Toolkit for testing scientific CCD cameras

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Uzycki, Janusz; Mankiewicz, Lech; Molak, Marcin; Wrochna, Grzegorz

2006-03-01

The CCD Toolkit (1) is a software tool for testing CCD cameras which allows to measure important characteristics of a camera like readout noise, total gain, dark current, 'hot' pixels, useful area, etc. The application makes a statistical analysis of images saved in files with FITS format, commonly used in astronomy. A graphical interface is based on the ROOT package, which offers high functionality and flexibility. The program was developed in a way to ensure future compatibility with different operating systems: Windows and Linux. The CCD Toolkit was created for the "Pie of the Sky" project collaboration (2).

The Bio-Community Perl toolkit for microbial ecology.

PubMed

Angly, Florent E; Fields, Christopher J; Tyson, Gene W

2014-07-01

The development of bioinformatic solutions for microbial ecology in Perl is limited by the lack of modules to represent and manipulate microbial community profiles from amplicon and meta-omics studies. Here we introduce Bio-Community, an open-source, collaborative toolkit that extends BioPerl. Bio-Community interfaces with commonly used programs using various file formats, including BIOM, and provides operations such as rarefaction and taxonomic summaries. Bio-Community will help bioinformaticians to quickly piece together custom analysis pipelines and develop novel software. Availability an implementation: Bio-Community is cross-platform Perl code available from http://search.cpan.org/dist/Bio-Community under the Perl license. A readme file describes software installation and how to contribute. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

ParCAT: A Parallel Climate Analysis Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haugen, B.; Smith, B.; Steed, C.; Ricciuto, D. M.; Thornton, P. E.; Shipman, G.

2012-12-01

Climate science has employed increasingly complex models and simulations to analyze the past and predict the future of our climate. The size and dimensionality of climate simulation data has been growing with the complexity of the models. This growth in data is creating a widening gap between the data being produced and the tools necessary to analyze large, high dimensional data sets. With single run data sets increasing into 10's, 100's and even 1000's of gigabytes, parallel computing tools are becoming a necessity in order to analyze and compare climate simulation data. The Parallel Climate Analysis Toolkit (ParCAT) provides basic tools that efficiently use parallel computing techniques to narrow the gap between data set size and analysis tools. ParCAT was created as a collaborative effort between climate scientists and computer scientists in order to provide efficient parallel implementations of the computing tools that are of use to climate scientists. Some of the basic functionalities included in the toolkit are the ability to compute spatio-temporal means and variances, differences between two runs and histograms of the values in a data set. ParCAT is designed to facilitate the "heavy lifting" that is required for large, multidimensional data sets. The toolkit does not focus on performing the final visualizations and presentation of results but rather, reducing large data sets to smaller, more manageable summaries. The output from ParCAT is provided in commonly used file formats (NetCDF, CSV, ASCII) to allow for simple integration with other tools. The toolkit is currently implemented as a command line utility, but will likely also provide a C library for developers interested in tighter software integration. Elements of the toolkit are already being incorporated into projects such as UV-CDAT and CMDX. There is also an effort underway to implement portions of the CCSM Land Model Diagnostics package using ParCAT in conjunction with Python and gnuplot. ParCAT is implemented in C to provide efficient file IO. The file IO operations in the toolkit use the parallel-netcdf library; this enables the code to use the parallel IO capabilities of modern HPC systems. Analysis that currently requires an estimated 12+ hours with the traditional CCSM Land Model Diagnostics Package can now be performed in as little as 30 minutes on a single desktop workstation and a few minutes for relatively small jobs completed on modern HPC systems such as ORNL's Jaguar.

Knowledge information management toolkit and method

DOEpatents

Hempstead, Antoinette R.; Brown, Kenneth L.

2006-08-15

A system is provided for managing user entry and/or modification of knowledge information into a knowledge base file having an integrator support component and a data source access support component. The system includes processing circuitry, memory, a user interface, and a knowledge base toolkit. The memory communicates with the processing circuitry and is configured to store at least one knowledge base. The user interface communicates with the processing circuitry and is configured for user entry and/or modification of knowledge pieces within a knowledge base. The knowledge base toolkit is configured for converting knowledge in at least one knowledge base from a first knowledge base form into a second knowledge base form. A method is also provided.

Biomechanical ToolKit: Open-source framework to visualize and process biomechanical data.

PubMed

Barre, Arnaud; Armand, Stéphane

2014-04-01

C3D file format is widely used in the biomechanical field by companies and laboratories to store motion capture systems data. However, few software packages can visualize and modify the integrality of the data in the C3D file. Our objective was to develop an open-source and multi-platform framework to read, write, modify and visualize data from any motion analysis systems using standard (C3D) and proprietary file formats (used by many companies producing motion capture systems). The Biomechanical ToolKit (BTK) was developed to provide cost-effective and efficient tools for the biomechanical community to easily deal with motion analysis data. A large panel of operations is available to read, modify and process data through C++ API, bindings for high-level languages (Matlab, Octave, and Python), and standalone application (Mokka). All these tools are open-source and cross-platform and run on all major operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS X). Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Biological Reference Repository (BioR): a rapid and flexible system for genomics annotation.

PubMed

Kocher, Jean-Pierre A; Quest, Daniel J; Duffy, Patrick; Meiners, Michael A; Moore, Raymond M; Rider, David; Hossain, Asif; Hart, Steven N; Dinu, Valentin

2014-07-01

The Biological Reference Repository (BioR) is a toolkit for annotating variants. BioR stores public and user-specific annotation sources in indexed JSON-encoded flat files (catalogs). The BioR toolkit provides the functionality to combine and retrieve annotation from these catalogs via the command-line interface. Several catalogs from commonly used annotation sources and instructions for creating user-specific catalogs are provided. Commands from the toolkit can be combined with other UNIX commands for advanced annotation processing. We also provide instructions for the development of custom annotation pipelines. The package is implemented in Java and makes use of external tools written in Java and Perl. The toolkit can be executed on Mac OS X 10.5 and above or any Linux distribution. The BioR application, quickstart, and user guide documents and many biological examples are available at http://bioinformaticstools.mayo.edu. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

GESearch: An Interactive GUI Tool for Identifying Gene Expression Signature.

PubMed

Ye, Ning; Yin, Hengfu; Liu, Jingjing; Dai, Xiaogang; Yin, Tongming

2015-01-01

The huge amount of gene expression data generated by microarray and next-generation sequencing technologies present challenges to exploit their biological meanings. When searching for the coexpression genes, the data mining process is largely affected by selection of algorithms. Thus, it is highly desirable to provide multiple options of algorithms in the user-friendly analytical toolkit to explore the gene expression signatures. For this purpose, we developed GESearch, an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit, which is written in MATLAB and supports a variety of gene expression data files. This analytical toolkit provides four models, including the mean, the regression, the delegate, and the ensemble models, to identify the coexpression genes, and enables the users to filter data and to select gene expression patterns by browsing the display window or by importing knowledge-based genes. Subsequently, the utility of this analytical toolkit is demonstrated by analyzing two sets of real-life microarray datasets from cell-cycle experiments. Overall, we have developed an interactive GUI toolkit that allows for choosing multiple algorithms for analyzing the gene expression signatures.

Free DICOM de-identification tools in clinical research: functioning and safety of patient privacy.

PubMed

Aryanto, K Y E; Oudkerk, M; van Ooijen, P M A

2015-12-01

To compare non-commercial DICOM toolkits for their de-identification ability in removing a patient's personal health information (PHI) from a DICOM header. Ten DICOM toolkits were selected for de-identification tests. Tests were performed by using the system's default de-identification profile and, subsequently, the tools' best adjusted settings. We aimed to eliminate fifty elements considered to contain identifying patient information. The tools were also examined for their respective methods of customization. Only one tool was able to de-identify all required elements with the default setting. Not all of the toolkits provide a customizable de-identification profile. Six tools allowed changes by selecting the provided profiles, giving input through a graphical user interface (GUI) or configuration text file, or providing the appropriate command-line arguments. Using adjusted settings, four of those six toolkits were able to perform full de-identification. Only five tools could properly de-identify the defined DICOM elements, and in four cases, only after careful customization. Therefore, free DICOM toolkits should be used with extreme care to prevent the risk of disclosing PHI, especially when using the default configuration. In case optimal security is required, one of the five toolkits is proposed. • Free DICOM toolkits should be carefully used to prevent patient identity disclosure. • Each DICOM tool produces its own specific outcomes from the de-identification process. • In case optimal security is required, using one DICOM toolkit is proposed.

An evaluation capacity building toolkit for principal investigators of undergraduate research experiences: A demonstration of transforming theory into practice.

PubMed

Rorrer, Audrey S

2016-04-01

This paper describes the approach and process undertaken to develop evaluation capacity among the leaders of a federally funded undergraduate research program. An evaluation toolkit was developed for Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering(1) Research Experiences for Undergraduates(2) (CISE REU) programs to address the ongoing need for evaluation capacity among principal investigators who manage program evaluation. The toolkit was the result of collaboration within the CISE REU community with the purpose being to provide targeted instructional resources and tools for quality program evaluation. Challenges were to balance the desire for standardized assessment with the responsibility to account for individual program contexts. Toolkit contents included instructional materials about evaluation practice, a standardized applicant management tool, and a modulated outcomes measure. Resulting benefits from toolkit deployment were having cost effective, sustainable evaluation tools, a community evaluation forum, and aggregate measurement of key program outcomes for the national program. Lessons learned included the imperative of understanding the evaluation context, engaging stakeholders, and building stakeholder trust. Results from project measures are presented along with a discussion of guidelines for facilitating evaluation capacity building that will serve a variety of contexts. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

MISR Toolkit

Atmospheric Science Data Center

2018-03-14

... which makes it very easy to extract and use MISR data sets. Reading a parameter requires the user to simply specify a file, grid, field, ... Automatically stitch, unpack and unscale MISR data while reading Performing coordinate conversions between lat/lon, SOM x/y, ...

PDB@: an offline toolkit for exploration and analysis of PDB files.

PubMed

Mani, Udayakumar; Ravisankar, Sadhana; Ramakrishnan, Sai Mukund

2013-12-01

Protein Data Bank (PDB) is a freely accessible archive of the 3-D structural data of biological molecules. Structure based studies offers a unique vantage point in inferring the properties of a protein molecule from structural data. This is too big a task to be done manually. Moreover, there is no single tool, software or server that comprehensively analyses all structure-based properties. The objective of the present work is to develop an offline computational toolkit, PDB@ containing in-built algorithms that help categorizing the structural properties of a protein molecule. The user has the facility to view and edit the PDB file to his need. Some features of the present work are unique in itself and others are an improvement over existing tools. Also, the representation of protein properties in both graphical and textual formats helps in predicting all the necessary details of a protein molecule on a single platform.

ProtoMD: A prototyping toolkit for multiscale molecular dynamics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Somogyi, Endre; Mansour, Andrew Abi; Ortoleva, Peter J.

2016-05-01

ProtoMD is a toolkit that facilitates the development of algorithms for multiscale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. It is designed for multiscale methods which capture the dynamic transfer of information across multiple spatial scales, such as the atomic to the mesoscopic scale, via coevolving microscopic and coarse-grained (CG) variables. ProtoMD can be also be used to calibrate parameters needed in traditional CG-MD methods. The toolkit integrates 'GROMACS wrapper' to initiate MD simulations, and 'MDAnalysis' to analyze and manipulate trajectory files. It facilitates experimentation with a spectrum of coarse-grained variables, prototyping rare events (such as chemical reactions), or simulating nanocharacterization experiments such as terahertz spectroscopy, AFM, nanopore, and time-of-flight mass spectroscopy. ProtoMD is written in python and is freely available under the GNU General Public License from github.com/CTCNano/proto_md.

';Best' Practices for Aggregating Subset Results from Archived Datasets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baskin, W. E.; Perez, J.

2013-12-01

In response to the exponential growth in science data analysis and visualization capabilities Data Centers have been developing new delivery mechanisms to package and deliver large volumes of aggregated subsets of archived data. New standards are evolving to help data providers and application programmers deal with growing needs of the science community. These standards evolve from the best practices gleaned from new products and capabilities. The NASA Atmospheric Sciences Data Center (ASDC) has developed and deployed production provider-specific search and subset web applications for the CALIPSO, CERES, TES, and MOPITT missions. This presentation explores several use cases that leverage aggregated subset results and examines the standards and formats ASDC developers applied to the delivered files as well as the implementation strategies for subsetting and processing the aggregated products. The following topics will be addressed: - Applications of NetCDF CF conventions to aggregated level 2 satellite subsets - Data-Provider-Specific format requirements vs. generalized standards - Organization of the file structure of aggregated NetCDF subset output - Global Attributes of individual subsetted files vs. aggregated results - Specific applications and framework used for subsetting and delivering derivative data files

pypet: A Python Toolkit for Data Management of Parameter Explorations

PubMed Central

Meyer, Robert; Obermayer, Klaus

2016-01-01

pypet (Python parameter exploration toolkit) is a new multi-platform Python toolkit for managing numerical simulations. Sampling the space of model parameters is a key aspect of simulations and numerical experiments. pypet is designed to allow easy and arbitrary sampling of trajectories through a parameter space beyond simple grid searches. pypet collects and stores both simulation parameters and results in a single HDF5 file. This collective storage allows fast and convenient loading of data for further analyses. pypet provides various additional features such as multiprocessing and parallelization of simulations, dynamic loading of data, integration of git version control, and supervision of experiments via the electronic lab notebook Sumatra. pypet supports a rich set of data formats, including native Python types, Numpy and Scipy data, Pandas DataFrames, and BRIAN(2) quantities. Besides these formats, users can easily extend the toolkit to allow customized data types. pypet is a flexible tool suited for both short Python scripts and large scale projects. pypet's various features, especially the tight link between parameters and results, promote reproducible research in computational neuroscience and simulation-based disciplines. PMID:27610080

pypet: A Python Toolkit for Data Management of Parameter Explorations.

PubMed

Meyer, Robert; Obermayer, Klaus

2016-01-01

pypet (Python parameter exploration toolkit) is a new multi-platform Python toolkit for managing numerical simulations. Sampling the space of model parameters is a key aspect of simulations and numerical experiments. pypet is designed to allow easy and arbitrary sampling of trajectories through a parameter space beyond simple grid searches. pypet collects and stores both simulation parameters and results in a single HDF5 file. This collective storage allows fast and convenient loading of data for further analyses. pypet provides various additional features such as multiprocessing and parallelization of simulations, dynamic loading of data, integration of git version control, and supervision of experiments via the electronic lab notebook Sumatra. pypet supports a rich set of data formats, including native Python types, Numpy and Scipy data, Pandas DataFrames, and BRIAN(2) quantities. Besides these formats, users can easily extend the toolkit to allow customized data types. pypet is a flexible tool suited for both short Python scripts and large scale projects. pypet's various features, especially the tight link between parameters and results, promote reproducible research in computational neuroscience and simulation-based disciplines.

IBiSA_Tools: A Computational Toolkit for Ion-Binding State Analysis in Molecular Dynamics Trajectories of Ion Channels.

PubMed

Kasahara, Kota; Kinoshita, Kengo

2016-01-01

Ion conduction mechanisms of ion channels are a long-standing conundrum. Although the molecular dynamics (MD) method has been extensively used to simulate ion conduction dynamics at the atomic level, analysis and interpretation of MD results are not straightforward due to complexity of the dynamics. In our previous reports, we proposed an analytical method called ion-binding state analysis to scrutinize and summarize ion conduction mechanisms by taking advantage of a variety of analytical protocols, e.g., the complex network analysis, sequence alignment, and hierarchical clustering. This approach effectively revealed the ion conduction mechanisms and their dependence on the conditions, i.e., ion concentration and membrane voltage. Here, we present an easy-to-use computational toolkit for ion-binding state analysis, called IBiSA_tools. This toolkit consists of a C++ program and a series of Python and R scripts. From the trajectory file of MD simulations and a structure file, users can generate several images and statistics of ion conduction processes. A complex network named ion-binding state graph is generated in a standard graph format (graph modeling language; GML), which can be visualized by standard network analyzers such as Cytoscape. As a tutorial, a trajectory of a 50 ns MD simulation of the Kv1.2 channel is also distributed with the toolkit. Users can trace the entire process of ion-binding state analysis step by step. The novel method for analysis of ion conduction mechanisms of ion channels can be easily used by means of IBiSA_tools. This software is distributed under an open source license at the following URL: http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~ktkshr/ibisa_tools/.

BIO::Phylo-phyloinformatic analysis using perl.

PubMed

Vos, Rutger A; Caravas, Jason; Hartmann, Klaas; Jensen, Mark A; Miller, Chase

2011-02-27

Phyloinformatic analyses involve large amounts of data and metadata of complex structure. Collecting, processing, analyzing, visualizing and summarizing these data and metadata should be done in steps that can be automated and reproduced. This requires flexible, modular toolkits that can represent, manipulate and persist phylogenetic data and metadata as objects with programmable interfaces. This paper presents Bio::Phylo, a Perl5 toolkit for phyloinformatic analysis. It implements classes and methods that are compatible with the well-known BioPerl toolkit, but is independent from it (making it easy to install) and features a richer API and a data model that is better able to manage the complex relationships between different fundamental data and metadata objects in phylogenetics. It supports commonly used file formats for phylogenetic data including the novel NeXML standard, which allows rich annotations of phylogenetic data to be stored and shared. Bio::Phylo can interact with BioPerl, thereby giving access to the file formats that BioPerl supports. Many methods for data simulation, transformation and manipulation, the analysis of tree shape, and tree visualization are provided. Bio::Phylo is composed of 59 richly documented Perl5 modules. It has been deployed successfully on a variety of computer architectures (including various Linux distributions, Mac OS X versions, Windows, Cygwin and UNIX-like systems). It is available as open source (GPL) software from http://search.cpan.org/dist/Bio-Phylo.

BIO::Phylo-phyloinformatic analysis using perl

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Phyloinformatic analyses involve large amounts of data and metadata of complex structure. Collecting, processing, analyzing, visualizing and summarizing these data and metadata should be done in steps that can be automated and reproduced. This requires flexible, modular toolkits that can represent, manipulate and persist phylogenetic data and metadata as objects with programmable interfaces. Results This paper presents Bio::Phylo, a Perl5 toolkit for phyloinformatic analysis. It implements classes and methods that are compatible with the well-known BioPerl toolkit, but is independent from it (making it easy to install) and features a richer API and a data model that is better able to manage the complex relationships between different fundamental data and metadata objects in phylogenetics. It supports commonly used file formats for phylogenetic data including the novel NeXML standard, which allows rich annotations of phylogenetic data to be stored and shared. Bio::Phylo can interact with BioPerl, thereby giving access to the file formats that BioPerl supports. Many methods for data simulation, transformation and manipulation, the analysis of tree shape, and tree visualization are provided. Conclusions Bio::Phylo is composed of 59 richly documented Perl5 modules. It has been deployed successfully on a variety of computer architectures (including various Linux distributions, Mac OS X versions, Windows, Cygwin and UNIX-like systems). It is available as open source (GPL) software from http://search.cpan.org/dist/Bio-Phylo PMID:21352572

QALMA: A computational toolkit for the analysis of quality protocols for medical linear accelerators in radiation therapy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahman, Md Mushfiqur; Lei, Yu; Kalantzis, Georgios

2018-01-01

Quality Assurance (QA) for medical linear accelerator (linac) is one of the primary concerns in external beam radiation Therapy. Continued advancements in clinical accelerators and computer control technology make the QA procedures more complex and time consuming which often, adequate software accompanied with specific phantoms is required. To ameliorate that matter, we introduce QALMA (Quality Assurance for Linac with MATLAB), a MALAB toolkit which aims to simplify the quantitative analysis of QA for linac which includes Star-Shot analysis, Picket Fence test, Winston-Lutz test, Multileaf Collimator (MLC) log file analysis and verification of light & radiation field coincidence test.

Livermore Big Artificial Neural Network Toolkit

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

Essen, Brian Van; Jacobs, Sam; Kim, Hyojin

2016-07-01

LBANN is a toolkit that is designed to train artificial neural networks efficiently on high performance computing architectures. It is optimized to take advantages of key High Performance Computing features to accelerate neural network training. Specifically it is optimized for low-latency, high bandwidth interconnects, node-local NVRAM, node-local GPU accelerators, and high bandwidth parallel file systems. It is built on top of the open source Elemental distributed-memory dense and spars-direct linear algebra and optimization library that is released under the BSD license. The algorithms contained within LBANN are drawn from the academic literature and implemented to work within a distributed-memory framework.

A software architecture for automating operations processes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Miller, Kevin J.

1994-01-01

The Operations Engineering Lab (OEL) at JPL has developed a software architecture based on an integrated toolkit approach for simplifying and automating mission operations tasks. The toolkit approach is based on building adaptable, reusable graphical tools that are integrated through a combination of libraries, scripts, and system-level user interface shells. The graphical interface shells are designed to integrate and visually guide a user through the complex steps in an operations process. They provide a user with an integrated system-level picture of an overall process, defining the required inputs and possible output through interactive on-screen graphics. The OEL has developed the software for building these process-oriented graphical user interface (GUI) shells. The OEL Shell development system (OEL Shell) is an extension of JPL's Widget Creation Library (WCL). The OEL Shell system can be used to easily build user interfaces for running complex processes, applications with extensive command-line interfaces, and tool-integration tasks. The interface shells display a logical process flow using arrows and box graphics. They also allow a user to select which output products are desired and which input sources are needed, eliminating the need to know which program and its associated command-line parameters must be executed in each case. The shells have also proved valuable for use as operations training tools because of the OEL Shell hypertext help environment. The OEL toolkit approach is guided by several principles, including the use of ASCII text file interfaces with a multimission format, Perl scripts for mission-specific adaptation code, and programs that include a simple command-line interface for batch mode processing. Projects can adapt the interface shells by simple changes to the resources configuration file. This approach has allowed the development of sophisticated, automated software systems that are easy, cheap, and fast to build. This paper will discuss our toolkit approach and the OEL Shell interface builder in the context of a real operations process example. The paper will discuss the design and implementation of a Ulysses toolkit for generating the mission sequence of events. The Sequence of Events Generation (SEG) system provides an adaptable multimission toolkit for producing a time-ordered listing and timeline display of spacecraft commands, state changes, and required ground activities.

The NetLogger Toolkit V2.0

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

Gunter, Dan; Lee, Jason; Stoufer, Martin

2003-03-28

The NetLogger Toolkit is designed to monitor, under actual operating conditions, the behavior of all the elements of the application-to-application communication path in order to determine exactly where time is spent within a complex system Using NetLogger, distnbuted application components are modified to produce timestamped logs of "interesting" events at all the critical points of the distributed system Events from each component are correlated, which allov^ one to characterize the performance of all aspects of the system and network in detail. The NetLogger Toolkit itself consists of four components an API and library of functions to simplify the generation ofmore » application-level event logs, a set of tools for collecting and sorting log files, an event archive system, and a tool for visualization and analysis of the log files In order to instrument an application to produce event logs, the application developer inserts calls to the NetLogger API at all the critical points in the code, then links the application with the NetLogger library All the tools in the NetLogger Toolkit share a common log format, and assume the existence of accurate and synchronized system clocks NetLogger messages can be logged using an easy-to-read text based format based on the lETF-proposed ULM format, or a binary format that can still be used through the same API but that is several times faster and smaller, with performance comparable or better than binary message formats such as MPI, XDR, SDDF-Binary, and PBIO. The NetLogger binary format is both highly efficient and self-describing, thus optimized for the dynamic message construction and parsing of application instrumentation. NetLogger includes an "activation" API that allows NetLogger logging to be turned on, off, or modified by changing an external file This IS useful for activating logging in daemons/services (e g GndFTP server). The NetLogger reliability API provides the ability to specify backup logging locations and penodically try to reconnect broken TCP pipe. A typical use for this is to store data on local disk while net is down. An event archiver can log one or more incoming NetLogger streams to a local disk file (netlogd) or to a mySQL database (netarchd). We have found exploratory, visual analysis of the log event data to be the most useful means of determining the causes of performance anomalies The NetLogger Visualization tool, niv, has been developed to provide a flexible and interactive graphical representation of system-level and application-level events.« less

Improved quality of care for patients infected or colonised with ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae in a French teaching hospital: impact of an interventional prospective study and development of specific tools.

PubMed

Mondain, Véronique; Lieutier, Florence; Pulcini, Céline; Degand, Nicolas; Landraud, Luce; Ruimy, Raymond; Fosse, Thierry; Roger, Pierre Marie

2018-05-01

The increasing incidence of ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-E) in France prompted the publication of national recommendations in 2010. Based on these, we developed a toolkit and a warning system to optimise management of ESBL-E infected or colonised patients in both community and hospital settings. The impact of this initiative on quality of care was assessed in a teaching hospital. The ESBL toolkit was developed in 2011 during multidisciplinary meetings involving a regional network of hospital, private clinic and laboratory staff in Southeastern France. It includes antibiotic treatment protocols, a check list, mail templates and a patient information sheet focusing on infection control. Upon identification of ESBL-E, the warning system involves alerting the attending physician and the infectious disease (ID) advisor, with immediate, advice-based implementation of the toolkit. The procedure and toolkit were tested in our teaching hospital. Patient management was compared before and after implementation of the toolkit over two 3-month periods (July-October 2010 and 2012). Implementation of the ESBL-E warning system and ESBL-E toolkit was tested for 87 patients in 2010 and 92 patients in 2012, resulting in improved patient management: expert advice sought and followed (16 vs 97%), information provided to the patient's general practitioner (18 vs 63%) and coding of the condition in the patient's medical file (17 vs 59%), respectively. Our multidisciplinary strategy improved quality of care for in-patients infected or colonised with ESBL-E, increasing compliance with national recommendations.

Sierra Toolkit Manual Version 4.48.

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

Sierra Toolkit Team

This report provides documentation for the SIERRA Toolkit (STK) modules. STK modules are intended to provide infrastructure that assists the development of computational engineering soft- ware such as finite-element analysis applications. STK includes modules for unstructured-mesh data structures, reading/writing mesh files, geometric proximity search, and various utilities. This document contains a chapter for each module, and each chapter contains overview descriptions and usage examples. Usage examples are primarily code listings which are generated from working test programs that are included in the STK code-base. A goal of this approach is to ensure that the usage examples will not fall outmore » of date. This page intentionally left blank.« less

Perl Embedded in PTC's Pro/ENGINEER, Version 1

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

2003-12-22

Pro-PERL (AKA Pro/PERL) is a Perl extension to the PTC Pro/TOOLKIT API to the PTC Pro/ENGINEER CAD application including an embedded interpreter. It can be used to automate and customize Pro/ENGINEER, create Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) format files and re-create CAD models from the VNA files. This has applications in sanitizing classified CAD models created in a classified environment for transfer to an open environment, creating template models for modification to finished models by non-expert users, and transfer of design intent data to other modeling technologies.

Windows .NET Network Distributed Basic Local Alignment Search Toolkit (W.ND-BLAST)

PubMed Central

Dowd, Scot E; Zaragoza, Joaquin; Rodriguez, Javier R; Oliver, Melvin J; Payton, Paxton R

2005-01-01

Background BLAST is one of the most common and useful tools for Genetic Research. This paper describes a software application we have termed Windows .NET Distributed Basic Local Alignment Search Toolkit (W.ND-BLAST), which enhances the BLAST utility by improving usability, fault recovery, and scalability in a Windows desktop environment. Our goal was to develop an easy to use, fault tolerant, high-throughput BLAST solution that incorporates a comprehensive BLAST result viewer with curation and annotation functionality. Results W.ND-BLAST is a comprehensive Windows-based software toolkit that targets researchers, including those with minimal computer skills, and provides the ability increase the performance of BLAST by distributing BLAST queries to any number of Windows based machines across local area networks (LAN). W.ND-BLAST provides intuitive Graphic User Interfaces (GUI) for BLAST database creation, BLAST execution, BLAST output evaluation and BLAST result exportation. This software also provides several layers of fault tolerance and fault recovery to prevent loss of data if nodes or master machines fail. This paper lays out the functionality of W.ND-BLAST. W.ND-BLAST displays close to 100% performance efficiency when distributing tasks to 12 remote computers of the same performance class. A high throughput BLAST job which took 662.68 minutes (11 hours) on one average machine was completed in 44.97 minutes when distributed to 17 nodes, which included lower performance class machines. Finally, there is a comprehensive high-throughput BLAST Output Viewer (BOV) and Annotation Engine components, which provides comprehensive exportation of BLAST hits to text files, annotated fasta files, tables, or association files. Conclusion W.ND-BLAST provides an interactive tool that allows scientists to easily utilizing their available computing resources for high throughput and comprehensive sequence analyses. The install package for W.ND-BLAST is freely downloadable from . With registration the software is free, installation, networking, and usage instructions are provided as well as a support forum. PMID:15819992

The ALFA (Activity Log Files Aggregation) toolkit: a method for precise observation of the consultation.

PubMed

de Lusignan, Simon; Kumarapeli, Pushpa; Chan, Tom; Pflug, Bernhard; van Vlymen, Jeremy; Jones, Beryl; Freeman, George K

2008-09-08

There is a lack of tools to evaluate and compare Electronic patient record (EPR) systems to inform a rational choice or development agenda. To develop a tool kit to measure the impact of different EPR system features on the consultation. We first developed a specification to overcome the limitations of existing methods. We divided this into work packages: (1) developing a method to display multichannel video of the consultation; (2) code and measure activities, including computer use and verbal interactions; (3) automate the capture of nonverbal interactions; (4) aggregate multiple observations into a single navigable output; and (5) produce an output interpretable by software developers. We piloted this method by filming live consultations (n = 22) by 4 general practitioners (GPs) using different EPR systems. We compared the time taken and variations during coded data entry, prescribing, and blood pressure (BP) recording. We used nonparametric tests to make statistical comparisons. We contrasted methods of BP recording using Unified Modeling Language (UML) sequence diagrams. We found that 4 channels of video were optimal. We identified an existing application for manual coding of video output. We developed in-house tools for capturing use of keyboard and mouse and to time stamp speech. The transcript is then typed within this time stamp. Although we managed to capture body language using pattern recognition software, we were unable to use this data quantitatively. We loaded these observational outputs into our aggregation tool, which allows simultaneous navigation and viewing of multiple files. This also creates a single exportable file in XML format, which we used to develop UML sequence diagrams. In our pilot, the GP using the EMIS LV (Egton Medical Information Systems Limited, Leeds, UK) system took the longest time to code data (mean 11.5 s, 95% CI 8.7-14.2). Nonparametric comparison of EMIS LV with the other systems showed a significant difference, with EMIS PCS (Egton Medical Information Systems Limited, Leeds, UK) (P = .007), iSoft Synergy (iSOFT, Banbury, UK) (P = .014), and INPS Vision (INPS, London, UK) (P = .006) facilitating faster coding. In contrast, prescribing was fastest with EMIS LV (mean 23.7 s, 95% CI 20.5-26.8), but nonparametric comparison showed no statistically significant difference. UML sequence diagrams showed that the simplest BP recording interface was not the easiest to use, as users spent longer navigating or looking up previous blood pressures separately. Complex interfaces with free-text boxes left clinicians unsure of what to add. The ALFA method allows the precise observation of the clinical consultation. It enables rigorous comparison of core elements of EPR systems. Pilot data suggests its capacity to demonstrate differences between systems. Its outputs could provide the evidence base for making more objective choices between systems.

Moving from HDF4 to HDF5/netCFD-4

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pourmal, Elena; Yang, Kent; Lee, Joe

2017-01-01

In this presentation, we will go over the major differences between two file formats and libraries, and will talk about the HDF5 features that users should consider when designing new products in HDF5netCDF4. We will also discuss the h4h5tools toolkit that can facilitate conversion of data in the existing HDF4 files to HDF5 and netCDF-4, and we will engage the participants in the discussion of how The HDF Group can help with the transition and adoption of HDF5 and netCDF-4.

NREL Releases Major Update to Wind Energy Dataset | News | NREL

Science.gov Websites

Toolkit-made 2 terabytes (TB) of information available, covering about 120,000 locations identified using ) using the AWS cloud to provide users with easy access to the data, which is stored as a series of HDF5 files. The information can be narrowed to a specific site or time and analyzed using either a custom

Analyzing microtomography data with Python and the scikit-image library.

PubMed

Gouillart, Emmanuelle; Nunez-Iglesias, Juan; van der Walt, Stéfan

2017-01-01

The exploration and processing of images is a vital aspect of the scientific workflows of many X-ray imaging modalities. Users require tools that combine interactivity, versatility, and performance. scikit-image is an open-source image processing toolkit for the Python language that supports a large variety of file formats and is compatible with 2D and 3D images. The toolkit exposes a simple programming interface, with thematic modules grouping functions according to their purpose, such as image restoration, segmentation, and measurements. scikit-image users benefit from a rich scientific Python ecosystem that contains many powerful libraries for tasks such as visualization or machine learning. scikit-image combines a gentle learning curve, versatile image processing capabilities, and the scalable performance required for the high-throughput analysis of X-ray imaging data.

Cyber Security Audit and Attack Detection Toolkit

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

Peterson, Dale

2012-05-31

This goal of this project was to develop cyber security audit and attack detection tools for industrial control systems (ICS). Digital Bond developed and released a tool named Bandolier that audits ICS components commonly used in the energy sector against an optimal security configuration. The Portaledge Project developed a capability for the PI Historian, the most widely used Historian in the energy sector, to aggregate security events and detect cyber attacks.

SatelliteDL: a Toolkit for Analysis of Heterogeneous Satellite Datasets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Galloy, M. D.; Fillmore, D.

2014-12-01

SatelliteDL is an IDL toolkit for the analysis of satellite Earth observations from a diverse set of platforms and sensors. The core function of the toolkit is the spatial and temporal alignment of satellite swath and geostationary data. The design features an abstraction layer that allows for easy inclusion of new datasets in a modular way. Our overarching objective is to create utilities that automate the mundane aspects of satellite data analysis, are extensible and maintainable, and do not place limitations on the analysis itself. IDL has a powerful suite of statistical and visualization tools that can be used in conjunction with SatelliteDL. Toward this end we have constructed SatelliteDL to include (1) HTML and LaTeX API document generation,(2) a unit test framework,(3) automatic message and error logs,(4) HTML and LaTeX plot and table generation, and(5) several real world examples with bundled datasets available for download. For ease of use, datasets, variables and optional workflows may be specified in a flexible format configuration file. Configuration statements may specify, for example, a region and date range, and the creation of images, plots and statistical summary tables for a long list of variables. SatelliteDL enforces data provenance; all data should be traceable and reproducible. The output NetCDF file metadata holds a complete history of the original datasets and their transformations, and a method exists to reconstruct a configuration file from this information. Release 0.1.0 distributes with ingest methods for GOES, MODIS, VIIRS and CERES radiance data (L1) as well as select 2D atmosphere products (L2) such as aerosol and cloud (MODIS and VIIRS) and radiant flux (CERES). Future releases will provide ingest methods for ocean and land surface products, gridded and time averaged datasets (L3 Daily, Monthly and Yearly), and support for 3D products such as temperature and water vapor profiles. Emphasis will be on NPP Sensor, Environmental and Climate Data Records as they become available. To obtain SatelliteDL, please visit the project website at http://www.txcorp.com/SatelliteDL

The ALFA (Activity Log Files Aggregation) Toolkit: A Method for Precise Observation of the Consultation

PubMed Central

2008-01-01

Background There is a lack of tools to evaluate and compare Electronic patient record (EPR) systems to inform a rational choice or development agenda. Objective To develop a tool kit to measure the impact of different EPR system features on the consultation. Methods We first developed a specification to overcome the limitations of existing methods. We divided this into work packages: (1) developing a method to display multichannel video of the consultation; (2) code and measure activities, including computer use and verbal interactions; (3) automate the capture of nonverbal interactions; (4) aggregate multiple observations into a single navigable output; and (5) produce an output interpretable by software developers. We piloted this method by filming live consultations (n = 22) by 4 general practitioners (GPs) using different EPR systems. We compared the time taken and variations during coded data entry, prescribing, and blood pressure (BP) recording. We used nonparametric tests to make statistical comparisons. We contrasted methods of BP recording using Unified Modeling Language (UML) sequence diagrams. Results We found that 4 channels of video were optimal. We identified an existing application for manual coding of video output. We developed in-house tools for capturing use of keyboard and mouse and to time stamp speech. The transcript is then typed within this time stamp. Although we managed to capture body language using pattern recognition software, we were unable to use this data quantitatively. We loaded these observational outputs into our aggregation tool, which allows simultaneous navigation and viewing of multiple files. This also creates a single exportable file in XML format, which we used to develop UML sequence diagrams. In our pilot, the GP using the EMIS LV (Egton Medical Information Systems Limited, Leeds, UK) system took the longest time to code data (mean 11.5 s, 95% CI 8.7-14.2). Nonparametric comparison of EMIS LV with the other systems showed a significant difference, with EMIS PCS (Egton Medical Information Systems Limited, Leeds, UK) (P = .007), iSoft Synergy (iSOFT, Banbury, UK) (P = .014), and INPS Vision (INPS, London, UK) (P = .006) facilitating faster coding. In contrast, prescribing was fastest with EMIS LV (mean 23.7 s, 95% CI 20.5-26.8), but nonparametric comparison showed no statistically significant difference. UML sequence diagrams showed that the simplest BP recording interface was not the easiest to use, as users spent longer navigating or looking up previous blood pressures separately. Complex interfaces with free-text boxes left clinicians unsure of what to add. Conclusions The ALFA method allows the precise observation of the clinical consultation. It enables rigorous comparison of core elements of EPR systems. Pilot data suggests its capacity to demonstrate differences between systems. Its outputs could provide the evidence base for making more objective choices between systems. PMID:18812313

Unipro UGENE: a unified bioinformatics toolkit.

PubMed

Okonechnikov, Konstantin; Golosova, Olga; Fursov, Mikhail

2012-04-15

Unipro UGENE is a multiplatform open-source software with the main goal of assisting molecular biologists without much expertise in bioinformatics to manage, analyze and visualize their data. UGENE integrates widely used bioinformatics tools within a common user interface. The toolkit supports multiple biological data formats and allows the retrieval of data from remote data sources. It provides visualization modules for biological objects such as annotated genome sequences, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) assembly data, multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetic trees and 3D structures. Most of the integrated algorithms are tuned for maximum performance by the usage of multithreading and special processor instructions. UGENE includes a visual environment for creating reusable workflows that can be launched on local resources or in a High Performance Computing (HPC) environment. UGENE is written in C++ using the Qt framework. The built-in plugin system and structured UGENE API make it possible to extend the toolkit with new functionality. UGENE binaries are freely available for MS Windows, Linux and Mac OS X at http://ugene.unipro.ru/download.html. UGENE code is licensed under the GPLv2; the information about the code licensing and copyright of integrated tools can be found in the LICENSE.3rd_party file provided with the source bundle.

STOCK: Structure mapper and online coarse-graining kit for molecular simulations

DOE PAGES

Bevc, Staš; Junghans, Christoph; Praprotnik, Matej

2015-03-15

We present a web toolkit STructure mapper and Online Coarse-graining Kit for setting up coarse-grained molecular simulations. The kit consists of two tools: structure mapping and Boltzmann inversion tools. The aim of the first tool is to define a molecular mapping from high, e.g. all-atom, to low, i.e. coarse-grained, resolution. Using a graphical user interface it generates input files, which are compatible with standard coarse-graining packages, e.g. VOTCA and DL_CGMAP. Our second tool generates effective potentials for coarse-grained simulations preserving the structural properties, e.g. radial distribution functions, of the underlying higher resolution model. The required distribution functions can be providedmore » by any simulation package. Simulations are performed on a local machine and only the distributions are uploaded to the server. The applicability of the toolkit is validated by mapping atomistic pentane and polyalanine molecules to a coarse-grained representation. Effective potentials are derived for systems of TIP3P (transferable intermolecular potential 3 point) water molecules and salt solution. The presented coarse-graining web toolkit is available at http://stock.cmm.ki.si.« less

The IATH ELAN Text-Sync Tool: A Simple System for Mobilizing ELAN Transcripts On- or Off-Line

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dobrin, Lise M.; Ross, Douglas

2017-01-01

In this article we present the IATH ELAN Text-Sync Tool (ETST; see http://community.village.virginia.edu/etst), a series of scripts and workflow for playing ELAN files and associated audiovisual media in a web browser either on- or off-line. ELAN has become an indispensable part of documentary linguists' toolkit, but it is less than ideal for…

Technical note: DIRART--A software suite for deformable image registration and adaptive radiotherapy research.

PubMed

Yang, Deshan; Brame, Scott; El Naqa, Issam; Aditya, Apte; Wu, Yu; Goddu, S Murty; Mutic, Sasa; Deasy, Joseph O; Low, Daniel A

2011-01-01

Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in image guide radiotherapy technology and a growing interest in the possibilities for adapting treatment planning and delivery over the course of treatment. One obstacle faced by the research community has been the lack of a comprehensive open-source software toolkit dedicated for adaptive radiotherapy (ART). To address this need, the authors have developed a software suite called the Deformable Image Registration and Adaptive Radiotherapy Toolkit (DIRART). DIRART is an open-source toolkit developed in MATLAB. It is designed in an object-oriented style with focus on user-friendliness, features, and flexibility. It contains four classes of DIR algorithms, including the newer inverse consistency algorithms to provide consistent displacement vector field in both directions. It also contains common ART functions, an integrated graphical user interface, a variety of visualization and image-processing features, dose metric analysis functions, and interface routines. These interface routines make DIRART a powerful complement to the Computational Environment for Radiotherapy Research (CERR) and popular image-processing toolkits such as ITK. DIRART provides a set of image processing/registration algorithms and postprocessing functions to facilitate the development and testing of DIR algorithms. It also offers a good amount of options for DIR results visualization, evaluation, and validation. By exchanging data with treatment planning systems via DICOM-RT files and CERR, and by bringing image registration algorithms closer to radiotherapy applications, DIRART is potentially a convenient and flexible platform that may facilitate ART and DIR research. 0 2011 Ameri-

BuddySuite: Command-Line Toolkits for Manipulating Sequences, Alignments, and Phylogenetic Trees.

PubMed

Bond, Stephen R; Keat, Karl E; Barreira, Sofia N; Baxevanis, Andreas D

2017-06-01

The ability to manipulate sequence, alignment, and phylogenetic tree files has become an increasingly important skill in the life sciences, whether to generate summary information or to prepare data for further downstream analysis. The command line can be an extremely powerful environment for interacting with these resources, but only if the user has the appropriate general-purpose tools on hand. BuddySuite is a collection of four independent yet interrelated command-line toolkits that facilitate each step in the workflow of sequence discovery, curation, alignment, and phylogenetic reconstruction. Most common sequence, alignment, and tree file formats are automatically detected and parsed, and over 100 tools have been implemented for manipulating these data. The project has been engineered to easily accommodate the addition of new tools, is written in the popular programming language Python, and is hosted on the Python Package Index and GitHub to maximize accessibility. Documentation for each BuddySuite tool, including usage examples, is available at http://tiny.cc/buddysuite_wiki. All software is open source and freely available through http://research.nhgri.nih.gov/software/BuddySuite. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2017. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the US.

Using Satellite Remote Sensing to Assist the National Weather Service (NWS) in Storm Damage Surveys

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schultz, Lori A.; Molthan, Andrew; McGrath, Kevin; Bell, Jordan; Cole, Tony; Burks, Jason

2016-01-01

In the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) is charged with performing damage assessments when storm or tornado damage is suspected after a severe weather event. This has led to the development of the Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT), an application for smartphones, tablets and web browsers that allows for the collection, geolocation, and aggregation of various damage indicators collected during storm surveys.

26 CFR 1.614-5 - Special rules as to aggregating nonoperating mineral interests.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... section. (b) Manner and scope of election—(1) Time for filing application for permission to aggregate separate nonoperating mineral interests under paragraph (a) of this section. The application for permission... and returns under permission. The application for permission to aggregate nonoperating mineral...

Census of Population and Housing, 1980: Summary Tape File 1F, School Districts. Technical Documentation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bureau of the Census (DOC), Washington, DC. Data User Services Div.

This report provides technical documentation associated with a 1980 Census of Population and Housing Summary Tape File 1F--the School Districts File. The file contains complete-count data of population and housing aggregated by school district. Population items tabulated include age, race (provisional data), sex, marital status, Spanish origin…

CHASM and SNVBox: toolkit for detecting biologically important single nucleotide mutations in cancer.

PubMed

Wong, Wing Chung; Kim, Dewey; Carter, Hannah; Diekhans, Mark; Ryan, Michael C; Karchin, Rachel

2011-08-01

Thousands of cancer exomes are currently being sequenced, yielding millions of non-synonymous single nucleotide variants (SNVs) of possible relevance to disease etiology. Here, we provide a software toolkit to prioritize SNVs based on their predicted contribution to tumorigenesis. It includes a database of precomputed, predictive features covering all positions in the annotated human exome and can be used either stand-alone or as part of a larger variant discovery pipeline. MySQL database, source code and binaries freely available for academic/government use at http://wiki.chasmsoftware.org, Source in Python and C++. Requires 32 or 64-bit Linux system (tested on Fedora Core 8,10,11 and Ubuntu 10), 2.5*≤ Python <3.0*, MySQL server >5.0, 60 GB available hard disk space (50 MB for software and data files, 40 GB for MySQL database dump when uncompressed), 2 GB of RAM.

Genetic Code Analysis Toolkit: A novel tool to explore the coding properties of the genetic code and DNA sequences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kraljić, K.; Strüngmann, L.; Fimmel, E.; Gumbel, M.

2018-01-01

The genetic code is degenerated and it is assumed that redundancy provides error detection and correction mechanisms in the translation process. However, the biological meaning of the code's structure is still under current research. This paper presents a Genetic Code Analysis Toolkit (GCAT) which provides workflows and algorithms for the analysis of the structure of nucleotide sequences. In particular, sets or sequences of codons can be transformed and tested for circularity, comma-freeness, dichotomic partitions and others. GCAT comes with a fertile editor custom-built to work with the genetic code and a batch mode for multi-sequence processing. With the ability to read FASTA files or load sequences from GenBank, the tool can be used for the mathematical and statistical analysis of existing sequence data. GCAT is Java-based and provides a plug-in concept for extensibility. Availability: Open source Homepage:http://www.gcat.bio/

The Trick Simulation Toolkit: A NASA/Opensource Framework for Running Time Based Physics Models

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Penn, John M.

2016-01-01

The Trick Simulation Toolkit is a simulation development environment used to create high fidelity training and engineering simulations at the NASA Johnson Space Center and many other NASA facilities. Its purpose is to generate a simulation executable from a collection of user-supplied models and a simulation definition file. For each Trick-based simulation, Trick automatically provides job scheduling, numerical integration, the ability to write and restore human readable checkpoints, data recording, interactive variable manipulation, a run-time interpreter, and many other commonly needed capabilities. This allows simulation developers to concentrate on their domain expertise and the algorithms and equations of their models. Also included in Trick are tools for plotting recorded data and various other supporting utilities and libraries. Trick is written in C/C++ and Java and supports both Linux and MacOSX computer operating systems. This paper describes Trick's design and use at NASA Johnson Space Center.

Online data handling and storage at the CMS experiment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andre, J.-M.; Andronidis, A.; Behrens, U.; Branson, J.; Chaze, O.; Cittolin, S.; Darlea, G.-L.; Deldicque, C.; Demiragli, Z.; Dobson, M.; Dupont, A.; Erhan, S.; Gigi, D.; Glege, F.; Gómez-Ceballos, G.; Hegeman, J.; Holzner, A.; Jimenez-Estupiñán, R.; Masetti, L.; Meijers, F.; Meschi, E.; Mommsen, RK; Morovic, S.; Nuñez-Barranco-Fernández, C.; O'Dell, V.; Orsini, L.; Paus, C.; Petrucci, A.; Pieri, M.; Racz, A.; Roberts, P.; Sakulin, H.; Schwick, C.; Stieger, B.; Sumorok, K.; Veverka, J.; Zaza, S.; Zejdl, P.

2015-12-01

During the LHC Long Shutdown 1, the CMS Data Acquisition (DAQ) system underwent a partial redesign to replace obsolete network equipment, use more homogeneous switching technologies, and support new detector back-end electronics. The software and hardware infrastructure to provide input, execute the High Level Trigger (HLT) algorithms and deal with output data transport and storage has also been redesigned to be completely file- based. All the metadata needed for bookkeeping are stored in files as well, in the form of small documents using the JSON encoding. The Storage and Transfer System (STS) is responsible for aggregating these files produced by the HLT, storing them temporarily and transferring them to the T0 facility at CERN for subsequent offline processing. The STS merger service aggregates the output files from the HLT from ∼62 sources produced with an aggregate rate of ∼2GB/s. An estimated bandwidth of 7GB/s in concurrent read/write mode is needed. Furthermore, the STS has to be able to store several days of continuous running, so an estimated of 250TB of total usable disk space is required. In this article we present the various technological and implementation choices of the three components of the STS: the distributed file system, the merger service and the transfer system.

Online Data Handling and Storage at the CMS Experiment

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

Andre, J. M.; et al.

2015-12-23

During the LHC Long Shutdown 1, the CMS Data Acquisition (DAQ) system underwent a partial redesign to replace obsolete network equipment, use more homogeneous switching technologies, and support new detector back-end electronics. The software and hardware infrastructure to provide input, execute the High Level Trigger (HLT) algorithms and deal with output data transport and storage has also been redesigned to be completely file- based. All the metadata needed for bookkeeping are stored in files as well, in the form of small documents using the JSON encoding. The Storage and Transfer System (STS) is responsible for aggregating these files produced bymore » the HLT, storing them temporarily and transferring them to the T0 facility at CERN for subsequent offline processing. The STS merger service aggregates the output files from the HLT from ~62 sources produced with an aggregate rate of ~2GB/s. An estimated bandwidth of 7GB/s in concurrent read/write mode is needed. Furthermore, the STS has to be able to store several days of continuous running, so an estimated of 250TB of total usable disk space is required. In this article we present the various technological and implementation choices of the three components of the STS: the distributed file system, the merger service and the transfer system.« less

Integrated Autonomous Network Management (IANM) Multi-Topology Route Manager and Analyzer

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-02-01

zebra tmg mtrcli xinetd (tftp) mysql configuration file (mtrrm.conf) configuration file (mtrrmAggregator.properties) tftp files /tftpboot NetFlow PDUs...configuration upload/download snmp, telnet OSPFv2 user interface tmg Figure 6-2. Internal software organization Figure 6-2 illustrates the main

Modifications to the accuracy assessment analysis routine MLTCRP to produce an output file

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Carnes, J. G.

1978-01-01

Modifications are described that were made to the analysis program MLTCRP in the accuracy assessment software system to produce a disk output file. The output files produced by this modified program are used to aggregate data for regions greater than a single segment.

Technical Note: DIRART – A software suite for deformable image registration and adaptive radiotherapy research

PubMed Central

Yang, Deshan; Brame, Scott; El Naqa, Issam; Aditya, Apte; Wu, Yu; Murty Goddu, S.; Mutic, Sasa; Deasy, Joseph O.; Low, Daniel A.

2011-01-01

Purpose: Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in image guide radiotherapy technology and a growing interest in the possibilities for adapting treatment planning and delivery over the course of treatment. One obstacle faced by the research community has been the lack of a comprehensive open-source software toolkit dedicated for adaptive radiotherapy (ART). To address this need, the authors have developed a software suite called the Deformable Image Registration and Adaptive Radiotherapy Toolkit (DIRART). Methods:DIRART is an open-source toolkit developed in MATLAB. It is designed in an object-oriented style with focus on user-friendliness, features, and flexibility. It contains four classes of DIR algorithms, including the newer inverse consistency algorithms to provide consistent displacement vector field in both directions. It also contains common ART functions, an integrated graphical user interface, a variety of visualization and image-processing features, dose metric analysis functions, and interface routines. These interface routines make DIRART a powerful complement to the Computational Environment for Radiotherapy Research (CERR) and popular image-processing toolkits such as ITK. Results: DIRART provides a set of image processing∕registration algorithms and postprocessing functions to facilitate the development and testing of DIR algorithms. It also offers a good amount of options for DIR results visualization, evaluation, and validation. Conclusions: By exchanging data with treatment planning systems via DICOM-RT files and CERR, and by bringing image registration algorithms closer to radiotherapy applications, DIRART is potentially a convenient and flexible platform that may facilitate ART and DIR research. PMID:21361176

A topological framework for interactive queries on 3D models in the Web.

PubMed

Figueiredo, Mauro; Rodrigues, José I; Silvestre, Ivo; Veiga-Pires, Cristina

2014-01-01

Several technologies exist to create 3D content for the web. With X3D, WebGL, and X3DOM, it is possible to visualize and interact with 3D models in a web browser. Frequently, three-dimensional objects are stored using the X3D file format for the web. However, there is no explicit topological information, which makes it difficult to design fast algorithms for applications that require adjacency and incidence data. This paper presents a new open source toolkit TopTri (Topological model for Triangle meshes) for Web3D servers that builds the topological model for triangular meshes of manifold or nonmanifold models. Web3D client applications using this toolkit make queries to the web server to get adjacent and incidence information of vertices, edges, and faces. This paper shows the application of the topological information to get minimal local points and iso-lines in a 3D mesh in a web browser. As an application, we present also the interactive identification of stalactites in a cave chamber in a 3D web browser. Several tests show that even for large triangular meshes with millions of triangles, the adjacency and incidence information is returned in real time making the presented toolkit appropriate for interactive Web3D applications.

