support for structured query language and information store-and-forward, will facilitate the development of clinical data repositories and provide flexibility when interacting with other host systems. This article describes the advantages and disadvantages of an interface engine and lists some problems not solved by the technology. Finally, early developmental experience with an interface engine at the University of Michigan Medical Center and the benefits of the project on system integration efforts are described, not the least of which has been the enthusiastic adoption of the HL7 standard for all future interface projects.

African wildlife conservation and the evolution of hunting institutions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

't Sas-Rolfes, Michael

2017-11-01

Hunting regulation presents a significant challenge for contemporary global conservation governance. Motivated by various incentives, hunters may act legally or illegally, for or against the interests of conservation. Hunter incentives are shaped by the interactions between unevenly evolving formal and informal institutions, embedded in socio-ecological systems. To work effectively for conservation, regulatory interventions must take these evolving institutional interactions into account. Drawing on analytical tools from evolutionary institutional economics, this article examines the trajectory of African hunting regulation and its consequences. Concepts of institutional dynamics, fit, scale, and interplay are applied to case studies of rhinoceros and lion hunting to highlight issues of significance to conservation outcomes. These include important links between different forms of hunting and dynamic interplay with institutions of trade. The case studies reveal that inappropriate formal regulatory approaches may be undermined by adaptive informal market responses. Poorly regulated hunting may lead to calls for stricter regulations or bans, but such legal restrictions may in turn perversely lead to more intensified and organised illegal hunting activity, further undermining conservation objectives. I conclude by offering insights and recommendations to guide more effective future regulatory interventions and priorities for further research. Specifically, I advocate approaches that move beyond simplistic regulatory interventions toward more complex, but supportive, institutional arrangements that align formal and informal institutions through inclusive stakeholder engagement.

Netgram: Visualizing Communities in Evolving Networks

PubMed Central

Mall, Raghvendra; Langone, Rocco; Suykens, Johan A. K.

2015-01-01

Real-world complex networks are dynamic in nature and change over time. The change is usually observed in the interactions within the network over time. Complex networks exhibit community like structures. A key feature of the dynamics of complex networks is the evolution of communities over time. Several methods have been proposed to detect and track the evolution of these groups over time. However, there is no generic tool which visualizes all the aspects of group evolution in dynamic networks including birth, death, splitting, merging, expansion, shrinkage and continuation of groups. In this paper, we propose Netgram: a tool for visualizing evolution of communities in time-evolving graphs. Netgram maintains evolution of communities over 2 consecutive time-stamps in tables which are used to create a query database using the sql outer-join operation. It uses a line-based visualization technique which adheres to certain design principles and aesthetic guidelines. Netgram uses a greedy solution to order the initial community information provided by the evolutionary clustering technique such that we have fewer line cross-overs in the visualization. This makes it easier to track the progress of individual communities in time evolving graphs. Netgram is a generic toolkit which can be used with any evolutionary community detection algorithm as illustrated in our experiments. We use Netgram for visualization of topic evolution in the NIPS conference over a period of 11 years and observe the emergence and merging of several disciplines in the field of information processing systems. PMID:26356538

The intellectual core of enterprise information systems: a co-citation analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shiau, Wen-Lung

2016-10-01

Enterprise information systems (EISs) have evolved in the past 20 years, attracting the attention of international practitioners and scholars. Although literature reviews and analyses have been conducted to examine the multiple dimensions of EISs, no co-citation analysis has been conducted to examine the knowledge structures involved in EIS studies; thus, the current study fills this research gap. This study investigated the intellectual structures of EISs. All data source documents (1083 articles and 24,090 citations) were obtained from the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Knowledge database. A co-citation analysis was used to analyse EIS data. By using factor analysis, we identified eight critical factors: (a) factors affecting the implementation and success of information systems (ISs); (b) the successful implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP); (c) IS evaluation and success, (d) system science studies; (e) factors influencing ERP success; (f) case research and theoretical models; (g) user acceptance of information technology; and (h) IS frameworks. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to visually map the resultant EIS knowledge. It is difficult to implement an EIS in an enterprise and each organisation exhibits specific considerations. The current findings indicate that managers must focus on ameliorating inferior project performance levels, enabling a transition from 'vicious' to 'virtuous' projects. Successful EIS implementation yields substantial organisational advantages.

Management of information within emergencies departments in developing countries: analysis at the National Emergency Department in Benin.

PubMed

Ahanhanzo, Yolaine Glèlè; Kpozehouen, Alphonse; Sopoh, Ghislain; Sossa-Jérôme, Charles; Ouedraogo, Laurent; Wilmet-Dramaix, Michèle

2016-01-01

The management of health information is a key pillar in both emergencies reception and handling facilities, given the strategic position and the potential of these facilities within hospitals, and in the monitoring of public health and epidemiology. With the technological revolution, computerization made the information systems evolve in emergency departments, especially in developed countries, with improved performance in terms of care quality, productivity and patient satisfaction. This study analyses the situation of Benin in this field, through the case of the Academic Clinic of Emergency Department of the National University Teaching Hospital of Cotonou, the national reference hospital. The study is cross-sectional and evaluative. Collection techniques are literature review and structured interviews. The components rated are resources, indicators, data sources, data management and the use-dissemination of the information through a model adapted from Health Metrics Network framework. We used quantitative and qualitative analysis. The absence of a regulatory framework restricts the operation of the system in all components and accounts for the lack and inadequacy of the dedicated resources. Dedication of more resources for this system for crucial needs such as computerization requires sensitization and greater awareness of the administrative authorities about the fact that an effective health information management system is of prime importance in this type of facility.

Symmetry of interactions rules in incompletely connected random replicator ecosystems.

PubMed

Kärenlampi, Petri P

2014-06-01

The evolution of an incompletely connected system of species with speciation and extinction is investigated in terms of random replicators. It is found that evolving random replicator systems with speciation do become large and complex, depending on speciation parameters. Antisymmetric interactions result in large systems, whereas systems with symmetric interactions remain small. A co-dominating feature is within-species interaction pressure: large within-species interaction increases species diversity. Average fitness evolves in all systems, however symmetry and connectivity evolve in small systems only. Newcomers get extinct almost immediately in symmetric systems. The distribution in species lifetimes is determined for antisymmetric systems. The replicator systems investigated do not show any sign of self-organized criticality. The generalized Lotka-Volterra system is shown to be a tedious way of implementing the replicator system.

A new evolutionary system for evolving artificial neural networks.

PubMed

Yao, X; Liu, Y

1997-01-01

This paper presents a new evolutionary system, i.e., EPNet, for evolving artificial neural networks (ANNs). The evolutionary algorithm used in EPNet is based on Fogel's evolutionary programming (EP). Unlike most previous studies on evolving ANN's, this paper puts its emphasis on evolving ANN's behaviors. Five mutation operators proposed in EPNet reflect such an emphasis on evolving behaviors. Close behavioral links between parents and their offspring are maintained by various mutations, such as partial training and node splitting. EPNet evolves ANN's architectures and connection weights (including biases) simultaneously in order to reduce the noise in fitness evaluation. The parsimony of evolved ANN's is encouraged by preferring node/connection deletion to addition. EPNet has been tested on a number of benchmark problems in machine learning and ANNs, such as the parity problem, the medical diagnosis problems, the Australian credit card assessment problem, and the Mackey-Glass time series prediction problem. The experimental results show that EPNet can produce very compact ANNs with good generalization ability in comparison with other algorithms.

Identifying and Synchronizing Health Information Technology (HIT) Events from FDA Medical Device Reports.

PubMed

Kang, Hong; Wang, Frank; Zhou, Sicheng; Miao, Qi; Gong, Yang

2017-01-01

Health information technology (HIT) events, a subtype of patient safety events, pose a major threat and barrier toward a safer healthcare system. It is crucial to gain a better understanding of the nature of the errors and adverse events caused by current HIT systems. The scarcity of HIT event-exclusive databases and event reporting systems indicates the challenge of identifying the HIT events from existing resources. FDA Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database is a potential resource for HIT events. However, the low proportion and the rapid evolvement of HIT-related events present challenges for distinguishing them from other equipment failures and hazards. We proposed a strategy to identify and synchronize HIT events from MAUDE by using a filter based on structured features and classifiers based on unstructured features. The strategy will help us develop and grow an HIT event-exclusive database, keeping pace with updates to MAUDE toward shared learning.

Cyberspace Security Econometrics System (CSES) - U.S. Copyright TXu 1-901-039

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Abercrombie, Robert K; Schlicher, Bob G; Sheldon, Frederick T

2014-01-01

Information security continues to evolve in response to disruptive changes with a persistent focus on information-centric controls and a healthy debate about balancing endpoint and network protection, with a goal of improved enterprise/business risk management. Economic uncertainty, intensively collaborative styles of work, virtualization, increased outsourcing and ongoing compliance pressures require careful consideration and adaptation. The Cyberspace Security Econometrics System (CSES) provides a measure (i.e., a quantitative indication) of reliability, performance, and/or safety of a system that accounts for the criticality of each requirement as a function of one or more stakeholders interests in that requirement. For a given stakeholder, CSESmore » accounts for the variance that may exist among the stakes one attaches to meeting each requirement. The basis, objectives and capabilities for the CSES including inputs/outputs as well as the structural and mathematical underpinnings contained in this copyright.« less

Quality of service management framework for dynamic chaining of geographic information services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Onchaga, Richard

2006-06-01

Dynamic chaining of geographic information services (geo-services) is gaining popularity as a new paradigm for evolving flexible geo-information systems and for providing on-demand access to geo-information. In dynamic chaining, disparate geo-services are discovered and composed at run time to yield more elaborate functionality and create value-added geo-information. Common approaches to service chaining discover and compose disparate geo-services based on the functional capability of individual geo-services. The primary concern of common approaches is thus the emergent behavior of the resulting composite geo-service. However, as geo-services become mundane and take on a greater and more strategic role in mission critical processes, deliverable quality of service (QoS) becomes an important concern. QoS concerns operational characteristics of a service that determine its utility in an application context. To address pertinent QoS requirements, a new approach to service chaining becomes necessary. In this paper we propose a QoS-aware chaining approach in which geo-services are discovered, composed and executed considering both functional and QoS requirements. We prescribe a QoS management framework that defines fundamental principles, concepts and mechanisms which can be applied to evolve an effective distributed computing platform for QoS-aware chaining of geo-services - the so-called geo-service infrastructure. The paper also defines an extensible QoS model for services delivered by dynamic compositions of geo-services. The process of orthophoto generation is used to demonstrate the applicability of the prescribed framework to service-oriented geographic information processing.

The Tobacco Use Management System: Analyzing Tobacco Control From a Systems Perspective

PubMed Central

Young, David; Coghill, Ken; Zhang, Jian Ying

2010-01-01

We use systems thinking to develop a strategic framework for analyzing the tobacco problem and we suggest solutions. Humans are vulnerable to nicotine addiction, and the most marketable form of nicotine delivery is the most harmful. A tobacco use management system has evolved out of governments’ attempts to regulate tobacco marketing and use and to support services that provide information about tobacco's harms and discourage its use. Our analysis identified 5 systemic problems that constrain progress toward the elimination of tobacco-related harm. We argue that this goal would be more readily achieved if the regulatory subsystem had dynamic power to regulate tobacco products and the tobacco industry as well as a responsive process for resourcing tobacco use control activities. PMID:20466970

Computerizing an integrated clinical and financial record system in a CMHC: a pilot project.

PubMed

Newkham, J; Bawcom, L

1981-01-01

The authors describe the three-year experience of a mid-sized community mental health center in designing and installing an automated Staff/Management Information System (S/MIS). The purpose of the project, piloted at the heart od Texas Region Mental Health Mental Retardation Center (HOTRMHMR) in Waco, Texas, was to examine the feasibility of a comprehensive data system operating at a local level which would create an effective audit trail for services and reimbursement and serve as a viable mechanism for the transmission of center data to a state system via computer tapes. Included in the discussion are agency philosophy, costs, management attitudes, the design and implementation process, and special features which evolved from the fully integrated system.

Whiplash Syndrome Reloaded: Digital Echoes of Whiplash Syndrome in the European Internet Search Engine Context

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Background In many Western countries, after a motor vehicle collision, those involved seek health care for the assessment of injuries and for insurance documentation purposes. In contrast, in many less wealthy countries, there may be limited access to care and no insurance or compensation system. Objective The purpose of this infodemiology study was to investigate the global pattern of evolving Internet usage in countries with and without insurance and the corresponding compensation systems for whiplash injury. Methods We used the Internet search engine analytics via Google Trends to study the health information-seeking behavior concerning whiplash injury at national population levels in Europe. Results We found that the search for “whiplash” is strikingly and consistently often associated with the search for “compensation” in countries or cultures with a tort system. Frequent or traumatic painful injuries; diseases or disorders such as arthritis, headache, radius, and hip fracture; depressive disorders; and fibromyalgia were not associated similarly with searches on “compensation.” Conclusions In this study, we present evidence from the evolving viewpoint of naturalistic Internet search engine analytics that the expectations for receiving compensation may influence Internet search behavior in relation to whiplash injury. PMID:28347974

Project Evolve User-Adopter Manual.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Joiner, Lee M.

An adult basic education (ABE) program for mentally retarded young adults between the ages of 14 and 26 years, Project Evolve can provide education agencies for educationally handicapped children with detailed information concerning an innovative program. The manual format was developed through interviews with professional educators concerning the…

KSC-2009-2816

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-04-21

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, a worker attaches solid rocket boosters to a Delta II rocket for launch of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency on July 29. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

KSC-2009-3667

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-05-01

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The STSS Demonstrator SV-2spacecraft arrives at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4616 [27 May 09])

KSC-2009-2815

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-04-21

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, solid rocket boosters are attached to a Delta II rocket for launch of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency on July 29. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

KSC-2009-2819

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-04-21

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, solid rocket boosters are installed on a Delta II rocket for launch of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency on July 29. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

How semantic category modulates preschool children's visual memory.

PubMed

Giganti, Fiorenza; Viggiano, Maria Pia

2015-01-01

The dynamic interplay between perception and memory has been explored in preschool children by presenting filtered stimuli regarding animals and artifacts. The identification of filtered images was markedly influenced by both prior exposure and the semantic nature of the stimuli. The identification of animals required less physical information than artifacts did. Our results corroborate the notion that the human attention system evolves to reliably develop definite category-specific selection criteria by which living entities are monitored in different ways.

Unusual Reactivity of the Martian Soil: Oxygen Release Upon Humidification

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yen, A. S.

2002-01-01

Recent lab results show that oxygen evolves from superoxide-coated mineral grains upon exposure to water vapor. This observation is additional support of the hypothesis that UV-generated O2 is responsible for the reactivity of the martian soil. Discussion of current NASA research opportunities, status of various programs within the Solar System Exploration Division, and employment opportunities within NASA Headquarters to support these programs. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.

