Distributed reservation-based code division multiple access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wieselthier, J. E.; Ephremides, A.

1984-11-01

The use of spread spectrum signaling, motivated primarily by its antijamming capabilities in military applications, leads naturally to the use of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) techniques that permit the successful simultaneous transmission by a number of users over a wideband channel. In this paper we address some of the major issues that are associated with the design of multiple access protocols for spread spectrum networks. We then propose, analyze, and evaluate a distributed reservation-based multiple access protocol that does in fact exploit CDMA properties. Especially significant is the fact that no acknowledgment or feedback information from the destination is required (thus facilitating communication with a radio-silent mode), nor is any form of coordination among the users necessary.

Use of an engineering data management system in the analysis of space shuttle orbiter tiles

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Giles, G. L.; Vallas, M.

1981-01-01

The use of an engineering data management system to facilitate the extensive stress analyses of the space shuttle orbiter thermal protection system is demonstrated. The methods used to gather, organize, and store the data; to query data interactively; to generate graphic displays of the data; and to access, transform, and prepare the data for input to a stress analysis program are described. Information related to many separate tiles can be accessed individually from the data base which has a natural organization from an engineering viewpoint. The flexible user features of the system facilitate changes in data content and organization which occur during the development and refinement of the tile analysis procedure. Additionally, the query language supports retrieval of data to satisfy a variety of user-specified conditions.

Paediatric musculoskeletal matters (pmm)--collaborative development of an online evidence based interactive learning tool and information resource for education in paediatric musculoskeletal medicine.

PubMed

Smith, Nicola; Rapley, Tim; Jandial, Sharmila; English, Christine; Davies, Barbara; Wyllie, Ruth; Foster, Helen E

2016-01-05

We describe the collaborative development of an evidence based, free online resource namely 'paediatric musculoskeletal matters' (pmm). This resource was developed with the aim of reaching a wide range of health professionals to increase awareness, knowledge and skills within paediatric musculoskeletal medicine, thereby facilitating early diagnosis and referral to specialist care. Engagement with stakeholder groups (primary care, paediatrics, musculoskeletal specialties and medical students) informed the essential 'core' learning outcomes to derive content of pmm. Representatives from stakeholder groups, social science and web development experts transformed the learning outcomes into a suitable framework. Target audience representatives reviewed the framework and their opinion was gathered using an online survey (n = 74) and focus groups (n = 2). Experts in paediatric musculoskeletal medicine peer reviewed the content and design. User preferences informed design with mobile, tablet and web compatible versions to facilitate access, various media and formats to engage users and the content presented in module format (i.e. Clinical assessment, Investigations and management, Limping child, Joint pain by site, Swollen joint(s) and Resources). We propose that our collaborative and evidence-based approach has ensured that pmm is user-friendly, with readily accessible, suitable content, and will help to improve access to paediatric musculoskeletal medicine education. The content is evidence-based with the design and functionality of pmm to facilitate optimal and 'real life' access to information. pmm is targeted at medical students and the primary care environment although messages are transferable to all health care professionals involved in the care of children and young people.

From parent to 'peer facilitator': a qualitative study of a peer-led parenting programme.

PubMed

Thomson, S; Michelson, D; Day, C

2015-01-01

Peer-led interventions are increasingly common in community health settings. Although peer-led approaches have proven benefits for service users, relatively little is known about the process and outcomes of participation for peer leaders. This study investigated experiences of parents who had participated as 'peer facilitators' in Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities (EPEC), a peer-led programme designed to improve access to evidence-based parenting support in socially disadvantaged communities. A qualitative cross-sectional design was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 peer facilitators and scrutinized using thematic analysis. Peer facilitators developed their knowledge and skills through personal experience of receiving parenting support, participation in formal training and supervised practice, access to an intervention manual, and peer modelling. Peer facilitators described positive changes in their own families, confidence and social status. Transformative personal gains reinforced peer facilitators' role commitment and contributed to a cohesive 'family' identity among EPEC staff and service users. Peer facilitators' enthusiasm, openness and mutual identification with families were seen as critical to EPEC's effectiveness and sustainability. Peer facilitators also found the training emotionally and intellectually demanding. There were particular difficulties around logistical issues (e.g. finding convenient supervision times), managing psychosocial complexity and child safeguarding. The successful delivery and sustained implementation of peer-led interventions requires careful attention to the personal qualities and support of peer leaders. Based on the findings of this study, support should include training, access to intervention manuals, regular and responsive supervision, and logistical/administrative assistance. Further research is required to elaborate and extend these findings to other peer-led programmes. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Direct access and patient/client self-referral to physiotherapy: a review of contemporary practice within the European Union.

PubMed

Bury, T J; Stokes, E K

2013-12-01

Direct access refers to service users being able to refer themselves to physiotherapy without a third-party referral. It represents a model of practice supported globally by the profession, growing research evidence and health policy in some health systems. To the authors' knowledge, no research has been reported to ascertain the extent to which direct access is available within the physiotherapy profession within the European Union (EU). To survey member organisations of the World Confederation for Physical Therapy (WCPT); establish the number of member states within the EU where it is possible for individuals seeking physiotherapy services to self-refer; describe the legislative/regulatory and reimbursement contexts in which physiotherapy services are delivered; examine if physiotherapy practice is different in member states where direct access is permitted compared with member states where direct access is not permitted; and to describe the barriers and facilitators to direct access perceived by member organisations of the WCPT. Cross-sectional, online survey using a purposive sample. Member organisations of the WCPT in the EU. Direct access is not available in all member states of the EU, despite the majority having legislation to regulate the profession, and entry-level education programmes that produce graduates with the requisite competencies. Key barriers perceived are those that can influence policy development, including the views of the medical profession and politicians. Support of service users and politicians, as well as professional autonomy, are seen as key facilitators. These results represent the first report of a comprehensive mapping of direct access to physiotherapy and contexts within the EU. In over half of member states, service users can self-refer to physiotherapists. These results provide insights to further individuals' understanding about the similarities and differences in working practices and service delivery factors, such as reimbursement across and within EU member states. The synergies between barriers and facilitators indicate the importance of targeted advocacy strategies in the introduction of direct access/self-referral to physiotherapy. Copyright © 2013 Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Distributed Multi-Agent System for Collaborative Information Management and Learning

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, James R.; Wolfe, Shawn R.; Wragg, Stephen D.; Koga, Dennis (Technical Monitor)

2000-01-01

In this paper, we present DIAMS, a system of distributed, collaborative agents to help users access, manage, share and exchange information. A DIAMS personal agent helps its owner find information most relevant to current needs. It provides tools and utilities for users to manage their information repositories with dynamic organization and virtual views. Flexible hierarchical display is integrated with indexed query search-to support effective information access. Automatic indexing methods are employed to support user queries and communication between agents. Contents of a repository are kept in object-oriented storage to facilitate information sharing. Collaboration between users is aided by easy sharing utilities as well as automated information exchange. Matchmaker agents are designed to establish connections between users with similar interests and expertise. DIAMS agents provide needed services for users to share and learn information from one another on the World Wide Web.

What do parents perceive are the barriers and facilitators to accessing psychological treatment for mental health problems in children and adolescents? A systematic review of qualitative and quantitative studies.

PubMed

Reardon, Tessa; Harvey, Kate; Baranowska, Magdalena; O'Brien, Doireann; Smith, Lydia; Creswell, Cathy

2017-06-01

A minority of children and adolescents with mental health problems access treatment. The reasons for poor rates of treatment access are not well understood. As parents are a key gatekeeper to treatment access, it is important to establish parents' views of barriers/facilitators to accessing treatment. The aims of this study are to synthesise findings from qualitative and quantitative studies that report parents' perceptions of barriers/facilitators to accessing treatment for mental health problems in children/adolescents. A systematic review and narrative synthesis were conducted. Forty-four studies were included in the review and were assessed in detail. Parental perceived barriers/facilitators relating to (1) systemic/structural issues; (2) views and attitudes towards services and treatment; (3) knowledge and understanding of mental health problems and the help-seeking process; and (4) family circumstances were identified. Findings highlight avenues for improving access to child mental health services, including increased provision that is free to service users and flexible to their needs, with opportunities to develop trusting, supportive relationships with professionals. Furthermore, interventions are required to improve parents' identification of mental health problems, reduce stigma for parents, and increase awareness of how to access services.

AOIPS data base management systems support for GARP data sets

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gary, J. P.

1977-01-01

A data base management system is identified, developed to provide flexible access to data sets produced by GARP during its data systems tests. The content and coverage of the data base are defined and a computer-aided, interactive information storage and retrieval system, implemented to facilitate access to user specified data subsets, is described. The computer programs developed to provide the capability were implemented on the highly interactive, minicomputer-based AOIPS and are referred to as the data retrieval system (DRS). Implemented as a user interactive but menu guided system, the DRS permits users to inventory the data tape library and create duplicate or subset data sets based on a user selected window defined by time and latitude/longitude boundaries. The DRS permits users to select, display, or produce formatted hard copy of individual data items contained within the data records.

The Gene Set Builder: collation, curation, and distribution of sets of genes

PubMed Central

Yusuf, Dimas; Lim, Jonathan S; Wasserman, Wyeth W

2005-01-01

Background In bioinformatics and genomics, there are many applications designed to investigate the common properties for a set of genes. Often, these multi-gene analysis tools attempt to reveal sequential, functional, and expressional ties. However, while tremendous effort has been invested in developing tools that can analyze a set of genes, minimal effort has been invested in developing tools that can help researchers compile, store, and annotate gene sets in the first place. As a result, the process of making or accessing a set often involves tedious and time consuming steps such as finding identifiers for each individual gene. These steps are often repeated extensively to shift from one identifier type to another; or to recreate a published set. In this paper, we present a simple online tool which – with the help of the gene catalogs Ensembl and GeneLynx – can help researchers build and annotate sets of genes quickly and easily. Description The Gene Set Builder is a database-driven, web-based tool designed to help researchers compile, store, export, and share sets of genes. This application supports the 17 eukaryotic genomes found in version 32 of the Ensembl database, which includes species from yeast to human. User-created information such as sets and customized annotations are stored to facilitate easy access. Gene sets stored in the system can be "exported" in a variety of output formats – as lists of identifiers, in tables, or as sequences. In addition, gene sets can be "shared" with specific users to facilitate collaborations or fully released to provide access to published results. The application also features a Perl API (Application Programming Interface) for direct connectivity to custom analysis tools. A downloadable Quick Reference guide and an online tutorial are available to help new users learn its functionalities. Conclusion The Gene Set Builder is an Ensembl-facilitated online tool designed to help researchers compile and manage sets of genes in a user-friendly environment. The application can be accessed via . PMID:16371163

RURAL/URBAN RESIDENCE, ACCESS, AND PERCEIVED NEED FOR TREATMENT AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN COCAINE USERS

PubMed Central

BORDERS, TYRONE F.; BOOTH, BRENDA M.; STEWART, KATHARINE E.; CHENEY, ANN M.; CURRAN, GEOFFREY M.

2014-01-01

Objective To examine how rural/urban residence, perceived access, and other factors impede or facilitate perceived need for drug use treatment, a concept closely linked to treatment utilization. Study Design Two hundred rural and 200 urban African American cocaine users who were not receiving treatment were recruited via Respondent-Driven Sampling and completed a structured in-person interview. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to test the associations between perceived need and rural/urban residence, perceived access, and other predisposing (eg, demographics), enabling (eg, insurance), and health factors (eg, psychiatric distress). Principal Findings In bivariate analyses, rural relative to urban cocaine users reported lower perceived treatment need (37% vs 48%), availability, affordability, overall ease of access, and effectiveness, as well as lower perceived acceptability of residential, outpatient, self-help, and hospital-based services. In multivariate analyses, there was a significant interaction between rural/urban residence and the acceptability of religious counseling. At the highest level of acceptability, rural users had lower odds of perceived need (OR=.23); at the lowest level, rural users had higher odds of perceived need (OR=2.74) than urban users. Among rural users, the acceptability of religious counseling was negatively associated with perceived need (OR=.64). Ease of access was negatively associated (OR=.71) whereas local treatment effectiveness (OR=1.47) and the acceptability of hospital-based treatment (OR=1.29) were positively associated with perceived need among all users. Conclusions Our findings suggest rural/urban disparities in perceived need and access to drug use treatment. Among rural and urban cocaine users, improving perceptions of treatment effectiveness and expanding hospital-based services could promote treatment seeking. PMID:25213603

Access to Space Interactive Design Web Site

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Leon, John; Cutlip, William; Hametz, Mark

2000-01-01

The Access To Space (ATS) Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) supports the science and technology community at GSFC by facilitating frequent and affordable opportunities for access to space. Through partnerships established with access mode suppliers, the ATS Group has developed an interactive Mission Design web site. The ATS web site provides both the information and the tools necessary to assist mission planners in selecting and planning their ride to space. This includes the evaluation of single payloads vs. ride-sharing opportunities to reduce the cost of access to space. Features of this site include the following: (1) Mission Database. Our mission database contains a listing of missions ranging from proposed missions to manifested. Missions can be entered by our user community through data input tools. Data is then accessed by users through various search engines: orbit parameters, ride-share opportunities, spacecraft parameters, other mission notes, launch vehicle, and contact information. (2) Launch Vehicle Toolboxes. The launch vehicle toolboxes provide the user a full range of information on vehicle classes and individual configurations. Topics include: general information, environments, performance, payload interface, available volume, and launch sites.

Atmospheric Composition Data and Information Services Center (ACDISC)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kempler, S.

2005-01-01

NASA's GSFC Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information and Data Services Center (DISC) manages the archive, distribution and data access for atmospheric composition data from AURA'S OMI, MLS, and hopefully one day, HIRDLS instruments, as well as heritage datasets from TOMS, UARS, MODIS, and AIRS. This data is currently archived in the GES Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). The GES DISC has begun the development of a community driven data management system that's sole purpose is to manage and provide value added services to NASA's Atmospheric Composition (AC) Data. This system, called the Atmospheric Composition Data and Information Services Center (ACDISC) will provide access all AC datasets from the above mentioned instruments, as well as AC datasets residing at remote archive sites (e.g, LaRC DAAC) The goals of the ACDISC are to: 1) Provide a data center for Atmospheric Scientists, guided by Atmospheric Scientists; 2) Be absolutely responsive to the data and data service needs of the Atmospheric Composition (AC) community; 3) Provide services (i.e., expertise) that will facilitate the effortless access to and usage of AC data; 4) Collaborate with AC scientists to facilitate the use of data from multiple sensors for long term atmospheric research. The ACDISC is an AC specific, user driven, multi-sensor, on-line, easy access archive and distribution system employing data analysis and visualization, data mining, and other user requested techniques that facilitate science data usage. The purpose of this presentation is to provide the evolution path that the GES DISC in order to better serve AC data, and also to receive continued community feedback and further foster collaboration with AC data users and providers.

Automated Computer Access Request System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Snook, Bryan E.

2010-01-01

The Automated Computer Access Request (AutoCAR) system is a Web-based account provisioning application that replaces the time-consuming paper-based computer-access request process at Johnson Space Center (JSC). Auto- CAR combines rules-based and role-based functionality in one application to provide a centralized system that is easily and widely accessible. The system features a work-flow engine that facilitates request routing, a user registration directory containing contact information and user metadata, an access request submission and tracking process, and a system administrator account management component. This provides full, end-to-end disposition approval chain accountability from the moment a request is submitted. By blending both rules-based and rolebased functionality, AutoCAR has the flexibility to route requests based on a user s nationality, JSC affiliation status, and other export-control requirements, while ensuring a user s request is addressed by either a primary or backup approver. All user accounts that are tracked in AutoCAR are recorded and mapped to the native operating system schema on the target platform where user accounts reside. This allows for future extensibility for supporting creation, deletion, and account management directly on the target platforms by way of AutoCAR. The system s directory-based lookup and day-today change analysis of directory information determines personnel moves, deletions, and additions, and automatically notifies a user via e-mail to revalidate his/her account access as a result of such changes. AutoCAR is a Microsoft classic active server page (ASP) application hosted on a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).

Trends in communicative access solutions for children with cerebral palsy.

PubMed

Myrden, Andrew; Schudlo, Larissa; Weyand, Sabine; Zeyl, Timothy; Chau, Tom

2014-08-01

Access solutions may facilitate communication in children with limited functional speech and motor control. This study reviews current trends in access solution development for children with cerebral palsy, with particular emphasis on the access technology that harnesses a control signal from the user (eg, movement or physiological change) and the output device (eg, augmentative and alternative communication system) whose behavior is modulated by the user's control signal. Access technologies have advanced from simple mechanical switches to machine vision (eg, eye-gaze trackers), inertial sensing, and emerging physiological interfaces that require minimal physical effort. Similarly, output devices have evolved from bulky, dedicated hardware with limited configurability, to platform-agnostic, highly personalized mobile applications. Emerging case studies encourage the consideration of access technology for all nonverbal children with cerebral palsy with at least nascent contingency awareness. However, establishing robust evidence of the effectiveness of the aforementioned advances will require more expansive studies. © The Author(s) 2014.

Use of an engineering data management system in the analysis of Space Shuttle Orbiter tiles

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Giles, G. L.; Vallas, M.

1981-01-01

This paper demonstrates the use of an engineering data management system to facilitate the extensive stress analyses of the Space Shuttle Orbiter thermal protection system. Descriptions are given of the approach and methods used (1) to gather, organize, and store the data, (2) to query data interactively, (3) to generate graphic displays of the data, and (4) to access, transform, and prepare the data for input to a stress analysis program. The relational information management system was found to be well suited to the tile analysis problem because information related to many separate tiles could be accessed individually from a data base having a natural organization from an engineering viewpoint. The flexible user features of the system facilitated changes in data content and organization which occurred during the development and refinement of the tile analysis procedure. Additionally, the query language supported retrieval of data to satisfy a variety of user-specified conditions.

Establishment of the U.S. castor (Ricinus communis L.) core collection using seed chemical composition analysis and genotyping with EST-SSR markers

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Natural genetic variation exists in the plant germplasm collections. Normally the germplasm collection for a specific species encompasses many accessions. Due to its large number of accessions, the entire collection is hard to handle and can’t be easily utilized. To facilitate the end-users (such as...

Human interface to large multimedia databases

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Davis, Ben; Marks, Linn; Collins, Dave; Mack, Robert; Malkin, Peter; Nguyen, Tam

1994-04-01

The emergence of high-speed networking for multimedia will have the effect of turning the computer screen into a window on a very large information space. As this information space increases in size and complexity, providing users with easy and intuitive means of accessing information will become increasingly important. Providing access to large amounts of text has been the focus of work for hundreds of years and has resulted in the evolution of a set of standards, from the Dewey Decimal System for libraries to the recently proposed ANSI standards for representing information on-line: KIF, Knowledge Interchange Format, and CG's, Conceptual Graphs. Certain problems remain unsolved by these efforts, though: how to let users know the contents of the information space, so that they know whether or not they want to search it in the first place, how to facilitate browsing, and, more specifically, how to facilitate visual browsing. These issues are particularly important for users in educational contexts and have been the focus of much of our recent work. In this paper we discuss some of the solutions we have prototypes: specifically, visual means, visual browsers, and visual definitional sequences.

Cloud-based Web Services for Near-Real-Time Web access to NPP Satellite Imagery and other Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, J. D.; Valente, E. G.

2010-12-01

We are building a scalable, cloud computing-based infrastructure for Web access to near-real-time data products synthesized from the U.S. National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) and other geospatial and meteorological data. Given recent and ongoing changes in the the NPP and NPOESS programs (now Joint Polar Satellite System), the need for timely delivery of NPP data is urgent. We propose an alternative to a traditional, centralized ground segment, using distributed Direct Broadcast facilities linked to industry-standard Web services by a streamlined processing chain running in a scalable cloud computing environment. Our processing chain, currently implemented on Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), retrieves raw data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and synthesizes data products such as Sea-Surface Temperature, Vegetation Indices, etc. The cloud computing approach lets us grow and shrink computing resources to meet large and rapid fluctuations (twice daily) in both end-user demand and data availability from polar-orbiting sensors. Early prototypes have delivered various data products to end-users with latencies between 6 and 32 minutes. We have begun to replicate machine instances in the cloud, so as to reduce latency and maintain near-real time data access regardless of increased data input rates or user demand -- all at quite moderate monthly costs. Our service-based approach (in which users invoke software processes on a Web-accessible server) facilitates access into datasets of arbitrary size and resolution, and allows users to request and receive tailored and composite (e.g., false-color multiband) products on demand. To facilitate broad impact and adoption of our technology, we have emphasized open, industry-standard software interfaces and open source software. Through our work, we envision the widespread establishment of similar, derived, or interoperable systems for processing and serving near-real-time data from NPP and other sensors. A scalable architecture based on cloud computing ensures cost-effective, real-time processing and delivery of NPP and other data. Access via standard Web services maximizes its interoperability and usefulness.

Next-generation genotype imputation service and methods.

PubMed

Das, Sayantan; Forer, Lukas; Schönherr, Sebastian; Sidore, Carlo; Locke, Adam E; Kwong, Alan; Vrieze, Scott I; Chew, Emily Y; Levy, Shawn; McGue, Matt; Schlessinger, David; Stambolian, Dwight; Loh, Po-Ru; Iacono, William G; Swaroop, Anand; Scott, Laura J; Cucca, Francesco; Kronenberg, Florian; Boehnke, Michael; Abecasis, Gonçalo R; Fuchsberger, Christian

2016-10-01

Genotype imputation is a key component of genetic association studies, where it increases power, facilitates meta-analysis, and aids interpretation of signals. Genotype imputation is computationally demanding and, with current tools, typically requires access to a high-performance computing cluster and to a reference panel of sequenced genomes. Here we describe improvements to imputation machinery that reduce computational requirements by more than an order of magnitude with no loss of accuracy in comparison to standard imputation tools. We also describe a new web-based service for imputation that facilitates access to new reference panels and greatly improves user experience and productivity.

Registered access: a 'Triple-A' approach.

PubMed

Dyke, Stephanie O M; Kirby, Emily; Shabani, Mahsa; Thorogood, Adrian; Kato, Kazuto; Knoppers, Bartha M

2016-12-01

We propose a standard model for a novel data access tier - registered access - to facilitate access to data that cannot be published in open access archives owing to ethical and legal risk. Based on an analysis of applicable research ethics and other legal and administrative frameworks, we discuss the general characteristics of this Registered Access Model, which would comprise a three-stage approval process: Authentication, Attestation and Authorization. We are piloting registered access with the Demonstration Projects of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health for which it may provide a suitable mechanism for access to certain data types and to different types of data users.

A clearing house for diagnostic testing: the solution to ensure access to and use of patented genetic inventions?

PubMed Central

van Zimmeren, Esther; Verbeure, Birgit; Matthijs, Gert; Van Overwalle, Geertrui

2006-01-01

In genetic diagnostics, the emergence of a so-called "patent thicket" is imminent. Such an overlapping set of patent rights may have restrictive effects on further research and development of diagnostic tests, and the provision of clinical diagnostic services. Currently, two models that may facilitate access to and use of patented genetic inventions are attracting much debate in various national and international fora: patent pools and clearing houses. In this article, we explore the concept of clearing houses. Several types of clearing houses are identified. First, we describe and discuss two types that would provide access to information on the patented inventions: the information clearing house and the technology exchange clearing house. Second, three types of clearing houses are analysed that not only offer access to information but also provide an instrument to facilitate the use of the patented inventions: the open access clearing house, the standardized licences clearing house and the royalty collection clearing house. A royalty collection clearing house for genetic diagnostic testing would be the most comprehensive as it would serve several functions: identifying patents and patent claims essential to diagnostic testing, matching licensees with licensors, developing and supplying standardized licences, collecting royalties, monitoring whether users respect licensing conditions, and providing dispute resolution services such as mediation and arbitration. In this way, it might function as an effective model for users to facilitate access to and use of the patented inventions. However, it remains to be seen whether patent holders with a strong patent portfolio will be convinced by the advantages of the royalty collection clearing house and be willing to participate. PMID:16710543

Combining apps targeting professionals and senior citizens to improve housing accessibility and influence housing provision policies.

PubMed

Helle, Tina; Iwarsson, Susanne; Lunn, Tine Bieber; Iversen, Mogens Holm; Jonsson, Oskar; Mårtensson, Knut; Svarre, Tanja; Slaug, Björn

2015-01-01

Two separate apps that address the increasingly important issue of accessible housing for senior citizens have been developed in different project settings. One of the apps was developed to facilitate the process for professional raters to assess housing accessibility in the context of individual housing adaptations. The other app was developed for senior citizens to raise their awareness of possible accessibility problems in their current dwelling and in other apartments within the available housing stock. Both apps were developed with a high degree of active user involvement in processes utilizing multiple state of the art methods. The results are two well accepted prototype apps perceived as user-friendly and appropriate for the intended user groups. By combining these two apps, our ambition is for the professional raters to benefit by gaining knowledge of their clients' perceived needs and desires, and for senior citizens to benefit by getting access to a database of professionally rated dwellings. The ultimate goal is the generation of sound knowledge reflecting the needs and desires of senior citizens and professional requirements regarding accessible housing as a means to inform and influence housing provision policies.

Service user involvement in mental health system strengthening in a rural African setting: qualitative study.

PubMed

Abayneh, Sisay; Lempp, Heidi; Alem, Atalay; Alemayehu, Daniel; Eshetu, Tigist; Lund, Crick; Semrau, Maya; Thornicroft, Graham; Hanlon, Charlotte

2017-05-18

It is essential to involve service users in efforts to expand access to mental health care in integrated primary care settings in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, there is little evidence from LMICs to guide this process. The aim of this study was to explore barriers to, and facilitators of, service user/caregiver involvement in rural Ethiopia to inform the development of a scalable approach. Thirty nine semi-structured interviews were carried out with purposively selected mental health service users (n = 13), caregivers (n = 10), heads of primary care facilities (n = 8) and policy makers/planners/service developers (n = 8). The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed in Amharic, and translated into English. Thematic analysis was applied. All groups of participants supported service user and caregiver involvement in mental health system strengthening. Potential benefits were identified as (i) improved appropriateness and quality of services, and (ii) greater protection against mistreatment and promotion of respect for service users. However, hardly any respondents had prior experience of service user involvement. Stigma was considered to be a pervasive barrier, operating within the health system, the local community and individuals. Competing priorities of service users included the need to obtain adequate individual care and to work for survival. Low recognition of the potential contribution of service users seemed linked to limited empowerment and mobilization of service users. Potential health system facilitators included a culture of community oversight of primary care services. All groups of respondents identified a need for awareness-raising and training to equip service users, caregivers, service providers and local community for involvement. Empowerment at the level of individual service users (information about mental health conditions, care and rights) and the group level (for advocacy and representation) were considered essential, alongside improved, accessible mental health care and livelihood interventions. As Ethiopia increases access to mental health care, a fundamental barrier to service user involvement is beginning to be addressed. Our study identified further barriers that need to be tackled, including a supportive political climate, and receptiveness amongst stakeholders. The findings will inform the development of a model of service user involvement, which will be piloted and evaluated.

Web Accessibility and Guidelines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harper, Simon; Yesilada, Yeliz

Access to, and movement around, complex online environments, of which the World Wide Web (Web) is the most popular example, has long been considered an important and major issue in the Web design and usability field. The commonly used slang phrase ‘surfing the Web’ implies rapid and free access, pointing to its importance among designers and users alike. It has also been long established that this potentially complex and difficult access is further complicated, and becomes neither rapid nor free, if the user is disabled. There are millions of people who have disabilities that affect their use of the Web. Web accessibility aims to help these people to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with, as well as contribute to, the Web, and thereby the society in general. This accessibility is, in part, facilitated by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) currently moving from version one to two. These guidelines are intended to encourage designers to make sure their sites conform to specifications, and in that conformance enable the assistive technologies of disabled users to better interact with the page content. In this way, it was hoped that accessibility could be supported. While this is in part true, guidelines do not solve all problems and the new WCAG version two guidelines are surrounded by controversy and intrigue. This chapter aims to establish the published literature related to Web accessibility and Web accessibility guidelines, and discuss limitations of the current guidelines and future directions.

Crowdsourced Contributions to the Nation's Geodetic Elevation Infrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stone, W. A.

2014-12-01

NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (NGS), a United States Department of Commerce agency, is engaged in providing the nation's fundamental positioning infrastructure - the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) - which includes the framework for latitude, longitude, and elevation determination as well as various geodetic models, tools, and data. Capitalizing on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology for improved access to the nation's precise geodetic elevation infrastructure requires use of a geoid model, which relates GNSS-derived heights (ellipsoid heights) with traditional elevations (orthometric heights). NGS is facilitating the use of crowdsourced GNSS observations collected at published elevation control stations by the professional surveying, geospatial, and scientific communities to help improve NGS' geoid modeling capability. This collocation of published elevation data and newly collected GNSS data integrates together the two height systems. This effort in turn supports enhanced access to accurate elevation information across the nation, thereby benefiting all users of geospatial data. By partnering with the public in this collaborative effort, NGS is not only helping facilitate improvements to the elevation infrastructure for all users but also empowering users of NSRS with the capability to do their own high-accuracy positioning. The educational outreach facet of this effort helps inform the public, including the scientific community, about the utility of various NGS tools, including the widely used Online Positioning User Service (OPUS). OPUS plays a key role in providing user-friendly and high accuracy access to NSRS, with optional sharing of results with NGS and the public. All who are interested in helping evolve and improve the nationwide elevation determination capability are invited to participate in this nationwide partnership and to learn more about the geodetic infrastructure which is a vital component of viable spatial data for many disciplines, including the geosciences.

PubMed on Tap: discovering design principles for online information delivery to handheld computers.

PubMed

Hauser, Susan E; Demner-Fushman, Dina; Ford, Glenn; Thoma, George R

2004-01-01

Online access to biomedical information from handheld computers will be a valuable adjunct to other popular medical applications if information delivery systems are designed with handheld computers in mind. The goal of this project is to discover design principles to facilitate practitioners' access to online medical information at the point-of-care. A prototype system was developed to serve as a testbed for this research. Using the testbed, an initial evaluation has yielded several user interface design principles. Continued research is expected to discover additional user interface design principles as well as guidelines for results organization and system performance

Intellectual property and networked health information: issues and principles.

PubMed

Cate, F H

1996-04-01

Information networks offer enormous potential for improving the delivery of health care services, facilitating health-related decision-making, and contributing to better health. In addition, advanced information technologies offer important opportunities for new markets, targeted information products and services, greater accessibility, lower costs and prices, and more rapid and efficient distribution. Realizing the full potential of those information resources requires the resolution of significant intellectual property issues, some of which may be affected by special features of health information. For example, the government is a significant funder and originator of health-related information. In addition, much of that information is of great importance to the population and benefits not only individual users, but also employers, insurance companies, the government, and society as a whole. The government must therefore continue to provide particularly important health information to the public, and facilitate that information's accessibility and reliability, while avoiding unnecessary competition with private information providers. Congress and courts must modify or interpret current copyright law as necessary to guarantee that it does not interfere with innovation in tailored health information or exceed its constitutional boundaries and restrict access to information, as opposed to expression. Both producers and users of information must work with the government to educate the public about the availability of health information and the rights of and limitations upon users under copyright law.

Intellectual property and networked health information: issues and principles.

PubMed Central

Cate, F H

1996-01-01

Information networks offer enormous potential for improving the delivery of health care services, facilitating health-related decision-making, and contributing to better health. In addition, advanced information technologies offer important opportunities for new markets, targeted information products and services, greater accessibility, lower costs and prices, and more rapid and efficient distribution. Realizing the full potential of those information resources requires the resolution of significant intellectual property issues, some of which may be affected by special features of health information. For example, the government is a significant funder and originator of health-related information. In addition, much of that information is of great importance to the population and benefits not only individual users, but also employers, insurance companies, the government, and society as a whole. The government must therefore continue to provide particularly important health information to the public, and facilitate that information's accessibility and reliability, while avoiding unnecessary competition with private information providers. Congress and courts must modify or interpret current copyright law as necessary to guarantee that it does not interfere with innovation in tailored health information or exceed its constitutional boundaries and restrict access to information, as opposed to expression. Both producers and users of information must work with the government to educate the public about the availability of health information and the rights of and limitations upon users under copyright law. PMID:8826629

Rapid deployment of internet-connected environmental monitoring devices

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Advances in electronic sensing and monitoring systems and the growth of the communications infrastructure have enabled users to gain immediate access to information and interaction with physical devices. To facilitate the uploading, viewing, and sharing of data via the internet, while avoiding the ...

Software for Sharing and Management of Information

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, James R.; Wolfe, Shawn R.; Wragg, Stephen D.

2003-01-01

DIAMS is a set of computer programs that implements a system of collaborative agents that serve multiple, geographically distributed users communicating via the Internet. DIAMS provides a user interface as a Java applet that runs on each user s computer and that works within the context of the user s Internet-browser software. DIAMS helps all its users to manage, gain access to, share, and exchange information in databases that they maintain on their computers. One of the DIAMS agents is a personal agent that helps its owner find information most relevant to current needs. It provides software tools and utilities for users to manage their information repositories with dynamic organization and virtual views. Capabilities for generating flexible hierarchical displays are integrated with capabilities for indexed- query searching to support effective access to information. Automatic indexing methods are employed to support users queries and communication between agents. The catalog of a repository is kept in object-oriented storage to facilitate sharing of information. Collaboration between users is aided by matchmaker agents and by automated exchange of information. The matchmaker agents are designed to establish connections between users who have similar interests and expertise.

Parasitology tutoring system: a hypermedia computer-based application.

PubMed

Theodoropoulos, G; Loumos, V

1994-02-14

The teaching of parasitology is a basic course in all life sciences curricula, and up to now no computer-assisted tutoring system has been developed for this purpose. By using Knowledge Pro, an object-oriented software development tool, a hypermedia tutoring system for teaching parasitology to college students was developed. Generally, a tutoring system contains a domain expert, a student model, a pedagogical expert and the user interface. In this project, particular emphasis was given to the user interface design and the expert knowledge representation. The system allows access to the educational material through hypermedia and indexing at the pace of the student. The hypermedia access is facilitated through key words defined as hypertext and objects in pictures defined as hyper-areas. The indexing access is based on a list of parameters that refers to various characteristics of the parasites, e.g. taxonomy, host, organ, etc. In addition, this indexing access can be used for testing the student's level of understanding. The advantages of this system are its user-friendliness, graphical interface and ability to incorporate new educational material in the area of parasitology.

Towards a standard licensing scheme for the access and use of satellite earth observation data for disaster management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clark, Nathan E.

2017-10-01

This paper explores from the view of the data recipient and user the complexities of creating a common licensing scheme for the access and use of satellite earth observation (EO) data in international disaster management (DM) activities. EO data contributions in major disaster events often involve numerous data providers with separate licensing mechanisms for controlling the access, uses, and distribution of data by the end users. A lack of standardization among the terminology, wording, and conditions within these licenses creates a complex legal environment for users, and often prevents them from using, sharing and combining datasets in an effective and timely manner. It also creates uncertainty among data providers as to the types of licensing controls that should be applied in disaster scenarios. This paper builds from an ongoing comparative analysis of the common and conflicting conditions among data licenses that must be addressed in order to facilitate easier access and use of EO data within the DM sector and offers recommendations towards the alignment of the structural and technical aspects of licenses among data providers.

Predicting impact of multi-paths on phase change in map-based vehicular ad hoc networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahmes, Mark; Lemieux, George; Sonnenberg, Jerome; Chester, David B.

2014-05-01

Dynamic Spectrum Access, which through its ability to adapt the operating frequency of a radio, is widely believed to be a solution to the limited spectrum problem. Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) can extend high capacity mobile communications over large areas where fixed and tethered-mobile systems are not available. In one use case with high potential impact cognitive radio employs spectrum sensing to facilitate identification of allocated frequencies not currently accessed by their primary users. Primary users own the rights to radiate at a specific frequency and geographic location, secondary users opportunistically attempt to radiate at a specific frequency when the primary user is not using it. We quantify optimal signal detection in map based cognitive radio networks with multiple rapidly varying phase changes and multiple orthogonal signals. Doppler shift occurs due to reflection, scattering, and rapid vehicle movement. Path propagation as well as vehicle movement produces either constructive or destructive interference with the incident wave. Our signal detection algorithms can assist the Doppler spread compensation algorithm by deciding how many phase changes in signals are present in a selected band of interest. Additionally we can populate a spatial radio environment map (REM) database with known information that can be leveraged in an ad hoc network to facilitate Dynamic Spectrum Access. We show how topography can help predict the impact of multi-paths on phase change, as well as about the prediction from dense traffic areas. Utilization of high resolution geospatial data layers in RF propagation analysis is directly applicable.

'What if you live on top of a bakery and you like cakes?'-Drug use and harm trajectories before, during and after the emergence of Silk Road.

PubMed

Barratt, Monica J; Lenton, Simon; Maddox, Alexia; Allen, Matthew

2016-09-01

Cryptomarkets are digital platforms that use anonymising software (e.g. Tor) and cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin) to facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) trade of goods and services. Their emergence has facilitated access to a wide range of high-quality psychoactive substances, according to surveys of users. In this paper, we ask the question 'How does changing access to drugs through cryptomarkets affect the drug use and harm trajectories of their users?' We conducted a digital ethnography spanning 2012-2014, a period that included the seizure of the original Silk Road marketplace and forum by law enforcement. Using encrypted online chat, we interviewed 17 people who reported using Silk Road to purchase illicit drugs. The interviews were in-depth and unstructured, and also involved the use of life history timelines to trace trajectories. Transcripts were analysed thematically using NVivo. For some, Silk Road facilitated initiation into drug use or a return to drug use after cessation. Typically, participants reported experiencing a glut of drug consumption in their first months using Silk Road, described by one participant as akin to 'kids in a candy store'. There was evidence that very high availability reduced the need for drug hoarding which helped some respondents to moderate use and feel more in control of purchases made online. Cryptomarket access also appeared to affect solitary and social drug users differently. Most participants described using other cryptomarkets after the closure of Silk Road, albeit with less confidence. In the context of high levels of drug access, supply and diversity occurring within a community regulated environment online, the impacts of cryptomarkets upon drug use trajectories are complex, often posing new challenges for self-control, yet not always leading to harmful outcomes. A major policy challenge is how to provide support for harm reduction in these highly volatile settings. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DockoMatic 2.0: high throughput inverse virtual screening and homology modeling.

PubMed

Bullock, Casey; Cornia, Nic; Jacob, Reed; Remm, Andrew; Peavey, Thomas; Weekes, Ken; Mallory, Chris; Oxford, Julia T; McDougal, Owen M; Andersen, Timothy L

2013-08-26

DockoMatic is a free and open source application that unifies a suite of software programs within a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) to facilitate molecular docking experiments. Here we describe the release of DockoMatic 2.0; significant software advances include the ability to (1) conduct high throughput inverse virtual screening (IVS); (2) construct 3D homology models; and (3) customize the user interface. Users can now efficiently setup, start, and manage IVS experiments through the DockoMatic GUI by specifying receptor(s), ligand(s), grid parameter file(s), and docking engine (either AutoDock or AutoDock Vina). DockoMatic automatically generates the needed experiment input files and output directories and allows the user to manage and monitor job progress. Upon job completion, a summary of results is generated by Dockomatic to facilitate interpretation by the user. DockoMatic functionality has also been expanded to facilitate the construction of 3D protein homology models using the Timely Integrated Modeler (TIM) wizard. The wizard TIM provides an interface that accesses the basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) and MODELER programs and guides the user through the necessary steps to easily and efficiently create 3D homology models for biomacromolecular structures. The DockoMatic GUI can be customized by the user, and the software design makes it relatively easy to integrate additional docking engines, scoring functions, or third party programs. DockoMatic is a free comprehensive molecular docking software program for all levels of scientists in both research and education.

A JAVA-based multimedia tool for clinical practice guidelines.

PubMed

Maojo, V; Herrero, C; Valenzuela, F; Crespo, J; Lazaro, P; Pazos, A

1997-01-01

We have developed a specific language for the representation of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) and Windows C++ and platform independent JAVA applications for multimedia presentation and edition of electronically stored CPGs. This approach facilitates translation of guidelines and protocols from paper to computer-based flowchart representations. Users can navigate through the algorithm with a friendly user interface and access related multimedia information within the context of each clinical problem. CPGs can be stored in a computer server and distributed over the World Wide Web, facilitating dissemination, local adaptation, and use as a reference element in medical care. We have chosen the Agency for Health Care and Policy Research's heart failure guideline to demonstrate the capabilities of our tool.

From Web accessibility to Web adaptability.

PubMed

Kelly, Brian; Nevile, Liddy; Sloan, David; Fanou, Sotiris; Ellison, Ruth; Herrod, Lisa

2009-07-01

This article asserts that current approaches to enhance the accessibility of Web resources fail to provide a solid foundation for the development of a robust and future-proofed framework. In particular, they fail to take advantage of new technologies and technological practices. The article introduces a framework for Web adaptability, which encourages the development of Web-based services that can be resilient to the diversity of uses of such services, the target audience, available resources, technical innovations, organisational policies and relevant definitions of 'accessibility'. The article refers to a series of author-focussed approaches to accessibility through which the authors and others have struggled to find ways to promote accessibility for people with disabilities. These approaches depend upon the resource author's determination of the anticipated users' needs and their provision. Through approaches labelled as 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, the authors have widened their focus to account for contexts and individual differences in target audiences. Now, the authors want to recognise the role of users in determining their engagement with resources (including services). To distinguish this new approach, the term 'adaptability' has been used to replace 'accessibility'; new definitions of accessibility have been adopted, and the authors have reviewed their previous work to clarify how it is relevant to the new approach. Accessibility 1.0 is here characterised as a technical approach in which authors are told how to construct resources for a broadly defined audience. This is known as universal design. Accessibility 2.0 was introduced to point to the need to account for the context in which resources would be used, to help overcome inadequacies identified in the purely technical approach. Accessibility 3.0 moved the focus on users from a homogenised universal definition to recognition of the idiosyncratic needs and preferences of individuals and to cater for them. All of these approaches placed responsibility within the authoring/publishing domain without recognising the role the user might want to play, or the roles that other users in social networks, or even Web services might play. Adaptability shifts the emphasis and calls for greater freedom for the users to facilitate individual accessibility in the open Web environment.

User Authentication in Smartphones for Telehealth

PubMed Central

SMITH, KATHERINE A.; ZHOU, LEMING; WATZLAF, VALERIE J. M.

2017-01-01

Many functions previously conducted on desktop computers are now performed on smartphones. Smartphones provide convenience, portability, and connectivity. When smartphones are used in the conduct of telehealth, sensitive data is invariably accessed, rendering the devices in need of user authentication to ensure data protection. User authentication of smartphones can help mitigate potential Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) breaches and keep sensitive patient information protected, while also facilitating the convenience of smartphones within everyday life and healthcare. This paper presents and examines several types of authentication methods available to smartphone users to help ensure security of sensitive data from attackers. The applications of these authentication methods in telehealth are discussed. PMID:29238444

User Authentication in Smartphones for Telehealth.

PubMed

Smith, Katherine A; Zhou, Leming; Watzlaf, Valerie J M

2017-01-01

Many functions previously conducted on desktop computers are now performed on smartphones. Smartphones provide convenience, portability, and connectivity. When smartphones are used in the conduct of telehealth, sensitive data is invariably accessed, rendering the devices in need of user authentication to ensure data protection. User authentication of smartphones can help mitigate potential Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) breaches and keep sensitive patient information protected, while also facilitating the convenience of smartphones within everyday life and healthcare. This paper presents and examines several types of authentication methods available to smartphone users to help ensure security of sensitive data from attackers. The applications of these authentication methods in telehealth are discussed.

PDBe: improved accessibility of macromolecular structure data from PDB and EMDB

PubMed Central

Velankar, Sameer; van Ginkel, Glen; Alhroub, Younes; Battle, Gary M.; Berrisford, John M.; Conroy, Matthew J.; Dana, Jose M.; Gore, Swanand P.; Gutmanas, Aleksandras; Haslam, Pauline; Hendrickx, Pieter M. S.; Lagerstedt, Ingvar; Mir, Saqib; Fernandez Montecelo, Manuel A.; Mukhopadhyay, Abhik; Oldfield, Thomas J.; Patwardhan, Ardan; Sanz-García, Eduardo; Sen, Sanchayita; Slowley, Robert A.; Wainwright, Michael E.; Deshpande, Mandar S.; Iudin, Andrii; Sahni, Gaurav; Salavert Torres, Jose; Hirshberg, Miriam; Mak, Lora; Nadzirin, Nurul; Armstrong, David R.; Clark, Alice R.; Smart, Oliver S.; Korir, Paul K.; Kleywegt, Gerard J.

2016-01-01

The Protein Data Bank in Europe (http://pdbe.org) accepts and annotates depositions of macromolecular structure data in the PDB and EMDB archives and enriches, integrates and disseminates structural information in a variety of ways. The PDBe website has been redesigned based on an analysis of user requirements, and now offers intuitive access to improved and value-added macromolecular structure information. Unique value-added information includes lists of reviews and research articles that cite or mention PDB entries as well as access to figures and legends from full-text open-access publications that describe PDB entries. A powerful new query system not only shows all the PDB entries that match a given query, but also shows the ‘best structures’ for a given macromolecule, ligand complex or sequence family using data-quality information from the wwPDB validation reports. A PDBe RESTful API has been developed to provide unified access to macromolecular structure data available in the PDB and EMDB archives as well as value-added annotations, e.g. regarding structure quality and up-to-date cross-reference information from the SIFTS resource. Taken together, these new developments facilitate unified access to macromolecular structure data in an intuitive way for non-expert users and support expert users in analysing macromolecular structure data. PMID:26476444

Unidata: 30 Years of FOSS for the Geosciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Davis, E.; Ramamurthy, M. K.; Young, J. W.; Fisher, W. I.; Rew, R. K.

2015-12-01

Unidata's core mission is to serve academic research and education communities by facilitating access and use of real-time weather data. To this end, Unidata develops, distributes, and supports several Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) packages. These packages are largely focused on data management, access, analysis and visualization. This presentation will discuss the lessons Unidata has gathered over thirty years of FOSS development, support, and community building. These lessons include what it takes to be a successful FOSS organization, how to adapt to changing "best practices" and the emergence of new FOSS tools and services, and techniques for dealing with software end-of-life. We will also discuss our approach when supporting a varied user community spanning end users and software developers. Strong user support has been an important key to Unidata's successful community building.

The CDF Run II disk inventory manager

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

Paul Hubbard and Stephan Lammel

2001-11-02

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment records and analyses proton-antiproton interactions at a center-of-mass energy of 2 TeV. Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron started in April of this year. The duration of the run is expected to be over two years. One of the main data handling strategies of CDF for Run II is to hide all tape access from the user and to facilitate sharing of data and thus disk space. A disk inventory manager was designed and developed over the past years to keep track of the data on disk, to coordinate user access to themore » data, and to stage data back from tape to disk as needed. The CDF Run II disk inventory manager consists of a server process, a user and administrator command line interfaces, and a library with the routines of the client API. Data are managed in filesets which are groups of one or more files. The system keeps track of user access to the filesets and attempts to keep frequently accessed data on disk. Data that are not on disk are automatically staged back from tape as needed. For CDF the main staging method is based on the mt-tools package as tapes are written according to the ANSI standard.« less

Comprehensive cluster analysis with Transitivity Clustering.

PubMed

Wittkop, Tobias; Emig, Dorothea; Truss, Anke; Albrecht, Mario; Böcker, Sebastian; Baumbach, Jan

2011-03-01

Transitivity Clustering is a method for the partitioning of biological data into groups of similar objects, such as genes, for instance. It provides integrated access to various functions addressing each step of a typical cluster analysis. To facilitate this, Transitivity Clustering is accessible online and offers three user-friendly interfaces: a powerful stand-alone version, a web interface, and a collection of Cytoscape plug-ins. In this paper, we describe three major workflows: (i) protein (super)family detection with Cytoscape, (ii) protein homology detection with incomplete gold standards and (iii) clustering of gene expression data. This protocol guides the user through the most important features of Transitivity Clustering and takes ∼1 h to complete.

Quantified Trust Levels for Authentication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thomas, Ivonne; Menzel, Michael; Meinel, Christoph

Service-oriented Architectures (SOAs) facilitate applications to integrate seamlessly services from collaborating business partners regardless of organizational borders. In order to secure access to these services, mechanisms for authentication and authorisation must be deployed that control the access based on identity-related information. To enable a business partners’ users to access the provided services, an identity federation is often established that enables the brokering of identity information across organisational borders. The establishment of such a federation requires complex agreements and contracts that define common policies, obligations and procedures. Generally, this includes obligations on the authentication process as well.

A security architecture for interconnecting health information systems.

PubMed

Gritzalis, Dimitris; Lambrinoudakis, Costas

2004-03-31

Several hereditary and other chronic diseases necessitate continuous and complicated health care procedures, typically offered in different, often distant, health care units. Inevitably, the medical records of patients suffering from such diseases become complex, grow in size very fast and are scattered all over the units involved in the care process, hindering communication of information between health care professionals. Web-based electronic medical records have been recently proposed as the solution to the above problem, facilitating the interconnection of the health care units in the sense that health care professionals can now access the complete medical record of the patient, even if it is distributed in several remote units. However, by allowing users to access information from virtually anywhere, the universe of ineligible people who may attempt to harm the system is dramatically expanded, thus severely complicating the design and implementation of a secure environment. This paper presents a security architecture that has been mainly designed for providing authentication and authorization services in web-based distributed systems. The architecture has been based on a role-based access scheme and on the implementation of an intelligent security agent per site (i.e. health care unit). This intelligent security agent: (a). authenticates the users, local or remote, that can access the local resources; (b). assigns, through temporary certificates, access privileges to the authenticated users in accordance to their role; and (c). communicates to other sites (through the respective security agents) information about the local users that may need to access information stored in other sites, as well as about local resources that can be accessed remotely.

Exploring accessibility issues of a public building for the mobility impaired. Case study: interstate bus terminal (ISBT), Vijayawada, India.

PubMed

Alagappan, Valliappan; Hefferan, Albert; Parivallal, Aarthi

2018-04-01

Right to access in the built environment creates equal and nondiscriminatory opportunities to a person with disabilities in order to move freely around and interact positively without hindrance and barriers. The objective of the study is to understand the existing accessibility related issues and implementation of guidelines and standards for public buildings. The technical verification using onsite and offsite access audit format for current provision of facilities in the internal and external environment has been carried out with the format prepared in reference to Central Public Works Department (CPWD) accessibility guidelines for mobility impaired and elderly and American Disability Act (ADA) guidelines. The access audit format included parameters like accessibility, safety, security, comfort and convenience and it addresses the barriers faced by wheel chair users, people with crutches, prosthetics and with non-assistive devices. The study addressed accessibility compliance in three zones of the building with initiation from parking area zone, inside the building, and area outside the building premises. The findings highlight the environmental barriers encountered by mobility impaired people and represented graphically in the layout plan and physical effort required to overcome the challenges in the built environment. The overall accessibility compliance is 42% in the interstate bus terminal. Implications for rehabilitation The study identifies the environmental limitations, human and technologically facilitators with the help of Central Public Works Department (CPWD) and American Disability Act (ADA) guidelines (1990). It highlights barriers for mobility-impaired users, by demonstrating in a spatial layout and the means to facilitate easy access with minimal frustration, stress and with less physical effort. It demonstrates the need for preparation of separate guidelines for making the existing types of buildings to be access and disabled-friendly. New accessibility guidelines shall be prepared by incorporating concepts like such as relative accessibility into new bus terminal buildings. Guidelines help the disabled in the process of rehabilitation and develop inclusiveness not rather than alienation.

MGIS: managing banana (Musa spp.) genetic resources information and high-throughput genotyping data

PubMed Central

Guignon, V.; Sempere, G.; Sardos, J.; Hueber, Y.; Duvergey, H.; Andrieu, A.; Chase, R.; Jenny, C.; Hazekamp, T.; Irish, B.; Jelali, K.; Adeka, J.; Ayala-Silva, T.; Chao, C.P.; Daniells, J.; Dowiya, B.; Effa effa, B.; Gueco, L.; Herradura, L.; Ibobondji, L.; Kempenaers, E.; Kilangi, J.; Muhangi, S.; Ngo Xuan, P.; Paofa, J.; Pavis, C.; Thiemele, D.; Tossou, C.; Sandoval, J.; Sutanto, A.; Vangu Paka, G.; Yi, G.; Van den houwe, I.; Roux, N.

2017-01-01

Abstract Unraveling the genetic diversity held in genebanks on a large scale is underway, due to advances in Next-generation sequence (NGS) based technologies that produce high-density genetic markers for a large number of samples at low cost. Genebank users should be in a position to identify and select germplasm from the global genepool based on a combination of passport, genotypic and phenotypic data. To facilitate this, a new generation of information systems is being designed to efficiently handle data and link it with other external resources such as genome or breeding databases. The Musa Germplasm Information System (MGIS), the database for global ex situ-held banana genetic resources, has been developed to address those needs in a user-friendly way. In developing MGIS, we selected a generic database schema (Chado), the robust content management system Drupal for the user interface, and Tripal, a set of Drupal modules which links the Chado schema to Drupal. MGIS allows germplasm collection examination, accession browsing, advanced search functions, and germplasm orders. Additionally, we developed unique graphical interfaces to compare accessions and to explore them based on their taxonomic information. Accession-based data has been enriched with publications, genotyping studies and associated genotyping datasets reporting on germplasm use. Finally, an interoperability layer has been implemented to facilitate the link with complementary databases like the Banana Genome Hub and the MusaBase breeding database. Database URL: https://www.crop-diversity.org/mgis/ PMID:29220435

36 CFR 1236.20 - What are appropriate recordkeeping systems for electronic records?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... into the electronic information system or records can be transferred to an electronic recordkeeping... and retrieval. Establish the appropriate rights for users to access the records and facilitate the search and retrieval of records. (6) Preserve records. Ensure that all records in the system are...

36 CFR § 1236.20 - What are appropriate recordkeeping systems for electronic records?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... into the electronic information system or records can be transferred to an electronic recordkeeping... and retrieval. Establish the appropriate rights for users to access the records and facilitate the search and retrieval of records. (6) Preserve records. Ensure that all records in the system are...

36 CFR 1236.20 - What are appropriate recordkeeping systems for electronic records?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... into the electronic information system or records can be transferred to an electronic recordkeeping... and retrieval. Establish the appropriate rights for users to access the records and facilitate the search and retrieval of records. (6) Preserve records. Ensure that all records in the system are...

36 CFR 1236.20 - What are appropriate recordkeeping systems for electronic records?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... into the electronic information system or records can be transferred to an electronic recordkeeping... and retrieval. Establish the appropriate rights for users to access the records and facilitate the search and retrieval of records. (6) Preserve records. Ensure that all records in the system are...

36 CFR 1236.20 - What are appropriate recordkeeping systems for electronic records?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... into the electronic information system or records can be transferred to an electronic recordkeeping... and retrieval. Establish the appropriate rights for users to access the records and facilitate the search and retrieval of records. (6) Preserve records. Ensure that all records in the system are...

Getting to Know You: Discovering User Behaviors and Their Implications for Service Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Daigle, Ben

2013-01-01

Public services librarians are often in the position of training patrons how to use technology. They adopt new technologies such as discovery layers, link resolvers, subject guides, virtual reference services, OPACs, content management systems, and institutional repositories to provide access to materials and facilitate collaboration, but…

Exploring the Use of Technology for Active Aging and Thriving.

PubMed

Øderud, Tone; Østensen, Elisabeth; Gjevjon, Edith Roth; Moen, Anne

2017-01-01

The study explores how older adults with limited digital experience become users of tablet computers (iPad) with Internet access, and how the tablet computers become part of their daily life facilitating active aging and thriving. Volunteer adolescents were mobilised to teach and follow up the participants regularly.

The Medical Literature as a Resource for Health Care Practice.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKibbon, K. Ann; And Others

1995-01-01

Discussion of evidence-based medicine (EBM) focuses on information tools to facilitate the practice of EBM that were developed, evaluated, and made more accessible by the McMaster University (Canada) Faculty of Health Sciences. Highlights include users' guides to medical literature, strategies for improving MEDLINE searches, new journals, and…

DockoMatic 2.0: High Throughput Inverse Virtual Screening and Homology Modeling

PubMed Central

Bullock, Casey; Cornia, Nic; Jacob, Reed; Remm, Andrew; Peavey, Thomas; Weekes, Ken; Mallory, Chris; Oxford, Julia T.; McDougal, Owen M.; Andersen, Timothy L.

2013-01-01

DockoMatic is a free and open source application that unifies a suite of software programs within a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) to facilitate molecular docking experiments. Here we describe the release of DockoMatic 2.0; significant software advances include the ability to: (1) conduct high throughput Inverse Virtual Screening (IVS); (2) construct 3D homology models; and (3) customize the user interface. Users can now efficiently setup, start, and manage IVS experiments through the DockoMatic GUI by specifying a receptor(s), ligand(s), grid parameter file(s), and docking engine (either AutoDock or AutoDock Vina). DockoMatic automatically generates the needed experiment input files and output directories, and allows the user to manage and monitor job progress. Upon job completion, a summary of results is generated by Dockomatic to facilitate interpretation by the user. DockoMatic functionality has also been expanded to facilitate the construction of 3D protein homology models using the Timely Integrated Modeler (TIM) wizard. The wizard TIM provides an interface that accesses the basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) and MODELLER programs, and guides the user through the necessary steps to easily and efficiently create 3D homology models for biomacromolecular structures. The DockoMatic GUI can be customized by the user, and the software design makes it relatively easy to integrate additional docking engines, scoring functions, or third party programs. DockoMatic is a free comprehensive molecular docking software program for all levels of scientists in both research and education. PMID:23808933

Use of XML and Java for collaborative petroleum reservoir modeling on the Internet

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Victorine, John; Watney, W. Lynn; Bhattacharya, Saibal

2005-11-01

The GEMINI (Geo-Engineering Modeling through INternet Informatics) is a public-domain, web-based freeware that is made up of an integrated suite of 14 Java-based software tools to accomplish on-line, real-time geologic and engineering reservoir modeling. GEMINI facilitates distant collaborations for small company and academic clients, negotiating analyses of both single and multiple wells. The system operates on a single server and an enterprise database. External data sets must be uploaded into this database. Feedback from GEMINI users provided the impetus to develop Stand Alone Web Start Applications of GEMINI modules that reside in and operate from the user's PC. In this version, the GEMINI modules run as applets, which may reside in local user PCs, on the server, or Java Web Start. In this enhanced version, XML-based data handling procedures are used to access data from remote and local databases and save results for later access and analyses. The XML data handling process also integrates different stand-alone GEMINI modules enabling the user(s) to access multiple databases. It provides flexibility to the user to customize analytical approach, database location, and level of collaboration. An example integrated field-study using GEMINI modules and Stand Alone Web Start Applications is provided to demonstrate the versatile applicability of this freeware for cost-effective reservoir modeling.

Use of XML and Java for collaborative petroleum reservoir modeling on the Internet

USGS Publications Warehouse

Victorine, J.; Watney, W.L.; Bhattacharya, S.

2005-01-01

The GEMINI (Geo-Engineering Modeling through INternet Informatics) is a public-domain, web-based freeware that is made up of an integrated suite of 14 Java-based software tools to accomplish on-line, real-time geologic and engineering reservoir modeling. GEMINI facilitates distant collaborations for small company and academic clients, negotiating analyses of both single and multiple wells. The system operates on a single server and an enterprise database. External data sets must be uploaded into this database. Feedback from GEMINI users provided the impetus to develop Stand Alone Web Start Applications of GEMINI modules that reside in and operate from the user's PC. In this version, the GEMINI modules run as applets, which may reside in local user PCs, on the server, or Java Web Start. In this enhanced version, XML-based data handling procedures are used to access data from remote and local databases and save results for later access and analyses. The XML data handling process also integrates different stand-alone GEMINI modules enabling the user(s) to access multiple databases. It provides flexibility to the user to customize analytical approach, database location, and level of collaboration. An example integrated field-study using GEMINI modules and Stand Alone Web Start Applications is provided to demonstrate the versatile applicability of this freeware for cost-effective reservoir modeling. ?? 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

US Gateway to SIMBAD Astronomical Database

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Eichhorn, G.; Oliversen, R. (Technical Monitor)

1999-01-01

During the last year the US SIMBAD Gateway Project continued to provide services like user registration to the US users of the SIMBAD database in France. Currently there are over 3400 US users registered. We also provide user support by answering questions from users and handling requests for lost passwords when still necessary. We have implemented in cooperation with the CDS SIMBAD project access to the SIMBAD database for US users on an Internet address basis. This allows most US users to access SIMBAD without having to enter passwords. We have maintained the mirror copy of the SIMBAD database on a server at SAO. This has allowed much faster access for the US users. We also supported a demonstration of the SIMBAD database at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January. We shipped computer equipment to the meeting and provided support for the demonstration activities at the SIMBAD booth. We continued to improve the cross-linking between the SIMBAD project and the Astrophysics Data System. This cross-linking between these systems is very much appreciated by the users of both the SIMBAD database and the ADS Abstract Service. The mirror of the SIMBAD database at SAO makes this connection faster for the US astronomers. We exchange information between the ADS and SIMBAD on a daily basis. The close cooperation between the CDS in Strasbourg and SAO, facilitated by this project, is an important part of the astronomy-wide digital library initiative called Urania. It has proven to be a model in how different data centers can collaborate and enhance the value of their products by linking with other data centers.

Neuronvisio: A Graphical User Interface with 3D Capabilities for NEURON.

PubMed

Mattioni, Michele; Cohen, Uri; Le Novère, Nicolas

2012-01-01

The NEURON simulation environment is a commonly used tool to perform electrical simulation of neurons and neuronal networks. The NEURON User Interface, based on the now discontinued InterViews library, provides some limited facilities to explore models and to plot their simulation results. Other limitations include the inability to generate a three-dimensional visualization, no standard mean to save the results of simulations, or to store the model geometry within the results. Neuronvisio (http://neuronvisio.org) aims to address these deficiencies through a set of well designed python APIs and provides an improved UI, allowing users to explore and interact with the model. Neuronvisio also facilitates access to previously published models, allowing users to browse, download, and locally run NEURON models stored in ModelDB. Neuronvisio uses the matplotlib library to plot simulation results and uses the HDF standard format to store simulation results. Neuronvisio can be viewed as an extension of NEURON, facilitating typical user workflows such as model browsing, selection, download, compilation, and simulation. The 3D viewer simplifies the exploration of complex model structure, while matplotlib permits the plotting of high-quality graphs. The newly introduced ability of saving numerical results allows users to perform additional analysis on their previous simulations.

Intelligent communication assistant for databases

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

Jakobson, G.; Shaked, V.; Rowley, S.

1983-01-01

An intelligent communication assistant for databases, called FRED (front end for databases) is explored. FRED is designed to facilitate access to database systems by users of varying levels of experience. FRED is a second generation of natural language front-ends for databases and intends to solve two critical interface problems existing between end-users and databases: connectivity and communication problems. The authors report their experiences in developing software for natural language query processing, dialog control, and knowledge representation, as well as the direction of future work. 10 references.

A Standardized Based Approach to Managing Atmosphere Studies For Wind Energy Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stephan, E.; Sivaraman, C.

2015-12-01

Atmosphere to Electrons (A2e) is a multi-year U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research initiative targeting significant reductions in the cost of wind energy through an improved understanding of the complex physics governing wind flow into and through wind farms. Better insight into the flow physics has the potential to reduce wind farm energy losses by up to 20%, to reduce annual operational costs by hundreds of millions of dollars, and to improve project financing terms to more closely resemble traditional capital projects. The Data Archive and Portal (DAP) is a key capability of the A2e initiative. The DAP is a cloud-based distributed system known as the 'Wind Cloud' that functions as a repository for all A2e data. This data includes numerous historic and on-going field studies involving in situ and remote sensing instruments, simulations, and scientific analysis. Significantly it is the integration and sharing of these diverse data sets through the DAP that is key to meeting the goals of A2e. This cloud will be accessible via an open and easy-to navigate user interface that facilitates community data access, interaction, and collaboration. DAP management is working with the community, industry, and international standards bodies to develop standards for wind data and to capture important characteristics of all data in the Wind Cloud. Security will be provided to facilitate storage of proprietary data alongside publicly accessible data in the Wind Cloud, and the capability to generate anonymized data will be provided to facilitate using private data by non-privileged users (when appropriate). Finally, limited computing capabilities will be provided to facilitate co-located data analysis, validation, and generation of derived products in support of A2e science.

Integrating care for frequent users of emergency departments: implementation evaluation of a brief multi-organizational intensive case management intervention.

PubMed

Kahan, Deborah; Leszcz, Molyn; O'Campo, Patricia; Hwang, Stephen W; Wasylenki, Donald A; Kurdyak, Paul; Wise Harris, Deborah; Gozdzik, Agnes; Stergiopoulos, Vicky

2016-04-27

Addressing the needs of frequent users of emergency departments (EDs) is a health system priority in many jurisdictions. This study describes stakeholder perspectives on the implementation of a multi-organizational brief intervention designed to support integration and continuity of care for frequent ED users with mental health and addictions problems, focusing on perceived barriers and facilitators to early implementation in a large urban centre. Coordinating Access to Care from Hospital Emergency Departments (CATCH-ED) is a brief case management intervention bridging hospital, primary and community care for frequent ED users experiencing mental illness and addictions. To examine barriers and facilitators to early implementation of this multi-organizational intervention, between July and October 2012, 47 stakeholders, including direct service providers, managers and administrators participated in 32 semi-structured qualitative interviews and one focus group exploring their experience with the intervention and factors that helped or hindered successful early implementation. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Stakeholders valued the intervention and its potential to support continuity of care for this population. Service delivery system factors, including organizational capacity and a history of collaborative relationships across the healthcare continuum, and support system factors, such as training and supervision, emerged as key facilitators of program implementation. Operational challenges included early low program referral rates, management of a multi-organizational initiative, variable adherence to the model among participating organizations, and scant access to specialty psychiatric resources. Factors contributing to these challenges included lack of dedicated staff in the ED and limited local system capacity to support this population, and insufficient training and technical assistance available to participating organizations. A multi-organizational brief intervention is an acceptable model to support integration of hospital, primary and community care for frequent ED users. The study highlights the importance of early implementation evaluation to identify potential solutions to implementation barriers that may be applicable to many jurisdictions.

VAGUE: a graphical user interface for the Velvet assembler.

PubMed

Powell, David R; Seemann, Torsten

2013-01-15

Velvet is a popular open-source de novo genome assembly software tool, which is run from the Unix command line. Most of the problems experienced by new users of Velvet revolve around constructing syntactically and semantically correct command lines, getting input files into acceptable formats and assessing the output. Here, we present Velvet Assembler Graphical User Environment (VAGUE), a multi-platform graphical front-end for Velvet. VAGUE aims to make sequence assembly accessible to a wider audience and to facilitate better usage amongst existing users of Velvet. VAGUE is implemented in JRuby and targets the Java Virtual Machine. It is available under an open-source GPLv2 licence from http://www.vicbioinformatics.com/. torsten.seemann@monash.edu.

Geoscience data visualization and analysis using GeoMapApp

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferrini, Vicki; Carbotte, Suzanne; Ryan, William; Chan, Samantha

2013-04-01

Increased availability of geoscience data resources has resulted in new opportunities for developing visualization and analysis tools that not only promote data integration and synthesis, but also facilitate quantitative cross-disciplinary access to data. Interdisciplinary investigations, in particular, frequently require visualizations and quantitative access to specialized data resources across disciplines, which has historically required specialist knowledge of data formats and software tools. GeoMapApp (www.geomapapp.org) is a free online data visualization and analysis tool that provides direct quantitative access to a wide variety of geoscience data for a broad international interdisciplinary user community. While GeoMapApp provides access to online data resources, it can also be packaged to work offline through the deployment of a small portable hard drive. This mode of operation can be particularly useful during field programs to provide functionality and direct access to data when a network connection is not possible. Hundreds of data sets from a variety of repositories are directly accessible in GeoMapApp, without the need for the user to understand the specifics of file formats or data reduction procedures. Available data include global and regional gridded data, images, as well as tabular and vector datasets. In addition to basic visualization and data discovery functionality, users are provided with simple tools for creating customized maps and visualizations and to quantitatively interrogate data. Specialized data portals with advanced functionality are also provided for power users to further analyze data resources and access underlying component datasets. Users may import and analyze their own geospatial datasets by loading local versions of geospatial data and can access content made available through Web Feature Services (WFS) and Web Map Services (WMS). Once data are loaded in GeoMapApp, a variety options are provided to export data and/or 2D/3D visualizations into common formats including grids, images, text files, spreadsheets, etc. Examples of interdisciplinary investigations that make use of GeoMapApp visualization and analysis functionality will be provided.

Physician-directed software design: the role of utilization statistics and user input in enhancing HELP results review capabilities.

PubMed

Michael, P A

1993-01-01

The M.D. Rounds Report program was developed and implemented in June of 1992 as an adjunct to the HELP System at Rex Hospital. The program facilitates rapid access to information on allergies and current medications, laboratory results, radiology reports and therapist notes for a list of patients without physicians having to make additional menu or submenu selections. In planning for an upgrade of the program, utilization statistics and user feedback provided valuable information in terms of frequency of access, features used and unused, and the value of the program as a reporting tool in comparison to other online results reporting applications. A brief description of the functionality of the M.D. Rounds Report, evaluation of the program audit trail and user feedback, planned enhancements to the program, and a discussion of the prototyping and monitoring experience and the impact on future physician subsystem development will be presented.

NASA Reverb: Standards-Driven Earth Science Data and Service Discovery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cechini, M. F.; Mitchell, A.; Pilone, D.

2011-12-01

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is a core capability in NASA's Earth Science Data Systems Program. NASA's EOS ClearingHOuse (ECHO) is a metadata catalog for the EOSDIS, providing a centralized catalog of data products and registry of related data services. Working closely with the EOSDIS community, the ECHO team identified a need to develop the next generation EOS data and service discovery tool. This development effort relied on the following principles: + Metadata Driven User Interface - Users should be presented with data and service discovery capabilities based on dynamic processing of metadata describing the targeted data. + Integrated Data & Service Discovery - Users should be able to discovery data and associated data services that facilitate their research objectives. + Leverage Common Standards - Users should be able to discover and invoke services that utilize common interface standards. Metadata plays a vital role facilitating data discovery and access. As data providers enhance their metadata, more advanced search capabilities become available enriching a user's search experience. Maturing metadata formats such as ISO 19115 provide the necessary depth of metadata that facilitates advanced data discovery capabilities. Data discovery and access is not limited to simply the retrieval of data granules, but is growing into the more complex discovery of data services. These services include, but are not limited to, services facilitating additional data discovery, subsetting, reformatting, and re-projecting. The discovery and invocation of these data services is made significantly simpler through the use of consistent and interoperable standards. By utilizing an adopted standard, developing standard-specific adapters can be utilized to communicate with multiple services implementing a specific protocol. The emergence of metadata standards such as ISO 19119 plays a similarly important role in discovery as the 19115 standard. After a yearlong design, development, and testing process, the ECHO team successfully released "Reverb - The Next Generation Earth Science Discovery Tool." Reverb relies heavily on the information contained in dataset and granule metadata, such as ISO 19115, to provide a dynamic experience to users based on identified search facet values extracted from science metadata. Such an approach allows users to perform cross-dataset correlation and searches, discovering additional data that they may not previously have been aware of. In addition to data discovery, Reverb users may discover services associated with their data of interest. When services utilize supported standards and/or protocols, Reverb can facilitate the invocation of both synchronous and asynchronous data processing services. This greatly enhances a users ability to discover data of interest and accomplish their research goals. Extrapolating on the current movement towards interoperable standards and an increase in available services, data service invocation and chaining will become a natural part of data discovery. Reverb is one example of a discovery tool that provides a mechanism for transforming the earth science data discovery paradigm.

US Astronomers Access to SIMBAD in Strasbourg, France

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Eichhorn, G.; Oliverson, Ronald J. (Technical Monitor)

2003-01-01

During the last year the US SIMBAD Gateway Project continued to provide services like user registration to the US users of the SIMBAD database in France. Currently there are over 4300 US users registered. We also provided user support by answering questions from users and handling requests for lost passwords when still necessary. Even though almost all users now access SIMBAD without a password, based on hostnames/IP addresses, there are still some users that need individual passwords. We continued to maintain the mirror copy of the SIMBAD database on a server at SAO. This allows much faster access for the US users. During the past year we moved this mirror to a faster server to improve access for the US users. We again supported a demonstration of the SIMBAD database at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January. We provided support for the demonstration activities at the SIMBAD booth. We paid part of the fee for the SIMBAD demonstration. We continued to improve the cross-linking between the SIMBAD project and the Astrophysics Data System. This cross-linking between these systems is very much appreciated by the users of both the SIMBAD database and the ADS Abstract Service. The mirror of the SIMBAD database at SAO makes this connection faster for the US astronomers. We exchange information between the ADS and SIMBAD on a daily basis. The close cooperation between the CDS in Strasbourg and SAO, facilitated by this project, is an important part of the astronomy-wide digital library initiative. It has proven to be a model in how different data centers can collaborate and enhance the value of their products by linking with other data centers. We continue this collaboration in order to provide better services to both the US and European astronomical community. This collaboration is even more important in light of the developments for the Virtual Observatory projects in the different countries.

Across the health-social care divide: elderly people as active users of health care and social care.