A Topological Framework for Interactive Queries on 3D Models in the Web

PubMed Central

Figueiredo, Mauro; Rodrigues, José I.; Silvestre, Ivo; Veiga-Pires, Cristina

2014-01-01

Several technologies exist to create 3D content for the web. With X3D, WebGL, and X3DOM, it is possible to visualize and interact with 3D models in a web browser. Frequently, three-dimensional objects are stored using the X3D file format for the web. However, there is no explicit topological information, which makes it difficult to design fast algorithms for applications that require adjacency and incidence data. This paper presents a new open source toolkit TopTri (Topological model for Triangle meshes) for Web3D servers that builds the topological model for triangular meshes of manifold or nonmanifold models. Web3D client applications using this toolkit make queries to the web server to get adjacent and incidence information of vertices, edges, and faces. This paper shows the application of the topological information to get minimal local points and iso-lines in a 3D mesh in a web browser. As an application, we present also the interactive identification of stalactites in a cave chamber in a 3D web browser. Several tests show that even for large triangular meshes with millions of triangles, the adjacency and incidence information is returned in real time making the presented toolkit appropriate for interactive Web3D applications. PMID:24977236

Development of a 'toolkit' to identify medical students at risk of failure to thrive on the course: an exploratory retrospective case study

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background An earlier study at Nottingham suggested that 10-15% of the medical student intake was likely to fail completely or have substantial problems on the course. This is a problem for the students, the Faculty, and society as a whole. If struggling students could be identified early in the course and additional pastoral resources offered, some of this wastage might be avoided. An exploratory case study was conducted to determine whether there were common indicators in the early years, over and above academic failure, that might aid the identification of students potentially at risk. Methods The study group was drawn from five successive cohorts. Students who had experienced difficulties were identified in any of four ways: from Minutes of the Academic Progress Committee; by scanning examination lists at key stages (end of the first two years, and finals at the end of the clinical course); from lists of students flagged to the Postgraduate Deanery as in need of extra monitoring or support; and from progress files of those who had left the course prematurely. Relevant data were extracted from each student's course progress file into a customised database. Results 1188 students were admitted over the five years. 162 (14%) were identified for the study, 75 of whom had failed to complete the course by October 2010. In the 87 who did graduate, a combination of markers in Years 1 and 2 identified over half of those who would subsequently have the most severe problems throughout the course. This 'toolkit' comprised failure of 3 or more examinations per year, an overall average of <50%, health or social difficulties, failure to complete Hepatitis B vaccination on time, and remarks noted about poor attitude or behaviour. Conclusions A simple toolkit of academic and non-academic markers could be used routinely to help identify potential strugglers at an early stage, enabling additional support and guidance to be given to these students. PMID:22098629

WE-H-BRA-04: Biological Geometries for the Monte Carlo Simulation Toolkit TOPASNBio

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

McNamara, A; Held, K; Paganetti, H

2016-06-15

Purpose: New advances in radiation therapy are most likely to come from the complex interface of physics, chemistry and biology. Computational simulations offer a powerful tool for quantitatively investigating radiation interactions with biological tissue and can thus help bridge the gap between physics and biology. The aim of TOPAS-nBio is to provide a comprehensive tool to generate advanced radiobiology simulations. Methods: TOPAS wraps and extends the Geant4 Monte Carlo (MC) simulation toolkit. TOPAS-nBio is an extension to TOPAS which utilizes the physics processes in Geant4-DNA to model biological damage from very low energy secondary electrons. Specialized cell, organelle and molecularmore » geometries were designed for the toolkit. Results: TOPAS-nBio gives the user the capability of simulating biological geometries, ranging from the micron-scale (e.g. cells and organelles) to complex nano-scale geometries (e.g. DNA and proteins). The user interacts with TOPAS-nBio through easy-to-use input parameter files. For example, in a simple cell simulation the user can specify the cell type and size as well as the type, number and size of included organelles. For more detailed nuclear simulations, the user can specify chromosome territories containing chromatin fiber loops, the later comprised of nucleosomes on a double helix. The chromatin fibers can be arranged in simple rigid geometries or within factual globules, mimicking realistic chromosome territories. TOPAS-nBio also provides users with the capability of reading protein data bank 3D structural files to simulate radiation damage to proteins or nucleic acids e.g. histones or RNA. TOPAS-nBio has been validated by comparing results to other track structure simulation software and published experimental measurements. Conclusion: TOPAS-nBio provides users with a comprehensive MC simulation tool for radiobiological simulations, giving users without advanced programming skills the ability to design and run complex simulations.« less

The Model Analyst’s Toolkit: Scientific Model Development, Analysis, and Validation

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-05-20

Charles River’s Metronome framework. This framework is built on top of the same Equinox libraries that the popular Eclipse Development Environment uses...the names are fully visible (see Figure 8). The Metronome framework also provides functionality for undo and redo, so the user can easily correct...mistakes. Figure 8. Changing Pane sizes and layouts in the new Metronome -enhanced MAT This period, we also improved the MAT project file format so

Multimodal Virtual Environments: MAGIC Toolkit and Visual-Haptic Interaction Paradigms

DTIC Science & Technology

1998-01-01

2.7.3 Load/Save Options ..... 2.7.4 Information Display .... 2.8 Library Files. 2.9 Evaluation .............. 3 Visual-Haptic Interactions 3.1...Northwestern University[ Colgate , 1994]. It is possible for a user to touch one side of a thin object and be propelled out the opposite side, because...when there is a high correlation in motion and force between the visual and haptic realms. * Chapter 7 concludes with an evaluation of the application

mzStudio: A Dynamic Digital Canvas for User-Driven Interrogation of Mass Spectrometry Data.

PubMed

Ficarro, Scott B; Alexander, William M; Marto, Jarrod A

2017-08-01

Although not yet truly 'comprehensive', modern mass spectrometry-based experiments can generate quantitative data for a meaningful fraction of the human proteome. Importantly for large-scale protein expression analysis, robust data pipelines are in place for identification of un-modified peptide sequences and aggregation of these data to protein-level quantification. However, interoperable software tools that enable scientists to computationally explore and document novel hypotheses for peptide sequence, modification status, or fragmentation behavior are not well-developed. Here, we introduce mzStudio, an open-source Python module built on our multiplierz project. This desktop application provides a highly-interactive graphical user interface (GUI) through which scientists can examine and annotate spectral features, re-search existing PSMs to test different modifications or new spectral matching algorithms, share results with colleagues, integrate other domain-specific software tools, and finally create publication-quality graphics. mzStudio leverages our common application programming interface (mzAPI) for access to native data files from multiple instrument platforms, including ion trap, quadrupole time-of-flight, Orbitrap, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization, and triple quadrupole mass spectrometers and is compatible with several popular search engines including Mascot, Proteome Discoverer, X!Tandem, and Comet. The mzStudio toolkit enables researchers to create a digital provenance of data analytics and other evidence that support specific peptide sequence assignments.

[Construction of chemical information database based on optical structure recognition technique].

PubMed

Lv, C Y; Li, M N; Zhang, L R; Liu, Z M

2018-04-18

To create a protocol that could be used to construct chemical information database from scientific literature quickly and automatically. Scientific literature, patents and technical reports from different chemical disciplines were collected and stored in PDF format as fundamental datasets. Chemical structures were transformed from published documents and images to machine-readable data by using the name conversion technology and optical structure recognition tool CLiDE. In the process of molecular structure information extraction, Markush structures were enumerated into well-defined monomer molecules by means of QueryTools in molecule editor ChemDraw. Document management software EndNote X8 was applied to acquire bibliographical references involving title, author, journal and year of publication. Text mining toolkit ChemDataExtractor was adopted to retrieve information that could be used to populate structured chemical database from figures, tables, and textual paragraphs. After this step, detailed manual revision and annotation were conducted in order to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the data. In addition to the literature data, computing simulation platform Pipeline Pilot 7.5 was utilized to calculate the physical and chemical properties and predict molecular attributes. Furthermore, open database ChEMBL was linked to fetch known bioactivities, such as indications and targets. After information extraction and data expansion, five separate metadata files were generated, including molecular structure data file, molecular information, bibliographical references, predictable attributes and known bioactivities. Canonical simplified molecular input line entry specification as primary key, metadata files were associated through common key nodes including molecular number and PDF number to construct an integrated chemical information database. A reasonable construction protocol of chemical information database was created successfully. A total of 174 research articles and 25 reviews published in Marine Drugs from January 2015 to June 2016 collected as essential data source, and an elementary marine natural product database named PKU-MNPD was built in accordance with this protocol, which contained 3 262 molecules and 19 821 records. This data aggregation protocol is of great help for the chemical information database construction in accuracy, comprehensiveness and efficiency based on original documents. The structured chemical information database can facilitate the access to medical intelligence and accelerate the transformation of scientific research achievements.

Dynamical patterning modules: physico-genetic determinants of morphological development and evolution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Newman, Stuart A.; Bhat, Ramray

2008-03-01

The shapes and forms of multicellular organisms arise by the generation of new cell states and types and changes in the numbers and rearrangements of the various kinds of cells. While morphogenesis and pattern formation in all animal species are widely recognized to be mediated by the gene products of an evolutionarily conserved 'developmental-genetic toolkit', the link between these molecular players and the physics underlying these processes has been generally ignored. This paper introduces the concept of 'dynamical patterning modules' (DPMs), units consisting of one or more products of the 'toolkit' genes that mobilize physical processes characteristic of chemically and mechanically excitable meso- to macroscopic systems such as cell aggregates: cohesion, viscoelasticity, diffusion, spatiotemporal heterogeneity based on lateral inhibition and multistable and oscillatory dynamics. We suggest that ancient toolkit gene products, most predating the emergence of multicellularity, assumed novel morphogenetic functions due to change in the scale and context inherent to multicellularity. We show that DPMs, acting individually and in concert with each other, constitute a 'pattern language' capable of generating all metazoan body plans and organ forms. The physical dimension of developmental causation implies that multicellular forms during the explosive radiation of animal body plans in the middle Cambrian, approximately 530 million years ago, could have explored an extensive morphospace without concomitant genotypic change or selection for adaptation. The morphologically plastic body plans and organ forms generated by DPMs, and their ontogenetic trajectories, would subsequently have been stabilized and consolidated by natural selection and genetic drift. This perspective also solves the apparent 'molecular homology-analogy paradox', whereby widely divergent modern animal types utilize the same molecular toolkit during development by proposing, in contrast to the Neo-Darwinian principle, that phenotypic disparity early in evolution occurred in advance of, rather than closely tracked, genotypic change.

75 FR 15479 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; The National Securities Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-03-29

... SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION [Release No. 34-61762; File No. SR-NSCC-2010-02] Self-Regulatory Organizations; The National Securities Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of Proposed Rule Change to Aggregate Obligations in Certain Securities Transactions Designated for Settlement on a Trade-for-Trade Basis Marc...

Pydpiper: a flexible toolkit for constructing novel registration pipelines.

PubMed

Friedel, Miriam; van Eede, Matthijs C; Pipitone, Jon; Chakravarty, M Mallar; Lerch, Jason P

2014-01-01

Using neuroimaging technologies to elucidate the relationship between genotype and phenotype and brain and behavior will be a key contribution to biomedical research in the twenty-first century. Among the many methods for analyzing neuroimaging data, image registration deserves particular attention due to its wide range of applications. Finding strategies to register together many images and analyze the differences between them can be a challenge, particularly given that different experimental designs require different registration strategies. Moreover, writing software that can handle different types of image registration pipelines in a flexible, reusable and extensible way can be challenging. In response to this challenge, we have created Pydpiper, a neuroimaging registration toolkit written in Python. Pydpiper is an open-source, freely available software package that provides multiple modules for various image registration applications. Pydpiper offers five key innovations. Specifically: (1) a robust file handling class that allows access to outputs from all stages of registration at any point in the pipeline; (2) the ability of the framework to eliminate duplicate stages; (3) reusable, easy to subclass modules; (4) a development toolkit written for non-developers; (5) four complete applications that run complex image registration pipelines "out-of-the-box." In this paper, we will discuss both the general Pydpiper framework and the various ways in which component modules can be pieced together to easily create new registration pipelines. This will include a discussion of the core principles motivating code development and a comparison of Pydpiper with other available toolkits. We also provide a comprehensive, line-by-line example to orient users with limited programming knowledge and highlight some of the most useful features of Pydpiper. In addition, we will present the four current applications of the code.

Pydpiper: a flexible toolkit for constructing novel registration pipelines

PubMed Central

Friedel, Miriam; van Eede, Matthijs C.; Pipitone, Jon; Chakravarty, M. Mallar; Lerch, Jason P.

2014-01-01

Using neuroimaging technologies to elucidate the relationship between genotype and phenotype and brain and behavior will be a key contribution to biomedical research in the twenty-first century. Among the many methods for analyzing neuroimaging data, image registration deserves particular attention due to its wide range of applications. Finding strategies to register together many images and analyze the differences between them can be a challenge, particularly given that different experimental designs require different registration strategies. Moreover, writing software that can handle different types of image registration pipelines in a flexible, reusable and extensible way can be challenging. In response to this challenge, we have created Pydpiper, a neuroimaging registration toolkit written in Python. Pydpiper is an open-source, freely available software package that provides multiple modules for various image registration applications. Pydpiper offers five key innovations. Specifically: (1) a robust file handling class that allows access to outputs from all stages of registration at any point in the pipeline; (2) the ability of the framework to eliminate duplicate stages; (3) reusable, easy to subclass modules; (4) a development toolkit written for non-developers; (5) four complete applications that run complex image registration pipelines “out-of-the-box.” In this paper, we will discuss both the general Pydpiper framework and the various ways in which component modules can be pieced together to easily create new registration pipelines. This will include a discussion of the core principles motivating code development and a comparison of Pydpiper with other available toolkits. We also provide a comprehensive, line-by-line example to orient users with limited programming knowledge and highlight some of the most useful features of Pydpiper. In addition, we will present the four current applications of the code. PMID:25126069

CHASM and SNVBox: toolkit for detecting biologically important single nucleotide mutations in cancer

PubMed Central

Carter, Hannah; Diekhans, Mark; Ryan, Michael C.; Karchin, Rachel

2011-01-01

Summary: Thousands of cancer exomes are currently being sequenced, yielding millions of non-synonymous single nucleotide variants (SNVs) of possible relevance to disease etiology. Here, we provide a software toolkit to prioritize SNVs based on their predicted contribution to tumorigenesis. It includes a database of precomputed, predictive features covering all positions in the annotated human exome and can be used either stand-alone or as part of a larger variant discovery pipeline. Availability and Implementation: MySQL database, source code and binaries freely available for academic/government use at http://wiki.chasmsoftware.org, Source in Python and C++. Requires 32 or 64-bit Linux system (tested on Fedora Core 8,10,11 and Ubuntu 10), 2.5*≤ Python <3.0*, MySQL server >5.0, 60 GB available hard disk space (50 MB for software and data files, 40 GB for MySQL database dump when uncompressed), 2 GB of RAM. Contact: karchin@jhu.edu Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:21685053

Multi-Physics Demonstration Problem with the SHARP Reactor Simulation Toolkit

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

Merzari, E.; Shemon, E. R.; Yu, Y. Q.

This report describes to employ SHARP to perform a first-of-a-kind analysis of the core radial expansion phenomenon in an SFR. This effort required significant advances in the framework Multi-Physics Demonstration Problem with the SHARP Reactor Simulation Toolkit used to drive the coupled simulations, manipulate the mesh in response to the deformation of the geometry, and generate the necessary modified mesh files. Furthermore, the model geometry is fairly complex, and consistent mesh generation for the three physics modules required significant effort. Fully-integrated simulations of a 7-assembly mini-core test problem have been performed, and the results are presented here. Physics models ofmore » a full-core model of the Advanced Burner Test Reactor have also been developed for each of the three physics modules. Standalone results of each of the three physics modules for the ABTR are presented here, which provides a demonstration of the feasibility of the fully-integrated simulation.« less

27 CFR 46.107 - Penalty for failure to file return or to pay tax.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... before the date for filing prescribed in § 46.103 must pay, in addition to the tax, a delinquency penalty....109). The delinquency penalty for failure to file the return on or before the last date prescribed... during which the delinquency continues, but not more than 25 percent in the aggregate. (b) Failure to pay...

Dissemination of Earth Remote Sensing Data for Use in the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Molthan, Andrew; Burks, Jason; Camp, Parks; McGrath, Kevin; Bell, Jordan

2015-01-01

The National Weather Service has developed the Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT), an application for smartphones and tablets that allows for the collection, geolocation, and aggregation of various damage indicators that are collected during storm surveys. The DAT supports the often labor-intensive process where meteorologists venture into the storm-affected area, allowing them to acquire geotagged photos of the observed damage while also assigning estimated EF-scale categories based upon their observations. Once the data are collected, the DAT infrastructure aggregates the observations into a server that allows other meteorologists to perform quality control and other analysis steps before completing their survey and making the resulting data available to the public. In addition to in-person observations, Earth remote sensing from operational, polar-orbiting satellites can support the damage assessment process by identifying portions of damage tracks that may be missed due to road limitations, access to private property, or time constraints. Products resulting from change detection techniques can identify damage to vegetation and the land surface, aiding in the survey process. In addition, higher resolution commercial imagery can corroborate ground-based surveys by examining higher-resolution commercial imagery. As part of an ongoing collaboration, NASA and NOAA are working to integrate near real-time Earth remote sensing observations into the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit. This presentation will highlight recent developments in a streamlined approach for disseminating Earth remote sensing data via web mapping services and a new menu interface that has been integrated within the DAT. A review of current and future products will be provided, including products derived from MODIS and VIIRS for preliminary track identification, along with conduits for higher-resolution Landsat, ASTER, and commercial imagery as they become available. In addition to tornado damage assessments, the team is also investigating the use of near real-time imagery for identifying hail damage to vegetation, which also results in large swaths of damage, particularly in the central United States during the peak growing season months of June, July, and August. This presentation will present an overview of recent activities, challenges and successes, best practices, and opportunities for future work and collaboration

12 CFR 1402.27 - Aggregating requests.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... Information § 1402.27 Aggregating requests. A requester may not file multiple requests at the same time, each... in concert, is attempting to break a request down into a series of requests for the purpose of... reasonable is the time period over which the requests have occurred. ...

12 CFR 1402.27 - Aggregating requests.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... Information § 1402.27 Aggregating requests. A requester may not file multiple requests at the same time, each... in concert, is attempting to break a request down into a series of requests for the purpose of... reasonable is the time period over which the requests have occurred. ...

12 CFR 1402.27 - Aggregating requests.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... Information § 1402.27 Aggregating requests. A requester may not file multiple requests at the same time, each... in concert, is attempting to break a request down into a series of requests for the purpose of... reasonable is the time period over which the requests have occurred. ...

National Geocoding Converter File 1 : Volume 3. Montana to Wyoming.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1974-01-01

This file contains a record for each county, county equivalent (as defined by the Census Bureau), SMSA county segment and SPLC county segment in the U.S. A record identifies for an area all major county codes and the associated county aggregate codes

National Geocoding Converter File 1 : Volume 1. Structure & Content.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1974-01-01

This file contains a record for each county, county equivalent (as defined by the Census Bureau), SMSA county segment and SPLC county segment in the U.S. A record identifies for an area all major county codes and the associated county aggregate codes

78 FR 3483 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; The Options Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing of Advance...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-01-16

... Harris Bank N.A. (``Lender'') having a maximum aggregate principal loan amount not to exceed $25 million... February 6, 2013. By the Commission. Kevin O'Neill, Deputy Secretary. [FR Doc. 2013-00795 Filed 1-15-13; 8...

Network issues for large mass storage requirements

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Perdue, James

1992-01-01

File Servers and Supercomputing environments need high performance networks to balance the I/O requirements seen in today's demanding computing scenarios. UltraNet is one solution which permits both high aggregate transfer rates and high task-to-task transfer rates as demonstrated in actual tests. UltraNet provides this capability as both a Server-to-Server and Server-to-Client access network giving the supercomputing center the following advantages highest performance Transport Level connections (to 40 MBytes/sec effective rates); matches the throughput of the emerging high performance disk technologies, such as RAID, parallel head transfer devices and software striping; supports standard network and file system applications using SOCKET's based application program interface such as FTP, rcp, rdump, etc.; supports access to the Network File System (NFS) and LARGE aggregate bandwidth for large NFS usage; provides access to a distributed, hierarchical data server capability using DISCOS UniTree product; supports file server solutions available from multiple vendors, including Cray, Convex, Alliant, FPS, IBM, and others.

The MOLGENIS toolkit: rapid prototyping of biosoftware at the push of a button.

PubMed

Swertz, Morris A; Dijkstra, Martijn; Adamusiak, Tomasz; van der Velde, Joeri K; Kanterakis, Alexandros; Roos, Erik T; Lops, Joris; Thorisson, Gudmundur A; Arends, Danny; Byelas, George; Muilu, Juha; Brookes, Anthony J; de Brock, Engbert O; Jansen, Ritsert C; Parkinson, Helen

2010-12-21

There is a huge demand on bioinformaticians to provide their biologists with user friendly and scalable software infrastructures to capture, exchange, and exploit the unprecedented amounts of new *omics data. We here present MOLGENIS, a generic, open source, software toolkit to quickly produce the bespoke MOLecular GENetics Information Systems needed. The MOLGENIS toolkit provides bioinformaticians with a simple language to model biological data structures and user interfaces. At the push of a button, MOLGENIS' generator suite automatically translates these models into a feature-rich, ready-to-use web application including database, user interfaces, exchange formats, and scriptable interfaces. Each generator is a template of SQL, JAVA, R, or HTML code that would require much effort to write by hand. This 'model-driven' method ensures reuse of best practices and improves quality because the modeling language and generators are shared between all MOLGENIS applications, so that errors are found quickly and improvements are shared easily by a re-generation. A plug-in mechanism ensures that both the generator suite and generated product can be customized just as much as hand-written software. In recent years we have successfully evaluated the MOLGENIS toolkit for the rapid prototyping of many types of biomedical applications, including next-generation sequencing, GWAS, QTL, proteomics and biobanking. Writing 500 lines of model XML typically replaces 15,000 lines of hand-written programming code, which allows for quick adaptation if the information system is not yet to the biologist's satisfaction. Each application generated with MOLGENIS comes with an optimized database back-end, user interfaces for biologists to manage and exploit their data, programming interfaces for bioinformaticians to script analysis tools in R, Java, SOAP, REST/JSON and RDF, a tab-delimited file format to ease upload and exchange of data, and detailed technical documentation. Existing databases can be quickly enhanced with MOLGENIS generated interfaces using the 'ExtractModel' procedure. The MOLGENIS toolkit provides bioinformaticians with a simple model to quickly generate flexible web platforms for all possible genomic, molecular and phenotypic experiments with a richness of interfaces not provided by other tools. All the software and manuals are available free as LGPLv3 open source at http://www.molgenis.org.

Applications of Earth Remote Sensing for Identifying Tornado and Severe Weather Damage

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schultz, Lori; Molthan, Andrew; Burks, Jason E.; Bell, Jordan; McGrath, Kevin; Cole, Tony

2016-01-01

NASA SPoRT (Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center) provided MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) and ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) imagery to WFOs (Weather Forecast Offices) in Alabama to support April 27th, 2011 damage assessments across the state. SPoRT was awarded a NASA Applied Science: Disasters Feasibility award to investigate the applicability of including remote sensing imagery and derived products into the NOAA/NWS (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Weather System) Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT). Proposal team was awarded the 3-year proposal to implement a web mapping service and associate data feeds from the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) to provide satellite imagery and derived products directly to the NWS thru the DAT. In the United States, NOAA/NWS is charged with performing damage assessments when storm or tornado damage is suspected after a severe weather event. This has led to the development of the Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT), an application for smartphones, tablets and web browsers that allows for the collection, geo-location, and aggregation of various damage indicators collected during storm surveys.

Dataset of aggregate producers in New Mexico

USGS Publications Warehouse

Orris, Greta J.

2000-01-01

This report presents data, including latitude and longitude, for aggregate sites in New Mexico that were believed to be active in the period 1997-1999. The data are presented in paper form in Part A of this report and as Microsoft Excel 97 and Data Interchange Format (DIF) files in Part B. The work was undertaken as part of the effort to update information for the National Atlas. This compilation includes data from: the files of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); company contacts; the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, New Mexico Bureau of Mine Inspection, and the Mining and Minerals Division of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (Hatton and others, 1998); the Bureau of Land Management Information; and direct communications with some of the aggregate operators. Additional information on most of the sites is available in Hatton and others (1998).

New Mexico aggregate production sites, 1997-1999

USGS Publications Warehouse

Orris, Greta J.

2000-01-01

This report presents data, including latitude and longitude, for aggregate sites in New Mexico that were believed to be active in the period 1997-1999. The data are presented in paper form in Part A of this report and as Microsoft Excel 97 and Data Interchange Format (DIF) files in Part B. The work was undertaken as part of the effort to update information for the National Atlas. This compilation includes data from: the files of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); company contacts; the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, New Mexico Bureau of Mine Inspection, and the Mining and Minerals Division of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (Hatton and others, 1998); the Bureau of Land Management Information; and direct communications with some of the aggregate operators. Additional information on most of the sites is available in Hatton and others (1998).

Example MODIS Global Cloud Optical and Microphysical Properties: Comparisons between Terra and Aqua

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hubanks, P. A.; Platnick, S.; King, M. D.; Ackerman, S. A.; Frey, R. A.

2003-01-01

MODIS observations from the NASA EOS Terra spacecraft (launched in December 1999, 1030 local time equatorial crossing) have provided a unique data set of Earth observations. With the launch of the NASA Aqua spacecraft in May 2002 (1330 local time), two MODIS daytime (sunlit) and nighttime observations are now available in a 24 hour period, allowing for some measure of diurnal variability. We report on an initial analysis of several operational global (Level-3) cloud products from the two platforms. The MODIS atmosphere Level-3 products, which include clear-sky and aerosol products in addition to cloud products, are available as three separate files providing daily, eight-day, and monthly aggregations; each temporal aggregation is spatially aggregated to a 1 degree grid. The files contain approximately 600 statisitical datasets (from simple means and standard deviations to 1 - and 2-dimensional histograms). Operational cloud products include detection (cloud fraction), cloud-top properties, and daytimeonly cloud optical thickness and particle effective radius for both water and ice clouds. We will compare example global Terra and Aqua cloud fraction, optical thickness, and effective radius aggregations.

DAKOTA Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terascale

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

Adams, Brian M.; Dalbey, Keith R.; Eldred, Michael S.

2010-02-24

The DAKOTA (Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terascale Applications) toolkit provides a flexible and extensible interface between simulation codes (computational models) and iterative analysis methods. By employing object-oriented design to implement abstractions of the key components required for iterative systems analyses, the DAKOTA toolkit provides a flexible and extensible problem-solving environment for design and analysis of computational models on high performance computers.A user provides a set of DAKOTA commands in an input file and launches DAKOTA. DAKOTA invokes instances of the computational models, collects their results, and performs systems analyses. DAKOTA contains algorithms for optimization with gradient and nongradient-basedmore » methods; uncertainty quantification with sampling, reliability, polynomial chaos, stochastic collocation, and epistemic methods; parameter estimation with nonlinear least squares methods; and sensitivity/variance analysis with design of experiments and parameter study methods. These capabilities may be used on their own or as components within advanced strategies such as hybrid optimization, surrogate-based optimization, mixed integer nonlinear programming, or optimization under uncertainty. Services for parallel computing, simulation interfacing, approximation modeling, fault tolerance, restart, and graphics are also included.« less

Pyicos: a versatile toolkit for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data.

PubMed

Althammer, Sonja; González-Vallinas, Juan; Ballaré, Cecilia; Beato, Miguel; Eyras, Eduardo

2011-12-15

High-throughput sequencing (HTS) has revolutionized gene regulation studies and is now fundamental for the detection of protein-DNA and protein-RNA binding, as well as for measuring RNA expression. With increasing variety and sequencing depth of HTS datasets, the need for more flexible and memory-efficient tools to analyse them is growing. We describe Pyicos, a powerful toolkit for the analysis of mapped reads from diverse HTS experiments: ChIP-Seq, either punctuated or broad signals, CLIP-Seq and RNA-Seq. We prove the effectiveness of Pyicos to select for significant signals and show that its accuracy is comparable and sometimes superior to that of methods specifically designed for each particular type of experiment. Pyicos facilitates the analysis of a variety of HTS datatypes through its flexibility and memory efficiency, providing a useful framework for data integration into models of regulatory genomics. Open-source software, with tutorials and protocol files, is available at http://regulatorygenomics.upf.edu/pyicos or as a Galaxy server at http://regulatorygenomics.upf.edu/galaxy eduardo.eyras@upf.edu Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Nmrglue: an open source Python package for the analysis of multidimensional NMR data.

PubMed

Helmus, Jonathan J; Jaroniec, Christopher P

2013-04-01

Nmrglue, an open source Python package for working with multidimensional NMR data, is described. When used in combination with other Python scientific libraries, nmrglue provides a highly flexible and robust environment for spectral processing, analysis and visualization and includes a number of common utilities such as linear prediction, peak picking and lineshape fitting. The package also enables existing NMR software programs to be readily tied together, currently facilitating the reading, writing and conversion of data stored in Bruker, Agilent/Varian, NMRPipe, Sparky, SIMPSON, and Rowland NMR Toolkit file formats. In addition to standard applications, the versatility offered by nmrglue makes the package particularly suitable for tasks that include manipulating raw spectrometer data files, automated quantitative analysis of multidimensional NMR spectra with irregular lineshapes such as those frequently encountered in the context of biomacromolecular solid-state NMR, and rapid implementation and development of unconventional data processing methods such as covariance NMR and other non-Fourier approaches. Detailed documentation, install files and source code for nmrglue are freely available at http://nmrglue.com. The source code can be redistributed and modified under the New BSD license.

Nmrglue: An Open Source Python Package for the Analysis of Multidimensional NMR Data

PubMed Central

Helmus, Jonathan J.; Jaroniec, Christopher P.

2013-01-01

Nmrglue, an open source Python package for working with multidimensional NMR data, is described. When used in combination with other Python scientific libraries, nmrglue provides a highly flexible and robust environment for spectral processing, analysis and visualization and includes a number of common utilities such as linear prediction, peak picking and lineshape fitting. The package also enables existing NMR software programs to be readily tied together, currently facilitating the reading, writing and conversion of data stored in Bruker, Agilent/Varian, NMRPipe, Sparky, SIMPSON, and Rowland NMR Toolkit file formats. In addition to standard applications, the versatility offered by nmrglue makes the package particularly suitable for tasks that include manipulating raw spectrometer data files, automated quantitative analysis of multidimensional NMR spectra with irregular lineshapes such as those frequently encountered in the context of biomacromolecular solid-state NMR, and rapid implementation and development of unconventional data processing methods such as covariance NMR and other non-Fourier approaches. Detailed documentation, install files and source code for nmrglue are freely available at http://nmrglue.com. The source code can be redistributed and modified under the New BSD license. PMID:23456039

FITSManager: Management of Personal Astronomical Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cui, Chenzhou; Fan, Dongwei; Zhao, Yongheng; Kembhavi, Ajit; He, Boliang; Cao, Zihuang; Li, Jian; Nandrekar, Deoyani

2011-07-01

With the increase of personal storage capacity, it is easy to find hundreds to thousands of FITS files in the personal computer of an astrophysicist. Because Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) is a professional data format initiated by astronomers and used mainly in the small community, data management toolkits for FITS files are very few. Astronomers need a powerful tool to help them manage their local astronomical data. Although Virtual Observatory (VO) is a network oriented astronomical research environment, its applications and related technologies provide useful solutions to enhance the management and utilization of astronomical data hosted in an astronomer's personal computer. FITSManager is such a tool to provide astronomers an efficient management and utilization of their local data, bringing VO to astronomers in a seamless and transparent way. FITSManager provides fruitful functions for FITS file management, like thumbnail, preview, type dependent icons, header keyword indexing and search, collaborated working with other tools and online services, and so on. The development of the FITSManager is an effort to fill the gap between management and analysis of astronomical data.

Pizza.py Toolkit

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

Plimpton, Steve; Jones, Matt; Crozier, Paul

2006-01-01

Pizza.py is a loosely integrated collection of tools, many of which provide support for the LAMMPS molecular dynamics and ChemCell cell modeling packages. There are tools to create input files. convert between file formats, process log and dump files, create plots, and visualize and animate simulation snapshots. Software packages that are wrapped by Pizza.py. so they can invoked from within Python, include GnuPlot, MatLab, Raster3d. and RasMol. Pizza.py is written in Python and runs on any platform that supports Python. Pizza.py enhances the standard Python interpreter in a few simple ways. Its tools are Python modules which can be invokedmore » interactively, from scripts, or from GUIs when appropriate. Some of the tools require additional Python packages to be installed as part of the users Python. Others are wrappers on software packages (as listed above) which must be available on the users system. It is easy to modify or extend Pizza.py with new functionality or new tools, which need not have anything to do with LAMMPS or ChemCell.« less

Web based tools for visualizing imaging data and development of XNATView, a zero footprint image viewer

PubMed Central

Gutman, David A.; Dunn, William D.; Cobb, Jake; Stoner, Richard M.; Kalpathy-Cramer, Jayashree; Erickson, Bradley

2014-01-01

Advances in web technologies now allow direct visualization of imaging data sets without necessitating the download of large file sets or the installation of software. This allows centralization of file storage and facilitates image review and analysis. XNATView is a light framework recently developed in our lab to visualize DICOM images stored in The Extensible Neuroimaging Archive Toolkit (XNAT). It consists of a PyXNAT-based framework to wrap around the REST application programming interface (API) and query the data in XNAT. XNATView was developed to simplify quality assurance, help organize imaging data, and facilitate data sharing for intra- and inter-laboratory collaborations. Its zero-footprint design allows the user to connect to XNAT from a web browser, navigate through projects, experiments, and subjects, and view DICOM images with accompanying metadata all within a single viewing instance. PMID:24904399

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... as the product of (i) the Founding Firm aggregate target market share for such measurement period... exceeded its ``Individual Target'' during the measurement period. A Founding Firm's Individual Target is its pro rata portion of an aggregate Founding Firm target contribution to the annual volume of the...

31 CFR 103.22 - Reports of transactions in currency.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... exemption would not apply); and (D) Jackpots from slot machines or video lottery terminals. (c) Aggregation...'s obligation, to file a report required by § 103.18 with respect to any transaction, including any... transaction that is described in § 103.18(a)(2)(i), (ii), or (iii), or relieves a bank of any reporting or...

SatelliteDL - An IDL Toolkit for the Analysis of Satellite Earth Observations - GOES, MODIS, VIIRS and CERES

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fillmore, D. W.; Galloy, M. D.; Kindig, D.

2013-12-01

SatelliteDL is an IDL toolkit for the analysis of satellite Earth observations from a diverse set of platforms and sensors. The design features an abstraction layer that allows for easy inclusion of new datasets in a modular way. The core function of the toolkit is the spatial and temporal alignment of satellite swath and geostationary data. IDL has a powerful suite of statistical and visualization tools that can be used in conjunction with SatelliteDL. Our overarching objective is to create utilities that automate the mundane aspects of satellite data analysis, are extensible and maintainable, and do not place limitations on the analysis itself. Toward this end we have constructed SatelliteDL to include (1) HTML and LaTeX API document generation, (2) a unit test framework, (3) automatic message and error logs, (4) HTML and LaTeX plot and table generation, and (5) several real world examples with bundled datasets available for download. For ease of use, datasets, variables and optional workflows may be specified in a flexible format configuration file. Configuration statements may specify, for example, a region and date range, and the creation of images, plots and statistical summary tables for a long list of variables. SatelliteDL enforces data provenance; all data should be traceable and reproducible. The output NetCDF file metadata holds a complete history of the original datasets and their transformations, and a method exists to reconstruct a configuration file from this information. Release 0.1.0 of SatelliteDL is anticipated for the 2013 Fall AGU conference. It will distribute with ingest methods for GOES, MODIS, VIIRS and CERES radiance data (L1) as well as select 2D atmosphere products (L2) such as aerosol and cloud (MODIS and VIIRS) and radiant flux (CERES). Future releases will provide ingest methods for ocean and land surface products, gridded and time averaged datasets (L3 Daily, Monthly and Yearly), and support for 3D products such as temperature and water vapor profiles. Emphasis will be on NPP Sensor, Environmental and Climate Data Records as they become available. To obtain SatelliteDL (from 2013 December onward) please visit the project website at the indicated URL. Our poster exhibits three regional weather examples of SatelliteDL in action: (1) a mesoscale convective complex over the Great Plains (GOES, MODIS, VIIRS and CERES), (2) a dust storm over Arabia (MODIS, VIIRS and CERES) and (3) a volcanic ash plume over Patagonia and the South Atlantic (GOES, MODIS and CERES). In these examples the GOES radiances are cross-calibrated with MODIS. Cloud products are shown in examples (1) and (3) and aerosol products in examples (2) and (3).

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Modifications to the accuracy assessment analysis routine SPATL to produce an output file

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Carnes, J. G.

1978-01-01

The SPATL is an analysis program in the Accuracy Assessment Software System which makes comparisons between ground truth information and dot labeling for an individual segment. In order to facilitate the aggregation cf this information, SPATL was modified to produce a disk output file containing the necessary information about each segment.

26 CFR 1.332-6 - Records to be kept and information to be filed with return.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... corporation during the current tax year; (3) The aggregate fair market value and basis, determined immediately... should specifically include information regarding the amount, basis, and fair market value of all... 26 Internal Revenue 4 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Records to be kept and information to be filed...

The MOLGENIS toolkit: rapid prototyping of biosoftware at the push of a button

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background There is a huge demand on bioinformaticians to provide their biologists with user friendly and scalable software infrastructures to capture, exchange, and exploit the unprecedented amounts of new *omics data. We here present MOLGENIS, a generic, open source, software toolkit to quickly produce the bespoke MOLecular GENetics Information Systems needed. Methods The MOLGENIS toolkit provides bioinformaticians with a simple language to model biological data structures and user interfaces. At the push of a button, MOLGENIS’ generator suite automatically translates these models into a feature-rich, ready-to-use web application including database, user interfaces, exchange formats, and scriptable interfaces. Each generator is a template of SQL, JAVA, R, or HTML code that would require much effort to write by hand. This ‘model-driven’ method ensures reuse of best practices and improves quality because the modeling language and generators are shared between all MOLGENIS applications, so that errors are found quickly and improvements are shared easily by a re-generation. A plug-in mechanism ensures that both the generator suite and generated product can be customized just as much as hand-written software. Results In recent years we have successfully evaluated the MOLGENIS toolkit for the rapid prototyping of many types of biomedical applications, including next-generation sequencing, GWAS, QTL, proteomics and biobanking. Writing 500 lines of model XML typically replaces 15,000 lines of hand-written programming code, which allows for quick adaptation if the information system is not yet to the biologist’s satisfaction. Each application generated with MOLGENIS comes with an optimized database back-end, user interfaces for biologists to manage and exploit their data, programming interfaces for bioinformaticians to script analysis tools in R, Java, SOAP, REST/JSON and RDF, a tab-delimited file format to ease upload and exchange of data, and detailed technical documentation. Existing databases can be quickly enhanced with MOLGENIS generated interfaces using the ‘ExtractModel’ procedure. Conclusions The MOLGENIS toolkit provides bioinformaticians with a simple model to quickly generate flexible web platforms for all possible genomic, molecular and phenotypic experiments with a richness of interfaces not provided by other tools. All the software and manuals are available free as LGPLv3 open source at http://www.molgenis.org. PMID:21210979

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17 CFR 230.504 - Exemption for limited offerings and sales of securities not exceeding $1,000,000.

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... require the public filing and delivery to investors of a substantive disclosure document before sale, and... only to “accredited investors” as defined in § 230.501(a). (2) The aggregate offering price for an... § 230.504 fails to meet the limitation on the aggregate offering price, it does not affect the...

Autoplot: a Browser for Science Data on the Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Faden, J.; Weigel, R. S.; West, E. E.; Merka, J.

2008-12-01

Autoplot (www.autoplot.org) is software for plotting data from many different sources and in many different file formats. Data from CDF, CEF, Fits, NetCDF, and OpenDAP can be plotted, along with many other sources such as ASCII tables and Excel spreadsheets. This is done by adapting these various data formats and APIs into a common data model that borrows from the netCDF and CDF data models. Autoplot uses a web browser metaphor to simplify use. The user specifies a parameter URL, for example a CDF file accessible via http with a parameter name appended, and the file resource is downloaded and the parameter is rendered in a scientifically meaningful way. When data span multiple files, the user can use a file name template in the URL to aggregate (combine) a set of remote files. So the problem of aggregating data across file boundaries is handled on the client side, allowing simple web servers to be used. The das2 graphics library provides rich controls for exploring the data. Scripting is supported through Python, providing not just programmatic control, but for calculating new parameters in a language that will look familiar to IDL and Matlab users. Autoplot is Java-based software, and will run on most computers without a burdensome installation process. It can also used as an applet or as a servlet that serves static images. Autoplot was developed as part of the Virtual Radiation Belt Observatory (ViRBO) project, and is also being used for the Virtual Magnetospheric Observatory (VMO). It is expected that this flexible, general-purpose plotting tool will be useful for allowing a data provider to add instant visualization capabilities to a directory of files or for general use in the Virtual Observatory environment.

The intersection of health and wealth: association between personal bankruptcy and myocardial infarction rates in Canada.

PubMed

Savu, Anamaria; Schopflocher, Donald; Scholnick, Barry; Kaul, Padma

2016-01-13

We examined the association between personal bankruptcy filing and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) rates in Canada. Between 2002 and 2009, aggregate and yearly bankruptcy and AMI rates were estimated for 1,155 forward sortation areas of Canada. Scatter plot and correlations were used to assess the association of the aggregate rates. Cross-lagged structural equation models were used to explore the longitudinal relationship between bankruptcy and AMI after adjustment for socio-economic factors. A cross-lagged structural equation model estimated that on average, an increase of 100 in bankruptcy filing count is associated with an increase of 1.5 (p = 0.02) in AMI count in the following year, and an increase of 100 in AMI count is associated with an increase of 7 (p < 0.01) in bankruptcy filing count. We found that regions with higher rates of AMI corresponded to those with higher levels of economic and financial stress, as indicated by personal bankruptcy rate, and vice-versa.

Tripal v1.1: a standards-based toolkit for construction of online genetic and genomic databases.

PubMed

Sanderson, Lacey-Anne; Ficklin, Stephen P; Cheng, Chun-Huai; Jung, Sook; Feltus, Frank A; Bett, Kirstin E; Main, Dorrie

2013-01-01

Tripal is an open-source freely available toolkit for construction of online genomic and genetic databases. It aims to facilitate development of community-driven biological websites by integrating the GMOD Chado database schema with Drupal, a popular website creation and content management software. Tripal provides a suite of tools for interaction with a Chado database and display of content therein. The tools are designed to be generic to support the various ways in which data may be stored in Chado. Previous releases of Tripal have supported organisms, genomic libraries, biological stocks, stock collections and genomic features, their alignments and annotations. Also, Tripal and its extension modules provided loaders for commonly used file formats such as FASTA, GFF, OBO, GAF, BLAST XML, KEGG heir files and InterProScan XML. Default generic templates were provided for common views of biological data, which could be customized using an open Application Programming Interface to change the way data are displayed. Here, we report additional tools and functionality that are part of release v1.1 of Tripal. These include (i) a new bulk loader that allows a site curator to import data stored in a custom tab delimited format; (ii) full support of every Chado table for Drupal Views (a powerful tool allowing site developers to construct novel displays and search pages); (iii) new modules including 'Feature Map', 'Genetic', 'Publication', 'Project', 'Contact' and the 'Natural Diversity' modules. Tutorials, mailing lists, download and set-up instructions, extension modules and other documentation can be found at the Tripal website located at http://tripal.info. DATABASE URL: http://tripal.info/.

Tripal v1.1: a standards-based toolkit for construction of online genetic and genomic databases

PubMed Central

Sanderson, Lacey-Anne; Ficklin, Stephen P.; Cheng, Chun-Huai; Jung, Sook; Feltus, Frank A.; Bett, Kirstin E.; Main, Dorrie

2013-01-01

Tripal is an open-source freely available toolkit for construction of online genomic and genetic databases. It aims to facilitate development of community-driven biological websites by integrating the GMOD Chado database schema with Drupal, a popular website creation and content management software. Tripal provides a suite of tools for interaction with a Chado database and display of content therein. The tools are designed to be generic to support the various ways in which data may be stored in Chado. Previous releases of Tripal have supported organisms, genomic libraries, biological stocks, stock collections and genomic features, their alignments and annotations. Also, Tripal and its extension modules provided loaders for commonly used file formats such as FASTA, GFF, OBO, GAF, BLAST XML, KEGG heir files and InterProScan XML. Default generic templates were provided for common views of biological data, which could be customized using an open Application Programming Interface to change the way data are displayed. Here, we report additional tools and functionality that are part of release v1.1 of Tripal. These include (i) a new bulk loader that allows a site curator to import data stored in a custom tab delimited format; (ii) full support of every Chado table for Drupal Views (a powerful tool allowing site developers to construct novel displays and search pages); (iii) new modules including ‘Feature Map’, ‘Genetic’, ‘Publication’, ‘Project’, ‘Contact’ and the ‘Natural Diversity’ modules. Tutorials, mailing lists, download and set-up instructions, extension modules and other documentation can be found at the Tripal website located at http://tripal.info. Database URL: http://tripal.info/ PMID:24163125

FQC Dashboard: integrates FastQC results into a web-based, interactive, and extensible FASTQ quality control tool

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

Brown, Joseph; Pirrung, Meg; McCue, Lee Ann

FQC is software that facilitates large-scale quality control of FASTQ files by carrying out a QC protocol, parsing results, and aggregating quality metrics within and across experiments into an interactive dashboard. The dashboard utilizes human-readable configuration files to manipulate the pages and tabs, and is extensible with CSV data.

Version 4.0 of code Java for 3D simulation of the CCA model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fan, Linyu; Liao, Jianwei; Zuo, Junsen; Zhang, Kebo; Li, Chao; Xiong, Hailing

2018-07-01

This paper presents a new version Java code for the three-dimensional simulation of Cluster-Cluster Aggregation (CCA) model to replace the previous version. Many redundant traverses of clusters-list in the program were totally avoided, so that the consumed simulation time is significantly reduced. In order to show the aggregation process in a more intuitive way, we have labeled different clusters with varied colors. Besides, a new function is added for outputting the particle's coordinates of aggregates in file to benefit coupling our model with other models.

Methodology for the preliminary design of high performance schools in hot and humid climates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Im, Piljae

A methodology to develop an easy-to-use toolkit for the preliminary design of high performance schools in hot and humid climates was presented. The toolkit proposed in this research will allow decision makers without simulation knowledge easily to evaluate accurately energy efficient measures for K-5 schools, which would contribute to the accelerated dissemination of energy efficient design. For the development of the toolkit, first, a survey was performed to identify high performance measures available today being implemented in new K-5 school buildings. Then an existing case-study school building in a hot and humid climate was selected and analyzed to understand the energy use pattern in a school building and to be used in developing a calibrated simulation. Based on the information from the previous step, an as-built and calibrated simulation was then developed. To accomplish this, five calibration steps were performed to match the simulation results with the measured energy use. The five steps include: (1) Using an actual 2006 weather file with measured solar radiation, (2) Modifying lighting & equipment schedule using ASHRAE's RP-1093 methods, (3) Using actual equipment performance curves (i.e., scroll chiller), (4) Using the Winkelmann's method for the underground floor heat transfer, and (5) Modifying the HVAC and room setpoint temperature based on the measured field data. Next, the calibrated simulation of the case-study K-5 school was compared to an ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 code-compliant school. In the next step, the energy savings potentials from the application of several high performance measures to an equivalent ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 code-compliant school. The high performance measures applied included the recommendations from the ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guides (AEDG) for K-12 and other high performance measures from the literature review as well as a daylighting strategy and solar PV and thermal systems. The results show that the net energy consumption of the final high performance school with the solar thermal and a solar PV system would be 1,162.1 MMBtu, which corresponds to the 14.9 kBtu/sqft-yr of EUI. The calculated final energy and cost savings over the code compliant school are 68.2% and 69.9%, respectively. As a final step of the research, specifications for a simplified easy-to-use toolkit were then developed, and a prototype screenshot of the toolkit was developed. The toolkit is expected to be used by non-technical decision-maker to select and evaluate high performance measures for a new school building in terms of energy and cost savings in a quick and easy way.

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

ReSeqTools: an integrated toolkit for large-scale next-generation sequencing based resequencing analysis.

PubMed

He, W; Zhao, S; Liu, X; Dong, S; Lv, J; Liu, D; Wang, J; Meng, Z

2013-12-04

Large-scale next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based resequencing detects sequence variations, constructs evolutionary histories, and identifies phenotype-related genotypes. However, NGS-based resequencing studies generate extraordinarily large amounts of data, making computations difficult. Effective use and analysis of these data for NGS-based resequencing studies remains a difficult task for individual researchers. Here, we introduce ReSeqTools, a full-featured toolkit for NGS (Illumina sequencing)-based resequencing analysis, which processes raw data, interprets mapping results, and identifies and annotates sequence variations. ReSeqTools provides abundant scalable functions for routine resequencing analysis in different modules to facilitate customization of the analysis pipeline. ReSeqTools is designed to use compressed data files as input or output to save storage space and facilitates faster and more computationally efficient large-scale resequencing studies in a user-friendly manner. It offers abundant practical functions and generates useful statistics during the analysis pipeline, which significantly simplifies resequencing analysis. Its integrated algorithms and abundant sub-functions provide a solid foundation for special demands in resequencing projects. Users can combine these functions to construct their own pipelines for other purposes.

A user-friendly software package to ease the use of VIC hydrologic model for practitioners

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wi, S.; Ray, P.; Brown, C.

2016-12-01

The VIC (Variable Infiltration Capacity) hydrologic and river routing model simulates the water and energy fluxes that occur near the land surface and provides users with useful information regarding the quantity and timing of available water at points of interest within the basin. However, despite its popularity (proved by numerous applications in the literature), its wider adoption is hampered by the considerable effort required to prepare model inputs; e.g., input files storing spatial information related to watershed topography, soil properties, and land cover. This study presents a user-friendly software package (named VIC Setup Toolkit) developed within the MATLAB (matrix laboratory) framework and accessible through an intuitive graphical user interface. The VIC Setup Toolkit enables users to navigate the model building process confidently through prompts and automation, with an intention to promote the use of the model for both practical and academic purposes. The automated processes include watershed delineation, climate and geographical input set-up, model parameter calibration, graph generation and output evaluation. We demonstrate the package's usefulness in various case studies with the American River, Oklahoma River, Feather River and Zambezi River basins.

The MUSOS (MUsic SOftware System) Toolkit: A computer-based, open source application for testing memory for melodies.

PubMed

Rainsford, M; Palmer, M A; Paine, G

2018-04-01

Despite numerous innovative studies, rates of replication in the field of music psychology are extremely low (Frieler et al., 2013). Two key methodological challenges affecting researchers wishing to administer and reproduce studies in music cognition are the difficulty of measuring musical responses, particularly when conducting free-recall studies, and access to a reliable set of novel stimuli unrestricted by copyright or licensing issues. In this article, we propose a solution for these challenges in computer-based administration. We present a computer-based application for testing memory for melodies. Created using the software Max/MSP (Cycling '74, 2014a), the MUSOS (Music Software System) Toolkit uses a simple modular framework configurable for testing common paradigms such as recall, old-new recognition, and stem completion. The program is accompanied by a stimulus set of 156 novel, copyright-free melodies, in audio and Max/MSP file formats. Two pilot tests were conducted to establish the properties of the accompanying stimulus set that are relevant to music cognition and general memory research. By using this software, a researcher without specialist musical training may administer and accurately measure responses from common paradigms used in the study of memory for music.

Pyicos: a versatile toolkit for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data

PubMed Central

Althammer, Sonja; González-Vallinas, Juan; Ballaré, Cecilia; Beato, Miguel; Eyras, Eduardo

2011-01-01

Motivation: High-throughput sequencing (HTS) has revolutionized gene regulation studies and is now fundamental for the detection of protein–DNA and protein–RNA binding, as well as for measuring RNA expression. With increasing variety and sequencing depth of HTS datasets, the need for more flexible and memory-efficient tools to analyse them is growing. Results: We describe Pyicos, a powerful toolkit for the analysis of mapped reads from diverse HTS experiments: ChIP-Seq, either punctuated or broad signals, CLIP-Seq and RNA-Seq. We prove the effectiveness of Pyicos to select for significant signals and show that its accuracy is comparable and sometimes superior to that of methods specifically designed for each particular type of experiment. Pyicos facilitates the analysis of a variety of HTS datatypes through its flexibility and memory efficiency, providing a useful framework for data integration into models of regulatory genomics. Availability: Open-source software, with tutorials and protocol files, is available at http://regulatorygenomics.upf.edu/pyicos or as a Galaxy server at http://regulatorygenomics.upf.edu/galaxy Contact: eduardo.eyras@upf.edu Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:21994224

An object-oriented class library for medical software development.

PubMed

O'Kane, K C; McColligan, E E

1996-12-01

The objective of this research is the development of a Medical Object Library (MOL) consisting of reusable, inheritable, portable, extendable C++ classes that facilitate rapid development of medical software at reduced cost and increased functionality. The result of this research is a library of class objects that range in function from string and hierarchical file handling entities to high level, procedural agents that perform increasingly complex, integrated tasks. A system built upon these classes is compatible with any other system similarly constructed with respect to data definitions, semantics, data organization and storage. As new objects are built, they can be added to the class library for subsequent use. The MOL is a toolkit of software objects intended to support a common file access methodology, a unified medical record structure, consistent message processing, standard graphical display facilities and uniform data collection procedures. This work emphasizes the relationship that potentially exists between the structure of a hierarchical medical record and procedural language components by means of a hierarchical class library and tree structured file access facility. In doing so, it attempts to establish interest in and demonstrate the practicality of the hierarchical medical record model in the modern context of object oriented programming.