Industrial application of semantic process mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Espen Ingvaldsen, Jon; Atle Gulla, Jon

2012-05-01

Process mining relates to the extraction of non-trivial and useful information from information system event logs. It is a new research discipline that has evolved significantly since the early work on idealistic process logs. Over the last years, process mining prototypes have incorporated elements from semantics and data mining and targeted visualisation techniques that are more user-friendly to business experts and process owners. In this article, we present a framework for evaluating different aspects of enterprise process flows and address practical challenges of state-of-the-art industrial process mining. We also explore the inherent strengths of the technology for more efficient process optimisation.

Toward a theory of multilevel evolution: long-term information integration shapes the mutational landscape and enhances evolvability.

PubMed

Hogeweg, Paulien

2012-01-01

Most of evolutionary theory has abstracted away from how information is coded in the genome and how this information is transformed into traits on which selection takes place. While in the earliest stages of biological evolution, in the RNA world, the mapping from the genotype into function was largely predefined by the physical-chemical properties of the evolving entities (RNA replicators, e.g. from sequence to folded structure and catalytic sites), in present-day organisms, the mapping itself is the result of evolution. I will review results of several in silico evolutionary studies which examine the consequences of evolving the genetic coding, and the ways this information is transformed, while adapting to prevailing environments. Such multilevel evolution leads to long-term information integration. Through genome, network, and dynamical structuring, the occurrence and/or effect of random mutations becomes nonrandom, and facilitates rapid adaptation. This is what does happen in the in silico experiments. Is it also what did happen in biological evolution? I will discuss some data that suggest that it did. In any case, these results provide us with novel search images to tackle the wealth of biological data.

Solving a Health Information Management Problem. An international success story.

PubMed

Hannan, Terry J

2015-01-01

The management of health care delivery requires the availability of effective 'information management' tools based on e-technologies [eHealth]. In developed economies many of these 'tools' are readily available whereas in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) there is limited access to eHealth technologies and this has been defined as the "digital divide". This paper provides a short introduction to the fundamental understanding of what is meant by information management in health care and how it applies to all social economies. The core of the paper describes the successful implementation of appropriate information management tools in a resource poor environment to manage the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other disease states, in sub-Saharan Africa and how the system has evolved to become the largest open source eHealth project in the world and become the health information infrastructure for several national eHealth economies. The system is known as Open MRS [www.openmrs.org). The continuing successful evolution of the OpenMRS project has permitted its key implementers to define core factors that are the foundations for successful eHealth projects.

Evolving Strategies for Cancer and Autoimmunity: Back to the Future

PubMed Central

Lane, Peter J. L.; McConnell, Fiona M.; Anderson, Graham; Nawaf, Maher G.; Gaspal, Fabrina M.; Withers, David R.

2014-01-01

Although current thinking has focused on genetic variation between individuals and environmental influences as underpinning susceptibility to both autoimmunity and cancer, an alternative view is that human susceptibility to these diseases is a consequence of the way the immune system evolved. It is important to remember that the immunological genes that we inherit and the systems that they control were shaped by the drive for reproductive success rather than for individual survival. It is our view that human susceptibility to autoimmunity and cancer is the evolutionarily acceptable side effect of the immune adaptations that evolved in early placental mammals to accommodate a fundamental change in reproductive strategy. Studies of immune function in mammals show that high affinity antibodies and CD4 memory, along with its regulation, co-evolved with placentation. By dissection of the immunologically active genes and proteins that evolved to regulate this step change in the mammalian immune system, clues have emerged that may reveal ways of de-tuning both effector and regulatory arms of the immune system to abrogate autoimmune responses whilst preserving protection against infection. Paradoxically, it appears that such a detuned and deregulated immune system is much better equipped to mount anti-tumor immune responses against cancers. PMID:24782861

Respiratory care management information systems.

PubMed

Ford, Richard M

2004-04-01

Hospital-wide computerized information systems evolved from the need to capture patient information and perform billing and other financial functions. These systems, however, have fallen short of meeting the needs of respiratory care departments regarding work load assessment, productivity management, and the level of outcome reporting required to support programs such as patient-driven protocols. The respiratory care management information systems (RCMIS) of today offer many advantages over paper-based systems and hospital-wide computer systems. RCMIS are designed to facilitate functions specific to respiratory care, including assessing work demand, assigning and tracking resources, charting, billing, and reporting results. RCMIS incorporate mobile, point-of-care charting and are highly configurable to meet the specific needs of individual respiratory care departments. Important and substantial benefits can be realized with an RCMIS and mobile, wireless charting devices. The initial and ongoing costs of an RCMIS are justified by increased charge capture and reduced costs, by way of improved productivity and efficiency. It is not unusual to recover the total cost of an RCMIS within the first year of its operation. In addition, such systems can facilitate and monitor patient-care protocols and help to efficiently manage the vast amounts of information encountered during the practitioner's workday. Respiratory care departments that invest in RCMIS have an advantage in the provision of quality care and in reducing expenses. A centralized respiratory therapy department with an RCMIS is the most efficient and cost-effective way to monitor work demand and manage the hospital-wide allocation of respiratory care services.

NASA's Earth Observing Data and Information System - Near-Term Challenges

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Behnke, Jeanne; Mitchell, Andrew; Ramapriyan, Hampapuram

2018-01-01

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been a central component of the NASA Earth observation program since the 1990's. EOSDIS manages data covering a wide range of Earth science disciplines including cryosphere, land cover change, polar processes, field campaigns, ocean surface, digital elevation, atmosphere dynamics and composition, and inter-disciplinary research, and many others. One of the key components of EOSDIS is a set of twelve discipline-based Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) distributed across the United States. Managed by NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project at Goddard Space Flight Center, these DAACs serve over 3 million users globally. The ESDIS Project provides the infrastructure support for EOSDIS, which includes other components such as the Science Investigator-led Processing systems (SIPS), common metadata and metrics management systems, specialized network systems, standards management, and centralized support for use of commercial cloud capabilities. Given the long-term requirements, and the rapid pace of information technology and changing expectations of the user community, EOSDIS has evolved continually over the past three decades. However, many challenges remain. Challenges addressed in this paper include: growing volume and variety, achieving consistency across a diverse set of data producers, managing information about a large number of datasets, migration to a cloud computing environment, optimizing data discovery and access, incorporating user feedback from a diverse community, keeping metadata updated as data collections grow and age, and ensuring that all the content needed for understanding datasets by future users is identified and preserved.

Evolution of uni- and bifactorial sexual compatibility systems in fungi

PubMed Central

Nieuwenhuis, B P S; Billiard, S; Vuilleumier, S; Petit, E; Hood, M E; Giraud, T

2013-01-01

Mating systems, that is, whether organisms give rise to progeny by selfing, inbreeding or outcrossing, strongly affect important ecological and evolutionary processes. Large variations in mating systems exist in fungi, allowing the study of their origin and consequences. In fungi, sexual incompatibility is determined by molecular recognition mechanisms, controlled by a single mating-type locus in most unifactorial fungi. In Basidiomycete fungi, however, which include rusts, smuts and mushrooms, a system has evolved in which incompatibility is controlled by two unlinked loci. This bifactorial system probably evolved from a unifactorial system. Multiple independent transitions back to a unifactorial system occurred. It is still unclear what force drove evolution and maintenance of these contrasting inheritance patterns that determine mating compatibility. Here, we give an overview of the evolutionary factors that might have driven the evolution of bifactoriality from a unifactorial system and the transitions back to unifactoriality. Bifactoriality most likely evolved for selfing avoidance. Subsequently, multiallelism at mating-type loci evolved through negative frequency-dependent selection by increasing the chance to find a compatible mate. Unifactoriality then evolved back in some species, possibly because either selfing was favoured or for increasing the chance to find a compatible mate in species with few alleles. Owing to the existence of closely related unifactorial and bifactorial species and the increasing knowledge of the genetic systems of the different mechanisms, Basidiomycetes provide an excellent model for studying the different forces that shape breeding systems. PMID:23838688

Emergency healthcare process automation using mobile computing and cloud services.

PubMed

Poulymenopoulou, M; Malamateniou, F; Vassilacopoulos, G

2012-10-01

Emergency care is basically concerned with the provision of pre-hospital and in-hospital medical and/or paramedical services and it typically involves a wide variety of interdependent and distributed activities that can be interconnected to form emergency care processes within and between Emergency Medical Service (EMS) agencies and hospitals. Hence, in developing an information system for emergency care processes, it is essential to support individual process activities and to satisfy collaboration and coordination needs by providing readily access to patient and operational information regardless of location and time. Filling this information gap by enabling the provision of the right information, to the right people, at the right time fosters new challenges, including the specification of a common information format, the interoperability among heterogeneous institutional information systems or the development of new, ubiquitous trans-institutional systems. This paper is concerned with the development of an integrated computer support to emergency care processes by evolving and cross-linking institutional healthcare systems. To this end, an integrated EMS cloud-based architecture has been developed that allows authorized users to access emergency case information in standardized document form, as proposed by the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) profile, uses the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) standard Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Hospital Availability Exchange (HAVE) for exchanging operational data with hospitals and incorporates an intelligent module that supports triaging and selecting the most appropriate ambulances and hospitals for each case.

Evolving Nature of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jourian, T. J.

2015-01-01

This chapter discusses the historical and evolving terminology, constructs, and ideologies that inform the language used by those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and same-gender loving, who may identify as queer, as well as those who are members of trans* communities from multiple and intersectional perspectives.

Evolution of Collective Behaviour in an Artificial World Using Linguistic Fuzzy Rule-Based Systems

PubMed Central

Lebar Bajec, Iztok

2017-01-01

Collective behaviour is a fascinating and easily observable phenomenon, attractive to a wide range of researchers. In biology, computational models have been extensively used to investigate various properties of collective behaviour, such as: transfer of information across the group, benefits of grouping (defence against predation, foraging), group decision-making process, and group behaviour types. The question ‘why,’ however remains largely unanswered. Here the interest goes into which pressures led to the evolution of such behaviour, and evolutionary computational models have already been used to test various biological hypotheses. Most of these models use genetic algorithms to tune the parameters of previously presented non-evolutionary models, but very few attempt to evolve collective behaviour from scratch. Of these last, the successful attempts display clumping or swarming behaviour. Empirical evidence suggests that in fish schools there exist three classes of behaviour; swarming, milling and polarized. In this paper we present a novel, artificial life-like evolutionary model, where individual agents are governed by linguistic fuzzy rule-based systems, which is capable of evolving all three classes of behaviour. PMID:28045964

Evolution of Collective Behaviour in an Artificial World Using Linguistic Fuzzy Rule-Based Systems.

PubMed

Demšar, Jure; Lebar Bajec, Iztok

2017-01-01

Collective behaviour is a fascinating and easily observable phenomenon, attractive to a wide range of researchers. In biology, computational models have been extensively used to investigate various properties of collective behaviour, such as: transfer of information across the group, benefits of grouping (defence against predation, foraging), group decision-making process, and group behaviour types. The question 'why,' however remains largely unanswered. Here the interest goes into which pressures led to the evolution of such behaviour, and evolutionary computational models have already been used to test various biological hypotheses. Most of these models use genetic algorithms to tune the parameters of previously presented non-evolutionary models, but very few attempt to evolve collective behaviour from scratch. Of these last, the successful attempts display clumping or swarming behaviour. Empirical evidence suggests that in fish schools there exist three classes of behaviour; swarming, milling and polarized. In this paper we present a novel, artificial life-like evolutionary model, where individual agents are governed by linguistic fuzzy rule-based systems, which is capable of evolving all three classes of behaviour.

Xia Futou's public bathhouse--a sustainable urbanization experiment in a Chinese village.

PubMed

Lu, Hongyi; Li, Limin; Zhang, Hua

2008-04-01

Xia Futou, a small Chinese village with a unique cultural landscape, consists of two unbalanced parts, an old village up the hill and a new one down the hill. In order to upgrade and preserve the unique cultural landscape of the older village and rebalance the dislocation of the two parts, a small public bathhouse project has been carried out according to sustainable architecture principles. Based on the current cultural landscape of the bathhouse and its surroundings, this approach is attempting to localize an informed, balance-seeking, design process in the village and in so doing develop a series of diverse possibilities and beneficial paths. The experiment of the public bathhouse's design and construction led to two key conceptual questions that need to be examined, the one is to research a village with a dynamic system conception instead of a static one; the other is to research a village with a self-organizing system conception1 instead of an organized one. Furthermore, we can give the sustainable path for the future that such naturally evolved Chinese villages evolve into sustainable towns and cities.

The European Bioinformatics Institute's data resources: towards systems biology.

PubMed

Brooksbank, Catherine; Cameron, Graham; Thornton, Janet

2005-01-01

Genomic and post-genomic biological research has provided fine-grain insights into the molecular processes of life, but also threatens to drown biomedical researchers in data. Moreover, as new high-throughput technologies are developed, the types of data that are gathered en masse are diversifying. The need to collect, store and curate all this information in ways that allow its efficient retrieval and exploitation is greater than ever. The European Bioinformatics Institute's (EBI's) databases and tools have evolved to meet the changing needs of molecular biologists: since we last wrote about our services in the 2003 issue of Nucleic Acids Research, we have launched new databases covering protein-protein interactions (IntAct), pathways (Reactome) and small molecules (ChEBI). Our existing core databases have continued to evolve to meet the changing needs of biomedical researchers, and we have developed new data-access tools that help biologists to move intuitively through the different data types, thereby helping them to put the parts together to understand biology at the systems level. The EBI's data resources are all available on our website at http://www.ebi.ac.uk.

The European Bioinformatics Institute's data resources: towards systems biology

PubMed Central

Brooksbank, Catherine; Cameron, Graham; Thornton, Janet

2005-01-01

Genomic and post-genomic biological research has provided fine-grain insights into the molecular processes of life, but also threatens to drown biomedical researchers in data. Moreover, as new high-throughput technologies are developed, the types of data that are gathered en masse are diversifying. The need to collect, store and curate all this information in ways that allow its efficient retrieval and exploitation is greater than ever. The European Bioinformatics Institute's (EBI's) databases and tools have evolved to meet the changing needs of molecular biologists: since we last wrote about our services in the 2003 issue of Nucleic Acids Research, we have launched new databases covering protein–protein interactions (IntAct), pathways (Reactome) and small molecules (ChEBI). Our existing core databases have continued to evolve to meet the changing needs of biomedical researchers, and we have developed new data-access tools that help biologists to move intuitively through the different data types, thereby helping them to put the parts together to understand biology at the systems level. The EBI's data resources are all available on our website at http://www.ebi.ac.uk. PMID:15608238

SAMS--a systems architecture for developing intelligent health information systems.