PubMed

Roberts, K

2001-03-01

Several ways in which elderly people may assume an active role when using welfare services are discussed here. Selected findings are presented from a study that explored the experience and behaviour of elderly people on discharge from inpatient care with regard to criteria indicating user influence or control (namely participation, representation, access, choice, information and redress). Data were collected via semistructured interviews with service users (n = 30) soon after their return home from hospital. A number of differences were revealed between health care and social care in relation to users being provided with opportunities to assume an active role and in being willing and able to assume an active role. These differences were manifest in elderly service users accessing services, seeking information, exercising choice and acting independently of service providers. It appeared paradoxical that contact points were more easily defined with regard to health care yet users were more likely to exercise choice and act independently in securing social care. It is suggested that social care needs and appropriate service delivery are more easily recognised than making the link between perceived health care needs and appropriate services. In addition, it appeared that informal and private providers are more widely available and accessible for social care. If comprehensive continuing care is to be provided, incorporating both health and social care elements, greater uniformity appears to be required across the welfare sector. Lessons for social care provision from the delivery of health care suggest the clear definition of contact points to facilitate service use. Making health care more accessible, however, does not appear to be easily attainable due to the monopoly provision of health care and the lack of direct purchasing power by potential users.

SCSODC: Integrating Ocean Data for Visualization Sharing and Application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, C.; Li, S.; Wang, D.; Xie, Q.

2014-02-01

The South China Sea Ocean Data Center (SCSODC) was founded in 2010 in order to improve collecting and managing of ocean data of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology (SCSIO). The mission of SCSODC is to ensure the long term scientific stewardship of ocean data, information and products - collected through research groups, monitoring stations and observation cruises - and to facilitate the efficient use and distribution to possible users. However, data sharing and applications were limited due to the characteristics of distribution and heterogeneity that made it difficult to integrate the data. To surmount those difficulties, the Data Sharing System has been developed by the SCSODC using the most appropriate information management and information technology. The Data Sharing System uses open standards and tools to promote the capability to integrate ocean data and to interact with other data portals or users and includes a full range of processes such as data discovery, evaluation and access combining C/S and B/S mode. It provides a visualized management interface for the data managers and a transparent and seamless data access and application environment for users. Users are allowed to access data using the client software and to access interactive visualization application interface via a web browser. The architecture, key technologies and functionality of the system are discussed briefly in this paper. It is shown that the system of SCSODC is able to implement web visualization sharing and seamless access to ocean data in a distributed and heterogeneous environment.

PDBe: improved accessibility of macromolecular structure data from PDB and EMDB.

PubMed

Velankar, Sameer; van Ginkel, Glen; Alhroub, Younes; Battle, Gary M; Berrisford, John M; Conroy, Matthew J; Dana, Jose M; Gore, Swanand P; Gutmanas, Aleksandras; Haslam, Pauline; Hendrickx, Pieter M S; Lagerstedt, Ingvar; Mir, Saqib; Fernandez Montecelo, Manuel A; Mukhopadhyay, Abhik; Oldfield, Thomas J; Patwardhan, Ardan; Sanz-García, Eduardo; Sen, Sanchayita; Slowley, Robert A; Wainwright, Michael E; Deshpande, Mandar S; Iudin, Andrii; Sahni, Gaurav; Salavert Torres, Jose; Hirshberg, Miriam; Mak, Lora; Nadzirin, Nurul; Armstrong, David R; Clark, Alice R; Smart, Oliver S; Korir, Paul K; Kleywegt, Gerard J

2016-01-04

The Protein Data Bank in Europe (http://pdbe.org) accepts and annotates depositions of macromolecular structure data in the PDB and EMDB archives and enriches, integrates and disseminates structural information in a variety of ways. The PDBe website has been redesigned based on an analysis of user requirements, and now offers intuitive access to improved and value-added macromolecular structure information. Unique value-added information includes lists of reviews and research articles that cite or mention PDB entries as well as access to figures and legends from full-text open-access publications that describe PDB entries. A powerful new query system not only shows all the PDB entries that match a given query, but also shows the 'best structures' for a given macromolecule, ligand complex or sequence family using data-quality information from the wwPDB validation reports. A PDBe RESTful API has been developed to provide unified access to macromolecular structure data available in the PDB and EMDB archives as well as value-added annotations, e.g. regarding structure quality and up-to-date cross-reference information from the SIFTS resource. Taken together, these new developments facilitate unified access to macromolecular structure data in an intuitive way for non-expert users and support expert users in analysing macromolecular structure data. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

Concurrent access to a virtual microscope using a web service oriented architecture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Corredor, Germán.; Iregui, Marcela; Arias, Viviana; Romero, Eduardo

2013-11-01

Virtual microscopy (VM) facilitates visualization and deployment of histopathological virtual slides (VS), a useful tool for education, research and diagnosis. In recent years, it has become popular, yet its use is still limited basically because of the very large sizes of VS, typically of the order of gigabytes. Such volume of data requires efficacious and efficient strategies to access the VS content. In an educative or research scenario, several users may require to access and interact with VS at the same time, so, due to large data size, a very expensive and powerful infrastructure is usually required. This article introduces a novel JPEG2000-based service oriented architecture for streaming and visualizing very large images under scalable strategies, which in addition need not require very specialized infrastructure. Results suggest that the proposed architecture enables transmission and simultaneous visualization of large images, while it is efficient using resources and offering users proper response times.

Nurse practitioner perceptions of barriers and facilitators in providing health care for deaf American Sign Language users: A qualitative socio-ecological approach.

PubMed

Pendergrass, Kathy M; Nemeth, Lynne; Newman, Susan D; Jenkins, Carolyn M; Jones, Elaine G

2017-06-01

Nurse practitioners (NPs), as well as all healthcare clinicians, have a legal and ethical responsibility to provide health care for deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users equal to that of other patients, including effective communication, autonomy, and confidentiality. However, very little is known about the feasibility to provide equitable health care. The purpose of this study was to examine NP perceptions of barriers and facilitators in providing health care for deaf ASL users. Semistructured interviews in a qualitative design using a socio-ecological model (SEM). Barriers were identified at all levels of the SEM. NPs preferred interpreters to facilitate the visit, but were unaware of their role in assuring effective communication is achieved. A professional sign language interpreter was considered a last resort when all other means of communication failed. Gesturing, note-writing, lip-reading, and use of a familial interpreter were all considered facilitators. Interventions are needed at all levels of the SEM. Resources are needed to provide awareness of deaf communication issues and legal requirements for caring for deaf signers for practicing and student NPs. Protocols need to be developed and present in all healthcare facilities for hiring interpreters as well as quick access to contact information for these interpreters. ©2017 American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

Autonomous Information Unit for Fine-Grain Data Access Control and Information Protection in a Net-Centric System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chow, Edward T.; Woo, Simon S.; James, Mark; Paloulian, George K.

2012-01-01

As communication and networking technologies advance, networks will become highly complex and heterogeneous, interconnecting different network domains. There is a need to provide user authentication and data protection in order to further facilitate critical mission operations, especially in the tactical and mission-critical net-centric networking environment. The Autonomous Information Unit (AIU) technology was designed to provide the fine-grain data access and user control in a net-centric system-testing environment to meet these objectives. The AIU is a fundamental capability designed to enable fine-grain data access and user control in the cross-domain networking environments, where an AIU is composed of the mission data, metadata, and policy. An AIU provides a mechanism to establish trust among deployed AIUs based on recombining shared secrets, authentication and verify users with a username, X.509 certificate, enclave information, and classification level. AIU achieves data protection through (1) splitting data into multiple information pieces using the Shamir's secret sharing algorithm, (2) encrypting each individual information piece using military-grade AES-256 encryption, and (3) randomizing the position of the encrypted data based on the unbiased and memory efficient in-place Fisher-Yates shuffle method. Therefore, it becomes virtually impossible for attackers to compromise data since attackers need to obtain all distributed information as well as the encryption key and the random seeds to properly arrange the data. In addition, since policy can be associated with data in the AIU, different user access and data control strategies can be included. The AIU technology can greatly enhance information assurance and security management in the bandwidth-limited and ad hoc net-centric environments. In addition, AIU technology can be applicable to general complex network domains and applications where distributed user authentication and data protection are necessary. AIU achieves fine-grain data access and user control, reducing the security risk significantly, simplifying the complexity of various security operations, and providing the high information assurance across different network domains.

Migrating Educational Data and Services to Cloud Computing: Exploring Benefits and Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lahiri, Minakshi; Moseley, James L.

2013-01-01

"Cloud computing" is currently the "buzzword" in the Information Technology field. Cloud computing facilitates convenient access to information and software resources as well as easy storage and sharing of files and data, without the end users being aware of the details of the computing technology behind the process. This…

Experiences with an Augmented Human Intellect System: A Revolution in Communication.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bair, James H.

The Augmented Human Intellect System (AHI) has been designed to facilitate communication among knowledge workers who may accomplish their entire job utilizing this advanced technology. The system is capable of sending information to geographically distributed users. It permits access to and modification of stored information by a number of persons…

Investigating a Student-Driven Taxonomy for Library Website Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hulseberg, Anna; Monson, Sarah

2011-01-01

Libraries spend countless hours developing websites to connect users and resources. However, how much do we really know about what website terminology and features are meaningful to our patrons? And how can we best organize websites to facilitate access to resources? This article examines these questions by presenting a case study of a…

From Pedagogically Relevant Corpora to Authentic Language Learning Contents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Braun, Sabine

2005-01-01

The potential of corpora for language learning and teaching has been widely acknowledged and their ready availability on the Web has facilitated access for a broad range of users, including language teachers and learners. However, the integration of corpora into general language learning and teaching practice has so far been disappointing. In this…

Special Collections and the New Web: Using LibGuides to Provide Meaningful Access

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Barbara; Griffin, Melanie

2011-01-01

Librarians have long struggled to find user-friendly mediums to provide meaningful information to patrons using bibliographies, pathfinders, and subject guides with varying degrees of success. Content management systems, such as Springshare's LibGuides, have recently been developed to facilitate the creation of online subject guides. Special…

Facilitating quality control for spectra assignments of small organic molecules: nmrshiftdb2--a free in-house NMR database with integrated LIMS for academic service laboratories.

PubMed

Kuhn, Stefan; Schlörer, Nils E

2015-08-01

nmrshiftdb2 supports with its laboratory information management system the integration of an electronic lab administration and management into academic NMR facilities. Also, it offers the setup of a local database, while full access to nmrshiftdb2's World Wide Web database is granted. This freely available system allows on the one hand the submission of orders for measurement, transfers recorded data automatically or manually, and enables download of spectra via web interface, as well as the integrated access to prediction, search, and assignment tools of the NMR database for lab users. On the other hand, for the staff and lab administration, flow of all orders can be supervised; administrative tools also include user and hardware management, a statistic functionality for accounting purposes, and a 'QuickCheck' function for assignment control, to facilitate quality control of assignments submitted to the (local) database. Laboratory information management system and database are based on a web interface as front end and are therefore independent of the operating system in use. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

JANIS-2: An Improved Version of the NEA Java-based Nuclear Data Information System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soppera, N.; Henriksson, H.; Nouri, A.; Nagel, P.; Dupont, E.

2005-05-01

JANIS (JAva-based Nuclear Information Software) is a display program designed to facilitate the visualisation and manipulation of nuclear data. Its objective is to allow the user of nuclear data to access numerical and graphical representations without prior knowledge of the storage format. It offers maximum flexibility for the comparison of different nuclear data sets. Features included in the latest release are described such as direct access to centralised databases through JAVA Servlet technology.

JANIS-2: An Improved Version of the NEA Java-based Nuclear Data Information System

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

Soppera, N.; Henriksson, H.; Nagel, P.

2005-05-24

JANIS (JAva-based Nuclear Information Software) is a display program designed to facilitate the visualisation and manipulation of nuclear data. Its objective is to allow the user of nuclear data to access numerical and graphical representations without prior knowledge of the storage format. It offers maximum flexibility for the comparison of different nuclear data sets. Features included in the latest release are described such as direct access to centralised databases through JAVA Servlet technology.

Barriers to Access to Sterile Syringes as Perceived by Pharmacists and Injecting Drug Users: Implications for Harm Reduction in Lebanon.

PubMed

Ghaddar, Ali; Nassar, Karine; Elsoury, Ghadier

2017-09-19

Access to sterile syringes to injecting drug users (IDU) reduces sharing behavior and prevents the transmission of HIV. To describe the barriers to access to sterile syringes for IDUs in Lebanon from the perspectives of pharmacists and IDUs. in this qualitative study conducted in Lebanon, data were collected from 72 syringe purchase tests at pharmacies, 64 interviewees with pharmacists and 2 focus groups with injecting drug users. Two independent researchers analyzed the verbatim transcripts. Results revealed that pharmacists often deny access to sterile syringes to IDUs who are frequently stigmatized and intimidated at pharmacies. While no large gender differences in pharmacists' attitudes and practices were observed, inequalities in syringe access were noticed with men IDUs more often denied purchase. Pharmacists had several barriers to sell syringes to IDUs including fear of disease spread, increased drug use, inappropriately discarded syringes, staff and customer safety, and business concerns. IDUs had several challenges to purchase syringes including stigmatization, intimidation, physical harassment, concern to reveal identity, fear of arrest and syringe price abuse. Identifying the barriers to and facilitators of access to sterile syringes to IDUs is important to guide the development of efficient policies. Findings implicate the importance of empowering IDUs to purchase syringes at pharmacies through reducing the negative attitude towards IDUs and strengthening pharmacists' role in the promotion of health of IDUs. Findings also suggest that the habit of syringe sharing would decrease if the legal and cultural barriers to access are reduced.

Making Dynamic Digital Maps Cross-Platform and WWW Capable

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Condit, C. D.

2001-05-01

High-quality color geologic maps are an invaluable information resource for educators, students and researchers. However, maps with large datasets that include images, or various types of movies, in addition to site locations where analytical data has been collected, are difficult to publish in a format that facilitates their easy access, distribution and use. The development of capable desktop computers and object oriented graphical programming environments has facilitated publication of such data sets in an encapsulated form. The original Dynamic Digital Map (DDM) programs, developed using the Macintosh based SuperCard programming environment, exemplified this approach, in which all data are included in a single package designed so that display and access to the data did not depend on proprietary programs. These DDMs were aimed for ease of use, and allowed data to be displayed by several methods, including point-and-click at icons pin-pointing sample (or image) locations on maps, and from clicklists of sample or site numbers. Each of these DDMs included an overview and automated tour explaining the content organization and program use. This SuperCard development culminated in a "DDM Template", which is a SuperCard shell into which SuperCard users could insert their own content and thus create their own DDMs, following instructions in an accompanying "DDM Cookbook" (URL http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/condit/condit2.html). These original SuperCard-based DDMs suffered two critical limitations: a single user platform (Macintosh) and, although they can be downloaded from the web, their use lacked an integration into the WWW. Over the last eight months I have been porting the DDM technology to MetaCard, which is aggressively cross-platform (11 UNIX dialects, WIN32 and Macintosh). The new MetaCard DDM is redesigned to make the maps and images accessible either from CD or the web, using the "LoadNGo" concept. LoadNGo allows the user to download the stand-alone DDM program using a standard browser, and then use the program independently to access images, maps and data with fast web connections. DDMs are intended to be a fast and inexpensive way to publish and make accessible, as an integrated product, high-quality color maps and data sets. They are not a substitute for the analytical capability of GIS; however maps produced using GIS and CAD programs can be easily integrated into DDMs. The preparation of any map product is a time consuming effort. To compliment that effort, the DDM Templates have build into them the capability to contain explanatory text at three different user levels (or perhaps in three different languages), thus one DDM may be used as both a research publication medium and an educational outreach product, with the user choosing which user mode to access the data.

The Mu.Ta.Lig. Chemotheca: A community-populated molecular database for multi-target ligands identification and compound-repurposing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ortuso, Francesco; Bagetta, Donatella; Maruca, Annalisa; Talarico, Carmine; Bolognesi, Maria L.; Haider, Norbert; Borges, Fernanda; Bryant, Sharon; Langer, Thierry; Senderowitz, Hanoch; Alcaro, Stefano

2018-04-01

Abstract For every lead compound developed in medicinal chemistry research, numerous other inactive or less active candidates are synthetized/isolated and tested. The majority of these compounds will not be selected for further development due to a sub-optimal pharmacological profile. However, some poorly active or even inactive compounds could live a second life if tested against other targets. Thus, new therapeutic opportunities could emerge and synergistic activities could be identified and exploited for existing compounds by sharing information between researchers who are working on different targets. The Mu.Ta.Lig (Multi-Target Ligand) Chemotheca database aims to offer such opportunities by facilitating information exchange among researchers worldwide. After a preliminary registration, users can (a) virtually upload structures and activity data for their compounds with corresponding, and eventually known activity data, and (b) search for other available compounds uploaded by the users community. Each piece of information about given compounds is owned by the user who initially uploaded it and multiple ownership is possible (occurs if different users uploaded the same compounds or information pertaining to the same compounds). A web-based graphical user interface has been developed to assist compound uploading, compounds searching and data retrieval. Physico-chemical and ADME properties as well as substructure-based PAINS evaluations are computed on the fly for each uploaded compound. Samples of compounds that match a set of search criteria and additional data on these compounds could be requested directly from their owners with no mediation by the Mu.Ta.Lig Chemotheca team. Guest access provides a simplified search interface to retrieve only basic information such as compound IDs and related 2D or 3D chemical structures. Moreover, some compounds can be hidden from Guest users according to an owner’s decision. In contrast, registered users have full access to all of the Chemotheca data including the permission to upload new compounds and/or update experimental/theoretical data (e.g., activities against new targets tested) related to already stored compounds. In order to facilitate scientific collaborations, all available data are connected to the corresponding owner’s email address (available for registered users only). The Chemotheca web site is accessible at http://chemotheca.unicz.it.

The Mu.Ta.Lig. Chemotheca: A Community-Populated Molecular Database for Multi-Target Ligands Identification and Compound-Repurposing.

PubMed

Ortuso, Francesco; Bagetta, Donatella; Maruca, Annalisa; Talarico, Carmine; Bolognesi, Maria L; Haider, Norbert; Borges, Fernanda; Bryant, Sharon; Langer, Thierry; Senderowitz, Hanoch; Alcaro, Stefano

2018-01-01

For every lead compound developed in medicinal chemistry research, numerous other inactive or less active candidates are synthetized/isolated and tested. The majority of these compounds will not be selected for further development due to a sub-optimal pharmacological profile. However, some poorly active or even inactive compounds could live a second life if tested against other targets. Thus, new therapeutic opportunities could emerge and synergistic activities could be identified and exploited for existing compounds by sharing information between researchers who are working on different targets. The Mu.Ta.Lig (Multi-Target Ligand) Chemotheca database aims to offer such opportunities by facilitating information exchange among researchers worldwide. After a preliminary registration, users can (a) virtually upload structures and activity data for their compounds with corresponding, and eventually known activity data, and (b) search for other available compounds uploaded by the users community. Each piece of information about given compounds is owned by the user who initially uploaded it and multiple ownership is possible (this occurs if different users uploaded the same compounds or information pertaining to the same compounds). A web-based graphical user interface has been developed to assist compound uploading, compounds searching and data retrieval. Physico-chemical and ADME properties as well as substructure-based PAINS evaluations are computed on the fly for each uploaded compound. Samples of compounds that match a set of search criteria and additional data on these compounds could be requested directly from their owners with no mediation by the Mu.Ta.Lig Chemotheca team. Guest access provides a simplified search interface to retrieve only basic information such as compound IDs and related 2D or 3D chemical structures. Moreover, some compounds can be hidden to Guest users according to an owner's decision. In contrast, registered users have full access to all of the Chemotheca data including the permission to upload new compounds and/or update experimental/theoretical data (e.g., activities against new targets tested) related to already stored compounds. In order to facilitate scientific collaborations, all available data are connected to the corresponding owner's email address (available for registered users only). The Chemotheca web site is accessible at http://chemotheca.unicz.it.

The Role of Social Media User Experience as a Mediator for Understanding Social Media User Behavior in Indonesia’s Museum Industry: Literature Review

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sundjaja, A. M.; LumanGaol, F.; Budiarti, T.; Abbas, B. S.; Abdinagoro, S. B.; Ongowarsito, H.

2017-01-01

Social media has changed the interaction between the customer and the business, social media has proven to provide new opportunities in facilitating access to information, efficiency and ease of interaction between customers and businesses that are distributed geographically dispersed. Ease of interaction to improve access to information about products, services, and prices have proven to have a positive impact for consumers. The purpose of this article is to develop a conceptual model to test the effect of user motivation, user expectations, and online community involvement to the intention of behavior that is mediated by the use of social media museum experience. This article is a literature study on exploration of social media user experiences museum in Indonesia. Authors searched and examined 85 articles from google scholar with the following keywords: motivation, expectations, online communities, user experience, social media, Technology Acceptance Model, Experiential Marketing, Uses and Gratification Theory. Proposed data collection techniques are literature study, survey and observation. The sample used in this research is 400 respondents of social media users that follow the social media managed by Indonesia’s museum. The sampling technique are systematic sampling. We use Structural Equation Model with AMOS for analyze the data.

Improving mental health service users' with medical co-morbidity transition between tertiary medical hospital and primary care services: a qualitative study.

PubMed

Cranwell, Kate; Polacsek, Meg; McCann, Terence V

2016-07-26

Mental health service users have high rates of medical co-morbidity but frequently experience problems accessing and transitioning between tertiary medical and primary care services. The aim of this study was to identify ways to improve service users' with medical co-morbidity care and experience during their transition between tertiary medical hospitals and primary care services. Experience-based co-design (EBCD) qualitative study incorporating a focus group discussion. The study took place in a large tertiary medical service, incorporating three medical hospitals, and primary care services, in Melbourne, Australia. A purposive sample of service users and their caregivers and tertiary medical and primary care clinicians participated in the focus group discussion, in August 2014. A semi-structured interview guide was used to inform data collection. A thematic analysis of the data was undertaken. Thirteen participants took part in the focus group interview, comprising 5 service users, 2 caregivers and 6 clinicians. Five themes were abstracted from the data, illustrating participants' perspectives about factors that facilitated (clinicians' expertise, engagement and accessibility enhancing transition) and presented as barriers (improving access pathways; enhancing communication and continuity of care; improving clinicians' attitudes; and increasing caregiver participation) to service users' progress through tertiary medical and primary care services. A sixth theme, enhancing service users' transition, incorporated three strategies to enhance their transition through tertiary medical and primary care services. EBCD is a useful approach to collaboratively develop strategies to improve service users' with medical co-morbidity and their caregivers' transition between tertiary medical and primary care services. A whole-of-service approach, incorporating policy development and implementation, change of practice philosophy, professional development education and support for clinicians, and acceptance of the need for caregiver participation, is required to improve service users' transition.

US Gateway to SIMBAD Astronomical Database

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Eichhorn, G.

1998-01-01

During the last year the US SIMBAD Gateway Project continued to provide services like user registration to the US users of the SIMBAD database in France. User registration is required by the SIMBAD project in France. Currently, there are almost 3000 US users registered. We also provide user support by answering questions from users and handling requests for lost passwords. We have worked with the CDS SIMBAD project to provide access to the SIMBAD database to US users on an Internet address basis. This will allow most US users to access SIMBAD without having to enter passwords. This new system was installed in August, 1998. The SIMBAD mirror database at SAO is fully operational. We worked with the CDS to adapt it to our computer system. We implemented automatic updating procedures that update the database and password files daily. This mirror database provides much better access to the US astronomical community. We also supported a demonstration of the SIMBAD database at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January. We shipped computer equipment to the meeting and provided support for the demonstration activities at the SIMBAD booth. We continued to improve the cross-linking between the SIMBAD project and the Astro- physics Data System. This cross-linking between these systems is very much appreciated by the users of both the SIMBAD database and the ADS Abstract Service. The mirror of the SIMBAD database at SAO makes this connection faster for the US astronomers. The close cooperation between the CDS in Strasbourg and SAO, facilitated by this project, is an important part of the astronomy-wide digital library initiative called Urania. It has proven to be a model in how different data centers can collaborate and enhance the value of their products by linking with other data centers.

Environmental factors associated with primary care access among urban older adults.

PubMed

Ryvicker, Miriam; Gallo, William T; Fahs, Marianne C

2012-09-01

Disparities in primary care access and quality impede optimal chronic illness prevention and management for older adults. Although research has shown associations between neighborhood attributes and health, little is known about how these factors - in particular, the primary care infrastructure - inform older adults' primary care use. Using geographic data on primary care physician supply and surveys from 1260 senior center attendees in New York City, we examined factors that facilitate and hinder primary care use for individuals living in service areas with different supply levels. Supply quartiles varied in primary care use (visit within the past 12 months), racial and socio-economic composition, and perceived neighborhood safety and social cohesion. Primary care use did not differ significantly after controlling for compositional factors. Individuals who used a community clinic or hospital outpatient department for most of their care were less likely to have had a primary care visit than those who used a private doctor's office. Stratified multivariate models showed that within the lowest-supply quartile, public transit users had a higher odds of primary care use than non-transit users. Moreover, a higher score on the perceived neighborhood social cohesion scale was associated with a higher odds of primary care use. Within the second-lowest quartile, nonwhites had a lower odds of primary care use compared to whites. Different patterns of disadvantage in primary care access exist that may be associated with - but not fully explained by - local primary care supply. In lower-supply areas, racial disparities and inadequate primary care infrastructure hinder access to care. However, accessibility and elder-friendliness of public transit, as well as efforts to improve social cohesion and support, may facilitate primary care access for individuals living in low-supply areas. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Challenges of user-centred assistive technology provision in Australia: shopping without a prescription.

PubMed

Steel, Emily J; Layton, Natasha Ann; Foster, Michele M; Bennett, Sally

2016-01-01

People with disability have a right to assistive technology devices and services, to support their inclusion and participation in society. User-centred approaches aim to address consumer dissatisfaction and sub-optimal outcomes from assistive technology (AT) provision, but make assumptions of consumer literacy and empowerment. Policy discourses about consumer choice prompt careful reflection, and this paper aims to provide a critical perspective on user involvement in assistive technology provision. User-centred approaches are considered, using literature to critically reflect on what user involvement means in AT provision. Challenges at the level of interactions between practitioners and consumers, and also the level of markets and policies are discussed, using examples from Australia. There is no unanimous conceptual framework for user-centred practice. Power imbalances and differing perspectives between practitioners and consumers make it difficult for consumers to feel empowered. Online access to information and international suppliers has not surmounted information asymmetries for consumers or lifted the regulation of publicly funded AT devices. Ensuring access and equity in the public provision of AT is challenging in an expanding market with diverse stakeholders. Consumers require personalised information and support to facilitate their involvement and choice in AT provision. Implications for Rehabilitation Variations in approaches informing AT provision practices have a profound impact on equity of access and outcomes for consumers. An internationalised and online market for AT devices is increasing the need for effective information provision strategies and services. Power imbalances between practitioners and consumers present barriers to the realisation of user-centred practice.

Cloud Computing Technologies Facilitate Earth Research

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2015-01-01

Under a Space Act Agreement, NASA partnered with Seattle-based Amazon Web Services to make the agency's climate and Earth science satellite data publicly available on the company's servers. Users can access the data for free, but they can also pay to use Amazon's computing services to analyze and visualize information using the same software available to NASA researchers.

Mobile "Comfort" Zones: Overcoming Barriers to Enable Facilitated Learning in the Workplace

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holley, Debbie; Sentance, Sue

2015-01-01

The affordances of mobile technologies are well documented (Vavoula (2004); Wali (2008); Pachler et al (2010); Cook (2011); Sharples (2013). Linked with the rapid expansion of the "SMART" phones, where users access fast/high quality information, new opportunities are offered to engage students at a time/place of their own choosing. Our…

Processes in scientific workflows for information seeking related to physical sample materials

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ramdeen, S.

2014-12-01

The majority of State Geological Surveys have repositories containing cores, cuttings, fossils or other physical sample material. State surveys maintain these collections to support their own research as well as the research conducted by external users from other organizations. This includes organizations such as government agencies (state and federal), academia, industry and the public. The preliminary results presented in this paper will look at the research processes of these external users. In particular: how they discover, access and use digital surrogates, which they use to evaluate and access physical items in these collections. Data such as physical samples are materials that cannot be completely replaced with digital surrogates. Digital surrogates may be represented as metadata, which enable discovery and ultimately access to these samples. These surrogates may be found in records, databases, publications, etc. But surrogates do not completely prevent the need for access to the physical item as they cannot be subjected to chemical testing and/or other similar analysis. The goal of this research is to document the various processes external users perform in order to access physical materials. Data for this study will be collected by conducting interviews with these external users. During the interviews, participants will be asked to describe the workflow that lead them to interact with state survey repositories, and what steps they took afterward. High level processes/categories of behavior will be identified. These processes will be used in the development of an information seeking behavior model. This model may be used to facilitate the development of management tools and other aspects of cyberinfrastructure related to physical samples.

Dynamic fair node spectrum allocation for ad hoc networks using random matrices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahmes, Mark; Lemieux, George; Chester, Dave; Sonnenberg, Jerry

2015-05-01

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) is widely seen as a solution to the problem of limited spectrum, because of its ability to adapt the operating frequency of a radio. Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) can extend high-capacity mobile communications over large areas where fixed and tethered-mobile systems are not available. In one use case with high potential impact, cognitive radio employs spectrum sensing to facilitate the identification of allocated frequencies not currently accessed by their primary users. Primary users own the rights to radiate at a specific frequency and geographic location, while secondary users opportunistically attempt to radiate at a specific frequency when the primary user is not using it. We populate a spatial radio environment map (REM) database with known information that can be leveraged in an ad hoc network to facilitate fair path use of the DSA-discovered links. Utilization of high-resolution geospatial data layers in RF propagation analysis is directly applicable. Random matrix theory (RMT) is useful in simulating network layer usage in nodes by a Wishart adjacency matrix. We use the Dijkstra algorithm for discovering ad hoc network node connection patterns. We present a method for analysts to dynamically allocate node-node path and link resources using fair division. User allocation of limited resources as a function of time must be dynamic and based on system fairness policies. The context of fair means that first available request for an asset is not envied as long as it is not yet allocated or tasked in order to prevent cycling of the system. This solution may also save money by offering a Pareto efficient repeatable process. We use a water fill queue algorithm to include Shapley value marginal contributions for allocation.

Improving care planning and coordination for service users with medical co-morbidity transitioning between tertiary medical and primary care services.

PubMed

Cranwell, K; Polacsek, M; McCann, T V

2017-08-01

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: Mental health service users with medical co-morbidity frequently experience difficulties accessing and receiving appropriate treatment in emergency departments. Service users frequently experience fragmented care planning and coordinating between tertiary medical and primary care services. Little is known about mental health nurses' perspectives about how to address these problems. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: Emergency department clinicians' poor communication and negative attitudes have adverse effects on service users and the quality of care they receive. The findings contribute to the international evidence about mental health nurses' perspectives of service users feeling confused and frustrated in this situation, and improving coordination and continuity of care, facilitating transitions and increasing family and caregiver participation. Intervention studies are needed to evaluate if adoption of these measures leads to sustainable improvements in care planning and coordination, and how service users with medical co-morbidity are treated in emergency departments in particular. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?: Effective planning and coordination of care are essential to enable smooth transitions between tertiary medical (emergency departments in particular) and primary care services for service users with medical co-morbidity. Ongoing professional development education and support is needed for emergency department clinicians. There is also a need to develop an organized and systemic approach to improving service users' experience in emergency departments. Introduction Mental health service users with medical co-morbidity frequently experience difficulties accessing appropriate treatment in medical hospitals, and often there is poor collaboration within and between services. Little is known about mental health nurses' perspectives on how to address these problems. Aim To explore mental health nurses' perspectives of the experience of service users with medical co-morbidity in tertiary medical services, and to identify how to improve care planning and coordination for service users transitioning between tertiary medical and primary care services. Method Embedded within an experience-based co-design study, focus group discussions were conducted with 17 emergency department nurses and other clinicians, in Melbourne, Australia. Results Three main themes were abstracted from the data: feeling confused and frustrated, enhancing service users' transition and experience and involving families and caregivers. Participants perceived the service user experience to be characterized by fear, confusion and a sense of not being listened to. They highlighted that service users' transition and experience could be enhanced by facilitating transitions and improving coordination and continuity of care. They also emphasized the need to increase family and caregiver participation. Conclusion Our findings contribute to knowledge about improving the way service users are treated in emergency departments and improving care planning and coordination; in particular, facilitating transitions, improving coordination and continuity of care and increasing family and caregiver participation. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

A Compositional Relevance Model for Adaptive Information Retrieval

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mathe, Nathalie; Chen, James; Lu, Henry, Jr. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

There is a growing need for rapid and effective access to information in large electronic documentation systems. Access can be facilitated if information relevant in the current problem solving context can be automatically supplied to the user. This includes information relevant to particular user profiles, tasks being performed, and problems being solved. However most of this knowledge on contextual relevance is not found within the contents of documents, and current hypermedia tools do not provide any easy mechanism to let users add this knowledge to their documents. We propose a compositional relevance network to automatically acquire the context in which previous information was found relevant. The model records information on the relevance of references based on user feedback for specific queries and contexts. It also generalizes such information to derive relevant references for similar queries and contexts. This model lets users filter information by context of relevance, build personalized views of documents over time, and share their views with other users. It also applies to any type of multimedia information. Compared to other approaches, it is less costly and doesn't require any a priori statistical computation, nor an extended training period. It is currently being implemented into the Computer Integrated Documentation system which enables integration of various technical documents in a hypertext framework.

Impact of an online medical internet site on knowledge and practice of health care providers: a mixed methods study of the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Evidence project.

PubMed

Eng, Janice J; Noonan, Vanessa K; Townson, Andrea F; Higgins, Caroline E; Rogers, Jess; Wolfe, Dalton L

2014-12-23

It is not known whether ongoing access to a broad-based Internet knowledge resource can influence the practice of health care providers. We undertook a study to evaluate the impact of a Web-based knowledge resource on increasing access to evidence and facilitating best practice of health care providers. The objective of this study was to evaluate (1) the impact of the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Evidence (SCIRE) project on access to information for health care providers and researchers and (2) how SCIRE influenced health care providers' management of clients. A 4-part mixed methods evaluation was undertaken: (1) monitoring website traffic and utilization using Google Analytics, (2) online survey of users who accessed the SCIRE website, (3) online survey of targeted end-users, that is, rehabilitation health care providers known to work with spinal cord injury (SCI) clients, as well as researchers, and (4) focus groups with health care providers who had previously accessed SCIRE. The online format allowed the content for a relatively specialized field to have far reach (eg, 26 countries and over 6500 users per month). The website survey and targeted end-user survey confirmed that health care providers, as well as researchers perceived that the website increased their access to SCI evidence. Access to SCIRE not only improved knowledge of SCI evidence but helped inform changes to the health providers' clinical practice and improved their confidence in treating SCI clients. The SCIRE information directly influenced the health providers' clinical decision making, in terms of choice of intervention, equipment needs, or assessment tool. A Web-based knowledge resource may be a relatively inexpensive method to increase access to evidence-based information, increase knowledge of the evidence, inform changes to the health providers' practice, and influence their clinical decision making.

Impact of an Online Medical Internet Site on Knowledge and Practice of Health Care Providers: A Mixed Methods Study of the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Evidence Project

PubMed Central

Noonan, Vanessa K; Townson, Andrea F; Higgins, Caroline E; Rogers, Jess; Wolfe, Dalton L

2014-01-01

Background It is not known whether ongoing access to a broad-based Internet knowledge resource can influence the practice of health care providers. We undertook a study to evaluate the impact of a Web-based knowledge resource on increasing access to evidence and facilitating best practice of health care providers. Objective The objective of this study was to evaluate (1) the impact of the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Evidence (SCIRE) project on access to information for health care providers and researchers and (2) how SCIRE influenced health care providers' management of clients. Methods A 4-part mixed methods evaluation was undertaken: (1) monitoring website traffic and utilization using Google Analytics, (2) online survey of users who accessed the SCIRE website, (3) online survey of targeted end-users, that is, rehabilitation health care providers known to work with spinal cord injury (SCI) clients, as well as researchers, and (4) focus groups with health care providers who had previously accessed SCIRE. Results The online format allowed the content for a relatively specialized field to have far reach (eg, 26 countries and over 6500 users per month). The website survey and targeted end-user survey confirmed that health care providers, as well as researchers perceived that the website increased their access to SCI evidence. Access to SCIRE not only improved knowledge of SCI evidence but helped inform changes to the health providers’ clinical practice and improved their confidence in treating SCI clients. The SCIRE information directly influenced the health providers’ clinical decision making, in terms of choice of intervention, equipment needs, or assessment tool. Conclusions A Web-based knowledge resource may be a relatively inexpensive method to increase access to evidence-based information, increase knowledge of the evidence, inform changes to the health providers’ practice, and influence their clinical decision making. PMID:25537167

MyDas, an Extensible Java DAS Server

PubMed Central

Jimenez, Rafael C.; Quinn, Antony F.; Jenkinson, Andrew M.; Mulder, Nicola; Martin, Maria; Hunter, Sarah; Hermjakob, Henning

2012-01-01

A large number of diverse, complex, and distributed data resources are currently available in the Bioinformatics domain. The pace of discovery and the diversity of information means that centralised reference databases like UniProt and Ensembl cannot integrate all potentially relevant information sources. From a user perspective however, centralised access to all relevant information concerning a specific query is essential. The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) defines a communication protocol to exchange annotations on genomic and protein sequences; this standardisation enables clients to retrieve data from a myriad of sources, thus offering centralised access to end-users. We introduce MyDas, a web server that facilitates the publishing of biological annotations according to the DAS specification. It deals with the common functionality requirements of making data available, while also providing an extension mechanism in order to implement the specifics of data store interaction. MyDas allows the user to define where the required information is located along with its structure, and is then responsible for the communication protocol details. PMID:23028496

Physician-directed software design: the role of utilization statistics and user input in enhancing HELP results review capabilities.

PubMed Central

Michael, P. A.

1993-01-01

The M.D. Rounds Report program was developed and implemented in June of 1992 as an adjunct to the HELP System at Rex Hospital. The program facilitates rapid access to information on allergies and current medications, laboratory results, radiology reports and therapist notes for a list of patients without physicians having to make additional menu or submenu selections. In planning for an upgrade of the program, utilization statistics and user feedback provided valuable information in terms of frequency of access, features used and unused, and the value of the program as a reporting tool in comparison to other online results reporting applications. A brief description of the functionality of the M.D. Rounds Report, evaluation of the program audit trail and user feedback, planned enhancements to the program, and a discussion of the prototyping and monitoring experience and the impact on future physician subsystem development will be presented. PMID:8130443

MyDas, an extensible Java DAS server.

PubMed

Salazar, Gustavo A; García, Leyla J; Jones, Philip; Jimenez, Rafael C; Quinn, Antony F; Jenkinson, Andrew M; Mulder, Nicola; Martin, Maria; Hunter, Sarah; Hermjakob, Henning

2012-01-01

A large number of diverse, complex, and distributed data resources are currently available in the Bioinformatics domain. The pace of discovery and the diversity of information means that centralised reference databases like UniProt and Ensembl cannot integrate all potentially relevant information sources. From a user perspective however, centralised access to all relevant information concerning a specific query is essential. The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) defines a communication protocol to exchange annotations on genomic and protein sequences; this standardisation enables clients to retrieve data from a myriad of sources, thus offering centralised access to end-users.We introduce MyDas, a web server that facilitates the publishing of biological annotations according to the DAS specification. It deals with the common functionality requirements of making data available, while also providing an extension mechanism in order to implement the specifics of data store interaction. MyDas allows the user to define where the required information is located along with its structure, and is then responsible for the communication protocol details.

Design of a Template for Handwriting Based Hindi Text Entry in Handheld Devices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gangopadhyay, Diya; Vasal, Ityam; Yammiyavar, Pradeep

Mobile phones, in the recent times, have become affordable and accessible to a wider range of users including the hitherto technologically and economically under-represented segments. Indian users are a gigantic consumer base for mobile phones. With Hindi being one of the most widely spoken languages in the country and the primary tool of communication for about a third of its population, an effective solution for Hindi text entry in mobile devices is expected to be immensely useful to the non English speaking users. This paper proposes a mobile phone handwriting based text entry solution for Hindi language, which allows for an easy text entry method, while facilitating better recognition accuracy.

Facilitating access to information in large documents with an intelligent hypertext system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mathe, Nathalie

1993-01-01

Retrieving specific information from large amounts of documentation is not an easy task. It could be facilitated if information relevant in the current problem solving context could be automatically supplied to the user. As a first step towards this goal, we have developed an intelligent hypertext system called CID (Computer Integrated Documentation) and tested it on the Space Station Freedom requirement documents. The CID system enables integration of various technical documents in a hypertext framework and includes an intelligent context-sensitive indexing and retrieval mechanism. This mechanism utilizes on-line user information requirements and relevance feedback either to reinforce current indexing in case of success or to generate new knowledge in case of failure. This allows the CID system to provide helpful responses, based on previous usage of the documentation, and to improve its performance over time.

Barriers and facilitators to home computer and internet use among urban novice computer users of low socioeconomic position.

PubMed

Kontos, Emily Z; Bennett, Gary G; Viswanath, K

2007-10-22

Despite the increasing penetration of the Internet and amount of online health information, there are significant barriers that limit its widespread adoption as a source of health information. One is the "digital divide," with people of higher socioeconomic position (SEP) demonstrating greater access and usage compared to those from lower SEP groups. However, as the access gap narrows over time and more people use the Internet, a shift in research needs to occur to explore how one might improve Internet use as well as website design for a range of audiences. This is particularly important in the case of novice users who may not have the technical skills, experience, or social connections that could help them search for health information using the Internet. The focus of our research is to investigate the challenges in the implementation of a project to improve health information seeking among low SEP groups. The goal of the project is not to promote health information seeking as much as to understand the barriers and facilitators to computer and Internet use, beyond access, among members of lower SEP groups in an urban setting. The purpose was to qualitatively describe participants' self-identified barriers and facilitators to computer and Internet use during a 1-year pilot study as well as the challenges encountered by the research team in the delivery of the intervention. Between August and November 2005, 12 low-SEP urban individuals with no or limited computer and Internet experience were recruited through a snowball sampling. Each participant received a free computer system, broadband Internet access, monthly computer training courses, and technical support for 1 year as the intervention condition. Upon completion of the study, participants were offered the opportunity to complete an in-depth semistructured interview. Interviews were approximately 1 hour in length and were conducted by the project director. The interviews were held in the participants' homes and were tape recorded for accuracy. Nine of the 12 study participants completed the semistructured interviews. Members of the research team conducted a qualitative analysis based on the transcripts from the nine interviews using the crystallization/immersion method. Nine of the 12 participants completed the in-depth interview (75% overall response rate), with three men and six women agreeing to be interviewed. Major barriers to Internet use that were mentioned included time constraints and family conflict over computer usage. The monthly training classes and technical assistance components of the intervention surfaced as the most important facilitators to computer and Internet use. The concept of received social support from other study members, such as assistance with computer-related questions, also emerged as an important facilitator to overall computer usage. This pilot study offers important insights into the self-identified barriers and facilitators in computer and Internet use among urban low-SEP novice users as well as the challenges faced by the research team in implementing the intervention.

Method of recommending items to a user based on user interest

DOEpatents

Bollen, John; Van De Sompel, Herbert

2013-11-05

Although recording of usage data is common in scholarly information services, its exploitation for the creation of value-added services remains limited due to concerns regarding, among others, user privacy, data validity, and the lack of accepted standards for the representation, sharing and aggregation of usage data. A technical, standards-based architecture for sharing usage information is presented. In this architecture, OpenURL-compliant linking servers aggregate usage information of a specific user community as it navigates the distributed information environment that it has access to. This usage information is made OAI-PMH harvestable so that usage information exposed by many linking servers can be aggregated to facilitate the creation of value-added services with a reach beyond that of a single community or a single information service.

VIEWCACHE: An incremental pointer-base access method for distributed databases. Part 1: The universal index system design document. Part 2: The universal index system low-level design document. Part 3: User's guide. Part 4: Reference manual. Part 5: UIMS test suite

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kelley, Steve; Roussopoulos, Nick; Sellis, Timos

1992-01-01

The goal of the Universal Index System (UIS), is to provide an easy-to-use and reliable interface to many different kinds of database systems. The impetus for this system was to simplify database index management for users, thus encouraging the use of indexes. As the idea grew into an actual system design, the concept of increasing database performance by facilitating the use of time-saving techniques at the user level became a theme for the project. This Final Report describes the Design, the Implementation of UIS, and its Language Interfaces. It also includes the User's Guide and the Reference Manual.

Service user involvement for mental health system strengthening in India: a qualitative study.

PubMed

Samudre, Sandesh; Shidhaye, Rahul; Ahuja, Shalini; Nanda, Sharmishtha; Khan, Azaz; Evans-Lacko, Sara; Hanlon, Charlotte

2016-07-28

There is a wide recognition that involvement of service users and their caregivers in health system policy and planning processes can strengthen health systems; however, most evidence and experience has come from high-income countries. This study aimed to explore baseline experiences, barriers and facilitators to service user-caregiver involvement in the emerging mental health system in India, and stakeholders' perspectives on how greater involvement could be achieved. A qualitative study was conducted in Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh, India. In-depth interviews (n = 27) and a focus group discussion were conducted among service users, caregivers and their representatives at district, state and national levels and policy makers, service providers and mental health researchers. The topic guide explored the baseline situation in India, barriers and facilitators to service user and caregiver involvement in the following aspects of mental health systems: policy-making and planning, service development, monitoring and quality control, as well as research. Framework analysis was employed. Respondents spoke of the limited involvement of service users and caregivers in the current Indian mental health system. The major reported barriers to this involvement were (1) unmet treatment and economic needs arising from low access to mental health services coupled with the high burden of illness, (2) pervasive stigmatising attitudes operating at the level of service user, caregiver, community, healthcare provider and healthcare administrators, and (3) entrenched power differentials between service providers and service users. Respondents prioritised greater involvement of service users in the planning of their own individual-level mental health care before considering involvement at the mental health system level. A stepwise progression was endorsed, starting from needs assessment, through empowerment and organization of service users and caregivers, leading finally to meaningful involvement. Societal and system level barriers need to be addressed in order to facilitate the involvement of service users and caregivers to strengthen the Indian mental health system. Shifting from a largely 'provider-centric' to a more 'user-centric' model of mental health care may be a fundamental first step to sustainable user involvement at the system level.

"Do Users Do What They Think They Do?"- A Comparative Study of User Perceived and Actual Information Searching Behaviour in the National Electronic Library of Infection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Roy, Anjana; Kostkova, Patty; Catchpole, Mike; Carson, Ewart

In the last decade, the Internet has profoundly changed the delivery of healthcare. Medical websites for professionals and patients are playing an increasingly important role in providing the latest evidence-based knowledge for professionals, facilitating virtual patient support groups, and providing an invaluable information source for patients. Information seeking is the key user activity on the Internet. However, the discrepancy between what information is available and what the user is able to find has a profound effect on user satisfaction. The UK National electronic Library of Infection (NeLI, www.neli.org.uk) and its subsidiary projects provide a single-access portal for quality-appraised evidence in infectious diseases. We use this national portal, as test-bed for investigating our research questions. In this paper, we investigate actual and perceived user navigation behaviour that reveals important information about user perceptions and actions, in searching for information. Our results show: (i) all users were able to access information they were seeking; (ii) broadly, there is an agreement between "reported" behaviour (from questionnaires) and "observed" behaviour (from web logs), although some important differences were identified; (iii) both browsing and searching were equally used to answer specific questions and (iv) the preferred route for browsing for data on the NeLI website was to enter via the "Top Ten Topics" menu option. These findings provide important insights into how to improve user experience and satisfaction with health information websites.

Population groups: indexing, coverage, and retrieval effectiveness of ethnically related health care issues in health sciences databases.

PubMed Central

Efthimiadis, E N; Afifi, M

1996-01-01

OBJECTIVES: This study examined methods of accessing (for indexing and retrieval purposes) medical research on population groups in the major abstracting and indexing services of the health sciences literature. DESIGN: The study of diseases in specific population groups is facilitated by the indexing of both diseases and populations in a database. The MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Embase databases were selected for the study. The published thesauri for these databases were examined to establish the vocabulary in use. Indexing terms were identified and examined as to their representation in the current literature. Terms were clustered further into groups thought to reflect an end user's perspective and to facilitate subsequent analysis. The medical literature contained in the three online databases was searched with both controlled vocabulary and natural language terms. RESULTS: The three thesauri revealed shallow pre-coordinated hierarchical structures, rather difficult-to-use terms for post-coordination, and a blurring of cultural, genetic, and racial facets of populations. Post-coordination is difficult because of the system-oriented terminology, which is intended mostly for information professionals. The terminology unintentionally restricts access by the end users who lack the knowledge needed to use the thesauri effectively for information retrieval. CONCLUSIONS: Population groups are not represented adequately in the index languages of health sciences databases. Users of these databases need to be alerted to the difficulties that may be encountered in searching for information on population groups. Information and health professionals may not be able to access the literature if they are not familiar with the indexing policies on population groups. Consequently, the study points to a problem that needs to be addressed, through either the redesign of existing systems or the design of new ones to meet the goals of Healthy People 2000 and beyond. PMID:8883987

The use of biometrics in the Personal Health Record (PHR).

PubMed

Bonney, Wilfred

2011-01-01

The emergence of the Personal Health Record (PHR) has made individual health information more readily accessible to a wide range of users including patients, consumers, practitioners, and healthcare providers. However, increased accessibility of PHR threatens the confidentiality, privacy, and security of personalized health information. Therefore, a need for robust and reliable forms of authentication is of prime concern. The concept of biometric authentication is now highly visible to healthcare providers as a technology to prevent unauthorized access to individual health information. Implementing biometric authentication mechanisms to protect PHR facilitates access control and secure exchange of health information. In this paper, a literature review is used to explore the key benefits, technical barriers, challenges, and ethical implications for using biometric authentication in PHR.

Accessibility, usability, and usefulness of a Web-based clinical decision support tool to enhance provider-patient communication around Self-management TO Prevent (STOP) Stroke.

PubMed

Anderson, Jane A; Godwin, Kyler M; Saleem, Jason J; Russell, Scott; Robinson, Joshua J; Kimmel, Barbara

2014-12-01

This article reports redesign strategies identified to create a Web-based user-interface for the Self-management TO Prevent (STOP) Stroke Tool. Members of a Stroke Quality Improvement Network (N = 12) viewed a visualization video of a proposed prototype and provided feedback on implementation barriers/facilitators. Stroke-care providers (N = 10) tested the Web-based prototype in think-aloud sessions of simulated clinic visits. Participants' dialogues were coded into themes. Access to comprehensive information and the automated features/systematized processes were the primary accessibility and usability facilitator themes. The need for training, time to complete the tool, and computer-centric care were identified as possible usability barriers. Patient accountability, reminders for best practice, goal-focused care, and communication/counseling themes indicate that the STOP Stroke Tool supports the paradigm of patient-centered care. The STOP Stroke Tool was found to prompt clinicians on secondary stroke-prevention clinical-practice guidelines, facilitate comprehensive documentation of evidence-based care, and support clinicians in providing patient-centered care through the shared decision-making process that occurred while using the action-planning/goal-setting feature of the tool. © The Author(s) 2013.

Development and usability testing of a web-based decision support for users and health professionals in psychiatric services.

PubMed

Grim, Katarina; Rosenberg, David; Svedberg, Petra; Schön, Ulla-Karin

2017-09-01

Shared decision making (SMD) related to treatment and rehabilitation is considered a central component in recovery-oriented practice. Although decision aids are regarded as an essential component for successfully implementing SDM, these aids are often lacking within psychiatric services. The aim of this study was to use a participatory design to facilitate the development of a user-generated, web-based decision aid for individuals receiving psychiatric services. The results of this effort as well as the lessons learned during the development and usability processes are reported. The participatory design included 4 iterative cycles of development. Various qualitative methods for data collection were used with potential end users participating as informants in focus group and individual interviews and as usability and pilot testers. Interviewing and testing identified usability problems that then led to refinements and making the subsequent prototypes increasingly user-friendly and relevant. In each phase of the process, feedback from potential end-users provided guidance in developing the formation of the web-based decision aid that strengthens the position of users by integrating access to information regarding alternative supports, interactivity between staff and users, and user preferences as a continual focus in the tool. This web-based decision aid has the potential to strengthen service users' experience of self-efficacy and control as well as provide staff access to user knowledge and preferences. Studies employing participatory models focusing on usability have potential to significantly contribute to the development and implementation of tools that reflect user perspectives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Scientific user requirements for a herbarium data portal.

PubMed

Vissers, Jorick; den Bosch, Frederik Van; Bogaerts, Ann; Cocquyt, Christine; Degreef, Jérôme; Diagre, Denis; de Haan, Myriam; Smedt, Sofie De; Henry Engledow; Ertz, Damien; Fabri, Régine; Godefroid, Sandrine; Nicole Hanquart; Mergen, Patricia; Ronse, Anne; Sosef, Marc; Stévart, Tariq; Stoffelen, Piet; Vanderhoeven, Sonia; Groom, Quentin

2017-01-01

The digitization of herbaria and their online access will greatly facilitate access to plant collections around the world. This will improve the efficiency of taxonomy and help reduce inequalities between scientists. The Botanic Garden Meise, Belgium, is currently digitizing 1.2 million specimens including label data. In this paper we describe the user requirements analysis conducted for a new herbarium web portal. The aim was to identify the required functionality, but also to assist in the prioritization of software development and data acquisition. The Garden conducted the analysis in cooperation with Clockwork, the digital engagement agency of Ordina. Using a series of interactive interviews, potential users were consulted from universities, research institutions, science-policy initiatives and the Botanic Garden Meise. Although digital herbarium data have many potential stakeholders, we focused on the needs of taxonomists, ecologists and historians, who are currently the primary users of the Meise herbarium data portal. The three categories of user have similar needs, all wanted as much specimen data as possible, and for those data, to be interlinked with other digital resources within and outside the Garden. Many users wanted an interactive system that they could comment on, or correct online, particularly if such corrections and annotations could be used to rank the reliability of data. Many requirements depend on the quality of the digitized data associated with each specimen. The essential data fields are the taxonomic name; geographic location; country; collection date; collector name and collection number. Also all researchers valued linkage between biodiversity literature and specimens. Nevertheless, to verify digitized data the researchers still want access to high quality images, even if fully transcribed label information is provided. The only major point of disagreement is the level of access users should have and what they should be allowed to do with the data and images. Not all of the user requirements are feasible given the current technical and regulatory landscape, however, the potential of these suggestions is discussed. Currently, there is no off-the-shelf solution to satisfy all these user requirements, but the intention of this paper is to guide other herbaria who are prioritising their investment in digitization and online web functionality.

Prototype and Evaluation of AutoHelp: A Case-based, Web-accessible Help Desk System for EOSDIS

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mitchell, Christine M.; Thurman, David A.

1999-01-01

AutoHelp is a case-based, Web-accessible help desk for users of the EOSDIS. Its uses a combination of advanced computer and Web technologies, knowledge-based systems tools, and cognitive engineering to offload the current, person-intensive, help desk facilities at the DAACs. As a case-based system, AutoHelp starts with an organized database of previous help requests (questions and answers) indexed by a hierarchical category structure that facilitates recognition by persons seeking assistance. As an initial proof-of-concept demonstration, a month of email help requests to the Goddard DAAC were analyzed and partially organized into help request cases. These cases were then categorized to create a preliminary case indexing system, or category structure. This category structure allows potential users to identify or recognize categories of questions, responses, and sample cases similar to their needs. Year one of this research project focused on the development of a technology demonstration. User assistance 'cases' are stored in an Oracle database in a combination of tables linking prototypical questions with responses and detailed examples from the email help requests analyzed to date. When a potential user accesses the AutoHelp system, a Web server provides a Java applet that displays the category structure of the help case base organized by the needs of previous users. When the user identifies or requests a particular type of assistance, the applet uses Java database connectivity (JDBC) software to access the database and extract the relevant cases. The demonstration will include an on-line presentation of how AutoHelp is currently structured. We will show how a user might request assistance via the Web interface and how the AutoHelp case base provides assistance. The presentation will describe the DAAC data collection, case definition, and organization to date, as well as the AutoHelp architecture. It will conclude with the year 2 proposal to more fully develop the case base, the user interface (including the category structure), interface with the current DAAC Help System, the development of tools to add new cases, and user testing and evaluation at (perhaps) the Goddard DAAC.

Scientific user requirements for a herbarium data portal

PubMed Central

Vissers, Jorick; den Bosch, Frederik Van; Bogaerts, Ann; Cocquyt, Christine; Degreef, Jérôme; Diagre, Denis; de Haan, Myriam; Smedt, Sofie De; Henry Engledow; Ertz, Damien; Fabri, Régine; Godefroid, Sandrine; Nicole Hanquart; Mergen, Patricia; Ronse, Anne; Sosef, Marc; Stévart, Tariq; Stoffelen, Piet; Vanderhoeven, Sonia; Groom, Quentin

2017-01-01

Abstract The digitization of herbaria and their online access will greatly facilitate access to plant collections around the world. This will improve the efficiency of taxonomy and help reduce inequalities between scientists. The Botanic Garden Meise, Belgium, is currently digitizing 1.2 million specimens including label data. In this paper we describe the user requirements analysis conducted for a new herbarium web portal. The aim was to identify the required functionality, but also to assist in the prioritization of software development and data acquisition. The Garden conducted the analysis in cooperation with Clockwork, the digital engagement agency of Ordina. Using a series of interactive interviews, potential users were consulted from universities, research institutions, science-policy initiatives and the Botanic Garden Meise. Although digital herbarium data have many potential stakeholders, we focused on the needs of taxonomists, ecologists and historians, who are currently the primary users of the Meise herbarium data portal. The three categories of user have similar needs, all wanted as much specimen data as possible, and for those data, to be interlinked with other digital resources within and outside the Garden. Many users wanted an interactive system that they could comment on, or correct online, particularly if such corrections and annotations could be used to rank the reliability of data. Many requirements depend on the quality of the digitized data associated with each specimen. The essential data fields are the taxonomic name; geographic location; country; collection date; collector name and collection number. Also all researchers valued linkage between biodiversity literature and specimens. Nevertheless, to verify digitized data the researchers still want access to high quality images, even if fully transcribed label information is provided. The only major point of disagreement is the level of access users should have and what they should be allowed to do with the data and images. Not all of the user requirements are feasible given the current technical and regulatory landscape, however, the potential of these suggestions is discussed. Currently, there is no off-the-shelf solution to satisfy all these user requirements, but the intention of this paper is to guide other herbaria who are prioritising their investment in digitization and online web functionality. PMID:28781551

Using Open and Interoperable Ways to Publish and Access LANCE AIRS Near-Real Time Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zhao, Peisheng; Lynnes, Christopher; Vollmer, Bruce; Savtchenko, Andrey; Theobald, Michael; Yang, Wenli

2011-01-01

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) Near-Real Time (NRT) data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) element at the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) provides information on the global and regional atmospheric state, with very low temporal latency, to support climate research and improve weather forecasting. An open and interoperable platform is useful to facilitate access to, and integration of, LANCE AIRS NRT data. As Web services technology has matured in recent years, a new scalable Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is emerging as the basic platform for distributed computing and large networks of interoperable applications. Following the provide-register-discover-consume SOA paradigm, this presentation discusses how to use open-source geospatial software components to build Web services for publishing and accessing AIRS NRT data, explore the metadata relevant to registering and discovering data and services in the catalogue systems, and implement a Web portal to facilitate users' consumption of the data and services.

Doing Your Science While You're in Orbit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Green, Mark L.; Miller, Stephen D.; Vazhkudai, Sudharshan S.; Trater, James R.

2010-11-01

Large-scale neutron facilities such as the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory need easy-to-use access to Department of Energy Leadership Computing Facilities and experiment repository data. The Orbiter thick- and thin-client and its supporting Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based services (available at https://orbiter.sns.gov) consist of standards-based components that are reusable and extensible for accessing high performance computing, data and computational grid infrastructure, and cluster-based resources easily from a user configurable interface. The primary Orbiter system goals consist of (1) developing infrastructure for the creation and automation of virtual instrumentation experiment optimization, (2) developing user interfaces for thin- and thick-client access, (3) provide a prototype incorporating major instrument simulation packages, and (4) facilitate neutron science community access and collaboration. The secure Orbiter SOA authentication and authorization is achieved through the developed Virtual File System (VFS) services, which use Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for data repository file access, thin-and thick-client functionality and application access, and computational job workflow management. The VFS Relational Database Management System (RDMS) consists of approximately 45 database tables describing 498 user accounts with 495 groups over 432,000 directories with 904,077 repository files. Over 59 million NeXus file metadata records are associated to the 12,800 unique NeXus file field/class names generated from the 52,824 repository NeXus files. Services that enable (a) summary dashboards of data repository status with Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, (b) data repository NeXus file field/class name full text search capabilities within a Google like interface, (c) fully functional RBAC browser for the read-only data repository and shared areas, (d) user/group defined and shared metadata for data repository files, (e) user, group, repository, and web 2.0 based global positioning with additional service capabilities are currently available. The SNS based Orbiter SOA integration progress with the Distributed Data Analysis for Neutron Scattering Experiments (DANSE) software development project is summarized with an emphasis on DANSE Central Services and the Virtual Neutron Facility (VNF). Additionally, the DANSE utilization of the Orbiter SOA authentication, authorization, and data transfer services best practice implementations are presented.

Building a Generic Virtual Research Environment Framework for Multiple Earth and Space Science Domains and a Diversity of Users.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wyborn, L. A.; Fraser, R.; Evans, B. J. K.; Friedrich, C.; Klump, J. F.; Lescinsky, D. T.

2017-12-01

Virtual Research Environments (VREs) are now part of academic infrastructures. Online research workflows can be orchestrated whereby data can be accessed from multiple external repositories with processing taking place on public or private clouds, and centralised supercomputers using a mixture of user codes, and well-used community software and libraries. VREs enable distributed members of research teams to actively work together to share data, models, tools, software, workflows, best practices, infrastructures, etc. These environments and their components are increasingly able to support the needs of undergraduate teaching. External to the research sector, they can also be reused by citizen scientists, and be repurposed for industry users to help accelerate the diffusion and hence enable the translation of research innovations. The Virtual Geophysics Laboratory (VGL) in Australia was started in 2012, built using a collaboration between CSIRO, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and Geoscience Australia, with support funding from the Australian Government Department of Education. VGL comprises three main modules that provide an interface to enable users to first select their required data; to choose a tool to process that data; and then access compute infrastructure for execution. VGL was initially built to enable a specific set of researchers in government agencies access to specific data sets and a limited number of tools. Over the years it has evolved into a multi-purpose Earth science platform with access to an increased variety of data (e.g., Natural Hazards, Geochemistry), a broader range of software packages, and an increasing diversity of compute infrastructures. This expansion has been possible because of the approach to loosely couple data, tools and compute resources via interfaces that are built on international standards and accessed as network-enabled services wherever possible. Built originally for researchers that were not fussy about general usability, increasing emphasis on User Interfaces (UIs) and stability will lead to increased uptake in the education and industry sectors. Simultaneously, improvements are being added to facilitate access to data and tools by experienced researchers who want direct access to both data and flexible workflows.

South African mental health care service user views on priorities for supporting recovery: implications for policy and service development.

PubMed

Kleintjes, Sharon; Lund, Crick; Swartz, Leslie

2012-01-01

The paper documents the views of South African mental health care service users on policy directions and service developments that are required to support their recovery. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with forty service users and service user advocates. A framework analysis approach was used to analyse the qualitative data. Service user priorities included addressing stigma, discrimination and disempowerment, and the links between mental health and poverty. They suggested that these challenges be addressed through public awareness campaigns, legislative and policy reform for rights protection, development of a national lobby to advocate for changes, and user empowerment. Users suggested that empowerment can be facilitated through opportunities for improved social relatedness and equitable access to social and economic resources. This study suggests three strategies to bridge the gap between mental health care service users rights and needs on one hand, and unsupportive attitudes, policies and practices on the other. These are: giving priority to service user involvement in policy and service reform, creating empathic alliances to promote user priorities, and building enabling partnerships to effect these priorities.

Service user and caregiver involvement in mental health system strengthening in low- and middle-income countries: a cross-country qualitative study.

PubMed

Lempp, H; Abayneh, S; Gurung, D; Kola, L; Abdulmalik, J; Evans-Lacko, S; Semrau, M; Alem, A; Thornicroft, G; Hanlon, C

2018-02-01

The aims of this paper are to: (i) explore the experiences of involvement of mental health service users, their caregivers, mental health centre heads and policy makers in mental health system strengthening in three low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (Ethiopia, Nepal and Nigeria); (ii) analyse the potential benefits and barriers of such involvement; and (iii) identify strategies required to achieve greater service user and caregiver participation. A cross-country qualitative study was conducted, interviewing 83 stakeholders of mental health services. Our analysis showed that service user and caregiver involvement in the health system strengthening process was an alien concept for most participants. They reported very limited access to direct participation. Stigma and poverty were described as the main barriers for involvement. Several strategies were identified by participants to overcome existing hurdles to facilitate service user and caregiver involvement in the mental health system strengthening process, such as support to access treatment, mental health promotion and empowerment of service users. This study suggests that capacity building for service users, and strengthening of user groups would equip them to contribute meaningfully to policy development from informed perspectives. Involvement of service users and their caregivers in mental health decision-making is still in its infancy in LMICs. Effective strategies are required to overcome existing barriers, for example making funding more widely available for Ph.D. studies in participatory research with service users and caregivers to develop, implement and evaluate approaches to involvement that are locally and culturally acceptable in LMICs.

A Cloud-Based Infrastructure for Near-Real-Time Processing and Dissemination of NPP Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Evans, J. D.; Valente, E. G.; Chettri, S. S.

2011-12-01

We are building a scalable cloud-based infrastructure for generating and disseminating near-real-time data products from a variety of geospatial and meteorological data sources, including the new National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP). Our approach relies on linking Direct Broadcast and other data streams to a suite of scientific algorithms coordinated by NASA's International Polar-Orbiter Processing Package (IPOPP). The resulting data products are directly accessible to a wide variety of end-user applications, via industry-standard protocols such as OGC Web Services, Unidata Local Data Manager, or OPeNDAP, using open source software components. The processing chain employs on-demand computing resources from Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud and NASA's Nebula cloud services. Our current prototype targets short-term weather forecasting, in collaboration with NASA's Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) program and the National Weather Service. Direct Broadcast is especially crucial for NPP, whose current ground segment is unlikely to deliver data quickly enough for short-term weather forecasters and other near-real-time users. Direct Broadcast also allows full local control over data handling, from the receiving antenna to end-user applications: this provides opportunities to streamline processes for data ingest, processing, and dissemination, and thus to make interpreted data products (Environmental Data Records) available to practitioners within minutes of data capture at the sensor. Cloud computing lets us grow and shrink computing resources to meet large and rapid fluctuations in data availability (twice daily for polar orbiters) - and similarly large fluctuations in demand from our target (near-real-time) users. This offers a compelling business case for cloud computing: the processing or dissemination systems can grow arbitrarily large to sustain near-real time data access despite surges in data volumes or user demand, but that computing capacity (and hourly costs) can be dropped almost instantly once the surge passes. Cloud computing also allows low-risk experimentation with a variety of machine architectures (processor types; bandwidth, memory, and storage capacities, etc.) and of system configurations (including massively parallel computing patterns). Finally, our service-based approach (in which user applications invoke software processes on a Web-accessible server) facilitates access into datasets of arbitrary size and resolution, and allows users to request and receive tailored products on demand. To maximize the usefulness and impact of our technology, we have emphasized open, industry-standard software interfaces. We are also using and developing open source software to facilitate the widespread adoption of similar, derived, or interoperable systems for processing and serving near-real-time data from NPP and other sources.

NASA GES DISC support of CO2 Data from OCO-2, ACOS, and AIRS

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wei, Jennifer C; Vollmer, Bruce E.; Savtchenko, Andrey K.; Hearty, Thomas J; Albayrak, Rustem Arif; Deshong, Barbara E.

2013-01-01

NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Centers (GES DISC) is the data center assigned to archive and distribute current AIRS, ACOS data and data from the upcoming OCO-2 mission. The GES DISC archives and supports data containing information on CO2 as well as other atmospheric composition, atmospheric dynamics, modeling and precipitation. Along with the data stewardship, an important mission of GES DISC is to facilitate access to and enhance the usability of data as well as to broaden the user base. GES DISC strives to promote the awareness of science content and novelty of the data by working with Science Team members and releasing news articles as appropriate. Analysis of events that are of interest to the general public, and that help in understanding the goals of NASA Earth Observing missions, have been among most popular practices.Users have unrestricted access to a user-friendly search interface, Mirador, that allows temporal, spatial, keyword and event searches, as well as an ontology-driven drill down. Variable subsetting, format conversion, quality screening, and quick browse, are among the services available in Mirador. The majority of the GES DISC data are also accessible through OPeNDAP (Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol) and WMS (Web Map Service). These services add more options for specialized subsetting, format conversion, image viewing and contributing to data interoperability.

The differing privacy concerns regarding exchanging electronic medical records of internet users in Taiwan.

PubMed

Hwang, Hsin-Ginn; Han, Hwai-En; Kuo, Kuang-Ming; Liu, Chung-Feng

2012-12-01

This study explores whether Internet users have different privacy concerns regarding the information contained in electronic medical records (EMRs) according to gender, age, occupation, education, and EMR awareness. Based on the Concern for Information Privacy (CFIP) scale developed by Smith and colleagues in 1996, we conducted an online survey using 15 items in four dimensions, namely, collection, unauthorized access, secondary use, and errors, to investigate Internet users' concerns regarding the privacy of EMRs under health information exchanges (HIE). We retrieved 213 valid questionnaires. The results indicate that the respondents had substantial privacy concerns regarding EMRs and their educational level and EMR awareness significantly influenced their privacy concerns regarding unauthorized access and secondary use of EMRs. This study recommends that the Taiwanese government organizes a comprehensive EMR awareness campaign, emphasizing unauthorized access and secondary use of EMRs. Additionally, to cultivate the public's understanding of EMRs, the government should employ various media, especially Internet channels, to promote EMR awareness, thereby enabling the public to accept the concept and use of EMRs. People who are highly educated and have superior EMR awareness should be given a comprehensive explanation of how hospitals protect patients' EMRs from unauthorized access and secondary use to address their concerns. Thus, the public can comprehend, trust, and accept the use of EMRs, reducing their privacy concerns, which should facilitate the future implementation of HIE.

Predictors of adherence among community users of a cognitive behavior therapy website

PubMed Central

Batterham, Philip J; Neil, Alison L; Bennett, Kylie; Griffiths, Kathleen M; Christensen, Helen

2008-01-01

Objective To investigate the predictors of early and late dropout among community users of the MoodGYM website, a five module online intervention for reducing the symptoms of depression. Method Approximately 82,000 users accessed the site in 2006, of which 27% completed one module and 10% completed two or more modules. Adherence was modeled as a trichotomous variable representing non-starters (0 modules), early dropouts (1 module) and late dropouts (2–5 modules). Predictor variables included age, gender, education, location, referral source, depression severity, anxiety severity, dysfunctional thinking, and change in symptom count. Results Better adherence was predicted by higher depression severity, higher anxiety severity, a greater level of dysfunctional thinking, younger age, higher education, being female, and being referred to the site by a mental health professional. In addition, users whose depression severity had improved or remained stable after the first intervention module had higher odds of completing subsequent modules. Conclusions While the effect of age and the null effect of location were in accordance with prior adherence research, the significant effects of gender, education and depression severity were not, and may reflect user characteristics, the content of the intervention and unique aspects of online interventions. Further research directions are suggested to investigate the elements of open access online interventions that facilitate adherence. PMID:19920949

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

Trott, Christian Robert; Lopez, Graham; Shipman, Galen

This report documents the completion of milestone STPM12-2 Kokkos User Support Infrastructure. The goal of this milestone was to develop and deploy an initial Kokkos support infrastructure, which facilitates communication and growth of the user community, adds a central place for user documentation and manages access to technical experts. Multiple possible support infrastructure venues were considered and a solution was put into place by Q1 of FY 18 consisting of (1) a Wiki programming guide, (2) github issues and projects for development planning and bug tracking and (3) a “Slack” channel for low latency support communications with the Kokkos usermore » community. Furthermore, the desirability of a cloud based training infrastructure was recognized and put in place in order to support training events.« less

[Drug information management through the intranet of a hospital center].

PubMed

Juárez Giménez, J C; Mendarte Barrenechea, L; Gil Luján, G; Sala Piñol, F; Lalueza Broto, P; Girona Brumós, L; Monterde Junyent, J

2006-01-01

This paper describes the methodology used for the implementation and validation of a network resource incorporated to the intranet of the Hospital, in order to retain and disseminate information from the Drug Information Center (DIC) of a pharmacy service in a hospital center. A working group designed the structure, contents, memory needs, priority of access for users and a quality assessment questionnaire. The resource developed by the working group had a capacity of 70 Gb and its structure was based on HTML documents, including files with different format and 12 theme areas. Two levels of priority of access were established depending on the user and two persons were in charge of the resource. The questionnaire was delivered after three months of use. Sixty nine per cent of the users regarded the resource as very useful and 31%, as useful. The final structure, according to the results of the survey, had 11 theme areas. The use of the hospital Intranet in order to include and organize DIC information can be very simple and economic. Furthermore, the involvement of all the users in its design and structure can facilitate the practical use of this tool and improve its quality.

Towards Simpler Custom and OpenSearch Services for Voluminous NEWS Merged A-Train Data (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hua, H.; Fetzer, E.; Braverman, A. J.; Lewis, S.; Henderson, M. L.; Guillaume, A.; Lee, S.; de La Torre Juarez, M.; Dang, H. T.

