Starting a Community-Wide Internet Turnkey Training Program for K-12 Teachers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McGrath, Beth; Baron, Joshua

Based on the work of the New Jersey Networking Infrastructure in Education (NJNIE) project, it has been demonstrated that thoughtful integration into the curriculum of Internet-based resources has enormous potential to improve teaching and learning. "The Alliance for Training K-12 Teachers in Instructional Technologies: A National…

Upgrading Technology Infrastructure in California's Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Niu; Murphy, Patrick

2016-01-01

As California schools move into online testing and online learning, an adequate technology infrastructure is no longer an option, but a necessity. To fully benefit from digital learning, schools will require a comprehensive technology infrastructure that can support a range of administrative and instructional tools. An earlier PPIC report found…

77 FR 43416 - ITS Industry Forum on Connected Vehicles: Moving From Research Towards Implementation; Notice of...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-07-24

..., Vehicle-to-Infrastructure, and Testing programs; along with a special session discussing lessons learned... evolving in terms of a robust Vehicle-to- Infrastructure environment, and identify what we have learned... wireless communication between vehicles, infrastructure, and personal communications devices to [[Page...

Robots and Humans in Planetary Exploration: Working Together?

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Landis, Geoffrey A.; Lyons, Valerie (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

Today's approach to human-robotic cooperation in planetary exploration focuses on using robotic probes as precursors to human exploration. A large portion of current NASA planetary surface exploration is focussed on Mars, and robotic probes are seen as precursors to human exploration in: Learning about operation and mobility on Mars; Learning about the environment of Mars; Mapping the planet and selecting landing sites for human mission; Demonstration of critical technology; Manufacture fuel before human presence, and emplace elements of human-support infrastructure

Infrastructures to Support Equitable STEM Learning across Settings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Penuel, William R.; Clark, Tiffany L.; Bevan, Bronwyn

2016-01-01

STEM learning is a process that unfolds through dynamic interactions over time and across settings. Formal education in schools is not the only--or necessarily the most significant--context for STEM learning. This paper outlines principles for building a diverse and connected ecosystem and the features of a STEM learning infrastructure to promote…

Infrastructure and distributed learning methodology for privacy-preserving multi-centric rapid learning health care: euroCAT.

PubMed

Deist, Timo M; Jochems, A; van Soest, Johan; Nalbantov, Georgi; Oberije, Cary; Walsh, Seán; Eble, Michael; Bulens, Paul; Coucke, Philippe; Dries, Wim; Dekker, Andre; Lambin, Philippe

2017-06-01

Machine learning applications for personalized medicine are highly dependent on access to sufficient data. For personalized radiation oncology, datasets representing the variation in the entire cancer patient population need to be acquired and used to learn prediction models. Ethical and legal boundaries to ensure data privacy hamper collaboration between research institutes. We hypothesize that data sharing is possible without identifiable patient data leaving the radiation clinics and that building machine learning applications on distributed datasets is feasible. We developed and implemented an IT infrastructure in five radiation clinics across three countries (Belgium, Germany, and The Netherlands). We present here a proof-of-principle for future 'big data' infrastructures and distributed learning studies. Lung cancer patient data was collected in all five locations and stored in local databases. Exemplary support vector machine (SVM) models were learned using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) from the distributed databases to predict post-radiotherapy dyspnea grade [Formula: see text]. The discriminative performance was assessed by the area under the curve (AUC) in a five-fold cross-validation (learning on four sites and validating on the fifth). The performance of the distributed learning algorithm was compared to centralized learning where datasets of all institutes are jointly analyzed. The euroCAT infrastructure has been successfully implemented in five radiation clinics across three countries. SVM models can be learned on data distributed over all five clinics. Furthermore, the infrastructure provides a general framework to execute learning algorithms on distributed data. The ongoing expansion of the euroCAT network will facilitate machine learning in radiation oncology. The resulting access to larger datasets with sufficient variation will pave the way for generalizable prediction models and personalized medicine.

Intelligent Learning Infrastructure for Knowledge Intensive Organizations: A Semantic Web Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lytras, Miltiadis, Ed.; Naeve, Ambjorn, Ed.

2005-01-01

In the context of Knowledge Society, the convergence of knowledge and learning management is a critical milestone. "Intelligent Learning Infrastructure for Knowledge Intensive Organizations: A Semantic Web Perspective" provides state-of-the art knowledge through a balanced theoretical and technological discussion. The semantic web perspective…

Tackling the x-ray cargo inspection challenge using machine learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jaccard, Nicolas; Rogers, Thomas W.; Morton, Edward J.; Griffin, Lewis D.

2016-05-01

The current infrastructure for non-intrusive inspection of cargo containers cannot accommodate exploding com-merce volumes and increasingly stringent regulations. There is a pressing need to develop methods to automate parts of the inspection workflow, enabling expert operators to focus on a manageable number of high-risk images. To tackle this challenge, we developed a modular framework for automated X-ray cargo image inspection. Employing state-of-the-art machine learning approaches, including deep learning, we demonstrate high performance for empty container verification and specific threat detection. This work constitutes a significant step towards the partial automation of X-ray cargo image inspection.

The Semi-opened Infrastructure Model (SopIM): A Frame to Set Up an Organizational Learning Process

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grundstein, Michel

In this paper, we introduce the "Semi-opened Infrastructure Model (SopIM)" implemented to deploy Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge-based Systems within a large industrial company. This model illustrates what could be two of the operating elements of the Model for General Knowledge Management within the Enterprise (MGKME) that are essential to set up the organizational learning process that leads people to appropriate and use concepts, methods and tools of an innovative technology: the "Ad hoc Infrastructures" element, and the "Organizational Learning Processes" element.

Towards Networked Knowledge: The Learning Registry, an Infrastructure for Sharing Online Learning Resources

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Ashley; Hobson, Joe; Bienkowski, Marie; Midgley, Steve; Currier, Sarah; Campbell, Lorna M.; Novoselova, Tatiana

2012-01-01

In this article, the authors describe an open-source, open-data digital infrastructure for sharing information about open educational resources (OERs) across disparate systems and platforms. The Learning Registry, which began as a project funded by the U.S. Departments of Education and Defense, currently has an active international community…

The Role of Transformative Leadership, ICT-Infrastructure and Learning Climate in Teachers' Use of Digital Learning Materials during Their Classes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vermeulen, Marjan; Kreijns, Karel; van Buuren, Hans; Van Acker, Frederik

2017-01-01

This study investigated whether school organizational variables (ie, transformative leadership (TL), ICT-infrastructure (technical and social) and organizational learning climate were related to teachers' dispositional variables (ie, attitude, perceived norm and perceived behavior control [PBC]). The direct and indirect influences of the…

Sustainable Water Infrastructure

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Resources for state and local environmental and public health officials, and water, infrastructure and utility professionals to learn about sustainable water infrastructure, sustainable water and energy practices, and their role.

Sub-orbital flights, a starting point for space tourism

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gaubatz, William A.

2002-07-01

While there is a growing awareness and interest by the general public in space travel neither the market nor the infrastructure exist to make a commercial space tourism business an attractive risk venture. In addition there is much to be learned about how the general public will respond to space flights and what physiological and psychological needs must be met to ensure a pleasurable as well as adventurous experience. Sub-orbital flights offer an incremental approach to develop the market and the infrastructure, demonstrate the safety of space flight, obtain real flight information regarding the needs of general public passengers and demonstrate the profitability of space tourism. This paper will summarize some of the system, operations, and financial aspects of creating a sub-orbital space tourism business as a stepping-stone to public space travel. A sample business case will be reviewed and impacts of markets, operations and vehicle costs and lifetimes will be assessed.

Quantifying Online Learning Contact Hours

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Powell, Karan; Helm, Jennifer Stephens; Layne, Melissa; Ice, Phil

2012-01-01

Technological and pedagogical advances in distance education have accentuated the necessity for higher education to keep pace regarding institutional infrastructures. Each infrastructure--driven by a common mission to provide quality learning--interprets quality according to standards established by various governmental and accrediting entities.…

Alternative Fuels Data Center: Hydrogen Fueling Stations

Science.gov Websites

will bring station costs down. Hydrogen infrastructure is also developing for buses, medium- and heavy . Infrastructure Development Learn about developing hydrogen fueling infrastructure. Maps & Data U.S

Improving global flood risk awareness through collaborative research: Id-Lab

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weerts, A.; Zijderveld, A.; Cumiskey, L.; Buckman, L.; Verlaan, M.; Baart, F.

2015-12-01

Scientific and end-user collaboration on operational flood risk modelling and forecasting requires an environment where scientists and end-users can physically work together and demonstrate, enhance and learn about new tools, methods and models for forecasting and warning purposes. Therefore, Deltares has built a real-time demonstration, training and research infrastructure ('operational' room and ICT backend). This research infrastructure supports various functions like (1) Real time response and disaster management, (2) Training, (3) Collaborative Research, (4) Demonstration. The research infrastructure will be used for a mixture of these functions on a regular basis by Deltares and a multitude of both scientists as well as end users such as universities, research institutes, consultants, governments and aid agencies. This infrastructure facilitates emergency advice and support during international and national disasters caused by rainfall, tropical cyclones or tsunamis. It hosts research flood and storm surge forecasting systems for global/continental/regional scale. It facilitates training for emergency & disaster management (along with hosting forecasting system user trainings in for instance the forecasting platform Delft-FEWS) both internally and externally. The facility is expected to inspire and initiate creative innovations by bringing together different experts from various organizations. The room hosts interactive modelling developments, participatory workshops and stakeholder meetings. State of the art tools, models and software, being applied across the globe are available and on display within the facility. We will present the Id-Lab in detail and we will put particular focus on the global operational forecasting systems GLOFFIS (Global Flood Forecasting Information System) and GLOSSIS (Global Storm Surge Information System).

Lifelong Learning: Workforce Development and Economic Success.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Alice

Lifelong learning through a strong, policy-supported information technology (IT) infrastructure is critical to the success of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies. There is a great need to upgrade the quality of skills within the workforce, and there have been unprecedented investments in infrastructure and advanced…

Characteristics of effective summer learning programs in practice.

PubMed

Bell, Susanne R; Carrillo, Natalie

2007-01-01

The Center for Summer Learning examined various summer program models and found that there are nine characteristics that provide a framework for effective summer programs. In this chapter, the authors demonstrate how effective practices lead to positive results for young people. The nine characteristics of effective summer learning programs are (1) accelerating learning, (2) youth development, (3) proactive approach to summer learning, (4) leadership, (5) advanced planning, (6) staff development, (7) strategic partnerships, (8) evaluation and commitment to program improvement, and (9) sustainability and cost-effectiveness. These characteristics are divided into two sections. The first three characteristics address a program's approach to learning. Summer instructional techniques are most effective when academic learning is woven into enrichment activities and youth development. The second section covers program infrastructure to ensure the organization achieves and maintains quality programming. The nine characteristics complement each other to ensure a strong program that works to prevent summer learning loss and narrow the achievement gap. To demonstrate the variety of high-quality programs that include the nine characteristics, thirteen program profiles at the conclusion of the chapter each highlight one of the characteristics. These profiles show the various approaches that different summer programs have developed to accelerate academic achievement and promote positive development for young people in their communities.

Case study and lessons learned for the Great Lakes ITS Program, Airport ITS Integration and the Road Infrastructure Management System projects, final report, Wayne County, Michigan

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2007-03-02

This report presents the case study and lessons learned for the national evaluation of the Great Lakes Intelligent Transportation Systems (GLITS) Airport ITS Integration and Road Infrastructure Management System (RIMS) projects. The Airport ITS Integ...

Youth and Lifelong Education: After-School Programmes as a Vital Component of Lifelong Education Infrastructure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lauzon, Allan C.

2013-01-01

This paper argues that after-school programmes need to be considered an essential part of lifelong learning infrastructure, particularly in light of the dominance of the economic discourse in both lifelong learning literature and the initial schooling literature. The paper, which is based upon existing literature, begins by providing an overview…

Lessons from the Unexpected: The Importance of Data Infrastructure, Conceptual Models, and Serendipity in Health Services Research

PubMed Central

Mechanic, David

2001-01-01

In examining the importance of data systems, conceptual models, and serendipity in understanding health services, the case is made for a vigorous and responsive data infrastructure and more emphasis on conceptual development. Particularly important is the development of data systems that can keep pace with changes in health care organization and patterns of care. Three examples—from managed care, deinstitutionalization, and physician remuneration—demonstrate the need to empirically examine seemingly obvious assumptions about health patterns and trends, and the lessons to be learned when assumptions are proved incorrect. Major future challenges include incorporating patient preferences into outcomes research, meaningful communication about treatment options and health plan choices, and understanding how organizational culture and norms affect decision processes. PMID:11565164

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

Leach, Richard; LoGrasso, Joseph; Monterosso, Sandra

The objective of this project was to develop Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV) advanced propulsion technology and demonstrate a fleet of 146 Volt EREVs to gather data on vehicle performance and infrastructure to understand the impacts on commercialization while also creating or retaining a significant number of jobs in the United States. This objective was achieved by developing and demonstrating EREVs in real world conditions with customers in several diverse locations across the United States and installing, demonstration and testing charging infrastructure while also continuing development on second generation EREV technology. The project completed the development of the Chevrolet Voltmore » and placed the vehicle in the hands of consumers in diverse locations across the United States. This demonstration leveraged the unique telematics platform of OnStar, standard on all Chevrolet Volts, to capture the operating experience that lead to better understanding of customer usage. The project team included utility partners that installed, demonstrated and tested charging infrastructure located in home, workplace and public locations to understand installation issues, customer usage and interaction with the electric grid. Development and demonstration of advanced technologies such as smart charging, fast charging and battery to grid interface were completed. The recipient collected, analyzed and reported the data generated by the demonstration. The recipient also continued to advance the technology of the Chevrolet Volt technology by developing energy storage system enhancements for the next-generation vehicle. Information gathered from the first generation vehicle will be utilized to refine the technology to reduce cost and mass while also increasing energy storage capacity to enhance adoption of the second generation technology into the marketplace. The launch of the first generation Chevrolet Volt will provide additional opportunities to further enhance the RESS (Rechargeable Energy Storage System) with each additional generation. Lessons learned from the launch of the first generation RESS will be demonstrated in the second generation to enhance adoption into the marketplace.« less

A National Strategy to Develop Pragmatic Clinical Trials Infrastructure

PubMed Central

Guise, Jeanne‐Marie; Dolor, Rowena J.; Meissner, Paul; Tunis, Sean; Krishnan, Jerry A.; Pace, Wilson D.; Saltz, Joel; Hersh, William R.; Michener, Lloyd; Carey, Timothy S.

2014-01-01

Abstract An important challenge in comparative effectiveness research is the lack of infrastructure to support pragmatic clinical trials, which compare interventions in usual practice settings and subjects. These trials present challenges that differ from those of classical efficacy trials, which are conducted under ideal circumstances, in patients selected for their suitability, and with highly controlled protocols. In 2012, we launched a 1‐year learning network to identify high‐priority pragmatic clinical trials and to deploy research infrastructure through the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards Consortium that could be used to launch and sustain them. The network and infrastructure were initiated as a learning ground and shared resource for investigators and communities interested in developing pragmatic clinical trials. We followed a three‐stage process of developing the network, prioritizing proposed trials, and implementing learning exercises that culminated in a 1‐day network meeting at the end of the year. The year‐long project resulted in five recommendations related to developing the network, enhancing community engagement, addressing regulatory challenges, advancing information technology, and developing research methods. The recommendations can be implemented within 24 months and are designed to lead toward a sustained national infrastructure for pragmatic trials. PMID:24472114

Assessing the Available ICT Infrastructure for Collaborative Web Technologies in a Blended Learning Environment in Tanzania: A Mixed Methods Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pima, John Marco; Odetayo, Michael; Iqbal, Rahat; Sedoyeka, Eliamani

2016-01-01

This paper is about the use of a Mixed Methods approach in an investigation that sought to assess the available Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure capable of supporting Collaborative Web Technologies (CWTs) in a Blended Learning (BL) environment in Tanzanian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). We first used…

Family learning research in museums: An emerging disciplinary matrix?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ellenbogen, Kirsten M.; Luke, Jessica J.; Dierking, Lynn D.

2004-07-01

Thomas Kuhn's notion of a disciplinary matrix provides a useful framework for investigating the growth of research on family learning in and from museums over the last decade. To track the emergence of this disciplinary matrix we consider three issues. First are shifting theoretical perspectives that result in new shared language, beliefs, values, understandings, and assumptions about what counts as family learning. Second are realigning methodologies, driven by underlying disciplinary assumptions about how research in this arena is best conducted, what questions should be addressed, and criteria for valid and reliable evidence. Third is resituating the focus of our research to make the family central to what we study, reflecting a more holistic understanding of the family as an educational institution within larger learning infrastructure. We discuss research that exemplifies these three issues and demonstrates the ways in which shifting theoretical perspectives, realigning methodologies, and resituating research foci signal the existence of a nascent disciplinary matrix.

NiftyNet: a deep-learning platform for medical imaging.

PubMed

Gibson, Eli; Li, Wenqi; Sudre, Carole; Fidon, Lucas; Shakir, Dzhoshkun I; Wang, Guotai; Eaton-Rosen, Zach; Gray, Robert; Doel, Tom; Hu, Yipeng; Whyntie, Tom; Nachev, Parashkev; Modat, Marc; Barratt, Dean C; Ourselin, Sébastien; Cardoso, M Jorge; Vercauteren, Tom

2018-05-01

Medical image analysis and computer-assisted intervention problems are increasingly being addressed with deep-learning-based solutions. Established deep-learning platforms are flexible but do not provide specific functionality for medical image analysis and adapting them for this domain of application requires substantial implementation effort. Consequently, there has been substantial duplication of effort and incompatible infrastructure developed across many research groups. This work presents the open-source NiftyNet platform for deep learning in medical imaging. The ambition of NiftyNet is to accelerate and simplify the development of these solutions, and to provide a common mechanism for disseminating research outputs for the community to use, adapt and build upon. The NiftyNet infrastructure provides a modular deep-learning pipeline for a range of medical imaging applications including segmentation, regression, image generation and representation learning applications. Components of the NiftyNet pipeline including data loading, data augmentation, network architectures, loss functions and evaluation metrics are tailored to, and take advantage of, the idiosyncracies of medical image analysis and computer-assisted intervention. NiftyNet is built on the TensorFlow framework and supports features such as TensorBoard visualization of 2D and 3D images and computational graphs by default. We present three illustrative medical image analysis applications built using NiftyNet infrastructure: (1) segmentation of multiple abdominal organs from computed tomography; (2) image regression to predict computed tomography attenuation maps from brain magnetic resonance images; and (3) generation of simulated ultrasound images for specified anatomical poses. The NiftyNet infrastructure enables researchers to rapidly develop and distribute deep learning solutions for segmentation, regression, image generation and representation learning applications, or extend the platform to new applications. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Another Initiative? Where Does it Fit? A Unifying Framework and an Integrated Infrastructure for Schools to Address Barriers to Learning and Promote Healthy Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA, 2005

2005-01-01

This report was developed to highlight the current state of affairs and illustrate the value of a unifying framework and integrated infrastructure for the many initiatives, projects, programs, and services schools pursue in addressing barriers to learning and promoting healthy development. Specifically, it highlights how initiatives can be…

Building Minds, Minding Buildings. School Infrastructure Funding Need: A State-by-State Assessment and an Analysis of Recent Court Cases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crampton, Faith E.; Thompson, David C.

2008-01-01

The quality of the physical environment in which children learn is a critical education capacity factor that contributes to their academic success and well-being. Adequate levels of fiscal investment in school infrastructure are essential to ensure that all students and staff have access to a physical environment conducive to learning; that is,…

Building Capacity for Civic Learning and Engagement: An Emerging Infrastructure in the Academic Arts and Humanities in the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heiland, Donna; Huber, Mary Taylor

2015-01-01

American higher education has always articulated a civic mission as part of its purpose: colleges and universities educate students for life in a democratic society and provide that society with citizens who ensure that it thrives in turn. This essay maps the development of a national infrastructure for civic learning and engagement in American…

More Bang for the Buck: Integrating Green Infrastructure into Existing Public Works Projects

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

shares lessons learned from municipal and county officials experienced in coordinating green infrastructure applications with scheduled street maintenance, park improvements, and projects on public sites.

Building electronic data infrastructure for comparative effectiveness research: accomplishments, lessons learned and future steps.

PubMed

Randhawa, Gurvaneet S

2014-11-01

There are large gaps in our knowledge on the potential impact of diagnostics and therapeutics on outcomes of patients treated in the real world. Comparative effectiveness research aims to fill these gaps to maximize effectiveness of these interventions. Health information technology has the potential to dramatically improve the practice of medicine and of research. This is an overview of about US$100 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment in 12 projects managed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to build an electronic clinical data infrastructure that connects research with healthcare delivery. The achievements and lessons learned from these projects provided a foundation for the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet)and will help to guide future infrastructure development needed to build an efficient, scalable and sustainable learning health system.

The Pedagogy of Complex Work Support Systems: Infrastructuring Practices and the Production of Critical Awareness in Risk Auditing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mathisen, Arve; Nerland, Monika

2012-01-01

This paper employs a socio-technical perspective to explore the role of complex work support systems in organising knowledge and providing opportunities for learning in professional work. Drawing on concepts from infrastructure studies, such systems are seen as work infrastructures which connect information, knowledge, standards and work…

A systems approach to implementation of eLearning in medical education: five MEPI schools' journeys.

PubMed

Vovides, Yianna; Chale, Selamawit Bedada; Gadhula, Rumbidzayi; Kebaetse, Masego B; Nigussie, Netsanet Animut; Suleman, Fatima; Tibyampansha, Dativa; Ibrahim, Glory Ramadhan; Ntabaye, Moshi; Frehywot, Seble; Nkomazana, Oathokwa

2014-08-01

How should eLearning be implemented in resource-constrained settings? The introduction of eLearning at four African medical schools and one school of pharmacy, all part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) eLearning Technical Working Group, highlighted the need for five factors essential for successful and sustainable implementation: institutional support; faculty engagement; student engagement; technical expertise; and infrastructure and support systems. All five MEPI schools reported strengthening technical expertise, infrastructure, and support systems; four schools indicated that they were also successful in developing student engagement; and three reported making good progress in building institutional support. Faculty engagement was the one core component that all five schools needed to enhance.

Exploring perceptions of a learning organization by RNs and relationship to EBP beliefs and implementation in the acute care setting.

PubMed

Estrada, Nicolette

2009-01-01

Health care professionals are expected to provide patient care based on best evidence. The context of the acute care setting presents a challenging environment for registered nurses (RNs) to utilize research and implement best evidence in practice. No organizational infrastructure has been identified that offers acute care RNs the support needed for evidence-based practice (EBP). The value of "learning organizations" has long been understood by corporate leaders. Potentially, the dimensions of a "learning organization" may offer a supportive EBP infrastructure for acute care RNs. (1) What is the relationship of the characteristics of the learning organization to registered nurses' beliefs regarding EBP? (2) Is there an impact of EBP beliefs on RNs' implementation of EBP? A descriptive, survey design study was conducted. Three established questionnaires were distributed to 1,750 RNs employed within six acute care hospitals. There were 594 questionnaires returned for a response rate of 34%. RNs rated their organizations in the mid-range on the dimensions of learning organization. Perceptions of the learning organization were found to be significant, although relatively small, predictors explaining 6% of knowledge beliefs, 11% of value beliefs, and 14% of resource beliefs. EBP beliefs explained 23% of EBP implementation reported by RNs. The study results indicate relationships between RNs' reported perception of a learning organization and EBP beliefs, and between EBP beliefs and implementation. However, findings were mixed. Overall, nurses rated their organizations the lowest in the dimensions of "promote inquiry and dialogue" and "empower people toward a collective vision." Leaders have an opportunity to offer a more supportive infrastructure through improving their organization in these two areas. RN beliefs explained 23% of EBP implementation in this study with a residual 77% yet to be identified. Acute care hospitals were perceived mid-range on learning organization dimensions by RNs, indicating an opportune area for leaders to strengthen their organizational infrastructure.

Does the Room Matter? Active Learning in Traditional and Enhanced Lecture Spaces

PubMed Central

Stoltzfus, Jon R.; Libarkin, Julie

2016-01-01

SCALE-UP–type classrooms, originating with the Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies project, are designed to facilitate active learning by maximizing opportunities for interactions between students and embedding technology in the classroom. Positive impacts when active learning replaces lecture are well documented, both in traditional lecture halls and SCALE-UP–type classrooms. However, few studies have carefully analyzed student outcomes when comparable active learning–based instruction takes place in a traditional lecture hall and a SCALE-UP–type classroom. Using a quasi-experimental design, we compared student perceptions and performance between sections of a nonmajors biology course, one taught in a traditional lecture hall and one taught in a SCALE-UP–type classroom. Instruction in both sections followed a flipped model that relied heavily on cooperative learning and was as identical as possible given the infrastructure differences between classrooms. Results showed that students in both sections thought that SCALE-UP infrastructure would enhance performance. However, measures of actual student performance showed no difference between the two sections. We conclude that, while SCALE-UP–type classrooms may facilitate implementation of active learning, it is the active learning and not the SCALE-UP infrastructure that enhances student performance. As a consequence, we suggest that institutions can modify existing classrooms to enhance student engagement without incorporating expensive technology. PMID:27909018

Action Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

1996

These four papers were presented at a symposium on action learning moderated by Lex Dilworth at the 1996 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development. "Developing an Infrastructure for Individual and Organizational Change: Transfer of Learning from an Action Reflection Learning (ARL) Program" (ARL Inquiry) reports findings…

Infrastructure and adaptive management in an eco-hydrological Delta: Lessons learned from design and construction of the Haringvliet Sluices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Linsen, Max; Mostert, Erik; van der Zaag, Pieter

2015-04-01

Consequences of climate change include an increase in extreme weather events in North-West Europe. The Netherlands is directly affected by these extreme events, in particular in water management practices. Large investments in infrastructure were made ever since the floods of 1953, leading to a higher level of protection against flooding from the sea and to a managed eco-hydrological Delta. Adaptive water management is presented as an approach to deal with challenges in water allocation and flood protection. One challenge to adaptive water management relates to infrastructure. Large works are often inevitable and essential in flood protection. Hydraulic infrastructure however tends to be inflexible by nature and requires a level of robustness to deliver the desired performance over time. In this study, we focus on the relation between desired performance of infrastructure and adaptation to environmental change and evolving social demands. The objective of this study is to gain an understanding of the evolution of the desired performance of water management infrastructure. This serves two purposes: an increased understanding of design and construction of existing infrastructure, and potential lessons learned for future hydraulic infrastructure in the context of adaptive management. A qualitative approach was used to evaluate over 130 reports on all stages of the design, planning and construction of the Haringvliet sluices as part of the realization of the Delta Works. The time frame is set between 1950 and 1970. The main source of information is a set of quarterly reports to the Dutch parliament, published between 1956 and 1988, and which provided detailed information on design, construction, maintenance, system behavior, policy needs, social demands and stakeholders. The original objectives of the infrastructure were reflected in its design: protection against flooding, protection against salt intrusion and discharge of water and ice - all with a desired ease of operations of the gates of the infrastructure. The dimensions of the Haringvliet sluices thank their uniqueness to the requirements to discharge both ice and water. Upon completion of the Haringvliet sluices in 1970, two main observations can be made. First, environmental issues were hardly considered, while the focus was on protection against flooding and salt from the sea. Second, during the construction phase, experimentation, learning and adaptation were reported. Changes were made during the construction and based on extreme weather events and lessons learned from construction activities elsewhere. These observations prompt the question whether an experimental approach as applied during the construction of the Haringvliet sluices would be allowed for in modern infrastructure projects of comparable impact, size and costs. A second question to be studied should be what happened after the completion of the Haringvliet sluices, when this infrastructure had to be operated and in a context in which environmental issues gradually became more prominent and eventually integrated into the water management practice.

Preparing for Organisational Learning by HK Infrastructure Project Joint Ventures Organizations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walker, Derek H. T.; Johannes, Derick S.

2003-01-01

Interviews with nine Hong Kong managers involved in joint ventures with other organizations focused on the organizational learning aspects of collaboration: attitudes toward interorganizational learning, acquisition of knowledge assets, and learning motivation. An important motivation for developing alliances was to learn from each other, fill…

An Architecture for Online Laboratory E-Learning System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duan, Bing; Hosseini, Habib Mir M.; Ling, Keck Voon; Gay, Robert Kheng Leng

2006-01-01

Internet-based learning systems, or e-learning, are widely available in institutes, universities, and industrial companies, hosting regular or continuous education programs. The dream of teaching and learning from anywhere and at anytime becomes a reality due to the construction of e-learning infrastructure. Traditional teaching materials and…

Lessons for the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure : international case study analysis

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2002-01-01

This report presents a RAND analysis of international collaboration for the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI). Ten in-depth international and regional collaboration case studies were conducted to assess lessons learned for GSDI development an...

Using i2b2 to Bootstrap Rural Health Analytics and Learning Networks

PubMed Central

Harris, Daniel R.; Baus, Adam D.; Harper, Tamela J.; Jarrett, Traci D.; Pollard, Cecil R.; Talbert, Jeffery C.

2017-01-01

We demonstrate that the open-source i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside) data model can be used to bootstrap rural health analytics and learning networks. These networks promote communication and research initiatives by providing the infrastructure necessary for sharing data and insights across a group of healthcare and research partners. Data integration remains a crucial challenge in connecting rural healthcare sites with a common data sharing and learning network due to the lack of interoperability and standards within electronic health records. The i2b2 data model acts as a point of convergence for disparate data from multiple healthcare sites. A consistent and natural data model for healthcare data is essential for overcoming integration issues, but challenges such as those caused by weak data standardization must still be addressed. We describe our experience in the context of building the West Virginia/Kentucky Health Analytics and Learning Network, a collaborative, multi-state effort connecting rural healthcare sites. PMID:28261006

Using i2b2 to Bootstrap Rural Health Analytics and Learning Networks.

PubMed

Harris, Daniel R; Baus, Adam D; Harper, Tamela J; Jarrett, Traci D; Pollard, Cecil R; Talbert, Jeffery C

2016-08-01

We demonstrate that the open-source i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside) data model can be used to bootstrap rural health analytics and learning networks. These networks promote communication and research initiatives by providing the infrastructure necessary for sharing data and insights across a group of healthcare and research partners. Data integration remains a crucial challenge in connecting rural healthcare sites with a common data sharing and learning network due to the lack of interoperability and standards within electronic health records. The i2b2 data model acts as a point of convergence for disparate data from multiple healthcare sites. A consistent and natural data model for healthcare data is essential for overcoming integration issues, but challenges such as those caused by weak data standardization must still be addressed. We describe our experience in the context of building the West Virginia/Kentucky Health Analytics and Learning Network, a collaborative, multi-state effort connecting rural healthcare sites.

Stochastic Hybrid Systems Modeling and Middleware-enabled DDDAS for Next-generation US Air Force Systems

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-03-30

experimental evaluations for hosting DDDAS-like applications in public cloud infrastructures . Finally, we report on ongoing work towards using the DDDAS...developed and their experimental evaluations for hosting DDDAS-like applications in public cloud infrastructures . Finally, we report on ongoing work towards...Dynamic resource management, model learning, simulation-based optimizations, cloud infrastructures for DDDAS applications. I. INTRODUCTION Critical cyber

Implementing Infrastructures for Managing Learning Objects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klemke, Roland; Ternier, Stefaan; Kalz, Marco; Specht, Marcus

2010-01-01

Making learning objects available is critical to reuse learning resources. Making content transparently available and providing added value to different stakeholders is among the goals of the European Commission's eContentplus programme. This paper analyses standards and protocols relevant for making learning objects accessible in distributed data…

Early Formulation Model-centric Engineering on Nasa's Europa Mission Concept Study

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bayer, Todd; Chung, Seung; Cole, Bjorn; Cooke, Brian; Dekens, Frank; Delp, Chris; Gontijo, I.; Lewis, Kari; Moshir, Mehrdad; Rasmussen, Robert;

Viable School Improvement Requires a Developmental Strategy that Moves beyond the Skewed Wish List and Reworks Operational Infrastructure. A Center Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA, 2011

2011-01-01

factors affecting learning and teaching and how the operational infrastructure is reworked to enable strategic and effective development of essential interventions. This is especially so for schools that…

E-Learning Capability Maturity Level in Kingdom of Bahrain

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-Ammary, Jaflah; Mohammed, Zainab; Omran, Fatima

2016-01-01

Despite the effectiveness of using e-learning, educational institutions are still facing many challenges with the e-learning infrastructure and technical aspects, practices and capabilities, and improvement in learning outcome. Hence, a need for framework to benchmark the e-learning capability maturity level and measure the extent to what it is…

The child and adolescent psychiatry trials network (CAPTN): infrastructure development and lessons learned

PubMed Central

Shapiro, Mark; Silva, Susan G; Compton, Scott; Chrisman, Allan; DeVeaugh-Geiss, Joseph; Breland-Noble, Alfiee; Kondo, Douglas; Kirchner, Jerry; March, John S

2009-01-01

Background In 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health funded the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Trials Network (CAPTN) under the Advanced Center for Services and Intervention Research (ACSIR) mechanism. At the time, CAPTN was believed to be both a highly innovative undertaking and a highly speculative one. One reviewer even suggested that CAPTN was "unlikely to succeed, but would be a valuable learning experience for the field." Objective To describe valuable lessons learned in building a clinical research network in pediatric psychiatry, including innovations intended to decrease barriers to research participation. Methods The CAPTN Team has completed construction of the CAPTN network infrastructure, conducted a large, multi-center psychometric study of a novel adverse event reporting tool, and initiated a large antidepressant safety registry and linked pharmacogenomic study focused on severe adverse events. Specific challenges overcome included establishing structures for network organization and governance; recruiting over 150 active CAPTN participants and 15 child psychiatry training programs; developing and implementing procedures for site contracts, regulatory compliance, indemnification and malpractice coverage, human subjects protection training and IRB approval; and constructing an innovative electronic casa report form (eCRF) running on a web-based electronic data capture system; and, finally, establishing procedures for audit trail oversight requirements put forward by, among others, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Conclusion Given stable funding for network construction and maintenance, our experience demonstrates that judicious use of web-based technologies for profiling investigators, investigator training, and capturing clinical trials data, when coupled to innovative approaches to network governance, data management and site management, can reduce the costs and burden and improve the feasibility of incorporating clinical research into routine clinical practice. Having successfully achieved its initial aim of constructing a network infrastructure, CAPTN is now a capable platform for large safety registries, pharmacogenetic studies, and randomized practical clinical trials in pediatric psychiatry. PMID:19320979

Lighting the Blue Touchpaper for UK e-Science - Closing Conference of ESLEA Project. ESLEA, March 26-28, 2007, Edinburgh

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clarke, Peter; Davenhall, Clive; Greenwood, Colin; Strong, Matthew

ESLEA, an EPSRC-funded project, aims to demonstrate the potential benefits of circuit-switched optical networks (lightpaths) to the UK e-Science community. This is being achieved by running a number of "proof of benefit" pilot applications over UKLight, the UK's first national optical research network. UKLight provides a new way for researchers to obtain dedicated "lightpaths" between remote sites and to deploy and test novel networking methods and technologies. It facilitates collaboration on global projects by providing a point of access to the fast growing international optical R&D infrastructure. A diverse range of data-intensive fields of academic endeavour are participating in the ESLEA project; all these groups require the integration of high-bandwidth switched lightpath circuits into their experimental and analysis infrastructure for international transport of high-volume applications data. In addition, network protocol research and development of circuit reservation mechanisms has been carried out to help the pilot applications to exploit the UKLight infrastructure effectively. Further information about ESLEA can be viewed at www.eslea.uklight.ac.uk. ESLEA activities are now coming to an end and work will finish from February to July 2007, depending upon the terms of funding of each pilot application. The first quarter of 2007 is considered the optimum time to hold a closing conference for the project. The objectives of the conference are to: 1. Provide a forum for the dissemination of research findings and learning experiences from the ESLEA project. 2. Enable colleagues from the UK and international e-Science communities to present, discuss and learn about the latest developments in networking technology. 3. Raise awareness about the deployment of the UKLight infrastructure and its relationship to SuperJANET 5. 4. Identify potential uses of UKLight by existing or future research projects

Using deliberative techniques to engage the community in policy development.

PubMed

Gregory, Judy; Hartz-Karp, Janette; Watson, Rebecca

2008-07-16

This paper examines work in deliberative approaches to community engagement used in Western Australia by the Department of Planning and Infrastructure and other planning and infrastructure agencies between 2001 and 2005, and considers whether the techniques could be applied to the development of health policy in Australia. Deliberative processes were used in WA to address specific planning and infrastructure problems. Using deliberative techniques, community participants contributed to joint decision making and policy development. Outcomes from deliberative processes were seriously considered by the Minister and used to influence policy decisions. In many cases, the recommendations generated through deliberative processes were fully adopted by the Minister. The experiences in WA demonstrate that deliberative engagement processes can be successfully implemented by government and can be used to guide policy. The techniques can be adapted to suit the context and issues experienced by a portfolio, and the skills required to conduct deliberative processes can be fostered amongst the portfolio's staff. Health policy makers may be able to learn from the experiences in WA, and adopt approaches to community engagement that allow for informed deliberation and debate in the community about the future of Australia's health system.