PubMed

Yılmaz, Özgün; Erdur, Rıza Cenk; Türksever, Mustafa

2013-12-01

In this paper, SAMS, a novel health information system architecture for developing intelligent health information systems is proposed and also some strategies for developing such systems are discussed. The systems fulfilling this architecture will be able to store electronic health records of the patients using OWL ontologies, share patient records among different hospitals and provide physicians expertise to assist them in making decisions. The system is intelligent because it is rule-based, makes use of rule-based reasoning and has the ability to learn and evolve itself. The learning capability is provided by extracting rules from previously given decisions by the physicians and then adding the extracted rules to the system. The proposed system is novel and original in all of these aspects. As a case study, a system is implemented conforming to SAMS architecture for use by dentists in the dental domain. The use of the developed system is described with a scenario. For evaluation, the developed dental information system will be used and tried by a group of dentists. The development of this system proves the applicability of SAMS architecture. By getting decision support from a system derived from this architecture, the cognitive gap between experienced and inexperienced physicians can be compensated. Thus, patient satisfaction can be achieved, inexperienced physicians are supported in decision making and the personnel can improve their knowledge. A physician can diagnose a case, which he/she has never diagnosed before, using this system. With the help of this system, it will be possible to store general domain knowledge in this system and the personnel's need to medical guideline documents will be reduced.

The Co-evolution of Concepts and Motivation

PubMed Central

Delton, Andrew W.; Sell, Aaron

2014-01-01

Does the human mind contain evolved concepts? Many psychologists have doubted this or have investigated only a narrow set (e.g., object, number, cause). Does the human mind contain evolved motivational systems? Many more assent to this claim, holding that there are evolved motivational systems for, among other tasks, social affiliation, aggressive competition, and finding food. An emerging research program, however, reveals that these are not separate questions. Any evolved motivational system needs a wealth of conceptual structure that tethers the motivations to real world entities. For instance, what use is a fear of predators without knowing what predators are and how to respond to them effectively? As we illustrate with case studies of cooperation and conflict, there is no motivation without representation: To generate adaptive behavior, motivational systems must be interwoven with the concepts required to support them, and cannot be understood without explicit reference to those concepts. PMID:25221389

Do Close-in Giant Planets Orbiting Evolved Stars Prefer Eccentric Orbits?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grunblatt, Samuel K.; Huber, Daniel; Gaidos, Eric; Lopez, Eric D.; Barclay, Thomas; Chontos, Ashley; Sinukoff, Evan; Van Eylen, Vincent; Howard, Andrew W.; Isaacson, Howard T.

2018-07-01

The NASA Kepler and K2 Missions have recently revealed a population of transiting giant planets orbiting moderately evolved, low-luminosity red giant branch stars. Here, we present radial velocity (RV) measurements of three of these systems, revealing significantly non-zero orbital eccentricities in each case. Comparing these systems with the known planet population suggests that close-in giant planets around evolved stars tend to have more eccentric orbits than those around main sequence stars. We interpret this as tentative evidence that the orbits of these planets pass through a transient, moderately eccentric phase where they shrink faster than they circularize due to tides raised on evolved host stars. Additional RV measurements of currently known systems, along with new systems discovered by the recently launched NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, may constrain the timescale and mass dependence of this process.

The Co-evolution of Concepts and Motivation.

PubMed

Delton, Andrew W; Sell, Aaron

2014-04-01

Does the human mind contain evolved concepts? Many psychologists have doubted this or have investigated only a narrow set (e.g., object, number, cause). Does the human mind contain evolved motivational systems? Many more assent to this claim, holding that there are evolved motivational systems for, among other tasks, social affiliation, aggressive competition, and finding food. An emerging research program, however, reveals that these are not separate questions. Any evolved motivational system needs a wealth of conceptual structure that tethers the motivations to real world entities. For instance, what use is a fear of predators without knowing what predators are and how to respond to them effectively? As we illustrate with case studies of cooperation and conflict, there is no motivation without representation: To generate adaptive behavior, motivational systems must be interwoven with the concepts required to support them, and cannot be understood without explicit reference to those concepts.

Evolution of cooperation and skew under imperfect information

PubMed Central

Akçay, Erol; Meirowitz, Adam; Ramsay, Kristopher W.; Levin, Simon A.

2012-01-01

The evolution of cooperation in nature and human societies depends crucially on how the benefits from cooperation are divided and whether individuals have complete information about their payoffs. We tackle these questions by adopting a methodology from economics called mechanism design. Focusing on reproductive skew as a case study, we show that full cooperation may not be achievable due to private information over individuals’ outside options, regardless of the details of the specific biological or social interaction. Further, we consider how the structure of the interaction can evolve to promote the maximum amount of cooperation in the face of the informational constraints. Our results point to a distinct avenue for investigating how cooperation can evolve when the division of benefits is flexible and individuals have private information. PMID:22908269

A new data management system for the French National Registry of human alveolar echinococcosis cases.

PubMed

Charbonnier, Amandine; Knapp, Jenny; Demonmerot, Florent; Bresson-Hadni, Solange; Raoul, Francis; Grenouillet, Frédéric; Millon, Laurence; Vuitton, Dominique Angèle; Damy, Sylvie

2014-01-01

Alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is an endemic zoonosis in France due to the cestode Echinococcus multilocularis. The French National Reference Centre for Alveolar Echinococcosis (CNR-EA), connected to the FrancEchino network, is responsible for recording all AE cases diagnosed in France. Administrative, epidemiological and medical information on the French AE cases may currently be considered exhaustive only on the diagnosis time. To constitute a reference data set, an information system (IS) was developed thanks to a relational database management system (MySQL language). The current data set will evolve towards a dynamic surveillance system, including follow-up data (e.g. imaging, serology) and will be connected to environmental and parasitological data relative to E. multilocularis to better understand the pathogen transmission pathway. A particularly important goal is the possible interoperability of the IS with similar European and other databases abroad; this new IS could play a supporting role in the creation of new AE registries. © A. Charbonnier et al., published by EDP Sciences, 2014.

A new data management system for the French National Registry of human alveolar echinococcosis cases

PubMed Central

Charbonnier, Amandine; Knapp, Jenny; Demonmerot, Florent; Bresson-Hadni, Solange; Raoul, Francis; Grenouillet, Frédéric; Millon, Laurence; Vuitton, Dominique Angèle; Damy, Sylvie

2014-01-01

Alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is an endemic zoonosis in France due to the cestode Echinococcus multilocularis. The French National Reference Centre for Alveolar Echinococcosis (CNR-EA), connected to the FrancEchino network, is responsible for recording all AE cases diagnosed in France. Administrative, epidemiological and medical information on the French AE cases may currently be considered exhaustive only on the diagnosis time. To constitute a reference data set, an information system (IS) was developed thanks to a relational database management system (MySQL language). The current data set will evolve towards a dynamic surveillance system, including follow-up data (e.g. imaging, serology) and will be connected to environmental and parasitological data relative to E. multilocularis to better understand the pathogen transmission pathway. A particularly important goal is the possible interoperability of the IS with similar European and other databases abroad; this new IS could play a supporting role in the creation of new AE registries. PMID:25526544

Evolving gene regulation networks into cellular networks guiding adaptive behavior: an outline how single cells could have evolved into a centralized neurosensory system

PubMed Central

Fritzsch, Bernd; Jahan, Israt; Pan, Ning; Elliott, Karen L.

2014-01-01

Understanding the evolution of the neurosensory system of man, able to reflect on its own origin, is one of the major goals of comparative neurobiology. Details of the origin of neurosensory cells, their aggregation into central nervous systems and associated sensory organs, their localized patterning into remarkably different cell types aggregated into variably sized parts of the central nervous system begin to emerge. Insights at the cellular and molecular level begin to shed some light on the evolution of neurosensory cells, partially covered in this review. Molecular evidence suggests that high mobility group (HMG) proteins of pre-metazoans evolved into the definitive Sox [SRY (sex determining region Y)-box] genes used for neurosensory precursor specification in metazoans. Likewise, pre-metazoan basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) genes evolved in metazoans into the group A bHLH genes dedicated to neurosensory differentiation in bilaterians. Available evidence suggests that the Sox and bHLH genes evolved a cross-regulatory network able to synchronize expansion of precursor populations and their subsequent differentiation into novel parts of the brain or sensory organs. Molecular evidence suggests metazoans evolved patterning gene networks early and not dedicated to neuronal development. Only later in evolution were these patterning gene networks tied into the increasing complexity of diffusible factors, many of which were already present in pre-metazoans, to drive local patterning events. It appears that the evolving molecular basis of neurosensory cell development may have led, in interaction with differentially expressed patterning genes, to local network modifications guiding unique specializations of neurosensory cells into sensory organs and various areas of the central nervous system. PMID:25416504

Evolving gene regulatory networks into cellular networks guiding adaptive behavior: an outline how single cells could have evolved into a centralized neurosensory system.

PubMed

Fritzsch, Bernd; Jahan, Israt; Pan, Ning; Elliott, Karen L

2015-01-01

Understanding the evolution of the neurosensory system of man, able to reflect on its own origin, is one of the major goals of comparative neurobiology. Details of the origin of neurosensory cells, their aggregation into central nervous systems and associated sensory organs and their localized patterning leading to remarkably different cell types aggregated into variably sized parts of the central nervous system have begun to emerge. Insights at the cellular and molecular level have begun to shed some light on the evolution of neurosensory cells, partially covered in this review. Molecular evidence suggests that high mobility group (HMG) proteins of pre-metazoans evolved into the definitive Sox [SRY (sex determining region Y)-box] genes used for neurosensory precursor specification in metazoans. Likewise, pre-metazoan basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) genes evolved in metazoans into the group A bHLH genes dedicated to neurosensory differentiation in bilaterians. Available evidence suggests that the Sox and bHLH genes evolved a cross-regulatory network able to synchronize expansion of precursor populations and their subsequent differentiation into novel parts of the brain or sensory organs. Molecular evidence suggests metazoans evolved patterning gene networks early, which were not dedicated to neuronal development. Only later in evolution were these patterning gene networks tied into the increasing complexity of diffusible factors, many of which were already present in pre-metazoans, to drive local patterning events. It appears that the evolving molecular basis of neurosensory cell development may have led, in interaction with differentially expressed patterning genes, to local network modifications guiding unique specializations of neurosensory cells into sensory organs and various areas of the central nervous system.

START: an advanced radiation therapy information system.

PubMed

Cocco, A; Valentini, V; Balducci, M; Mantello, G

1996-01-01

START is an advanced radiation therapy information system (RTIS) which connects direct information technology present in the devices with indirect information technology for clinical, administrative, information management integrated with the hospital information system (HIS). The following objectives are pursued: to support decision making in treatment planning and functional and information integration with the rest of the hospital; to enhance organizational efficiency of a Radiation Therapy Department; to facilitate the statistical evaluation of clinical data and managerial performance assessment; to ensure the safety and confidentiality of used data. For its development a working method based on the involvement of all operators of the Radiation Therapy Department, was applied. Its introduction in the work activity was gradual, trying to reuse and integrate the existing information applications. The START information flow identifies four major phases: admission, visit of admission, planning, therapy. The system main functionalities available to the radiotherapist are: clinical history/medical report linking function; folder function; planning function; tracking function; electronic mail and banner function; statistical function; management function. Functions available to the radiotherapy technician are: the room daily list function; management function: to the nurse the following functions are available: patient directing function; management function. START is a departmental client (pc-windows)-server (unix) developed on an integrated database of all information of interest (clinical, organizational and administrative) coherent with the standard and with a modular architecture which can evolve with additional functionalities in subsequent times. For a more thorough evaluation of its impact on the daily activity of a radiation therapy facility, a prolonged clinical validation is in progress.

Ethical Issues in Integrated Health Care: Implications for Social Workers.

PubMed

Reamer, Frederic G

2018-05-01

Integrated health care has come of age. What began modestly in the 1930s has evolved into a mature model of health care that is quickly becoming the standard of care. Social workers are now employed in a wide range of comprehensive integrated health care organizations. Some of these settings were designed as integrated health care delivery systems from their beginning. Others evolved over time, some incorporating behavioral health into existing primary care centers and others incorporating primary care into existing behavioral health agencies. In all of these contexts, social workers are encountering complex, sometimes unprecedented, ethical challenges. This article identifies and discusses ethical issues facing social workers in integrated health care settings, especially related to informed consent, privacy, confidentiality, boundaries, dual relationships, and conflicts of interest. The author includes practical resources that social workers can use to develop state-of-the-art ethics policies and protocols.

Quantum information and the problem of mechanisms of biological evolution.

PubMed

Melkikh, Alexey V

2014-01-01

One of the most important conditions for replication in early evolution is the de facto elimination of the conformational degrees of freedom of the replicators, the mechanisms of which remain unclear. In addition, realistic evolutionary timescales can be established based only on partially directed evolution, further complicating this issue. A division of the various evolutionary theories into two classes has been proposed based on the presence or absence of a priori information about the evolving system. A priori information plays a key role in solving problems in evolution. Here, a model of partially directed evolution, based on the learning automata theory, which includes a priori information about the fitness space, is proposed. A potential repository of such prior information is the states of biologically important molecules. Thus, the need for extended evolutionary synthesis is discussed. Experiments to test the hypothesis of partially directed evolution are proposed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Informal learning processes in support of clinical service delivery in a service-oriented community pharmacy.

PubMed

Patterson, Brandon J; Bakken, Brianne K; Doucette, William R; Urmie, Julie M; McDonough, Randal P

The evolving health care system necessitates pharmacy organizations' adjustments by delivering new services and establishing inter-organizational relationships. One approach supporting pharmacy organizations in making changes may be informal learning by technicians, pharmacists, and pharmacy owners. Informal learning is characterized by a four-step cycle including intent to learn, action, feedback, and reflection. This framework helps explain individual and organizational factors that influence learning processes within an organization as well as the individual and organizational outcomes of those learning processes. A case study of an Iowa independent community pharmacy with years of experience in offering patient care services was made. Nine semi-structured interviews with pharmacy personnel revealed initial evidence in support of the informal learning model in practice. Future research could investigate more fully the informal learning model in delivery of patient care services in community pharmacies. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

NASA CDDIS: Next Generation System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Michael, B. P.; Noll, C. E.; Woo, J. Y.; Limbacher, R. I.

2017-12-01

The Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS) supports data archiving and distribution activities for the space geodesy and geodynamics community. The main objectives of the system are to make space geodesy and geodynamics related data and derived products available in a central archive, to maintain information about the archival of these data, to disseminate these data and information in a timely manner to a global scientific research community, and to provide user based tools for the exploration and use of the archive. As the techniques and data volume have increased, the CDDIS has evolved to offer a broad range of data ingest services, from data upload, quality control, documentation, metadata extraction, and ancillary information. As a major step taken to improve services, the CDDIS has transitioned to a new hardware system and implemented incremental upgrades to a new software system to meet these goals while increasing automation. This new system increases the ability of the CDDIS to consistently track errors and issues associated with data and derived product files uploaded to the system and to perform post-ingest checks on all files received for the archive. In addition, software to process new data sets and changes to existing data sets have been implemented to handle new formats and any issues identified during the ingest process. In this poster, we will discuss the CDDIS archive in general as well as review and contrast the system structures and quality control measures employed before and after the system upgrade. We will also present information about new data sets and changes to existing data and derived products archived at the CDDIS.