2010-12-01

To simplify access to large and complex satellite data sets for climate analysis and model verification, we developed web services that is used to study long-term and global-scale trends in climate, water and energy cycle, and weather variability. A related NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS) task has created a merged NEWS Level 2 data from multiple instruments in NASA’s A-Train constellation of satellites. We used this data to enable creation of climatologies that include correlation between observed temperature, water vapor and cloud properties from the A-Train sensors. Instead of imposing on the user an often rigid and limiting web-based analysis environment, we recognize the need for simple and well-designed services so that users can perform analysis in their own familiar computing environments. Custom on-demand services were developed to improve data accessibility of voluminous multi-sensor data. Services enabling geospatial, geographical, and multi-sensor parameter subsets of the data, as well a custom time-averaged Level 3 service will be presented. We will also show how a Level 3Q data reduction approach can be used to help “browse” the voluminous multi-sensor Level 2 data. An OpenSearch capability with full text + space + time search of data products will also be presented as an approach to facilitated interoperability with other data systems. We will present our experiences for improving user usability as well as strategies for facilitating interoperability with other data systems.

A mixed methods systematic review of success factors of mhealth and telehealth for maternal health in Sub-Saharan Africa.

PubMed

Ag Ahmed, Mohamed Ali; Gagnon, Marie-Pierre; Hamelin-Brabant, Louise; Mbemba, Gisele Irène Claudine; Alami, Hassane

2017-01-01

Access to health care is still limited for many women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), while it remains an important determinant of maternal mortality and morbidity. Information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as mhealth and telehealth, can help to facilitate this access by acting on the various obstacles encountered by women, be they socio-cultural, economic, geographical or organizational. However, various factors contribute to the success of mhealth and telehealth implementation and use, and must be considered for these technologies to go beyond the pilot project stage. The objective of this systematic literature review is to synthesize the empirical knowledge on the success factors of the implementation and use of telehealth and mhealth to facilitate access to maternal care in SSA. The methodology used is based on that of the Cochrane Collaboration, including a documentary search using standardized language in six databases, selection of studies corresponding to the inclusion criteria, data extraction, evaluation of study quality, and synthesis of the results. A total of 93 articles were identified, which allowed the inclusion of seven studies, six of which were on mhealth. Based on the framework proposed by Broens et al ., we synthesized success factors into five categories: (I) technology, such as technical support to maintain, troubleshoot and train users, good network coverage, existence of a source of energy and user friendliness; (II) user acceptance, which is facilitated by factors such as unrestricted use of the device, perceived usefulness to the worker, adequate literacy, or previous experience of use ; (III) short- and long-term funding; (IV) organizational factors, such as the existence of a well-organized health system and effective coordination of interventions; and (V) political or legislative aspects, in this case strong government support to deploy technology on a large scale. Telehealth and mhealth are promising solutions to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality in SSA, but knowledge on how these interventions can succeed and move to scale is limited. Success factors identified in this review can provide guidance on elements that should be considered in the design and implementation of telehealth and mhealth for maternal health in SSA.

A mixed methods systematic review of success factors of mhealth and telehealth for maternal health in Sub-Saharan Africa

PubMed Central

Ag Ahmed, Mohamed Ali; Hamelin-Brabant, Louise; Mbemba, Gisele Irène Claudine; Alami, Hassane

2017-01-01

Access to health care is still limited for many women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), while it remains an important determinant of maternal mortality and morbidity. Information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as mhealth and telehealth, can help to facilitate this access by acting on the various obstacles encountered by women, be they socio-cultural, economic, geographical or organizational. However, various factors contribute to the success of mhealth and telehealth implementation and use, and must be considered for these technologies to go beyond the pilot project stage. The objective of this systematic literature review is to synthesize the empirical knowledge on the success factors of the implementation and use of telehealth and mhealth to facilitate access to maternal care in SSA. The methodology used is based on that of the Cochrane Collaboration, including a documentary search using standardized language in six databases, selection of studies corresponding to the inclusion criteria, data extraction, evaluation of study quality, and synthesis of the results. A total of 93 articles were identified, which allowed the inclusion of seven studies, six of which were on mhealth. Based on the framework proposed by Broens et al., we synthesized success factors into five categories: (I) technology, such as technical support to maintain, troubleshoot and train users, good network coverage, existence of a source of energy and user friendliness; (II) user acceptance, which is facilitated by factors such as unrestricted use of the device, perceived usefulness to the worker, adequate literacy, or previous experience of use ; (III) short- and long-term funding; (IV) organizational factors, such as the existence of a well-organized health system and effective coordination of interventions; and (V) political or legislative aspects, in this case strong government support to deploy technology on a large scale. Telehealth and mhealth are promising solutions to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality in SSA, but knowledge on how these interventions can succeed and move to scale is limited. Success factors identified in this review can provide guidance on elements that should be considered in the design and implementation of telehealth and mhealth for maternal health in SSA. PMID:28736731

Facilitators and barriers to quality of care in maternal, newborn and child health: a global situational analysis through metareview.

PubMed

Nair, Manisha; Yoshida, Sachiyo; Lambrechts, Thierry; Boschi-Pinto, Cynthia; Bose, Krishna; Mason, Elizabeth Mary; Mathai, Matthews

2014-05-22

Conduct a global situational analysis to identify the current facilitators and barriers to improving quality of care (QoC) for pregnant women, newborns and children. Metareview of published and unpublished systematic reviews and meta-analyses conducted between January 2000 and March 2013 in any language. Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) is used to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews. Health systems of all countries. Study outcome: QoC measured using surrogate indicators--effective, efficient, accessible, acceptable/patient centred, equitable and safe. Conducted in two phases (1) qualitative synthesis of extracted data to identify and group the facilitators and barriers to improving QoC, for each of the three population groups, into the six domains of WHO's framework and explore new domains and (2) an analysis grid to map the common facilitators and barriers. We included 98 systematic reviews with 110 interventions to improve QoC from countries globally. The facilitators and barriers identified fitted the six domains of WHO's framework--information, patient-population engagement, leadership, regulations and standards, organisational capacity and models of care. Two new domains, 'communication' and 'satisfaction', were generated. Facilitators included active and regular interpersonal communication between users and providers; respect, confidentiality, comfort and support during care provision; engaging users in decision-making; continuity of care and effective audit and feedback mechanisms. Key barriers identified were language barriers in information and communication; power difference between users and providers; health systems not accounting for user satisfaction; variable standards of implementation of standard guidelines; shortage of resources in health facilities and lack of studies assessing the role of leadership in improving QoC. These were common across the three population groups. The barriers to good-quality healthcare are common for pregnant women, newborns and children; thus, interventions targeted to address them will have uniform beneficial effects. Adopting the identified facilitators would help countries strengthen their health systems and ensure high-quality care for all. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Facilitators and barriers to quality of care in maternal, newborn and child health: a global situational analysis through metareview

PubMed Central

Nair, Manisha; Yoshida, Sachiyo; Lambrechts, Thierry; Boschi-Pinto, Cynthia; Bose, Krishna; Mason, Elizabeth Mary; Mathai, Matthews

2014-01-01

Objective Conduct a global situational analysis to identify the current facilitators and barriers to improving quality of care (QoC) for pregnant women, newborns and children. Study design Metareview of published and unpublished systematic reviews and meta-analyses conducted between January 2000 and March 2013 in any language. Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) is used to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews. Settings Health systems of all countries. Study outcome: QoC measured using surrogate indicators––effective, efficient, accessible, acceptable/patient centred, equitable and safe. Analysis Conducted in two phases (1) qualitative synthesis of extracted data to identify and group the facilitators and barriers to improving QoC, for each of the three population groups, into the six domains of WHO's framework and explore new domains and (2) an analysis grid to map the common facilitators and barriers. Results We included 98 systematic reviews with 110 interventions to improve QoC from countries globally. The facilitators and barriers identified fitted the six domains of WHO's framework––information, patient–population engagement, leadership, regulations and standards, organisational capacity and models of care. Two new domains, ‘communication’ and ‘satisfaction’, were generated. Facilitators included active and regular interpersonal communication between users and providers; respect, confidentiality, comfort and support during care provision; engaging users in decision-making; continuity of care and effective audit and feedback mechanisms. Key barriers identified were language barriers in information and communication; power difference between users and providers; health systems not accounting for user satisfaction; variable standards of implementation of standard guidelines; shortage of resources in health facilities and lack of studies assessing the role of leadership in improving QoC. These were common across the three population groups. Conclusions The barriers to good-quality healthcare are common for pregnant women, newborns and children; thus, interventions targeted to address them will have uniform beneficial effects. Adopting the identified facilitators would help countries strengthen their health systems and ensure high-quality care for all. PMID:24852300

Task Delegation Based Access Control Models for Workflow Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gaaloul, Khaled; Charoy, François

e-Government organisations are facilitated and conducted using workflow management systems. Role-based access control (RBAC) is recognised as an efficient access control model for large organisations. The application of RBAC in workflow systems cannot, however, grant permissions to users dynamically while business processes are being executed. We currently observe a move away from predefined strict workflow modelling towards approaches supporting flexibility on the organisational level. One specific approach is that of task delegation. Task delegation is a mechanism that supports organisational flexibility, and ensures delegation of authority in access control systems. In this paper, we propose a Task-oriented Access Control (TAC) model based on RBAC to address these requirements. We aim to reason about task from organisational perspectives and resources perspectives to analyse and specify authorisation constraints. Moreover, we present a fine grained access control protocol to support delegation based on the TAC model.

Methodological proceedings to evaluate the physical accessibility in urban historic sites.

PubMed

Ribeiro, Gabriela Sousa; Martins, Laura Bezerra; Monteiro, Circe Maria Gama

2012-01-01

Historic urban sites are set by cultural and social diversities, generating multiple activities and use and access to these sites should be available to all people including those with disabilities. Taking into consideration that using the same methodology that was used in different historic sites researches with positive results facilitates replication, we aimed to develop methodological procedures that identify conditions of physical accessibility in open public spaces and access to public buildings in historic urban sites to support proposals about design requirements for improvements to the problems diagnosed and control inadequacies of the physical environment. The study methods and techniques from different areas of knowledge culminated in a proposal built with an emphasis on user participation that could be applied with low cost and in relatively short period of time.

Cloud Computing for the Grid: GridControl: A Software Platform to Support the Smart Grid

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

None

GENI Project: Cornell University is creating a new software platform for grid operators called GridControl that will utilize cloud computing to more efficiently control the grid. In a cloud computing system, there are minimal hardware and software demands on users. The user can tap into a network of computers that is housed elsewhere (the cloud) and the network runs computer applications for the user. The user only needs interface software to access all of the cloud’s data resources, which can be as simple as a web browser. Cloud computing can reduce costs, facilitate innovation through sharing, empower users, and improvemore » the overall reliability of a dispersed system. Cornell’s GridControl will focus on 4 elements: delivering the state of the grid to users quickly and reliably; building networked, scalable grid-control software; tailoring services to emerging smart grid uses; and simulating smart grid behavior under various conditions.« less

Derived virtual devices: a secure distributed file system mechanism

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

VanMeter, Rodney; Hotz, Steve; Finn, Gregory

1996-01-01

This paper presents the design of derived virtual devices (DVDs). DVDs are the mechanism used by the Netstation Project to provide secure shared access to network-attached peripherals distributed in an untrusted network environment. DVDs improve Input/Output efficiency by allowing user processes to perform I/O operations directly from devices without intermediate transfer through the controlling operating system kernel. The security enforced at the device through the DVD mechanism includes resource boundary checking, user authentication, and restricted operations, e.g., read-only access. To illustrate the application of DVDs, we present the interactions between a network-attached disk and a file system designed to exploit the DVD abstraction. We further discuss third-party transfer as a mechanism intended to provide for efficient data transfer in a typical NAP environment. We show how DVDs facilitate third-party transfer, and provide the security required in a more open network environment.

Toward a Virtual Solar Observatory: Starting Before the Petabytes Fall

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gurman, Joseph; Fisher, Richard R. (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

Although a few, large, space- and groundbased solar physics databases exist at selected locations, there is as yet only limited standardization or interoperability. I describe the outline of a plan to facilitate access to a distributed network of online solar data archives, both large and small. The underlying principle is that the user need not know where- the data are, only how to specify which data are desired. At the least, such an approach could considerably simplify the scientific user's access to the enormous amount of solar physics data to be obtained in the next decade. At best, it might mean the withering away of traditional data centers, and all the bureaucracy they entail. This work is supported by the Sun-Earth Connections Division of NASA Office of Space Science, thanks to an anomalous act of largess on the part of the 2001 SEC Senior Review.

Toward a Virtual Solar Observatory: Starting Before the Petabytes Fall

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gurman, J. B.

2001-12-01

Although a few, large, space- and groundbased solar physics databases exist at selected locations, there is as yet only limited standardization or interoperability. I describe the outline of a plan to facilitate access to a distributed network of online solar data archives, both large and small. The underlying principle is that the user need not know where the data are, only how to specify which data are desired. At the least, such an approach could considerably simplify the scientific user's access to the enormous amount of solar physics data to be obtained in the next decade. At best, it might mean the withering away of traditional data centers, and all the bureaucracy they entail. This work is supported by the Sun-Earth Connections Division of NASA Office of Space Science, thanks to an anomalous act of largess on the part of the 2001 SEC Senior Review.

Automatic Figure Ranking and User Interfacing for Intelligent Figure Search

PubMed Central

Yu, Hong; Liu, Feifan; Ramesh, Balaji Polepalli

2010-01-01

Background Figures are important experimental results that are typically reported in full-text bioscience articles. Bioscience researchers need to access figures to validate research facts and to formulate or to test novel research hypotheses. On the other hand, the sheer volume of bioscience literature has made it difficult to access figures. Therefore, we are developing an intelligent figure search engine (http://figuresearch.askhermes.org). Existing research in figure search treats each figure equally, but we introduce a novel concept of “figure ranking”: figures appearing in a full-text biomedical article can be ranked by their contribution to the knowledge discovery. Methodology/Findings We empirically validated the hypothesis of figure ranking with over 100 bioscience researchers, and then developed unsupervised natural language processing (NLP) approaches to automatically rank figures. Evaluating on a collection of 202 full-text articles in which authors have ranked the figures based on importance, our best system achieved a weighted error rate of 0.2, which is significantly better than several other baseline systems we explored. We further explored a user interfacing application in which we built novel user interfaces (UIs) incorporating figure ranking, allowing bioscience researchers to efficiently access important figures. Our evaluation results show that 92% of the bioscience researchers prefer as the top two choices the user interfaces in which the most important figures are enlarged. With our automatic figure ranking NLP system, bioscience researchers preferred the UIs in which the most important figures were predicted by our NLP system than the UIs in which the most important figures were randomly assigned. In addition, our results show that there was no statistical difference in bioscience researchers' preference in the UIs generated by automatic figure ranking and UIs by human ranking annotation. Conclusion/Significance The evaluation results conclude that automatic figure ranking and user interfacing as we reported in this study can be fully implemented in online publishing. The novel user interface integrated with the automatic figure ranking system provides a more efficient and robust way to access scientific information in the biomedical domain, which will further enhance our existing figure search engine to better facilitate accessing figures of interest for bioscientists. PMID:20949102

Barriers and Facilitators to Home Computer and Internet Use Among Urban Novice Computer Users of Low Socioeconomic Position

PubMed Central

Bennett, Gary G; Viswanath, K

2007-01-01

Background Despite the increasing penetration of the Internet and amount of online health information, there are significant barriers that limit its widespread adoption as a source of health information. One is the “digital divide,” with people of higher socioeconomic position (SEP) demonstrating greater access and usage compared to those from lower SEP groups. However, as the access gap narrows over time and more people use the Internet, a shift in research needs to occur to explore how one might improve Internet use as well as website design for a range of audiences. This is particularly important in the case of novice users who may not have the technical skills, experience, or social connections that could help them search for health information using the Internet. The focus of our research is to investigate the challenges in the implementation of a project to improve health information seeking among low SEP groups. The goal of the project is not to promote health information seeking as much as to understand the barriers and facilitators to computer and Internet use, beyond access, among members of lower SEP groups in an urban setting. Objective The purpose was to qualitatively describe participants’ self-identified barriers and facilitators to computer and Internet use during a 1-year pilot study as well as the challenges encountered by the research team in the delivery of the intervention. Methods Between August and November 2005, 12 low-SEP urban individuals with no or limited computer and Internet experience were recruited through a snowball sampling. Each participant received a free computer system, broadband Internet access, monthly computer training courses, and technical support for 1 year as the intervention condition. Upon completion of the study, participants were offered the opportunity to complete an in-depth semistructured interview. Interviews were approximately 1 hour in length and were conducted by the project director. The interviews were held in the participants’ homes and were tape recorded for accuracy. Nine of the 12 study participants completed the semistructured interviews. Members of the research team conducted a qualitative analysis based on the transcripts from the nine interviews using the crystallization/immersion method. Results Nine of the 12 participants completed the in-depth interview (75% overall response rate), with three men and six women agreeing to be interviewed. Major barriers to Internet use that were mentioned included time constraints and family conflict over computer usage. The monthly training classes and technical assistance components of the intervention surfaced as the most important facilitators to computer and Internet use. The concept of received social support from other study members, such as assistance with computer-related questions, also emerged as an important facilitator to overall computer usage. Conclusions This pilot study offers important insights into the self-identified barriers and facilitators in computer and Internet use among urban low-SEP novice users as well as the challenges faced by the research team in implementing the intervention. PMID:17951215

Capacity Building for the Access and Application of NASA Earth Science Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blevins, B.; Prados, A. I.; Hook, E.

2016-12-01

Since 2008, NASA's Applied Remote Sensing Training (ARSET) program has built capacity in applied remote sensing by building awareness, and enabling access and use of NASA Earth science data. To reach decision and policy makers from all sectors, ARSET hosts hands-on workshops and online webinars. With over 70 trainings, reaching more than 6,000 people from 130 countries and 1,600 organizations, ARSET has ample experience with assessing and meeting end-user needs. To meet the spectrum of needs and levels of attendee expertise, ARSET holds trainings for both the novice and experienced end-user. Trainings employ exercises, assignments, and live demonstrations of data access tools to reinforce remote sensing concepts and to facilitate data use and analysis techniques. This program is in a unique position to collect important feedback from thousands of participants each year through formal surveys and informal methods on NASA tools, portals, data formats, and the applications of Earth science data for end-user decision making activities. This information is shared with NASA data centers and program managers to help inform data portal development and to help prioritize the production of new satellite derived data products. This presentation will discuss the challenges that arise in capacity building trainings, the integration of community feedback into the training development cycle, and lessons learned throughout the process.

Standardized Access and Processing of Multi-Source Earth Observation Time-Series Data within a Regional Data Middleware

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eberle, J.; Schmullius, C.

2017-12-01

Increasing archives of global satellite data present a new challenge to handle multi-source satellite data in a user-friendly way. Any user is confronted with different data formats and data access services. In addition the handling of time-series data is complex as an automated processing and execution of data processing steps is needed to supply the user with the desired product for a specific area of interest. In order to simplify the access to data archives of various satellite missions and to facilitate the subsequent processing, a regional data and processing middleware has been developed. The aim of this system is to provide standardized and web-based interfaces to multi-source time-series data for individual regions on Earth. For further use and analysis uniform data formats and data access services are provided. Interfaces to data archives of the sensor MODIS (NASA) as well as the satellites Landsat (USGS) and Sentinel (ESA) have been integrated in the middleware. Various scientific algorithms, such as the calculation of trends and breakpoints of time-series data, can be carried out on the preprocessed data on the basis of uniform data management. Jupyter Notebooks are linked to the data and further processing can be conducted directly on the server using Python and the statistical language R. In addition to accessing EO data, the middleware is also used as an intermediary between the user and external databases (e.g., Flickr, YouTube). Standardized web services as specified by OGC are provided for all tools of the middleware. Currently, the use of cloud services is being researched to bring algorithms to the data. As a thematic example, an operational monitoring of vegetation phenology is being implemented on the basis of various optical satellite data and validation data from the German Weather Service. Other examples demonstrate the monitoring of wetlands focusing on automated discovery and access of Landsat and Sentinel data for local areas.

JUICE: a data management system that facilitates the analysis of large volumes of information in an EST project workflow.

PubMed

Latorre, Mariano; Silva, Herman; Saba, Juan; Guziolowski, Carito; Vizoso, Paula; Martinez, Veronica; Maldonado, Jonathan; Morales, Andrea; Caroca, Rodrigo; Cambiazo, Veronica; Campos-Vargas, Reinaldo; Gonzalez, Mauricio; Orellana, Ariel; Retamales, Julio; Meisel, Lee A

2006-11-23

Expressed sequence tag (EST) analyses provide a rapid and economical means to identify candidate genes that may be involved in a particular biological process. These ESTs are useful in many Functional Genomics studies. However, the large quantity and complexity of the data generated during an EST sequencing project can make the analysis of this information a daunting task. In an attempt to make this task friendlier, we have developed JUICE, an open source data management system (Apache + PHP + MySQL on Linux), which enables the user to easily upload, organize, visualize and search the different types of data generated in an EST project pipeline. In contrast to other systems, the JUICE data management system allows a branched pipeline to be established, modified and expanded, during the course of an EST project. The web interfaces and tools in JUICE enable the users to visualize the information in a graphical, user-friendly manner. The user may browse or search for sequences and/or sequence information within all the branches of the pipeline. The user can search using terms associated with the sequence name, annotation or other characteristics stored in JUICE and associated with sequences or sequence groups. Groups of sequences can be created by the user, stored in a clipboard and/or downloaded for further analyses. Different user profiles restrict the access of each user depending upon their role in the project. The user may have access exclusively to visualize sequence information, access to annotate sequences and sequence information, or administrative access. JUICE is an open source data management system that has been developed to aid users in organizing and analyzing the large amount of data generated in an EST Project workflow. JUICE has been used in one of the first functional genomics projects in Chile, entitled "Functional Genomics in nectarines: Platform to potentiate the competitiveness of Chile in fruit exportation". However, due to its ability to organize and visualize data from external pipelines, JUICE is a flexible data management system that should be useful for other EST/Genome projects. The JUICE data management system is released under the Open Source GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). JUICE may be downloaded from http://genoma.unab.cl/juice_system/ or http://www.genomavegetal.cl/juice_system/.

JUICE: a data management system that facilitates the analysis of large volumes of information in an EST project workflow

PubMed Central

Latorre, Mariano; Silva, Herman; Saba, Juan; Guziolowski, Carito; Vizoso, Paula; Martinez, Veronica; Maldonado, Jonathan; Morales, Andrea; Caroca, Rodrigo; Cambiazo, Veronica; Campos-Vargas, Reinaldo; Gonzalez, Mauricio; Orellana, Ariel; Retamales, Julio; Meisel, Lee A

2006-01-01

Background Expressed sequence tag (EST) analyses provide a rapid and economical means to identify candidate genes that may be involved in a particular biological process. These ESTs are useful in many Functional Genomics studies. However, the large quantity and complexity of the data generated during an EST sequencing project can make the analysis of this information a daunting task. Results In an attempt to make this task friendlier, we have developed JUICE, an open source data management system (Apache + PHP + MySQL on Linux), which enables the user to easily upload, organize, visualize and search the different types of data generated in an EST project pipeline. In contrast to other systems, the JUICE data management system allows a branched pipeline to be established, modified and expanded, during the course of an EST project. The web interfaces and tools in JUICE enable the users to visualize the information in a graphical, user-friendly manner. The user may browse or search for sequences and/or sequence information within all the branches of the pipeline. The user can search using terms associated with the sequence name, annotation or other characteristics stored in JUICE and associated with sequences or sequence groups. Groups of sequences can be created by the user, stored in a clipboard and/or downloaded for further analyses. Different user profiles restrict the access of each user depending upon their role in the project. The user may have access exclusively to visualize sequence information, access to annotate sequences and sequence information, or administrative access. Conclusion JUICE is an open source data management system that has been developed to aid users in organizing and analyzing the large amount of data generated in an EST Project workflow. JUICE has been used in one of the first functional genomics projects in Chile, entitled "Functional Genomics in nectarines: Platform to potentiate the competitiveness of Chile in fruit exportation". However, due to its ability to organize and visualize data from external pipelines, JUICE is a flexible data management system that should be useful for other EST/Genome projects. The JUICE data management system is released under the Open Source GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). JUICE may be downloaded from or . PMID:17123449

Toward a use case based classification of mobile health applications.

PubMed

Yasini, Mobin; Marchand, Guillaume

2015-01-01

Smartphones are growing in number and mobile health applications (apps) are becoming a commonly used way for improving the quality of health and healthcare delivery. Health related apps are mainly centralized in Medical and health&fitness categories in Google and Apple app stores. However, these apps are not easily accessible by the users. We decided to develop a system facilitating the access to these apps, to increase their visibility and usability. Various use cases for 567 health related apps in French were identified and listed incrementally. UML modeling was then used to represent these use cases and their relationships with each other and with the potential users of these apps. Thirty one different use cases were found that were then regrouped into six major categories: consulting medical information references, communicating and/or sharing the information, fulfilling a contextual need, educational tools, managing professional activities, health related management. A classification of this type would highlight the real purpose and functionalities of these apps and offers the user to search for the right app rapidly and to find it in a non-ambiguous context.

Contextual Compression of Large-Scale Wind Turbine Array Simulations: Preprint

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

Gruchalla, Kenny M; Brunhart-Lupo, Nicholas J; Potter, Kristin C

Data sizes are becoming a critical issue particularly for HPC applications. We have developed a user-driven lossy wavelet-based storage model to facilitate the analysis and visualization of large-scale wind turbine array simulations. The model stores data as heterogeneous blocks of wavelet coefficients, providing high-fidelity access to user-defined data regions believed the most salient, while providing lower-fidelity access to less salient regions on a block-by-block basis. In practice, by retaining the wavelet coefficients as a function of feature saliency, we have seen data reductions in excess of 94 percent, while retaining lossless information in the turbine-wake regions most critical to analysismore » and providing enough (low-fidelity) contextual information in the upper atmosphere to track incoming coherent turbulent structures. Our contextual wavelet compression approach has allowed us to deliver interactive visual analysis while providing the user control over where data loss, and thus reduction in accuracy, in the analysis occurs. We argue this reduced but contexualized representation is a valid approach and encourages contextual data management.« less

Contextual Compression of Large-Scale Wind Turbine Array Simulations

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

Gruchalla, Kenny M; Brunhart-Lupo, Nicholas J; Potter, Kristin C

Data sizes are becoming a critical issue particularly for HPC applications. We have developed a user-driven lossy wavelet-based storage model to facilitate the analysis and visualization of large-scale wind turbine array simulations. The model stores data as heterogeneous blocks of wavelet coefficients, providing high-fidelity access to user-defined data regions believed the most salient, while providing lower-fidelity access to less salient regions on a block-by-block basis. In practice, by retaining the wavelet coefficients as a function of feature saliency, we have seen data reductions in excess of 94 percent, while retaining lossless information in the turbine-wake regions most critical to analysismore » and providing enough (low-fidelity) contextual information in the upper atmosphere to track incoming coherent turbulent structures. Our contextual wavelet compression approach has allowed us to deliver interative visual analysis while providing the user control over where data loss, and thus reduction in accuracy, in the analysis occurs. We argue this reduced but contextualized representation is a valid approach and encourages contextual data management.« less

Website creation and resource management: developing collaborative strategies for asynchronous interaction with library users.

PubMed

Hopkins, Mark E; Summers-Ables, Joy E; Clifton, Shari C; Coffman, Michael A

2011-06-01

To make electronic resources available to library users while effectively harnessing intellectual capital within the library, ultimately fostering the library's use of technology to interact asynchronously with its patrons (users). The methods used in the project included: (1) developing a new library website to facilitate the creation, management, accessibility, maintenance and dissemination of library resources; and (2) establishing ownership by those who participated in the project, while creating effective work allocation strategies through the implementation of a content management system that allowed the library to manage cost, complexity and interoperability. Preliminary results indicate that contributors to the system benefit from an increased understanding of the library's resources and add content valuable to library patrons. These strategies have helped promote the manageable creation and maintenance of electronic content in accomplishing the library's goal of interacting with its patrons. Establishment of a contributive system for adding to the library's electronic resources and electronic content has been successful. Further work will look at improving asynchronous interaction, particularly highlighting accessibility of electronic content and resources. © 2010 The authors. Health Information and Libraries Journal © 2010 Health Libraries Group.

FEDIX: The on-line database retrieval service of government information for colleges, universities, and other organizations. User`s guide: Version 4.0/Release 2.0

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

Not Available

FEDIX is an on-line information service that links the higher education community and the federal government to facilitate research, education, and services. The system provides accurate and timely federal agency information to colleges, universities, and other research organizations. There are no registration fees and no access charges for using FEDIX. Agencies participating in the FEDIX system include: Department of Energy (DOE), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), National Science Foundation (NSF), National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Commerce (DOC), Department of Education (DOEd), Departmentmore » of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Agency for International Development (AID). Additional government agencies are expected to join FEDIX in the near future. This guide is intended to help users access and utilize the FEDIX system. Because the system is frequently updated, however, some menus and tables used as examples in this text may not exactly match those displayed on the live system.« less

HDF4 Maps: For Now and For the Future

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Plutchak, J.; Aydt, R.; Folk, M. J.

2013-12-01

Data formats and access tools necessarily change as technology improves to address emerging requirements with new capabilities. This on-going process inevitably leaves behind significant data collections in legacy formats that are difficult to support and sustain. NASA ESDIS and The HDF Group currently face this problem with large and growing archives of data in HDF4, an older version of the HDF format. Indefinitely guaranteeing the ability to read these data with multi-platform libraries in many languages is very difficult. As an alternative, HDF and NASA worked together to create maps of the files that contain metadata and information about data types, locations, and sizes of data objects in the files. These maps are written in XML and have successfully been used to access and understand data in HDF4 files without the HDF libraries. While originally developed to support sustainable access to these data, these maps can also be used to provide access to HDF4 metadata, facilitate user understanding of files prior to download, and validate the files for compliance with particular conventions. These capabilities are now available as a service for HDF4 archives and users.

Brokered virtual hubs for facilitating access and use of geospatial Open Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mazzetti, Paolo; Latre, Miguel; Kamali, Nargess; Brumana, Raffaella; Braumann, Stefan; Nativi, Stefano

2016-04-01

Open Data is a major trend in current information technology scenario and it is often publicised as one of the pillars of the information society in the near future. In particular, geospatial Open Data have a huge potential also for Earth Sciences, through the enablement of innovative applications and services integrating heterogeneous information. However, open does not mean usable. As it was recognized at the very beginning of the Web revolution, many different degrees of openness exist: from simple sharing in a proprietary format to advanced sharing in standard formats and including semantic information. Therefore, to fully unleash the potential of geospatial Open Data, advanced infrastructures are needed to increase the data openness degree, enhancing their usability. In October 2014, the ENERGIC OD (European NEtwork for Redistributing Geospatial Information to user Communities - Open Data) project, funded by the European Union under the Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme (CIP), has started. In response to the EU call, the general objective of the project is to "facilitate the use of open (freely available) geographic data from different sources for the creation of innovative applications and services through the creation of Virtual Hubs". The ENERGIC OD Virtual Hubs aim to facilitate the use of geospatial Open Data by lowering and possibly removing the main barriers which hampers geo-information (GI) usage by end-users and application developers. Data and services heterogeneity is recognized as one of the major barriers to Open Data (re-)use. It imposes end-users and developers to spend a lot of effort in accessing different infrastructures and harmonizing datasets. Such heterogeneity cannot be completely removed through the adoption of standard specifications for service interfaces, metadata and data models, since different infrastructures adopt different standards to answer to specific challenges and to address specific use-cases. Thus, beyond a certain extent, heterogeneity is irreducible especially in interdisciplinary contexts. ENERGIC OD Virtual Hubs address heterogeneity adopting a mediation and brokering approach: specific components (brokers) are dedicated to harmonize service interfaces, metadata and data models, enabling seamless discovery and access to heterogeneous infrastructures and datasets. As an innovation project, ENERGIC OD integrates several existing technologies to implement Virtual Hubs as single points of access to geospatial datasets provided by new or existing platforms and infrastructures, including INSPIRE-compliant systems and Copernicus services. A first version of the ENERGIC OD brokers has been implemented based on the GI-Suite Brokering Framework developed by CNR-IIA, and complemented with other tools under integration and development. It already enables mediated discovery and harmonized access to different geospatial Open Data sources. It is accessible by users as Software-as-a-Service through a browser. Moreover, open APIs and a Javascript library are available for application developers. Six ENERGIC OD Virtual Hubs have been currently deployed: one at regional level (Berlin metropolitan area) and five at national-level (in France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain). Each Virtual Hub manager decided the deployment strategy (local infrastructure or commercial Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud), and the list of connected Open Data sources. The ENERGIC OD Virtual Hubs are under test and validation through the development of ten different mobile and Web applications.

Reconfigurable Mobile System - Ground, sea and air applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lamonica, Gary L.; Sturges, James W.

1990-11-01

The Reconfigurable Mobile System (RMS) is a highly mobile data-processing unit for military users requiring real-time access to data gathered by airborne (and other) reconnaissance data. RMS combines high-performance computation and image processing workstations with resources for command/control/communications in a single, lightweight shelter. RMS is composed of off-the-shelf components, and is easily reconfigurable to land-vehicle or shipboard versions. Mission planning, which involves an airborne sensor platform's sensor coverage, considered aircraft/sensor capabilities in conjunction with weather, terrain, and threat scenarios. RMS's man-machine interface concept facilitates user familiarization and features iron-based function selection and windowing.

DDBJ read annotation pipeline: a cloud computing-based pipeline for high-throughput analysis of next-generation sequencing data.

PubMed

Nagasaki, Hideki; Mochizuki, Takako; Kodama, Yuichi; Saruhashi, Satoshi; Morizaki, Shota; Sugawara, Hideaki; Ohyanagi, Hajime; Kurata, Nori; Okubo, Kousaku; Takagi, Toshihisa; Kaminuma, Eli; Nakamura, Yasukazu

2013-08-01

High-performance next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies are advancing genomics and molecular biological research. However, the immense amount of sequence data requires computational skills and suitable hardware resources that are a challenge to molecular biologists. The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) of the National Institute of Genetics (NIG) has initiated a cloud computing-based analytical pipeline, the DDBJ Read Annotation Pipeline (DDBJ Pipeline), for a high-throughput annotation of NGS reads. The DDBJ Pipeline offers a user-friendly graphical web interface and processes massive NGS datasets using decentralized processing by NIG supercomputers currently free of charge. The proposed pipeline consists of two analysis components: basic analysis for reference genome mapping and de novo assembly and subsequent high-level analysis of structural and functional annotations. Users may smoothly switch between the two components in the pipeline, facilitating web-based operations on a supercomputer for high-throughput data analysis. Moreover, public NGS reads of the DDBJ Sequence Read Archive located on the same supercomputer can be imported into the pipeline through the input of only an accession number. This proposed pipeline will facilitate research by utilizing unified analytical workflows applied to the NGS data. The DDBJ Pipeline is accessible at http://p.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/.

University of Wisconsin Ion Beam Laboratory: A facility for irradiated materials and ion beam analysis

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

Field, K. G.; Wetteland, C. J.; Cao, G.

2013-04-19

The University of Wisconsin Ion Beam Laboratory (UW-IBL) has recently undergone significant infrastructure upgrades to facilitate graduate level research in irradiated materials phenomena and ion beam analysis. A National Electrostatics Corp. (NEC) Torodial Volume Ion Source (TORVIS), the keystone upgrade for the facility, can produce currents of hydrogen ions and helium ions up to {approx}200 {mu}A and {approx}5 {mu}A, respectively. Recent upgrades also include RBS analysis packages, end station developments for irradiation of relevant material systems, and the development of an in-house touch screen based graphical user interface for ion beam monitoring. Key research facilitated by these upgrades includes irradiationmore » of nuclear fuels, studies of interfacial phenomena under irradiation, and clustering dynamics of irradiated oxide dispersion strengthened steels. The UW-IBL has also partnered with the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR-NSUF) to provide access to the irradiation facilities housed at the UW-IBL as well as access to post irradiation facilities housed at the UW Characterization Laboratory for Irradiated Materials (CLIM) and other ATR-NSUF partner facilities. Partnering allows for rapid turnaround from proposed research to finalized results through the ATR-NSUF rapid turnaround proposal system. An overview of the UW-IBL including CLIM and relevant research is summarized.« less

DDBJ Read Annotation Pipeline: A Cloud Computing-Based Pipeline for High-Throughput Analysis of Next-Generation Sequencing Data

PubMed Central

Nagasaki, Hideki; Mochizuki, Takako; Kodama, Yuichi; Saruhashi, Satoshi; Morizaki, Shota; Sugawara, Hideaki; Ohyanagi, Hajime; Kurata, Nori; Okubo, Kousaku; Takagi, Toshihisa; Kaminuma, Eli; Nakamura, Yasukazu

2013-01-01

High-performance next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies are advancing genomics and molecular biological research. However, the immense amount of sequence data requires computational skills and suitable hardware resources that are a challenge to molecular biologists. The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) of the National Institute of Genetics (NIG) has initiated a cloud computing-based analytical pipeline, the DDBJ Read Annotation Pipeline (DDBJ Pipeline), for a high-throughput annotation of NGS reads. The DDBJ Pipeline offers a user-friendly graphical web interface and processes massive NGS datasets using decentralized processing by NIG supercomputers currently free of charge. The proposed pipeline consists of two analysis components: basic analysis for reference genome mapping and de novo assembly and subsequent high-level analysis of structural and functional annotations. Users may smoothly switch between the two components in the pipeline, facilitating web-based operations on a supercomputer for high-throughput data analysis. Moreover, public NGS reads of the DDBJ Sequence Read Archive located on the same supercomputer can be imported into the pipeline through the input of only an accession number. This proposed pipeline will facilitate research by utilizing unified analytical workflows applied to the NGS data. The DDBJ Pipeline is accessible at http://p.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/. PMID:23657089

Service user perspectives on the experience of illness and pathway to care in first-episode psychosis: a qualitative study within the TOP project.

PubMed

Jansen, Jens Einar; Wøldike, Peter Michael; Haahr, Ulrik Helt; Simonsen, Erik

2015-03-01

Delays in initiating treatment are associated with poor clinical and functional outcomes, yet there remains unclarity as to what facilitates and what acts as barriers to accessing appropriate support for first-episode psychosis. To explore this we examined service users' views of their illness trajectory and help-seeking behavior. To describe service-users' experiences with and understanding of their illness and pathway to care, including their need for treatment, the role of their relatives and experience with the treatment service. In-depth interviews were conducted with eleven randomly selected service users (median age 20, range 15-24, 6 males, 5 females) diagnosed with a first-episode psychosis and currently enrolled in treatment for this disorder. Fear of stigma, lack of knowledge about mental illness and normalisation of symptoms were barriers to accessing appropriate treatment, while support from significant others and information accessed by internet were reported as important elements in seeking appropriate treatment. The findings regarding barriers to treatment are in accordance with themes found in earlier studies and serve to validate these. Our study highlights the need to include psychological factors such as normalisation of symptoms and fear of stigma when attempting to reduce DUP in early psychosis, in addition to initiatives to reduce service delays. Also, a greater use of the potentials inherent in Internet and social media platforms seems important in this regard.

Data You May Like: A Recommender System for Research Data Discovery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Devaraju, A.; Davy, R.; Hogan, D.

2016-12-01

Various data portals been developed to facilitate access to research datasets from different sources. For example, the Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science (PANGAEA), the Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data.org), and the National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC). Due to data quantity and heterogeneity, finding relevant datasets on these portals may be difficult and tedious. Keyword searches based on specific metadata elements or multi-key indexes may return irrelevant results. Faceted searches may be unsatisfactory and time consuming, especially when facet values are exhaustive. We need a much more intelligent way to complement existing searching mechanisms in order to enhance user experiences of the data portals. We developed a recommender system that helps users to find the most relevant research datasets on the CSIRO's Data Access Portal (DAP). The system is based on content-based filtering. We computed the similarity of datasets based on data attributes (e.g., descriptions, fields of research, location, contributors, and provenance) and inference from transaction logs (e.g., the relations among datasets and between queries and datasets). We improved the recommendation quality by assigning weights to data similarities. The weight values are drawn from a survey involving data users. The recommender results for a given dataset are accessible programmatically via a web service. Taking both data attributes and user actions into account, the recommender system will make it easier for researchers to find and reuse data offered through the data portal.

Data access and decision tools for coastal water resources ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

US EPA has supported the development of numerous models and tools to support implementation of environmental regulations. However, transfer of knowledge and methods from detailed technical models to support practical problem solving by local communities and watershed or coastal management organizations remains a challenge. We have developed the Estuary Data Mapper (EDM) to facilitate data discovery, visualization and access to support environmental problem solving for coastal watersheds and estuaries. EDM is a stand-alone application based on open-source software which requires only internet access for operation. Initially, development of EDM focused on delivery of raw data streams from distributed web services, ranging from atmospheric deposition to hydrologic, tidal, and water quality time series, estuarine habitat characteristics, and remote sensing products. We have transitioned to include access to value-added products which provide end-users with results of future scenario analysis, facilitate extension of models across geographic regions, and/or promote model interoperability. Here we present three examples: 1) the delivery of input data for the development of seagrass models across estuaries, 2) scenarios illustrating the implications of riparian buffer management (loss or restoration) for stream thermal regimes and fish communities, and 3) access to hydrology model outputs to foster connections across models at different scales, ultimately feeding

Perceived Drug Use Functions and Risk Reduction Practices Among High-Risk Nonmedical Users of Prescription Drugs

PubMed Central

Silva, Karol; Kecojevic, Aleksandar; Lankenau, Stephen E.

2014-01-01

Nonmedical use of prescription drugs has become the fastest growing drug problem in the United States, particularly among young adults. This study examines the reasons young polydrug users misuse prescription drugs, and explores how young users employ risk reduction strategies to minimize adverse consequences. The sample was recruited during 2008 and 2009 in Los Angeles and New York, and comprised 45 nonmedical users of prescription drugs, aged 16 to 25. Data from a semistructured interview were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Participants reported nonmedical use of prescription drugs to change mood, to facilitate activity, and to monitor the intake of other substances. Commonly employed risk reduction strategies included calculating pill timing, dosage, and access, and monitoring frequency of use, particularly when combining different substances. Most study participants often planned drug use to occur within socially acceptable parameters, such that prescription drug misuse was a normalized feature of their everyday lives. PMID:25477621

Integrated Web-Based Access to and use of Satellite Remote Sensing Data for Improved Decision Making in Hydrologic Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Teng, W.; Chiu, L.; Kempler, S.; Liu, Z.; Nadeau, D.; Rui, H.

2006-12-01

Using NASA satellite remote sensing data from multiple sources for hydrologic applications can be a daunting task and requires a detailed understanding of the data's internal structure and physical implementation. Gaining this understanding and applying it to data reduction is a time-consuming task that must be undertaken before the core investigation can begin. In order to facilitate such investigations, the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) has developed the GES-DISC Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure or "Giovanni," which supports a family of Web interfaces (instances) that allow users to perform interactive visualization and analysis online without downloading any data. Two such Giovanni instances are particularly relevant to hydrologic applications: the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Online Visualization and Analysis System (TOVAS) and the Agricultural Online Visualization and Analysis System (AOVAS), both highly popular and widely used for a variety of applications, including those related to several NASA Applications of National Priority, such as Agricultural Efficiency, Disaster Management, Ecological Forecasting, Homeland Security, and Public Health. Dynamic, context- sensitive Web services provided by TOVAS and AOVAS enable users to seamlessly access NASA data from within, and deeply integrate the data into, their local client environments. One example is between TOVAS and Florida International University's TerraFly, a Web-enabled system that serves a broad segment of the research and applications community, by facilitating access to various textual, remotely sensed, and vector data. Another example is between AOVAS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA FAS)'s Crop Explorer, the primary decision support tool used by FAS to monitor the production, supply, and demand of agricultural commodities worldwide. AOVAS is also part of GES DISC's Agricultural Information System (AIS), which can operationally provide satellite remote sensing data products (e.g., near- real-time rainfall) and analysis services to agricultural users. AIS enables the remote, interoperable access to distributed data, by using the GrADS-Data Server (GDS) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)- compliant MapServer. The latter allows the access of AIS data from any OGC-compliant client, such as the Earth-Sun System Gateway (ESG) or Google Earth. The Giovanni system is evolving towards a Service- Oriented Architecture and is highly customizable (e.g., adding new products or services), thus availing the hydrologic applications user community of Giovanni's simple-to-use and powerful capabilities to improve decision-making.

Non-visual Web Browsing: Beyond Web Accessibility

PubMed Central

Ramakrishnan, I.V.; Ashok, Vikas

2017-01-01

People with vision impairments typically use screen readers to browse the Web. To facilitate non-visual browsing, web sites must be made accessible to screen readers, i.e., all the visible elements in the web site must be readable by the screen reader. But even if web sites are accessible, screen-reader users may not find them easy to use and/or easy to navigate. For example, they may not be able to locate the desired information without having to listen to a lot of irrelevant contents. These issues go beyond web accessibility and directly impact web usability. Several techniques have been reported in the accessibility literature for making the Web usable for screen reading. This paper is a review of these techniques. Interestingly, the review reveals that understanding the semantics of the web content is the overarching theme that drives these techniques for improving web usability. PMID:29202137

Non-visual Web Browsing: Beyond Web Accessibility.

PubMed

Ramakrishnan, I V; Ashok, Vikas; Billah, Syed Masum

2017-07-01

People with vision impairments typically use screen readers to browse the Web. To facilitate non-visual browsing, web sites must be made accessible to screen readers, i.e., all the visible elements in the web site must be readable by the screen reader. But even if web sites are accessible, screen-reader users may not find them easy to use and/or easy to navigate. For example, they may not be able to locate the desired information without having to listen to a lot of irrelevant contents. These issues go beyond web accessibility and directly impact web usability. Several techniques have been reported in the accessibility literature for making the Web usable for screen reading. This paper is a review of these techniques. Interestingly, the review reveals that understanding the semantics of the web content is the overarching theme that drives these techniques for improving web usability.

A graphical user interface for RAId, a knowledge integrated proteomics analysis suite with accurate statistics.

PubMed

Joyce, Brendan; Lee, Danny; Rubio, Alex; Ogurtsov, Aleksey; Alves, Gelio; Yu, Yi-Kuo

2018-03-15

RAId is a software package that has been actively developed for the past 10 years for computationally and visually analyzing MS/MS data. Founded on rigorous statistical methods, RAId's core program computes accurate E-values for peptides and proteins identified during database searches. Making this robust tool readily accessible for the proteomics community by developing a graphical user interface (GUI) is our main goal here. We have constructed a graphical user interface to facilitate the use of RAId on users' local machines. Written in Java, RAId_GUI not only makes easy executions of RAId but also provides tools for data/spectra visualization, MS-product analysis, molecular isotopic distribution analysis, and graphing the retrieval versus the proportion of false discoveries. The results viewer displays and allows the users to download the analyses results. Both the knowledge-integrated organismal databases and the code package (containing source code, the graphical user interface, and a user manual) are available for download at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Yu/downloads/raid.html .

RUASN: a robust user authentication framework for wireless sensor networks.

PubMed

Kumar, Pardeep; Choudhury, Amlan Jyoti; Sain, Mangal; Lee, Sang-Gon; Lee, Hoon-Jae

2011-01-01

In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been considered as a potential solution for real-time monitoring applications and these WSNs have potential practical impact on next generation technology too. However, WSNs could become a threat if suitable security is not considered before the deployment and if there are any loopholes in their security, which might open the door for an attacker and hence, endanger the application. User authentication is one of the most important security services to protect WSN data access from unauthorized users; it should provide both mutual authentication and session key establishment services. This paper proposes a robust user authentication framework for wireless sensor networks, based on a two-factor (password and smart card) concept. This scheme facilitates many services to the users such as user anonymity, mutual authentication, secure session key establishment and it allows users to choose/update their password regularly, whenever needed. Furthermore, we have provided the formal verification using Rubin logic and compare RUASN with many existing schemes. As a result, we found that the proposed scheme possesses many advantages against popular attacks, and achieves better efficiency at low computation cost.

Practices in NASA's EOSDIS to Promote Open Data and Research Integrity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Behnke, J.; Ramapriyan, H.

2017-12-01

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the key practices adopted by NASA in its Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) to promote and facilitate open data and research integrity. EOSDIS is the system that manages most of NASA's Earth science data from various sources - satellites, aircraft, field campaigns and some research projects. Since its inception in 1990 as a part of the Earth Observing System (EOS) Program, EOSDIS has been following NASA's free and open data and information policy, whereby data are shared with all users on a non-discriminatory basis and are provided at no cost. To ensure that the data are discoverable and accessible to the user community, NASA follows an evolutionary development approach, whereby the latest technologies that can be practically adopted are infused into EOSDIS. This results in continuous improvements in system capabilities such that technologies that users are accustomed to in other environments are brought to bear in their access to NASA's Earth observation data. Mechanisms have existed for ensuring that the data products offered by EOSDIS are vetted by the community before they are released. Information about data products such as Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents and quality assessments are openly available with the products. The EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) work with the science teams responsible for product generation to assist with proper use of metadata. The DAACs have knowledgeable staff to answer users' questions and have access to scientific experts as needed. Citation of data products in scientific papers are facilitated by assignment of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) - at present, over 50% of data products in EOSDIS have been assigned DOIs. NASA gathers and publishes citation metrics for the datasets offered by the DAACs. Through its Software and Services Citations Working Group, NASA is currently investigating broadening DOI assignments to promote greater provenance traceability. NASA has developed Preservation Content Specifications for Earth science data to ensure that provenance and context are captured and preserved for the future and is applying them to data and information from its missions. All these actions promote availability of information to promote integrity in scientific research.

DE-FG02-04ER25606 Identity Federation and Policy Management Guide: Final Report

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

Humphrey, Marty, A

The goal of this 3-year project was to facilitate a more productive dynamic matching between resource providers and resource consumers in Grid environments by explicitly specifying policies. There were broadly two problems being addressed by this project. First, there was a lack of an Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA)-compliant mechanism for expressing, storing and retrieving user policies and Virtual Organization (VO) policies. Second, there was a lack of tools to resolve and enforce policies in the Open Services Grid Architecture. To address these problems, our overall approach in this project was to make all policies explicit (e.g., virtual organization policies,more » resource provider policies, resource consumer policies), thereby facilitating policy matching and policy negotiation. Policies defined on a per-user basis were created, held, and updated in MyPolMan, thereby providing a Grid user to centralize (where appropriate) and manage his/her policies. Organizationally, the corresponding service was VOPolMan, in which the policies of the Virtual Organization are expressed, managed, and dynamically consulted. Overall, we successfully defined, prototyped, and evaluated policy-based resource management and access control for OGSA-based Grids. This DOE project partially supported 17 peer-reviewed publications on a number of different topics: General security for Grids, credential management, Web services/OGSA/OGSI, policy-based grid authorization (for remote execution and for access to information), policy-directed Grid data movement/placement, policies for large-scale virtual organizations, and large-scale policy-aware grid architectures. In addition to supporting the PI, this project partially supported the training of 5 PhD students.« less

Selecting the Best Mobile Information Service with Natural Language User Input

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feng, Qiangze; Qi, Hongwei; Fukushima, Toshikazu

Information services accessed via mobile phones provide information directly relevant to subscribers’ daily lives and are an area of dynamic market growth worldwide. Although many information services are currently offered by mobile operators, many of the existing solutions require a unique gateway for each service, and it is inconvenient for users to have to remember a large number of such gateways. Furthermore, the Short Message Service (SMS) is very popular in China and Chinese users would prefer to access these services in natural language via SMS. This chapter describes a Natural Language Based Service Selection System (NL3S) for use with a large number of mobile information services. The system can accept user queries in natural language and navigate it to the required service. Since it is difficult for existing methods to achieve high accuracy and high coverage and anticipate which other services a user might want to query, the NL3S is developed based on a Multi-service Ontology (MO) and Multi-service Query Language (MQL). The MO and MQL provide semantic and linguistic knowledge, respectively, to facilitate service selection for a user query and to provide adaptive service recommendations. Experiments show that the NL3S can achieve 75-95% accuracies and 85-95% satisfactions for processing various styles of natural language queries. A trial involving navigation of 30 different mobile services shows that the NL3S can provide a viable commercial solution for mobile operators.

GrowYourIC: an open access Python code to facilitate comparison between kinematic models of inner core evolution and seismic observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lasbleis, M.; Day, E. A.; Waszek, L.

2017-12-01

The complex nature of inner core structure has been well-established from seismic studies, with heterogeneities at various length scales, both radially and laterally. Despite this, no geodynamic model has successfully explained all of the observed seismic features. To facilitate comparisons between seismic observations and geodynamic models of inner core growth we have developed a new, open access Python tool - GrowYourIC - that allows users to compare models of inner core structure. The code allows users to simulate different evolution models of the inner core, with user-defined rates of inner core growth, translation and rotation. Once the user has "grown" an inner core with their preferred parameters they can then explore the effect of "their" inner core's evolution on the relative age and growth rate in different regions of the inner core. The code will convert these parameters into seismic properties using either built-in mineral physics models, or user-supplied ones that calculate these seismic properties with users' own preferred mineralogical models. The 3D model of isotropic inner core properties can then be used to calculate the predicted seismic travel time anomalies for a random, or user-specified, set of seismic ray paths through the inner core. A real dataset of inner core body-wave differential travel times is included for the purpose of comparing user-generated models of inner core growth to actual observed travel time anomalies in the top 100km of the inner core. Here, we explore some of the possibilities of our code. We investigate the effect of the limited illumination of the inner core by seismic waves on the robustness of kinematic model interpretation. We test the impact on seismic differential travel time observations of several kinematic models of inner core growth: fast lateral translation; slow differential growth; and inner core super-rotation. We find that a model of inner core evolution incorporating both differential growth and slow super-rotation is able to recreate some of the more intricate details of the seismic observations. Specifically we are able to "grow" an inner core that has an asymmetric shift in isotropic hemisphere boundaries with increasing depth in the inner core.

Raising Virtual Laboratories in Australia onto global platforms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wyborn, L. A.; Barker, M.; Fraser, R.; Evans, B. J. K.; Moloney, G.; Proctor, R.; Moise, A. F.; Hamish, H.

2016-12-01

Across the globe, Virtual Laboratories (VLs), Science Gateways (SGs), and Virtual Research Environments (VREs) are being developed that enable users who are not co-located to actively work together at various scales to share data, models, tools, software, workflows, best practices, etc. Outcomes range from enabling `long tail' researchers to more easily access specific data collections, to facilitating complex workflows on powerful supercomputers. In Australia, government funding has facilitated the development of a range of VLs through the National eResearch Collaborative Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) program. The VLs provide highly collaborative, research-domain oriented, integrated software infrastructures that meet user community needs. Twelve VLs have been funded since 2012, including the Virtual Geophysics Laboratory (VGL); Virtual Hazards, Impact and Risk Laboratory (VHIRL); Climate and Weather Science Laboratory (CWSLab); Marine Virtual Laboratory (MarVL); and Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL). These VLs share similar technical challenges, with common issues emerging on integration of tools, applications and access data collections via both cloud-based environments and other distributed resources. While each VL began with a focus on a specific research domain, communities of practice have now formed across the VLs around common issues, and facilitate identification of best practice case studies, and new standards. As a result, tools are now being shared where the VLs access data via data services using international standards such as ISO, OGC, W3C. The sharing of these approaches is starting to facilitate re-usability of infrastructure and is a step towards supporting interdisciplinary research. Whilst the focus of the VLs are Australia-centric, by using standards, these environments are able to be extended to analysis on other international datasets. Many VL datasets are subsets of global datasets and so extension to global is a small (and often requested) step. Similarly, most of the tools, software, and other technologies could be shared across infrastructures globally. Therefore, it is now time to better connect the Australian VLs with similar initiatives elsewhere to create international platforms that can contribute to global research challenges.

Developing a long-term condition's information service in collaboration with third sector organisations.

PubMed

McShane, Lesley; Greenwell, Kate; Corbett, Sally; Walker, Richard

2014-06-01

People with long-term conditions need to be signposted to high quality information and advice to understand and manage their condition. Information seeking tools combined with third sector information could help address their information needs. To describe the development and implementation of an information service for people living with long-term conditions at one NHS acute trust in the Northeast of England. An information service was trialled using bespoke information models for three long-term conditions in collaboration with third sector organisations. These guided people to relevant, timely and reliable information. Both clinician and service user questionnaires were used to evaluate satisfaction with the service. Appropriately designed information models can be used interchangeably across all services. Between 75% and 91% of users agreed that they were satisfied with various aspects of the service. Generally, users received relevant, understandable and high quality information at the right time. Nearly all health professionals (94-100%) felt the service was accessible, provided high quality information and did not significantly impact on their consultation time. The developed information service was well received by service users and health professionals. Specifically, the use of information prescriptions and menus facilitated access to information for people with long-term conditions. © 2014 The authors. Health Information and Libraries Journal © 2014 Health Libraries Group.

ZeBase: an open-source relational database for zebrafish laboratories.

PubMed

Hensley, Monica R; Hassenplug, Eric; McPhail, Rodney; Leung, Yuk Fai

2012-03-01

Abstract ZeBase is an open-source relational database for zebrafish inventory. It is designed for the recording of genetic, breeding, and survival information of fish lines maintained in a single- or multi-laboratory environment. Users can easily access ZeBase through standard web-browsers anywhere on a network. Convenient search and reporting functions are available to facilitate routine inventory work; such functions can also be automated by simple scripting. Optional barcode generation and scanning are also built-in for easy access to the information related to any fish. Further information of the database and an example implementation can be found at http://zebase.bio.purdue.edu.

ClimatePipes: User-Friendly Data Access, Manipulation, Analysis & Visualization of Community Climate Models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chaudhary, A.; DeMarle, D.; Burnett, B.; Harris, C.; Silva, W.; Osmari, D.; Geveci, B.; Silva, C.; Doutriaux, C.; Williams, D. N.

2013-12-01

The impact of climate change will resonate through a broad range of fields including public health, infrastructure, water resources, and many others. Long-term coordinated planning, funding, and action are required for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Unfortunately, widespread use of climate data (simulated and observed) in non-climate science communities is impeded by factors such as large data size, lack of adequate metadata, poor documentation, and lack of sufficient computational and visualization resources. We present ClimatePipes to address many of these challenges by creating an open source platform that provides state-of-the-art, user-friendly data access, analysis, and visualization for climate and other relevant geospatial datasets, making the climate data available to non-researchers, decision-makers, and other stakeholders. The overarching goals of ClimatePipes are: - Enable users to explore real-world questions related to climate change. - Provide tools for data access, analysis, and visualization. - Facilitate collaboration by enabling users to share datasets, workflows, and visualization. ClimatePipes uses a web-based application platform for its widespread support on mainstream operating systems, ease-of-use, and inherent collaboration support. The front-end of ClimatePipes uses HTML5 (WebGL, Canvas2D, CSS3) to deliver state-of-the-art visualization and to provide a best-in-class user experience. The back-end of the ClimatePipes is built around Python using the Visualization Toolkit (VTK, http://vtk.org), Climate Data Analysis Tools (CDAT, http://uv-cdat.llnl.gov), and other climate and geospatial data processing tools such as GDAL and PROJ4. ClimatePipes web-interface to query and access data from remote sources (such as ESGF). Shown in the figure is climate data layer from ESGF on top of map data layer from OpenStreetMap. The ClimatePipes workflow editor provides flexibility and fine grained control, and uses the VisTrails (http://www.vistrails.org) workflow engine in the backend.

Public service user terminus study compendium of terminus equipment

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1979-01-01

General descriptions and specifications are given for equipments which facilitate satellite and terrestrial communications delivery by acting as interfaces between a human, mechanical, or electrical information generator (or source) and the communication system. Manufactures and suppliers are given as well as the purchase, service, or lease costs of various products listed under the following cateories: voice/telephony/facsimile equipment; data/graphics terminals; full motion and processes video equipment; and multiple access equipment.

Collaborative Information Agents on the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, James R.; Mathe, Nathalie; Wolfe, Shawn; Koga, Dennis J. (Technical Monitor)

1998-01-01

In this paper, we present DIAMS, a system of distributed, collaborative information agents which help users access, collect, organize, and exchange information on the World Wide Web. Personal agents provide their owners dynamic displays of well organized information collections, as well as friendly information management utilities. Personal agents exchange information with one another. They also work with other types of information agents such as matchmakers and knowledge experts to facilitate collaboration and communication.

Explore, Visualize, and Analyze Functional Cancer Proteomic Data Using the Cancer Proteome Atlas. | Office of Cancer Genomics

Cancer.gov

Reverse-phase protein arrays (RPPA) represent a powerful functional proteomic approach to elucidate cancer-related molecular mechanisms and to develop novel cancer therapies. To facilitate community-based investigation of the large-scale protein expression data generated by this platform, we have developed a user-friendly, open-access bioinformatic resource, The Cancer Proteome Atlas (TCPA, http://tcpaportal.org), which contains two separate web applications.

MetaNET--a web-accessible interactive platform for biological metabolic network analysis.

PubMed

Narang, Pankaj; Khan, Shawez; Hemrom, Anmol Jaywant; Lynn, Andrew Michael

2014-01-01

Metabolic reactions have been extensively studied and compiled over the last century. These have provided a theoretical base to implement models, simulations of which are used to identify drug targets and optimize metabolic throughput at a systemic level. While tools for the perturbation of metabolic networks are available, their applications are limited and restricted as they require varied dependencies and often a commercial platform for full functionality. We have developed MetaNET, an open source user-friendly platform-independent and web-accessible resource consisting of several pre-defined workflows for metabolic network analysis. MetaNET is a web-accessible platform that incorporates a range of functions which can be combined to produce different simulations related to metabolic networks. These include (i) optimization of an objective function for wild type strain, gene/catalyst/reaction knock-out/knock-down analysis using flux balance analysis. (ii) flux variability analysis (iii) chemical species participation (iv) cycles and extreme paths identification and (v) choke point reaction analysis to facilitate identification of potential drug targets. The platform is built using custom scripts along with the open-source Galaxy workflow and Systems Biology Research Tool as components. Pre-defined workflows are available for common processes, and an exhaustive list of over 50 functions are provided for user defined workflows. MetaNET, available at http://metanet.osdd.net , provides a user-friendly rich interface allowing the analysis of genome-scale metabolic networks under various genetic and environmental conditions. The framework permits the storage of previous results, the ability to repeat analysis and share results with other users over the internet as well as run different tools simultaneously using pre-defined workflows, and user-created custom workflows.

An enhanced archive facilitating climate impacts analysis

USGS Publications Warehouse

Maurer, E.P.; Brekke, L.; Pruitt, T.; Thrasher, B.; Long, J.; Duffy, P.; Dettinger, M.; Cayan, D.; Arnold, J.

2014-01-01

We describe the expansion of a publicly available archive of downscaled climate and hydrology projections for the United States. Those studying or planning to adapt to future climate impacts demand downscaled climate model output for local or regional use. The archive we describe attempts to fulfill this need by providing data in several formats, selectable to meet user needs. Our archive has served as a resource for climate impacts modelers, water managers, educators, and others. Over 1,400 individuals have transferred more than 50 TB of data from the archive. In response to user demands, the archive has expanded from monthly downscaled data to include daily data to facilitate investigations of phenomena sensitive to daily to monthly temperature and precipitation, including extremes in these quantities. New developments include downscaled output from the new Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) climate model simulations at both the monthly and daily time scales, as well as simulations of surface hydrologi- cal variables. The web interface allows the extraction of individual projections or ensemble statistics for user-defined regions, promoting the rapid assessment of model consensus and uncertainty for future projections of precipitation, temperature, and hydrology. The archive is accessible online (http://gdo-dcp.ucllnl.org/downscaled_ cmip_projections).

Developing Toolsets for AirBorne Data (TAD): Overview of Design Concept

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Parker, L.; Perez, J.; Chen, G.; Benson, A.; Peeters, M. C.

2013-12-01

NASA has conducted airborne tropospheric chemistry studies for about three decades. These field campaigns have generated a great wealth of observations, including a wide range of the trace gases and aerosol properties. Even though the spatial and temporal coverage is limited, the aircraft data offer high resolution and comprehensive simultaneous coverage of many variables, e.g. ozone precursors, intermediate photochemical species, and photochemical products. The recent NASA Earth Venture Program has generated an unprecedented amount of aircraft observations in terms of the sheer number of measurements and data volume. The ASDC Toolset for Airborne Data (TAD) is being designed to meet the user community needs for aircraft data for scientific research on climate change and air quality relevant issues, particularly: 1) Provide timely access to a broad user community, 2) Provide an intuitive user interface to facilitate quick discovery of the variables and data, 3) Provide data products and tools to facilitate model assessment activities, e.g., merge files and data subsetting capabilities, 4) Provide simple utility 'calculators', e.g., unit conversion and aerosol size distribution processing, and 5) Provide Web Coverage Service capable tools to enhance the data usability. The general strategy and design of TAD will be presented.

OMARC: An online multimedia application for training health care providers in the assessment of respiratory conditions.

PubMed

Meruvia-Pastor, Oscar; Patra, Pranjal; Andres, Karen; Twomey, Creina; Peña-Castillo, Lourdes

2016-05-01

OMARC, a multimedia application designed to support the training of health care providers for the identification of common lung sounds heard in a patient's thorax as part of a health assessment, is described and its positive contribution to user learning is assessed. The main goal of OMARC is to effectively help health-care students become familiar with lung sounds as part of the assessment of respiratory conditions. In addition, the application must be easy to use and accessible to students and practitioners over the internet. OMARC was developed using an online platform to facilitate access to users in remote locations. OMARC's unique contribution as an educational software tool is that it presents a narrative about normal and abnormal lung sounds using interactive multimedia and sample case studies designed by professional health-care providers and educators. Its interface consists of two distinct components: a sounds glossary and a rich multimedia interface which presents clinical case studies and provides access to lung sounds placed on a model of a human torso. OMARC's contents can be extended through the addition of sounds and case studies designed by health-care educators and professionals. To validate OMARC and determine its efficacy in improving learning and capture user perceptions about it, we performed a pilot study with ten nursing students. Participants' performance was measured through an evaluation of their ability to identify several normal and adventitious/abnormal sounds prior and after exposure to OMARC. Results indicate that participants are able to better identify different lung sounds, going from an average of 63% (S.D. 18.3%) in the pre-test evaluation to an average of 90% (S.D. of 11.5%) after practising with OMARC. Furthermore, participants indicated in a user satisfaction questionnaire that they found the application helpful, easy to use and that they would recommend it to other persons in their field. OMARC is an online multimedia application for training health care students in the assessment of respiratory conditions. The software integrates multimedia technology and health-care education concepts to facilitate learning, while being useful and easy to use. Results from a pilot study indicate that OMARC significantly helps to improve the capacity of the users to correctly identify lung sounds for different respiratory conditions. In addition, participants' opinions about OMARC were quite positive: users were likely to recommend the application to other persons in their field and found the application easy to use and helpful to better identify lung sounds. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

What do web-use skill differences imply for online health information searches?

PubMed

Feufel, Markus A; Stahl, S Frederica

2012-06-13

Online health information is of variable and often low scientific quality. In particular, elderly less-educated populations are said to struggle in accessing quality online information (digital divide). Little is known about (1) how their online behavior differs from that of younger, more-educated, and more-frequent Web users, and (2) how the older population may be supported in accessing good-quality online health information. To specify the digital divide between skilled and less-skilled Web users, we assessed qualitative differences in technical skills, cognitive strategies, and attitudes toward online health information. Based on these findings, we identified educational and technological interventions to help Web users find and access good-quality online health information. We asked 22 native German-speaking adults to search for health information online. The skilled cohort consisted of 10 participants who were younger than 30 years of age, had a higher level of education, and were more experienced using the Web than 12 participants in the less-skilled cohort, who were at least 50 years of age. We observed online health information searches to specify differences in technical skills and analyzed concurrent verbal protocols to identify health information seekers' cognitive strategies and attitudes. Our main findings relate to (1) attitudes: health information seekers in both cohorts doubted the quality of information retrieved online; among poorly skilled seekers, this was mainly because they doubted their skills to navigate vast amounts of information; once a website was accessed, quality concerns disappeared in both cohorts, (2) technical skills: skilled Web users effectively filtered information according to search intentions and data sources; less-skilled users were easily distracted by unrelated information, and (3) cognitive strategies: skilled Web users searched to inform themselves; less-skilled users searched to confirm their health-related opinions such as "vaccinations are harmful." Independent of Web-use skills, most participants stopped a search once they had found the first piece of evidence satisfying search intentions, rather than according to quality criteria. Findings related to Web-use skills differences suggest two classes of interventions to facilitate access to good-quality online health information. Challenges related to findings (1) and (2) should be remedied by improving people's basic Web-use skills. In particular, Web users should be taught how to avoid information overload by generating specific search terms and to avoid low-quality information by requesting results from trusted websites only. Problems related to finding (3) may be remedied by visually labeling search engine results according to quality criteria.

StreptomycesInforSys: A web-enabled information repository

PubMed Central

Jain, Chakresh Kumar; Gupta, Vidhi; Gupta, Ashvarya; Gupta, Sanjay; Wadhwa, Gulshan; Sharma, Sanjeev Kumar; Sarethy, Indira P

2012-01-01

Members of Streptomyces produce 70% of natural bioactive products. There is considerable amount of information available based on polyphasic approach for classification of Streptomyces. However, this information based on phenotypic, genotypic and bioactive component production profiles is crucial for pharmacological screening programmes. This is scattered across various journals, books and other resources, many of which are not freely accessible. The designed database incorporates polyphasic typing information using combinations of search options to aid in efficient screening of new isolates. This will help in the preliminary categorization of appropriate groups. It is a free relational database compatible with existing operating systems. A cross platform technology with XAMPP Web server has been used to develop, manage, and facilitate the user query effectively with database support. Employment of PHP, a platform-independent scripting language, embedded in HTML and the database management software MySQL will facilitate dynamic information storage and retrieval. The user-friendly, open and flexible freeware (PHP, MySQL and Apache) is foreseen to reduce running and maintenance cost. Availability www.sis.biowaves.org PMID:23275736

StreptomycesInforSys: A web-enabled information repository.

PubMed

Jain, Chakresh Kumar; Gupta, Vidhi; Gupta, Ashvarya; Gupta, Sanjay; Wadhwa, Gulshan; Sharma, Sanjeev Kumar; Sarethy, Indira P

2012-01-01

Members of Streptomyces produce 70% of natural bioactive products. There is considerable amount of information available based on polyphasic approach for classification of Streptomyces. However, this information based on phenotypic, genotypic and bioactive component production profiles is crucial for pharmacological screening programmes. This is scattered across various journals, books and other resources, many of which are not freely accessible. The designed database incorporates polyphasic typing information using combinations of search options to aid in efficient screening of new isolates. This will help in the preliminary categorization of appropriate groups. It is a free relational database compatible with existing operating systems. A cross platform technology with XAMPP Web server has been used to develop, manage, and facilitate the user query effectively with database support. Employment of PHP, a platform-independent scripting language, embedded in HTML and the database management software MySQL will facilitate dynamic information storage and retrieval. The user-friendly, open and flexible freeware (PHP, MySQL and Apache) is foreseen to reduce running and maintenance cost. www.sis.biowaves.org.

The Design of PC/MISI, a PC-Based Common User Interface to Remote Information Storage and Retrieval Systems. M.S. ThesisFinal Report, 1 Jul. 1985 - 31 Dec. 1987

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dominick, Wayne D. (Editor); Hall, Philip P.

1985-01-01

The amount of information contained in the data bases of large-scale information storage and retrieval systems is very large and growing at a rapid rate. The methods available for assessing this information have not been successful in making the information easily available to the people who have the greatest need for it. This thesis describes the design of a personal computer based system which will provide a means for these individuals to retrieve this data through one standardized interface. The thesis identifies each of the major problems associated with providing access to casual users of IS and R systems and describes the manner in which these problems are to be solved by the utilization of the local processing power of a PC. Additional capabilities, not available with standard access methods, are also provided to improve the user's ability to make use of this information. The design of PC/MISI is intended to facilitate its use as a research vehicle. Evaluation mechanisms and possible areas of future research are described. The PC/MISI development effort is part of a larger research effort directed at improving access to remote IS and R systems. This research effort, supported in part by NASA, is also reviewed.

elevatr: Access Elevation Data from Various APIs | Science ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Several web services are available that provide access to elevation data. This package provides access to several of those services and returns elevation data either as a SpatialPointsDataFrame from point elevation services or as a raster object from raster elevation services. Currently, the package supports access to the Mapzen Elevation Service, Mapzen Terrain Service, and the USGS Elevation Point Query Service. The R language for statistical computing is increasingly used for spatial data analysis . This R package, elevatr, is in response to this and provides access to elevation data from various sources directly in R. The impact of `elevatr` is that it will 1) facilitate spatial analysis in R by providing access to foundational dataset for many types of analyses (e.g. hydrology, limnology) 2) open up a new set of users and uses for APIs widely used outside of R, and 3) provide an excellent example federal open source development as promoted by the Federal Source Code Policy (https://sourcecode.cio.gov/).

Facilitating Cohort Discovery by Enhancing Ontology Exploration, Query Management and Query Sharing for Large Clinical Data Repositories.

PubMed

Tao, Shiqiang; Cui, Licong; Wu, Xi; Zhang, Guo-Qiang

2017-01-01

To help researchers better access clinical data, we developed a prototype query engine called DataSphere for exploring large-scale integrated clinical data repositories. DataSphere expedites data importing using a NoSQL data management system and dynamically renders its user interface for concept-based querying tasks. DataSphere provides an interactive query-building interface together with query translation and optimization strategies, which enable users to build and execute queries effectively and efficiently. We successfully loaded a dataset of one million patients for University of Kentucky (UK) Healthcare into DataSphere with more than 300 million clinical data records. We evaluated DataSphere by comparing it with an instance of i2b2 deployed at UK Healthcare, demonstrating that DataSphere provides enhanced user experience for both query building and execution.