TestDose: A nuclear medicine software based on Monte Carlo modeling for generating gamma camera acquisitions and dosimetry

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

Garcia, Marie-Paule, E-mail: marie-paule.garcia@univ-brest.fr; Villoing, Daphnée; McKay, Erin

Purpose: The TestDose platform was developed to generate scintigraphic imaging protocols and associated dosimetry by Monte Carlo modeling. TestDose is part of a broader project (www.dositest.com) whose aim is to identify the biases induced by different clinical dosimetry protocols. Methods: The TestDose software allows handling the whole pipeline from virtual patient generation to resulting planar and SPECT images and dosimetry calculations. The originality of their approach relies on the implementation of functional segmentation for the anthropomorphic model representing a virtual patient. Two anthropomorphic models are currently available: 4D XCAT and ICRP 110. A pharmacokinetic model describes the biodistribution of amore » given radiopharmaceutical in each defined compartment at various time-points. The Monte Carlo simulation toolkit GATE offers the possibility to accurately simulate scintigraphic images and absorbed doses in volumes of interest. The TestDose platform relies on GATE to reproduce precisely any imaging protocol and to provide reference dosimetry. For image generation, TestDose stores user’s imaging requirements and generates automatically command files used as input for GATE. Each compartment is simulated only once and the resulting output is weighted using pharmacokinetic data. Resulting compartment projections are aggregated to obtain the final image. For dosimetry computation, emission data are stored in the platform database and relevant GATE input files are generated for the virtual patient model and associated pharmacokinetics. Results: Two samples of software runs are given to demonstrate the potential of TestDose. A clinical imaging protocol for the Octreoscan™ therapeutical treatment was implemented using the 4D XCAT model. Whole-body “step and shoot” acquisitions at different times postinjection and one SPECT acquisition were generated within reasonable computation times. Based on the same Octreoscan™ kinetics, a dosimetry computation performed on the ICRP 110 model is also presented. Conclusions: The proposed platform offers a generic framework to implement any scintigraphic imaging protocols and voxel/organ-based dosimetry computation. Thanks to the modular nature of TestDose, other imaging modalities could be supported in the future such as positron emission tomography.« less

TestDose: A nuclear medicine software based on Monte Carlo modeling for generating gamma camera acquisitions and dosimetry.

PubMed

Garcia, Marie-Paule; Villoing, Daphnée; McKay, Erin; Ferrer, Ludovic; Cremonesi, Marta; Botta, Francesca; Ferrari, Mahila; Bardiès, Manuel

2015-12-01

The TestDose platform was developed to generate scintigraphic imaging protocols and associated dosimetry by Monte Carlo modeling. TestDose is part of a broader project (www.dositest.com) whose aim is to identify the biases induced by different clinical dosimetry protocols. The TestDose software allows handling the whole pipeline from virtual patient generation to resulting planar and SPECT images and dosimetry calculations. The originality of their approach relies on the implementation of functional segmentation for the anthropomorphic model representing a virtual patient. Two anthropomorphic models are currently available: 4D XCAT and ICRP 110. A pharmacokinetic model describes the biodistribution of a given radiopharmaceutical in each defined compartment at various time-points. The Monte Carlo simulation toolkit gate offers the possibility to accurately simulate scintigraphic images and absorbed doses in volumes of interest. The TestDose platform relies on gate to reproduce precisely any imaging protocol and to provide reference dosimetry. For image generation, TestDose stores user's imaging requirements and generates automatically command files used as input for gate. Each compartment is simulated only once and the resulting output is weighted using pharmacokinetic data. Resulting compartment projections are aggregated to obtain the final image. For dosimetry computation, emission data are stored in the platform database and relevant gate input files are generated for the virtual patient model and associated pharmacokinetics. Two samples of software runs are given to demonstrate the potential of TestDose. A clinical imaging protocol for the Octreoscan™ therapeutical treatment was implemented using the 4D XCAT model. Whole-body "step and shoot" acquisitions at different times postinjection and one SPECT acquisition were generated within reasonable computation times. Based on the same Octreoscan™ kinetics, a dosimetry computation performed on the ICRP 110 model is also presented. The proposed platform offers a generic framework to implement any scintigraphic imaging protocols and voxel/organ-based dosimetry computation. Thanks to the modular nature of TestDose, other imaging modalities could be supported in the future such as positron emission tomography.

pyPcazip: A PCA-based toolkit for compression and analysis of molecular simulation data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shkurti, Ardita; Goni, Ramon; Andrio, Pau; Breitmoser, Elena; Bethune, Iain; Orozco, Modesto; Laughton, Charles A.

The biomolecular simulation community is currently in need of novel and optimised software tools that can analyse and process, in reasonable timescales, the large generated amounts of molecular simulation data. In light of this, we have developed and present here pyPcazip: a suite of software tools for compression and analysis of molecular dynamics (MD) simulation data. The software is compatible with trajectory file formats generated by most contemporary MD engines such as AMBER, CHARMM, GROMACS and NAMD, and is MPI parallelised to permit the efficient processing of very large datasets. pyPcazip is a Unix based open-source software (BSD licenced) written in Python.

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

David Lawrence

Calibrations and conditions databases can be accessed from within the JANA Event Processing framework through the API defined in its JCalibration base class. The API is designed to support everything from databases, to web services to flat files for the backend. A Web Service backend using the gSOAP toolkit has been implemented which is particularly interesting since it addresses many modern cybersecurity issues including support for SSL. The API allows constants to be retrieved through a single line of C++ code with most of the context, including the transport mechanism, being implied by the run currently being analyzed and themore » environment relieving developers from implementing such details.« less

The JANA calibrations and conditions database API

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lawrence, David

2010-04-01

Calibrations and conditions databases can be accessed from within the JANA Event Processing framework through the API defined in its JCalibration base class. The API is designed to support everything from databases, to web services to flat files for the backend. A Web Service backend using the gSOAP toolkit has been implemented which is particularly interesting since it addresses many modern cybersecurity issues including support for SSL. The API allows constants to be retrieved through a single line of C++ code with most of the context, including the transport mechanism, being implied by the run currently being analyzed and the environment relieving developers from implementing such details.

User-Friendly Data Servers for Climate Studies at the Asia-Pacific Data-Research Center (APDRC)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yuan, G.; Shen, Y.; Zhang, Y.; Merrill, R.; Waseda, T.; Mitsudera, H.; Hacker, P.

2002-12-01

The APDRC was recently established within the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaii. The APDRC mission is to increase understanding of climate variability in the Asia-Pacific region by developing the computational, data-management, and networking infrastructure necessary to make data resources readily accessible and usable by researchers, and by undertaking data-intensive research activities that will both advance knowledge and lead to improvements in data preparation and data products. A focus of recent activity is the implementation of user-friendly data servers. The APDRC is currently running a Live Access Server (LAS) developed at NOAA/PMEL to provide access to and visualization of gridded climate products via the web. The LAS also allows users to download the selected data subsets in various formats (such as binary, netCDF and ASCII). Most of the datasets served by the LAS are also served through our OPeNDAP server (formerly DODS), which allows users to directly access the data using their desktop client tools (e.g. GrADS, Matlab and Ferret). In addition, the APDRC is running an OPeNDAP Catalog/Aggregation Server (CAS) developed by Unidata at UCAR to serve climate data and products such as model output and satellite-derived products. These products are often large (> 2 GB) and are therefore stored as multiple files (stored separately in time or in parameters). The CAS remedies the inconvenience of multiple files and allows access to the whole dataset (or any subset that cuts across the multiple files) via a single request command from any DODS enabled client software. Once the aggregation of files is configured at the server (CAS), the process of aggregation is transparent to the user. The user only needs to know a single URL for the entire dataset, which is, in fact, stored as multiple files. CAS even allows aggregation of files on different systems and at different locations. Currently, the APDRC is serving NCEP, ECMWF, SODA, WOCE-Satellite, TMI, GPI and GSSTF products through the CAS. The APDRC is also running an EPIC server developed by PMEL/NOAA. EPIC is a web-based, data search and display system suited for in situ (station versus gridded) data. The process of locating and selecting individual station data from large collections (millions of profiles or time series, etc.) of in situ data is a major challenge. Serving in situ data on the Internet faces two problems: the irregularity of data formats; and the large quantity of data files. To solve the first problem, we have converted the in situ data into netCDF data format. The second problem was solved by using the EPIC server, which allows users to easily subset the files using a friendly graphical interface. Furthermore, we enhanced the capability of EPIC and configured OPeNDAP into EPIC to serve the numerous in situ data files and to export them to users through two different options: 1) an OPeNDAP pointer file of user-selected data files; and 2) a data package that includes meta-information (e.g., location, time, cruise no, etc.), a local pointer file, and the data files that the user selected. Option 1) is for those who do not want to download the selected data but want to use their own application software (such as GrADS, Matlab and Ferret) for access and analysis; option 2) is for users who want to store the data on their own system (e.g. laptops before going for a cruise) for subsequent analysis. Currently, WOCE CTD and bottle data, the WOCE current meter data, and some Argo float data are being served on the EPIC server.

The Galley Parallel File System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nieuwejaar, Nils; Kotz, David

1996-01-01

Most current multiprocessor file systems are designed to use multiple disks in parallel, using the high aggregate bandwidth to meet the growing I/0 requirements of parallel scientific applications. Many multiprocessor file systems provide applications with a conventional Unix-like interface, allowing the application to access multiple disks transparently. This interface conceals the parallelism within the file system, increasing the ease of programmability, but making it difficult or impossible for sophisticated programmers and libraries to use knowledge about their I/O needs to exploit that parallelism. In addition to providing an insufficient interface, most current multiprocessor file systems are optimized for a different workload than they are being asked to support. We introduce Galley, a new parallel file system that is intended to efficiently support realistic scientific multiprocessor workloads. We discuss Galley's file structure and application interface, as well as the performance advantages offered by that interface.

A qualitative study of clinic and community member perspectives on intervention toolkits: "Unless the toolkit is used it won't help solve the problem".

PubMed

Davis, Melinda M; Howk, Sonya; Spurlock, Margaret; McGinnis, Paul B; Cohen, Deborah J; Fagnan, Lyle J

2017-07-18

Intervention toolkits are common products of grant-funded research in public health and primary care settings. Toolkits are designed to address the knowledge translation gap by speeding implementation and dissemination of research into practice. However, few studies describe characteristics of effective intervention toolkits and their implementation. Therefore, we conducted this study to explore what clinic and community-based users want in intervention toolkits and to identify the factors that support application in practice. In this qualitative descriptive study we conducted focus groups and interviews with a purposive sample of community health coalition members, public health experts, and primary care professionals between November 2010 and January 2012. The transdisciplinary research team used thematic analysis to identify themes and a cross-case comparative analysis to explore variation by participant role and toolkit experience. Ninety six participants representing primary care (n = 54, 56%) and community settings (n = 42, 44%) participated in 18 sessions (13 focus groups, five key informant interviews). Participants ranged from those naïve through expert in toolkit development; many reported limited application of toolkits in actual practice. Participants wanted toolkits targeted at the right audience and demonstrated to be effective. Well organized toolkits, often with a quick start guide, with tools that were easy to tailor and apply were desired. Irrespective of perceived quality, participants experienced with practice change emphasized that leadership, staff buy-in, and facilitative support was essential for intervention toolkits to be translated into changes in clinic or public -health practice. Given the emphasis on toolkits in supporting implementation and dissemination of research and clinical guidelines, studies are warranted to determine when and how toolkits are used. Funders, policy makers, researchers, and leaders in primary care and public health are encouraged to allocate resources to foster both toolkit development and implementation. Support, through practice facilitation and organizational leadership, are critical for translating knowledge from intervention toolkits into practice.

Doing accelerator physics using SDDS, UNIX, and EPICS

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

Borland, M.; Emery, L.; Sereno, N.

1995-12-31

The use of the SDDS (Self-Describing Data Sets) file protocol, together with the UNIX operating system and EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Controls System), has proved powerful during the commissioning of the APS (Advanced Photon Source) accelerator complex. The SDDS file protocol has permitted a tool-oriented approach to developing applications, wherein generic programs axe written that function as part of multiple applications. While EPICS-specific tools were written for data collection, automated experiment execution, closed-loop control, and so forth, data processing and display axe done with the SDDS Toolkit. Experiments and data reduction axe implemented as UNIX shell scripts that coordinatemore » the execution of EPICS specific tools and SDDS tools. Because of the power and generic nature of the individual tools and of the UNIX shell environment, automated experiments can be prepared and executed rapidly in response to unanticipated needs or new ideas. Examples are given of application of this methodology to beam motion characterization, beam-position-monitor offset measurements, and klystron characterization.« less

Stroke

MedlinePlus

... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ...

Varicose Veins

MedlinePlus

... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ...

Tribal Green Building Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This Tribal Green Building Toolkit (Toolkit) is designed to help tribal officials, community members, planners, developers, and architects develop and adopt building codes to support green building practices. Anyone can use this toolkit!

Find an Interventional Radiologist

MedlinePlus

... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ...

Society of Interventional Radiology

MedlinePlus

... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ...

Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia - HHT

MedlinePlus

... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ...

Child Abuse - Multiple Languages

MedlinePlus

... Section Healthy Living Toolkit: Violence In the Home - English PDF Healthy Living Toolkit: Violence In the Home - ... Section Healthy Living Toolkit: Violence In the Home - English PDF Healthy Living Toolkit: Violence In the Home - ...

Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit | Grid Modernization | NREL

Science.gov Websites

information, share tips The WIND Toolkit includes meteorological conditions and turbine power for more than Integration National Dataset Toolkit Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit The Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit is an update and expansion of the Eastern Wind Integration Data Set and

Chronic pelvic pain (pelvic congestion syndrome)

MedlinePlus

... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ... GUIDELINES, CLINICAL TOPIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MACRA MATTERS HEALTH POLICY, ECONOMICS, CODING REIMBURSEMENT AND APPEALS TOOLKITS UFE AWARENESS TOOLKIT ...

High-Performance, Multi-Node File Copies and Checksums for Clustered File Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kolano, Paul Z.; Ciotti, Robert B.

2012-01-01

Modern parallel file systems achieve high performance using a variety of techniques, such as striping files across multiple disks to increase aggregate I/O bandwidth and spreading disks across multiple servers to increase aggregate interconnect bandwidth. To achieve peak performance from such systems, it is typically necessary to utilize multiple concurrent readers/writers from multiple systems to overcome various singlesystem limitations, such as number of processors and network bandwidth. The standard cp and md5sum tools of GNU coreutils found on every modern Unix/Linux system, however, utilize a single execution thread on a single CPU core of a single system, and hence cannot take full advantage of the increased performance of clustered file systems. Mcp and msum are drop-in replacements for the standard cp and md5sum programs that utilize multiple types of parallelism and other optimizations to achieve maximum copy and checksum performance on clustered file systems. Multi-threading is used to ensure that nodes are kept as busy as possible. Read/write parallelism allows individual operations of a single copy to be overlapped using asynchronous I/O. Multinode cooperation allows different nodes to take part in the same copy/checksum. Split-file processing allows multiple threads to operate concurrently on the same file. Finally, hash trees allow inherently serial checksums to be performed in parallel. Mcp and msum provide significant performance improvements over standard cp and md5sum using multiple types of parallelism and other optimizations. The total speed-ups from all improvements are significant. Mcp improves cp performance over 27x, msum improves md5sum performance almost 19x, and the combination of mcp and msum improves verified copies via cp and md5sum by almost 22x. These improvements come in the form of drop-in replacements for cp and md5sum, so are easily used and are available for download as open source software at http://mutil.sourceforge.net.

78 FR 38743 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; National Securities Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-06-27

... effective, and timely benchmarking and other relevant information mechanism, than other similar aggregating... about their own businesses and business relationships, and benchmarking information about the overall...

BenMAP Downloads

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Download the current and legacy versions of the BenMAP program. Download configuration and aggregation/pooling/valuation files to estimate benefits. BenMAP-CE is free and open source software, and the source code is available upon request.

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.

FQC Dashboard: integrates FastQC results into a web-based, interactive, and extensible FASTQ quality control tool

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

Brown, Joseph; Pirrung, Meg; McCue, Lee Ann

FQC is software that facilitates quality control of FASTQ files by carrying out a QC protocol using FastQC, parsing results, and aggregating quality metrics into an interactive dashboard designed to richly summarize individual sequencing runs. The dashboard groups samples in dropdowns for navigation among the data sets, utilizes human-readable configuration files to manipulate the pages and tabs, and is extensible with CSV data.

FQC Dashboard: integrates FastQC results into a web-based, interactive, and extensible FASTQ quality control tool

DOE PAGES

Brown, Joseph; Pirrung, Meg; McCue, Lee Ann

2017-06-09

FQC is software that facilitates quality control of FASTQ files by carrying out a QC protocol using FastQC, parsing results, and aggregating quality metrics into an interactive dashboard designed to richly summarize individual sequencing runs. The dashboard groups samples in dropdowns for navigation among the data sets, utilizes human-readable configuration files to manipulate the pages and tabs, and is extensible with CSV data.

Trucks involved in fatal accidents factbook 2007.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2010-01-01

This document presents aggregate statistics on trucks involved in traffic accidents in 2007. The : statistics are derived from the Trucks Involved in Fatal Accidents (TIFA) file, compiled by the : University of Michigan Transportation Research Instit...

Buses involved in fatal accidents factbook 2007

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2010-03-01

This document presents aggregate statistics on buses involved in traffic accidents in 2007. The : statistics are derived from the Buses Involved in Fatal Accidents (BIFA) file, compiled by the : University of Michigan Transportation Research Institut...

Trucks involved in fatal accidents factbook 2008.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2011-03-01

This document presents aggregate statistics on trucks involved in traffic accidents in 2008. The : statistics are derived from the Trucks Involved in Fatal Accidents (TIFA) file, compiled by the : University of Michigan Transportation Research Instit...

7 CFR 984.437 - Methods for proposing names of additional candidates to be included on walnut growers' nomination...

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

....35(a)(5) and (b)(6), any ten or more such growers who marketed an aggregate of 500 or more tons of... specified in § 984.35(a)(3) and (4) or § 984.35(b)(4) and (5) and who marketed an aggregate of 500 or more... section shall be on forms supplied by the Board and filed no later than April 1 of the nomination year...

Every Place Counts Leadership Academy : transportation toolkit quick guide

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2016-12-01

This is a quick guide to the Transportation Toolkit. The Transportation Toolkit is meant to explain the transportation process to members of the public with no prior knowledge of transportation. The Toolkit is meant to demystify transportation and he...

Object Toolkit Version 4.3 User’s Manual

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-12-31

unlimited. (OPS-17-12855 dtd 19 Jan 2017) 13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 14. ABSTRACT Object Toolkit is a finite - element model builder specifically designed for...INTRODUCTION 1 What Is Object Toolkit? Object Toolkit is a finite - element model builder specifically designed for creating representations of spacecraft...Nascap-2k and EPIC, the user is not required to purchase or learn expensive finite element generators to create system models. Second, Object Toolkit

TOASTing Your Images With Montage

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berriman, G. Bruce; Good, John

2017-01-01

The Montage image mosaic engine is a scalable toolkit for creating science-grade mosaics of FITS files, according to the user's specifications of coordinates, projection, sampling, and image rotation. It is written in ANSI-C and runs on all common *nix-based platforms. The code is freely available and is released with a BSD 3-clause license. Version 5 is a major upgrade to Montage, and provides support for creating images that can be consumed by the World Wide Telescope (WWT). Montage treats the TOAST sky tessellation scheme, used by the WWT, as a spherical projection like those in the WCStools library. Thus images in any projection can be converted to the TOAST projection by Montage’s reprojection services. These reprojections can be performed at scale on high-performance platforms and on desktops. WWT consumes PNG or JPEG files, organized according to WWT’s tiling and naming scheme. Montage therefore provides a set of dedicated modules to create the required files from FITS images that contain the TOAST projection. There are two other major features of Version 5. It supports processing of HEALPix files to any projection in the WCS tools library. And it can be built as a library that can be called from other languages, primarily Python. http://montage.ipac.caltech.edu.GitHub download page: https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC/Montage.ASCL record: ascl:1010.036. DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.49418 Montage is funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number ACI-1440620,

"Handy Manny" and the Emergent Literacy Technology Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hourcade, Jack J.; Parette, Howard P., Jr.; Boeckmann, Nichole; Blum, Craig

2010-01-01

This paper outlines the use of a technology toolkit to support emergent literacy curriculum and instruction in early childhood education settings. Components of the toolkit include hardware and software that can facilitate key emergent literacy skills. Implementation of the comprehensive technology toolkit enhances the development of these…

Risk of Resource Failure and Toolkit Variation in Small-Scale Farmers and Herders

PubMed Central

Collard, Mark; Ruttle, April; Buchanan, Briggs; O’Brien, Michael J.

2012-01-01

Recent work suggests that global variation in toolkit structure among hunter-gatherers is driven by risk of resource failure such that as risk of resource failure increases, toolkits become more diverse and complex. Here we report a study in which we investigated whether the toolkits of small-scale farmers and herders are influenced by risk of resource failure in the same way. In the study, we applied simple linear and multiple regression analysis to data from 45 small-scale food-producing groups to test the risk hypothesis. Our results were not consistent with the hypothesis; none of the risk variables we examined had a significant impact on toolkit diversity or on toolkit complexity. It appears, therefore, that the drivers of toolkit structure differ between hunter-gatherers and small-scale food-producers. PMID:22844421

The effectiveness of toolkits as knowledge translation strategies for integrating evidence into clinical care: a systematic review

PubMed Central

Yamada, Janet; Shorkey, Allyson; Barwick, Melanie; Widger, Kimberley; Stevens, Bonnie J

2015-01-01

Objectives The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness of toolkits as a knowledge translation (KT) strategy for facilitating the implementation of evidence into clinical care. Toolkits include multiple resources for educating and/or facilitating behaviour change. Design Systematic review of the literature on toolkits. Methods A search was conducted on MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO and CINAHL. Studies were included if they evaluated the effectiveness of a toolkit to support the integration of evidence into clinical care, and if the KT goal(s) of the study were to inform, share knowledge, build awareness, change practice, change behaviour, and/or clinical outcomes in healthcare settings, inform policy, or to commercialise an innovation. Screening of studies, assessment of methodological quality and data extraction for the included studies were conducted by at least two reviewers. Results 39 relevant studies were included for full review; 8 were rated as moderate to strong methodologically with clinical outcomes that could be somewhat attributed to the toolkit. Three of the eight studies evaluated the toolkit as a single KT intervention, while five embedded the toolkit into a multistrategy intervention. Six of the eight toolkits were partially or mostly effective in changing clinical outcomes and six studies reported on implementation outcomes. The types of resources embedded within toolkits varied but included predominantly educational materials. Conclusions Future toolkits should be informed by high-quality evidence and theory, and should be evaluated using rigorous study designs to explain the factors underlying their effectiveness and successful implementation. PMID:25869686

A Python Interface for the Dakota Iterative Systems Analysis Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Piper, M.; Hutton, E.; Syvitski, J. P.

2016-12-01

Uncertainty quantification is required to improve the accuracy, reliability, and accountability of Earth science models. Dakota is a software toolkit, developed at Sandia National Laboratories, that provides an interface between models and a library of analysis methods, including support for sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, optimization, and calibration techniques. Dakota is a powerful tool, but its learning curve is steep: the user not only must understand the structure and syntax of the Dakota input file, but also must develop intermediate code, called an analysis driver, that allows Dakota to run a model. The CSDMS Dakota interface (CDI) is a Python package that wraps and extends Dakota's user interface. It simplifies the process of configuring and running a Dakota experiment. A user can program to the CDI, allowing a Dakota experiment to be scripted. The CDI creates Dakota input files and provides a generic analysis driver. Any model written in Python that exposes a Basic Model Interface (BMI), as well as any model componentized in the CSDMS modeling framework, automatically works with the CDI. The CDI has a plugin architecture, so models written in other languages, or those that don't expose a BMI, can be accessed by the CDI by programmatically extending a template; an example is provided in the CDI distribution. Currently, six Dakota analysis methods have been implemented for examples from the much larger Dakota library. To demonstrate the CDI, we performed an uncertainty quantification experiment with the HydroTrend hydrological water balance and transport model. In the experiment, we evaluated the response of long-term suspended sediment load at the river mouth (Qs) to uncertainty in two input parameters, annual mean temperature (T) and precipitation (P), over a series of 100-year runs, using the polynomial chaos method. Through Dakota, we calculated moments, local and global (Sobol') sensitivity indices, and probability density and cumulative distribution functions for the response.

The Scalable Checkpoint/Restart Library

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

Moody, A.

The Scalable Checkpoint/Restart (SCR) library provides an interface that codes may use to worite our and read in application-level checkpoints in a scalable fashion. In the current implementation, checkpoint files are cached in local storage (hard disk or RAM disk) on the compute nodes. This technique provides scalable aggregate bandwidth and uses storage resources that are fully dedicated to the job. This approach addresses the two common drawbacks of checkpointing a large-scale application to a shared parallel file system, namely, limited bandwidth and file system contention. In fact, on current platforms, SCR scales linearly with the number of compute nodes.more » It has been benchmarked as high as 720GB/s on 1094 nodes of Atlas, which is nearly two orders of magnitude faster thanthe parallel file system.« less

77 FR 47453 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; Chicago Board Options Exchange, Incorporated; Notice of Filing and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-08-08

... acronym or MPID may aggregate their trading activity for purposes of these rates. Qualification for these rates will require that a market participant appropriately indicate his trading acronym and/or MPID in...

76 FR 2742 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-01-14

... relationship. Direct liquidity provision is beneficial to NASDAQ and to the marketplace generally. Direct... liquidity provision rather than compensating the effort required to aggregate order flow. To encourage the... [[Page 2743

A Dose of Reality: Radiation Analysis for Realistic Human Spacecraft

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Barzilla, J. E.; Lee, K. T.

2017-01-01

INTRODUCTION As with most computational analyses, a tradeoff exists between problem complexity, resource availability and response accuracy when modeling radiation transport from the source to a detector. The largest amount of analyst time for setting up an analysis is often spent ensuring that any simplifications made have minimal impact on the results. The vehicle shield geometry of interest is typically simplified from the original CAD design in order to reduce computation time, but this simplification requires the analyst to "re-draw" the geometry with a limited set of volumes in order to accommodate a specific radiation transport software package. The resulting low-fidelity geometry model cannot be shared with or compared to other radiation transport software packages, and the process can be error prone with increased model complexity. The work presented here demonstrates the use of the DAGMC (Direct Accelerated Geometry for Monte Carlo) Toolkit from the University of Wisconsin, to model the impacts of several space radiation sources on a CAD drawing of the US Lab module. METHODS The DAGMC toolkit workflow begins with the export of an existing CAD geometry from the native CAD to the ACIS format. The ACIS format file is then cleaned using SpaceClaim to remove small holes and component overlaps. Metadata is then assigned to the cleaned geometry file using CUBIT/Trelis from csimsoft (Registered Trademark). The DAGMC plugin script removes duplicate shared surfaces, facets the geometry to a specified tolerance, and ensures that the faceted geometry is water tight. This step also writes the material and scoring information to a standard input file format that the analyst can alter as desired prior to running the radiation transport program. The scoring results can be transformed, via python script, into a 3D format that is viewable in a standard graphics program. RESULTS The CAD model of the US Lab module of the International Space Station, inclusive of all the racks and components, was simplified to remove holes and volume overlaps. Problematic features within the drawing were also removed or repaired to prevent runtime issues. The cleaned drawing was then run through the DAGMC workflow to prepare for analysis. Pilot tests modeling transport of 1GeV proton and 800MeV/A oxygen sources show that reasonable results are converged upon in an acceptable amount of overall computation time from drawing preparation to data analysis. The FLUKA radiation transport code will next be used to model both a GCR and a trapped radiation source. These results will then be compared with measurements that have been made by the radiation instrumentation deployed inside the US Lab module. DISCUSSION Early analyses have indicated that the DAGMC workflow is a promising toolkit for running vehicle geometries of interest to NASA through multiple radiation transport codes. In addition, recent work has shown that a realistic human phantom, provided via a subcontract with the University of Florida, can be placed inside any vehicle geometry for a combinatorial analysis. This added functionality gives the user the ability to score various parameters at the organ level, and the results can then be used as input for cancer risk models.

Multimethod evaluation of the VA's peer-to-peer Toolkit for patient-centered medical home implementation.

PubMed

Luck, Jeff; Bowman, Candice; York, Laura; Midboe, Amanda; Taylor, Thomas; Gale, Randall; Asch, Steven

2014-07-01

Effective implementation of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) in primary care practices requires training and other resources, such as online toolkits, to share strategies and materials. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) developed an online Toolkit of user-sourced tools to support teams implementing its Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) medical home model. To present findings from an evaluation of the PACT Toolkit, including use, variation across facilities, effect of social marketing, and factors influencing use. The Toolkit is an online repository of ready-to-use tools created by VA clinic staff that physicians, nurses, and other team members may share, download, and adopt in order to more effectively implement PCMH principles and improve local performance on VA metrics. Multimethod evaluation using: (1) website usage analytics, (2) an online survey of the PACT community of practice's use of the Toolkit, and (3) key informant interviews. Survey respondents were PACT team members and coaches (n = 544) at 136 VA facilities. Interview respondents were Toolkit users and non-users (n = 32). For survey data, multivariable logistic models were used to predict Toolkit awareness and use. Interviews and open-text survey comments were coded using a "common themes" framework. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) guided data collection and analyses. The Toolkit was used by 6,745 staff in the first 19 months of availability. Among members of the target audience, 80 % had heard of the Toolkit, and of those, 70 % had visited the website. Tools had been implemented at 65 % of facilities. Qualitative findings revealed a range of user perspectives from enthusiastic support to lack of sufficient time to browse the Toolkit. An online Toolkit to support PCMH implementation was used at VA facilities nationwide. Other complex health care organizations may benefit from adopting similar online peer-to-peer resource libraries.

Telescience Resource Kit (TReK)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lippincott, Jeff

2015-01-01

Telescience Resource Kit (TReK) is one of the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) remote operations solutions. It can be used to monitor and control International Space Station (ISS) payloads from anywhere in the world. It is comprised of a suite of software applications and libraries that provide generic data system capabilities and access to HOSC services. The TReK Software has been operational since 2000. A new cross-platform version of TReK is under development. The new software is being released in phases during the 2014-2016 timeframe. The TReK Release 3.x series of software is the original TReK software that has been operational since 2000. This software runs on Windows. It contains capabilities to support traditional telemetry and commanding using CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) packets. The TReK Release 4.x series of software is the new cross platform software. It runs on Windows and Linux. The new TReK software will support communication using standard IP protocols and traditional telemetry and commanding. All the software listed above is compatible and can be installed and run together on Windows. The new TReK software contains a suite of software that can be used by payload developers on the ground and onboard (TReK Toolkit). TReK Toolkit is a suite of lightweight libraries and utility applications for use onboard and on the ground. TReK Desktop is the full suite of TReK software -most useful on the ground. When TReK Desktop is released, the TReK installation program will provide the option to choose just the TReK Toolkit portion of the software or the full TReK Desktop suite. The ISS program is providing the TReK Toolkit software as a generic flight software capability offered as a standard service to payloads. TReK Software Verification was conducted during the April/May 2015 timeframe. Payload teams using the TReK software onboard can reference the TReK software verification. TReK will be demonstrated on-orbit running on an ISS provided T61p laptop. Target Timeframe: September 2015 -2016. The on-orbit demonstration will collect benchmark metrics, and will be used in the future to provide live demonstrations during ISS Payload Conferences. Benchmark metrics and demonstrations will address the protocols described in SSP 52050-0047 Ku Forward section 3.3.7. (Associated term: CCSDS File Delivery Protocol (CFDP)).

Evaluation of an Extension-Delivered Resource for Accelerating Progress in Childhood Obesity Prevention: The BEPA-Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gunter, Katherine B.; Abi Nader, Patrick; Armington, Amanda; Hicks, John C.; John, Deborah

2017-01-01

The Balanced Energy Physical Activity Toolkit, or the BEPA-Toolkit, supports physical activity (PA) programming via Extension in elementary schools. In a pilot study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the BEPA-Toolkit as used by teachers through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education partnerships. We surveyed teachers (n = 57)…

27 CFR 24.274 - Failure to timely pay tax or file a return.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... percent for each month or fraction thereof of the delinquency, not exceeding 25 percent in the aggregate, unless it is shown that the delinquency is due to reasonable cause and not to willful neglect. (Sec. 201...

Implementing a user-driven online quality improvement toolkit for cancer care.

PubMed

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

2015-05-01

Peer-to-peer collaboration within integrated health systems requires a mechanism for sharing quality improvement lessons. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) developed online compendia of tools linked to specific cancer quality indicators. We evaluated awareness and use of the toolkits, variation across facilities, impact of social marketing, and factors influencing toolkit use. A diffusion of innovations conceptual framework guided the collection of user activity data from the Toolkit Series SharePoint site and an online survey of potential Lung Cancer Care Toolkit users. The VA Toolkit Series site had 5,088 unique visitors in its first 22 months; 5% of users accounted for 40% of page views. Social marketing communications were correlated with site usage. Of survey respondents (n = 355), 54% had visited the site, of whom 24% downloaded at least one tool. Respondents' awareness of the lung cancer quality performance of their facility, and facility participation in quality improvement collaboratives, were positively associated with Toolkit Series site use. Facility-level lung cancer tool implementation varied widely across tool types. The VA Toolkit Series achieved widespread use and a high degree of user engagement, although use varied widely across facilities. The most active users were aware of and active in cancer care quality improvement. Toolkit use seemed to be reinforced by other quality improvement activities. A combination of user-driven tool creation and centralized toolkit development seemed to be effective for leveraging health information technology to spread disease-specific quality improvement tools within an integrated health care system. Copyright © 2015 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Network Science Research Laboratory (NSRL) Discrete Event Toolkit

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-01-01

ARL-TR-7579 ● JAN 2016 US Army Research Laboratory Network Science Research Laboratory (NSRL) Discrete Event Toolkit by...Laboratory (NSRL) Discrete Event Toolkit by Theron Trout and Andrew J Toth Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, ARL...Research Laboratory (NSRL) Discrete Event Toolkit 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b. GRANT NUMBER 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER 6. AUTHOR(S) Theron Trout

Modulation of electrostatic interactions to reveal a reaction network unifying the aggregation behaviour of the Aβ42 peptide and its variants† †Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c7sc00215g Click here for additional data file.

PubMed Central

Meisl, Georg; Yang, Xiaoting

2017-01-01

The aggregation of the amyloid β peptide (Aβ42), which is linked to Alzheimer's disease, can be altered significantly by modulations of the peptide's intermolecular electrostatic interactions. Variations in sequence and solution conditions have been found to lead to highly variable aggregation behaviour. Here we modulate systematically the electrostatic interactions governing the aggregation kinetics by varying the ionic strength of the solution. We find that changes in the solution ionic strength induce a switch in the reaction pathway, altering the dominant mechanisms of aggregate multiplication. This strategy thereby allows us to continuously sample a large space of different reaction mechanisms and develop a minimal reaction network that unifies the experimental kinetics under a wide range of different conditions. More generally, this universal reaction network connects previously separate systems, such as charge mutants of the Aβ42 peptide, on a continuous mechanistic landscape, providing a unified picture of the aggregation mechanism of Aβ42. PMID:28979758

Catalog of electronic data products

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

1990-07-01

The catalog lists and describes the public-use data files produced by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). More than 500 public-use data files, representing most of the NCHS data collection programs, are available for purchase and use. Public-use data files are prepared and disseminated to speed and enhance access to the full scope of data. NCHS data systems include a national vital registration program; household interview and health examination surveys; surveys of hospitals, nursing homes, physicians, and other health care providers; and other periodic or occasional data collection activities to produce a wide spectrum of health and health-related data. NCHS data users encompass all levels of government, the academic and research communities, and business. The majority of the data files released by NCHS contain microdata to allow researchers to aggregate findings in whatever format appropriate for their analyses.

Collaborative Online Communities for Increased MILSATCOM Performance

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-09-01

47 3. Folksonomy ...60 2. Aggregation in the NMT Data Collection System...........................63 3. Folksonomies in the NMT Data Collection System...2008). 3. Folksonomy The challenge with any filing system, whether physical or electronic, is making a decision about where to place something. Once

77 FR 42654 - Trifloxystrobin; Pesticide Tolerance

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-07-20

... code 112). Food manufacturing (NAICS code 311). Pesticide manufacturing (NAICS code 32532). This... filing. III. Aggregate Risk Assessment and Determination of Safety Section 408(b)(2)(A)(i) of FFDCA... dose at which adverse effects of concern are identified (the LOAEL). Uncertainty/safety factors are...

88. Photographic copy of historic photo, June 25, 1930 (original ...

Library of Congress Historic Buildings Survey, Historic Engineering Record, Historic Landscapes Survey

88. Photographic copy of historic photo, June 25, 1930 (original print filed in Record Group 115, National Archives, Washington, D.C.). CEMENT AGGREGATE AND WATER CONTROLS AT OWYHEE DAM MIXING PLANT. - Owyhee Dam, Across Owyhee River, Nyssa, Malheur County, OR

PeakML/mzMatch: a file format, Java library, R library, and tool-chain for mass spectrometry data analysis.

PubMed

Scheltema, Richard A; Jankevics, Andris; Jansen, Ritsert C; Swertz, Morris A; Breitling, Rainer

2011-04-01

The recent proliferation of high-resolution mass spectrometers has generated a wealth of new data analysis methods. However, flexible integration of these methods into configurations best suited to the research question is hampered by heterogeneous file formats and monolithic software development. The mzXML, mzData, and mzML file formats have enabled uniform access to unprocessed raw data. In this paper we present our efforts to produce an equally simple and powerful format, PeakML, to uniformly exchange processed intermediary and result data. To demonstrate the versatility of PeakML, we have developed an open source Java toolkit for processing, filtering, and annotating mass spectra in a customizable pipeline (mzMatch), as well as a user-friendly data visualization environment (PeakML Viewer). The PeakML format in particular enables the flexible exchange of processed data between software created by different groups or companies, as we illustrate by providing a PeakML-based integration of the widely used XCMS package with mzMatch data processing tools. As an added advantage, downstream analysis can benefit from direct access to the full mass trace information underlying summarized mass spectrometry results, providing the user with the means to rapidly verify results. The PeakML/mzMatch software is freely available at http://mzmatch.sourceforge.net, with documentation, tutorials, and a community forum.

UTOPIA-User-Friendly Tools for Operating Informatics Applications.

PubMed

Pettifer, S R; Sinnott, J R; Attwood, T K

2004-01-01

Bioinformaticians routinely analyse vast amounts of information held both in large remote databases and in flat data files hosted on local machines. The contemporary toolkit available for this purpose consists of an ad hoc collection of data manipulation tools, scripting languages and visualization systems; these must often be combined in complex and bespoke ways, the result frequently being an unwieldy artefact capable of one specific task, which cannot easily be exploited or extended by other practitioners. Owing to the sizes of current databases and the scale of the analyses necessary, routine bioinformatics tasks are often automated, but many still require the unique experience and intuition of human researchers: this requires tools that support real-time interaction with complex datasets. Many existing tools have poor user interfaces and limited real-time performance when applied to realistically large datasets; much of the user's cognitive capacity is therefore focused on controlling the tool rather than on performing the research. The UTOPIA project is addressing some of these issues by building reusable software components that can be combined to make useful applications in the field of bioinformatics. Expertise in the fields of human computer interaction, high-performance rendering, and distributed systems is being guided by bioinformaticians and end-user biologists to create a toolkit that is both architecturally sound from a computing point of view, and directly addresses end-user and application-developer requirements.

The GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit: Facilitating the Efficient Publishing of Biodiversity Data on the Internet

PubMed Central

Robertson, Tim; Döring, Markus; Guralnick, Robert; Bloom, David; Wieczorek, John; Braak, Kyle; Otegui, Javier; Russell, Laura; Desmet, Peter

2014-01-01

The planet is experiencing an ongoing global biodiversity crisis. Measuring the magnitude and rate of change more effectively requires access to organized, easily discoverable, and digitally-formatted biodiversity data, both legacy and new, from across the globe. Assembling this coherent digital representation of biodiversity requires the integration of data that have historically been analog, dispersed, and heterogeneous. The Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) is a software package developed to support biodiversity dataset publication in a common format. The IPT’s two primary functions are to 1) encode existing species occurrence datasets and checklists, such as records from natural history collections or observations, in the Darwin Core standard to enhance interoperability of data, and 2) publish and archive data and metadata for broad use in a Darwin Core Archive, a set of files following a standard format. Here we discuss the key need for the IPT, how it has developed in response to community input, and how it continues to evolve to streamline and enhance the interoperability, discoverability, and mobilization of new data types beyond basic Darwin Core records. We close with a discussion how IPT has impacted the biodiversity research community, how it enhances data publishing in more traditional journal venues, along with new features implemented in the latest version of the IPT, and future plans for more enhancements. PMID:25099149

A Critical Review on the Use of Support Values in Tree Viewers and Bioinformatics Toolkits.

PubMed

Czech, Lucas; Huerta-Cepas, Jaime; Stamatakis, Alexandros

2017-06-01

Phylogenetic trees are routinely visualized to present and interpret the evolutionary relationships of species. Most empirical evolutionary data studies contain a visualization of the inferred tree with branch support values. Ambiguous semantics in tree file formats can lead to erroneous tree visualizations and therefore to incorrect interpretations of phylogenetic analyses. Here, we discuss problems that arise when displaying branch values on trees after rerooting. Branch values are typically stored as node labels in the widely-used Newick tree format. However, such values are attributes of branches. Storing them as node labels can therefore yield errors when rerooting trees. This depends on the mostly implicit semantics that tools deploy to interpret node labels. We reviewed ten tree viewers and ten bioinformatics toolkits that can display and reroot trees. We found that 14 out of 20 of these tools do not permit users to select the semantics of node labels. Thus, unaware users might obtain incorrect results when rooting trees. We illustrate such incorrect mappings for several test cases and real examples taken from the literature. This review has already led to improvements in eight tools. We suggest tools should provide options that explicitly force users to define the semantics of node labels. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.

LACIE performance predictor final operational capability program description, volume 3

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1976-01-01

The requirements and processing logic for the LACIE Error Model program (LEM) are described. This program is an integral part of the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE) system. LEM is that portion of the LPP (LACIE Performance Predictor) which simulates the sample segment classification, strata yield estimation, and production aggregation. LEM controls repetitive Monte Carlo trials based on input error distributions to obtain statistical estimates of the wheat area, yield, and production at different levels of aggregation. LEM interfaces with the rest of the LPP through a set of data files.

TOOLKIT, Version 2. 0

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

Schroeder, E.; Bagot, B.; McNeill, R.L.

1990-05-09

The purpose of this User's Guide is to show by example many of the features of Toolkit II. Some examples will be copies of screens as they appear while running the Toolkit. Other examples will show what the user should enter in various situations; in these instances, what the computer asserts will be in boldface and what the user responds will be in regular type. The User's Guide is divided into four sections. The first section, FOCUS Databases'', will give a broad overview of the Focus administrative databases that are available on the VAX; easy-to-use reports are available for mostmore » of them in the Toolkit. The second section, Getting Started'', will cover the steps necessary to log onto the Computer Center VAX cluster and how to start Focus and the Toolkit. The third section, Using the Toolkit'', will discuss some of the features in the Toolkit -- the available reports and how to access them, as well as some utilities. The fourth section, Helpful Hints'', will cover some useful facts about the VAX and Focus as well as some of the more common problems that can occur. The Toolkit is not set in concrete but is continually being revised and improved. If you have any opinions as to changes that you would like to see made to the Toolkit or new features that you would like included, please let us know. Since we do try to respond to the needs of the user and make periodic improvement to the Toolkit, this User's Guide may not correspond exactly to what is available in the computer. In general, changes are made to provide new options or features; rarely is an existing feature deleted.« less

Local Foods, Local Places Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Toolkit to help communities that want to use local foods to spur revitalization. The toolkit gives step-by-step instructions to help communities plan and host a workshop and create an action plan to implement.

Provider perceptions of an integrated primary care quality improvement strategy: The PPAQ toolkit.

PubMed

Beehler, Gregory P; Lilienthal, Kaitlin R

2017-02-01

The Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model of integrated primary care is challenging to implement with high fidelity. The Primary Care Behavioral Health Provider Adherence Questionnaire (PPAQ) was designed to assess provider adherence to essential model components and has recently been adapted into a quality improvement toolkit. The aim of this pilot project was to gather preliminary feedback on providers' perceptions of the acceptability and utility of the PPAQ toolkit for making beneficial practice changes. Twelve mental health providers working in Department of Veterans Affairs integrated primary care clinics participated in semistructured interviews to gather quantitative and qualitative data. Descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis were used to analyze data. Providers identified several positive features of the PPAQ toolkit organization and structure that resulted in high ratings of acceptability, while also identifying several toolkit components in need of modification to improve usability. Toolkit content was considered highly representative of the (PCBH) model and therefore could be used as a diagnostic self-assessment of model adherence. The toolkit was considered to be high in applicability to providers regardless of their degree of prior professional preparation or current clinical setting. Additionally, providers identified several system-level contextual factors that could impact the usefulness of the toolkit. These findings suggest that frontline mental health providers working in (PCBH) settings may be receptive to using an adherence-focused toolkit for ongoing quality improvement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Green Infrastructure Modeling Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

EPA's Green Infrastructure Modeling Toolkit is a toolkit of 5 EPA green infrastructure models and tools, along with communication materials, that can be used as a teaching tool and a quick reference resource when making GI implementation decisions.

College Women's Health

MedlinePlus

... the College Women's Social Media Kit! College Women's Social Media Toolkit Use the Social Media Toolkit to share health tips with your campus ... toolkit includes resources for young women including sample social media messages, flyers and blogs posts. NEW Social Media ...

Every Place Counts Leadership Academy transportation toolkit

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2016-12-01

The Transportation Toolkit is meant to explain the transportation process to members of the public with no prior knowledge of transportation. The Toolkit is meant to demystify transportation and help people engage in local transportation decision-mak...

Matlab based Toolkits used to Interface with Optical Design Software for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Howard, Joseph

2007-01-01

The viewgraph presentation provides an introduction to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The first part provides a brief overview of Matlab toolkits including CodeV, OSLO, and Zemax Toolkits. The toolkit overview examines purpose, layout, how Matlab gets data from CodeV, function layout, and using cvHELP. The second part provides examples of use with JWST, including wavefront sensitivities and alignment simulations.

Capturing Petascale Application Characteristics with the Sequoia Toolkit

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

Vetter, Jeffrey S; Bhatia, Nikhil; Grobelny, Eric M

2005-01-01

Characterization of the computation, communication, memory, and I/O demands of current scientific applications is crucial for identifying which technologies will enable petascale scientific computing. In this paper, we present the Sequoia Toolkit for characterizing HPC applications. The Sequoia Toolkit consists of the Sequoia trace capture library and the Sequoia Event Analysis Library, or SEAL, that facilitates the development of tools for analyzing Sequoia event traces. Using the Sequoia Toolkit, we have characterized the behavior of application runs with up to 2048 application processes. To illustrate the use of the Sequoia Toolkit, we present a preliminary characterization of LAMMPS, a molecularmore » dynamics application of great interest to the computational biology community.« less

A graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit for the calculation of three-dimensional (3D) multi-phase biological effective dose (BED) distributions including statistical analyses.

PubMed

Kauweloa, Kevin I; Gutierrez, Alonso N; Stathakis, Sotirios; Papanikolaou, Niko; Mavroidis, Panayiotis

2016-07-01

A toolkit has been developed for calculating the 3-dimensional biological effective dose (BED) distributions in multi-phase, external beam radiotherapy treatments such as those applied in liver stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) and in multi-prescription treatments. This toolkit also provides a wide range of statistical results related to dose and BED distributions. MATLAB 2010a, version 7.10 was used to create this GUI toolkit. The input data consist of the dose distribution matrices, organ contour coordinates, and treatment planning parameters from the treatment planning system (TPS). The toolkit has the capability of calculating the multi-phase BED distributions using different formulas (denoted as true and approximate). Following the calculations of the BED distributions, the dose and BED distributions can be viewed in different projections (e.g. coronal, sagittal and transverse). The different elements of this toolkit are presented and the important steps for the execution of its calculations are illustrated. The toolkit is applied on brain, head & neck and prostate cancer patients, who received primary and boost phases in order to demonstrate its capability in calculating BED distributions, as well as measuring the inaccuracy and imprecision of the approximate BED distributions. Finally, the clinical situations in which the use of the present toolkit would have a significant clinical impact are indicated. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

GLAD: a system for developing and deploying large-scale bioinformatics grid.

PubMed

Teo, Yong-Meng; Wang, Xianbing; Ng, Yew-Kwong

2005-03-01

Grid computing is used to solve large-scale bioinformatics problems with gigabytes database by distributing the computation across multiple platforms. Until now in developing bioinformatics grid applications, it is extremely tedious to design and implement the component algorithms and parallelization techniques for different classes of problems, and to access remotely located sequence database files of varying formats across the grid. In this study, we propose a grid programming toolkit, GLAD (Grid Life sciences Applications Developer), which facilitates the development and deployment of bioinformatics applications on a grid. GLAD has been developed using ALiCE (Adaptive scaLable Internet-based Computing Engine), a Java-based grid middleware, which exploits the task-based parallelism. Two bioinformatics benchmark applications, such as distributed sequence comparison and distributed progressive multiple sequence alignment, have been developed using GLAD.

Forensic Analysis of Windows Hosts Using UNIX-based Tools

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

Cory Altheide

2004-07-19

Many forensic examiners are introduced to UNIX-based forensic utilities when faced with investigating a UNIX-like operating system for the first time. They will use these utilities for this very specific task, because in many cases these tools are the only ones for the given job. For example, at the time of this writing, given a FreeBSD 5.x file system, the author's only choice is to use The Coroner's Toolkit running on FreeBSD 5.x. However, many of the same tools examiners use for the occasional UNIX-like system investigation are extremely capable when a Windows system is the target. Indeed, the Linuxmore » operating system itself can prove to be an extremely useful forensics platform with very little use of specialized forensics utilities at all.« less

The Comprehension Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harvey, Stephanie; Goudvis, Anne

2005-01-01

"The Comprehension Toolkit" focuses on reading, writing, talking, listening, and investigating, to deepen understanding of nonfiction texts. With a focus on strategic thinking, this toolkit's lessons provide a foundation for developing independent readers and learners. It also provides an alternative to the traditional assign and correct…

JAVA Stereo Display Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Edmonds, Karina

2008-01-01

This toolkit provides a common interface for displaying graphical user interface (GUI) components in stereo using either specialized stereo display hardware (e.g., liquid crystal shutter or polarized glasses) or anaglyph display (red/blue glasses) on standard workstation displays. An application using this toolkit will work without modification in either environment, allowing stereo software to reach a wider audience without sacrificing high-quality display on dedicated hardware. The toolkit is written in Java for use with the Swing GUI Toolkit and has cross-platform compatibility. It hooks into the graphics system, allowing any standard Swing component to be displayed in stereo. It uses the OpenGL graphics library to control the stereo hardware and to perform the rendering. It also supports anaglyph and special stereo hardware using the same API (application-program interface), and has the ability to simulate color stereo in anaglyph mode by combining the red band of the left image with the green/blue bands of the right image. This is a low-level toolkit that accomplishes simply the display of components (including the JadeDisplay image display component). It does not include higher-level functions such as disparity adjustment, 3D cursor, or overlays all of which can be built using this toolkit.

Code Parallelization with CAPO: A User Manual

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jin, Hao-Qiang; Frumkin, Michael; Yan, Jerry; Biegel, Bryan (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

A software tool has been developed to assist the parallelization of scientific codes. This tool, CAPO, extends an existing parallelization toolkit, CAPTools developed at the University of Greenwich, to generate OpenMP parallel codes for shared memory architectures. This is an interactive toolkit to transform a serial Fortran application code to an equivalent parallel version of the software - in a small fraction of the time normally required for a manual parallelization. We first discuss the way in which loop types are categorized and how efficient OpenMP directives can be defined and inserted into the existing code using the in-depth interprocedural analysis. The use of the toolkit on a number of application codes ranging from benchmark to real-world application codes is presented. This will demonstrate the great potential of using the toolkit to quickly parallelize serial programs as well as the good performance achievable on a large number of toolkit to quickly parallelize serial programs as well as the good performance achievable on a large number of processors. The second part of the document gives references to the parameters and the graphic user interface implemented in the toolkit. Finally a set of tutorials is included for hands-on experiences with this toolkit.

Aggregate R-R-V Analysis

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The excel file contains time series data of flow rates, concentrations of alachlor , atrazine, ammonia, total phosphorus, and total suspended solids observed in two watersheds in Indiana from 2002 to 2007. The aggregate time series data corresponding or representative to all these parameters was obtained using a specialized, data-driven technique. The aggregate data is hypothesized in the published paper to represent the overall health of both watersheds with respect to various potential water quality impairments. The time series data for each of the individual water quality parameters were used to compute corresponding risk measures (Rel, Res, and Vul) that are reported in Table 4 and 5. The aggregation of the risk measures, which is computed from the aggregate time series and water quality standards in Table 1, is also reported in Table 4 and 5 of the published paper. Values under column heading uncertainty reports uncertainties associated with reconstruction of missing records of the water quality parameters. Long-term records of the water quality parameters were reconstructed in order to estimate the (R-R-V) and corresponding aggregate risk measures. This dataset is associated with the following publication:Hoque, Y., S. Tripathi, M. Hantush , and R. Govindaraju. Aggregate Measures of Watershed Health from Reconstructed Water Quality Data with Uncertainty. Ed Gregorich JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY. American Society of Agronomy, MADISON, WI,

Hydropower Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit

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

Levine, Aaron L

Hydropower Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit presentation from the WPTO FY14-FY16 Peer Review. The toolkit is aimed at regulatory agencies, consultants, project developers, the public, and any other party interested in learning more about the hydropower regulatory process.