The Evolving Demand for Skills.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Greenspan, Alan

From a macroeconomic perspective, the evolving demand for skills in the United States has been triggered by the accelerated expansion of computer and information technology, which has, in turn, brought significant changes to the workplace. Technological advances have made some wholly manual jobs obsolete. But even for many other workers, a rapidly…

Armed with Information: Evolving Public Affairs to Deliver Operational Effects

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-04-01

Recommendations and Conclusions The epitome of skill is to defeat your enemy without physically engaging him in battle. —Sun Szu Evolving existing PA...Applied Warfare Course coursebook , edited by Sharon McBride, 19-36. Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, October 2008. Krepinevich, Andrew F

Reference Architecture Model Enabling Standards Interoperability.

PubMed

Blobel, Bernd

2017-01-01

Advanced health and social services paradigms are supported by a comprehensive set of domains managed by different scientific disciplines. Interoperability has to evolve beyond information and communication technology (ICT) concerns, including the real world business domains and their processes, but also the individual context of all actors involved. So, the system must properly reflect the environment in front and around the computer as essential and even defining part of the health system. This paper introduces an ICT-independent system-theoretical, ontology-driven reference architecture model allowing the representation and harmonization of all domains involved including the transformation into an appropriate ICT design and implementation. The entire process is completely formalized and can therefore be fully automated.

A general scientific information system to support the study of climate-related data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Treinish, L. A.

1984-01-01

The development and use of NASA's Pilot Climate Data System (PCDS) are discussed. The PCDS is used as a focal point for managing and providing access to a large collection of actively used data for the Earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences. The PCDS provides uniform data catalogs, inventories, and access methods for selected NASA and non-NASA data sets. Scientific users can preview the data sets using graphical and statistical methods. The system has evolved from its original purpose as a climate data base management system in response to a national climate program, into an extensive package of capabilities to support many types of data sets from both spaceborne and surface based measurements with flexible data selection and analysis functions.

The Evolvable Advanced Multi-Mission Operations System (AMMOS): Making Systems Interoperable

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ko, Adans Y.; Maldague, Pierre F.; Bui, Tung; Lam, Doris T.; McKinney, John C.

2010-01-01

The Advanced Multi-Mission Operations System (AMMOS) provides a common Mission Operation System (MOS) infrastructure to NASA deep space missions. The evolution of AMMOS has been driven by two factors: increasingly challenging requirements from space missions, and the emergence of new IT technology. The work described in this paper focuses on three key tasks related to IT technology requirements: first, to eliminate duplicate functionality; second, to promote the use of loosely coupled application programming interfaces, text based file interfaces, web-based frameworks and integrated Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to connect users, data, and core functionality; and third, to build, develop, and deploy AMMOS services that are reusable, agile, adaptive to project MOS configurations, and responsive to industrially endorsed information technology standards.

Quantum biology of the retina.

PubMed

Sia, Paul Ikgan; Luiten, André N; Stace, Thomas M; Wood, John Pm; Casson, Robert J

2014-08-01

The emerging field of quantum biology has led to a greater understanding of biological processes at the microscopic level. There is recent evidence to suggest that non-trivial quantum features such as entanglement, tunnelling and coherence have evolved in living systems. These quantum features are particularly evident in supersensitive light-harvesting systems such as in photosynthesis and photoreceptors. A biomimetic strategy utilizing biological quantum phenomena might allow new advances in the field of quantum engineering, particularly in quantum information systems. In addition, a better understanding of quantum biological features may lead to novel medical diagnostic and therapeutic developments. In the present review, we discuss the role of quantum physics in biological systems with an emphasis on the retina. © 2014 Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists.

Medical image informatics infrastructure design and applications.

PubMed

Huang, H K; Wong, S T; Pietka, E

1997-01-01

Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) is a system integration of multimodality images and health information systems designed for improving the operation of a radiology department. As it evolves, PACS becomes a hospital image document management system with a voluminous image and related data file repository. A medical image informatics infrastructure can be designed to take advantage of existing data, providing PACS with add-on value for health care service, research, and education. A medical image informatics infrastructure (MIII) consists of the following components: medical images and associated data (including PACS database), image processing, data/knowledge base management, visualization, graphic user interface, communication networking, and application oriented software. This paper describes these components and their logical connection, and illustrates some applications based on the concept of the MIII.

Global change data sets: Excerpts from the Master Directory, version 2.0

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Beier, Joy

1992-01-01

The recent awakening to the reality of human-induced changes to the environment has resulted in an organized effort to promote global change research. The goal of this research as outlined by NASA's Earth System Science Committee (Earth System Science: A closer View, 1988) is to understand the entire Earth system on a global scale by describing how its component parts and their interactions have evolved, how they function, and how they may be expected to evolve on all timescales. The practical result is the capacity to predict that evolution over the next decade to century. Key variables important for the study of global change include external forcing factors (solar radiance, UV flux), radiatively and chemically important trace species (CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.), atmospheric response variables (temperature, pressure, winds), landsurface properties (river run-off, snow cover, albedo, soil moisture, vegetation cover), and oceanic variables (sea surface temperature, sea ice extent, sea level ocean wind stress, currents, chlorophyll, biogeochemical fluxes). The purpose of this document is to identify existing data sets available (both remotely sensed and in situ data) covering some of these variables. This is not intended to be a complete list of global change data, but merely a highlight of what is available. The information was extracted from the Master Directory (MD), an on-line scientific data information service which may be used by any researcher. This report contains the coverage dates for the data sets, sources (satellites, instruments) of the data and where they are archived.

Mass trauma: disasters, terrorism, and war.

PubMed

Chrisman, Allan K; Dougherty, Joseph G

2014-04-01

Disasters, war, and terrorism expose millions of children globally to mass trauma with increasing frequency and severity. The clinical impact of such exposure is influenced by a child's social ecology, which is understood in a risk and resilience framework. Research findings informed by developmental systems theory and the related core principles of contemporary developmental psychopathology are reviewed. Their application to the recent recommendations for interventions based on evolving public health models of community resilience are discussed along with practical clinical tools for individual response. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The roles of federal legislation and evolving health care systems in promoting medical-dental collaboration.

PubMed

Edelstein, Burton L

2014-01-01

Recent federal health care legislation contains explicit and implicit drivers for medical-dental collaboration. These laws implicitly promote health care evolution through value-based financing, "big data" and health information technology, increased number of care providers and a more holistic approach. Additional changes--practice aggregation, consumerism and population health perspectives--may also influence dental care. While dentistry will likely lag behind medicine toward value-based and accountable care organizations, dentists will be affected by changing consumer expectations.

Research on Capturing of Customer Requirements Based on Innovation Theory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

junwu, Ding; dongtao, Yang; zhenqiang, Bao

To exactly and effectively capture customer requirements information, a new customer requirements capturing modeling method was proposed. Based on the analysis of function requirement models of previous products and the application of technology system evolution laws of the Theory of Innovative Problem Solving (TRIZ), the customer requirements could be evolved from existing product designs, through modifying the functional requirement unit and confirming the direction of evolution design. Finally, a case study was provided to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Evolving a Simulation Model Product Line Software Architecture from Heterogeneous Model Representations

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-09-01

resolution M&S concept for integrating heterogeneous M&S into the hierarchy has existed since the early 1980s [DH92a, DH92b]. 25...groups [PAD78]. The need for credible M&S grew in the Nation’s private and public sectors. By 1980 , information from computer-based simulations...formal) identified in the [GMS+96 and RPG00]. We noted that systemic issues identi- fied in by reports, studies, and assessments the early 1980s

KSC-2009-2818

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-04-21

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, workers monitor the placement of a solid rocket booster on a Delta II rocket for launch of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency on July 29. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

KSC-2009-3666

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-05-01

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A flatbed truck carrying the STSS Demonstrator SV-2spacecraft arrives at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4616 [27 May 09])

KSC-2009-4617

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-06-25

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The flatbed truck with the SV-1 cargo of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft arrives at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4804 [4 Aug 09] )

KSC-2009-4622

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft is being moved to a stand. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-3668

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-05-01

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The STSS Demonstrator SV-2spacecraft is moved inside a building at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4616 [27 May 09])

KSC-2009-4618

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-06-25

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The SV-1 cargo of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft is moved into the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4804 [4 Aug 09] )

KSC-2009-4619

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The shipping crate is being removed from the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft in the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-2817

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-04-21

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Launch Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, a worker monitors the placement of a solid rocket booster on a Delta II rocket for launch of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency on July 29. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

KSC-2009-4623

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft is lowered onto a stand. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-2711

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-04-16

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – On Launch Complex 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the first stage of the Delta II rocket waits on the gantry for the solid rocket boosters. The STSS Demonstrators is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator and is part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency on July 29. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

KSC-2009-4616

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-06-25

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The flatbed truck with the SV-1 cargo of the STSS Demonstrator spacecraft arrives at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4804 [4 Aug 09] )

KSC-2009-4620

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft is lifted from its shipping crate. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

KSC-2009-4621

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft is lifted clear from its shipping crate. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

Adaptive approaches to biosecurity governance.

PubMed

Cook, David C; Liu, Shuang; Murphy, Brendan; Lonsdale, W Mark

2010-09-01

This article discusses institutional changes that may facilitate an adaptive approach to biosecurity risk management where governance is viewed as a multidisciplinary, interactive experiment acknowledging uncertainty. Using the principles of adaptive governance, evolved from institutional theory, we explore how the concepts of lateral information flows, incentive alignment, and policy experimentation might shape Australia's invasive species defense mechanisms. We suggest design principles for biosecurity policies emphasizing overlapping complementary response capabilities and the sharing of invasive species risks via a polycentric system of governance. © 2010 Society for Risk Analysis

KSC-2009-4630

NASA Image and Video Library

2009-07-23

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. , technicians get ready to remove the overhead crane from the STSS Demonstrator SV-1 spacecraft. The spacecraft is a midcourse tracking technology demonstrator, part of an evolving ballistic missile defense system. STSS is capable of tracking objects after boost phase and provides trajectory information to other sensors. It will be launched by NASA for the Missile Defense Agency in late summer. Photo credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (Approved for Public Release 09-MDA-4800 [30 July 09] )

The PDS4 Information Model and its Role in Agile Science Data Curation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hughes, J. S.; Crichton, D.

2017-12-01

PDS4 is an information model-driven service architecture supporting the capture, management, distribution and integration of massive planetary science data captured in distributed data archives world-wide. The PDS4 Information Model (IM), the core element of the architecture, was developed using lessons learned from 20 years of archiving Planetary Science Data and best practices for information model development. The foundational principles were adopted from the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (ISO 14721), the Metadata Registry Specification (ISO/IEC 11179), and W3C XML (Extensible Markup Language) specifications. These provided respectively an object oriented model for archive information systems, a comprehensive schema for data dictionaries and hierarchical governance, and rules for rules for encoding documents electronically. The PDS4 Information model is unique in that it drives the PDS4 infrastructure by providing the representation of concepts and their relationships, constraints, rules, and operations; a sharable, stable, and organized set of information requirements; and machine parsable definitions that are suitable for configuring and generating code. This presentation will provide an over of the PDS4 Information Model and how it is being leveraged to develop and evolve the PDS4 infrastructure and enable agile curation of over 30 years of science data collected by the international Planetary Science community.

Downtime procedures for the 21st century: using a fully integrated health record for uninterrupted electronic reporting of laboratory results during laboratory information system downtimes.

PubMed

Oral, Bulent; Cullen, Regina M; Diaz, Danny L; Hod, Eldad A; Kratz, Alexander

2015-01-01

Downtimes of the laboratory information system (LIS) or its interface to the electronic medical record (EMR) disrupt the reporting of laboratory results. Traditionally, laboratories have relied on paper-based or phone-based reporting methods during these events. We developed a novel downtime procedure that combines advance placement of orders by clinicians for planned downtimes, the printing of laboratory results from instruments, and scanning of the instrument printouts into our EMR. The new procedure allows the analysis of samples from planned phlebotomies with no delays, even during LIS downtimes. It also enables the electronic reporting of all clinically urgent results during downtimes, including intensive care and emergency department samples, thereby largely avoiding paper- and phone-based communication of laboratory results. With the capabilities of EMRs and LISs rapidly evolving, information technology (IT) teams, laboratories, and clinicians need to collaborate closely, review their systems' capabilities, and design innovative ways to apply all available IT functions to optimize patient care during downtimes. Copyright© by the American Society for Clinical Pathology.

A peer-to-peer music sharing system based on query-by-humming

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Jianrong; Chang, Xinglong; Zhao, Zheng; Zhang, Yebin; Shi, Qingwei

2007-09-01

Today, the main traffic in peer-to-peer (P2P) network is still multimedia files including large numbers of music files. The study of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) brings out many encouraging achievements in music search area. Nevertheless, the research of music search based on MIR in P2P network is still insufficient. Query by Humming (QBH) is one MIR technology studied for years. In this paper, we present a server based P2P music sharing system which is based on QBH and integrated with a Hierarchical Index Structure (HIS) to enhance the relation between surface data and potential information. HIS automatically evolving depends on the music related items carried by each peer such as midi files, lyrics and so forth. Instead of adding large amount of redundancy, the system generates a bit of index for multiple search input which improves the traditional keyword-based text search mode largely. When network bandwidth, speed, etc. are no longer a bottleneck of internet serve, the accessibility and accuracy of information provided by internet are being more concerned by end users.

Space Weather Needs of an Evolving Customer Base (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rutledge, B.; Viereck, R. A.; Onsager, T. G.

2013-12-01

Great progress has been made in raising the global awareness of space weather and the associated impacts on Earth and our technological systems. However, significant gaps still exist in providing comprehensive and easily understood space weather information, products, and services to the diverse and growing customer base. As technologies, such as Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), have become more ingrained in applications and fields of work that previously did not rely on systems sensitive to space weather, the customer base has grown substantially. Furthermore, the causes and effects of space weather can be difficult to interpret without a detailed understanding of the scientific underpinnings. In response to this change, space weather service providers must address this evolution by both improving services and by representing space weather information and impacts in ways that are meaningful to each facet of this diverse customer base. The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) must work with users, spanning precision agriculture, emergency management, power grid operators and beyond, to both identify unmet space weather service requirements and to ensure information and decision support services are provided in meaningful and more easily understood forms.

Implementing PAT with Standards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chandramohan, Laakshmana Sabari; Doolla, Suryanarayana; Khaparde, S. A.