Facilitating Cohort Discovery by Enhancing Ontology Exploration, Query Management and Query Sharing for Large Clinical Data Repositories

PubMed Central

Tao, Shiqiang; Cui, Licong; Wu, Xi; Zhang, Guo-Qiang

2017-01-01

To help researchers better access clinical data, we developed a prototype query engine called DataSphere for exploring large-scale integrated clinical data repositories. DataSphere expedites data importing using a NoSQL data management system and dynamically renders its user interface for concept-based querying tasks. DataSphere provides an interactive query-building interface together with query translation and optimization strategies, which enable users to build and execute queries effectively and efficiently. We successfully loaded a dataset of one million patients for University of Kentucky (UK) Healthcare into DataSphere with more than 300 million clinical data records. We evaluated DataSphere by comparing it with an instance of i2b2 deployed at UK Healthcare, demonstrating that DataSphere provides enhanced user experience for both query building and execution. PMID:29854239

Annotate-it: a Swiss-knife approach to annotation, analysis and interpretation of single nucleotide variation in human disease

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

The increasing size and complexity of exome/genome sequencing data requires new tools for clinical geneticists to discover disease-causing variants. Bottlenecks in identifying the causative variation include poor cross-sample querying, constantly changing functional annotation and not considering existing knowledge concerning the phenotype. We describe a methodology that facilitates exploration of patient sequencing data towards identification of causal variants under different genetic hypotheses. Annotate-it facilitates handling, analysis and interpretation of high-throughput single nucleotide variant data. We demonstrate our strategy using three case studies. Annotate-it is freely available and test data are accessible to all users at http://www.annotate-it.org. PMID:23013645

Crucial design issues for special access technology; a Delphi study.

PubMed

O'Rourke, Pearl; Ekins, Ray; Timmins, Bernard; Timmins, Fiona; Long, Siobhan; Coyle, Eugene

2014-01-01

To develop and demonstrate a method to involve professional users of assistive technology (AT) in the development process of customisable products. Employing the ideas of user participation and mass customisation, this research addresses the need for reduced product costs and optimised product flexibility. An adaptable six-question Delphi study was developed to establish consensus among AT professionals on design issues relating to a specified AT domain requiring innovation. The study is demonstrated for the special access technology (SAT) domain. A modified morphological matrix structures the application of the study results to the product design process. Fourteen professionals from the Republic of Ireland and the UK participated. Consensus was reached on prevalent parts of SAT that malfunction, primary reasons for SAT malfunction, characteristics of clients associated with SAT selection, client needs regarding SAT use and training, desirable traits of SAT and clinicians' frustrations with SAT. The study revealed a range of problems related to SAT, highlighting the complexities of successful SAT adoption. The questions led to differentiated insights and enabled design solution conceptualisation from various perspectives. The approach was found to help facilitate efficient generation and application of professional users' knowledge during the design process of customisable AT.

UUI: Reusable Spatial Data Services in Unified User Interface at NASA GES DISC

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Petrenko, Maksym; Hegde, Mahabaleshwa; Bryant, Keith; Pham, Long B.

2016-01-01

Unified User Interface (UUI) is a next-generation operational data access tool that has been developed at Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center(GES DISC) to provide a simple, unified, and intuitive one-stop shop experience for the key data services available at GES DISC, including subsetting (Simple Subset Wizard -SSW), granule file search (Mirador), plotting (Giovanni), and other legacy spatial data services. UUI has been built based on a flexible infrastructure of reusable web services self-contained building blocks that can easily be plugged into spatial applications, including third-party clients or services, to easily enable new functionality as new datasets and services become available. In this presentation, we will discuss our experience in designing UUI services based on open industry standards. We will also explain how the resulting framework can be used for a rapid development, deployment, and integration of spatial data services, facilitating efficient access and dissemination of spatial data sets.

Improving accessibility and discovery of ESA planetary data through the new planetary science archive

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Macfarlane, A. J.; Docasal, R.; Rios, C.; Barbarisi, I.; Saiz, J.; Vallejo, F.; Besse, S.; Arviset, C.; Barthelemy, M.; De Marchi, G.; Fraga, D.; Grotheer, E.; Heather, D.; Lim, T.; Martinez, S.; Vallat, C.

2018-01-01

The Planetary Science Archive (PSA) is the European Space Agency's (ESA) repository of science data from all planetary science and exploration missions. The PSA provides access to scientific data sets through various interfaces at http://psa.esa.int. Mostly driven by the evolution of the PDS standards which all new ESA planetary missions shall follow and the need to update the interfaces to the archive, the PSA has undergone an important re-engineering. In order to maximise the scientific exploitation of ESA's planetary data holdings, significant improvements have been made by utilising the latest technologies and implementing widely recognised open standards. To facilitate users in handling and visualising the many products stored in the archive which have spatial data associated, the new PSA supports Geographical Information Systems (GIS) by implementing the standards approved by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The modernised PSA also attempts to increase interoperability with the international community by implementing recognised planetary science specific protocols such as the PDAP (Planetary Data Access Protocol) and EPN-TAP (EuroPlanet-Table Access Protocol). In this paper we describe some of the methods by which the archive may be accessed and present the challenges that are being faced in consolidating data sets of the older PDS3 version of the standards with the new PDS4 deliveries into a single data model mapping to ensure transparent access to the data for users and services whilst maintaining a high performance.

Linking User Identities Across the DataONE Federation of Data Repositories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jones, M. B.; Mecum, B.; Leinfelder, B.; Jones, C. S.; Walker, L.

2016-12-01

DataONE provides services for identifying, authenticating, and authorizing researchers to access and contribute data to repositories within the DataONE federation. In the earth sciences, thousands of institutional and disciplinary repositories have created their own user identity and authentication systems with their own user directory based on a database or web content management systems. Thus, researchers have many identities that are neither linked nor interoperable, making it difficult to reference the identity of these users across systems. Key user information is hidden, and only a non-disambiguated name is often available. From a sample of 160,000 data sets within DataONE, a super-majority of references to the data creators lack even an email address. In an attempt to disambiguate these people via the GeoLink project, we conservatively estimate they represent at least 57,000 unique identities, but without a clear user identifier, there could be as many as 223,000. Interoperability among repositories is critical to improving the scope of scientific synthesis and capabilities for research collaboration. While many have focused on the convenience of Single Sign-On (SSO), we have found that sharing user identifiers is far more useful for interoperability. With an unambiguous user identity in incoming metadata, DataONE has built user-profiles that present that user's data across repositories, that link users and their organizational affiliations, and that allow users to work collaboratively in private groups that span repository systems. DataONE's user identity solution leverages existing systems such as InCommon, CILogon, Google, and ORCID to not further proliferate user identities. DataONE provides a core service allowing users to link their multiple identities so that authenticating with one identity (e.g., ORCID) can authorize access to data protected via another identity (e.g., InCommon). Currently, DataONE is using ORCID identities to link and identify users, but challenges must still be overcome to support historical records for which ORCIDs can not be used because the associated people are unavailable to confirm their identity. DataONE's identity systems facilitate crosslinking between user identities and scientific metadata to accelerate collaboration and synthesis.

A Re-Engineered Software Interface and Workflow for the Open-Source SimVascular Cardiovascular Modeling Package.

PubMed

Lan, Hongzhi; Updegrove, Adam; Wilson, Nathan M; Maher, Gabriel D; Shadden, Shawn C; Marsden, Alison L

2018-02-01

Patient-specific simulation plays an important role in cardiovascular disease research, diagnosis, surgical planning and medical device design, as well as education in cardiovascular biomechanics. simvascular is an open-source software package encompassing an entire cardiovascular modeling and simulation pipeline from image segmentation, three-dimensional (3D) solid modeling, and mesh generation, to patient-specific simulation and analysis. SimVascular is widely used for cardiovascular basic science and clinical research as well as education, following increased adoption by users and development of a GATEWAY web portal to facilitate educational access. Initial efforts of the project focused on replacing commercial packages with open-source alternatives and adding increased functionality for multiscale modeling, fluid-structure interaction (FSI), and solid modeling operations. In this paper, we introduce a major SimVascular (SV) release that includes a new graphical user interface (GUI) designed to improve user experience. Additional improvements include enhanced data/project management, interactive tools to facilitate user interaction, new boundary condition (BC) functionality, plug-in mechanism to increase modularity, a new 3D segmentation tool, and new computer-aided design (CAD)-based solid modeling capabilities. Here, we focus on major changes to the software platform and outline features added in this new release. We also briefly describe our recent experiences using SimVascular in the classroom for bioengineering education.

Virtual Mission Operations Center -Explicit Access to Small Satellites by a Net Enabled User Base

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miller, E.; Medina, O.; Paulsen, P.; Hopkins, J.; Long, C.; Holloman, K.

2008-08-01

The Office of Naval Research (ON R), The Office of the Secr etary of Defense (OSD) , Th e Operationally Responsive Space Off ice (ORS) , and th e National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are funding the development and integration of key technologies and new processes that w ill allow users across th e bread th of operations the ab ility to access, task , retr ieve, and collaborate w ith data from various sensors including small satellites v ia the Intern et and the SIPRnet. The V irtual Mission Oper ations Center (VMO C) facilitates the dynamic apportionmen t of space assets, allows scalable mission man agement of mu ltiple types of sensors, and provid es access for non-space savvy users through an intu itive collaborative w eb site. These key technologies are b eing used as experimentation pathfinders fo r th e Do D's Operationally Responsiv e Sp ace (O RS) initiative and NASA's Sensor W eb. The O RS initiative seeks to provide space assets that can b e rapid ly tailored to meet a commander's in telligen ce or commun ication needs. For the DoD and NASA the V MO C provid es ready and scalab le access to space b ased assets. To the commercial space sector the V MO C may provide an analog to the innovativ e fractional ownersh ip approach represen ted by FlexJet. This pap er delves in to the technology, in tegration, and applicability of th e V MO C to th e DoD , NASA , and co mmer cial sectors.

DataFed: A Federated Data System for Visualization and Analysis of Spatio-Temporal Air Quality Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Husar, R. B.; Hoijarvi, K.

2017-12-01

DataFed is a distributed web-services-based computing environment for accessing, processing, and visualizing atmospheric data in support of air quality science and management. The flexible, adaptive environment facilitates the access and flow of atmospheric data from provider to users by enabling the creation of user-driven data processing/visualization applications. DataFed `wrapper' components, non-intrusively wrap heterogeneous, distributed datasets for access by standards-based GIS web services. The mediator components (also web services) map the heterogeneous data into a spatio-temporal data model. Chained web services provide homogeneous data views (e.g., geospatial, time views) using a global multi-dimensional data model. In addition to data access and rendering, the data processing component services can be programmed for filtering, aggregation, and fusion of multidimensional data. A complete application software is written in a custom made data flow language. Currently, the federated data pool consists of over 50 datasets originating from globally distributed data providers delivering surface-based air quality measurements, satellite observations, emissions data as well as regional and global-scale air quality models. The web browser-based user interface allows point and click navigation and browsing the XYZT multi-dimensional data space. The key applications of DataFed are for exploring spatial pattern of pollutants, seasonal, weekly, diurnal cycles and frequency distributions for exploratory air quality research. Since 2008, DataFed has been used to support EPA in the implementation of the Exceptional Event Rule. The data system is also used at universities in the US, Europe and Asia.

Sharing Data and Analytical Resources Securely in a Biomedical Research Grid Environment

PubMed Central

Langella, Stephen; Hastings, Shannon; Oster, Scott; Pan, Tony; Sharma, Ashish; Permar, Justin; Ervin, David; Cambazoglu, B. Barla; Kurc, Tahsin; Saltz, Joel

2008-01-01

Objectives To develop a security infrastructure to support controlled and secure access to data and analytical resources in a biomedical research Grid environment, while facilitating resource sharing among collaborators. Design A Grid security infrastructure, called Grid Authentication and Authorization with Reliably Distributed Services (GAARDS), is developed as a key architecture component of the NCI-funded cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG™). The GAARDS is designed to support in a distributed environment 1) efficient provisioning and federation of user identities and credentials; 2) group-based access control support with which resource providers can enforce policies based on community accepted groups and local groups; and 3) management of a trust fabric so that policies can be enforced based on required levels of assurance. Measurements GAARDS is implemented as a suite of Grid services and administrative tools. It provides three core services: Dorian for management and federation of user identities, Grid Trust Service for maintaining and provisioning a federated trust fabric within the Grid environment, and Grid Grouper for enforcing authorization policies based on both local and Grid-level groups. Results The GAARDS infrastructure is available as a stand-alone system and as a component of the caGrid infrastructure. More information about GAARDS can be accessed at http://www.cagrid.org. Conclusions GAARDS provides a comprehensive system to address the security challenges associated with environments in which resources may be located at different sites, requests to access the resources may cross institutional boundaries, and user credentials are created, managed, revoked dynamically in a de-centralized manner. PMID:18308979

‘On the same level’: facilitators’ experiences running a drug user-led safer injecting education campaign

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Unsafe injection practices play a major role in elevated rates of morbidity and mortality among people who inject drugs (IDU). There is growing interest in the direct involvement of IDU in interventions that seek to address unsafe injecting. This study describes a drug user-led safer injecting education campaign, and explores facilitators’ experiences delivering educational workshops. Methods We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 8 members of the Injection Support (IS) Team who developed and facilitated a series of safer injecting education workshops. Interviews explored facilitator’s perceptions of the workshops, experiences being a facilitator, and perspectives on the educational campaign. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and a thematic analysis was conducted. Results IS Team facilitators described how the workshop’s structure and content enabled effective communication of information about safer injecting practices, while targeting the unsafe practices of workshop participants. Facilitators’ identity as IDU enhanced their ability to relate to workshop participants and communicate educational messages in language accessible to workshop participants. Facilitators reported gaining knowledge and skills from their involvement in the campaign, as well as positive feelings about themselves from the realization that they were helping people to protect their health. Overall, facilitators felt that this campaign provided IDU with valuable information, although facilitators also critiqued the campaign and suggested improvements for future efforts. Conclusions This study demonstrates the feasibility of involving IDU in educational initiatives targeting unsafe injecting. Findings illustrate how IDU involvement in prevention activities improves relevance and cultural appropriateness of interventions while providing individual, social, and professional benefits to those IDU delivering education. PMID:23497293

Regional Disparities in Online Map User Access Volume and Determining Factors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, R.; Yang, N.; Li, R.; Huang, W.; Wu, H.

2017-09-01

The regional disparities of online map user access volume (use `user access volume' in this paper to indicate briefly) is a topic of growing interest with the increment of popularity in public users, which helps to target the construction of geographic information services for different areas. At first place we statistically analysed the online map user access logs and quantified these regional access disparities on different scales. The results show that the volume of user access is decreasing from east to the west in China as a whole, while East China produces the most access volume; these cities are also the crucial economic and transport centres. Then Principal Component Regression (PCR) is applied to explore the regional disparities of user access volume. A determining model for Online Map access volume is proposed afterwards, which indicates that area scale is the primary determining factor for regional disparities, followed by public transport development level and public service development level. Other factors like user quality index and financial index have very limited influence on the user access volume. According to the study of regional disparities in user access volume, map providers can reasonably dispatch and allocate the data resources and service resources in each area and improve the operational efficiency of the Online Map server cluster.

Characteristics of physical activity levels among trail users in a U.S. national sample.

PubMed

Librett, John J; Yore, Michelle M; Schmid, Thomas L

2006-11-01

The Task Force on Community Preventive Services strongly recommends environmental interventions that include enhanced access to opportunities for physical activity, such as walking and cycling trails. Although accumulating evidence indicates that trails can be effective in increasing physical activity, little is known about trail users. Cross-sectional analysis of a national sample of 3717 adults from the HealthStyles and ConsumerStyles surveys using logistic regression to determine physical activity patterns and sociodemographic correlates related to trail use, and to identify support regarding trail development policies. Almost 13% (12.7%) of the sample reported using trails at least once a month and 24.3% at least once a week. People who reported using trails at least once a week were twice as likely than people who reported rarely or never using trails to meet physical activity recommendations (odds ratio=2.3, 95% confidence interval=1.9-2.8). Nearly half (43.6%) of the non-trail users supported expanded public spaces for people to exercise, and 36.4% of the non-trail users reported that they would be willing to pay more taxes to build more parks and trails in their community. Community trails facilitate physical activity, and almost half of frequent trail users report that access to trails and other green space is important in choosing a place to live. These results support the need for prospective research on whether newly built trails promote physical activity in previously inactive people.

User Access | Energy Systems Integration Facility | NREL

Science.gov Websites

User Access User Access The ESIF houses an unparalleled collection of state-of-the-art capabilities user access program, the ESIF allows researchers access to its premier laboratories in support of research and development that aims to optimize our entire energy system at full power. Requests for access

The deaf and the classroom design: a contribution of the built environmental ergonomics for the accessibility.

PubMed

Martins, Laura Bezerra; Gaudiot, Denise Mariasimões Freire

2012-01-01

In any concept of school design, classroom occupies the central place. Dimensions, lighting, the equipment needed, ventilation are old questions already answered, even in form of laws and standards adopted. However, the best use of available materials and physical conditions of comfort is not sufficient for a classroom design guaranteed success. The classroom should provide deaf students elements to facilitate the learning process, eliminating as much as possible the obstacles created by lack of hearing and allowing them to have the same access to learning as a listener student. As users of a school building, teachers, students, parents and staff are the best evaluators of the physical environment of schools. The environmental comfort is a largest ally of pedagogy. The learning comes from the perception and the concentration of students in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to detect the role of direct perception (physical) and indirect (intangible) elements that informs and have symbolic value, and propose layouts for accessible classrooms to deaf students. The ergonomics of the built environment evaluation methods could use the participatory design method tools as basis to assessing how users perceive and use the school environment.

TopoLens: Building a cyberGIS community data service for enhancing the usability of high-resolution National Topographic datasets

USGS Publications Warehouse

Hu, Hao; Hong, Xingchen; Terstriep, Jeff; Liu, Yan; Finn, Michael P.; Rush, Johnathan; Wendel, Jeffrey; Wang, Shaowen

2016-01-01

Geospatial data, often embedded with geographic references, are important to many application and science domains, and represent a major type of big data. The increased volume and diversity of geospatial data have caused serious usability issues for researchers in various scientific domains, which call for innovative cyberGIS solutions. To address these issues, this paper describes a cyberGIS community data service framework to facilitate geospatial big data access, processing, and sharing based on a hybrid supercomputer architecture. Through the collaboration between the CyberGIS Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a community data service for accessing, customizing, and sharing digital elevation model (DEM) and its derived datasets from the 10-meter national elevation dataset, namely TopoLens, is created to demonstrate the workflow integration of geospatial big data sources, computation, analysis needed for customizing the original dataset for end user needs, and a friendly online user environment. TopoLens provides online access to precomputed and on-demand computed high-resolution elevation data by exploiting the ROGER supercomputer. The usability of this prototype service has been acknowledged in community evaluation.

A Qualitative Evaluation of Web-Based Cancer Care Quality Improvement Toolkit Use in the Veterans Health Administration.

PubMed

Bowman, Candice; Luck, Jeff; Gale, Randall C; Smith, Nina; York, Laura S; Asch, Steven

2015-01-01

Disease severity, complexity, and patient burden highlight cancer care as a target for quality improvement (QI) interventions. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) implemented a series of disease-specific online cancer care QI toolkits. To describe characteristics of the toolkits, target users, and VHA cancer care facilities that influenced toolkit access and use and assess whether such resources were beneficial for users. Deductive content analysis of detailed notes from 94 telephone interviews with individuals from 48 VHA facilities. We evaluated toolkit access and use across cancer types, participation in learning collaboratives, and affiliation with VHA cancer care facilities. The presence of champions was identified as a strong facilitator of toolkit use, and learning collaboratives were important for spreading information about toolkit availability. Identified barriers included lack of personnel and financial resources and complicated approval processes to support tool use. Online cancer care toolkits are well received across cancer specialties and provider types. Clinicians, administrators, and QI staff may benefit from the availability of toolkits as they become more reliant on rapid access to strategies that support comprehensive delivery of evidence-based care. Toolkits should be considered as a complement to other QI approaches.

Lead users' ideas on core features to support physical activity in rheumatoid arthritis: a first step in the development of an internet service using participatory design.

PubMed

Revenäs, Åsa; Opava, Christina H; Åsenlöf, Pernilla

2014-03-22

Despite the growing evidence of the benefits of physical activity (PA) in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the majority is not physically active enough. An innovative strategy is to engage lead users in the development of PA interventions provided over the internet. The aim was to explore lead users' ideas and prioritization of core features in a future internet service targeting adoption and maintenance of healthy PA in people with RA. Six focus group interviews were performed with a purposively selected sample of 26 individuals with RA. Data were analyzed with qualitative content analysis and quantification of participants' prioritization of most important content. Six categories were identified as core features for a future internet service: up-to-date and evidence-based information and instructions, self-regulation tools, social interaction, personalized set-up, attractive design and content, and access to the internet service. The categories represented four themes, or core aspects, important to consider in the design of the future service: (1) content, (2) customized options, (3) user interface and (4) access and implementation. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study involving people with RA in the development of an internet service to support the adoption and maintenance of PA.Participants helped identifying core features and aspects important to consider and further explore during the next phase of development. We hypothesize that involvement of lead users will make transfer from theory to service more adequate and user-friendly and therefore will be an effective mean to facilitate PA behavior change.

RUASN: A Robust User Authentication Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Kumar, Pardeep; Choudhury, Amlan Jyoti; Sain, Mangal; Lee, Sang-Gon; Lee, Hoon-Jae

2011-01-01

In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been considered as a potential solution for real-time monitoring applications and these WSNs have potential practical impact on next generation technology too. However, WSNs could become a threat if suitable security is not considered before the deployment and if there are any loopholes in their security, which might open the door for an attacker and hence, endanger the application. User authentication is one of the most important security services to protect WSN data access from unauthorized users; it should provide both mutual authentication and session key establishment services. This paper proposes a robust user authentication framework for wireless sensor networks, based on a two-factor (password and smart card) concept. This scheme facilitates many services to the users such as user anonymity, mutual authentication, secure session key establishment and it allows users to choose/update their password regularly, whenever needed. Furthermore, we have provided the formal verification using Rubin logic and compare RUASN with many existing schemes. As a result, we found that the proposed scheme possesses many advantages against popular attacks, and achieves better efficiency at low computation cost. PMID:22163888

Looking into Pandora's Box: The Content of Sci-Hub and its Usage.

PubMed

Greshake, Bastian

2017-01-01

Despite the growth of Open Access, potentially illegally circumventing paywalls to access scholarly publications is becoming a more mainstream phenomenon. The web service Sci-Hub is amongst the biggest facilitators of this, offering free access to around 62 million publications. So far it is not well studied how and why its users are accessing publications through Sci-Hub. By utilizing the recently released corpus of Sci-Hub and comparing it to the data of  ~28 million downloads done through the service, this study tries to address some of these questions. The comparative analysis shows that both the usage and complete corpus is largely made up of recently published articles, with users disproportionately favoring newer articles and 35% of downloaded articles being published after 2013. These results hint that embargo periods before publications become Open Access are frequently circumnavigated using Guerilla Open Access approaches like Sci-Hub. On a journal level, the downloads show a bias towards some scholarly disciplines, especially Chemistry, suggesting increased barriers to access for these. Comparing the use and corpus on a publisher level, it becomes clear that only 11% of publishers are highly requested in comparison to the baseline frequency, while 45% of all publishers are significantly less accessed than expected. Despite this, the oligopoly of publishers is even more remarkable on the level of content consumption, with 80% of all downloads being published through only 9 publishers. All of this suggests that Sci-Hub is used by different populations and for a number of different reasons, and that there is still a lack of access to the published scientific record. A further analysis of these openly available data resources will undoubtedly be valuable for the investigation of academic publishing.

FunRich proteomics software analysis, let the fun begin!

PubMed

Benito-Martin, Alberto; Peinado, Héctor

2015-08-01

Protein MS analysis is the preferred method for unbiased protein identification. It is normally applied to a large number of both small-scale and high-throughput studies. However, user-friendly computational tools for protein analysis are still needed. In this issue, Mathivanan and colleagues (Proteomics 2015, 15, 2597-2601) report the development of FunRich software, an open-access software that facilitates the analysis of proteomics data, providing tools for functional enrichment and interaction network analysis of genes and proteins. FunRich is a reinterpretation of proteomic software, a standalone tool combining ease of use with customizable databases, free access, and graphical representations. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Network-based collaborative research environment LDRD final report

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

Davies, B.R.; McDonald, M.J.

1997-09-01

The Virtual Collaborative Environment (VCE) and Distributed Collaborative Workbench (DCW) are new technologies that make it possible for diverse users to synthesize and share mechatronic, sensor, and information resources. Using these technologies, university researchers, manufacturers, design firms, and others can directly access and reconfigure systems located throughout the world. The architecture for implementing VCE and DCW has been developed based on the proposed National Information Infrastructure or Information Highway and a tool kit of Sandia-developed software. Further enhancements to the VCE and DCW technologies will facilitate access to other mechatronic resources. This report describes characteristics of VCE and DCW andmore » also includes background information about the evolution of these technologies.« less

NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services - Technologies for Visualizing Earth Science Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cechini, M. F.; Boller, R. A.; Baynes, K.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Thompson, C. K.; Roberts, J. T.; Rodriguez, J.; Wong, M. M.; King, B. A.; King, J.; De Luca, A. P.; Pressley, N. N.

2017-12-01

For more than 20 years, the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) has collected earth science data for thousands of scientific parameters now totaling nearly 15 Petabytes of data. In 2013, NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) formed its vision to "transform how end users interact and discover [EOS] data through visualizations." This vision included leveraging scientific and community best practices and standards to provide a scalable, compliant, and authoritative source for EOS earth science data visualizations. Since that time, GIBS has grown quickly and now services millions of daily requests for over 500 imagery layers representing hundreds of earth science parameters to a broad community of users. For many of these parameters, visualizations are available within hours of acquisition from the satellite. For others, visualizations are available for the entire mission of the satellite. The GIBS system is built upon the OnEarth and MRF open source software projects, which are provided by the GIBS team. This software facilitates standards-based access for compliance with existing GIS tools. The GIBS imagery layers are predominantly rasterized images represented in two-dimensional coordinate systems, though multiple projections are supported. The OnEarth software also supports the GIBS ingest pipeline to facilitate low latency updates to new or updated visualizations. This presentation will focus on the following topics: Overview of GIBS visualizations and user community Current benefits and limitations of the OnEarth and MRF software projects and related standards GIBS access methods and their in/compatibilities with existing GIS libraries and applications Considerations for visualization accuracy and understandability Future plans for more advanced visualization concepts including Vertical Profiles and Vector-Based Representations Future plans for Amazon Web Service support and deployments

RIPPLELAB: A Comprehensive Application for the Detection, Analysis and Classification of High Frequency Oscillations in Electroencephalographic Signals

PubMed Central

Alvarado-Rojas, Catalina; Le Van Quyen, Michel; Valderrama, Mario

2016-01-01

High Frequency Oscillations (HFOs) in the brain have been associated with different physiological and pathological processes. In epilepsy, HFOs might reflect a mechanism of epileptic phenomena, serving as a biomarker of epileptogenesis and epileptogenicity. Despite the valuable information provided by HFOs, their correct identification is a challenging task. A comprehensive application, RIPPLELAB, was developed to facilitate the analysis of HFOs. RIPPLELAB provides a wide range of tools for HFOs manual and automatic detection and visual validation; all of them are accessible from an intuitive graphical user interface. Four methods for automated detection—as well as several options for visualization and validation of detected events—were implemented and integrated in the application. Analysis of multiple files and channels is possible, and new options can be added by users. All features and capabilities implemented in RIPPLELAB for automatic detection were tested through the analysis of simulated signals and intracranial EEG recordings from epileptic patients (n = 16; 3,471 analyzed hours). Visual validation was also tested, and detected events were classified into different categories. Unlike other available software packages for EEG analysis, RIPPLELAB uniquely provides the appropriate graphical and algorithmic environment for HFOs detection (visual and automatic) and validation, in such a way that the power of elaborated detection methods are available to a wide range of users (experts and non-experts) through the use of this application. We believe that this open-source tool will facilitate and promote the collaboration between clinical and research centers working on the HFOs field. The tool is available under public license and is accessible through a dedicated web site. PMID:27341033

The EnzymeTracker: an open-source laboratory information management system for sample tracking.

PubMed

Triplet, Thomas; Butler, Gregory

2012-01-26

In many laboratories, researchers store experimental data on their own workstation using spreadsheets. However, this approach poses a number of problems, ranging from sharing issues to inefficient data-mining. Standard spreadsheets are also error-prone, as data do not undergo any validation process. To overcome spreadsheets inherent limitations, a number of proprietary systems have been developed, which laboratories need to pay expensive license fees for. Those costs are usually prohibitive for most laboratories and prevent scientists from benefiting from more sophisticated data management systems. In this paper, we propose the EnzymeTracker, a web-based laboratory information management system for sample tracking, as an open-source and flexible alternative that aims at facilitating entry, mining and sharing of experimental biological data. The EnzymeTracker features online spreadsheets and tools for monitoring numerous experiments conducted by several collaborators to identify and characterize samples. It also provides libraries of shared data such as protocols, and administration tools for data access control using OpenID and user/team management. Our system relies on a database management system for efficient data indexing and management and a user-friendly AJAX interface that can be accessed over the Internet. The EnzymeTracker facilitates data entry by dynamically suggesting entries and providing smart data-mining tools to effectively retrieve data. Our system features a number of tools to visualize and annotate experimental data, and export highly customizable reports. It also supports QR matrix barcoding to facilitate sample tracking. The EnzymeTracker was designed to be easy to use and offers many benefits over spreadsheets, thus presenting the characteristics required to facilitate acceptance by the scientific community. It has been successfully used for 20 months on a daily basis by over 50 scientists. The EnzymeTracker is freely available online at http://cubique.fungalgenomics.ca/enzymedb/index.html under the GNU GPLv3 license.

The EnzymeTracker: an open-source laboratory information management system for sample tracking

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background In many laboratories, researchers store experimental data on their own workstation using spreadsheets. However, this approach poses a number of problems, ranging from sharing issues to inefficient data-mining. Standard spreadsheets are also error-prone, as data do not undergo any validation process. To overcome spreadsheets inherent limitations, a number of proprietary systems have been developed, which laboratories need to pay expensive license fees for. Those costs are usually prohibitive for most laboratories and prevent scientists from benefiting from more sophisticated data management systems. Results In this paper, we propose the EnzymeTracker, a web-based laboratory information management system for sample tracking, as an open-source and flexible alternative that aims at facilitating entry, mining and sharing of experimental biological data. The EnzymeTracker features online spreadsheets and tools for monitoring numerous experiments conducted by several collaborators to identify and characterize samples. It also provides libraries of shared data such as protocols, and administration tools for data access control using OpenID and user/team management. Our system relies on a database management system for efficient data indexing and management and a user-friendly AJAX interface that can be accessed over the Internet. The EnzymeTracker facilitates data entry by dynamically suggesting entries and providing smart data-mining tools to effectively retrieve data. Our system features a number of tools to visualize and annotate experimental data, and export highly customizable reports. It also supports QR matrix barcoding to facilitate sample tracking. Conclusions The EnzymeTracker was designed to be easy to use and offers many benefits over spreadsheets, thus presenting the characteristics required to facilitate acceptance by the scientific community. It has been successfully used for 20 months on a daily basis by over 50 scientists. The EnzymeTracker is freely available online at http://cubique.fungalgenomics.ca/enzymedb/index.html under the GNU GPLv3 license. PMID:22280360

Science data, tools and services available from NSIDC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gergely, K.; Sheffield, E.

2011-12-01

While the name may be narrow in focus, the National Snow and Ice Data Center archives, distributes and supports data from many scientific disciplines. It is true that the majority of our holdings are on snow, sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, and other cryospheric parameters. These are complimented by holdings on soil moisture, ocean data, global altimeter data, and human observations of environmental change, among other data. We facilitate access and use of our data through various tools, subsetters, and visualizing interfaces, and complete the package with a staff of hands-on user support specialists, available by email or phone to assist users with questions about our data and services. Based on user questions about general cryospheric physical processes over the past 35 years, we created a suite of online educational information on our areas of research, including snow, glaciers, sea ice, frozen ground, and others material of interest to the citizen scientist. Our excellent customer service has been noted on a widely distributed annual user survey.

Explore Earth Science Datasets for STEM with the NASA GES DISC Online Visualization and Analysis Tool, GIOVANNI

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Z.; Acker, J. G.; Kempler, S. J.

2016-12-01

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) is one of twelve NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Data Centers that provide Earth science data, information, and services to research scientists, applications scientists, applications users, and students around the world. The GES DISC is the home (archive) of NASA Precipitation and Hydrology, as well as Atmospheric Composition and Dynamics remote sensing data and information. To facilitate Earth science data access, the GES DISC has been developing user-friendly data services for users at different levels. Among them, the Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (GIOVANNI, http://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/) allows users to explore satellite-based data using sophisticated analyses and visualizations without downloading data and software, which is particularly suitable for novices to use NASA datasets in STEM activities. In this presentation, we will briefly introduce GIOVANNI and recommend datasets for STEM. Examples of using these datasets in STEM activities will be presented as well.

Explore Earth Science Datasets for STEM with the NASA GES DISC Online Visualization and Analysis Tool, Giovanni

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Z.; Acker, J.; Kempler, S.

2016-01-01

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center(DISC) is one of twelve NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Data Centers that provide Earth science data, information, and services to users around the world including research and application scientists, students, citizen scientists, etc. The GESDISC is the home (archive) of remote sensing datasets for NASA Precipitation and Hydrology, Atmospheric Composition and Dynamics, etc. To facilitate Earth science data access, the GES DISC has been developing user-friendly data services for users at different levels in different countries. Among them, the Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (Giovanni, http:giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov) allows users to explore satellite-based datasets using sophisticated analyses and visualization without downloading data and software, which is particularly suitable for novices (such as students) to use NASA datasets in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activities. In this presentation, we will briefly introduce Giovanni along with examples for STEM activities.

A survey of how clinicians in forensic personality disorder services engage their service users in treatment

PubMed Central

Clarke, Martin; Fardouly, Peter; McMurran, Mary

2014-01-01

Non-completion is a significant problem in treatments for personality disorder (PD), and is associated with poorer outcomes. Clinicians routinely attend to engagement issues with people diagnosed with PD and so we accessed their views about the techniques they used to facilitate treatment engagement with service users with PD. Twenty-three clinicians from a range of disciplines were asked how they defined treatment engagement, what they thought were the causes of treatment engagement problems in people with PD, and what techniques or strategies they used to enhance engagement of people with PD. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Staff working with people with PD have broad views on the factors that are implicated in treatment engagement for their client group. Consequently, the techniques they use to engage service users are wide-ranging, addressing issues to do with services, individuals, therapies and therapists. Given the limited published data thus far, the suggestions generated may be of value to other practitioners in improving service user engagement. PMID:25202229

Identifying research needs for wheelchair transfers in the built environment.

PubMed

Crytzer, Theresa Marie; Cooper, Rory; Jerome, Genevieve; Koontz, Alicia

2017-02-01

The purpose of this study is to describe the results of focus groups held during the Independent Wheelchair Transfer (IWT) Workgroup. The aims were to facilitate exchange of ideas on (1) the impact of the built environment on the wheelchair transfer process within the community (i.e. moving from wheelchair to and from other surfaces (e.g. furniture, toilet seat, bath bench, car seat) to participate in daily activities), (2) wheelchair users' needs during transfers in the built environment, and (3) future research directions. Live web-based conferencing using Adobe Connect technology (Clarix Technologies, Inc., Pittsford, NY) was utilized to conduct three focus groups composed of experts in the field of assistive technology. Investigators independently reviewed focus group meeting transcripts and used qualitative methods to identify main themes. Thirty-one experts in assistive technology and related fields participated in focus groups. Nine main themes were found including the effect of transfer skills training, space considerations in the built environment, wheelchair configuration, and the interaction between the built environment, user preferences, and transfer techniques. All groups raised issues about the transfer process in areas of the built environment with limited access, the effect of wheelchair users' transfer techniques, and user preferences during transfers. The area of independent transfers is multi-faceted and several factors require consideration when contemplating environmental changes to improve accessibility for wheelchair users. Obvious opportunity exists for research which could lead to advances in transfer technology, environments, and techniques for wheelchair users. Implications for Rehabilitation Tremendous opportunities for research collaborations in the field of assistive technology: To develop new terminology to describe wheelchair transfers. To improve the design of the built environment for wheelchair users. To investigate wheelchair transfer training techniques.

User-Centered Design, Experience, and Usability of an Electronic Consent User Interface to Facilitate Informed Decision-Making in an HIV Clinic.

PubMed

Ramos, S Raquel

2017-11-01

Health information exchange is the electronic accessibility and transferability of patient medical records across various healthcare settings and providers. In some states, patients have to formally give consent to allow their medical records to be electronically shared. The purpose of this study was to apply a novel user-centered, multistep, multiframework approach to design and test an electronic consent user interface, so patients with HIV can make more informed decisions about electronically sharing their health information. This study consisted of two steps. Step 1 was a cross-sectional, descriptive, qualitative study that used user-centric design interviews to create the user interface. This informed Step 2. Step 2 consisted of a one group posttest to examine perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, preference, and comprehension of a health information exchange electronic consent user interface. More than half of the study population had college experience, but challenges remained with overall comprehension regarding consent. The user interface was not independently successful, suggesting that in addition to an electronic consent user interface, human interaction may also be necessary to address the complexities associated with consenting to electronically share health information. Comprehension is key factor in the ability to make informed decisions.

A novel virtual hub approach for multisource downstream service integration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Previtali, Mattia; Cuca, Branka; Barazzetti, Luigi

2016-08-01

A large development of downstream services is expected to be stimulated starting from earth observations (EO) datasets acquired by Copernicus satellites. An important challenge connected with the availability of downstream services is the possibility for their integration in order to create innovative applications with added values for users of different categories level. At the moment, the world of geo-information (GI) is extremely heterogeneous in terms of standards and formats used, thus preventing a facilitated access and integration of downstream services. Indeed, different users and data providers have also different requirements in terms of communication protocols and technology advancement. In recent years, many important programs and initiatives have tried to address this issue even on trans-regional and international level (e.g. INSPIRE Directive, GEOSS, Eye on Earth and SEIS). However, a lack of interoperability between systems and services still exists. In order to facilitate the interaction between different downstream services, a new architectural approach (developed within the European project ENERGIC OD) is proposed in this paper. The brokering-oriented architecture introduces a new mediation layer (the Virtual Hub) which works as an intermediary to bridge the gaps linked to interoperability issues. This intermediation layer de-couples the server and the client allowing a facilitated access to multiple downstream services and also Open Data provided by national and local SDIs. In particular, in this paper an application is presented integrating four services on the topic of agriculture: (i) the service given by Space4Agri (providing services based on MODIS and Landsat data); (ii) Gicarus Lab (providing sample services based on Landsat datasets) and (iii) FRESHMON (providing sample services for water quality) and services from a several regional SDIs.

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 DICOM based radiotherapy plan database for research collaboration and reporting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Westberg, J.; Krogh, S.; Brink, C.; Vogelius, I. R.

2014-03-01

Purpose: To create a central radiotherapy (RT) plan database for dose analysis and reporting, capable of calculating and presenting statistics on user defined patient groups. The goal is to facilitate multi-center research studies with easy and secure access to RT plans and statistics on protocol compliance. Methods: RT institutions are able to send data to the central database using DICOM communications on a secure computer network. The central system is composed of a number of DICOM servers, an SQL database and in-house developed software services to process the incoming data. A web site within the secure network allows the user to manage their submitted data. Results: The RT plan database has been developed in Microsoft .NET and users are able to send DICOM data between RT centers in Denmark. Dose-volume histogram (DVH) calculations performed by the system are comparable to those of conventional RT software. A permission system was implemented to ensure access control and easy, yet secure, data sharing across centers. The reports contain DVH statistics for structures in user defined patient groups. The system currently contains over 2200 patients in 14 collaborations. Conclusions: A central RT plan repository for use in multi-center trials and quality assurance was created. The system provides an attractive alternative to dummy runs by enabling continuous monitoring of protocol conformity and plan metrics in a trial.

Users' information-seeking behavior on a medical library Website

PubMed Central

Rozic-Hristovski, Anamarija; Hristovski, Dimitar; Todorovski, Ljupco

2002-01-01

The Central Medical Library (CMK) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, started to build a library Website that included a guide to library services and resources in 1997. The evaluation of Website usage plays an important role in its maintenance and development. Analyzing and exploring regularities in the visitors' behavior can be used to enhance the quality and facilitate delivery of information services, identify visitors' interests, and improve the server's performance. The analysis of the CMK Website users' navigational behavior was carried out by analyzing the Web server log files. These files contained information on all user accesses to the Website and provided a great opportunity to learn more about the behavior of visitors to the Website. The majority of the available tools for Web log file analysis provide a predefined set of reports showing the access count and the transferred bytes grouped along several dimensions. In addition to the reports mentioned above, the authors wanted to be able to perform interactive exploration and ad hoc analysis and discover trends in a user-friendly way. Because of that, we developed our own solution for exploring and analyzing the Web logs based on data warehousing and online analytical processing technologies. The analytical solution we developed proved successful, so it may find further application in the field of Web log file analysis. We will apply the findings of the analysis to restructuring the CMK Website. PMID:11999179

GeoBrain for Facilitating Earth Science Education in Higher-Education Institutes--Experience and Lessons-learned

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deng, M.; di, L.

2007-12-01

Data integration and analysis are the foundation for the scientific investigation in Earth science. In the past several decades, huge amounts of Earth science data have been collected mainly through remote sensing. Those data have become the treasure for Earth science research. Training students how to discover and use the huge volume of Earth science data in research become one of the most important trainings for making a student a qualified scientist. Being developed by a NASA funded project, the GeoBrain system has adopted and implemented the latest Web services and knowledge management technologies for providing innovative methods in publishing, accessing, visualizing, and analyzing geospatial data and in building/sharing geoscience knowledge. It provides a data-rich online learning and research environment enabled by wealthy data and information available at NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Students, faculty members, and researchers from institutes worldwide can easily access, analyze, and model with the huge amount of NASA EOS data just like they possess such vast resources locally at their desktops. Although still in development, the GeoBrain system has been operational since 2005. A number of education materials have been developed for facilitating the use of GeoBrain as a powerful education tool for Earth science education at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Thousands of online higher-education users worldwide have used GeoBrain services. A number of faculty members in multiple universities have been funded as GeoBrain education partners to explore the use of GeoBrain in the classroom teaching and student research. By summarizing and analyzing the feedbacks from the online users and the education partners, this presentation presents the user experiences on using GeoBrain in Earth science teaching and research. The feedbacks on classroom use of GeoBrain have demonstrated that GeoBrain is very useful for facilitating the transition of both undergraduate and graduate students from learners to investigators. They feedbacks have also shown the system can improve teaching effectiveness, refine student's learning habit, and inspire students" interests in pursuing Earth sciences as their career. The interaction with the education users of GeoBrain provides much needed guidance and lessens-learned for future development and promotion of GeoBrain.

BioMart: a data federation framework for large collaborative projects.

PubMed

Zhang, Junjun; Haider, Syed; Baran, Joachim; Cros, Anthony; Guberman, Jonathan M; Hsu, Jack; Liang, Yong; Yao, Long; Kasprzyk, Arek

2011-01-01

BioMart is a freely available, open source, federated database system that provides a unified access to disparate, geographically distributed data sources. It is designed to be data agnostic and platform independent, such that existing databases can easily be incorporated into the BioMart framework. BioMart allows databases hosted on different servers to be presented seamlessly to users, facilitating collaborative projects between different research groups. BioMart contains several levels of query optimization to efficiently manage large data sets and offers a diverse selection of graphical user interfaces and application programming interfaces to ensure that queries can be performed in whatever manner is most convenient for the user. The software has now been adopted by a large number of different biological databases spanning a wide range of data types and providing a rich source of annotation available to bioinformaticians and biologists alike.

User acceptance of mobile commerce: an empirical study in Macau

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lai, Ivan K. W.; Lai, Donny C. F.

2014-06-01

This study aims to examine the positive and negative factors that can significantly explain user acceptance of mobile commerce (m-commerce) in Macau. A technology acceptance model for m-commerce with five factors is constructed. The proposed model is tested using data collected from 219 respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis is performed to examine the reliability and validity of the model, and structural equation modelling is performed to access the relationship between behaviour intention and each factor. The acceptance of m-commerce is influenced by factors including performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and privacy concern; while effort expectancy is insignificant in this case. The results of the study are useful for m-commerce service providers to adjust their strategies for promoting m-commerce services. This study contributes to the practice by providing a user technology acceptance model for m-commerce that can be used as a foundation for future research.

Twelve tips to promote successful development of a learner performance dashboard within a medical education program.

PubMed

Boscardin, Christy; Fergus, Kirkpatrick B; Hellevig, Bonnie; Hauer, Karen E

2017-11-09

Easily accessible and interpretable performance data constitute critical feedback for learners that facilitate informed self-assessment and learning planning. To provide this feedback, there has been a proliferation of educational dashboards in recent years. An educational (learner) dashboard systematically delivers timely and continuous feedback on performance and can provide easily visualized and interpreted performance data. In this paper, we provide practical tips for developing a functional, user-friendly individual learner performance dashboard and literature review of dashboard development, assessment theory, and users' perspectives. Considering key design principles and maximizing current technological advances in data visualization techniques can increase dashboard utility and enhance the user experience. By bridging current technology with assessment strategies that support learning, educators can continue to improve the field of learning analytics and design of information management tools such as dashboards in support of improved learning outcomes.

The GeoDataPortal: A Standards-based Environmental Modeling Data Access and Manipulation Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blodgett, D. L.; Kunicki, T.; Booth, N.; Suftin, I.; Zoerb, R.; Walker, J.

2010-12-01

Environmental modelers from fields of study such as climatology, hydrology, geology, and ecology rely on many data sources and processing methods that are common across these disciplines. Interest in inter-disciplinary, loosely coupled modeling and data sharing is increasing among scientists from the USGS, other agencies, and academia. For example, hydrologic modelers need downscaled climate change scenarios and land cover data summarized for the watersheds they are modeling. Subsequently, ecological modelers are interested in soil moisture information for a particular habitat type as predicted by the hydrologic modeler. The USGS Center for Integrated Data Analytics Geo Data Portal (GDP) project seeks to facilitate this loose model coupling data sharing through broadly applicable open-source web processing services. These services simplify and streamline the time consuming and resource intensive tasks that are barriers to inter-disciplinary collaboration. The GDP framework includes a catalog describing projects, models, data, processes, and how they relate. Using newly introduced data, or sources already known to the catalog, the GDP facilitates access to sub-sets and common derivatives of data in numerous formats on disparate web servers. The GDP performs many of the critical functions needed to summarize data sources into modeling units regardless of scale or volume. A user can specify their analysis zones or modeling units as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard Web Feature Service (WFS). Utilities to cache Shapefiles and other common GIS input formats have been developed to aid in making the geometry available for processing via WFS. Dataset access in the GDP relies primarily on the Unidata NetCDF-Java library’s common data model. Data transfer relies on methods provided by Unidata’s Thematic Real-time Environmental Data Distribution System Data Server (TDS). TDS services of interest include the Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP) standard for gridded time series, the OGC’s Web Coverage Service for high-density static gridded data, and Unidata’s CDM-remote for point time series. OGC WFS and Sensor Observation Service (SOS) are being explored as mechanisms to serve and access static or time series data attributed to vector geometry. A set of standardized XML-based output formats allows easy transformation into a wide variety of “model-ready” formats. Interested users will have the option of submitting custom transformations to the GDP or transforming the XML output as a post-process. The GDP project aims to support simple, rapid development of thin user interfaces (like web portals) to commonly needed environmental modeling-related data access and manipulation tools. Standalone, service-oriented components of the GDP framework provide the metadata cataloging, data subset access, and spatial-statistics calculations needed to support interdisciplinary environmental modeling.

Earth and environmental science in the 1980's: Part 1: Environmental data systems, supercomputer facilities and networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1986-01-01

Overview descriptions of on-line environmental data systems, supercomputer facilities, and networks are presented. Each description addresses the concepts of content, capability, and user access relevant to the point of view of potential utilization by the Earth and environmental science community. The information on similar systems or facilities is presented in parallel fashion to encourage and facilitate intercomparison. In addition, summary sheets are given for each description, and a summary table precedes each section.

FAMNET: The Use of an Electronic Mail System in Canadian Academic Family Medicine

PubMed Central

Ostbye, Truls; Needler, M.C.; Shires, David B.

1988-01-01

The major Canadian universities are connected via a computer communications network called `Netnorth'. We have used Netnorth's accessible, low-cost, electronic mail system to develop a network of academic Family Medicine users (Famnet). We then tested Famnet's utility for conducting rapid surveys. Famnet shows promise of being a useful means of undertaking regular inter-departmental communication. This system may also increase collegiality among Canadian Departments of Family Medicine and facilitate international communication in family medicine. PMID:21264023

A Summary of Sociological Concepts Related to Social Network and Its Techniques for Quantifying Social Cohesion, Social Position, Social Distance

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-01-16

the context of social networking sites , email communications, and virtual worlds, etc. They also, however, form indirect communities via the development...science. In the spring of 2011, access to social networking sites was largely hailed as a prime facilitator of individuals across North Africa and...at an astounding rate, particularly the use of social networking sites . The number of adult internet users in the United States doubled be- tween 2008

Restructuring Big Data to Improve Data Access and Performance in Analytic Services Making Research More Efficient for the Study of Extreme Weather Events and Application User Communities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ostrenga, D.; Shen, S.; Vollmer, B.; Meyer, D. L.

2017-12-01

NASA climate reanalysis dataset from MERRA-2 contains numerous data for atmosphere, land, and ocean, that are grouped into 95 products of archived volume over 300 TB. The data files are saved as hourly-file, day-file (hourly time interval) and month-file containing up to 125 parameters. Due to the large number of data files and the sheer data volumes, it is a challenging for users, especially those in the application research community, to handle dealing with the original data files. Most of these researchers prefer to focus on a small region or single location using the hourly data for long time periods to analyze extreme weather events or say winds for renewable energy applications. At the GES DISC, we have been working closely with the science teams and the application user community to create several new value added data products and high quality services to facilitate the use of the model data for various types of research. We have tested converting hourly data from one-day per file into different data cubes, such as one-month, one-year, or whole-mission and then continued to analyze the efficiency of the accessibility of this newly structured data through various services. Initial results have shown that compared to the original file structure, the new data has significantly improved the performance for accessing long time series. It is noticed that the performance is associated to the cube size and structure, the compression method, and how the data are accessed. The optimized data cube structure will not only improve the data access, but also enable better online analytic services for doing statistical analysis and extreme events mining. Two case studies will be presented using the newly structured data and value added services, the California drought and the extreme drought of the Northeastern states of Brazil. Furthermore, data access and analysis through cloud storage capabilities will be investigated.

EVITHERM: The Virtual Institute of Thermal Metrology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Redgrove, J.; Filtz, J.-R.; Fischer, J.; Le Parlouër, P.; Mathot, V.; Nesvadba, P.; Pavese, F.

2007-12-01

Evitherm is a web-based thermal resource centre, resulting from a 3-year project partly funded by the EU’s GROWTH programme (2002 05). Evitherm links together the widely distributed centres of excellence (NMIs, research and teaching institutes, consultants, etc.) and others concerned with thermal measurements and technology to provide a focal point for information exchange and knowledge transfer between all these organizations and industry. To facilitate the quick and easy flow of thermal knowledge to users of thermal technologies, evitherm has a website (www.evitherm.org) through which it disseminates information and by which it also provides access to resources such as training, property data, measurements and experts. Among the resources available from the website are (1) thermal property data—offering access to some of the world’s leading databases; (2) expertise— evitherm has a database of consultants, an Advice line, a public Forum and a unique Consultancy Brokering Service whereby users are linked to the expert they need to solve their thermal industrial problems; (3) industry resources—thermal information for particular industry sectors; (4) services—information directories on thermal property measurement, training, equipment supply, reference materials, etc.; (5) literature—links to books, papers, standards, etc.; (6) events—conferences, meetings, seminars, organizations and networks, what’s happening. A user only has to register (for free) to gain access to all the information on the evitherm website. Much of the thermal property data can be accessed for free and in a few cases we have negotiated affordable rates for access to some leading databases, such as CINDAS, THERSYST and NELFOOD. This article illustrates the aims and structure of the evitherm Society, how it is directed, and how it serves the thermal community worldwide in its need for quick and easy access to the resources needed to help ensure a well resourced industrial work force and clean and efficient thermal processes.

Implementing Recommendations From Web Accessibility Guidelines: A Comparative Study of Nondisabled Users and Users With Visual Impairments.

PubMed

Schmutz, Sven; Sonderegger, Andreas; Sauer, Juergen

2017-09-01

The present study examined whether implementing recommendations of Web accessibility guidelines would have different effects on nondisabled users than on users with visual impairments. The predominant approach for making Web sites accessible for users with disabilities is to apply accessibility guidelines. However, it has been hardly examined whether this approach has side effects for nondisabled users. A comparison of the effects on both user groups would contribute to a better understanding of possible advantages and drawbacks of applying accessibility guidelines. Participants from two matched samples, comprising 55 participants with visual impairments and 55 without impairments, took part in a synchronous remote testing of a Web site. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of three Web sites, which differed in the level of accessibility (very low, low, and high) according to recommendations of the well-established Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). Performance (i.e., task completion rate and task completion time) and a range of subjective variables (i.e., perceived usability, positive affect, negative affect, perceived aesthetics, perceived workload, and user experience) were measured. Higher conformance to Web accessibility guidelines resulted in increased performance and more positive user ratings (e.g., perceived usability or aesthetics) for both user groups. There was no interaction between user group and accessibility level. Higher conformance to WCAG 2.0 may result in benefits for nondisabled users and users with visual impairments alike. Practitioners may use the present findings as a basis for deciding on whether and how to implement accessibility best.

Giovanni - The Bridge Between Data and Science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Zhong; Acker, James

2017-01-01

This article describes new features in the Geospatial Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (Giovanni), a user-friendly online tool that enables visualization, analysis, and assessment of NASA Earth science data sets without downloading data and software. Since the satellite era began, data collected from Earth-observing satellites have been widely used in research and applications; however, using satellite-based data sets can still be a challenge to many. To facilitate data access and evaluation, as well as scientific exploration and discovery, the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) has developed Giovanni for a wide range of users around the world. This article describes the latest capabilities of Giovanni with examples, and discusses future plans for this innovative system.

Engineering data compendium. Human perception and performance. User's guide

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Boff, Kenneth R. (Editor); Lincoln, Janet E. (Editor)

1988-01-01

The concept underlying the Engineering Data Compendium was the product of a research and development program (Integrated Perceptual Information for Designers project) aimed at facilitating the application of basic research findings in human performance to the design and military crew systems. The principal objective was to develop a workable strategy for: (1) identifying and distilling information of potential value to system design from the existing research literature, and (2) presenting this technical information in a way that would aid its accessibility, interpretability, and applicability by systems designers. The present four volumes of the Engineering Data Compendium represent the first implementation of this strategy. This is the first volume, the User's Guide, containing a description of the program and instructions for its use.

Coastal Thematic Exploitation Platform (C-TEP): An innovative and collaborative platform to facilitate Big Data coastal research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tuohy, Eimear; Clerc, Sebastien; Politi, Eirini; Mangin, Antoine; Datcu, Mihai; Vignudelli, Stefano; Illuzzi, Diomede; Craciunescu, Vasile; Aspetsberger, Michael

2017-04-01

The Coastal Thematic Exploitation Platform (C-TEP) is an on-going European Space Agency (ESA) funded project to develop a web service dedicated to the observation of the coastal environment and to support coastal management and monitoring. For over 20 years ESA satellites have provided a wealth of environmental data. The availability of an ever increasing volume of environmental data from satellite remote sensing provides a unique opportunity for exploratory science and the development of coastal applications. However, the diversity and complexity of EO data available, the need for efficient data access, information extraction, data management and high spec processing tools pose major challenges to achieving its full potential in terms of Big Data exploitation. C-TEP will provide a new means to handle the technical challenges of the observation of coastal areas and contribute to improved understanding and decision-making with respect to coastal resources and environments. C-TEP will unlock coastal knowledge and innovation as a collaborative, virtual work environment providing access to a comprehensive database of coastal Earth Observation (EO) data, in-situ data, model data and the tools and processors necessary to fully exploit these vast and heterogeneous datasets. The cloud processing capabilities provided, allow users to perform heavy processing tasks through a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI). A connection to the PEPS (Plateforme pour l'Exploitation des Produits Sentinel) archive will provide data from Sentinel missions 1, 2 and 3. Automatic comparison tools will be provided to exploit the in-situ datasets in synergy with EO data. In addition, users may develop, test and share their own advanced algorithms for the extraction of coastal information. Algorithm validation will be facilitated by the capabilities to compute statistics over long time-series. Finally, C-TEP subscription services will allow users to perform automatic monitoring of some key indicators (water quality, water level, vegetation stress) from Near Real Time data. To demonstrate the benefits of C-TEP, three pilot cases have been implemented, each addressing specific, and highly topical, coastal research needs. These applications include change detection in land and seabed cover, water quality monitoring and reporting, and a coastal altimetry processor. The pilot cases demonstrate the wide scope of C-TEP and how it may contribute to European projects and international coastal networks. In conclusion, CTEP aims to provide new services and tools which will revolutionise accessibility to EO datasets, support a multi-disciplinary research collaboration, and the provision of long-term data series and innovative services for the monitoring of coastal regions.

An Integrated Approach for Accessing Multiple Datasets through LANCE

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Murphy, K. J.; Teague, M.; Conover, H.; Regner, K.; Beaumont, B.; Masuoka, E.; Vollmer, B.; Theobald, M.; Durbin, P.; Michael, K.; Boller, R. A.; Schmaltz, J. E.; Davies, D.; Horricks, K.; Ilavajhala, S.; Thompson, C. K.; Bingham, A.

2011-12-01

The NASA/GSFC Land Atmospheres Near-real time Capability for EOS (LANCE) provides imagery for approximately 40 data products from MODIS, AIRS, AMSR-E and OMI to support the applications community in the study of a variety of phenomena. Thirty-six of these products are available within 2.5 hours of observation at the spacecraft. The data set includes the population density data provided by the EOSDIS Socio-Economic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). The purpose of this paper is to describe the variety of tools that have been developed by LANCE to support user access to the imagery. The long-standing Rapid Response system has been integrated into LANCE and is a major vehicle for the distribution of the imagery to end users. There are presently approximately 10,000 anonymous users per month accessing these imagery. The products are grouped into 14 applications categories such as Smoke Plumes, Pollution, Fires, Agriculture and the selection of any category will make relevant subsets of the 40 products available as possible overlays in an interactive Web Client utilizing Web Mapping Service (WMS) to support user investigations (http://lance2.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/wms/). For example, selecting Severe Storms will include 6 products for MODIS, OMI, AIRS, and AMSR-E plus the SEDAC population density data. The client and WMS were developed using open-source technologies such as OpenLayers and MapServer and provides a uniform, browser-based access to data products. All overlays are downloadable in PNG, JPEG, or GeoTiff form up to 200MB per request. The WMS was beta-tested with the user community and substantial performance improvements were made through the use of such techniques as tile-caching. LANCE established a partnership with Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO DAAC) to develop an alternative presentation for the 40 data products known as the State of the Earth (SOTE). This provides a Google Earth-based interface to the products grouped in the same fashion as the WMS. The SOTE servers stream imagery and data in the OGC KML format and these feeds can be visualized through the Google Earth browser plug-in. SOTE provides visualization through a virtual globe environment by allowing users to interact with the globe via zooming, rotating, and tilting. In addition, SOTE also allows adding custom KML feeds. LANCE also provides datacasting feeds to facilitate user access to imagery for the 40 products and the related HDF-EOS products (available in a variety of formats). These XML-based data feeds contain data attribute and geolocation information, and metadata including an identification of the related application category. Users can subscribe to any feeds through the LANCE web site and use the PO DAAC Feed Reader to filter and view the content. The WMS, SOTE, and datacasting tools can be accessed through http://lance.nasa.gov.

Interactive analysis of geographically distributed population imaging data collections over light-path data networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

van Lew, Baldur; Botha, Charl P.; Milles, Julien R.; Vrooman, Henri A.; van de Giessen, Martijn; Lelieveldt, Boudewijn P. F.

2015-03-01

The cohort size required in epidemiological imaging genetics studies often mandates the pooling of data from multiple hospitals. Patient data, however, is subject to strict privacy protection regimes, and physical data storage may be legally restricted to a hospital network. To enable biomarker discovery, fast data access and interactive data exploration must be combined with high-performance computing resources, while respecting privacy regulations. We present a system using fast and inherently secure light-paths to access distributed data, thereby obviating the need for a central data repository. A secure private cloud computing framework facilitates interactive, computationally intensive exploration of this geographically distributed, privacy sensitive data. As a proof of concept, MRI brain imaging data hosted at two remote sites were processed in response to a user command at a third site. The system was able to automatically start virtual machines, run a selected processing pipeline and write results to a user accessible database, while keeping data locally stored in the hospitals. Individual tasks took approximately 50% longer compared to a locally hosted blade server but the cloud infrastructure reduced the total elapsed time by a factor of 40 using 70 virtual machines in the cloud. We demonstrated that the combination light-path and private cloud is a viable means of building an analysis infrastructure for secure data analysis. The system requires further work in the areas of error handling, load balancing and secure support of multiple users.

Perspectives of basic wheelchair users on improving their access to wheelchair services in Kenya and Philippines: a qualitative study.

PubMed

Williams, Emma; Hurwitz, Elizabeth; Obaga, Immaculate; Onguti, Brenda; Rivera, Adovich; Sy, Tyrone Reden L; Kirby, R Lee; Noon, Jamie; Tanuku, Deepti; Gichangi, Anthony; Bazant, Eva

2017-08-17

The United Nations has called for countries to improve access to mobility devices when needed. The World Health Organization has published guidelines on the provision of manual wheelchairs in less-resourced settings. Yet little is known about the extent to which appropriate wheelchairs are available and provided according to international guidelines. This study's purpose was to describe wheelchair users' experiences receiving services and acquiring wheelchair skills in urban and peri-urban areas of Kenya and the Philippines. Local researchers in Nairobi and Manila interviewed 48 adult basic wheelchair users, with even distribution of those who had and had not received wheelchair services along with their wheelchair. Recordings were transcribed in the local language and translated into English. The study team coded transcripts for predetermined and emergent themes, using Atlas-ti software. A qualitative content analysis approach was taken with the WHO service delivery process as an organizing framework. Wheelchair users frequently described past experiences with ill-fitting wheelchairs and little formal training to use wheelchairs effectively. Through exposure to multiple wheelchairs and self-advocacy, they learned to select wheelchairs suitable for their needs. Maintenance and repair services were often in short supply. Participants attributed shorter duration of wheelchair use to lack of repair. Peer support networks emerged as an important source of knowledge, resources and emotional support. Most participants acknowledged that they received wheelchairs that would have been difficult or impossible for them to pay for, and despite challenges, they were grateful to have some means of mobility. Four themes emerged as critical for understanding the implementation of wheelchair services: barriers in the physical environment, the need for having multiple chairs to improve access, perceived social stigma, and the importance of peer support. Interventions are needed to provide wheelchairs services efficiently, at scale, in an environment facilitating physical access and peer support, and reduced social stigma. Not applicable since this was a descriptive study.

New SECAA/ NSSDC Capabilities for Accessing ITM Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bilitza, D.; Papitashvili, N.; McGuire, R.

NASA's National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) archives a large volume of data and models that are of relevance to the International Living with a Star (ILWS) project. Working with NSSDC its sister organization the Sun Earth Connection Active Archive (SECAA) has developed a number of data access and browse tools to facilitate user access to this important data source. For the most widely used empirical models (IRI, IGRF, MSIS/CIRA, AE/AP-8) Java-based web interfaces let users compute, list, plot, and download model parameters. We will report about recent enhancements and extensions of these data and model services in the area of ionospheric-thermospheric-mesospheric (ITM) physics. The ATMOWeb system (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/atmoweb/) includes data from many of the ITM satellite missions of the sixties, seventies, and eighties (BE-B, DME-A, Alouette 2, AE-B, OGO-6, ISIS-1, ISIS-2, AEROS-A, AE-C, AE-D, AE-E, DE-2, and Hinotori). New capabilities of the ATMOWeb system include in addition to time series plots and data retrievals, ATMOWeb now lets user generate scatter plots and linear regression fits for any pair of parameters. Optional upper and lower boundaries let users filter out specific segments of the data and/or certain ranges of orbit parameters (altitude, longitude, local time, etc.). Data from TIMED is being added to the CDAWeb system, including new web service capabilities, to be available jointly with the broad scope of space physics data already served by CDAWeb. We will also present the newest version of the NSSDC/SECAA models web pages. The layout and sequence of these entry pages to the models catalog, archive, and web interfaces was greatly simplified and broad up-to-date.

Towards an integrated EU data system within AtlantOS project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pouliquen, Sylvie; Harscoat, Valerie; Waldmann, Christoph; Koop-Jakobsen, ketill

2017-04-01

The H2020 AtlantOS project started in June 2015 and aims to optimise and enhance the Integrated Atlantic Ocean Observing Systems (IAOOS). One goal is to ensure that data from different and diverse in-situ observing networks are readily accessible and useable to the wider community, international ocean science community and other stakeholders in this field. To achieve that, the strategy is to move towards an integrated data system within AtlantOS that harmonises work flows, data processing and distribution across the in-situ observing network systems, and integrates in-situ observations in existing European and international data infrastructures (Copernicus marine service, SeaDataNet NODCs, EMODnet, OBIS, GEOSS) so called Integrators. The targeted integrated system will deal with data management challenges for efficient and reliable data service to users: • Quality control commons for heterogeneous and nearly real time data • Standardisation of mandatory metadata for efficient data exchange • Interoperability of network and integrator data management systems Presently the situation is that the data acquired by the different in situ observing networks contributing to the AtlantOS project are processed and distributed using different methodologies and means. Depending on the network data management organization, the data are either processed following recommendations elaborated y the network teams and accessible through a unique portal (FTP or Web), or are processed by individual scientific researchers and made available through National Data Centres or directly at institution level. Some datasets are available through Integrators, such as Copernicus or EMODnet, but connected through ad-hoc links. To facilitate the access to the Atlantic observations and avoid "mixing pears with apples", it has been necessary to agree on (1) the EOVs list and definition across the Networks, (2) a minimum set of common vocabularies for metadata and data description to be used by all the Networks, and (3) a minimum level of Near Real Time Quality Control Procedures for selected EOVs. Then a data exchange backbone has been defined and is being setting up to facilitate discovery, viewing and downloading by the users. Some tools will be recommended to help Network plugging their data on this backbone and facilitate integration in the Integrators. Finally, existing services to the users for data discovery, viewing and downloading will be enhanced to ease access to existing observations. An initial working phase relying on existing international standards and protocols, involving data providers, both Networks and Integrators, and dealing with data harmonisation and integration objectives, has led to agreements and recommendations .The setup phase has started, both on Networks and Integrators sides, to adapt the existing systems in order to move toward this integrated EU data system within AtlantOS as well as collaboration with international partners arpound the ATlantic Ocean.

Web tools for predictive toxicology model building.

PubMed

Jeliazkova, Nina

2012-07-01

The development and use of web tools in chemistry has accumulated more than 15 years of history already. Powered by the advances in the Internet technologies, the current generation of web systems are starting to expand into areas, traditional for desktop applications. The web platforms integrate data storage, cheminformatics and data analysis tools. The ease of use and the collaborative potential of the web is compelling, despite the challenges. The topic of this review is a set of recently published web tools that facilitate predictive toxicology model building. The focus is on software platforms, offering web access to chemical structure-based methods, although some of the frameworks could also provide bioinformatics or hybrid data analysis functionalities. A number of historical and current developments are cited. In order to provide comparable assessment, the following characteristics are considered: support for workflows, descriptor calculations, visualization, modeling algorithms, data management and data sharing capabilities, availability of GUI or programmatic access and implementation details. The success of the Web is largely due to its highly decentralized, yet sufficiently interoperable model for information access. The expected future convergence between cheminformatics and bioinformatics databases provides new challenges toward management and analysis of large data sets. The web tools in predictive toxicology will likely continue to evolve toward the right mix of flexibility, performance, scalability, interoperability, sets of unique features offered, friendly user interfaces, programmatic access for advanced users, platform independence, results reproducibility, curation and crowdsourcing utilities, collaborative sharing and secure access.

The Association between Access to Public Transportation and Self-Reported Active Commuting

PubMed Central

Djurhuus, Sune; Hansen, Henning S.; Aadahl, Mette; Glümer, Charlotte

2014-01-01

Active commuting provides routine-based regular physical activity which can reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Using public transportation involves some walking or cycling to a transit stop, transfers and a walk to the end location and users of public transportation have been found to accumulate more moderate physical activity than non-users. Understanding how public transportation characteristics are associated with active transportation is thus important from a public health perspective. This study examines the associations between objective measures of access to public transportation and self-reported active commuting. Self-reported time spent either walking or cycling commuting each day and the distance to workplace were obtained for adults aged 16 to 65 in the Danish National Health Survey 2010 (n = 28,928). Access to public transportation measures were computed by combining GIS-based road network distances from home address to public transit stops an integrating their service level. Multilevel logistic regression was used to examine the association between access to public transportation measures and active commuting. Distance to bus stop, density of bus stops, and number of transport modes were all positively associated with being an active commuter and with meeting recommendations of physical activity. No significant association was found between bus services at the nearest stop and active commuting. The results highlight the importance of including detailed measurements of access to public transit in order to identify the characteristics that facilitate the use of public transportation and active commuting. PMID:25489998

The association between access to public transportation and self-reported active commuting.

PubMed

Djurhuus, Sune; Hansen, Henning S; Aadahl, Mette; Glümer, Charlotte

2014-12-05

Active commuting provides routine-based regular physical activity which can reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Using public transportation involves some walking or cycling to a transit stop, transfers and a walk to the end location and users of public transportation have been found to accumulate more moderate physical activity than non-users. Understanding how public transportation characteristics are associated with active transportation is thus important from a public health perspective. This study examines the associations between objective measures of access to public transportation and self-reported active commuting. Self-reported time spent either walking or cycling commuting each day and the distance to workplace were obtained for adults aged 16 to 65 in the Danish National Health Survey 2010 (n = 28,928). Access to public transportation measures were computed by combining GIS-based road network distances from home address to public transit stops an integrating their service level. Multilevel logistic regression was used to examine the association between access to public transportation measures and active commuting. Distance to bus stop, density of bus stops, and number of transport modes were all positively associated with being an active commuter and with meeting recommendations of physical activity. No significant association was found between bus services at the nearest stop and active commuting. The results highlight the importance of including detailed measurements of access to public transit in order to identify the characteristics that facilitate the use of public transportation and active commuting.

Smart-device environmental control systems: experiences of people with cervical spinal cord injuries.

PubMed

Hooper, Bethany; Verdonck, Michele; Amsters, Delena; Myburg, Michelle; Allan, Emily

2017-09-06

Environmental control systems (ECS) are devices that enable people with severe physical limitations to independently control household appliances. Recent advancements in the area of environmental control technology have led to the development of ECS that can be controlled through mainstream smart-devices. There is limited research on ECS within Australia and no known research addressing smart-device ECS. The current study sought to explore users' experiences with smart-device ECS within Australia. The study followed a single embedded case study method. Participants (n = 5) were existing ECS users with a cervical spinal cord injury. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with participants, reflexive journals and field notes. An inductive approach was used to analyze the data thematically. The experience of using a smart-device ECS presented both opportunities and costs to users. The opportunities included: independent control, choice, peace of mind, connection, effective resource use, and control over smart-phone functions and applications. The associated costs included: financial, time, frustration, and technical limitations. While findings are similar to previous research into traditional ECS this study indicates that smart-device ECS also offered a new opportunity for users to access mainstream smart-device functions and applications. Future research should investigate methods and resources that practitioners could utilize to better support new users of smart-device ECS. Implications for Rehabilitation As with traditional environmental control systems, users of smart environmental control systems report increased independence, choice and control. Smart-device environmental control systems provide users with access to mainstream smart-device functions and applications, which facilitate connection to family and the outside world. The costs to the user of smart-device environmental control systems include monetary and time investment, dealing with technical limitations and resulting frustration. Prescribers and installers must consider ways to mitigate these costs experienced by users.