Student Success Center Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jobs For the Future, 2014

2014-01-01

"Student Success Center Toolkit" is a compilation of materials organized to assist Student Success Center directors as they staff, launch, operate, and sustain Centers. The toolkit features materials created and used by existing Centers, such as staffing and budgeting templates, launch materials, sample meeting agendas, and fundraising…

Veterinary Immunology Committee Toolkit Workshop 2010: Progress and plans

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The Third Veterinary Immunology Committee (VIC) Toolkit Workshop took place at the Ninth International Veterinary Immunology Symposium (IVIS) in Tokyo, Japan on August 18, 2020. The Workshop built on previous Toolkit Workshops and covered various aspects of reagent development, commercialisation an...

77 FR 73023 - U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-07

... foreign end-users of environmental technologies that will outline U.S. approaches to a series of environmental problems and highlight participating U.S. vendors of relevant U.S. technologies. The Toolkit will... DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE International Trade Administration U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit...

Development of an educational 'toolkit' for health professionals and their patients with prediabetes: the WAKEUP study (Ways of Addressing Knowledge Education and Understanding in Pre-diabetes).

PubMed

Evans, P H; Greaves, C; Winder, R; Fearn-Smith, J; Campbell, J L

2007-07-01

To identify key messages about pre-diabetes and to design, develop and pilot an educational toolkit to address the information needs of patients and health professionals. Mixed qualitative methodology within an action research framework. Focus group interviews with patients and health professionals and discussion with an expert reference group aimed to identify the important messages and produce a draft toolkit. Two action research cycles were then conducted in two general practices, during which the draft toolkit was used and video-taped consultations and follow-up patient interviews provided further data. Framework analysis techniques were used to examine the data and to elicit action points for improving the toolkit. The key messages about pre-diabetes concerned the seriousness of the condition, the preventability of progression to diabetes, and the need for lifestyle change. As well as feedback on the acceptability and use of the toolkit, four main themes were identified in the data: knowledge and education needs (of both patients and health professionals); communicating knowledge and motivating change; redesign of practice systems to support pre-diabetes management and the role of the health professional. The toolkit we developed was found to be an acceptable and useful resource for both patients and health practitioners. Three key messages about pre-diabetes were identified. A toolkit of information materials for patients with pre-diabetes and the health professionals and ideas for improving practice systems for managing pre-diabetes were developed and successfully piloted. Further work is needed to establish the best mode of delivery of the WAKEUP toolkit.

Prototype Implementation of Web and Desktop Applications for ALMA Science Verification Data and the Lessons Learned

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eguchi, S.; Kawasaki, W.; Shirasaki, Y.; Komiya, Y.; Kosugi, G.; Ohishi, M.; Mizumoto, Y.

2013-10-01

ALMA is estimated to generate TB scale data during only one observation; astronomers need to identify which part of the data they are really interested in. We have been developing new GUI software for this purpose utilizing the VO interface: ALMA Web Quick Look System (ALMAWebQL) and ALMA Desktop Application (Vissage). The former is written in JavaScript and HTML5 generated from Java code by the Google Web Toolkit, and the latter is in pure Java. An essential point of our approach is how to reduce network traffic: we prepare, in advance, “compressed” FITS files of 2x2x1 (horizontal, vertical, and spectral directions, respectively) binning, 2 x 2 x 2 binning, 4 x 4 x 2 binning data, and so on. These files are hidden from users, and Web QL automatically chooses the proper one for each user operation. Through this work, we find that network traffic in our system is still a bottleneck towards TB scale data distribution. Hence we have to develop alternative data containers for much faster data processing. In this paper, we introduce our data analysis systems, and describe what we learned through the development.

75 FR 44830 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-07-29

...-dealers and aggregators such as electronic communications networks. A member firm is able to select any... (`ATSs') and electronic communications networks (`ECNs') that the Commission has also nurtured and... the following methods: Electronic Comments Use the Commission's Internet comment form ( http://www.sec...

76 FR 55882 - Procurement List; Addition

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-09-09

... Americans to work, earn income and be productive members of society. The AbilityOne Program, which the... Administration, Fort Worth, TX. Coverage: A-List for the Total Government Requirement as aggregated by the... Information Management). [FR Doc. 2011-23107 Filed 9-8-11; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6353-01-P ...

12 CFR 1750.4 - Minimum capital requirement computation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... amounts: (1) 2.50 percent times the aggregate on-balance sheet assets of the Enterprise; (2) 0.45 percent times the unpaid principal balance of mortgage-backed securities and substantially equivalent... last day of the quarter just ended (or the date for which the minimum capital report is filed, if...

26 CFR 1.6031(a)-1 - Return of partnership income.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... gross income (including gains) derived from sources within the United States (U.S.-source income... more of any item of partnership income, gain, loss, deduction, or credit is allocable in the aggregate... allocable items of partnership income, gain, loss, deduction, and credit. (3) Filing obligations for certain...

26 CFR 1.6031(a)-1 - Return of partnership income.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... gross income (including gains) derived from sources within the United States (U.S.-source income... more of any item of partnership income, gain, loss, deduction, or credit is allocable in the aggregate... allocable items of partnership income, gain, loss, deduction, and credit. (3) Filing obligations for certain...

78 FR 21487 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; National Securities Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing of...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-04-10

... family of affiliated Members (``Affiliated Family'') that would generate the largest aggregate payment... attributable to the exposure presented by those unaffiliated Members and Affiliated Families that regularly... Families provide additional liquidity to NSCC. Under proposed Rule 4(A), this will take the form of...

In-database processing of a large collection of remote sensing data: applications and implementation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kikhtenko, Vladimir; Mamash, Elena; Chubarov, Dmitri; Voronina, Polina

2016-04-01

Large archives of remote sensing data are now available to scientists, yet the need to work with individual satellite scenes or product files constrains studies that span a wide temporal range or spatial extent. The resources (storage capacity, computing power and network bandwidth) required for such studies are often beyond the capabilities of individual geoscientists. This problem has been tackled before in remote sensing research and inspired several information systems. Some of them such as NASA Giovanni [1] and Google Earth Engine have already proved their utility for science. Analysis tasks involving large volumes of numerical data are not unique to Earth Sciences. Recent advances in data science are enabled by the development of in-database processing engines that bring processing closer to storage, use declarative query languages to facilitate parallel scalability and provide high-level abstraction of the whole dataset. We build on the idea of bridging the gap between file archives containing remote sensing data and databases by integrating files into relational database as foreign data sources and performing analytical processing inside the database engine. Thereby higher level query language can efficiently address problems of arbitrary size: from accessing the data associated with a specific pixel or a grid cell to complex aggregation over spatial or temporal extents over a large number of individual data files. This approach was implemented using PostgreSQL for a Siberian regional archive of satellite data products holding hundreds of terabytes of measurements from multiple sensors and missions taken over a decade-long span. While preserving the original storage layout and therefore compatibility with existing applications the in-database processing engine provides a toolkit for provisioning remote sensing data in scientific workflows and applications. The use of SQL - a widely used higher level declarative query language - simplifies interoperability between desktop GIS, web applications and geographic web services and interactive scientific applications (MATLAB, IPython). The system is also automatically ingesting direct readout data from meteorological and research satellites in near-real time with distributed acquisition workflows managed by Taverna workflow engine [2]. The system has demonstrated its utility in performing non-trivial analytic processing such as the computation of the Robust Satellite Technique (RST) indices [3]. It had been useful in different tasks such as studying urban heat islands, analyzing patterns in the distribution of wildfire occurrences, detecting phenomena related to seismic and earthquake activity. Initial experience has highlighted several limitations of the proposed approach yet it has demonstrated ability to facilitate the use of large archives of remote sensing data by geoscientists. 1. J.G. Acker, G. Leptoukh, Online analysis enhances use of NASA Earth science data. EOS Trans. AGU, 2007, 88(2), P. 14-17. 2. D. Hull, K. Wolsfencroft, R. Stevens, C. Goble, M.R. Pocock, P. Li and T. Oinn, Taverna: a tool for building and running workflows of services. Nucleic Acids Research. 2006. V. 34. P. W729-W732. 3. V. Tramutoli, G. Di Bello, N. Pergola, S. Piscitelli, Robust satellite techniques for remote sensing of seismically active areas // Annals of Geophysics. 2001. no. 44(2). P. 295-312.

Toolkit of Available EPA Green Infrastructure Modeling Software. National Stormwater Calculator

EPA Science Inventory

This webinar will present a toolkit consisting of five EPA green infrastructure models and tools, along with communication material. This toolkit can be used as a teaching and quick reference resource for use by planners and developers when making green infrastructure implementat...

Teacher Quality Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lauer, Patricia A.; Dean, Ceri B.

2004-01-01

This Teacher Quality Toolkit aims to support the continuum of teacher learning by providing tools that institutions of higher education, districts, and schools can use to improve both preservice and inservice teacher education. The toolkit incorporates McREL?s accumulated knowledge and experience related to teacher quality and standards-based…

77 FR 73022 - U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-07

... Commerce continues to develop the web- based U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit to be used by foreign environmental officials and foreign end-users of environmental technologies that will outline U.S. approaches to... DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE International Trade Administration U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit...

CAPRI: Using a Geometric Foundation for Computational Analysis and Design

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Haimes, Robert

2002-01-01

CAPRI (Computational Analysis Programming Interface) is a software development tool intended to make computerized design, simulation and analysis faster and more efficient. The computational steps traditionally taken for most engineering analysis (Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), structural analysis, etc.) are: Surface Generation, usually by employing a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system; Grid Generation, preparing the volume for the simulation; Flow Solver, producing the results at the specified operational point; Post-processing Visualization, interactively attempting to understand the results. It should be noted that the structures problem is more tractable than CFD; there are fewer mesh topologies used and the grids are not as fine (this problem space does not have the length scaling issues of fluids). For CFD, these steps have worked well in the past for simple steady-state simulations at the expense of much user interaction. The data was transmitted between phases via files. In most cases, the output from a CAD system could go IGES files. The output from Grid Generators and Solvers do not really have standards though there are a couple of file formats that can be used for a subset of the gridding (i.e. PLOT3D) data formats and the upcoming CGNS). The user would have to patch up the data or translate from one format to another to move to the next step. Sometimes this could take days. Instead of the serial approach to analysis, CAPRI takes a geometry centric approach. CAPRI is a software building tool-kit that refers to two ideas: (1) A simplified, object-oriented, hierarchical view of a solid part integrating both geometry and topology definitions, and (2) programming access to this part or assembly and any attached data. The connection to the geometry is made through an Application Programming Interface (API) and not a file system.

WATERSHED HEALTH ASSESSMENT TOOLS-INVESTIGATING FISHERIES (WHAT-IF): A MODELING TOOLKIT FOR WATERSHED AND FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

EPA Science Inventory

The Watershed Health Assessment Tools-Investigating Fisheries (WHAT-IF) is a decision-analysis modeling toolkit for personal computers that supports watershed and fisheries management. The WHAT-IF toolkit includes a relational database, help-system functions and documentation, a...

Designing and Delivering Intensive Interventions: A Teacher's Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murray, Christy S.; Coleman, Meghan A.; Vaughn, Sharon; Wanzek, Jeanne; Roberts, Greg

2012-01-01

This toolkit provides activities and resources to assist practitioners in designing and delivering intensive interventions in reading and mathematics for K-12 students with significant learning difficulties and disabilities. Grounded in research, this toolkit is based on the Center on Instruction's "Intensive Interventions for Students Struggling…

The National Informal STEM Education Network

Science.gov Websites

Evaluation and Research Kits Explore Science: Earth & Space toolkit Building with Biology Kit Explore 2018 toolkits now available for download. Download the 2018 Digital Toolkit! Building with Biology ACTIVITY KIT Building with Biology Conversations and activities about synthetic biology; this emerging

78 FR 14773 - U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit-Landfill Standards

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-03-07

... and foreign end-users of environmental technologies that will outline U.S. approaches to a series of environmental problems and highlight participating U.S. vendors of relevant U.S. technologies. The Toolkit will... DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE International Trade Administration U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit...

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

Duro, Francisco Rodrigo; Garcia Blas, Javier; Isaila, Florin

This paper explores novel techniques for improving the performance of many-task workflows based on the Swift scripting language. We propose novel programmer options for automated distributed data placement and task scheduling. These options trigger a data placement mechanism used for distributing intermediate workflow data over the servers of Hercules, a distributed key-value store that can be used to cache file system data. We demonstrate that these new mechanisms can significantly improve the aggregated throughput of many-task workflows with up to 86x, reduce the contention on the shared file system, exploit the data locality, and trade off locality and load balance.

Trick Simulation Environment 07

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lin, Alexander S.; Penn, John M.

2012-01-01

The Trick Simulation Environment is a generic simulation toolkit used for constructing and running simulations. This release includes a Monte Carlo analysis simulation framework and a data analysis package. It produces all auto documentation in XML. Also, the software is capable of inserting a malfunction at any point during the simulation. Trick 07 adds variable server output options and error messaging and is capable of using and manipulating wide characters for international support. Wide character strings are available as a fundamental type for variables processed by Trick. A Trick Monte Carlo simulation uses a statistically generated, or predetermined, set of inputs to iteratively drive the simulation. Also, there is a framework in place for optimization and solution finding where developers may iteratively modify the inputs per run based on some analysis of the outputs. The data analysis package is capable of reading data from external simulation packages such as MATLAB and Octave, as well as the common comma-separated values (CSV) format used by Excel, without the use of external converters. The file formats for MATLAB and Octave were obtained from their documentation sets, and Trick maintains generic file readers for each format. XML tags store the fields in the Trick header comments. For header files, XML tags for structures and enumerations, and the members within are stored in the auto documentation. For source code files, XML tags for each function and the calling arguments are stored in the auto documentation. When a simulation is built, a top level XML file, which includes all of the header and source code XML auto documentation files, is created in the simulation directory. Trick 07 provides an XML to TeX converter. The converter reads in header and source code XML documentation files and converts the data to TeX labels and tables suitable for inclusion in TeX documents. A malfunction insertion capability allows users to override the value of any simulation variable, or call a malfunction job, at any time during the simulation. Users may specify conditions, use the return value of a malfunction trigger job, or manually activate a malfunction. The malfunction action may consist of executing a block of input file statements in an action block, setting simulation variable values, call a malfunction job, or turn on/off simulation jobs.

78 FR 58520 - U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-09-24

... notice sets forth a request for input from U.S. businesses capable of exporting their goods or services... and foreign end-users of environmental technologies The Toolkit outline U.S. approaches to a series of environmental problems and highlight participating U.S. vendors of relevant U.S. technologies. The Toolkit will...

Practitioner Data Use in Schools: Workshop Toolkit. REL 2015-043

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bocala, Candice; Henry, Susan F.; Mundry, Susan; Morgan, Claire

2014-01-01

The "Practitioner Data Use in Schools: Workshop Toolkit" is designed to help practitioners systematically and accurately use data to inform their teaching practice. The toolkit includes an agenda, slide deck, participant workbook, and facilitator's guide and covers the following topics: developing data literacy, engaging in a cycle of…

Language Access Toolkit: An Organizing and Advocacy Resource for Community-Based Youth Programs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beyersdorf, Mark Ro

2013-01-01

Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) developed this language access toolkit to share the expertise and experiences of National Asian American Education Advocates Network (NAAEA) member organizations with other community organizations interested in developing language access campaigns. This toolkit includes an overview of…

FY17Q4 Ristra project: Release Version 1.0 of a production toolkit

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

Hungerford, Aimee L.; Daniel, David John

2017-09-21

The Next Generation Code project will release Version 1.0 of a production toolkit for multi-physics application development on advanced architectures. Features of this toolkit will include remap and link utilities, control and state manager, setup, visualization and I/O, as well as support for a variety of mesh and particle data representations. Numerical physics packages that operate atop this foundational toolkit will be employed in a multi-physics demonstration problem and released to the community along with results from the demonstration.

Diagnosing turbulence for research aircraft safety using open source toolkits

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lang, T. J.; Guy, N.

Open source software toolkits have been developed and applied to diagnose in-cloud turbulence in the vicinity of Earth science research aircraft, via analysis of ground-based Doppler radar data. Based on multiple retrospective analyses, these toolkits show promise for detecting significant turbulence well prior to cloud penetrations by research aircraft. A pilot study demonstrated the ability to provide mission scientists turbulence estimates in near real time during an actual field campaign, and thus these toolkits are recommended for usage in future cloud-penetrating aircraft field campaigns.

Software reuse in spacecraft planning and scheduling systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mclean, David; Tuchman, Alan; Broseghini, Todd; Yen, Wen; Page, Brenda; Johnson, Jay; Bogovich, Lynn; Burkhardt, Chris; Mcintyre, James; Klein, Scott

1993-01-01

The use of a software toolkit and development methodology that supports software reuse is described. The toolkit includes source-code-level library modules and stand-alone tools which support such tasks as data reformatting and report generation, simple relational database applications, user interfaces, tactical planning, strategic planning and documentation. The current toolkit is written in C and supports applications that run on IBM-PC's under DOS and UNlX-based workstations under OpenLook and Motif. The toolkit is fully integrated for building scheduling systems that reuse AI knowledge base technology. A typical scheduling scenario and three examples of applications that utilize the reuse toolkit will be briefly described. In addition to the tools themselves, a description of the software evolution and reuse methodology that was used is presented.

Development of an evidence-informed leisure time physical activity resource for adults with spinal cord injury: the SCI Get Fit Toolkit.

PubMed

Arbour-Nicitopoulos, K P; Martin Ginis, K A; Latimer-Cheung, A E; Bourne, C; Campbell, D; Cappe, S; Ginis, S; Hicks, A L; Pomerleau, P; Smith, K

2013-06-01

To systematically develop an evidence-informed leisure time physical activity (LTPA) resource for adults with spinal cord injury (SCI). Canada. The Appraisal of Guidelines, Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II protocol was used to develop a toolkit to teach and encourage adults with SCI how to make smart and informed choices about being physically active. A multidisciplinary expert panel appraised the evidence and generated specific recommendations for the content of the toolkit. Pilot testing was conducted to refine the toolkit's presentation. Recommendations emanating from the consultation process were that the toolkit be a brief, evidence-based resource that contains images of adults with tetraplegia and paraplegia, and links to more detailed online information. The content of the toolkit should include the physical activity guidelines (PAGs) for adults with SCI, activities tailored to manual and power chair users, the benefits of LTPA, and strategies to overcome common LTPA barriers for adults with SCI. The inclusion of action plans and safety tips was also recommended. These recommendations have resulted in the development of an evidence-informed LTPA resource to assist adults with SCI in meeting the PAGs. This toolkit will have important implications for consumers, health care professionals and policy makers for encouraging LTPA in the SCI community.

A framework for measurement and harmonization of pediatric multiple sclerosis etiologic research studies: The Pediatric MS Tool-Kit.

PubMed

Magalhaes, Sandra; Banwell, Brenda; Bar-Or, Amit; Fortier, Isabel; Hanwell, Heather E; Lim, Ming; Matt, Georg E; Neuteboom, Rinze F; O'Riordan, David L; Schneider, Paul K; Pugliatti, Maura; Shatenstein, Bryna; Tansey, Catherine M; Wassmer, Evangeline; Wolfson, Christina

2018-06-01

While studying the etiology of multiple sclerosis (MS) in children has several methodological advantages over studying etiology in adults, studies are limited by small sample sizes. Using a rigorous methodological process, we developed the Pediatric MS Tool-Kit, a measurement framework that includes a minimal set of core variables to assess etiological risk factors. We solicited input from the International Pediatric MS Study Group to select three risk factors: environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure, sun exposure, and vitamin D intake. To develop the Tool-Kit, we used a Delphi study involving a working group of epidemiologists, neurologists, and content experts from North America and Europe. The Tool-Kit includes six core variables to measure ETS, six to measure sun exposure, and six to measure vitamin D intake. The Tool-Kit can be accessed online ( www.maelstrom-research.org/mica/network/tool-kit ). The goals of the Tool-Kit are to enhance exposure measurement in newly designed pediatric MS studies and comparability of results across studies, and in the longer term to facilitate harmonization of studies, a methodological approach that can be used to circumvent issues of small sample sizes. We believe the Tool-Kit will prove to be a valuable resource to guide pediatric MS researchers in developing study-specific questionnaire.

Implementation of the Good School Toolkit in Uganda: a quantitative process evaluation of a successful violence prevention program.

PubMed

Knight, Louise; Allen, Elizabeth; Mirembe, Angel; Nakuti, Janet; Namy, Sophie; Child, Jennifer C; Sturgess, Joanna; Kyegombe, Nambusi; Walakira, Eddy J; Elbourne, Diana; Naker, Dipak; Devries, Karen M

2018-05-09

The Good School Toolkit, a complex behavioural intervention designed by Raising Voices a Ugandan NGO, reduced past week physical violence from school staff to primary students by an average of 42% in a recent randomised controlled trial. This process evaluation quantitatively examines what was implemented across the twenty-one intervention schools, variations in school prevalence of violence after the intervention, factors that influence exposure to the intervention and factors associated with students' experience of physical violence from staff at study endline. Implementation measures were captured prospectively in the twenty-one intervention schools over four school terms from 2012 to 2014 and Toolkit exposure captured in the student (n = 1921) and staff (n = 286) endline cross-sectional surveys in 2014. Implementation measures and the prevalence of violence are summarised across schools and are assessed for correlation using Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient. Regression models are used to explore individual factors associated with Toolkit exposure and with physical violence at endline. School prevalence of past week physical violence from staff against students ranged from 7% to 65% across schools at endline. Schools with higher mean levels of teacher Toolkit exposure had larger decreases in violence during the study. Students in schools categorised as implementing a 'low' number of program school-led activities reported less exposure to the Toolkit. Higher student Toolkit exposure was associated with decreased odds of experiencing physical violence from staff (OR: 0.76, 95%CI: 0.67-0.86, p-value< 0.001). Girls, students reporting poorer mental health and students in a lower grade were less exposed to the toolkit. After the intervention, and when adjusting for individual Toolkit exposure, some students remained at increased risk of experiencing violence from staff, including, girls, students reporting poorer mental health, students who experienced other violence and those reporting difficulty with self-care. Our results suggest that increasing students and teachers exposure to the Good School Toolkit within schools has the potential to bring about further reductions in violence. Effectiveness of the Toolkit may be increased by further targeting and supporting teachers' engagement with girls and students with mental health difficulties. The trial is registered at clinicaltrials.gov , NCT01678846, August 24th 2012.

The Montage Image Mosaic Toolkit As A Visualization Engine.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berriman, G. Bruce; Lerias, Angela; Good, John; Mandel, Eric; Pepper, Joshua

2018-01-01

The Montage toolkit has since 2003 been used to aggregate FITS images into mosaics for science analysis. It is now finding application as an engine for image visualization. One important reason is that the functionality developed for creating mosaics is also valuable in image visualization. An equally important (though perhaps less obvious) reason is that Montage is portable and is built on standard astrophysics toolkits, making it very easy to integrate into new environments. Montage models and rectifies the sky background to a common level and thus reveals faint, diffuse features; it offers an adaptive image stretching method that preserves the dynamic range of a FITS image when represented in PNG format; it provides utilities for creating cutouts of large images and downsampled versions of large images that can then be visualized on desktops or in browsers; it contains a fast reprojection algorithm intended for visualization; and it resamples and reprojects images to a common grid for subsequent multi-color visualization.This poster will highlight these visualization capabilities with the following examples:1. Creation of down-sampled multi-color images of a 16-wavelength Infrared Atlas of the Galactic Plane, sampled at 1 arcsec when created2. Integration into web-based image processing environment: JS9 is an interactive image display service for web browsers, desktops and mobile devices. It exploits the flux-preserving reprojection algorithms in Montage to transform diverse images to common image parameters for display. Select Montage programs have been compiled to Javascript/WebAssembly using the Emscripten compiler, which allows our reprojection algorithms to run in browsers at close to native speed.3. Creation of complex sky coverage maps: an multicolor all-sky map that shows the sky coverage of the Kepler and K2, KELT and TESS projects, overlaid on an all-sky 2MASS image.Montage is funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number ACI-1642453. JS9 is funded by the Chandra X-ray Center (NAS8-03060) and NASA's Universe of Learning (STScI-509913).

The Spider Center Wide File System; From Concept to Reality

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

Shipman, Galen M; Dillow, David A; Oral, H Sarp

2009-01-01

The Leadership Computing Facility (LCF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has a diverse portfolio of computational resources ranging from a petascale XT4/XT5 simulation system (Jaguar) to numerous other systems supporting development, visualization, and data analytics. In order to support vastly different I/O needs of these systems Spider, a Lustre-based center wide file system was designed and deployed to provide over 240 GB/s of aggregate throughput with over 10 Petabytes of formatted capacity. A multi-stage InfiniBand network, dubbed as Scalable I/O Network (SION), with over 889 GB/s of bisectional bandwidth was deployed as part of Spider to provide connectivity tomore » our simulation, development, visualization, and other platforms. To our knowledge, while writing this paper, Spider is the largest and fastest POSIX-compliant parallel file system in production. This paper will detail the overall architecture of the Spider system, challenges in deploying and initial testings of a file system of this scale, and novel solutions to these challenges which offer key insights into file system design in the future.« less

Assessing the effectiveness of the Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit: a curriculum for enhancing farmworkers' understanding of pesticide safety concepts.

PubMed

LePrevost, Catherine E; Storm, Julia F; Asuaje, Cesar R; Arellano, Consuelo; Cope, W Gregory

2014-01-01

Among agricultural workers, migrant and seasonal farmworkers have been recognized as a special risk population because these laborers encounter cultural challenges and linguistic barriers while attempting to maintain their safety and health within their working environments. The crop-specific Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit (Toolkit) is a pesticide safety and health curriculum designed to communicate to farmworkers pesticide hazards commonly found in their working environments and to address Worker Protection Standard (WPS) pesticide training criteria for agricultural workers. The goal of this preliminary study was to test evaluation items for measuring knowledge increases among farmworkers and to assess the effectiveness of the Toolkit in improving farmworkers' knowledge of key WPS and risk communication concepts when the Toolkit lesson was delivered by trained trainers in the field. After receiving training on the curriculum, four participating trainers provided lessons using the Toolkit as part of their regular training responsibilities and orally administered a pre- and post-lesson evaluation instrument to 20 farmworker volunteers who were generally representative of the national farmworker population. Farmworker knowledge of pesticide safety messages significantly (P<.05) increased after participation in the lesson. Further, items with visual alternatives were found to be most useful in discriminating between more and less knowledgeable farmworkers. The pilot study suggests that the Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit is an effective, research-based pesticide safety and health intervention for the at-risk farmworker population and identifies a testing format appropriate for evaluating the Toolkit and other similar interventions for farmworkers in the field.

Educator Toolkits on Second Victim Syndrome, Mindfulness and Meditation, and Positive Psychology: The 2017 Resident Wellness Consensus Summit

PubMed Central

Smart, Jon; Zdradzinski, Michael; Roth, Sarah; Gende, Alecia; Conroy, Kylie; Battaglioli, Nicole

2018-01-01

Introduction Burnout, depression, and suicidality among residents of all specialties have become a critical focus of attention for the medical education community. Methods As part of the 2017 Resident Wellness Consensus Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, resident participants from 31 programs collaborated in the Educator Toolkit workgroup. Over a seven-month period leading up to the summit, this workgroup convened virtually in the Wellness Think Tank, an online resident community, to perform a literature review and draft curricular plans on three core wellness topics. These topics were second victim syndrome, mindfulness and meditation, and positive psychology. At the live summit event, the workgroup expanded to include residents outside the Wellness Think Tank to obtain a broader consensus of the evidence-based toolkits for these three topics. Results Three educator toolkits were developed. The second victim syndrome toolkit has four modules, each with a pre-reading material and a leader (educator) guide. In the mindfulness and meditation toolkit, there are three modules with a leader guide in addition to a longitudinal, guided meditation plan. The positive psychology toolkit has two modules, each with a leader guide and a PowerPoint slide set. These toolkits provide educators the necessary resources, reading materials, and lesson plans to implement didactic sessions in their residency curriculum. Conclusion Residents from across the world collaborated and convened to reach a consensus on high-yield—and potentially high-impact—lesson plans that programs can use to promote and improve resident wellness. These lesson plans may stand alone or be incorporated into a larger wellness curriculum. PMID:29560061

Educator Toolkits on Second Victim Syndrome, Mindfulness and Meditation, and Positive Psychology: The 2017 Resident Wellness Consensus Summit.

PubMed

Chung, Arlene S; Smart, Jon; Zdradzinski, Michael; Roth, Sarah; Gende, Alecia; Conroy, Kylie; Battaglioli, Nicole

2018-03-01

Burnout, depression, and suicidality among residents of all specialties have become a critical focus of attention for the medical education community. As part of the 2017 Resident Wellness Consensus Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, resident participants from 31 programs collaborated in the Educator Toolkit workgroup. Over a seven-month period leading up to the summit, this workgroup convened virtually in the Wellness Think Tank, an online resident community, to perform a literature review and draft curricular plans on three core wellness topics. These topics were second victim syndrome, mindfulness and meditation, and positive psychology. At the live summit event, the workgroup expanded to include residents outside the Wellness Think Tank to obtain a broader consensus of the evidence-based toolkits for these three topics. Three educator toolkits were developed. The second victim syndrome toolkit has four modules, each with a pre-reading material and a leader (educator) guide. In the mindfulness and meditation toolkit, there are three modules with a leader guide in addition to a longitudinal, guided meditation plan. The positive psychology toolkit has two modules, each with a leader guide and a PowerPoint slide set. These toolkits provide educators the necessary resources, reading materials, and lesson plans to implement didactic sessions in their residency curriculum. Residents from across the world collaborated and convened to reach a consensus on high-yield-and potentially high-impact-lesson plans that programs can use to promote and improve resident wellness. These lesson plans may stand alone or be incorporated into a larger wellness curriculum.

The RAPID Toolkit: Facilitating Utility-Scale Renewable Energy Development

Science.gov Websites

energy and bulk transmission projects. The RAPID Toolkit, developed by the National Renewable Energy Renewable Energy Development The RAPID Toolkit: Facilitating Utility-Scale Renewable Energy Development information about federal, state, and local permitting and regulations for utility-scale renewable energy and

Quality Assurance Toolkit for Distance Higher Education Institutions and Programmes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rama, Kondapalli, Ed.; Hope, Andrea, Ed.

2009-01-01

The Commonwealth of Learning is proud to partner with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Higher Education and UNESCO to produce this "Quality Assurance Toolkit for Distance Higher Education Institutions and Programmes". The Toolkit has been prepared with three features. First, it is a generic document on quality assurance, complete with a…

75 FR 35038 - Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-06-21

... components of the RED, as well as the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse patients; (2) To pre-test the revised RED Toolkit in ten varied hospital settings, evaluating how the RED Toolkit is... intensity of technical assistance (TA). (3) To modify the revised RED Toolkit based on pre-testing and to...

Transition Toolkit 3.0: Meeting the Educational Needs of Youth Exposed to the Juvenile Justice System. Third Edition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clark, Heather Griller; Mathur, Sarup; Brock, Leslie; O'Cummings, Mindee; Milligan, DeAngela

2016-01-01

The third edition of the National Technical Assistance Center for the Education of Neglected or Delinquent Children and Youth's (NDTAC's) "Transition Toolkit" provides updated information on existing policies, practices, strategies, and resources for transition that build on field experience and research. The "Toolkit" offers…

Problem posing and cultural tailoring: developing an HIV/AIDS health literacy toolkit with the African American community.

PubMed

Rikard, R V; Thompson, Maxine S; Head, Rachel; McNeil, Carlotta; White, Caressa

2012-09-01

The rate of HIV infection among African Americans is disproportionately higher than for other racial groups in the United States. Previous research suggests that low level of health literacy (HL) is an underlying factor to explain racial disparities in the prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS. The present research describes a community and university project to develop a culturally tailored HIV/AIDS HL toolkit in the African American community. Paulo Freire's pedagogical philosophy and problem-posing methodology served as the guiding framework throughout the development process. Developing the HIV/AIDS HL toolkit occurred in a two-stage process. In Stage 1, a nonprofit organization and research team established a collaborative partnership to develop a culturally tailored HIV/AIDS HL toolkit. In Stage 2, African American community members participated in focus groups conducted as Freirian cultural circles to further refine the HIV/AIDS HL toolkit. In both stages, problem posing engaged participants' knowledge, experiences, and concerns to evaluate a working draft toolkit. The discussion and implications highlight how Freire's pedagogical philosophy and methodology enhances the development of culturally tailored health information.

75 FR 22874 - Claymore Exchange-Traded Fund Trust 3, et al.; Notice of Application

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-04-30

... SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION [Investment Company Act Release No. 29256; File No. 812-13534... the Investment Company Act of 1940 (``Act'') for an exemption from sections 2(a)(32), 5(a)(1), 22(d... management investment companies to issue shares (``Shares'') redeemable in large aggregations only...

12 CFR 621.7 - Rule of aggregation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... constitutes an independent credit risk and such determination is adequately documented in the loan file. (1) A loan shall be considered an independent credit risk if a substantial portion of the loan is guaranteed... credit risks if and so long as: (i) The primary sources of repayment are independent for each loan; (ii...

18 CFR 46.6 - Contents of the written statement and procedures for filing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... entity described in § 46.5(c), which produces or supplies electrical equipment for use of such public utility, such person shall provide the following information: (1) The aggregate amount of revenues received by such entity from producing or supplying electrical equipment to such public utility in the...

78 FR 3931 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-01-17

... thresholds through a single MPID to avoid providing excessive encouragement to members to aggregate the... a particular venue to be excessive, or rebate opportunities available at other venues to be more... standards applicable to exchanges. These competitive forces help to ensure that NASDAQ's fees are reasonable...

78 FR 22580 - Millington Securities, Inc. and Millington Exchange Traded MAVINS Fund, LLC; Notice of Application

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-04-16

... security for inclusion in the Fund's portfolio to have aggregate investment characteristics, fundamental... SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION [Investment Company Act Release No. 30459; File No. 812-13887... an order under section 6(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the ``Act'') for an exemption from...

76 FR 78610 - Notice of Intent To Reduce the Frequency of Rice and Potato Stocks Surveys and All Associated...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-12-19

... the resulting publications. Abstract: The primary functions of the National Agricultural Statistics..., filing of petitions and applications and agency #0;statements of organization and functions are examples..., 7 U.S.C. 2276, which requires USDA to afford strict confidentiality to non- aggregated data provided...

78 FR 48757 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; Chicago Board Options Exchange, Incorporated; Notice of Filing and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-08-09

... market, with aggregate size (``BBO data,'' sometimes referred to as ``top-of-book data''). Data with...''). This new COB Feed will provide data regarding the Exchange's Complex Order Book (``COB'') and related... to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices, to promote just and equitable principles...

Sexual Abuse of Vulnerable Young and Old Men

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roberto, Karen A.; Teaster, Pamela B.; Nikzad, Katherina A.

2007-01-01

During a 4-year period, aggregated data from Adult Protective Services case files in Virginia revealed 17 cases of sexually abused young, middle-age, and old men. The most common types of sexual abuse across age groups involved instances of sexualized kissing and fondling and unwelcome sexual interest in the individual men's bodies. The majority…

78 FR 25496 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; National Securities Clearing Corporation; Notice of Filing of...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-05-01

... obligations to its Members in the event of the default of the Member or family of affiliated Members (``Affiliated Family'') that would generate the largest aggregate payment obligation to NSCC in stressed... Members and Affiliated Families that regularly incur the largest gross settlement debits over a settlement...

MITK-OpenIGTLink for combining open-source toolkits in real-time computer-assisted interventions.

PubMed

Klemm, Martin; Kirchner, Thomas; Gröhl, Janek; Cheray, Dominique; Nolden, Marco; Seitel, Alexander; Hoppe, Harald; Maier-Hein, Lena; Franz, Alfred M

2017-03-01

Due to rapid developments in the research areas of medical imaging, medical image processing and robotics, computer-assisted interventions (CAI) are becoming an integral part of modern patient care. From a software engineering point of view, these systems are highly complex and research can benefit greatly from reusing software components. This is supported by a number of open-source toolkits for medical imaging and CAI such as the medical imaging interaction toolkit (MITK), the public software library for ultrasound imaging research (PLUS) and 3D Slicer. An independent inter-toolkit communication such as the open image-guided therapy link (OpenIGTLink) can be used to combine the advantages of these toolkits and enable an easier realization of a clinical CAI workflow. MITK-OpenIGTLink is presented as a network interface within MITK that allows easy to use, asynchronous two-way messaging between MITK and clinical devices or other toolkits. Performance and interoperability tests with MITK-OpenIGTLink were carried out considering the whole CAI workflow from data acquisition over processing to visualization. We present how MITK-OpenIGTLink can be applied in different usage scenarios. In performance tests, tracking data were transmitted with a frame rate of up to 1000 Hz and a latency of 2.81 ms. Transmission of images with typical ultrasound (US) and greyscale high-definition (HD) resolutions of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] is possible at up to 512 and 128 Hz, respectively. With the integration of OpenIGTLink into MITK, this protocol is now supported by all established open-source toolkits in the field. This eases interoperability between MITK and toolkits such as PLUS or 3D Slicer and facilitates cross-toolkit research collaborations. MITK and its submodule MITK-OpenIGTLink are provided open source under a BSD-style licence ( http://mitk.org ).

Alarm rationalization: practical experience rationalizing alarm configuration for an accelerator subsystem

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

Kasemir, Kay; Hartman, Steven M

2009-01-01

A new alarm system toolkit has been implemented at SNS. The toolkit handles the Central Control Room (CCR) 'annunciator', or audio alarms. For the new alarm system to be effective, the alarms must be meaningful and properly configured. Along with the implementation of the new alarm toolkit, a thorough documentation and rationalization of the alarm configuration is taking place. Requirements and maintenance of a robust alarm configuration have been gathered from system and operations experts. In this paper we present our practical experience with the vacuum system alarm handling configuration of the alarm toolkit.

Demonstration of the Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit

PubMed Central

Mabachi, Natabhona M.; Cifuentes, Maribel; Barnard, Juliana; Brega, Angela G.; Albright, Karen; Weiss, Barry D.; Brach, Cindy; West, David

2016-01-01

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit was developed to help primary care practices assess and make changes to improve communication with and support for patients. Twelve diverse primary care practices implemented assigned tools over a 6-month period. Qualitative results revealed challenges practices experienced during implementation, including competing demands, bureaucratic hurdles, technological challenges, limited quality improvement experience, and limited leadership support. Practices used the Toolkit flexibly and recognized the efficiencies of implementing tools in tandem and in coordination with other quality improvement initiatives. Practices recommended reducing Toolkit density and making specific refinements. PMID:27232681

Demonstration of the Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit: Lessons for Quality Improvement.

PubMed

Mabachi, Natabhona M; Cifuentes, Maribel; Barnard, Juliana; Brega, Angela G; Albright, Karen; Weiss, Barry D; Brach, Cindy; West, David

2016-01-01

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit was developed to help primary care practices assess and make changes to improve communication with and support for patients. Twelve diverse primary care practices implemented assigned tools over a 6-month period. Qualitative results revealed challenges practices experienced during implementation, including competing demands, bureaucratic hurdles, technological challenges, limited quality improvement experience, and limited leadership support. Practices used the Toolkit flexibly and recognized the efficiencies of implementing tools in tandem and in coordination with other quality improvement initiatives. Practices recommended reducing Toolkit density and making specific refinements.

Full 3D visualization tool-kit for Monte Carlo and deterministic transport codes

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

Frambati, S.; Frignani, M.

2012-07-01

We propose a package of tools capable of translating the geometric inputs and outputs of many Monte Carlo and deterministic radiation transport codes into open source file formats. These tools are aimed at bridging the gap between trusted, widely-used radiation analysis codes and very powerful, more recent and commonly used visualization software, thus supporting the design process and helping with shielding optimization. Three main lines of development were followed: mesh-based analysis of Monte Carlo codes, mesh-based analysis of deterministic codes and Monte Carlo surface meshing. The developed kit is considered a powerful and cost-effective tool in the computer-aided design formore » radiation transport code users of the nuclear world, and in particular in the fields of core design and radiation analysis. (authors)« less

The nursing human resource planning best practice toolkit: creating a best practice resource for nursing managers.

PubMed

Vincent, Leslie; Beduz, Mary Agnes

2010-05-01

Evidence of acute nursing shortages in urban hospitals has been surfacing since 2000. Further, new graduate nurses account for more than 50% of total nurse turnover in some hospitals and between 35% and 60% of new graduates change workplace during the first year. Critical to organizational success, first line nurse managers must have the knowledge and skills to ensure the accurate projection of nursing resource requirements and to develop proactive recruitment and retention programs that are effective, promote positive nursing socialization, and provide early exposure to the clinical setting. The Nursing Human Resource Planning Best Practice Toolkit project supported the creation of a network of teaching and community hospitals to develop a best practice toolkit in nursing human resource planning targeted at first line nursing managers. The toolkit includes the development of a framework including the conceptual building blocks of planning tools, manager interventions, retention and recruitment and professional practice models. The development of the toolkit involved conducting a review of the literature for best practices in nursing human resource planning, using a mixed method approach to data collection including a survey and extensive interviews of managers and completing a comprehensive scan of human resource practices in the participating organizations. This paper will provide an overview of the process used to develop the toolkit, a description of the toolkit contents and a reflection on the outcomes of the project.

A proposal for a spiritual care assessment toolkit for religious volunteers and volunteer service users.

PubMed

Liu, Yi-Jung

2014-10-01

Based on the idea that volunteer services in healthcare settings should focus on the service users' best interests and providing holistic care for the body, mind, and spirit, the aim of this study was to propose an assessment toolkit for assessing the effectiveness of religious volunteers and improving their service. By analyzing and categorizing the results of previous studies, we incorporated effective care goals and methods in the proposed religious and spiritual care assessment toolkit. Two versions of the toolkit were created. The service users' version comprises 10 questions grouped into the following five dimensions: "physical care," "psychological and emotional support," "social relationships," "religious and spiritual care," and "hope restoration." Each question could either be answered with "yes" or "no". The volunteers' version contains 14 specific care goals and 31 care methods, in addition to the 10 care dimensions in the residents' version. A small sample of 25 experts was asked to judge the usefulness of each of the toolkit items for evaluating volunteers' effectiveness. Although some experts questioned the volunteer's capacity, however, to improve the spiritual care capacity and effectiveness provided by volunteers is the main purpose of developing this assessment toolkit. The toolkit developed in this study may not be applicable to other countries, and only addressed patients' general spiritual needs. Volunteers should receive special training in caring for people with special needs.

High Performance Data Transfer for Distributed Data Intensive Sciences

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

Fang, Chin; Cottrell, R 'Les' A.; Hanushevsky, Andrew B.

We report on the development of ZX software providing high performance data transfer and encryption. The design scales in: computation power, network interfaces, and IOPS while carefully balancing the available resources. Two U.S. patent-pending algorithms help tackle data sets containing lots of small files and very large files, and provide insensitivity to network latency. It has a cluster-oriented architecture, using peer-to-peer technologies to ease deployment, operation, usage, and resource discovery. Its unique optimizations enable effective use of flash memory. Using a pair of existing data transfer nodes at SLAC and NERSC, we compared its performance to that of bbcp andmore » GridFTP and determined that they were comparable. With a proof of concept created using two four-node clusters with multiple distributed multi-core CPUs, network interfaces and flash memory, we achieved 155Gbps memory-to-memory over a 2x100Gbps link aggregated channel and 70Gbps file-to-file with encryption over a 5000 mile 100Gbps link.« less

A Survey of Complex Object Technologies for Digital Libraries

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael L.; Argue, Brad; Efron, Miles; Denn, Sheila; Pattuelli, Maria Cristina

2001-01-01

Many early web-based digital libraries (DLs) had implicit assumptions reflected in their architecture that the unit of focus in the DL (frequently "reports" or "e-prints") would only be manifested in a single, or at most a few, common file formats such as PDF or PostScript. DLs have now matured to the point where their contents are commonly no longer simple files. Complex objects in DLs have emerged from in response to various requirements, including: simple aggregation of formats and supporting files, bundling additional information to aid digital preservation, creating opaque digital objects for e-commerce applications, and the incorporation of dynamic services with the traditional data files. We examine a representative (but not necessarily exhaustive) number of current and recent historical web-based complex object technologies and projects that are applicable to DLs: Aurora, Buckets, ComMentor, Cryptolopes, Digibox, Document Management Alliance, FEDORA, Kahn-Wilensky Framework Digital Objects, Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard, Multivalent Documents, Open eBooks, VERS Encapsulated Objects, and the Warwick Framework.

Toolkit for Evaluating Alignment of Instructional and Assessment Materials to the Common Core State Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Achieve, Inc., 2014

2014-01-01

In joint partnership, Achieve, The Council of Chief State School Officers, and Student Achievement Partners have developed a Toolkit for Evaluating the Alignment of Instructional and Assessment Materials to the Common Core State Standards. The Toolkit is a set of interrelated, freely available instruments for evaluating alignment to the CCSS; each…

A Data Audit and Analysis Toolkit To Support Assessment of the First College Year.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paulson, Karen

This "toolkit" provides a process by which institutions can identify and use information resources to enhance the experiences and outcomes of first-year students. The toolkit contains a "Technical Manual" designed for use by the technical personnel who will be conducting the data audit and associated analyses. Administrators who want more…

SU-E-T-565: RAdiation Resistance of Cancer CElls Using GEANT4 DNA: RACE

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

Perrot, Y; Payno, H; Delage, E

2014-06-01

Purpose: The objective of the RACE project is to develop a comparison between Monte Carlo simulation using the Geant4-DNA toolkit and measurements of radiation damage on 3D melanoma and chondrosarcoma culture cells coupled with gadolinium nanoparticles. We currently expose the status of the developments regarding simulations. Methods: Monte Carlo studies are driven using the Geant4 toolkit and the Geant4-DNA extension. In order to model the geometry of a cell population, the opensource CPOP++ program is being developed for the geometrical representation of 3D cell populations including a specific cell mesh coupled with a multi-agent system. Each cell includes cytoplasm andmore » nucleus. The correct modeling of the cell population has been validated with confocal microscopy images of spheroids. The Geant4 Livermore physics models are used to simulate the interactions of a 250 keV X-ray beam and the production of secondaries from gadolinium nanoparticles supposed to be fixed on the cell membranes. Geant4-DNA processes are used to simulate the interactions of charged particles with the cells. An atomistic description of the DNA molecule, from PDB (Protein Data Bank) files, is provided by the so-called PDB4DNA Geant4 user application we developed to score energy depositions in DNA base pairs and sugar-phosphate groups. Results: At the microscopic level, our simulations enable assessing microscopic energy distribution in each cell compartment of a realistic 3D cell population. Dose enhancement factors due to the presence of gadolinium nanoparticles can be estimated. At the nanometer scale, direct damages on nuclear DNA are also estimated. Conclusion: We successfully simulated the impact of direct radiations on a realistic 3D cell population model compatible with microdosimetry calculations using the Geant4-DNA toolkit. Upcoming validation and the future integration of the radiochemistry module of Geant4-DNA will propose to correlate clusters of ionizations with in vitro experiments. All those developments will be released publicly. This work was supported by grants from Plan Cancer 2009-2013 French national initiative managed by INSERM (Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale)« less

Development of an Integrated Human Factors Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Resnick, Marc L.

2003-01-01

An effective integration of human abilities and limitations is crucial to the success of all NASA missions. The Integrated Human Factors Toolkit facilitates this integration by assisting system designers and analysts to select the human factors tools that are most appropriate for the needs of each project. The HF Toolkit contains information about a broad variety of human factors tools addressing human requirements in the physical, information processing and human reliability domains. Analysis of each tool includes consideration of the most appropriate design stage, the amount of expertise in human factors that is required, the amount of experience with the tool and the target job tasks that are needed, and other factors that are critical for successful use of the tool. The benefits of the Toolkit include improved safety, reliability and effectiveness of NASA systems throughout the agency. This report outlines the initial stages of development for the Integrated Human Factors Toolkit.

Field tests of a participatory ergonomics toolkit for Total Worker Health

PubMed Central

Kernan, Laura; Plaku-Alakbarova, Bora; Robertson, Michelle; Warren, Nicholas; Henning, Robert

2018-01-01

Growing interest in Total Worker Health® (TWH) programs to advance worker safety, health and well-being motivated development of a toolkit to guide their implementation. Iterative design of a program toolkit occurred in which participatory ergonomics (PE) served as the primary basis to plan integrated TWH interventions in four diverse organizations. The toolkit provided start-up guides for committee formation and training, and a structured PE process for generating integrated TWH interventions. Process data from program facilitators and participants throughout program implementation were used for iterative toolkit design. Program success depended on organizational commitment to regular design team meetings with a trained facilitator, the availability of subject matter experts on ergonomics and health to support the design process, and retraining whenever committee turnover occurred. A two committee structure (employee Design Team, management Steering Committee) provided advantages over a single, multilevel committee structure, and enhanced the planning, communication, and team-work skills of participants. PMID:28166897

Fall TIPS: strategies to promote adoption and use of a fall prevention toolkit.

PubMed

Dykes, Patricia C; Carroll, Diane L; Hurley, Ann; Gersh-Zaremski, Ronna; Kennedy, Ann; Kurowski, Jan; Tierney, Kim; Benoit, Angela; Chang, Frank; Lipsitz, Stuart; Pang, Justine; Tsurkova, Ruslana; Zuyov, Lyubov; Middleton, Blackford

2009-11-14

Patient falls are serious problems in hospitals. Risk factors for falls are well understood and nurses routinely assess for fall risk on all hospitalized patients. However, the link from nursing assessment of fall risk, to identification and communication of tailored interventions to prevent falls is yet to be established. The Fall TIPS (Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety) Toolkit was developed to leverage existing practices and workflows and to employ information technology to improve fall prevention practices. The purpose of this paper is to describe the Fall TIPS Toolkit and to report on strategies used to drive adoption of the Toolkit in four acute care hospitals. Using the IHI "Framework for Spread" as a conceptual model, the research team describes the "spread" of the Fall TIPS Toolkit as means to integrate effective fall prevention practices into the workflow of interdisciplinary caregivers, patients and family members.

Building Emergency Contraception Awareness among Adolescents. A Toolkit for Schools and Community-Based Organizations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simkin, Linda; Radosh, Alice; Nelsesteun, Kari; Silverstein, Stacy

This toolkit presents emergency contraception (EC) as a method to help adolescent women avoid pregnancy and abortion after unprotected sexual intercourse. The sections of this toolkit are designed to help increase your knowledge of EC and stay up to date. They provide suggestions for increasing EC awareness in the workplace, whether it is a school…

The Customer Flow Toolkit: A Framework for Designing High Quality Customer Services.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

New York Association of Training and Employment Professionals, Albany.

This document presents a toolkit to assist staff involved in the design and development of New York's one-stop system. Section 1 describes the preplanning issues to be addressed and the intended outcomes that serve as the framework for creation of the customer flow toolkit. Section 2 outlines the following strategies to assist in designing local…

HIV Prevention in Schools: A Tool Kit for Education Leaders.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Office of the Surgeon General (DHHS/PHS), Washington, DC.

This packet of materials is Phase 1 of a toolkit designed to enlighten education leaders about the need for HIV prevention for youth, especially in communities of color. One element of the toolkit is a VHS videotape that features a brief message from former Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher. The toolkit also includes a copy of a letter sent to…

Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Parents and Community as Partners in Education. Part I: Building an Understanding of Family and Community Engagement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific, 2014

2014-01-01

This toolkit is designed to guide school staff in strengthening partnerships with families and community members to support student learning. This toolkit offers an integrated approach to family and community engagement, bringing together research, promising practices, and a wide range of useful tools and resources with explanations and directions…

Toolkit for a Workshop on Building a Culture of Data Use. REL 2015-063

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gerzon, Nancy; Guckenburg, Sarah

2015-01-01

The Culture of Data Use Workshop Toolkit helps school and district teams apply research to practice as they establish and support a culture of data use in their educational setting. The field-tested workshop toolkit guides teams through a set of structured activities to develop an understanding of data-use research in schools and to analyze…

Implementing Project Based Survey Research Skills to Grade Six ELP Students with "The Survey Toolkit" and "TinkerPlots"[R

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walsh, Thomas, Jr.

2011-01-01

"Survey Toolkit Collecting Information, Analyzing Data and Writing Reports" (Walsh, 2009a) is discussed as a survey research curriculum used by the author's sixth grade students. The report describes the implementation of "The Survey Toolkit" curriculum and "TinkerPlots"[R] software to provide instruction to students learning a project based…

Overview and Meteorological Validation of the Wind Integration National Dataset toolkit

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

Draxl, C.; Hodge, B. M.; Clifton, A.

2015-04-13

The Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit described in this report fulfills these requirements, and constitutes a state-of-the-art national wind resource data set covering the contiguous United States from 2007 to 2013 for use in a variety of next-generation wind integration analyses and wind power planning. The toolkit is a wind resource data set, wind forecast data set, and wind power production and forecast data set derived from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) numerical weather prediction model. WIND Toolkit data are available online for over 116,000 land-based and 10,000 offshore sites representing existing and potential wind facilities.