2016-02-01

Perform Achieve Trade (PAT) is a market-based incentive mechanism to promote energy efficiency. The purpose of this work is to address the challenges inherent to inconsistent representation of business processes, and interoperability issues in PAT like cap-and-trade mechanisms especially when scaled. Studies by various agencies have highlighted that as the mechanism evolves including more industrial sectors and industries in its ambit, implementation will become more challenging. This paper analyses the major needs of PAT (namely tracking, monitoring, auditing & verifying energy-saving reports, and providing technical support & guidance to stakeholders); and how the aforesaid reasons affect them. Though current technologies can handle these challenges to an extent, standardization activities for implementation have been scanty for PAT and this work attempts to evolve them. The inconsistent modification of business processes, rules, and procedures across stakeholders, and interoperability among heterogeneous systems are addressed. This paper proposes the adoption of specifically two standards into PAT, namely Business Process Model and Notation for maintaining consistency in business process modelling, and Common Information Model (IEC 61970, 61968, 62325 combined) for information exchange. Detailed architecture and organization of these adoptions are reported. The work can be used by PAT implementing agencies, stakeholders, and standardization bodies.

Source technology as the foundation for modern infra-red counter measures (IRCM)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grasso, Robert J.

2010-10-01

Protection of military aircraft from IR guided threats is paramount to ensure the survivability of aircrews, platforms, and to ensure mission success. At the foundation of all IRCM systems is the source; that component that provides the in-band radiant energy required for threat defeat. As such, source technology has evolved with IRCM technology to encompass the evolving systems architectures that encompass IRCM: 1) "Hot Brick" omni-directional sources; 2) arc lamps, and; 3) lasers. Lasers, as IRCM sources continue to evolve to meet the challenges of ever-evolving threats, superior techniques, economy of installation, and superior source technology. Lasers represent the single greatest advance in IRCM source technology and continue to evolve to meet ever more sophisticated threats. And have been used with great effect in all modern IRCM systems; evolving from frequency doubled CO2 lasers, to solid state lasers with OPOs, to semiconductor lasers including Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCLs); these last devices represent the latest advance in IRCM source technology offering all-band coverage, architectural simplicity, and economy of scale. While QCLs represent the latest advance in IRCM laser technology, fiber lasers show much promise in addressing multi-band operation as well as the ability to be coherently combined to achieve even greater output capability. Also, ultra-short pulse lasers are evolving to become practical for IRCM applications. Stay tuned ......

Evolvable Neural Software System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Curtis, Steven A.

2009-01-01

The Evolvable Neural Software System (ENSS) is composed of sets of Neural Basis Functions (NBFs), which can be totally autonomously created and removed according to the changing needs and requirements of the software system. The resulting structure is both hierarchical and self-similar in that a given set of NBFs may have a ruler NBF, which in turn communicates with other sets of NBFs. These sets of NBFs may function as nodes to a ruler node, which are also NBF constructs. In this manner, the synthetic neural system can exhibit the complexity, three-dimensional connectivity, and adaptability of biological neural systems. An added advantage of ENSS over a natural neural system is its ability to modify its core genetic code in response to environmental changes as reflected in needs and requirements. The neural system is fully adaptive and evolvable and is trainable before release. It continues to rewire itself while on the job. The NBF is a unique, bilevel intelligence neural system composed of a higher-level heuristic neural system (HNS) and a lower-level, autonomic neural system (ANS). Taken together, the HNS and the ANS give each NBF the complete capabilities of a biological neural system to match sensory inputs to actions. Another feature of the NBF is the Evolvable Neural Interface (ENI), which links the HNS and ANS. The ENI solves the interface problem between these two systems by actively adapting and evolving from a primitive initial state (a Neural Thread) to a complicated, operational ENI and successfully adapting to a training sequence of sensory input. This simulates the adaptation of a biological neural system in a developmental phase. Within the greater multi-NBF and multi-node ENSS, self-similar ENI s provide the basis for inter-NBF and inter-node connectivity.

Exploring the History of Time in an Integrated System: the Ramifications for Water

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Green, M. B.; Adams, L. E.; Allen, T. L.; Arrigo, J. S.; Bain, D. J.; Bray, E. N.; Duncan, J. M.; Hermans, C. M.; Pastore, C.; Schlosser, C. A.; Vorosmarty, C. J.; Witherell, B. B.; Wollheim, W. M.; Wreschnig, A. J.

2009-12-01

Characteristic time scales are useful and simple descriptors of geophysical and socio-economic system dynamics. Focusing on the integrative nature of the hydrologic cycle, new insights into system couplings can be gained by compiling characteristic time scales of important processes driving these systems. There are many examples of changing characteristic time scales. Human life expectancy has increased over the recent history of medical advancement. The transport time of goods has decreased with the progression from horse to rail to car to plane. The transport time of information changed with the progression from letter to telegraph to telephone to networked computing. Soil residence time (pedogenesis to estuary deposition) has been influenced by changing agricultural technology, urbanization, and forest practices. Surface water residence times have varied as beaver dams have disappeared and been replaced with modern reservoirs, flood control works, and channelization. These dynamics raise the question of how these types of time scales interact with each other to form integrated Earth system dynamics? Here we explore the coupling of geophysical and socio-economic systems in the northeast United States over the 1600 to 2010 period by examining characteristic time scales. This visualization of many time scales serves as an exploratory analysis, producing new hypotheses about how the integrated system dynamics have evolved over the last 400 years. Specifically, exponential population growth and the evolving strategies to maintain that population appears as fundamental to many of the time scales.

Intelligent reservoir operation system based on evolving artificial neural networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chaves, Paulo; Chang, Fi-John

2008-06-01

We propose a novel intelligent reservoir operation system based on an evolving artificial neural network (ANN). Evolving means the parameters of the ANN model are identified by the GA evolutionary optimization technique. Accordingly, the ANN model should represent the operational strategies of reservoir operation. The main advantages of the Evolving ANN Intelligent System (ENNIS) are as follows: (i) only a small number of parameters to be optimized even for long optimization horizons, (ii) easy to handle multiple decision variables, and (iii) the straightforward combination of the operation model with other prediction models. The developed intelligent system was applied to the operation of the Shihmen Reservoir in North Taiwan, to investigate its applicability and practicability. The proposed method is first built to a simple formulation for the operation of the Shihmen Reservoir, with single objective and single decision. Its results were compared to those obtained by dynamic programming. The constructed network proved to be a good operational strategy. The method was then built and applied to the reservoir with multiple (five) decision variables. The results demonstrated that the developed evolving neural networks improved the operation performance of the reservoir when compared to its current operational strategy. The system was capable of successfully simultaneously handling various decision variables and provided reasonable and suitable decisions.

Modular interdependency in complex dynamical systems.

PubMed

Watson, Richard A; Pollack, Jordan B

2005-01-01

Herbert A. Simon's characterization of modularity in dynamical systems describes subsystems as having dynamics that are approximately independent of those of other subsystems (in the short term). This fits with the general intuition that modules must, by definition, be approximately independent. In the evolution of complex systems, such modularity may enable subsystems to be modified and adapted independently of other subsystems, whereas in a nonmodular system, modifications to one part of the system may result in deleterious side effects elsewhere in the system. But this notion of modularity and its effect on evolvability is not well quantified and is rather simplistic. In particular, modularity need not imply that intermodule dependences are weak or unimportant. In dynamical systems this is acknowledged by Simon's suggestion that, in the long term, the dynamical behaviors of subsystems do interact with one another, albeit in an "aggregate" manner--but this kind of intermodule interaction is omitted in models of modularity for evolvability. In this brief discussion we seek to unify notions of modularity in dynamical systems with notions of how modularity affects evolvability. This leads to a quantifiable measure of modularity and a different understanding of its effect on evolvability.

Questions regarding the predictive value of one evolved complex adaptive system for a second: exemplified by the SOD1 mouse.

PubMed

Greek, Ray; Hansen, Lawrence A

2013-11-01

We surveyed the scientific literature regarding amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the SOD1 mouse model, complex adaptive systems, evolution, drug development, animal models, and philosophy of science in an attempt to analyze the SOD1 mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the context of evolved complex adaptive systems. Humans and animals are examples of evolved complex adaptive systems. It is difficult to predict the outcome from perturbations to such systems because of the characteristics of complex systems. Modeling even one complex adaptive system in order to predict outcomes from perturbations is difficult. Predicting outcomes to one evolved complex adaptive system based on outcomes from a second, especially when the perturbation occurs at higher levels of organization, is even more problematic. Using animal models to predict human outcomes to perturbations such as disease and drugs should have a very low predictive value. We present empirical evidence confirming this and suggest a theory to explain this phenomenon. We analyze the SOD1 mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in order to illustrate this position. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Evolvable Mars Campaign Long Duration Habitation Strategies: Architectural Approaches to Enable Human Exploration Missions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Simon, Matthew A.; Toups, Larry; Howe, A. Scott; Wald, Samuel I.

2015-01-01

The Evolvable Mars Campaign (EMC) is the current NASA Mars mission planning effort which seeks to establish sustainable, realistic strategies to enable crewed Mars missions in the mid-2030s timeframe. The primary outcome of the Evolvable Mars Campaign is not to produce "The Plan" for sending humans to Mars, but instead its intent is to inform the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate near-term key decisions and investment priorities to prepare for those types of missions. The FY'15 EMC effort focused upon analysis of integrated mission architectures to identify technically appealing transportation strategies, logistics build-up strategies, and vehicle designs for reaching and exploring Mars moons and Mars surface. As part of the development of this campaign, long duration habitats are required which are capable of supporting crew with limited resupply and crew abort during the Mars transit, Mars moons, and Mars surface segments of EMC missions. In particular, the EMC design team sought to design a single, affordable habitation system whose manufactured units could be outfitted uniquely for each of these missions and reused for multiple crewed missions. This habitat system must provide all of the functionality to safely support 4 crew for long durations while meeting mass and volume constraints for each of the mission segments set by the chosen transportation architecture and propulsion technologies. This paper describes several proposed long-duration habitation strategies to enable the Evolvable Mars Campaign through improvements in mass, cost, and reusability, and presents results of analysis to compare the options and identify promising solutions. The concepts investigated include several monolithic concepts: monolithic clean sheet designs, and concepts which leverage the co-manifested payload capability of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) to deliver habitable elements within the Universal Payload Adaptor between the SLS upper stage and the Orion/Service module on the top of the vehicle. Multiple modular habitat options for Mars surface and in-space missions are also considered with various functionality and volume splits between modules to find the best balance of reducing the single largest mass which must be delivered to a destination and reducing the number of separate elements which must be launched. Analysis results presented for each of these concepts in this paper include mass/volume/power sizing using parametric sizing tools, identification of unique operational constraints, and limited comments on the additional impacts of reusability/dormancy on system design. Finally, recommendations will be made for promising solutions which will be carried forward for consideration in the Evolvable Mars Campaign work.

The Evolution of System Safety at NASA

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dezfuli, Homayoon; Everett, Chris; Groen, Frank

2014-01-01

The NASA system safety framework is in the process of change, motivated by the desire to promote an objectives-driven approach to system safety that explicitly focuses system safety efforts on system-level safety performance, and serves to unify, in a purposeful manner, safety-related activities that otherwise might be done in a way that results in gaps, redundancies, or unnecessary work. An objectives-driven approach to system safety affords more flexibility to determine, on a system-specific basis, the means by which adequate safety is achieved and verified. Such flexibility and efficiency is becoming increasingly important in the face of evolving engineering modalities and acquisition models, where, for example, NASA will increasingly rely on commercial providers for transportation services to low-earth orbit. A key element of this objectives-driven approach is the use of the risk-informed safety case (RISC): a structured argument, supported by a body of evidence, that provides a compelling, comprehensible and valid case that a system is or will be adequately safe for a given application in a given environment. The RISC addresses each of the objectives defined for the system, providing a rational basis for making informed risk acceptance decisions at relevant decision points in the system life cycle.

Evolving the Reuse Process at the Flight Dynamics Division (FDD) Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Condon, S.; Seaman, C.; Basili, Victor; Kraft, S.; Kontio, J.; Kim, Y.

1996-01-01

This paper presents the interim results from the Software Engineering Laboratory's (SEL) Reuse Study. The team conducting this study has, over the past few months, been studying the Generalized Support Software (GSS) domain asset library and architecture, and the various processes associated with it. In particular, we have characterized the process used to configure GSS-based attitude ground support systems (AGSS) to support satellite missions at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. To do this, we built detailed models of the tasks involved, the people who perform these tasks, and the interdependencies and information flows among these people. These models were based on information gleaned from numerous interviews with people involved in this process at various levels. We also analyzed effort data in order to determine the cost savings in moving from actual development of AGSSs to support each mission (which was necessary before GSS was available) to configuring AGSS software from the domain asset library. While characterizing the GSS process, we became aware of several interesting factors which affect the successful continued use of GSS. Many of these issues fall under the subject of evolving technologies, which were not available at the inception of GSS, but are now. Some of these technologies could be incorporated into the GSS process, thus making the whole asset library more usable. Other technologies are being considered as an alternative to the GSS process altogether. In this paper, we outline some of issues we will be considering in our continued study of GSS and the impact of evolving technologies.

Stochastic approximation methods-Powerful tools for simulation and optimization: A survey of some recent work on multi-agent systems and cyber-physical systems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Yin, George; Wang, Le Yi; Zhang, Hongwei

2014-12-10

Stochastic approximation methods have found extensive and diversified applications. Recent emergence of networked systems and cyber-physical systems has generated renewed interest in advancing stochastic approximation into a general framework to support algorithm development for information processing and decisions in such systems. This paper presents a survey on some recent developments in stochastic approximation methods and their applications. Using connected vehicles in platoon formation and coordination as a platform, we highlight some traditional and new methodologies of stochastic approximation algorithms and explain how they can be used to capture essential features in networked systems. Distinct features of networked systems with randomlymore » switching topologies, dynamically evolving parameters, and unknown delays are presented, and control strategies are provided.« less

Evolvable mathematical models: A new artificial Intelligence paradigm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grouchy, Paul

We develop a novel Artificial Intelligence paradigm to generate autonomously artificial agents as mathematical models of behaviour. Agent/environment inputs are mapped to agent outputs via equation trees which are evolved in a manner similar to Symbolic Regression in Genetic Programming. Equations are comprised of only the four basic mathematical operators, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, as well as input and output variables and constants. From these operations, equations can be constructed that approximate any analytic function. These Evolvable Mathematical Models (EMMs) are tested and compared to their Artificial Neural Network (ANN) counterparts on two benchmarking tasks: the double-pole balancing without velocity information benchmark and the challenging discrete Double-T Maze experiments with homing. The results from these experiments show that EMMs are capable of solving tasks typically solved by ANNs, and that they have the ability to produce agents that demonstrate learning behaviours. To further explore the capabilities of EMMs, as well as to investigate the evolutionary origins of communication, we develop NoiseWorld, an Artificial Life simulation in which interagent communication emerges and evolves from initially noncommunicating EMM-based agents. Agents develop the capability to transmit their x and y position information over a one-dimensional channel via a complex, dialogue-based communication scheme. These evolved communication schemes are analyzed and their evolutionary trajectories examined, yielding significant insight into the emergence and subsequent evolution of cooperative communication. Evolved agents from NoiseWorld are successfully transferred onto physical robots, demonstrating the transferability of EMM-based AIs from simulation into physical reality.