Cloud Infrastructure & Applications - CloudIA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sulistio, Anthony; Reich, Christoph; Doelitzscher, Frank

The idea behind Cloud Computing is to deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Services and Software-as-a-Service over the Internet on an easy pay-per-use business model. To harness the potentials of Cloud Computing for e-Learning and research purposes, and to small- and medium-sized enterprises, the Hochschule Furtwangen University establishes a new project, called Cloud Infrastructure & Applications (CloudIA). The CloudIA project is a market-oriented cloud infrastructure that leverages different virtualization technologies, by supporting Service-Level Agreements for various service offerings. This paper describes the CloudIA project in details and mentions our early experiences in building a private cloud using an existing infrastructure.

Exploring Cloud Computing for Distance Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

He, Wu; Cernusca, Dan; Abdous, M'hammed

2011-01-01

The use of distance courses in learning is growing exponentially. To better support faculty and students for teaching and learning, distance learning programs need to constantly innovate and optimize their IT infrastructures. The new IT paradigm called "cloud computing" has the potential to transform the way that IT resources are utilized and…

A Transformation of Learning: Use of the NII for Education and Lifelong Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Microcomputers for Information Management, 1995

1995-01-01

Suggests uses for the NII (National Information Infrastructure) for education and lifelong learning. Highlights include educational benefits of technology; current uses of telecommunications for education, including instructional video and distance learning; the role of various federal, state, and local agencies; telecommunications in the…

A Comprehensive Approach of E-learning Design for Effective Learning Transfer

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lim, Doo Hun

2012-01-01

Literature indicates that there is limited research on the national and organizational level decision processes to develop and deliver e-learning programs. In this paper, existing e-learning literature is analyzed in terms of national level factors (national culture, readiness for new technology, and infrastructure), organizational level factors…

Workload Reduction in Online Courses: Getting Some Shuteye

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunlap, Joanna C.

2005-01-01

Instructors are a key component of any successful facilitated, asynchronous online course. They are tasked with providing the infrastructure for learning; modeling effective participation, collaboration, and learning strategies; monitoring and assessing learning and providing feedback, remediation, and grades; troubleshooting and resolving…

GAS INJECTION/WELL STIMULATION PROJECT

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

John K. Godwin

2005-12-01

Driver Production proposes to conduct a gas repressurization/well stimulation project on a six well, 80-acre portion of the Dutcher Sand of the East Edna Field, Okmulgee County, Oklahoma. The site has been location of previous successful flue gas injection demonstration but due to changing economic and sales conditions, finds new opportunities to use associated natural gas that is currently being vented to the atmosphere to repressurize the reservoir to produce additional oil. The established infrastructure and known geological conditions should allow quick startup and much lower operating costs than flue gas. Lessons learned from the previous project, the lessons learnedmore » form cyclical oil prices and from other operators in the area will be applied. Technology transfer of the lessons learned from both projects could be applied by other small independent operators.« less

The AGING Initiative experience: a call for sustained support for team science networks.

PubMed

Garg, Tullika; Anzuoni, Kathryn; Landyn, Valentina; Hajduk, Alexandra; Waring, Stephen; Hanson, Leah R; Whitson, Heather E

2018-05-18

Team science, defined as collaborative research efforts that leverage the expertise of diverse disciplines, is recognised as a critical means to address complex healthcare challenges, but the practical implementation of team science can be difficult. Our objective is to describe the barriers, solutions and lessons learned from our team science experience as applied to the complex and growing challenge of multiple chronic conditions (MCC). MCC is the presence of two or more chronic conditions that have a collective adverse effect on health status, function or quality of life, and that require complex healthcare management, decision-making or coordination. Due to the increasing impact on the United States society, MCC research has been identified as a high priority research area by multiple federal agencies. In response to this need, two national research entities, the Healthcare Systems Research Network (HCSRN) and the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Centers (OAIC), formed the Advancing Geriatrics Infrastructure and Network Growth (AGING) Initiative to build nationwide capacity for MCC team science. This article describes the structure, lessons learned and initial outcomes of the AGING Initiative. We call for funding mechanisms to sustain infrastructures that have demonstrated success in fostering team science and innovation in translating findings to policy change necessary to solve complex problems in healthcare.

Identifying Green Infrastructure from Social Media and Crowdsourcing- An Image Based Machine-Learning Approach.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rai, A.; Minsker, B. S.

2016-12-01

In this work we introduce a novel dataset GRID: GReen Infrastructure Detection Dataset and a framework for identifying urban green storm water infrastructure (GI) designs (wetlands/ponds, urban trees, and rain gardens/bioswales) from social media and satellite aerial images using computer vision and machine learning methods. Along with the hydrologic benefits of GI, such as reducing runoff volumes and urban heat islands, GI also provides important socio-economic benefits such as stress recovery and community cohesion. However, GI is installed by many different parties and cities typically do not know where GI is located, making study of its impacts or siting new GI difficult. We use object recognition learning methods (template matching, sliding window approach, and Random Hough Forest method) and supervised machine learning algorithms (e.g., support vector machines) as initial screening approaches to detect potential GI sites, which can then be investigated in more detail using on-site surveys. Training data were collected from GPS locations of Flickr and Instagram image postings and Amazon Mechanical Turk identification of each GI type. Sliding window method outperformed other methods and achieved an average F measure, which is combined metric for precision and recall performance measure of 0.78.

Thinking about Distributed Learning? Issues and Questions To Ponder.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sorg, Steven

2001-01-01

Introduces other articles in this issue devoted to distributed learning at metropolitan universities. Discusses issues that institutions should address if considering distributed learning: institutional goals and strategic plans, faculty development needs and capabilities, student support services, technical and personnel infrastructure, policies,…

Hydrogen Infrastructure Testing and Research Facility

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

None

2017-04-10

Learn about the Hydrogen Infrastructure Testing and Research Facility (HITRF), where NREL researchers are working on vehicle and hydrogen infrastructure projects that aim to enable more rapid inclusion of fuel cell and hydrogen technologies in the market to meet consumer and national goals for emissions reduction, performance, and energy security. As part of NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), the HITRF is designed for collaboration with a wide range of hydrogen, fuel cell, and transportation stakeholders.

A Curriculum-Based Approach to Teaching Biosafety Through eLearning.

PubMed

Ndolo, Dennis O; Wach, Michael; Rüdelsheim, Patrick; Craig, Wendy

2018-01-01

Anyone working in biosafety capacity enhancement faces the challenge of ensuring that the impact of a capacity enhancing activity continues and becomes sustainable beyond the depletion of funding. Many training efforts face the limitation of one-off events: they only reach those people present at the time. It becomes incumbent upon the trainees to pass on the training to colleagues as best they can, whilst the demand for the training never appears to diminish. However, beyond the initial effort to establish the basic content, repeating capacity enhancement events in different locations is usually not economically feasible. Also, the lack of infrastructure and other resources needed to support a robust training programme hinder operationalizing a "train-the-trainer" approach to biosafety training. One way to address these challenges is through the use of eLearning modules that can be delivered online, globally, continuously, at low cost, and on an as-needed basis to multiple audiences. Once the modules are developed and peer-reviewed, they can be maintained on a remote server and made available to various audiences through a password-protected portal that delivers the programme content, administers preliminary and final exams, and provides the administrative infrastructure to register users and track their progress through the modules. Crucial to the implementation of such an eLearning programme is an approach in which the modules are intentionally developed together as a cohesive curriculum. Once developed, such a curriculum can be released as a stand-alone programme for the training of governmental risk assessors and regulators or used as accredited components in post-graduate degree programmes in biosafety, at minimal cost to the government or university. Examples from the portfolio of eLearning modules developed by the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) are provided to demonstrate these key features.

Educational Infrastructure Using Virtualization Technologies: Experience at Kaunas University of Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miseviciene, Regina; Ambraziene, Danute; Tuminauskas, Raimundas; Pažereckas, Nerijus

2012-01-01

Many factors influence education nowadays. Educational institutions are faced with budget cuttings, outdated IT, data security management and the willingness to integrate remote learning at home. Virtualization technologies provide innovative solutions to the problems. The paper presents an original educational infrastructure using virtualization…

A PKI Approach for Deploying Modern Secure Distributed E-Learning and M-Learning Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kambourakis, Georgios; Kontoni, Denise-Penelope N.; Rouskas, Angelos; Gritzalis, Stefanos

2007-01-01

While public key cryptography is continuously evolving and its installed base is growing significantly, recent research works examine its potential use in e-learning or m-learning environments. Public key infrastructure (PKI) and attribute certificates (ACs) can provide the appropriate framework to effectively support authentication and…

Using Taxonomic Indexing Trees to Efficiently Retrieve SCORM-Compliant Documents in e-Learning Grids

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shih, Wen-Chung; Tseng, Shian-Shyong; Yang, Chao-Tung

2008-01-01

With the flourishing development of e-Learning, more and more SCORM-compliant teaching materials are developed by institutes and individuals in different sites. In addition, the e-Learning grid is emerging as an infrastructure to enhance traditional e-Learning systems. Therefore, information retrieval schemes supporting SCORM-compliant documents…

How Can Organisations Learn: An Information Systems Development Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baxter, Gavin J.; Connolly, Thomas M.; Stansfield, Mark

2009-01-01

This article sets out to argue that organisations can learn but that they cannot do so in their own right without infrastructural support. This article further examines the notion that individuals in organisations also require the cognitive participation of the organisation itself as a learning entity to learn. The close reliance and affiliation…

E-Learning--Organizational Infrastructure and Tools for Specific Areas

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pontes, Elvis, Ed.; Silva, Anderson, Ed.; Guelfi, Adilson, Ed.; Kofuji, Sergio Takeo, Ed.

2012-01-01

Chapters in this book include: (1) Factors that Influence Academic Teacher's Acceptance of E-Learning Technology in Blended Learning Environment (Snjezana Babic); (2) Towards Economical E-Learning Educational Environments for Physically Challenged Students (Amir Zeid, Sarah S. Sakit, Noor A. Al-AbdulRazzaq, Mariam M. Al-Tattan, Fatima S. Sakit,…

Development and Validation of the Blended Learning Environment Instrument (BLEI) in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aljahni, Areej; Al-Begain, Khalid; Skinner, Heather

2014-01-01

Part of ongoing research into the efficacy of blended learning in higher education within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The need for, and development of, a Blended Learning Environment Instrument (BLEI) are explained. This new instrument assesses student perceptions across five core aspects of blended learning environments: Infrastructure,…

Digital Preservation and Deep Infrastructure; Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Progress Report and Workplan for 2002; Video Gaming, Education and Digital Learning Technologies: Relevance and Opportunities; Digital Collections of Real World Objects; The MusArt Music-Retrieval System: An Overview; eML: Taking Mississippi Libraries into the 21st Century.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Granger, Stewart; Dekkers, Makx; Weibel, Stuart L.; Kirriemuir, John; Lensch, Hendrik P. A.; Goesele, Michael; Seidel, Hans-Peter; Birmingham, William; Pardo, Bryan; Meek, Colin; Shifrin, Jonah; Goodvin, Renee; Lippy, Brooke

2002-01-01

One opinion piece and five articles in this issue discuss: digital preservation infrastructure; accomplishments and changes in the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative in 2001 and plans for 2002; video gaming and how it relates to digital libraries and learning technologies; overview of a music retrieval system; and the online version of the…

Globalisation, Consumption and the Learning Business.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Field, John

1995-01-01

Distance open learning represents both an outcome of and a primary factor in globalization. Despite investment in infrastructure, software, and human resources, demand for distance open learning in the European market remains constrained. The European Union's policies conceptualize a "European economic space" that ignores the real…

E-Learning Readiness in the Academic Sector of Thailand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laohajaratsang, Thanomporn

2009-01-01

As e-learning in the academic sector serves as a crucial driving force in the development of e-learning in Thailand, this article looks at e-learning readiness in Thailand with a focus on the academic sector. The article is divided into four parts: (1) a brief history of e-learning in Thailand; (2) the infrastructure related to e-learning…

Software Engineering Infrastructure in a Large Virtual Campus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cristobal, Jesus; Merino, Jorge; Navarro, Antonio; Peralta, Miguel; Roldan, Yolanda; Silveira, Rosa Maria

2011-01-01

Purpose: The design, construction and deployment of a large virtual campus are a complex issue. Present virtual campuses are made of several software applications that complement e-learning platforms. In order to develop and maintain such virtual campuses, a complex software engineering infrastructure is needed. This paper aims to analyse the…

Connecting the Dots: One Teacher's Story of Her Travels on the Information Superhighway.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bracey, Bonnie

2000-01-01

This teacher tells her story of venturing into technology-assisted learning and becoming a mentor for others. Highlights include project-based initiatives and professional development; the National Information Infrastructure and the Global Information Infrastructure; PowerUp and the Council of Regional Information Technology Associations(CRITA);…

Graduates' Perceptions towards UKM's Infrastructure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Omar, Ramli; Khoon, Koh Aik; Hamzah, Mohd Fauzi; Ahmadan, Siti Rohayu

2009-01-01

This paper reports on the surveys which were conducted between 2006 and 2008 on graduates' perceptions towards the infrastructure at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). It covered three major aspects pertaining to learning, living and leisure on campus. Eight out of 14 components received overwhelming approval from our graduates. (Contains 1…

Economic Benefits of Green Infrastructure in Lancaster PA

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This document outlines technical assistance for demonstrating how accounting for the multiple benefits of green infrastructure can provide a more complete assessment of infrastructure and community investments.

Management Classes as Online Learning Communities.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shrivastava, Paul

1999-01-01

Conceptualizes management education in the digital economy through the development of online leaning communities. Essential elements for building community are described: technology and content infrastructure, organizational learning model, managed interactivity, and facilitator retraining. (SK)

Blended Learning: A Dangerous Idea?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moskal, Patsy; Dziuban, Charles; Hartman, Joel

2013-01-01

The authors make the case that implementation of a successful blended learning program requires alignment of institutional, faculty, and student goals. Reliable and robust infrastructure must be in place to support students and faculty. Continuous evaluation can effectively track the impact of blended learning on students, faculty, and the…

Green Infrastructure Research and Demonstration at the Edison Environmental Center

EPA Science Inventory

This presentation will review the need for storm water control practices and will present a portion of the green infrastructure research and demonstration being performed at the Edison Environmental Center.

Does the Room Matter? Active Learning in Traditional and Enhanced Lecture Spaces.

PubMed

Stoltzfus, Jon R; Libarkin, Julie

2016-01-01

SCALE-UP-type classrooms, originating with the Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies project, are designed to facilitate active learning by maximizing opportunities for interactions between students and embedding technology in the classroom. Positive impacts when active learning replaces lecture are well documented, both in traditional lecture halls and SCALE-UP-type classrooms. However, few studies have carefully analyzed student outcomes when comparable active learning-based instruction takes place in a traditional lecture hall and a SCALE-UP-type classroom. Using a quasi-experimental design, we compared student perceptions and performance between sections of a nonmajors biology course, one taught in a traditional lecture hall and one taught in a SCALE-UP-type classroom. Instruction in both sections followed a flipped model that relied heavily on cooperative learning and was as identical as possible given the infrastructure differences between classrooms. Results showed that students in both sections thought that SCALE-UP infrastructure would enhance performance. However, measures of actual student performance showed no difference between the two sections. We conclude that, while SCALE-UP-type classrooms may facilitate implementation of active learning, it is the active learning and not the SCALE-UP infrastructure that enhances student performance. As a consequence, we suggest that institutions can modify existing classrooms to enhance student engagement without incorporating expensive technology. © 2016 J. R. Stoltzfus and J. Libarkin. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2016 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

Hospital nursing leadership-led interventions increased genomic awareness and educational intent in Magnet settings.

PubMed

Calzone, Kathleen A; Jenkins, Jean; Culp, Stacey; Badzek, Laurie

2017-11-13

The Precision Medicine Initiative will accelerate genomic discoveries that improve health care, necessitating a genomic competent workforce. This study assessed leadership team (administrator/educator) year-long interventions to improve registered nurses' (RNs) capacity to integrate genomics into practice. We examined genomic competency outcomes in 8,150 RNs. Awareness and intention to learn more increased compared with controls. Findings suggest achieving genomic competency requires a longer intervention and support strategies such as infrastructure and policies. Leadership played a role in mobilizing staff, resources, and supporting infrastructure to sustain a large-scale competency effort on an institutional basis. Results demonstrate genomic workforce competency can be attained with leadership support and sufficient time. Our study provides evidence of the critical role health-care leaders play in facilitating genomic integration into health care to improve patient outcomes. Genomics' impact on quality, safety, and cost indicate a leader-initiated national competency effort is achievable and warranted. Published by Elsevier Inc.

In Support of Coaching Models of Management and Leadership: A Comparative Study of Empirically Derived Managerial Coaching/Facilitating Learning Behaviors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hamlin, Bob; Ellinger, Andrea D.; Beattie, Rona S.

2004-01-01

The concept of managers assuming developmental roles such as coaches and learning facilitators has gained considerable attention in recent years as organizations seek to leverage learning by creating infrastructures that foster employee learning and development. Despite the increased focus on coaching, the literature base remains atheoretical.…

Distance Learning for Food Security and Rural Development: A Perspective from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McLean, Scott; Gasperini, Lavinia; Rudgard, Stephen

2002-01-01

The distance learning experiences of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization led to the following suggestions for applying distance learning strategies to the challenges of food security and rural development: use distance learning for the right reasons, be sensitive to context, use existing infrastructure, engage stakeholders, and…

Engineering novel habitats on urban infrastructure to increase intertidal biodiversity.

PubMed

Chapman, M G; Blockley, D J

2009-09-01

Urbanization replaces natural shorelines with built infrastructure, seriously impacting species living on these "new" shores. Understanding the ecology of developed shorelines and reducing the consequences of urban development to fauna and flora cannot advance by simply documenting changes to diversity. It needs a robust experimental programme to develop ways in which biodiversity can be sustained in urbanized environments. There have, however, been few such experiments despite wholesale changes to shorelines in urbanized areas. Seawalls--the most extensive artificial infrastructure--are generally featureless, vertical habitats that support reduced levels of local biodiversity. Here, a mimic of an important habitat on natural rocky shores (rock-pools) was experimentally added to a seawall and its impact on diversity assessed. The mimics created shaded vertical substratum and pools that retained water during low tide. These novel habitats increased diversity of foliose algae and sessile and mobile animals, especially higher on the shore. Many species that are generally confined to lowshore levels, expanded their distribution over a greater tidal range. In fact, there were more species in the constructed pools than in natural pools of similar size on nearby shores. There was less effect on the abundances of mobile animals, which may be due to the limited time available for recruitment, or because these structures did not provide appropriate habitat. With increasing anthropogenic intrusion into natural areas and concomitant loss of species, it is essential to learn how to build urban infrastructure that can maintain or enhance biodiversity while meeting societal and engineering criteria. Success requires melding engineering skills and ecological understanding. This paper demonstrates one cost-effective way of addressing this important issue for urban infrastructure affecting nearshore habitats.

Learn about the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF)

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Clean Water State Revolving Fund provides financial assistance for a range of water infrastructure projects. Learn how it works, project eligibility, and types of financial assistance it can provide for water quality projects.

IDEAL-NM Annual Report: School Year 2013-2014

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

New Mexico Public Education Department, 2015

2015-01-01

Innovative Digital Education and Learning-New Mexico (IDEAL-NM) was created in response to the 2005 Performance and Accountability Contract, "Making Schools Work" to leverage technology. On October 27, 2006, the statewide e-learning program that would implement a shared e-learning infrastructure using a single statewide learning…

Snapshot of a Hybrid Learning Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alexander, Mystica M.; Lynch, John E.; Rabinovich, Tamara; Knutel, Phillip G.

2014-01-01

In a time of flat enrollments in traditional higher education, online learning is booming. This article describes how one university evolved its programs to be on the forefront of the fastest-growing segment of online programs, hybrid learning. With a relatively minor investment in infrastructure, classes are delivered simultaneously to students…

A Web-Based Virtual Classroom System Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adewale, Olumide S.; Ibam, Emmanuel O.; Alese, B. K.

2012-01-01

The population of students all over the world is growing without a proportionate increase in teaching/learning resources/infrastructure. There is also much quest for learning in an environment that provides equal opportunities to all learners. The need to provide an equal opportunity learning environment that will hitherto improve the system of…

A Structural Model Proposal for Turkish Faculties of Education Regarding ICT Integration Indicators

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Akbulut, Yavuz

2010-01-01

A recent survey study with 2515 pre-service teachers suggested an underlying structure to shelter ICT integration indicators. Eleven indicators were extracted, which were Teaching-Learning Methods, E-learning, E-interaction, Learning Communities, Infrastructure, Access, Ease of Use, Technical Assistance, Policy, Special Education and Health. In…

E-Learning in Higher Education--Opportunities & Challenges for Dubai

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gokah, Theophilus K.; Gupta, Namrata; Ndiweni, Esinath

2015-01-01

E-Learning is becoming a popular delivery method across various universities and colleges in Dubai as the region is experiencing a rapid growth of e-Learning in higher education. Adequate infrastructure, changes in demographic profile, globalization, government initiatives, outsourcing and increasing demand for IT knowledge based jobs are the…

Learning Spaces and Pedagogic Change: Envisioned, Enacted and Experienced

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulcahy, Dianne; Cleveland, Ben; Aberton, Helen

2015-01-01

Building on work in how spaces of learning can contribute to the broader policy agenda of achieving pedagogic change, this article takes as its context the Building the Education Revolution infrastructure programme in Australia. Deploying a sociomaterial approach to researching learning spaces and pedagogic change and drawing on data from…

Capturing Teachers' Experience of Learning Design through Case Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Masterman, Elizabeth; Jameson, Jill; Walker, Simon

2009-01-01

This article distinguishes three dimensions to learning design: a technological infrastructure, a conceptual framework for practice that focuses on the creation of structured sequences of learning activities, and a way to represent and share practice through the use of mediating artefacts. Focusing initially on the second of these dimensions, the…

Extending the ARIADNE Web-Based Learning Environment.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Durm, Rafael; Duval, Erik; Verhoeven, Bart; Cardinaels, Kris; Olivie, Henk

One of the central notions of the ARIADNE learning platform is a share-and-reuse approach toward the development of digital course material. The ARIADNE infrastructure includes a distributed database called the Knowledge Pool System (KPS), which acts as a repository of pedagogical material, described with standardized IEEE LTSC Learning Object…

Designing a Responsive E-Learning Infrastructure: Systemic Change in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chow, Anthony S.; Croxton, Rebecca A.

2017-01-01

As university administrators respond to increasing demands of the educational market to offer greater opportunities for online learning, their capacity to create an economically stable, sustainable, yet rich teaching and learning environment deserves immediate and continued attention. A university-wide study involving 130 participants examined the…

A Connected History of Health and Education: Learning Together toward a Better City

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howard, Joanne; Howard, Diane; Dotson, Ebbin

2015-01-01

The infrastructure, financial, and human resource histories of health and education are offered as key components of future strategic planning initiatives in learning cities, and 10 key components of strategic planning initiatives designed to enhance the health and wealth of citizens of learning cities are discussed.

Development and Classroom Implementation of an Environmental Data Creation and Sharing Tool

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brogan, Daniel S.; McDonald, Walter M.; Lohani, Vinod K.; Dymond, Randel L.; Bradner, Aaron J.

2016-01-01

Education is essential for solving the complex water-related challenges facing society. The Learning Enhanced Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS) and the Online Watershed Learning System (OWLS) provide data creation and data sharing infrastructures, respectively, that combine to form an environmental learning tool. This system collects, integrates…

Network and computing infrastructure for scientific applications in Georgia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kvatadze, R.; Modebadze, Z.

2016-09-01

Status of network and computing infrastructure and available services for research and education community of Georgia are presented. Research and Educational Networking Association - GRENA provides the following network services: Internet connectivity, network services, cyber security, technical support, etc. Computing resources used by the research teams are located at GRENA and at major state universities. GE-01-GRENA site is included in European Grid infrastructure. Paper also contains information about programs of Learning Center and research and development projects in which GRENA is participating.

Sustainability considerations for health research and analytic data infrastructures.

PubMed

Wilcox, Adam; Randhawa, Gurvaneet; Embi, Peter; Cao, Hui; Kuperman, Gilad J

2014-01-01

The United States has made recent large investments in creating data infrastructures to support the important goals of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative effectiveness research (CER), with still more investment planned. These initial investments, while critical to the creation of the infrastructures, are not expected to sustain them much beyond the initial development. To provide the maximum benefit, the infrastructures need to be sustained through innovative financing models while providing value to PCOR and CER researchers. Based on our experience with creating flexible sustainability strategies (i.e., strategies that are adaptive to the different characteristics and opportunities of a resource or infrastructure), we define specific factors that are important considerations in developing a sustainability strategy. These factors include assets, expansion, complexity, and stakeholders. Each factor is described, with examples of how it is applied. These factors are dimensions of variation in different resources, to which a sustainability strategy should adapt. We also identify specific important considerations for maintaining an infrastructure, so that the long-term intended benefits can be realized. These observations are presented as lessons learned, to be applied to other sustainability efforts. We define the lessons learned, relating them to the defined sustainability factors as interactions between factors. Using perspectives and experiences from a diverse group of experts, we define broad characteristics of sustainability strategies and important observations, which can vary for different projects. Other descriptions of adaptive, flexible, and successful models of collaboration between stakeholders and data infrastructures can expand this framework by identifying other factors for sustainability, and give more concrete directions on how sustainability can be best achieved.

Education Outreach Associated with Technology Transfer in a Colonia of South Texas: Green Valley Farms Science and Space Club for Middle School Aged Children in Green Valley Farms, San Benito, Texas

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Potess, Marla D.; Rainwater, Ken; Muirhead, Dean

2004-01-01

Texas colonias are unincorporated subdivisions characterized by inadequate water and wastewater infrastructure, inadequate drainage and road infrastructure, substandard housing, and poverty. Since 1989 the Texas Legislature has implemented policies to halt further development of colonias and to address water and wastewater infrastructure needs in existing and new colonias along the border with Mexico. Government programs and non-government and private organization projects aim to address these infrastructure needs. Texas Tech University's Water Resources Center demonstrated the use of alternative on-site wastewater treatment in the Green Valley Farms colonia, San Benito, Texas. The work in Green Valley Farms was a component of a NASA-funded project entitled Evaluation of NASA's Advanced Life Support Integrated Water Recovery System for Non-Optimal Conditions and Terrestrial Applications. Two households within the colonia are demonstration sites for constructed wetlands. A colonia resident and activist identified educational opportunities for colonia children as a primary goal for many colonia residents. Colonia parents view education as the door to opportunity and escape from poverty for their children. The educational outreach component of the project in Green Valley Farms was a Science and Space Club for middle-school age students. Involved parents, schoolteachers, and school administrators enthusiastically supported the monthly club meetings and activities. Each month, students participated in interactive learning experiences about water use and reuse in space and on earth. Activities increased knowledge and interest in water resource issues and in science and engineering fields. The Institute for the Development and Enrichment of Advanced Learners (IDEAL) at Texas Tech University provided full scholarships for five students from Green Valley Farms to attend the Shake Hands With Your Future camp at Texas Tech University in June 2003. The educational outreach component was evaluated in February 2004 using survey instruments for students and parents, and interviews with science teachers and counselors.

78 FR 58186 - Approval and Promulgation of State Implementation Plan Revisions; Infrastructure Requirements for...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-09-23

... Approval and Promulgation of State Implementation Plan Revisions; Infrastructure Requirements for the 1997...) submissions from the State of Colorado to demonstrate that the SIP meets the infrastructure requirements of... NAAQS is promulgated, review their SIPs to ensure that they meet infrastructure requirements. The State...

3 CFR 13636 - Executive Order 13636 of February 12, 2013. Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. Repeated cyber intrusions into critical infrastructure demonstrate the need for improved cybersecurity. The cyber threat to critical infrastructure continues to grow... resilience of the Nation's critical infrastructure and to maintain a cyber environment that encourages...

An Open and Scalable Learning Infrastructure for Food Safety

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Manouselis, Nikos; Thanopoulos, Charalampos; Vignare, Karen; Geith, Christine

2013-01-01

In the last several years, a variety of approaches and tools have been developed for giving access to open educational resources (OER) related to food safety, security, and food standards, as well to various targeted audiences (e.g., farmers, agronomists). The aim of this paper is to present a technology infrastructure currently in demonstration…

Conditions for Ubiquitous Computing: What Can Be Learned from a Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lei, Jing

2010-01-01

Based on survey data and interview data collected over four academic years, this longitudinal study examined how a ubiquitous computing project evolved along with the changes in teachers, students, the human infrastructure, and technology infrastructure in the school. This study also investigated what conditions were necessary for successful…

Investing in the Improvement of Education: Lessons to be Learned from the National Writing Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

St. John, Mark; Stokes, Laura

2008-01-01

This paper defines the concept of "improvement infrastructure" and "educational capital" for education, and it uses the case of the National Writing Project to develop an extended, data-based illustration of the design and generativeness of an improvement infrastructure. Since 1983 there have been multiple "waves" of…

Creating Anytime, Anywhere Learning for All Students: Key Elements of a Comprehensive Digital Infrastructure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thigpen, Kamila

2014-01-01

While connecting the nation's schools and libraries to the internet by modernizing and expanding the federal E-rate program currently dominates education technology efforts, a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education urges that adequate broadband access be accompanied by a comprehensive "digital infrastructure" that unlocks…

Toward a Rhetoric of Infrastructure: Doing New Media Writing with Communities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Getto, Guiseppe

2011-01-01

In the following dissertation, I develop heuristics for collaboratively and sustainably contributing to community infrastructures through writing. Based on the findings of an observational study on how students enrolled in my first year composition and service-learning class created new media writing projects with community partners and were able…

Cloud Computing in Support of Applied Learning: A Baseline Study of Infrastructure Design at Southern Polytechnic State University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conn, Samuel S.; Reichgelt, Han

2013-01-01

Cloud computing represents an architecture and paradigm of computing designed to deliver infrastructure, platforms, and software as constructible computing resources on demand to networked users. As campuses are challenged to better accommodate academic needs for applications and computing environments, cloud computing can provide an accommodating…

Building and strengthening infrastructure for data exchange: lessons from the beacon communities.

PubMed

Torres, Gretchen W; Swietek, Karen; Ubri, Petry S; Singer, Rachel F; Lowell, Kristina H; Miller, Wilhelmine

2014-01-01

The Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program supports interventions, including care-delivery innovations, provider performance measurement and feedback initiatives, and tools for providers and consumers to enhance care. Using a learning health system framework, we examine the Beacon Communities' processes in building and strengthening health IT (HIT) infrastructures, specifically successes and challenges in sharing patient information to improve clinical care. In 2010, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) launched the three-year program, which provided $250 million to 17 Beacon Communities to invest in HIT and health information exchange (HIE) infrastructure. Beacon Communities used this funding to develop and disseminate HIT-enabled quality improvement practices found effective in particular community and practice environments. NORC conducted 7 site visits, November 2012-March 2013, selecting Communities to represent diverse program features. From August-October 2013, NORC held discussions with the remaining 10 Communities. Following each visit or discussion, NORC summarized the information gathered, including transcripts, team observations, and other documents the Community provided, to facilitate a within-Community analysis of context and stakeholders, intervention strategies, enabling factors, and challenges. Although each Community designed and implemented data-sharing strategies in a unique environment, similar challenges and enabling factors emerged across the Beacons. From a learning health system perspective, their strategies to build and strengthen data-sharing infrastructures address the following crosscutting priorities: promoting technical advances and innovations by helping providers adapt EHRs for data exchange and performance measurement with customizable IT and offering technical support to smaller, independent providers; engaging key stakeholders; and fostering transparent governance and stewardship of the infrastructure with neutral conveners. While all the Communities developed or strengthened data-exchange infrastructure, each did this in a unique environment of existing health care market and legal factors. The Communities, however, encountered similar challenges and enabling factors. Organizations undertaking collaborative data sharing, performance measurement and clinical transformation can learn from the Beacon Communities' experience.

Building and Strengthening Infrastructure for Data Exchange: Lessons from the Beacon Communities

PubMed Central

Torres, Gretchen W.; Swietek, Karen; Ubri, Petry S.; Singer, Rachel F.; Lowell, Kristina H.; Miller, Wilhelmine

2014-01-01

Introduction: The Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program supports interventions, including care-delivery innovations, provider performance measurement and feedback initiatives, and tools for providers and consumers to enhance care. Using a learning health system framework, we examine the Beacon Communities’ processes in building and strengthening health IT (HIT) infrastructures, specifically successes and challenges in sharing patient information to improve clinical care. Background: In 2010, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) launched the three-year program, which provided $250 million to 17 Beacon Communities to invest in HIT and health information exchange (HIE) infrastructure. Beacon Communities used this funding to develop and disseminate HIT-enabled quality improvement practices found effective in particular community and practice environments. Methods: NORC conducted 7 site visits, November 2012–March 2013, selecting Communities to represent diverse program features. From August–October 2013, NORC held discussions with the remaining 10 Communities. Following each visit or discussion, NORC summarized the information gathered, including transcripts, team observations, and other documents the Community provided, to facilitate a within-Community analysis of context and stakeholders, intervention strategies, enabling factors, and challenges. Results: Although each Community designed and implemented data-sharing strategies in a unique environment, similar challenges and enabling factors emerged across the Beacons. From a learning health system perspective, their strategies to build and strengthen data-sharing infrastructures address the following crosscutting priorities: promoting technical advances and innovations by helping providers adapt EHRs for data exchange and performance measurement with customizable IT and offering technical support to smaller, independent providers; engaging key stakeholders; and fostering transparent governance and stewardship of the infrastructure with neutral conveners. Conclusion: While all the Communities developed or strengthened data-exchange infrastructure, each did this in a unique environment of existing health care market and legal factors. The Communities, however, encountered similar challenges and enabling factors. Organizations undertaking collaborative data sharing, performance measurement and clinical transformation can learn from the Beacon Communities’ experience. PMID:25848619

Ensemble machine learning and forecasting can achieve 99% uptime for rural handpumps

PubMed Central

Thomas, Evan A.

2017-01-01

Broken water pumps continue to impede efforts to deliver clean and economically-viable water to the global poor. The literature has demonstrated that customers’ health benefits and willingness to pay for clean water are best realized when clean water infrastructure performs extremely well (>99% uptime). In this paper, we used sensor data from 42 Afridev-brand handpumps observed for 14 months in western Kenya to demonstrate how sensors and supervised ensemble machine learning could be used to increase total fleet uptime from a best-practices baseline of about 70% to >99%. We accomplish this increase in uptime by forecasting pump failures and identifying existing failures very quickly. Comparing the costs of operating the pump per functional year over a lifetime of 10 years, we estimate that implementing this algorithm would save 7% on the levelized cost of water relative to a sensor-less scheduled maintenance program. Combined with a rigorous system for dispatching maintenance personnel, implementing this algorithm in a real-world program could significantly improve health outcomes and customers’ willingness to pay for water services. PMID:29182673

Design of Adaptive Policy Pathways under Deep Uncertainties

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Babovic, Vladan

2013-04-01

The design of large-scale engineering and infrastructural systems today is growing in complexity. Designers need to consider sociotechnical uncertainties, intricacies, and processes in the long- term strategic deployment and operations of these systems. In this context, water and spatial management is increasingly challenged not only by climate-associated changes such as sea level rise and increased spatio-temporal variability of precipitation, but also by pressures due to population growth and particularly accelerating rate of urbanisation. Furthermore, high investment costs and long term-nature of water-related infrastructure projects requires long-term planning perspective, sometimes extending over many decades. Adaptation to such changes is not only determined by what is known or anticipated at present, but also by what will be experienced and learned as the future unfolds, as well as by policy responses to social and water events. As a result, a pathway emerges. Instead of responding to 'surprises' and making decisions on ad hoc basis, exploring adaptation pathways into the future provide indispensable support in water management decision-making. In this contribution, a structured approach for designing a dynamic adaptive policy based on the concepts of adaptive policy making and adaptation pathways is introduced. Such an approach provides flexibility which allows change over time in response to how the future unfolds, what is learned about the system, and changes in societal preferences. The introduced flexibility provides means for dealing with complexities of adaptation under deep uncertainties. It enables engineering systems to change in the face of uncertainty to reduce impacts from downside scenarios while capitalizing on upside opportunities. This contribution presents comprehensive framework for development and deployment of adaptive policy pathway framework, and demonstrates its performance under deep uncertainties on a case study related to urban water catchment in Singapore. Ingredients of this approach are: (a) transient scenarios (time series of various uncertain developments such as climate change, economic developments, societal changes), (b) a methodology for exploring many options and sequences of these options across different futures, and (c) a stepwise policy analysis. The strategy is applied on case of flexible deployment of novel, so-called Next Generation Infrastructure, and assessed in context of the proposed. Results of the study show that flexible design alternatives deliver much enhanced performance compared to systems optimized under deterministic forecasts of the future. The work also demonstrates that explicit incorporation of uncertainty and flexibility into decision-making process reduces capital expenditures while allowing decision makers to learn about system evolution throughout the lifetime of the project.

Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Healthcare System (SCILHS): Architecture

PubMed Central

Mandl, Kenneth D; Kohane, Isaac S; McFadden, Douglas; Weber, Griffin M; Natter, Marc; Mandel, Joshua; Schneeweiss, Sebastian; Weiler, Sarah; Klann, Jeffrey G; Bickel, Jonathan; Adams, William G; Ge, Yaorong; Zhou, Xiaobo; Perkins, James; Marsolo, Keith; Bernstam, Elmer; Showalter, John; Quarshie, Alexander; Ofili, Elizabeth; Hripcsak, George; Murphy, Shawn N

2014-01-01

We describe the architecture of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Healthcare System (SCILHS, http://www.SCILHS.org) clinical data research network, which leverages the $48 billion dollar federal investment in health information technology (IT) to enable a queryable semantic data model across 10 health systems covering more than 8 million patients, plugging universally into the point of care, generating evidence and discovery, and thereby enabling clinician and patient participation in research during the patient encounter. Central to the success of SCILHS is development of innovative ‘apps’ to improve PCOR research methods and capacitate point of care functions such as consent, enrollment, randomization, and outreach for patient-reported outcomes. SCILHS adapts and extends an existing national research network formed on an advanced IT infrastructure built with open source, free, modular components. PMID:24821734

Digital Learning in California's K-12 Schools. Just the Facts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Niu

2015-01-01

This fact page briefly discusses the following facts on digital learning in California's K-12: (1) As California implements new tests in its K-12 schools, technology infrastructure is a key concern; (2) Many districts are confident that they had enough bandwidth for online field tests; (3) Digital learning will require significantly greater…

The Role of a Reference Synthetic Data Generator within the Field of Learning Analytics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berg, Alan\tM.; Mol, Stefan T.; Kismihók, Gábor; Sclater, Niall

2016-01-01

This paper details the anticipated impact of synthetic "big" data on learning analytics (LA) infrastructures, with a particular focus on data governance, the acceleration of service development, and the benchmarking of predictive models. By reviewing two cases, one at the sector-wide level (the Jisc learning analytics architecture) and…

Models of Educational Computing @ Home: New Frontiers for Research on Technology in Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kafai, Yasmin B.; Fishman, Barry J.; Bruckman, Amy S.; Rockman, Saul

2002-01-01

Discusses models of home educational computing that are linked to learning in school and recommends the need for research that addresses the home as a computer-based learning environment. Topics include a history of research on educational computing at home; technological infrastructure, including software and compatibility; Internet access;…

Implementing eLearning Programmes for Higher Education: A Review of the Literature

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Neill, Kayte; Singh, Gurmak; O'Donoghue, John

2004-01-01

This paper is a consideration of the issues associated with the infrastructural aspects, pedagogic considerations and the need to associate the usefulness of technology to enhance the learning experience. This technological path will potentially enhance the learning process, not replace the lecturer or tutor. For lecturers and students, the…

An Ontology Infrastructure for an E-Learning Scenario

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guo, Wen-Ying; Chen, De-Ren

2007-01-01

Selecting appropriate learning services for a learner from a large number of heterogeneous knowledge sources is a complex and challenging task. This article illustrates and discusses how Semantic Web technologies such as RDF [resource description framework] and ontology can be applied to e-learning systems to help the learner in selecting an…

Teachers' Learning Communities: Catalyst for Change or a New Infrastructure for the Status Quo?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wood, Diane

2007-01-01

Background/Context: In an era of high stakes accountability, public school districts struggle to improve teaching and learning for all students. As a result, effective professional development approaches for teachers are a high priority. Recently, teachers' learning communities (LCs) have been recommended because successful LCs foster teacher…

Korean Content Management in e-Higher Education: Here and Hereafter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Insook

2006-01-01

Current trends in the management of e-learning content in Korean higher education are reviewed, along with important issues for future development. South Korean technological infrastructure, among the most advanced in the world, provides the necessary conditions for e-learning to proliferate, but as e-learning in higher education approaches a…

Shaping the Future of Learning Using the Student Voice: We're Listening but Are We Hearing Clearly?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meadows, Chris; Soper, Kate; Cullen, Rod; Wasiuk, Catherine; McAllister-Gibson, Colin; Danby, Phil

2016-01-01

Student voice data is a key factor as Manchester Metropolitan University strives to continually improve institutional technology enhanced learning (TEL) infrastructure. A bi-annual Institutional Student Survey enables students to communicate their experience of learning, teaching and assessment on programmes and specific units studied. Each cycle…

SparkText: Biomedical Text Mining on Big Data Framework.

PubMed

Ye, Zhan; Tafti, Ahmad P; He, Karen Y; Wang, Kai; He, Max M

Many new biomedical research articles are published every day, accumulating rich information, such as genetic variants, genes, diseases, and treatments. Rapid yet accurate text mining on large-scale scientific literature can discover novel knowledge to better understand human diseases and to improve the quality of disease diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. In this study, we designed and developed an efficient text mining framework called SparkText on a Big Data infrastructure, which is composed of Apache Spark data streaming and machine learning methods, combined with a Cassandra NoSQL database. To demonstrate its performance for classifying cancer types, we extracted information (e.g., breast, prostate, and lung cancers) from tens of thousands of articles downloaded from PubMed, and then employed Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Logistic Regression to build prediction models to mine the articles. The accuracy of predicting a cancer type by SVM using the 29,437 full-text articles was 93.81%. While competing text-mining tools took more than 11 hours, SparkText mined the dataset in approximately 6 minutes. This study demonstrates the potential for mining large-scale scientific articles on a Big Data infrastructure, with real-time update from new articles published daily. SparkText can be extended to other areas of biomedical research.

SparkText: Biomedical Text Mining on Big Data Framework

PubMed Central

He, Karen Y.; Wang, Kai

2016-01-01

Background Many new biomedical research articles are published every day, accumulating rich information, such as genetic variants, genes, diseases, and treatments. Rapid yet accurate text mining on large-scale scientific literature can discover novel knowledge to better understand human diseases and to improve the quality of disease diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. Results In this study, we designed and developed an efficient text mining framework called SparkText on a Big Data infrastructure, which is composed of Apache Spark data streaming and machine learning methods, combined with a Cassandra NoSQL database. To demonstrate its performance for classifying cancer types, we extracted information (e.g., breast, prostate, and lung cancers) from tens of thousands of articles downloaded from PubMed, and then employed Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Logistic Regression to build prediction models to mine the articles. The accuracy of predicting a cancer type by SVM using the 29,437 full-text articles was 93.81%. While competing text-mining tools took more than 11 hours, SparkText mined the dataset in approximately 6 minutes. Conclusions This study demonstrates the potential for mining large-scale scientific articles on a Big Data infrastructure, with real-time update from new articles published daily. SparkText can be extended to other areas of biomedical research. PMID:27685652

Effective collaborative learning in biomedical education using a web-based infrastructure.

PubMed

Wu, Yunfeng; Zheng, Fang; Cai, Suxian; Xiang, Ning; Zhong, Zhangting; He, Jia; Xu, Fang

2012-01-01

This paper presents a feature-rich web-based system used for biomedical education at the undergraduate level. With the powerful groupware features provided by the wiki system, the instructors are able to establish a community-centered mentoring environment that capitalizes on local expertise to create a sense of online collaborative learning among students. The web-based infrastructure can help the instructors effectively organize and coordinate student research projects, and the groupware features may support the interactive activities, such as interpersonal communications and data sharing. The groupware features also provide the web-based system with a wide range of additional ways of organizing collaboratively developed materials, which makes it become an effective tool for online active learning. Students are able to learn the ability to work effectively in teams, with an improvement of project management, design collaboration, and technical writing skills. With the fruitful outcomes in recent years, it is positively thought that the web-based collaborative learning environment can perform an excellent shift away from the conventional instructor-centered teaching to community- centered collaborative learning in the undergraduate education.

TRANSVAC research infrastructure - Results and lessons learned from the European network of vaccine research and development.

PubMed

Geels, Mark J; Thøgersen, Regitze L; Guzman, Carlos A; Ho, Mei Mei; Verreck, Frank; Collin, Nicolas; Robertson, James S; McConkey, Samuel J; Kaufmann, Stefan H E; Leroy, Odile

2015-10-05

TRANSVAC was a collaborative infrastructure project aimed at enhancing European translational vaccine research and training. The objective of this four year project (2009-2013), funded under the European Commission's (EC) seventh framework programme (FP7), was to support European collaboration in the vaccine field, principally through the provision of transnational access (TNA) to critical vaccine research and development (R&D) infrastructures, as well as by improving and harmonising the services provided by these infrastructures through joint research activities (JRA). The project successfully provided all available services to advance 29 projects and, through engaging all vaccine stakeholders, successfully laid down the blueprint for the implementation of a permanent research infrastructure for early vaccine R&D in Europe. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Self-Learning Embedded System for Object Identification in Intelligent Infrastructure Sensors.

PubMed

Villaverde, Monica; Perez, David; Moreno, Felix

2015-11-17

The emergence of new horizons in the field of travel assistant management leads to the development of cutting-edge systems focused on improving the existing ones. Moreover, new opportunities are being also presented since systems trend to be more reliable and autonomous. In this paper, a self-learning embedded system for object identification based on adaptive-cooperative dynamic approaches is presented for intelligent sensor's infrastructures. The proposed system is able to detect and identify moving objects using a dynamic decision tree. Consequently, it combines machine learning algorithms and cooperative strategies in order to make the system more adaptive to changing environments. Therefore, the proposed system may be very useful for many applications like shadow tolls since several types of vehicles may be distinguished, parking optimization systems, improved traffic conditions systems, etc.

Infrastructure to support learning health systems: are we there yet? Innovative solutions and lessons learned from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act CER investments.

PubMed

Holve, Erin; Segal, Courtney

2014-11-01

The 11 big health data networks participating in the AcademyHealth Electronic Data Methods Forum represent cutting-edge efforts to harness the power of big health data for research and quality improvement. This paper is a comparative case study based on site visits conducted with a subset of these large infrastructure grants funded through the Recovery Act, in which four key issues emerge that can inform the evolution of learning health systems, including the importance of acknowledging the challenges of scaling specialized expertise needed to manage and run CER networks; the delicate balance between privacy protections and the utility of distributed networks; emerging community engagement strategies; and the complexities of developing a robust business model for multi-use networks.

Using Cloud Computing infrastructure with CloudBioLinux, CloudMan and Galaxy

PubMed Central

Afgan, Enis; Chapman, Brad; Jadan, Margita; Franke, Vedran; Taylor, James

2012-01-01

Cloud computing has revolutionized availability and access to computing and storage resources; making it possible to provision a large computational infrastructure with only a few clicks in a web browser. However, those resources are typically provided in the form of low-level infrastructure components that need to be procured and configured before use. In this protocol, we demonstrate how to utilize cloud computing resources to perform open-ended bioinformatics analyses, with fully automated management of the underlying cloud infrastructure. By combining three projects, CloudBioLinux, CloudMan, and Galaxy into a cohesive unit, we have enabled researchers to gain access to more than 100 preconfigured bioinformatics tools and gigabytes of reference genomes on top of the flexible cloud computing infrastructure. The protocol demonstrates how to setup the available infrastructure and how to use the tools via a graphical desktop interface, a parallel command line interface, and the web-based Galaxy interface. PMID:22700313

Using cloud computing infrastructure with CloudBioLinux, CloudMan, and Galaxy.

PubMed

Afgan, Enis; Chapman, Brad; Jadan, Margita; Franke, Vedran; Taylor, James

2012-06-01

Cloud computing has revolutionized availability and access to computing and storage resources, making it possible to provision a large computational infrastructure with only a few clicks in a Web browser. However, those resources are typically provided in the form of low-level infrastructure components that need to be procured and configured before use. In this unit, we demonstrate how to utilize cloud computing resources to perform open-ended bioinformatic analyses, with fully automated management of the underlying cloud infrastructure. By combining three projects, CloudBioLinux, CloudMan, and Galaxy, into a cohesive unit, we have enabled researchers to gain access to more than 100 preconfigured bioinformatics tools and gigabytes of reference genomes on top of the flexible cloud computing infrastructure. The protocol demonstrates how to set up the available infrastructure and how to use the tools via a graphical desktop interface, a parallel command-line interface, and the Web-based Galaxy interface.

Self-Development of Competences for Social Inclusion Using the TENCompetence Infrastructure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Louys, Amelie; Hernandez-Leo, Davinia; Schoonenboom, Judith; Lemmers, Ruud; Perez-Sanagustin, Mar

2009-01-01

This paper describes a pilot study centred on the technology-enhanced self-development of competences in lifelong learning education carried out in the challenging context of the Association of Participants Agora. The pilot study shows that the use of the TENCompetence infrastructure, i.e. in this case the Personal Development Planner tool,…

Implementation of an Intelligent Tutorial System for Socioenvironmental Management Projects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vera, Gil; Daniel, Víctor; Awad, Gabriel

2015-01-01

The agents responsible of execution of physical infrastructure projects of the Government of Antioquia must know the theories and concepts related to the socio-environmental management of physical infrastructure projects. In the absence of tools and the little information on the subject, it is necessary to build a m-learning tool to facilitate to…

The Broadband Imperative: Recommendations to Address K-12 Education Infrastructure Needs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fox, Christine; Waters, John; Fletcher, Geoff; Levin, Douglas

2012-01-01

It is a simple fact that access to high-speed broadband is now as vital a component of K-12 school infrastructure as electricity, air conditioning, and heating. The same tools and resources that have transformed educators' personal, civic, and professional lives must be part of learning experiences intended to prepare today's students for college…

Organizing English Learner Instruction in New Immigrant Destinations: District Infrastructure and Subject-Specific School Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hopkins, Megan; Lowenhaupt, Rebecca; Sweet, Tracy M.

2015-01-01

In the context of shifting demographics and standards-based reform, school districts in new immigrant destinations are charged with designing infrastructures that support teaching and learning for English learners (ELs) in core academic subjects. This article uses qualitative data and social network analysis to examine how one district in the…

Satellite Schools: The Private Provision of School Infrastructure. Policy Insight Number 153.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beales, Janet R.

1992-01-01

The private-sector provision of school infrastructure in the form of satellite schools is discussed in this paper. Following the introduction, section 2 presents a case study of Satellite Learning Centers in Dade County, Florida, in which the schools operate as public schools on business worksites. The host-business, American Bankers Insurance…

Sustainability Considerations for Health Research and Analytic Data Infrastructures

PubMed Central

Wilcox, Adam; Randhawa, Gurvaneet; Embi, Peter; Cao, Hui; Kuperman, Gilad J.

2014-01-01

Introduction: The United States has made recent large investments in creating data infrastructures to support the important goals of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) and comparative effectiveness research (CER), with still more investment planned. These initial investments, while critical to the creation of the infrastructures, are not expected to sustain them much beyond the initial development. To provide the maximum benefit, the infrastructures need to be sustained through innovative financing models while providing value to PCOR and CER researchers. Sustainability Factors: Based on our experience with creating flexible sustainability strategies (i.e., strategies that are adaptive to the different characteristics and opportunities of a resource or infrastructure), we define specific factors that are important considerations in developing a sustainability strategy. These factors include assets, expansion, complexity, and stakeholders. Each factor is described, with examples of how it is applied. These factors are dimensions of variation in different resources, to which a sustainability strategy should adapt. Summary Observations: We also identify specific important considerations for maintaining an infrastructure, so that the long-term intended benefits can be realized. These observations are presented as lessons learned, to be applied to other sustainability efforts. We define the lessons learned, relating them to the defined sustainability factors as interactions between factors. Conclusion and Next Steps: Using perspectives and experiences from a diverse group of experts, we define broad characteristics of sustainability strategies and important observations, which can vary for different projects. Other descriptions of adaptive, flexible, and successful models of collaboration between stakeholders and data infrastructures can expand this framework by identifying other factors for sustainability, and give more concrete directions on how sustainability can be best achieved. PMID:25848610

Exploring the Earth Using Deep Learning Techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Larraondo, P. R.; Evans, B. J. K.; Antony, J.

2016-12-01

Research using deep neural networks have significantly matured in recent times, and there is now a surge in interest to apply such methods to Earth systems science and the geosciences. When combined with Big Data, we believe there are opportunities for significantly transforming a number of areas relevant to researchers and policy makers. In particular, by using a combination of data from a range of satellite Earth observations as well as computer simulations from climate models and reanalysis, we can gain new insights into the information that is locked within the data. Global geospatial datasets describe a wide range of physical and chemical parameters, which are mostly available using regular grids covering large spatial and temporal extents. This makes them perfect candidates to apply deep learning methods. So far, these techniques have been successfully applied to image analysis through the use of convolutional neural networks. However, this is only one field of interest, and there is potential for many more use cases to be explored. The deep learning algorithms require fast access to large amounts of data in the form of tensors and make intensive use of CPU in order to train its models. The Australian National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) has recently augmented its Raijin 1.2 PFlop supercomputer with hardware accelerators. Together with NCI's 3000 core high performance OpenStack cloud, these computational systems have direct access to NCI's 10+ PBytes of datasets and associated Big Data software technologies (see http://geonetwork.nci.org.au/ and http://nci.org.au/systems-services/national-facility/nerdip/). To effectively use these computing infrastructures requires that both the data and software are organised in a way that readily supports the deep learning software ecosystem. Deep learning software, such as the open source TensorFlow library, has allowed us to demonstrate the possibility of generating geospatial models by combining information from our different data sources. This opens the door to an exciting new way of generating products and extracting features that have previously been labour intensive. In this paper, we will explore some of these geospatial use cases and share some of the lessons learned from this experience.

Historical maintenance relevant information road-map for a self-learning maintenance prediction procedural approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morales, Francisco J.; Reyes, Antonio; Cáceres, Noelia; Romero, Luis M.; Benitez, Francisco G.; Morgado, Joao; Duarte, Emanuel; Martins, Teresa

2017-09-01

A large percentage of transport infrastructures are composed of linear assets, such as roads and rail tracks. The large social and economic relevance of these constructions force the stakeholders to ensure a prolonged health/durability. Even though, inevitable malfunctioning, breaking down, and out-of-service periods arise randomly during the life cycle of the infrastructure. Predictive maintenance techniques tend to diminish the appearance of unpredicted failures and the execution of needed corrective interventions, envisaging the adequate interventions to be conducted before failures show up. This communication presents: i) A procedural approach, to be conducted, in order to collect the relevant information regarding the evolving state condition of the assets involved in all maintenance interventions; this reported and stored information constitutes a rich historical data base to train Machine Learning algorithms in order to generate reliable predictions of the interventions to be carried out in further time scenarios. ii) A schematic flow chart of the automatic learning procedure. iii) Self-learning rules from automatic learning from false positive/negatives. The description, testing, automatic learning approach and the outcomes of a pilot case are presented; finally some conclusions are outlined regarding the methodology proposed for improving the self-learning predictive capability.

Probability Distributome: A Web Computational Infrastructure for Exploring the Properties, Interrelations, and Applications of Probability Distributions.

PubMed

Dinov, Ivo D; Siegrist, Kyle; Pearl, Dennis K; Kalinin, Alexandr; Christou, Nicolas

2016-06-01

Probability distributions are useful for modeling, simulation, analysis, and inference on varieties of natural processes and physical phenomena. There are uncountably many probability distributions. However, a few dozen families of distributions are commonly defined and are frequently used in practice for problem solving, experimental applications, and theoretical studies. In this paper, we present a new computational and graphical infrastructure, the Distributome , which facilitates the discovery, exploration and application of diverse spectra of probability distributions. The extensible Distributome infrastructure provides interfaces for (human and machine) traversal, search, and navigation of all common probability distributions. It also enables distribution modeling, applications, investigation of inter-distribution relations, as well as their analytical representations and computational utilization. The entire Distributome framework is designed and implemented as an open-source, community-built, and Internet-accessible infrastructure. It is portable, extensible and compatible with HTML5 and Web2.0 standards (http://Distributome.org). We demonstrate two types of applications of the probability Distributome resources: computational research and science education. The Distributome tools may be employed to address five complementary computational modeling applications (simulation, data-analysis and inference, model-fitting, examination of the analytical, mathematical and computational properties of specific probability distributions, and exploration of the inter-distributional relations). Many high school and college science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses may be enriched by the use of modern pedagogical approaches and technology-enhanced methods. The Distributome resources provide enhancements for blended STEM education by improving student motivation, augmenting the classical curriculum with interactive webapps, and overhauling the learning assessment protocols.

Probability Distributome: A Web Computational Infrastructure for Exploring the Properties, Interrelations, and Applications of Probability Distributions

PubMed Central

Dinov, Ivo D.; Siegrist, Kyle; Pearl, Dennis K.; Kalinin, Alexandr; Christou, Nicolas

2015-01-01

Probability distributions are useful for modeling, simulation, analysis, and inference on varieties of natural processes and physical phenomena. There are uncountably many probability distributions. However, a few dozen families of distributions are commonly defined and are frequently used in practice for problem solving, experimental applications, and theoretical studies. In this paper, we present a new computational and graphical infrastructure, the Distributome, which facilitates the discovery, exploration and application of diverse spectra of probability distributions. The extensible Distributome infrastructure provides interfaces for (human and machine) traversal, search, and navigation of all common probability distributions. It also enables distribution modeling, applications, investigation of inter-distribution relations, as well as their analytical representations and computational utilization. The entire Distributome framework is designed and implemented as an open-source, community-built, and Internet-accessible infrastructure. It is portable, extensible and compatible with HTML5 and Web2.0 standards (http://Distributome.org). We demonstrate two types of applications of the probability Distributome resources: computational research and science education. The Distributome tools may be employed to address five complementary computational modeling applications (simulation, data-analysis and inference, model-fitting, examination of the analytical, mathematical and computational properties of specific probability distributions, and exploration of the inter-distributional relations). Many high school and college science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses may be enriched by the use of modern pedagogical approaches and technology-enhanced methods. The Distributome resources provide enhancements for blended STEM education by improving student motivation, augmenting the classical curriculum with interactive webapps, and overhauling the learning assessment protocols. PMID:27158191

Unreliable Sustainable Infrastructure: Three Transformations to Guide Cities towards Becoming Healthy 'Smart Cities'

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

Sperling, Joshua; Fisher, Stephen; Reiner, Mark B.

The term 'leapfrogging' has been applied to cities and nations that have adopted a new form of infrastructure by bypassing the traditional progression of development, e.g., from no phones to cell phones - bypassing landlines all together. However, leapfrogging from unreliable infrastructure systems to 'smart' cities is too large a jump resulting in unsustainable and unhealthy infrastructure systems. In the Global South, a baseline of unreliable infrastructure is a prevalent problem. The push for sustainable and 'smart' [re]development tends to ignore many of those already living with failing, unreliable infrastructure. Without awareness of baseline conditions, uninformed projects run the riskmore » of returning conditions to the status quo, keeping many urban populations below targets of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. A key part of understanding the baseline is to identify how citizens have long learned to adjust their expectations of basic services. To compensate for poor infrastructure, most residents in the Global South invest in remedial secondary infrastructure (RSI) at the household and business levels. The authors explore three key 'smart' city transformations that address RSI within a hierarchical planning pyramid known as the comprehensive resilient and reliable infrastructure systems (CRISP) planning framework.« less

Information Infrastructure, Information Environments, and Long-Term Collaboration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baker, K. S.; Pennington, D. D.

2009-12-01

Information infrastructure that supports collaborative science is a complex system of people, organizational arrangements, and tools that require co-management. Contemporary studies are exploring how to establish and characterize effective collaborative information environments. Collaboration depends on the flow of information across the human and technical system components through mechanisms that create linkages, both conceptual and technical. This transcends the need for requirements solicitation and usability studies, highlighting synergistic interactions between humans and technology that can lead to emergence of group level cognitive properties. We consider the ramifications of placing priority on establishing new metaphors and new types of learning environments located near-to-data-origin for the field sciences. In addition to changes in terms of participant engagement, there are implications in terms of innovative contributions to the design of information systems and data exchange. While data integration occurs in the minds of individual participants, it may be facilitated by collaborative thinking and community infrastructure. Existing learning frameworks - from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to organizational learning - require modification and extension if effective approaches to decentralized information management and systems design are to emerge. Case studies relating to data integration include ecological community projects: development of cross-disciplinary conceptual maps and of a community unit registry.

A SCORM Thin Client Architecture for E-Learning Systems Based on Web Services

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Casella, Giovanni; Costagliola, Gennaro; Ferrucci, Filomena; Polese, Giuseppe; Scanniello, Giuseppe

2007-01-01

In this paper we propose an architecture of e-learning systems characterized by the use of Web services and a suitable middleware component. These technical infrastructures allow us to extend the system with new services as well as to integrate and reuse heterogeneous software e-learning components. Moreover, they let us better support the…

Internet-Based Public Health E-Learning Student Perceptions: An Evaluation from the People's Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Awofeso, Niyi; Philip, Keir; Heller, Richard F.

2012-01-01

Current public health training infrastructure and facilitators in most developing nations are insufficient relative to public health service delivery needs. We examined five areas of student perceptions of a web-based public health learning initiative, the Peoples-uni, which focused on: reasons for enrolling, learning expectations; technical…

Delivery of Open, Distance, and E-Learning in Kenya

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nyerere, Jackline Anyona; Gravenir, Frederick Q.; Mse, Godfrey S.

2012-01-01

The increased demand and need for continuous learning have led to the introduction of open, distance, and e-learning (ODeL) in Kenya. Provision of this mode of education has, however, been faced with various challenges, among them infrastructural ones. This study was a survey conducted in two public universities offering major components of ODeL,…

Challenging Ideals of Connected Learning: The Networked Configurations for Learning of Migrant Youth in the Netherlands

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de Haan, Mariette; Leander, Kevin; Ünlüsoy, Asli; Prinsen, Fleur

2014-01-01

New infrastructures that dramatically change our possibilities for knowledge production and learning have also brought forward ideals on "new" connectivity. Two important ideals of connectivity are that of the individual who tailors his or her knowledge among expansively dispersed resources, and the ideal of access to multiple, diverse…

Toward Global Real Time Hydrologic Modeling - An "Open" View From the Trenches

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nelson, J.

2015-12-01

Big Data has become a popular term to describe the exponential growth of data and related cyber infrastructure to process it so that better analysis can be performed and lead to improved decision-making. How are we doing in the hydrologic sciences? As part of a significant collaborative effort that brought together scientists from public, private, and academic organizations a new transformative hydrologic forecasting modeling infrastructure has been developed. How was it possible to go from deterministic hydrologic forecasts largely driven through manual interactions at 3600 stations to automated 15-day ensemble forecasts at 2.67 million stations? Earth observations of precipitation, temperature, moisture, and other atmospheric and land surface conditions form the foundation of global hydrologic forecasts, but this project demonstrates a critical component to harness these resources can be summed up in one word: OPEN. Whether it is open data sources, open software solutions with open standards, or just being open to collaborations and building teams across institutions, disciplines, and international boundaries, time and time again through my involvement in the development of a high-resolution real time global hydrologic forecasting model I have discovered that in every aspect the sum has always been greater than the parts. While much has been accomplished, much more remains to be done, but the most important lesson learned has been to the degree that we can remain open and work together, the greater our ability will be to use big data hydrologic modeling resources to solve the world's most vexing water related challenges. This presentation will demonstrate a transformational global real time hydrologic forecasting application based on downscaled ECMWF ensemble forecasts, RAPID routing, and Tethys Platform for cloud computing and visualization with discussions of the human and cyber infrastructure connections that make it successful and needs moving forward.

Technology and the Future of Appalachian Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Winters, R. Oakley

1999-01-01

Proposes that Appalachia pursue an economic development strategy based on exporting knowledge and training. Partnerships between governments, private utilities, and institutions of higher learning could improve the telecommunications infrastructure, establish new learning products companies, instruct adults at their home and work places, expand…

The Broadband Imperative: Recommendations to Address K-12 Education Infrastructure Needs. Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fox, C.; Waters, J.; Fletcher, G.; Levin, D.

2012-01-01

It is a simple fact that access to high-speed broadband is now as vital a component of K-12 school infrastructure as electricity, air conditioning, and heating. The same tools and resources that have transformed educators' personal, civic, and professional lives must be part of learning experiences intended to prepare today's students for college…

Managing water resources infrastructure in the face of different values

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mostert, Erik

Water resources infrastructure (WRI) plays a key role in water management. It can serve or negatively affect some seven to ten different and sometimes conflicting values. WRI management is therefore not a purely technical issue. Economic analyses can help to some extent, but only for values related to current human use. Multi-criteria analysis can cover all values, but in the end WRI management is not an analytical issue, but a governance issue. Different governance paradigms exist: markets, hierarchies and “third alternatives”, such as common pool resources management and network management. This article presents social learning as the most promising paradigm. Positive experiences with social learning have been described and guidance on putting social learning into practice exists. Nonetheless, there are no magic solutions for managing WRI in the face of different values.

Shared Learning and the Drive to Improve Patient Safety: Lessons Learned from the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-01-01

the environmental, cultural, and infrastructure changes in health care that will be necessary to achieve significant, widespread patient safety...to improved patient outcomes. Achievement of improved patient safety requires enhanced health care leadership commitment and learning systems that... health care organizations and practitioners to work together to identify and solve patient safety problems. Providing safe care requires a learning

A Curriculum-Based Approach to Teaching Biosafety Through eLearning

PubMed Central

Ndolo, Dennis O.; Wach, Michael; Rüdelsheim, Patrick; Craig, Wendy

2018-01-01

Anyone working in biosafety capacity enhancement faces the challenge of ensuring that the impact of a capacity enhancing activity continues and becomes sustainable beyond the depletion of funding. Many training efforts face the limitation of one-off events: they only reach those people present at the time. It becomes incumbent upon the trainees to pass on the training to colleagues as best they can, whilst the demand for the training never appears to diminish. However, beyond the initial effort to establish the basic content, repeating capacity enhancement events in different locations is usually not economically feasible. Also, the lack of infrastructure and other resources needed to support a robust training programme hinder operationalizing a “train-the-trainer” approach to biosafety training. One way to address these challenges is through the use of eLearning modules that can be delivered online, globally, continuously, at low cost, and on an as-needed basis to multiple audiences. Once the modules are developed and peer-reviewed, they can be maintained on a remote server and made available to various audiences through a password-protected portal that delivers the programme content, administers preliminary and final exams, and provides the administrative infrastructure to register users and track their progress through the modules. Crucial to the implementation of such an eLearning programme is an approach in which the modules are intentionally developed together as a cohesive curriculum. Once developed, such a curriculum can be released as a stand-alone programme for the training of governmental risk assessors and regulators or used as accredited components in post-graduate degree programmes in biosafety, at minimal cost to the government or university. Examples from the portfolio of eLearning modules developed by the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) are provided to demonstrate these key features. PMID:29755974

Demonstration of Green/Gray Infrastructure for Combined Sewer Overflow Control

EPA Science Inventory

This project is a major national demonstration of the integration of green and gray infrastructure for combined sewer overflow (CSO) control in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. It will use Kansas City, MO, as a case example. The project will have a major in...

E-Learning Trends and Hypes in Academic Teaching. Methodology and Findings of a Trend Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fischer, Helge; Heise, Linda; Heinz, Matthias; Moebius, Kathrin; Koehler, Thomas

2014-01-01

What comes next in the field of academic e-learning? Which e-learning trends will dominate the discourse at universities? Answering such questions is the basis for the adaptation of service strategies and IT-infrastructures within institutions of Higher Education. The present paper therefore introduces methodology and findings of a trend study in…

"The Spiral Model for the Development of Coordination": A Learning Model Based on Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-Dor, Nira

2006-01-01

The objective of this study is to present "The Spiral Model for the Development of Coordination" (SMDC), a learning model that reflects the complexity and possibilities embodied in the learning of movement notation Eshkol-Wachman (EWMN), an Israeli invention. This model constituted the infrastructure for a comprehensive study that examined the…

Building a New Generation of Learning: Conversations to Catalyze Our Construction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Milliron, Mark David; Plinske, Kathleen; Noonan-Terry, Coral

2008-01-01

Rather than focus primarily on the next generation of learners, the authors argue we are best served to focus on building out our on-ground and online infrastructures for a new generation of learning--blending multiple learning modes, technologies, and techniques over the course of the next 15-20 years to serve the diverse array of students from…

The Place of Multiple Intelligence in Achieving the Objectives and Goals of Open and Distance Learning Institutions: A Critical Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ojo, Olugbenga David; Olakulehin, Felix Kayode

2006-01-01

This paper examined the nature of open and distance learning institutions as organizations where synergy of efforts of all personnel is required in order to achieve the aims and objectives of the institution. It explored the huge infrastructural and personnel requirements of distance learning institutions, especially at inception, and the…

Aligning What We Do and What We Measure in Business Schools: Incorporating Active Learning and Effective Media Use in the Assessment of Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Serva, Mark A.; Fuller, Mark A.

2004-01-01

Current methods of evaluating learning and instruction have not kept pace with changes in learning theory, or with the transformed technological infrastructure of the modern business school classroom. Without reliable and valid instructional measurement systems, it is virtually impossible to benchmark new pedagogical techniques, assess the value…

Structural health monitoring of civil infrastructure.

PubMed

Brownjohn, J M W

2007-02-15

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is a term increasingly used in the last decade to describe a range of systems implemented on full-scale civil infrastructures and whose purposes are to assist and inform operators about continued 'fitness for purpose' of structures under gradual or sudden changes to their state, to learn about either or both of the load and response mechanisms. Arguably, various forms of SHM have been employed in civil infrastructure for at least half a century, but it is only in the last decade or two that computer-based systems are being designed for the purpose of assisting owners/operators of ageing infrastructure with timely information for their continued safe and economic operation. This paper describes the motivations for and recent history of SHM applications to various forms of civil infrastructure and provides case studies on specific types of structure. It ends with a discussion of the present state-of-the-art and future developments in terms of instrumentation, data acquisition, communication systems and data mining and presentation procedures for diagnosis of infrastructural 'health'.

Case-based learning in education of Traditional Chinese Medicine: a systematic review.

PubMed

Chen, Ji; Li, Ying; Tang, Yong; Zeng, Fang; Wu, Xi; Liang, Fanrong

2013-10-01

To assess the effect of case-based learning (CBL) in the education of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The studies concerning TCM courses designed with CBL were included by searching the databases of EBSCO, Pubmed, Science Citation Index, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chongqing VIP database. The valid data was extracted in accordance with the included criteria. The quality of the studies was assessed with Gemma Flores-Masteo. A total of 22 articles were retrieved that met the selection criteria: one was of high quality; two were of low quality; the rest were categorized as moderate quality. The majority of the studies demonstrated the better effect produced by CBL, while a few studies showed no difference, compared with the didactic format. All included studies confirmed the favorable effect on learners' attitude, skills and ability. CBL showed the desirable results in achieving the goal of learning. Compared to didactic approach, it played a more active role in promoting students' competency. Since the quality of the articles on which the study was based was not so high, the findings still need further research to become substantiated.

Transforming Our Cities: High-Performance Green Infrastructure (WERF Report INFR1R11)

EPA Science Inventory

The objective of this project is to demonstrate that the highly distributed real-time control (DRTC) technologies for green infrastructure being developed by the research team can play a critical role in transforming our nation’s urban infrastructure. These technologies include a...

Progress in Machine Learning Studies for the CMS Computing Infrastructure

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

Bonacorsi, Daniele; Kuznetsov, Valentin; Magini, Nicolo

Here, computing systems for LHC experiments developed together with Grids worldwide. While a complete description of the original Grid-based infrastructure and services for LHC experiments and its recent evolutions can be found elsewhere, it is worth to mention here the scale of the computing resources needed to fulfill the needs of LHC experiments in Run-1 and Run-2 so far.

Progress in Machine Learning Studies for the CMS Computing Infrastructure

DOE PAGES

Bonacorsi, Daniele; Kuznetsov, Valentin; Magini, Nicolo; ...

2017-12-06

Here, computing systems for LHC experiments developed together with Grids worldwide. While a complete description of the original Grid-based infrastructure and services for LHC experiments and its recent evolutions can be found elsewhere, it is worth to mention here the scale of the computing resources needed to fulfill the needs of LHC experiments in Run-1 and Run-2 so far.

Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Healthcare System (SCILHS): architecture.