PsyToolkit: a software package for programming psychological experiments using Linux.

PubMed

Stoet, Gijsbert

2010-11-01

PsyToolkit is a set of software tools for programming psychological experiments on Linux computers. Given that PsyToolkit is freely available under the Gnu Public License, open source, and designed such that it can easily be modified and extended for individual needs, it is suitable not only for technically oriented Linux users, but also for students, researchers on small budgets, and universities in developing countries. The software includes a high-level scripting language, a library for the programming language C, and a questionnaire presenter. The software easily integrates with other open source tools, such as the statistical software package R. PsyToolkit is designed to work with external hardware (including IoLab and Cedrus response keyboards and two common digital input/output boards) and to support millisecond timing precision. Four in-depth examples explain the basic functionality of PsyToolkit. Example 1 demonstrates a stimulus-response compatibility experiment. Example 2 demonstrates a novel mouse-controlled visual search experiment. Example 3 shows how to control light emitting diodes using PsyToolkit, and Example 4 shows how to build a light-detection sensor. The last two examples explain the electronic hardware setup such that they can even be used with other software packages.

An open source toolkit for medical imaging de-identification.

PubMed

González, David Rodríguez; Carpenter, Trevor; van Hemert, Jano I; Wardlaw, Joanna

2010-08-01

Medical imaging acquired for clinical purposes can have several legitimate secondary uses in research projects and teaching libraries. No commonly accepted solution for anonymising these images exists because the amount of personal data that should be preserved varies case by case. Our objective is to provide a flexible mechanism for anonymising Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) data that meets the requirements for deployment in multicentre trials. We reviewed our current de-identification practices and defined the relevant use cases to extract the requirements for the de-identification process. We then used these requirements in the design and implementation of the toolkit. Finally, we tested the toolkit taking as a reference those requirements, including a multicentre deployment. The toolkit successfully anonymised DICOM data from various sources. Furthermore, it was shown that it could forward anonymous data to remote destinations, remove burned-in annotations, and add tracking information to the header. The toolkit also implements the DICOM standard confidentiality mechanism. A DICOM de-identification toolkit that facilitates the enforcement of privacy policies was developed. It is highly extensible, provides the necessary flexibility to account for different de-identification requirements and has a low adoption barrier for new users.

The Reconstruction Toolkit (RTK), an open-source cone-beam CT reconstruction toolkit based on the Insight Toolkit (ITK)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rit, S.; Vila Oliva, M.; Brousmiche, S.; Labarbe, R.; Sarrut, D.; Sharp, G. C.

2014-03-01

We propose the Reconstruction Toolkit (RTK, http://www.openrtk.org), an open-source toolkit for fast cone-beam CT reconstruction, based on the Insight Toolkit (ITK) and using GPU code extracted from Plastimatch. RTK is developed by an open consortium (see affiliations) under the non-contaminating Apache 2.0 license. The quality of the platform is daily checked with regression tests in partnership with Kitware, the company supporting ITK. Several features are already available: Elekta, Varian and IBA inputs, multi-threaded Feldkamp-David-Kress reconstruction on CPU and GPU, Parker short scan weighting, multi-threaded CPU and GPU forward projectors, etc. Each feature is either accessible through command line tools or C++ classes that can be included in independent software. A MIDAS community has been opened to share CatPhan datasets of several vendors (Elekta, Varian and IBA). RTK will be used in the upcoming cone-beam CT scanner developed by IBA for proton therapy rooms. Many features are under development: new input format support, iterative reconstruction, hybrid Monte Carlo / deterministic CBCT simulation, etc. RTK has been built to freely share tomographic reconstruction developments between researchers and is open for new contributions.

Development of an Online Toolkit for Measuring Performance in Health Emergency Response Exercises.

PubMed

Agboola, Foluso; Bernard, Dorothy; Savoia, Elena; Biddinger, Paul D

2015-10-01

Exercises that simulate emergency scenarios are accepted widely as an essential component of a robust Emergency Preparedness program. Unfortunately, the variability in the quality of the exercises conducted, and the lack of standardized processes to measure performance, has limited the value of exercises in measuring preparedness. In order to help health organizations improve the quality and standardization of the performance data they collect during simulated emergencies, a model online exercise evaluation toolkit was developed using performance measures tested in over 60 Emergency Preparedness exercises. The exercise evaluation toolkit contains three major components: (1) a database of measures that can be used to assess performance during an emergency response exercise; (2) a standardized data collection tool (form); and (3) a program that populates the data collection tool with the measures that have been selected by the user from the database. The evaluation toolkit was pilot tested from January through September 2014 in collaboration with 14 partnering organizations representing 10 public health agencies and four health care agencies from eight states across the US. Exercise planners from the partnering organizations were asked to use the toolkit for their exercise evaluation process and were interviewed to provide feedback on the use of the toolkit, the generated evaluation tool, and the usefulness of the data being gathered for the development of the exercise after-action report. Ninety-three percent (93%) of exercise planners reported that they found the online database of performance measures appropriate for the creation of exercise evaluation forms, and they stated that they would use it again for future exercises. Seventy-two percent (72%) liked the exercise evaluation form that was generated from the toolkit, and 93% reported that the data collected by the use of the evaluation form were useful in gauging their organization's performance during the exercise. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of exercise planners preferred the evaluation form generated by the toolkit to other forms of evaluations. Results of this project show that users found the newly developed toolkit to be user friendly and more relevant to measurement of specific public health and health care capabilities than other tools currently available. The developed toolkit may contribute to the further advancement of developing a valid approach to exercise performance measurement.

17 CFR 240.13d-1 - Filing of Schedules 13D and 13G.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... regulatory scheme applicable to the equivalent U.S. institution; and (K) A group, provided that all the... influencing the control of the issuer, nor in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having... or control person, provided the aggregate amount held directly by the parent or control person, and...

17 CFR 240.13d-1 - Filing of Schedules 13D and 13G.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... regulatory scheme applicable to the equivalent U.S. institution; and (K) A group, provided that all the... control of the issuer, nor in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having such purpose... or control person, provided the aggregate amount held directly by the parent or control person, and...

77 FR 73089 - Cambria Investment Management, L.P. and Cambria ETF Trust; Notice of Application

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-07

... Investing Fund's Advisory Group will not control (individually or in the aggregate) a Fund within the... group of investment companies as the series to acquire Shares. DATES: Filing Dates: The application was... Fund will (a) be advised by Cambria or an entity controlling, controlled by, or under common control...

77 FR 67431 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; New York Stock Exchange LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-11-09

..., and adds liquidity to the Exchange as a Supplemental Liquidity Provider (``SLP'') for all assigned SLP securities in the aggregate (including shares of both an SLP proprietary trading unit (``SLP- Prop'') and an SLP market maker (``SLMM'') of the same member organization) of more than 0.25% of NYSE CADV. The...

Improvement of DHRA-DMDC Physical Access Software DBIDS Using Cloud Computing Technology: A Case Study

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-06-01

technology originally developed on the Java platform. The Hibernate framework supports rapid development of a data access layer without requiring a...31 viii 2. Hibernate ................................................................................ 31 3. Database Design...protect from security threats; o Easy aggregate management operations via file tags; 2. Hibernate We recommend using Hibernate technology for object

Pancreatic Ribonucleases Superfamily Dynamics

DOE Data Explorer

Agarwal, Pratul

2016-01-01

This data set consists of molecular dynamics simulations based flexibility/dynamics derived for family members of pancreatic ribonucleases. The results are based on two independent 0.5 microsecond trajectories for each of the 23 members. The flexibility is computed at aggregation of first ten quasi-harmonic modes, and indicated in the temperature factor column of PDB (protein data bank) file format.

78 FR 25334 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; Chicago Board Options Exchange, Incorporated; Notice of Filing and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-04-30

... aggregate size (``BBO data,'' sometimes referred to as ``top-of-book data''). Data with respect to executed... for complex strategies (e.g., spreads, straddles, buy-writes, etc.) (``Spread Data''), (iv) BBO data... approved redistributor (i.e., a market data vendor or an extranet service provider) and then distributes it...

75 FR 67417 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; Chicago Board Options Exchange, Incorporated; Notice of Filing and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-11-02

... trading platform at a given time, not both. What trading platform an individual series trades on is... remove) series from the Hybrid Trading Platform we plan to revert back to the general approach of... quotes which represent the aggregate Market-Maker quoting interest in the series for the trading crowd...

76 FR 62872 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; NASDAQ OMX PHLX LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-10-11

... the calculation of the SQT Fees to incentivize trading in equity options, excluding currencies and... the Exchange's options floor and thereby provide liquidity for floor-brokered orders traded in-crowd... Fee based on the aggregate amount of equity options and index options traded by the SQTs in that...

Fat Cat and Friends: Which University Pays Its General Staff the Best?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dobson, Ian R.

2008-01-01

Universities are required by legislation to provide annual staff unit record files to the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). Most universities seem to undertake this task with appropriate diligence. This paper examines the latest staff aggregated data set released by DEST (2005 data), in order to compare average salaries paid by…

78 FR 14617 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; Miami International Securities Exchange LLC; Notice of Filing and...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-03-06

..., with aggregate size and last sale information, subscribers to ToM will also receive: Opening imbalance... information. \\3\\ Where there is an imbalance at the price at which the maximum number of contracts can trade... Timer or Imbalance Timer expires if material conditions of the market (imbalance size, ABBO price or...

26 CFR 1.368-3 - Records to be kept and information to be filed with returns.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... such parties; (2) The date of the reorganization; (3) The aggregate fair market value and basis, determined immediately before the exchange, of the assets, stock or securities of the target corporation... all of the parties to the reorganization; (2) The date of the reorganization; and (3) The fair market...

78 FR 57191 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; BOX Options Exchange LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-09-17

... transactions in the BOX Price Improvement Period (``PIP'') on the BOX Market LLC (``BOX'') options facility... to a PIP auction, and the retention rates of Initiating Participants and those market makers who... believes that in the aggregate, the long term data trends demonstrate there has not been a decline in...

78 FR 25118 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; New York Stock Exchange LLC; Notice of Filing of Proposed Rule...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-04-29

... not marked dark is already visible to DMMs. Similarly, aggregated information for interest not marked dark is visible to any market participant beyond the Floor via OpenBook.\\20\\ \\19\\ Exchange systems make... ``dark'' orders that are not visible to the DMM, which would prevent any communication about such...

77 FR 32640 - Designation of a Class of Employees for Addition to the Special Exposure Cohort

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-06-01

... Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for... number of work days aggregating at least 250 work days, occurring either solely under this employment or... Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. 2012-13381 Filed 5-31-12; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ...

77 FR 9250 - Designation of a Class of Employees for Addition to the Special Exposure Cohort

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-02-16

... Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for... January 1, 1953, through September 30, 1972, for a number of work days aggregating at least 250 work days... . John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. 2012-3645 Filed...

77 FR 58381 - Designation of a Class of Employees for Addition to the Special Exposure Cohort

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-09-20

... Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for... December 31, 1967, for a number of work days aggregating at least 250 work days, occurring either solely..., National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. 2012-23207 Filed 9-19-12; 8:45 am] BILLING...

Facilitated family presence at resuscitation: effectiveness of a nursing student toolkit.

PubMed

Kantrowitz-Gordon, Ira; Bennett, Deborah; Wise Stauffer, Debra; Champ-Gibson, Erla; Fitzgerald, Cynthia; Corbett, Cynthia

2013-10-01

Facilitated family presence at resuscitation is endorsed by multiple nursing and specialty practice organizations. Implementation of this practice is not universal so there is a need to increase familiarity and competence with facilitated family presence at resuscitation during this significant life event. One strategy to promote this practice is to use a nursing student toolkit for pre-licensure and graduate nursing students. The toolkit includes short video simulations of facilitated family presence at resuscitation, a PowerPoint presentation of evidence-based practice, and questions to facilitate guided discussion. This study tested the effectiveness of this toolkit in increasing nursing students' knowledge, perceptions, and confidence in facilitated family presence at resuscitation. Nursing students from five universities in the United States completed the Family Presence Risk-Benefit Scale, Family Presence Self-Confidence Scale, and a knowledge test before and after the intervention. Implementing the facilitated family presence at resuscitation toolkit significantly increased nursing students' knowledge, perceptions, and confidence related to facilitated family presence at resuscitation (p<.001). The effect size was large for knowledge (d=.90) and perceptions (d=1.04) and moderate for confidence (d=.51). The facilitated family presence at resuscitation toolkit used in this study had a positive impact on students' knowledge, perception of benefits and risks, and self-confidence in facilitated family presence at resuscitation. The toolkit provides students a structured opportunity to consider the presence of family members at resuscitation prior to encountering this situation in clinical practice. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Behavioral Genetic Toolkits: Toward the Evolutionary Origins of Complex Phenotypes.

PubMed

Rittschof, C C; Robinson, G E

2016-01-01

The discovery of toolkit genes, which are highly conserved genes that consistently regulate the development of similar morphological phenotypes across diverse species, is one of the most well-known observations in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. Surprisingly, this phenomenon is also relevant for a wide array of behavioral phenotypes, despite the fact that these phenotypes are highly complex and regulated by many genes operating in diverse tissues. In this chapter, we review the use of the toolkit concept in the context of behavior, noting the challenges of comparing behaviors and genes across diverse species, but emphasizing the successes in identifying genetic toolkits for behavior; these successes are largely attributable to the creative research approaches fueled by advances in behavioral genomics. We have two general goals: (1) to acknowledge the groundbreaking progress in this field, which offers new approaches to the difficult but exciting challenge of understanding the evolutionary genetic basis of behaviors, some of the most complex phenotypes known, and (2) to provide a theoretical framework that encompasses the scope of behavioral genetic toolkit studies in order to clearly articulate the research questions relevant to the toolkit concept. We emphasize areas for growth and highlight the emerging approaches that are being used to drive the field forward. Behavioral genetic toolkit research has elevated the use of integrative and comparative approaches in the study of behavior, with potentially broad implications for evolutionary biologists and behavioral ecologists alike. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

Klise, Katherine A.; Siirola, John Daniel; Hart, David

The Water Security Toolkit (WST) is a suite of open source software tools that can be used by water utilities to create response strategies to reduce the impact of contamination in a water distribution network . WST includes hydraulic and water quality modeling software , optimizati on methodologies , and visualization tools to identify: (1) sensor locations to detect contamination, (2) locations in the network in which the contamination was introduced, (3) hydrants to remove contaminated water from the distribution system, (4) locations in the network to inject decontamination agents to inactivate, remove, or destroy contaminants, (5) locations in themore » network to take grab sample s to help identify the source of contamination and (6) valves to close in order to isolate contaminate d areas of the network. This user manual describes the different components of WST , along w ith examples and case studies. License Notice The Water Security Toolkit (WST) v.1.2 Copyright c 2012 Sandia Corporation. Under the terms of Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000, there is a non-exclusive license for use of this work by or on behalf of the U.S. government. This software is distributed under the Revised BSD License (see below). In addition, WST leverages a variety of third-party software packages, which have separate licensing policies: Acro Revised BSD License argparse Python Software Foundation License Boost Boost Software License Coopr Revised BSD License Coverage BSD License Distribute Python Software Foundation License / Zope Public License EPANET Public Domain EPANET-ERD Revised BSD License EPANET-MSX GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) v.3 gcovr Revised BSD License GRASP AT&T Commercial License for noncommercial use; includes randomsample and sideconstraints executable files LZMA SDK Public Domain nose GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) v.2.1 ordereddict MIT License pip MIT License PLY BSD License PyEPANET Revised BSD License Pyro MIT License PyUtilib Revised BSD License PyYAML MIT License runpy2 Python Software Foundation License setuptools Python Software Foundation License / Zope Public License six MIT License TinyXML zlib License unittest2 BSD License Utilib Revised BSD License virtualenv MIT License Vol Common Public License vpykit Revised BSD License Additionally, some precompiled WST binary distributions might bundle other third-party executables files: Coliny Revised BSD License (part of Acro project) Dakota GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) v.2.1 PICO Revised BSD License (part of Acro project) i Revised BSD License Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * Neither the name of Sandia National Laboratories nor Sandia Corporation nor the names of its con- tributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IM- PLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL SANDIA CORPORATION BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUD- ING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. ii Acknowledgements This work was supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through its Office of Research and Development (Interagency Agreement # DW8992192801). The material in this document has been subject to technical and policy review by the U.S. EPA, and approved for publication. The views expressed by individual authors, however, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Mention of trade names, products, or services does not convey official U.S. EPA approval, endorsement, or recommendation. The Water Security Toolkit is an extension of the Threat Ensemble Vulnerability Assessment-Sensor Place- ment Optimization Tool (TEVA-SPOT), which was also developed with funding from the U.S. Environ- mental Protection Agency through its Office of Research and Development (Interagency Agreement # DW8992192801). The authors acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions to the devel- opment of TEVA-SPOT: Jonathan Berry (Sandia National Laboratories), Erik Boman (Sandia National Laboratories), Lee Ann Riesen (Sandia National Laboratories), James Uber (University of Cincinnati), and Jean-Paul Watson (Sandia National Laboratories). iii Acronyms ATUS American Time-Use Survey BLAS Basic linear algebra sub-routines CFU Colony-forming unit CVAR Conditional value at risk CWS Contamination warning system EA Evolutionary algorithm EDS Event detection system EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EC Extent of Contamination ERD EPANET results database file GLPK GNU Linear Programming Kit GRASP Greedy randomized adaptive sampling process HEX Hexadecimal HTML HyperText markup language INP EPANET input file LP Linear program MC Mass consumed MILP Mixed integer linear program MIP Mixed integer program MSX Multi-species extension for EPANET NFD Number of failed detections NS Number of sensors NZD Non-zero demand PD Population dosed PE Population exposed PK Population killed TAI Threat assessment input file TCE Tailed-conditioned expectation TD Time to detection TEC Timed extent of contamination TEVA Threat ensemble vulnerability assessment TSB Tryptic soy broth TSG Threat scenario generation file TSI Threat simulation input file VAR Value at risk VC Volume consumed WST Water Security Toolkit YML YAML configuration file format for WST iv Symbols Notation Definition Example { , } set brackets { 1,2,3 } means a set containing the values 1,2, and 3. [?] is an element of s [?] S means that s is an element of the set S . [?] for all s = 1 [?] s [?] S means that the statement s = 1 is true for all s in set S . P summation P n i =1 s i means s 1 + s 2 + * * * + s n . \\ set minus S \\ T means the set that contains all those elements of S that are not in set T . %7C given %7C is used to define conditional probability. P ( s %7C t ) means the prob- ability of s occurring given that t occurs. %7C ... %7C cardinality Cardinality of a set is the number of elements of the set. If set S = { 2,4,6 } , then %7C S %7C = 3. v« less

Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit; NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

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

Draxl, Caroline; Hodge, Bri-Mathias

A webinar about the Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit was presented by Bri-Mathias Hodge and Caroline Draxl on July 14, 2015. It was hosted by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. The toolkit is a grid integration data set that contains meteorological and power data at a 5-minute resolution across the continental United States for 7 years and hourly power forecasts.

Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education: Part 2: Building a Cultural Bridge. REL 2016-151

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garcia, Maria Elena; Frunzi, Kay; Dean, Ceri B.; Flores, Nieves; Miller, Kirsten B.

2016-01-01

The Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education is a four-part resource that brings together research, promising practices, and useful tools and resources to guide educators in strengthening partnerships with families and community members to support student learning. The toolkit defines family and…

Semantic Web Technologies for Mobile Context-Aware Services

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-03-01

for Context-Aware Service Provisioning 6 Communication toolkit (http, e-mail, IM, etc.) User interaction manager Platform manager White & yellow ...NAICS] North American Industry Classification System , http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html [OS00] Opermann, R., and Specht , M., A Context...toolkit (http, e-mail, IM, etc.) User interaction manager Platform manager White & yellow pages MAS administration toolkit N ET W O R K knowledge

Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Parents and Community as Partners in Education. Part 3: Building Trusting Relationships with Families & Community through Effective Communication

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific, 2015

2015-01-01

This toolkit is designed to guide school staff in strengthening partnerships with families and community members to support student learning. This toolkit offers an integrated approach to family and community engagement, bringing together research, promising practices, and a wide range of useful tools and resources with explanations and directions…

Designing and evaluating an interprofessional shared decision-making and goal-setting decision aid for patients with diabetes in clinical care--systematic decision aid development and study protocol.

PubMed

Yu, Catherine H; Stacey, Dawn; Sale, Joanna; Hall, Susan; Kaplan, David M; Ivers, Noah; Rezmovitz, Jeremy; Leung, Fok-Han; Shah, Baiju R; Straus, Sharon E

2014-01-22

Care of patients with diabetes often occurs in the context of other chronic illness. Competing disease priorities and competing patient-physician priorities present challenges in the provision of care for the complex patient. Guideline implementation interventions to date do not acknowledge these intricacies of clinical practice. As a result, patients and providers are left overwhelmed and paralyzed by the sheer volume of recommendations and tasks. An individualized approach to the patient with diabetes and multiple comorbid conditions using shared decision-making (SDM) and goal setting has been advocated as a patient-centred approach that may facilitate prioritization of treatment options. Furthermore, incorporating interprofessional integration into practice may overcome barriers to implementation. However, these strategies have not been taken up extensively in clinical practice. To systematically develop and test an interprofessional SDM and goal-setting toolkit for patients with diabetes and other chronic diseases, following the Knowledge to Action framework. 1. Feasibility study: Individual interviews with primary care physicians, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, and patients with diabetes will be conducted, exploring their experiences with shared decision-making and priority-setting, including facilitators and barriers, the relevance of a decision aid and toolkit for priority-setting, and how best to integrate it into practice.2. Toolkit development: Based on this data, an evidence-based multi-component SDM toolkit will be developed. The toolkit will be reviewed by content experts (primary care, endocrinology, geriatricians, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, patients) for accuracy and comprehensiveness.3. Heuristic evaluation: A human factors engineer will review the toolkit and identify, list and categorize usability issues by severity.4. Usability testing: This will be done using cognitive task analysis.5. Iterative refinement: Throughout the development process, the toolkit will be refined through several iterative cycles of feedback and redesign. Interprofessional shared decision-making regarding priority-setting with the use of a decision aid toolkit may help prioritize care of individuals with multiple comorbid conditions. Adhering to principles of user-centered design, we will develop and refine a toolkit to assess the feasibility of this approach.

Designing and evaluating an interprofessional shared decision-making and goal-setting decision aid for patients with diabetes in clinical care - systematic decision aid development and study protocol

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Care of patients with diabetes often occurs in the context of other chronic illness. Competing disease priorities and competing patient-physician priorities present challenges in the provision of care for the complex patient. Guideline implementation interventions to date do not acknowledge these intricacies of clinical practice. As a result, patients and providers are left overwhelmed and paralyzed by the sheer volume of recommendations and tasks. An individualized approach to the patient with diabetes and multiple comorbid conditions using shared decision-making (SDM) and goal setting has been advocated as a patient-centred approach that may facilitate prioritization of treatment options. Furthermore, incorporating interprofessional integration into practice may overcome barriers to implementation. However, these strategies have not been taken up extensively in clinical practice. Objectives To systematically develop and test an interprofessional SDM and goal-setting toolkit for patients with diabetes and other chronic diseases, following the Knowledge to Action framework. Methods 1. Feasibility study: Individual interviews with primary care physicians, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, and patients with diabetes will be conducted, exploring their experiences with shared decision-making and priority-setting, including facilitators and barriers, the relevance of a decision aid and toolkit for priority-setting, and how best to integrate it into practice. 2. Toolkit development: Based on this data, an evidence-based multi-component SDM toolkit will be developed. The toolkit will be reviewed by content experts (primary care, endocrinology, geriatricians, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, patients) for accuracy and comprehensiveness. 3. Heuristic evaluation: A human factors engineer will review the toolkit and identify, list and categorize usability issues by severity. 4. Usability testing: This will be done using cognitive task analysis. 5. Iterative refinement: Throughout the development process, the toolkit will be refined through several iterative cycles of feedback and redesign. Discussion Interprofessional shared decision-making regarding priority-setting with the use of a decision aid toolkit may help prioritize care of individuals with multiple comorbid conditions. Adhering to principles of user-centered design, we will develop and refine a toolkit to assess the feasibility of this approach. PMID:24450385

PyGOLD: a python based API for docking based virtual screening workflow generation.

PubMed

Patel, Hitesh; Brinkjost, Tobias; Koch, Oliver

2017-08-15

Molecular docking is one of the successful approaches in structure based discovery and development of bioactive molecules in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry. Due to the huge amount of computational time that is still required, docking is often the last step in a virtual screening approach. Such screenings are set as workflows spanned over many steps, each aiming at different filtering task. These workflows can be automatized in large parts using python based toolkits except for docking using the docking software GOLD. However, within an automated virtual screening workflow it is not feasible to use the GUI in between every step to change the GOLD configuration file. Thus, a python module called PyGOLD was developed, to parse, edit and write the GOLD configuration file and to automate docking based virtual screening workflows. The latest version of PyGOLD, its documentation and example scripts are available at: http://www.ccb.tu-dortmund.de/koch or http://www.agkoch.de. PyGOLD is implemented in Python and can be imported as a standard python module without any further dependencies. oliver.koch@agkoch.de, oliver.koch@tu-dortmund.de. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

Toolkit of Available EPA Green Infrastructure Modeling ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This webinar will present a toolkit consisting of five EPA green infrastructure models and tools, along with communication material. This toolkit can be used as a teaching and quick reference resource for use by planners and developers when making green infrastructure implementation decisions. It can also be used for low impact development design competitions. Models and tools included: Green Infrastructure Wizard (GIWiz), Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (WMOST), Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments (VELMA) Model, Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), and the National Stormwater Calculator (SWC). This webinar will present a toolkit consisting of five EPA green infrastructure models and tools, along with communication material. This toolkit can be used as a teaching and quick reference resource for use by planners and developers when making green infrastructure implementation decisions. It can also be used for low impact development design competitions. Models and tools included: Green Infrastructure Wizard (GIWiz), Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (WMOST), Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments (VELMA) Model, Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), and the National Stormwater Calculator (SWC).

Designing a ticket to ride with the Cognitive Work Analysis Design Toolkit.

PubMed

Read, Gemma J M; Salmon, Paul M; Lenné, Michael G; Jenkins, Daniel P

2015-01-01

Cognitive work analysis has been applied in the design of numerous sociotechnical systems. The process used to translate analysis outputs into design concepts, however, is not always clear. Moreover, structured processes for translating the outputs of ergonomics methods into concrete designs are lacking. This paper introduces the Cognitive Work Analysis Design Toolkit (CWA-DT), a design approach which has been developed specifically to provide a structured means of incorporating cognitive work analysis outputs in design using design principles and values derived from sociotechnical systems theory. This paper outlines the CWA-DT and describes its application in a public transport ticketing design case study. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations of the process provide promising early evidence that the toolkit fulfils the evaluation criteria identified for its success, with opportunities for improvement also highlighted. The Cognitive Work Analysis Design Toolkit has been developed to provide ergonomics practitioners with a structured approach for translating the outputs of cognitive work analysis into design solutions. This paper demonstrates an application of the toolkit and provides evaluation findings.

Field tests of a participatory ergonomics toolkit for Total Worker Health.

PubMed

Nobrega, Suzanne; Kernan, Laura; Plaku-Alakbarova, Bora; Robertson, Michelle; Warren, Nicholas; Henning, Robert

2017-04-01

Growing interest in Total Worker Health ® (TWH) programs to advance worker safety, health and well-being motivated development of a toolkit to guide their implementation. Iterative design of a program toolkit occurred in which participatory ergonomics (PE) served as the primary basis to plan integrated TWH interventions in four diverse organizations. The toolkit provided start-up guides for committee formation and training, and a structured PE process for generating integrated TWH interventions. Process data from program facilitators and participants throughout program implementation were used for iterative toolkit design. Program success depended on organizational commitment to regular design team meetings with a trained facilitator, the availability of subject matter experts on ergonomics and health to support the design process, and retraining whenever committee turnover occurred. A two committee structure (employee Design Team, management Steering Committee) provided advantages over a single, multilevel committee structure, and enhanced the planning, communication, and teamwork skills of participants. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Measures of Success for Earth System Science Education: The DLESE Evaluation Services and the Evaluation Toolkit Collection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McCaffrey, M. S.; Buhr, S. M.; Lynds, S.

2005-12-01

Increased agency emphasis upon the integration of research and education coupled with the ability to provide students with access to digital background materials, learning activities and primary data sources has begun to revolutionize Earth science education in formal and informal settings. The DLESE Evaluation Services team and the related Evaluation Toolkit collection (http://www.dlese.org/cms/evalservices/ ) provides services and tools for education project leads and educators. Through the Evaluation Toolkit, educators may access high-quality digital materials to assess students' cognitive gains, examples of alternative assessments, and case studies and exemplars of authentic research. The DLESE Evaluation Services team provides support for those who are developing evaluation plans on an as-requested basis. In addition, the Toolkit provides authoritative peer reviewed articlesabout evaluation research techniques and strategies of particular importance to geoscience education. This paper will provide an overview of the DLESE Evaluation Toolkit and discuss challenges and best practices for assessing student learning and evaluating Earth system sciences education in a digital world.

Respiratory Protection Toolkit: Providing Guidance Without Changing Requirements-Can We Make an Impact?

PubMed

Bien, Elizabeth Ann; Gillespie, Gordon Lee; Betcher, Cynthia Ann; Thrasher, Terri L; Mingerink, Donna R

2016-12-01

International travel and infectious respiratory illnesses worldwide place health care workers (HCWs) at increasing risk of respiratory exposures. To ensure the highest quality safety initiatives, one health care system used a quality improvement model of Plan-Do-Study-Act and guidance from Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) May 2015 Hospital Respiratory Protection Program (RPP) Toolkit to assess a current program. The toolkit aided in identification of opportunities for improvement within their well-designed RPP. One opportunity was requiring respirator use during aerosol-generating procedures for specific infectious illnesses. Observation data demonstrated opportunities to mitigate controllable risks including strap placement, user seal check, and reuse of disposable N95 filtering facepiece respirators. Subsequent interdisciplinary collaboration resulted in other ideas to decrease risks and increase protection from potentially infectious respiratory illnesses. The toolkit's comprehensive document to evaluate the program showed that while the OSHA standards have not changed, the addition of the toolkit can better protect HCWs. © 2016 The Author(s).

Can a workbook work? Examining whether a practitioner evaluation toolkit can promote instrumental use.

PubMed

Campbell, Rebecca; Townsend, Stephanie M; Shaw, Jessica; Karim, Nidal; Markowitz, Jenifer

2015-10-01

In large-scale, multi-site contexts, developing and disseminating practitioner-oriented evaluation toolkits are an increasingly common strategy for building evaluation capacity. Toolkits explain the evaluation process, present evaluation design choices, and offer step-by-step guidance to practitioners. To date, there has been limited research on whether such resources truly foster the successful design, implementation, and use of evaluation findings. In this paper, we describe a multi-site project in which we developed a practitioner evaluation toolkit and then studied the extent to which the toolkit and accompanying technical assistance was effective in promoting successful completion of local-level evaluations and fostering instrumental use of the findings (i.e., whether programs directly used their findings to improve practice, see Patton, 2008). Forensic nurse practitioners from six geographically dispersed service programs completed methodologically rigorous evaluations; furthermore, all six programs used the findings to create programmatic and community-level changes to improve local practice. Implications for evaluation capacity building are discussed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Statewide Quality Improvement Collaborative to Increase Breastfeeding Rates in Tennessee.

PubMed

Ware, Julie L; Schetzina, Karen E; Morad, Anna; Barker, Brenda; Scott, Theresa A; Grubb, Peter H

2018-05-01

Tennessee has low breastfeeding rates and has identified opportunities for improvement to enhance maternity practices to support breastfeeding mothers. We sought a 10% relative increase in the aggregate Joint Commission measure of breastfeeding exclusivity at discharge (TJC PC-05) by focusing on high-reliability (≥90%) implementation of processes that promote breastfeeding in the delivery setting. A statewide, multidisciplinary development team reviewed evidence from the WHO-UNICEF "Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding" to create a consensus toolkit of process indicators aligned with the Ten Steps. Hospitals submitted monthly TJC PC-05 data for 6 months while studying local implementation of the Ten Steps to identify improvement opportunities, and for an additional 11 months while conducting tests of change to improve Ten Steps implementation using Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, local process audits, and control charts. Data were aggregated at the state level and presented at 12 monthly webinars, 3 regional learning sessions, and 1 statewide meeting where teams shared their local data and implementation experiences. Thirteen hospitals accounting for 47% of live births in Tennessee submitted data on 31,183 mother-infant dyads from August 1, 2012, to December 31, 2013. Aggregate monthly mean PC-05 demonstrated "special cause" improvement increasing from 37.1% to 41.2%, an 11.1% relative increase. Five hospitals reported implementation of ≥5 of the Ten Steps and two hospitals reported ≥90% reliability on ≥5 of the Ten Steps using locally designed process audits. Using large-scale improvement methodology, a successful statewide collaborative led to >10% relative increase in breastfeeding exclusivity at discharge in participating Tennessee hospitals. Further opportunities for improvement in implementing breastfeeding supportive practices were identified.

A prototype forensic toolkit for industrial-control-systems incident response

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carr, Nickolas B.; Rowe, Neil C.

2015-05-01

Industrial control systems (ICSs) are an important part of critical infrastructure in cyberspace. They are especially vulnerable to cyber-attacks because of their legacy hardware and software and the difficulty of changing it. We first survey the history of intrusions into ICSs, the more serious of which involved a continuing adversary presence on an ICS network. We discuss some common vulnerabilities and the categories of possible attacks, noting the frequent use of software written a long time ago. We propose a framework for designing ICS incident response under the constraints that no new software must be required and that interventions cannot impede the continuous processing that is the norm for such systems. We then discuss a prototype toolkit we built using the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-Line tool for host-based analysis and the Bro intrusion-detection software for network-based analysis. Particularly useful techniques we used were learning the historical range of parameters of numeric quantities so as to recognize anomalies, learning the usual addresses of connections to a node, observing Internet addresses (usually rare), observing anomalous network protocols such as unencrypted data transfers, observing unusual scheduled tasks, and comparing key files through registry entries and hash values to find malicious modifications. We tested our methods on actual data from ICSs including publicly-available data, voluntarily-submitted data, and researcher-provided "advanced persistent threat" data. We found instances of interesting behavior in our experiments. Intrusions were generally easy to see because of the repetitive nature of most processing on ICSs, but operators need to be motivated to look.

Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, Version 4 (ANAM4): Examination of Select Psychometric Properties and Administration Procedures

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-12-01

2017 was approved in August 2016. The supplemental project has 2 primary objectives: • Recommend cognitive assessment tools/approaches ( toolkit ) from...strategies for use in future military-relevant environments The supplemental project has two primary deliverables: • Proposed Toolkit of cognitive...6 Vet Final Report and Cognitive performance recommendations through Steering Committee Task 7 Provide Toolkit Report 16 Months 8-12 Task 8

Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education. Part 1: Building an Understanding of Family and Community Engagement. REL 2016-148

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garcia, Maria Elena; Frunzi, Kay; Dean, Ceri B.; Flores, Nieves; Miller, Kirsten B.

2016-01-01

The Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education is a four-part resource that brings together research, promising practices, and useful tools and resources to guide educators in strengthening partnerships with families and community members to support student learning. The toolkit defines family and…

Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education: Part 3: Building Trusting Relationships with Families and the Community through Effective Communication. REL 2016-152

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garcia, Maria Elena; Frunzi, Kay; Dean, Ceri B.; Flores, Nieves; Miller, Kirsten B.

2016-01-01

The Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education is a four-part resource that brings together research, promising practices, and useful tools and resources to guide educators in strengthening partnerships with families and community members to support student learning. The toolkit defines family and…

BRDF profile of Tyvek and its implementation in the Geant4 simulation toolkit.

PubMed

Nozka, Libor; Pech, Miroslav; Hiklova, Helena; Mandat, Dusan; Hrabovsky, Miroslav; Schovanek, Petr; Palatka, Miroslav

2011-02-28

Diffuse and specular characteristics of the Tyvek 1025-BL material are reported with respect to their implementation in the Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit. This toolkit incorporates the UNIFIED model. Coefficients defined by the UNIFIED model were calculated from the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) profiles measured with a scatterometer for several angles of incidence. Results were amended with profile measurements made by a profilometer.

SIGKit: Software for Introductory Geophysics Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kruse, S.; Bank, C. G.; Esmaeili, S.; Jazayeri, S.; Liu, S.; Stoikopoulos, N.

2017-12-01

The Software for Introductory Geophysics Toolkit (SIGKit) affords students the opportunity to create model data and perform simple processing of field data for various geophysical methods. SIGkit provides a graphical user interface built with the MATLAB programming language, but can run even without a MATLAB installation. At this time SIGkit allows students to pick first arrivals and match a two-layer model to seismic refraction data; grid total-field magnetic data, extract a profile, and compare this to a synthetic profile; and perform simple processing steps (subtraction of a mean trace, hyperbola fit) to ground-penetrating radar data. We also have preliminary tools for gravity, resistivity, and EM data representation and analysis. SIGkit is being built by students for students, and the intent of the toolkit is to provide an intuitive interface for simple data analysis and understanding of the methods, and act as an entrance to more sophisticated software. The toolkit has been used in introductory courses as well as field courses. First reactions from students are positive. Think-aloud observations of students using the toolkit have helped identify problems and helped shape it. We are planning to compare the learning outcomes of students who have used the toolkit in a field course to students in a previous course to test its effectiveness.

The development of an artificial organic networks toolkit for LabVIEW.

PubMed

Ponce, Hiram; Ponce, Pedro; Molina, Arturo

2015-03-15

Two of the most challenging problems that scientists and researchers face when they want to experiment with new cutting-edge algorithms are the time-consuming for encoding and the difficulties for linking them with other technologies and devices. In that sense, this article introduces the artificial organic networks toolkit for LabVIEW™ (AON-TL) from the implementation point of view. The toolkit is based on the framework provided by the artificial organic networks technique, giving it the potential to add new algorithms in the future based on this technique. Moreover, the toolkit inherits both the rapid prototyping and the easy-to-use characteristics of the LabVIEW™ software (e.g., graphical programming, transparent usage of other softwares and devices, built-in programming event-driven for user interfaces), to make it simple for the end-user. In fact, the article describes the global architecture of the toolkit, with particular emphasis in the software implementation of the so-called artificial hydrocarbon networks algorithm. Lastly, the article includes two case studies for engineering purposes (i.e., sensor characterization) and chemistry applications (i.e., blood-brain barrier partitioning data model) to show the usage of the toolkit and the potential scalability of the artificial organic networks technique. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

[Hepatox: database on hepatotoxic drugs].

PubMed

Quinton, A; Latry, P; Biour, M

1993-01-01

Hepatox is a data base on the hepatotoxic drugs file published every year in Gastroentérologie Clinique et Biologique. The program was developed under Omnis 7 for Apple computers, and under Visual Basic Professional Toolkit and Code Base for IBM PC and compatibles computers. The data base includes forms of 866 drugs identified by their approved name and those of their 1,300 corresponding proprietary names in France; drugs are distributed among 104 pharmacological classes. It is possible to have instantaneously access to the card of a drug identified by its approved name. Acceding to a drug identified by its proprietary name gives a list of the approved name of its components; going from a name of this list to the correspondent card of hepatoxicity is immediate. It is easy to extract lists of drugs responsible of a type of hepatic injury, and a table of types of hepatic injuries induced by the drugs of a pharmacological class.

BurnMan: Towards a multidisciplinary toolkit for reproducible deep Earth science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Myhill, R.; Cottaar, S.; Heister, T.; Rose, I.; Unterborn, C. T.; Dannberg, J.; Martin-Short, R.

2016-12-01

BurnMan (www.burnman.org) is an open-source toolbox to compute thermodynamic and thermoelastic properties as a function of pressure and temperature using published mineral physical parameters and equations-of-state. The framework is user-friendly, written in Python, and modular, allowing the user to implement their own equations of state, endmember and solution model libraries, geotherms, and averaging schemes. Here we introduce various new modules, which can be used to: Fit thermodynamic variables to data from high pressure static and shock wave experiments, Calculate equilibrium assemblages given a bulk composition, pressure and temperature, Calculate chemical potentials and oxygen fugacities for given assemblages Compute 3D synthetic seismic models using output from geodynamic models and compare these results with global seismic tomographic models, Create input files for synthetic seismogram codes. Users can contribute scripts that reproduce the results from peer-reviewed articles and practical demonstrations (e.g. Cottaar et al., 2014).

Microsoft Biology Initiative: .NET Bioinformatics Platform and Tools

PubMed Central

Diaz Acosta, B.

2011-01-01

The Microsoft Biology Initiative (MBI) is an effort in Microsoft Research to bring new technology and tools to the area of bioinformatics and biology. This initiative is comprised of two primary components, the Microsoft Biology Foundation (MBF) and the Microsoft Biology Tools (MBT). MBF is a language-neutral bioinformatics toolkit built as an extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework—initially aimed at the area of Genomics research. Currently, it implements a range of parsers for common bioinformatics file formats; a range of algorithms for manipulating DNA, RNA, and protein sequences; and a set of connectors to biological web services such as NCBI BLAST. MBF is available under an open source license, and executables, source code, demo applications, documentation and training materials are freely downloadable from http://research.microsoft.com/bio. MBT is a collection of tools that enable biology and bioinformatics researchers to be more productive in making scientific discoveries.

77 FR 63406 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; New York Stock Exchange LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-10-16

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2010-01-01

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Hey Big Spender! An Analysis of Australian Universities and How Much They Pay Their General Staff

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dobson, Ian R.

2009-01-01

Analysis of aggregated data files on staff sent by all Australian universities to DEST in 2007 and of salary schedules posted on university websites reveals a considerable variation between salaries paid to general staff at each salary level and the relative seniority of those staff. This paper outlines the differences in staffing structures and…

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77 FR 58382 - Designation of a Class of Employees for Addition to the Special Exposure Cohort

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-09-20

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77 FR 38835 - Final Effect of Designation of a Class of Employees for Addition to the Special Exposure Cohort

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2012-06-29

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Trial-dependent psychometric functions accounting for perceptual learning in 2-AFC discrimination tasks.

PubMed

Kattner, Florian; Cochrane, Aaron; Green, C Shawn

2017-09-01

The majority of theoretical models of learning consider learning to be a continuous function of experience. However, most perceptual learning studies use thresholds estimated by fitting psychometric functions to independent blocks, sometimes then fitting a parametric function to these block-wise estimated thresholds. Critically, such approaches tend to violate the basic principle that learning is continuous through time (e.g., by aggregating trials into large "blocks" for analysis that each assume stationarity, then fitting learning functions to these aggregated blocks). To address this discrepancy between base theory and analysis practice, here we instead propose fitting a parametric function to thresholds from each individual trial. In particular, we implemented a dynamic psychometric function whose parameters were allowed to change continuously with each trial, thus parameterizing nonstationarity. We fit the resulting continuous time parametric model to data from two different perceptual learning tasks. In nearly every case, the quality of the fits derived from the continuous time parametric model outperformed the fits derived from a nonparametric approach wherein separate psychometric functions were fit to blocks of trials. Because such a continuous trial-dependent model of perceptual learning also offers a number of additional advantages (e.g., the ability to extrapolate beyond the observed data; the ability to estimate performance on individual critical trials), we suggest that this technique would be a useful addition to each psychophysicist's analysis toolkit.

The Visualization Toolkit (VTK): Rewriting the rendering code for modern graphics cards

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hanwell, Marcus D.; Martin, Kenneth M.; Chaudhary, Aashish; Avila, Lisa S.

2015-09-01

The Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is an open source, permissively licensed, cross-platform toolkit for scientific data processing, visualization, and data analysis. It is over two decades old, originally developed for a very different graphics card architecture. Modern graphics cards feature fully programmable, highly parallelized architectures with large core counts. VTK's rendering code was rewritten to take advantage of modern graphics cards, maintaining most of the toolkit's programming interfaces. This offers the opportunity to compare the performance of old and new rendering code on the same systems/cards. Significant improvements in rendering speeds and memory footprints mean that scientific data can be visualized in greater detail than ever before. The widespread use of VTK means that these improvements will reap significant benefits.

AutoMicromanager: A microscopy scripting toolkit for LABVIEW and other programming environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ashcroft, Brian Alan; Oosterkamp, Tjerk

2010-11-01

We present a scripting toolkit for the acquisition and analysis of a wide variety of imaging data by integrating the ease of use of various programming environments such as LABVIEW, IGOR PRO, MATLAB, SCILAB, and others. This toolkit is designed to allow the user to quickly program a variety of standard microscopy components for custom microscopy applications allowing much more flexibility than other packages. Included are both programming tools as well as graphical user interface classes allowing a standard, consistent, and easy to maintain scripting environment. This programming toolkit allows easy access to most commonly used cameras, stages, and shutters through the Micromanager project so the scripter can focus on their custom application instead of boilerplate code generation.

AutoMicromanager: a microscopy scripting toolkit for LABVIEW and other programming environments.

PubMed

Ashcroft, Brian Alan; Oosterkamp, Tjerk

2010-11-01

We present a scripting toolkit for the acquisition and analysis of a wide variety of imaging data by integrating the ease of use of various programming environments such as LABVIEW, IGOR PRO, MATLAB, SCILAB, and others. This toolkit is designed to allow the user to quickly program a variety of standard microscopy components for custom microscopy applications allowing much more flexibility than other packages. Included are both programming tools as well as graphical user interface classes allowing a standard, consistent, and easy to maintain scripting environment. This programming toolkit allows easy access to most commonly used cameras, stages, and shutters through the Micromanager project so the scripter can focus on their custom application instead of boilerplate code generation.

Kekule.js: An Open Source JavaScript Chemoinformatics Toolkit.

PubMed

Jiang, Chen; Jin, Xi; Dong, Ying; Chen, Ming

2016-06-27

Kekule.js is an open-source, object-oriented JavaScript toolkit for chemoinformatics. It provides methods for many common tasks in molecular informatics, including chemical data input/output (I/O), two- and three-dimensional (2D/3D) rendering of chemical structure, stereo identification, ring perception, structure comparison, and substructure search. Encapsulated widgets to display and edit chemical structures directly in web context are also supplied. Developed with web standards, the toolkit is ideal for building chemoinformatics applications over the Internet. Moreover, it is highly platform-independent and can also be used in desktop or mobile environments. Some initial applications, such as plugins for inputting chemical structures on the web and uses in chemistry education, have been developed based on the toolkit.

bioWidgets: data interaction components for genomics.

PubMed

Fischer, S; Crabtree, J; Brunk, B; Gibson, M; Overton, G C

1999-10-01

The presentation of genomics data in a perspicuous visual format is critical for its rapid interpretation and validation. Relatively few public database developers have the resources to implement sophisticated front-end user interfaces themselves. Accordingly, these developers would benefit from a reusable toolkit of user interface and data visualization components. We have designed the bioWidget toolkit as a set of JavaBean components. It includes a wide array of user interface components and defines an architecture for assembling applications. The toolkit is founded on established software engineering design patterns and principles, including componentry, Model-View-Controller, factored models and schema neutrality. As a proof of concept, we have used the bioWidget toolkit to create three extendible applications: AnnotView, BlastView and AlignView.

Desensitized Optimal Filtering and Sensor Fusion Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Karlgaard, Christopher D.

2015-01-01

Analytical Mechanics Associates, Inc., has developed a software toolkit that filters and processes navigational data from multiple sensor sources. A key component of the toolkit is a trajectory optimization technique that reduces the sensitivity of Kalman filters with respect to model parameter uncertainties. The sensor fusion toolkit also integrates recent advances in adaptive Kalman and sigma-point filters for non-Gaussian problems with error statistics. This Phase II effort provides new filtering and sensor fusion techniques in a convenient package that can be used as a stand-alone application for ground support and/or onboard use. Its modular architecture enables ready integration with existing tools. A suite of sensor models and noise distribution as well as Monte Carlo analysis capability are included to enable statistical performance evaluations.

Nuclear Computerized Library for Assessing Reactor Reliability (NUCLARR). Version 3.5, Quick Reference Guide

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

Gilbert, B.G.; Richards, R.E.; Reece, W.J.

1992-10-01

This Reference Guide contains instructions on how to install and use Version 3.5 of the NRC-sponsored Nuclear Computerized Library for Assessing Reactor Reliability (NUCLARR). The NUCLARR data management system is contained in compressed files on the floppy diskettes that accompany this Reference Guide. NUCLARR is comprised of hardware component failure data (HCFD) and human error probability (HEP) data, both of which are available via a user-friendly, menu driven retrieval system. The data may be saved to a file in a format compatible with IRRAS 3.0 and commercially available statistical packages, or used to formulate log-plots and reports of data retrievalmore » and aggregation findings.« less

Nuclear Computerized Library for Assessing Reactor Reliability (NUCLARR)

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

Gilbert, B.G.; Richards, R.E.; Reece, W.J.

1992-10-01

This Reference Guide contains instructions on how to install and use Version 3.5 of the NRC-sponsored Nuclear Computerized Library for Assessing Reactor Reliability (NUCLARR). The NUCLARR data management system is contained in compressed files on the floppy diskettes that accompany this Reference Guide. NUCLARR is comprised of hardware component failure data (HCFD) and human error probability (HEP) data, both of which are available via a user-friendly, menu driven retrieval system. The data may be saved to a file in a format compatible with IRRAS 3.0 and commercially available statistical packages, or used to formulate log-plots and reports of data retrievalmore » and aggregation findings.« less

FQC Dashboard: integrates FastQC results into a web-based, interactive, and extensible FASTQ quality control tool.

PubMed

Brown, Joseph; Pirrung, Meg; McCue, Lee Ann

2017-06-09

FQC is software that facilitates quality control of FASTQ files by carrying out a QC protocol using FastQC, parsing results, and aggregating quality metrics into an interactive dashboard designed to richly summarize individual sequencing runs. The dashboard groups samples in dropdowns for navigation among the data sets, utilizes human-readable configuration files to manipulate the pages and tabs, and is extensible with CSV data. FQC is implemented in Python 3 and Javascript, and is maintained under an MIT license. Documentation and source code is available at: https://github.com/pnnl/fqc . joseph.brown@pnnl.gov. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

NeuroPigPen: A Scalable Toolkit for Processing Electrophysiological Signal Data in Neuroscience Applications Using Apache Pig

PubMed Central

Sahoo, Satya S.; Wei, Annan; Valdez, Joshua; Wang, Li; Zonjy, Bilal; Tatsuoka, Curtis; Loparo, Kenneth A.; Lhatoo, Samden D.

2016-01-01

The recent advances in neurological imaging and sensing technologies have led to rapid increase in the volume, rate of data generation, and variety of neuroscience data. This “neuroscience Big data” represents a significant opportunity for the biomedical research community to design experiments using data with greater timescale, large number of attributes, and statistically significant data size. The results from these new data-driven research techniques can advance our understanding of complex neurological disorders, help model long-term effects of brain injuries, and provide new insights into dynamics of brain networks. However, many existing neuroinformatics data processing and analysis tools were not built to manage large volume of data, which makes it difficult for researchers to effectively leverage this available data to advance their research. We introduce a new toolkit called NeuroPigPen that was developed using Apache Hadoop and Pig data flow language to address the challenges posed by large-scale electrophysiological signal data. NeuroPigPen is a modular toolkit that can process large volumes of electrophysiological signal data, such as Electroencephalogram (EEG), Electrocardiogram (ECG), and blood oxygen levels (SpO2), using a new distributed storage model called Cloudwave Signal Format (CSF) that supports easy partitioning and storage of signal data on commodity hardware. NeuroPigPen was developed with three design principles: (a) Scalability—the ability to efficiently process increasing volumes of data; (b) Adaptability—the toolkit can be deployed across different computing configurations; and (c) Ease of programming—the toolkit can be easily used to compose multi-step data processing pipelines using high-level programming constructs. The NeuroPigPen toolkit was evaluated using 750 GB of electrophysiological signal data over a variety of Hadoop cluster configurations ranging from 3 to 30 Data nodes. The evaluation results demonstrate that the toolkit is highly scalable and adaptable, which makes it suitable for use in neuroscience applications as a scalable data processing toolkit. As part of the ongoing extension of NeuroPigPen, we are developing new modules to support statistical functions to analyze signal data for brain connectivity research. In addition, the toolkit is being extended to allow integration with scientific workflow systems. NeuroPigPen is released under BSD license at: https://sites.google.com/a/case.edu/neuropigpen/. PMID:27375472

NeuroPigPen: A Scalable Toolkit for Processing Electrophysiological Signal Data in Neuroscience Applications Using Apache Pig.