Residents’ and preceptors’ perceptions of the use of the iPad for clinical teaching in a family medicine residency program

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background As Family Medicine programs across Canada are transitioning into a competency-based curriculum, medical students and clinical teachers are increasingly incorporating tablet computers in their work and educational activities. The purpose of this pilot study was to identify how preceptors and residents use tablet computers to implement and adopt a new family medicine curriculum and to evaluate how they access applications (apps) through their tablet in an effort to support and enhance effective teaching and learning. Methods Residents and preceptors (n = 25) from the Family Medicine program working at the Pembroke Regional Hospital in Ontario, Canada, were given iPads and training on how to use the device in clinical teaching and learning activities and how to access the online curriculum. Data regarding the use and perceived contribution of the iPads were collected through surveys and focus groups. This mixed methods research used analysis of survey responses to support the selection of questions for focus groups. Results Reported results were categorized into: curriculum and assessment; ease of use; portability; apps and resources; and perceptions about the use of the iPad in teaching/learning setting. Most participants agreed on the importance of accessing curriculum resources through the iPad but recognized that these required enhancements to facilitate use. The iPad was considered to be more useful for activities involving output of information than for input. Participants’ responses regarding the ease of use of mobile technology were heterogeneous due to the diversity of computer proficiency across users. Residents had a slightly more favorable opinion regarding the iPad’s contribution to teaching/learning compared to preceptors. Conclusions iPad’s interface should be fully enhanced to allow easy access to online curriculum and its built-in resources. The differences in computer proficiency level among users should be reduced by sharing knowledge through workshops led by more skillful iPad users. To facilitate collection of information through the iPad, the design of electronic data-input forms should consider the participants’ reported negative perceptions towards typing data through mobile devices. Technology deployment projects should gather sufficient evidence from pilot studies in order to guide efforts to adapt resources and infrastructure to relevant needs of Family Medicine teachers and learners. PMID:25138307

GAIA virtual observatory - development and practices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Syrjäsuo, Mikko; Marple, Steve

2010-05-01

The Global Auroral Imaging Access, or GAIA, is a virtual observatory providing quick access to summary data from satellite and ground-based instruments that remote sense auroral precipitation (http://gaia-vxo.org). This web-based service facilitates locating data relevant to particular events by simultaneously displaying summary images from various data sets around the world. At the moment, there are GAIA server nodes in Canada, Finland, Norway and the UK. The development is an international effort and the software and metadata are freely available. The GAIA system is based on a relational database which is queried by a dedicated software suite that also creates the graphical end-user interface if such is needed. Most commonly, the virtual observatory is used interactively by using a web browser: the user provides the date and the type of data of interest. As the summary data from multiple instruments are displayed simultaneously, the user can conveniently explore the recorded data. The virtual observatory provides essentially instant access to the images originating from all major auroral instrument networks including THEMIS, NORSTAR, GLORIA and MIRACLE. The scientific, educational and outreach use is limited by creativity rather than access. The first version of the GAIA was developed at the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) in 2004-2005. This proof-of-concept included mainly THEMIS and MIRACLE data, which comprised of millions of summary plots and thumbnail images. However, it was soon realised that a complete re-design was necessary to increase flexibility. In the presentation, we will discuss the early history and motivation of GAIA as well as how the development continued towards the current version. The emphasis will be on practical problems and their solutions. Relevant design choices will also be highlighted.

Venous access and care: harnessing pragmatics in harm reduction for people who inject drugs.

PubMed

Harris, Magdalena; Rhodes, Tim

2012-06-01

To explore the facilitators of long-term hepatitis C avoidance among people who inject drugs. We employed a qualitative life history design. Recruitment took place through low-threshold drug services and drug user networks in South East and North London. Participants were interviewed at the recruitment services or in their homes. The sample comprised 35 people who inject drugs, 20 of whom were hepatitis C antibody-negative. Participants' average injecting trajectory was 19 years (6-33), with 66% primarily injecting heroin, and 34% a crack and heroin mix. Nine (26%) of the sample were female and the average age was 39 years (23-53). Two interviews were conducted with each participant, with the second interview incorporating reference to a computer-constructed life history time-line. Interview accounts were audiorecorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Hepatitis C risk awareness was recent and deprioritized by the majority of participants. The facilitation of venous access and care was an initial and enduring rationale for safe injecting practices. Difficult venous access resulted in increased contamination of injecting environments and transitions to femoral injecting. Participants expressed an unmet desire for non-judgemental venous access information and advice. Harm reduction interventions which attend to the immediate priorities of people who inject drugs, such as venous access and care, have the potential to re-engage individuals who are jaded or confused by hepatitis C prevention messages. © 2011 The Authors, Addiction © 2011 Society for the Study of Addiction.

An Information System for European culture collections: the way forward.

PubMed

Casaregola, Serge; Vasilenko, Alexander; Romano, Paolo; Robert, Vincent; Ozerskaya, Svetlana; Kopf, Anna; Glöckner, Frank O; Smith, David

2016-01-01

Culture collections contain indispensable information about the microorganisms preserved in their repositories, such as taxonomical descriptions, origins, physiological and biochemical characteristics, bibliographic references, etc. However, information currently accessible in databases rarely adheres to common standard protocols. The resultant heterogeneity between culture collections, in terms of both content and format, notably hampers microorganism-based research and development (R&D). The optimized exploitation of these resources thus requires standardized, and simplified, access to the associated information. To this end, and in the interest of supporting R&D in the fields of agriculture, health and biotechnology, a pan-European distributed research infrastructure, MIRRI, including over 40 public culture collections and research institutes from 19 European countries, was established. A prime objective of MIRRI is to unite and provide universal access to the fragmented, and untapped, resources, information and expertise available in European public collections of microorganisms; a key component of which is to develop a dynamic Information System. For the first time, both culture collection curators as well as their users have been consulted and their feedback, concerning the needs and requirements for collection databases and data accessibility, utilised. Users primarily noted that databases were not interoperable, thus rendering a global search of multiple databases impossible. Unreliable or out-of-date and, in particular, non-homogenous, taxonomic information was also considered to be a major obstacle to searching microbial data efficiently. Moreover, complex searches are rarely possible in online databases thus limiting the extent of search queries. Curators also consider that overall harmonization-including Standard Operating Procedures, data structure, and software tools-is necessary to facilitate their work and to make high-quality data easily accessible to their users. Clearly, the needs of culture collection curators coincide with those of users on the crucial point of database interoperability. In this regard, and in order to design an appropriate Information System, important aspects on which the culture collection community should focus include: the interoperability of data sets with the ontologies to be used; setting best practice in data management, and the definition of an appropriate data standard.

Implementing Recommendations From Web Accessibility Guidelines: Would They Also Provide Benefits to Nondisabled Users.

PubMed

Schmutz, Sven; Sonderegger, Andreas; Sauer, Juergen

2016-06-01

We examined the consequences of implementing Web accessibility guidelines for nondisabled users. Although there are Web accessibility guidelines for people with disabilities available, they are rarely used in practice, partly due to the fact that practitioners believe that such guidelines provide no benefits, or even have negative consequences, for nondisabled people, who represent the main user group of Web sites. Despite these concerns, there is a lack of empirical research on the effects of current Web accessibility guidelines on nondisabled users. Sixty-one nondisabled participants used one of three Web sites differing in levels of accessibility (high, low, and very low). Accessibility levels were determined by following established Web accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0). A broad methodological approach was used, including performance measures (e.g., task completion time) and user ratings (e.g., perceived usability). A high level of Web accessibility led to better performance (i.e., task completion time and task completion rate) than low or very low accessibility. Likewise, high Web accessibility improved user ratings (i.e., perceived usability, aesthetics, workload, and trustworthiness) compared to low or very low Web accessibility. There was no difference between the very low and low Web accessibility conditions for any of the outcome measures. Contrary to some concerns in the literature and among practitioners, high conformance with Web accessibility guidelines may provide benefits to users without disabilities. The findings may encourage more practitioners to implement WCAG 2.0 for the benefit of users with disabilities and nondisabled users. © 2016, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Earth science information: Planning for the integration and use of global change information

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lousma, Jack R.

1992-01-01

The Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) was founded in 1989 as a non-profit corporation dedicated to facilitating access to, use and understanding of global change information worldwide. The Consortium was created to cooperate and coordinate with organizations and researchers throughout the global change community to further access the most advanced technology, the latest scientific research, and the best information available for critical environmental decision making. CIESIN study efforts are guided by Congressional mandates to 'convene key present and potential users to assess the need for investment in integration of earth science information,' to 'outline the desirable pattern of interaction with the scientific and policy community,' and to 'develop recommendations and draft plans to achieve the appropriate level of effort in the use of earth science data for research and public policy purposes.' In addition, CIESIN is tasked by NASA to develop a data center that would extend the benefits of Earth Observing System (EOS) to the users of global change information related to human dimensions issues. For FY 1991, CIESIN focused on two main objectives. The first addressed the identification of information needs of global change research and non-research user groups worldwide. The second focused on an evaluation of the most efficient mechanisms for making this information available in usable forms.

Improving Data Access for Climate Preparedness Through Public-Private Partnerships

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Satkowski, L.; Tewksbury, J.

2017-12-01

With increasing exposure to extreme hurricane and flooding events, a growing number of communities, companies, and civil society organizations around the world are looking to assess climate impacts and vulnerability, and to develop resilience plans. Currently, efforts to turn data into actionable plans are constrained by limited access to robust, actionable data and information. The Partnership for Resilience and Preparedness (PREP), public-private collaboration that seeks to empower a data-driven approach to building climate resilience, aims to facilitate the process for planners, investors, resource managers, and others to routinely incorporate climate risks into their decisions, by enhancing access to relevant data and facilitating collective learning. Together, this peer-to-peer initiative of approximately 30 government, NGO, and business partners built PREPdata, an intuitive, open map-based platform that enables users to visualize, download and layer data to inform adaptation decision-making. The platform also connects practitioners to data providers, closing the feedback loop between them and enhancing the climate data ecosystem. In this session participants will learn how public-private partnerships can reduce barriers to discovering, accessing climate data and will be given an interactive tutorial on PREPdata, specific to the Gulf of Mexico and hurricane and flooding events. Participants will discover ways to incorporate local data with national and global data, learn about PREPdata application case studies, and how PREPdata can be used to analyze risk in hurricane vulnerable geographies.

Limb-Enhancer Genie: An accessible resource of accurate enhancer predictions in the developing limb

DOE PAGES

Monti, Remo; Barozzi, Iros; Osterwalder, Marco; ...

2017-08-21

Epigenomic mapping of enhancer-associated chromatin modifications facilitates the genome-wide discovery of tissue-specific enhancers in vivo. However, reliance on single chromatin marks leads to high rates of false-positive predictions. More sophisticated, integrative methods have been described, but commonly suffer from limited accessibility to the resulting predictions and reduced biological interpretability. Here we present the Limb-Enhancer Genie (LEG), a collection of highly accurate, genome-wide predictions of enhancers in the developing limb, available through a user-friendly online interface. We predict limb enhancers using a combination of > 50 published limb-specific datasets and clusters of evolutionarily conserved transcription factor binding sites, taking advantage ofmore » the patterns observed at previously in vivo validated elements. By combining different statistical models, our approach outperforms current state-of-the-art methods and provides interpretable measures of feature importance. Our results indicate that including a previously unappreciated score that quantifies tissue-specific nuclease accessibility significantly improves prediction performance. We demonstrate the utility of our approach through in vivo validation of newly predicted elements. Moreover, we describe general features that can guide the type of datasets to include when predicting tissue-specific enhancers genome-wide, while providing an accessible resource to the general biological community and facilitating the functional interpretation of genetic studies of limb malformations.« less

Provenance for Runtime Workflow Steering and Validation in Computational Seismology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Spinuso, A.; Krischer, L.; Krause, A.; Filgueira, R.; Magnoni, F.; Muraleedharan, V.; David, M.

2014-12-01

Provenance systems may be offered by modern workflow engines to collect metadata about the data transformations at runtime. If combined with effective visualisation and monitoring interfaces, these provenance recordings can speed up the validation process of an experiment, suggesting interactive or automated interventions with immediate effects on the lifecycle of a workflow run. For instance, in the field of computational seismology, if we consider research applications performing long lasting cross correlation analysis and high resolution simulations, the immediate notification of logical errors and the rapid access to intermediate results, can produce reactions which foster a more efficient progress of the research. These applications are often executed in secured and sophisticated HPC and HTC infrastructures, highlighting the need for a comprehensive framework that facilitates the extraction of fine grained provenance and the development of provenance aware components, leveraging the scalability characteristics of the adopted workflow engines, whose enactment can be mapped to different technologies (MPI, Storm clusters, etc). This work looks at the adoption of W3C-PROV concepts and data model within a user driven processing and validation framework for seismic data, supporting also computational and data management steering. Validation needs to balance automation with user intervention, considering the scientist as part of the archiving process. Therefore, the provenance data is enriched with community-specific metadata vocabularies and control messages, making an experiment reproducible and its description consistent with the community understandings. Moreover, it can contain user defined terms and annotations. The current implementation of the system is supported by the EU-Funded VERCE (http://verce.eu). It provides, as well as the provenance generation mechanisms, a prototypal browser-based user interface and a web API built on top of a NoSQL storage technology, experimenting ways to ensure a rapid and flexible access to the lineage traces. It supports the users with the visualisation of graphical products and offers combined operations to access and download the data which may be selectively stored at runtime, into dedicated data archives.

Automatic Identification System modular receiver for academic purposes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cabrera, F.; Molina, N.; Tichavska, M.; Araña, V.

2016-07-01

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) standard is encompassed within the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS), in force since 1999. The GMDSS is a set of procedures, equipment, and communication protocols designed with the aim of increasing the safety of sea crossings, facilitating navigation, and the rescue of vessels in danger. The use of this system not only is increasingly attractive to security issues but also potentially creates intelligence products throughout the added-value information that this network can transmit from ships on real time (identification, position, course, speed, dimensions, flag, among others). Within the marine electronics market, commercial receivers implement this standard and allow users to access vessel-broadcasted information if in the range of coverage. In addition to satellite services, users may request actionable information from private or public AIS terrestrial networks where real-time feed or historical data can be accessed from its nodes. This paper describes the configuration of an AIS receiver based on a modular design. This modular design facilitates the evaluation of specific modules and also a better understanding of the standard and the possibility of changing hardware modules to improve the performance of the prototype. Thus, the aim of this paper is to describe the system's specifications, its main hardware components, and to present educational didactics on the setup and use of a modular and terrestrial AIS receiver. The latter is for academic purposes and in undergraduate studies such as electrical engineering, telecommunications, and maritime studies.

Data Archive and Portal Thrust Area Strategy Report

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

Sivaraman, Chitra; Stephan, Eric G.; Macduff, Matt C.

2014-09-01

This report describes the Data Archive and Portal (DAP), a key capability of the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmosphere to Electron (A2e) initiative. The DAP Thrust Area Planning Group was organized to develop a plan for deploying this capability. Primarily, the report focuses on a distributed system--a DOE Wind Cloud--that functions as a repository for all A2e data. The Wind Cloud will be accessible via an open, easy-to-navigate user interface that facilitates community data access, interaction, and collaboration. DAP management will work with the community, industry, and international standards bodies to develop standards for wind data and to capture importantmore » characteristics of all data in the Wind Cloud.« less

WebSat--a web software for microsatellite marker development.

PubMed

Martins, Wellington Santos; Lucas, Divino César Soares; Neves, Kelligton Fabricio de Souza; Bertioli, David John

2009-01-01

Simple sequence repeats (SSR), also known as microsatellites, have been extensively used as molecular markers due to their abundance and high degree of polymorphism. We have developed a simple to use web software, called WebSat, for microsatellite molecular marker prediction and development. WebSat is accessible through the Internet, requiring no program installation. Although a web solution, it makes use of Ajax techniques, providing a rich, responsive user interface. WebSat allows the submission of sequences, visualization of microsatellites and the design of primers suitable for their amplification. The program allows full control of parameters and the easy export of the resulting data, thus facilitating the development of microsatellite markers. The web tool may be accessed at http://purl.oclc.org/NET/websat/

SLIMS--a user-friendly sample operations and inventory management system for genotyping labs.

PubMed

Van Rossum, Thea; Tripp, Ben; Daley, Denise

2010-07-15

We present the Sample-based Laboratory Information Management System (SLIMS), a powerful and user-friendly open source web application that provides all members of a laboratory with an interface to view, edit and create sample information. SLIMS aims to simplify common laboratory tasks with tools such as a user-friendly shopping cart for subjects, samples and containers that easily generates reports, shareable lists and plate designs for genotyping. Further key features include customizable data views, database change-logging and dynamically filled pre-formatted reports. Along with being feature-rich, SLIMS' power comes from being able to handle longitudinal data from multiple time-points and biological sources. This type of data is increasingly common from studies searching for susceptibility genes for common complex diseases that collect thousands of samples generating millions of genotypes and overwhelming amounts of data. LIMSs provide an efficient way to deal with this data while increasing accessibility and reducing laboratory errors; however, professional LIMS are often too costly to be practical. SLIMS gives labs a feasible alternative that is easily accessible, user-centrically designed and feature-rich. To facilitate system customization, and utilization for other groups, manuals have been written for users and developers. Documentation, source code and manuals are available at http://genapha.icapture.ubc.ca/SLIMS/index.jsp. SLIMS was developed using Java 1.6.0, JSPs, Hibernate 3.3.1.GA, DB2 and mySQL, Apache Tomcat 6.0.18, NetBeans IDE 6.5, Jasper Reports 3.5.1 and JasperSoft's iReport 3.5.1.

Applications For Real Time NOMADS At NCEP To Disseminate NOAA's Operational Model Data Base

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alpert, J. C.; Wang, J.; Rutledge, G.

2007-05-01

A wide range of environmental information, in digital form, with metadata descriptions and supporting infrastructure is contained in the NOAA Operational Modeling Archive Distribution System (NOMADS) and its Real Time (RT) project prototype at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). NOMADS is now delivering on its goal of a seamless framework, from archival to real time data dissemination for NOAA's operational model data holdings. A process is under way to make NOMADS part of NCEP's operational production of products. A goal is to foster collaborations among the research and education communities, value added retailers, and public access for science and development. In the National Research Council's "Completing the Forecast", Recommendation 3.4 states: "NOMADS should be maintained and extended to include (a) long-term archives of the global and regional ensemble forecasting systems at their native resolution, and (b) re-forecast datasets to facilitate post-processing." As one of many participants of NOMADS, NCEP serves the operational model data base using data application protocol (Open-DAP) and other services for participants to serve their data sets and users to obtain them. Using the NCEP global ensemble data as an example, we show an Open-DAP (also known as DODS) client application that provides a request-and-fulfill mechanism for access to the complex ensemble matrix of holdings. As an example of the DAP service, we show a client application which accesses the Global or Regional Ensemble data set to produce user selected weather element event probabilities. The event probabilities are easily extended over model forecast time to show probability histograms defining the future trend of user selected events. This approach insures an efficient use of computer resources because users transmit only the data necessary for their tasks. Data sets are served by OPeN-DAP allowing commercial clients such as MATLAB or IDL as well as freeware clients such as GrADS to access the NCEP real time database. We will demonstrate how users can use NOMADS services to repackage area subsets and select levels and variables that are sent to a users selected ftp site. NOMADS can also display plots on demand for area subsets, selected levels, time series and selected variables.

The Five 'R's' for Developing Trusted Software Frameworks to increase confidence in, and maximise reuse of, Open Source Software.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fraser, Ryan; Gross, Lutz; Wyborn, Lesley; Evans, Ben; Klump, Jens

2015-04-01

Recent investments in HPC, cloud and Petascale data stores, have dramatically increased the scale and resolution that earth science challenges can now be tackled. These new infrastructures are highly parallelised and to fully utilise them and access the large volumes of earth science data now available, a new approach to software stack engineering needs to be developed. The size, complexity and cost of the new infrastructures mean any software deployed has to be reliable, trusted and reusable. Increasingly software is available via open source repositories, but these usually only enable code to be discovered and downloaded. As a user it is hard for a scientist to judge the suitability and quality of individual codes: rarely is there information on how and where codes can be run, what the critical dependencies are, and in particular, on the version requirements and licensing of the underlying software stack. A trusted software framework is proposed to enable reliable software to be discovered, accessed and then deployed on multiple hardware environments. More specifically, this framework will enable those who generate the software, and those who fund the development of software, to gain credit for the effort, IP, time and dollars spent, and facilitate quantification of the impact of individual codes. For scientific users, the framework delivers reviewed and benchmarked scientific software with mechanisms to reproduce results. The trusted framework will have five separate, but connected components: Register, Review, Reference, Run, and Repeat. 1) The Register component will facilitate discovery of relevant software from multiple open source code repositories. The registration process of the code should include information about licensing, hardware environments it can be run on, define appropriate validation (testing) procedures and list the critical dependencies. 2) The Review component is targeting on the verification of the software typically against a set of benchmark cases. This will be achieved by linking the code in the software framework to peer review forums such as Mozilla Science or appropriate Journals (e.g. Geoscientific Model Development Journal) to assist users to know which codes to trust. 3) Referencing will be accomplished by linking the Software Framework to groups such as Figshare or ImpactStory that help disseminate and measure the impact of scientific research, including program code. 4) The Run component will draw on information supplied in the registration process, benchmark cases described in the review and relevant information to instantiate the scientific code on the selected environment. 5) The Repeat component will tap into existing Provenance Workflow engines that will automatically capture information that relate to a particular run of that software, including identification of all input and output artefacts, and all elements and transactions within that workflow. The proposed trusted software framework will enable users to rapidly discover and access reliable code, reduce the time to deploy it and greatly facilitate sharing, reuse and reinstallation of code. Properly designed it could enable an ability to scale out to massively parallel systems and be accessed nationally/ internationally for multiple use cases, including Supercomputer centres, cloud facilities, and local computers.

Developing methods for systematic reviewing in health services delivery and organization: an example from a review of access to health care for people with learning disabilities. Part 2. Evaluation of the literature--a practical guide.

PubMed

Alborz, Alison; McNally, Rosalind

2004-12-01

To develop methods to facilitate the 'systematic' review of evidence from a range of methodologies on diffuse or 'soft' topics, as exemplified by 'access to health care'. Twenty-eight bibliographic databases, research registers, organizational websites or library catalogues. Reference lists from identified studies. Contact with experts and service users. Current awareness and contents alerting services in the area of learning disabilities. Inclusion criteria were English language literature from 1980 onwards, relating to people with learning disabilities of any age and all study designs. The main criteria for assessment was relevance to Guillifords' model of access to health care which was adapted to the circumstances of people with learning disabilities. Selected studies were evaluated for scientific rigour then data was extracted and the results synthesized. Quality assessment was by an initial set of 'generic' quality indicators. This enabled further evidence selection before evaluation of findings according to specific criteria for qualitative, quantitative or mixed-method studies. Eighty-two studies were fully evaluated. Five studies were rated 'highly rigorous', 22 'rigorous', 46 'less rigorous' and nine 'poor' papers were retained as the sole evidence covering aspects of the guiding model. The majority of studies were quantitative but used only descriptive statistics. Most evidence lacked methodological detail, which often lowered final quality ratings. The application of a consistent structure to quality evaluation can facilitate data appraisal, extraction and synthesis across a range of methodologies in diffuse or 'soft' topics. Synthesis can be facilitated further by using software, such as the microsoft 'access' database, for managing information.

Full-Text Linking: Affiliated versus Nonaffiliated Access in a Free Database.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grogg, Jill E.; Andreadis, Debra K.; Kirk, Rachel A.

2002-01-01

Presents a comparison of access to full-text articles from a free bibliographic database (PubSCIENCE) for affiliated and unaffiliated users. Found that affiliated users had access to more full-text articles than unaffiliated users had, and that both types of users could increase their level of access through additional searching and greater…

User Interface Technology for Formal Specification Development

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lowry, Michael; Philpot, Andrew; Pressburger, Thomas; Underwood, Ian; Lum, Henry, Jr. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

Formal specification development and modification are an essential component of the knowledge-based software life cycle. User interface technology is needed to empower end-users to create their own formal specifications. This paper describes the advanced user interface for AMPHION1 a knowledge-based software engineering system that targets scientific subroutine libraries. AMPHION is a generic, domain-independent architecture that is specialized to an application domain through a declarative domain theory. Formal specification development and reuse is made accessible to end-users through an intuitive graphical interface that provides semantic guidance in creating diagrams denoting formal specifications in an application domain. The diagrams also serve to document the specifications. Automatic deductive program synthesis ensures that end-user specifications are correctly implemented. The tables that drive AMPHION's user interface are automatically compiled from a domain theory; portions of the interface can be customized by the end-user. The user interface facilitates formal specification development by hiding syntactic details, such as logical notation. It also turns some of the barriers for end-user specification development associated with strongly typed formal languages into active sources of guidance, without restricting advanced users. The interface is especially suited for specification modification. AMPHION has been applied to the domain of solar system kinematics through the development of a declarative domain theory. Testing over six months with planetary scientists indicates that AMPHION's interactive specification acquisition paradigm enables users to develop, modify, and reuse specifications at least an order of magnitude more rapidly than manual program development.

Personalized summarization using user preference for m-learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Sihyoung; Yang, Seungji; Ro, Yong Man; Kim, Hyoung Joong

2008-02-01

As the Internet and multimedia technology is becoming advanced, the number of digital multimedia contents is also becoming abundant in learning area. In order to facilitate the access of digital knowledge and to meet the need of a lifelong learning, e-learning could be the helpful alternative way to the conventional learning paradigms. E-learning is known as a unifying term to express online, web-based and technology-delivered learning. Mobile-learning (m-learning) is defined as e-learning through mobile devices using wireless transmission. In a survey, more than half of the people remarked that the re-consumption was one of the convenient features in e-learning. However, it is not easy to find user's preferred segmentation from a full version of lengthy e-learning content. Especially in m-learning, a content-summarization method is strongly required because mobile devices are limited to low processing power and battery capacity. In this paper, we propose a new user preference model for re-consumption to construct personalized summarization for re-consumption. The user preference for re-consumption is modeled based on user actions with statistical model. Based on the user preference model for re-consumption with personalized user actions, our method discriminates preferred parts over the entire content. Experimental results demonstrated successful personalized summarization.

OPACs: The User and Subject Access.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carson, Elizabeth

1985-01-01

This survey of the literature reveals user and professional opinions of changes in subject access features available for online public access catalogs. Highlights include expanded access to fields already incorporated into traditional MARC record, access to context of the record, and design of the user interface. Twenty-four references are cited.…

75 FR 4101 - Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) System User Access Authorization Form and Rules of Behavior...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-01-26

... Verification (EIV) System User Access Authorization Form and Rules of Behavior and User Agreement AGENCY... lists the following information: Title of Proposal: Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) System User Access, Authorization Form and Rules Of Behavior and User Agreement. OMB Approval Number: 2577-New. Form...

From Open Geographical Data to Tangible Maps: Improving the Accessibility of Maps for Visually Impaired People

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ducasse, J.; Macé, M.; Jouffrais, C.

2015-08-01

Visual maps must be transcribed into (interactive) raised-line maps to be accessible for visually impaired people. However, these tactile maps suffer from several shortcomings: they are long and expensive to produce, they cannot display a large amount of information, and they are not dynamically modifiable. A number of methods have been developed to automate the production of raised-line maps, but there is not yet any tactile map editor on the market. Tangible interactions proved to be an efficient way to help a visually impaired user manipulate spatial representations. Contrary to raised-line maps, tangible maps can be autonomously constructed and edited. In this paper, we present the scenarios and the main expected contributions of the AccessiMap project, which is based on the availability of many sources of open spatial data: 1/ facilitating the production of interactive tactile maps with the development of an open-source web-based editor; 2/ investigating the use of tangible interfaces for the autonomous construction and exploration of a map by a visually impaired user.

Sustainable data and metadata management at the BD2K-LINCS Data Coordination and Integration Center

PubMed Central

Stathias, Vasileios; Koleti, Amar; Vidović, Dušica; Cooper, Daniel J.; Jagodnik, Kathleen M.; Terryn, Raymond; Forlin, Michele; Chung, Caty; Torre, Denis; Ayad, Nagi; Medvedovic, Mario; Ma'ayan, Avi; Pillai, Ajay; Schürer, Stephan C.

2018-01-01

The NIH-funded LINCS Consortium is creating an extensive reference library of cell-based perturbation response signatures and sophisticated informatics tools incorporating a large number of perturbagens, model systems, and assays. To date, more than 350 datasets have been generated including transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenomics, cell phenotype and competitive binding profiling assays. The large volume and variety of data necessitate rigorous data standards and effective data management including modular data processing pipelines and end-user interfaces to facilitate accurate and reliable data exchange, curation, validation, standardization, aggregation, integration, and end user access. Deep metadata annotations and the use of qualified data standards enable integration with many external resources. Here we describe the end-to-end data processing and management at the DCIC to generate a high-quality and persistent product. Our data management and stewardship solutions enable a functioning Consortium and make LINCS a valuable scientific resource that aligns with big data initiatives such as the BD2K NIH Program and concords with emerging data science best practices including the findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles. PMID:29917015

Jenkins-CI, an Open-Source Continuous Integration System, as a Scientific Data and Image-Processing Platform.

PubMed

Moutsatsos, Ioannis K; Hossain, Imtiaz; Agarinis, Claudia; Harbinski, Fred; Abraham, Yann; Dobler, Luc; Zhang, Xian; Wilson, Christopher J; Jenkins, Jeremy L; Holway, Nicholas; Tallarico, John; Parker, Christian N

2017-03-01

High-throughput screening generates large volumes of heterogeneous data that require a diverse set of computational tools for management, processing, and analysis. Building integrated, scalable, and robust computational workflows for such applications is challenging but highly valuable. Scientific data integration and pipelining facilitate standardized data processing, collaboration, and reuse of best practices. We describe how Jenkins-CI, an "off-the-shelf," open-source, continuous integration system, is used to build pipelines for processing images and associated data from high-content screening (HCS). Jenkins-CI provides numerous plugins for standard compute tasks, and its design allows the quick integration of external scientific applications. Using Jenkins-CI, we integrated CellProfiler, an open-source image-processing platform, with various HCS utilities and a high-performance Linux cluster. The platform is web-accessible, facilitates access and sharing of high-performance compute resources, and automates previously cumbersome data and image-processing tasks. Imaging pipelines developed using the desktop CellProfiler client can be managed and shared through a centralized Jenkins-CI repository. Pipelines and managed data are annotated to facilitate collaboration and reuse. Limitations with Jenkins-CI (primarily around the user interface) were addressed through the selection of helper plugins from the Jenkins-CI community.

Jenkins-CI, an Open-Source Continuous Integration System, as a Scientific Data and Image-Processing Platform

PubMed Central

Moutsatsos, Ioannis K.; Hossain, Imtiaz; Agarinis, Claudia; Harbinski, Fred; Abraham, Yann; Dobler, Luc; Zhang, Xian; Wilson, Christopher J.; Jenkins, Jeremy L.; Holway, Nicholas; Tallarico, John; Parker, Christian N.

2016-01-01

High-throughput screening generates large volumes of heterogeneous data that require a diverse set of computational tools for management, processing, and analysis. Building integrated, scalable, and robust computational workflows for such applications is challenging but highly valuable. Scientific data integration and pipelining facilitate standardized data processing, collaboration, and reuse of best practices. We describe how Jenkins-CI, an “off-the-shelf,” open-source, continuous integration system, is used to build pipelines for processing images and associated data from high-content screening (HCS). Jenkins-CI provides numerous plugins for standard compute tasks, and its design allows the quick integration of external scientific applications. Using Jenkins-CI, we integrated CellProfiler, an open-source image-processing platform, with various HCS utilities and a high-performance Linux cluster. The platform is web-accessible, facilitates access and sharing of high-performance compute resources, and automates previously cumbersome data and image-processing tasks. Imaging pipelines developed using the desktop CellProfiler client can be managed and shared through a centralized Jenkins-CI repository. Pipelines and managed data are annotated to facilitate collaboration and reuse. Limitations with Jenkins-CI (primarily around the user interface) were addressed through the selection of helper plugins from the Jenkins-CI community. PMID:27899692

Security Analysis and Improvements of Authentication and Access Control in the Internet of Things

PubMed Central

Ndibanje, Bruce; Lee, Hoon-Jae; Lee, Sang-Gon

2014-01-01

Internet of Things is a ubiquitous concept where physical objects are connected over the internet and are provided with unique identifiers to enable their self-identification to other devices and the ability to continuously generate data and transmit it over a network. Hence, the security of the network, data and sensor devices is a paramount concern in the IoT network as it grows very fast in terms of exchanged data and interconnected sensor nodes. This paper analyses the authentication and access control method using in the Internet of Things presented by Jing et al (Authentication and Access Control in the Internet of Things. In Proceedings of the 2012 32nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, Macau, China, 18–21 June 2012, pp. 588–592). According to our analysis, Jing et al.'s protocol is costly in the message exchange and the security assessment is not strong enough for such a protocol. Therefore, we propose improvements to the protocol to fill the discovered weakness gaps. The protocol enhancements facilitate many services to the users such as user anonymity, mutual authentication, and secure session key establishment. Finally, the performance and security analysis show that the improved protocol possesses many advantages against popular attacks, and achieves better efficiency at low communication cost. PMID:25123464

MED31/437: A Web-based Diabetes Management System: DiabNet

PubMed Central

Zhao, N; Roudsari, A; Carson, E

1999-01-01

Introduction A web-based system (DiabNet) was developed to provide instant access to the Electronic Diabetes Records (EDR) for end-users, and real-time information for healthcare professionals to facilitate their decision-making. It integrates portable glucometer, handheld computer, mobile phone and Internet access as a combined telecommunication and mobile computing solution for diabetes management. Methods: Active Server Pages (ASP) embedded with advanced ActiveX controls and VBScript were developed to allow remote data upload, retrieval and interpretation. Some advisory and Internet-based learning features, together with a video teleconferencing component make DiabNet web site an informative platform for Web-consultation. Results The evaluation of the system is being implemented among several UK Internet diabetes discussion groups and the Diabetes Day Centre at the Guy's & St. Thomas' Hospital. Many positive feedback are received from the web site demonstrating DiabNet is an advanced web-based diabetes management system which can help patients to keep closer control of self-monitoring blood glucose remotely, and is an integrated diabetes information resource that offers telemedicine knowledge in diabetes management. Discussion In summary, DiabNet introduces an innovative online diabetes management concept, such as online appointment and consultation, to enable users to access diabetes management information without time and location limitation and security concerns.

Security analysis and improvements of authentication and access control in the Internet of Things.

PubMed

Ndibanje, Bruce; Lee, Hoon-Jae; Lee, Sang-Gon

2014-08-13

Internet of Things is a ubiquitous concept where physical objects are connected over the internet and are provided with unique identifiers to enable their self-identification to other devices and the ability to continuously generate data and transmit it over a network. Hence, the security of the network, data and sensor devices is a paramount concern in the IoT network as it grows very fast in terms of exchanged data and interconnected sensor nodes. This paper analyses the authentication and access control method using in the Internet of Things presented by Jing et al. (Authentication and Access Control in the Internet of Things. In Proceedings of the 2012 32nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, Macau, China, 18-21 June 2012, pp. 588-592). According to our analysis, Jing et al.'s protocol is costly in the message exchange and the security assessment is not strong enough for such a protocol. Therefore, we propose improvements to the protocol to fill the discovered weakness gaps. The protocol enhancements facilitate many services to the users such as user anonymity, mutual authentication, and secure session key establishment. Finally, the performance and security analysis show that the improved protocol possesses many advantages against popular attacks, and achieves better efficiency at low communication cost.

Controlling user access to electronic resources without password

DOEpatents

Smith, Fred Hewitt

2015-06-16

Described herein are devices and techniques for remotely controlling user access to a restricted computer resource. The process includes pre-determining an association of the restricted computer resource and computer-resource-proximal environmental information. Indicia of user-proximal environmental information are received from a user requesting access to the restricted computer resource. Received indicia of user-proximal environmental information are compared to associated computer-resource-proximal environmental information. User access to the restricted computer resource is selectively granted responsive to a favorable comparison in which the user-proximal environmental information is sufficiently similar to the computer-resource proximal environmental information. In at least some embodiments, the process further includes comparing user-supplied biometric measure and comparing it with a predetermined association of at least one biometric measure of an authorized user. Access to the restricted computer resource is granted in response to a favorable comparison.

Usage based indicators to assess the impact of scholarly works: architecture and method

DOEpatents

Bollen, Johan [Santa Fe, NM; Van De Sompel, Herbert [Santa Fe, NM

2012-03-13

Although recording of usage data is common in scholarly information services, its exploitation for the creation of value-added services remains limited due to concerns regarding, among others, user privacy, data validity, and the lack of accepted standards for the representation, sharing and aggregation of usage data. A technical, standards-based architecture for sharing usage information is presented. In this architecture, OpenURL-compliant linking servers aggregate usage information of a specific user community as it navigates the distributed information environment that it has access to. This usage information is made OAI-PMH harvestable so that usage information exposed by many linking servers can be aggregated to facilitate the creation of value-added services with a reach beyond that of a single community or a single information service.

Visualization of High-Resolution LiDAR Topography in Google Earth

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Crosby, C. J.; Nandigam, V.; Arrowsmith, R.; Blair, J. L.

2009-12-01

The growing availability of high-resolution LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) topographic data has proven to be revolutionary for Earth science research. These data allow scientists to study the processes acting on the Earth’s surfaces at resolutions not previously possible yet essential for their appropriate representation. In addition to their utility for research, the data have also been recognized as powerful tools for communicating earth science concepts for education and outreach purposes. Unfortunately, the massive volume of data produced by LiDAR mapping technology can be a barrier to their use. To facilitate access to these powerful data for research and educational purposes, we have been exploring the use of Keyhole Markup Language (KML) and Google Earth to deliver LiDAR-derived visualizations. The OpenTopography Portal (http://www.opentopography.org/) is a National Science Foundation-funded facility designed to provide access to Earth science-oriented LiDAR data. OpenTopography hosts a growing collection of LiDAR data for a variety of geologic domains, including many of the active faults in the western United States. We have found that the wide spectrum of LiDAR users have variable scientific applications, computing resources, and technical experience and thus require a data distribution system that provides various levels of access to the data. For users seeking a synoptic view of the data, and for education and outreach purposes, delivering full-resolution images derived from LiDAR topography into the Google Earth virtual globe is powerful. The virtual globe environment provides a freely available and easily navigated viewer and enables quick integration of the LiDAR visualizations with imagery, geographic layers, and other relevant data available in KML format. Through region-dependant network linked KML, OpenTopography currently delivers over 20 GB of LiDAR-derived imagery to users via simple, easily downloaded KMZ files hosted at the Portal. This method provides seamlessly access to hillshaded imagery for both bare earth and first return terrain models with various angles of illumination. Seamless access to LiDAR-derived imagery in Google Earth has proven to be the most popular product available in the OpenTopography Portal. The hillshade KMZ files have been downloaded over 3000 times by users ranging from earthquake scientists to K-12 educators who wish to introduce cutting edge real world data into their earth science lessons. OpenTopography also provides dynamically generated KMZ visualizations of LiDAR data products produced when users choose to use the OpenTopography point cloud access and processing system. These Google Earth compatible products allow users to quickly visualize the custom terrain products they have generated without the burden of loading the data into a GIS environment. For users who have installed the Google Earth browser plug-in, these visualizations can be launched directly from the OpenTopography results page and viewed directly in the browser.

National Scale Marine Geophysical Data Portal for the Israel EEZ with Public Access Web-GIS Platform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ketter, T.; Kanari, M.; Tibor, G.

2017-12-01

Recent offshore discoveries and regulation in the Israel Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) are the driving forces behind increasing marine research and development initiatives such as infrastructure development, environmental protection and decision making among many others. All marine operations rely on existing seabed information, while some also generate new data. We aim to create a single platform knowledge-base to enable access to existing information, in a comprehensive, publicly accessible web-based interface. The Israel EEZ covers approx. 26,000 sqkm and has been surveyed continuously with various geophysical instruments over the past decades, including 10,000 km of multibeam survey lines, 8,000 km of sub-bottom seismic lines, and hundreds of sediment sampling stations. Our database consists of vector and raster datasets from multiple sources compiled into a repository of geophysical data and metadata, acquired nation-wide by several research institutes and universities. The repository will enable public access via a web portal based on a GIS platform, including datasets from multibeam, sub-bottom profiling, single- and multi-channel seismic surveys and sediment sampling analysis. Respective data products will also be available e.g. bathymetry, substrate type, granulometry, geological structure etc. Operating a web-GIS based repository allows retrieval of pre-existing data for potential users to facilitate planning of future activities e.g. conducting marine surveys, construction of marine infrastructure and other private or public projects. User interface is based on map oriented spatial selection, which will reveal any relevant data for designated areas of interest. Querying the database will allow the user to obtain information about the data owner and to address them for data retrieval as required. Wide and free public access to existing data and metadata can save time and funds for academia, government and commercial sectors, while aiding in cooperation and data sharing among the various stakeholders.

SCHeMA web-based observation data information system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Novellino, Antonio; Benedetti, Giacomo; D'Angelo, Paolo; Confalonieri, Fabio; Massa, Francesco; Povero, Paolo; Tercier-Waeber, Marie-Louise

2016-04-01

It is well recognized that the need of sharing ocean data among non-specialized users is constantly increasing. Initiatives that are built upon international standards will contribute to simplify data processing and dissemination, improve user-accessibility also through web browsers, facilitate the sharing of information across the integrated network of ocean observing systems; and ultimately provide a better understanding of the ocean functioning. The SCHeMA (Integrated in Situ Chemical MApping probe) Project is developing an open and modular sensing solution for autonomous in situ high resolution mapping of a wide range of anthropogenic and natural chemical compounds coupled to master bio-physicochemical parameters (www.schema-ocean.eu). The SCHeMA web system is designed to ensure user-friendly data discovery, access and download as well as interoperability with other projects through a dedicated interface that implements the Global Earth Observation System of Systems - Common Infrastructure (GCI) recommendations and the international Open Geospatial Consortium - Sensor Web Enablement (OGC-SWE) standards. This approach will insure data accessibility in compliance with major European Directives and recommendations. Being modular, the system allows the plug-and-play of commercially available probes as well as new sensor probess under development within the project. The access to the network of monitoring probes is provided via a web-based system interface that, being implemented as a SOS (Sensor Observation Service), is providing standard interoperability and access tosensor observations systems through O&M standard - as well as sensor descriptions - encoded in Sensor Model Language (SensorML). The use of common vocabularies in all metadatabases and data formats, to describe data in an already harmonized and common standard is a prerequisite towards consistency and interoperability. Therefore, the SCHeMA SOS has adopted the SeaVox common vocabularies populated by SeaDataNet network of National Oceanographic Data Centres. The SCHeMA presentation layer, a fundamental part of the software architecture, offers to the user a bidirectional interaction with the integrated system allowing to manage and configure the sensor probes; view the stored observations and metadata, and handle alarms. The overall structure of the web portal developed within the SCHeMA initiative (Sensor Configuration, development of Core Profile interface for data access via OGC standard, external services such as web services, WMS, WFS; and Data download and query manager) will be presented and illustrated with examples of ongoing tests in costal and open sea.

GeoBrain Computational Cyber-laboratory for Earth Science Studies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deng, M.; di, L.

2009-12-01

Computational approaches (e.g., computer-based data visualization, analysis and modeling) are critical for conducting increasingly data-intensive Earth science (ES) studies to understand functions and changes of the Earth system. However, currently Earth scientists, educators, and students have met two major barriers that prevent them from being effectively using computational approaches in their learning, research and application activities. The two barriers are: 1) difficulties in finding, obtaining, and using multi-source ES data; and 2) lack of analytic functions and computing resources (e.g., analysis software, computing models, and high performance computing systems) to analyze the data. Taking advantages of recent advances in cyberinfrastructure, Web service, and geospatial interoperability technologies, GeoBrain, a project funded by NASA, has developed a prototype computational cyber-laboratory to effectively remove the two barriers. The cyber-laboratory makes ES data and computational resources at large organizations in distributed locations available to and easily usable by the Earth science community through 1) enabling seamless discovery, access and retrieval of distributed data, 2) federating and enhancing data discovery with a catalogue federation service and a semantically-augmented catalogue service, 3) customizing data access and retrieval at user request with interoperable, personalized, and on-demand data access and services, 4) automating or semi-automating multi-source geospatial data integration, 5) developing a large number of analytic functions as value-added, interoperable, and dynamically chainable geospatial Web services and deploying them in high-performance computing facilities, 6) enabling the online geospatial process modeling and execution, and 7) building a user-friendly extensible web portal for users to access the cyber-laboratory resources. Users can interactively discover the needed data and perform on-demand data analysis and modeling through the web portal. The GeoBrain cyber-laboratory provides solutions to meet common needs of ES research and education, such as, distributed data access and analysis services, easy access to and use of ES data, and enhanced geoprocessing and geospatial modeling capability. It greatly facilitates ES research, education, and applications. The development of the cyber-laboratory provides insights, lessons-learned, and technology readiness to build more capable computing infrastructure for ES studies, which can meet wide-range needs of current and future generations of scientists, researchers, educators, and students for their formal or informal educational training, research projects, career development, and lifelong learning.

GEIA's Vision for Improved Emissions Information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Frost, G. J.; Granier, C.; Tarrason, L.; Middleton, P.

2014-12-01

Accurate, timely, and accessible emissions information is critical for understanding and making predictions about the atmosphere. We will present recent progress of the Global Emissions InitiAtive (GEIA, http://www.geiacenter.org/), a community-driven joint activity of IGAC, iLEAPS, and AIMES within the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. Since 1990, GEIA has served as a forum for the exchange of expertise and information on anthropogenic and natural emissions of trace gases and aerosols. GEIA supports a worldwide network of emissions data developers and users, providing a solid scientific foundation for atmospheric chemistry research. By the year 2020, GEIA envisions being a bridge between the environmental science, regulatory, assessment, policy, and operational communities. GEIA's core activities include 1) facilitating analysis that improves the scientific basis for emissions data, 2) enhancing access to emissions information, and 3) strengthening linkages within the international emissions community. We will highlight GEIA's current work distributing emissions data, organizing the development of new emissions datasets, facilitating regional emissions studies, and initiating analyses aimed at improving emissions information. GEIA welcomes new partnerships that advance emissions knowledge for the future.

The SNS/HFIR Web Portal System - How Can it Help Me?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miller, Stephen D.; Geist, Al; Herwig, Kenneth W.; Peterson, Peter F.; Reuter, Michael A.; Ren, Shelly; Bilheux, Jean-Christophe; Campbell, Stuart I.; Kohl, James A.; Vazhkudai, Sudharshan S.; Cobb, John W.; Lynch, Vickie E.; Chen, Meili; Trater, James R.; Smith, Bradford C.; (William Swain, Tom; Huang, Jian; Mikkelson, Ruth; Mikkelson, Dennis; een, Mar K. L. Gr

2010-11-01

In a busy world, continuing with the status-quo, to do things the way we are already familiar, often seems to be the most efficient way to conduct our work. We look for the value-add to decide if investing in a new method is worth the effort. How shall we evaluate if we have reached this tipping point for change? For contemporary researchers, understanding the properties of the data is a good starting point. The new generation of neutron scattering instruments being built are higher resolution and produce one or more orders of magnitude larger data than the previous generation of instruments. For instance, we have grown out of being able to perform some important tasks with our laptops - the data are too big and the computations would simply take too long. These large datasets can be problematic as facility users now begin to grapple with many of the same issues faced by more established computing communities. These issues include data access, management, and movement, data format standards, distributed computing, and collaboration among others. The Neutron Science Portal has been architected, designed, and implemented to provide users with an easy-to-use interface for managing and processing data, while also keeping an eye on meeting modern cybersecurity requirements imposed on institutions. The cost of entry for users has been lowered by utilizing a web interface providing access to backend portal resources. Users can browse or search for data which they are allowed to see, data reduction applications can be run without having to load the software, sample activation calculations can be performed for SNS and HFIR beamlines, McStas simulations can be run on TeraGrid and ORNL computers, and advanced analysis applications such as those being produced by the DANSE project can be run. Behind the scenes is a "live cataloging" system which automatically catalogs and archives experiment data via the data management system, and provides proposal team members access to their experiment data. The complexity of data movement and utilizing distributed computing resources has been taken care on behalf of users. Collaboration is facilitated by providing users a read/writeable common area, shared

Research into display sharing techniques for distributed computing environments

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hugg, Steven B.; Fitzgerald, Paul F., Jr.; Rosson, Nina Y.; Johns, Stephen R.

1990-01-01

The X-based Display Sharing solution for distributed computing environments is described. The Display Sharing prototype includes the base functionality for telecast and display copy requirements. Since the prototype implementation is modular and the system design provided flexibility for the Mission Control Center Upgrade (MCCU) operational consideration, the prototype implementation can be the baseline for a production Display Sharing implementation. To facilitate the process the following discussions are presented: Theory of operation; System of architecture; Using the prototype; Software description; Research tools; Prototype evaluation; and Outstanding issues. The prototype is based on the concept of a dedicated central host performing the majority of the Display Sharing processing, allowing minimal impact on each individual workstation. Each workstation participating in Display Sharing hosts programs to facilitate the user's access to Display Sharing as host machine.

The role of privacy protection in healthcare information systems adoption.

PubMed

Hsu, Chien-Lung; Lee, Ming-Ren; Su, Chien-Hui

2013-10-01

Privacy protection is an important issue and challenge in healthcare information systems (HISs). Recently, some privacy-enhanced HISs are proposed. Users' privacy perception, intention, and attitude might affect the adoption of such systems. This paper aims to propose a privacy-enhanced HIS framework and investigate the role of privacy protection in HISs adoption. In the proposed framework, privacy protection, access control, and secure transmission modules are designed to enhance the privacy protection of a HIS. An experimental privacy-enhanced HIS is also implemented. Furthermore, we proposed a research model extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology by considering perceived security and information security literacy and then investigate user adoption of a privacy-enhanced HIS. The experimental results and analyses showed that user adoption of a privacy-enhanced HIS is directly affected by social influence, performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, and perceived security. Perceived security has a mediating effect between information security literacy and user adoption. This study proposes several implications for research and practice to improve designing, development, and promotion of a good healthcare information system with privacy protection.

U.S. Geological Survey archived data recovery in Texas, 2008-11

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wehmeyer, Loren L.; Reece, Brian D.

2011-01-01

The 2008–11 data rescue and recovery efforts by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Texas Water Science Center resulted in an efficient workflow process, database, and Web user interface for scientists and citizens to access archived environmental information with practical applications. Much of this information is unique and has never been readily available to the public. The methods developed and lessons learned during this effort are now being applied to facilitate recovering archived information requested by USGS scientists, cooperators, and the general public.

Facilitating Navigation Through Large Archives

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shelton, Robert O.; Smith, Stephanie L.; Troung, Dat; Hodgson, Terry R.

2005-01-01

Automated Visual Access (AVA) is a computer program that effectively makes a large collection of information visible in a manner that enables a user to quickly and efficiently locate information resources, with minimal need for conventional keyword searches and perusal of complex hierarchical directory systems. AVA includes three key components: (1) a taxonomy that comprises a collection of words and phrases, clustered according to meaning, that are used to classify information resources; (2) a statistical indexing and scoring engine; and (3) a component that generates a graphical user interface that uses the scoring data to generate a visual map of resources and topics. The top level of an AVA display is a pictorial representation of an information archive. The user enters the depicted archive by either clicking on a depiction of subject area cluster, selecting a topic from a list, or entering a query into a text box. The resulting display enables the user to view candidate information entities at various levels of detail. Resources are grouped spatially by topic with greatest generality at the top layer and increasing detail with depth. The user can zoom in or out of specific sites or into greater or lesser content detail.

TERENA eScience PKI

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sova, Milan

Several National Research and Education Networks associated in TERENA have joined their efforts to build a shared PKI able to serve potentially millions of users from their constituency. The TCS eScience Personal CA takes advantage of national identity federations to facilitate user identity vetting and enrollment procedures. The system uses identity management systems (IdMS) at participating institutions to perform the functions of registration authorities. The certificate enrollment application acts as a SAML Service Provider relying on information provided by IdMS performing as SAML Identity Providers (IdP). When applying for a personal certificate, users authenticate at their home IdP using credentials they normally use to access local services. The IdP controls the certificate issuance process by releasing SAML attributes specifying the user's eligibility for the service and the information to be included in the certificate such as the user's name and email address. The TCS eScience Personal CA is part of the TERENA Certificate Service that uses a commercial PKI provider. Outsourcing the actual CA machinery to a specialized company results in professional-level services such as CRL and OCSP management. The paper describes the legal, organizational and technical aspects of the TCS eScience PKI.

ECS DAAC Data Pools

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kiebuzinski, A. B.; Bories, C. M.; Kalluri, S.

2002-12-01

As part of its Earth Observing System (EOS), NASA supports operations for several satellites including Landsat 7, Terra, and Aqua. ECS (EOSDIS Core System) is a vast archival and distribution system and includes several Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) located around the United States. EOSDIS reached a milestone in February when its data holdings exceeded one petabyte (1,000 terabytes) in size. It has been operational since 1999 and originally was intended to serve a large community of Earth Science researchers studying global climate change. The Synergy Program was initiated in 2000 with the purpose of exploring and expanding the use of remote sensing data beyond the traditional research community to the applications community including natural resource managers, disaster/emergency managers, urban planners and others. This included facilitating data access at the DAACs to enable non-researchers to exploit the data for their specific applications. The combined volume of data archived daily across the DAACs is of the order of three terabytes. These archived data are made available to the research community and to general users of ECS data. Currently, the average data volume distributed daily is two terabytes, which combined with an ever-increasing need for timely access to these data, taxes the ECS processing and archival resources for more real-time use than was previously intended for research purposes. As a result, the delivery of data sets to users was being delayed in many cases, to unacceptable limits. Raytheon, under the auspices of the Synergy Program, investigated methods at making data more accessible at a lower cost of resources (processing and archival) at the DAACs. Large on-line caches (as big as 70 Terabytes) of data were determined to be a solution that would allow users who require contemporary data to access them without having to pull it from the archive. These on-line caches are referred to as "Data Pools." In the Data Pool concept, data is inserted via subscriptions based on ECS events, for example, arrival of data matching a specific spatial context. Upon acquisition, these data are written to the Data Pools as well as to the permanent archive. The data is then accessed via a public Web interface, which provides a drilldown search, using data group, spatial, temporal and other flags. The result set is displayed as a list of ftp links to the data, which the user can click and directly download. Data Pool holdings are continuously renewed as the data is allowed to expire and is replaced by more current insertions. In addition, the Data Pool may also house data sets that though not contemporary, receive significant user attention, i.e. a Chernobyl-type of incident, a flood, or a forest fire. The benefits are that users who require contemporary data can access the data immediately (within 24 hours of acquisition) under a much improved access technique. Users not requiring contemporary data, benefit from the Data Pools by having greater archival and processing resources (and a shorter processing queue) made available to them. All users benefit now from the capability to have standing data orders for data matching a geographic context (spatial subscription), a capability also developed under the Synergy program. The Data Pools are currently being installed and checked at each of the DAACs. Additionally, several improvements to the search capabilities, data manipulation tools and overall storage capacity are being developed and will be installed in the First Quarter of 2003.

Support Services for Remote Users of Online Public Access Catalogs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalin, Sally W.

1991-01-01

Discusses the needs of remote users of online public access catalogs (OPACs). User expectations are discussed; problems encountered by remote-access users are examined, including technical problems and searching problems; support services are described, including instruction, print guides, and online help; and differences from the needs of…

Improving access to electronic health records for people with intellectual disability: a qualitative study.

PubMed

van Dooren, Kate; Lennox, Nick; Stewart, Madeline

2013-01-01

People with intellectual disability represent ~2-3% of the Australian population and experience elevated rates of mortality and morbidity compared with the general population. People with intellectual disability, and their families and carers, must keep track of extensive medical information while also managing turnover of paid staff, general practitioners and other health professionals, making them beneficiaries of Australia's new eHealth record system. Although they are key users, there is a lack of knowledge about the accessibility of the system for individuals with intellectual disability, or those responsible for managing their health information. This is a missed opportunity to improve the lives of an already overlooked group. This study aimed to identify the facilitators and barriers to registering for an eHealth record network for people with intellectual disability and those supporting them to manage their health information. We interviewed potential users of eHealth records, including four people with intellectual disability, three family members and two residential support workers. Our findings suggest that decision-makers involved in the roll-out of the eHealth record networks should incorporate 'reasonable accommodations' to improve accessibility for people with intellectual disability and those who support them to manage their health information. This includes identifying and eliminating the barriers to accessibility of eHealth records and taking appropriate measures to promote access to individuals with intellectual disability. People with intellectual disability and the people who support them are a diverse group with a range of abilities. The translation of their views into practice will help to improve the eHealth system for this and other vulnerable population groups.

Open access to Water Indicators for Climate Change Adaptation: proof-of-concept for the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lottle, Lorna; Arheimer, Berit; Gyllensvärd, Frida; Dejong, Fokke; Ludwig, Fulco; Hutjes, Ronald; Martinez, Bernat

2017-04-01

Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) is still in the development phase and will combine observations of the climate system with the latest science to develop authoritative, quality-assured information about the past, current and future states of the climate and climate dependent sectors in Europe and worldwide. C3S will provide key indicators on climate change drivers and selected sectorial impacts. The aim of these indicators will be to support adaptation and mitigation. This presentation will show one service already operational as a proof-of-concept of this future climate service. The project "Service for Water Indicators in Climate Change Adaptation" (SWICCA) has developed a sectorial information service for water management. It offers readily available climate-impact data, for open access from the web-site http://swicca.climate.copernicus.eu/. The development is user-driven with the overall goal to speed up the workflow in climate-change adaptation of water management across Europe. The service is co-designed by consultant engineers and agencies in 15 case-studies spread out over the continent. SWICCA has an interactive user-interface, which shows maps and graphs, and facilitates data download in user-friendly formats. In total, more than 900 open dataset are given for various hydrometeorological (and a few socioeconomical) variables, model ensembles, resolutions, time-periods and RCPs. The service offers more than 40 precomputed climate impact indicators (CIIs) and transient time-series of 4 essential climate variables ECVs) with high spatial and temporal resolution. To facilitate both near future and far future assessments, SWICCA provides the indicators for different time ranges; normally, absolute values are given for a reference period (e.g. 1971-2000) and the expected future changes for different 30-year periods, such as early century (2011-2040), mid-century (2041-2070) and end-century (2071-2100). An ensemble of model results is always given to indicate confidence in the estimates. The SWICCA demonstrator also includes user guidance, information sheets, tutorials, and links to other relevant websites. The aim of this service is to provide research data and guidance for climate impact assessments in the water sector. The main target group is consulting engineers (so called Purveyors) working with climate change adaptation in the water sector. By using indicators, climate impact assessments can be done without having to run a full production chain from raw climate model results - instead the indicators can be included in the local workflow with local methods applied, to facilitate decision-making and strategies to meet the future. Working with real users will ensure that useful data is inserted into the C3S Climate Data Store (CDS).

Effects of accessible website design on nondisabled users: age and device as moderating factors.

PubMed

Schmutz, Sven; Sonderegger, Andreas; Sauer, Juergen

2018-05-01

This study examined how implementing recommendations from Web accessibility guidelines affects nondisabled people in different age groups using different technical devices. While recent research showed positive effects of implementing such recommendations for nondisabled users, it remains unclear whether such effects would apply to different age groups and kind of devices. A 2 × 2 × 2 design was employed with website accessibility (high accessibility vs. very low accessibility), age (younger adults vs. older adults) and type of device (laptop vs. tablet) as independent variables. 110 nondisabled participants took part in a usability test, in which performance and satisfaction were measured as dependent variables. The results showed that higher accessibility increased task completion rate, task completion time and satisfaction ratings of nondisabled users. While user age did not have any effects, users showed faster task completion time under high accessibility when using a tablet rather than a laptop. The findings confirmed previous findings, which showed benefits of accessible websites for nondisabled users. These beneficial effects may now be generalised to a wide age range and across different devices. Practitioner Summary: This work is relevant to the design of websites since it emphasises the need to consider the characteristics of different user groups. Accessible website design (aimed at users with disabilities) leads to benefits for nondisabled users across different ages. These findings provide further encouragement for practitioners to apply WCAG 2.0.

Integration of EGA secure data access into Galaxy.

PubMed

Hoogstrate, Youri; Zhang, Chao; Senf, Alexander; Bijlard, Jochem; Hiltemann, Saskia; van Enckevort, David; Repo, Susanna; Heringa, Jaap; Jenster, Guido; J A Fijneman, Remond; Boiten, Jan-Willem; A Meijer, Gerrit; Stubbs, Andrew; Rambla, Jordi; Spalding, Dylan; Abeln, Sanne

2016-01-01

High-throughput molecular profiling techniques are routinely generating vast amounts of data for translational medicine studies. Secure access controlled systems are needed to manage, store, transfer and distribute these data due to its personally identifiable nature. The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) was created to facilitate access and management to long-term archival of bio-molecular data. Each data provider is responsible for ensuring a Data Access Committee is in place to grant access to data stored in the EGA. Moreover, the transfer of data during upload and download is encrypted. ELIXIR, a European research infrastructure for life-science data, initiated a project (2016 Human Data Implementation Study) to understand and document the ELIXIR requirements for secure management of controlled-access data. As part of this project, a full ecosystem was designed to connect archived raw experimental molecular profiling data with interpreted data and the computational workflows, using the CTMM Translational Research IT (CTMM-TraIT) infrastructure http://www.ctmm-trait.nl as an example. Here we present the first outcomes of this project, a framework to enable the download of EGA data to a Galaxy server in a secure way. Galaxy provides an intuitive user interface for molecular biologists and bioinformaticians to run and design data analysis workflows. More specifically, we developed a tool -- ega_download_streamer - that can download data securely from EGA into a Galaxy server, which can subsequently be further processed. This tool will allow a user within the browser to run an entire analysis containing sensitive data from EGA, and to make this analysis available for other researchers in a reproducible manner, as shown with a proof of concept study.  The tool ega_download_streamer is available in the Galaxy tool shed: https://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/yhoogstrate/ega_download_streamer.

Integration of EGA secure data access into Galaxy

PubMed Central

Hoogstrate, Youri; Zhang, Chao; Senf, Alexander; Bijlard, Jochem; Hiltemann, Saskia; van Enckevort, David; Repo, Susanna; Heringa, Jaap; Jenster, Guido; Fijneman, Remond J.A.; Boiten, Jan-Willem; A. Meijer, Gerrit; Stubbs, Andrew; Rambla, Jordi; Spalding, Dylan; Abeln, Sanne

2016-01-01

High-throughput molecular profiling techniques are routinely generating vast amounts of data for translational medicine studies. Secure access controlled systems are needed to manage, store, transfer and distribute these data due to its personally identifiable nature. The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) was created to facilitate access and management to long-term archival of bio-molecular data. Each data provider is responsible for ensuring a Data Access Committee is in place to grant access to data stored in the EGA. Moreover, the transfer of data during upload and download is encrypted. ELIXIR, a European research infrastructure for life-science data, initiated a project (2016 Human Data Implementation Study) to understand and document the ELIXIR requirements for secure management of controlled-access data. As part of this project, a full ecosystem was designed to connect archived raw experimental molecular profiling data with interpreted data and the computational workflows, using the CTMM Translational Research IT (CTMM-TraIT) infrastructure http://www.ctmm-trait.nl as an example. Here we present the first outcomes of this project, a framework to enable the download of EGA data to a Galaxy server in a secure way. Galaxy provides an intuitive user interface for molecular biologists and bioinformaticians to run and design data analysis workflows. More specifically, we developed a tool -- ega_download_streamer - that can download data securely from EGA into a Galaxy server, which can subsequently be further processed. This tool will allow a user within the browser to run an entire analysis containing sensitive data from EGA, and to make this analysis available for other researchers in a reproducible manner, as shown with a proof of concept study.  The tool ega_download_streamer is available in the Galaxy tool shed: https://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/yhoogstrate/ega_download_streamer. PMID:28232859

ACTRIS Data Centre: An atmospheric data portal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Myhre, C. Lund; Fahre Vik, A.; Logna, R.; Torseth, K.; Linné, H.; O'Connor, E.

2012-04-01

ACTRIS (Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research InfraStructure Network) is a European Project aiming at integrating European ground-based stations equipped with advanced instrumentation for studying aerosols, clouds, and short-lived gas-phase species. The ACTRIS activities result in improved atmospheric measurements data made at more than 60 European sites, from numerous instruments and includes variables measured by ground based in situ and remote sensing technologies. Core variables are in situ aerosol optical, physical and chemical properties, short-lived trace gases (volatile organic carbon and nitrogen oxides), aerosol scattering and extinction profiles, and cloud properties. The ACTRIS data centre (ACTRIS DC) is giving free and open access to all data resulting from the activities of the infrastructure network, complemented with data from other relevant networks and data bases. The overall goal is to facilitate scientists and other user groups access to atmospheric observational data, and to provide mature products for analysis and interpretation of atmospheric composition change. The ACTRIS DC aims at substantially increasing the number of high-quality data by providing long-term observational data relevant to climate and air quality research produced with standardized or comparable procedures throughout the network. The backbone of the ACTRIS DC is the three core data bases: - EARLINET Data Base hosting aerosol lidar data from more than 30 European sites - EBAS hosting ground based atmospheric in situ data from more than 1000 sites globally - Cloudnet hosting remote sensing cloud data and products from 5 European sites Furthermore, a joint portal is developed combining information from various data sources to gain new information not presently available from standalone databases or networks. The data centre will provide tools and services to facilitate the use of measurements for broad user communities. Higher level and integrated products will be developed stage-by-stage during the project, and user requirements, interactions and feedbacks are essential. The first version of ACTRIS DC is a web portal that allows users to search for atmospheric composition data from a multitude of data archives through a single user interface. Examples of data bases and frameworks included are EMEP, the GAW- world data centres, EARLINET, NDACC, CARIBIC-GEOmon, HTAP, AMAP amongst others. Currently the portal provides an overview of more than 800 000 data sets from more than 20 data bases/frameworks globally. For some of the databases included in the portal, the interface furthermore allows you to download data directly through the portal. A map functionality is implemented facilitating the identification of data and making it possible to search for collocation of observations, variables and sites both in time and space. The data portal can serve as "one-stop-shop" of atmospheric high-quality data, and the portal will also offer a direct interface towards external users like the MACC II project and GMES in-situ. The data dissemination will take into account the principles outlined in SEIS, INSPIRE, WIS and GEOSS.

Coalition building by drug user and sex worker community-based organizations in Vietnam can lead to improved interactions with government agencies: a qualitative study.

PubMed

Le, Leah T; Grau, Lauretta E; Nguyen, Huong H; Khuat, Oanh Hai T; Heimer, Robert

2015-10-16

Drug users and female sex workers are among the groups most vulnerable to HIV infection in Vietnam. To address the HIV epidemic within these communities, former drug users and sex workers established the first community-based organizations (CBOs) in 2009. The study provides a focused assessment of CBOs' expanding efforts to advocate for their members that identifies existing collaborations with Vietnamese government programs. This assessment explores the barriers to and facilitators of expansion in order to propose recommendations to improve the working relationship between CBOs and government programs. Thirty-two individuals from drug user and sex worker CBOs (n = 24) and relevant government programs (n = 8) participated in face-to-face interviews in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hai Phong. Coded interview transcripts were analyzed qualitatively concerning the purpose of CBOs, the interactions between CBOs and government programs, and the perceived barriers, facilitators, and feasibility of future CBO-government program collaborations. Services provided by the CBOs were considered to improve members' quality of life. The formation of coalitions among CBOs increased efficiency in meeting members' specific service needs, in addition to internal capacity building. Government field staff interacted with CBOs by providing CBOs with technical and legal support. CBOs and methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) clinics collaborated to help the clinics meet patient enrollment quotas and facilitate entry into treatment for CBO members. Barriers to CBO-government program collaboration included perceived conflicting missions on how to address drug use and sex work in the community, limited CBO-government program communication, CBO mistrust of the MMT system, and lack of legal status for CBOs. To reduce these barriers, we recommend (1) introduction of CBO consultative services at government healthcare centers, (2) enlistment of CBO outreach to ensure full access to the imminent scaled-up MMT program, and (3) establishment of standards by which CBOs can obtain legal status.

Decisional conflict among women considering antidepressant medication use in pregnancy.

PubMed

Walton, Georgia D; Ross, Lori E; Stewart, Donna E; Grigoriadis, Sophie; Dennis, Cindy-Lee; Vigod, Simone

2014-12-01

The purpose of this study was to examine decision-making among women considering antidepressant medication use in pregnancy. Decisional conflict was assessed using the Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS) among pregnant women considering antidepressant medication treatment (N = 40). Overall DCS and subscale scores were compared between women who were antidepressant users and non-users. Semi-structured interviews (N = 10) explored barriers and facilitators of decision-making. Twenty-one women (52 %) had moderate or high decisional conflict (DCS ≥ 25). Overall DCS scores did not differ between groups, but antidepressant use was associated with feeling more adequately informed (subscale mean 17.5, SD 17.9 vs. 42.1, SD 23.8, p = 0.001) and clear about values (subscale mean 16.7, SD 15.1 vs. 29.8, SD 24.0, p = 0.043). Barriers to decision-making were (1) difficulty weighing maternal versus infant health, (2) lack of high quality information, (3) negative external influences, and (4) emotional reactions to decision-making. Facilitators were (1) interpersonal supports, (2) accessible subspecialty care, and (3) severe depressive symptoms. Many pregnant women facing decisions regarding antidepressant medication use experience decisional conflict. Interventions that provide accurate information, assistance with weighing risks and benefits of treatment, management of problematic external influences, and emotional support may reduce decisional conflict and facilitate the decision-making process.

InfoTrac TFD: a microcomputer implementation of the Transcription Factor Database TFD with a graphical user interface.

PubMed

Hoeck, W G

1994-06-01

InfoTrac TFD provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for viewing and manipulating datasets in the Transcription Factor Database, TFD. The interface was developed in Filemaker Pro 2.0 by Claris Corporation, which provides cross platform compatibility between Apple Macintosh computers running System 7.0 and higher and IBM-compatibles running Microsoft Windows 3.0 and higher. TFD ASCII-tables were formatted to fit data into several custom data tables using Add/Strip, a shareware utility and Filemaker Pro's lookup feature. The lookup feature was also put to use to allow TFD data tables to become linked within a flat-file database management system. The 'Navigator', consisting of several pop-up menus listing transcription factor abbreviations, facilitates the search for transcription factor entries. Data are presented onscreen in several layouts, that can be further customized by the user. InfoTrac TFD makes the transcription factor database accessible to a much wider community of scientists by making it available on two popular microcomputer platforms.

Integrating management tools and concepts to develop an estuarine planning support system: A case study of the Humber Estuary, Eastern England.

PubMed

Lonsdale, Jemma-Anne; Weston, Keith; Barnard, Steve; Boyes, Suzanne J; Elliott, Michael

2015-11-15

Estuaries are important because of their multiple uses and users which often makes them challenging to manage since management must strike a balance between the needs of users, the estuaries' ecological and economic value and the context of multiple legislative drivers. To facilitate management we have therefore developed an Estuarine Planning Support System (EPSS) framework using the Humber Estuary, Eastern England, as a case study which integrates the current legislation tools and concepts. This integrated EPSS framework is an improvement on previous approaches for assessing cumulative impacts as it takes into account legislative drivers, management tools and other mechanisms for controlling plans/projects specific to the estuary. It therefore enables managers and users to assess and address both the current state and the way in which a new industrial, port or urban development could impact an estuary in an accessible and understandable framework. Crown Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A resettable and reprogrammable DNA-based security system to identify multiple users with hierarchy.

PubMed

Li, Hailong; Hong, Wei; Dong, Shaojun; Liu, Yaqing; Wang, Erkang

2014-03-25

Molecular-level security devices have raised ever-increasing interest in recent years to protect data and information from illegal invasion. Prior molecular keypad locks have an output signal dependent upon not only the appropriate combination but also the exact sequence of inputs, but it cannot be reset or reprogrammed. Here, a DNA-based security system with reset and never-reported reprogram function is successfully developed in proof-of-principle, with which one can change the password in case that the system is cracked. The previous password becomes invalid in the reprogrammed security system. Interestingly, more than one password is designed to permit multiple users to access. By harnessing the intrinsic merit of the different passwords, the system can distinguish different user who is endowed with prior authority. The intelligent device is addressed on solid support and facilitates electronic processes, avoiding chemical accumulation in the system by simple removal of the electrode from the input solution and indicating a main avenue for its further development.

Mobile applications for participation at the shopping mall: content analysis and usability for persons with physical disabilities and communication or cognitive limitations.

PubMed

Auger, Claudine; Leduc, Emilie; Labbé, Delphine; Guay, Cassioppée; Fillion, Brigitte; Bottari, Carolina; Swaine, Bonnie

2014-12-01

The aim of this exploratory study was to determine the important features in content and usability of existing mobile applications evaluating environmental barriers and facilitators (EBF) to participation for persons with physical disabilities presenting mild communication or cognitive limitations. A rigorous process based on a user-centered design approach led to the identification of two relevant mobile applications to evaluate the EBF. An accessibility expert, the research team as well as five users then tested the mobile applications in a shopping mall. A thematic content analysis of the research team's and users' comments established 10 categories of key features that adequately respond to the needs of the clientele targeted in this study. In terms of content, granularity and contextualization of the information provided were considered important. With respect to usability, relevant features were place finding, rating system, presentation of results, compatibility, user-friendliness, aesthetics, credibility of the information as well as connectivity/interactiveness. The research team and the users agreed on some aspects such as aesthetics, but had different perspectives on features such as the rating system or the connectivity/interactiveness of the application. The users proposed new features suggesting that the existing mobile applications did not correspond to all their needs.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative: Unprecedented access to real-time data streaming from the Cabled Array through OOI Cyberinfrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Knuth, F.; Vardaro, M.; Belabbassi, L.; Smith, M. J.; Garzio, L. M.; Crowley, M. F.; Kerfoot, J.; Kawka, O. E.