Cyber-Informed Engineering: The Need for a New Risk Informed and Design Methodology

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Price, Joseph Daniel; Anderson, Robert Stephen

Current engineering and risk management methodologies do not contain the foundational assumptions required to address the intelligent adversary’s capabilities in malevolent cyber attacks. Current methodologies focus on equipment failures or human error as initiating events for a hazard, while cyber attacks use the functionality of a trusted system to perform operations outside of the intended design and without the operator’s knowledge. These threats can by-pass or manipulate traditionally engineered safety barriers and present false information, invalidating the fundamental basis of a safety analysis. Cyber threats must be fundamentally analyzed from a completely new perspective where neither equipment nor human operationmore » can be fully trusted. A new risk analysis and design methodology needs to be developed to address this rapidly evolving threatscape.« less

Three Essays on Information Technology Security Management in Organizations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gupta, Manish

2011-01-01

Increasing complexity and sophistication of ever evolving information technologies has spurred unique and unprecedented challenges for organizations to protect their information assets. Companies suffer significant financial and reputational damage due to ineffective information technology security management, which has extensively been shown to…

JPEG 2000 in advanced ground station architectures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chien, Alan T.; Brower, Bernard V.; Rajan, Sreekanth D.

2000-11-01

The integration and management of information from distributed and heterogeneous information producers and providers must be a key foundation of any developing imagery intelligence system. Historically, imagery providers acted as production agencies for imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information. In the future, these imagery producers will be evolving to act more like e-business information brokers. The management of imagery and geospatial information-visible, spectral, infrared (IR), radar, elevation, or other feature and foundation data-is crucial from a quality and content perspective. By 2005, there will be significantly advanced collection systems and a myriad of storage devices. There will also be a number of automated and man-in-the-loop correlation, fusion, and exploitation capabilities. All of these new imagery collection and storage systems will result in a higher volume and greater variety of imagery being disseminated and archived in the future. This paper illustrates the importance-from a collection, storage, exploitation, and dissemination perspective-of the proper selection and implementation of standards-based compression technology for ground station and dissemination/archive networks. It specifically discusses the new compression capabilities featured in JPEG 2000 and how that commercially based technology can provide significant improvements to the overall imagery and geospatial enterprise both from an architectural perspective as well as from a user's prospective.

Apps for immunization: Leveraging mobile devices to place the individual at the center of care.

PubMed

Wilson, Kumanan; Atkinson, Katherine M; Westeinde, Jacqueline

2015-01-01

Mobile technology and applications (apps) have disrupted several industries including healthcare. The advantage of apps, being personally focused and permitting bidirectional communication, make them well suited to address many immunization challenges. As of April 25, 2015 searching the Android app store with the words 'immunize app' and 'immunization app' in Canada yielded 225 apps. On the Apple App Store a similar search produced 98 results. These include apps that provide immunization related information, permit vaccine tracking both for individuals and for animals, assist with the creation of customized schedules and identification of vaccine clinics and serve as sources of education. The diverse functionality of mobile apps creates the potential for transformation of immunization practice both at a personal level and a system level. For individuals, mobile apps offer the opportunity for better record keeping, assistance with the logistics of vaccination, and novel ways of communicating with and receiving information from public health officials. For the system, mobile apps offer the potential to improve the quality of information residing in immunization information systems and program evaluation, facilitate harmonization of immunization information between individuals, health care providers and public health as well as reduce vaccine hesitancy. As mobile technology continues to rapidly evolve there will emerge new ways in which apps can enhance immunization practice.

Swarm autonomic agents with self-destruct capability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hinchey, Michael G. (Inventor); Sterritt, Roy (Inventor)

2009-01-01

Systems, methods and apparatus are provided through which in some embodiments an autonomic entity manages a system by generating one or more stay alive signals based on the functioning status and operating state of the system. In some embodiments, an evolvable synthetic neural system is operably coupled to one or more evolvable synthetic neural systems in a hierarchy. The evolvable neural interface receives and generates heartbeat monitor signals and pulse monitor signals that are used to generate a stay alive signal that is used to manage the operations of the synthetic neural system. In another embodiment an asynchronous Alice signal (Autonomic license) requiring valid credentials of an anonymous autonomous agent is initiated. An unsatisfactory Alice exchange may lead to self-destruction of the anonymous autonomous agent for self-protection.

Swarm autonomic agents with self-destruct capability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hinchey, Michael G. (Inventor); Sterritt, Roy (Inventor)

2011-01-01

Systems, methods and apparatus are provided through which in some embodiments an autonomic entity manages a system by generating one or more stay alive signals based on the functioning status and operating state of the system. In some embodiments, an evolvable synthetic neural system is operably coupled to one or more evolvable synthetic neural systems in a hierarchy. The evolvable neural interface receives and generates heartbeat monitor signals and pulse monitor signals that are used to generate a stay alive signal that is used to manage the operations of the synthetic neural system. In another embodiment an asynchronous Alice signal (Autonomic license) requiring valid credentials of an anonymous autonomous agent is initiated. An unsatisfactory Alice exchange may lead to self-destruction of the anonymous autonomous agent for self-protection.

Adaptive Communication: Languages with More Non-Native Speakers Tend to Have Fewer Word Forms

PubMed Central

Bentz, Christian; Verkerk, Annemarie; Kiela, Douwe; Hill, Felix; Buttery, Paula

2015-01-01

Explaining the diversity of languages across the world is one of the central aims of typological, historical, and evolutionary linguistics. We consider the effect of language contact-the number of non-native speakers a language has-on the way languages change and evolve. By analysing hundreds of languages within and across language families, regions, and text types, we show that languages with greater levels of contact typically employ fewer word forms to encode the same information content (a property we refer to as lexical diversity). Based on three types of statistical analyses, we demonstrate that this variance can in part be explained by the impact of non-native speakers on information encoding strategies. Finally, we argue that languages are information encoding systems shaped by the varying needs of their speakers. Language evolution and change should be modeled as the co-evolution of multiple intertwined adaptive systems: On one hand, the structure of human societies and human learning capabilities, and on the other, the structure of language. PMID:26083380

NASA SBIR product catalog, 1991

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1991-01-01

This catalog is a partial list of products of NASA SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) projects that have advanced to some degree into Phase 3. While most of the products evolved from work conducted during SBIR Phase 1 and 2, a few advanced to commercial status solely from Phase 1 activities. The catalog presents information provided to NASA by SBIR contractors who wished to have their products exhibited at Technology 2001, a NASA-sponsored technology transfer conference held in San Jose, California, on December 4, 5, and 6, 1991. The catalog presents the product information in the following technology areas: computer and communication systems; information processing and AI; robotics and automation; signal and image processing; microelectronics; electronic devices and equipment; microwave electronic devices; optical devices and lasers; advanced materials; materials processing; materials testing and NDE; materials instrumentation; aerodynamics and aircraft; fluid mechanics and measurement; heat transfer devices; refrigeration and cryogenics; energy conversion devices; oceanographic instruments; atmosphere monitoring devices; water management; life science instruments; and spacecraft electromechanical systems.

Policy reconciliation for access control in dynamic cross-enterprise collaborations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Preuveneers, D.; Joosen, W.; Ilie-Zudor, E.

2018-03-01

In dynamic cross-enterprise collaborations, different enterprises form a - possibly temporary - business relationship. To integrate their business processes, enterprises may need to grant each other limited access to their information systems. Authentication and authorization are key to secure information handling. However, access control policies often rely on non-standardized attributes to describe the roles and permissions of their employees which convolutes cross-organizational authorization when business relationships evolve quickly. Our framework addresses the managerial overhead of continuous updates to access control policies for enterprise information systems to accommodate disparate attribute usage. By inferring attribute relationships, our framework facilitates attribute and policy reconciliation, and automatically aligns dynamic entitlements during the evaluation of authorization decisions. We validate our framework with a Industry 4.0 motivating scenario on networked production where such dynamic cross-enterprise collaborations are quintessential. The evaluation reveals the capabilities and performance of our framework, and illustrates the feasibility of liberating the security administrator from manually provisioning and aligning attributes, and verifying the consistency of access control policies for cross-enterprise collaborations.

A meta-learning system based on genetic algorithms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pellerin, Eric; Pigeon, Luc; Delisle, Sylvain

2004-04-01

The design of an efficient machine learning process through self-adaptation is a great challenge. The goal of meta-learning is to build a self-adaptive learning system that is constantly adapting to its specific (and dynamic) environment. To that end, the meta-learning mechanism must improve its bias dynamically by updating the current learning strategy in accordance with its available experiences or meta-knowledge. We suggest using genetic algorithms as the basis of an adaptive system. In this work, we propose a meta-learning system based on a combination of the a priori and a posteriori concepts. A priori refers to input information and knowledge available at the beginning in order to built and evolve one or more sets of parameters by exploiting the context of the system"s information. The self-learning component is based on genetic algorithms and neural Darwinism. A posteriori refers to the implicit knowledge discovered by estimation of the future states of parameters and is also applied to the finding of optimal parameters values. The in-progress research presented here suggests a framework for the discovery of knowledge that can support human experts in their intelligence information assessment tasks. The conclusion presents avenues for further research in genetic algorithms and their capability to learn to learn.

Kiondo Bag Boutique: A Serial Case for Introductory Financial Accounting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siriwardane, Harshini P.

2014-01-01

Kiondo Bag Boutique is a hypothetical serial case involving a start-up retail business. The case evolves from an ambitious business idea to a successful business. Through the evolving business, the importance of accounting information is highlighted. Different iterations are used to illustrate the role of accounting in serving and managing…

Evolving Identities: The Person(al), the Profession(al), and the Artist(ic)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaimal, Girija

2015-01-01

In this viewpoint, the author shares some experiences of living in the United States for the past 16 years and explores the uses of art and narratives in uncovering bias, illustrating lived experience, and informing research enterprises. In addition, contradictions, vulnerabilities, and complexities that underlie evolving constructions of culture,…

Ontology Research and Development. Part 2 - A Review of Ontology Mapping and Evolving.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ding, Ying; Foo, Schubert

2002-01-01

Reviews ontology research and development, specifically ontology mapping and evolving. Highlights include an overview of ontology mapping projects; maintaining existing ontologies and extending them as appropriate when new information or knowledge is acquired; and ontology's role and the future of the World Wide Web, or Semantic Web. (Contains 55…

Stewardship of NASA's Earth Science Data and Ensuring Long-Term Active Archives

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ramapriyan, Hampapuram K.; Behnke, Jeanne

2016-01-01

Program, NASA has followed an open data policy, with non-discriminatory access to data with no period of exclusive access. NASA has well-established processes for assigning and or accepting datasets into one of 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that are parts of EOSDIS. EOSDIS has been evolving through several information technology cycles, adapting to hardware and software changes in the commercial sector. NASA is responsible for maintaining Earth science data as long as users are interested in using them for research and applications, which is well beyond the life of the data gathering missions. For science data to remain useful over long periods of time, steps must be taken to preserve: (1) Data bits with no corruption, (2) Discoverability and access, (3) Readability, (4) Understandability, (5) Usability' and (6). Reproducibility of results. NASAs Earth Science data and Information System (ESDIS) Project, along with the 12 EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), has made significant progress in each of these areas over the last decade, and continues to evolve its active archive capabilities. Particular attention is being paid in recent years to ensure that the datasets are published in an easily accessible and citable manner through a unified metadata model, a common metadata repository (CMR), a coherent view through the earthdata.gov website, and assignment of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) with well-designed landing product information pages.

Emerging technologies in autoantibody testing for rheumatic diseases.

PubMed

Olsen, Nancy J; Choi, May Y; Fritzler, Marvin J

2017-07-24

Testing for the presence of antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) is a key step in the diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and other systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARD). The standard slide-based indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) test is widely used, but is limited by a relative lack of specificity for SLE and not all SARD-ANAs are detected. Alternative immunoassays that might offer enhanced diagnostic and prognostic information have evolved, and some of these have entered clinical practice. This review summarizes the current state of ANA testing and multiplex techniques for detecting other autoantibodies, the possibility of point-of-care testing, and approaches for applications in early disease stages.

OAST Space Theme Workshop 1976

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sadin, S. R.

1977-01-01

Papers that provide a technical foundation including research and technology base candidates for each of six space themes - space power, space industrialization, search for extraterrestrial intelligence, exploration of the solar system, global service, and advanced transportation systems - are presented. The material is mainly intended for further use by workshop participants and NASA elements concerned with space research and technology. While the data presented do not represent official plans or positions, they are part of the process of evolving such plans and positions. The information contained reflects the efforts of workshop participants and should be an aid in the successful implementation and execution of the Agency's near- and far-term advanced technology program.

Plan execution monitoring with distributed intelligent agents for battle command

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Allen, James P.; Barry, Kevin P.; McCormick, John M.; Paul, Ross A.

2004-07-01

As military tactics evolve toward execution centric operations the ability to analyze vast amounts of mission relevant data is essential to command and control decision making. To maintain operational tempo and achieve information superiority we have developed Vigilant Advisor, a mobile agent-based distributed Plan Execution Monitoring system. It provides military commanders with continuous contingency monitoring tailored to their preferences while overcoming the network bandwidth problem often associated with traditional remote data querying. This paper presents an overview of Plan Execution Monitoring as well as a detailed view of the Vigilant Advisor system including key features and statistical analysis of resource savings provided by its mobile agent-based approach.

Integrative structure modeling with the Integrative Modeling Platform.

PubMed

Webb, Benjamin; Viswanath, Shruthi; Bonomi, Massimiliano; Pellarin, Riccardo; Greenberg, Charles H; Saltzberg, Daniel; Sali, Andrej

2018-01-01

Building models of a biological system that are consistent with the myriad data available is one of the key challenges in biology. Modeling the structure and dynamics of macromolecular assemblies, for example, can give insights into how biological systems work, evolved, might be controlled, and even designed. Integrative structure modeling casts the building of structural models as a computational optimization problem, for which information about the assembly is encoded into a scoring function that evaluates candidate models. Here, we describe our open source software suite for integrative structure modeling, Integrative Modeling Platform (https://integrativemodeling.org), and demonstrate its use. © 2017 The Protein Society.

MendeLIMS: a web-based laboratory information management system for clinical genome sequencing.