PubMed

Sahoo, Satya S; Wei, Annan; Valdez, Joshua; Wang, Li; Zonjy, Bilal; Tatsuoka, Curtis; Loparo, Kenneth A; Lhatoo, Samden D

2016-01-01

The recent advances in neurological imaging and sensing technologies have led to rapid increase in the volume, rate of data generation, and variety of neuroscience data. This "neuroscience Big data" represents a significant opportunity for the biomedical research community to design experiments using data with greater timescale, large number of attributes, and statistically significant data size. The results from these new data-driven research techniques can advance our understanding of complex neurological disorders, help model long-term effects of brain injuries, and provide new insights into dynamics of brain networks. However, many existing neuroinformatics data processing and analysis tools were not built to manage large volume of data, which makes it difficult for researchers to effectively leverage this available data to advance their research. We introduce a new toolkit called NeuroPigPen that was developed using Apache Hadoop and Pig data flow language to address the challenges posed by large-scale electrophysiological signal data. NeuroPigPen is a modular toolkit that can process large volumes of electrophysiological signal data, such as Electroencephalogram (EEG), Electrocardiogram (ECG), and blood oxygen levels (SpO2), using a new distributed storage model called Cloudwave Signal Format (CSF) that supports easy partitioning and storage of signal data on commodity hardware. NeuroPigPen was developed with three design principles: (a) Scalability-the ability to efficiently process increasing volumes of data; (b) Adaptability-the toolkit can be deployed across different computing configurations; and (c) Ease of programming-the toolkit can be easily used to compose multi-step data processing pipelines using high-level programming constructs. The NeuroPigPen toolkit was evaluated using 750 GB of electrophysiological signal data over a variety of Hadoop cluster configurations ranging from 3 to 30 Data nodes. The evaluation results demonstrate that the toolkit is highly scalable and adaptable, which makes it suitable for use in neuroscience applications as a scalable data processing toolkit. As part of the ongoing extension of NeuroPigPen, we are developing new modules to support statistical functions to analyze signal data for brain connectivity research. In addition, the toolkit is being extended to allow integration with scientific workflow systems. NeuroPigPen is released under BSD license at: https://sites.google.com/a/case.edu/neuropigpen/.

Facilitating interprofessional evidence-based practice in paediatric rehabilitation: development, implementation and evaluation of an online toolkit for health professionals.

PubMed

Glegg, Stephanie M N; Livingstone, Roslyn; Montgomery, Ivonne

2016-01-01

Lack of time, competencies, resources and supports are documented as barriers to evidence-based practice (EBP). This paper introduces a recently developed web-based toolkit designed to assist interprofessional clinicians in implementing EBP within a paediatric rehabilitation setting. EBP theory, models, frameworks and tools were applied or adapted in the development of the online resources, which formed the basis of a larger support strategy incorporating interactive workshops, knowledge broker facilitation and mentoring. The highly accessed toolkit contains flowcharts with embedded information sheets, resources and templates to streamline, quantify and document outcomes throughout the EBP process. Case examples relevance to occupational therapy and physical therapy highlight the utility and application of the toolkit in a clinical paediatric setting. Workshops were highly rated by learners for clinical relevance, presentation level and effectiveness. Eight evidence syntheses have been created and 79 interventions have been evaluated since the strategy's inception in January 2011. The toolkit resources streamlined and supported EBP processes, promoting consistency in quality and presentation of outputs. The online toolkit can be a useful tool to facilitate clinicians' use of EBP in order to meet the needs of the clients and families whom they support. Implications for Rehabilitation A comprehensive online EBP toolkit for interprofessional clinicians is available to streamline the EBP process and to support learning needs regardless of competency level. Multi-method facilitation support, including interactive education, e-learning, clinical librarian services and knowledge brokering, is a valued but cost-restrictive supplement to the implementation of online EBP resources. EBP resources are not one-size-fits-all; targeted appraisal tools, models and frameworks may be integrated to improve their utility for specific sectors, which may limit them for others.

Application development environment for advanced digital workstations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valentino, Daniel J.; Harreld, Michael R.; Liu, Brent J.; Brown, Matthew S.; Huang, Lu J.

1998-06-01

One remaining barrier to the clinical acceptance of electronic imaging and information systems is the difficulty in providing intuitive access to the information needed for a specific clinical task (such as reaching a diagnosis or tracking clinical progress). The purpose of this research was to create a development environment that enables the design and implementation of advanced digital imaging workstations. We used formal data and process modeling to identify the diagnostic and quantitative data that radiologists use and the tasks that they typically perform to make clinical decisions. We studied a diverse range of radiology applications, including diagnostic neuroradiology in an academic medical center, pediatric radiology in a children's hospital, screening mammography in a breast cancer center, and thoracic radiology consultation for an oncology clinic. We used object- oriented analysis to develop software toolkits that enable a programmer to rapidly implement applications that closely match clinical tasks. The toolkits support browsing patient information, integrating patient images and reports, manipulating images, and making quantitative measurements on images. Collectively, we refer to these toolkits as the UCLA Digital ViewBox toolkit (ViewBox/Tk). We used the ViewBox/Tk to rapidly prototype and develop a number of diverse medical imaging applications. Our task-based toolkit approach enabled rapid and iterative prototyping of workstations that matched clinical tasks. The toolkit functionality and performance provided a 'hands-on' feeling for manipulating images, and for accessing textual information and reports. The toolkits directly support a new concept for protocol based-reading of diagnostic studies. The design supports the implementation of network-based application services (e.g., prefetching, workflow management, and post-processing) that will facilitate the development of future clinical applications.

Using stakeholder perspectives to develop an ePrescribing toolkit for NHS Hospitals: a questionnaire study.

PubMed

Lee, Lisa; Cresswell, Kathrin; Slee, Ann; Slight, Sarah P; Coleman, Jamie; Sheikh, Aziz

2014-10-01

To evaluate how an online toolkit may support ePrescribing deployments in National Health Service hospitals, by assessing the type of knowledge-based resources currently sought by key stakeholders. Questionnaire-based survey of attendees at a national ePrescribing symposium. 2013 National ePrescribing Symposium in London, UK. Eighty-four delegates were eligible for inclusion in the survey, of whom 70 completed and returned the questionnaire. Estimate of the usefulness and type of content to be included in an ePrescribing toolkit. Interest in a toolkit designed to support the implementation and use of ePrescribing systems was high (n = 64; 91.4%). As could be expected given the current dearth of such a resource, few respondents (n = 2; 2.9%) had access or used an ePrescribing toolkit at the time of the survey. Anticipated users for the toolkit included implementation (n = 62; 88.6%) and information technology (n = 61; 87.1%) teams, pharmacists (n = 61; 87.1%), doctors (n = 58; 82.9%) and nurses (n = 56; 80.0%). Summary guidance for every stage of the implementation (n = 48; 68.6%), planning and monitoring tools (n = 47; 67.1%) and case studies of hospitals' experiences (n = 45; 64.3%) were considered the most useful types of content. There is a clear need for reliable and up-to-date knowledge to support ePrescribing system deployments and longer term use. The findings highlight how a toolkit may become a useful instrument for the management of knowledge in the field, not least by allowing the exchange of ideas and shared learning.

The PRIDE (Partnership to Improve Diabetes Education) Toolkit: Development and Evaluation of Novel Literacy and Culturally Sensitive Diabetes Education Materials.

PubMed

Wolff, Kathleen; Chambers, Laura; Bumol, Stefan; White, Richard O; Gregory, Becky Pratt; Davis, Dianne; Rothman, Russell L

2016-02-01

Patients with low literacy, low numeracy, and/or linguistic needs can experience challenges understanding diabetes information and applying concepts to their self-management. The authors designed a toolkit of education materials that are sensitive to patients' literacy and numeracy levels, language preferences, and cultural norms and that encourage shared goal setting to improve diabetes self-management and health outcomes. The Partnership to Improve Diabetes Education (PRIDE) toolkit was developed to facilitate diabetes self-management education and support. The PRIDE toolkit includes a comprehensive set of 30 interactive education modules in English and Spanish to support diabetes self-management activities. The toolkit builds upon the authors' previously validated Diabetes Literacy and Numeracy Education Toolkit (DLNET) by adding a focus on shared goal setting, addressing the needs of Spanish-speaking patients, and including a broader range of diabetes management topics. Each PRIDE module was evaluated using the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) instrument to determine the material's cultural appropriateness and its sensitivity to the needs of patients with low literacy and low numeracy. Reading grade level was also assessed using the Automated Readability Index (ARI), Coleman-Liau, Flesch-Kincaid, Fry, and SMOG formulas. The average reading grade level of the materials was 5.3 (SD 1.0), with a mean SAM of 91.2 (SD 5.4). All of the 30 modules received a "superior" score (SAM >70%) when evaluated by 2 independent raters. The PRIDE toolkit modules can be used by all members of a multidisciplinary team to assist patients with low literacy and low numeracy in managing their diabetes. © 2015 The Author(s).

Does the Good Schools Toolkit Reduce Physical, Sexual and Emotional Violence, and Injuries, in Girls and Boys equally? A Cluster-Randomised Controlled Trial.

PubMed

Devries, Karen M; Knight, Louise; Allen, Elizabeth; Parkes, Jenny; Kyegombe, Nambusi; Naker, Dipak

2017-10-01

We aimed to investigate whether the Good School Toolkit reduced emotional violence, severe physical violence, sexual violence and injuries from school staff to students, as well as emotional, physical and sexual violence between peers, in Ugandan primary schools. We performed a two-arm cluster randomised controlled trial with parallel assignment. Forty-two schools in one district were allocated to intervention (n = 21) or wait-list control (n = 21) arms in 2012. We did cross-sectional baseline and endline surveys in 2012 and 2014, and the Good School Toolkit intervention was implemented for 18 months between surveys. Analyses were by intention to treat and are adjusted for clustering within schools and for baseline school-level proportions of outcomes. The Toolkit was associated with an overall reduction in any form of violence from staff and/or peers in the past week towards both male (aOR = 0.34, 95%CI 0.22-0.53) and female students (aOR = 0.55, 95%CI 0.36-0.84). Injuries as a result of violence from school staff were also lower in male (aOR = 0.36, 95%CI 0.20-0.65) and female students (aOR = 0.51, 95%CI 0.29-0.90). Although the Toolkit seems to be effective at reducing violence in both sexes, there is some suggestion that the Toolkit may have stronger effects in boys than girls. The Toolkit is a promising intervention to reduce a wide range of different forms of violence from school staff and between peers in schools, and should be urgently considered for scale-up. Further research is needed to investigate how the intervention could engage more successfully with girls.

Improving the Effectiveness of Medication Review: Guidance from the Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit.

PubMed

Weiss, Barry D; Brega, Angela G; LeBlanc, William G; Mabachi, Natabhona M; Barnard, Juliana; Albright, Karen; Cifuentes, Maribel; Brach, Cindy; West, David R

2016-01-01

Although routine medication reviews in primary care practice are recommended to identify drug therapy problems, it is often difficult to get patients to bring all their medications to office visits. The objective of this study was to determine whether the medication review tool in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit can help to improve medication reviews in primary care practices. The toolkit's "Brown Bag Medication Review" was implemented in a rural private practice in Missouri and an urban teaching practice in California. Practices recorded outcomes of medication reviews with 45 patients before toolkit implementation and then changed their medication review processes based on guidance in the toolkit. Six months later we conducted interviews with practice staff to identify changes made as a result of implementing the tool, and practices recorded outcomes of medication reviews with 41 additional patients. Data analyses compared differences in whether all medications were brought to visits, the number of medications reviewed, drug therapy problems identified, and changes in medication regimens before and after implementation. Interviews revealed that practices made the changes recommended in the toolkit to encourage patients to bring medications to office visits. Evaluation before and after implementation revealed a 3-fold increase in the percentage of patients who brought all their prescription medications and a 6-fold increase in the number of prescription medications brought to office visits. The percentage of reviews in which drug therapy problems were identified doubled, as did the percentage of medication regimens revised. Use of the Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit can help to identify drug therapy problems. © Copyright 2016 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

Using stakeholder perspectives to develop an ePrescribing toolkit for NHS Hospitals: a questionnaire study

PubMed Central

Cresswell, Kathrin; Slee, Ann; Slight, Sarah P; Coleman, Jamie; Sheikh, Aziz

2014-01-01

Summary Objective To evaluate how an online toolkit may support ePrescribing deployments in National Health Service hospitals, by assessing the type of knowledge-based resources currently sought by key stakeholders. Design Questionnaire-based survey of attendees at a national ePrescribing symposium. Setting 2013 National ePrescribing Symposium in London, UK. Participants Eighty-four delegates were eligible for inclusion in the survey, of whom 70 completed and returned the questionnaire. Main outcome measures Estimate of the usefulness and type of content to be included in an ePrescribing toolkit. Results Interest in a toolkit designed to support the implementation and use of ePrescribing systems was high (n = 64; 91.4%). As could be expected given the current dearth of such a resource, few respondents (n = 2; 2.9%) had access or used an ePrescribing toolkit at the time of the survey. Anticipated users for the toolkit included implementation (n = 62; 88.6%) and information technology (n = 61; 87.1%) teams, pharmacists (n = 61; 87.1%), doctors (n = 58; 82.9%) and nurses (n = 56; 80.0%). Summary guidance for every stage of the implementation (n = 48; 68.6%), planning and monitoring tools (n = 47; 67.1%) and case studies of hospitals’ experiences (n = 45; 64.3%) were considered the most useful types of content. Conclusions There is a clear need for reliable and up-to-date knowledge to support ePrescribing system deployments and longer term use. The findings highlight how a toolkit may become a useful instrument for the management of knowledge in the field, not least by allowing the exchange of ideas and shared learning. PMID:25383199

A Web Portal-Based Time-Aware KML Animation Tool for Exploring Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Hydrological Events

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bao, X.; Cai, X.; Liu, Y.

2009-12-01

Understanding spatiotemporal dynamics of hydrological events such as storms and droughts is highly valuable for decision making on disaster mitigation and recovery. Virtual Globe-based technologies such as Google Earth and Open Geospatial Consortium KML standards show great promises for collaborative exploration of such events using visual analytical approaches. However, currently there are two barriers for wider usage of such approaches. First, there lacks an easy way to use open source tools to convert legacy or existing data formats such as shapefiles, geotiff, or web services-based data sources to KML and to produce time-aware KML files. Second, an integrated web portal-based time-aware animation tool is currently not available. Thus users usually share their files in the portal but have no means to visually explore them without leaving the portal environment which the users are familiar with. We develop a web portal-based time-aware KML animation tool for viewing extreme hydrologic events. The tool is based on Google Earth JavaScript API and Java Portlet standard 2.0 JSR-286, and it is currently deployable in one of the most popular open source portal frameworks, namely Liferay. We have also developed an open source toolkit kml-soc-ncsa (http://code.google.com/p/kml-soc-ncsa/) to facilitate the conversion of multiple formats into KML and the creation of time-aware KML files. We illustrate our tool using some example cases, in which drought and storm events with both time and space dimension can be explored in this web-based KML animation portlet. The tool provides an easy-to-use web browser-based portal environment for multiple users to collaboratively share and explore their time-aware KML files as well as improving the understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the hydrological events.

Pcetk: A pDynamo-based Toolkit for Protonation State Calculations in Proteins.

PubMed

Feliks, Mikolaj; Field, Martin J

2015-10-26

Pcetk (a pDynamo-based continuum electrostatic toolkit) is an open-source, object-oriented toolkit for the calculation of proton binding energetics in proteins. The toolkit is a module of the pDynamo software library, combining the versatility of the Python scripting language and the efficiency of the compiled languages, C and Cython. In the toolkit, we have connected pDynamo to the external Poisson-Boltzmann solver, extended-MEAD. Our goal was to provide a modern and extensible environment for the calculation of protonation states, electrostatic energies, titration curves, and other electrostatic-dependent properties of proteins. Pcetk is freely available under the CeCILL license, which is compatible with the GNU General Public License. The toolkit can be found on the Web at the address http://github.com/mfx9/pcetk. The calculation of protonation states in proteins requires a knowledge of pKa values of protonatable groups in aqueous solution. However, for some groups, such as protonatable ligands bound to protein, the pKa aq values are often difficult to obtain from experiment. As a complement to Pcetk, we revisit an earlier computational method for the estimation of pKa aq values that has an accuracy of ± 0.5 pKa-units or better. Finally, we verify the Pcetk module and the method for estimating pKa aq values with different model cases.

A Toolkit to assess health needs for congenital disorders in low- and middle-income countries: an instrument for public health action.

PubMed

Nacul, L C; Stewart, A; Alberg, C; Chowdhury, S; Darlison, M W; Grollman, C; Hall, A; Modell, B; Moorthie, S; Sagoo, G S; Burton, H

2014-06-01

In 2010 the World Health Assembly called for action to improve the care and prevention of congenital disorders, noting that technical guidance would be required for this task, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Responding to this call, we have developed a freely available web-accessible Toolkit for assessing health needs for congenital disorders. Materials for the Toolkit website (http://toolkit.phgfoundation.org) were prepared by an iterative process of writing, discussion and modification by the project team, with advice from external experts. A customized database was developed using epidemiological, demographic, socio-economic and health-services data from a range of validated sources. Document-processing and data integration software combines data from the database with a template to generate topic- and country-specific Calculator documents for quantitative analysis. The Toolkit guides users through selection of topics (including both clinical conditions and relevant health services), assembly and evaluation of qualitative and quantitative information, assessment of the potential effects of selected interventions, and planning and prioritization of actions to reduce the risk or prevalence of congenital disorders. The Toolkit enables users without epidemiological or public health expertise to undertake health needs assessment as a prerequisite for strategic planning in relation to congenital disorders in their country or region. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Faculty of Public Health.

New Careers in Nursing Scholar Alumni Toolkit: Development of an Innovative Resource for Transition to Practice.

PubMed

Mauro, Ann Marie P; Escallier, Lori A; Rosario-Sim, Maria G

2016-01-01

The transition from student to professional nurse is challenging and may be more difficult for underrepresented minority nurses. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Careers in Nursing (NCIN) program supported development of a toolkit that would serve as a transition-to-practice resource to promote retention of NCIN alumni and other new nurses. Thirteen recent NCIN alumni (54% male, 23% Hispanic/Latino, 23% African Americans) from 3 schools gave preliminary content feedback. An e-mail survey was sent to a convenience sample of 29 recent NCIN alumni who evaluated the draft toolkit using a Likert scale (poor = 1; excellent = 5). Twenty NCIN alumni draft toolkit reviewers (response rate 69%) were primarily female (80%) and Hispanic/Latino (40%). Individual chapters' mean overall rating of 4.67 demonstrated strong validation. Mean scores for overall toolkit content (4.57), usability (4.5), relevance (4.79), and quality (4.71) were also excellent. Qualitative comments were analyzed using thematic content analysis and supported the toolkit's relevance and utility. A multilevel peer review process was also conducted. Peer reviewer feedback resulted in a 6-chapter document that offers resources for successful transition to practice and lays the groundwork for continued professional growth. Future research is needed to determine the ideal time to introduce this resource. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Third Party TMDL Development Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Water Environment Federation's toolkit provides basic steps in which an organization or group other than the lead water quality agency takes responsibility for developing the TMDL document and supporting analysis.

Lessons Learned in the Integration of Earth Remote Sensing Data within the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Molthan, A.; Schultz, L. A.; McGrath, K.; Bell, J. R.; Cole, T.; Meyer, P. J.; Burks, J.; Camp, P.; Angle, K.

2016-12-01

Following the occurrence of a suspected or known tornado, meteorologists with NOAA's National Weather Service are tasked with performing a detailed ground survey to map the impacts of the tornado, identify specific damage indicators, and link those damage indicators to the Enhanced Fujita scale as an estimate of the intensity of the tornado at various points along the damage path. Over the past few years, NOAA/NWS meteorologists have developed the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT), a smartphone and web based application to support the collection of damage information, editing of the damage survey, and final publication. This allows meteorologists in the field to sample the damage track, collect geotagged photos with notations of damage areas, and aggregation of the information to provide a more detailed survey whereas previous efforts may have been limited to start and end locations, maximum width, and maximum intensity. To support these damage assessment efforts, various Earth remote sensing data sets were incorporated into the DAT to support survey efforts, following preliminary activities using remote sensing to support select NOAA/NWS field offices following the widespread outbreak of tornadoes that occurred in the southeastern United States on April 27, 2011. These efforts included the collection of various products in collaboration with multiple federal agencies and commercial providers, with particular emphasis upon the USGS Hazards Data Distribution System, hosting and sharing of these products through geospatial platforms, partnerships with forecasters to better understand their needs, and the development and delivery of training materials. This presentation will provide an overview of the project along with strengths and weaknesses, opportunities for future work and improvements, and best practices learned during the "research to applications" process supported by the NASA Applied Sciences: Disasters program.

An approach to improve the care of mid-life women through the implementation of a Women’s Health Assessment Tool/Clinical Decision Support toolkit

PubMed Central

Silvestrin, Terry M; Steenrod, Anna W; Coyne, Karin S; Gross, David E; Esinduy, Canan B; Kodsi, Angela B; Slifka, Gayle J; Abraham, Lucy; Araiza, Anna L; Bushmakin, Andrew G; Luo, Xuemei

2016-01-01

The objectives of this study are to describe the implementation process of the Women’s Health Assessment Tool/Clinical Decision Support toolkit and summarize patients’ and clinicians’ perceptions of the toolkit. The Women’s Health Assessment Tool/Clinical Decision Support toolkit was piloted at three clinical sites over a 4-month period in Washington State to evaluate health outcomes among mid-life women. The implementation involved a multistep process and engagement of multiple stakeholders over 18 months. Two-thirds of patients (n = 76/110) and clinicians (n = 8/12) participating in pilot completed feedback surveys; five clinicians participated in qualitative interviews. Most patients felt more prepared for their annual visit (69.7%) and that quality of care improved (68.4%) while clinicians reported streamlined patient visits and improved communication with patients. The Women’s Health Assessment Tool/Clinical Decision Support toolkit offers a unique approach to introduce and address some of the key health issues that affect mid-life women. PMID:27558508

Enhancing the sustainability and climate resiliency of health care facilities: a comparison of initiatives and toolkits.

PubMed

Balbus, John; Berry, Peter; Brettle, Meagan; Jagnarine-Azan, Shalini; Soares, Agnes; Ugarte, Ciro; Varangu, Linda; Prats, Elena Villalobos

2016-09-01

Extreme weather events have revealed the vulnerability of health care facilities and the extent of devastation to the community when they fail. With climate change anticipated to increase extreme weather and its impacts worldwide-severe droughts, floods, heat waves, and related vector-borne diseases-health care officials need to understand and address the vulnerabilities of their health care systems and take action to improve resiliency in ways that also meet sustainability goals. Generally, the health sector is among a country's largest consumers of energy and a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Now it has the opportunity lead climate mitigation, while reducing energy, water, and other costs. This Special Report summarizes several initiatives and compares three toolkits for implementing sustainability and resiliency measures for health care facilities: the Canadian Health Care Facility Climate Change Resiliency Toolkit, the U.S. Sustainable and Climate Resilient Health Care Facilities Toolkit, and the PAHO SMART Hospitals Toolkit of the World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization. These tools and the lessons learned can provide a critical starting point for any health system in the Americas.

A Software Toolkit to Study Systematic Uncertainties of the Physics Models of the Geant4 Simulation Package

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

Genser, Krzysztof; Hatcher, Robert; Kelsey, Michael

The Geant4 simulation toolkit is used to model interactions between particles and matter. Geant4 employs a set of validated physics models that span a wide range of interaction energies. These models rely on measured cross-sections and phenomenological models with the physically motivated parameters that are tuned to cover many application domains. To study what uncertainties are associated with the Geant4 physics models we have designed and implemented a comprehensive, modular, user-friendly software toolkit that allows the variation of one or more parameters of one or more Geant4 physics models involved in simulation studies. It also enables analysis of multiple variantsmore » of the resulting physics observables of interest in order to estimate the uncertainties associated with the simulation model choices. Based on modern event-processing infrastructure software, the toolkit offers a variety of attractive features, e.g. exible run-time con gurable work ow, comprehensive bookkeeping, easy to expand collection of analytical components. Design, implementation technology, and key functionalities of the toolkit are presented in this paper and illustrated with selected results.« less

CRISPR-Cas9 Toolkit for Actinomycete Genome Editing.

PubMed

Tong, Yaojun; Robertsen, Helene Lunde; Blin, Kai; Weber, Tilmann; Lee, Sang Yup

2018-01-01

Bacteria of the order Actinomycetales are one of the most important sources of bioactive natural products, which are the source of many drugs. However, many of them still lack efficient genome editing methods, some strains even cannot be manipulated at all. This restricts systematic metabolic engineering approaches for boosting known and discovering novel natural products. In order to facilitate the genome editing for actinomycetes, we developed a CRISPR-Cas9 toolkit with high efficiency for actinomyces genome editing. This basic toolkit includes a software for spacer (sgRNA) identification, a system for in-frame gene/gene cluster knockout, a system for gene loss-of-function study, a system for generating a random size deletion library, and a system for gene knockdown. For the latter, a uracil-specific excision reagent (USER) cloning technology was adapted to simplify the CRISPR vector construction process. The application of this toolkit was successfully demonstrated by perturbation of genomes of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) and Streptomyces collinus Tü 365. The CRISPR-Cas9 toolkit and related protocol described here can be widely used for metabolic engineering of actinomycetes.

Grid data access on widely distributed worker nodes using scalla and SRM

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jakl, P.; Lauret, J.; Hanushevsky, A.; Shoshani, A.; Sim, A.; Gu, J.

2008-07-01

Facing the reality of storage economics, NP experiments such as RHIC/STAR have been engaged in a shift of the analysis model, and now heavily rely on using cheap disks attached to processing nodes, as such a model is extremely beneficial over expensive centralized storage. Additionally, exploiting storage aggregates with enhanced distributed computing capabilities such as dynamic space allocation (lifetime of spaces), file management on shared storages (lifetime of files, pinning file), storage policies or a uniform access to heterogeneous storage solutions is not an easy task. The Xrootd/Scalla system allows for storage aggregation. We will present an overview of the largest deployment of Scalla (Structured Cluster Architecture for Low Latency Access) in the world spanning over 1000 CPUs co-sharing the 350 TB Storage Elements and the experience on how to make such a model work in the RHIC/STAR standard analysis framework. We will explain the key features and approach on how to make access to mass storage (HPSS) possible in such a large deployment context. Furthermore, we will give an overview of a fully 'gridified' solution using the plug-and-play features of Scalla architecture, replacing standard storage access with grid middleware SRM (Storage Resource Manager) components designed for space management and will compare the solution with the standard Scalla approach in use in STAR for the past 2 years. Integration details, future plans and status of development will be explained in the area of best transfer strategy between multiple-choice data pools and best placement with respect of load balancing and interoperability with other SRM aware tools or implementations.

Transportation librarian's toolkit

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2007-12-01

The Transportation Librarians Toolkit is a product of the Transportation Library Connectivity pooled fund study, TPF- 5(105), a collaborative, grass-roots effort by transportation libraries to enhance information accessibility and professional expert...

The Python ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART), a library for working with weather radar data in the Python programming language

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

Helmus, Jonathan J.; Collis, Scott M.

The Python ARM Radar Toolkit is a package for reading, visualizing, correcting and analysing data from weather radars. Development began to meet the needs of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility and has since expanded to provide a general-purpose framework for working with data from weather radars in the Python programming language. The toolkit is built on top of libraries in the Scientific Python ecosystem including NumPy, SciPy, and matplotlib, and makes use of Cython for interfacing with existing radar libraries written in C and to speed up computationally demanding algorithms. As a result, the source code for themore » toolkit is available on GitHub and is distributed under a BSD license.« less

Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Venkatesh, Meera; Kapadia, Ravi; Walker, Mark; Wilkins, Kim

2013-01-01

A framework of software components has been implemented to facilitate the development of ISHM systems according to a methodology based on Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). This framework is collectively referred to as the Toolkit and was developed using General Atomics' Health MAP (TM) technology. The toolkit is intended to provide assistance to software developers of mission-critical system health monitoring applications in the specification, implementation, configuration, and deployment of such applications. In addition to software tools designed to facilitate these objectives, the toolkit also provides direction to software developers in accordance with an ISHM specification and development methodology. The development tools are based on an RCM approach for the development of ISHM systems. This approach focuses on defining, detecting, and predicting the likelihood of system functional failures and their undesirable consequences.

The Python ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART), a library for working with weather radar data in the Python programming language

DOE PAGES

Helmus, Jonathan J.; Collis, Scott M.

2016-07-18

The Python ARM Radar Toolkit is a package for reading, visualizing, correcting and analysing data from weather radars. Development began to meet the needs of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility and has since expanded to provide a general-purpose framework for working with data from weather radars in the Python programming language. The toolkit is built on top of libraries in the Scientific Python ecosystem including NumPy, SciPy, and matplotlib, and makes use of Cython for interfacing with existing radar libraries written in C and to speed up computationally demanding algorithms. As a result, the source code for themore » toolkit is available on GitHub and is distributed under a BSD license.« less

The Lean and Environment Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This Lean and Environment Toolkit assembles practical experience collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and partner companies and organizations that have experience with coordinating Lean implementation and environmental management.

75 FR 48400 - Self-Regulatory Organizations; NASDAQ OMX BX, Inc.; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-08-10

...\\ Id. \\11\\ Id. Under Chapter IV, Section 3(i) of the BOX Rules, Exchange-Traded Fund Shares (``ETFs... traded on BOX: The ETFs must (i) be traded on a national securities exchange; (ii) be defined as an ``NMS... specified non-U.S. currency or currencies deposited with the trust or similar entity when aggregated in some...

User's manual for the two-dimensional transputer graphics toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ellis, Graham K.

1988-01-01

The user manual for the 2-D graphics toolkit for a transputer based parallel processor is presented. The toolkit consists of a package of 2-D display routines that can be used for the simulation visualizations. It supports multiple windows, double buffered screens for animations, and simple graphics transformations such as translation, rotation, and scaling. The display routines are written in occam to take advantage of the multiprocessing features available on transputers. The package is designed to run on a transputer separate from the graphics board.

A Machine Learning and Optimization Toolkit for the Swarm

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-11-17

Machine   Learning  and  Op0miza0on   Toolkit  for  the  Swarm   Ilge  Akkaya,  Shuhei  Emoto...3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2014 to 00-00-2014 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE A Machine Learning and Optimization Toolkit for the Swarm 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER... machine   learning   methodologies  by  providing  the  right  interfaces  between   machine   learning  tools  and

A clinical research analytics toolkit for cohort study.

PubMed

Yu, Yiqin; Zhu, Yu; Sun, Xingzhi; Tao, Ying; Zhang, Shuo; Xu, Linhao; Pan, Yue

2012-01-01

This paper presents a clinical informatics toolkit that can assist physicians to conduct cohort studies effectively and efficiently. The toolkit has three key features: 1) support of procedures defined in epidemiology, 2) recommendation of statistical methods in data analysis, and 3) automatic generation of research reports. On one hand, our system can help physicians control research quality by leveraging the integrated knowledge of epidemiology and medical statistics; on the other hand, it can improve productivity by reducing the complexities for physicians during their cohort studies.

UQTk Version 3.0.3 User Manual

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

Sargsyan, Khachik; Safta, Cosmin; Chowdhary, Kamaljit Singh

2017-05-01

The UQ Toolkit (UQTk) is a collection of libraries and tools for the quantification of uncertainty in numerical model predictions. Version 3.0.3 offers intrusive and non-intrusive methods for propagating input uncertainties through computational models, tools for sen- sitivity analysis, methods for sparse surrogate construction, and Bayesian inference tools for inferring parameters from experimental data. This manual discusses the download and installation process for UQTk, provides pointers to the UQ methods used in the toolkit, and describes some of the examples provided with the toolkit.

Food: Too Good to Waste Implementation Guide and Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Food: Too Good to Waste (FTGTW) Implementation Guide and Toolkit is designed for community organizations, local governments, households and others interested in reducing wasteful household food management practices.

Development of a toolkit and glossary to aid in the adaptation of health technology assessment (HTA) reports for use in different contexts.

PubMed

Chase, D; Rosten, C; Turner, S; Hicks, N; Milne, R

2009-11-01

To develop a health technology assessment (HTA) adaptation toolkit and glossary of adaptation terms for use by HTA agencies within EU member states to support them in adapting HTA reports written for other contexts. The toolkit and glossary were developed by a partnership of 28 HTA agencies and networks across Europe (EUnetHTA work package 5), led by the UK National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment (NCCHTA). Methods employed for the two resources were literature searching, a survey of adaptation experience, two rounds of a Delphi survey, meetings of the partnership and drawing on the expertise and experience of the partnership, two rounds of review, and two rounds of quality assurance testing. All partners were requested to provide input into each stage of development. The resulting toolkit is a collection of resources, in the form of checklists of questions on relevance, reliability and transferability of data and information, and links to useful websites, that help the user assess whether data and information in existing HTA reports can be adapted for a different setting. The toolkit is designed for the adaptation of evidence synthesis rather than primary research. The accompanying glossary provides descriptions of meanings for HTA adaptation terms from HTA agencies across Europe. It seeks to highlight differences in the use and understanding of each word by HTA agencies. The toolkit and glossary are available for use by all HTA agencies and can be accessed via www.eunethta.net/. These resources have been developed to help HTA agencies make better use of HTA reports produced elsewhere. They can be used by policy-makers and clinicians to aid in understanding HTA reports written for other contexts. The main implication of this work is that there is the potential for the adaptation of HTA reports and, if utilised, this should release resources to enable the development of further HTA reports. Recommendations for the further development of the toolkit include the potential to develop an interactive web-based version and to extend the toolkit to facilitate the adaptation of HTA reports on diagnostic testing and screening.

The Development and Evaluation of an Online Healthcare Toolkit for Autistic Adults and their Primary Care Providers.

PubMed

Nicolaidis, Christina; Raymaker, Dora; McDonald, Katherine; Kapp, Steven; Weiner, Michael; Ashkenazy, Elesia; Gerrity, Martha; Kripke, Clarissa; Platt, Laura; Baggs, Amelia

2016-10-01

The healthcare system is ill-equipped to meet the needs of adults on the autism spectrum. Our goal was to use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to develop and evaluate tools to facilitate the primary healthcare of autistic adults. Toolkit development included cognitive interviewing and test-retest reliability studies. Evaluation consisted of a mixed-methods, single-arm pre/post-intervention comparison. A total of 259 autistic adults and 51 primary care providers (PCPs) residing in the United States. The AASPIRE Healthcare toolkit includes the Autism Healthcare Accommodations Tool (AHAT)-a tool that allows patients to create a personalized accommodations report for their PCP-and general healthcare- and autism-related information, worksheets, checklists, and resources for patients and healthcare providers. Satisfaction with patient-provider communication, healthcare self-efficacy, barriers to healthcare, and satisfaction with the toolkit's usability and utility; responses to open-ended questions. Preliminary testing of the AHAT demonstrated strong content validity and adequate test-retest stability. Almost all patient participants (>94 %) felt that the AHAT and the toolkit were easy to use, important, and useful. In pre/post-intervention comparisons, the mean number of barriers decreased (from 4.07 to 2.82, p < 0.0001), healthcare self-efficacy increased (from 37.9 to 39.4, p = 0.02), and satisfaction with PCP communication improved (from 30.9 to 32.6, p = 0.03). Patients stated that the toolkit helped clarify their needs, enabled them to self-advocate and prepare for visits more effectively, and positively influenced provider behavior. Most of the PCPs surveyed read the AHAT (97 %), rated it as moderately or very useful (82 %), and would recommend it to other patients (87 %). The CBPR process resulted in a reliable healthcare accommodation tool and a highly accessible healthcare toolkit. Patients and providers indicated that the tools positively impacted healthcare interactions. The toolkit has the potential to reduce barriers to healthcare and improve healthcare self-efficacy and patient-provider communication.

A patient and public involvement (PPI) toolkit for meaningful and flexible involvement in clinical trials - a work in progress.

PubMed

Bagley, Heather J; Short, Hannah; Harman, Nicola L; Hickey, Helen R; Gamble, Carrol L; Woolfall, Kerry; Young, Bridget; Williamson, Paula R

2016-01-01

Funders of research are increasingly requiring researchers to involve patients and the public in their research. Patient and public involvement (PPI) in research can potentially help researchers make sure that the design of their research is relevant, that it is participant friendly and ethically sound. Using and sharing PPI resources can benefit those involved in undertaking PPI, but existing PPI resources are not used consistently and this can lead to duplication of effort. This paper describes how we are developing a toolkit to support clinical trials teams in a clinical trials unit. The toolkit will provide a key 'off the shelf' resource to support trial teams with limited resources, in undertaking PPI. Key activities in further developing and maintaining the toolkit are to: ● listen to the views and experience of both research teams and patient and public contributors who use the tools; ● modify the tools based on our experience of using them; ● identify the need for future tools; ● update the toolkit based on any newly identified resources that come to light; ● raise awareness of the toolkit and ● work in collaboration with others to either develop or test out PPI resources in order to reduce duplication of work in PPI. Background Patient and public involvement (PPI) in research is increasingly a funder requirement due to the potential benefits in the design of relevant, participant friendly, ethically sound research. The use and sharing of resources can benefit PPI, but available resources are not consistently used leading to duplication of effort. This paper describes a developing toolkit to support clinical trials teams to undertake effective and meaningful PPI. Methods The first phase in developing the toolkit was to describe which PPI activities should be considered in the pathway of a clinical trial and at what stage these activities should take place. This pathway was informed through review of the type and timing of PPI activities within trials coordinated by the Clinical Trials Research Centre and previously described areas of potential PPI impact in trials. In the second phase, key websites around PPI and identification of resources opportunistically, e.g. in conversation with other trialists or social media, were used to identify resources. Tools were developed where gaps existed. Results A flowchart was developed describing PPI activities that should be considered in the clinical trial pathway and the point at which these activities should happen. Three toolkit domains were identified: planning PPI; supporting PPI; recording and evaluating PPI. Four main activities and corresponding tools were identified under the planning for PPI: developing a plan; identifying patient and public contributors; allocating appropriate costs; and managing expectations. In supporting PPI, tools were developed to review participant information sheets. These tools, which require a summary of potential trial participant characteristics and circumstances help to clarify requirements and expectations of PPI review. For recording and evaluating PPI, the planned PPI interventions should be monitored in terms of impact, and a tool to monitor public contributor experience is in development. Conclusions This toolkit provides a developing 'off the shelf' resource to support trial teams with limited resources in undertaking PPI. Key activities in further developing and maintaining the toolkit are to: listen to the views and experience of both research teams and public contributors using the tools, to identify the need for future tools, to modify tools based on experience of their use; to update the toolkit based on any newly identified resources that come to light; to raise awareness of the toolkit and to work in collaboration with others to both develop and test out PPI resources in order to reduce duplication of work in PPI.

A Summary of Proposed Changes to the Current ICARTT Format Standards and their Implications to Future Airborne Studies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Northup, E. A.; Kusterer, J.; Quam, B.; Chen, G.; Early, A. B.; Beach, A. L., III

2015-12-01

The current ICARTT file format standards were developed for the purpose of fulfilling the data management needs for the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation (ICARTT) campaign in 2004. The goal of the ICARTT file format was to establish a common and simple to use data file format to promote data exchange and collaboration among science teams with similar science objectives. ICARTT has been the NASA standard since 2010, and is widely used by NOAA, NSF, and international partners (DLR, FAAM). Despite its level of acceptance, there are a number of issues with the current ICARTT format, especially concerning the machine readability. To enhance usability, the ICARTT Refresh Earth Science Data Systems Working Group (ESDSWG) was established to enable a platform for atmospheric science data producers, users (e.g. modelers) and data managers to collaborate on developing criteria for this file format. Ultimately, this is a cross agency effort to improve and aggregate the metadata records being produced. After conducting a survey to identify deficiencies in the current format, we determined which are considered most important to the various communities. Numerous recommendations were made to improve upon the file format while maintaining backward compatibility. The recommendations made to date and their advantages and limitations will be discussed.

McrEngine: A Scalable Checkpointing System Using Data-Aware Aggregation and Compression

DOE PAGES

Islam, Tanzima Zerin; Mohror, Kathryn; Bagchi, Saurabh; ...

2013-01-01

High performance computing (HPC) systems use checkpoint-restart to tolerate failures. Typically, applications store their states in checkpoints on a parallel file system (PFS). As applications scale up, checkpoint-restart incurs high overheads due to contention for PFS resources. The high overheads force large-scale applications to reduce checkpoint frequency, which means more compute time is lost in the event of failure. We alleviate this problem through a scalable checkpoint-restart system, mcrEngine. McrEngine aggregates checkpoints from multiple application processes with knowledge of the data semantics available through widely-used I/O libraries, e.g., HDF5 and netCDF, and compresses them. Our novel scheme improves compressibility ofmore » checkpoints up to 115% over simple concatenation and compression. Our evaluation with large-scale application checkpoints show that mcrEngine reduces checkpointing overhead by up to 87% and restart overhead by up to 62% over a baseline with no aggregation or compression.« less

Nestly--a framework for running software with nested parameter choices and aggregating results.

PubMed

McCoy, Connor O; Gallagher, Aaron; Hoffman, Noah G; Matsen, Frederick A

2013-02-01

The execution of a software application or pipeline using various combinations of parameters and inputs is a common task in bioinformatics. In the absence of a specialized tool to organize, streamline and formalize this process, scientists must write frequently complex scripts to perform these tasks. We present nestly, a Python package to facilitate running tools with nested combinations of parameters and inputs. nestly provides three components. First, a module to build nested directory structures corresponding to choices of parameters. Second, the nestrun script to run a given command using each set of parameter choices. Third, the nestagg script to aggregate results of the individual runs into a CSV file, as well as support for more complex aggregation. We also include a module for easily specifying nested dependencies for the SCons build tool, enabling incremental builds. Source, documentation and tutorial examples are available at http://github.com/fhcrc/nestly. nestly can be installed from the Python Package Index via pip; it is open source (MIT license).

Preparation and measurement methods for studying nanoparticle aggregate surface chemistry.

PubMed

Szakal, Christopher; McCarthy, James A; Ugelow, Melissa S; Konicek, Andrew R; Louis, Kacie; Yezer, Benjamin; Herzing, Andrew A; Hamers, Robert J; Holbrook, R David

2012-07-01

Despite best efforts at controlling nanoparticle (NP) surface chemistries, the environment surrounding nanomaterials is always changing and can impart a permanent chemical memory. We present a set of preparation and measurement methods to be used as the foundation for studying the surface chemical memory of engineered NP aggregates. We attempt to bridge the gap between controlled lab studies and real-world NP samples, specifically TiO(2), by using well-characterized and consistently synthesized NPs, controllably producing NP aggregates with precision drop-on-demand inkjet printing for subsequent chemical measurements, monitoring the physical morphology of the NP aggregate depositions with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), acquiring "surface-to-bulk" mass spectra of the NP aggregate surfaces with time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), and developing a data analysis scheme to interpret chemical signatures more accurately from thousands of data files. We present differences in mass spectral peak ratios for bare TiO(2) NPs compared to NPs mixed separately with natural organic matter (NOM) or pond water. The results suggest that subtle changes in the local environment can alter the surface chemistry of TiO(2) NPs, as monitored by Ti(+)/TiO(+) and Ti(+)/C(3)H(5)(+) peak ratios. The subtle changes in the absolute surface chemistry of NP aggregates vs. that of the subsurface are explored. It is envisioned that the methods developed herein can be adapted for monitoring the surface chemistries of a variety of engineered NPs obtained from diverse natural environments.

Lean and Information Technology Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Lean and Information Technology Toolkit is a how-to guide which provides resources to environmental agencies to help them use Lean Startup, Lean process improvement, and Agile tools to streamline and automate processes.

Health Information in Kirundi (Rundi)

MedlinePlus

... Abuse Healthy Living Toolkit: Violence In the Home - English PDF Healthy Living Toolkit: Violence In the Home - ... Parents on Talking to Children About the Flu - English PDF Advice for Parents on Talking to Children ...

78 FR 14774 - U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit-Universal Waste

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-03-07

... following list: (a) Mercury Recycling Technology (b) E-Waste Recycling Technology (c) CRT Recycling Technology (d) Lamp Crushing Systems For purposes of participation in the Toolkit, ``United States exporter...

ARC SDK: A toolbox for distributed computing and data applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Skou Andersen, M.; Cameron, D.; Lindemann, J.

2014-06-01

Grid middleware suites provide tools to perform the basic tasks of job submission and retrieval and data access, however these tools tend to be low-level, operating on individual jobs or files and lacking in higher-level concepts. User communities therefore generally develop their own application-layer software catering to their specific communities' needs on top of the Grid middleware. It is thus important for the Grid middleware to provide a friendly, well documented and simple to use interface for the applications to build upon. The Advanced Resource Connector (ARC), developed by NorduGrid, provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) which enables applications to use the middleware for job and data management. This paper presents the architecture and functionality of the ARC SDK along with an example graphical application developed with the SDK. The SDK consists of a set of libraries accessible through Application Programming Interfaces (API) in several languages. It contains extensive documentation and example code and is available on multiple platforms. The libraries provide generic interfaces and rely on plugins to support a given technology or protocol and this modular design makes it easy to add a new plugin if the application requires supporting additional technologies.The ARC Graphical Clients package is a graphical user interface built on top of the ARC SDK and the Qt toolkit and it is presented here as a fully functional example of an application. It provides a graphical interface to enable job submission and management at the click of a button, and allows data on any Grid storage system to be manipulated using a visual file system hierarchy, as if it were a regular file system.

FAST User Guide

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Walatka, Pamela P.; Clucas, Jean; McCabe, R. Kevin; Plessel, Todd; Potter, R.; Cooper, D. M. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

The Flow Analysis Software Toolkit, FAST, is a software environment for visualizing data. FAST is a collection of separate programs (modules) that run simultaneously and allow the user to examine the results of numerical and experimental simulations. The user can load data files, perform calculations on the data, visualize the results of these calculations, construct scenes of 3D graphical objects, and plot, animate and record the scenes. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) visualization is the primary intended use of FAST, but FAST can also assist in the analysis of other types of data. FAST combines the capabilities of such programs as PLOT3D, RIP, SURF, and GAS into one environment with modules that share data. Sharing data between modules eliminates the drudgery of transferring data between programs. All the modules in the FAST environment have a consistent, highly interactive graphical user interface. Most commands are entered by pointing and'clicking. The modular construction of FAST makes it flexible and extensible. The environment can be custom configured and new modules can be developed and added as needed. The following modules have been developed for FAST: VIEWER, FILE IO, CALCULATOR, SURFER, TOPOLOGY, PLOTTER, TITLER, TRACER, ARCGRAPH, GQ, SURFERU, SHOTET, and ISOLEVU. A utility is also included to make the inclusion of user defined modules in the FAST environment easy. The VIEWER module is the central control for the FAST environment. From VIEWER, the user can-change object attributes, interactively position objects in three-dimensional space, define and save scenes, create animations, spawn new FAST modules, add additional view windows, and save and execute command scripts. The FAST User Guide uses text and FAST MAPS (graphical representations of the entire user interface) to guide the user through the use of FAST. Chapters include: Maps, Overview, Tips, Getting Started Tutorial, a separate chapter for each module, file formats, and system administration.

Water Quality Trading Toolkit for Permit Writers

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Water Quality Trading Toolkit for Permit Writers is EPA’s first “how-to” manual on designing and implementing water quality trading programs. It helps NPDES permitting authorities incorporate trading provisions into permits.

Heart Health for Women

MedlinePlus

... more about how you can participate. Heart Health Social Media Toolkit The FDA Office of Women's Health offers ... informed about heart health. Use the Heart Health Social Media Toolkit to encourage women in your network to ...

Data on fossil fuel availability for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.

PubMed

Bauer, Nico; Hilaire, Jérôme; Brecha, Robert J; Edmonds, Jae; Jiang, Kejun; Kriegler, Elmar; Rogner, Hans-Holger; Sferra, Fabio

2017-02-01

The data files contain the assumptions and results for the construction of cumulative availability curves for coal, oil and gas for the five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. The files include the maximum availability (also known as cumulative extraction cost curves) and the assumptions that are applied to construct the SSPs. The data is differentiated into twenty regions. The resulting cumulative availability curves are plotted and the aggregate data as well as cumulative availability curves are compared across SSPs. The methodology, the data sources and the assumptions are documented in a related article (N. Bauer, J. Hilaire, R.J. Brecha, J. Edmonds, K. Jiang, E. Kriegler, H.-H. Rogner, F. Sferra, 2016) [1] under DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.05.088.

Overview of EVE - the event visualization environment of ROOT

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tadel, Matevž

2010-04-01

EVE is a high-level visualization library using ROOT's data-processing, GUI and OpenGL interfaces. It is designed as a framework for object management offering hierarchical data organization, object interaction and visualization via GUI and OpenGL representations. Automatic creation of 2D projected views is also supported. On the other hand, it can serve as an event visualization toolkit satisfying most HEP requirements: visualization of geometry, simulated and reconstructed data such as hits, clusters, tracks and calorimeter information. Special classes are available for visualization of raw-data. Object-interaction layer allows for easy selection and highlighting of objects and their derived representations (projections) across several views (3D, Rho-Z, R-Phi). Object-specific tooltips are provided in both GUI and GL views. The visual-configuration layer of EVE is built around a data-base of template objects that can be applied to specific instances of visualization objects to ensure consistent object presentation. The data-base can be retrieved from a file, edited during the framework operation and stored to file. EVE prototype was developed within the ALICE collaboration and has been included into ROOT in December 2007. Since then all EVE components have reached maturity. EVE is used as the base of AliEve visualization framework in ALICE, Firework physics-oriented event-display in CMS, and as the visualization engine of FairRoot in FAIR.

Opal web services for biomedical applications.

PubMed

Ren, Jingyuan; Williams, Nadya; Clementi, Luca; Krishnan, Sriram; Li, Wilfred W

2010-07-01

Biomedical applications have become increasingly complex, and they often require large-scale high-performance computing resources with a large number of processors and memory. The complexity of application deployment and the advances in cluster, grid and cloud computing require new modes of support for biomedical research. Scientific Software as a Service (sSaaS) enables scalable and transparent access to biomedical applications through simple standards-based Web interfaces. Towards this end, we built a production web server (http://ws.nbcr.net) in August 2007 to support the bioinformatics application called MEME. The server has grown since to include docking analysis with AutoDock and AutoDock Vina, electrostatic calculations using PDB2PQR and APBS, and off-target analysis using SMAP. All the applications on the servers are powered by Opal, a toolkit that allows users to wrap scientific applications easily as web services without any modification to the scientific codes, by writing simple XML configuration files. Opal allows both web forms-based access and programmatic access of all our applications. The Opal toolkit currently supports SOAP-based Web service access to a number of popular applications from the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NBCR) and affiliated collaborative and service projects. In addition, Opal's programmatic access capability allows our applications to be accessed through many workflow tools, including Vision, Kepler, Nimrod/K and VisTrails. From mid-August 2007 to the end of 2009, we have successfully executed 239,814 jobs. The number of successfully executed jobs more than doubled from 205 to 411 per day between 2008 and 2009. The Opal-enabled service model is useful for a wide range of applications. It provides for interoperation with other applications with Web Service interfaces, and allows application developers to focus on the scientific tool and workflow development. Web server availability: http://ws.nbcr.net.

PWHATSHAP: efficient haplotyping for future generation sequencing.

PubMed

Bracciali, Andrea; Aldinucci, Marco; Patterson, Murray; Marschall, Tobias; Pisanti, Nadia; Merelli, Ivan; Torquati, Massimo

2016-09-22

Haplotype phasing is an important problem in the analysis of genomics information. Given a set of DNA fragments of an individual, it consists of determining which one of the possible alleles (alternative forms of a gene) each fragment comes from. Haplotype information is relevant to gene regulation, epigenetics, genome-wide association studies, evolutionary and population studies, and the study of mutations. Haplotyping is currently addressed as an optimisation problem aiming at solutions that minimise, for instance, error correction costs, where costs are a measure of the confidence in the accuracy of the information acquired from DNA sequencing. Solutions have typically an exponential computational complexity. WHATSHAP is a recent optimal approach which moves computational complexity from DNA fragment length to fragment overlap, i.e., coverage, and is hence of particular interest when considering sequencing technology's current trends that are producing longer fragments. Given the potential relevance of efficient haplotyping in several analysis pipelines, we have designed and engineered PWHATSHAP, a parallel, high-performance version of WHATSHAP. PWHATSHAP is embedded in a toolkit developed in Python and supports genomics datasets in standard file formats. Building on WHATSHAP, PWHATSHAP exhibits the same complexity exploring a number of possible solutions which is exponential in the coverage of the dataset. The parallel implementation on multi-core architectures allows for a relevant reduction of the execution time for haplotyping, while the provided results enjoy the same high accuracy as that provided by WHATSHAP, which increases with coverage. Due to its structure and management of the large datasets, the parallelisation of WHATSHAP posed demanding technical challenges, which have been addressed exploiting a high-level parallel programming framework. The result, PWHATSHAP, is a freely available toolkit that improves the efficiency of the analysis of genomics information.

Combining Open-Source Packages for Planetary Exploration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmidt, Albrecht; Grieger, Björn; Völk, Stefan

2015-04-01

The science planning of the ESA Rosetta mission has presented challenges which were addressed with combining various open-source software packages, such as the SPICE toolkit, the Python language and the Web graphics library three.js. The challenge was to compute certain parameters from a pool of trajectories and (possible) attitudes to describe the behaviour of the spacecraft. To be able to do this declaratively and efficiently, a C library was implemented that allows to interface the SPICE toolkit for geometrical computations from the Python language and process as much data as possible during one subroutine call. To minimise the lines of code one has to write special care was taken to ensure that the bindings were idiomatic and thus integrate well into the Python language and ecosystem. When done well, this very much simplifies the structure of the code and facilitates the testing for correctness by automatic test suites and visual inspections. For rapid visualisation and confirmation of correctness of results, the geometries were visualised with the three.js library, a popular Javascript library for displaying three-dimensional graphics in a Web browser. Programmatically, this was achieved by generating data files from SPICE sources that were included into templated HTML and displayed by a browser, thus made easily accessible to interested parties at large. As feedback came and new ideas were to be explored, the authors benefited greatly from the design of the Python-to-SPICE library which allowed the expression of algorithms to be concise and easier to communicate. In summary, by combining several well-established open-source tools, we were able to put together a flexible computation and visualisation environment that helped communicate and build confidence in planning ideas.