PubMed

Mandl, Kenneth D; Kohane, Isaac S; McFadden, Douglas; Weber, Griffin M; Natter, Marc; Mandel, Joshua; Schneeweiss, Sebastian; Weiler, Sarah; Klann, Jeffrey G; Bickel, Jonathan; Adams, William G; Ge, Yaorong; Zhou, Xiaobo; Perkins, James; Marsolo, Keith; Bernstam, Elmer; Showalter, John; Quarshie, Alexander; Ofili, Elizabeth; Hripcsak, George; Murphy, Shawn N

2014-01-01

We describe the architecture of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Healthcare System (SCILHS, http://www.SCILHS.org) clinical data research network, which leverages the $48 billion dollar federal investment in health information technology (IT) to enable a queryable semantic data model across 10 health systems covering more than 8 million patients, plugging universally into the point of care, generating evidence and discovery, and thereby enabling clinician and patient participation in research during the patient encounter. Central to the success of SCILHS is development of innovative 'apps' to improve PCOR research methods and capacitate point of care functions such as consent, enrollment, randomization, and outreach for patient-reported outcomes. SCILHS adapts and extends an existing national research network formed on an advanced IT infrastructure built with open source, free, modular components. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Rural Areas in the Information Society: Diminishing Distance or Increasing Learning Capacity?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grimes, Seamus

2000-01-01

Examines prospects for rural areas within the Information Society, referring particularly to the European Union. Discusses effects of diminished distance from core markets, increased learning capacity through improved access to information, public policy emphasis on building infrastructure, disappointing outcomes for telecommunications initiatives…

Sectoral Patterns of Interactive Learning: An Empirical Exploration of a Case in a Dutch Region.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meeus, Marius T. H.; Oerlemans, Leon A. G.; Hage, Jerald

2001-01-01

Pursues the development of a theoretical framework that explains interactive learning between innovator firms and external actors in both the knowledge infrastructure and the production chain. Analyzes models in four sectors with distinct technological dynamics as distinguished by Pavitt. (DDR)

Intrusion detection system using Online Sequence Extreme Learning Machine (OS-ELM) in advanced metering infrastructure of smart grid.

PubMed

Li, Yuancheng; Qiu, Rixuan; Jing, Sitong

2018-01-01

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) realizes a two-way communication of electricity data through by interconnecting with a computer network as the core component of the smart grid. Meanwhile, it brings many new security threats and the traditional intrusion detection method can't satisfy the security requirements of AMI. In this paper, an intrusion detection system based on Online Sequence Extreme Learning Machine (OS-ELM) is established, which is used to detecting the attack in AMI and carrying out the comparative analysis with other algorithms. Simulation results show that, compared with other intrusion detection methods, intrusion detection method based on OS-ELM is more superior in detection speed and accuracy.

78 FR 73445 - Disapproval, Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plan Revisions...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-12-06

...] Disapproval, Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plan Revisions; Infrastructure... State of Wyoming to demonstrate that the SIP meets the infrastructure requirements of the Clean Air Act... revised NAAQS is promulgated, review their SIPs to ensure that they meet infrastructure requirements. The...

Fuzzy Logic Based Anomaly Detection for Embedded Network Security Cyber Sensor

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

Ondrej Linda; Todd Vollmer; Jason Wright

Resiliency and security in critical infrastructure control systems in the modern world of cyber terrorism constitute a relevant concern. Developing a network security system specifically tailored to the requirements of such critical assets is of a primary importance. This paper proposes a novel learning algorithm for anomaly based network security cyber sensor together with its hardware implementation. The presented learning algorithm constructs a fuzzy logic rule based model of normal network behavior. Individual fuzzy rules are extracted directly from the stream of incoming packets using an online clustering algorithm. This learning algorithm was specifically developed to comply with the constrainedmore » computational requirements of low-cost embedded network security cyber sensors. The performance of the system was evaluated on a set of network data recorded from an experimental test-bed mimicking the environment of a critical infrastructure control system.« less

Semantic Support for Complex Ecosystem Research Environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klawonn, M.; McGuinness, D. L.; Pinheiro, P.; Santos, H. O.; Chastain, K.

2015-12-01

As ecosystems come under increasing stresses from diverse sources, there is growing interest in research efforts aimed at monitoring, modeling, and improving understanding of ecosystems and protection options. We aimed to provide a semantic infrastructure capable of representing data initially related to one large aquatic ecosystem research effort - the Jefferson project at Lake George. This effort includes significant historical observational data, extensive sensor-based monitoring data, experimental data, as well as model and simulation data covering topics including lake circulation, watershed runoff, lake biome food webs, etc. The initial measurement representation has been centered on monitoring data and related provenance. We developed a human-aware sensor network ontology (HASNetO) that leverages existing ontologies (PROV-O, OBOE, VSTO*) in support of measurement annotations. We explicitly support the human-aware aspects of human sensor deployment and collection activity to help capture key provenance that often is lacking. Our foundational ontology has since been generalized into a family of ontologies and used to create our human-aware data collection infrastructure that now supports the integration of measurement data along with simulation data. Interestingly, we have also utilized the same infrastructure to work with partners who have some more specific needs for specifying the environmental conditions where measurements occur, for example, knowing that an air temperature is not an external air temperature, but of the air temperature when windows are shut and curtains are open. We have also leveraged the same infrastructure to work with partners more interested in modeling smart cities with data feeds more related to people, mobility, environment, and living. We will introduce our human-aware data collection infrastructure, and demonstrate how it uses HASNetO and its supporting SOLR-based search platform to support data integration and semantic browsing. Further we will present learnings from its use in three relatively diverse large ecosystem research efforts and highlight some benefits and challenges related to our semantically-enhanced foundation.

Tufts Health Sciences Database: lessons, issues, and opportunities.

PubMed

Lee, Mary Y; Albright, Susan A; Alkasab, Tarik; Damassa, David A; Wang, Paul J; Eaton, Elizabeth K

2003-03-01

The authors present their seven-year experience with developing the Tufts Health Sciences Database (Tufts HSDB), a database-driven information management system that combines the strengths of a digital library, content delivery tools, and curriculum management. They describe a future where online tools will provide a health sciences learning infrastructure that fosters the work of an increasingly interdisciplinary community of learners and allows content to be shared across institutions as well as with academic and commercial information repositories. The authors note the key partners in Tufts HSDB's success--the close collaboration of the health sciences library, educational affairs, and information technology staff. Tufts HSDB moved quickly from serving the medical curriculum to supporting Tufts' veterinary, dental, biomedical sciences, and nutrition schools, thus leveraging Tufts HSDB research and development with university-wide efforts including Internet2 middleware, wireless access, information security, and digital libraries. The authors identify major effects on teaching and learning, e.g., what is better taught with multimedia, how faculty preparation and student learning time can be more efficient and effective, how content integration for interdisciplinary teaching and learning is promoted, and how continuous improvement methods can be integrated. Also addressed are issues of faculty development, copyright and intellectual property, budgetary concerns, and coordinating IT across schools and hospitals. The authors describe Tufts' recent experience with sharing its infrastructure with other schools, and welcome inquiries from those wishing to explore national and international partnerships to create a truly open and integrated infrastructure for education across the health sciences.

Low carbon technology performance vs infrastructure vulnerability: analysis through the local and global properties space.

PubMed

Dawson, David A; Purnell, Phil; Roelich, Katy; Busch, Jonathan; Steinberger, Julia K

2014-11-04

Renewable energy technologies, necessary for low-carbon infrastructure networks, are being adopted to help reduce fossil fuel dependence and meet carbon mitigation targets. The evolution of these technologies has progressed based on the enhancement of technology-specific performance criteria, without explicitly considering the wider system (global) impacts. This paper presents a methodology for simultaneously assessing local (technology) and global (infrastructure) performance, allowing key technological interventions to be evaluated with respect to their effect on the vulnerability of wider infrastructure systems. We use exposure of low carbon infrastructure to critical material supply disruption (criticality) to demonstrate the methodology. A series of local performance changes are analyzed; and by extension of this approach, a method for assessing the combined criticality of multiple materials for one specific technology is proposed. Via a case study of wind turbines at both the material (magnets) and technology (turbine generators) levels, we demonstrate that analysis of a given intervention at different levels can lead to differing conclusions regarding the effect on vulnerability. Infrastructure design decisions should take a systemic approach; without these multilevel considerations, strategic goals aimed to help meet low-carbon targets, that is, through long-term infrastructure transitions, could be significantly jeopardized.

Learning Connected Civics: Narratives, Practices, Infrastructures

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ito, Mizuko; Soep, Elisabeth; Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta; Shresthova, Sangita; Gamber-Thompson, Liana; Zimmerman, Arely

2015-01-01

Bringing together popular culture studies and sociocultural learning theory, in this paper we formulate the concept of "connected civics," grounded in the idea that young people today are engaging in new forms of politics that are profoundly participatory. Often working in collaboration with adult allies, they leverage digital media and…

Selecting a Virtual World Platform for Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robbins, Russell W.; Butler, Brian S.

2009-01-01

Like any infrastructure technology, Virtual World (VW) platforms provide affordances that facilitate some activities and hinder others. Although it is theoretically possible for a VW platform to support all types of activities, designers make choices that lead technologies to be more or less suited for different learning objectives. Virtual World…

Thoughts on a Regional Approach for Lifelong Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yoshio, Jiro

An improved educational infrastructure must be developed in East and Southeast Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries in order to accommodate the surge of economic growth and advanced technology. The increased need for highly educated and skilled technicians can be met through a system of lifelong learning. The need for borderless…

Learning with Mobiles in Developing Countries: Technology, Language, and Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Traxler, John M.

2017-01-01

In the countries of the global South, the challenges of fixed infrastructure and environment, the apparent universality of mobile hardware, software and network technologies and the rhetoric of the global knowledge economy have slowed or impoverished the development of appropriate theoretical discourses to underpin learning with mobiles. This…

What have we learned about intelligent transportation systems? Chapter 2, What have we learned about freeway incident and emergency management and electronic toll collection?

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2000-12-01

The intelligent infrastructure is often the most visible manifestation of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) along with roads, freeways, and incident management is often among the first ITS elements implemented. They can significantly contribut...

The Future of Learning and Training in Augmented Reality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Kangdon

2012-01-01

Students acquire knowledge and skills through different modes of instruction that include classroom lectures with textbooks, computers, and the like. The availability and choice of learning innovation depends on the individual's access to technologies and on the infrastructure environment of the surrounding community. In this rapidly changing…

Learning Analytics Platform, towards an Open Scalable Streaming Solution for Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewkow, Nicholas; Zimmerman, Neil; Riedesel, Mark; Essa, Alfred

2015-01-01

Next generation digital learning environments require delivering "just-in-time feedback" to learners and those who support them. Unlike traditional business intelligence environments, streaming data requires resilient infrastructure that can move data at scale from heterogeneous data sources, process the data quickly for use across…

Distance Learning and Assistance Using Smart Glasses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spitzer, Michael; Nanic, Ibrahim; Ebner, Martin

2018-01-01

With the everyday growth of technology, new possibilities arise to support activities of everyday life. In education and training, more and more digital learning materials are emerging, but there is still room for improvement. This research study describes the implementation of a smart glasses app and infrastructure to support distance learning…

Improving Virtual Collaborative Learning through Canonical Action Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weber, Peter; Lehr, Christian; Gersch, Martin

2014-01-01

Virtual collaboration continues to gain in significance and is attracting attention also as virtual collaborative learning (VCL) in education. This paper addresses aspects of VCL that we identified as critical in a series of courses named "Net Economy": (1) technical infrastructure, (2) motivation and collaboration, and (3) assessment…

Designing for Learning Engagement in Remote Communities: Narratives from North of Sixty

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doering, Aaron; Henrickson, Jeni

2014-01-01

There are multiple challenges to designing learning experiences for schools in remote communities, including technology and infrastructure limitations, high teacher and administrator turnover, and conflicting interests between local culture and school curricula. In this paper, we offer a brief history of educational initiatives in remote Arctic…

An Infrastructure for Web-Based Computer Assisted Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Joy, Mike; Muzykantskii, Boris; Rawles, Simon; Evans, Michael

2002-01-01

We describe an initiative under way at Warwick to provide a technical foundation for computer aided learning and computer-assisted assessment tools, which allows a rich dialogue sensitive to individual students' response patterns. The system distinguishes between dialogues for individual problems and the linking of problems. This enables a subject…

An Organizational Model for Instructional Support at a Community College.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mundell, Jacqueline; Celene-Martel, Coryl; Braziunas, Tom

2003-01-01

Describes the Instructional and Information Support Services (IISS) division at North Seattle Community College, which brings together the college's library, media services, and distance learning units as well as the Teaching and Learning center to support instruction campus-wide. Discusses the campus technological infrastructure, online courses,…

Enterprise Approaches to Information and Learning Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferrell, Gill

2007-01-01

Like it or not, an institution's IT infrastructure is a matter with which institutional strategic planners must concern themselves. Information systems represent a significant investment, they perform mission-critical functions, and the appropriate use of information and learning technologies can have a critical part to play in delivering against…

Regulatory Enhancements, Infrastructure Modernization, and Connecticut's Interactive, Distance Learning Network.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pietras, Jesse John

This paper presents an overview of the regulatory, technological, and economic status of interactive distance learning in Connecticut as it relates to the current and future provisioning of services by the telecommunications and cable television industries. The review is predicated upon the following questions: (1) What obligations should the…

Learning to Succeed in a Flat World: Information and Communication Technologies for a New Generation of Business Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramirez, Alex; Hine, Michael; J.; Ji, Shaobo; Ulbrich, Frank; Riordan, Rob

2009-01-01

This article investigates the relationship of learning and its infrastructure using Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate the acquisition of skills needed to succeed in a global economy. We explore the learning phenomenon as a way to bring forward a process of continuous improvement supported by social software. We use a commonly accepted definition…

Social Justice and Out-of-School Science Learning: Exploring Equity in Science Television, Science Clubs and Maker Spaces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dawson, Emily

2017-01-01

This article outlines how social justice theories, in combination with the concepts of infrastructure access, literacies and community acceptance, can be used to think about equity in out-of-school science learning. The author applies these ideas to out-of-school learning via television, science clubs, and maker spaces, looking at research as well…

The Learning Environment in Clicker Classrooms: Student Processes of Learning and Involvement in Large University-Level Courses Using Student Response Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trees, April R.; Jackson, Michele H.

2007-01-01

To explore what social and educational infrastructure is needed to support classroom use of student response systems (Roschelle et al., 2004), this study investigated the ways in which student characteristics and course design choices were related to students' assessments of the contribution of clicker use to their learning and involvement in the…

Integrating operation design into infrastructure planning to foster robustness of planned water systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bertoni, Federica; Giuliani, Matteo; Castelletti, Andrea

2017-04-01

Over the past years, many studies have looked at the planning and management of water infrastructure systems as two separate problems, where the dynamic component (i.e., operations) is considered only after the static problem (i.e., planning) has been resolved. Most recent works have started to investigate planning and management as two strictly interconnected faces of the same problem, where the former is solved jointly with the latter in an integrated framework. This brings advantages to multi-purpose water reservoir systems, where several optimal operating strategies exist and similar system designs might perform differently on the long term depending on the considered short-term operating tradeoff. An operationally robust design will be therefore one performing well across multiple feasible tradeoff operating policies. This work aims at studying the interaction between short-term operating strategies and their impacts on long-term structural decisions, when long-lived infrastructures with complex ecological impacts and multi-sectoral demands to satisfy (i.e., reservoirs) are considered. A parametric reinforcement learning approach is adopted for nesting optimization and control yielding to both optimal reservoir design and optimal operational policies for water reservoir systems. The method is demonstrated on a synthetic reservoir that must be designed and operated for ensuring reliable water supply to downstream users. At first, the optimal design capacity derived is compared with the 'no-fail storage' computed through Rippl, a capacity design function that returns the minimum storage needed to satisfy specified water demands without allowing supply shortfall. Then, the optimal reservoir volume is used to simulate the simplified case study under other operating objectives than water supply, in order to assess whether and how the system performance changes. The more robust the infrastructural design, the smaller the difference between the performances of different operating strategies.

Improving linear transport infrastructure efficiency by automated learning and optimised predictive maintenance techniques (INFRALERT)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiménez-Redondo, Noemi; Calle-Cordón, Alvaro; Kandler, Ute; Simroth, Axel; Morales, Francisco J.; Reyes, Antonio; Odelius, Johan; Thaduri, Aditya; Morgado, Joao; Duarte, Emmanuele

2017-09-01

The on-going H2020 project INFRALERT aims to increase rail and road infrastructure capacity in the current framework of increased transportation demand by developing and deploying solutions to optimise maintenance interventions planning. It includes two real pilots for road and railways infrastructure. INFRALERT develops an ICT platform (the expert-based Infrastructure Management System, eIMS) which follows a modular approach including several expert-based toolkits. This paper presents the methodologies and preliminary results of the toolkits for i) nowcasting and forecasting of asset condition, ii) alert generation, iii) RAMS & LCC analysis and iv) decision support. The results of these toolkits in a meshed road network in Portugal under the jurisdiction of Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) are presented showing the capabilities of the approaches.

A knowledge infrastructure for occupational safety and health.

PubMed

van Dijk, Frank J H; Verbeek, Jos H; Hoving, Jan L; Hulshof, Carel T J

2010-12-01

Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) professionals should use scientific evidence to support their decisions in policy and practice. Although examples from practice show that progress has been made in evidence-based decision making, there is a challenge to improve and extend the facilities that support knowledge translation in practice. A knowledge infrastructure that supports OSH practice should include scientific research, systematic reviews, practice guidelines, and other tools for professionals such as well accessible virtual libraries and databases providing knowledge, quality tools, and good learning materials. A good infrastructure connects facilities with each other and with practice. Training and education is needed for OSH professionals in the use of evidence to improve effectiveness and efficiency. New initiatives show that occupational health can profit from intensified international collaboration to establish a good functioning knowledge infrastructure.

Electronic patient-reported data capture as a foundation of rapid learning cancer care.

PubMed

Abernethy, Amy P; Ahmad, Asif; Zafar, S Yousuf; Wheeler, Jane L; Reese, Jennifer Barsky; Lyerly, H Kim

2010-06-01

"Rapid learning healthcare" presents a new infrastructure to support comparative effectiveness research. By leveraging heterogeneous datasets (eg, clinical, administrative, genomic, registry, and research), health information technology, and sophisticated iterative analyses, rapid learning healthcare provides a real-time framework in which clinical studies can evaluate the relative impact of therapeutic approaches on a diverse array of measures. This article describes an effort, at 1 academic medical center, to demonstrate what rapid learning healthcare might look like in operation. The article describes the process of developing and testing the components of this new model of integrated clinical/research function, with the pilot site being an academic oncology clinic and with electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) being the foundational dataset. Steps included: feasibility study of the ePRO system; validation study of ePRO collection across 3 cancers; linking ePRO and other datasets; implementation; stakeholder alignment and buy in, and; demonstration through use cases. Two use cases are presented; participants were metastatic breast cancer (n = 65) and gastrointestinal cancer (n = 113) patients at 2 academic medical centers. (1) Patient-reported symptom data were collected with tablet computers; patients with breast and gastrointestinal cancer indicated high levels of sexual distress, which prompted multidisciplinary response, design of an intervention, and successful application for funding to study the intervention's impact. (2) The system evaluated the longitudinal impact of a psychosocial care program provided to patients with breast cancer. Participants used tablet computers to complete PRO surveys; data indicated significant impact on psychosocial outcomes, notably distress and despair, despite advanced disease. Results return to the clinic, allowing iterative update and evaluation. An ePRO-based rapid learning cancer clinic is feasible, providing real-time research-quality data to support comparative effectiveness research.

Development of a public health nursing data infrastructure.

PubMed

Monsen, Karen A; Bekemeier, Betty; P Newhouse, Robin; Scutchfield, F Douglas

2012-01-01

An invited group of national public health nursing (PHN) scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders met in October 2010 identifying a critical need for a national PHN data infrastructure to support PHN research. This article summarizes the strengths, limitations, and gaps specific to PHN data and proposes a research agenda for development of a PHN data infrastructure. Future implications are suggested, such as issues related to the development of the proposed PHN data infrastructure and future research possibilities enabled by the infrastructure. Such a data infrastructure has potential to improve accountability and measurement, to demonstrate the value of PHN services, and to improve population health. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Resilience in social insect infrastructure systems

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Both human and insect societies depend on complex and highly coordinated infrastructure systems, such as communication networks, supply chains and transportation networks. Like human-designed infrastructure systems, those of social insects are regularly subject to disruptions such as natural disasters, blockages or breaks in the transportation network, fluctuations in supply and/or demand, outbreaks of disease and loss of individuals. Unlike human-designed systems, there is no deliberate planning or centralized control system; rather, individual insects make simple decisions based on local information. How do these highly decentralized, leaderless systems deal with disruption? What factors make a social insect system resilient, and which factors lead to its collapse? In this review, we bring together literature on resilience in three key social insect infrastructure systems: transportation networks, supply chains and communication networks. We describe how systems differentially invest in three pathways to resilience: resistance, redirection or reconstruction. We suggest that investment in particular resistance pathways is related to the severity and frequency of disturbance. In the final section, we lay out a prospectus for future research. Human infrastructure networks are rapidly becoming decentralized and interconnected; indeed, more like social insect infrastructures. Human infrastructure management might therefore learn from social insect researchers, who can in turn make use of the mature analytical and simulation tools developed for the study of human infrastructure resilience. PMID:26962030

The role of assessment infrastructures in crafting project-based science classrooms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

D'Amico, Laura Marie

In project-based science teaching, teachers engage students in the practice of conducting meaningful investigations and explanations of natural phenomena, often in collaboration with fellow students or adults. Reformers suggest that this approach can provide students with more profitable learning experiences; but for many teachers, a shift to such instruction can be difficult to manage. As some reform-minded teachers have discovered, classroom assessment can serve as a vital tool for meeting the challenges associated with project science activity. In this research, classroom assessment was viewed as an infrastructure that both students and teachers rely upon as a mediational tool for classroom activity and communications. The study explored the classroom assessment infrastructures created by three teachers involved in the Learning through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project from 1993--94 to 1995--96. Each of the three teachers under study either created a new course or radically reformulated an old one in an effort to incorporate project-based science pedagogy and supporting technologies. Data in the form of interviews, classroom observations, surveys, student work, and teacher records was collected. From these data, an interpretive case study was developed for each course and its accompanying assessment infrastructure. A set of cross-case analyses was also constructed, based upon common themes that emerged from all three cases. These themes included: the assessment challenges based on the nature of project activity, the role of technology in the teachers' assessment infrastructure designs, and the influence of the wider assessment infrastructure on their course and assessment designs. In combination, the case studies and cross-case analyses describe the synergistic relationship between the design of pedagogical reforms and classroom assessment infrastructures, as well as the effectiveness of all three assessment designs. This work contributes to research and practice associated with assessment and pedagogical reform in three ways. First, it provides a theoretical frame for the relationship between assessment and pedagogical reform. Second, it provides a set of taxonomies which outline both the challenges of project-based science activity and typical assessment strategies to meet them. Finally, it provides a set of cautions and recommendations for designing classroom assessment infrastructures in support of project-based science.

Intrusion detection system using Online Sequence Extreme Learning Machine (OS-ELM) in advanced metering infrastructure of smart grid

PubMed Central

Li, Yuancheng; Jing, Sitong

2018-01-01

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) realizes a two-way communication of electricity data through by interconnecting with a computer network as the core component of the smart grid. Meanwhile, it brings many new security threats and the traditional intrusion detection method can’t satisfy the security requirements of AMI. In this paper, an intrusion detection system based on Online Sequence Extreme Learning Machine (OS-ELM) is established, which is used to detecting the attack in AMI and carrying out the comparative analysis with other algorithms. Simulation results show that, compared with other intrusion detection methods, intrusion detection method based on OS-ELM is more superior in detection speed and accuracy. PMID:29485990

The Development and Impact of POWERSOURCE[c]: Year 5. CRESST Report 792

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phelan, Julia; Vendlinski, Terry; Choi, Kilchan; Dai, Yunyun; Herman, Joan; Baker, Eva L.

2011-01-01

The POWERSOURCE[c] intervention is intended as a generalizable and powerful formative assessment strategy that can be integrated with any mathematics curriculum. POWERSOURCE[c] includes both a system of learning-based assessments and an infrastructure to support teachers' use of those assessments to improve student learning. The core undertaking…

The Fallacies of Open: Participatory Design, Infrastructuring, and the Pursuit of Radical Possibility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

West-Puckett, Stephanie; Smith, Anna; Cantrill, Christina; Zamora, Mia

2018-01-01

To better understand the impacts of participatory design in English language arts teacher education, this critical case study focuses on the National Writing Project's Connected Learning Massive, Open, Online Collaboration (CLMOOC) that engaged educators in playing with the connected learning framework. The authors draw from 5 years of interaction…

Students' Reaction to WebCT: Implications for Designing On-Line Learning Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Osman, Mohamed Eltahir

2005-01-01

There is a growing number of web-based and web-assisted course development tools and products that can be used to create on-line learning environment. The utility of these products, however, varies greatly depending on their feasibility, prerequisite infrastructure, technical features, interface, and course development and management tools. WebCT…

Facing the Challenges of E-Learning Initiatives in African Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gunga, Samson O.; Ricketts, Ian W.

2007-01-01

This paper explores the possibility of bringing e-learning to African universities through collaborative networks of public-private partnerships. It is envisaged that this approach will solve the dual problem of infrastructural barriers and weak ICT policies. As technology is used more in education, the teachers' roles are increasingly integrated…

Knowledge Infrastructures and the Inscrutability of Openness in Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Edwards, Richard

2015-01-01

Openness has a long genealogy in education. Whether through the use of post, radio, television and digital technologies, extending learning opportunities to more and a wider range of people has been a significant aspect of educational history. Transcending barriers to learning has been promoted as the means of opening educational opportunities in…

A Study of Early Learning Services in Museums and Libraries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sirinides, P.; Fink, R.; DuBois, T.

2017-01-01

Museums and libraries can play a role in providing opportunities for early learning, and there is clear momentum and infrastructure already in place to help make this happen. Researchers conducted a mixed-methods descriptive study to generate new evidence about the availability of services for young children in museums and libraries, and the…

Techno-Literacy and Blogging within a Formal Higher Education Setting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arenas, Edilson; Lynch, Julianne

2015-01-01

For the last two decades, higher education institutions have been actively engaged in the use of online technologies with the aim of transforming the ways we teach and learn to improve students' learning experiences and outcomes. However, despite significant investment in infrastructure and training and a wide-scale uptake of such technologies,…

Virtual Office Hours as Cyberinfrastructure: The Case Study of Instant Messaging

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Balayeva, Jeren; Quan-Haase, Anabel

2009-01-01

Although out-of-class communication enhances students' learning experience, students' use of office hours has been limited. As the learning infrastructures of the social sciences and humanities have undergone a range of changes since the diffusion of digital networks, new opportunities emerge to increase out-of-class communication. Hence, it is…

QSIA--A Web-Based Environment for Learning, Assessing and Knowledge Sharing in Communities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rafaeli, Sheizaf; Barak, Miri; Dan-Gur, Yuval; Toch, Eran

2004-01-01

This paper describes a Web-based and distributed system named QSIA that serves as an environment for learning, assessing and knowledge sharing. QSIA--Questions Sharing and Interactive Assignments--offers a unified infrastructure for developing, collecting, managing and sharing of knowledge items. QSIA enhances collaboration in authoring via online…

Learning from Home: Implementing Technical Infrastructure for Distributed Learning via Home-PC within Telenor.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Folkman, Kristian; Berge, Zane L.

2002-01-01

Presents results from a study conducted at Telenor, a Norwegian telecom operator, regarding the distribution of home personal computers to employees to encourage professional development outside working hours on an individual basis. Findings from a survey suggest that home computers can contribute positively to increasing employee's knowledge…

Knowledge Cultures and the Shaping of Work-Based Learning: The Case of Computer Engineering

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nerland, Monika

2008-01-01

This paper examines how the knowledge culture of computer engineering--that is, the ways in which knowledge is produced, distributed, accumulated and collectively approached within this profession--serve to construct work-based learning in specific ways. Typically, the epistemic infrastructures take the form of information structures with a global…

Preparing the Next IT Leaders: Financial Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goldstein, Karen L.

2007-01-01

The next generation of IT leaders must learn to navigate the complexities of higher education financial planning and negotiation. Technology infrastructure, hardware, software, and services are very expensive to provide and will continue to be so for some time to come. Most CIOs have learned about complex IT finances the hard way--they were handed…

Building Different Bridges: Technology Integration, Engaged Student Learning, and New Approaches to Professional Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jacobsen, D. Michele

The human and organizational infrastructure that is required to support the efficacious use of technology by teachers in the classroom was studied in three elementary schools in Alberta, Canada. The resulting impacts on engaged student learning were also studied, and the usefulness of Alberta's Galileo Educational Network Association initiative…

From E-Campus to E-Learning: An Overview of ICT Applications in Chinese Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, Guodong; Jiang, Zhongjiao

2010-01-01

Centring on the application of information and communication technology (ICT) in Chinese higher education, this paper discusses the development of e-campus in Chinese universities from three different aspects: campus network infrastructure and various management information systems; three modes of e-learning and its application in higher education…

Patterns of Guidance in Inquiry Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Veermans, Marjaana; Lallimo, Jiri; Hakkarainen, Kai

2005-01-01

The purpose of this case study was to examine a teacher's guidance of an inquiry learning project in an ordinary elementary-school classroom. The participants in the study were 21 Finnish, grade 4 students (10 years old), from which four students were selected for intensive observation. The technical infrastructure of the study was Computer…

The Nature of Assessment Systems to Support Effective Use of Evidence through Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scalise, Kathleen; Wilson, Mark

2011-01-01

The National Educational Technology Plan 2010 (NETP) presents a model of twenty-first-century learning powered by technology, with goals and recommendations in five essential areas: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. This article connects NETP ideas in one of these areas--assessment--with those of the Assessment and…

Ubiquitous and Ambient Intelligence Assisted Learning Environment Infrastructures Development--A Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kanagarajan, Sujith; Ramakrishnan, Sivakumar

2018-01-01

Ubiquitous Learning Environment (ULE) has been becoming a mobile and sensor based technology equipped environment that suits the modern world education discipline requirements for the past few years. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) makes much smarter the ULE by the support of optimization and intelligent techniques. Various efforts have been so far…

Federal/State Regulatory Reform, Cost Allocation, and CATV/TELCO Distance Learning Initiatives in Connecticut.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pietras, Jesse John; Murphy, Robert J.

Distance learning in Connecticut has begun to develop in the wake of telecommunications (TELCO) infrastructure modernization. Progress in this area is reviewed and discussed. The state has not yet adopted a standardized statewide policy governing the delivery of educational telecommunications programing, and various private producers currently…

Critical Success Factors for E-Learning and Institutional Change--Some Organisational Perspectives on Campus-Wide E-Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

White, Su

2007-01-01

Computer technology has been harnessed for education in UK universities ever since the first computers for research were installed at 10 selected sites in 1957. Subsequently, real costs have fallen dramatically. Processing power has increased; network and communications infrastructure has proliferated, and information has become unimaginably…

Utilization of Multimedia Laboratory: An Acceptance Analysis using TAM

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Modeong, M.; Palilingan, V. R.

2018-02-01

Multimedia is often utilized by teachers to present a learning materials. Learning that delivered by multimedia enables people to understand the information of up to 60% of the learning in general. To applying the creative learning to the classroom, multimedia presentation needs a laboratory as a space that provides multimedia needs. This study aims to reveal the level of student acceptance on the multimedia laboratories, by explaining the direct and indirect effect of internal support and technology infrastructure. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is used as the basis of measurement on this research, through the perception of usefulness, ease of use, and the intention, it’s recognized capable of predicting user acceptance about technology. This study used the quantitative method. The data analysis using path analysis that focuses on trimming models, it’s performed to improve the model of path analysis structure by removing exogenous variables that have insignificant path coefficients. The result stated that Internal Support and Technology Infrastructure are well mediated by TAM variables to measure the level of technology acceptance. The implications suggest that TAM can measure the success of multimedia laboratory utilization in Faculty of Engineering UNIMA.

Franchise Plan. Central Archive for Reusable Defense Software (CARDS)

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-02-28

learned To achieve maximum benefit from a reuse infrastructure and change the way the organization is doing business, management has to make a long...Purpose For an organization to fully comprehend the benefits of reuse, and to gauge the magnitude of change required to achieve the benefits , information...3.4.3 Identify Technology Infrastructure Rationale In order for an organization to fully comprehend the benefits of reuse and to gauge the magnitude of

Jump-Starting Early Childhood Education at Home: Early Learning, Parent Motivation, and Public Policy.

PubMed

Maloney, Erin A; Converse, Benjamin A; Gibbs, Chloe R; Levine, Susan C; Beilock, Sian L

2015-11-01

By the time children begin formal schooling, their experiences at home have already contributed to large variations in their math and language development, and once school begins, academic achievement continues to depend strongly on influences outside of school. It is thus essential that educational reform strategies involve primary caregivers. Specifically, programs and policies should promote and support aspects of caregiver-child interaction that have been empirically demonstrated to boost early learning and should seek to impede "motivational sinkholes" that threaten to undermine caregivers' desires to engage their children effectively. This article draws on cognitive and behavioral science to detail simple, low-cost, and effective tools caregivers can employ to prepare their children for educational success and then describes conditions that can protect and facilitate caregivers' motivation to use those tools. Policy recommendations throughout focus on using existing infrastructure to more deeply engage caregivers in effective early childhood education at home. © The Author(s) 2015.

A network-based training environment: a medical image processing paradigm.

PubMed

Costaridou, L; Panayiotakis, G; Sakellaropoulos, P; Cavouras, D; Dimopoulos, J

1998-01-01

The capability of interactive multimedia and Internet technologies is investigated with respect to the implementation of a distance learning environment. The system is built according to a client-server architecture, based on the Internet infrastructure, composed of server nodes conceptually modelled as WWW sites. Sites are implemented by customization of available components. The environment integrates network-delivered interactive multimedia courses, network-based tutoring, SIG support, information databases of professional interest, as well as course and tutoring management. This capability has been demonstrated by means of an implemented system, validated with digital image processing content, specifically image enhancement. Image enhancement methods are theoretically described and applied to mammograms. Emphasis is given to the interactive presentation of the effects of algorithm parameters on images. The system end-user access depends on available bandwidth, so high-speed access can be achieved via LAN or local ISDN connections. Network based training offers new means of improved access and sharing of learning resources and expertise, as promising supplements in training.

First use of LHC Run 3 Conditions Database infrastructure for auxiliary data files in ATLAS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aperio Bella, L.; Barberis, D.; Buttinger, W.; Formica, A.; Gallas, E. J.; Rinaldi, L.; Rybkin, G.; ATLAS Collaboration

2017-10-01

Processing of the large amount of data produced by the ATLAS experiment requires fast and reliable access to what we call Auxiliary Data Files (ADF). These files, produced by Combined Performance, Trigger and Physics groups, contain conditions, calibrations, and other derived data used by the ATLAS software. In ATLAS this data has, thus far for historical reasons, been collected and accessed outside the ATLAS Conditions Database infrastructure and related software. For this reason, along with the fact that ADF are effectively read by the software as binary objects, this class of data appears ideal for testing the proposed Run 3 conditions data infrastructure now in development. This paper describes this implementation as well as the lessons learned in exploring and refining the new infrastructure with the potential for deployment during Run 2.

Functional imaging of the semantic system: retrieval of sensory-experienced and verbally learned knowledge.

PubMed

Noppeney, Uta; Price, Cathy J

2003-01-01

This paper considers how functional neuro-imaging can be used to investigate the organization of the semantic system and the limitations associated with this technique. The majority of the functional imaging studies of the semantic system have looked for divisions by varying stimulus category. These studies have led to divergent results and no clear anatomical hypotheses have emerged to account for the dissociations seen in behavioral studies. Only a few functional imaging studies have used task as a variable to differentiate the neural correlates of semantic features more directly. We extend these findings by presenting a new study that contrasts tasks that differentially weight sensory (color and taste) and verbally learned (origin) semantic features. Irrespective of the type of semantic feature retrieved, a common semantic system was activated as demonstrated in many previous studies. In addition, the retrieval of verbally learned, but not sensory-experienced, features enhanced activation in medial and lateral posterior parietal areas. We attribute these "verbally learned" effects to differences in retrieval strategy and conclude that evidence for segregation of semantic features at an anatomical level remains weak. We believe that functional imaging has the potential to increase our understanding of the neuronal infrastructure that sustains semantic processing but progress may require multiple experiments until a consistent explanatory framework emerges.

Learning from LANCE: Developing a Web Portal Infrastructure for NASA Earth Science Data (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Murphy, K. J.