PubMed

Grimes, Susan M; Ji, Hanlee P

2014-08-27

Large clinical genomics studies using next generation DNA sequencing require the ability to select and track samples from a large population of patients through many experimental steps. With the number of clinical genome sequencing studies increasing, it is critical to maintain adequate laboratory information management systems to manage the thousands of patient samples that are subject to this type of genetic analysis. To meet the needs of clinical population studies using genome sequencing, we developed a web-based laboratory information management system (LIMS) with a flexible configuration that is adaptable to continuously evolving experimental protocols of next generation DNA sequencing technologies. Our system is referred to as MendeLIMS, is easily implemented with open source tools and is also highly configurable and extensible. MendeLIMS has been invaluable in the management of our clinical genome sequencing studies. We maintain a publicly available demonstration version of the application for evaluation purposes at http://mendelims.stanford.edu. MendeLIMS is programmed in Ruby on Rails (RoR) and accesses data stored in SQL-compliant relational databases. Software is freely available for non-commercial use at http://dna-discovery.stanford.edu/software/mendelims/.

Estimation and Analysis of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems. Ph.D. Thesis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Marcus, S. I.

1975-01-01

The algebraic and geometric structures of certain classes of nonlinear stochastic systems were exploited in order to obtain useful stability and estimation results. The class of bilinear stochastic systems (or linear systems with multiplicative noise) was discussed. The stochastic stability of bilinear systems driven by colored noise was considered. Approximate methods for obtaining sufficient conditions for the stochastic stability of bilinear systems evolving on general Lie groups were discussed. Two classes of estimation problems involving bilinear systems were considered. It was proved that, for systems described by certain types of Volterra series expansions or by certain bilinear equations evolving on nilpotent or solvable Lie groups, the optimal conditional mean estimator consists of a finite dimensional nonlinear set of equations. The theory of harmonic analysis was used to derive suboptimal estimators for bilinear systems driven by white noise which evolve on compact Lie groups or homogeneous spaces.

An Evaluation of optional timing/synchronization features to support selection of an optimum design for the DCS digital communication network

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bradley, D. B.; Cain, J. B., III; Williard, M. W.

1978-01-01

The task was to evaluate the ability of a set of timing/synchronization subsystem features to provide a set of desirable characteristics for the evolving Defense Communications System digital communications network. The set of features related to the approaches by which timing/synchronization information could be disseminated throughout the network and the manner in which this information could be utilized to provide a synchronized network. These features, which could be utilized in a large number of different combinations, included mutual control, directed control, double ended reference links, independence of clock error measurement and correction, phase reference combining, and self organizing.

A Survey on Distributed Mobile Database and Data Mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goel, Ajay Mohan; Mangla, Neeraj; Patel, R. B.

2010-11-01

The anticipated increase in popular use of the Internet has created more opportunity in information dissemination, Ecommerce, and multimedia communication. It has also created more challenges in organizing information and facilitating its efficient retrieval. In response to this, new techniques have evolved which facilitate the creation of such applications. Certainly the most promising among the new paradigms is the use of mobile agents. In this paper, mobile agent and distributed database technologies are applied in the banking system. Many approaches have been proposed to schedule data items for broadcasting in a mobile environment. In this paper, an efficient strategy for accessing multiple data items in mobile environments and the bottleneck of current banking will be proposed.

The New HIT: Human Health Information Technology.

PubMed

Leung, Tiffany I; Goldstein, Mary K; Musen, Mark A; Cronkite, Ruth; Chen, Jonathan H; Gottlieb, Assaf; Leitersdorf, Eran

2017-01-01

Humanism in medicine is defined as health care providers' attitudes and actions that demonstrate respect for patients' values and concerns in relation to their social, psychological and spiritual life domains. Specifically, humanistic clinical medicine involves showing respect for the patient, building a personal connection, and eliciting and addressing a patient's emotional response to illness. Health information technology (IT) often interferes with humanistic clinical practice, potentially disabling these core aspects of the therapeutic patient-physician relationship. Health IT has evolved rapidly in recent years - and the imperative to maintain humanism in practice has never been greater. In this vision paper, we aim to discuss why preserving humanism is imperative in the design and implementation of health IT systems.

Real-time implementation of an interactive jazz accompaniment system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deshpande, Nikhil

Modern computational algorithms and digital signal processing (DSP) are able to combine with human performers without forced or predetermined structure in order to create dynamic and real-time accompaniment systems. With modern computing power and intelligent algorithm layout and design, it is possible to achieve more detailed auditory analysis of live music. Using this information, computer code can follow and predict how a human's musical performance evolves, and use this to react in a musical manner. This project builds a real-time accompaniment system to perform together with live musicians, with a focus on live jazz performance and improvisation. The system utilizes a new polyphonic pitch detector and embeds it in an Ableton Live system - combined with Max for Live - to perform elements of audio analysis, generation, and triggering. The system also relies on tension curves and information rate calculations from the Creative Artificially Intuitive and Reasoning Agent (CAIRA) system to help understand and predict human improvisation. These metrics are vital to the core system and allow for extrapolated audio analysis. The system is able to react dynamically to a human performer, and can successfully accompany the human as an entire rhythm section.

Computational systems chemical biology.

PubMed

Oprea, Tudor I; May, Elebeoba E; Leitão, Andrei; Tropsha, Alexander

2011-01-01

There is a critical need for improving the level of chemistry awareness in systems biology. The data and information related to modulation of genes and proteins by small molecules continue to accumulate at the same time as simulation tools in systems biology and whole body physiologically based pharmacokinetics (PBPK) continue to evolve. We called this emerging area at the interface between chemical biology and systems biology systems chemical biology (SCB) (Nat Chem Biol 3: 447-450, 2007).The overarching goal of computational SCB is to develop tools for integrated chemical-biological data acquisition, filtering and processing, by taking into account relevant information related to interactions between proteins and small molecules, possible metabolic transformations of small molecules, as well as associated information related to genes, networks, small molecules, and, where applicable, mutants and variants of those proteins. There is yet an unmet need to develop an integrated in silico pharmacology/systems biology continuum that embeds drug-target-clinical outcome (DTCO) triplets, a capability that is vital to the future of chemical biology, pharmacology, and systems biology. Through the development of the SCB approach, scientists will be able to start addressing, in an integrated simulation environment, questions that make the best use of our ever-growing chemical and biological data repositories at the system-wide level. This chapter reviews some of the major research concepts and describes key components that constitute the emerging area of computational systems chemical biology.

Computational Systems Chemical Biology

PubMed Central

Oprea, Tudor I.; May, Elebeoba E.; Leitão, Andrei; Tropsha, Alexander

2013-01-01

There is a critical need for improving the level of chemistry awareness in systems biology. The data and information related to modulation of genes and proteins by small molecules continue to accumulate at the same time as simulation tools in systems biology and whole body physiologically-based pharmacokinetics (PBPK) continue to evolve. We called this emerging area at the interface between chemical biology and systems biology systems chemical biology, SCB (Oprea et al., 2007). The overarching goal of computational SCB is to develop tools for integrated chemical-biological data acquisition, filtering and processing, by taking into account relevant information related to interactions between proteins and small molecules, possible metabolic transformations of small molecules, as well as associated information related to genes, networks, small molecules and, where applicable, mutants and variants of those proteins. There is yet an unmet need to develop an integrated in silico pharmacology / systems biology continuum that embeds drug-target-clinical outcome (DTCO) triplets, a capability that is vital to the future of chemical biology, pharmacology and systems biology. Through the development of the SCB approach, scientists will be able to start addressing, in an integrated simulation environment, questions that make the best use of our ever-growing chemical and biological data repositories at the system-wide level. This chapter reviews some of the major research concepts and describes key components that constitute the emerging area of computational systems chemical biology. PMID:20838980

Synchronisation effects on the behavioural performance and information dynamics of a simulated minimally cognitive robotic agent.

PubMed

Moioli, Renan C; Vargas, Patricia A; Husbands, Phil

2012-09-01

Oscillatory activity is ubiquitous in nervous systems, with solid evidence that synchronisation mechanisms underpin cognitive processes. Nevertheless, its informational content and relationship with behaviour are still to be fully understood. In addition, cognitive systems cannot be properly appreciated without taking into account brain-body- environment interactions. In this paper, we developed a model based on the Kuramoto Model of coupled phase oscillators to explore the role of neural synchronisation in the performance of a simulated robotic agent in two different minimally cognitive tasks. We show that there is a statistically significant difference in performance and evolvability depending on the synchronisation regime of the network. In both tasks, a combination of information flow and dynamical analyses show that networks with a definite, but not too strong, propensity for synchronisation are more able to reconfigure, to organise themselves functionally and to adapt to different behavioural conditions. The results highlight the asymmetry of information flow and its behavioural correspondence. Importantly, it also shows that neural synchronisation dynamics, when suitably flexible and reconfigurable, can generate minimally cognitive embodied behaviour.

Adaptive Visualization for Focused Personalized Information Retrieval

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahn, Jae-wook

2010-01-01

The new trend on the Web has totally changed today's information access environment. The traditional information overload problem has evolved into the qualitative level beyond the quantitative growth. The mode of producing and consuming information is changing and we need a new paradigm for accessing information. Personalized search is one of…

The Current Status of Instructional Design Theories in Relation to Today's Authoring Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Neil, A. Fred

2008-01-01

It is of course very difficult to accurately project important characteristics of the future state of any rapidly evolving field, and the field of authoring systems for computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is no exception. However, strong trends in evolving CAI systems of today would seem to indicate some important characteristics of the software…

Social Media: How to Use It Effectively.

PubMed

Gary, Joshua L

2015-11-01

The digital age has revolutionized how information is shared among human beings. The Internet initially provided a means for obtaining information and then evolved to allow the exchange of information between humans and Web sites. The enormous impact of these changes on health care has shifted the way physicians provide care and how patients elect for and receive care. Social media applications allow for immediate exchange of ideas between large populations, which presents many opportunities and challenges for practicing physicians. Providers must be cognizant of patient confidentiality, their own online reputation, and risk management when using social media. The future is widely unknown with opportunities for marketing, networking, and research to evolve in the coming decades.

The medical matters wiki: building a library Web site 2.0.

PubMed

Robertson, Justin; Burnham, Judy; Li, Jie; Sayed, Ellen

2008-01-01

New and innovative information technologies drive the ever-evolving library profession. From clay tablet to parchment scroll to manufactured paper to computer screen pixel, information storage, retrieval, and delivery methods continue to evolve, and each advance irrevocably affects the way libraries, and librarians, work. The Internet has forever altered information and library science, both in theory and practice, but even within this context the progression continues. Though ambiguously defined, Web 2.0 offers a new outlook and new software, presenting librarians with potentially invaluable new tools and methods. This paper discusses the creation, implementation, and maintenance of a Web 2.0 technology, the wiki, as a resource tool for an academic biomedical library.

Enhanced training using the life support for trauma and transport (LSTAT)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hanson, Matthew E.; Toth, Louis S.; White, William H.

1999-07-01

The Life Support for Trauma and Transport (LSTAT) is an intensive care unit (ICU) in a 'stretcher' only 5 inches thick. LSTAT is a portable intensive care system which integrates state-of-the-art, commercial-off-the-shelf, hospital grade ICU devices into a single patient resuscitation, stabilization, evacuation, and surgical platform. LSTAT's current and evolving attributes include compact volume, low weight, integrated devices and subsystems, ergonomic patient-caregiver interface, patient and system information system, near-universal power interface, patient- caregiver hazardous environment isolation, and extensive evacuation vehicle interface compatibility. Although the LSTAT system architecture was established primarily to support diagnosis, monitoring and telemedicine consulting, the information architecture and communications suite can also support hosting training experiences and scenarios. The training scenario capabilities and features include: (1) moving training out to the field, (2) facilitating distributed training, (3) off-setting training with remote experts (or potentially embedded expert systems), and (4) facilitating training-by-simulation. Equipping the caregiver via such enhanced equipment and training should ultimately translate into better care for the patient.

Damage-mitigating control of aerospace systems for high performance and extended life

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ray, Asok; Wu, Min-Kuang; Carpino, Marc; Lorenzo, Carl F.; Merrill, Walter C.

1992-01-01

The concept of damage-mitigating control is to minimize fatigue (as well as creep and corrosion) damage of critical components of mechanical structures while simultaneously maximizing the system dynamic performance. Given a dynamic model of the plant and the specifications for performance and stability robustness, the task is to synthesize a control law that would meet the system requirements and, at the same time, satisfy the constraints that are imposed by the material and structural properties of the critical components. The authors present the concept of damage-mitigating control systems design with the following objectives: (1) to achieve high performance with a prolonged life span; and (2) to systematically update the controller as the new technology of advanced materials evolves. The major challenge is to extract the information from the material properties and then utilize this information in a mathematical form so that it can be directly applied to robust control synthesis for mechanical systems. The basic concept of damage-mitigating control is illustrated using a relatively simplified model of a space shuttle main engine.

Search for Primitive Matter in the Solar System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Libourel, G.; Michel, P.; Delbo, M.; Ganino, C.; Recio-Blanco, A.; de Laverny, P.; Zolensky, M. E.; Krot, A. N.

2017-01-01

Recent astronomical observations and theoretical modeling led to a consensus regarding the global scenario of the formation of young stellar objects (YSO) from a cold molecular cloud of interstellar dust (organics and minerals) and gas that, in some cases, leads to the formation of a planetary system. In the case of our Solar System, which has already evolved for approximately 4567 Ma, the quest is to access, through the investigation of planets, moons, cometary and asteroidal bodies, meteorites, micrometeorites, and interplanetary dust particles, the primitive material that contains the key information about the early Solar System processes and its evolution. However, laboratory analyses of extraterrestrial samples, astronomical observations and dynamical models of the Solar System evolution have not brought yet any conclusive evidence on the nature and location of primitive matter in the Solar System, preventing a clear understanding of its early stages.

The digital anatomist information system and its use in the generation and delivery of Web-based anatomy atlases.

PubMed

Brinkley, J F; Bradley, S W; Sundsten, J W; Rosse, C

1997-12-01

Advances in network and imaging technology, coupled with the availability of 3-D datasets such as the Visible Human, provide a unique opportunity for developing information systems in anatomy that can deliver relevant knowledge directly to the clinician, researcher or educator. A software framework is described for developing such a system within a distributed architecture that includes spatial and symbolic anatomy information resources, Web and custom servers, and authoring and end-user client programs. The authoring tools have been used to create 3-D atlases of the brain, knee and thorax that are used both locally and throughout the world. For the one and a half year period from June 1995-January 1997, the on-line atlases were accessed by over 33,000 sites from 94 countries, with an average of over 4000 "hits" per day, and 25,000 hits per day during peak exam periods. The atlases have been linked to by over 500 sites, and have received at least six unsolicited awards by outside rating institutions. The flexibility of the software framework has allowed the information system to evolve with advances in technology and representation methods. Possible new features include knowledge-based image retrieval and tutoring, dynamic generation of 3-D scenes, and eventually, real-time virtual reality navigation through the body. Such features, when coupled with other on-line biomedical information resources, should lead to interesting new ways for managing and accessing structural information in medicine. Copyright 1997 Academic Press.