A lightweight, flow-based toolkit for parallel and distributed bioinformatics pipelines

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Bioinformatic analyses typically proceed as chains of data-processing tasks. A pipeline, or 'workflow', is a well-defined protocol, with a specific structure defined by the topology of data-flow interdependencies, and a particular functionality arising from the data transformations applied at each step. In computer science, the dataflow programming (DFP) paradigm defines software systems constructed in this manner, as networks of message-passing components. Thus, bioinformatic workflows can be naturally mapped onto DFP concepts. Results To enable the flexible creation and execution of bioinformatics dataflows, we have written a modular framework for parallel pipelines in Python ('PaPy'). A PaPy workflow is created from re-usable components connected by data-pipes into a directed acyclic graph, which together define nested higher-order map functions. The successive functional transformations of input data are evaluated on flexibly pooled compute resources, either local or remote. Input items are processed in batches of adjustable size, all flowing one to tune the trade-off between parallelism and lazy-evaluation (memory consumption). An add-on module ('NuBio') facilitates the creation of bioinformatics workflows by providing domain specific data-containers (e.g., for biomolecular sequences, alignments, structures) and functionality (e.g., to parse/write standard file formats). Conclusions PaPy offers a modular framework for the creation and deployment of parallel and distributed data-processing workflows. Pipelines derive their functionality from user-written, data-coupled components, so PaPy also can be viewed as a lightweight toolkit for extensible, flow-based bioinformatics data-processing. The simplicity and flexibility of distributed PaPy pipelines may help users bridge the gap between traditional desktop/workstation and grid computing. PaPy is freely distributed as open-source Python code at http://muralab.org/PaPy, and includes extensive documentation and annotated usage examples. PMID:21352538

SHARP Multiphysics Tutorials

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

Yu, Y. Q.; Shemon, E. R.; Mahadevan, Vijay S.

SHARP, developed under the NEAMS Reactor Product Line, is an advanced modeling and simulation toolkit for the analysis of advanced nuclear reactors. SHARP is comprised of three physics modules currently including neutronics, thermal hydraulics, and structural mechanics. SHARP empowers designers to produce accurate results for modeling physical phenomena that have been identified as important for nuclear reactor analysis. SHARP can use existing physics codes and take advantage of existing infrastructure capabilities in the MOAB framework and the coupling driver/solver library, the Coupled Physics Environment (CouPE), which utilizes the widely used, scalable PETSc library. This report aims at identifying the coupled-physicsmore » simulation capability of SHARP by introducing the demonstration example called sahex in advance of the SHARP release expected by Mar 2016. sahex consists of 6 fuel pins with cladding, 1 control rod, sodium coolant and an outer duct wall that encloses all the other components. This example is carefully chosen to demonstrate the proof of concept for solving more complex demonstration examples such as EBR II assembly and ABTR full core. The workflow of preparing the input files, running the case and analyzing the results is demonstrated in this report. Moreover, an extension of the sahex model called sahex_core, which adds six homogenized neighboring assemblies to the full heterogeneous sahex model, is presented to test homogenization capabilities in both Nek5000 and PROTEUS. Some primary information on the configuration and build aspects for the SHARP toolkit, which includes capability to auto-download dependencies and configure/install with optimal flags in an architecture-aware fashion, is also covered by this report. A step-by-step instruction is provided to help users to create their cases. Details on these processes will be provided in the SHARP user manual that will accompany the first release.« less

A lightweight, flow-based toolkit for parallel and distributed bioinformatics pipelines.

PubMed

Cieślik, Marcin; Mura, Cameron

2011-02-25

Bioinformatic analyses typically proceed as chains of data-processing tasks. A pipeline, or 'workflow', is a well-defined protocol, with a specific structure defined by the topology of data-flow interdependencies, and a particular functionality arising from the data transformations applied at each step. In computer science, the dataflow programming (DFP) paradigm defines software systems constructed in this manner, as networks of message-passing components. Thus, bioinformatic workflows can be naturally mapped onto DFP concepts. To enable the flexible creation and execution of bioinformatics dataflows, we have written a modular framework for parallel pipelines in Python ('PaPy'). A PaPy workflow is created from re-usable components connected by data-pipes into a directed acyclic graph, which together define nested higher-order map functions. The successive functional transformations of input data are evaluated on flexibly pooled compute resources, either local or remote. Input items are processed in batches of adjustable size, all flowing one to tune the trade-off between parallelism and lazy-evaluation (memory consumption). An add-on module ('NuBio') facilitates the creation of bioinformatics workflows by providing domain specific data-containers (e.g., for biomolecular sequences, alignments, structures) and functionality (e.g., to parse/write standard file formats). PaPy offers a modular framework for the creation and deployment of parallel and distributed data-processing workflows. Pipelines derive their functionality from user-written, data-coupled components, so PaPy also can be viewed as a lightweight toolkit for extensible, flow-based bioinformatics data-processing. The simplicity and flexibility of distributed PaPy pipelines may help users bridge the gap between traditional desktop/workstation and grid computing. PaPy is freely distributed as open-source Python code at http://muralab.org/PaPy, and includes extensive documentation and annotated usage examples.

Experimental and Chemoinformatics Study of Tautomerism in a Database of Commercially Available Screening Samples

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

We investigated how many cases of the same chemical sold as different products (at possibly different prices) occurred in a prototypical large aggregated database and simultaneously tested the tautomerism definitions in the chemoinformatics toolkit CACTVS. We applied the standard CACTVS tautomeric transforms plus a set of recently developed ring–chain transforms to the Aldrich Market Select (AMS) database of 6 million screening samples and building blocks. In 30 000 cases, two or more AMS products were found to be just different tautomeric forms of the same compound. We purchased and analyzed 166 such tautomer pairs and triplets by 1H and 13C NMR to determine whether the CACTVS transforms accurately predicted what is the same “stuff in the bottle”. Essentially all prototropic transforms with examples in the AMS were confirmed. Some of the ring–chain transforms were found to be too “aggressive”, i.e. to equate structures with one another that were different compounds. PMID:27669079

High sensitivity detection and sorting of infectious human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) particles by flow virometry

PubMed Central

Bonar, Micha M.; Tilton, John C.

2017-01-01

Detection of viruses by flow cytometry is complicated by their small size. Here, we characterized the ability of a standard (FACSAria II) and a sub-micron flow cytometer (A50 Micro) to resolve HIV-1 viruses. The A50 was superior at resolving small particles but did not reliably distinguish HIV-1, extracellular vesicles, and laser noise by light scatter properties alone. However, single fluorescent HIV-1 particles could readily be detected by both cytometers. Fluorescent particles were sorted and retained infectivity, permitting further exploration of the functional consequences of HIV-1 heterogeneity. Finally, flow cytometry had a limit of detection of 80 viruses/ml, nearly equal to PCR assays. These studies demonstrate the power of flow cytometry to detect and sort viral particles and provide a critical toolkit to validate methods to label wild-type HIV-1; quantitatively assess integrity and aggregation of viruses and virus-based therapeutics; and efficiently screen drugs inhibiting viral assembly and release. PMID:28235684

High sensitivity detection and sorting of infectious human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) particles by flow virometry.

PubMed

Bonar, Michał M; Tilton, John C

2017-05-01

Detection of viruses by flow cytometry is complicated by their small size. Here, we characterized the ability of a standard (FACSAria II) and a sub-micron flow cytometer (A50 Micro) to resolve HIV-1 viruses. The A50 was superior at resolving small particles but did not reliably distinguish HIV-1, extracellular vesicles, and laser noise by light scatter properties alone. However, single fluorescent HIV-1 particles could readily be detected by both cytometers. Fluorescent particles were sorted and retained infectivity, permitting further exploration of the functional consequences of HIV-1 heterogeneity. Finally, flow cytometry had a limit of detection of 80 viruses/ml, nearly equal to PCR assays. These studies demonstrate the power of flow cytometry to detect and sort viral particles and provide a critical toolkit to validate methods to label wild-type HIV-1; quantitatively assess integrity and aggregation of viruses and virus-based therapeutics; and efficiently screen drugs inhibiting viral assembly and release. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Health Care Facilities Resilient to Climate Change Impacts

PubMed Central

Paterson, Jaclyn; Berry, Peter; Ebi, Kristie; Varangu, Linda

2014-01-01

Climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events and create risks that will impact health care facilities. Health care facilities will need to assess climate change risks and adopt adaptive management strategies to be resilient, but guidance tools are lacking. In this study, a toolkit was developed for health care facility officials to assess the resiliency of their facility to climate change impacts. A mixed methods approach was used to develop climate change resiliency indicators to inform the development of the toolkit. The toolkit consists of a checklist for officials who work in areas of emergency management, facilities management and health care services and supply chain management, a facilitator’s guide for administering the checklist, and a resource guidebook to inform adaptation. Six health care facilities representing three provinces in Canada piloted the checklist. Senior level officials with expertise in the aforementioned areas were invited to review the checklist, provide feedback during qualitative interviews and review the final toolkit at a stakeholder workshop. The toolkit helps health care facility officials identify gaps in climate change preparedness, direct allocation of adaptation resources and inform strategic planning to increase resiliency to climate change. PMID:25522050

Current Status of VO Compliant Data Service in Japanese Virtual Observatory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shirasaki, Y.; Komiya, Y.; Ohishi, M.; Mizumoto, Y.; Ishihara, Y.; Tsutsumi, J.; Hiyama, T.; Nakamoto, H.; Sakamoto, M.

2012-09-01

In these years, standards to build a Virtual Observatory (VO) data service have been established with the efforts in the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA). We applied these newly established standards (SSAP, TAP) to our VO service toolkit which was developed to implement earlier VO standards SIAP and (deprecated) SkyNode. The toolkit can be easily installed and provides a GUI interface to construct and manage VO service. In this paper, we describes the architecture of our toolkit and how it is used to start hosting VO service.

Python-based geometry preparation and simulation visualization toolkits for STEPS

PubMed Central

Chen, Weiliang; De Schutter, Erik

2014-01-01

STEPS is a stochastic reaction-diffusion simulation engine that implements a spatial extension of Gillespie's Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) in complex tetrahedral geometries. An extensive Python-based interface is provided to STEPS so that it can interact with the large number of scientific packages in Python. However, a gap existed between the interfaces of these packages and the STEPS user interface, where supporting toolkits could reduce the amount of scripting required for research projects. This paper introduces two new supporting toolkits that support geometry preparation and visualization for STEPS simulations. PMID:24782754

Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) / Emergency Core Coolant System (ECCS Evaluation of Risk-Informed Margins Management Strategies for a Representative Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)

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

Szilard, Ronaldo Henriques

A Risk Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) toolkit and methodology are proposed for investigating nuclear power plant core, fuels design and safety analysis, including postulated Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA) analysis. This toolkit, under an integrated evaluation model framework, is name LOCA toolkit for the US (LOTUS). This demonstration includes coupled analysis of core design, fuel design, thermal hydraulics and systems analysis, using advanced risk analysis tools and methods to investigate a wide range of results.

WIND Toolkit Power Data Site Index

DOE Data Explorer

Draxl, Caroline; Mathias-Hodge, Bri

2016-10-19

This spreadsheet contains per-site metadata for the WIND Toolkit sites and serves as an index for the raw data hosted on Globus connect (nrel#globus:/globusro/met_data). Aside from the metadata, per site average power and capacity factor are given. This data was prepared by 3TIER under contract by NREL and is public domain. Authoritative documentation on the creation of the underlying dataset is at: Final Report on the Creation of the Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit and API: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/66189.pdf

An approach to enhance pnetCDF performance in ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Data intensive simulations are often limited by their I/O (input/output) performance, and "novel" techniques need to be developed in order to overcome this limitation. The software package pnetCDF (parallel network Common Data Form), which works with parallel file systems, was developed to address this issue by providing parallel I/O capability. This study examines the performance of an application-level data aggregation approach which performs data aggregation along either row or column dimension of MPI (Message Passing Interface) processes on a spatially decomposed domain, and then applies the pnetCDF parallel I/O paradigm. The test was done with three different domain sizes which represent small, moderately large, and large data domains, using a small-scale Community Multiscale Air Quality model (CMAQ) mock-up code. The examination includes comparing I/O performance with traditional serial I/O technique, straight application of pnetCDF, and the data aggregation along row and column dimension before applying pnetCDF. After the comparison, "optimal" I/O configurations of this application-level data aggregation approach were quantified. Data aggregation along the row dimension (pnetCDFcr) works better than along the column dimension (pnetCDFcc) although it may perform slightly worse than the straight pnetCDF method with a small number of processors. When the number of processors becomes larger, pnetCDFcr outperforms pnetCDF significantly. If the number of proces

Integrating fine-scale soil data into species distribution models: preparing Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) data from multiple counties

Treesearch

Matthew P. Peters; Louis R. Iverson; Anantha M. Prasad; Steve N. Matthews

2013-01-01

Fine-scale soil (SSURGO) data were processed at the county level for 37 states within the eastern United States, initially for use as predictor variables in a species distribution model called DISTRIB II. Values from county polygon files converted into a continuous 30-m raster grid were aggregated to 4-km cells and integrated with other environmental and site condition...

Lessons Learned in Deploying the World s Largest Scale Lustre File System

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

Dillow, David A; Fuller, Douglas; Wang, Feiyi

2010-01-01

The Spider system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is the world's largest scale Lustre parallel file system. Envisioned as a shared parallel file system capable of delivering both the bandwidth and capacity requirements of the OLCF's diverse computational environment, the project had a number of ambitious goals. To support the workloads of the OLCF's diverse computational platforms, the aggregate performance and storage capacity of Spider exceed that of our previously deployed systems by a factor of 6x - 240 GB/sec, and 17x - 10 Petabytes, respectively. Furthermore, Spider supports over 26,000 clients concurrently accessing themore » file system, which exceeds our previously deployed systems by nearly 4x. In addition to these scalability challenges, moving to a center-wide shared file system required dramatically improved resiliency and fault-tolerance mechanisms. This paper details our efforts in designing, deploying, and operating Spider. Through a phased approach of research and development, prototyping, deployment, and transition to operations, this work has resulted in a number of insights into large-scale parallel file system architectures, from both the design and the operational perspectives. We present in this paper our solutions to issues such as network congestion, performance baselining and evaluation, file system journaling overheads, and high availability in a system with tens of thousands of components. We also discuss areas of continued challenges, such as stressed metadata performance and the need for file system quality of service alongside with our efforts to address them. Finally, operational aspects of managing a system of this scale are discussed along with real-world data and observations.« less

The 2016 ACCP Pharmacotherapy Didactic Curriculum Toolkit.

PubMed

Schwinghammer, Terry L; Crannage, Andrew J; Boyce, Eric G; Bradley, Bridget; Christensen, Alyssa; Dunnenberger, Henry M; Fravel, Michelle; Gurgle, Holly; Hammond, Drayton A; Kwon, Jennifer; Slain, Douglas; Wargo, Kurt A

2016-11-01

The 2016 American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Educational Affairs Committee was charged with updating and contemporizing ACCP's 2009 Pharmacotherapy Didactic Curriculum Toolkit. The toolkit has been designed to guide schools and colleges of pharmacy in developing, maintaining, and modifying their curricula. The 2016 committee reviewed the recent medical literature and other documents to identify disease states that are responsive to drug therapy. Diseases and content topics were organized by organ system, when feasible, and grouped into tiers as defined by practice competency. Tier 1 topics should be taught in a manner that prepares all students to provide collaborative, patient-centered care upon graduation and licensure. Tier 2 topics are generally taught in the professional curriculum, but students may require additional knowledge or skills after graduation (e.g., residency training) to achieve competency in providing direct patient care. Tier 3 topics may not be taught in the professional curriculum; thus, graduates will be required to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills on their own to provide direct patient care, if required in their practice. The 2016 toolkit contains 276 diseases and content topics, of which 87 (32%) are categorized as tier 1, 133 (48%) as tier 2, and 56 (20%) as tier 3. The large number of tier 1 topics will require schools and colleges to use creative pedagogical strategies to achieve the necessary practice competencies. Almost half of the topics (48%) are tier 2, highlighting the importance of postgraduate residency training or equivalent practice experience to competently care for patients with these disorders. The Pharmacotherapy Didactic Curriculum Toolkit will continue to be updated to provide guidance to faculty at schools and colleges of pharmacy as these academic pharmacy institutions regularly evaluate and modify their curricula to keep abreast of scientific advances and associated practice changes. Access the current Pharmacotherapy Didactic Curriculum Toolkit at http://www.accp.com/docs/positions/misc/Toolkit_final.pdf. © 2016 Pharmacotherapy Publications, Inc.

Patient-Centered Personal Health Record and Portal Implementation Toolkit for Ambulatory Clinics: A Feasibility Study.

PubMed

Nahm, Eun-Shim; Diblasi, Catherine; Gonzales, Eva; Silver, Kristi; Zhu, Shijun; Sagherian, Knar; Kongs, Katherine

2017-04-01

Personal health records and patient portals have been shown to be effective in managing chronic illnesses. Despite recent nationwide implementation efforts, the personal health record and patient portal adoption rates among patients are low, and the lack of support for patients using the programs remains a critical gap in most implementation processes. In this study, we implemented the Patient-Centered Personal Health Record and Patient Portal Implementation Toolkit in a large diabetes/endocrinology center and assessed its preliminary impact on personal health record and patient portal knowledge, self-efficacy, patient-provider communication, and adherence to treatment plans. Patient-Centered Personal Health Record and Patient Portal Implementation Toolkit is composed of Patient-Centered Personal Health Record and Patient Portal Implementation Toolkit-General, clinic-level resources for clinicians, staff, and patients, and Patient-Centered Personal Health Record and Patient Portal Implementation Toolkit Plus, an optional 4-week online resource program for patients ("MyHealthPortal"). First, Patient-Centered Personal Health Record and Patient Portal Implementation Toolkit-General was implemented, and all clinicians and staff were educated about the center's personal health record and patient portal. Then general patient education was initiated, while a randomized controlled trial was conducted to test the preliminary effects of "MyHealthPortal" using a small sample (n = 74) with three observations (baseline and 4 and 12 weeks). The intervention group showed significantly greater improvement than the control group in patient-provider communication at 4 weeks (t56 = 3.00, P = .004). For other variables, the intervention group tended to show greater improvement; however, the differences were not significant. In this preliminary study, Patient-Centered Personal Health Record and Patient Portal Implementation Toolkit showed potential for filling the gap in the current personal health record and patient portal implementation process. Further studies are needed using larger samples in other settings to ascertain if these results are generalizable to other populations.

The Ames MER microscopic imager toolkit

USGS Publications Warehouse

Sargent, R.; Deans, Matthew; Kunz, C.; Sims, M.; Herkenhoff, K.

2005-01-01

12The Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have spent several successful months on Mars, returning gigabytes of images and spectral data to scientists on Earth. One of the instruments on the MER rovers, the Athena Microscopic Imager (MI), is a fixed focus, megapixel camera providing a ??3mm depth of field and a 31??31mm field of view at a working distance of 63 mm from the lens to the object being imaged. In order to maximize the science return from this instrument, we developed the Ames MI Toolkit and supported its use during the primary mission. The MI Toolkit is a set of programs that operate on collections of MI images, with the goal of making the data more understandable to the scientists on the ground. Because of the limited depth of field of the camera, and the often highly variable topography of the terrain being imaged, MI images of a given rock are often taken as a stack, with the Instrument Deployment Device (IDD) moving along a computed normal vector, pausing every few millimeters for the MI to acquire an image. The MI Toolkit provides image registration and focal section merging, which combine these images to form a single, maximally in-focus image, while compensating for changes in lighting as well as parallax due to the motion of the camera. The MI Toolkit also provides a 3-D reconstruction of the surface being imaged using stereo and can embed 2-D MI images as texture maps into 3-D meshes produced by other imagers on board the rover to provide context. The 2-D images and 3-D meshes output from the Toolkit are easily viewed by scientists using other mission tools, such as Viz or the MI Browser.This paper describes the MI Toolkit in detail, as well as our experience using it with scientists at JPL during the primary MER mission. ?? 2005 IEEE.

The Ames MER Microscopic Imager Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sargent, Randy; Deans, Matthew; Kunz, Clayton; Sims, Michael; Herkenhoff, Ken

2005-01-01

The Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have spent several successful months on Mars, returning gigabytes of images and spectral data to scientists on Earth. One of the instruments on the MER rovers, the Athena Microscopic Imager (MI), is a fixed focus, megapixel camera providing a plus or minus mm depth of field and a 3lx31mm field of view at a working distance of 63 mm from the lens to the object being imaged. In order to maximize the science return from this instrument, we developed the Ames MI Toolkit and supported its use during the primary mission. The MI Toolkit is a set of programs that operate on collections of MI images, with the goal of making the data more understandable to the scientists on the ground. Because of the limited depth of field of the camera, and the often highly variable topography of the terrain being imaged, MI images of a given rock are often taken as a stack, with the Instrument Deployment Device (IDD) moving along a computed normal vector, pausing every few millimeters for the MI to acquire an image. The MI Toolkit provides image registration and focal section merging, which combine these images to form a single, maximally in-focus image, while compensating for changes in lighting as well as parallax due to the motion of the camera. The MI Toolkit also provides a 3-D reconstruction of the surface being imaged using stereo and can embed 2-D MI images as texture maps into 3-D meshes produced by other imagers on board the rover to provide context. The 2-D images and 3-D meshes output from the Toolkit are easily viewed by scientists using other mission tools, such as Viz or the MI Browser. This paper describes the MI Toolkit in detail, as well as our experience using it with scientists at JPL during the primary MER mission.

Ridesharing options analysis and practitioners' toolkit

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2010-12-01

The purpose of this toolkit is to elaborate upon the recent changes in ridesharing, introduce the wide variety that exists in ridesharing programs today, and the developments in technology and funding availability that create greater incentives for p...

Energy Savings Performance Contract Energy Sales Agreement Toolkit

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

None

FEMP developed the Energy Savings Performance Contracting Energy Sales Agreement (ESPC ESA) Toolkit to provide federal agency contracting officers and other acquisition team members with information that will facilitate the timely execution of ESPC ESA projects.

Engineering and algorithm design for an image processing Api: a technical report on ITK--the Insight Toolkit.

PubMed

Yoo, Terry S; Ackerman, Michael J; Lorensen, William E; Schroeder, Will; Chalana, Vikram; Aylward, Stephen; Metaxas, Dimitris; Whitaker, Ross

2002-01-01

We present the detailed planning and execution of the Insight Toolkit (ITK), an application programmers interface (API) for the segmentation and registration of medical image data. This public resource has been developed through the NLM Visible Human Project, and is in beta test as an open-source software offering under cost-free licensing. The toolkit concentrates on 3D medical data segmentation and registration algorithms, multimodal and multiresolution capabilities, and portable platform independent support for Windows, Linux/Unix systems. This toolkit was built using current practices in software engineering. Specifically, we embraced the concept of generic programming during the development of these tools, working extensively with C++ templates and the freedom and flexibility they allow. Software development tools for distributed consortium-based code development have been created and are also publicly available. We discuss our assumptions, design decisions, and some lessons learned.

The GeoViz Toolkit: Using component-oriented coordination methods for geographic visualization and analysis

PubMed Central

Hardisty, Frank; Robinson, Anthony C.

2010-01-01

In this paper we present the GeoViz Toolkit, an open-source, internet-delivered program for geographic visualization and analysis that features a diverse set of software components which can be flexibly combined by users who do not have programming expertise. The design and architecture of the GeoViz Toolkit allows us to address three key research challenges in geovisualization: allowing end users to create their own geovisualization and analysis component set on-the-fly, integrating geovisualization methods with spatial analysis methods, and making geovisualization applications sharable between users. Each of these tasks necessitates a robust yet flexible approach to inter-tool coordination. The coordination strategy we developed for the GeoViz Toolkit, called Introspective Observer Coordination, leverages and combines key advances in software engineering from the last decade: automatic introspection of objects, software design patterns, and reflective invocation of methods. PMID:21731423

Security Hardened Cyber Components for Nuclear Power Plants: Phase I SBIR Final Technical Report

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

Franusich, Michael D.

SpiralGen, Inc. built a proof-of-concept toolkit for enhancing the cyber security of nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructure with high-assurance instrumentation and control code. The toolkit is based on technology from the DARPA High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) program, which has focused on applying the science of formal methods to the formidable set of problems involved in securing cyber physical systems. The primary challenges beyond HACMS in developing this toolkit were to make the new technology usable by control system engineers and compatible with the regulatory and commercial constraints of the nuclear power industry. The toolkit, packaged as amore » Simulink add-on, allows a system designer to assemble a high-assurance component from formally specified and proven blocks and generate provably correct control and monitor code for that subsystem.« less

Molecular mechanisms of protein aggregation from global fitting of kinetic models.

PubMed

Meisl, Georg; Kirkegaard, Julius B; Arosio, Paolo; Michaels, Thomas C T; Vendruscolo, Michele; Dobson, Christopher M; Linse, Sara; Knowles, Tuomas P J

2016-02-01

The elucidation of the molecular mechanisms by which soluble proteins convert into their amyloid forms is a fundamental prerequisite for understanding and controlling disorders that are linked to protein aggregation, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. However, because of the complexity associated with aggregation reaction networks, the analysis of kinetic data of protein aggregation to obtain the underlying mechanisms represents a complex task. Here we describe a framework, using quantitative kinetic assays and global fitting, to determine and to verify a molecular mechanism for aggregation reactions that is compatible with experimental kinetic data. We implement this approach in a web-based software, AmyloFit. Our procedure starts from the results of kinetic experiments that measure the concentration of aggregate mass as a function of time. We illustrate the approach with results from the aggregation of the β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides measured using thioflavin T, but the method is suitable for data from any similar kinetic experiment measuring the accumulation of aggregate mass as a function of time; the input data are in the form of a tab-separated text file. We also outline general experimental strategies and practical considerations for obtaining kinetic data of sufficient quality to draw detailed mechanistic conclusions, and the procedure starts with instructions for extensive data quality control. For the core part of the analysis, we provide an online platform (http://www.amylofit.ch.cam.ac.uk) that enables robust global analysis of kinetic data without the need for extensive programming or detailed mathematical knowledge. The software automates repetitive tasks and guides users through the key steps of kinetic analysis: determination of constraints to be placed on the aggregation mechanism based on the concentration dependence of the aggregation reaction, choosing from several fundamental models describing assembly into linear aggregates and fitting the chosen models using an advanced minimization algorithm to yield the reaction orders and rate constants. Finally, we outline how to use this approach to investigate which targets potential inhibitors of amyloid formation bind to and where in the reaction mechanism they act. The protocol, from processing data to determining mechanisms, can be completed in <1 d.

A microcomputer program for energy assessment and aggregation using the triangular probability distribution

USGS Publications Warehouse

Crovelli, R.A.; Balay, R.H.

1991-01-01

A general risk-analysis method was developed for petroleum-resource assessment and other applications. The triangular probability distribution is used as a model with an analytic aggregation methodology based on probability theory rather than Monte-Carlo simulation. Among the advantages of the analytic method are its computational speed and flexibility, and the saving of time and cost on a microcomputer. The input into the model consists of a set of components (e.g. geologic provinces) and, for each component, three potential resource estimates: minimum, most likely (mode), and maximum. Assuming a triangular probability distribution, the mean, standard deviation, and seven fractiles (F100, F95, F75, F50, F25, F5, and F0) are computed for each component, where for example, the probability of more than F95 is equal to 0.95. The components are aggregated by combining the means, standard deviations, and respective fractiles under three possible siutations (1) perfect positive correlation, (2) complete independence, and (3) any degree of dependence between these two polar situations. A package of computer programs named the TRIAGG system was written in the Turbo Pascal 4.0 language for performing the analytic probabilistic methodology. The system consists of a program for processing triangular probability distribution assessments and aggregations, and a separate aggregation routine for aggregating aggregations. The user's documentation and program diskette of the TRIAGG system are available from USGS Open File Services. TRIAGG requires an IBM-PC/XT/AT compatible microcomputer with 256kbyte of main memory, MS-DOS 3.1 or later, either two diskette drives or a fixed disk, and a 132 column printer. A graphics adapter and color display are optional. ?? 1991.

Development of EnergyPlus Utility to Batch Simulate Building Energy Performance on a National Scale

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

Valencia, Jayson F.; Dirks, James A.

2008-08-29

EnergyPlus is a simulation program that requires a large number of details to fully define and model a building. Hundreds or even thousands of lines in a text file are needed to run the EnergyPlus simulation depending on the size of the building. To manually create these files is a time consuming process that would not be practical when trying to create input files for thousands of buildings needed to simulate national building energy performance. To streamline the process needed to create the input files for EnergyPlus, two methods were created to work in conjunction with the National Renewable Energymore » Laboratory (NREL) Preprocessor; this reduced the hundreds of inputs needed to define a building in EnergyPlus to a small set of high-level parameters. The first method uses Java routines to perform all of the preprocessing on a Windows machine while the second method carries out all of the preprocessing on the Linux cluster by using an in-house built utility called Generalized Parametrics (GPARM). A comma delimited (CSV) input file is created to define the high-level parameters for any number of buildings. Each method then takes this CSV file and uses the data entered for each parameter to populate an extensible markup language (XML) file used by the NREL Preprocessor to automatically prepare EnergyPlus input data files (idf) using automatic building routines and macro templates. Using a Linux utility called “make”, the idf files can then be automatically run through the Linux cluster and the desired data from each building can be aggregated into one table to be analyzed. Creating a large number of EnergyPlus input files results in the ability to batch simulate building energy performance and scale the result to national energy consumption estimates.« less

Margins of safety provided by COSHH Essentials and the ILO Chemical Control Toolkit.

PubMed

Jones, Rachael M; Nicas, Mark

2006-03-01

COSHH Essentials, developed by the UK Health and Safety Executive, and the Chemical Control Toolkit (Toolkit) proposed by the International Labor Organization, are 'control banding' approaches to workplace risk management intended for use by proprietors of small and medium-sized businesses. Both systems group chemical substances into hazard bands based on toxicological endpoint and potency. COSSH Essentials uses the European Union's Risk-phrases (R-phrases), whereas the Toolkit uses R-phrases and the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals. Each hazard band is associated with a range of airborne concentrations, termed exposure bands, which are to be attained by the implementation of recommended control technologies. Here we analyze the margin of safety afforded by the systems and, for each hazard band, define the minimal margin as the ratio of the minimum airborne concentration that produced the toxicological endpoint of interest in experimental animals to the maximum concentration in workplace air permitted by the exposure band. We found that the minimal margins were always <100, with some ranging to <1, and inversely related to molecular weight. The Toolkit-GHS system generally produced margins equal to or larger than COSHH Essentials, suggesting that the Toolkit-GHS system is more protective of worker health. Although, these systems predict exposures comparable with current occupational exposure limits, we argue that the minimal margins are better indicators of health protection. Further, given the small margins observed, we feel it is important that revisions of these systems provide the exposure bands to users, so as to permit evaluation of control technology capture efficiency.

Effects of a Short Video-Based Resident-as-Teacher Training Toolkit on Resident Teaching.

PubMed

Ricciotti, Hope A; Freret, Taylor S; Aluko, Ashley; McKeon, Bri Anne; Haviland, Miriam J; Newman, Lori R

2017-10-01

To pilot a short video-based resident-as-teacher training toolkit and assess its effect on resident teaching skills in clinical settings. A video-based resident-as-teacher training toolkit was previously developed by educational experts at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. Residents were recruited from two academic hospitals, watched two videos from the toolkit ("Clinical Teaching Skills" and "Effective Clinical Supervision"), and completed an accompanying self-study guide. A novel assessment instrument for evaluating the effect of the toolkit on teaching was created through a modified Delphi process. Before and after the intervention, residents were observed leading a clinical teaching encounter and scored using the 15-item assessment instrument. The primary outcome of interest was the change in number of skills exhibited, which was assessed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Twenty-eight residents from two academic hospitals were enrolled, and 20 (71%) completed all phases of the study. More than one third of residents who volunteered to participate reported no prior formal teacher training. After completing two training modules, residents demonstrated a significant increase in the median number of teaching skills exhibited in a clinical teaching encounter, from 7.5 (interquartile range 6.5-9.5) to 10.0 (interquartile range 9.0-11.5; P<.001). Of the 15 teaching skills assessed, there were significant improvements in asking for the learner's perspective (P=.01), providing feedback (P=.005), and encouraging questions (P=.046). Using a resident-as-teacher video-based toolkit was associated with improvements in teaching skills in residents from multiple specialties.

Innovations and Challenges of Implementing a Glucose Gel Toolkit for Neonatal Hypoglycemia.

PubMed

Hammer, Denise; Pohl, Carla; Jacobs, Peggy J; Kaufman, Susan; Drury, Brenda

2018-05-24

Transient neonatal hypoglycemia occurs most commonly in newborns who are small for gestational age, large for gestational age, infants of diabetic mothers, and late preterm infants. An exact blood glucose value has not been determined for neonatal hypoglycemia, and it is important to note that poor neurologic outcomes can occur if hypoglycemia is left untreated. Interventions that separate mothers and newborns, as well as use of formula to treat hypoglycemia, have the potential to disrupt exclusive breastfeeding. To determine whether implementation of a toolkit designed to support staff in the adaptation of the practice change for management of newborns at risk for hypoglycemia, that includes 40% glucose gel in an obstetric unit with a level 2 nursery will decrease admissions to the Intermediate Care Nursery, and increase exclusive breastfeeding. This descriptive study used a retrospective chart review for pre/postimplementation of the Management of Newborns at Risk for Hypoglycemia Toolkit (Toolkit) using a convenience sample of at-risk newborns in the first 2 days of life to evaluate the proposed outcomes. Following implementation of the Toolkit, at-risk newborns had a clinically but not statistically significant 6.5% increase in exclusive breastfeeding and a clinically but not statistically significant 5% decrease in admissions to the Intermediate Care Nursery. The Toolkit was designed for ease of staff use and to improve outcomes for the at-risk newborn. Future research includes replication at other level 2 and level 1 obstetric centers and investigation into the number of 40% glucose gel doses that can safely be administered.

Grid Data Access on Widely Distributed Worker Nodes Using Scalla and SRM

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

Jakl, Pavel; /Prague, Inst. Phys.; Lauret, Jerome

2011-11-10

Facing the reality of storage economics, NP experiments such as RHIC/STAR have been engaged in a shift of the analysis model, and now heavily rely on using cheap disks attached to processing nodes, as such a model is extremely beneficial over expensive centralized storage. Additionally, exploiting storage aggregates with enhanced distributed computing capabilities such as dynamic space allocation (lifetime of spaces), file management on shared storages (lifetime of files, pinning file), storage policies or a uniform access to heterogeneous storage solutions is not an easy task. The Xrootd/Scalla system allows for storage aggregation. We will present an overview of themore » largest deployment of Scalla (Structured Cluster Architecture for Low Latency Access) in the world spanning over 1000 CPUs co-sharing the 350 TB Storage Elements and the experience on how to make such a model work in the RHIC/STAR standard analysis framework. We will explain the key features and approach on how to make access to mass storage (HPSS) possible in such a large deployment context. Furthermore, we will give an overview of a fully 'gridified' solution using the plug-and-play features of Scalla architecture, replacing standard storage access with grid middleware SRM (Storage Resource Manager) components designed for space management and will compare the solution with the standard Scalla approach in use in STAR for the past 2 years. Integration details, future plans and status of development will be explained in the area of best transfer strategy between multiple-choice data pools and best placement with respect of load balancing and interoperability with other SRM aware tools or implementations.« less

RISMC Toolkit and Methodology Research and Development Plan for External Hazards Analysis

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

Coleman, Justin Leigh

This report includes the description and development plan for a Risk Informed Safety Margins Characterization (RISMC) toolkit and methodology that will evaluate multihazard risk in an integrated manner to support the operating nuclear fleet.

Resource Toolkit for Working with Education Service Providers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NJ1), 2005

2005-01-01

This resource toolkit for working education service providers contains four sections. Section 1, "Roles Responsibilities, and Relationships," contains: (1) "Purchasing Services from an Educational Management Organization," excerpted from "The Charter School Administrative and Governance Guide" (Massachusetts Dept. of…

Improving safety on rural local and tribal roads safety toolkit.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2014-08-01

Rural roadway safety is an important issue for communities throughout the country and presents a challenge for state, local, and Tribal agencies. The Improving Safety on Rural Local and Tribal Roads Safety Toolkit was created to help rural local ...

A methodological toolkit for field assessments of artisanally mined alluvial diamond deposits

USGS Publications Warehouse

Chirico, Peter G.; Malpeli, Katherine C.

2014-01-01

This toolkit provides a standardized checklist of critical issues relevant to artisanal mining-related field research. An integrated sociophysical geographic approach to collecting data at artisanal mine sites is outlined. The implementation and results of a multistakeholder approach to data collection, carried out in the assessment of Guinea’s artisanally mined diamond deposits, also are summarized. This toolkit, based on recent and successful field campaigns in West Africa, has been developed as a reference document to assist other government agencies or organizations in collecting the data necessary for artisanal diamond mining or similar natural resource assessments.

TRSkit: A Simple Digital Library Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael L.; Esler, Sandra L.

1997-01-01

This paper introduces TRSkit, a simple and effective toolkit for building digital libraries on the World Wide Web. The toolkit was developed for the creation of the Langley Technical Report Server and the NASA Technical Report Server, but is applicable to most simple distribution paradigms. TRSkit contains a handful of freely available software components designed to be run under the UNIX operating system and served via the World Wide Web. The intended customer is the person that must continuously and synchronously distribute anywhere from 100 - 100,000's of information units and does not have extensive resources to devote to the problem.

RAVE—a Detector-independent vertex reconstruction toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Waltenberger, Wolfgang; Mitaroff, Winfried; Moser, Fabian

2007-10-01

A detector-independent toolkit for vertex reconstruction (RAVE ) is being developed, along with a standalone framework (VERTIGO ) for testing, analyzing and debugging. The core algorithms represent state of the art for geometric vertex finding and fitting by both linear (Kalman filter) and robust estimation methods. Main design goals are ease of use, flexibility for embedding into existing software frameworks, extensibility, and openness. The implementation is based on modern object-oriented techniques, is coded in C++ with interfaces for Java and Python, and follows an open-source approach. A beta release is available. VERTIGO = "vertex reconstruction toolkit and interface to generic objects".

Methodology for the development of a taxonomy and toolkit to evaluate health-related habits and lifestyle (eVITAL)

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background Chronic diseases cause an ever-increasing percentage of morbidity and mortality, but many have modifiable risk factors. Many behaviors that predispose or protect an individual to chronic disease are interrelated, and therefore are best approached using an integrated model of health and the longevity paradigm, using years lived without disability as the endpoint. Findings This study used a 4-phase mixed qualitative design to create a taxonomy and related online toolkit for the evaluation of health-related habits. Core members of a working group conducted a literature review and created a framing document that defined relevant constructs. This document was revised, first by a working group and then by a series of multidisciplinary expert groups. The working group and expert panels also designed a systematic evaluation of health behaviors and risks, which was computerized and evaluated for feasibility. A demonstration study of the toolkit was performed in 11 healthy volunteers. Discussion In this protocol, we used forms of the community intelligence approach, including frame analysis, feasibility, and demonstration, to develop a clinical taxonomy and an online toolkit with standardized procedures for screening and evaluation of multiple domains of health, with a focus on longevity and the goal of integrating the toolkit into routine clinical practice. Trial Registration IMSERSO registry 200700012672 PMID:20334642

Implementing a Breastfeeding Toolkit for Nursing Education.

PubMed

Folker-Maglaya, Catherine; Pylman, Maureen E; Couch, Kimberly A; Spatz, Diane L; Marzalik, Penny R

All health professional organizations recommend exclusive breastfeeding for at least 6 months, with continued breastfeeding for 1 year or more after birth. Women cite lack of support from health professionals as a barrier to breastfeeding. Meanwhile, breastfeeding education is not considered essential to basic nursing education and students are not adequately prepared to support breastfeeding women. Therefore, a toolkit of comprehensive evidence-based breastfeeding educational materials was developed to provide essential breastfeeding knowledge. A study was performed to determine the effectiveness of the breastfeeding toolkit education in an associate degree nursing program. A pretest/posttest survey design with intervention and comparison groups was used. One hundred fourteen students completed pre- and posttests. Student knowledge was measured using a 12-item survey derived with minor modifications from Marzalik's 2004 instrument measuring breastfeeding knowledge. When pre- and posttests scores were compared within groups, both groups' knowledge scores increased. A change score was calculated with a significantly higher mean score for the intervention group. When regression analysis was used to control for the pretest score, belonging to the intervention group increased student scores but not significantly. The toolkit was developed to provide a curriculum that demonstrates enhanced learning to prepare nursing students for practice. The toolkit could be used in other settings, such as to educate staff nurses working with childbearing families.

The Automatic Parallelisation of Scientific Application Codes Using a Computer Aided Parallelisation Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ierotheou, C.; Johnson, S.; Leggett, P.; Cross, M.; Evans, E.; Jin, Hao-Qiang; Frumkin, M.; Yan, J.; Biegel, Bryan (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

The shared-memory programming model is a very effective way to achieve parallelism on shared memory parallel computers. Historically, the lack of a programming standard for using directives and the rather limited performance due to scalability have affected the take-up of this programming model approach. Significant progress has been made in hardware and software technologies, as a result the performance of parallel programs with compiler directives has also made improvements. The introduction of an industrial standard for shared-memory programming with directives, OpenMP, has also addressed the issue of portability. In this study, we have extended the computer aided parallelization toolkit (developed at the University of Greenwich), to automatically generate OpenMP based parallel programs with nominal user assistance. We outline the way in which loop types are categorized and how efficient OpenMP directives can be defined and placed using the in-depth interprocedural analysis that is carried out by the toolkit. We also discuss the application of the toolkit on the NAS Parallel Benchmarks and a number of real-world application codes. This work not only demonstrates the great potential of using the toolkit to quickly parallelize serial programs but also the good performance achievable on up to 300 processors for hybrid message passing and directive-based parallelizations.

Tailored prevention of inpatient falls: development and usability testing of the fall TIPS toolkit.

PubMed

Zuyev, Lyubov; Benoit, Angela N; Chang, Frank Y; Dykes, Patricia C

2011-02-01

Patient falls and fall-related injuries are serious problems in hospitals. The Fall TIPS application aims to prevent patient falls by translating routine nursing fall risk assessment into a decision support intervention that communicates fall risk status and creates a tailored evidence-based plan of care that is accessible to the care team, patients, and family members. In our design and implementation of the Fall TIPS toolkit, we used the Spiral Software Development Life Cycle model. Three output tools available to be generated from the toolkit are bed poster, plan of care, and patient education handout. A preliminary design of the application was based on initial requirements defined by project leaders and informed by focus groups with end users. Preliminary design partially simulated the paper version of the Morse Fall Scale currently used in hospitals involved in the research study. Strengths and weaknesses of the first prototype were identified by heuristic evaluation. Usability testing was performed at sites where research study is implemented. Suggestions mentioned by end users participating in usability studies were either directly incorporated into the toolkit and output tools, were slightly modified, or will be addressed during training. The next step is implementation of the fall prevention toolkit on the pilot testing units.

Testing Video and Social Media for Engaging Users of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Green, C. J.; Gardiner, N.; Niepold, F., III; Esposito, C.

2015-12-01

We developed a custom video production stye and a method for analyzing social media behavior so that we may deliberately build and track audience growth for decision-support tools and case studies within the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit. The new style of video focuses quickly on decision processes; its 30s format is well-suited for deployment through social media. We measured both traffic and engagement with video using Google Analytics. Each video included an embedded tag, allowing us to measure viewers' behavior: whether or not they entered the toolkit website; the duration of their session on the website; and the number pages they visited in that session. Results showed that video promotion was more effective on Facebook than Twitter. Facebook links generated twice the number of visits to the toolkit. Videos also increased Facebook interaction overall. Because most Facebook users are return visitors, this campaign did not substantially draw new site visitors. We continue to research and apply these methods in a targeted engagement and outreach campaign that utilizes the theory of social diffusion and social influence strategies to grow our audience of "influential" decision-makers and people within their social networks. Our goal is to increase access and use of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.

Genetic Engineering of Bee Gut Microbiome Bacteria with a Toolkit for Modular Assembly of Broad-Host-Range Plasmids.

PubMed

Leonard, Sean P; Perutka, Jiri; Powell, J Elijah; Geng, Peng; Richhart, Darby D; Byrom, Michelle; Kar, Shaunak; Davies, Bryan W; Ellington, Andrew D; Moran, Nancy A; Barrick, Jeffrey E

2018-05-18

Engineering the bacteria present in animal microbiomes promises to lead to breakthroughs in medicine and agriculture, but progress is hampered by a dearth of tools for genetically modifying the diverse species that comprise these communities. Here we present a toolkit of genetic parts for the modular construction of broad-host-range plasmids built around the RSF1010 replicon. Golden Gate assembly of parts in this toolkit can be used to rapidly test various antibiotic resistance markers, promoters, fluorescent reporters, and other coding sequences in newly isolated bacteria. We demonstrate the utility of this toolkit in multiple species of Proteobacteria that are native to the gut microbiomes of honey bees ( Apis mellifera) and bumble bees (B ombus sp.). Expressing fluorescent proteins in Snodgrassella alvi, Gilliamella apicola, Bartonella apis, and Serratia strains enables us to visualize how these bacteria colonize the bee gut. We also demonstrate CRISPRi repression in B. apis and use Cas9-facilitated knockout of an S. alvi adhesion gene to show that it is important for colonization of the gut. Beyond characterizing how the gut microbiome influences the health of these prominent pollinators, this bee microbiome toolkit (BTK) will be useful for engineering bacteria found in other natural microbial communities.

Region 9 Census Block 2010

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Geography:The TIGER Line Files are feature classes and related database files (.) that are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). The MTDB represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER Line File is designed to stand alone as an independent data set, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation. Census Blocks are statistical areas bounded on all sides by visible features, such as streets, roads, streams, and railroad tracks, and/or by non visible boundaries such as city, town, township, and county limits, and short line-of-sight extensions of streets and roads. Census blocks are relatively small in area; for example, a block in a city bounded by streets. However, census blocks in remote areas are often large and irregular and may even be many square miles in area. A common misunderstanding is that data users think census blocks are used geographically to build all other census geographic areas, rather all other census geographic areas are updated and then used as the primary constraints, along with roads and water features, to delineate the tabulation blocks. As a result, all 2010 Census blocks nest within every other 2010 Census geographic area, so that Census Bureau statistical data can be tabulated at the block level and aggregated up t

ISIS and META projects

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Birman, Kenneth; Cooper, Robert; Marzullo, Keith

1990-01-01

ISIS and META are two distributed systems projects at Cornell University. The ISIS project, has developed a new methodology, virtual synchrony, for writing robust distributed software. This approach is directly supported by the ISIS Toolkit, a programming system that is distributed to over 300 academic and industrial sites. Several interesting applications that exploit the strengths of ISIS, including an NFS-compatible replicated file system, are being developed. The META project, is about distributed control in a soft real time environment incorporating feedback. This domain encompasses examples as diverse as monitoring inventory and consumption on a factory floor and performing load-balancing on a distributed computing system. One of the first uses of META is for distributed application management: the tasks of configuring a distributed program, dynamically adapting to failures, and monitoring its performance. Recent progress and current plans are presented. This approach to distributed computing, a philosophy that is believed to significantly distinguish the work from that of others in the field, is explained.

JGromacs: a Java package for analyzing protein simulations.

PubMed

Münz, Márton; Biggin, Philip C

2012-01-23

In this paper, we introduce JGromacs, a Java API (Application Programming Interface) that facilitates the development of cross-platform data analysis applications for Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. The API supports parsing and writing file formats applied by GROMACS (GROningen MAchine for Chemical Simulations), one of the most widely used MD simulation packages. JGromacs builds on the strengths of object-oriented programming in Java by providing a multilevel object-oriented representation of simulation data to integrate and interconvert sequence, structure, and dynamics information. The easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, and easy-to-extend framework is intended to simplify and accelerate the implementation and development of complex data analysis algorithms. Furthermore, a basic analysis toolkit is included in the package. The programmer is also provided with simple tools (e.g., XML-based configuration) to create applications with a user interface resembling the command-line interface of GROMACS applications. JGromacs and detailed documentation is freely available from http://sbcb.bioch.ox.ac.uk/jgromacs under a GPLv3 license .

MDAnalysis: a toolkit for the analysis of molecular dynamics simulations.

PubMed

Michaud-Agrawal, Naveen; Denning, Elizabeth J; Woolf, Thomas B; Beckstein, Oliver

2011-07-30

MDAnalysis is an object-oriented library for structural and temporal analysis of molecular dynamics (MD) simulation trajectories and individual protein structures. It is written in the Python language with some performance-critical code in C. It uses the powerful NumPy package to expose trajectory data as fast and efficient NumPy arrays. It has been tested on systems of millions of particles. Many common file formats of simulation packages including CHARMM, Gromacs, Amber, and NAMD and the Protein Data Bank format can be read and written. Atoms can be selected with a syntax similar to CHARMM's powerful selection commands. MDAnalysis enables both novice and experienced programmers to rapidly write their own analytical tools and access data stored in trajectories in an easily accessible manner that facilitates interactive explorative analysis. MDAnalysis has been tested on and works for most Unix-based platforms such as Linux and Mac OS X. It is freely available under the GNU General Public License from http://mdanalysis.googlecode.com. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

TEMPy: a Python library for assessment of three-dimensional electron microscopy density fits.

PubMed

Farabella, Irene; Vasishtan, Daven; Joseph, Agnel Praveen; Pandurangan, Arun Prasad; Sahota, Harpal; Topf, Maya

2015-08-01

Three-dimensional electron microscopy is currently one of the most promising techniques used to study macromolecular assemblies. Rigid and flexible fitting of atomic models into density maps is often essential to gain further insights into the assemblies they represent. Currently, tools that facilitate the assessment of fitted atomic models and maps are needed. TEMPy (template and electron microscopy comparison using Python) is a toolkit designed for this purpose. The library includes a set of methods to assess density fits in intermediate-to-low resolution maps, both globally and locally. It also provides procedures for single-fit assessment, ensemble generation of fits, clustering, and multiple and consensus scoring, as well as plots and output files for visualization purposes to help the user in analysing rigid and flexible fits. The modular nature of TEMPy helps the integration of scoring and assessment of fits into large pipelines, making it a tool suitable for both novice and expert structural biologists.

JGromacs: A Java Package for Analyzing Protein Simulations

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

In this paper, we introduce JGromacs, a Java API (Application Programming Interface) that facilitates the development of cross-platform data analysis applications for Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. The API supports parsing and writing file formats applied by GROMACS (GROningen MAchine for Chemical Simulations), one of the most widely used MD simulation packages. JGromacs builds on the strengths of object-oriented programming in Java by providing a multilevel object-oriented representation of simulation data to integrate and interconvert sequence, structure, and dynamics information. The easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, and easy-to-extend framework is intended to simplify and accelerate the implementation and development of complex data analysis algorithms. Furthermore, a basic analysis toolkit is included in the package. The programmer is also provided with simple tools (e.g., XML-based configuration) to create applications with a user interface resembling the command-line interface of GROMACS applications. Availability: JGromacs and detailed documentation is freely available from http://sbcb.bioch.ox.ac.uk/jgromacs under a GPLv3 license. PMID:22191855

JAva GUi for Applied Research (JAGUAR) v 3.0

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

JAGUAR is a Java software tool for automatically rendering a graphical user interface (GUI) from a structured input specification. It is designed as a plug-in to the Eclipse workbench to enable users to create, edit, and externally execute analysis application input decks and then view the results. JAGUAR serves as a GUI for Sandia's DAKOTA software toolkit for optimization and uncertainty quantification. It will include problem (input deck)set-up, option specification, analysis execution, and results visualization. Through the use of wizards, templates, and views, JAGUAR helps uses navigate the complexity of DAKOTA's complete input specification. JAGUAR is implemented in Java, leveragingmore » Eclipse extension points and Eclipse user interface. JAGUAR parses a DAKOTA NIDR input specification and presents the user with linked graphical and plain text representations of problem set-up and option specification for DAKOTA studies. After the data has been input by the user, JAGUAR generates one or more input files for DAKOTA, executes DAKOTA, and captures and interprets the results« less

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

Graf, Norman A.; /SLAC

Maximizing the physics performance of detectors being designed for the International Linear Collider, while remaining sensitive to cost constraints, requires a powerful, efficient, and flexible simulation, reconstruction and analysis environment to study the capabilities of a large number of different detector designs. The preparation of Letters Of Intent for the International Linear Collider involved the detailed study of dozens of detector options, layouts and readout technologies; the final physics benchmarking studies required the reconstruction and analysis of hundreds of millions of events. We describe the Java-based software toolkit (org.lcsim) which was used for full event reconstruction and analysis. The componentsmore » are fully modular and are available for tasks from digitization of tracking detector signals through to cluster finding, pattern recognition, track-fitting, calorimeter clustering, individual particle reconstruction, jet-finding, and analysis. The detector is defined by the same xml input files used for the detector response simulation, ensuring the simulation and reconstruction geometries are always commensurate by construction. We discuss the architecture as well as the performance.« less

Marine Debris and Plastic Source Reduction Toolkit

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Many plastic food service ware items originate on college and university campuses—in cafeterias, snack rooms, cafés, and eateries with take-out dining options. This Campus Toolkit is a detailed “how to” guide for reducing plastic waste on college campuses.

77 FR 73023 - U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-07

... officials and foreign end-users of environmental technologies that will outline U.S. [[Page 73024.... approaches to solving environmental problems and to U.S. companies that can export related technologies. The... DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE International Trade Administration U.S. Environmental Solutions Toolkit...

Surface-active ionic liquids in micellar catalysis: impact of anion selection on reaction rates in nucleophilic substitutions† †Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Formulae for calculating aggregation parameters and fitting of kinetic constants and copies of NMR spectra. See DOI: 10.1039/c6cp00493h Click here for additional data file.