2013-12-01

NASA developed the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) in response to a growing need for timely satellite observations by applications users, operational agencies and researchers. EOS capabilities originally intended for long-term Earth science research were modified to deliver satellite data products with sufficient latencies to meet the needs of the NRT user communities. LANCE products are primarily distributed as HDF data files for analysis, however novel capabilities for distribution of NRT imagery for visualization have been added which have expanded the user base. Additionally systems to convert data to information such as the MODIS hotspot/active fire data are also provided through the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS). LANCE services include: FTP/HTTP file distribution, Rapid Response (RR), Worldview, Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) and FIRMS. This paper discusses how NASA has developed services specifically for LANCE and is taking the lessons learned through these activities to develop an Earthdata Web Infrastructure. This infrastructure is being used as a platform to support development of data portals that address specific science issues for much of EOSDIS data.

The Role of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Learning Health Systems.

PubMed

Paton, C; Karopka, T

2017-08-01

Objective: To give an overview of the role of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in the context of secondary use of patient data to enable Learning Health Systems (LHSs). Methods: We conducted an environmental scan of the academic and grey literature utilising the MedFLOSS database of open source systems in healthcare to inform a discussion of the role of open source in developing LHSs that reuse patient data for research and quality improvement. Results: A wide range of FLOSS is identified that contributes to the information technology (IT) infrastructure of LHSs including operating systems, databases, frameworks, interoperability software, and mobile and web apps. The recent literature around the development and use of key clinical data management tools is also reviewed. Conclusions: FLOSS already plays a critical role in modern health IT infrastructure for the collection, storage, and analysis of patient data. The nature of FLOSS systems to be collaborative, modular, and modifiable may make open source approaches appropriate for building the digital infrastructure for a LHS. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart.

Scalability Issues for Remote Sensing Infrastructure: A Case Study.

PubMed

Liu, Yang; Picard, Sean; Williamson, Carey

2017-04-29

For the past decade, a team of University of Calgary researchers has operated a large "sensor Web" to collect, analyze, and share scientific data from remote measurement instruments across northern Canada. This sensor Web receives real-time data streams from over a thousand Internet-connected sensors, with a particular emphasis on environmental data (e.g., space weather, auroral phenomena, atmospheric imaging). Through research collaborations, we had the opportunity to evaluate the performance and scalability of their remote sensing infrastructure. This article reports the lessons learned from our study, which considered both data collection and data dissemination aspects of their system. On the data collection front, we used benchmarking techniques to identify and fix a performance bottleneck in the system's memory management for TCP data streams, while also improving system efficiency on multi-core architectures. On the data dissemination front, we used passive and active network traffic measurements to identify and reduce excessive network traffic from the Web robots and JavaScript techniques used for data sharing. While our results are from one specific sensor Web system, the lessons learned may apply to other scientific Web sites with remote sensing infrastructure.

Railroad infrastructure trespass detection performance guidelines

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2011-01-01

The U.S. Department of Transportations John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, under the direction of the Federal Railroad Administration, conducted a 3-year demonstration of an automated prototype railroad infrastructure security sy...

Critical issues in medical education and the implications for telemedicine technology.

PubMed

Mahapatra, Ashok Kumar; Mishra, Saroj Kanta; Kapoor, Lily; Singh, Indra Pratap

2009-01-01

Ensuring quality medical education in all the medical colleges across India based on uniform curriculum prescribed by a regulatory body and maintaining a uniform standard are dependent on availability of an excellent infrastructure. Such infrastructure includes qualified teachers, knowledge resources, learning materials, and advanced education technology, which is a challenge in developing countries due to financial and logistic constraints. Advancement in telecommunication, information science, and technology provides an opportunity to exchange knowledge and skill across geographically dispersed organizations by networking academic medical centers of excellence with medical colleges and institutes to practice distance learning using information and communication technology (ICT)-based tools. These may be as basic as commonly used Web-based tools or may be as advanced as virtual reality, simulation, and telepresence-based collaborative learning environment. The scenario in India is no different from any developing country, but there is considerable progress due to technical advancement in these sectors. Telemedicine and tele-education in health science, is gradually getting adopted into the Indian Health System after decade-long pilot studies across the country. A recent recommendation of the National Knowledge Commission, once implemented, would ensure a gigabyte network across all the educational institutions of the country including medical colleges. Availability of indigenous satellite communication technology and the government policy of free bandwidth provision for societal development sector have added strength to set up infrastructure to pilot several telemedicine educational projects across the country.

Operational models of infrastructure resilience.

PubMed

Alderson, David L; Brown, Gerald G; Carlyle, W Matthew

2015-04-01

We propose a definition of infrastructure resilience that is tied to the operation (or function) of an infrastructure as a system of interacting components and that can be objectively evaluated using quantitative models. Specifically, for any particular system, we use quantitative models of system operation to represent the decisions of an infrastructure operator who guides the behavior of the system as a whole, even in the presence of disruptions. Modeling infrastructure operation in this way makes it possible to systematically evaluate the consequences associated with the loss of infrastructure components, and leads to a precise notion of "operational resilience" that facilitates model verification, validation, and reproducible results. Using a simple example of a notional infrastructure, we demonstrate how to use these models for (1) assessing the operational resilience of an infrastructure system, (2) identifying critical vulnerabilities that threaten its continued function, and (3) advising policymakers on investments to improve resilience. © 2014 Society for Risk Analysis.

Skate Genome Project: Cyber-Enabled Bioinformatics Collaboration

PubMed Central

Vincent, J.

2011-01-01

The Skate Genome Project, a pilot project of the North East Cyber infrastructure Consortium, aims to produce a draft genome sequence of Leucoraja erinacea, the Little Skate. The pilot project was designed to also develop expertise in large scale collaborations across the NECC region. An overview of the bioinformatics and infrastructure challenges faced during the first year of the project will be presented. Results to date and lessons learned from the perspective of a bioinformatics core will be highlighted.

ORAC-DR: A generic data reduction pipeline infrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jenness, Tim; Economou, Frossie

2015-03-01

ORAC-DR is a general purpose data reduction pipeline system designed to be instrument and observatory agnostic. The pipeline works with instruments as varied as infrared integral field units, imaging arrays and spectrographs, and sub-millimeter heterodyne arrays and continuum cameras. This paper describes the architecture of the pipeline system and the implementation of the core infrastructure. We finish by discussing the lessons learned since the initial deployment of the pipeline system in the late 1990s.

Re/assembling "Innovative" Learning Environments: Affective Practice and Its Politics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulcahy, Dianne; Morrison, Carol

2017-01-01

In this article, we argue that the interest being taken by governments in establishing innovative learning environments (ILEs) in schools relies on a conception of space as a largely neutral arena. In consequence, relations of space and power inherent in the infrastructural shift to ILEs tend to drop from view. Adopting an assemblage approach to…

Who Assigns the Most ICT Activities? Examining the Relationship between Teacher and Student Usage

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsu, Shihkuan

2011-01-01

The expansion of information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure in schools is expected to promote learning. To what extent teachers are utilizing the new ICT tools to engage students in learning activities remains a question. This study reports what kind of activities teachers are likely to assign students, and what type of teachers…

Technology Acceptance of E-Learning within a Blended Vocational Course in West Africa

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mehta, Ashwin

2014-01-01

Replacing lecture-based learning content with online information can augment learner-content interaction and facilitate greater mastery over a subject. The success of online delivery will depend on the readiness of learners to use and accept technology as well as the readiness of the organizational infrastructure to support a learner-centric…

Analysis of Critical Success Factors of Online International Learning Exchange of Korean School Pupils with English-Speaking Counterparts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jong-Yeon; Park, Sanghoon

2017-01-01

This study identifies the factors influencing the success of online international learning exchange (ILE) among Korean school pupils who partnered with American and Australian pupils. In particular, it examined the effects of self-efficacy (SE), exchange infrastructure (EI) and quality of exchange activities (QEA) on the students' learning…

A Joint Learning Activity in Process Control and Distance Collaboration between Future Engineers and Technicians

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deschênes, Jean-Sebastien; Barka, Noureddine; Michaud, Mario; Paradis, Denis; Brousseau, Jean

2013-01-01

A joint learning activity in process control is presented, in the context of a distance collaboration between engineering and technical-level students, in a similar fashion as current practices in the industry involving distance coordination and troubleshooting. The necessary infrastructure and the setup used are first detailed, followed by a…

Connecticut Proposes New Legislation Designed To Enhance and Increase Interactive Distance Learning for Telephone and CATV Technologies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pietras, Jesse John

Connecticut has proposed legislation to augment the remote education infrastructure which includes public libraries, public schools, and institutions of higher learning. The purpose of one bill is to explore the possibilities of transmitting interactive distance education to all schools intrastate and to classify public libraries at a cheaper…

eCX: A Secure Infrastructure for E-Course Delivery.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yau, Joe C. K; Hui, Lucas C. K.; Cheung, Bruce; Yiu, S. M.

2003-01-01

Presents a mechanism, the Secure e-Course eXchange (eCX) designed to protect learning material from unauthorized dissemination, and shows how this mechanism can be integrated in the operation model of online learning course providers. The design of eCX is flexible to fit two operating models, the Institutional Server Model and the Corporate Server…

Classroom Technology in Business Schools: A Survey of Installations and Attitudes toward Teaching and Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parker, Betty; Burnie, David

2009-01-01

A survey of administrators and faculty of AACSB-accredited business schools provided insights into current classroom technology infrastructure, attitudes towards technology and learning, and the use of web course tools in business school classrooms. The results of the survey provided four major findings: business schools are utilizing high levels…

A Qualitative Case Study on the Acquisition and Use of Educational and Information Technologies in a New High School in Southern New Mexico

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grijalva, Norma

2013-01-01

This research explores various aspects of technology in education, including learning applications, equipment, infrastructure, and pedagogy. Technology can be used for course delivery, assessment, communications, research and other learning activities. As educational institutions transition more of their academic courses, resources, and services…

Feasibility of Cloud Computing Implementation for eLearning in Secondary Schools in Tanzania

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mwakisole, Kennedy F.; Kissaka, Mussa M.; Mtebe, Joel S.

2018-01-01

This article assessed the feasibility of implementing eLearning systems in a cloud-based infrastructure for secondary schools in Tanzania. The study adopted questionnaire and document reviews as data collection tools. A total of 820 students successfully returned the questionnaire from seven secondary schools in Tanzania. The study found that 11%…

Distributed data networks: a blueprint for Big Data sharing and healthcare analytics.

PubMed

Popovic, Jennifer R

2017-01-01

This paper defines the attributes of distributed data networks and outlines the data and analytic infrastructure needed to build and maintain a successful network. We use examples from one successful implementation of a large-scale, multisite, healthcare-related distributed data network, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-sponsored Sentinel Initiative. Analytic infrastructure-development concepts are discussed from the perspective of promoting six pillars of analytic infrastructure: consistency, reusability, flexibility, scalability, transparency, and reproducibility. This paper also introduces one use case for machine learning algorithm development to fully utilize and advance the portfolio of population health analytics, particularly those using multisite administrative data sources. © 2016 New York Academy of Sciences.

A socioecological analysis of the determinants of national public health nutrition work force capacity: Australia as a case study.

PubMed

Hughes, Roger

2006-01-01

This article uses a socioecological analytical approach to assess the capacity of the public health nutrition work force in Australia as a prelude to work force development strategy planning. It demonstrates how the socioecological model can be used to assess and inform the development of the infrastructure required for effective public health nutrition effort. An interpretive case study method was used involving triangular analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from multiple sources including semistructured interviews with advanced-level practitioners, literature review, a cross-sectional national work force survey, and position description audit and consensus development using a Delphi study. The findings of this analysis indicate that the Australian public health nutrition work force's capacity to effectively address priority nutrition issues is limited by determinants that can be categorized as relating to human resource infrastructure, organizational and policy environments, intelligence access and use, practice improvement and learning systems, and work force preparation. This socioecological analysis supports an intelligence-based focus for work force development effort in Australia and a conceptual framework for work force capacity assessment with potential applications in other countries.

Quality assurance for gastrointestinal endoscopy.

PubMed

Allen, John I

2012-09-01

This review concerns quality assurance for gastrointestinal endoscopic procedures, especially colonoscopy and will emphasize research and guidelines published since January 2011. Important articles from previous years have been included for background. Critical lapses in endoscope processing and administration of intravenous sedation alerted us to the infection risk of endoscopy. Increases in cost of colonoscopy, evidence for overuse and studies demonstrating missed cancers have led some to question the value of endoscopy. Despite these setbacks, the National Polyp Study (NPS) consortium published their long-term follow-up of the original NPS patients and confirmed that colonoscopy with polyp removal can reduce the risk of colorectal cancer for an extended period. In this article, we will focus on ways to improve the value of outpatient colonoscopy. The United States national quality improvement agenda recently became organized into a more coordinated effort spearheaded by several public and private entities. They comprise the infrastructure by which performance measures are developed and implemented as accountability standards. Understanding wherein a gastroenterology (GI) practice fits into this infrastructure and learning ways we can improve our endoscopic practice is important for physicians who provide this vital service to patients. This article will provide a roadmap for developing a quality assurance program for endoscopic practice.

Multimedia And Internetworking Architecture Infrastructure On Interactive E-Learning System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Indah, K. A. T.; Sukarata, G.

2018-01-01

Interactive e-learning is a distance learning method that involves information technology, electronic system or computer as one means of learning system used for teaching and learning process that is implemented without having face to face directly between teacher and student. A strong dependence on emerging technologies greatly influences the way in which the architecture is designed to produce a powerful interactive e-learning network. In this paper analyzed an architecture model where learning can be done interactively, involving many participants (N-way synchronized distance learning) using video conferencing technology. Also used broadband internet network as well as multicast techniques as a troubleshooting method for bandwidth usage can be efficient.

Machine learning patterns for neuroimaging-genetic studies in the cloud.

PubMed

Da Mota, Benoit; Tudoran, Radu; Costan, Alexandru; Varoquaux, Gaël; Brasche, Goetz; Conrod, Patricia; Lemaitre, Herve; Paus, Tomas; Rietschel, Marcella; Frouin, Vincent; Poline, Jean-Baptiste; Antoniu, Gabriel; Thirion, Bertrand

2014-01-01

Brain imaging is a natural intermediate phenotype to understand the link between genetic information and behavior or brain pathologies risk factors. Massive efforts have been made in the last few years to acquire high-dimensional neuroimaging and genetic data on large cohorts of subjects. The statistical analysis of such data is carried out with increasingly sophisticated techniques and represents a great computational challenge. Fortunately, increasing computational power in distributed architectures can be harnessed, if new neuroinformatics infrastructures are designed and training to use these new tools is provided. Combining a MapReduce framework (TomusBLOB) with machine learning algorithms (Scikit-learn library), we design a scalable analysis tool that can deal with non-parametric statistics on high-dimensional data. End-users describe the statistical procedure to perform and can then test the model on their own computers before running the very same code in the cloud at a larger scale. We illustrate the potential of our approach on real data with an experiment showing how the functional signal in subcortical brain regions can be significantly fit with genome-wide genotypes. This experiment demonstrates the scalability and the reliability of our framework in the cloud with a 2 weeks deployment on hundreds of virtual machines.

Railroad infrastructure trespassing detection systems research in Pittsford, New York

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2006-08-01

The U.S. Department of Transportations Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, under the direction of the Federal Railroad Administration, conducted a 3-year demonstration of an automated prototype railroad infrastructure security system on ...

Resilience in social insect infrastructure systems.

PubMed

Middleton, Eliza J T; Latty, Tanya

2016-03-01

Both human and insect societies depend on complex and highly coordinated infrastructure systems, such as communication networks, supply chains and transportation networks. Like human-designed infrastructure systems, those of social insects are regularly subject to disruptions such as natural disasters, blockages or breaks in the transportation network, fluctuations in supply and/or demand, outbreaks of disease and loss of individuals. Unlike human-designed systems, there is no deliberate planning or centralized control system; rather, individual insects make simple decisions based on local information. How do these highly decentralized, leaderless systems deal with disruption? What factors make a social insect system resilient, and which factors lead to its collapse? In this review, we bring together literature on resilience in three key social insect infrastructure systems: transportation networks, supply chains and communication networks. We describe how systems differentially invest in three pathways to resilience: resistance, redirection or reconstruction. We suggest that investment in particular resistance pathways is related to the severity and frequency of disturbance. In the final section, we lay out a prospectus for future research. Human infrastructure networks are rapidly becoming decentralized and interconnected; indeed, more like social insect infrastructures. Human infrastructure management might therefore learn from social insect researchers, who can in turn make use of the mature analytical and simulation tools developed for the study of human infrastructure resilience. © 2016 The Author(s).

Key lessons for designing health literacy professional development courses.

PubMed

Naccarella, Lucio; Murphy, Bernice

2018-02-01

Health literacy courses for health professionals have emerged in response to health professionals' perceived lack of understanding of health literacy issues, and their failure to routinely adopt health literacy practices. Since 2013 in Victoria, Australia, the Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health has delivered an annual health literacy demonstration training course that it developed. Course development and delivery partners included HealthWest Partnership and cohealth. The courses are designed to develop the health literacy knowledge, skills and organisational capacity of the health and community services sector in the western metropolitan region of Melbourne. This study presents key learnings from evaluation data from three health literacy courses using Wenger's professional educational learning design framework. The framework has three educational learning architecture components (engagement, imagination and alignment) and four educational learning architecture dimensions (participation, emergent, local/global, identification). Participatory realist evaluation approaches and qualitative methods were used. The evaluations revealed that the health literacy courses are developing leadership in health literacy, building partnerships among course participants, developing health literacy workforce knowledge and skills, developing ways to use and apply health literacy resources and are serving as a catalyst for building organisational infrastructure. Although the courses were not explicitly developed or implemented using Wenger's educational learning design pedagogic features, the course structure (i.e. facilitation role of course coordinators, providing safe learning environments, encouraging small group work amongst participants, requiring participants to conduct mini-projects and sponsor organisation buy-in) provided opportunities for engagement, imagination and alignment. Wenger's educational learning design framework can inform the design of future key pedagogic features of health literacy courses.

Taking a Step to Identify How to Create Professional Learning Communities--Report of a Case Study of a Korean Public High School on How to Create and Sustain a School-Based Teacher Professional Learning Community

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahn, Joonkil

2017-01-01

This study intends to identify some key factors in creating and sustaining school-based teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) through a case study of a South Korean public high school. To achieve this, the study identified some essential infrastructure, preparation, and necessary social organization for creating PLCs. The ideal unit and…

Telematic Infrastructures for Flexible and Distance Learning "Electronic Universities." A Report from DELTA Workshops on Telematic Networks for Distance Education and Training "Electronic Universities" and on Learning Technology (October 1990, November 1990).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moller, Morten, Ed.; Shaughnessy, Haydn, Ed.

This report is based on contributions to two workshops arranged jointly by Task Force Human Resources and the DELTA (Developing European Learning through Technological Advance) Unit. The purpose of collecting these papers was to provide an overview of the implications of the DELTA Exploratory Action outcomes for future research. After the preface…

Implementing and Sustaining Team-Based Telecare for Bipolar Disorder: Lessons Learned from a Model-Guided, Mixed Methods Analysis.

PubMed

Bauer, Mark S; Krawczyk, Lois; Tuozzo, Kathy; Frigand, Cara; Holmes, Sally; Miller, Christopher J; Abel, Erica; Osser, David N; Franz, Aleda; Brandt, Cynthia; Rooney, Meghan; Fleming, Jerry; Smith, Eric; Godleski, Linda

2018-01-01

Telemental health interventions have empirical support from clinical trials and structured demonstration projects. However, their implementation and sustainability under less structured clinical conditions are not well demonstrated. We conducted a follow-up analysis of the implementation and sustainability of a clinical video teleconference-based collaborative care model for individuals with bipolar disorder treated in the Department of Veterans Affairs to (a) characterize the extent of implementation and sustainability of the program after its establishment and (b) identify barriers and facilitators to implementation and sustainability. We conducted a mixed methods program evaluation, assessing quantitative aspects of implementation according to the Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance implementation framework. We conducted qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with 16 of the providers who submitted consults, utilizing the Integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in the Health Services implementation framework. The program demonstrated linear growth in sites (n = 35) and consults (n = 915) from late 2011 through mid-2016. Site-based analysis indicated statistically significant sustainability beyond the first year of operation. Qualitative analysis identified key facilitators, including consult content, ease of use via electronic health record, and national infrastructure. Barriers included availability of telehealth space, equipment, and staff at the sites, as well as the labor-intensive nature of scheduling. The program achieved continuous growth over almost 5 years due to (1) successfully filling a need perceived by providers, (2) developing in a supportive context, and (3) receiving effective facilitation by national and local infrastructure. Clinical video teleconference-based interventions, even multicomponent collaborative care interventions for individuals with complex mental health conditions, can grow vigorously under appropriate conditions.

The NWRA Classification Infrastructure: description and extension to the Discriminant Analysis Flare Forecasting System (DAFFS)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Leka, K. D.; Barnes, Graham; Wagner, Eric

2018-04-01

A classification infrastructure built upon Discriminant Analysis (DA) has been developed at NorthWest Research Associates for examining the statistical differences between samples of two known populations. Originating to examine the physical differences between flare-quiet and flare-imminent solar active regions, we describe herein some details of the infrastructure including: parametrization of large datasets, schemes for handling "null" and "bad" data in multi-parameter analysis, application of non-parametric multi-dimensional DA, an extension through Bayes' theorem to probabilistic classification, and methods invoked for evaluating classifier success. The classifier infrastructure is applicable to a wide range of scientific questions in solar physics. We demonstrate its application to the question of distinguishing flare-imminent from flare-quiet solar active regions, updating results from the original publications that were based on different data and much smaller sample sizes. Finally, as a demonstration of "Research to Operations" efforts in the space-weather forecasting context, we present the Discriminant Analysis Flare Forecasting System (DAFFS), a near-real-time operationally-running solar flare forecasting tool that was developed from the research-directed infrastructure.

Combating AIDS in South Africa and Mozambique: The Role of Open, Distance, and Flexible Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pridmore, Pat; Yates, Chris

2005-01-01

This article examines the potential for open, distance, and flexible learning (ODFL) to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS on young people. Based on experience from a field study in Mozambique and South Africa, the authors show how ODFL can support and extend the work of existing infrastructures supporting vulnerable youth. As neighboring…

Interaction Problems Accessing E-Learning Environments in Multi-Touch Mobile Devices: A Case Study in TelEduc

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

da Silva, André Constantino; Freire, Fernanda Maria Pereira; de Arruda, Alan Victor Pereira; da Rocha, Heloísa Vieira

2013-01-01

e-Learning environments offer content, such text, audio, video, animations, using the Web infrastructure and they are designed to users interacting with keyboard, mouse and a medium-sized screen. Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have enough computation power to render Web pages, allowing browsing the Internet and access e-Learning…

Upgrading School Buildings in Mexico with Social Participation. "The Better Schools Programme". Centre for Effective Learning Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blyth, Alastair; Almeida, Rodolfo; Forrester, David; Gorey, Ann; Chavez Zepeda, Juan Jose

2012-01-01

This review of Mexico's Better Schools Programme was conducted in 2012 by the OECD Centre for Effective Learning Environments (CELE). In 2008, the federal government created the Programme to repair and improve the physical infrastructure of schools for basic education throughout Mexico. A key characteristic of the programme is social participation…

13th Annual Systems Engineering Conference: Tues- Wed

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-10-28

greater understanding/documentation of lessons learned – Promotes SE within the organization • Justification for continued funding of SE Infrastructure...educational process – Addresses the development of innovative learning tools, strategies, and teacher training • Research and Development – Promotes ...technology, and mathematics • More commitment to engaging young students in science, engineering, technology and mathematics • More rigor in defining

The Athabasca University eduSource Project: Building an Accessible Learning Object Repository

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cleveland-Innes, Martha; McGreal, Rory; Anderson, Terry; Friesen, Norm; Ally, Mohamed; Tin, Tony; Graham, Rodger; Moisey, Susan; Petrinjak, Anita; Schafer, Steve

2005-01-01

Athabasca University--Canada's Open University (AU) made the commitment to put all of its courses online as part of its Strategic University Plan. In pursuit of this goal, AU participated in the eduSource project, a pan-Canadian effort to build the infrastructure for an interoperable network of learning object repositories. AU acted as a leader in…

Factors Influencing Teachers' Adoption and Integration of Information and Communication Technology into Teaching: A Review of the Literature

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buabeng-Andoh, Charles

2012-01-01

Global investment in ICT to improve teaching and learning in schools have been initiated by many governments. Despite all these investments on ICT infrastructure, equipments and professional development to improve education in many countries, ICT adoption and integration in teaching and learning have been limited. This article reviews personal,…

Recovery Act-SmartGrid regional demonstration transmission and distribution (T&D) Infrastructure

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

Hedges, Edward T.

This document represents the Final Technical Report for the Kansas City Power & Light Company (KCP&L) Green Impact Zone SmartGrid Demonstration Project (SGDP). The KCP&L project is partially funded by Department of Energy (DOE) Regional Smart Grid Demonstration Project cooperative agreement DE-OE0000221 in the Transmission and Distribution Infrastructure application area. This Final Technical Report summarizes the KCP&L SGDP as of April 30, 2015 and includes summaries of the project design, implementation, operations, and analysis performed as of that date.

Comparison of WinSLAMM Modeled Results with Monitored Biofiltration Data

EPA Science Inventory

The US EPA’s Green Infrastructure Demonstration project in Kansas City incorporates both small scale individual biofiltration device monitoring, along with large scale watershed monitoring. The test watershed (100 acres) is saturated with green infrastructure components (includin...

Evaluation of long carbon fiber reinforced concrete to mitigate earthquake damage of infrastructure components.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2013-06-01

The proposed study involves investigating long carbon fiber reinforced concrete as a method of mitigating earthquake damage to : bridges and other infrastructure components. Long carbon fiber reinforced concrete has demonstrated significant resistanc...

78 FR 11737 - Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-02-19

... of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. Repeated cyber intrusions into critical infrastructure demonstrate the need for improved cybersecurity. The cyber threat to critical... cyber environment that encourages efficiency, innovation, and economic prosperity while promoting safety...

Error begat error: design error analysis and prevention in social infrastructure projects.

PubMed

Love, Peter E D; Lopez, Robert; Edwards, David J; Goh, Yang M

2012-09-01

Design errors contribute significantly to cost and schedule growth in social infrastructure projects and to engineering failures, which can result in accidents and loss of life. Despite considerable research that has addressed their error causation in construction projects they still remain prevalent. This paper identifies the underlying conditions that contribute to design errors in social infrastructure projects (e.g. hospitals, education, law and order type buildings). A systemic model of error causation is propagated and subsequently used to develop a learning framework for design error prevention. The research suggests that a multitude of strategies should be adopted in congruence to prevent design errors from occurring and so ensure that safety and project performance are ameliorated. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Scalability Issues for Remote Sensing Infrastructure: A Case Study

PubMed Central

Liu, Yang; Picard, Sean; Williamson, Carey

2017-01-01

For the past decade, a team of University of Calgary researchers has operated a large “sensor Web” to collect, analyze, and share scientific data from remote measurement instruments across northern Canada. This sensor Web receives real-time data streams from over a thousand Internet-connected sensors, with a particular emphasis on environmental data (e.g., space weather, auroral phenomena, atmospheric imaging). Through research collaborations, we had the opportunity to evaluate the performance and scalability of their remote sensing infrastructure. This article reports the lessons learned from our study, which considered both data collection and data dissemination aspects of their system. On the data collection front, we used benchmarking techniques to identify and fix a performance bottleneck in the system’s memory management for TCP data streams, while also improving system efficiency on multi-core architectures. On the data dissemination front, we used passive and active network traffic measurements to identify and reduce excessive network traffic from the Web robots and JavaScript techniques used for data sharing. While our results are from one specific sensor Web system, the lessons learned may apply to other scientific Web sites with remote sensing infrastructure. PMID:28468262

Sustainability Through Technology Licensing and Commercialization: Lessons Learned from the TRIAD Project

PubMed Central

Payne, Philip R.O.

2014-01-01

Ongoing transformation relative to the funding climate for healthcare research programs housed in academic and non-profit research organizations has led to a new (or renewed) emphasis on the pursuit of non-traditional sustainability models. This need is often particularly acute in the context of data management and sharing infrastructure that is developed under the auspices of such research initiatives. One option for achieving sustainability of such data management and sharing infrastructure is the pursuit of technology licensing and commercialization, in an effort to establish public-private or equivalent partnerships that sustain and even expand upon the development and dissemination of research-oriented data management and sharing technologies. However, the critical success factors for technology licensing and commercialization efforts are often unknown to individuals outside of the private sector, thus making this type of endeavor challenging to investigators in academic and non-profit settings. In response to such a gap in knowledge, this article will review a number of generalizable lessons learned from an effort undertaken at The Ohio State University to commercialize a prototypical research-oriented data management and sharing infrastructure, known as the Translational Research Informatics and Data Management (TRIAD) Grid. It is important to note that the specific emphasis of these lessons learned is on the early stages of moving a technology from the research setting into a private-sector entity and as such are particularly relevant to academic investigators interested in pursuing such activities. PMID:25848609

What does fault tolerant Deep Learning need from MPI?

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

Amatya, Vinay C.; Vishnu, Abhinav; Siegel, Charles M.

Deep Learning (DL) algorithms have become the {\\em de facto} Machine Learning (ML) algorithm for large scale data analysis. DL algorithms are computationally expensive -- even distributed DL implementations which use MPI require days of training (model learning) time on commonly studied datasets. Long running DL applications become susceptible to faults -- requiring development of a fault tolerant system infrastructure, in addition to fault tolerant DL algorithms. This raises an important question: {\\em What is needed from MPI for designing fault tolerant DL implementations?} In this paper, we address this problem for permanent faults. We motivate the need for amore » fault tolerant MPI specification by an in-depth consideration of recent innovations in DL algorithms and their properties, which drive the need for specific fault tolerance features. We present an in-depth discussion on the suitability of different parallelism types (model, data and hybrid); a need (or lack thereof) for check-pointing of any critical data structures; and most importantly, consideration for several fault tolerance proposals (user-level fault mitigation (ULFM), Reinit) in MPI and their applicability to fault tolerant DL implementations. We leverage a distributed memory implementation of Caffe, currently available under the Machine Learning Toolkit for Extreme Scale (MaTEx). We implement our approaches by extending MaTEx-Caffe for using ULFM-based implementation. Our evaluation using the ImageNet dataset and AlexNet neural network topology demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed fault tolerant DL implementation using OpenMPI based ULFM.« less

Dynamic Collaboration Infrastructure for Hydrologic Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tarboton, D. G.; Idaszak, R.; Castillo, C.; Yi, H.; Jiang, F.; Jones, N.; Goodall, J. L.

2016-12-01

Data and modeling infrastructure is becoming increasingly accessible to water scientists. HydroShare is a collaborative environment that currently offers water scientists the ability to access modeling and data infrastructure in support of data intensive modeling and analysis. It supports the sharing of and collaboration around "resources" which are social objects defined to include both data and models in a structured standardized format. Users collaborate around these objects via comments, ratings, and groups. HydroShare also supports web services and cloud based computation for the execution of hydrologic models and analysis and visualization of hydrologic data. However, the quantity and variety of data and modeling infrastructure available that can be accessed from environments like HydroShare is increasing. Storage infrastructure can range from one's local PC to campus or organizational storage to storage in the cloud. Modeling or computing infrastructure can range from one's desktop to departmental clusters to national HPC resources to grid and cloud computing resources. How does one orchestrate this vast number of data and computing infrastructure without needing to correspondingly learn each new system? A common limitation across these systems is the lack of efficient integration between data transport mechanisms and the corresponding high-level services to support large distributed data and compute operations. A scientist running a hydrology model from their desktop may require processing a large collection of files across the aforementioned storage and compute resources and various national databases. To address these community challenges a proof-of-concept prototype was created integrating HydroShare with RADII (Resource Aware Data-centric collaboration Infrastructure) to provide software infrastructure to enable the comprehensive and rapid dynamic deployment of what we refer to as "collaborative infrastructure." In this presentation we discuss the results of this proof-of-concept prototype which enabled HydroShare users to readily instantiate virtual infrastructure marshaling arbitrary combinations, varieties, and quantities of distributed data and computing infrastructure in addressing big problems in hydrology.

Lowering the barriers to computational modeling of Earth's surface: coupling Jupyter Notebooks with Landlab, HydroShare, and CyberGIS for research and education.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bandaragoda, C.; Castronova, A. M.; Phuong, J.; Istanbulluoglu, E.; Strauch, R. L.; Nudurupati, S. S.; Tarboton, D. G.; Wang, S. W.; Yin, D.; Barnhart, K. R.; Tucker, G. E.; Hutton, E.; Hobley, D. E. J.; Gasparini, N. M.; Adams, J. M.

2017-12-01

The ability to test hypotheses about hydrology, geomorphology and atmospheric processes is invaluable to research in the era of big data. Although community resources are available, there remain significant educational, logistical and time investment barriers to their use. Knowledge infrastructure is an emerging intellectual framework to understand how people are creating, sharing and distributing knowledge - which has been dramatically transformed by Internet technologies. In addition to the technical and social components in a cyberinfrastructure system, knowledge infrastructure considers educational, institutional, and open source governance components required to advance knowledge. We are designing an infrastructure environment that lowers common barriers to reproducing modeling experiments for earth surface investigation. Landlab is an open-source modeling toolkit for building, coupling, and exploring two-dimensional numerical models. HydroShare is an online collaborative environment for sharing hydrologic data and models. CyberGIS-Jupyter is an innovative cyberGIS framework for achieving data-intensive, reproducible, and scalable geospatial analytics using the Jupyter Notebook based on ROGER - the first cyberGIS supercomputer, so that models that can be elastically reproduced through cloud computing approaches. Our team of geomorphologists, hydrologists, and computer geoscientists has created a new infrastructure environment that combines these three pieces of software to enable knowledge discovery. Through this novel integration, any user can interactively execute and explore their shared data and model resources. Landlab on HydroShare with CyberGIS-Jupyter supports the modeling continuum from fully developed modelling applications, prototyping new science tools, hands on research demonstrations for training workshops, and classroom applications. Computational geospatial models based on big data and high performance computing can now be more efficiently developed, improved, scaled, and seamlessly reproduced among multidisciplinary users, thereby expanding the active learning curriculum and research opportunities for students in earth surface modeling and informatics.

Evaluating Green/Gray Infrastructure for CSO/Stormwater Control

EPA Science Inventory

The NRMRL is conducting this project to evaluate the water quality and quantity benefits of a large-scale application of green infrastructure (low-impact development/best management practices) retrofits in an entire subcatchment. It will document ORD's effort to demonstrate the e...

Removing Obstacles to the Pedagogical Changes Required by Jonassen's Vision of Authentic Technology-Enabled Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ertmer, Peggy A.; Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Anne

2013-01-01

Educators have been striving to achieve meaningful technology use in our K-12 classrooms for over 30 years. Yet, despite significant investments of time and money in infrastructure, training, and support "we have few assurances that [educators] are able to use technology for teaching and learning" (NEA, 2008, p. 1). In this article, we call for a…

The Life and Times of a Learning Technology System: The Impact of Change and Evolution

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pahl, Claus

2013-01-01

With the inception of the web now being more than 20 years ago, many web-based learning technology systems (LTS) have had a long life and have undergone many changes, both affecting content and infrastructure technologies. A change factor model can capture the various factors causing LTS to change. Methods for change-aware design of LTS have been…

A learning-based markerless approach for full-body kinematics estimation in-natura from a single image.

PubMed

Drory, Ami; Li, Hongdong; Hartley, Richard

2017-04-11

We present a supervised machine learning approach for markerless estimation of human full-body kinematics for a cyclist from an unconstrained colour image. This approach is motivated by the limitations of existing marker-based approaches restricted by infrastructure, environmental conditions, and obtrusive markers. By using a discriminatively learned mixture-of-parts model, we construct a probabilistic tree representation to model the configuration and appearance of human body joints. During the learning stage, a Structured Support Vector Machine (SSVM) learns body parts appearance and spatial relations. In the testing stage, the learned models are employed to recover body pose via searching in a test image over a pyramid structure. We focus on the movement modality of cycling to demonstrate the efficacy of our approach. In natura estimation of cycling kinematics using images is challenging because of human interaction with a bicycle causing frequent occlusions. We make no assumptions in relation to the kinematic constraints of the model, nor the appearance of the scene. Our technique finds multiple quality hypotheses for the pose. We evaluate the precision of our method on two new datasets using loss functions. Our method achieves a score of 91.1 and 69.3 on mean Probability of Correct Keypoint (PCK) measure and 88.7 and 66.1 on the Average Precision of Keypoints (APK) measure for the frontal and sagittal datasets respectively. We conclude that our method opens new vistas to robust user-interaction free estimation of full body kinematics, a prerequisite to motion analysis. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Case Study: The Role of eLearning in Midwifery Pre-Service Education in Ghana.