2016-02-01

The National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), is a broad-scale, multidisciplinary facility that will transform oceanographic research by providing users with unprecedented access to long-term datasets from a variety of deployed physical, chemical, biological, and geological sensors. The Cabled Array component of the OOI, installed and operated by the University of Washington, is located on the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the coast of Oregon. It is a unique network of >100 cabled instruments and instrumented moorings transmitting data to shore in real-time via fiber optic technology. Instruments now installed include HD video and digital still cameras, mass spectrometers, a resistivity-temperature probe inside the orifice of a high-temperature hydrothermal vent, upward-looking ADCP's, pH and pC02 sensors, Horizontal Electrometer Pressure Inverted Echosounders and many others. Here, we present the technical aspects of data streaming from the Cabled Array through the OOI Cyberinfrastructure. We illustrate the types of instruments and data products available, data volume and density, processing levels and algorithms used, data delivery methods, file formats and access methods through the graphical user interface. Our goal is to facilitate the use and access to these unprecedented, co-registered oceanographic datasets. We encourage researchers to collaborate through the use of these simultaneous, interdisciplinary measurements, in the exploration of short-lived events (tectonic, volcanic, biological, severe storms), as well as long-term trends in ocean systems (circulation patterns, climate change, ocean acidity, ecosystem shifts).

WebSat ‐ A web software for microsatellite marker development

PubMed Central

Martins, Wellington Santos; Soares Lucas, Divino César; de Souza Neves, Kelligton Fabricio; Bertioli, David John

2009-01-01

Simple sequence repeats (SSR), also known as microsatellites, have been extensively used as molecular markers due to their abundance and high degree of polymorphism. We have developed a simple to use web software, called WebSat, for microsatellite molecular marker prediction and development. WebSat is accessible through the Internet, requiring no program installation. Although a web solution, it makes use of Ajax techniques, providing a rich, responsive user interface. WebSat allows the submission of sequences, visualization of microsatellites and the design of primers suitable for their amplification. The program allows full control of parameters and the easy export of the resulting data, thus facilitating the development of microsatellite markers. Availability The web tool may be accessed at http://purl.oclc.org/NET/websat/ PMID:19255650

PCE: web tools to compute protein continuum electrostatics

PubMed Central

Miteva, Maria A.; Tufféry, Pierre; Villoutreix, Bruno O.

2005-01-01

PCE (protein continuum electrostatics) is an online service for protein electrostatic computations presently based on the MEAD (macroscopic electrostatics with atomic detail) package initially developed by D. Bashford [(2004) Front Biosci., 9, 1082–1099]. This computer method uses a macroscopic electrostatic model for the calculation of protein electrostatic properties, such as pKa values of titratable groups and electrostatic potentials. The MEAD package generates electrostatic energies via finite difference solution to the Poisson–Boltzmann equation. Users submit a PDB file and PCE returns potentials and pKa values as well as color (static or animated) figures displaying electrostatic potentials mapped on the molecular surface. This service is intended to facilitate electrostatics analyses of proteins and thereby broaden the accessibility to continuum electrostatics to the biological community. PCE can be accessed at . PMID:15980492

Representing Graphical User Interfaces with Sound: A Review of Approaches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ratanasit, Dan; Moore, Melody M.

2005-01-01

The inability of computer users who are visually impaired to access graphical user interfaces (GUIs) has led researchers to propose approaches for adapting GUIs to auditory interfaces, with the goal of providing access for visually impaired people. This article outlines the issues involved in nonvisual access to graphical user interfaces, reviews…

User Procedures Standardization for Network Access. NBS Technical Note 799.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neumann, A. J.

User access procedures to information systems have become of crucial importance with the advent of computer networks, which have opened new types of resources to a broad spectrum of users. This report surveys user access protocols of six representative systems: BASIC, GE MK II, INFONET, MEDLINE, NIC/ARPANET and SPIRES. Functional access…

Facilitating medical information search using Google Glass connected to a content-based medical image retrieval system.

PubMed

Widmer, Antoine; Schaer, Roger; Markonis, Dimitrios; Muller, Henning

2014-01-01

Wearable computing devices are starting to change the way users interact with computers and the Internet. Among them, Google Glass includes a small screen located in front of the right eye, a camera filming in front of the user and a small computing unit. Google Glass has the advantage to provide online services while allowing the user to perform tasks with his/her hands. These augmented glasses uncover many useful applications, also in the medical domain. For example, Google Glass can easily provide video conference between medical doctors to discuss a live case. Using these glasses can also facilitate medical information search by allowing the access of a large amount of annotated medical cases during a consultation in a non-disruptive fashion for medical staff. In this paper, we developed a Google Glass application able to take a photo and send it to a medical image retrieval system along with keywords in order to retrieve similar cases. As a preliminary assessment of the usability of the application, we tested the application under three conditions (images of the skin; printed CT scans and MRI images; and CT and MRI images acquired directly from an LCD screen) to explore whether using Google Glass affects the accuracy of the results returned by the medical image retrieval system. The preliminary results show that despite minor problems due to the relative stability of the Google Glass, images can be sent to and processed by the medical image retrieval system and similar images are returned to the user, potentially helping in the decision making process.

Generic trending and analysis system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Keehan, Lori; Reese, Jay

1994-01-01

The Generic Trending and Analysis System (GTAS) is a generic spacecraft performance monitoring tool developed by NASA Code 511 and Loral Aerosys. It is designed to facilitate quick anomaly resolution and trend analysis. Traditionally, the job of off-line analysis has been performed using hardware and software systems developed for real-time spacecraft contacts; then, the systems were supplemented with a collection of tools developed by Flight Operations Team (FOT) members. Since the number of upcoming missions is increasing, NASA can no longer afford to operate in this manner. GTAS improves control center productivity and effectiveness because it provides a generic solution across multiple missions. Thus, GTAS eliminates the need for each individual mission to develop duplicate capabilities. It also allows for more sophisticated tools to be developed because it draws resources from several projects. In addition, the GTAS software system incorporates commercial off-the-shelf tools software (COTS) packages and reuses components of other NASA-developed systems wherever possible. GTAS has incorporated lessons learned from previous missions by involving the users early in the development process. GTAS users took a proactive role in requirements analysis, design, development, and testing. Because of user involvement, several special tools were designed and are now being developed. GTAS users expressed considerable interest in facilitating data collection for long term trending and analysis. As a result, GTAS provides easy access to large volumes of processed telemetry data directly in the control center. The GTAS archival and retrieval capabilities are supported by the integration of optical disk technology and a COTS relational database management system.

General consumer communication tools for improved image management and communication in medicine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ratib, Osman M.; Rosset, Antoine; McCoy, J. Michael

2005-04-01

We elected to explore emerging consumer technologies that can be adopted to improve and facilitate image and data communication in medical and clinical environment. The wide adoption of new communication paradigm such as instant messaging, chatting and direct emailing can be integrated in specific applications. The increasing capacity of portable and hand held devices such as iPod music players offer an attractive alternative for data storage that exceeds the capabilities of traditional offline storage media such as CD or even DVD. We adapted medical image display and manipulation software called OSIRIX to integrate different innovative technologies facilitating the communication and data transfer between remote users. We integrated email and instant messaging features to the program allowing users to instantaneously email an image or a set of images that are displayed on the screen. Using iChat instant messaging application from Apple a user can share the content of his screen with a remote correspondent and communicate in real time using voice and video. To provide convenient mechanism for exchange of large data sets the program can store the data in DICOM format on CD or DVD, but was also extended to use the large storage capacity of iPod hard disks as well as Apple"s online storage service "dot Mac" that users can subscribe to benefit from scalable secure storage that accessible from anywhere on the internet. The adoption of these innovative technologies is likely to change the architecture of traditional picture archiving and communication systems and provide more flexible and efficient means of communication.

Using Open and Interoperable Ways to Publish and Access LANCE AIRS Near-Real Time Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, P.; Lynnes, C.; Vollmer, B.; Savtchenko, A. K.; Yang, W.

2011-12-01

Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) Near-Real Time (NRT) data from the Land Atmosphere Near real time Capability for EOS (LANCE) provide the information on the global and regional atmospheric state with very low latency. An open and interoperable platform is useful to facilitate access to and integration of LANCE AIRS NRT data. This paper discusses the use of open-source software components to build Web services for publishing and accessing AIRS NRT data in the context of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The AIRS NRT data have also been made available through an OPeNDAP server. OPeNDAP allows several open-source netCDF-based tools such as Integrated Data Viewer, Ferret and Panoply to directly display the Level 2 data over the network. To enable users to locate swath data files in the OPeNDAP server that lie within a certain geographical area, graphical "granule maps" are being added to show the outline of each file on a map of the Earth. The metadata of AIRS NRT data and services is then explored to implement information advertisement and discovery in catalogue systems. Datacasting, an RSS-based technology for accessing Earth Science data and information to facilitate the subscriptions to AIRS NRT data availability, filtering, downloading and viewing data, is also discussed. To provide an easy entry point to AIRS NRT data and services, a Web portal designed for customized data downloading and visualization is introduced.

MetaGenSense: A web-application for analysis and exploration of high throughput sequencing metagenomic data.

PubMed

Correia, Damien; Doppelt-Azeroual, Olivia; Denis, Jean-Baptiste; Vandenbogaert, Mathias; Caro, Valérie

2015-01-01

The detection and characterization of emerging infectious agents has been a continuing public health concern. High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) or Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies have proven to be promising approaches for efficient and unbiased detection of pathogens in complex biological samples, providing access to comprehensive analyses. As NGS approaches typically yield millions of putatively representative reads per sample, efficient data management and visualization resources have become mandatory. Most usually, those resources are implemented through a dedicated Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), solely to provide perspective regarding the available information. We developed an easily deployable web-interface, facilitating management and bioinformatics analysis of metagenomics data-samples. It was engineered to run associated and dedicated Galaxy workflows for the detection and eventually classification of pathogens. The web application allows easy interaction with existing Galaxy metagenomic workflows, facilitates the organization, exploration and aggregation of the most relevant sample-specific sequences among millions of genomic sequences, allowing them to determine their relative abundance, and associate them to the most closely related organism or pathogen. The user-friendly Django-Based interface, associates the users' input data and its metadata through a bio-IT provided set of resources (a Galaxy instance, and both sufficient storage and grid computing power). Galaxy is used to handle and analyze the user's input data from loading, indexing, mapping, assembly and DB-searches. Interaction between our application and Galaxy is ensured by the BioBlend library, which gives API-based access to Galaxy's main features. Metadata about samples, runs, as well as the workflow results are stored in the LIMS. For metagenomic classification and exploration purposes, we show, as a proof of concept, that integration of intuitive exploratory tools, like Krona for representation of taxonomic classification, can be achieved very easily. In the trend of Galaxy, the interface enables the sharing of scientific results to fellow team members.

Implementation of newly adopted technology in acute care settings: a qualitative analysis of clinical staff

PubMed Central

Langhan, Melissa L.; Riera, Antonio; Kurtz, Jordan C.; Schaeffer, Paula; Asnes, Andrea G.

2015-01-01

Objective Technologies are not always successfully implemented into practise. We elicited experiences of acute care providers with the introduction of technology and identified barriers and facilitators in the implementation process. Methods A qualitative study using one-on-one interviews among a purposeful sample of 19 physicians and nurses within ten emergency departments and intensive care units was performed. Grounded theory, iterative data analysis and the constant comparative method were used to inductively generate ideas and build theories. Results Five major categories emerged: decision-making factors, the impact on practise, technology's perceived value, facilitators and barriers to implementation. Barriers included negative experiences, age, infrequent use, and access difficulties. A positive outlook, sufficient training, support staff, and user friendliness were facilitators. Conclusions This study describes strategies implicated in the successful implementation of newly adopted technology in acute care settings. Improved implementation methods and evaluation of implementation processes are necessary for successful adoption of new technology. PMID:25367721

ZBIT Bioinformatics Toolbox: A Web-Platform for Systems Biology and Expression Data Analysis

PubMed Central

Römer, Michael; Eichner, Johannes; Dräger, Andreas; Wrzodek, Clemens; Wrzodek, Finja; Zell, Andreas

2016-01-01

Bioinformatics analysis has become an integral part of research in biology. However, installation and use of scientific software can be difficult and often requires technical expert knowledge. Reasons are dependencies on certain operating systems or required third-party libraries, missing graphical user interfaces and documentation, or nonstandard input and output formats. In order to make bioinformatics software easily accessible to researchers, we here present a web-based platform. The Center for Bioinformatics Tuebingen (ZBIT) Bioinformatics Toolbox provides web-based access to a collection of bioinformatics tools developed for systems biology, protein sequence annotation, and expression data analysis. Currently, the collection encompasses software for conversion and processing of community standards SBML and BioPAX, transcription factor analysis, and analysis of microarray data from transcriptomics and proteomics studies. All tools are hosted on a customized Galaxy instance and run on a dedicated computation cluster. Users only need a web browser and an active internet connection in order to benefit from this service. The web platform is designed to facilitate the usage of the bioinformatics tools for researchers without advanced technical background. Users can combine tools for complex analyses or use predefined, customizable workflows. All results are stored persistently and reproducible. For each tool, we provide documentation, tutorials, and example data to maximize usability. The ZBIT Bioinformatics Toolbox is freely available at https://webservices.cs.uni-tuebingen.de/. PMID:26882475

The Hawaiian Algal Database: a laboratory LIMS and online resource for biodiversity data

PubMed Central

Wang, Norman; Sherwood, Alison R; Kurihara, Akira; Conklin, Kimberly Y; Sauvage, Thomas; Presting, Gernot G

2009-01-01

Background Organization and presentation of biodiversity data is greatly facilitated by databases that are specially designed to allow easy data entry and organized data display. Such databases also have the capacity to serve as Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS). The Hawaiian Algal Database was designed to showcase specimens collected from the Hawaiian Archipelago, enabling users around the world to compare their specimens with our photographs and DNA sequence data, and to provide lab personnel with an organizational tool for storing various biodiversity data types. Description We describe the Hawaiian Algal Database, a comprehensive and searchable database containing photographs and micrographs, geo-referenced collecting information, taxonomic checklists and standardized DNA sequence data. All data for individual samples are linked through unique accession numbers. Users can search online for sample information by accession number, numerous levels of taxonomy, or collection site. At the present time the database contains data representing over 2,000 samples of marine, freshwater and terrestrial algae from the Hawaiian Archipelago. These samples are primarily red algae, although other taxa are being added. Conclusion The Hawaiian Algal Database is a digital repository for Hawaiian algal samples and acts as a LIMS for the laboratory. Users can make use of the online search tool to view and download specimen photographs and micrographs, DNA sequences and relevant habitat data, including georeferenced collecting locations. It is publicly available at . PMID:19728892

Replication Strategy for Spatiotemporal Data Based on Distributed Caching System

PubMed Central

Xiong, Lian; Tao, Yang; Xu, Juan; Zhao, Lun

2018-01-01

The replica strategy in distributed cache can effectively reduce user access delay and improve system performance. However, developing a replica strategy suitable for varied application scenarios is still quite challenging, owing to differences in user access behavior and preferences. In this paper, a replication strategy for spatiotemporal data (RSSD) based on a distributed caching system is proposed. By taking advantage of the spatiotemporal locality and correlation of user access, RSSD mines high popularity and associated files from historical user access information, and then generates replicas and selects appropriate cache node for placement. Experimental results show that the RSSD algorithm is simple and efficient, and succeeds in significantly reducing user access delay. PMID:29342897

MPD: a pathogen genome and metagenome database

PubMed Central

Zhang, Tingting; Miao, Jiaojiao; Han, Na; Qiang, Yujun; Zhang, Wen

2018-01-01

Abstract Advances in high-throughput sequencing have led to unprecedented growth in the amount of available genome sequencing data, especially for bacterial genomes, which has been accompanied by a challenge for the storage and management of such huge datasets. To facilitate bacterial research and related studies, we have developed the Mypathogen database (MPD), which provides access to users for searching, downloading, storing and sharing bacterial genomics data. The MPD represents the first pathogenic database for microbial genomes and metagenomes, and currently covers pathogenic microbial genomes (6604 genera, 11 071 species, 41 906 strains) and metagenomic data from host, air, water and other sources (28 816 samples). The MPD also functions as a management system for statistical and storage data that can be used by different organizations, thereby facilitating data sharing among different organizations and research groups. A user-friendly local client tool is provided to maintain the steady transmission of big sequencing data. The MPD is a useful tool for analysis and management in genomic research, especially for clinical Centers for Disease Control and epidemiological studies, and is expected to contribute to advancing knowledge on pathogenic bacteria genomes and metagenomes. Database URL: http://data.mypathogen.org PMID:29917040

Increasing the usefulness of Shuttle with SPACEHAB

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stone, Barbara A.; Rossi, David A.

1992-08-01

SPACEHAB is a pressurized laboratory, approximately 10 feet long and 13 feet in diameter, which fits in the forward position of the Shuttle payload bay and connects to the crew compartment through the Orbiter airlock. SPACEHAB modules may contain up to 61 standard middeck lockers, providing 1100 cubic feet of pressurized work space. SPACEHAB'S capacity offers crew-tended access to the microgravity environment for experimentation, technology development, and small-scale production. The modules are designed to facilitate the user's ability to quickly and inexpensively develop and integrate a microgravity payload. Payloads are typically integrated into the SPACEHAB module in standard SPACEHAB lockers or SPACEHAB racks. Lockers are designed to offer identical user interfaces as standard Space Shuttle middeck lockers. SPACEHAB racks are interchangeable with Space Station Freedom racks, allowing hardware to be qualified for early station use.

Eruptive event generator based on the Gibson-Low magnetic configuration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borovikov, D.; Sokolov, I. V.; Manchester, W. B.; Jin, M.; Gombosi, T. I.

2017-08-01

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), a kind of energetic solar eruptions, are an integral subject of space weather research. Numerical magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modeling, which requires powerful computational resources, is one of the primary means of studying the phenomenon. With increasing accessibility of such resources, grows the demand for user-friendly tools that would facilitate the process of simulating CMEs for scientific and operational purposes. The Eruptive Event Generator based on Gibson-Low flux rope (EEGGL), a new publicly available computational model presented in this paper, is an effort to meet this demand. EEGGL allows one to compute the parameters of a model flux rope driving a CME via an intuitive graphical user interface. We provide a brief overview of the physical principles behind EEGGL and its functionality. Ways toward future improvements of the tool are outlined.

Curriculum-based neurosurgery digital library.

PubMed

Langevin, Jean-Philippe; Dang, Thai; Kon, David; Sapo, Monica; Batzdorf, Ulrich; Martin, Neil

2010-11-01

Recent work-hour restrictions and the constantly evolving body of knowledge are challenging the current ways of teaching neurosurgery residents. To develop a curriculum-based digital library of multimedia content to face the challenges in neurosurgery education. We used the residency program curriculum developed by the Congress of Neurological Surgeons to structure the library and Microsoft Sharepoint as the user interface. This project led to the creation of a user-friendly and searchable digital library that could be accessed remotely and throughout the hospital, including the operating rooms. The electronic format allows standardization of the content and transformation of the operating room into a classroom. This in turn facilitates the implementation of a curriculum within the training program and improves teaching efficiency. Future work will focus on evaluating the efficacy of the library as a teaching tool for residents.

Forensic Taxonomy of Android Social Apps.

PubMed

Azfar, Abdullah; Choo, Kim-Kwang Raymond; Liu, Lin

2017-03-01

An Android social app taxonomy incorporating artifacts that are of forensic interest will enable users and forensic investigators to identify the personally identifiable information (PII) stored by the apps. In this study, 30 popular Android social apps were examined. Artifacts of forensic interest (e.g., contacts lists, chronology of messages, and timestamp of an added contact) were recovered. In addition, images were located, and Facebook token strings used to tie account identities and gain access to information entered into Facebook by a user were identified. Based on the findings, a two-dimensional taxonomy of the forensic artifacts of the social apps is proposed. A comparative summary of existing forensic taxonomies of different categories of Android apps, designed to facilitate timely collection and analysis of evidentiary materials from Android devices, is presented. © 2016 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

The AMMA database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boichard, Jean-Luc; Brissebrat, Guillaume; Cloche, Sophie; Eymard, Laurence; Fleury, Laurence; Mastrorillo, Laurence; Moulaye, Oumarou; Ramage, Karim

2010-05-01

The AMMA project includes aircraft, ground-based and ocean measurements, an intensive use of satellite data and diverse modelling studies. Therefore, the AMMA database aims at storing a great amount and a large variety of data, and at providing the data as rapidly and safely as possible to the AMMA research community. In order to stimulate the exchange of information and collaboration between researchers from different disciplines or using different tools, the database provides a detailed description of the products and uses standardized formats. The AMMA database contains: - AMMA field campaigns datasets; - historical data in West Africa from 1850 (operational networks and previous scientific programs); - satellite products from past and future satellites, (re-)mapped on a regular latitude/longitude grid and stored in NetCDF format (CF Convention); - model outputs from atmosphere or ocean operational (re-)analysis and forecasts, and from research simulations. The outputs are processed as the satellite products are. Before accessing the data, any user has to sign the AMMA data and publication policy. This chart only covers the use of data in the framework of scientific objectives and categorically excludes the redistribution of data to third parties and the usage for commercial applications. Some collaboration between data producers and users, and the mention of the AMMA project in any publication is also required. The AMMA database and the associated on-line tools have been fully developed and are managed by two teams in France (IPSL Database Centre, Paris and OMP, Toulouse). Users can access data of both data centres using an unique web portal. This website is composed of different modules : - Registration: forms to register, read and sign the data use chart when an user visits for the first time - Data access interface: friendly tool allowing to build a data extraction request by selecting various criteria like location, time, parameters... The request can concern local, satellite and model data. - Documentation: catalogue of all the available data and their metadata. These tools have been developed using standard and free languages and softwares: - Linux system with an Apache web server and a Tomcat application server; - J2EE tools : JSF and Struts frameworks, hibernate; - relational database management systems: PostgreSQL and MySQL; - OpenLDAP directory. In order to facilitate the access to the data by African scientists, the complete system has been mirrored at AGHRYMET Regional Centre in Niamey and is operational there since January 2009. Users can now access metadata and request data through one or the other of two equivalent portals: http://database.amma-international.org or http://amma.agrhymet.ne/amma-data.

Semantically optiMize the dAta seRvice operaTion (SMART) system for better data discovery and access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, C.; Huang, T.; Armstrong, E. M.; Moroni, D. F.; Liu, K.; Gui, Z.

2013-12-01

Abstract: We present a Semantically optiMize the dAta seRvice operaTion (SMART) system for better data discovery and access across the NASA data systems, Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Clearinghouse and Data.gov to facilitate scientists to select Earth observation data that fit better their needs in four aspects: 1. Integrating and interfacing the SMART system to include the functionality of a) semantic reasoning based on Jena, an open source semantic reasoning engine, b) semantic similarity calculation, c) recommendation based on spatiotemporal, semantic, and user workflow patterns, and d) ranking results based on similarity between search terms and data ontology. 2. Collaborating with data user communities to a) capture science data ontology and record relevant ontology triple stores, b) analyze and mine user search and download patterns, c) integrate SMART into metadata-centric discovery system for community-wide usage and feedback, and d) customizing data discovery, search and access user interface to include the ranked results, recommendation components, and semantic based navigations. 3. Laying the groundwork to interface the SMART system with other data search and discovery systems as an open source data search and discovery solution. The SMART systems leverages NASA, GEO, FGDC data discovery, search and access for the Earth science community by enabling scientists to readily discover and access data appropriate to their endeavors, increasing the efficiency of data exploration and decreasing the time that scientists must spend on searching, downloading, and processing the datasets most applicable to their research. By incorporating the SMART system, it is a likely aim that the time being devoted to discovering the most applicable dataset will be substantially reduced, thereby reducing the number of user inquiries and likewise reducing the time and resources expended by a data center in addressing user inquiries. Keywords: EarthCube; ECHO, DAACs, GeoPlatform; Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure References: 1. Yang, P., Evans, J., Cole, M., Alameh, N., Marley, S., & Bambacus, M., (2007). The Emerging Concepts and Applications of the Spatial Web Portal. Photogrammetry Engineering &Remote Sensing,73(6):691-698. 2. Zhang, C, Zhao, T. and W. Li. (2010). The Framework of a Geospatial Semantic Web based Spatial Decision Support System for Digital Earth. International Journal of Digital Earth. 3(2):111-134. 3. Yang C., Raskin R., Goodchild M.F., Gahegan M., 2010, Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure: Past, Present and Future,Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems, 34(4):264-277. 4. Liu K., Yang C., Li W., Gui Z., Xu C., Xia J., 2013. Using ontology and similarity calculations to rank Earth science data searching results, International Journal of Geospatial Information Applications. (in press)

Crossing the river: Developing a strategy to support understanding of uncertainty within probabilistic climate projections.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Walton, P.; Lamb, R.

2010-09-01

The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) was established by government in 1997 to support the UK's engagement with becoming better adapted to a changing climate. As the lead organisation in the UK on climate change adaptation, UKCIP oversaw the development of the UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) which were launched in June 2009 providing, for the first time, probabilistic climate projections for the UK. As with previous generations of UKCIP climate scenarios, they were freely accessible and intended for a whole spectrum of users, from technical experts to a lay audience. . Prior to the launch of UKCP09 it was acknowledged that users would need support in understanding key concepts, such as the uncertainty inherent in the projections, to be able to use them appropriately. The user support strategy was therefore developed. It is founded on robust pedagogical principles and draws on the latest thinking on public understanding of science (PUS) that places the user at the centre of the communication process. The adopted approach first identifies profiles of the key users of the climate projections and the ways in which they would use and access the data. Based on these profiles it is possible to identify a range of mechanisms that allow the user to engage with understanding the projections in different ways and situations including lectures, workshops and online learning. Within this blended strategy an exercise was developed specifically to support users' understanding of the concept of uncertainty within the probabilistic climate projections. The ‘Crossing the River' exercise encourages the participants to actively consider the nature of information they are using, and how it could be applied in a specific decision. Reflection and discussion are key elements in supporting the users' understanding of the concept and allowing them to apply the principles in the exercise to their own context. Their reflection is facilitated through a range of mechanisms that provide social and personal spaces and is guided by the communicator. The exercise has been used successfully with a broad range of users (from government officers to environmental managers) in groups ranging from small community events to large corporate conferences. Feedback has shown that the majority of people who completed the exercise had a better understanding of the concept of uncertainty within the probabilistic climate projections as a result. We are now working to create an online version that can be freely accessed by users along with other resources that develop understanding of other key concepts associated with UKCP09 and the broader climate change adaptation agenda. This paper evaluates the development and application of the user support strategy and provides a practical illustration of how it can be used within a face-to-face group setting and also as an online resource.

Examining Factors of Engagement With Digital Interventions for Weight Management: Rapid Review

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Background Digital interventions for weight management provide a unique opportunity to target daily lifestyle choices and eating behaviors over a sustained period of time. However, recent evidence has demonstrated a lack of user engagement with digital health interventions, impacting on the levels of intervention effectiveness. Thus, it is critical to identify the factors that may facilitate user engagement with digital health interventions to encourage behavior change and weight management. Objective The aim of this study was to identify and synthesize the available evidence to gain insights about users’ perspectives on factors that affect engagement with digital interventions for weight management. Methods A rapid review methodology was adopted. The search strategy was executed in the following databases: Web of Science, PsycINFO, and PubMed. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they investigated users’ engagement with a digital weight management intervention and were published from 2000 onwards. A narrative synthesis of data was performed on all included studies. Results A total of 11 studies were included in the review. The studies were qualitative, mixed-methods, or randomized controlled trials. Some of the studies explored features influencing engagement when using a Web-based digital intervention, others specifically explored engagement when accessing a mobile phone app, and some looked at engagement after text message (short message service, SMS) reminders. Factors influencing engagement with digital weight management interventions were found to be both user-related (eg, perceived health benefits) and digital intervention–related (eg, ease of use and the provision of personalized information). Conclusions The findings highlight the importance of incorporating user perspectives during the digital intervention development process to encourage engagement. The review contributes to our understanding of what facilitates user engagement and points toward a coproduction approach for developing digital interventions for weight management. Particularly, it highlights the importance of thinking about user-related and digital tool–related factors from the very early stages of the intervention development process. PMID:29061557

Secure anonymity-preserving password-based user authentication and session key agreement scheme for telecare medicine information systems.

PubMed

Sutrala, Anil Kumar; Das, Ashok Kumar; Odelu, Vanga; Wazid, Mohammad; Kumari, Saru

2016-10-01

Information and communication and technology (ICT) has changed the entire paradigm of society. ICT facilitates people to use medical services over the Internet, thereby reducing the travel cost, hospitalization cost and time to a greater extent. Recent advancements in Telecare Medicine Information System (TMIS) facilitate users/patients to access medical services over the Internet by gaining health monitoring facilities at home. Amin and Biswas recently proposed a RSA-based user authentication and session key agreement protocol usable for TMIS, which is an improvement over Giri et al.'s RSA-based user authentication scheme for TMIS. In this paper, we show that though Amin-Biswas's scheme considerably improves the security drawbacks of Giri et al.'s scheme, their scheme has security weaknesses as it suffers from attacks such as privileged insider attack, user impersonation attack, replay attack and also offline password guessing attack. A new RSA-based user authentication scheme for TMIS is proposed, which overcomes the security pitfalls of Amin-Biswas's scheme and also preserves user anonymity property. The careful formal security analysis using the two widely accepted Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic and the random oracle models is done. Moreover, the informal security analysis of the scheme is also done. These security analyses show the robustness of our new scheme against the various known attacks as well as attacks found in Amin-Biswas's scheme. The simulation of the proposed scheme using the widely accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool is also done. We present a new user authentication and session key agreement scheme for TMIS, which fixes the mentioned security pitfalls found in Amin-Biswas's scheme, and we also show that the proposed scheme provides better security than other existing schemes through the rigorous security analysis and verification tool. Furthermore, we present the formal security verification of our scheme using the widely accepted AVISPA tool. High security and extra functionality features allow our proposed scheme to be applicable for telecare medicine information systems which is used for e-health care medical applications. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analysis of the access patterns at GSFC distributed active archive center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Johnson, Theodore; Bedet, Jean-Jacques

1996-01-01

The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) has been operational for more than two years. Its mission is to support existing and pre Earth Observing System (EOS) Earth science datasets, facilitate the scientific research, and test Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) concepts. Over 550,000 files and documents have been archived, and more than six Terabytes have been distributed to the scientific community. Information about user request and file access patterns, and their impact on system loading, is needed to optimize current operations and to plan for future archives. To facilitate the management of daily activities, the GSFC DAAC has developed a data base system to track correspondence, requests, ingestion and distribution. In addition, several log files which record transactions on Unitree are maintained and periodically examined. This study identifies some of the users' requests and file access patterns at the GSFC DAAC during 1995. The analysis is limited to the subset of orders for which the data files are under the control of the Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) Unitree. The results show that most of the data volume ordered was for two data products. The volume was also mostly made up of level 3 and 4 data and most of the volume was distributed on 8 mm and 4 mm tapes. In addition, most of the volume ordered was for deliveries in North America although there was a significant world-wide use. There was a wide range of request sizes in terms of volume and number of files ordered. On an average 78.6 files were ordered per request. Using the data managed by Unitree, several caching algorithms have been evaluated for both hit rate and the overhead ('cost') associated with the movement of data from near-line devices to disks. The algorithm called LRU/2 bin was found to be the best for this workload, but the STbin algorithm also worked well.

Development of a task analysis tool to facilitate user interface design

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Scholtz, Jean C.

1992-01-01

A good user interface is one that facilitates the user in carrying out his task. Such interfaces are difficult and costly to produce. The most important aspect in producing a good interface is the ability to communicate to the software designers what the user's task is. The Task Analysis Tool is a system for cooperative task analysis and specification of the user interface requirements. This tool is intended to serve as a guide to development of initial prototypes for user feedback.

Scholarly Electronic Full-Text Publications via the Internet: Issues and Impacts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kosmin, Linda J.

1999-01-01

On-line access to complete texts of scholarly journal articles, conference papers, and books is facilitated by rapidly developing World-wide Web Internet access and capabilities. Meanwhile, print publications continue to be produced and read in spite of the proliferation of many networked electronic publications. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight fundamental issues impacting stakeholder groups, as the trend continues towards migration from paper to affordable ubiquitous networked full-text publications. Librarians, publishers, authors and end-users have various viewpoints, interests, and concerns. There are many issues challenging all stakeholder groups. For instance, all share concerns about administering copyright compliance and enforcing fair use. Uncontrollable electronic downstreaming could result in infringed copyright, while limiting a publisher's entitled revenue stream. Moreover, metered fee-based access may hamper scholarly information research. And, self-authoring on the Internet without peer filtering could lead to information clutter. Many related issues challenge librarians in particular. Among these are rising journal subscription prices, regardless if offered in print or electronic. Some electronic offerings are independent of print, others supplement or duplicate print; several publishers presently require subscribing to print in order to access electronic. Furthermore, numbers of publications are n'ow being marketed via the Internet directly to end-users, which can be viewed as encouraging users to bypass the traditional library. A key issue challenging publishers today is the rapidly expanding electronic user base that is demanding delivery of added-value full-text to desktop computers. Also of growing concern appears to be the decline in print sales to libraries, thereby reducing traditional revenue stream potential. Nowadays, publishers are more hesitant about investing in the production of publications geared toward small niche subjects, since these tend to require higher pricing and carry limited sales potential. Both electronic and print publications necessitate similar editorial, production, operating, and marketing dollars. Tradeoffs owing to delivery format difference do not necessarily mean less dollars need to be spent. Authors wishing to publish books are facing a decline in the role of scholarly monographs in electronic media. However, they are witnessing increased roles of electronic preprints and electronic journal articles. Moreover, the Internet fosters self-publishing without peer monitoring or formal review. Issues challenging end-users include electronic barriers to peer-reviewed formal published works (i.e., fee-based subscriptions to journal literature vs. traditional free-library concept). This often means password only access or IP address controlled site-licensed access. Also, in an uncontrolled Internet environment, sometimes there is a blurring of publication authorship/ownership, as various pieces of publications are cut/pasted into/re-posted on various, disconnected Web searchable home pages.

'Reaching the hard to reach' - lessons learned from the VCS (voluntary and community Sector). A qualitative study

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background The notion 'hard to reach' is a contested and ambiguous term that is commonly used within the spheres of social care and health, especially in discourse around health and social inequalities. There is a need to address health inequalities and to engage in services the marginalized and socially excluded sectors of society. Methods This paper describes a pilot study involving interviews with representatives from eight Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations. The purpose of the study was to explore the notion of 'hard to reach' and perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to accessing services for 'hard to reach' groups from a voluntary and community sector perspective. Results The 'hard to reach' may include drug users, people living with HIV, people from sexual minority communities, asylum seekers, refugees, people from black and ethnic minority communities, and homeless people although defining the notion of the 'hard to reach' is not straight forward. It may be that certain groups resist engaging in treatment services and are deemed hard to reach by a particular service or from a societal stance. There are a number of potential barriers for people who may try and access services, including people having bad experiences in the past; location and opening times of services and how services are funded and managed. A number of areas of commonality are found in terms of how access to services for 'hard to reach' individuals and groups could be improved including: respectful treatment of service users, establishing trust with service users, offering service flexibility, partnership working with other organisations and harnessing service user involvement. Conclusions If health services are to engage with groups that are deemed 'hard to reach' and marginalised from mainstream health services, the experiences and practices for engagement from within the VCS may serve as useful lessons for service improvement for statutory health services. PMID:20377850

Database Development for Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical (EEE) Parts for the International Space Station Alpha

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wassil-Grimm, Andrew D.

1997-01-01

More effective electronic communication processes are needed to transfer contractor and international partner data into NASA and prime contractor baseline database systems. It is estimated that the International Space Station Alpha (ISSA) parts database will contain up to one million parts each of which may require database capabilities for approximately one thousand bytes of data for each part. The resulting gigabyte database must provide easy access to users who will be preparing multiple analyses and reports in order to verify as-designed, as-built, launch, on-orbit, and return configurations for up to 45 missions associated with the construction of the ISSA. Additionally, Internet access to this data base is strongly indicated to allow multiple user access from clients located in many foreign countries. This summer's project involved familiarization and evaluation of the ISSA Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical (EEE) Parts data and the process of electronically managing these data. Particular attention was devoted to improving the interfaces among the many elements of the ISSA information system and its global customers and suppliers. Additionally, prototype queries were developed to facilitate the identification of data changes in the data base, verifications that the designs used only approved parts, and certifications that the flight hardware containing EEE parts was ready for flight. This project also resulted in specific recommendations to NASA for further development in the area of EEE parts database development and usage.

Promotion of a healthy public living environment: participatory design of public toilets with visually impaired persons.

PubMed

Siu, Kin Wai Michael; Wong, M M Y

2013-07-01

The principal objective of a healthy living environment is to improve the quality of everyday life. Visually impaired persons (VIPs) encounter many difficulties in everyday life through a series of barriers, particularly in relation to public toilets. This study aimed to explore the concerns of VIPs in accessing public toilets, and identify methods for improvement. Considerations about user participation are also discussed. Adopting a case study approach, VIPs were invited to participate in the research process. In addition to in-depth interviews and field visits, models and a simulated full-scale environment were produced to facilitate the VIPs to voice their opinions. The key findings indicate that the design of public toilets for promoting public health should be considered and tackled from a three-level framework: plain, line and point. Governments, professionals and the public need to consider the quality of public toilets in terms of policy, implementation and management. VIPs have the right to access public toilets. Governments and professionals should respect the particular needs and concerns of VIPs. A three-level framework (plain, line and point) is required to consider the needs of VIPs in accessing public toilets, and user participation is a good way to reveal the actual needs of VIPs. Copyright © 2013 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Computer use, internet access, and online health searching among Harlem adults.

PubMed

Cohall, Alwyn T; Nye, Andrea; Moon-Howard, Joyce; Kukafka, Rita; Dye, Bonnie; Vaughan, Roger D; Northridge, Mary E

2011-01-01

Computer use, Internet access, and online searching for health information were assessed toward enhancing Internet use for health promotion. Cross-sectional random digit dial landline phone survey. Eight zip codes that comprised Central Harlem/Hamilton Heights and East Harlem in New York City. Adults 18 years and older (N=646). Demographic characteristics, computer use, Internet access, and online searching for health information. Frequencies for categorical variables and means and standard deviations for continuous variables were calculated and compared with analogous findings reported in national surveys from similar time periods. Among Harlem adults, ever computer use and current Internet use were 77% and 52%, respectively. High-speed home Internet connections were somewhat lower for Harlem adults than for U.S. adults overall (43% vs. 68%). Current Internet users in Harlem were more likely to be younger, white vs. black or Hispanic, better educated, and in better self-reported health than non-current users (p<.01). Of those who reported searching online for health information, 74% sought information on medical problems and thought that information found on the Internet affected the way they eat (47%) or exercise (44%). Many Harlem adults currently use the Internet to search for health information. High-speed connections and culturally relevant materials may facilitate health information searching for underserved groups. Copyright © 2011 by American Journal of Health Promotion, Inc.

Setting Access Permission through Transitive Relationship in Web-based Social Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hong, Dan; Shen, Vincent Y.

The rising popularity of various social networking websites has created a huge problem on Internet privacy. Although it is easy to post photos, comments, opinions on some events, etc. on the Web, some of these data (such as a person’s location at a particular time, criticisms of a politician, etc.) are private and should not be accessed by unauthorized users. Although social networks facilitate sharing, the fear of sending sensitive data to a third party without knowledge or permission of the data owners discourages people from taking full advantage of some social networking applications. We exploit the existing relationships on social networks and build a ‘‘trust network’’ with transitive relationship to allow controlled data sharing so that the privacy and preferences of data owners are respected. The trust network linking private data owners, private data requesters, and intermediary users is a directed weighted graph. The permission value for each private data requester can be automatically assigned in this network based on the transitive relationship. Experiments were conducted to confirm the feasibility of constructing the trust network from existing social networks, and to assess the validity of permission value assignments in the query process. Since the data owners only need to define the access rights of their closest contacts once, this privacy scheme can make private data sharing easily manageable by social network participants.

Producing Decisions in Service-User Groups for People with an Intellectual Disability: Two Contrasting Facilitator Styles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Antaki, Charles; Finlay, W. M. L.; Sheridan, Emma; Jingree, Treena; Walton, Chris

2006-01-01

Service-user groups whose goals include the promotion of self-advocacy for people with an intellectual disability aim, among other things, to encourage service users to identify problems and find solutions. However, service users' contributions to group sessions may not always be full and spontaneous. This presents a dilemma to the facilitator. In…

High-Performance Computing User Facility | Computational Science | NREL

Science.gov Websites

User Facility High-Performance Computing User Facility The High-Performance Computing User Facility technologies. Photo of the Peregrine supercomputer The High Performance Computing (HPC) User Facility provides Gyrfalcon Mass Storage System. Access Our HPC User Facility Learn more about these systems and how to access

The NCAR Research Data Archive's Hybrid Approach for Data Discovery and Access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schuster, D.; Worley, S. J.

2013-12-01

The NCAR Research Data Archive (RDA http://rda.ucar.edu) maintains a variety of data discovery and access capabilities for it's 600+ dataset collections to support the varying needs of a diverse user community. In-house developed and standards-based community tools offer services to more than 10,000 users annually. By number of users the largest group is external and access the RDA through web based protocols; the internal NCAR HPC users are fewer in number, but typically access more data volume. This paper will detail the data discovery and access services maintained by the RDA to support both user groups, and show metrics that illustrate how the community is using the services. The distributed search capability enabled by standards-based community tools, such as Geoportal and an OAI-PMH access point that serves multiple metadata standards, provide pathways for external users to initially discover RDA holdings. From here, in-house developed web interfaces leverage primary discovery level metadata databases that support keyword and faceted searches. Internal NCAR HPC users, or those familiar with the RDA, may go directly to the dataset collection of interest and refine their search based on rich file collection metadata. Multiple levels of metadata have proven to be invaluable for discovery within terabyte-sized archives composed of many atmospheric or oceanic levels, hundreds of parameters, and often numerous grid and time resolutions. Once users find the data they want, their access needs may vary as well. A THREDDS data server running on targeted dataset collections enables remote file access through OPENDAP and other web based protocols primarily for external users. In-house developed tools give all users the capability to submit data subset extraction and format conversion requests through scalable, HPC based delayed mode batch processing. Users can monitor their RDA-based data processing progress and receive instructions on how to access the data when it is ready. External users are provided with RDA server generated scripts to download the resulting request output. Similarly they can download native dataset collection files or partial files using Wget or cURL based scripts supplied by the RDA server. Internal users can access the resulting request output or native dataset collection files directly from centralized file systems.

Web service activities at the IRIS DMC to support federated and multidisciplinary access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trabant, Chad; Ahern, Timothy K.

2013-04-01

At the IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) we have developed a suite of web service interfaces to access our large archive of, primarily seismological, time series data and related metadata. The goals of these web services include providing: a) next-generation and easily used access interfaces for our current users, b) access to data holdings in a form usable for non-seismologists, c) programmatic access to facilitate integration into data processing workflows and d) a foundation for participation in federated data discovery and access systems. To support our current users, our services provide access to the raw time series data and metadata or conversions of the raw data to commonly used formats. Our services also support simple, on-the-fly signal processing options that are common first steps in many workflows. Additionally, high-level data products derived from raw data are available via service interfaces. To support data access by researchers unfamiliar with seismic data we offer conversion of the data to broadly usable formats (e.g. ASCII text) and data processing to convert the data to Earth units. By their very nature, web services are programmatic interfaces. Combined with ubiquitous support for web technologies in programming & scripting languages and support in many computing environments, web services are very well suited for integrating data access into data processing workflows. As programmatic interfaces that can return data in both discipline-specific and broadly usable formats, our services are also well suited for participation in federated and brokered systems either specific to seismology or multidisciplinary. Working within the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks, the DMC collaborated on the specification of standardized web service interfaces for use at any seismological data center. These data access interfaces, when supported by multiple data centers, will form a foundation on which to build discovery and access mechanisms for data sets spanning multiple centers. To promote the adoption of these standardized services the DMC has developed portable implementations of the software needed to host these interfaces, minimizing the work required at each data center. Within the COOPEUS project framework, the DMC is working with EU partners to install web services implementations at multiple data centers in Europe.

EUFAR the unique portal for airborne research in Europe

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gérard, Elisabeth; Brown, Philip

2016-04-01

Created in 2000 and supported by the EU Framework Programmes since then, EUFAR was born out of the necessity to create a central network and access point for the airborne research community in Europe. With the aim to support researchers by granting them access to research infrastructures, not accessible in their home countries, EUFAR also provides technical support and training in the field of airborne research for the environmental and geo-sciences. Today, EUFAR2 (2014-2018) coordinates and facilitates transnational access to 18 instrumented aircraft and 3 remote-sensing instruments through the 13 operators who are part of EUFAR's current 24-partner European consortium. In addition, the current project supports networking and research activities focused on providing an enabling environment for and promoting airborne research. The EUFAR2 activities cover three objectives, supported by the internet website www.eufar.net: (I - Institutional) improvement of the access to the research infrastructures and development of the future fleet according to the strategic advisory committee (SAC) recommendations; (ii - Innovation) improvement of the scientific knowledge and promotion of innovating instruments, processes and services for the emergence of new industrial technologies, with an identification of industrial needs by the SAC; (iii - Service) optimisation and harmonisation of the use of the research infrastructures through the development of the community of young researches in airborne science, of the standards and protocols and of the airborne central database. With the launch of a brand new website (www.eufar.net) in mid-November 2015, EUFAR aims to improve user experience on the website, which serves as a source of information and a hub where users are able to collaborate, learn, share expertise and best practices, and apply for transnational access, and education and training funded opportunities within the network. With its newly designed eye-catching interface, the website offers easy navigation, and user friendly functionalities. New features also include a section on news and airborne research stories to keep users up-to-date on EUFAR's activities, a career section, photo galleries, and much more. By elaborating new solutions for the web portal, EUFAR continues to serve as an interactive and dynamic platform bringing together experts, early-stage researchers, operators, data users, industry and other stakeholders in the airborne research community. A main focus of the current project is the establishment of a sustainable legal structure for EUFAR. This is critical to ensuring the continuity of EUFAR and securing, at the least, partial financial independence from the European Commission who has been funding the project since its start. After carefully examining different legal forms relevant for EUFAR, the arguments are strongly in favour of establishing an International non-profit Association under the Belgian law (AISBL). Together with the implementation of an Open Access scheme by means of resource-sharing to support the mobility of personnel across countries envisaged in 2016, such a sustainable structure would contribute substantially toward broadening the user base of existing airborne research facilities in Europe and mobilising additional resources for this end. In essence, this would cement EUFAR's position as the key portal for airborne research in Europe.

Advanced software development workstation project ACCESS user's guide

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1990-01-01

ACCESS is a knowledge based software information system designed to assist the user in modifying retrieved software to satisfy user specifications. A user's guide is presented for the knowledge engineer who wishes to create for ACCESS a knowledge base consisting of representations of objects in some software system. This knowledge is accessible to an end user who wishes to use the catalogued software objects to create a new application program or an input stream for an existing system. The application specific portion of an ACCESS knowledge base consists of a taxonomy of object classes, as well as instances of these classes. All objects in the knowledge base are stored in an associative memory. ACCESS provides a standard interface for the end user to browse and modify objects. In addition, the interface can be customized by the addition of application specific data entry forms and by specification of display order for the taxonomy and object attributes. These customization options are described.

Mobile assistive technologies for the visually impaired.

PubMed

Hakobyan, Lilit; Lumsden, Jo; O'Sullivan, Dympna; Bartlett, Hannah

2013-01-01

There are around 285 million visually impaired people worldwide, and around 370,000 people are registered as blind or partially sighted in the UK. Ongoing advances in information technology (IT) are increasing the scope for IT-based mobile assistive technologies to facilitate the independence, safety, and improved quality of life of the visually impaired. Research is being directed at making mobile phones and other handheld devices accessible via our haptic (touch) and audio sensory channels. We review research and innovation within the field of mobile assistive technology for the visually impaired and, in so doing, highlight the need for successful collaboration between clinical expertise, computer science, and domain users to realize fully the potential benefits of such technologies. We initially reflect on research that has been conducted to make mobile phones more accessible to people with vision loss. We then discuss innovative assistive applications designed for the visually impaired that are either delivered via mainstream devices and can be used while in motion (e.g., mobile phones) or are embedded within an environment that may be in motion (e.g., public transport) or within which the user may be in motion (e.g., smart homes). Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

WebArray: an online platform for microarray data analysis

PubMed Central

Xia, Xiaoqin; McClelland, Michael; Wang, Yipeng

2005-01-01

Background Many cutting-edge microarray analysis tools and algorithms, including commonly used limma and affy packages in Bioconductor, need sophisticated knowledge of mathematics, statistics and computer skills for implementation. Commercially available software can provide a user-friendly interface at considerable cost. To facilitate the use of these tools for microarray data analysis on an open platform we developed an online microarray data analysis platform, WebArray, for bench biologists to utilize these tools to explore data from single/dual color microarray experiments. Results The currently implemented functions were based on limma and affy package from Bioconductor, the spacings LOESS histogram (SPLOSH) method, PCA-assisted normalization method and genome mapping method. WebArray incorporates these packages and provides a user-friendly interface for accessing a wide range of key functions of limma and others, such as spot quality weight, background correction, graphical plotting, normalization, linear modeling, empirical bayes statistical analysis, false discovery rate (FDR) estimation, chromosomal mapping for genome comparison. Conclusion WebArray offers a convenient platform for bench biologists to access several cutting-edge microarray data analysis tools. The website is freely available at . It runs on a Linux server with Apache and MySQL. PMID:16371165

GenomeGems: evaluation of genetic variability from deep sequencing data

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Detection of disease-causing mutations using Deep Sequencing technologies possesses great challenges. In particular, organizing the great amount of sequences generated so that mutations, which might possibly be biologically relevant, are easily identified is a difficult task. Yet, for this assignment only limited automatic accessible tools exist. Findings We developed GenomeGems to gap this need by enabling the user to view and compare Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) from multiple datasets and to load the data onto the UCSC Genome Browser for an expanded and familiar visualization. As such, via automatic, clear and accessible presentation of processed Deep Sequencing data, our tool aims to facilitate ranking of genomic SNP calling. GenomeGems runs on a local Personal Computer (PC) and is freely available at http://www.tau.ac.il/~nshomron/GenomeGems. Conclusions GenomeGems enables researchers to identify potential disease-causing SNPs in an efficient manner. This enables rapid turnover of information and leads to further experimental SNP validation. The tool allows the user to compare and visualize SNPs from multiple experiments and to easily load SNP data onto the UCSC Genome browser for further detailed information. PMID:22748151

Pan European Phenological database (PEP725): a single point of access for European data.

PubMed

Templ, Barbara; Koch, Elisabeth; Bolmgren, Kjell; Ungersböck, Markus; Paul, Anita; Scheifinger, Helfried; Rutishauser, This; Busto, Montserrat; Chmielewski, Frank-M; Hájková, Lenka; Hodzić, Sabina; Kaspar, Frank; Pietragalla, Barbara; Romero-Fresneda, Ramiro; Tolvanen, Anne; Vučetič, Višnja; Zimmermann, Kirsten; Zust, Ana

2018-06-01

The Pan European Phenology (PEP) project is a European infrastructure to promote and facilitate phenological research, education, and environmental monitoring. The main objective is to maintain and develop a Pan European Phenological database (PEP725) with an open, unrestricted data access for science and education. PEP725 is the successor of the database developed through the COST action 725 "Establishing a European phenological data platform for climatological applications" working as a single access point for European-wide plant phenological data. So far, 32 European meteorological services and project partners from across Europe have joined and supplied data collected by volunteers from 1868 to the present for the PEP725 database. Most of the partners actively provide data on a regular basis. The database presently holds almost 12 million records, about 46 growing stages and 265 plant species (including cultivars), and can be accessed via http://www.pep725.eu/ . Users of the PEP725 database have studied a diversity of topics ranging from climate change impact, plant physiological question, phenological modeling, and remote sensing of vegetation to ecosystem productivity.

Pan European Phenological database (PEP725): a single point of access for European data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Templ, Barbara; Koch, Elisabeth; Bolmgren, Kjell; Ungersböck, Markus; Paul, Anita; Scheifinger, Helfried; Rutishauser, This; Busto, Montserrat; Chmielewski, Frank-M.; Hájková, Lenka; Hodzić, Sabina; Kaspar, Frank; Pietragalla, Barbara; Romero-Fresneda, Ramiro; Tolvanen, Anne; Vučetič, Višnja; Zimmermann, Kirsten; Zust, Ana

2018-02-01

The Pan European Phenology (PEP) project is a European infrastructure to promote and facilitate phenological research, education, and environmental monitoring. The main objective is to maintain and develop a Pan European Phenological database (PEP725) with an open, unrestricted data access for science and education. PEP725 is the successor of the database developed through the COST action 725 "Establishing a European phenological data platform for climatological applications" working as a single access point for European-wide plant phenological data. So far, 32 European meteorological services and project partners from across Europe have joined and supplied data collected by volunteers from 1868 to the present for the PEP725 database. Most of the partners actively provide data on a regular basis. The database presently holds almost 12 million records, about 46 growing stages and 265 plant species (including cultivars), and can be accessed via http://www.pep725.eu/. Users of the PEP725 database have studied a diversity of topics ranging from climate change impact, plant physiological question, phenological modeling, and remote sensing of vegetation to ecosystem productivity.

Street Policing, Injecting Drug Use and Harm Reduction in a Russian City: A Qualitative Study of Police Perspectives

PubMed Central

Platt, Lucy; Sarang, Anya; Vlasov, Alexander; Mikhailova, Larissa; Monaghan, Geoff

2006-01-01

We undertook a qualitative exploration of police perspectives on injecting drug use and needle and syringe access among injecting drug users (IDUs) in a Russian city which has witnessed explosive spread of HIV associated with drug injecting. Twenty-seven in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted in May 2002 with police officers of varying rank who reported having regular contact with IDUs. All interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, translated and coded thematically. Accounts upheld an approach to policing which emphasised high street-based visibility and close surveillance of IDUs. IDUs were depicted as ‘potential criminals’ warranting a ‘pre-emptive’ approach to the prevention of drug-related crime. Street policing was described as a means of maintaining close surveillance leading to the official registration of persons suspected or proven to be users of illicit drugs. Such registration enabled further ongoing surveillance, including through stop and search procedures. While aware of drug users' reluctance to carry injecting equipment linked to their fears of detention or arrest, accounts suggested that the confiscation of previously used injecting equipment can constitute evidence in relation to drugs possession charges and that discovery of clean injecting equipment may be sufficient to raise suspicion and/or further investigation, including through stop and search or questioning. Our findings suggest an uneasy relationship between street policing and needle and syringe access, whereby policing strategies can undermine an HIV prevention ethos promoting needle and syringe accessibility among IDUs. We conclude that facilitating partnerships between policing agencies and HIV prevention initiatives are a critical feature of creating environments conducive for risk reduction. PMID:16855880

Beyond Social Media: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Other Internet and Mobile Phone Applications in a Community Psychiatry Population.

PubMed

Colder Carras, Michelle; Mojtabai, Ramin; Cullen, Bernadette

2018-03-01

Popular media applications have been shown to benefit people with severe mental illness by facilitating communication and social support, helping patients cope with or manage symptoms, and providing a way to monitor or predict mental health states. Although many studies of technology use by individuals with severe mental illness have focused primarily on use of social media, this study provides additional information about use of Internet applications such as blogs, wikis (websites that allow collaborative editing of content and structure by users), video games, and Skype by a community psychiatry population. All English-speaking patients attending an outpatient program during a 4-week period in 2011 (N=274) were surveyed about their technology use and demographic information; 189 patients provided demographic data and comprised the sample. Among Internet users (n=112), rates of use of message boards, wikis, Skype, role-playing games, and blogs ranged from 26.8% to 34.8%. Among mobile phone users (n=162), 41.4% used their phones to access the Internet and 25.3% used Twitter on their phones. In multivariate analysis, patients who had attended or completed college had much greater odds of accessing the Internet on mobile phones. Older patients were much less likely to access the Internet or use Twitter. Our findings indicate that use of several popular forms of media is not uncommon in a community psychiatry population, but that rates of use differ on the basis of age and education. As the digital divide between people with severe mental illness and the general population is lessening, further research is needed to determine how to best leverage various types of media to support mental health recovery and complement clinical care.

The HARNESS Workbench: Unified and Adaptive Access to Diverse HPC Platforms

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

Sunderam, Vaidy S.

2012-03-20

The primary goal of the Harness WorkBench (HWB) project is to investigate innovative software environments that will help enhance the overall productivity of applications science on diverse HPC platforms. Two complementary frameworks were designed: one, a virtualized command toolkit for application building, deployment, and execution, that provides a common view across diverse HPC systems, in particular the DOE leadership computing platforms (Cray, IBM, SGI, and clusters); and two, a unified runtime environment that consolidates access to runtime services via an adaptive framework for execution-time and post processing activities. A prototype of the first was developed based on the concept ofmore » a 'system-call virtual machine' (SCVM), to enhance portability of the HPC application deployment process across heterogeneous high-end machines. The SCVM approach to portable builds is based on the insertion of toolkit-interpretable directives into original application build scripts. Modifications resulting from these directives preserve the semantics of the original build instruction flow. The execution of the build script is controlled by our toolkit that intercepts build script commands in a manner transparent to the end-user. We have applied this approach to a scientific production code (Gamess-US) on the Cray-XT5 machine. The second facet, termed Unibus, aims to facilitate provisioning and aggregation of multifaceted resources from resource providers and end-users perspectives. To achieve that, Unibus proposes a Capability Model and mediators (resource drivers) to virtualize access to diverse resources, and soft and successive conditioning to enable automatic and user-transparent resource provisioning. A proof of concept implementation has demonstrated the viability of this approach on high end machines, grid systems and computing clouds.« less

DYNAMO-HIA--a Dynamic Modeling tool for generic Health Impact Assessments.

PubMed

Lhachimi, Stefan K; Nusselder, Wilma J; Smit, Henriette A; van Baal, Pieter; Baili, Paolo; Bennett, Kathleen; Fernández, Esteve; Kulik, Margarete C; Lobstein, Tim; Pomerleau, Joceline; Mackenbach, Johan P; Boshuizen, Hendriek C

2012-01-01

Currently, no standard tool is publicly available that allows researchers or policy-makers to quantify the impact of policies using epidemiological evidence within the causal framework of Health Impact Assessment (HIA). A standard tool should comply with three technical criteria (real-life population, dynamic projection, explicit risk-factor states) and three usability criteria (modest data requirements, rich model output, generally accessible) to be useful in the applied setting of HIA. With DYNAMO-HIA (Dynamic Modeling for Health Impact Assessment), we introduce such a generic software tool specifically designed to facilitate quantification in the assessment of the health impacts of policies. DYNAMO-HIA quantifies the impact of user-specified risk-factor changes on multiple diseases and in turn on overall population health, comparing one reference scenario with one or more intervention scenarios. The Markov-based modeling approach allows for explicit risk-factor states and simulation of a real-life population. A built-in parameter estimation module ensures that only standard population-level epidemiological evidence is required, i.e. data on incidence, prevalence, relative risks, and mortality. DYNAMO-HIA provides a rich output of summary measures--e.g. life expectancy and disease-free life expectancy--and detailed data--e.g. prevalences and mortality/survival rates--by age, sex, and risk-factor status over time. DYNAMO-HIA is controlled via a graphical user interface and is publicly available from the internet, ensuring general accessibility. We illustrate the use of DYNAMO-HIA with two example applications: a policy causing an overall increase in alcohol consumption and quantifying the disease-burden of smoking. By combining modest data needs with general accessibility and user friendliness within the causal framework of HIA, DYNAMO-HIA is a potential standard tool for health impact assessment based on epidemiologic evidence.

Deploying the ODISEES Ontology-guided Search in the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huffer, E.; Gleason, J. L.; Cotnoir, M.; Spaulding, R.; Deardorff, G.

2016-12-01

Robust, semantically rich metadata can support data discovery and access, and facilitate machine-to-machine transactions with services such as data subsetting, regridding, and reformatting. Despite this, for users not already familiar with the data in a given archive, most metadata is insufficient to help them find appropriate data for their projects. With this in mind, the Ontology-driven Interactive Search Environment (ODISEES) Data Discovery Portal was developed to enable users to find and download data variables that satisfy precise, parameter-level criteria, even when they know little or nothing about the naming conventions employed by data providers, or where suitable data might be archived. ODISEES relies on an Earth science ontology and metadata repository that provide an ontological framework for describing NASA data holdings with enough detail and fidelity to enable researchers to find, compare and evaluate individual data variables. Users can search for data by indicating the specific parameters desired, and comparing the results in a table that lets them quickly determine which data is most suitable. ODISEES and OLYMPUS, a tool for generating the semantically enhanced metadata used by ODISEES, are being developed in collaboration with the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) project at the NASA Ames Research Center to prototype a robust data discovery and access service that could be made available to NEX users. NEX is a collaborative platform that provides researchers with access to TB to PB-scale datasets and analysis tools to operate on those data. By integrating ODISEES into the NEX Web Portal we hope to enable NEX users to locate datasets relevant to their research and download them directly into the NAS environment, where they can run applications using those datasets on the NAS supercomputers. This poster will describe the prototype integration of ODISEES into the NEX portal development environment, the mechanism implemented to use NASA APIs to retrieve data, and the approach to transfer data into the NAS supercomputing environment. Finally, we will describe the end-to-end demonstration of the capabilities implemented. This work was funded by the Advanced Information Systems Technology Program of NASA's Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science.

Actinobase: Database on molecular diversity, phylogeny and biocatalytic potential of salt tolerant alkaliphilic actinomycetes.

PubMed

Sharma, Amit K; Gohel, Sangeeta; Singh, Satya P

2012-01-01

Actinobase is a relational database of molecular diversity, phylogeny and biocatalytic potential of haloalkaliphilic actinomycetes. The main objective of this data base is to provide easy access to range of information, data storage, comparison and analysis apart from reduced data redundancy, data entry, storage, retrieval costs and improve data security. Information related to habitat, cell morphology, Gram reaction, biochemical characterization and molecular features would allow researchers in understanding identification and stress adaptation of the existing and new candidates belonging to salt tolerant alkaliphilic actinomycetes. The PHP front end helps to add nucleotides and protein sequence of reported entries which directly help researchers to obtain the required details. Analysis of the genus wise status of the salt tolerant alkaliphilic actinomycetes indicated 6 different genera among the 40 classified entries of the salt tolerant alkaliphilic actinomycetes. The results represented wide spread occurrence of salt tolerant alkaliphilic actinomycetes belonging to diverse taxonomic positions. Entries and information related to actinomycetes in the database are publicly accessible at http://www.actinobase.in. On clustalW/X multiple sequence alignment of the alkaline protease gene sequences, different clusters emerged among the groups. The narrow search and limit options of the constructed database provided comparable information. The user friendly access to PHP front end facilitates would facilitate addition of sequences of reported entries. The database is available for free at http://www.actinobase.in.

Totally Connected Healthcare with TV White Spaces.

PubMed

Katzis, Konstantinos; Jones, Richard W; Despotou, Georgios

2017-01-01

Recent technological advances in electronics, wireless communications and low cost medical sensors generated a plethora of Wearable Medical Devices (WMDs), which are capable of generating considerably large amounts of new, unstructured real-time data. This contribution outlines how this data can be propagated to a healthcare system through the internet, using long distance Radio Access Networks (RANs) and proposes a novel communication system architecture employing White Space Devices (WSD) to provide seamless connectivity to its users. Initial findings indicate that the proposed communication system can facilitate broadband services over a large geographical area taking advantage of the freely available TV White Spaces (TVWS).

Databases and Web Tools for Cancer Genomics Study

PubMed Central

Yang, Yadong; Dong, Xunong; Xie, Bingbing; Ding, Nan; Chen, Juan; Li, Yongjun; Zhang, Qian; Qu, Hongzhu; Fang, Xiangdong

2015-01-01

Publicly-accessible resources have promoted the advance of scientific discovery. The era of genomics and big data has brought the need for collaboration and data sharing in order to make effective use of this new knowledge. Here, we describe the web resources for cancer genomics research and rate them on the basis of the diversity of cancer types, sample size, omics data comprehensiveness, and user experience. The resources reviewed include data repository and analysis tools; and we hope such introduction will promote the awareness and facilitate the usage of these resources in the cancer research community. PMID:25707591

NASA Taxonomy 2.0 Project Overview

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dutra, Jayne; Busch, Joseph

2004-01-01

This viewgraph presentation reviews the project to develop a Taxonomy for NASA. The benefits of this project are: Make it easy for various audiences to find relevant information from NASA programs quickly, specifically (1) Provide easy access for NASA Web resources (2) Information integration for unified queries and management reporting ve search results targeted to user interests the ability to move content through the enterprise to where it is needed most (3) Facilitate Records Management and Retention Requirements. In addition the project will assist NASA in complying with E-Government Act of 2002 and prepare NASA to participate in federal projects.

Results of the Collaborative Energy and Water Cycle Information Services (CEWIS) Workshop on Heterogeneous Dataset Analysis Preparation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kempler, Steven; Teng, William; Acker, James; Belvedere, Deborah; Liu, Zhong; Leptoukh, Gregory

2010-01-01

In support of the NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS), the Collaborative Energy and Water Cycle Information Services (CEWIS), sponsored by NEWS Program Manager Jared Entin, was initiated to develop an evolving set of community-based data and information services that would facilitate users to locate, access, and bring together multiple distributed heterogeneous energy and water cycle datasets. The CEWIS workshop, June 15-16, 2010, at NASA/GSFC, was the initial step of the process, starting with identifying and scoping the issues, as defined by the community.

HepSim: A repository with predictions for high-energy physics experiments

DOE PAGES

Chekanov, S. V.

2015-02-03

A file repository for calculations of cross sections and kinematic distributions using Monte Carlo generators for high-energy collisions is discussed. The repository is used to facilitate effective preservation and archiving of data from theoretical calculations and for comparisons with experimental data. The HepSim data library is publicly accessible and includes a number of Monte Carlo event samples with Standard Model predictions for current and future experiments. The HepSim project includes a software package to automate the process of downloading and viewing online Monte Carlo event samples. Data streaming over a network for end-user analysis is discussed.

Real-time shipboard displays for science operation and planning on CGC Healy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Roberts, S.; Chayes, D.; Arko, R.

2007-12-01

To facilitate effective science planning and decision making, we have developed a real-time geospatial browser and other displays widely used by many if not all members of USCGC Healy's science cruises and some officers and crew since 2004. In order to enable a 'zero-configuration' experience to the end user with nearly any modern browser, on any platform, anywhere on the ship with wired (or wireless) network access, we chose a Web-based/server-centric approach that provides a very low barrier to access in an environment where we have many participants constantly coming and going, often with their own computers. The principle interface for planning and operational decision making is a georeferenced, Web-based user interface built on the MapServer Web GIS platform developed at the University of Minnesota (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/), using the PostGIS spatial database extensions (http://postgis.refractions.net/) to enable live database connectivity. Data available include current ship position and orientation, historical ship tracks and data, seafloor bathymetry, station locations, RADARSAT, and subbottom profiles among others. In addition to the user interfaces that are part of individual instrumentation (such as the sonars and navigation systems), custom interfaces have been developed to centralize data with high update rates such as sea surface temperature, vessel attitude, position, etc. Underlying data acquisition and storage is provided by the Lamont Data System (LDS) and the NOAA SCS system. All data are stored on RAIDed disk systems and shared across a switched network with a gigabit fiber backbone. The real-time displays access data in a number of ways including real-time UDP datagrams from LDS, accessing files on disk, and querying a PostgreSQL relational backend. This work is supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs, Arctic Science section.

Consent-based access to core EHR information. Collaborative approaches in Norway.

PubMed

Heimly, Vigdis; Berntsen, Kirsti E

2009-01-01

Lack of access to updated drug information is a challenge for healthcare providers in Norway. Drug charts are updated in separate EHR systems but exchange of drug information between them is lacking. In order to provide ready access to updated medication information, a project for consent-based access to a core EHR has been established. End users have developed requirements for additions to the medication modules in the EHR systems in cooperation with vendors, researchers and standardization workers. The modules are then implemented by the vendors, tested in the usability lab, and finally tested by the national testing and approval service before implementation. An ethnographic study, with focus on future users and their interaction with other actors regarding medicines and medication, has included semi-/unstructured interviews with the involved organizational units. The core EHR uses the EHR kept by the patient's regular GP as the main source of information. A server-based solution has been chosen in order to keep the core EHR accessible outside the GP's regular work hours. The core EHR is being tested, and the EHR-vendors are implementing additions to their systems in order to facilitate communication with the core EHR. All major EHR-system vendors in Norway participate in the project. The core EHR provides a generic basis that may be used as a pilot for a national patient summary. Examples of a wider use of the core EHR can be: shared individual plans to support continuity of care, summary of the patient's contacts with health providers in different organizations, and core EHR information such as important diagnoses, allergies and contact information. Extensive electronic cooperation and communication requires that all partners adjust their documentation practices to fit with other actors' needs. The implementation effects on future work practices will be followed by researchers.

American Meteorological Society (AMS) - The Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) Data and Accessibility

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

daSilva, Arlindo

2009-01-01

The AM Short Course on The Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data and accessibility will be held on January 11, 2009 preceding the 89th Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. Preliminary programs, registration, hotel, and general information will be posted on the AMS Web site in mid-September 2008. Retrospective-analyses (or reanalyses) have been established as an important tool in weather and climate research over the last decade. As computer power increases, the data assimilation and modeling systems improve and become more advanced, the input data quality increases and so reanalyses become more reliable. In 2008, NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office began producing a new reanalysis called the Modem Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA). The initial data from the reanalysis has been made available to the community and should be complete through 30 years (1979-present) by Fall of 2009. MERRA has taken advantage of the advancement of computing resources to provide users more data than previously available. The native spatial resolution is nominally 1/2 degrees and the surface two dimensional data are one hourly frequency. In addition to the meteorological analysis data, complete mass, energy and momentum budget data and also stratospheric data are provided. The eventual data holdings will exceed 150Tb. In order to facilitate user accessibility to the data, it will be stored in online hard drives (not tape storage) and available through several portals. Subsetting tools will also be available to allow users to tailor their data requests. The goals of this short course are to provide hands on users of reanalyses instruction on MERRA systems and also interactive experience with the online data and access tools. The course is intended for students and research scientists who will be actively interested in accessing and applying MERRA data in their weather, climate or applications work. The course has three parts. There will be an overview of the MERRA system, the validation of the system and the native data format. Second, Instructors will provide examples of weather and climate data analysis using various software packages (primarily GrADS) as well as the online access tools for subsetting and download, as well as visualization (e.g. Giovanni and Google Earth). This will also include examples on changing the data format to fit user's preferences and also to regrid the data for comparisons to other reanalyses and observational data. Lastly, there will he time set aside for participants to have hands on access to the data and software while interacting with the instructors and other developers. The course convener is Dr. Michael Bosilovich, NASA GSFC Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). He will be joined by several GMAO, Goddard Earth Science Data and information Services Center (GES DISC) and Software Integration and Visualization Office (SIVO) staff.

DataONE: A Distributed Environmental and Earth Science Data Network Supporting the Full Data Life Cycle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cook, R.; Michener, W.; Vieglais, D.; Budden, A.; Koskela, R.

2012-04-01

Addressing grand environmental science challenges requires unprecedented access to easily understood data that cross the breadth of temporal, spatial, and thematic scales. Tools are needed to plan management of the data, discover the relevant data, integrate heterogeneous and diverse data, and convert the data to information and knowledge. Addressing these challenges requires new approaches for the full data life cycle of managing, preserving, sharing, and analyzing data. DataONE (Observation Network for Earth) represents a virtual organization that enables new science and knowledge creation through preservation and access to data about life on Earth and the environment that sustains it. The DataONE approach is to improve data collection and management techniques; facilitate easy, secure, and persistent storage of data; continue to increase access to data and tools that improve data interoperability; disseminate integrated and user-friendly tools for data discovery and novel analyses; work with researchers to build intuitive data exploration and visualization tools; and support communities of practice via education, outreach, and stakeholder engagement.

DataONE: Gateway to Earth and Environmental Data Repositories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Koskela, R.; Michener, W. K.; Vieglais, D.; Budden, A. E.

2017-12-01

DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) is a National Science Foundation DataNet project that enables universal access to data and also facilitates researchers in fulfilling their need for data management and in providing secure and permanent access to their data. DataONE offers the scientific community a suite of tools and training materials that cover all aspects of the data life cycle from data collection, to management, analysis and publication. Data repositories affiliated with DataONE are referred to as Member Nodes and represent large regional, national and international research networks, agencies, and other institutions. As part of the DataONE Federation, the repositories gain access to a range of value-added services to support their users. These services include usage tracking and reporting, content replication, and the ability to register the services created by the repository. In addition, DataONE and the California Digital Library manage ONEShare, a repository that accepts content submitted through Dash, a platform allowing researchers to easily describe, deposit and share their research data.

Controlling user access to electronic resources without password

DOEpatents

Smith, Fred Hewitt

2017-08-22

Described herein are devices and techniques for remotely controlling user access to a restricted computer resource. The process includes obtaining an image from a communication device of a user. An individual and a landmark are identified within the image. Determinations are made that the individual is the user and that the landmark is a predetermined landmark. Access to a restricted computing resource is granted based on the determining that the individual is the user and that the landmark is the predetermined landmark. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Interactive energy atlas for Colorado and New Mexico: an online resource for decisionmakers

USGS Publications Warehouse

Carr, Natasha B.; Ignizio, Drew A.; Diffendorfer, James E.; Latysh, Natalie; Matherne, Ann Marie; Linard, Joshua I.; Leib, Kenneth J.; Hawkins, Sarah J.