PubMed Central

Cognigni, Alice; Gaertner, Peter; Zirbs, Ronald; Peterlik, Herwig; Prochazka, Katharina; Schröder, Christian

2016-01-01

A series of surface-active ionic liquids based on the 1-dodecyl-3-methylimidazolium cation and different anions such as halides and alkylsulfates was synthesized. The aggregation behavior of these ionic liquids in water was characterized by surface tension, conductivity measurements and UV-Vis spectroscopy in order to determine the critical micelle concentration (CMC) and to provide aggregation parameters. The determination of surface activity and aggregation properties of amphiphilic ionic liquids was accompanied by SAXS studies on selected surface-active ionic liquids. The application of these surface-active ionic liquids with different anions was tested in nucleophilic substitution reactions for the degradation of organophosphorus compounds. Kinetic studies via UV-Vis spectrophotometry showed a strong acceleration of the reaction in the micellar system compared to pure water. In addition, an influence of the anion was observed, resulting in a correlation between the anion binding to the micelle and the reaction rate constants, indicating that the careful choice of the surface-active ionic liquid can considerably affect the outcome of reactions. PMID:27121134

Accuracy of Assessment of Eligibility for Early Medical Abortion by Community Health Workers in Ethiopia, India and South Africa.

PubMed

Johnston, Heidi Bart; Ganatra, Bela; Nguyen, My Huong; Habib, Ndema; Afework, Mesganaw Fantahun; Harries, Jane; Iyengar, Kirti; Moodley, Jennifer; Lema, Hailu Yeneneh; Constant, Deborah; Sen, Swapnaleen

2016-01-01

To assess the accuracy of assessment of eligibility for early medical abortion by community health workers using a simple checklist toolkit. Diagnostic accuracy study. Ethiopia, India and South Africa. Two hundred seventeen women in Ethiopia, 258 in India and 236 in South Africa were enrolled into the study. A checklist toolkit to determine eligibility for early medical abortion was validated by comparing results of clinician and community health worker assessment of eligibility using the checklist toolkit with the reference standard exam. Accuracy was over 90% and the negative likelihood ratio <0.1 at all three sites when used by clinician assessors. Positive likelihood ratios were 4.3 in Ethiopia, 5.8 in India and 6.3 in South Africa. When used by community health workers the overall accuracy of the toolkit was 92% in Ethiopia, 80% in India and 77% in South Africa negative likelihood ratios were 0.08 in Ethiopia, 0.25 in India and 0.22 in South Africa and positive likelihood ratios were 5.9 in Ethiopia and 2.0 in India and South Africa. The checklist toolkit, as used by clinicians, was excellent at ruling out participants who were not eligible, and moderately effective at ruling in participants who were eligible for medical abortion. Results were promising when used by community health workers particularly in Ethiopia where they had more prior experience with use of diagnostic aids and longer professional training. The checklist toolkit assessments resulted in some participants being wrongly assessed as eligible for medical abortion which is an area of concern. Further research is needed to streamline the components of the tool, explore optimal duration and content of training for community health workers, and test feasibility and acceptability.

An evaluation of a toolkit for the early detection, management, and control of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae: a survey of acute hospital trusts in England.

PubMed

Coope, C M; Verlander, N Q; Schneider, A; Hopkins, S; Welfare, W; Johnson, A P; Patel, B; Oliver, I

2018-03-09

Following hospital outbreaks of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE), Public Health England published a toolkit in December 2013 to promote the early detection, management, and control of CPE colonization and infection in acute hospital settings. To examine awareness, uptake, implementation and usefulness of the CPE toolkit and identify potential barriers and facilitators to its adoption in order to inform future guidance. A cross-sectional survey of National Health Service (NHS) acute trusts was conducted in May 2016. Descriptive analysis and multivariable regression models were conducted, and narrative responses were analysed thematically and informed using behaviour change theory. Most (92%) acute trusts had a written CPE plan. Fewer (75%) reported consistent compliance with screening and isolation of CPE risk patients. Lower prioritization and weaker senior management support for CPE prevention were associated with poorer compliance. Awareness of the CPE toolkit was high and all trusts with patients infected or colonized with CPE had used the toolkit either as provided (32%), or to inform (65%) their own local CPE plan. Despite this, many respondents (80%) did not believe that the CPE toolkit guidance offered an effective means to prevent CPE or was practical to follow. CPE prevention and control requires robust IPC measures. Successful implementation can be hindered by a complex set of factors related to their practical execution, insufficient resources and a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of the guidance. Future CPE guidance would benefit from substantive user involvement, processes for ongoing feedback, and regular guidance updates. Copyright © 2018 The Healthcare Infection Society. All rights reserved.

A randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the SCI Get Fit Toolkit on leisure-time physical activity behaviour and social-cognitive processes in adults with spinal cord injury.

PubMed

Arbour-Nicitopoulos, Kelly P; Sweet, Shane N; Lamontagne, Marie-Eve; Ginis, Kathleen A Martin; Jeske, Samantha; Routhier, François; Latimer-Cheung, Amy E

2017-01-01

Single blind, two-group randomized controlled trial. To evaluate the efficacy of the SCI Get Fit Toolkit delivered online on theoretical constructs and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among adults with SCI. Ontario and Quebec, Canada. Inactive, English- and French-speaking Canadian adults with traumatic SCI with Internet access, and no self-reported cognitive or memory impairments. Participants ( N =90 M age =48.12±11.29 years; 79% male) were randomized to view the SCI Get Fit Toolkit or the Physical Activity Guidelines for adults with SCI (PAG-SCI) online. Primary (intentions) and secondary (outcome expectancies, self-efficacy, planning and MVPA behaviour) outcomes were assessed over a 1-month period. Of the 90 participants randomized, 77 were included in the analyses. Participants viewed the experimental stimuli only briefly, reading the 4-page toolkit for approximately 2.5 min longer than the 1-page guideline document. No condition effects were found for intentions, outcome expectancies, self-efficacy, and planning (ΔR 2 ⩽0.03). Individuals in the toolkit condition were more likely to participate in at least one bout of 20 min of MVPA behaviour at 1-week post-intervention compared to individuals in the guidelines condition (OR=3.54, 95% CI=0.95, 13.17). However, no differences were found when examining change in weekly minutes of MVPA or comparing whether participants met the PAG-SCI. No firm conclusions can be made regarding the impact of the SCI Get Fit Toolkit in comparison to the PAG-SCI on social cognitions and MVPA behaviour. The limited online access to this resource may partially explain these null findings.

Development and formative evaluation of the e-Health Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT).

PubMed

Murray, Elizabeth; May, Carl; Mair, Frances

2010-10-18

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) or e-Health is seen as essential for a modern, cost-effective health service. However, there are well documented problems with implementation of e-Health initiatives, despite the existence of a great deal of research into how best to implement e-Health (an example of the gap between research and practice). This paper reports on the development and formative evaluation of an e-Health Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT) which aims to summarise and synthesise new and existing research on implementation of e-Health initiatives, and present it to senior managers in a user-friendly format. The content of the e-HIT was derived by combining data from a systematic review of reviews of barriers and facilitators to implementation of e-Health initiatives with qualitative data derived from interviews of "implementers", that is people who had been charged with implementing an e-Health initiative. These data were summarised, synthesised and combined with the constructs from the Normalisation Process Model. The software for the toolkit was developed by a commercial company (RocketScience). Formative evaluation was undertaken by obtaining user feedback. There are three components to the toolkit--a section on background and instructions for use aimed at novice users; the toolkit itself; and the report generated by completing the toolkit. It is available to download from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pcph/research/ehealth/documents/e-HIT.xls. The e-HIT shows potential as a tool for enhancing future e-Health implementations. Further work is needed to make it fully web-enabled, and to determine its predictive potential for future implementations.

Development and formative evaluation of the e-Health Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT)

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) or e-Health is seen as essential for a modern, cost-effective health service. However, there are well documented problems with implementation of e-Health initiatives, despite the existence of a great deal of research into how best to implement e-Health (an example of the gap between research and practice). This paper reports on the development and formative evaluation of an e-Health Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT) which aims to summarise and synthesise new and existing research on implementation of e-Health initiatives, and present it to senior managers in a user-friendly format. Results The content of the e-HIT was derived by combining data from a systematic review of reviews of barriers and facilitators to implementation of e-Health initiatives with qualitative data derived from interviews of "implementers", that is people who had been charged with implementing an e-Health initiative. These data were summarised, synthesised and combined with the constructs from the Normalisation Process Model. The software for the toolkit was developed by a commercial company (RocketScience). Formative evaluation was undertaken by obtaining user feedback. There are three components to the toolkit - a section on background and instructions for use aimed at novice users; the toolkit itself; and the report generated by completing the toolkit. It is available to download from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pcph/research/ehealth/documents/e-HIT.xls Conclusions The e-HIT shows potential as a tool for enhancing future e-Health implementations. Further work is needed to make it fully web-enabled, and to determine its predictive potential for future implementations. PMID:20955594

PAGANI Toolkit: Parallel graph-theoretical analysis package for brain network big data.

PubMed

Du, Haixiao; Xia, Mingrui; Zhao, Kang; Liao, Xuhong; Yang, Huazhong; Wang, Yu; He, Yong

2018-05-01

The recent collection of unprecedented quantities of neuroimaging data with high spatial resolution has led to brain network big data. However, a toolkit for fast and scalable computational solutions is still lacking. Here, we developed the PArallel Graph-theoretical ANalysIs (PAGANI) Toolkit based on a hybrid central processing unit-graphics processing unit (CPU-GPU) framework with a graphical user interface to facilitate the mapping and characterization of high-resolution brain networks. Specifically, the toolkit provides flexible parameters for users to customize computations of graph metrics in brain network analyses. As an empirical example, the PAGANI Toolkit was applied to individual voxel-based brain networks with ∼200,000 nodes that were derived from a resting-state fMRI dataset of 624 healthy young adults from the Human Connectome Project. Using a personal computer, this toolbox completed all computations in ∼27 h for one subject, which is markedly less than the 118 h required with a single-thread implementation. The voxel-based functional brain networks exhibited prominent small-world characteristics and densely connected hubs, which were mainly located in the medial and lateral fronto-parietal cortices. Moreover, the female group had significantly higher modularity and nodal betweenness centrality mainly in the medial/lateral fronto-parietal and occipital cortices than the male group. Significant correlations between the intelligence quotient and nodal metrics were also observed in several frontal regions. Collectively, the PAGANI Toolkit shows high computational performance and good scalability for analyzing connectome big data and provides a friendly interface without the complicated configuration of computing environments, thereby facilitating high-resolution connectomics research in health and disease. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Data Albums: An Event Driven Search, Aggregation and Curation Tool for Earth Science

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ramachandran, Rahul; Kulkarni, Ajinkya; Maskey, Manil; Bakare, Rohan; Basyal, Sabin; Li, Xiang; Flynn, Shannon

2014-01-01

Approaches used in Earth science research such as case study analysis and climatology studies involve discovering and gathering diverse data sets and information to support the research goals. To gather relevant data and information for case studies and climatology analysis is both tedious and time consuming. Current Earth science data systems are designed with the assumption that researchers access data primarily by instrument or geophysical parameter. In cases where researchers are interested in studying a significant event, they have to manually assemble a variety of datasets relevant to it by searching the different distributed data systems. This paper presents a specialized search, aggregation and curation tool for Earth science to address these challenges. The search rool automatically creates curated 'Data Albums', aggregated collections of information related to a specific event, containing links to relevant data files [granules] from different instruments, tools and services for visualization and analysis, and information about the event contained in news reports, images or videos to supplement research analysis. Curation in the tool is driven via an ontology based relevancy ranking algorithm to filter out non relevant information and data.

Keep It Sacred | National Native Network

Science.gov Websites

Detection Health Care Coverage Get Involved Resources NNN Webinar Archive Newsletter Archive Podcasts Cancer Guide Tribal Public Health Data Toolkits Smoke-Free Policy Toolkit Success Stories Resource Library Colorectal Cancer Diabetes Fact Sheets & Contact General Health Problems & Cancers General State

Literacy Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood Education, 2005

2005-01-01

The toolkit contains print and electronic resources, including (1) "eMERGing Literacy and Technology: Working Together", A 492 page curriculum guide; (2) "LitTECH Interactive Presents: The Beginning of Literacy", a DVD that provides and overview linking technology to the concepts of emerging literacy; (3) "Your Preschool Classroom Computer Center:…

A Software Toolkit to Study Systematic Uncertainties of the Physics Models of the Geant4 Simulation Package

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

Genser, Krzysztof; Hatcher, Robert; Perdue, Gabriel

2016-11-10

The Geant4 toolkit is used to model interactions between particles and matter. Geant4 employs a set of validated physics models that span a wide range of interaction energies. These models are tuned to cover a large variety of possible applications. This raises the critical question of what uncertainties are associated with the Geant4 physics model, or group of models, involved in a simulation project. To address the challenge, we have designed and implemented a comprehen- sive, modular, user-friendly software toolkit that allows the variation of one or more parameters of one or more Geant4 physics models involved in simulation studies.more » It also enables analysis of multiple variants of the resulting physics observables of interest in order to estimate the uncertain- ties associated with the simulation model choices. Key functionalities of the toolkit are presented in this paper and are illustrated with selected results.« less

Toolkit for US colleges/schools of pharmacy to prepare learners for careers in academia.

PubMed

Haines, Seena L; Summa, Maria A; Peeters, Michael J; Dy-Boarman, Eliza A; Boyle, Jaclyn A; Clifford, Kalin M; Willson, Megan N

2017-09-01

The objective of this article is to provide an academic toolkit for use by colleges/schools of pharmacy to prepare student pharmacists/residents for academic careers. Through the American Association of Colleges of Pharmac (AACP) Section of Pharmacy Practice, the Student Resident Engagement Task Force (SRETF) collated teaching materials used by colleges/schools of pharmacy from a previously reported national survey. The SRETF developed a toolkit for student pharmacists/residents interested in academic pharmacy. Eighteen institutions provided materials; five provided materials describing didactic coursework; over fifteen provided materials for an academia-focused Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPE), while one provided materials for an APPE teaching-research elective. SRETF members created a syllabus template and sample lesson plan by integrating submitted resources. Submissions still needed to complete the toolkit include examples of curricular tracks and certificate programs. Pharmacy faculty vacancies still exist in pharmacy education. Engaging student pharmacists/residents about academia pillars of teaching, scholarship and service is critical for the future success of the academy. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Hydrogen quantitative risk assessment workshop proceedings.

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

Groth, Katrina M.; Harris, Aaron P.

2013-09-01

The Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) Toolkit Introduction Workshop was held at Energetics on June 11-12. The workshop was co-hosted by Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) and HySafe, the International Association for Hydrogen Safety. The objective of the workshop was twofold: (1) Present a hydrogen-specific methodology and toolkit (currently under development) for conducting QRA to support the development of codes and standards and safety assessments of hydrogen-fueled vehicles and fueling stations, and (2) Obtain feedback on the needs of early-stage users (hydrogen as well as potential leveraging for Compressed Natural Gas [CNG], and Liquefied Natural Gas [LNG]) and set priorities for %E2%80%9CVersionmore » 1%E2%80%9D of the toolkit in the context of the commercial evolution of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). The workshop consisted of an introduction and three technical sessions: Risk Informed Development and Approach; CNG/LNG Applications; and Introduction of a Hydrogen Specific QRA Toolkit.« less

Assessing Coverage of Population-Based and Targeted Fortification Programs with the Use of the Fortification Assessment Coverage Toolkit (FACT): Background, Toolkit Development, and Supplement Overview.

PubMed

Friesen, Valerie M; Aaron, Grant J; Myatt, Mark; Neufeld, Lynnette M

2017-05-01

Food fortification is a widely used approach to increase micronutrient intake in the diet. High coverage is essential for achieving impact. Data on coverage is limited in many countries, and tools to assess coverage of fortification programs have not been standardized. In 2013, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition developed the Fortification Assessment Coverage Toolkit (FACT) to carry out coverage assessments in both population-based (i.e., staple foods and/or condiments) and targeted (e.g., infant and young child) fortification programs. The toolkit was designed to generate evidence on program coverage and the use of fortified foods to provide timely and programmatically relevant information for decision making. This supplement presents results from FACT surveys that assessed the coverage of population-based and targeted food fortification programs across 14 countries. It then discusses the policy and program implications of the findings for the potential for impact and program improvement.

Perspectives of healthcare providers and HIV-affected individuals and couples during the development of a Safer Conception Counseling Toolkit in Kenya: stigma, fears, and recommendations for the delivery of services.

PubMed

Mmeje, Okeoma; Njoroge, Betty; Akama, Eliud; Leddy, Anna; Breitnauer, Brooke; Darbes, Lynae; Brown, Joelle

2016-01-01

Reproduction is important to many HIV-affected individuals and couples and healthcare providers (HCPs) are responsible for providing resources to help them safely conceive while minimizing the risk of sexual and perinatal HIV transmission. In order to fulfill their reproductive goals, HIV-affected individuals and their partners need access to information regarding safer methods of conception. The objective of this qualitative study was to develop a Safer Conception Counseling Toolkit that can be used to train HCPs and counsel HIV-affected individuals and couples in HIV care and treatment clinics in Kenya. We conducted a two-phased qualitative study among HCPs and HIV-affected individuals and couples from eight HIV care and treatment sites in Kisumu, Kenya. We conducted in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) to assess the perspectives of HCPs and HIV-affected individuals and couples in order to develop and refine the content of the Toolkit. Subsequently, IDIs were conducted among HCPs who were trained using the Toolkit and FGDs among HIV-affected individuals and couples who were counseled with the Toolkit. HIV-related stigma, fears, and recommendations for delivery of safer conception counseling were assessed during the discussions. One hundred and six individuals participated in FGDs and IDIs; 29 HCPs, 49 HIV-affected women and men, and 14 HIV-serodiscordant couples. Participants indicated that a safer conception counseling and training program for HCPs is needed and that routine provision of safer conception counseling may promote maternal and child health by enhancing reproductive autonomy among HIV-affected couples. They also reported that the Toolkit may help dispel the stigma and fears associated with reproduction in HIV-affected couples, while supporting them in achieving their reproductive goals. Additional research is needed to evaluate the Safer Conception Toolkit in order to support its implementation and use in HIV care and treatment programs in Kenya and other HIV endemic regions of sub-Saharan Africa.

WIND Toolkit Offshore Summary Dataset

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

Draxl, Caroline; Musial, Walt; Scott, George

This dataset contains summary statistics for offshore wind resources for the continental United States derived from the Wind Integration National Datatset (WIND) Toolkit. These data are available in two formats: GDB - Compressed geodatabases containing statistical summaries aligned with lease blocks (aliquots) stored in a GIS format. These data are partitioned into Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf resource regions. HDF5 - Statistical summaries of all points in the offshore Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf offshore regions. These data are located on the original WIND Toolkit grid and have not been reassigned or downsampled to lease blocks. These data were developed under contractmore » by NREL for the Bureau of Oceanic Energy Management (BOEM).« less

Land surface Verification Toolkit (LVT)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kumar, Sujay V.

2017-01-01

LVT is a framework developed to provide an automated, consolidated environment for systematic land surface model evaluation Includes support for a range of in-situ, remote-sensing and other model and reanalysis products. Supports the analysis of outputs from various LIS subsystems, including LIS-DA, LIS-OPT, LIS-UE. Note: The Land Information System Verification Toolkit (LVT) is a NASA software tool designed to enable the evaluation, analysis and comparison of outputs generated by the Land Information System (LIS). The LVT software is released under the terms and conditions of the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) Version 1.1 or later. Land Information System Verification Toolkit (LVT) NOSA.

MAVEN Data Analysis and Visualization Toolkits

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harter, B., Jr.; DeWolfe, A. W.; Brain, D.; Chaffin, M.

2017-12-01

The Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has been collecting data at Mars since September 2014. The MAVEN Science Data Center has developed software toolkits for analyzing and visualizing the science data. Our Data Intercomparison and Visualization Development Effort (DIVIDE) toolkit is written in IDL, and utilizes the widely used "tplot" IDL libraries. Recently, we have converted DIVIDE into Python in an effort to increase the accessibility of the MAVEN data. This conversion also necessitated the development of a Python version of the tplot libraries, which we have dubbed "PyTplot". PyTplot is generalized to work with missions beyond MAVEN, and our software is available on Github.

An Industrial Physics Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cummings, Bill

2004-03-01

Physicists possess many skills highly valued in industrial companies. However, with the exception of a decreasing number of positions in long range research at large companies, job openings in industry rarely say "Physicist Required." One key to a successful industrial career is to know what subset of your physics skills is most highly valued by a given industry and to continue to build these skills while working. This combination of skills from both academic and industrial experience becomes your "Industrial Physics Toolkit" and is a transferable resource when you change positions or companies. This presentation will describe how one builds and sells your own "Industrial Physics Toolkit" using concrete examples from the speaker's industrial experience.

WIRM: An Open Source Toolkit for Building Biomedical Web Applications

PubMed Central

Jakobovits, Rex M.; Rosse, Cornelius; Brinkley, James F.

2002-01-01

This article describes an innovative software toolkit that allows the creation of web applications that facilitate the acquisition, integration, and dissemination of multimedia biomedical data over the web, thereby reducing the cost of knowledge sharing. There is a lack of high-level web application development tools suitable for use by researchers, clinicians, and educators who are not skilled programmers. Our Web Interfacing Repository Manager (WIRM) is a software toolkit that reduces the complexity of building custom biomedical web applications. WIRM’s visual modeling tools enable domain experts to describe the structure of their knowledge, from which WIRM automatically generates full-featured, customizable content management systems. PMID:12386108

RAPID Toolkit Creates Smooth Flow Toward New Projects

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

Levine, Aaron; Young, Katherine

2016-07-01

Uncertainty about the duration and outcome of the permitting process has historically been seen as a deterrent to investment in renewable energy projects, including new hydropower projects. What if the process were clearer, smoother, faster? That's the purpose of the Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit, developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Western Governors' Association. Now, the RAPID Toolkit is being expanded to include information about developing and permitting hydropower projects, with initial outreach and information gathering occurring duringmore » 2015.« less

New Software Developments for Quality Mesh Generation and Optimization from Biomedical Imaging Data

PubMed Central

Yu, Zeyun; Wang, Jun; Gao, Zhanheng; Xu, Ming; Hoshijima, Masahiko

2013-01-01

In this paper we present a new software toolkit for generating and optimizing surface and volumetric meshes from three-dimensional (3D) biomedical imaging data, targeted at image-based finite element analysis of some biomedical activities in a single material domain. Our toolkit includes a series of geometric processing algorithms including surface re-meshing and quality-guaranteed tetrahedral mesh generation and optimization. All methods described have been encapsulated into a user-friendly graphical interface for easy manipulation and informative visualization of biomedical images and mesh models. Numerous examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the described methods and toolkit. PMID:24252469

Open source tools and toolkits for bioinformatics: significance, and where are we?

PubMed

Stajich, Jason E; Lapp, Hilmar

2006-09-01

This review summarizes important work in open-source bioinformatics software that has occurred over the past couple of years. The survey is intended to illustrate how programs and toolkits whose source code has been developed or released under an Open Source license have changed informatics-heavy areas of life science research. Rather than creating a comprehensive list of all tools developed over the last 2-3 years, we use a few selected projects encompassing toolkit libraries, analysis tools, data analysis environments and interoperability standards to show how freely available and modifiable open-source software can serve as the foundation for building important applications, analysis workflows and resources.

The PyRosetta Toolkit: a graphical user interface for the Rosetta software suite.

PubMed

Adolf-Bryfogle, Jared; Dunbrack, Roland L

2013-01-01

The Rosetta Molecular Modeling suite is a command-line-only collection of applications that enable high-resolution modeling and design of proteins and other molecules. Although extremely useful, Rosetta can be difficult to learn for scientists with little computational or programming experience. To that end, we have created a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Rosetta, called the PyRosetta Toolkit, for creating and running protocols in Rosetta for common molecular modeling and protein design tasks and for analyzing the results of Rosetta calculations. The program is highly extensible so that developers can add new protocols and analysis tools to the PyRosetta Toolkit GUI.

A Toolkit to Implement Graduate Attributes in Geography Curricula

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spronken-Smith, Rachel; McLean, Angela; Smith, Nell; Bond, Carol; Jenkins, Martin; Marshall, Stephen; Frielick, Stanley

2016-01-01

This article uses findings from a project on engagement with graduate outcomes across higher education institutions in New Zealand to produce a toolkit for implementing graduate attributes in geography curricula. Key facets include strong leadership; academic developers to facilitate conversations about graduate attributes and teaching towards…

Developments in Geometric Metadata and Tools at the PDS Ring-Moon Systems Node

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Showalter, M. R.; Ballard, L.; French, R. S.; Gordon, M. K.; Tiscareno, M. S.

2018-04-01

Object-Oriented Python/SPICE (OOPS) is an overlay on the SPICE toolkit that vastly simplifies and speeds up geometry calculations for planetary data products. This toolkit is the basis for much of the development at the PDS Ring-Moon Systems Node.

Teacher Quality Toolkit. 2nd Edition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lauer, Patricia A.; Dean, Ceri B.; Martin-Glenn, Mya L.; Asensio, Margaret L.

2005-01-01

The Teacher Quality Toolkit addresses the continuum of teacher learning by providing tools that can be used to improve both preservice, and inservice teacher education. Each chapter provides self assessment tools that can guide progress toward improved teacher quality and describes resources for designing exemplary programs and practices. Chapters…

WHU at TREC KBA Vital Filtering Track 2014

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-11-01

view the problem as a classification problem and use Stanford NLP Toolkit to extract necessary information. Various kinds of features are leveraged to...profile of an entity. Our approach is to view the problem as a classification problem and use Stanford NLP Toolkit to extract necessary information

Field trials of a novel toolkit for evaluating 'intangible' values-related dimensions of projects.

PubMed

Burford, Gemma; Velasco, Ismael; Janoušková, Svatava; Zahradnik, Martin; Hak, Tomas; Podger, Dimity; Piggot, Georgia; Harder, Marie K

2013-02-01

A novel toolkit has been developed, using an original approach to develop its components, for the purpose of evaluating 'soft' outcomes and processes that have previously been generally considered 'intangible': those which are specifically values based. This represents a step-wise, significant, change in provision for the assessment of values-based achievements that are of absolutely key importance to most civil society organisations (CSOs) and values-based businesses, and fills a known gap in evaluation practice. In this paper, we demonstrate the significance and rigour of the toolkit by presenting an evaluation of it in three diverse scenarios where different CSOs use it to co-evaluate locally relevant outcomes and processes to obtain results which are both meaningful to them and potentially comparable across organisations. A key strength of the toolkit is its original use of a prior generated, peer-elicited 'menu' of values-based indicators which provides a framework for user CSOs to localise. Principles of participatory, process-based and utilisation-focused evaluation are embedded in this toolkit and shown to be critical to its success, achieving high face-validity and wide applicability. The emerging contribution of this next-generation evaluation tool to other fields, such as environmental values, development and environmental sustainable development, shared values, business, education and organisational change is outlined. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Liquid Argon Software Toolkit (LArSoft): Goals, Status and Plan

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

Pordes, Rush; Snider, Erica

LArSoft is a toolkit that provides a software infrastructure and algorithms for the simulation, reconstruction and analysis of events in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs). It is used by the ArgoNeuT, LArIAT, MicroBooNE, DUNE (including 35ton prototype and ProtoDUNE) and SBND experiments. The LArSoft collaboration provides an environment for the development, use, and sharing of code across experiments. The ultimate goal is to develop fully automatic processes for reconstruction and analysis of LArTPC events. The toolkit is based on the art framework and has a well-defined architecture to interface to other packages, including to GEANT4 and GENIE simulation softwaremore » and the Pandora software development kit for pattern recognition. It is designed to facilitate and support the evolution of algorithms including their transition to new computing platforms. The development of the toolkit is driven by the scientific stakeholders involved. The core infrastructure includes standard definitions of types and constants, means to input experiment geometries as well as meta and event- data in several formats, and relevant general utilities. Examples of algorithms experiments have contributed to date are: photon-propagation; particle identification; hit finding, track finding and fitting; electromagnetic shower identification and reconstruction. We report on the status of the toolkit and plans for future work.« less

Organizational Context Matters: A Research Toolkit for Conducting Standardized Case Studies of Integrated Care Initiatives

PubMed Central

Grudniewicz, Agnes; Gray, Carolyn Steele; Wodchis, Walter P.; Carswell, Peter; Baker, G. Ross

2017-01-01

Introduction: The variable success of integrated care initiatives has led experts to recommend tailoring design and implementation to the organizational context. Yet, organizational contexts are rarely described, understood, or measured with sufficient depth and breadth in empirical studies or in practice. We thus lack knowledge of when and specifically how organizational contexts matter. To facilitate the accumulation of evidence, we developed a research toolkit for conducting case studies using standardized measures of the (inter-)organizational context for integrating care. Theory and Methods: We used a multi-method approach to develop the research toolkit: (1) development and validation of the Context and Capabilities for Integrating Care (CCIC) Framework, (2) identification, assessment, and selection of survey instruments, (3) development of document review methods, (4) development of interview guide resources, and (5) pilot testing of the document review guidelines, consolidated survey, and interview guide. Results: The toolkit provides a framework and measurement tools that examine 18 organizational and inter-organizational factors that affect the implementation and success of integrated care initiatives. Discussion and Conclusion: The toolkit can be used to characterize and compare organizational contexts across cases and enable comparison of results across studies. This information can enhance our understanding of the influence of organizational contexts, support the transfer of best practices, and help explain why some integrated care initiatives succeed and some fail. PMID:28970750

BrainIACS: a system for web-based medical image processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kishore, Bhaskar; Bazin, Pierre-Louis; Pham, Dzung L.

2009-02-01

We describe BrainIACS, a web-based medical image processing system that permits and facilitates algorithm developers to quickly create extensible user interfaces for their algorithms. Designed to address the challenges faced by algorithm developers in providing user-friendly graphical interfaces, BrainIACS is completely implemented using freely available, open-source software. The system, which is based on a client-server architecture, utilizes an AJAX front-end written using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and Java Servlets running on Apache Tomcat as its back-end. To enable developers to quickly and simply create user interfaces for configuring their algorithms, the interfaces are described using XML and are parsed by our system to create the corresponding user interface elements. Most of the commonly found elements such as check boxes, drop down lists, input boxes, radio buttons, tab panels and group boxes are supported. Some elements such as the input box support input validation. Changes to the user interface such as addition and deletion of elements are performed by editing the XML file or by using the system's user interface creator. In addition to user interface generation, the system also provides its own interfaces for data transfer, previewing of input and output files, and algorithm queuing. As the system is programmed using Java (and finally Java-script after compilation of the front-end code), it is platform independent with the only requirements being that a Servlet implementation be available and that the processing algorithms can execute on the server platform.

CMS Configuration Editor: GUI based application for user analysis job

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Cosa, A.

2011-12-01

We present the user interface and the software architecture of the Configuration Editor for the CMS experiment. The analysis workflow is organized in a modular way integrated within the CMS framework that organizes in a flexible way user analysis code. The Python scripting language is adopted to define the job configuration that drives the analysis workflow. It could be a challenging task for users, especially for newcomers, to develop analysis jobs managing the configuration of many required modules. For this reason a graphical tool has been conceived in order to edit and inspect configuration files. A set of common analysis tools defined in the CMS Physics Analysis Toolkit (PAT) can be steered and configured using the Config Editor. A user-defined analysis workflow can be produced starting from a standard configuration file, applying and configuring PAT tools according to the specific user requirements. CMS users can adopt this tool, the Config Editor, to create their analysis visualizing in real time which are the effects of their actions. They can visualize the structure of their configuration, look at the modules included in the workflow, inspect the dependences existing among the modules and check the data flow. They can visualize at which values parameters are set and change them according to what is required by their analysis task. The integration of common tools in the GUI needed to adopt an object-oriented structure in the Python definition of the PAT tools and the definition of a layer of abstraction from which all PAT tools inherit.

Understanding Disabilities in American Indian and Alaska Native Communities. Toolkit Guide.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Council on Disability, Washington, DC.

This "toolkit" document is intended to provide a culturally appropriate set of resources to address the unique political and legal concerns of people with disabilities in American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. It provides information on education, health, vocational rehabilitation (VR), independent living, model approaches, and…

Object Toolkit Version 4.2 Users Manual

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-10-31

48 Figure 39. Geocentric Orbit Dialog Box...Z Side at (0.44, -0.44, 1.46). ............................................ 114 Figure 133. Geocentric Orbit Dialog Box...building an object for MEM, Object Toolkit has an Orbit menu that allows the user to specify and edit a heliocentric or geocentric orbit. The dialog

Educating Globally Competent Citizens: A Toolkit. Second Edition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elliott-Gower, Steven; Falk, Dennis R.; Shapiro, Martin

2012-01-01

Educating Globally Competent Citizens, a product of AASCU's American Democracy Project and its Global Engagement Initiative, introduces readers to a set of global challenges facing society based on the Center for Strategic and International Studies' 7 Revolutions. The toolkit is designed to aid faculty in incorporating global challenges into new…

75 FR 53969 - Office of Community Services: Notice To Award an Expansion Supplement

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-09-02

... related to job creation and new initiatives that target careers in energy efficiency and other...; and (3) collects, develops, and disseminates resources related to job creation and careers related to... through professional consultations and peer assistance sessions; and online toolkit(s). The T/TA CAP will...

The Student Writing Toolkit: Enhancing Undergraduate Teaching of Scientific Writing in the Biological Sciences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dirrigl, Frank J., Jr.; Noe, Mark

2014-01-01

Teaching scientific writing in biology classes is challenging for both students and instructors. This article offers and reviews several useful "toolkit" items that improve student writing. These include sentence and paper-length templates, funnelling and compartmentalisation, and preparing compendiums of corrections. In addition,…

The Archivists' Toolkit: Another Step toward Streamlined Archival Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Westbrook, Bradley D.; Mandell, Lee; Shepherd, Kelcy; Stevens, Brian; Varghese, Jason

2006-01-01

The Archivists' Toolkit is a software application currently in development and designed to support the creation and management of archival information. This article summarizes the development of the application, including some of the problems the application is designed to resolve. Primary emphasis is placed on describing the application's…

Healthy People 2010: Oral Health Toolkit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Isman, Beverly

2007-01-01

The purpose of this Toolkit is to provide guidance, technical tools, and resources to help states, territories, tribes and communities develop and implement successful oral health components of Healthy People 2010 plans as well as other oral health plans. These plans are useful for: (1) promoting, implementing and tracking oral health objectives;…

Using Toolkits to Achieve STEM Enterprise Learning Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watts, Carys A.; Wray, Katie

2012-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of using several commercial tools in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects for enterprise education at Newcastle University, UK. Design/methodology/approach: The paper provides an overview of existing toolkit use in higher education, before reviewing where and…

BAT - The Bayesian analysis toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Caldwell, Allen; Kollár, Daniel; Kröninger, Kevin

2009-11-01

We describe the development of a new toolkit for data analysis. The analysis package is based on Bayes' Theorem, and is realized with the use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo. This gives access to the full posterior probability distribution. Parameter estimation, limit setting and uncertainty propagation are implemented in a straightforward manner.

A Toolkit for Teacher Engagement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grantmakers for Education, 2014

2014-01-01

Teachers are critical to the success of education grantmaking strategies, yet in talking with them we discovered that the world of philanthropy is often a mystery. GFE's Toolkit for Teacher Engagement aims to assist funders in authentically and effectively involving teachers in the education reform and innovation process. Built directly from the…

The Mentoring Toolkit 2.0: Resources for Developing Programs for Incarcerated Youth. Guide

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zaugg, Nathan; Jarjoura, Roger

2017-01-01

"The Mentoring Toolkit 2.0: Resources for Developing Programs for Incarcerated Youth" provides information, program descriptions, and links to important resources that can assist juvenile correctional facilities and other organizations to design effective mentoring programs for neglected and delinquent youth, particularly those who are…

Making Schools the Model for Healthier Environments Toolkit: What It Is

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2012

2012-01-01

Healthy students perform better. Poor nutrition and inadequate physical activity can affect not only academic achievement, but also other factors such as absenteeism, classroom behavior, ability to concentrate, self-esteem, cognitive performance, and test scores. This toolkit provides information to help make schools the model for healthier…

Policy to Performance Toolkit: Transitioning Adults to Opportunity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alamprese, Judith A.; Limardo, Chrys

2012-01-01

The "Policy to Performance Toolkit" is designed to provide state adult education staff and key stakeholders with guidance and tools to use in developing, implementing, and monitoring state policies and their associated practices that support an effective state adult basic education (ABE) to postsecondary education and training transition…

Excellence in Teaching End-of-Life Care. A New Multimedia Toolkit for Nurse Educators.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilkie, Diana J.; Judge, Kay M.; Wells, Marjorie J.; Berkley, Ila Meredith

2001-01-01

Describes a multimedia toolkit for teaching palliative care in nursing, which contains modules on end-of-life topics: comfort, connections, ethics, grief, impact, and well-being. Other contents include myths, definitions, pre- and postassessments, teaching materials, case studies, learning activities, and resources. (SK)

Re-Organizing Earth Observation Data Storage to Support Temporal Analysis of Big Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lynnes, Christopher

2017-01-01

The Earth Observing System Data and Information System archives many datasets that are critical to understanding long-term variations in Earth science properties. Thus, some of these are large, multi-decadal datasets. Yet the challenge in long time series analysis comes less from the sheer volume than the data organization, which is typically one (or a small number of) time steps per file. The overhead of opening and inventorying complex, API-driven data formats such as Hierarchical Data Format introduces a small latency at each time step, which nonetheless adds up for datasets with O(10^6) single-timestep files. Several approaches to reorganizing the data can mitigate this overhead by an order of magnitude: pre-aggregating data along the time axis (time-chunking); storing the data in a highly distributed file system; or storing data in distributed columnar databases. Storing a second copy of the data incurs extra costs, so some selection criteria must be employed, which would be driven by expected or actual usage by the end user community, balanced against the extra cost.

Re-organizing Earth Observation Data Storage to Support Temporal Analysis of Big Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lynnes, C.

2017-12-01

The Earth Observing System Data and Information System archives many datasets that are critical to understanding long-term variations in Earth science properties. Thus, some of these are large, multi-decadal datasets. Yet the challenge in long time series analysis comes less from the sheer volume than the data organization, which is typically one (or a small number of) time steps per file. The overhead of opening and inventorying complex, API-driven data formats such as Hierarchical Data Format introduces a small latency at each time step, which nonetheless adds up for datasets with O(10^6) single-timestep files. Several approaches to reorganizing the data can mitigate this overhead by an order of magnitude: pre-aggregating data along the time axis (time-chunking); storing the data in a highly distributed file system; or storing data in distributed columnar databases. Storing a second copy of the data incurs extra costs, so some selection criteria must be employed, which would be driven by expected or actual usage by the end user community, balanced against the extra cost.

Adoption of Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration for the Development of the Trick Simulation Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Penn, John M.

2013-01-01

This paper describes the adoption of a Test Driven Development approach and a Continuous Integration System in the development of the Trick Simulation Toolkit, a generic simulation development environment for creating high fidelity training and engineering simulations at the NASA/Johnson Space Center and many other NASA facilities. It describes what was learned and the significant benefits seen, such as fast, thorough, and clear test feedback every time code is checked-in to the code repository. It also describes a system that encourages development of code that is much more flexible, maintainable, and reliable. The Trick Simulation Toolkit development environment provides a common architecture for user-defined simulations. Trick builds executable simulations using user-supplied simulation-definition files (S_define) and user supplied "model code". For each Trick-based simulation, Trick automatically provides job scheduling, checkpoint / restore, data-recording, interactive variable manipulation (variable server), and an input-processor. Also included are tools for plotting recorded data and various other supporting tools and libraries. Trick is written in C/C++ and Java and supports both Linux and MacOSX. Prior to adopting this new development approach, Trick testing consisted primarily of running a few large simulations, with the hope that their complexity and scale would exercise most of Trick's code and expose any recently introduced bugs. Unsurprising, this approach yielded inconsistent results. It was obvious that a more systematic, thorough approach was required. After seeing examples of some Java-based projects that used the JUnit test framework, similar test frameworks for C and C++ were sought. Several were found, all clearly inspired by JUnit. Googletest, a freely available Open source testing framework, was selected as the most appropriate and capable. The new approach was implemented while rewriting the Trick memory management component, to eliminate a fundamental design flaw. The benefits became obvious almost immediately, not just in the correctness of the individual functions and classes but also in the correctness and flexibility being added to the overall design. Creating code to be testable, and testing as it was created resulted not only in better working code, but also in better-organized, flexible, and readable (i.e., articulate) code. This was, in essence the Test-driven development (TDD) methodology created by Kent Beck. Seeing the benefits of Test Driven Development, other Trick components were refactored to make them more testable and tests were designed and implemented for them.

A Toolkit for Forward/Inverse Problems in Electrocardiography within the SCIRun Problem Solving Environment

PubMed Central

Burton, Brett M; Tate, Jess D; Erem, Burak; Swenson, Darrell J; Wang, Dafang F; Steffen, Michael; Brooks, Dana H; van Dam, Peter M; Macleod, Rob S

2012-01-01

Computational modeling in electrocardiography often requires the examination of cardiac forward and inverse problems in order to non-invasively analyze physiological events that are otherwise inaccessible or unethical to explore. The study of these models can be performed in the open-source SCIRun problem solving environment developed at the Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing (CIBC). A new toolkit within SCIRun provides researchers with essential frameworks for constructing and manipulating electrocardiographic forward and inverse models in a highly efficient and interactive way. The toolkit contains sample networks, tutorials and documentation which direct users through SCIRun-specific approaches in the assembly and execution of these specific problems. PMID:22254301

New software developments for quality mesh generation and optimization from biomedical imaging data.

PubMed

Yu, Zeyun; Wang, Jun; Gao, Zhanheng; Xu, Ming; Hoshijima, Masahiko

2014-01-01

In this paper we present a new software toolkit for generating and optimizing surface and volumetric meshes from three-dimensional (3D) biomedical imaging data, targeted at image-based finite element analysis of some biomedical activities in a single material domain. Our toolkit includes a series of geometric processing algorithms including surface re-meshing and quality-guaranteed tetrahedral mesh generation and optimization. All methods described have been encapsulated into a user-friendly graphical interface for easy manipulation and informative visualization of biomedical images and mesh models. Numerous examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the described methods and toolkit. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2010, 2010 Census Block State-based

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The TIGER/Line Files are shapefiles and related database files (.dbf) that are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). The MTDB represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER/Line File is designed to stand alone as an independent data set, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation. Census Blocks are statistical areas bounded on all sides by visible features, such as streets, roads, streams, and railroad tracks, and/or by nonvisible boundaries such as city, town, township, and county limits, and short line-of-sight extensions of streets and roads. Census blocks are relatively small in area; for example, a block in a city bounded by streets. However, census blocks in remote areas are often large and irregular and may even be many square miles in area. A common misunderstanding is that data users think census blocks are used geographically to build all other census geographic areas, rather all other census geographic areas are updated and then used as the primary constraints, along with roads and water features, to delineate the tabulation blocks. As a result, all 2010 Census blocks nest within every other 2010 Census geographic area, so that Census Bureau statistical data can be tabulated at the block level and aggregated up to the appropr

A Next-Generation Parallel File System Environment for the OLCF

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

Dillow, David A; Fuller, Douglas; Gunasekaran, Raghul

2012-01-01

When deployed in 2008/2009 the Spider system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory s Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) was the world s largest scale Lustre parallel file system. Envisioned as a shared parallel file system capable of delivering both the bandwidth and capacity requirements of the OLCF s diverse computational environment, Spider has since become a blueprint for shared Lustre environments deployed worldwide. Designed to support the parallel I/O requirements of the Jaguar XT5 system and other smallerscale platforms at the OLCF, the upgrade to the Titan XK6 heterogeneous system will begin to push the limits of Spider s originalmore » design by mid 2013. With a doubling in total system memory and a 10x increase in FLOPS, Titan will require both higher bandwidth and larger total capacity. Our goal is to provide a 4x increase in total I/O bandwidth from over 240GB=sec today to 1TB=sec and a doubling in total capacity. While aggregate bandwidth and total capacity remain important capabilities, an equally important goal in our efforts is dramatically increasing metadata performance, currently the Achilles heel of parallel file systems at leadership. We present in this paper an analysis of our current I/O workloads, our operational experiences with the Spider parallel file systems, the high-level design of our Spider upgrade, and our efforts in developing benchmarks that synthesize our performance requirements based on our workload characterization studies.« less

Use of Remote Sensing Data to Enhance NWS Storm Damage Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jedlove, Gary J.; Molthan, Andrew L.; White, Kris; Burks, Jason; Stellman, Keith; Smith, Mathew

2012-01-01

In the wake of a natural disaster such as a tornado, the National Weather Service (NWS) is required to provide a very detailed and timely storm damage assessment to local, state and federal homeland security officials. The Post ]Storm Data Acquisition (PSDA) procedure involves the acquisition and assembly of highly perishable data necessary for accurate post ]event analysis and potential integration into a geographic information system (GIS) available to its end users and associated decision makers. Information gained from the process also enables the NWS to increase its knowledge of extreme events, learn how to better use existing equipment, improve NWS warning programs, and provide accurate storm intensity and damage information to the news media and academia. To help collect and manage all of this information, forecasters in NWS Southern Region are currently developing a Storm Damage Assessment Toolkit (SDAT), which incorporates GIS ]capable phones and laptops into the PSDA process by tagging damage photography, location, and storm damage details with GPS coordinates for aggregation within the GIS database. However, this tool alone does not fully integrate radar and ground based storm damage reports nor does it help to identify undetected storm damage regions. In many cases, information on storm damage location (beginning and ending points, swath width, etc.) from ground surveys is incomplete or difficult to obtain. Geographic factors (terrain and limited roads in rural areas), manpower limitations, and other logistical constraints often prevent the gathering of a comprehensive picture of tornado or hail damage, and may allow damage regions to go undetected. Molthan et al. (2011) have shown that high resolution satellite data can provide additional valuable information on storm damage tracks to augment this database. This paper presents initial development to integrate satellitederived damage track information into the SDAT for near real ]time use by forecasters and decision makers.

Integration of Earth Remote Sensing into the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Molthan, A.; Burks, J. E.; Camp, P.; McGrath, K.; Bell, J. R.

2014-12-01

Following the occurrence of severe weather, NOAA/NWS meteorologists are tasked with performing a storm damage survey to assess the type and severity of the weather event, primarily focused with the confirmation and assessment of tornadoes. This labor-intensive process requires meteorologists to venture into the affected area, acquire damage indicators through photos, eyewitness accounts, and other documentation, then aggregation of data in order to make a final determination of the tornado path length, width, maximum intensity, and other characteristics. Earth remote sensing from operational, polar-orbiting satellites can support the damage assessment process by helping to identify portions of damage tracks that are difficult to access due to road limitations or time constraints by applying change detection techniques. In addition, higher resolution commercial imagery can corroborate ground-based surveys by examining higher-resolution commercial imagery. As part of an ongoing collaboration, NASA and NOAA are working to integrate near real-time Earth remote sensing observations into the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit (DAT), a suite of applications used by meteorologists in the survey process. The DAT includes a handheld application used by meteorologists in the survey process. The team has recently developed a more streamlined approach for delivering data via a web mapping service and menu interface, allowing for caching of imagery before field deployment. Near real-time products have been developed using MODIS and VIIRS imagery and change detection for preliminary track identification, along with conduits for higher-resolution Landsat, ASTER, and commercial imagery as they become available. In addition to tornado damage assessments, the team is also investigating the use of near real-time imagery for identifying hail damage to vegetation, which also results in large swaths of damage, particularly in the central United States during the peak growing season months of June, July, and August. This presentation will present an overview of recent activities, challenges and successes, best practices, and opportunities for future work and collaboration.

Use of Remote Sensing Data to Enhance NWS Storm Damage Toolkit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jedlovec, G.; Molthan, A.; White, K.; Burks, J.; Stellman, K.; Smith, M. R.

2012-12-01

In the wake of a natural disaster such as a tornado, the National Weather Service (NWS) is required to provide a very detailed and timely storm damage assessment to local, state and federal homeland security officials. The Post-Storm Data Acquisition (PSDA) procedure involves the acquisition and assembly of highly perishable data necessary for accurate post-event analysis and potential integration into a geographic information system (GIS) available to its end users and associated decision makers. Information gained from the process also enables the NWS to increase its knowledge of extreme events, learn how to better use existing equipment, improve NWS warning programs, and provide accurate storm intensity and damage information to the news media and academia. To help collect and manage all of this information, forecasters in NWS Southern Region are currently developing a Storm Damage Assessment Toolkit (SDAT), which incorporates GIS-capable phones and laptops into the PSDA process by tagging damage photography, location, and storm damage details with GPS coordinates for aggregation within the GIS database. However, this tool alone does not fully integrate radar and ground based storm damage reports nor does it help to identify undetected storm damage regions. In many cases, information on storm damage location (beginning and ending points, swath width, etc.) from ground surveys is incomplete or difficult to obtain. Geographic factors (terrain and limited roads in rural areas), manpower limitations, and other logistical constraints often prevent the gathering of a comprehensive picture of tornado or hail damage, and may allow damage regions to go undetected. Molthan et al. (2011) have shown that high resolution satellite data can provide additional valuable information on storm damage tracks to augment this database. This paper presents initial development to integrate satellite-derived damage track information into the SDAT for near real-time use by forecasters and decision makers.

An interactive visualization tool for mobile objects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kobayashi, Tetsuo

Recent advancements in mobile devices---such as Global Positioning System (GPS), cellular phones, car navigation system, and radio-frequency identification (RFID)---have greatly influenced the nature and volume of data about individual-based movement in space and time. Due to the prevalence of mobile devices, vast amounts of mobile objects data are being produced and stored in databases, overwhelming the capacity of traditional spatial analytical methods. There is a growing need for discovering unexpected patterns, trends, and relationships that are hidden in the massive mobile objects data. Geographic visualization (GVis) and knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) are two major research fields that are associated with knowledge discovery and construction. Their major research challenges are the integration of GVis and KDD, enhancing the ability to handle large volume mobile objects data, and high interactivity between the computer and users of GVis and KDD tools. This dissertation proposes a visualization toolkit to enable highly interactive visual data exploration for mobile objects datasets. Vector algebraic representation and online analytical processing (OLAP) are utilized for managing and querying the mobile object data to accomplish high interactivity of the visualization tool. In addition, reconstructing trajectories at user-defined levels of temporal granularity with time aggregation methods allows exploration of the individual objects at different levels of movement generality. At a given level of generality, individual paths can be combined into synthetic summary paths based on three similarity measures, namely, locational similarity, directional similarity, and geometric similarity functions. A visualization toolkit based on the space-time cube concept exploits these functionalities to create a user-interactive environment for exploring mobile objects data. Furthermore, the characteristics of visualized trajectories are exported to be utilized for data mining, which leads to the integration of GVis and KDD. Case studies using three movement datasets (personal travel data survey in Lexington, Kentucky, wild chicken movement data in Thailand, and self-tracking data in Utah) demonstrate the potential of the system to extract meaningful patterns from the otherwise difficult to comprehend collections of space-time trajectories.

Integration of Earth Remote Sensing into the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Molthan, Andrew; Burks, Jason; Camp, Parks; McGrath, Kevin; Bell, Jordan

2014-01-01

Following the occurrence of severe weather, NOAA/NWS meteorologists are tasked with performing a storm damage survey to assess the type and severity of the weather event, primarily focused with the confirmation and assessment of tornadoes. This labor-intensive process requires meteorologists to venture into the affected area, acquire damage indicators through photos, eyewitness accounts, and other documentation, then aggregation of data in order to make a final determination of the tornado path length, width, maximum intensity, and other characteristics. Earth remote sensing from operational, polar-orbiting satellites can support the damage assessment process by helping to identify portions of damage tracks that are difficult to access due to road limitations or time constraints by applying change detection techniques. In addition, higher resolution commercial imagery can corroborate ground-based surveys by examining higher-resolution commercial imagery. As part of an ongoing collaboration, NASA and NOAA are working to integrate near real-time Earth remote sensing observations into the NOAA/NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, a handheld application used by meteorologists in the survey process. The team has recently developed a more streamlined approach for delivering data via a web mapping service and menu interface, allowing for caching of imagery before field deployment. Near real-time products have been developed using MODIS and VIIRS imagery and change detection for preliminary track identification, along with conduits for higher-resolution Landsat, ASTER, and commercial imagery as they become available. In addition to tornado damage assessments, the team is also investigating the use of near real-time imagery for identifying hail damage to vegetation, which also results in large swaths of damage, particularly in the central United States during the peak growing season months of June, July, and August. This presentation will present an overview of recent activities, challenges and successes, best practices, and opportunities for future work and collaboration.

Using an Assistive Technology Toolkit to Promote Inclusion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Judge, Sharon; Floyd, Kim; Jeffs, Tara

2008-01-01

Although the use of assistive technology for young children is increasing, the lack of awareness and the lack of training continue to act as major barriers to providers using assistive technology. This article describes an assistive technology toolkit designed for use with young children with disabilities that can be easily assembled and…

Roles of the Volunteer in Development: Toolkits for Building Capacity.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Slater, Marsha; Allsman, Ava; Savage, Ron; Havens, Lani; Blohm, Judee; Raftery, Kate

This document, which was developed to assist Peace Corps volunteers and those responsible for training them, presents an introductory booklet and six toolkits for use in the training provided to and by volunteers involved in community development. All the materials emphasize long-term participatory approaches to sustainable development and a…