PubMed

Appiagyei, Martha; Trump, Alison; Danso, Evans; Yeboah, Alex; Searle, Sarah; Carr, Catherine

The issues and challenges of implementing eLearning in pre-service health education were explored through a pilot study conducted in six nurse-midwifery education programs in Ghana. Case-based, interactive computer mediated eLearning modules, targeted to basic emergency and obstetrical signal functions, were delivered both online and offline using a free-for-use eLearning platform, skoool HE(®). Key success factors included broad stakeholder support, an established curriculum and student and tutor interest. Challenges included infrastructure limitations, large class sizes and added workloads for tutors and information technology staff. National scale up is planned.

Making Connections.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garbe, Edward

1998-01-01

Discusses enhancing a college's competitive position by offering technological capabilities to its students, including the planning process and wiring installation issues to be considered. Highlights two examples concerning building the wiring infrastructure to support multipurpose, technology-rich learning environments. (GR)

Improving Heat Health Resilience through Urban Infrastructure Planning and Design

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Public health and environmental agencies can reduce the heat island effect, increase resilience to extreme heat events, and help each other further their respective missions. Listen to this webinar to learn how.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Analysis: Lessons Learned from Stationary Power Generation Final Report

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

Scott E. Grasman; John W. Sheffield; Fatih Dogan

2010-04-30

This study considered opportunities for hydrogen in stationary applications in order to make recommendations related to RD&D strategies that incorporate lessons learned and best practices from relevant national and international stationary power efforts, as well as cost and environmental modeling of pathways. The study analyzed the different strategies utilized in power generation systems and identified the different challenges and opportunities for producing and using hydrogen as an energy carrier. Specific objectives included both a synopsis/critical analysis of lessons learned from previous stationary power programs and recommendations for a strategy for hydrogen infrastructure deployment. This strategy incorporates all hydrogen pathways andmore » a combination of distributed power generating stations, and provides an overview of stationary power markets, benefits of hydrogen-based stationary power systems, and competitive and technological challenges. The motivation for this project was to identify the lessons learned from prior stationary power programs, including the most significant obstacles, how these obstacles have been approached, outcomes of the programs, and how this information can be used by the Hydrogen, Fuel Cells & Infrastructure Technologies Program to meet program objectives primarily related to hydrogen pathway technologies (production, storage, and delivery) and implementation of fuel cell technologies for distributed stationary power. In addition, the lessons learned address environmental and safety concerns, including codes and standards, and education of key stakeholders.« less

Electric vehicles and public charging infrastructure : impediments and opportunities for success in the United States.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2013-07-01

This report seeks to reach conclusions over the role that electric vehicles (EVs) and public charging : infrastructure should play in the future U.S. transportation system As demonstrated in this report, electric : vehicles are neither new nor techno...

An "integrated health neighbourhood" framework to optimise the use of EHR data.

PubMed

Liaw, Siaw-Teng; De Lusignan, Simon

2016-10-04

 General practice should become the hub of integrated health neighbourhoods (IHNs), which involves sharing of information to ensure that medical homes are also part of learning organisations that use electronic health record (EHR) data for care, decision making, teaching and learning, quality improvement and research. The IHN is defined as the primary and ambulatory care services in a locality that relates largely to a single hospital-based secondary care service provider and is the logical denominator and unit of comparison for the optimal use of EHR data and health information exchange (HIE) to facilitate integration and coordination of care. Its size may vary based on the geography and requirements of the population, for example between city, suburban and rural areas. The conceptual framework includes context; integration of data, information and knowledge; integration of clinical workflow and practice; and inter-professional integration to ensure coordinated shared care to deliver safe and effective services that are equitable, accessible and culturally respectful. We illustrate how this HIE-supported IHN vision may be achieved with an Australian case study demonstrating the integration of linked pseudonymised records with knowledge- and evidence-based guidelines using semantic web tools and informatics-based methods, researching causal links bewteen data quality and quality of care and the key issues to address. The data presented in this paper form part of the evaluation of the informatics infrastructure - HIE and data repository - for its reliability and utility in supporting the IHN. An IHN can only be created if the necessary health informatics infrastructure is put in place. Integrated care may struggle to be effective without HIE.

Use cases and DEMO: aligning functional features of ICT-infrastructure to business processes.

PubMed

Maij, E; Toussaint, P J; Kalshoven, M; Poerschke, M; Zwetsloot-Schonk, J H M

2002-11-12

The proper alignment of functional features of the ICT-infrastructure to business processes is a major challenge in health care organisations. This alignment takes into account that the organisational structure not only shapes the ICT-infrastructure, but that the inverse also holds. To solve the alignment problem, relevant features of the ICT-infrastructure should be derived from the organisational structure and the influence of this envisaged ICT to the work practices should be pointed out. The objective of our study was to develop a method to solve this alignment problem. In a previous study we demonstrated the appropriateness of the business process modelling methodology Dynamic Essential Modelling of Organizations (DEMO). A proven and widely used modelling language for expressing functional features is Unified Modelling Language (UML). In the context of a specific case study at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands we investigated if the combined use of DEMO and UML could solve the alignment problem. The study demonstrated that the DEMO models were suited as a starting point in deriving system functionality by using the use case concept of UML. Further, the case study demonstrated that in using this approach for the alignment problem, insight is gained into the mutual influence of ICT-infrastructure and organisation structure: (a) specification of independent, re-usable components-as a set of related functionalities-is realised, and (b) a helpful representation of the current and future work practice is provided for in relation to the envisaged ICT support.

Effects of tutoring in phonological and early reading skills on students at risk for reading disabilities.

PubMed

Vadasy, P F; Jenkins, J R; Pool, K

2000-01-01

This study examined the effectiveness of nonprofessional tutors in a phonologically based reading treatment similar to those in which successful reading outcomes have been demonstrated. Participants were 23 first graders at risk for learning disability who received intensive one-to-one tutoring from noncertified tutors for 30 minutes, 4 days a week, for one school year. Tutoring included instruction in phonological skills, letter-sound correspondence, explicit decoding, rime analysis, writing, spelling, and reading phonetically controlled text. At year end, tutored students significantly outperformed untutored control students on measures of reading, spelling, and decoding. Effect sizes ranged from .42 to 1.24. Treatment effects diminished at follow-up at the end of second grade, although tutored students continued to significantly outperform untutored students in decoding and spelling. Findings suggest that phonologically based reading instruction for first graders at risk for learning disability can be delivered by nonteacher tutors. Our discussion addresses the character of reading outcomes associated with tutoring, individual differences in response to treatment, and the infrastructure required for nonprofessional tutoring programs.

The High-Performance Computing and Communications program, the national information infrastructure and health care.

PubMed Central

Lindberg, D A; Humphreys, B L

1995-01-01

The High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program is a multiagency federal effort to advance the state of computing and communications and to provide the technologic platform on which the National Information Infrastructure (NII) can be built. The HPCC program supports the development of high-speed computers, high-speed telecommunications, related software and algorithms, education and training, and information infrastructure technology and applications. The vision of the NII is to extend access to high-performance computing and communications to virtually every U.S. citizen so that the technology can be used to improve the civil infrastructure, lifelong learning, energy management, health care, etc. Development of the NII will require resolution of complex economic and social issues, including information privacy. Health-related applications supported under the HPCC program and NII initiatives include connection of health care institutions to the Internet; enhanced access to gene sequence data; the "Visible Human" Project; and test-bed projects in telemedicine, electronic patient records, shared informatics tool development, and image systems. PMID:7614116

Adaptive management of urban watersheds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Garmestani, A.; Shuster, W.; Green, O. O.

2013-12-01

Consent decree settlements for violations of the Clean Water Act (1972) increasingly include provisions for redress of combined sewer overflow activity through hybrid approaches that incorporate the best of both gray (e.g., storage tunnels) and green infrastructure (e.g., rain gardens). Adaptive management is an environmental management strategy that uses an iterative process of decision-making to improve environmental management via system monitoring. A central tenet of adaptive management is that management involves a learning process that can help regulated communities achieve environmental quality objectives. We are using an adaptive management approach to guide a green infrastructure retrofit of a neighborhood in the Slavic Village Development Corporation area (Cleveland, Ohio). We are in the process of gathering hydrologic and ecosystem services data and will use this data as a basis for collaboration with area citizens on a plan to use green infrastructure to contain stormflows. Monitoring data provides researchers with feedback on the impact of green infrastructure implementation and suggest where improvements can be made.

Earthquake prediction in California using regression algorithms and cloud-based big data infrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Asencio-Cortés, G.; Morales-Esteban, A.; Shang, X.; Martínez-Álvarez, F.

2018-06-01

Earthquake magnitude prediction is a challenging problem that has been widely studied during the last decades. Statistical, geophysical and machine learning approaches can be found in literature, with no particularly satisfactory results. In recent years, powerful computational techniques to analyze big data have emerged, making possible the analysis of massive datasets. These new methods make use of physical resources like cloud based architectures. California is known for being one of the regions with highest seismic activity in the world and many data are available. In this work, the use of several regression algorithms combined with ensemble learning is explored in the context of big data (1 GB catalog is used), in order to predict earthquakes magnitude within the next seven days. Apache Spark framework, H2 O library in R language and Amazon cloud infrastructure were been used, reporting very promising results.

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

Beaver, Justin M; Borges, Raymond Charles; Buckner, Mark A

Critical infrastructure Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems were designed to operate on closed, proprietary networks where a malicious insider posed the greatest threat potential. The centralization of control and the movement towards open systems and standards has improved the efficiency of industrial control, but has also exposed legacy SCADA systems to security threats that they were not designed to mitigate. This work explores the viability of machine learning methods in detecting the new threat scenarios of command and data injection. Similar to network intrusion detection systems in the cyber security domain, the command and control communications in amore » critical infrastructure setting are monitored, and vetted against examples of benign and malicious command traffic, in order to identify potential attack events. Multiple learning methods are evaluated using a dataset of Remote Terminal Unit communications, which included both normal operations and instances of command and data injection attack scenarios.« less

Developing an urban community-campus partnership: lessons learned in infrastructure development and communication.

PubMed

Parker, Dorothy F; Dietz, Noella A; Hooper, Monica Webb; Byrne, Margaret M; Fernandez, Cristina A; Baker, Elizabeth A; Stevens, Marsha S; Messiah, Antoine; Lee, David J; Kobetz, Erin N

2012-01-01

A low-income, African American neighborhood in Miami, Florida, experiences health disparities including an excess burden of cancer. Many residents are disenfranchised from the healthcare system, and may not participate in cancer prevention and screening services. We sought to describe the development of a partnership between a university and this community and lessons learned in using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model. To better understand the community's health behaviors and status, a randomized door-to-door survey was conducted in collaboration with a community partner. This collaboration helped foster a mutual understanding of the benefits of CBPR. We also describe challenges of adhering to study protocols, quality control, and sharing fiscal responsibility with organizations that do not have an established infrastructure. Understanding the organizational dynamics of a community is necessary for developing a CBPR model that will be effective in that community. Once established, it can help to inform future collaborations.

Security-Oriented and Load-Balancing Wireless Data Routing Game in the Integration of Advanced Metering Infrastructure Network in Smart Grid

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

He, Fulin; Cao, Yang; Zhang, Jun Jason

Ensuring flexible and reliable data routing is indispensable for the integration of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) networks, we propose a secure-oriented and load-balancing wireless data routing scheme. A novel utility function is designed based on security routing scheme. Then, we model the interactive security-oriented routing strategy among meter data concentrators or smart grid meters as a mixed-strategy network formation game. Finally, such problem results in a stable probabilistic routing scheme with proposed distributed learning algorithm. One contributions is that we studied that different types of applications affect the routing selection strategy and the strategy tendency. Another contributions is that themore » chosen strategy of our mixed routing can adaptively to converge to a new mixed strategy Nash equilibrium (MSNE) during the learning process in the smart grid.« less

Finding the truth in the noise - potentials and limitations of big ecological datasets for new knowledge generation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kutsch, Werner Leo

2016-04-01

Nowadays,technical possibilities in Earth Observation provide enormous amounts of data that open great possibilities to review existing ecological theories and develop new ones. Several examples for that are shown in the presentation in order to discuss potentials and limitations of the underlying concepts and provide feedback to large infrastructures carrying out ecological observations or experiments. Since different ecological questions or theoretical approaches require different methods, data interoperability and co-location are practical challenges. Nevertheless, we also have to learn that not every method is applicable in all ecosystems and that data have to be critically scrutinized before being sure that we can really draw ecological conclusions. This is time consuming and very often frustrating since we may learn that we have sometimes invested lots of work and money for building infrastructure at a site that is not suitable for the method.

Self-directed e-learning at a tertiary hospital in Malawi--a qualitative evaluation and lessons learnt.

PubMed

Barteit, Sandra; Hoepffner, Philip; Huwendiek, Sören; Karamagi, Angela; Munthali, Charles; Theurer, Antje; Neuhann, Florian

2015-01-01

Malawi faces a severe lack of health workers. Despite initiatives to address this problem, a critical shortage of health care staff remains. This lack challenges the education and training of junior medical staff, especially medical interns in their final and crucial training year before they independently work as medical doctors. We have introduced an e-learning platform in the medical department of the Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Malawi. With the support of computer-assisted instruction, we aimed to improve the quality of medical training and education, as well as access to current medical materials, in particular for interns. From March to April 2012, we conducted a qualitative evaluation to assess relevance and appropriateness of the e-learning platform. Data was collected via face-to-face interviews, a guided group discussion and a checklist based observation log. Evaluation data was recorded and coded using content analysis, interviewees were chosen via purposive sampling. E-learning proved to be technically feasible in this setting. Users considered the e-learning platform to be relevant and appropriate. Concerns were raised about sustainability, accessibility and technical infrastructure, as well as limited involvement and responsibilities of Malawian partners. Interest in e-learning was high, yet, awareness of and knowledge about the e-learning platform among potential users was low. Evaluation results indicated that further adaptions to local needs are necessary to increase usage and accessibility. Interview results and our project experiences showed that, in the given setting, e-learning requires commitment from local stakeholders, adequate technical infrastructure, identification and assignation of responsibilities, as well as specific adaption to local needs.

Self-directed e-learning at a tertiary hospital in Malawi – A qualitative Evaluation and Lessons learnt

PubMed Central

Barteit, Sandra; Hoepffner, Philip; Huwendiek, Sören; Karamagi, Angela; Munthali, Charles; Theurer, Antje; Neuhann, Florian

2015-01-01

Background: Malawi faces a severe lack of health workers. Despite initiatives to address this problem, a critical shortage of health care staff remains. This lack challenges the education and training of junior medical staff, especially medical interns in their final and crucial training year before they independently work as medical doctors. Project description: We have introduced an e-learning platform in the medical department of the Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Malawi. With the support of computer-assisted instruction, we aimed to improve the quality of medical training and education, as well as access to current medical materials, in particular for interns. Method: From March to April 2012, we conducted a qualitative evaluation to assess relevance and appropriateness of the e-learning platform. Data was collected via face-to-face interviews, a guided group discussion and a checklist based observation log. Evaluation data was recorded and coded using content analysis, interviewees were chosen via purposive sampling. Results: E-learning proved to be technically feasible in this setting. Users considered the e-learning platform to be relevant and appropriate. Concerns were raised about sustainability, accessibility and technical infrastructure, as well as limited involvement and responsibilities of Malawian partners. Interest in e-learning was high, yet, awareness of and knowledge about the e-learning platform among potential users was low. Evaluation results indicated that further adaptions to local needs are necessary to increase usage and accessibility. Conclusions: Interview results and our project experiences showed that, in the given setting, e-learning requires commitment from local stakeholders, adequate technical infrastructure, identification and assignation of responsibilities, as well as specific adaption to local needs. PMID:25699110

A modeling framework for investment planning in interdependent infrastructures in multi-hazard environments.

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

Brown, Nathanael J. K.; Gearhart, Jared Lee; Jones, Dean A.

Currently, much of protection planning is conducted separately for each infrastructure and hazard. Limited funding requires a balance of expenditures between terrorism and natural hazards based on potential impacts. This report documents the results of a Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) project that created a modeling framework for investment planning in interdependent infrastructures focused on multiple hazards, including terrorism. To develop this framework, three modeling elements were integrated: natural hazards, terrorism, and interdependent infrastructures. For natural hazards, a methodology was created for specifying events consistent with regional hazards. For terrorism, we modeled the terrorists actions based on assumptions regardingmore » their knowledge, goals, and target identification strategy. For infrastructures, we focused on predicting post-event performance due to specific terrorist attacks and natural hazard events, tempered by appropriate infrastructure investments. We demonstrate the utility of this framework with various examples, including protection of electric power, roadway, and hospital networks.« less

Lessons Learned From the Implementation of Brighter Bites: A Food Co-op to Increase Access to Fruits and Vegetables and Nutrition Education Among Low-Income Children and Their Families.

PubMed

Sharma, Shreela V; Chow, Joanne; Pomeroy, Michael; Raber, Margaret; Salako, David; Markham, Christine

2017-04-01

Food co-op models have gained popularity as a mechanism for offering affordable, quality produce. We describe the challenges, successes, and lessons learned from implementation of a school-based program using a food co-op model combined with nutrition education to improve access to and intake of fresh fruits and vegetables among low-income children and their families. Brighter Bites is a 16-week intervention comprising of fresh produce deliveries, recipe demonstrations, and nutrition education. A mixed-methods approach was used comprising survey and focus group data collected from Brighter Bites staff, parents, and teachers. Descriptive statistics and frequencies were computed for the survey data collected. Brighter Bites was implemented across 9 schools, serving a total of 1530 predominantly low-income families in the 2013-2014 school year. Brighter Bites distributed an average 60.2 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables per family per week. Lessons learned included the importance of leveraging existing infrastructure of food banks and schools to implement the program, early school and parent engagement, and incorporating strategies to track and optimize engagement. Clear expectations and reliable partnerships are keys to the delivery of the Brighter Bites program. © 2017, American School Health Association.

Demonstration and Evaluation of Innovative Rehabilitation Technologies for Water Infrastructure Systems

EPA Science Inventory

The needs associated with the deteriorating water infrastructure are immense and have been estimated at more than $1 trillion over the next 20 years for water and wastewater utilities. To meet this growing need, utilities require the use of innovative technologies and procedures ...

Geographic Hotspots of Critical National Infrastructure.

PubMed

Thacker, Scott; Barr, Stuart; Pant, Raghav; Hall, Jim W; Alderson, David

2017-12-01

Failure of critical national infrastructures can result in major disruptions to society and the economy. Understanding the criticality of individual assets and the geographic areas in which they are located is essential for targeting investments to reduce risks and enhance system resilience. Within this study we provide new insights into the criticality of real-life critical infrastructure networks by integrating high-resolution data on infrastructure location, connectivity, interdependence, and usage. We propose a metric of infrastructure criticality in terms of the number of users who may be directly or indirectly disrupted by the failure of physically interdependent infrastructures. Kernel density estimation is used to integrate spatially discrete criticality values associated with individual infrastructure assets, producing a continuous surface from which statistically significant infrastructure criticality hotspots are identified. We develop a comprehensive and unique national-scale demonstration for England and Wales that utilizes previously unavailable data from the energy, transport, water, waste, and digital communications sectors. The testing of 200,000 failure scenarios identifies that hotspots are typically located around the periphery of urban areas where there are large facilities upon which many users depend or where several critical infrastructures are concentrated in one location. © 2017 Society for Risk Analysis.

Automatic Multi-sensor Data Quality Checking and Event Detection for Environmental Sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

LIU, Q.; Zhang, Y.; Zhao, Y.; Gao, D.; Gallaher, D. W.; Lv, Q.; Shang, L.

2017-12-01

With the advances in sensing technologies, large-scale environmental sensing infrastructures are pervasively deployed to continuously collect data for various research and application fields, such as air quality study and weather condition monitoring. In such infrastructures, many sensor nodes are distributed in a specific area and each individual sensor node is capable of measuring several parameters (e.g., humidity, temperature, and pressure), providing massive data for natural event detection and analysis. However, due to the dynamics of the ambient environment, sensor data can be contaminated by errors or noise. Thus, data quality is still a primary concern for scientists before drawing any reliable scientific conclusions. To help researchers identify potential data quality issues and detect meaningful natural events, this work proposes a novel algorithm to automatically identify and rank anomalous time windows from multiple sensor data streams. More specifically, (1) the algorithm adaptively learns the characteristics of normal evolving time series and (2) models the spatial-temporal relationship among multiple sensor nodes to infer the anomaly likelihood of a time series window for a particular parameter in a sensor node. Case studies using different data sets are presented and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can effectively identify anomalous time windows, which may resulted from data quality issues and natural events.

A tale of two rain gardens: Barriers and bridges to adaptive management of urban stormwater in Cleveland, Ohio.

PubMed

Chaffin, Brian C; Shuster, William D; Garmestani, Ahjond S; Furio, Brooke; Albro, Sandra L; Gardiner, Mary; Spring, MaLisa; Green, Olivia Odom

2016-12-01

Green infrastructure installations such as rain gardens and bioswales are increasingly regarded as viable tools to mitigate stormwater runoff at the parcel level. The use of adaptive management to implement and monitor green infrastructure projects as experimental attempts to manage stormwater has not been adequately explored as a way to optimize green infrastructure performance or increase social and political acceptance. Efforts to improve stormwater management through green infrastructure suffer from the complexity of overlapping jurisdictional boundaries, as well as interacting social and political forces that dictate the flow, consumption, conservation and disposal of urban wastewater flows. Within this urban milieu, adaptive management-rigorous experimentation applied as policy-can inform new wastewater management techniques such as the implementation of green infrastructure projects. In this article, we present a narrative of scientists and practitioners working together to apply an adaptive management approach to green infrastructure implementation for stormwater management in Cleveland, Ohio. In Cleveland, contextual legal requirements and environmental factors created an opportunity for government researchers, stormwater managers and community organizers to engage in the development of two distinct sets of rain gardens, each borne of unique social, economic and environmental processes. In this article we analyze social and political barriers to applying adaptive management as a framework for implementing green infrastructure experiments as policy. We conclude with a series of lessons learned and a reflection on the prospects for adaptive management to facilitate green infrastructure implementation for improved stormwater management. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Collaborative Access Control For Critical Infrastructures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baina, Amine; El Kalam, Anas Abou; Deswarte, Yves; Kaaniche, Mohamed

A critical infrastructure (CI) can fail with various degrees of severity due to physical and logical vulnerabilities. Since many interdependencies exist between CIs, failures can have dramatic consequences on the entire infrastructure. This paper focuses on threats that affect information and communication systems that constitute the critical information infrastructure (CII). A new collaborative access control framework called PolyOrBAC is proposed to address security problems that are specific to CIIs. The framework offers each organization participating in a CII the ability to collaborate with other organizations while maintaining control of its resources and internal security policy. The approach is demonstrated on a practical scenario involving the electrical power grid.

Facilities and Infrastructure FY 2017 Budget At-A-Glance

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

None

2016-03-01

The Facilities and Infrastructure Program includes EERE’s capital investments, operations and maintenance, and site-wide support of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It is the nation’s only national laboratory with a primary mission dedicated to the research, development and demonstration (RD&D) of energy efficiency, renewable energy and related technologies. EERE is NREL’s steward, primary client and sponsor of NREL’s designation as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center. The Facilities and Infrastructure (F&I) budget maintains NREL’s research and support infrastructure, ensures availability for EERE’s use, and provides a safe and secure workplace for employees.

e-Infrastructures supporting research into depression, self-harm and suicide.

PubMed

McCafferty, S; Doherty, T; Sinnott, R O; Watt, J

2010-08-28

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded Data Management through e-Social Sciences (DAMES) project is investigating, as one of its four research themes, how research into depression, self-harm and suicide may be enhanced through the adoption of e-Science infrastructures and techniques. In this paper, we explore the challenges in supporting such research infrastructures and describe the distributed and heterogeneous datasets that need to be provisioned to support such research. We describe and demonstrate the application of an advanced user and security-driven infrastructure that has been developed specifically to meet these challenges in an on-going study into depression, self-harm and suicide.

Water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools in low socio-economic regions in Nicaragua: a cross-sectional survey.

PubMed

Jordanova, Tania; Cronk, Ryan; Obando, Wanda; Medina, Octavio Zeledon; Kinoshita, Rinko; Bartram, Jamie

2015-05-29

Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) in schools contributes to better health and educational outcomes among school-aged children. In 2012, UNICEF Nicaragua and partners conducted a cross-sectional survey of WaSH in 526 schools in 12 low socio-economic status municipalities in Nicaragua. The survey gathered information on: school characteristics; teacher and community participation; water and sanitation infrastructure; and hygiene education and habits. Survey results were analyzed for associations between variables. WaSH coverage was significantly higher in urban than rural areas. Presence of drinking water infrastructure (43%) was lower than sanitation infrastructure (64%). Eighty-one percent of schools had no hand washing stations and 74% of schools lacked soap. Sanitation facilities were not in use at 28% of schools with sanitation infrastructure and 26% of schools with water infrastructure had non-functional systems. Only 8% of schools had budgets to purchase toilet-cleaning supplies and 75% obtained supplies from students' families. This study generates transferable WaSH sector learnings and new insights from monitoring data. Results can be used by donors, service providers, and policy makers to better target resources in Nicaraguan schools.

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Schools in Low Socio-Economic Regions in Nicaragua: A Cross-Sectional Survey

PubMed Central

Jordanova, Tania; Cronk, Ryan; Obando, Wanda; Medina, Octavio Zeledon; Kinoshita, Rinko; Bartram, Jamie

2015-01-01

Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) in schools contributes to better health and educational outcomes among school-aged children. In 2012, UNICEF Nicaragua and partners conducted a cross-sectional survey of WaSH in 526 schools in 12 low socio-economic status municipalities in Nicaragua. The survey gathered information on: school characteristics; teacher and community participation; water and sanitation infrastructure; and hygiene education and habits. Survey results were analyzed for associations between variables. WaSH coverage was significantly higher in urban than rural areas. Presence of drinking water infrastructure (43%) was lower than sanitation infrastructure (64%). Eighty-one percent of schools had no hand washing stations and 74% of schools lacked soap. Sanitation facilities were not in use at 28% of schools with sanitation infrastructure and 26% of schools with water infrastructure had non-functional systems. Only 8% of schools had budgets to purchase toilet-cleaning supplies and 75% obtained supplies from students’ families. This study generates transferable WaSH sector learnings and new insights from monitoring data. Results can be used by donors, service providers, and policy makers to better target resources in Nicaraguan schools. PMID:26035665

Creating 21st-Century Laboratories and Classrooms for Improving Population Health: A Call to Action for Academic Medical Centers.

PubMed

DeVoe, Jennifer E; Likumahuwa-Ackman, Sonja; Shannon, Jackilen; Steiner Hayward, Elizabeth

2017-04-01

Academic medical centers (AMCs) in the United States built world-class infrastructure to successfully combat disease in the 20th century, which is inadequate for the complexity of sustaining and improving population health. AMCs must now build first-rate 21st-century infrastructure to connect combating disease and promoting health. This infrastructure must acknowledge the bio-psycho-social-environmental factors impacting health and will need to reach far beyond the AMC walls to foster community "laboratories" that support the "science of health," complementary to those supporting the "science of medicine"; cultivate community "classrooms" to stimulate learning and discovery in the places where people live, work, and play; and strengthen bridges between academic centers and these community laboratories and classrooms to facilitate bidirectional teaching, learning, innovation, and discovery.Private and public entities made deep financial investments that contributed to the AMC disease-centered approach to clinical care, education, and research in the 20th century. Many of these same funders now recognize the need to transform U.S. health care into a system that is accountable for population health and the need for a medical workforce equipped with the skills to measure and improve health. Innovative ideas about communities as centers of learning, the importance of social factors as major determinants of health, and the need for multidisciplinary perspectives to solve complex problems are not new; many are 20th-century ideas still waiting to be fully implemented. The window of opportunity is now. The authors articulate how AMCs must take bigger and bolder steps to become leaders in population health.

A One Health Evaluation of the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance

PubMed Central

Hanin, Marie C. E.; Queenan, Kevin; Savic, Sara; Karimuribo, Esron; Rüegg, Simon R.; Häsler, Barbara

2018-01-01

Rooted in the recognition that emerging infectious diseases occur at the interface of human, animal, and ecosystem health, the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS) initiative aims to promote a trans-sectoral approach to address better infectious disease risk management in five countries of the Southern African Development Community. Nine years after SACIDS’ inception, this study aimed to evaluate the program by applying a One Health (OH) evaluation framework developed by the Network for Evaluation of One Health (NEOH). The evaluation included a description of the context and the initiative, illustration of the theory of change, identification of outputs and outcomes, and assessment of the One Healthness. The latter is the sum of characteristics that defines an integrated approach and includes OH thinking, OH planning, OH working, sharing infrastructure, learning infrastructure, and systemic organization. The protocols made available by NEOH were used to develop data collection protocols and identify the study design. The framework relies on a mixed methods approach by combining a descriptive and qualitative assessment with a semi-quantitative evaluation (scoring). Data for the analysis were gathered during a document review, in group and individual interviews and in an online survey. Operational aspects (i.e., OH thinking, planning, and working) were found to be balanced overall with the highest score in the planning dimension, whereas the infrastructure (learning infrastructure, systemic organization, and sharing infrastructure) was high for the first two dimensions, but low for sharing. The OH index calculated was 0.359, and the OH ratio calculated was 1.495. The program was praised for its great innovative energy in a difficult landscape dominated by poor infrastructure and its ability to create awareness for OH and enthuse people for the concept; training of people and networking. Shortcomings were identified regarding the balance of contributions, funds and activities across member countries in the South, lack of data sharing, unequal allocation of resources, top-down management structures, and limited horizontal collaboration. Despite these challenges, SACIDS is perceived to be an effective agent in tackling infectious diseases in an integrated manner. PMID:29616227

A One Health Evaluation of the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance.

PubMed

Hanin, Marie C E; Queenan, Kevin; Savic, Sara; Karimuribo, Esron; Rüegg, Simon R; Häsler, Barbara

2018-01-01

Rooted in the recognition that emerging infectious diseases occur at the interface of human, animal, and ecosystem health, the Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS) initiative aims to promote a trans-sectoral approach to address better infectious disease risk management in five countries of the Southern African Development Community. Nine years after SACIDS' inception, this study aimed to evaluate the program by applying a One Health (OH) evaluation framework developed by the Network for Evaluation of One Health (NEOH). The evaluation included a description of the context and the initiative, illustration of the theory of change, identification of outputs and outcomes, and assessment of the One Healthness. The latter is the sum of characteristics that defines an integrated approach and includes OH thinking, OH planning, OH working, sharing infrastructure, learning infrastructure, and systemic organization. The protocols made available by NEOH were used to develop data collection protocols and identify the study design. The framework relies on a mixed methods approach by combining a descriptive and qualitative assessment with a semi-quantitative evaluation (scoring). Data for the analysis were gathered during a document review, in group and individual interviews and in an online survey. Operational aspects (i.e., OH thinking, planning, and working) were found to be balanced overall with the highest score in the planning dimension, whereas the infrastructure (learning infrastructure, systemic organization, and sharing infrastructure) was high for the first two dimensions, but low for sharing. The OH index calculated was 0.359, and the OH ratio calculated was 1.495. The program was praised for its great innovative energy in a difficult landscape dominated by poor infrastructure and its ability to create awareness for OH and enthuse people for the concept; training of people and networking. Shortcomings were identified regarding the balance of contributions, funds and activities across member countries in the South, lack of data sharing, unequal allocation of resources, top-down management structures, and limited horizontal collaboration. Despite these challenges, SACIDS is perceived to be an effective agent in tackling infectious diseases in an integrated manner.

Comparison of WinSLAMM Modeled Results with Monitored Bioinfiltration Data during Kansas City Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project

EPA Science Inventory

The Water Services Department (WSD) in Kansas City, Missouri (KCMO) has conducted extensive modeling and economic studies of its combined sewer system (CSS) over the last several years. A number of green infrastructure (GI) solutions were identified and constructed to reduce dis...

A genome-wide association study platform built on iPlant cyber-infrastructure

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

We demonstrated a flexible Genome-Wide Association (GWA) Study (GWAS) platform built upon the iPlant Collaborative Cyber-infrastructure. The platform supports big data management, sharing, and large scale study of both genotype and phenotype data on clusters. End users can add their own analysis too...

75 FR 59278 - Homeland Security Advisory Council

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-09-27

... information among TSA and federal and local law enforcement agencies concerning transportation infrastructure... about the potential capabilities and vulnerabilities identified in a cyber exercise and discuss... Operational Improvements. Lessons Learned from the cyber exercise. Basis for Closure: In accordance with...

Knowledge base for v-Embryo: Information Infrastructure for in silico modeling

EPA Science Inventory

Computers, imaging technologies, and the worldwide web have assumed an important role in augmenting traditional learning. Resources to disseminate multimedia information across platforms, and the emergence of communal knowledge environments, facilitate the visualization of diffi...

Designing Green Stormwater Infrastructure for Hydrologic and Human Benefits: An Image Based Machine Learning Approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rai, A.; Minsker, B. S.

2014-12-01

Urbanization over the last century has degraded our natural water resources by increasing storm-water runoff, reducing nutrient retention, and creating poor ecosystem health downstream. The loss of tree canopy and expansion of impervious area and storm sewer systems have significantly decreased infiltration and evapotranspiration, increased stream-flow velocities, and increased flood risk. These problems have brought increasing attention to catchment-wide implementation of green infrastructure (e.g., decentralized green storm water management practices such as bioswales, rain gardens, permeable pavements, tree box filters, cisterns, urban wetlands, urban forests, stream buffers, and green roofs) to replace or supplement conventional storm water management practices and create more sustainable urban water systems. Current green infrastructure (GI) practice aims at mitigating the negative effects of urbanization by restoring pre-development hydrology and ultimately addressing water quality issues at an urban catchment scale. The benefits of green infrastructure extend well beyond local storm water management, as urban green spaces are also major contributors to human health. Considerable research in the psychological sciences have shown significant human health benefits from appropriately designed green spaces, yet impacts on human wellbeing have not yet been formally considered in GI design frameworks. This research is developing a novel computational green infrastructure (GI) design framework that integrates hydrologic requirements with criteria for human wellbeing. A supervised machine learning model is created to identify specific patterns in urban green spaces that promote human wellbeing; the model is linked to RHESSYS model to evaluate GI designs in terms of both hydrologic and human health benefits. An application of the models to Dead Run Watershed in Baltimore showed that image mining methods were able to capture key elements of human preferences that could improve tree-based GI design. Hydrologic benefits associated with these features were substantial, indicating that increased urban tree coverage and a more integrated GI design approach can significantly increase both human and hydrologic benefits.

Create, run, share, publish, and reference your LC-MS, FIA-MS, GC-MS, and NMR data analysis workflows with the Workflow4Metabolomics 3.0 Galaxy online infrastructure for metabolomics.

PubMed

Guitton, Yann; Tremblay-Franco, Marie; Le Corguillé, Gildas; Martin, Jean-François; Pétéra, Mélanie; Roger-Mele, Pierrick; Delabrière, Alexis; Goulitquer, Sophie; Monsoor, Misharl; Duperier, Christophe; Canlet, Cécile; Servien, Rémi; Tardivel, Patrick; Caron, Christophe; Giacomoni, Franck; Thévenot, Etienne A

2017-12-01

Metabolomics is a key approach in modern functional genomics and systems biology. Due to the complexity of metabolomics data, the variety of experimental designs, and the multiplicity of bioinformatics tools, providing experimenters with a simple and efficient resource to conduct comprehensive and rigorous analysis of their data is of utmost importance. In 2014, we launched the Workflow4Metabolomics (W4M; http://workflow4metabolomics.org) online infrastructure for metabolomics built on the Galaxy environment, which offers user-friendly features to build and run data analysis workflows including preprocessing, statistical analysis, and annotation steps. Here we present the new W4M 3.0 release, which contains twice as many tools as the first version, and provides two features which are, to our knowledge, unique among online resources. First, data from the four major metabolomics technologies (i.e., LC-MS, FIA-MS, GC-MS, and NMR) can be analyzed on a single platform. By using three studies in human physiology, alga evolution, and animal toxicology, we demonstrate how the 40 available tools can be easily combined to address biological issues. Second, the full analysis (including the workflow, the parameter values, the input data and output results) can be referenced with a permanent digital object identifier (DOI). Publication of data analyses is of major importance for robust and reproducible science. Furthermore, the publicly shared workflows are of high-value for e-learning and training. The Workflow4Metabolomics 3.0 e-infrastructure thus not only offers a unique online environment for analysis of data from the main metabolomics technologies, but it is also the first reference repository for metabolomics workflows. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Case for Adapting and Applying Continuance Theory to Education: Understanding the Role of Student Feedback in Motivating Teachers to Persist with Including Digital Technologies in Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Noeline

2015-01-01

In New Zealand schools, the adoption and persistent use of digital tools to aid learning is a growing but uneven, trend, often linked to the practices of early adopters and/or robust wifi infrastructure. The Technology Adoption Model is used internationally to gauge levels of uptake of technological tools, particularly in commerce and also in…

National Geodata Policy Forum: present and emerging U.S. policies governing the development, evolution, and use of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure: summary report

USGS Publications Warehouse

Federal Geographic Data Committee, U.S. Geological Survey

1993-01-01

The first National Geo-Data Policy Forum was held on May 10-12, 1993, in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. The objective of the National Geo-Data Policy Forum was to examine policies related to the evolution and use of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). A second goal was to identify issues concerning spatial data technology and its use by all citizens. Policy makers from the public and private sectors offered ideas on the myriad issues and questions related to the NSDI and learned of concerns that their organizations must address. The links that connect the NSDI to the Clinton Administration's National Information Infrastructure were identified and discussed. The forum offered participants an opportunity to define the NSDI's role in carrying out technology policy.