2013-01-01

Throughout the western United States, increased demand for energy is driving the rapid development of nonrenewable and renewable energy resources. Resource managers must balance the benefits of energy development with the potential consequences for ecological resources and ecosystem services. To facilitate access to geospatial data related to energy resources, energy infrastructure, and natural resources that may be affected by energy development, the U.S. Geological Survey has developed an online Interactive Energy Atlas (Energy Atlas) for Colorado and New Mexico. The Energy Atlas is designed to meet the needs of varied users who seek information about energy in the western United States. The Energy Atlas has two primary capabilities: a geographic information system (GIS) data viewer and an interactive map gallery. The GIS data viewer allows users to preview and download GIS data related to energy potential and development in Colorado and New Mexico. The interactive map gallery contains a collection of maps that compile and summarize thematically related data layers in a user-friendly format. The maps are dynamic, allowing users to explore data at different resolutions and obtain information about the features being displayed. The Energy Atlas also includes an interactive decision-support tool, which allows users to explore the potential consequences of energy development for species that vary in their sensitivity to disturbance.

Visual gene developer: a fully programmable bioinformatics software for synthetic gene optimization.

PubMed

Jung, Sang-Kyu; McDonald, Karen

2011-08-16

Direct gene synthesis is becoming more popular owing to decreases in gene synthesis pricing. Compared with using natural genes, gene synthesis provides a good opportunity to optimize gene sequence for specific applications. In order to facilitate gene optimization, we have developed a stand-alone software called Visual Gene Developer. The software not only provides general functions for gene analysis and optimization along with an interactive user-friendly interface, but also includes unique features such as programming capability, dedicated mRNA secondary structure prediction, artificial neural network modeling, network & multi-threaded computing, and user-accessible programming modules. The software allows a user to analyze and optimize a sequence using main menu functions or specialized module windows. Alternatively, gene optimization can be initiated by designing a gene construct and configuring an optimization strategy. A user can choose several predefined or user-defined algorithms to design a complicated strategy. The software provides expandable functionality as platform software supporting module development using popular script languages such as VBScript and JScript in the software programming environment. Visual Gene Developer is useful for both researchers who want to quickly analyze and optimize genes, and those who are interested in developing and testing new algorithms in bioinformatics. The software is available for free download at http://www.visualgenedeveloper.net.

Mobile Applications for Participation at the Shopping Mall: Content Analysis and Usability for Persons with Physical Disabilities and Communication or Cognitive Limitations

PubMed Central

Auger, Claudine; Leduc, Emilie; Labbé, Delphine; Guay, Cassioppée; Fillion, Brigitte; Bottari, Carolina; Swaine, Bonnie

2014-01-01

The aim of this exploratory study was to determine the important features in content and usability of existing mobile applications evaluating environmental barriers and facilitators (EBF) to participation for persons with physical disabilities presenting mild communication or cognitive limitations. A rigorous process based on a user-centered design approach led to the identification of two relevant mobile applications to evaluate the EBF. An accessibility expert, the research team as well as five users then tested the mobile applications in a shopping mall. A thematic content analysis of the research team’s and users’ comments established 10 categories of key features that adequately respond to the needs of the clientele targeted in this study. In terms of content, granularity and contextualization of the information provided were considered important. With respect to usability, relevant features were place finding, rating system, presentation of results, compatibility, user-friendliness, aesthetics, credibility of the information as well as connectivity/interactiveness. The research team and the users agreed on some aspects such as aesthetics, but had different perspectives on features such as the rating system or the connectivity/interactiveness of the application. The users proposed new features suggesting that the existing mobile applications did not correspond to all their needs. PMID:25513999

Performance Analysis of Motion-Sensor Behavior for User Authentication on Smartphones.

PubMed

Shen, Chao; Yu, Tianwen; Yuan, Sheng; Li, Yunpeng; Guan, Xiaohong

2016-03-09

The growing trend of using smartphones as personal computing platforms to access and store private information has stressed the demand for secure and usable authentication mechanisms. This paper investigates the feasibility and applicability of using motion-sensor behavior data for user authentication on smartphones. For each sample of the passcode, sensory data from motion sensors are analyzed to extract descriptive and intensive features for accurate and fine-grained characterization of users' passcode-input actions. One-class learning methods are applied to the feature space for performing user authentication. Analyses are conducted using data from 48 participants with 129,621 passcode samples across various operational scenarios and different types of smartphones. Extensive experiments are included to examine the efficacy of the proposed approach, which achieves a false-rejection rate of 6.85% and a false-acceptance rate of 5.01%. Additional experiments on usability with respect to passcode length, sensitivity with respect to training sample size, scalability with respect to number of users, and flexibility with respect to screen size were provided to further explore the effectiveness and practicability. The results suggest that sensory data could provide useful authentication information, and this level of performance approaches sufficiency for two-factor authentication on smartphones. Our dataset is publicly available to facilitate future research.

Wiki use in mental health practice: recognizing potential use of collaborative technology.

PubMed

Bastida, Richard; McGrath, Ian; Maude, Phil

2010-04-01

Web 2.0, the second-generation of the World Wide Web, differs to earlier versions of Web development and design in that it facilitates more user-friendly, interactive information sharing and mechanisms for greater collaboration between users. Examples of Web 2.0 include Web-based communities, hosted services, social networking sites, video sharing sites, blogs, mashups, and wikis. Users are able to interact with others across the world or to add to or change website content. This paper examines examples of wiki use in the Australian mental health sector. A wiki can be described as an online collaborative and interactive database that can be easily edited by users. They are accessed via a standard Web browser which has an interface similar to traditional Web pages, thus do not require special application or software for the user. Although there is a paucity of literature describing wiki use in mental health, other industries have developed uses, including a repository of knowledge, a platform for collaborative writing, a project management tool, and an alternative to traditional Web pages or Intranets. This paper discusses the application of wikis in other industries and offers suggestions by way of examples of how this technology could be used in the mental health sector.

Visual gene developer: a fully programmable bioinformatics software for synthetic gene optimization

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Direct gene synthesis is becoming more popular owing to decreases in gene synthesis pricing. Compared with using natural genes, gene synthesis provides a good opportunity to optimize gene sequence for specific applications. In order to facilitate gene optimization, we have developed a stand-alone software called Visual Gene Developer. Results The software not only provides general functions for gene analysis and optimization along with an interactive user-friendly interface, but also includes unique features such as programming capability, dedicated mRNA secondary structure prediction, artificial neural network modeling, network & multi-threaded computing, and user-accessible programming modules. The software allows a user to analyze and optimize a sequence using main menu functions or specialized module windows. Alternatively, gene optimization can be initiated by designing a gene construct and configuring an optimization strategy. A user can choose several predefined or user-defined algorithms to design a complicated strategy. The software provides expandable functionality as platform software supporting module development using popular script languages such as VBScript and JScript in the software programming environment. Conclusion Visual Gene Developer is useful for both researchers who want to quickly analyze and optimize genes, and those who are interested in developing and testing new algorithms in bioinformatics. The software is available for free download at http://www.visualgenedeveloper.net. PMID:21846353

An Interactive Web System for Field Data Sharing and Collaboration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weng, Y.; Sun, F.; Grigsby, J. D.

2010-12-01

A Web 2.0 system is designed and developed to facilitate data collection for the field studies in the Geological Sciences department at Ball State University. The system provides a student-centered learning platform that enables the users to first upload their collected data in various formats, interact and collaborate dynamically online, and ultimately create a shared digital repository of field experiences. The data types considered for the system and their corresponding format and requirements are listed in the table below. The system has six main functionalities as follows. (1) Only the registered users can access the system with confidential identification and password. (2) Each user can upload/revise/delete data in various formats such as image, audio, video, and text files to the system. (3) Interested users are allowed to co-edit the contents and join the collaboration whiteboard for further discussion. (4) The system integrates with Google, Yahoo, or Flickr to search for similar photos with same tags. (5) Users can search the web system according to the specific key words. (6) Photos with recorded GPS readings can be mashed and mapped to Google Maps/Earth for visualization. Application of the system to geology field trips at Ball State University will be demonstrated to assess the usability of the system.Data Requirements

AztecOO user guide.

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

Heroux, Michael Allen

2004-07-01

The Trilinos{trademark} Project is an effort to facilitate the design, development, integration and ongoing support of mathematical software libraries. AztecOO{trademark} is a package within Trilinos that enables the use of the Aztec solver library [19] with Epetra{trademark} [13] objects. AztecOO provides access to Aztec preconditioners and solvers by implementing the Aztec 'matrix-free' interface using Epetra. While Aztec is written in C and procedure-oriented, AztecOO is written in C++ and is object-oriented. In addition to providing access to Aztec capabilities, AztecOO also provides some signficant new functionality. In particular it provides an extensible status testing capability that allows expression of sophisticatedmore » stopping criteria as is needed in production use of iterative solvers. AztecOO also provides mechanisms for using Ifpack [2], ML [20] and AztecOO itself as preconditioners.« less

DSCOVR Science Data and Retrospective Access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rowland, W. F.; Codrescu, S.; Tilton, M.; Cartwright, J.; Redmon, R. J.; Loto'aniu, P. T. M.; Mccullough, H.; Denig, W. F.

2016-12-01

On July 27, 2016 the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) became the first operational satellite at the first Lagrange point (L1). This vantage, approximately one percent of the distance from the Earth to the Sun along the Earth-Sun line, means that DSCOVR data provide critical advanced warning of impending space weather events. As such, DSCOVR data are essential for forecasters, modelers, and the scientific community. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA/NCEI) archives the retrospective data and shares them with the public. We examine the data available, with a focus on some of the more interesting events that have occurred. We also discuss mechanisms created to facilitate search and access for those data, including a user-driven interface that allows one to dynamically generate plots and order relevant data of interest.

Secure Web-Site Access with Tickets and Message-Dependent Digests

USGS Publications Warehouse

Donato, David I.

2008-01-01

Although there are various methods for restricting access to documents stored on a World Wide Web (WWW) site (a Web site), none of the widely used methods is completely suitable for restricting access to Web applications hosted on an otherwise publicly accessible Web site. A new technique, however, provides a mix of features well suited for restricting Web-site or Web-application access to authorized users, including the following: secure user authentication, tamper-resistant sessions, simple access to user state variables by server-side applications, and clean session terminations. This technique, called message-dependent digests with tickets, or MDDT, maintains secure user sessions by passing single-use nonces (tickets) and message-dependent digests of user credentials back and forth between client and server. Appendix 2 provides a working implementation of MDDT with PHP server-side code and JavaScript client-side code.

A geodata warehouse: Using denormalisation techniques as a tool for delivering spatially enabled integrated geological information to geologists

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kingdon, Andrew; Nayembil, Martin L.; Richardson, Anne E.; Smith, A. Graham

2016-11-01

New requirements to understand geological properties in three dimensions have led to the development of PropBase, a data structure and delivery tools to deliver this. At the BGS, relational database management systems (RDBMS) has facilitated effective data management using normalised subject-based database designs with business rules in a centralised, vocabulary controlled, architecture. These have delivered effective data storage in a secure environment. However, isolated subject-oriented designs prevented efficient cross-domain querying of datasets. Additionally, the tools provided often did not enable effective data discovery as they struggled to resolve the complex underlying normalised structures providing poor data access speeds. Users developed bespoke access tools to structures they did not fully understand sometimes delivering them incorrect results. Therefore, BGS has developed PropBase, a generic denormalised data structure within an RDBMS to store property data, to facilitate rapid and standardised data discovery and access, incorporating 2D and 3D physical and chemical property data, with associated metadata. This includes scripts to populate and synchronise the layer with its data sources through structured input and transcription standards. A core component of the architecture includes, an optimised query object, to deliver geoscience information from a structure equivalent to a data warehouse. This enables optimised query performance to deliver data in multiple standardised formats using a web discovery tool. Semantic interoperability is enforced through vocabularies combined from all data sources facilitating searching of related terms. PropBase holds 28.1 million spatially enabled property data points from 10 source databases incorporating over 50 property data types with a vocabulary set that includes 557 property terms. By enabling property data searches across multiple databases PropBase has facilitated new scientific research, previously considered impractical. PropBase is easily extended to incorporate 4D data (time series) and is providing a baseline for new "big data" monitoring projects.

A Network and Visual Quality Aware N-Screen Content Recommender System Using Joint Matrix Factorization

PubMed Central

Ullah, Farman; Sarwar, Ghulam; Lee, Sungchang

2014-01-01

We propose a network and visual quality aware N-Screen content recommender system. N-Screen provides more ways than ever before to access multimedia content through multiple devices and heterogeneous access networks. The heterogeneity of devices and access networks present new questions of QoS (quality of service) in the realm of user experience with content. We propose, a recommender system that ensures a better visual quality on user's N-screen devices and the efficient utilization of available access network bandwidth with user preferences. The proposed system estimates the available bandwidth and visual quality on users N-Screen devices and integrates it with users preferences and contents genre information to personalize his N-Screen content. The objective is to recommend content that the user's N-Screen device and access network are capable of displaying and streaming with the user preferences that have not been supported in existing systems. Furthermore, we suggest a joint matrix factorization approach to jointly factorize the users rating matrix with the users N-Screen device similarity and program genres similarity. Finally, the experimental results show that we also enhance the prediction and recommendation accuracy, sparsity, and cold start issues. PMID:24982999

Social and Psychological Effects of the Internet Use

PubMed Central

Diomidous, Marianna; Chardalias, Kostis; Magita, Adrianna; Koutonias, Panagiotis; Panagiotopoulou, Paraskevi; Mantas, John

2016-01-01

Background and Aims: Over the past two decades there was an upsurge of the use of Internet in human life. With this continuous development, Internet users are able to communicate with any part of the globe, to shop online, to use it as a mean of education, to work remotely and to conduct financial transactions. Unfortunately, this rapid development of the Internet has a detrimental impact in our life, which leads to various phenomena such as cyber bullying, cyber porn, cyber suicide, Internet addiction, social isolation, cyber racism etc. The main purpose of this paper is to record and analyze all these social and psychological effects that appears to users due to the extensive use of the Internet. Materials and Methods: This review study was a thorough search of bibliography data conducted through Internet and library research studies. Key words were extracted from search engines and data bases including Google, Yahoo, Scholar Google, PubMed. Findings: The findings of this study showed that the Internet offers a quick access to information and facilitates communication however; it is quite dangerous, especially for young users. For this reason, users should be aware of it and face critically any information that is handed from the website PMID:27041814

Social and Psychological Effects of the Internet Use.

PubMed

Diomidous, Marianna; Chardalias, Kostis; Magita, Adrianna; Koutonias, Panagiotis; Panagiotopoulou, Paraskevi; Mantas, John

2016-02-01

Over the past two decades there was an upsurge of the use of Internet in human life. With this continuous development, Internet users are able to communicate with any part of the globe, to shop online, to use it as a mean of education, to work remotely and to conduct financial transactions. Unfortunately, this rapid development of the Internet has a detrimental impact in our life, which leads to various phenomena such as cyber bullying, cyber porn, cyber suicide, Internet addiction, social isolation, cyber racism etc. The main purpose of this paper is to record and analyze all these social and psychological effects that appears to users due to the extensive use of the Internet. This review study was a thorough search of bibliography data conducted through Internet and library research studies. Key words were extracted from search engines and data bases including Google, Yahoo, Scholar Google, PubMed. The findings of this study showed that the Internet offers a quick access to information and facilitates communication however; it is quite dangerous, especially for young users. For this reason, users should be aware of it and face critically any information that is handed from the website.

The application of NASTRAN at Sperry Univac Holland. [analysis of engineering, modelling, and use of program system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Koopmans, G.

1973-01-01

Very divergent problems arising with different calculations indicate that NASTRAN is not always accessible for common use. Problems with engineering, modelling, and use of the program system are analysed and a way of solution is outlined. Related to this, some supplementary modifications are made at Sperry Univac Holland to facilitate the program for the less skilled user. The implementation of a new element also gives an insight into the use of NASTRAN at Sperry Univac Holland. As the users of Univac computers are from very different kinds of industries like shipbuilders, petrochemical industries, and building industries, the variety of problems coming from these users is very large. This variety results in experience not with one special kind of calculation nor one special kind of construction, but with a wide area of problems arising in the use of NASTRAN. These problems can roughly be divided into three different groups: (1) recognition of what is to be calculated and how, (2) construction of a model, and (3) handling the NASTRAN program. These are the basic problems for every less skilled user of NASTRAN and the Application/Research Department of Sperry Univac has to give reasonable answers to these questions.

Saguaro: a distributed operating system based on pools of servers. Annual report, 1 January 1984-31 December 1986

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

Andrews, G.R.

1986-03-03

Prototypes of components of the Saguaro distributed operating system were implemented and the design of the entire system refined based on the experience. The philosophy behind Saguaro is to support the illusion of a single virtual machine while taking advantage of the concurrency and robustness that are possible in a network architecture. Within the system, these advantages are realized by the use of pools of server processes and decentralized allocation protocols. Potential concurrency and robustness are also made available to the user through low-cost mechanisms to control placement of executing commands and files, and to support semi-transparent file replication andmore » access. Another unique aspect of Saguaro is its extensive use of type system to describe user data such as files and to specify the types of arguments to commands and procedures. This enables the system to assist in type checking and leads to a user interface in which command-specific templates are available to facilitate command invocation. A mechanism, channels, is also provided to enable users to construct applications containing general graphs of communication processes.« less

Usability of a Low-Cost Head Tracking Computer Access Method following Stroke.

PubMed

Mah, Jasmine; Jutai, Jeffrey W; Finestone, Hillel; Mckee, Hilary; Carter, Melanie

2015-01-01

Assistive technology devices for computer access can facilitate social reintegration and promote independence for people who have had a stroke. This work describes the exploration of the usefulness and acceptability of a new computer access device called the Nouse™ (Nose-as-mouse). The device uses standard webcam and video recognition algorithms to map the movement of the user's nose to a computer cursor, thereby allowing hands-free computer operation. Ten participants receiving in- or outpatient stroke rehabilitation completed a series of standardized and everyday computer tasks using the Nouse™ and then completed a device usability questionnaire. Task completion rates were high (90%) for computer activities only in the absence of time constraints. Most of the participants were satisfied with ease of use (70%) and liked using the Nouse™ (60%), indicating they could resume most of their usual computer activities apart from word-processing using the device. The findings suggest that hands-free computer access devices like the Nouse™ may be an option for people who experience upper motor impairment caused by stroke and are highly motivated to resume personal computing. More research is necessary to further evaluate the effectiveness of this technology, especially in relation to other computer access assistive technology devices.

Health professional learner attitudes and use of digital learning resources.

PubMed

Maloney, Stephen; Chamberlain, Michael; Morrison, Shane; Kotsanas, George; Keating, Jennifer L; Ilic, Dragan

2013-01-16

Web-based digital repositories allow educational resources to be accessed efficiently and conveniently from diverse geographic locations, hold a variety of resource formats, enable interactive learning, and facilitate targeted access for the user. Unlike some other learning management systems (LMS), resources can be retrieved through search engines and meta-tagged labels, and content can be streamed, which is particularly useful for multimedia resources. The aim of this study was to examine usage and user experiences of an online learning repository (Physeek) in a population of physiotherapy students. The secondary aim of this project was to examine how students prefer to access resources and which resources they find most helpful. The following data were examined using an audit of the repository server: (1) number of online resources accessed per day in 2010, (2) number of each type of resource accessed, (3) number of resources accessed during business hours (9 am to 5 pm) and outside business hours (years 1-4), (4) session length of each log-on (years 1-4), and (5) video quality (bit rate) of each video accessed. An online questionnaire and 3 focus groups assessed student feedback and self-reported experiences of Physeek. Students preferred the support provided by Physeek to other sources of educational material primarily because of its efficiency. Peak usage commonly occurred at times of increased academic need (ie, examination times). Students perceived online repositories as a potential tool to support lifelong learning and health care delivery. The results of this study indicate that today's health professional students welcome the benefits of online learning resources because of their convenience and usability. This represents a transition away from traditional learning styles and toward technological learning support and may indicate a growing link between social immersions in Internet-based connections and learning styles. The true potential for Web-based resources to support student learning is as yet unknown.

Addressing data access challenges in seismology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trabant, C. M.; Ahern, T.; Weertman, B.; Benson, R. B.; Van Fossen, M.; Weekly, R. T.; Casey, R. E.; Suleiman, Y. Y.; Stults, M.

2016-12-01

The development of web services at the IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) over the last 6 years represents the most significant enhancement of data access ever introduced at the DMC. These web services have allowed the us to focus our internal operations around a single, consistent data access layer while facilitating development of a new generation of tools and methods for researchers to conduct their work. This effort led the DMC to propose standardized web service interfaces within the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN), enabling other seismological data centers to offer data using compatible interfaces. With this new foundation, we now turn our attention to more advanced data access challenges. In particular, we will present the status of two developments intending to address 1) access to data of consistent quality for science and 2) discovery and access of data from multiple data centers. To address the challenge of requesting high or consistent quality data we will introduce our Research-Ready Data Sets (RRDS) initiative. The purpose of the RRDS project is to reduce the time a researcher spends culling and otherwise identifying data appropriate for given study. RRDS will provide users with additional criteria related to data quality that can be specified when requesting data. Leveraging the data quality measurements provided by our MUSTANG system, these criteria will include ambient noise, completeness, dead channel identification and more. To address the challenge of seismological data discovery and access, we have built and continue to improve the IRIS Federator. The Federator takes advantage of the FDSN-standard web services at various data centers to help a user locate specific channels, wherever they may be offered globally. The search interface provides results that are pre-formatted requests, ready for submission to each data center that serves that data. These two developments are aimed squarely at reducing the time researchers spend searching for, collecting and preparing data for processing.

Health Professional Learner Attitudes and Use of Digital Learning Resources

PubMed Central

Chamberlain, Michael; Morrison, Shane; Kotsanas, George; Keating, Jennifer L; Ilic, Dragan

2013-01-01

Background Web-based digital repositories allow educational resources to be accessed efficiently and conveniently from diverse geographic locations, hold a variety of resource formats, enable interactive learning, and facilitate targeted access for the user. Unlike some other learning management systems (LMS), resources can be retrieved through search engines and meta-tagged labels, and content can be streamed, which is particularly useful for multimedia resources. Objective The aim of this study was to examine usage and user experiences of an online learning repository (Physeek) in a population of physiotherapy students. The secondary aim of this project was to examine how students prefer to access resources and which resources they find most helpful. Methods The following data were examined using an audit of the repository server: (1) number of online resources accessed per day in 2010, (2) number of each type of resource accessed, (3) number of resources accessed during business hours (9 am to 5 pm) and outside business hours (years 1-4), (4) session length of each log-on (years 1-4), and (5) video quality (bit rate) of each video accessed. An online questionnaire and 3 focus groups assessed student feedback and self-reported experiences of Physeek. Results Students preferred the support provided by Physeek to other sources of educational material primarily because of its efficiency. Peak usage commonly occurred at times of increased academic need (ie, examination times). Students perceived online repositories as a potential tool to support lifelong learning and health care delivery. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that today’s health professional students welcome the benefits of online learning resources because of their convenience and usability. This represents a transition away from traditional learning styles and toward technological learning support and may indicate a growing link between social immersions in Internet-based connections and learning styles. The true potential for Web-based resources to support student learning is as yet unknown. PMID:23324800

31 CFR 344.3 - What provisions apply to the SLGSafe Service?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... SLGSafe transactions: (1) SLGSafe Application for Internet Access and SLGSafe User Acknowledgment; and (2) SLGSafe User's Manual. (d) Who can apply for SLGSafe access? If you are an owner or a potential owner of... access. Other potential users of SLGSafe include, but are not limited to, underwriters, financial...

Unaffiliated Users' Access to Academic Libraries: A Survey.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Courtney, Nancy

2003-01-01

Most of 814 academic libraries surveyed allow onsite access to unaffiliated users, and many give borrowing privileges to certain categories of users. Use of library computers to access library resources and other computer applications is commonly allowed although authentication on library computers is increasing. Five tables show statistics.…

Thus Spake the OPAC User.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Markey, Karen

1983-01-01

Findings of focused-group interviews conducted for OCLC study of library users and online public access catalogs (OPACs) indicate users like OPACs, have problems finding right subject heading, envision features to improve subject access, want access to more than books, and want OPACs to provide new services. Eight references are listed. (EJS)

A qualitative study of women's experiences of communication in antenatal care: identifying areas for action.

PubMed

Raine, Rosalind; Cartwright, Martin; Richens, Yana; Mahamed, Zuhura; Smith, Debbie

2010-07-01

To identify key features of communication across antenatal (prenatal) care that are evaluated positively or negatively by service users. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews were used to explore communication experiences of thirty pregnant women from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds affiliated to a large London hospital. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Women reported a wide diversity of experiences. From the users' perspective, constructive communication on the part of health care providers was characterised by an empathic conversational style, openness to questions, allowing sufficient time to talk through any concerns, and pro-active contact by providers (e.g. text message appointment reminders). These features created reassurance, facilitated information exchange, improved appointment attendance and fostered tolerance in stressful situations. Salient features of poor communication were a lack of information provision, especially about the overall arrangement and the purpose of antenatal care, insufficient discussion about possible problems with the pregnancy and discourteous styles of interaction. Poor communication led some women to become assertive to address their needs; others became reluctant to actively engage with providers. General Practitioners need to be better integrated into antenatal care, more information should be provided about the pattern and purpose of the care women receive during pregnancy, and new technologies should be used to facilitate interactions between women and their healthcare providers. Providers require communications training to encourage empathic interactions that promote constructive provider-user relationships and encourage women to engage effectively and access the care they need.

EQUIP training the trainers: an evaluation of a training programme for service users and carers involved in training mental health professionals in user-involved care planning.

PubMed

Fraser, C; Grundy, A; Meade, O; Callaghan, P; Lovell, K

2017-08-01

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: UK NHS policy highlights the importance of user and carer involvement in health professional training. We know little about service user and carer motivations and experiences of accessing training courses for delivering training to health professionals and how well such courses prepare them for delivering training to healthcare professionals. 'Involvement' in training has often been tokenistic and too narrowly focused on preregistration courses. There is limited data on how best to prepare and support potential service user and carer trainers. WHAT DOES THIS PAPER ADD TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: This study adds to the international literature by highlighting service user and carer motivations for accessing a training course for delivering training to health professionals. Service users and carers wanted to gain new skills and confidence in presentation/facilitation as well as to make a difference to healthcare practice. We also learned that service users desired different levels of involvement in training facilitation - some wanted to take a more active role than others. A one-size-fits-all approach is not always appropriate. Encountering resistance from staff in training was a previously unidentified challenge to service user and carers' experience of delivering training in practice and is a key challenge for trainers to address in future. Professional training involvement can be enhanced via specialist training such as the EQUIP training the trainers programme evaluated here. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?: When training service users and carers to deliver training to mental health professionals, it is important that service users are equipped to deal with resistance from staff. It is important that service user and carer roles are negotiated and agreed prior to delivering training to healthcare professionals to accommodate individual preferences and allay anxieties. Training for service users and carers must be offered alongside ongoing support and supervision. Mental health nurses (and other health professionals) will be better able to involve service users and carers in care planning. Service users and carers may feel more involved in care planning in future. Introduction Limited evidence exists on service user and carer perceptions of undertaking a training course for delivering care planning training to qualified mental health professionals. We know little about trainee motivations for engaging with such train the trainers courses, experiences of attending courses and trainees' subsequent experiences of codelivering training to health professionals, hence the current study. Aim To obtain participants' views on the suitability and acceptability of a training programme that aimed to prepare service users and carers to codeliver training to health professionals. Method Semi-structured interviews with nine service users and carers attending the training programme. Transcripts were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Results Participants' reasons for attending training included skill development and making a difference to mental health practice. Course content was generally rated highly but may benefit from review and/or extension to allow the range of topics and resulting professional training programme to be covered in more depth. Trainees who delivered the care planning training reported a mix of expectations, support experiences, preparedness and personal impacts. Implications for Practice Mental health nurses are increasingly coproducing and delivering training with service users and carers. This study identifies possibilities and pitfalls in this endeavour, highlighting areas where user and carer involvement and support structures might be improved in order to fully realize the potential for involvement in training. © 2017 The Authors. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Barriers and facilitators to implementing electronic prescription: a systematic review of user groups' perceptions.

PubMed

Gagnon, Marie-Pierre; Nsangou, Édith-Romy; Payne-Gagnon, Julie; Grenier, Sonya; Sicotte, Claude

2014-01-01

We conducted a systematic review identifying users groups' perceptions of barriers and facilitators to implementing electronic prescription (e-prescribing) in primary care. We included studies following these criteria: presence of an empirical design, focus on the users' experience of e-prescribing implementation, conducted in primary care, and providing data on barriers and facilitators to e-prescribing implementation. We used the Donabedian logical model of healthcare quality (adapted by Barber et al) to analyze our findings. We found 34 publications (related to 28 individual studies) eligible to be included in this review. These studies identified a total of 594 elements as barriers or facilitators to e-prescribing implementation. Most user groups perceived that e-prescribing was facilitated by design and technical concerns, interoperability, content appropriate for the users, attitude towards e-prescribing, productivity, and available resources. This review highlights the importance of technical and organizational support for the successful implementation of e-prescribing systems. It also shows that the same factor can be seen as a barrier or a facilitator depending on the project's own circumstances. Moreover, a factor can change in nature, from a barrier to a facilitator and vice versa, in the process of e-prescribing implementation. This review summarizes current knowledge on factors related to e-prescribing implementation in primary care that could support decision makers in their design of effective implementation strategies. Finally, future studies should emphasize on the perceptions of other user groups, such as pharmacists, managers, vendors, and patients, who remain neglected in the literature.

Pharmacology podcasts: a qualitative study of non-medical prescribing students' use, perceptions and impact on learning.

PubMed

Meade, Oonagh; Bowskill, Dianne; Lymn, Joanne S

2011-01-11

There is growing research on student use of podcasts in academic settings. However, there is little in-depth research focusing on student experience of podcasts, in particular in terms of barriers to, and facilitators of, podcast use and students' perceptions of the usefulness of podcasts as learning tools. This study aimed to explore the experiences of non-medical prescribing students who had access to podcasts of key pharmacology lectures as supplementary learning tools to their existing course materials. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with seven non-medical prescribing students (average age = 43 years), all of whom were nurses, who had access to seven podcasts of key pharmacology lectures. These podcasts took the form of downloadable audio lecture recordings available through the virtual learning environment WebCT. Low, medium and high users of the podcasts took part in the interviews in order to access a variety of student experiences. Interview data was analysed using thematic template analysis to identify key themes surrounding student experience of podcast availability, particularly in relation to barriers to and facilitators of podcast use, and students' experiences of podcasts as a learning tool. Students used podcasts for a variety of reasons such as revisiting lectures, preparing for exams, to clarify or revise specific topics and, to a lesser extent, to catch up on a missed lecture. Barriers to podcast use centred mainly around technological issues. Lack of experience of the technology required to access podcasts proved a barrier for some students. A lack of access to suitable technology was also a reported barrier. Family assistance and I.T. assistance from the university helped facilitate students' use of the podcasts. Students found that using podcasts allowed them to have greater control over their learning and to gauge their learning needs, as well as helping them build their understanding of a complex topic. Students used podcasts for a variety of reasons. Barriers to podcasts use were generally related to technological issues. Students often found that once assistance had been gained regarding these technological issues, they accessed the podcasts more easily. Students felt that access to podcasts added value to their learning materials by allowing them to better manage their learning and build their understanding. Podcasts represent a valuable additional learning tool for this specific group of older students.

Pharmacology podcasts: a qualitative study of non-medical prescribing students' use, perceptions and impact on learning

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background There is growing research on student use of podcasts in academic settings. However, there is little in-depth research focusing on student experience of podcasts, in particular in terms of barriers to, and facilitators of, podcast use and students' perceptions of the usefulness of podcasts as learning tools. This study aimed to explore the experiences of non-medical prescribing students who had access to podcasts of key pharmacology lectures as supplementary learning tools to their existing course materials. Methods Semi-structured interviews were carried out with seven non-medical prescribing students (average age = 43 years), all of whom were nurses, who had access to seven podcasts of key pharmacology lectures. These podcasts took the form of downloadable audio lecture recordings available through the virtual learning environment WebCT. Low, medium and high users of the podcasts took part in the interviews in order to access a variety of student experiences. Interview data was analysed using thematic template analysis to identify key themes surrounding student experience of podcast availability, particularly in relation to barriers to and facilitators of podcast use, and students' experiences of podcasts as a learning tool. Results Students used podcasts for a variety of reasons such as revisiting lectures, preparing for exams, to clarify or revise specific topics and, to a lesser extent, to catch up on a missed lecture. Barriers to podcast use centred mainly around technological issues. Lack of experience of the technology required to access podcasts proved a barrier for some students. A lack of access to suitable technology was also a reported barrier. Family assistance and I.T. assistance from the university helped facilitate students' use of the podcasts. Students found that using podcasts allowed them to have greater control over their learning and to gauge their learning needs, as well as helping them build their understanding of a complex topic. Conclusions Students used podcasts for a variety of reasons. Barriers to podcasts use were generally related to technological issues. Students often found that once assistance had been gained regarding these technological issues, they accessed the podcasts more easily. Students felt that access to podcasts added value to their learning materials by allowing them to better manage their learning and build their understanding. Podcasts represent a valuable additional learning tool for this specific group of older students. PMID:21223547

Discovering, Indexing and Interlinking Information Resources

PubMed Central

Celli, Fabrizio; Keizer, Johannes; Jaques, Yves; Konstantopoulos, Stasinos; Vudragović, Dušan

2015-01-01

The social media revolution is having a dramatic effect on the world of scientific publication. Scientists now publish their research interests, theories and outcomes across numerous channels, including personal blogs and other thematic web spaces where ideas, activities and partial results are discussed. Accordingly, information systems that facilitate access to scientific literature must learn to cope with this valuable and varied data, evolving to make this research easily discoverable and available to end users. In this paper we describe the incremental process of discovering web resources in the domain of agricultural science and technology. Making use of Linked Open Data methodologies, we interlink a wide array of custom-crawled resources with the AGRIS bibliographic database in order to enrich the user experience of the AGRIS website. We also discuss the SemaGrow Stack, a query federation and data integration infrastructure used to estimate the semantic distance between crawled web resources and AGRIS. PMID:26834982

Online Social Networking, Sexual Risk and Protective Behaviors: Considerations for Clinicians and Researchers.

PubMed

Holloway, Ian W; Dunlap, Shannon; Del Pino, Homero E; Hermanstyne, Keith; Pulsipher, Craig; Landovitz, Raphael J

2014-09-01

Online social networking refers to the use of internet-based technologies that facilitate connection and communication between users. These platforms may be accessed via computer or mobile device (e.g., tablet, smartphone); communication between users may include linking of profiles, posting of text, photo and video content, instant messaging and email. This review provides an overview of recent research on the relationship between online social networking and sexual risk and protective behaviors with a focus on use of social networking sites (SNS) among young people and populations at high risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). While findings are mixed, the widespread use of SNS for sexual communication and partner seeking presents opportunities for the delivery and evaluation of public health interventions. Results of SNS-based interventions to reduce sexual risk are synthesized in order to offer hands-on advice for clinicians and researchers interested in engaging patients and study participants via online social networking.

STINGRAY: system for integrated genomic resources and analysis.

PubMed

Wagner, Glauber; Jardim, Rodrigo; Tschoeke, Diogo A; Loureiro, Daniel R; Ocaña, Kary A C S; Ribeiro, Antonio C B; Emmel, Vanessa E; Probst, Christian M; Pitaluga, André N; Grisard, Edmundo C; Cavalcanti, Maria C; Campos, Maria L M; Mattoso, Marta; Dávila, Alberto M R

2014-03-07

The STINGRAY system has been conceived to ease the tasks of integrating, analyzing, annotating and presenting genomic and expression data from Sanger and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) platforms. STINGRAY includes: (a) a complete and integrated workflow (more than 20 bioinformatics tools) ranging from functional annotation to phylogeny; (b) a MySQL database schema, suitable for data integration and user access control; and (c) a user-friendly graphical web-based interface that makes the system intuitive, facilitating the tasks of data analysis and annotation. STINGRAY showed to be an easy to use and complete system for analyzing sequencing data. While both Sanger and NGS platforms are supported, the system could be faster using Sanger data, since the large NGS datasets could potentially slow down the MySQL database usage. STINGRAY is available at http://stingray.biowebdb.org and the open source code at http://sourceforge.net/projects/stingray-biowebdb/.

MyHealthAtVanderbilt: policies and procedures governing patient portal functionality

PubMed Central

Rosenbloom, S Trent; Stenner, Shane P; Anders, Shilo; Muse, Sue; Johnson, Kevin B; Jirjis, Jim; Jackson, Gretchen Purcell

2011-01-01

Explicit guidelines are needed to develop safe and effective patient portals. This paper proposes general principles, policies, and procedures for patient portal functionality based on MyHealthAtVanderbilt (MHAV), a robust portal for Vanderbilt University Medical Center. We describe policies and procedures designed to govern popular portal functions, address common user concerns, and support adoption. We present the results of our approach as overall and function-specific usage data. Five years after implementation, MHAV has over 129 800 users; 45% have used bi-directional messaging; 52% have viewed test results and 45% have viewed other medical record data; 30% have accessed health education materials; 39% have scheduled appointments; and 29% have managed a medical bill. Our policies and procedures have supported widespread adoption and use of MHAV. We believe other healthcare organizations could employ our general guidelines and lessons learned to facilitate portal implementation and usage. PMID:21807648

KFC Server: interactive forecasting of protein interaction hot spots.

PubMed

Darnell, Steven J; LeGault, Laura; Mitchell, Julie C

2008-07-01

The KFC Server is a web-based implementation of the KFC (Knowledge-based FADE and Contacts) model-a machine learning approach for the prediction of binding hot spots, or the subset of residues that account for most of a protein interface's; binding free energy. The server facilitates the automated analysis of a user submitted protein-protein or protein-DNA interface and the visualization of its hot spot predictions. For each residue in the interface, the KFC Server characterizes its local structural environment, compares that environment to the environments of experimentally determined hot spots and predicts if the interface residue is a hot spot. After the computational analysis, the user can visualize the results using an interactive job viewer able to quickly highlight predicted hot spots and surrounding structural features within the protein structure. The KFC Server is accessible at http://kfc.mitchell-lab.org.

KFC Server: interactive forecasting of protein interaction hot spots

PubMed Central

Darnell, Steven J.; LeGault, Laura; Mitchell, Julie C.

2008-01-01

The KFC Server is a web-based implementation of the KFC (Knowledge-based FADE and Contacts) model—a machine learning approach for the prediction of binding hot spots, or the subset of residues that account for most of a protein interface's; binding free energy. The server facilitates the automated analysis of a user submitted protein–protein or protein–DNA interface and the visualization of its hot spot predictions. For each residue in the interface, the KFC Server characterizes its local structural environment, compares that environment to the environments of experimentally determined hot spots and predicts if the interface residue is a hot spot. After the computational analysis, the user can visualize the results using an interactive job viewer able to quickly highlight predicted hot spots and surrounding structural features within the protein structure. The KFC Server is accessible at http://kfc.mitchell-lab.org. PMID:18539611

STINGRAY: system for integrated genomic resources and analysis

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background The STINGRAY system has been conceived to ease the tasks of integrating, analyzing, annotating and presenting genomic and expression data from Sanger and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) platforms. Findings STINGRAY includes: (a) a complete and integrated workflow (more than 20 bioinformatics tools) ranging from functional annotation to phylogeny; (b) a MySQL database schema, suitable for data integration and user access control; and (c) a user-friendly graphical web-based interface that makes the system intuitive, facilitating the tasks of data analysis and annotation. Conclusion STINGRAY showed to be an easy to use and complete system for analyzing sequencing data. While both Sanger and NGS platforms are supported, the system could be faster using Sanger data, since the large NGS datasets could potentially slow down the MySQL database usage. STINGRAY is available at http://stingray.biowebdb.org and the open source code at http://sourceforge.net/projects/stingray-biowebdb/. PMID:24606808

Organizational Uses of Health Information Exchange to Change Cost and Utilization Outcomes: A Typology from a Multi-Site Qualitative Analysis.

PubMed

Vest, Joshua R; Abramson, Erika

2015-01-01

Health information exchange (HIE) systems facilitate access to patient information for a variety of health care organizations, end users, and clinical and organizational goals. While a complex intervention, organizations' usage of HIE is often conceptualized and measured narrowly. We sought to provide greater specificity to the concept of HIE as an intervention by formulating a typology of organizational HIE usage. We interviewed representatives of a regional health information organization and health care organizations actively using HIE information to change patient utilization and costs. The resultant typology includes three dimensions: user role, usage initiation, and patient set. This approach to categorizing how health care organizations are actually applying HIE information to clinical and business tasks provides greater clarity about HIE as an intervention and helps elucidate the conceptual linkage between HIE an organizational and patient outcomes.

Functional Behavioral Assessment: An Interactive Training Module. User's Manual & Facilitator's Guide. Second Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liaupsin, Carl J.; Scott, Terry M.; Nelson, C. Michael

This user's manual and facilitator's guide is intended for use with an accompanying interactive CD-ROM to provide a complete training program in conducting functional behavioral assessments (FBAs) as required under the 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Chapter 1 provides general information for users, such as…

The ARL 2030 Scenarios: A User's Guide for Research Libraries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Association of Research Libraries, 2010

2010-01-01

This user's guide was developed to advance local planning at ARL member libraries. It is written for library leaders writ large and for anyone leading or contributing to research library planning processes. Users do not need advanced facilitation skills to benefit from this guide, but facilitators charged with supporting scenario planning will…

User-generated online health content: a survey of Internet users in the United Kingdom.

PubMed

O'Neill, Braden; Ziebland, Sue; Valderas, Jose; Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Francisco

2014-04-30

The production of health information has begun to shift from commercial organizations to health care users themselves. People increasingly go online to share their own health and illness experiences and to access information others have posted, but this behavior has not been investigated at a population level in the United Kingdom. This study aims to explore access and production of user-generated health content among UK Internet users and to investigate relationships between frequency of use and other variables. We undertook an online survey of 1000 UK Internet users. Descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses were used to interpret the data. Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23.7%, 237/1000) reported accessing and sharing user-generated health content online, whereas more than 20% (22.2%, 222/1000) were unaware that it was possible to do this. Respondents could be divided into 3 groups based on frequency of use: rare users (78.7%, 612/778) who accessed and shared content less than weekly, users (13.9%, 108/778) who did so weekly, and superusers (7.5%, 58/778) who did so on a daily basis. Superusers were more likely to be male (P<.001) and to be employed (P<.001), but there were no differences between the groups with respect to educational level (P=.99) or health status (P=.63). They were more likely to use the Internet for varied purposes such as banking and shopping (P<.001). Although this study found reasonably widespread access of user-generated online health content, only a minority of respondents reported doing so frequently. As this type of content proliferates, superusers are likely to shape the health information that others access. Further research should assess the effect of user-generated online content on health outcomes and use of health services by Internet users.

The Motivation-Facilitation Theory of Prenatal Care Access.

PubMed

Phillippi, Julia C; Roman, Marian W

2013-01-01

Despite the availability of services, accessing health care remains a problem in the United States and other developed countries. Prenatal care has the potential to improve perinatal outcomes and decrease health disparities, yet many women struggle with access to care. Current theories addressing access to prenatal care focus on barriers, although such knowledge is minimally useful for clinicians. We propose a middle-range theory, the motivation-facilitation theory of prenatal care access, which condenses the prenatal care access process into 2 interacting components: motivation and facilitation. Maternal motivation is the mother's desire to begin and maintain care. Facilitation represents the goal of the clinic to create easy, open access to person-centered beneficial care. This simple model directs the focus of research and change to the interface of the woman and the clinic and encourages practice-level interventions that facilitate women entering and maintaining prenatal care. © 2013 by the American College of Nurse‐Midwives.

Service composition towards increasing end-user accessibility.

PubMed

Kaklanis, Nikolaos; Votis, Konstantinos; Tzovaras, Dimitrios

2015-01-01

This paper presents the Cloud4all Service Synthesizer Tool, a framework that enables efficient orchestration of accessibility services, as well as their combination into complex forms, providing more advanced functionalities towards increasing the accessibility of end-users with various types of functional limitations. The supported services are described formally within an ontology, enabling, thus, semantic service composition. The proposed service composition approach is based on semantic matching between services specifications on the one hand and user needs/preferences and current context of use on the other hand. The use of automatic composition of accessibility services can significantly enhance end-users' accessibility, especially in cases where assistive solutions are not available in their device.

A Web-Based Earth-Systems Knowledge Portal and Collaboration Platform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

D'Agnese, F. A.; Turner, A. K.

2010-12-01

In support of complex water-resource sustainability projects in the Great Basin region of the United States, Earth Knowledge, Inc. has developed several web-based data management and analysis platforms that have been used by its scientists, clients, and public to facilitate information exchanges, collaborations, and decision making. These platforms support accurate water-resource decision-making by combining second-generation internet (Web 2.0) technologies with traditional 2D GIS and web-based 2D and 3D mapping systems such as Google Maps, and Google Earth. Most data management and analysis systems use traditional software systems to address the data needs and usage behavior of the scientific community. In contrast, these platforms employ more accessible open-source and “off-the-shelf” consumer-oriented, hosted web-services. They exploit familiar software tools using industry standard protocols, formats, and APIs to discover, process, fuse, and visualize earth, engineering, and social science datasets. Thus, they respond to the information needs and web-interface expectations of both subject-matter experts and the public. Because the platforms continue to gather and store all the contributions of their broad-spectrum of users, each new assessment leverages the data, information, and expertise derived from previous investigations. In the last year, Earth Knowledge completed a conceptual system design and feasibility study for a platform, which has a Knowledge Portal providing access to users wishing to retrieve information or knowledge developed by the science enterprise and a Collaboration Environment Module, a framework that links the user-access functions to a Technical Core supporting technical and scientific analyses including Data Management, Analysis and Modeling, and Decision Management, and to essential system administrative functions within an Administrative Module. The over-riding technical challenge is the design and development of a single technical platform that is accessed through a flexible series of knowledge portal and collaboration environment styles reflecting the information needs and user expectations of a diverse community of users. Recent investigations have defined the information needs and expectations of the major end-users and also have reviewed and assessed a wide variety of modern web-based technologies. Combining these efforts produced design specifications and recommendations for the selection and integration of web- and client-based tools. When fully developed, the resulting platform will: -Support new, advanced information systems and decision environments that take full advantage of multiple data sources and platforms; -Provide a distribution network tailored to the timely delivery of products to a broad range of users that are needed to support applications in disaster management, resource management, energy, and urban sustainability; -Establish new integrated multiple-user requirements and knowledge databases that support researchers and promote infusion of successful technologies into existing processes; and -Develop new decision support strategies and presentation methodologies for applied earth science applications to reduce risk, cost, and time.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative: Data Acquisition Functions and Its Built-In Automated Python Modules

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, M. J.; Vardaro, M.; Crowley, M. F.; Glenn, S. M.; Schofield, O.; Belabbassi, L.; Garzio, L. M.; Knuth, F.; Fram, J. P.; Kerfoot, J.

2016-02-01

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), funded by the National Science Foundation, provides users with access to long-term datasets from a variety of oceanographic sensors. The Endurance Array in the Pacific Ocean consists of two separate lines off the coasts of Oregon and Washington. The Oregon line consists of 7 moorings, two cabled benthic experiment packages and 6 underwater gliders. The Washington line comprises 6 moorings and 6 gliders. Each mooring is outfitted with a variety of instrument packages. The raw data from these instruments are sent to shore via satellite communication and in some cases, via fiber optic cable. Raw data is then sent to the cyberinfrastructure (CI) group at Rutgers where it is aggregated, parsed into thousands of different data streams, and integrated into a software package called uFrame. The OOI CI delivers the data to the general public via a web interface that outputs data into commonly used scientific data file formats such as JSON, netCDF, and CSV. The Rutgers data management team has developed a series of command-line Python tools that streamline data acquisition in order to facilitate the QA/QC review process. The first step in the process is querying the uFrame database for a list of all available platforms. From this list, a user can choose a specific platform and automatically download all available datasets from the specified platform. The downloaded dataset is plotted using a generalized Python netcdf plotting routine that utilizes a data visualization toolbox called matplotlib. This routine loads each netCDF file separately and outputs plots by each available parameter. These Python tools have been uploaded to a Github repository that is openly available to help facilitate OOI data access and visualization.

Scaling Up Scientific Discovery in Sleep Medicine: The National Sleep Research Resource.

PubMed

Dean, Dennis A; Goldberger, Ary L; Mueller, Remo; Kim, Matthew; Rueschman, Michael; Mobley, Daniel; Sahoo, Satya S; Jayapandian, Catherine P; Cui, Licong; Morrical, Michael G; Surovec, Susan; Zhang, Guo-Qiang; Redline, Susan

2016-05-01

Professional sleep societies have identified a need for strategic research in multiple areas that may benefit from access to and aggregation of large, multidimensional datasets. Technological advances provide opportunities to extract and analyze physiological signals and other biomedical information from datasets of unprecedented size, heterogeneity, and complexity. The National Institutes of Health has implemented a Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative that aims to develop and disseminate state of the art big data access tools and analytical methods. The National Sleep Research Resource (NSRR) is a new National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute resource designed to provide big data resources to the sleep research community. The NSRR is a web-based data portal that aggregates, harmonizes, and organizes sleep and clinical data from thousands of individuals studied as part of cohort studies or clinical trials and provides the user a suite of tools to facilitate data exploration and data visualization. Each deidentified study record minimally includes the summary results of an overnight sleep study; annotation files with scored events; the raw physiological signals from the sleep record; and available clinical and physiological data. NSRR is designed to be interoperable with other public data resources such as the Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Information Coordinating Center Demographics (BioLINCC) data and analyzed with methods provided by the Research Resource for Complex Physiological Signals (PhysioNet). This article reviews the key objectives, challenges and operational solutions to addressing big data opportunities for sleep research in the context of the national sleep research agenda. It provides information to facilitate further interactions of the user community with NSRR, a community resource. © 2016 Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC.

End User Evaluations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jay, Caroline; Lunn, Darren; Michailidou, Eleni

As new technologies emerge, and Web sites become increasingly sophisticated, ensuring they remain accessible to disabled and small-screen users is a major challenge. While guidelines and automated evaluation tools are useful for informing some aspects of Web site design, numerous studies have demonstrated that they provide no guarantee that the site is genuinely accessible. The only reliable way to evaluate the accessibility of a site is to study the intended users interacting with it. This chapter outlines the processes that can be used throughout the design life cycle to ensure Web accessibility, describing their strengths and weaknesses, and discussing the practical and ethical considerations that they entail. The chapter also considers an important emerging trend in user evaluations: combining data from studies of “standard” Web use with data describing existing accessibility issues, to drive accessibility solutions forward.

RE-PLAN: An Extensible Software Architecture to Facilitate Disaster Response Planning

PubMed Central

O’Neill, Martin; Mikler, Armin R.; Indrakanti, Saratchandra; Tiwari, Chetan; Jimenez, Tamara

2014-01-01

Computational tools are needed to make data-driven disaster mitigation planning accessible to planners and policymakers without the need for programming or GIS expertise. To address this problem, we have created modules to facilitate quantitative analyses pertinent to a variety of different disaster scenarios. These modules, which comprise the REsponse PLan ANalyzer (RE-PLAN) framework, may be used to create tools for specific disaster scenarios that allow planners to harness large amounts of disparate data and execute computational models through a point-and-click interface. Bio-E, a user-friendly tool built using this framework, was designed to develop and analyze the feasibility of ad hoc clinics for treating populations following a biological emergency event. In this article, the design and implementation of the RE-PLAN framework are described, and the functionality of the modules used in the Bio-E biological emergency mitigation tool are demonstrated. PMID:25419503

Neural network based visualization of collaborations in a citizen science project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morais, Alessandra M. M.; Santos, Rafael D. C.; Raddick, M. Jordan

2014-05-01

Citizen science projects are those in which volunteers are asked to collaborate in scientific projects, usually by volunteering idle computer time for distributed data processing efforts or by actively labeling or classifying information - shapes of galaxies, whale sounds, historical records are all examples of citizen science projects in which users access a data collecting system to label or classify images and sounds. In order to be successful, a citizen science project must captivate users and keep them interested on the project and on the science behind it, increasing therefore the time the users spend collaborating with the project. Understanding behavior of citizen scientists and their interaction with the data collection systems may help increase the involvement of the users, categorize them accordingly to different parameters, facilitate their collaboration with the systems, design better user interfaces, and allow better planning and deployment of similar projects and systems. Users behavior can be actively monitored or derived from their interaction with the data collection systems. Records of the interactions can be analyzed using visualization techniques to identify patterns and outliers. In this paper we present some results on the visualization of more than 80 million interactions of almost 150 thousand users with the Galaxy Zoo I citizen science project. Visualization of the attributes extracted from their behaviors was done with a clustering neural network (the Self-Organizing Map) and a selection of icon- and pixel-based techniques. These techniques allows the visual identification of groups of similar behavior in several different ways.

Fragment-Based Docking: Development of the CHARMMing Web User Interface as a Platform for Computer-Aided Drug Design

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Web-based user interfaces to scientific applications are important tools that allow researchers to utilize a broad range of software packages with just an Internet connection and a browser.1 One such interface, CHARMMing (CHARMM interface and graphics), facilitates access to the powerful and widely used molecular software package CHARMM. CHARMMing incorporates tasks such as molecular structure analysis, dynamics, multiscale modeling, and other techniques commonly used by computational life scientists. We have extended CHARMMing’s capabilities to include a fragment-based docking protocol that allows users to perform molecular docking and virtual screening calculations either directly via the CHARMMing Web server or on computing resources using the self-contained job scripts generated via the Web interface. The docking protocol was evaluated by performing a series of “re-dockings” with direct comparison to top commercial docking software. Results of this evaluation showed that CHARMMing’s docking implementation is comparable to many widely used software packages and validates the use of the new CHARMM generalized force field for docking and virtual screening. PMID:25151852

Multi-Sector Sustainability Browser (MSSB) User Manual: A ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

EPA’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) Research Program is developing methodologies, resources, and tools to assist community members and local decision makers in implementing policy choices that facilitate sustainable approaches in managing their resources affecting the built environment, natural environment, and human health. In order to assist communities and decision makers in implementing sustainable practices, EPA is developing computer-based systems including models, databases, web tools, and web browsers to help communities decide upon approaches that support their desired outcomes. Communities need access to resources that will allow them to achieve their sustainability objectives through intelligent decisions in four key sustainability areas: • Land Use • Buildings and Infrastructure • Transportation • Materials Management (i.e., Municipal Solid Waste [MSW] processing and disposal) The Multi-Sector Sustainability Browser (MSSB) is designed to support sustainable decision-making for communities, local and regional planners, and policy and decision makers. Document is an EPA Technical Report, which is the user manual for the Multi-Sector Sustainability Browser (MSSB) tool. The purpose of the document is to provide basic guidance on use of the tool for users

Fragment-based docking: development of the CHARMMing Web user interface as a platform for computer-aided drug design.

PubMed

Pevzner, Yuri; Frugier, Emilie; Schalk, Vinushka; Caflisch, Amedeo; Woodcock, H Lee

2014-09-22

Web-based user interfaces to scientific applications are important tools that allow researchers to utilize a broad range of software packages with just an Internet connection and a browser. One such interface, CHARMMing (CHARMM interface and graphics), facilitates access to the powerful and widely used molecular software package CHARMM. CHARMMing incorporates tasks such as molecular structure analysis, dynamics, multiscale modeling, and other techniques commonly used by computational life scientists. We have extended CHARMMing's capabilities to include a fragment-based docking protocol that allows users to perform molecular docking and virtual screening calculations either directly via the CHARMMing Web server or on computing resources using the self-contained job scripts generated via the Web interface. The docking protocol was evaluated by performing a series of "re-dockings" with direct comparison to top commercial docking software. Results of this evaluation showed that CHARMMing's docking implementation is comparable to many widely used software packages and validates the use of the new CHARMM generalized force field for docking and virtual screening.

How could health information exchange better meet the needs of care practitioners?

PubMed

Kierkegaard, P; Kaushal, R; Vest, J R

2014-01-01

Health information exchange (HIE) has the potential to improve the quality of healthcare by enabling providers with better access to patient information from multiple sources at the point of care. However, HIE efforts have historically been difficult to establish in the US and the failure rates of organizations created to foster HIE have been high. We sought to better understand how RHIO-based HIE systems were used in practice and the challenges care practitioners face using them. The objective of our study were to so investigate how HIE can better meet the needs of care practitioners. We performed a multiple-case study using qualitative methods in three communities in New York State. We conducted interviews onsite and by telephone with HIE users and non-users and observed the workflows of healthcare professionals at multiple healthcare organizations participating in a local HIE effort in New York State. The empirical data analysis suggests that challenges still remain in increasing provider usage, optimizing HIE implementations and connecting HIE systems across geographic regions. Important determinants of system usage and perceived value includes users experienced level of available information and the fit of use for physician workflows. Challenges still remain in increasing provider adoption, optimizing HIE implementations, and demonstrating value. The inability to find information reduced usage of HIE. Healthcare organizations, HIE facilitating organizations, and states can help support HIE adoption by ensuring patient information is accessible to providers through increasing patient consents, fostering broader participation, and by ensuring systems are usable.

The VLab repository of thermodynamics and thermoelastic properties of minerals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Da Silveira, P. R.; Sarkar, K.; Wentzcovitch, R. M.; Shukla, G.; Lindemann, W.; Wu, Z.

2015-12-01

Thermodynamics and thermoelastic properties of minerals at planetary interior conditions are essential as input for geodynamics simulations and for interpretation of seismic tomography models. Precise experimental determination of these properties at such extreme conditions is very challenging. Therefore, ab initio calculations play an essential role in this context, but at the cost of great computational effort and memory use. Setting up a widely accessible and versatile mineral physics database can relax unnecessary repetition of such computationally intensive calculations. Access to such data facilitates transactional interaction across fields and can advance more quickly insights about deep Earth processes. Hosted by the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, the Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials (VLab) was designed to develop and promote the theory of planetary materials using distributed, high-throughput quantum calculations. VLab hosts an interactive database of thermodynamics and thermoelastic properties or minerals computed by ab initio. Such properties can be obtained according to user's preference. The database is accompanied by interactive visualization tools, allowing users to repeat and build upon previously published results. Using VLab2015, we have evaluated thermoelastic properties, such as elastic coefficients (Cij), Voigt, Reuss, and Voigt-Reuss-Hill aggregate averages for bulk (K) and shear modulus (G), shear wave velocity (VS), longitudinal wave velocity (Vp), and bulk sound velocity (V0) for several important minerals. Developed web services are general and can be used for crystals of any symmetry. Results can be tabulated, plotted, or downloaded from the VLab website according to user's preference.

Incentive Mechanism for P2P Content Sharing over Heterogenous Access Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sato, Kenichiro; Hashimoto, Ryo; Yoshino, Makoto; Shinkuma, Ryoichi; Takahashi, Tatsuro

In peer-to-peer (P2P) content sharing, users can share their content by contributing their own resources to one another. However, since there is no incentive for contributing contents or resources to others, users may attempt to obtain content without any contribution. To motivate users to contribute their resources to the service, incentive-rewarding mechanisms have been proposed. On the other hand, emerging wireless technologies, such as IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks, beyond third generation (B3G) cellular networks and mobile WiMAX, provide high-speed Internet access for wireless users. Using these high-speed wireless access, wireless users can use P2P services and share their content with other wireless users and with fixed users. However, this diversification of access networks makes it difficult to appropriately assign rewards to each user according to their contributions. This is because the cost necessary for contribution is different in different access networks. In this paper, we propose a novel incentive-rewarding mechanism called EMOTIVER that can assign rewards to users appropriately. The proposed mechanism uses an external evaluator and interactive learning agents. We also investigate a way of appropriately controlling rewards based on the system service's quality and managing policy.

Accessibility information in New Delhi for "EasenAccess" Android-based app for persons with disability: an observational study.

PubMed

Agarwal, Yashovardhan

2018-06-14

The World Health Organization and the World Bank's "World Report on Disability" reported that over 1 billion people have various kinds of disability worldwide while Indian Census 2011 reported about 26 million in India. The United Nations Convention states, "The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) include accessibility to Information, Transportation, Environment, Communication Technology and Services". This article takes forward the reason of making the "EasenAccess" (EnA) Android-based app to empower PwD with wheelchair-accessibility information, communication sentences and sending SOS signals with location. A survey of 25 most frequented places in New Delhi by common people and tourist with chosen 12 parameters in comparison the Government of India's survey of 100 most important buildings nationally. A statistical analysis and recommendations about areas for improvement, for the Government of India. EasenAccess helps millions of PwD to enable them with freedom of movement for employment and socio-economic activities to lead an independent lifestyle. EasenAccess increases government's access to information about lacunae, gives them an easy way to tabulate the places where more accessibility needs updating, and helps the government in facilitating information flow to the PwD. Implication for Rehabilitation The Rights of Persons with Disability Act in 2016 covers both the concepts of Universal Design of products, environments and programs; and accessibility. We are exploring with them the ways technology can help bridge the gap between rehabilitation and accessibility. In the higher income countries such as the UK or USA, it is normal for a person to receive training when being given a wheelchair to prevent future injuries. Frequently, even with this, training people develop upper limb injuries, due in part to the high, repetitive loads needed to push a wheelchair. This training is given as part of a package of rehabilitation, which also normally includes adaptations to people's living environments, which will enable them to use their wheelchair indoors. In Accessible Routes from Crowd-based Cloud Services (ARCCS) many NGOs have been able to develop sensors, which are themselves part of the Internet of Things, which when attached to a mobility device extend the ability of that device. Users can interact with the sensor data on their mobile phone via an app. They can also add geo-tagged photo or voice notes to annotate their journey. These can then be shared with other users of the ARCCS system. The system has been developed with a range of wheelchair users and other stakeholders. For example, one such initiative by the Government of India is called "Street Rehab". The aim of Street Rehab is to co-develop a new system for delivering a service for wheelchair users, which puts everyday activities at the heart of the rehabilitation process. To do this, a clear understanding of user needs, available technology and the accessibility of the city are all required. The first step is to understand the current accessibility of Delhi, the next to map this with the rehabilitation and livelihoods requirements of the wheelchair and tricycle users. This approach has led to the development of novel sensors and a data processing chain, which can automatically identify features of the sidewalk or surface, for example, drop curb, camber, and rough terrain. These classifications are then used to help with increasing localization of the person. In addition, the sensors can be used to identify how the pushing techniques of people, who self-propel their wheelchair. They have developed these sensors, as mobile phones alone, while useful if secured in a fixed position, are not adequate when loosely placed in bags or pockets. The aim is to find practical solutions for those who use mobility aids in India to access the services and places they wish to without risk of injury. Injuries can occur due to toppling out of a mobility device, being hit by a vehicle or developing an injury over time due to the demand of pushing/cycling the mobility device. EasenAccess can be a synergistic platform for all such future community based rehabilitation approaches. It can also help compile and collate data for accessibility gaps and rehabilitation issues encountered. EasenAccess app can thus help create an emerging framework, which puts the experience of the wheelchair user at the center but with a clear connection to people who can implement policy change on a broad scale.One that includes local people who will be advocates for creation of accessible maps, and local NGOs to provide hubs of training. These can be linked to a series of YouTube videos and supported via a messaging service, for example, local WhatsApp groups or social media groups, for example, a Facebook Page. With infinite possibilities, as illustrated above, EasenAccess app can create a new technological paradigm for convergence of Accessibility and Rehabilitation.

Comparison and Evaluation of End-User Interfaces for Online Public Access Catalogs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zumer, Maja

End-user interfaces for the online public access catalogs (OPACs) of OhioLINK, a system linking major university and research libraries in Ohio, and its 16 member libraries, accessible through the Internet, are compared and evaluated from the user-oriented perspective. A common, systematic framework was used for the scientific observation of the…

The Physical Accessibility of Public Libraries to Users: A GIS Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, Sung Jae

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study is to gain a finer-grained picture and better understanding of the travel patterns of library users, and the activities, demographics, and other factors that affect library access. Previous studies of physical accessibility of public libraries, which have focused on library users' single-destination trips and their travel…

System Design and Cataloging Meet the User: User Interfaces to Online Public Access Catalogs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yee, Martha M.

1991-01-01

Discusses features of online public access catalogs: (1) demonstration of relationships between records; (2) provision of entry vocabularies; (3) arrangement of multiple entries on the screen; (4) provision of access points; (5) display of single records; and (6) division of catalogs into separate files or indexes. User studies and other research…

The Searching Behavior of Remote Users: A Study of One Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalin, Sally W.

1991-01-01

Describes a study that was conducted to determine whether the searching behavior of remote users of LIAS (Library Information Access System), Pennsylvania State University's online public access catalog (OPAC), differed from those using the OPAC within the library. Differences in search strategies and in user satisfaction are discussed. (eight…

Enabling Scientists: Serving Sci-Tech Library Users with Disabilities.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coonin, Bryna

2001-01-01

Discusses how librarians in scientific and technical libraries can contribute to an accessible electronic library environment for users with disabilities to ensure independent access to information. Topics include relevant assistive technologies; creating accessible Web pages; monitoring accessibility of electronic databases; preparing accessible…

Lead users’ ideas on core features to support physical activity in rheumatoid arthritis: a first step in the development of an internet service using participatory design

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Despite the growing evidence of the benefits of physical activity (PA) in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the majority is not physically active enough. An innovative strategy is to engage lead users in the development of PA interventions provided over the internet. The aim was to explore lead users’ ideas and prioritization of core features in a future internet service targeting adoption and maintenance of healthy PA in people with RA. Methods Six focus group interviews were performed with a purposively selected sample of 26 individuals with RA. Data were analyzed with qualitative content analysis and quantification of participants’ prioritization of most important content. Results Six categories were identified as core features for a future internet service: up-to-date and evidence-based information and instructions, self-regulation tools, social interaction, personalized set-up, attractive design and content, and access to the internet service. The categories represented four themes, or core aspects, important to consider in the design of the future service: (1) content, (2) customized options, (3) user interface and (4) access and implementation. Conclusions This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study involving people with RA in the development of an internet service to support the adoption and maintenance of PA. Participants helped identifying core features and aspects important to consider and further explore during the next phase of development. We hypothesize that involvement of lead users will make transfer from theory to service more adequate and user-friendly and therefore will be an effective mean to facilitate PA behavior change. PMID:24655757

LiPD and CSciBox: A Case Study in Why Data Standards are Important for Paleoscience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weiss, I.; Bradley, E.; McKay, N.; Emile-Geay, J.; de Vesine, L. R.; Anderson, K. A.; White, J. W. C.; Marchitto, T. M., Jr.

2016-12-01

CSciBox [1] is an integrated software system that helps geoscientists build and evaluate age models. Its user chooses from a number of built-in analysis tools, composing them into an analysis workflow and applying it to paleoclimate proxy datasets. CSciBox employs modern database technology to store both the data and the analysis results in an easily accessible and searchable form, and offers the user access to the computational toolbox, the data, and the results via a graphical user interface and a sophisticated plotter. Standards are a staple of modern life, and underlie any form of automation. Without data standards, it is difficult, if not impossible, to construct effective computer tools for paleoscience analysis. The LiPD (Linked Paleo Data) framework [2] enables the storage of both data and metadata in systematic, meaningful, machine-readable ways. LiPD has been a primary enabler of CSciBox's goals of usability, interoperability, and reproducibility. Building LiPD capabilities into CSciBox's importer, for instance, eliminated the need to ask the user about file formats, variable names, relationships between columns in the input file, etc. Building LiPD capabilities into the exporter facilitated the storage of complete details about the input data-provenance, preprocessing steps, etc.-as well as full descriptions of any analyses that were performed using the CSciBox tool, along with citations to appropriate references. This comprehensive collection of data and metadata, which is all linked together in a semantically meaningful, machine-readable way, not only completely documents the analyses and makes them reproducible. It also enables interoperability with any other software system that employs the LiPD standard. [1] www.cs.colorado.edu/ lizb/cscience.html[2] McKay & Emile-Geay, Climate of the Past 12:1093 (2016)

DRIAS project : A component of French Climate Services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lémond, J.; Dandin, P.; Moisselin, J. M.; Franchistéguy, L.; Kerdoncuff, M.; Pagé, C.; Vautard, R.; Déqué, M.; Planton, S.

2010-09-01

DRIAS (Providing access to French Regionalized climate scenarios for the Impact and the Adaptation of our Societies and environment) is a 2 years project, funded by the GICC (Management and Impacts of Climate Change) programme of the French Ministery of Ecology and Sustainable Development. Its aim is to provide regionalized climate simulations, data and products performed by French climate modeling, as well as to support users of these informations. In addition to numerical data, the project aims to make available probabilistic products, allowing the user to apprehend and take into account in studies the uncertainty inherent in modeling. From a technical perspective, the challenge will be to provide standardized informations between different producers. The combined accompaniment should be under different forms (metadata, hotline, training, forum), which will allow optimal use of products supplied. DRIAS gathers different partners and expertises. Its composed by representatives of French laboratories in which regionalized numerical simulations are produced : IPSL, CERFACS, and CNRM. The project is coordonned by the Climatology Departement of Météo-France which will provide expertise in the production and tools of availability of climatological data, acquired through the development of an existing data service access called Climathèque (http://climatheque.meteo.fr). In addition, a multidisciplinary committee of users representing different sectors concerned by climate change and different kind of structures (public, parapublic, private, association) accompanies the project. Its role is to express needs, validate the choices made, do tests... and thus facilitate communication between producers and users. Thus, the DRIAS project participates in the development effort of French Climate Services. The aim of this work is to present and introduce these key aspects.

A new visual navigation system for exploring biomedical Open Educational Resource (OER) videos

PubMed Central

Zhao, Baoquan; Xu, Songhua; Lin, Shujin; Luo, Xiaonan; Duan, Lian

2016-01-01

Objective Biomedical videos as open educational resources (OERs) are increasingly proliferating on the Internet. Unfortunately, seeking personally valuable content from among the vast corpus of quality yet diverse OER videos is nontrivial due to limitations of today’s keyword- and content-based video retrieval techniques. To address this need, this study introduces a novel visual navigation system that facilitates users’ information seeking from biomedical OER videos in mass quantity by interactively offering visual and textual navigational clues that are both semantically revealing and user-friendly. Materials and Methods The authors collected and processed around 25 000 YouTube videos, which collectively last for a total length of about 4000 h, in the broad field of biomedical sciences for our experiment. For each video, its semantic clues are first extracted automatically through computationally analyzing audio and visual signals, as well as text either accompanying or embedded in the video. These extracted clues are subsequently stored in a metadata database and indexed by a high-performance text search engine. During the online retrieval stage, the system renders video search results as dynamic web pages using a JavaScript library that allows users to interactively and intuitively explore video content both efficiently and effectively. Results The authors produced a prototype implementation of the proposed system, which is publicly accessible at https://patentq.njit.edu/oer. To examine the overall advantage of the proposed system for exploring biomedical OER videos, the authors further conducted a user study of a modest scale. The study results encouragingly demonstrate the functional effectiveness and user-friendliness of the new system for facilitating information seeking from and content exploration among massive biomedical OER videos. Conclusion Using the proposed tool, users can efficiently and effectively find videos of interest, precisely locate video segments delivering personally valuable information, as well as intuitively and conveniently preview essential content of a single or a collection of videos. PMID:26335986

Workshop AccessibleTV "Accessible User Interfaces for Future TV Applications"

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hahn, Volker; Hamisu, Pascal; Jung, Christopher; Heinrich, Gregor; Duarte, Carlos; Langdon, Pat

Approximately half of the elderly people over 55 suffer from some type of typically mild visual, auditory, motor or cognitive impairment. For them interaction, especially with PCs and other complex devices is sometimes challenging, although accessible ICT applications could make much of a difference for their living quality. Basically they have the potential to enable or simplify participation and inclusion in their surrounding private and professional communities. However, the availability of accessible user interfaces being capable to adapt to the specific needs and requirements of users with individual impairments is very limited. Although there are a number of APIs [1, 2, 3, 4] available for various platforms that allow developers to provide accessibility features within their applications, today none of them provides features for the automatic adaptation of multimodal interfaces being capable to automatically fit the individual requirements of users with different kinds of impairments. Moreover, the provision of accessible user interfaces is still expensive and risky for application developers, as they need special experience and effort for user tests. Today many implementations simply neglect the needs of elderly people, thus locking out a large portion of their potential users. The workshop is organized as part of the dissemination activity for the European-funded project GUIDE "Gentle user interfaces for elderly people", which aims to address this situation with a comprehensive approach for the realization of multimodal user interfaces being capable to adapt to the needs of users with different kinds of mild impairments. As application platform, GUIDE will mainly target TVs and Set-Top Boxes, such as the emerging Connected-TV or WebTV platforms, as they have the potential to address the needs of the elderly users with applications such as for home automation, communication or continuing education.

Variation in use of technology among vascular access specialists: an analysis of the PICC1 survey.

PubMed

Chopra, Vineet; Kuhn, Latoya; Ratz, David; Winter, Suzanne; Carr, Peter J; Paje, David; Krein, Sarah L

2017-05-15

While the use of technologies such as ultrasound and electrocardiographic (ECG) guidance systems to place peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) has grown, little is known about the clinicians who use these tools or their work settings. Using data from a national survey of vascular access specialists, we identified technology users as PICC inserters that: (a) use ultrasound to find a suitable vein for catheter placement; (b) measure catheter-to-vein ratio; and (c) use ECG for PICC placement. Individual and organizational-level characteristics between technology users versus non-users were assessed. Bivariable comparisons were made using Chi-squared or Fisher's exact tests; two-sided alpha with p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Of the 2762 PICC inserters who accessed the survey, 1518 (55%) provided information regarding technology use. Technology users reported greater experience than non-technology users, with a higher percentage stating they had placed >1000 PICCs (55% vs. 45%, p<0.001). A significantly greater percentage of technology users also reported being certified in vascular access by an external agency than non-technology users (75% vs. 63%, p<0.001). Technology users were more often part of vascular access teams with ≥10 members compared to non-technology users (35% vs. 22%, p<0.001). Some practices also varied between the two groups: for example, use of certain securement devices and dressings differed between technology users and non-users (p<0.001). Technology use by vascular access clinicians while placing PICCs is associated with clinician characteristics, work setting and practice factors. Understanding whether such differences influence clinical care or patient outcomes appears necessary.