Building a Framework in Improving Drought Monitoring and Early Warning Systems in Africa

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tadesse, T.; Wall, N.; Haigh, T.; Shiferaw, A. S.; Beyene, S.; Demisse, G. B.; Zaitchik, B.

2015-12-01

Decision makers need a basic understanding of the prediction models and products of hydro-climatic extremes and their suitability in time and space for strategic resource and development planning to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies. Advances in our ability to assess and predict climate extremes (e.g., droughts and floods) under evolving climate change suggest opportunity to improve management of climatic/hydrologic risk in agriculture and water resources. In the NASA funded project entitled, "Seasonal Prediction of Hydro-Climatic Extremes in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) under Evolving Climate Conditions to Support Adaptation Strategies," we are attempting to develop a framework that uses dialogue between managers and scientists on how to enhance the use of models' outputs and prediction products in the GHA as well as improve the delivery of this information in ways that can be easily utilized by managers. This process is expected to help our multidisciplinary research team obtain feedback on the models and forecast products. In addition, engaging decision makers is essential in evaluating the use of drought and flood prediction models and products for decision-making processes in drought and flood management. Through this study, we plan to assess information requirements to implement a robust Early Warning Systems (EWS) by engaging decision makers in the process. This participatory process could also help the existing EWSs in Africa and to develop new local and regional EWSs. In this presentation, we report the progress made in the past two years of the NASA project.

Social insect colony as a biological regulatory system: modelling information flow in dominance networks.

PubMed

Nandi, Anjan K; Sumana, Annagiri; Bhattacharya, Kunal

2014-12-06

Social insects provide an excellent platform to investigate flow of information in regulatory systems since their successful social organization is essentially achieved by effective information transfer through complex connectivity patterns among the colony members. Network representation of such behavioural interactions offers a powerful tool for structural as well as dynamical analysis of the underlying regulatory systems. In this paper, we focus on the dominance interaction networks in the tropical social wasp Ropalidia marginata-a species where behavioural observations indicate that such interactions are principally responsible for the transfer of information between individuals about their colony needs, resulting in a regulation of their own activities. Our research reveals that the dominance networks of R. marginata are structurally similar to a class of naturally evolved information processing networks, a fact confirmed also by the predominance of a specific substructure-the 'feed-forward loop'-a key functional component in many other information transfer networks. The dynamical analysis through Boolean modelling confirms that the networks are sufficiently stable under small fluctuations and yet capable of more efficient information transfer compared to their randomized counterparts. Our results suggest the involvement of a common structural design principle in different biological regulatory systems and a possible similarity with respect to the effect of selection on the organization levels of such systems. The findings are also consistent with the hypothesis that dominance behaviour has been shaped by natural selection to co-opt the information transfer process in such social insect species, in addition to its primal function of mediation of reproductive competition in the colony. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Study and prototype of data system interactions for the Earth Observing System Data and Information System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Emmitt, G. D.; Wood, S. A.; Morris, M.

1990-01-01

A crucial part of the Earth Observing System (EOS) is its Data and Information System (EOSDIS). The success of EOS depends not only on its instruments and science studies, but also on its ability to help scientists integrate data sets of geophysical and biological measurements taken by various instruments and investigators. NASA contractors have completed Phase B studies of EOSDIS, in particular its architecture, functionality, and user interfacing. At this point in time, it may seem impossible to exercise the EOSDIS or any of its components since they do not exist; i.e., if the EOSDIS is accepted as a totally new system, distinct from any existing DIS. However, if EOSDIS is seen as evolving from existing data systems, then some limited prototyping studies can be conducted by using currently functioning systems. In support of both the EOSDIS Science Advisory Panel and the EOSDIS Project, a prototyping activity was carried out by a cross section of interdisciplinary scientists. That prototyping activity is summarized and some conclusions are drawn that can be used by NASA-Goddard to evaluate and modify the specifications soon to be released in an RFP to build EOSDIS.

Identification of design features to enhance utilization and acceptance of systems for Internet-based decision support at the point of care.

PubMed

Gadd, C S; Baskaran, P; Lobach, D F

1998-01-01

Extensive utilization of point-of-care decision support systems will be largely dependent on the development of user interaction capabilities that make them effective clinical tools in patient care settings. This research identified critical design features of point-of-care decision support systems that are preferred by physicians, through a multi-method formative evaluation of an evolving prototype of an Internet-based clinical decision support system. Clinicians used four versions of the system--each highlighting a different functionality. Surveys and qualitative evaluation methodologies assessed clinicians' perceptions regarding system usability and usefulness. Our analyses identified features that improve perceived usability, such as telegraphic representations of guideline-related information, facile navigation, and a forgiving, flexible interface. Users also preferred features that enhance usefulness and motivate use, such as an encounter documentation tool and the availability of physician instruction and patient education materials. In addition to identifying design features that are relevant to efforts to develop clinical systems for point-of-care decision support, this study demonstrates the value of combining quantitative and qualitative methods of formative evaluation with an iterative system development strategy to implement new information technology in complex clinical settings.

Rapid divergence and convergence of life-history in experimentally evolved Drosophila melanogaster.

PubMed

Burke, Molly K; Barter, Thomas T; Cabral, Larry G; Kezos, James N; Phillips, Mark A; Rutledge, Grant A; Phung, Kevin H; Chen, Richard H; Nguyen, Huy D; Mueller, Laurence D; Rose, Michael R

2016-09-01

Laboratory selection experiments are alluring in their simplicity, power, and ability to inform us about how evolution works. A longstanding challenge facing evolution experiments with metazoans is that significant generational turnover takes a long time. In this work, we present data from a unique system of experimentally evolved laboratory populations of Drosophila melanogaster that have experienced three distinct life-history selection regimes. The goal of our study was to determine how quickly populations of a certain selection regime diverge phenotypically from their ancestors, and how quickly they converge with independently derived populations that share a selection regime. Our results indicate that phenotypic divergence from an ancestral population occurs rapidly, within dozens of generations, regardless of that population's evolutionary history. Similarly, populations sharing a selection treatment converge on common phenotypes in this same time frame, regardless of selection pressures those populations may have experienced in the past. These patterns of convergence and divergence emerged much faster than expected, suggesting that intermediate evolutionary history has transient effects in this system. The results we draw from this system are applicable to other experimental evolution projects, and suggest that many relevant questions can be sufficiently tested on shorter timescales than previously thought. © 2016 The Author(s). Evolution © 2016 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Whiplash Syndrome Reloaded: Digital Echoes of Whiplash Syndrome in the European Internet Search Engine Context.

PubMed

Noll-Hussong, Michael

2017-03-27

In many Western countries, after a motor vehicle collision, those involved seek health care for the assessment of injuries and for insurance documentation purposes. In contrast, in many less wealthy countries, there may be limited access to care and no insurance or compensation system. The purpose of this infodemiology study was to investigate the global pattern of evolving Internet usage in countries with and without insurance and the corresponding compensation systems for whiplash injury. We used the Internet search engine analytics via Google Trends to study the health information-seeking behavior concerning whiplash injury at national population levels in Europe. We found that the search for "whiplash" is strikingly and consistently often associated with the search for "compensation" in countries or cultures with a tort system. Frequent or traumatic painful injuries; diseases or disorders such as arthritis, headache, radius, and hip fracture; depressive disorders; and fibromyalgia were not associated similarly with searches on "compensation." In this study, we present evidence from the evolving viewpoint of naturalistic Internet search engine analytics that the expectations for receiving compensation may influence Internet search behavior in relation to whiplash injury. ©Michael Noll-Hussong. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 27.03.2017.

Processing multilevel secure test and evaluation information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hurlburt, George; Hildreth, Bradley; Acevedo, Teresa

1994-07-01

The Test and Evaluation Community Network (TECNET) is building a Multilevel Secure (MLS) system. This system features simultaneous access to classified and unclassified information and easy access through widely available communications channels. It provides the necessary separation of classification levels, assured through the use of trusted system design techniques, security assessments and evaluations. This system enables cleared T&E users to view and manipulate classified and unclassified information resources either using a single terminal interface or multiple windows in a graphical user interface. TECNET is in direct partnership with the National Security Agency (NSA) to develop and field the MLS TECNET capability in the near term. The centerpiece of this partnership is a state-of-the-art Concurrent Systems Security Engineering (CSSE) process. In developing the MLS TECNET capability, TECNET and NSA are providing members, with various expertise and diverse backgrounds, to participate in the CSSE process. The CSSE process is founded on the concepts of both Systems Engineering and Concurrent Engineering. Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach to evolve and verify an integrated and life cycle balanced set of system product and process solutions that satisfy customer needs (ASD/ENS-MIL STD 499B 1992). Concurrent Engineering is design and development using the simultaneous, applied talents of a diverse group of people with the appropriate skills. Harnessing diverse talents to support CSSE requires active participation by team members in an environment that both respects and encourages diversity.

A Proposed Information Architecture for Telehealth System Interoperability

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Warren, S.; Craft, R.L.; Parks, R.C.

1999-04-07

Telemedicine technology is rapidly evolving. Whereas early telemedicine consultations relied primarily on video conferencing, consultations today may utilize video conferencing, medical peripherals, store-and-forward capabilities, electronic patient record management software, and/or a host of other emerging technologies. These remote care systems rely increasingly on distributed, collaborative information technology during the care delivery process, in its many forms. While these leading-edge systems are bellwethers for highly advanced telemedicine, the remote care market today is still immature. Most telemedicine systems are custom-designed and do not interoperate with other commercial offerings. Users are limited to a set of functionality that a single vendor providesmore » and must often pay high prices to obtain this functionality, since vendors in this marketplace must deliver entire systems in order to compete. Besides increasing corporate research and development costs, this inhibits the ability of the user to make intelligent purchasing decisions regarding best-of-breed technologies. We propose a secure, object-oriented information architecture for telemedicine systems that promotes plug-and-play interaction between system components through standardized interfaces, communication protocols, messaging formats, and data definitions. In this architecture, each component functions as a black box, and components plug together in a lego-like fashion to achieve the desired device or system functionality. The architecture will support various ongoing standards work in the medical device arena.« less

Construction and Resource Utilization Explorer (CRUX): Implementing Instrument Suite Data Fusion to Characterize Regolith Hydrogen Resources

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Haldemann, Albert F. C.; Johnson, Jerome B.; Elphic, Richard C.; Boynton, William V.; Wetzel, John

2006-01-01

CRUX is a modular suite of geophysical and borehole instruments combined with display and decision support system (MapperDSS) tools to characterize regolith resources, surface conditions, and geotechnical properties. CRUX is a NASA-funded Technology Maturation Program effort to provide enabling technology for Lunar and Planetary Surface Operations (LPSO). The MapperDSS uses data fusion methods with CRUX instruments, and other available data and models, to provide regolith properties information needed for LPSO that cannot be determined otherwise. We demonstrate the data fusion method by showing how it might be applied to characterize the distribution and form of hydrogen using a selection of CRUX instruments: Borehole Neutron Probe and Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer data as a function of depth help interpret Surface Neutron Probe data to generate 3D information. Secondary information from other instruments along with physical models improves the hydrogen distribution characterization, enabling information products for operational decision-making.

Reinforced communication and social navigation: Remember your friends and remember yourself

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mirshahvalad, A.; Rosvall, M.

2011-09-01

In social systems, people communicate with each other and form groups based on their interests. The pattern of interactions, the network, and the ideas that flow on the network naturally evolve together. Researchers use simple models to capture the feedback between changing network patterns and ideas on the network, but little is understood about the role of past events in the feedback process. Here, we introduce a simple agent-based model to study the coupling between peoples’ ideas and social networks, and better understand the role of history in dynamic social networks. We measure how information about ideas can be recovered from information about network structure and, the other way around, how information about network structure can be recovered from information about ideas. We find that it is, in general, easier to recover ideas from the network structure than vice versa.

Modeling reality

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Denning, Peter J.

1990-01-01

Although powerful computers have allowed complex physical and manmade hardware systems to be modeled successfully, we have encountered persistent problems with the reliability of computer models for systems involving human learning, human action, and human organizations. This is not a misfortune; unlike physical and manmade systems, human systems do not operate under a fixed set of laws. The rules governing the actions allowable in the system can be changed without warning at any moment, and can evolve over time. That the governing laws are inherently unpredictable raises serious questions about the reliability of models when applied to human situations. In these domains, computers are better used, not for prediction and planning, but for aiding humans. Examples are systems that help humans speculate about possible futures, offer advice about possible actions in a domain, systems that gather information from the networks, and systems that track and support work flows in organizations.

Paleogeographic constraints on continental-scale source-to-sink systems: Northern South America and its Atlantic margins

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bajolet, Flora; Chardon, Dominique; Rouby, Delphine; Dall'Asta, Massimo; Roig, Jean-Yves; Loparev, Artiom; Coueffe, Renaud

2017-04-01

Our work aims at setting the evolving boundary conditions of erosion and sediments transfer, transit, and onshore-offshore accumulations on northern South America and along its Atlantic margins. Since the Early Mesozoic, the source-to-sink system evolved under the interplay of four main processes, which are (i) volcanism and arc building along the proto-Andes, (ii) long-term dynamics of the Amazon incratonic basin, (iii) rifting, relaxation and rejuvenation of the Atlantic margins and (iv) building of the Andes. We compiled information available from geological maps and the literature regarding tectonics, plate kinematics, magmatism, stratigraphy, sedimentology (including paleoenvironments and currents) and thermochronology to produce a series of paleogeographic maps showing the tectonic and kinematic framework of continental areas under erosion (sources), by-pass and accumulation (sinks) over the Amazonian craton, its adjacent regions and along its Atlantic margins. The maps also allow assessing the relative impact of (i) ongoing Pacific subduction, (ii) Atlantic rifting and its aftermath, and (iii) Atlantic slab retreat from under the Caribbean domain on the distribution and activity of onshore/offshore sedimentary basins. Stratigraphic and thermochronology data are also used to assess denudation / vertical motions due to sediment transfers and lithosphere-asthenosphere interactions. This study ultimately aims at linking the sediment routing system to long-wavelength deformation of northern South America under the influence of mountain building, intracratonic geodynamics, divergent margin systems and mantle dynamics.

PDAs in Teacher Education: A Case Study Examining Mobile Technology Integration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Franklin, Teresa; Sexton, Colleen; Lu, Young; Ma, Hongyan

2007-01-01

The classroom computer is no longer confined to a box on the desk. Mobile handheld computing devices have evolved into powerful and affordable learning tools. Handheld technologies are changing the way people access and work with information. The use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs or handhelds) has been an evolving part of the business world…