German experience in managing stormwater with green infrastructure

EPA Science Inventory

This paper identifies and describes experience with ‘green’ stormwater management practices in Germany. It provides the context in which developments took place and extracts lessons learned to inform efforts of other countries in confronting urban stormwater challenges. Our findi...

7 CFR 1599.4 - Application process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... associations, community infrastructure, and health, nutrition, water and sanitation conditions; (3) Information... improvements in the learning environment; (iii) Improved maternal, child and student health and nutrition; (iv... OF AGRICULTURE McGOVERN-DOLE INTERNATIONAL FOOD FOR EDUCATION AND CHILD NUTRITION PROGRAM § 1599.4...

7 CFR 1599.4 - Application process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... associations, community infrastructure, and health, nutrition, water and sanitation conditions; (3) Information... improvements in the learning environment; (iii) Improved maternal, child and student health and nutrition; (iv... OF AGRICULTURE McGOVERN-DOLE INTERNATIONAL FOOD FOR EDUCATION AND CHILD NUTRITION PROGRAM § 1599.4...

7 CFR 1599.4 - Application process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... associations, community infrastructure, and health, nutrition, water and sanitation conditions; (3) Information... improvements in the learning environment; (iii) Improved maternal, child and student health and nutrition; (iv... OF AGRICULTURE McGOVERN-DOLE INTERNATIONAL FOOD FOR EDUCATION AND CHILD NUTRITION PROGRAM § 1599.4...

7 CFR 1599.4 - Application process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... associations, community infrastructure, and health, nutrition, water and sanitation conditions; (3) Information... improvements in the learning environment; (iii) Improved maternal, child and student health and nutrition; (iv... OF AGRICULTURE McGOVERN-DOLE INTERNATIONAL FOOD FOR EDUCATION AND CHILD NUTRITION PROGRAM § 1599.4...

Role Transfer for Robot Tasking

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-04-01

Artificial Intel- ligence (AAAI-98). Brooks, R. A., Breazeal, C., Marjanovic , M. & Scassellati, B. (1999). The Cog project: Building a humanoid robot...scale investment in knowledge infrastructure, Communications of the ACM 38(11): 33-38. 33 Marjanovic , M. (1995). Learning functional maps between

A Risk Mitigation Model: Lessons Learned From Actual Insider Sabotage

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-11-07

performance Responsibilities removed from projects Suspension of Internet access Death in family ; Divorce Financial Disagreement re: salary/compensation...Infrastructure by Information Technology Insiders, ” Monterrey , CA.: Defense Personnel Security Research and Education Center. Shaw, E.D. (2004). “The

Teaching minority children hygiene: investigating hygiene education in kindergartens and homes of ethnic minority children in northern Vietnam.

PubMed

Rheinländer, Thilde; Samuelsen, Helle; Dalsgaard, Anders; Konradsen, Flemming

2015-01-01

Ethnic minority children in Vietnam experience high levels of hygiene- and sanitation-related diseases. Improving hygiene for minority children is therefore vital for improving child health. The study objective was to investigate how kindergarten and home environments influence the learning of hygiene of pre-school ethnic minority children in rural Vietnam. Eight months of ethnographic field studies were conducted among four ethnic minority groups living in highland and lowland communities in northern Vietnam. Data included participant observation in four kindergartens and 20 homes of pre-school children, together with 67 semi-structured interviews with caregivers and five kindergarten staff. Thematic analysis was applied and concepts of social learning provided inputs to the analysis. This study showed that poor living conditions with lack of basic sanitation infrastructures were important barriers for the implementation of safe home child hygiene. Furthermore, the everyday life of highland villages, with parents working away from the households resulted in little daily adult supervision of safe child hygiene practices. While kindergartens were identified as potentially important institutions for improving child hygiene education, essential and well-functioning hygiene infrastructures were lacking. Also, hygiene teaching relied on theoretical and non-practice-based learning styles, which did not facilitate hygiene behaviour change in small children. Minority children were further disadvantaged as teaching was only provided in non-minority language. Kindergartens can be important institutions for the promotion of safe hygiene practices among children, but they must invest in the maintenance of hygiene and sanitation infrastructures and adopt a strong practice-based teaching approach in daily work and in teacher's education. To support highland minority children in particular, teaching styles must take local living conditions and caregiver structures into account and teach in local languages. Creating stronger links between home and institutional learning environments can be vital to support disadvantaged highland families in improving child health.

Users as essential contributors to spatial cyberinfrastructures

PubMed Central

Poore, Barbara S.

2011-01-01

Current accounts of spatial cyberinfrastructure development tend to overemphasize technologies to the neglect of critical social and cultural issues on which adoption depends. Spatial cyberinfrastructures will have a higher chance of success if users of many types, including nonprofessionals, are made central to the development process. Recent studies in the history of infrastructures reveal key turning points and issues that should be considered in the development of spatial cyberinfrastructure projects. These studies highlight the importance of adopting qualitative research methods to learn how users work with data and digital tools, and how user communities form. The author's empirical research on data sharing networks in the Pacific Northwest salmon crisis at the turn of the 21st century demonstrates that ordinary citizens can contribute critical local knowledge to global databases and should be considered in the design and construction of spatial cyberinfrastructures. PMID:21444825

Users as essential contributors to spatial cyberinfrastructures.

PubMed

Poore, Barbara S

2011-04-05

Current accounts of spatial cyberinfrastructure development tend to overemphasize technologies to the neglect of critical social and cultural issues on which adoption depends. Spatial cyberinfrastructures will have a higher chance of success if users of many types, including nonprofessionals, are made central to the development process. Recent studies in the history of infrastructures reveal key turning points and issues that should be considered in the development of spatial cyberinfrastructure projects. These studies highlight the importance of adopting qualitative research methods to learn how users work with data and digital tools, and how user communities form. The author's empirical research on data sharing networks in the Pacific Northwest salmon crisis at the turn of the 21st century demonstrates that ordinary citizens can contribute critical local knowledge to global databases and should be considered in the design and construction of spatial cyberinfrastructures.

Integrating Automation into a Multi-Mission Operations Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Surka, Derek M.; Jones, Lori; Crouse, Patrick; Cary, Everett A, Jr.; Esposito, Timothy C.

2007-01-01

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Space Science Mission Operations (SSMO) Project is currently tackling the challenge of minimizing ground operations costs for multiple satellites that have surpassed their prime mission phase and are well into extended mission. These missions are being reengineered into a multi-mission operations center built around modern information technologies and a common ground system infrastructure. The effort began with the integration of four SMEX missions into a similar architecture that provides command and control capabilities and demonstrates fleet automation and control concepts as a pathfinder for additional mission integrations. The reengineered ground system, called the Multi-Mission Operations Center (MMOC), is now undergoing a transformation to support other SSMO missions, which include SOHO, Wind, and ACE. This paper presents the automation principles and lessons learned to date for integrating automation into an existing operations environment for multiple satellites.

Users as essential contributors to spatial cyberinfrastructures

USGS Publications Warehouse

Poore, B.S.

2011-01-01

Current accounts of spatial cyberinfrastructure development tend to overemphasize technologies to the neglect of critical social and cultural issues on which adoption depends. Spatial cyberinfrastructures will have a higher chance of success if users of many types, including nonprofessionals, are made central to the development process. Recent studies in the history of infrastructures reveal key turning points and issues that should be considered in the development of spatial cyberinfrastructure projects. These studies highlight the importance of adopting qualitative research methods to learn how users work with data and digital tools, and how user communities form. The author's empirical research on data sharing networks in the Pacific Northwest salmon crisis at the turn of the 21st century demonstrates that ordinary citizens can contribute critical local knowledge to global databases and should be considered in the design and construction of spatial cyberinfrastructures.

Phase I - Smart Grid Data Access Pilot Program: Utilizing STEM Education as a Catalyst for Residential Consumer Decision Making and Change

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

Lishness, Alan; Peake, Leigh

2014-11-19

Under Phase I of the Smart Grid Data Access Pilot Program, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) partnered with Central Maine Power (CMP), and the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA) and engaged key vendors Tilson Government Services, LLC (Tilson), and Image Works to demonstrate the efficacy of PowerHouse, an interactive online learning environment linking middle school students with their home electricity consumption data provided through CMP’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). The goal of the program is to harness the power of youth to alter home energy consumption behaviors using AMI data. Successful programs aimed at smoking cessation, recycling,more » and seat belt use have demonstrated the power of young people to influence household behaviors. In an era of increasing concern about energy costs, availability, and human impacts on global climate, GMRI sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of a student-focused approach to understanding and managing household energy use. We also sought to contribute to a solid foundation of science-literate students who can analyze evidence to find solutions to increasingly complex energy challenges.« less

Architecture of a Biomedical Informatics Research Data Management Pipeline.

PubMed

Bauer, Christian R; Umbach, Nadine; Baum, Benjamin; Buckow, Karoline; Franke, Thomas; Grütz, Romanus; Gusky, Linda; Nussbeck, Sara Yasemin; Quade, Matthias; Rey, Sabine; Rottmann, Thorsten; Rienhoff, Otto; Sax, Ulrich

2016-01-01

In University Medical Centers, heterogeneous data are generated that cannot always be clearly attributed to patient care or biomedical research. Each data set has to adhere to distinct intrinsic and operational quality standards. However, only if high-quality data, tools to work with the data, and most importantly guidelines and rules of how to work with the data are addressed adequately, an infrastructure can be sustainable. Here, we present the IT Research Architecture of the University Medical Center Göttingen and describe our ten years' experience and lessons learned with infrastructures in networked medical research.

INcreasing Security and Protection through Infrastructure REsilience: The INSPIRE Project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

D'Antonio, Salvatore; Romano, Luigi; Khelil, Abdelmajid; Suri, Neeraj

The INSPIRE project aims at enhancing the European potential in the field of security by ensuring the protection of critical information infrastructures through (a) the identification of their vulnerabilities and (b) the development of innovative techniques for securing networked process control systems. To increase the resilience of such systems INSPIRE will develop traffic engineering algorithms, diagnostic processes and self-reconfigurable architectures along with recovery techniques. Hence, the core idea of the INSPIRE project is to protect critical information infrastructures by appropriately configuring, managing, and securing the communication network which interconnects the distributed control systems. A working prototype will be implemented as a final demonstrator of selected scenarios. Controls/Communication Experts will support project partners in the validation and demonstration activities. INSPIRE will also contribute to standardization process in order to foster multi-operator interoperability and coordinated strategies for securing lifeline systems.

Software defined networking (SDN) over space division multiplexing (SDM) optical networks: features, benefits and experimental demonstration.

PubMed

Amaya, N; Yan, S; Channegowda, M; Rofoee, B R; Shu, Y; Rashidi, M; Ou, Y; Hugues-Salas, E; Zervas, G; Nejabati, R; Simeonidou, D; Puttnam, B J; Klaus, W; Sakaguchi, J; Miyazawa, T; Awaji, Y; Harai, H; Wada, N

2014-02-10

We present results from the first demonstration of a fully integrated SDN-controlled bandwidth-flexible and programmable SDM optical network utilizing sliceable self-homodyne spatial superchannels to support dynamic bandwidth and QoT provisioning, infrastructure slicing and isolation. Results show that SDN is a suitable control plane solution for the high-capacity flexible SDM network. It is able to provision end-to-end bandwidth and QoT requests according to user requirements, considering the unique characteristics of the underlying SDM infrastructure.

Setting the vision: applied patient-reported outcomes and smart, connected digital healthcare systems to improve patient-centered outcomes prediction in critical illness.

PubMed

Wysham, Nicholas G; Abernethy, Amy P; Cox, Christopher E

2014-10-01

Prediction models in critical illness are generally limited to short-term mortality and uncommonly include patient-centered outcomes. Current outcome prediction tools are also insensitive to individual context or evolution in healthcare practice, potentially limiting their value over time. Improved prognostication of patient-centered outcomes in critical illness could enhance decision-making quality in the ICU. Patient-reported outcomes have emerged as precise methodological measures of patient-centered variables and have been successfully employed using diverse platforms and technologies, enhancing the value of research in critical illness survivorship and in direct patient care. The learning health system is an emerging ideal characterized by integration of multiple data sources into a smart and interconnected health information technology infrastructure with the goal of rapidly optimizing patient care. We propose a vision of a smart, interconnected learning health system with integrated electronic patient-reported outcomes to optimize patient-centered care, including critical care outcome prediction. A learning health system infrastructure integrating electronic patient-reported outcomes may aid in the management of critical illness-associated conditions and yield tools to improve prognostication of patient-centered outcomes in critical illness.

Accelerated vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) safety applications : concept of operations document.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2001-12-01

This document summarizes lessons learned through the evaluation of four sites selected in 1996 to serve as national models for deploying and operating intelligent transportation systems (ITS) in metropolitan areas. One of the goals of the Metropolita...

Adaptive Management of Urban Ecosystem Restoration: Learning From Restoration Managers in Rhode Island, USA

EPA Science Inventory

Urban aquatic restoration can be difficult to accomplish because of complications like industrial pollutants, population density, infrastructure, and expense; however, unique opportunities in urban settings, including the potential to provide benefits to many diverse people, can ...

Transforming American Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Horn, Michael B.; Mackey, Katherine

2011-01-01

In this article the authors accept as a given the National Education Technology Plan's vision of a transformed education system powered by technology such that learners receive personalized and engaging learning experiences, and where assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity are redefined. The article analyzes this vision of a…

Opening the Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watson, Richard T.; Boudreau, Marie-Claude; York, Paul T.; Greiner, Martina; Wynn, Donald E.

2008-01-01

We argue that information systems educators--and others in similarly dynamic professional disciplines--could benefit from an alternative infrastructure for learning. We present an "open classroom" model of education which expands upon Ferris' (2002) collaborative partnership model of education by integrating "open" technologies such as Wiki and…

The iPlant collaborative: cyberinfrastructure for enabling data to discovery for the life sciences

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The iPlant Collaborative provides life science research communities access to comprehensive, scalable, and cohesive computational infrastructure for data management; identify management; collaboration tools; and cloud, high-performance, high-throughput computing. iPlant provides training, learning m...

Strategies for Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Training, 2012

2012-01-01

"Training" magazine taps 2012 Training Top 125 winners and Top 10 Hall of Famers to provide their learning and development best practices in each issue. In this article, Jamie Leitch (American Infrastructure) and Mary Beth Alexander (The Economical Insurance Group) share strategies for tuition reimbursement and professional designations.

Reshaping Student Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parsley, James F.

1991-01-01

Besides reorganizing the central office to support instructional goals, the Vancouver (Washington) School District has passed bond and levy issues to revitalize the infrastructure, changed to a three-year middle school configuration, designed three new school facilities, and allocated $1 million for school improvement initiatives. The goals are…

Ensuring Quality Assurance in Vocational Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Idialu, Ethel E.

2013-01-01

Vocational education emphasises skill acquisition. Quality assurance in vocational education is a concept that is concerned with high performance involving activities with vocational education such as teaching, learning, infrastructures, students' behaviour and the entire academic process. Quality vocational education refers to input and output of…

Evolution of a Materials Data Infrastructure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Warren, James A.; Ward, Charles H.

2018-06-01

The field of materials science and engineering is writing a new chapter in its evolution, one of digitally empowered materials discovery, development, and deployment. The 2008 Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) study report helped usher in this paradigm shift, making a compelling case and strong recommendations for an infrastructure supporting ICME that would enable access to precompetitive materials data for both scientific and engineering applications. With the launch of the Materials Genome Initiative in 2011, which drew substantial inspiration from the ICME study, digital data was highlighted as a core component of a Materials Innovation Infrastructure, along with experimental and computational tools. Over the past 10 years, our understanding of what it takes to provide accessible materials data has matured and rapid progress has been made in establishing a Materials Data Infrastructure (MDI). We are learning that the MDI is essential to eliminating the seams between experiment and computation by providing a means for them to connect effortlessly. Additionally, the MDI is becoming an enabler, allowing materials engineering to tie into a much broader model-based engineering enterprise for product design.

Building research infrastructure in community health centers: a Community Health Applied Research Network (CHARN) report.

PubMed

Likumahuwa, Sonja; Song, Hui; Singal, Robbie; Weir, Rosy Chang; Crane, Heidi; Muench, John; Sim, Shao-Chee; DeVoe, Jennifer E

2013-01-01

This article introduces the Community Health Applied Research Network (CHARN), a practice-based research network of community health centers (CHCs). Established by the Health Resources and Services Administration in 2010, CHARN is a network of 4 community research nodes, each with multiple affiliated CHCs and an academic center. The four nodes (18 individual CHCs and 4 academic partners in 9 states) are supported by a data coordinating center. Here we provide case studies detailing how CHARN is building research infrastructure and capacity in CHCs, with a particular focus on how community practice-academic partnerships were facilitated by the CHARN structure. The examples provided by the CHARN nodes include many of the building blocks of research capacity: communication capacity and "matchmaking" between providers and researchers; technology transfer; research methods tailored to community practice settings; and community institutional review board infrastructure to enable community oversight. We draw lessons learned from these case studies that we hope will serve as examples for other networks, with special relevance for community-based networks seeking to build research infrastructure in primary care settings.

Building Research Infrastructure in Community Health Centers: A Community Health Applied Research Network (CHARN) Report

PubMed Central

Likumahuwa, Sonja; Song, Hui; Singal, Robbie; Weir, Rosy Chang; Crane, Heidi; Muench, John; Sim, Shao-Chee; DeVoe, Jennifer E.

2015-01-01

This article introduces the Community Health Applied Research Network (CHARN), a practice-based research network of community health centers (CHCs). Established by the Health Resources and Services Administration in 2010, CHARN is a network of 4 community research nodes, each with multiple affiliated CHCs and an academic center. The four nodes (18 individual CHCs and 4 academic partners in 9 states) are supported by a data coordinating center. Here we provide case studies detailing how CHARN is building research infrastructure and capacity in CHCs, with a particular focus on how community practice-academic partnerships were facilitated by the CHARN structure. The examples provided by the CHARN nodes include many of the building blocks of research capacity: communication capacity and “matchmaking” between providers and researchers; technology transfer; research methods tailored to community practice settings; and community institutional review board infrastructure to enable community oversight. We draw lessons learned from these case studies that we hope will serve as examples for other networks, with special relevance for community-based networks seeking to build research infrastructure in primary care settings. PMID:24004710

Literacy Infrastructure, Access to Books, and the Implementation of the School Literacy Movement in Primary Schools in Indonesia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Laksono, K.; Retnaningdyah, P.

2018-01-01

Literacy Infrastructure and access to books are the foundation of literacy activity. Indonesia has regulations from the Ministry of Education and Culture requiring that 15 minutes should be used each day before the learning begins to read books other than textbooks. However, many schools are not yet obeying this requirement. The purposes of this study are to describe the literacy infrastructure in primary schools in Indonesia, to analyze access to books in primary schools, to explain the School Literacy Movement implementation, and to identify issues around the implementation of reading strategies in a context in which there is limited access to books. The questionnaire and interview study were conducted in 30 primary schools in East Java, Indonesia. The study concluded that the literacy infrastructure and access to books in 30 primary schools are below standard, but the school community enthusiastically implements the objectives of the School Literacy Movement. Many primary schools are already implementing good many reading strategies although there are some problems related to teacher competence.

Data Modeling & the Infrastructural Nature of Conceptual Tools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lesh, Richard; Caylor, Elizabeth; Gupta, Shweta

2007-01-01

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the infrastructural nature of many modern conceptual technologies. The focus of this paper is on conceptual tools associated with elementary types of data modeling. We intend to show a variety of ways in which these conceptual tools not only express thinking, but also mold and shape thinking. And those ways…

Green Infrastructure Management Techniques in Arid and Semi-arid Regions: Software Implementation and Demonstration using the AGWA/KINEROS2 Watershed Model

EPA Science Inventory

Increasing urban development in the arid and semi-arid regions of the southwestern United States has led to greater demand for water in a region with limited water resources and has fundamentally altered the hydrologic response of developed watersheds. Green Infrastructure (GI) p...

Representing Green Infrastructure Management Techniques in Arid and Semi-arid Regions: Software Implementation and Demonstration using the AGWA/KINEROS2 Watershed Model

EPA Science Inventory

Increasing urban development in the arid and semi-arid regions of the southwestern United States has led to greater demand for water from a region of limited water resources which has fundamentally altered the hydrologic response of developed watersheds. Green Infrastructure (GI)...

Enhancements of the "eHabitat

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Santoro, M.; Dubois, G.; Schulz, M.; Skøien, J. O.; Nativi, S.; Peedell, S.; Boldrini, E.

2012-04-01

The number of interoperable research infrastructures has increased significantly with the growing awareness of the efforts made by the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). One of the Social Benefit Areas (SBA) that is benefiting most from GEOSS is biodiversity, given the costs of monitoring the environment and managing complex information, from space observations to species records including their genetic characteristics. But GEOSS goes beyond the simple sharing of the data as it encourages the connectivity of models (the GEOSS Model Web), an approach easing the handling of often complex multi-disciplinary questions such as understanding the impact of environmental and climatological factors on ecosystems and habitats. In the context of GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot - Phase 3 (AIP-3), the EC-funded EuroGEOSS and GENESIS projects have developed and successfully demonstrated the "eHabitat" use scenario dealing with Climate Change and Biodiversity domains. Based on the EuroGEOSS multidisciplinary brokering infrastructure and on the DOPA (Digital Observatory for Protected Areas, see http://dopa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/), this scenario demonstrated how a GEOSS-based interoperability infrastructure can aid decision makers to assess and possibly forecast the irreplaceability of a given protected area, an essential indicator for assessing the criticality of threats this protected area is exposed to. The "eHabitat" use scenario was advanced in the GEOSS Sprint to Plenary activity; the advanced scenario will include the "EuroGEOSS Data Access Broker" and a new version of the eHabitat model in order to support the use of uncertain data. The multidisciplinary interoperability infrastructure which is used to demonstrate the "eHabitat" use scenario is composed of the following main components: a) A Discovery Broker: this component is able to discover resources from a plethora of different and heterogeneous geospatial services, presenting them on a single and standard discovery service; b) A Discovery Augmentation Component (DAC): this component builds on existing discovery and semantic services in order to provide the infrastructure with semantics enabled queries; c) A Data Access Broker: this component provides a seamless access of heterogeneous remote resources via a unique and standard service; d) Environmental Modeling Components (i.e. OGC WPS): these implement algorithms to predict evolution of protected areas This presentation introduces the advanced infrastructure developed to enhance the "eHabitat" use scenario. The presented infrastructure will be accessible through the GEO Portal and was used for demonstrating the "eHabitat" model at the last GEO Plenary Meeting - Istanbul, November 2011.

EU Climate-KIC Innovation Blue Green Dream Project: Creation of Educational Experience, Communication and Dissemination

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tchiguirinskaia, Ioulia; Gires, Auguste; Vicari, Rosa; Schertzer, Daniel; Maksimovic, Cedo

2013-04-01

The combined effects of climate change and increasing urbanization call for a change of paradigm for planning, maintenance and management of new urban developments and retrofitting of existing ones to maximize ecosystem services and increase resilience to the adverse climate change effects. This presentation will discuss synergies of the EU Climate-KIC Innovation Blue Green Dream (BGD) Project in promoting the BGD demonstration and training sites established in participating European countries. The BGD demonstration and training sites show clear benefits when blue and green infrastructures are considered together. These sites present a unique opportunity for community learning and dissemination. Their development and running acts as a hub for engineers, architects, planners and modellers to come together in their design and implementation stage. This process, being captured in a variety of media, creates a corpus of knowledge, anchored in specific examples of different scales, types and dimensions. During the EU Climate-KIC Innovation Blue Green Dream Project, this corpus of knowledge will be used to develop dissemination and training materials whose content will be customised to fit urgent societal needs.

A virtual reality-based method of decreasing transmission time of visual feedback for a tele-operative robotic catheter operating system.

PubMed

Guo, Jin; Guo, Shuxiang; Tamiya, Takashi; Hirata, Hideyuki; Ishihara, Hidenori

2016-03-01

An Internet-based tele-operative robotic catheter operating system was designed for vascular interventional surgery, to afford unskilled surgeons the opportunity to learn basic catheter/guidewire skills, while allowing experienced physicians to perform surgeries cooperatively. Remote surgical procedures, limited by variable transmission times for visual feedback, have been associated with deterioration in operability and vascular wall damage during surgery. At the patient's location, the catheter shape/position was detected in real time and converted into three-dimensional coordinates in a world coordinate system. At the operation location, the catheter shape was reconstructed in a virtual-reality environment, based on the coordinates received. The data volume reduction significantly reduced visual feedback transmission times. Remote transmission experiments, conducted over inter-country distances, demonstrated the improved performance of the proposed prototype. The maximum error for the catheter shape reconstruction was 0.93 mm and the transmission time was reduced considerably. The results were positive and demonstrate the feasibility of remote surgery using conventional network infrastructures. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sustaining Change: The Answers Are Blowing in the Wind.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moffett, Cerylle A.

2000-01-01

Sustaining reform requires district leaders to develop a supportive infrastructure, nurture professional communities, reduce turnover, and use facilitators to build capacity. Bringing educators up to speed means providing abundant staff development, balancing pressure with support, providing adult learning time, and reducing fragmentation and…

Operating in Uncertainty; Growing Resilient Critical Infrastructure Organizations

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-03-01

management. Institutional arrangements and enviromental knowledge are tested and revised in a dynamic, ongoing self-organized process of “learning by...February 17, 2010, from U.S. Enviromental Protection Agency: http://cfpub.epa.gov/safewater/watersecurity/features.cfm#f1 Walker, B., Gunderson, L

Folding Our Way to Productivity. Active Learning Lessons. Economics International.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baranova, Daira; Bottomoley, Alice; Brock, John; Shappo, Natalia

This lesson plan was developed through "Economics International," an international program to help build economic education infrastructures in the emerging market economies. It provides a lesson description; economic concepts; content standards and benchmarks; related subject areas; instructional objectives; time required for lesson…

Maslow and Motherboards: Taking a Hierarchical View of Technology Planning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Doug

2003-01-01

Presents a planning model for educational uses of technology that is based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Topics include established infrastructure; effective administration; extensive resources; enhanced teaching, including creating distance learning opportunities; empowered students, including evaluation methods and information literacy skills;…

CALL: A Triangle of Triangles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Montoro, Carlos; Hampel, Regine

2012-01-01

Institutional investment in technology and infrastructure for the provision of new online and self-access language learning opportunities is not always accompanied by the necessary changes in the practices of learners, practitioners and managers in higher education (Wertsch, 2002). As a result, feelings of frustration, helplessness and confusion…

More Money for Telecommunications, Other Programs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Dennis

2000-01-01

Describes increases in federal aid that affect: (1) the rural telecommunications infrastructure, access to the Internet for rural schools and libraries, and distance learning and telemedicine programs; (2) nonmetropolitan airports and other transportation; and (3) water treatment and wastewater facilities in rural, American Indian, and Alaska…

Networking. New Opportunities for Partnering, CAUSE94. Track IV.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

CAUSE, Boulder, CO.

Seven papers are presented from the 1994 CAUSE conference track on networking and information sharing among higher education institutions. The papers include: (1) "Integrated Statewide Infrastructure of Learning Technologies," focusing on the University of Wisconsin System (Lee Alley); (2) "Designing and Implementing a Network…

Rapidly expanding mobile apps for crowd-sourcing bike data to new cities : final report.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2017-03-01

Cities such as San Francisco, Atlanta, and Portland are using novel methods of data collection to learn more about the use of their bicycle : infrastructure. These data can help transportation planners better design or upgrade bicycle facilities. San...

Creating Business Intelligence from Course Management Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Dyk, Liezl; Conradie, Pieter

2007-01-01

Purpose: This article seeks to address the interface between individual learning facilitators that use course management systems (CMS) data to support decision-making and course design and institutional infrastructure providers that are responsible for institutional business intelligence. Design/methodology/approach: The design of a data warehouse…

Developing a data infrastructure for a learning health system: the PORTAL network

PubMed Central

McGlynn, Elizabeth A; Lieu, Tracy A; Durham, Mary L; Bauck, Alan; Laws, Reesa; Go, Alan S; Chen, Jersey; Feigelson, Heather Spencer; Corley, Douglas A; Young, Deborah Rohm; Nelson, Andrew F; Davidson, Arthur J; Morales, Leo S; Kahn, Michael G

2014-01-01

The Kaiser Permanente & Strategic Partners Patient Outcomes Research To Advance Learning (PORTAL) network engages four healthcare delivery systems (Kaiser Permanente, Group Health Cooperative, HealthPartners, and Denver Health) and their affiliated research centers to create a new national network infrastructure that builds on existing relationships among these institutions. PORTAL is enhancing its current capabilities by expanding the scope of the common data model, paying particular attention to incorporating patient-reported data more systematically, implementing new multi-site data governance procedures, and integrating the PCORnet PopMedNet platform across our research centers. PORTAL is partnering with clinical research and patient experts to create cohorts of patients with a common diagnosis (colorectal cancer), a rare diagnosis (adolescents and adults with severe congenital heart disease), and adults who are overweight or obese, including those with pre-diabetes or diabetes, to conduct large-scale observational comparative effectiveness research and pragmatic clinical trials across diverse clinical care settings. PMID:24821738

Autonomic Management of Application Workflows on Hybrid Computing Infrastructure

DOE PAGES

Kim, Hyunjoo; el-Khamra, Yaakoub; Rodero, Ivan; ...

2011-01-01

In this paper, we present a programming and runtime framework that enables the autonomic management of complex application workflows on hybrid computing infrastructures. The framework is designed to address system and application heterogeneity and dynamics to ensure that application objectives and constraints are satisfied. The need for such autonomic system and application management is becoming critical as computing infrastructures become increasingly heterogeneous, integrating different classes of resources from high-end HPC systems to commodity clusters and clouds. For example, the framework presented in this paper can be used to provision the appropriate mix of resources based on application requirements and constraints.more » The framework also monitors the system/application state and adapts the application and/or resources to respond to changing requirements or environment. To demonstrate the operation of the framework and to evaluate its ability, we employ a workflow used to characterize an oil reservoir executing on a hybrid infrastructure composed of TeraGrid nodes and Amazon EC2 instances of various types. Specifically, we show how different applications objectives such as acceleration, conservation and resilience can be effectively achieved while satisfying deadline and budget constraints, using an appropriate mix of dynamically provisioned resources. Our evaluations also demonstrate that public clouds can be used to complement and reinforce the scheduling and usage of traditional high performance computing infrastructure.« less

Assessment of municipal infrastructure development and its critical influencing factors in urban China: A FA and STIRPAT approach.

PubMed

Li, Yu; Zheng, Ji; Li, Fei; Jin, Xueting; Xu, Chen

2017-01-01

Municipal infrastructure is a fundamental facility for the normal operation and development of an urban city and is of significance for the stable progress of sustainable urbanization around the world, especially in developing countries. Based on the municipal infrastructure data of the prefecture-level cities in China, municipal infrastructure development is assessed comprehensively using a FA (factor analysis) model, and then the stochastic model STIRPAT (stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence and technology) is examined to investigate key factors that influence municipal infrastructure of cities in various stages of urbanization and economy. This study indicates that the municipal infrastructure development in urban China demonstrates typical characteristics of regional differentiation, in line with the economic development pattern. Municipal infrastructure development in cities is primarily influenced by income, industrialization and investment. For China and similar developing countries under transformation, national public investment remains the primary driving force of economy as well as the key influencing factor of municipal infrastructure. Contribution from urbanization and the relative consumption level, and the tertiary industry is still scanty, which is a crux issue for many developing countries under transformation. With economic growth and the transformation requirements, the influence of the conventional factors such as public investment and industrialization on municipal infrastructure development would be expected to decline, meanwhile, other factors like the consumption and tertiary industry driven model and the innovation society can become key contributors to municipal infrastructure sustainability.

Assessment of municipal infrastructure development and its critical influencing factors in urban China: A FA and STIRPAT approach

PubMed Central

Li, Yu; Zheng, Ji; Li, Fei; Jin, Xueting; Xu, Chen

2017-01-01

Municipal infrastructure is a fundamental facility for the normal operation and development of an urban city and is of significance for the stable progress of sustainable urbanization around the world, especially in developing countries. Based on the municipal infrastructure data of the prefecture-level cities in China, municipal infrastructure development is assessed comprehensively using a FA (factor analysis) model, and then the stochastic model STIRPAT (stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence and technology) is examined to investigate key factors that influence municipal infrastructure of cities in various stages of urbanization and economy. This study indicates that the municipal infrastructure development in urban China demonstrates typical characteristics of regional differentiation, in line with the economic development pattern. Municipal infrastructure development in cities is primarily influenced by income, industrialization and investment. For China and similar developing countries under transformation, national public investment remains the primary driving force of economy as well as the key influencing factor of municipal infrastructure. Contribution from urbanization and the relative consumption level, and the tertiary industry is still scanty, which is a crux issue for many developing countries under transformation. With economic growth and the transformation requirements, the influence of the conventional factors such as public investment and industrialization on municipal infrastructure development would be expected to decline, meanwhile, other factors like the consumption and tertiary industry driven model and the innovation society can become key contributors to municipal infrastructure sustainability. PMID:28787031

The dependence of educational infrastructure on clinical infrastructure.

PubMed Central

Cimino, C.

1998-01-01

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine needed to assess the growth of its infrastructure for educational computing as a first step to determining if student needs were being met. Included in computing infrastructure are space, equipment, software, and computing services. The infrastructure was assessed by reviewing purchasing and support logs for a six year period from 1992 to 1998. This included equipment, software, and e-mail accounts provided to students and to faculty for educational purposes. Student space has grown at a constant rate (averaging 14% increase each year respectively). Student equipment on campus has grown by a constant amount each year (average 8.3 computers each year). Student infrastructure off campus and educational support of faculty has not kept pace. It has either declined or remained level over the six year period. The availability of electronic mail clearly demonstrates this with accounts being used by 99% of students, 78% of Basic Science Course Leaders, 38% of Clerkship Directors, 18% of Clerkship Site Directors, and 8% of Clinical Elective Directors. The collection of the initial descriptive infrastructure data has revealed problems that may generalize to other medical schools. The discrepancy between infrastructure available to students and faculty on campus and students and faculty off campus creates a setting where students perceive a paradoxical declining support for computer use as they progress through medical school. While clinical infrastructure may be growing, it is at the expense of educational infrastructure at affiliate hospitals. PMID:9929262

Hyperopt: a Python library for model selection and hyperparameter optimization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bergstra, James; Komer, Brent; Eliasmith, Chris; Yamins, Dan; Cox, David D.

2015-01-01

Sequential model-based optimization (also known as Bayesian optimization) is one of the most efficient methods (per function evaluation) of function minimization. This efficiency makes it appropriate for optimizing the hyperparameters of machine learning algorithms that are slow to train. The Hyperopt library provides algorithms and parallelization infrastructure for performing hyperparameter optimization (model selection) in Python. This paper presents an introductory tutorial on the usage of the Hyperopt library, including the description of search spaces, minimization (in serial and parallel), and the analysis of the results collected in the course of minimization. This paper also gives an overview of Hyperopt-Sklearn, a software project that provides automatic algorithm configuration of the Scikit-learn machine learning library. Following Auto-Weka, we take the view that the choice of classifier and even the choice of preprocessing module can be taken together to represent a single large hyperparameter optimization problem. We use Hyperopt to define a search space that encompasses many standard components (e.g. SVM, RF, KNN, PCA, TFIDF) and common patterns of composing them together. We demonstrate, using search algorithms in Hyperopt and standard benchmarking data sets (MNIST, 20-newsgroups, convex shapes), that searching this space is practical and effective. In particular, we improve on best-known scores for the model space for both MNIST and convex shapes. The paper closes with some discussion of ongoing and future work.

Blended Learning Implementation in “Guru Pembelajar” Program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mahdan, D.; Kamaludin, M.; Wendi, H. F.; Simanjuntak, M. V.