Health websites: accessibility and usability for American sign language users.

PubMed

Kushalnagar, Poorna; Naturale, Joan; Paludneviciene, Raylene; Smith, Scott R; Werfel, Emily; Doolittle, Richard; Jacobs, Stephen; DeCaro, James

2015-01-01

To date, there have been efforts toward creating better health information access for Deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users. However, the usability of websites with access to health information in ASL has not been evaluated. Our article focuses on the usability of four health websites that include ASL videos. We seek to obtain ASL users' perspectives on the navigation of these ASL-accessible websites, finding the health information that they needed, and perceived ease of understanding ASL video content. ASL users (n = 32) were instructed to find specific information on four ASL-accessible websites, and answered questions related to (a) navigation to find the task, (b) website usability, and (c) ease of understanding ASL video content for each of the four websites. Participants also gave feedback on what they would like to see in an ASL health library website, including the benefit of added captioning and/or signer model to medical illustration of health videos. Participants who had lower health literacy had greater difficulty in finding information on ASL-accessible health websites. This article also describes the participants' preferences for an ideal ASL-accessible health website, and concludes with a discussion on the role of accessible websites in promoting health literacy in ASL users.

The Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility Advancing Nuclear Technology

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

T. R. Allen; J. B. Benson; J. A. Foster

2009-05-01

To help ensure the long-term viability of nuclear energy through a robust and sustained research and development effort, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) designated the Advanced Test Reactor and associated post-irradiation examination facilities a National Scientific User Facility (ATR NSUF), allowing broader access to nuclear energy researchers. The mission of the ATR NSUF is to provide access to world-class nuclear research facilities, thereby facilitating the advancement of nuclear science and technology. The ATR NSUF seeks to create an engaged academic and industrial user community that routinely conducts reactor-based research. Cost free access to the ATR and PIE facilities ismore » granted based on technical merit to U.S. university-led experiment teams conducting non-proprietary research. Proposals are selected via independent technical peer review and relevance to DOE mission. Extensive publication of research results is expected as a condition for access. During FY 2008, the first full year of ATR NSUF operation, five university-led experiments were awarded access to the ATR and associated post-irradiation examination facilities. The ATR NSUF has awarded four new experiments in early FY 2009, and anticipates awarding additional experiments in the fall of 2009 as the results of the second 2009 proposal call. As the ATR NSUF program mature over the next two years, the capability to perform irradiation research of increasing complexity will become available. These capabilities include instrumented irradiation experiments and post-irradiation examinations on materials previously irradiated in U.S. reactor material test programs. The ATR critical facility will also be made available to researchers. An important component of the ATR NSUF an education program focused on the reactor-based tools available for resolving nuclear science and technology issues. The ATR NSUF provides education programs including a summer short course, internships, faculty-student team projects and faculty/staff exchanges. In June of 2008, the first week-long ATR NSUF Summer Session was attended by 68 students, university faculty and industry representatives. The Summer Session featured presentations by 19 technical experts from across the country and covered topics including irradiation damage mechanisms, degradation of reactor materials, LWR and gas reactor fuels, and non-destructive evaluation. High impact research results from leveraging the entire research infrastructure, including universities, industry, small business, and the national laboratories. To increase overall research capability, ATR NSUF seeks to form strategic partnerships with university facilities that add significant nuclear research capability to the ATR NSUF and are accessible to all ATR NSUF users. Current partner facilities include the MIT Reactor, the University of Michigan Irradiated Materials Testing Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin Characterization Laboratory, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas transmission Electron Microscope User Facility. Needs for irradiation of material specimens at tightly controlled temperatures are being met by dedication of a large in-pile pressurized water loop facility for use by ATR NSUF users. Several environmental mechanical testing systems are under construction to determine crack growth rates and fracture toughness on irradiated test systems.« less

SeaConditions: a web and mobile service for safer professional and recreational activities in the Mediterranean Sea

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coppini, Giovanni; Marra, Palmalisa; Lecci, Rita; Pinardi, Nadia; Cretì, Sergio; Scalas, Mario; Tedesco, Luca; D'Anca, Alessandro; Fazioli, Leopoldo; Olita, Antonio; Turrisi, Giuseppe; Palazzo, Cosimo; Aloisio, Giovanni; Fiore, Sandro; Bonaduce, Antonio; Vittal Kumkar, Yogesh; Ciliberti, Stefania Angela; Federico, Ivan; Mannarini, Gianandrea; Agostini, Paola; Bonarelli, Roberto; Martinelli, Sara; Verri, Giorgia; Lusito, Letizia; Rollo, Davide; Cavallo, Arturo; Tumolo, Antonio; Monacizzo, Tony; Spagnulo, Marco; Sorgente, Rorberto; Cucco, Andrea; Quattrocchi, Giovanni; Tonani, Marina; Drudi, Massimiliano; Nassisi, Paola; Conte, Laura; Panzera, Laura; Navarra, Antonio; Negro, Giancarlo

2017-04-01

Reliable and timely information on the environmental conditions at sea is key to the safety of professional and recreational users as well as to the optimal execution of their activities. The possibility of users obtaining environmental information in due time and with adequate accuracy in the marine and coastal environment is defined as sea situational awareness (SSA). Without adequate information on the environmental meteorological and oceanographic conditions, users have a limited capacity to respond, which has led to loss of lives and to large environmental disasters with enormous consequent damage to the economy, society and ecosystems. Within the framework of the TESSA project, new SSA services for the Mediterranean Sea have been developed. In this paper we present SeaConditions, which is a web and mobile application for the provision of meteorological and oceanographic observation and forecasting products. Model forecasts and satellite products from operational services, such as ECMWF and CMEMS, can be visualized in SeaConditions. In addition, layers of information related to bathymetry, sea level and ocean-colour data (chl a and water transparency) are displayed. Ocean forecasts at high spatial resolutions are included in the version of SeaConditions presented here. SeaConditions provides a user-friendly experience with a fluid zoom capability, facilitating the appropriate display of data with different levels of detail. SeaConditions is a single point of access to interactive maps from different geophysical fields, providing high-quality information based on advanced oceanographic models. The SeaConditions services are available through both web and mobile applications. The web application is available at www.sea-conditions.com and is accessible and compatible with present-day browsers. Interoperability with GIS software is implemented. User feedback has been collected and taken into account in order to improve the service. The SeaConditions iOS and Android apps have been downloaded by more than 105 000 users to date (May 2016), and more than 100 000 users have visited the web version.

yStreX: yeast stress expression database

PubMed Central

Wanichthanarak, Kwanjeera; Nookaew, Intawat; Petranovic, Dina

2014-01-01

Over the past decade genome-wide expression analyses have been often used to study how expression of genes changes in response to various environmental stresses. Many of these studies (such as effects of oxygen concentration, temperature stress, low pH stress, osmotic stress, depletion or limitation of nutrients, addition of different chemical compounds, etc.) have been conducted in the unicellular Eukaryal model, yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However, the lack of a unifying or integrated, bioinformatics platform that would permit efficient and rapid use of all these existing data remain an important issue. To facilitate research by exploiting existing transcription data in the field of yeast physiology, we have developed the yStreX database. It is an online repository of analyzed gene expression data from curated data sets from different studies that capture genome-wide transcriptional changes in response to diverse environmental transitions. The first aim of this online database is to facilitate comparison of cross-platform and cross-laboratory gene expression data. Additionally, we performed different expression analyses, meta-analyses and gene set enrichment analyses; and the results are also deposited in this database. Lastly, we constructed a user-friendly Web interface with interactive visualization to provide intuitive access and to display the queried data for users with no background in bioinformatics. Database URL: http://www.ystrexdb.com PMID:25024351

Universal design characteristic on themed streets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harsritanto, Bangun IR; Indriastjario; Wijayanti

2017-12-01

People around the world can access the streets to fulfil their daily activities regardless of their gender, age, and abilities. The streetscape is an urban public space which is built to facilitate the basic needs of people as social being. The themed street is an urban streetscape designed and built in detail with a theme or special purpose in an of urban development process. Universal design facilitates the full range of human diversity as physical appearance, perception, cognitive abilities, sizes, and shapes. By designing for the diversity, the specialized streets become more functional and user-friendly. The purpose of this study is to examine several design characteristics of themed streets in several countries from three different continents using universal design principles for giving proper directions to develop more user-friendly streets. Literature review and case study were used as research methods. The literature review was extracted and compiled from manuscripts, streetscape design books, and from universal design principles. Furthermore, the constructed theory were used to examine the case studies of themed streets. The findings indicated that themed streets’ character design were strongly influenced by local cultural aspect even though the basic guidelines were universal design principles; the resumed design direction can be suggested universal along with the richness of local aspects.

Development and implementation of an online clinical pathway for adult chronic kidney disease in primary care: a mixed methods study.

PubMed

Donald, Maoliosa; McBrien, Kerry; Jackson, Wes; Manns, Braden J; Tonelli, Marcello; King-Shier, Kathryn; Jindal, Kailash; Lewanczuk, Richard Z; Scott-Douglas, Nairne; Braun, Ted; Straus, Sharon E; Naugler, Christopher; Elliott, Meghan J; Jun, Min; Hemmelgarn, Brenda R

2016-08-17

Primary care physicians and other primary health care professionals from Alberta, Canada identified a clinical pathway as a potential tool to facilitate uptake of clinical practice guidelines for the diagnosis, management and referral of adults with chronic kidney disease. We describe the development and implementation of a chronic kidney disease clinical pathway (CKD-CP; www.ckdpathway.ca ). The CKD-CP was developed and implemented based on the principles of the Knowledge-To-Action Cycle framework. We used a mixed methods approach to identify the usability and feasibility of the CKD-CP. This included individual interviews, an online survey and website analytics, to gather data on barriers and facilitators to use, perceived usefulness and characteristics of users. Results are reported using conventional qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics. Eighteen individual interviews were conducted with primary care physicians, nephrologists, pharmacists and nurse practitioners to identify themes reflecting both barriers and facilitators to integrating the CKD-CP into clinical practice. Themes identified included: communication, work efficiency and confidence. Of the 159 participants that completed the online survey, the majority (52 %) were first time CKD-CP users. Among those who had previously used the CKD-CP, 94 % agreed or strongly agreed that the pathway was user friendly, provided useful information and increased their knowledge and confidence in the care of patients with CKD. Between November 2014 and July 2015, the CKD-CP website had 10,710 visits, 67 % of which were new visitors. The 3 most frequently visited web pages were home, diagnose and medical management. Canada, Indonesia and the United States were the top 3 countries accessing the website during the 9 month period. An interactive, online, point-of-care tool for primary care providers can be developed and implemented to assist in the care of patients with CKD. Our findings are important for making refinements to the CKD -CP website via ongoing discussions with end-users and the development team, along with continued dissemination using multiple strategies.

Hierarchical data security in a Query-By-Example interface for a shared database.

PubMed

Taylor, Merwyn

2002-06-01

Whenever a shared database resource, containing critical patient data, is created, protecting the contents of the database is a high priority goal. This goal can be achieved by developing a Query-By-Example (QBE) interface, designed to access a shared database, and embedding within the QBE a hierarchical security module that limits access to the data. The security module ensures that researchers working in one clinic do not get access to data from another clinic. The security can be based on a flexible taxonomy structure that allows ordinary users to access data from individual clinics and super users to access data from all clinics. All researchers submit queries through the same interface and the security module processes the taxonomy and user identifiers to limit access. Using this system, two different users with different access rights can submit the same query and get different results thus reducing the need to create different interfaces for different clinics and access rights.

Addressing Unmet Need for HIV Testing in Emergency Care Settings: A Role for Computer-facilitated Rapid HIV Testing?

PubMed Central

Kurth, Ann E.; Severynen, Anneleen; Spielberg, Freya

2014-01-01

HIV testing in emergency departments (EDs) remains underutilized. We evaluated a computer tool to facilitate rapid HIV testing in an urban ED. Randomly assigned non-acute adult ED patients to computer tool (‘CARE’) and rapid HIV testing before standard visit (n=258) or to standard visit (n=259) with chart access. Assessed intervention acceptability and compared noted HIV risks. Participants were 56% non-white, 58% male; median age 37 years. In the CARE arm nearly all (251/258) completed the session and received HIV results; 4 declined test consent. HIV risks were reported by 54% of users and there was one confirmed HIV-positive and 2 false-positives (seroprevalence 0.4%, 95% CI 0.01–2.2%). Half (55%) preferred computerized, over face-to-face, counseling for future HIV testing. In standard arm, one HIV test and 2 referrals for testing occurred. Computer-facilitated HIV testing appears acceptable to ED patients. Future research should assess cost-effectiveness compared with staff-delivered approaches. PMID:23837807

Writing Technical Reports for Simulation in Education for Health Professionals: Suggested Guidelines.

PubMed

Dubrowski, Adam; Alani, Sabrina; Bankovic, Tina; Crowe, Andrea; Pollard, Megan

2015-11-02

Simulation is an important training tool used in a variety of influential fields. However, development of simulation scenarios - the key component of simulation - occurs in isolation; sharing of scenarios is almost non-existent. This can make simulation use a costly task in terms of the resources and time and the possible redundancy of efforts. To alleviate these issues, the goal is to strive for an open communication of practice (CoP) surrounding simulation. To facilitate this goal, this report describes a set of guidelines for writing technical reports about simulation use for educating health professionals. Using an accepted set of guidelines will allow for homogeneity when building simulation scenarios and facilitate open sharing among simulation users. In addition to optimizing simulation efforts in institutions that are currently using simulation as an educational tool, the development of such a repository may have direct implications on developing countries, where simulation is only starting to be used systematically. Our project facilitates equivalent and global access to information, knowledge, and highest-caliber education - in this context, simulation - collectively, the building blocks of optimal healthcare.

Writing Technical Reports for Simulation in Education for Health Professionals: Suggested Guidelines

PubMed Central

Alani, Sabrina; Bankovic, Tina; Crowe, Andrea; Pollard, Megan

2015-01-01

Simulation is an important training tool used in a variety of influential fields. However, development of simulation scenarios - the key component of simulation – occurs in isolation; sharing of scenarios is almost non-existent. This can make simulation use a costly task in terms of the resources and time and the possible redundancy of efforts. To alleviate these issues, the goal is to strive for an open communication of practice (CoP) surrounding simulation. To facilitate this goal, this report describes a set of guidelines for writing technical reports about simulation use for educating health professionals. Using an accepted set of guidelines will allow for homogeneity when building simulation scenarios and facilitate open sharing among simulation users. In addition to optimizing simulation efforts in institutions that are currently using simulation as an educational tool, the development of such a repository may have direct implications on developing countries, where simulation is only starting to be used systematically. Our project facilitates equivalent and global access to information, knowledge, and highest-caliber education - in this context, simulation – collectively, the building blocks of optimal healthcare.  PMID:26677421

Data Standards for Flow Cytometry

PubMed Central

SPIDLEN, JOSEF; GENTLEMAN, ROBERT C.; HAALAND, PERRY D.; LANGILLE, MORGAN; MEUR, NOLWENN LE; OCHS, MICHAEL F.; SCHMITT, CHARLES; SMITH, CLAYTON A.; TREISTER, ADAM S.; BRINKMAN, RYAN R.

2009-01-01

Flow cytometry (FCM) is an analytical tool widely used for cancer and HIV/AIDS research, and treatment, stem cell manipulation and detecting microorganisms in environmental samples. Current data standards do not capture the full scope of FCM experiments and there is a demand for software tools that can assist in the exploration and analysis of large FCM datasets. We are implementing a standardized approach to capturing, analyzing, and disseminating FCM data that will facilitate both more complex analyses and analysis of datasets that could not previously be efficiently studied. Initial work has focused on developing a community-based guideline for recording and reporting the details of FCM experiments. Open source software tools that implement this standard are being created, with an emphasis on facilitating reproducible and extensible data analyses. As well, tools for electronic collaboration will assist the integrated access and comprehension of experiments to empower users to collaborate on FCM analyses. This coordinated, joint development of bioinformatics standards and software tools for FCM data analysis has the potential to greatly facilitate both basic and clinical research—impacting a notably diverse range of medical and environmental research areas. PMID:16901228

GI-axe: an access broker framework for the geosciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boldrini, E.; Nativi, S.; Santoro, M.; Papeschi, F.; Mazzetti, P.

2012-12-01

The efficient and effective discovery of heterogeneous geospatial resources (e.g. data and services) is currently addressed by implementing "Discovery Brokering components"—such as GI-cat which is successfully used by the GEO brokering framework. A related (and subsequent) problem is the access of discovered resources. As for the discovery case, there exists a clear challenge: the geospatial Community makes use of heterogeneous access protocols and data models. In fact, different standards (and best practices) are defined and used by the diverse Geoscience domains and Communities of practice. Besides, through a client application, Users want to access diverse data to be jointly used in a common Geospatial Environment (CGE): a geospatial environment characterized by a spatio-temporal CRS (Coordinate Reference System), resolution, and extension. Users want to define a CGE and get the selected data ready to be used in such an environment. Finally, they want to download data according to a common encoding (either binary or textual). Therefore, it is possible to introduce the concept of "Access Brokering component" which addresses all these intermediation needs, in a transparent way for both clients (i.e. Users) and access servers (i.e. Data Providers). This work presents GI-axe: a flexible Access Broker which is capable to intermediate the different access standards and to get data according to a CGE, previously specified by the User. In doing that, GI-axe complements the capabilities of the brokered access servers, in keeping with the brokering principles. Let's consider a sample use case of a User needing to access a global temperature dataset available online on a THREDDS Data Server and a rainfall dataset accessible through a WFS—she/he may have obtained the datasets as a search result from a discovery broker. Distribution information metadata accompanying the temperature dataset further indicate that a given OPeNDAP service has to be accessed to retrieve it. At this point, the User would be in charge of searching for an existing OPeNDAP client and retrieve the desired data with the desired CGE; worse he/she may need to write his/her own OPeNDAP client. While, the User has to utilize a GIS to access the rainfall data and perform all the necessary transformations to obtain the same CGE. The GI-axe access broker takes this interoperability burden off the User, by bearing the charge of accessing the available services and performing the needed adaptations to get both data according to the same CGE. Actually, GI-axe can also expose both the TDS the WFS as (for example) a WMS, allowing the User to utilize a unique and (perhaps) more familiar client. The User can this way concentrate on less technological aspects more inherent to his/her scientific field. GI-axe has been first developed and experimented in the multidisciplinary interoperability framework of the European Community funded EuroGEOSS project. Presently, is utilized in the GEOSS Discovery & Access Brokering framework.

Fine-grained Database Field Search Using Attribute-Based Encryption for E-Healthcare Clouds.

PubMed

Guo, Cheng; Zhuang, Ruhan; Jie, Yingmo; Ren, Yizhi; Wu, Ting; Choo, Kim-Kwang Raymond

2016-11-01

An effectively designed e-healthcare system can significantly enhance the quality of access and experience of healthcare users, including facilitating medical and healthcare providers in ensuring a smooth delivery of services. Ensuring the security of patients' electronic health records (EHRs) in the e-healthcare system is an active research area. EHRs may be outsourced to a third-party, such as a community healthcare cloud service provider for storage due to cost-saving measures. Generally, encrypting the EHRs when they are stored in the system (i.e. data-at-rest) or prior to outsourcing the data is used to ensure data confidentiality. Searchable encryption (SE) scheme is a promising technique that can ensure the protection of private information without compromising on performance. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for controlling access to EHRs stored in semi-trusted cloud servers (e.g. a private cloud or a community cloud). To achieve fine-grained access control for EHRs, we leverage the ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) technique to encrypt tables published by hospitals, including patients' EHRs, and the table is stored in the database with the primary key being the patient's unique identity. Our framework can enable different users with different privileges to search on different database fields. Differ from previous attempts to secure outsourcing of data, we emphasize the control of the searches of the fields within the database. We demonstrate the utility of the scheme by evaluating the scheme using datasets from the University of California, Irvine.

ThinkHazard!: an open-source, global tool for understanding hazard information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fraser, Stuart; Jongman, Brenden; Simpson, Alanna; Nunez, Ariel; Deparday, Vivien; Saito, Keiko; Murnane, Richard; Balog, Simone

2016-04-01

Rapid and simple access to added-value natural hazard and disaster risk information is a key issue for various stakeholders of the development and disaster risk management (DRM) domains. Accessing available data often requires specialist knowledge of heterogeneous data, which are often highly technical and can be difficult for non-specialists in DRM to find and exploit. Thus, availability, accessibility and processing of these information sources are crucial issues, and an important reason why many development projects suffer significant impacts from natural hazards. The World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) is currently developing a new open-source tool to address this knowledge gap: ThinkHazard! The main aim of the ThinkHazard! project is to develop an analytical tool dedicated to facilitating improvements in knowledge and understanding of natural hazards among non-specialists in DRM. It also aims at providing users with relevant guidance and information on handling the threats posed by the natural hazards present in a chosen location. Furthermore, all aspects of this tool will be open and transparent, in order to give users enough information to understand its operational principles. In this presentation, we will explain the technical approach behind the tool, which translates state-of-the-art probabilistic natural hazard data into understandable hazard classifications and practical recommendations. We will also demonstrate the functionality of the tool, and discuss limitations from a scientific as well as an operational perspective.

Using information communication technologies to increase the institutional capacity of local health organisations in Africa: a case study of the Kenya Civil Society Portal for Health.

PubMed

Juma, Charles; Sundsmo, Aaron; Maket, Boniface; Powell, Richard; Aluoch, Gilbert

2015-01-01

Achieving the healthcare components of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals is significantly premised on effective service delivery by civil society organisations (CSOs). However, many CSOs across Africalack the necessary capacity to perform this role robustly. This paper reports on an evaluation of the use, and perceived impact, of aknowledge management tool upon institutional strengthening among CSOs working in Kenya's health sector. Three methods were used: analytics data; user satisfaction surveys; and a furtherkey informant survey. Satisfaction with the portal was consistently high, with 99% finding the quality and relevance of the content very good or good for institutional strengthening standards, governance, and planning and resource mobilisation. Critical facilitators to the success of knowledge management for CSO institutional strengthening were identified as people/culture (developed resources and organisational narratives) and technology (easily accessible, enabling information exchange, tools/resources available, access to consultants/partners). Critical barriers were identified as people/culture (database limitations, materials limitations, and lack of active users), and process (limited access, limited interactions, and limited approval process). This pilot study demonstrated the perceived utility of a web-based knowledge management portal among developing nations' CSOs, with widespread satisfaction across multiple domains, which increased over time. Providing increased opportunities for collective mutual learning, promoting a culture of data use for decision making, and encouraging all health organisations to be learning institutions should be a priority for those interested in promoting sustainable long-term solutions for Africa.

The NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program: Prologue to the Future

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1991-01-01

The NASA STI Program offers researchers an infrastructure of people and systems that facilitates access to STI; worldwide. The Program is also NASA's institutional mechanism for disseminating the results of its research and developing activities. Through discussions in 1991, the STI Program formulated its Strategic Plan. The plan gives the Program a renewed sense of direction by focusing on future opportunities, customer requirements and Program goals, along with the changes needed to achieve those goals. The Program provides users access to a massive flow of STI which, in fact, represents the largest collection of aeronautical and space science information in the world. The STI Program products and services are outlined, along with the NASA centers, international operations, and the fact that total quality management drives NASA wide program developments. As is detailed, the NASA STI Program is using its resources as effectively as possible to meet the missing needs of NASA.

Cloud-based solution to identify statistically significant MS peaks differentiating sample categories.

PubMed

Ji, Jun; Ling, Jeffrey; Jiang, Helen; Wen, Qiaojun; Whitin, John C; Tian, Lu; Cohen, Harvey J; Ling, Xuefeng B

2013-03-23

Mass spectrometry (MS) has evolved to become the primary high throughput tool for proteomics based biomarker discovery. Until now, multiple challenges in protein MS data analysis remain: large-scale and complex data set management; MS peak identification, indexing; and high dimensional peak differential analysis with the concurrent statistical tests based false discovery rate (FDR). "Turnkey" solutions are needed for biomarker investigations to rapidly process MS data sets to identify statistically significant peaks for subsequent validation. Here we present an efficient and effective solution, which provides experimental biologists easy access to "cloud" computing capabilities to analyze MS data. The web portal can be accessed at http://transmed.stanford.edu/ssa/. Presented web application supplies large scale MS data online uploading and analysis with a simple user interface. This bioinformatic tool will facilitate the discovery of the potential protein biomarkers using MS.

Digital Inclusion & Health Communication: A Rapid Review of Literature.

PubMed

Borg, Kim; Boulet, Mark; Smith, Liam; Bragge, Peter

2018-06-11

Information and communication technologies can be a valuable tool for enhancing health communication. However, not everyone is utilising the wide suite of digital opportunities. This disparity has the potential to exacerbate existing social and health inequalities, particularly among vulnerable groups such as those who are in poor health and the elderly. This review aimed to systematically identify the common barriers to, and facilitators of, digital inclusion. A comprehensive database search yielded 969 citations. Following screening, seven systematic reviews and three non-systematic reviews were identified. Collectively, the reviews found that physical access continues to be a barrier to digital inclusion. However, provision of access alone is insufficient, as digital ability and attitude were also potential barriers. Social support, direct user experience and collaborative learning/design were identified as key strategies to improve inclusion. These review findings provide guidance for health communication practitioners in designing and implementing effective programmes in the digital environment.

Archive Management of NASA Earth Observation Data to Support Cloud Analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lynnes, Christopher; Baynes, Kathleen; McInerney, Mark A.

2017-01-01

NASA collects, processes and distributes petabytes of Earth Observation (EO) data from satellites, aircraft, in situ instruments and model output, with an order of magnitude increase expected by 2024. Cloud-based web object storage (WOS) of these data can simplify the execution of such an increase. More importantly, it can also facilitate user analysis of those volumes by making the data available to the massively parallel computing power in the cloud. However, storing EO data in cloud WOS has a ripple effect throughout the NASA archive system with unexpected challenges and opportunities. One challenge is modifying data servicing software (such as Web Coverage Service servers) to access and subset data that are no longer on a directly accessible file system, but rather in cloud WOS. Opportunities include refactoring of the archive software to a cloud-native architecture; virtualizing data products by computing on demand; and reorganizing data to be more analysis-friendly.

PlantDB – a versatile database for managing plant research

PubMed Central

Exner, Vivien; Hirsch-Hoffmann, Matthias; Gruissem, Wilhelm; Hennig, Lars

2008-01-01

Background Research in plant science laboratories often involves usage of many different species, cultivars, ecotypes, mutants, alleles or transgenic lines. This creates a great challenge to keep track of the identity of experimental plants and stored samples or seeds. Results Here, we describe PlantDB – a Microsoft® Office Access database – with a user-friendly front-end for managing information relevant for experimental plants. PlantDB can hold information about plants of different species, cultivars or genetic composition. Introduction of a concise identifier system allows easy generation of pedigree trees. In addition, all information about any experimental plant – from growth conditions and dates over extracted samples such as RNA to files containing images of the plants – can be linked unequivocally. Conclusion We have been using PlantDB for several years in our laboratory and found that it greatly facilitates access to relevant information. PMID:18182106

Remote Sensing Information Gateway: A free application and web service for fast, convenient, interoperable access to large repositories of atmospheric data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Plessel, T.; Szykman, J.; Freeman, M.

2012-12-01

EPA's Remote Sensing Information Gateway (RSIG) is a widely used free applet and web service for quickly and easily retrieving, visualizing and saving user-specified subsets of atmospheric data - by variable, geographic domain and time range. Petabytes of available data include thousands of variables from a set of NASA and NOAA satellites, aircraft, ground stations and EPA air-quality models. The RSIG applet is used by atmospheric researchers and uses the rsigserver web service to obtain data and images. The rsigserver web service is compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service (OGC-WCS) standard to facilitate data discovery and interoperability. Since rsigserver is publicly accessible, it can be (and is) used by other applications. This presentation describes the architecture and technical implementation details of this successful system with an emphasis on achieving convenience, high-performance, data integrity and security.

The Internet for neurosurgeons: current resources and future challenges.

PubMed

Hughes, Mark A; Brennan, Paul M

2011-06-01

Our professional and personal lives depend increasingly on access to information via the Internet. As an open access resource, the Internet is on the whole unbridled by censorship and can facilitate the rapid propagation of ideas and discoveries. At the same time, this liberty in sharing information, being unregulated and often free from external validation, can be oppressive; overloading the user and hindering effective decision-making. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to reliably ascertain the provenance of data and opinion. We must, therefore, discern what is useful, relevant, and above all reliable if we are to harness the Internet's potential to improve training, delivery of care, research, and provision of patient information. This article profiles the resources currently available to neurosurgeons, asks how we can sort the informational wheat from the chaff, and explores where future developments might further influence neurosurgical practice.

A universal Model-R Coupler to facilitate the use of R functions for model calibration and analysis

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wu, Yiping; Liu, Shuguang; Yan, Wende

2014-01-01

Mathematical models are useful in various fields of science and engineering. However, it is a challenge to make a model utilize the open and growing functions (e.g., model inversion) on the R platform due to the requirement of accessing and revising the model's source code. To overcome this barrier, we developed a universal tool that aims to convert a model developed in any computer language to an R function using the template and instruction concept of the Parameter ESTimation program (PEST) and the operational structure of the R-Soil and Water Assessment Tool (R-SWAT). The developed tool (Model-R Coupler) is promising because users of any model can connect an external algorithm (written in R) with their model to implement various model behavior analyses (e.g., parameter optimization, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, performance evaluation, and visualization) without accessing or modifying the model's source code.

Endnote Web tutorial for BJCVS/RBCCV

PubMed Central

de Oliveira, Marcos Aurélio Barboza; dos Santos, Carlos Alberto; Brandi, Antônio Carlos; Botelho, Paulo Henrique Husseini; Sciarra, Adília Maria Pires; Braile, Domingo Marcolino

2015-01-01

At present, many useful tools for reference management are available for use. They can be either off-line softwares or accessible Websites to all users in the internet. Their target is to facilitate the production of scientific text. But, to accomplish that, the featured bibliographic style should be effectively inserted, and the program has to be free. Here in this tutorial, we present Endnote Web®, a bibliographic reference management program comprising these two requirements: it contains the Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery reference format and its use is free for charge after sign-in in IP registered terminal in Web of Science®. PMID:26107457

Pediatric skin care: what do nurses really know?

PubMed

Drake, Jennifer; Redfern, Wendi S; Sherburne, Eileen; Nugent, Melodee L; Simpson, Pippa

2012-10-01

The purpose of this study was to explore pediatric nurses' knowledge of pressure ulcer prevention, investigate their beliefs and practices, and identify the barriers and facilitators to providing evidence-based pressure ulcer preventive practices. An exploratory, descriptive, and cross-sectional survey was taken of registered nurses in a freestanding children's hospital. Nurses have adequate knowledge of general pressure ulcer prevention; however, they struggle with individualization. Further, analysis revealed that nursing knowledge did not always correlate with nursing practice. Nurses require education on individualized interventions and access to user-friendly, interactive, and comprehensive resources, including unit-based champions and order sets. © 2012, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Global Precipitation Measurement Mission Products and Services at the NASA GES DISC

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Liu, Z.; Ostrenga, D.; Vollmer, B.; Deshong, B.; MacRitchie, K.; Greene, M.; Kempler, S.

2017-01-01

This article describes NASA/JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission products and services at the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC). Built on the success of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), the next-generation GPM mission consists of new precipitation measurement instruments and a constellation of international research and operational satellites to provide improved measurements of precipitation globally. To facilitate data access, research, applications, and scientific discovery, the GES DISC has developed a variety of data services for GPM. This article is intended to guide users in choosing GPM datasets and services at the GES DISC.

The p-medicine portal—a collaboration platform for research in personalised medicine

PubMed Central

Schera, Fatima; Weiler, Gabriele; Neri, Elias; Kiefer, Stephan; Graf, Norbert

2014-01-01

The European project p-medicine creates an information technology infrastructure that facilitates the development from current medical practice to personalised medicine. The main access point to this infrastructure is the p-medicine portal that provides clinicians, patients, and researchers a platform to collaborate, share data and expertise, and use tools and services to improve personalised treatments of patients. In this document, we describe the community-based structure of the p-medicine portal and provide information about the p-medicine security framework implemented in the portal. Finally, we show the user interface and describe the p-medicine tools and services integrated in the portal. PMID:24567755

Using mathematical software to design power electronic converters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hinov, Nikolay; Hranov, Tsveti

2017-12-01

In the paper is presented mathematical software, which was used for design of power electronic devices. Examined to different example, which are applied to designing electronic converters. In this way, it is possible to play different combinations of the circuit elements by simple means, thus optimizing according to certain criteria and limitations. Free software with a simple and intuitive interface is selected. No special user training is required to work with it and no further training is required. The use of mathematical software greatly facilitates the design, assists and makes it attractive and accessible to a wider range of students and specialists in power electronics training.

Hearing Health Care: perception of the users of a public service.

PubMed

Jardim, Débora Soares; Maciel, Fernanda Jorge; Piastrelli, Marina Teixeira; Lemos, Stela Maris Aguiar

2017-03-30

Evaluate hearing health service under the users' perspective according to the aspects: access, care, communication, and professional competence, and its correlation with clinical, sociodemographic and assistance characteristics. This is an observational analytic cross-sectional study with a probability sample stratified by gender and age. The Hearing Health Care Assessment questionnaire and the Brazilian Economic Classification Criterion questionnaire were used. In total, 214 users were interviewed, which were assisted from May 2009 to May 2013. It was observed that most of the evaluated users are female, elderly, literate, presenting moderate degree of hearing impairment, who had access to transportation out-of-pocket, was submitted to ENT evaluation for diagnosis and sought the service to purchase a hearing aid, besides belonging to class C. Regarding user satisfaction, most were satisfied with access, hearing evaluation, personalized service, benefit for the family, communication and information, and professional competence. In the analysis of correlation between the scores, it was found that when users are satisfied with access, as well as with communication and information, the total score increases with moderate correlation coefficient. The users showed greater satisfaction with the professional competence domain and lower satisfaction with the benefit for the family. In addition, assessment proved that access and communication are considered important quality indicators for the hearing health service according to users.

I Want It, You've Got It - Effectively Connect Users to Geospatial Resources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

White, C. E.

2012-12-01

How do users of scientific data find what they need? How do they know where to look, what to look for, how to evaluate, and - if they find the right resource - then how to get it? When the data is of a geospatial nature, other factors also come into play - is the data in a format/projection compatible with other data being used, does the user have access to tools that can analyze and display the data to adequately evaluate it, and does the user have knowledge on how to manage that access - especially if the data is being exposed by web services. Supporting users to connect them to geospatial data in a continually evolving technological climate is a challenge that reaches deeply into all levels of data management. In this talk, we will discuss specific challenges in how users discover and access resources, and how Esri has evolved solutions over time to more effectively connect users to what they need. Some of the challenges - and current solutions - that will be discussed are: balancing a straightforward user experience with rich functionality, providing simple descriptions while maintaining complete metadata, enabling data access to work with an organization's content while being compatible with other organizations' access mechanisms, and the ability to publish data once yet share it in many venues.

Selective access and editing in a database

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Maluf, David A. (Inventor); Gawdiak, Yuri O. (Inventor)

2010-01-01

Method and system for providing selective access to different portions of a database by different subgroups of database users. Where N users are involved, up to 2.sup.N-1 distinguishable access subgroups in a group space can be formed, where no two access subgroups have the same members. Two or more members of a given access subgroup can edit, substantially simultaneously, a document accessible to each member.

A Selective Group Authentication Scheme for IoT-Based Medical Information System.

PubMed

Park, YoHan; Park, YoungHo

2017-04-01

The technology of IoT combined with medical systems is expected to support advanced medical services. However, unsolved security problems, such as misuse of medical devices, illegal access to the medical server and so on, make IoT-based medical systems not be applied widely. In addition, users have a high burden of computation to access Things for the explosive growth of IoT devices. Because medical information is critical and important, but users have a restricted computing power, IoT-based medical systems are required to provide secure and efficient authentication for users. In this paper, we propose a selective group authentication scheme using Shamir's threshold technique. The property of selectivity gives the right of choice to users to form a group which consists of things users select and access. And users can get an access authority for those Things at a time. Thus, our scheme provides an efficient user authentication for multiple Things and conditional access authority for safe IoT-based medical information system. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed scheme is the first in which selectivity is combined with group authentication in IoT environments.

Mapping and Modeling Web Portal to Advance Global Monitoring and Climate Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, G.; Malhotra, S.; Bui, B.; Sadaqathulla, S.; Goodale, C. E.; Ramirez, P.; Kim, R. M.; Rodriguez, L.; Law, E.

2011-12-01

Today, the principal investigators of NASA Earth Science missions develop their own software to manipulate, visualize, and analyze the data collected from Earth, space, and airborne observation instruments. There is very little, if any, collaboration among these principal investigators due to the lack of collaborative tools, which would allow these scientists to share data and results. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), under the Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP), we have built a web portal that exposes a set of common services to users to allow search, visualization, subset, and download lunar science data. Users also have access to a set of tools that visualize, analyze and annotate the data. These services are developed according to industry standards for data access and manipulation, such REST and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services. As a result, users can access the datasets through custom written applications or off-the-shelf applications such as Google Earth. Even though it's currently used to store and process lunar data, this web portal infrastructure has been designed to support other solar system bodies such as asteroids and planets, including Earth. The infrastructure uses a combination of custom, commercial, and open-source software as well as off-the-shelf hardware and pay-by-use cloud computing services. The use of standardized web service interfaces facilitates platform and application-independent access to the services and data. For instance, we have software clients for the LMMP portal that provide a rich browsing and analysis experience from a variety of platforms including iOS and Android mobile platforms and large screen multi-touch displays with 3-D terrain viewing functions. The service-oriented architecture and design principles utilized in the implementation of the portal lends itself to be reusable and scalable and could naturally be extended to include a collaborative environment that enables scientists and principal investigators to share their research and analysis seamlessly. In addition, this extension will allow users to easily share their tools and data, and to enrich their mapping and analysis experiences. In this talk, we will describe the advanced data management and portal technologies used to power this collaborative environment. We will further illustrate how this environment can enable, enhance and advance global monitoring and climate research.

Arkheia: Data Management and Communication for Open Computational Neuroscience

PubMed Central

Antolík, Ján; Davison, Andrew P.

2018-01-01

Two trends have been unfolding in computational neuroscience during the last decade. First, a shift of focus to increasingly complex and heterogeneous neural network models, with a concomitant increase in the level of collaboration within the field (whether direct or in the form of building on top of existing tools and results). Second, a general trend in science toward more open communication, both internally, with other potential scientific collaborators, and externally, with the wider public. This multi-faceted development toward more integrative approaches and more intense communication within and outside of the field poses major new challenges for modelers, as currently there is a severe lack of tools to help with automatic communication and sharing of all aspects of a simulation workflow to the rest of the community. To address this important gap in the current computational modeling software infrastructure, here we introduce Arkheia. Arkheia is a web-based open science platform for computational models in systems neuroscience. It provides an automatic, interactive, graphical presentation of simulation results, experimental protocols, and interactive exploration of parameter searches, in a web browser-based application. Arkheia is focused on automatic presentation of these resources with minimal manual input from users. Arkheia is written in a modular fashion with a focus on future development of the platform. The platform is designed in an open manner, with a clearly defined and separated API for database access, so that any project can write its own backend translating its data into the Arkheia database format. Arkheia is not a centralized platform, but allows any user (or group of users) to set up their own repository, either for public access by the general population, or locally for internal use. Overall, Arkheia provides users with an automatic means to communicate information about not only their models but also individual simulation results and the entire experimental context in an approachable graphical manner, thus facilitating the user's ability to collaborate in the field and outreach to a wider audience. PMID:29556187

Arkheia: Data Management and Communication for Open Computational Neuroscience.

PubMed

Antolík, Ján; Davison, Andrew P

2018-01-01

Two trends have been unfolding in computational neuroscience during the last decade. First, a shift of focus to increasingly complex and heterogeneous neural network models, with a concomitant increase in the level of collaboration within the field (whether direct or in the form of building on top of existing tools and results). Second, a general trend in science toward more open communication, both internally, with other potential scientific collaborators, and externally, with the wider public. This multi-faceted development toward more integrative approaches and more intense communication within and outside of the field poses major new challenges for modelers, as currently there is a severe lack of tools to help with automatic communication and sharing of all aspects of a simulation workflow to the rest of the community. To address this important gap in the current computational modeling software infrastructure, here we introduce Arkheia. Arkheia is a web-based open science platform for computational models in systems neuroscience. It provides an automatic, interactive, graphical presentation of simulation results, experimental protocols, and interactive exploration of parameter searches, in a web browser-based application. Arkheia is focused on automatic presentation of these resources with minimal manual input from users. Arkheia is written in a modular fashion with a focus on future development of the platform. The platform is designed in an open manner, with a clearly defined and separated API for database access, so that any project can write its own backend translating its data into the Arkheia database format. Arkheia is not a centralized platform, but allows any user (or group of users) to set up their own repository, either for public access by the general population, or locally for internal use. Overall, Arkheia provides users with an automatic means to communicate information about not only their models but also individual simulation results and the entire experimental context in an approachable graphical manner, thus facilitating the user's ability to collaborate in the field and outreach to a wider audience.

The Usability of Diabetes MAP: A Web-delivered Intervention for Improving Medication Adherence.

PubMed

Nelson, Lyndsay A; Bethune, Magaela C; Lagotte, Andrea E; Osborn, Chandra Y

2016-05-12

Web-delivered interventions are a feasible approach to health promotion. However, if a website is poorly designed, difficult to navigate, and has technical bugs, it will not be used as intended. Usability testing prior to evaluating a website's benefits can identify barriers to user engagement and maximize future use. We developed a Web-delivered intervention called Diabetes Medication Adherence Promotion (Diabetes MAP) and used a mixed-methods approach to test its usability prior to evaluating its efficacy on medication adherence and glycemic control in a randomized controlled trial. We recruited English-speaking adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) from an academic medical center who were prescribed diabetes medications. A trained research assistant administered a baseline survey, collected medical record information, and instructed participants on how to access Diabetes MAP. Participants were asked to use the site independently for 2 weeks and to provide survey and/or focus group feedback on their experience. We analyzed survey data descriptively and qualitative data thematically to identify participants' favorable and unfavorable experiences, characterize usability concerns, and solicit recommendations for improving Diabetes MAP. Enrolled participants (N=32) were an average of 51.7 ± 11.8 years old, 66% (21/32) female, 60% (19/32) non-Hispanic White, 88% (28/32) had more than 12 years of education, half had household incomes over $50,000, and 78% (25/32) were privately insured. Average duration of diagnosed diabetes was 7.8 ± 6.3 years, average A1c was 7.4 ± 2.0, and 38% (12/32) were prescribed insulin. Of enrolled participants, 91% (29/32) provided survey and/or focus group feedback about Diabetes MAP. On the survey, participants agreed website information was clear and easy to understand, but in focus groups they reported navigational challenges and difficulty overcoming user errors (eg, entering data in an unspecified format). Participants also reported difficulty accessing the site and, once accessed, using all of its features. Participants recommended improving the site's user interface to facilitate quick, efficient access to all features and content. Adults with T2DM rated the Diabetes MAP website favorably on surveys, but focus groups gave more in-depth feedback on the user experience (eg, difficulty accessing the site, maximizing all of the site's features and content, and recovering from errors). Appropriate usability testing methods ensure Web-delivered interventions work as intended and any benefits are not diminished by usability challenges.

The Usability of Diabetes MAP: A Web-delivered Intervention for Improving Medication Adherence

PubMed Central

Nelson, Lyndsay A; Bethune, Magaela C; Lagotte, Andrea E

2016-01-01

Background Web-delivered interventions are a feasible approach to health promotion. However, if a website is poorly designed, difficult to navigate, and has technical bugs, it will not be used as intended. Usability testing prior to evaluating a website’s benefits can identify barriers to user engagement and maximize future use. Objective We developed a Web-delivered intervention called Diabetes Medication Adherence Promotion (Diabetes MAP) and used a mixed-methods approach to test its usability prior to evaluating its efficacy on medication adherence and glycemic control in a randomized controlled trial. Methods We recruited English-speaking adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) from an academic medical center who were prescribed diabetes medications. A trained research assistant administered a baseline survey, collected medical record information, and instructed participants on how to access Diabetes MAP. Participants were asked to use the site independently for 2 weeks and to provide survey and/or focus group feedback on their experience. We analyzed survey data descriptively and qualitative data thematically to identify participants’ favorable and unfavorable experiences, characterize usability concerns, and solicit recommendations for improving Diabetes MAP. Results Enrolled participants (N=32) were an average of 51.7 ± 11.8 years old, 66% (21/32) female, 60% (19/32) non-Hispanic White, 88% (28/32) had more than 12 years of education, half had household incomes over $50,000, and 78% (25/32) were privately insured. Average duration of diagnosed diabetes was 7.8 ± 6.3 years, average A1c was 7.4 ± 2.0, and 38% (12/32) were prescribed insulin. Of enrolled participants, 91% (29/32) provided survey and/or focus group feedback about Diabetes MAP. On the survey, participants agreed website information was clear and easy to understand, but in focus groups they reported navigational challenges and difficulty overcoming user errors (eg, entering data in an unspecified format). Participants also reported difficulty accessing the site and, once accessed, using all of its features. Participants recommended improving the site’s user interface to facilitate quick, efficient access to all features and content. Conclusions Adults with T2DM rated the Diabetes MAP website favorably on surveys, but focus groups gave more in-depth feedback on the user experience (eg, difficulty accessing the site, maximizing all of the site’s features and content, and recovering from errors). Appropriate usability testing methods ensure Web-delivered interventions work as intended and any benefits are not diminished by usability challenges. PMID:27174496

The Geodetic Seamless Archive Centers Service Layer: A System Architecture for Federating Geodesy Data Repositories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McWhirter, J.; Boler, F. M.; Bock, Y.; Jamason, P.; Squibb, M. B.; Noll, C. E.; Blewitt, G.; Kreemer, C. W.

2010-12-01

Three geodesy Archive Centers, Scripps Orbit and Permanent Array Center (SOPAC), NASA's Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS) and UNAVCO are engaged in a joint effort to define and develop a common Web Service Application Programming Interface (API) for accessing geodetic data holdings. This effort is funded by the NASA ROSES ACCESS Program to modernize the original GPS Seamless Archive Centers (GSAC) technology which was developed in the 1990s. A new web service interface, the GSAC-WS, is being developed to provide uniform and expanded mechanisms through which users can access our data repositories. In total, our respective archives hold tens of millions of files and contain a rich collection of site/station metadata. Though we serve similar user communities, we currently provide a range of different access methods, query services and metadata formats. This leads to a lack of consistency in the userís experience and a duplication of engineering efforts. The GSAC-WS API and its reference implementation in an underlying Java-based GSAC Service Layer (GSL) supports metadata and data queries into site/station oriented data archives. The general nature of this API makes it applicable to a broad range of data systems. The overall goals of this project include providing consistent and rich query interfaces for end users and client programs, the development of enabling technology to facilitate third party repositories in developing these web service capabilities and to enable the ability to perform data queries across a collection of federated GSAC-WS enabled repositories. A fundamental challenge faced in this project is to provide a common suite of query services across a heterogeneous collection of data yet enabling each repository to expose their specific metadata holdings. To address this challenge we are developing a "capabilities" based service where a repository can describe its specific query and metadata capabilities. Furthermore, the architecture of the GSL is based on a model-view paradigm that decouples the underlying data model semantics from particular representations of the data model. This will allow for the GSAC-WS enabled repositories to evolve their service offerings to incorporate new metadata definition formats (e.g., ISO-19115, FGDC, JSON, etc.) and new techniques for accessing their holdings. Building on the core GSAC-WS implementations the project is also developing a federated/distributed query service. This service will seamlessly integrate with the GSAC Service Layer and will support data and metadata queries across a collection of federated GSAC repositories.

User-Generated Online Health Content: A Survey of Internet Users in the United Kingdom

PubMed Central

Ziebland, Sue; Valderas, Jose; Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Francisco

2014-01-01

Background The production of health information has begun to shift from commercial organizations to health care users themselves. People increasingly go online to share their own health and illness experiences and to access information others have posted, but this behavior has not been investigated at a population level in the United Kingdom. Objective This study aims to explore access and production of user-generated health content among UK Internet users and to investigate relationships between frequency of use and other variables. Methods We undertook an online survey of 1000 UK Internet users. Descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses were used to interpret the data. Results Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23.7%, 237/1000) reported accessing and sharing user-generated health content online, whereas more than 20% (22.2%, 222/1000) were unaware that it was possible to do this. Respondents could be divided into 3 groups based on frequency of use: rare users (78.7%, 612/778) who accessed and shared content less than weekly, users (13.9%, 108/778) who did so weekly, and superusers (7.5%, 58/778) who did so on a daily basis. Superusers were more likely to be male (P<.001) and to be employed (P<.001), but there were no differences between the groups with respect to educational level (P=.99) or health status (P=.63). They were more likely to use the Internet for varied purposes such as banking and shopping (P<.001). Conclusions Although this study found reasonably widespread access of user-generated online health content, only a minority of respondents reported doing so frequently. As this type of content proliferates, superusers are likely to shape the health information that others access. Further research should assess the effect of user-generated online content on health outcomes and use of health services by Internet users. PMID:24784798

A parallel coordinates style interface for exploratory volume visualization.

PubMed

Tory, Melanie; Potts, Simeon; Möller, Torsten

2005-01-01

We present a user interface, based on parallel coordinates, that facilitates exploration of volume data. By explicitly representing the visualization parameter space, the interface provides an overview of rendering options and enables users to easily explore different parameters. Rendered images are stored in an integrated history bar that facilitates backtracking to previous visualization options. Initial usability testing showed clear agreement between users and experts of various backgrounds (usability, graphic design, volume visualization, and medical physics) that the proposed user interface is a valuable data exploration tool.

A service user co-facilitated intervention to reduce mental illness stigma among primary healthcare workers: Utilizing perspectives of family members and caregivers.

PubMed

Rai, Sauharda; Gurung, Dristy; Kaiser, Bonnie N; Sikkema, Kathleen J; Dhakal, Manoj; Bhardwaj, Anvita; Tergesen, Cori; Kohrt, Brandon A

2018-06-01

Service users' involvement as cofacilitators of mental health trainings is a nascent endeavor in low- and middle-income countries, and the role of families on service user participation in trainings has received limited attention. This study examined how caregivers perceive and facilitate service user's involvement in an antistigma program that was added to mental health Gap Action Program (mhGAP) trainings for primary care workers in Nepal. Service users were trained as cofacilitators for antistigma and mhGAP trainings delivered to primary care workers through the REducing Stigma among HealthcAre ProvidErs (RESHAPE) program. Key informant interviews (n = 17) were conducted with caregivers and service users in RESHAPE. Five themes emerged: (a) Caregivers' perceived benefits of service user involvement included reduced caregiver burden, learning new skills, and opportunities to develop support groups. (b) Caregivers' fear of worsening stigma impeded RESHAPE participation. (c) Lack of trust between caregivers and service users jeopardized participation, but it could be mitigated through family engagement with health workers. (d) Orientation provided to caregivers regarding RESHAPE needed greater attention, and when information was provided, it contributed to stigma reduction in families. (e) Time management impacted caregivers' ability to facilitate service user participation. Engagement with families allows for greater identification of motivational factors and barriers impacting optimal program performance. Caregiver involvement in all program elements should be considered best practice for service user-facilitated antistigma initiatives, and service users reluctant to include caregivers should be provided with health staff support to address barriers to including family. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

BioPortal: enhanced functionality via new Web services from the National Center for Biomedical Ontology to access and use ontologies in software applications.

PubMed

Whetzel, Patricia L; Noy, Natalya F; Shah, Nigam H; Alexander, Paul R; Nyulas, Csongor; Tudorache, Tania; Musen, Mark A

2011-07-01

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) is one of the National Centers for Biomedical Computing funded under the NIH Roadmap Initiative. Contributing to the national computing infrastructure, NCBO has developed BioPortal, a web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies (http://bioportal.bioontology.org) via the NCBO Web services. BioPortal enables community participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content by providing features to add mappings between terms, to add comments linked to specific ontology terms and to provide ontology reviews. The NCBO Web services (http://www.bioontology.org/wiki/index.php/NCBO_REST_services) enable this functionality and provide a uniform mechanism to access ontologies from a variety of knowledge representation formats, such as Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) format. The Web services provide multi-layered access to the ontology content, from getting all terms in an ontology to retrieving metadata about a term. Users can easily incorporate the NCBO Web services into software applications to generate semantically aware applications and to facilitate structured data collection.

Pan European Phenological database (PEP725): a single point of access for European data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Templ, Barbara; Koch, Elisabeth; Bolmgren, Kjell; Ungersböck, Markus; Paul, Anita; Scheifinger, Helfried; Rutishauser, This; Busto, Montserrat; Chmielewski, Frank-M.; Hájková, Lenka; Hodzić, Sabina; Kaspar, Frank; Pietragalla, Barbara; Romero-Fresneda, Ramiro; Tolvanen, Anne; Vučetič, Višnja; Zimmermann, Kirsten; Zust, Ana

2018-06-01

The Pan European Phenology (PEP) project is a European infrastructure to promote and facilitate phenological research, education, and environmental monitoring. The main objective is to maintain and develop a Pan European Phenological database (PEP725) with an open, unrestricted data access for science and education. PEP725 is the successor of the database developed through the COST action 725 "Establishing a European phenological data platform for climatological applications" working as a single access point for European-wide plant phenological data. So far, 32 European meteorological services and project partners from across Europe have joined and supplied data collected by volunteers from 1868 to the present for the PEP725 database. Most of the partners actively provide data on a regular basis. The database presently holds almost 12 million records, about 46 growing stages and 265 plant species (including cultivars), and can be accessed via http://www.pep725.eu/ . Users of the PEP725 database have studied a diversity of topics ranging from climate change impact, plant physiological question, phenological modeling, and remote sensing of vegetation to ecosystem productivity.

Software Applications to Access Earth Science Data: Building an ECHO Client

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cohen, A.; Cechini, M.; Pilone, D.

2010-12-01

Historically, developing an ECHO (NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) ClearingHOuse) client required interaction with its SOAP API. SOAP, as a framework for web service communication has numerous advantages for Enterprise applications and Java/C# type programming languages. However, as interest has grown for quick development cycles and more intriguing “mashups,” ECHO has seen the SOAP API lose its appeal. In order to address these changing needs, ECHO has introduced two new interfaces facilitating simple access to its metadata holdings. The first interface is built upon the OpenSearch format and ESIP Federated Search framework. The second interface is built upon the Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture. Using the REST and OpenSearch APIs to access ECHO makes development with modern languages much more feasible and simpler. Client developers can leverage the simple interaction with ECHO to focus more of their time on the advanced functionality they are presenting to users. To demonstrate the simplicity of developing with the REST API, participants will be led through a hands-on experience where they will develop an ECHO client that performs the following actions: + Login + Provider discovery + Provider based dataset discovery + Dataset, Temporal, and Spatial constraint based Granule discovery + Online Data Access

Ubiquitous computing in the military environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scholtz, Jean

2001-08-01

Increasingly people work and live on the move. To support this mobile lifestyle, especially as our work becomes more intensely information-based, companies are producing various portable and embedded information devices. The late Mark Weiser coined the term, 'ubiquitous computing' to describe an environment where computers have disappeared and are integrated into physical objects. Much industry research today is concerned with ubiquitous computing in the work and home environments. A ubiquitous computing environment would facilitate mobility by allowing information users to easily access and use information anytime, anywhere. As war fighters are inherently mobile, the question is what effect a ubiquitous computing environment would have on current military operations and doctrine. And, if ubiquitous computing is viewed as beneficial for the military, what research would be necessary to achieve a military ubiquitous computing environment? What is a vision for the use of mobile information access in a battle space? Are there different requirements for civilian and military users of this technology? What are those differences? Are there opportunities for research that will support both worlds? What type of research has been supported by the military and what areas need to be investigated? Although we don't yet have all the answers to these questions, this paper discusses the issues and presents the work we are doing to address these issues.

EnsMart: A Generic System for Fast and Flexible Access to Biological Data

PubMed Central

Kasprzyk, Arek; Keefe, Damian; Smedley, Damian; London, Darin; Spooner, William; Melsopp, Craig; Hammond, Martin; Rocca-Serra, Philippe; Cox, Tony; Birney, Ewan

2004-01-01

The EnsMart system (www.ensembl.org/EnsMart) provides a generic data warehousing solution for fast and flexible querying of large biological data sets and integration with third-party data and tools. The system consists of a query-optimized database and interactive, user-friendly interfaces. EnsMart has been applied to Ensembl, where it extends its genomic browser capabilities, facilitating rapid retrieval of customized data sets. A wide variety of complex queries, on various types of annotations, for numerous species are supported. These can be applied to many research problems, ranging from SNP selection for candidate gene screening, through cross-species evolutionary comparisons, to microarray annotation. Users can group and refine biological data according to many criteria, including cross-species analyses, disease links, sequence variations, and expression patterns. Both tabulated list data and biological sequence output can be generated dynamically, in HTML, text, Microsoft Excel, and compressed formats. A wide range of sequence types, such as cDNA, peptides, coding regions, UTRs, and exons, with additional upstream and downstream regions, can be retrieved. The EnsMart database can be accessed via a public Web site, or through a Java application suite. Both implementations and the database are freely available for local installation, and can be extended or adapted to `non-Ensembl' data sets. PMID:14707178

CUAHSI-HIS: an Internet based system to facilitate public discovery, access, and exploration of different water science data sources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arrigo, J. S.; Hooper, R. P.; Choi, Y.; Ames, D. P.; Kadlec, J.; Whiteaker, T.

2011-12-01

"Water is everywhere." This sentiment underscores the importance of instilling hydrologic and earth science literacy in educators, students, and the general public, but also presents challenges for water scientists and educators. Scientific data about water is collected and distributed by several different sources, from federal agencies to scientific investigators to citizen scientists. As competition for limited water resources increase, increasing access to and understanding of the wealth of information about the nation's and the world's water will be critical. The CUAHSI-HIS system is a web based system for sharing hydrologic data that can help address this need. HydroDesktop is a free, open source application for finding, getting, analyzing and using hydrologic data from the CUAHSI-HIS system. It works with HydroCatalog which indexes the data to find out what data exists and where it is, and then it retrieves the data from HydroServers where it is stored communicating using WaterOneFlow web services. Currently, there are over 65 services registered in HydroCatalog providing central discovery of water data from several federal and state agencies, university projects, and other sources. HydroDesktop provides a simplified GIS that allows users to incorporate spatial data, and simple analysis tools to facilitate graphing and visualization. HydroDesktop is designed to be useful for a number of different groups of users with a wide variety of needs and skill levels including university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, K-12 students, engineering and scientific consultants, and others. This presentation will highlight some of the features of HydroDesktop and the CUAHSI-HIS system that make it particularly appropriate for use in educational and public outreach settings, and will present examples of educational use. The incorporation of "real data," localization to an area of interest, and problem-based learning are all recognized as effective strategies for learning. Many example exercises educators create around water may list several websites and data sources (e.g. EPA, USGS, etc.) an educator needs to prepare even a simple exercise. HydroDesktop can simplify this process by providing unified access to several sources. The GIS interface can be used to incorporate local spatial data to allow students to explore environmental factors, and to illustrate concepts, such as watershed delineation. Simple graphing and time series tools can be used to illustrate relationships between different types of data and important water science concepts. CUAHSI is interested in partnering with science PIs to facilitate access to their project data and creating education and outreach materials around them, as well as with educators, public policy professionals and other constituencies to explore how CUAHSI HIS services can be utilized to foster public understanding and consumption of water information.

Drafting standards on cognitive accessibility: a global collaboration.

PubMed

Steel, Emily J; Janeslätt, Gunnel

2017-05-01

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is working on accessibility of products to support people with cognitive impairment. Working Group 10, within the technical committee 173 (assistive products for persons with disability) was formed in 2014 to draft standards for assistive products that support people with cognitive impairment. This article explains the scope and purpose of the working group and the context for its formation, and describes the plans and process for drafting and publishing new international standards. The proposed suite of standards is presented, with examples from a draft standard on daily time management. It draws on international research evidence for the effectiveness of assistive products designed to support time management in people with cognitive impairment. Examples of assistive products and their key features are provided based on domains of time as defined in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth (ICF-CY). The proposed standards will provide design recommendations for features and functions that increase the accessibility of products used by people with cognitive impairment. They are intended to be used by designers, manufactures, educators and services providers, to facilitate their commitment to inclusion and demonstrate their willingness to work with accessibility regulation. Implications for Rehabilitation New standards based on universal design (UD) principles can guide the design of more user-friendly assistive products for people with cognitive impairment. Greater usability of assistive products, whether mainstream or specially-designed, will make it easier for practitioners to find and introduce assistive solutions to individuals with cognitive impairment. Greater usability of assistive products for daily time management can decrease the need for user training and support and enable participation.

iHOPerator: user-scripting a personalized bioinformatics Web, starting with the iHOP website

PubMed Central

Good, Benjamin M; Kawas, Edward A; Kuo, Byron Yu-Lin; Wilkinson, Mark D

2006-01-01

Background User-scripts are programs stored in Web browsers that can manipulate the content of websites prior to display in the browser. They provide a novel mechanism by which users can conveniently gain increased control over the content and the display of the information presented to them on the Web. As the Web is the primary medium by which scientists retrieve biological information, any improvements in the mechanisms that govern the utility or accessibility of this information may have profound effects. GreaseMonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that facilitates the development and deployment of user-scripts for the Firefox web-browser. We utilize this to enhance the content and the presentation of the iHOP (information Hyperlinked Over Proteins) website. Results The iHOPerator is a GreaseMonkey user-script that augments the gene-centred pages on iHOP by providing a compact, configurable visualization of the defining information for each gene and by enabling additional data, such as biochemical pathway diagrams, to be collected automatically from third party resources and displayed in the same browsing context. Conclusion This open-source script provides an extension to the iHOP website, demonstrating how user-scripts can personalize and enhance the Web browsing experience in a relevant biological setting. The novel, user-driven controls over the content and the display of Web resources made possible by user-scripts, such as the iHOPerator, herald the beginning of a transition from a resource-centric to a user-centric Web experience. We believe that this transition is a necessary step in the development of Web technology that will eventually result in profound improvements in the way life scientists interact with information. PMID:17173692

A new visual navigation system for exploring biomedical Open Educational Resource (OER) videos.

PubMed

Zhao, Baoquan; Xu, Songhua; Lin, Shujin; Luo, Xiaonan; Duan, Lian

2016-04-01

Biomedical videos as open educational resources (OERs) are increasingly proliferating on the Internet. Unfortunately, seeking personally valuable content from among the vast corpus of quality yet diverse OER videos is nontrivial due to limitations of today's keyword- and content-based video retrieval techniques. To address this need, this study introduces a novel visual navigation system that facilitates users' information seeking from biomedical OER videos in mass quantity by interactively offering visual and textual navigational clues that are both semantically revealing and user-friendly. The authors collected and processed around 25 000 YouTube videos, which collectively last for a total length of about 4000 h, in the broad field of biomedical sciences for our experiment. For each video, its semantic clues are first extracted automatically through computationally analyzing audio and visual signals, as well as text either accompanying or embedded in the video. These extracted clues are subsequently stored in a metadata database and indexed by a high-performance text search engine. During the online retrieval stage, the system renders video search results as dynamic web pages using a JavaScript library that allows users to interactively and intuitively explore video content both efficiently and effectively.ResultsThe authors produced a prototype implementation of the proposed system, which is publicly accessible athttps://patentq.njit.edu/oer To examine the overall advantage of the proposed system for exploring biomedical OER videos, the authors further conducted a user study of a modest scale. The study results encouragingly demonstrate the functional effectiveness and user-friendliness of the new system for facilitating information seeking from and content exploration among massive biomedical OER videos. Using the proposed tool, users can efficiently and effectively find videos of interest, precisely locate video segments delivering personally valuable information, as well as intuitively and conveniently preview essential content of a single or a collection of videos. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Direct Access to Peregrine for External Users | High-Performance Computing

Science.gov Websites

| NREL Direct Access to Peregrine for External Users Direct Access to Peregrine for External : ssh yourHPCuserid@peregrine-ssh.nrel.gov For more information, please read this page. About direct ssh allow access to VPNs. Our current jump-node (hpcsh.nrel.gov) does not provide direct-to-peregrine access

Approaches in highly parameterized inversion-PESTCommander, a graphical user interface for file and run management across networks

USGS Publications Warehouse

Karanovic, Marinko; Muffels, Christopher T.; Tonkin, Matthew J.; Hunt, Randall J.

2012-01-01

Models of environmental systems have become increasingly complex, incorporating increasingly large numbers of parameters in an effort to represent physical processes on a scale approaching that at which they occur in nature. Consequently, the inverse problem of parameter estimation (specifically, model calibration) and subsequent uncertainty analysis have become increasingly computation-intensive endeavors. Fortunately, advances in computing have made computational power equivalent to that of dozens to hundreds of desktop computers accessible through a variety of alternate means: modelers have various possibilities, ranging from traditional Local Area Networks (LANs) to cloud computing. Commonly used parameter estimation software is well suited to take advantage of the availability of such increased computing power. Unfortunately, logistical issues become increasingly important as an increasing number and variety of computers are brought to bear on the inverse problem. To facilitate efficient access to disparate computer resources, the PESTCommander program documented herein has been developed to provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that facilitates the management of model files ("file management") and remote launching and termination of "slave" computers across a distributed network of computers ("run management"). In version 1.0 described here, PESTCommander can access and ascertain resources across traditional Windows LANs: however, the architecture of PESTCommander has been developed with the intent that future releases will be able to access computing resources (1) via trusted domains established in Wide Area Networks (WANs) in multiple remote locations and (2) via heterogeneous networks of Windows- and Unix-based operating systems. The design of PESTCommander also makes it suitable for extension to other computational resources, such as those that are available via cloud computing. Version 1.0 of PESTCommander was developed primarily to work with the parameter estimation software PEST; the discussion presented in this report focuses on the use of the PESTCommander together with Parallel PEST. However, PESTCommander can be used with a wide variety of programs and models that require management, distribution, and cleanup of files before or after model execution. In addition to its use with the Parallel PEST program suite, discussion is also included in this report regarding the use of PESTCommander with the Global Run Manager GENIE, which was developed simultaneously with PESTCommander.

Supporting Data Stewardship Throughout the Data Life Cycle in the Solid Earth Sciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferrini, V.; Lehnert, K. A.; Carbotte, S. M.; Hsu, L.

2013-12-01

Stewardship of scientific data is fundamental to enabling new data-driven research, and ensures preservation, accessibility, and quality of the data, yet researchers, especially in disciplines that typically generate and use small, but complex, heterogeneous, and unstructured datasets are challenged to fulfill increasing demands of properly managing their data. The IEDA Data Facility (www.iedadata.org) provides tools and services that support data stewardship throughout the full life cycle of observational data in the solid earth sciences, with a focus on the data management needs of individual researchers. IEDA builds upon and brings together over a decade of development and experiences of its component data systems, the Marine Geoscience Data System (MGDS, www.marine-geo.org) and EarthChem (www.earthchem.org). IEDA services include domain-focused data curation and synthesis, tools for data discovery, access, visualization and analysis, as well as investigator support services that include tools for data contribution, data publication services, and data compliance support. IEDA data synthesis efforts (e.g. PetDB and Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) Synthesis) focus on data integration and analysis while emphasizing provenance and attribution. IEDA's domain-focused data catalogs (e.g. MGDS and EarthChem Library) provide access to metadata-rich long-tail data complemented by extensive metadata including attribution information and links to related publications. IEDA's visualization and analysis tools (e.g. GeoMapApp) broaden access to earth science data for domain specialist and non-specialists alike, facilitating both interdisciplinary research and education and outreach efforts. As a disciplinary data repository, a key role IEDA plays is to coordinate with its user community and to bridge the requirements and standards for data curation with both the evolving needs of its science community and emerging technologies. Development of IEDA tools and services is based first and foremost on the scientific needs of its user community. As data stewardship becomes a more integral component of the scientific workflow, IEDA investigator support services (e.g. Data Management Plan Tool and Data Compliance Reporting Tool) continue to evolve with the goal of lessening the 'burden' of data management for individual investigators by increasing awareness and facilitating the adoption of data management practices. We will highlight a variety of IEDA system components that support investigators throughout the data life cycle, and will discuss lessons learned and future directions.

Drug information resources used by nurse practitioners and collaborating physicians at the point of care in Nova Scotia, Canada: a survey and review of the literature

PubMed Central

Murphy, Andrea L; Fleming, Mark; Martin-Misener, Ruth; Sketris, Ingrid S; MacCara, Mary; Gass, David

2006-01-01

Background Keeping current with drug therapy information is challenging for health care practitioners. Technologies are often implemented to facilitate access to current and credible drug information sources. In the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, legislation was passed in 2002 to allow nurse practitioners (NPs) to practice collaboratively with physician partners. The purpose of this study was to determine the current utilization patterns of information technologies by these groups of practitioners. Methods Nurse practitioners and their collaborating physician partners in Nova Scotia were sent a survey in February 2005 to determine the frequency of use, usefulness, accessibility, credibility, and current/timeliness of personal digital assistant (PDA), computer, and print drug information resources. Two surveys were developed (one for PDA users and one for computer users) and revised based on a literature search, stakeholder consultation, and pilot-testing results. A second distribution to nonresponders occurred two weeks following the first. Data were entered and analysed with SPSS. Results Twenty-seven (14 NPs and 13 physicians) of 36 (75%) recipients responded. 22% (6) returned personal digital assistant (PDA) surveys. Respondents reported print, health professionals, and online/electronic resources as the most to least preferred means to access drug information, respectively. 37% and 35% of respondents reported using "both print and electronic but print more than electronic" and "print only", respectively, to search monograph-related drug information queries whereas 4% reported using "PDA only". Analysis of respondent ratings for all resources in the categories print, health professionals and other, and online/electronic resources, indicated that the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties and pharmacists ranked highly for frequency of use, usefulness, accessibility, credibility, and current/timeliness by both groups of practitioners. Respondents' preferences and resource ratings were consistent with self-reported methods for conducting drug information queries. Few differences existed between NP and physician rankings of resources. Conclusion The use of computers and PDAs remains limited, which is also consistent with preferred and frequent use of print resources. Education for these practitioners regarding available electronic drug information resources may facilitate future computer and PDA use. Further research is needed to determine methods to increase computer and PDA use and whether these technologies affect prescribing and patient outcomes. PMID:16822323

Which Users Should Be the Focus of Mobile Personal Health Records? Analysis of User Characteristics Influencing Usage of a Tethered Mobile Personal Health Record.

PubMed

Lee, Guna; Park, Joong Yeol; Shin, Soo-Yong; Hwang, Jong Su; Ryu, Hyeon Jeong; Lee, Jae Ho; Bates, David W

2016-05-01

This study was conducted to analyze the usage pattern of a hospital-tethered mobile personal health records (m-PHRs) application named My Chart in My Hand (MCMH) and to identify user characteristics that influence m-PHR usage. Access logs to MCMH and its menus were collected for a total of 18 months, from August 2011 to January 2013. Usage patterns between users without a patient identification number (ID) and users with a patient ID were compared. Users with a patient ID were divided into light and heavy user groups by the median number of monthly access. Multiple linear regression models were used to assess MCMH usage pattern by characteristics of MCMH user with a patient ID. The total number of MCMH logins was 105,603, and the median number of accesses was 15 times. Users (n = 7,096) mostly accessed the "My Chart" menu, but "OPD [outpatient department] Service Support" and "Health Management" menus were also frequently used. Patients with chronic diseases, experience of hospital visits including emergency room and OPD, and age group of 0-19 years were more frequently found among users with a patient ID (n = 2,186) (p < 0.001). A similar trend was found in the heavy user group (n = 1,123). Submenus of laboratory result, online appointment, and medication lists that were accessed mostly by users with a patient ID were associated with OPD visit and chronic diseases. This study showed that focuses on patients with chronic disease and more hospital visits and empowerment functions in a tethered m-PHR would be helpful to pursue the extensive use.

Using others' experiences. Cancer patients' expectations and navigation of a website providing narratives on prostate, breast and colorectal cancer.

PubMed

Engler, Jennifer; Adami, Sandra; Adam, Yvonne; Keller, Bettina; Repke, Tim; Fügemann, Hella; Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele; Müller-Nordhorn, Jacqueline; Holmberg, Christine

2016-08-01

To understand what cancer patients expect and may learn from other patients' experiences, as analyzed and sorted for presentation on a website called krankheitserfahrungen.de (meaning "illness experiences"). Mixed methods approach including log file analyses, survey data analyses and thematic analysis of focus group discussions. Users highly valued the wide range of patient experiences presented. The academic leadership of krankheitserfahrungen.de made them trust the information quality. Reading, watching and listening to other cancer patients' experiences gave users a feeling of hope and confidence. Searching for persons with similar experiences was a major way of navigating the website. Patient narratives as presented on krankheitserfahrungen.de provide a helpful resource, supporting cancer patients' engagement with their disease. Having access to such research-informed accounts of everyday cancer experiences was seen as a great contribution to existing available patient information. When health information websites include experiences, they should adhere to quality standards of qualitative research and encompass a wide range, so that users are able to find patients similar to themselves. Filter options are a helpful tool. A mix of written text and videos is beneficial, as users have different preferences. The inclusion of patient photographs and video interviews facilitates authenticity and closeness. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.