2018-02-01

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), especially the internet, computers and communication devices requires the innovation in learning; one of which is Blended Learning. The concept of Blended Learning is the mixing of face-to-face learning models by learning online. Blended learning used in the learner teacher program organized by the Indonesian department of education and culture that a program to improve the competence of teachers, called “Guru Pembelajar” (GP). Blended learning model is perfect for learning for teachers, due to limited distance and time because online learning can be done anywhere and anytime. but the problems that arise from the implementation of this activity are many teachers who do not follow the activities because teachers, especially the elderly do not want to follow the activities because they cannot use computers and the internet, applications that are difficult to understand by participants, unstable internet connection in the area where the teacher lives and facilities and infrastructure are not adequate.

Medical students' evaluation of physiology learning environments in two Nigerian medical schools.

PubMed

Anyaehie, U S B; Nwobodo, E; Oze, G; Nwagha, U I; Orizu, I; Okeke, T; Anyanwu, G E

2011-06-01

The expansion of biomedical knowledge and the pursuit of more meaningful learning have led to world-wide evidence-based innovative changes in medical education and curricula. The recent emphasis on problem-based learning (PBL) and student-centred learning environments are, however, not being implemented in Nigerian medical schools. Traditional didactic lectures thus predominate, and learning is further constrained by funding gaps, poor infrastructure, and increasing class sizes. We reviewed medical students' perceptions of their exposed learning environment to determine preferences, shortcomings, and prescriptions for improvements. The results confirm declining interest in didactic lectures and practical sessions with preferences for peer-tutored discussion classes, which were considered more interactive and interesting. This study recommends more emphasis on student-centered learning with alternatives to passive lecture formats and repetitive cookbook practical sessions. The institutionalization of student feedback processes in Nigerian medical schools is also highly recommended.

The Learning Healthcare System and Cardiovascular Care: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association.

PubMed

Maddox, Thomas M; Albert, Nancy M; Borden, William B; Curtis, Lesley H; Ferguson, T Bruce; Kao, David P; Marcus, Gregory M; Peterson, Eric D; Redberg, Rita; Rumsfeld, John S; Shah, Nilay D; Tcheng, James E

2017-04-04

The learning healthcare system uses health information technology and the health data infrastructure to apply scientific evidence at the point of clinical care while simultaneously collecting insights from that care to promote innovation in optimal healthcare delivery and to fuel new scientific discovery. To achieve these goals, the learning healthcare system requires systematic redesign of the current healthcare system, focusing on 4 major domains: science and informatics, patient-clinician partnerships, incentives, and development of a continuous learning culture. This scientific statement provides an overview of how these learning healthcare system domains can be realized in cardiovascular disease care. Current cardiovascular disease care innovations in informatics, data uses, patient engagement, continuous learning culture, and incentives are profiled. In addition, recommendations for next steps for the development of a learning healthcare system in cardiovascular care are presented. © 2017 American Heart Association, Inc.

Critical Success Factor for Implementing Vocational Blended Learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dewi, K. C.; Ciptayani, P. I.; Surjono, H. D.; Priyanto

2018-01-01

Blended learning provides many benefits to the flexibility of time, place and situation constraints. The research’s objectives was describing the factors that determine the successful implementation of blended learning in vocational higher education. The research used a qualitative approach, data collected through observations and interviews by questionnare based on the CSFs indicators refers to TAM and Kliger. Data analysis was inductive method. The result provided an illustration that the success of vocational blended learning implementation was largely determined by the selection of instructional models that are inline with learning achievement target. The effectiveness of blended learning required the existence of policy support, readiness of IT infrastructure. Changing lecturer’s culture by utilizing ICT can also encourage the accelerated process of successful implementation. It can concluded that determinant factor of successful implementation of blended learning in vocational education is determined by teacher’s ability in mastering the pedagogical knowledge of designing instructional models.

Strategies for interprofessional education: the Interprofessional Team Objective Structured Clinical Examination for midwifery and medical students.

PubMed

Cullen, Lindsay; Fraser, Diane; Symonds, Ian

2003-08-01

This paper provides an overview of the processes involved in implementing an interprofessional education (IPE) strategy in a recently established School of Human Development at the University of Nottingham. The merger of the academic divisions of child health, midwifery, obstetrics and gynaecology was a deliberate initiative to create an organisational infrastructure intended to enhance opportunities for interprofessional collaborations in research and education. As a first step, a small group of academic midwives and obstetricians formed a project group to find the best way of facilitating IPE for medical and midwifery students at undergraduate level. A discussion is provided of the work the project group undertook to: determine an agreed definition of IPE; decide an action research approach was needed; determine the ways in which teaching and learning strategies were to be implemented, evaluated and compared; and identify the factors inhibiting and enhancing developments. Evaluations have demonstrated that the Interprofessional Team Objective Structured Clinical Examination (ITOSCE) focusing on intrapartum scenarios is effective in promoting interprofessional learning. Both medical and midwifery students and facilitators agree that team working and understanding each other's roles has been enhanced and that although resource intensive, IPE is worth the time and effort involved.

A spatial framework for targeting urban planning for pollinators and people with local stakeholders: A route to healthy, blossoming communities?

PubMed

Bellamy, Chloe C; van der Jagt, Alexander P N; Barbour, Shelley; Smith, Mike; Moseley, Darren

2017-10-01

Pollinators such as bees and hoverflies are essential components of an urban ecosystem, supporting and contributing to the biodiversity, functioning, resilience and visual amenity of green infrastructure. Their urban habitats also deliver health and well-being benefits to society, by providing important opportunities for accessing nature nearby to the homes of a growing majority of people living in towns and cities. However, many pollinator species are in decline, and the loss, degradation and fragmentation of natural habitats are some of the key drivers of this change. Urban planners and other practitioners need evidence to carefully prioritise where they focus their resources to provide and maintain a high quality, multifunctional green infrastructure network that supports pollinators and people. We provide a modelling framework to inform green infrastructure planning as a nature based solution with social and ecological benefits. We show how habitat suitability models (HSM) incorporating remote sensed vegetation data can provide important information on the influence of urban landcover composition and spatial configuration on species distributions across cities. Using Edinburgh, Scotland, as a case study city, we demonstrate this approach for bumble bees and hoverflies, providing high resolution predictive maps that identify pollinator habitat hotspots and pinch points across the city. By combining this spatial HSM output with health deprivation data, we highlight 'win-win' opportunity areas in most need of improved green infrastructure to support pollinator habitat quality and connectivity, as well as societal health and well-being. In addition, in collaboration with municipal planners, local stakeholders, and partners from a local greenspace learning alliance, we identified opportunities for citizen engagement activities to encourage interest in wildlife gardening as part of a 'pollinator pledge'. We conclude that this quantitative, spatially explicit and transferable approach provides a useful decision-making tool for targeting nature-based solutions to improve biodiversity and increase environmental stewardship, with the aim of providing a more attractive city to live, work and invest in. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Towards large-scale mapping of urban three-dimensional structure using Landsat imagery and global elevation datasets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, P.; Huang, C.

2017-12-01

The three-dimensional (3D) structure of buildings and infrastructures is fundamental to understanding and modelling of the impacts and challenges of urbanization in terms of energy use, carbon emissions, and earthquake vulnerabilities. However, spatially detailed maps of urban 3D structure have been scarce, particularly in fast-changing developing countries. We present here a novel methodology to map the volume of buildings and infrastructures at 30 meter resolution using a synergy of Landsat imagery and openly available global digital surface models (DSMs), including the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), ASTER Global Digital Elevation Map (GDEM), ALOS World 3D - 30m (AW3D30), and the recently released global DSM from the TanDEM-X mission. Our method builds on the concept of object-based height profile to extract height metrics from the DSMs and use a machine learning algorithm to predict height and volume from the height metrics. We have tested this algorithm in the entire England and assessed our result using Lidar measurements in 25 England cities. Our initial assessments achieved a RMSE of 1.4 m (R2 = 0.72) for building height and a RMSE of 1208.7 m3 (R2 = 0.69) for building volume, demonstrating the potential of large-scale applications and fully automated mapping of urban structure.

OpenFDA: an innovative platform providing access to a wealth of FDA's publicly available data.

PubMed

Kass-Hout, Taha A; Xu, Zhiheng; Mohebbi, Matthew; Nelsen, Hans; Baker, Adam; Levine, Jonathan; Johanson, Elaine; Bright, Roselie A

2016-05-01

The objective of openFDA is to facilitate access and use of big important Food and Drug Administration public datasets by developers, researchers, and the public through harmonization of data across disparate FDA datasets provided via application programming interfaces (APIs). Using cutting-edge technologies deployed on FDA's new public cloud computing infrastructure, openFDA provides open data for easier, faster (over 300 requests per second per process), and better access to FDA datasets; open source code and documentation shared on GitHub for open community contributions of examples, apps and ideas; and infrastructure that can be adopted for other public health big data challenges. Since its launch on June 2, 2014, openFDA has developed four APIs for drug and device adverse events, recall information for all FDA-regulated products, and drug labeling. There have been more than 20 million API calls (more than half from outside the United States), 6000 registered users, 20,000 connected Internet Protocol addresses, and dozens of new software (mobile or web) apps developed. A case study demonstrates a use of openFDA data to understand an apparent association of a drug with an adverse event. With easier and faster access to these datasets, consumers worldwide can learn more about FDA-regulated products. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved.

OpenFDA: an innovative platform providing access to a wealth of FDA’s publicly available data

PubMed Central

Kass-Hout, Taha A; Mohebbi, Matthew; Nelsen, Hans; Baker, Adam; Levine, Jonathan; Johanson, Elaine; Bright, Roselie A

2016-01-01

Objective The objective of openFDA is to facilitate access and use of big important Food and Drug Administration public datasets by developers, researchers, and the public through harmonization of data across disparate FDA datasets provided via application programming interfaces (APIs). Materials and Methods Using cutting-edge technologies deployed on FDA’s new public cloud computing infrastructure, openFDA provides open data for easier, faster (over 300 requests per second per process), and better access to FDA datasets; open source code and documentation shared on GitHub for open community contributions of examples, apps and ideas; and infrastructure that can be adopted for other public health big data challenges. Results Since its launch on June 2, 2014, openFDA has developed four APIs for drug and device adverse events, recall information for all FDA-regulated products, and drug labeling. There have been more than 20 million API calls (more than half from outside the United States), 6000 registered users, 20,000 connected Internet Protocol addresses, and dozens of new software (mobile or web) apps developed. A case study demonstrates a use of openFDA data to understand an apparent association of a drug with an adverse event. Conclusion With easier and faster access to these datasets, consumers worldwide can learn more about FDA-regulated products. PMID:26644398

Theoretically-Driven Infrastructure for Supporting Healthcare Teams Training at a Military Treatment Facility

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Turner, Robert T.; Parodi, Andrea V.

2011-01-01

The Team Resource Center (TRC) at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) currently hosts a tri-service healthcare teams training course three times annually . The course consists of didactic learning coupled with simulation exercises to provide an interactive educational experience for healthcare professionals. The course is also the foundation of a research program designed to explore the use of simulation technologies for enhancing team training and evaluation. The TRC has adopted theoretical frameworks for evaluating training readiness and efficacy, and is using these frameworks to guide a systematic reconfiguration of the infrastructure supporting healthcare teams training and research initiatives at NMCP.

"It's Not My Community"--Insights from Social Identity Theory Explaining Community-Failure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mueller, Julia; Renzl, Birgit; Kaar, Alexandra

2008-01-01

The availability of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has led organisations to implement different kinds of electronic knowledge networks and communities. While the technological infrastructure connects employees in different locations and allows for learning and the flow of knowledge across traditional organisational…

A Rooster and a Bean Seed. Active Learning Lessons. Economics International.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lelyuk, Julia

This lesson plan was developed through "Economics International," an international program to help build economic education infrastructures in the emerging market economies. It provides a description of the lesson; appropriate age level; economic concepts; content standards and benchmarks; related subject areas; instructional objectives;…

Cloud Computing Based E-Learning System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-Zoube, Mohammed; El-Seoud, Samir Abou; Wyne, Mudasser F.

2010-01-01

Cloud computing technologies although in their early stages, have managed to change the way applications are going to be developed and accessed. These technologies are aimed at running applications as services over the internet on a flexible infrastructure. Microsoft office applications, such as word processing, excel spreadsheet, access database…

Barriers, Opportunities, and Strategies for Urban Ecosystem Restoration: Lessons Learned from Restoration Managers in Rhode Island, U.S.A.

EPA Science Inventory

Urban ecosystem restoration can be especially difficult to accomplish because of complications like industrial pollutants, population density, infrastructure, and expense, however, the unique opportunities in urban settings, including the potential to provide benefits to many peo...

This Old House: Revitalizing Higher Education's Architecture.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flynn, William J.

2000-01-01

Asserts that in order to transform colleges into learning organizations, the infrastructure of higher education must be analyzed. States that basic relationships must be redesigned--the pedagogical interaction between teacher and student, the tension between faculty and administration, the caste system relationship that has existed between faculty…

Information Infrastructure: Organisational Capability for Online Information Provision.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klobas, Jane E.

This paper identifies aspects of information flow that are affected by online provision of internal information. Reference is made to four case studies of Western Australian government agencies' steps toward becoming Internet information providers, and to the lessons learned from their experiences. Three key interdependent elements of…

Centuries of Economic Growth--From Feathers to Robotics. Active Learning Lessons. Economics International.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bullock, Angela; Paul, Sara; Yevgushchenko, Anzhela; Yotkova, Vesselka

This lesson plan was developed through "Economics International," an international program to help build economic education infrastructures in the emerging market economies. It provides a lesson description; appropriate age level; economic concepts; content standards and benchmarks; related subject areas; instruction objectives; time…

Classification of Encrypted Web Traffic Using Machine Learning Algorithms

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-01

DPI devices to block certain websites; Yu, Cong, Chen, and Lei [52] suggest hashing the domains of pornographic and illegal websites so ISPs can...Zhenming Lei. “Blocking pornographic , illegal websites by internet host domain using FPGA and Bloom Filter”. Network Infrastructure and Digital Content

Kern Community College District Information Technology Plan.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kern Community Coll. District, Bakersfield, CA.

The Information Technology Plan as set forth in this document provides the organizational structure, assignment of duties, infrastructure, and philosophic environment that should permit the Kern Community College District to proceed in an orderly manner in developing information technology to enhance student learning, serve the faculty, and…

Top-Ten IT Issues: 2009

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agee, Anne Scrivener; Yang, Catherine

2009-01-01

This article presents the top-ten IT-related issues in terms of strategic importance to the institution, as revealed by the tenth annual EDUCAUSE Current Issues Survey. These IT-related issues include: (1) Funding IT; (2) Administrative/ERP Information Systems; (3) Security; (4) Infrastructure/Cyberinfrastructure; (5) Teaching and Learning with…

SEED: A Suite of Instructional Laboratories for Computer Security Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Du, Wenliang; Wang, Ronghua

2008-01-01

The security and assurance of our computing infrastructure has become a national priority. To address this priority, higher education has gradually incorporated the principles of computer and information security into the mainstream undergraduate and graduate computer science curricula. To achieve effective education, learning security principles…

ACHP | News

Science.gov Websites

of a comprehensive plan to accelerate and expand permitting reform government-wide. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) contributed to the development of this plan as a member of the Administration's plan adopts the best practices learned from the initial focus infrastructure projects and calls on

A High-Energy Technology Demonstration Platfom: The First Step in a Stepping Stones Approach to Energy-Rich Space Infrastructures

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Carrington, Connie; Day, Greg

2004-01-01

The sun provides an abundant source of energy in space, which can be used to power exploration vehicles and infrastructures that support exploration. A first step in developing and demonstrating the necessary technologies to support solar-powered exploration could be a 100-kWe-class solar-powered platform in Earth orbit. This platform would utilize advanced technologies in solar power collection and generation, power management and distribution, thermal management, and electric propulsion. It would also provide a power-rich free-flying platform to demonstrate in space a portfolio of technology flight experiments. This paper presents a preliminary design concept for a 100-kWe solar-powered satellite with the capability to use high-powered electric propulsion, and to flight-demonstrate a variety of payload experiments.

Brokering Capabilities for EarthCube - supporting Multi-disciplinary Earth Science Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jodha Khalsa, Siri; Pearlman, Jay; Nativi, Stefano; Browdy, Steve; Parsons, Mark; Duerr, Ruth; Pearlman, Francoise

2013-04-01

The goal of NSF's EarthCube is to create a sustainable infrastructure that enables the sharing of all geosciences data, information, and knowledge in an open, transparent and inclusive manner. Brokering of data and improvements in discovery and access are a key to data exchange and promotion of collaboration across the geosciences. In this presentation we describe an evolutionary process of infrastructure and interoperability development focused on participation of existing science research infrastructures and augmenting them for improved access. All geosciences communities already have, to a greater or lesser degree, elements of an information infrastructure in place. These elements include resources such as data archives, catalogs, and portals as well as vocabularies, data models, protocols, best practices and other community conventions. What is necessary now is a process for levering these diverse infrastructure elements into an overall infrastructure that provides easy discovery, access and utilization of resources across disciplinary boundaries. Brokers connect disparate systems with only minimal burdens upon those systems, and enable the infrastructure to adjust to new technical developments and scientific requirements as they emerge. Robust cyberinfrastructure will arise only when social, organizational, and cultural issues are resolved in tandem with the creation of technology-based services. This is a governance issue, but is facilitated by infrastructure capabilities that can impact the uptake of new interdisciplinary collaborations and exchange. Thus brokering must address both the cyberinfrastructure and computer technology requirements and also the social issues to allow improved cross-domain collaborations. This is best done through use-case-driven requirements and agile, iterative development methods. It is important to start by solving real (not hypothetical) information access and use problems via small pilot projects that develop capabilities targeted to specific communities. Brokering, as a critical capability for connecting systems, evolves over time through more connections and increased functionality. This adaptive process allows for continual evaluation as to how well science-driven use cases are being met. There is a near term, and possibly unique, opportunity through EarthCube and European e-Infrastructure projects to increase the impact and interconnectivity of projects. In the developments described in this presentation, brokering has been demonstrated to be an essential part of a robust, adaptive technical infrastructure and demonstration and user scenarios can address of both the governance and detailed implementation paths forward. The EarthCube Brokering roadmap proposes the expansion of brokering pilots into fully operational prototypes that work with the broader science and informatics communities to answer these questions, connect existing and emerging systems, and evolve the EarthCube infrastructure.

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

Jonathan Gray; Robert Anderson; Julio G. Rodriguez

Abstract: Identifying and understanding digital instrumentation and control (I&C) cyber vulnerabilities within nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, is critical if nation states desire to operate nuclear facilities safely, reliably, and securely. In order to demonstrate objective evidence that cyber vulnerabilities have been adequately identified and mitigated, a testbed representing a facility’s critical nuclear equipment must be replicated. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has built and operated similar testbeds for common critical infrastructure I&C for over ten years. This experience developing, operating, and maintaining an I&C testbed in support of research identifying cyber vulnerabilities has led the Korean Atomic Energymore » Research Institute of the Republic of Korea to solicit the experiences of INL to help mitigate problems early in the design, development, operation, and maintenance of a similar testbed. The following information will discuss I&C testbed lessons learned and the impact of these experiences to KAERI.« less

Artificial Diversity and Defense Security (ADDSec) Final Report.

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

Chavez, Adrian R.; Hamlet, Jason; Stout, William M.S.

Critical infrastructure systems continue to foster predictable communication patterns and static configurations over extended periods of time. The static nature of these systems eases the process of gathering reconnaissance information that can be used to design, develop, and launch attacks by adversaries. In this research effort, the early phases of an attack vector will be disrupted by randomizing application port numbers, IP addresses, and communication paths dynamically through the use of overlay networks within Industrial Control Systems (ICS). These protective measures convert static systems into "moving targets," adding an additional layer of defense. Additionally, we have developed a framework thatmore » automatically detects and defends against threats within these systems using an ensemble of machine learning algorithms that classify and categorize abnormal behavior. Our proof-of-concept has been demonstrated within a representative ICS environment. Performance metrics of our proof-of-concept have been captured with latency impacts of less than a millisecond, on average.« less

Effects of a significant New Madrid Seismic Zone event on oil and natural gas pipelines and their cascading effects to critical infrastructures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fields, Damon E.

Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) is a construct that relates preparedness and responsiveness to natural or man-made disasters that involve vulnerable assets deemed essential for the functioning of our economy and society. Infrastructure systems (power grids, bridges, airports, etc.) are vulnerable to disastrous types of events--natural or man-made. Failures of these systems can have devastating effects on communities and entire regions. CIP relates our willingness, ability, and capability to defend, mitigate, and re-constitute those assets that succumb to disasters affecting one or more infrastructure sectors. This qualitative research utilized ethnography and employed interviews with subject matter experts (SMEs) from various fields of study regarding CIP with respect to oil and natural gas pipelines in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The study focused on the research question: What can be done to mitigate vulnerabilities in the oil and natural gas infrastructures, along with the potential cascading effects to interdependent systems, associated with a New Madrid fault event? The researcher also analyzed National Level Exercises (NLE) and real world events, and associated After Action Reports (AAR) and Lessons Learned (LL) in order to place a holistic lens across all infrastructures and their dependencies and interdependencies. Three main themes related to the research question emerged: (a) preparedness, (b) mitigation, and (c) impacts. These themes comprised several dimensions: (a) redundancy, (b) node hardening, (c) education, (d) infrastructure damage, (e) cascading effects, (f) interdependencies, (g) exercises, and (h) earthquake readiness. As themes and dimensions are analyzed, they are considered against findings in AARs and LL from previous real world events and large scale exercise events for validation or rejection.

Evaluating the Benefits of Adaptation of Critical Infrastructures to Hydrometeorological Risks.

PubMed

Thacker, Scott; Kelly, Scott; Pant, Raghav; Hall, Jim W

2018-01-01

Infrastructure adaptation measures provide a practical way to reduce the risk from extreme hydrometeorological hazards, such as floods and windstorms. The benefit of adapting infrastructure assets is evaluated as the reduction in risk relative to the "do nothing" case. However, evaluating the full benefits of risk reduction is challenging because of the complexity of the systems, the scarcity of data, and the uncertainty of future climatic changes. We address this challenge by integrating methods from the study of climate adaptation, infrastructure systems, and complex networks. In doing so, we outline an infrastructure risk assessment that incorporates interdependence, user demands, and potential failure-related economic losses. Individual infrastructure assets are intersected with probabilistic hazard maps to calculate expected annual damages. Protection measure costs are integrated to calculate risk reduction and associated discounted benefits, which are used to explore the business case for investment in adaptation. A demonstration of the methodology is provided for flood protection of major electricity substations in England and Wales. We conclude that the ongoing adaptation program for major electricity assets is highly cost beneficial. © 2017 Society for Risk Analysis.

76 FR 41088 - Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; Kentucky; 110(a)(1) and (2) Infrastructure...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-07-13

...EPA is taking final action to approve the December 13, 2007, submission by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, through the Kentucky Division of Air Quality (KDAQ) as demonstrating that the Commonwealth meets the state implementation plan (SIP) requirements of sections 110(a)(1) and (2) of the Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act) for the 1997 8- hour ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). Section 110(a) of the CAA requires that each state adopt and submit a SIP for the implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of each NAAQS promulgated by the EPA, which is commonly referred to as an ``infrastructure'' SIP. Kentucky certified that the Kentucky SIP contains provisions that ensure the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS is implemented, enforced, and maintained in Kentucky (hereafter referred to as ``infrastructure submission''). Kentucky's infrastructure submission, provided to EPA on December 13, 2007, addressed all the required infrastructure elements for the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS. Additionally, EPA is responding to adverse comments received on EPA's March 17, 2011, proposed approval of Kentucky's December 13, 2007, infrastructure submission.

76 FR 41100 - Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; Alabama; 110(a)(1) and (2) Infrastructure...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-07-13

...EPA is taking final action to approve the December 10, 2007, submission by the State of Alabama, through the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) as demonstrating that the State meets the state implementation plan (SIP) requirements of sections 110(a)(1) and (2) of the Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act) for the 1997 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). Section 110(a) of the CAA requires that each state adopt and submit a SIP for the implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of each NAAQS promulgated by the EPA, which is commonly referred to as an ``infrastructure'' SIP. Alabama certified that the Alabama SIP contains provisions that ensure the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS is implemented, enforced, and maintained in Alabama (hereafter referred to as ``infrastructure submission''). Alabama's infrastructure submission, provided to EPA on December 10, 2007, addressed all the required infrastructure elements for the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS. Additionally, EPA is responding to adverse comments received on EPA's March 17, 2011, proposed approval of Alabama's December 10, 2007, infrastructure submission.

76 FR 41123 - Approval and Promulgation of Implementation Plans; Mississippi; 110(a)(1) and (2) Infrastructure...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-07-13

...EPA is taking final action to approve the December 7, 2007, submission by the State of Mississippi, through the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) as demonstrating that the State meets the implementation plan (SIP) requirements of sections 110(a)(1) and (2) of the Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act) for the 1997 8- hour ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). Section 110(a) of the CAA requires that each state adopt and submit a SIP for the implementation, maintenance, and enforcement of each NAAQS promulgated by the EPA, which is commonly referred to as an ``infrastructure'' SIP. Mississippi certified that the Mississippi SIP contains provisions that ensure the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS is implemented, enforced, and maintained in Mississippi (hereafter referred to as ``infrastructure submission''). Mississippi's infrastructure submission, provided to EPA on December 7, 2007, addressed all the required infrastructure elements for the 1997 8-hour ozone NAAQS. Additionally, EPA is responding to adverse comments received on EPA's March 17, 2011, proposed approval of Mississippi's December 7, 2007, infrastructure submission.

Transitioning from learning healthcare systems to learning health care communities.

PubMed

Mullins, C Daniel; Wingate, La'Marcus T; Edwards, Hillary A; Tofade, Toyin; Wutoh, Anthony

2018-02-26

The learning healthcare system (LHS) model framework has three core, foundational components. These include an infrastructure for health-related data capture, care improvement targets and a supportive policy environment. Despite progress in advancing and implementing LHS approaches, low levels of participation from patients and the public have hampered the transformational potential of the LHS model. An enhanced vision of a community-engaged LHS redesign would focus on the provision of health care from the patient and community perspective to complement the healthcare system as the entity that provides the environment for care. Addressing the LHS framework implementation challenges and utilizing community levers are requisite components of a learning health care community model, version two of the LHS archetype.

Machine learning for Big Data analytics in plants.

PubMed

Ma, Chuang; Zhang, Hao Helen; Wang, Xiangfeng

2014-12-01

Rapid advances in high-throughput genomic technology have enabled biology to enter the era of 'Big Data' (large datasets). The plant science community not only needs to build its own Big-Data-compatible parallel computing and data management infrastructures, but also to seek novel analytical paradigms to extract information from the overwhelming amounts of data. Machine learning offers promising computational and analytical solutions for the integrative analysis of large, heterogeneous and unstructured datasets on the Big-Data scale, and is gradually gaining popularity in biology. This review introduces the basic concepts and procedures of machine-learning applications and envisages how machine learning could interface with Big Data technology to facilitate basic research and biotechnology in the plant sciences. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evaluating Usability in a Distance Digital Systems Laboratory Class

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kostaras, N.; Xenos, M.; Skodras, A. N.

2011-01-01

This paper presents the usability evaluation of a digital systems laboratory class offered to distance-learning students. It details the way in which students can participate remotely in such a laboratory, the methodology employed in the usability assessment of the laboratory infrastructure (hardware and software), and also outlines the main…

Assisting Adult Higher Education via Personal Computer: Technology and Distance Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spradley, Evelyn

1993-01-01

Thomas Edison State College (New Jersey) has developed a computer-assisted distance learning system to make undergraduate study more accessible, efficient, and effective for nontraditional students. The three main components: an infrastructure to provide varied technical services; an independent study course system; and diagnostic, online pretests…

Higher Education Scenario from a Cross-Cultural Perspective: eLearning Implications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Serradell-Lopez, Enric; Lara-Navarra, Pablo; Casado-Lumbreras, Cristina

2012-01-01

Higher education institutions are crucial in the present. Universities play a role that varies with time and evolves with society. Globalization is changing the world and affecting higher education institutions in all their intrinsic characteristics: personnel, programs, infrastructures and students. Analyzed is the relevant research on cultural…

EDUCAUSE '99: Celebrating New Beginnings. [Proceedings] (Long Beach, California, October 26-29, 1999).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

EDUCAUSE, Washington, DC.

This proceedings of the 1999 EDUCAUSE Conference contains papers presented in six tracks: Building the New Information Technology Foundation and Infrastructure; Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning; Renewing Administrative Services; Outreach, Public Service, and New Communities; Advancing the Leading Edge; and the EDUCAUSE Track. Topics of…

Women Engineers: Stories of Persistence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuzmak, Nancy

2010-01-01

More engineers are needed to support the infrastructure of the United States and to solve economic, human, and environmental problems. Women have been cited as the untapped resource who can provide new perspectives, solutions, and diversity. Unfortunately, over the last 20 years, colleges have not learned how to graduate more women, keeping…

Students' Acceptance of Tablet PCs in the Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ifenthaler, Dirk; Schweinbenz, Volker

2016-01-01

In recent years digital technologies, such as tablet personal computers (TPCs), have become an integral part of a school's infrastructure and are seen as a promising way to facilitate students' learning processes. This study empirically tested a theoretical model derived from the technology acceptance model containing key constructs developed in…

An Assessment of E-Training Effectiveness in Multinational Companies in Malaysia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramayah, Thurasamy; Ahmad, Noor Hazlina; Hong, Tan Say

2012-01-01

E-training has developed into a revolutionary way of learning in Malaysian organizations due to rapid growth in information technology infrastructure. The present study endeavors to determine the critical factors that influence e-training effectiveness in multinational companies (MNCs) in Malaysia. By integrating Technology Acceptance Model (TAM),…

Community College Students and Applied Research. Professional File. Number 30

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zuniga, Sabrina Faust

2009-01-01

Student participation in applied research as a form of experiential learning in community colleges is relatively new. Ontario Colleges today participate at different levels with different numbers of projects and faculty involved. A few colleges in Ontario are more established in doing applied research including having basic infrastructure for…

Opportunities for Distance Education in the Commonwealth African Countries.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

INTELECON Research & Consultancy Ltd., Vancouver (British Columbia).

The geo-demographic, economic, and infrastructural makeup of 12 African countries (Botswana. Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) were compared to determine the potential benefits to them of a Commonwealth of Learning (COL) distance education initiative. Data were collected on…

Educational Film Studies: A Burgeoning Field of Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bruch, Anne

2016-01-01

Since the 1890s early film pioneers used their cinematographic oeuvre for educational and informative purposes. As a result not only did film production companies regard schools as a lucrative emerging market, but progressive teachers also welcomed this new resource for teaching and learning. Soon a professional infrastructure was created and…

Boosting Adult Learning. Working Brief.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boyer, David

Too many of Britain's workforce lack the skills needed for a knowledge-based economy. To remedy this will require the commitment, in time and resources, of individuals, employers, the education and training infrastructure and the state. Adults with the lowest qualifications have the least access to employer-funded training, especially in small…

Evaluating Fuel Leak and Aging Infrastructure at Red Hill, Hawaii, the Largest Underground Fuel Storage Facility in the United States

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Learn about how EPA Region 9, Hawaii’s Department of Health, U.S. Navy, and Defense Logistics Agency are working tprotect human health and the environment at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii.

E-Governance in Education: Pursuit of Education Excellence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Natarajan, Sundarapandiyan

2015-01-01

This article aims to explore today's educational challenges, being technologically supreme, the primary focus on education is to bring out the outcome and value based education to the community. Electronic Governance (e- Governance) focuses not only the technological infrastructure and getting the learning environment sync is the major challenge.…

Online Education Vendor Partners: When and How to Select One

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoffman, Michael S.

2012-01-01

Higher education institutions are increasingly looking to online education as a means to broaden their market reach, increase student enrollments and ultimately realize increased tuition revenue. Many institutions, however, find that they have insufficient infrastructure resources to launch one or more fully online learning programs. A small…

A Case for Data Commons

PubMed Central

Grossman, Robert L.; Heath, Allison; Murphy, Mark; Patterson, Maria; Wells, Walt

2017-01-01

Data commons collocate data, storage, and computing infrastructure with core services and commonly used tools and applications for managing, analyzing, and sharing data to create an interoperable resource for the research community. An architecture for data commons is described, as well as some lessons learned from operating several large-scale data commons. PMID:29033693

Pedagogical Applications of Smartphone Integration in Teaching - Lecturers', Students' & Pupils' Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seifert, Tami

2014-01-01

As the disparity between educational standards and reality outside educational institutions is increasing, alternative learning infrastructure such as mobile technologies are becoming more common, and are challenging long held, traditional modes of teaching. Educators' attitudes toward wireless devices are mixed. Wireless devices are perceived by…

Towards the Reconciliation of Knowledge Management and e-Collaboration Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Le Dinh, Thang; Rinfret, Louis; Raymond, Louis; Dong Thi, Bich-Thuy

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose an intelligent infrastructure for the reconciliation of knowledge management and e-collaboration systems. Design/Methodology/Approach:Literature on e-collaboration, information management, knowledge management, learning process, and intellectual capital is mobilised in order to build the conceptual…

Digital Soil Mapping – A platform for enhancing soil learning.

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The expansion of digital infrastructure and tools has generated massive data and information as well as a need for reliable processing and accurate interpretations. Digital Soil Mapping is no exception in that it has provided opportunities for professionals and the public to interact at field and tr...

From First Contact to Close Encounters: A Developmentally Deep Perceptual System for a Humanoid Robot

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-06-01

pages 961-968. Brooks, R. A., Breazeal, C., Marjanovic , M., and Scassellati, B. (1999). The Cog project: Building a humanoid robot. Lecture Notes in...investment in knowledge infrastructure. Communications of the ACM, 38(11):33-38. Marjanovic , M. (1995). Learning functional maps between sensorimotor

Telecommunications in Rural America: Opportunities and Challenges for the Health Care System.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Puskin, Dena S.

1992-01-01

Presents major themes dealing with the application of telecommunications to rural health care, such as barriers to rural health care delivery, cost effectiveness, lack of technology infrastructure, and human capital needs. Discusses distance learning and telemedicine for health professionals. Lists elements of a successful telecommunications…

A Short History of Performance Assessment: Lessons Learned.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Madaus, George F.; O'Dwyer, Laura M.

1999-01-01

Places performance assessment in the context of high-stakes uses, describes underlying technologies, and outlines the history of performance testing from 210 B.C.E. to the present. Historical issues of fairness, efficiency, cost, and infrastructure influence contemporary efforts to use performance assessments in large-scale, high-stakes testing…

Security Engineering Lessons Learned for Migrating Independent LANs to an Enterprise Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marchant, Robert L.; Bonneau, Thomas

2013-01-01

Transition from small, independent LANs into larger enterprise managed infrastructures is becoming more prominent in academia, business and government. Consolidation of IT resources into larger, more disciplined, and more professionally managed environments has significant advantages however they do bring their own unique issues to solve in order…

E-Learning Funding for Schools: A Policy Paradox?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mee, Adrian

2007-01-01

The rise in UK government funding for information and communications technologies (ICTs) since 1997 has created a large capital infrastructure, which schools are required to support with their own funds. Simultaneously, both nationally and internationally, the model of self-managing schools gathers momentum. In the UK, the government supports the…

Influence of governance structure on green stormwater infrastructure investment

USGS Publications Warehouse

Hopkins, Kristina G.; Grimm, Nancy B.; York, Abigail M.

2018-01-01

Communities are faced with the challenge of meeting regulatory requirements mandating reductions in water pollution from stormwater and combined sewer overflows (CSO). Green stormwater infrastructure and gray stormwater infrastructure are two types of water management strategies communities can use to address water pollution. In this study, we used long-term control plans from 25 U.S. cities to synthesize: the types of gray and green infrastructure being used by communities to address combined sewer overflows; the types of goals set; biophysical characteristics of each city; and factors associated with the governance of stormwater management. These city characteristics were then used to identify common characteristics of “green leader” cities—those that dedicated >20% of the control plan budget in green infrastructure. Five “green leader” cities were identified: Milwaukee, WI, Philadelphia, PA, Syracuse, NY, New York City, NY, and Buffalo, NY. These five cities had explicit green infrastructure goals targeting the volume of stormwater or percentage of impervious cover managed by green infrastructure. Results suggested that the management scale and complexity of the management system are less important factors than the ability to harness a “policy window” to integrate green infrastructure into control plans. Two case studies—Philadelphia, PA, and Milwaukee, WI—indicated that green leader cities have a long history of building momentum for green infrastructure through a series of phases from experimentation, demonstration, and finally—in the case of Philadelphia—a full transition in the approach used to manage CSOs.

The neurobiology of syntax: beyond string sets.

PubMed

Petersson, Karl Magnus; Hagoort, Peter

2012-07-19

The human capacity to acquire language is an outstanding scientific challenge to understand. Somehow our language capacities arise from the way the human brain processes, develops and learns in interaction with its environment. To set the stage, we begin with a summary of what is known about the neural organization of language and what our artificial grammar learning (AGL) studies have revealed. We then review the Chomsky hierarchy in the context of the theory of computation and formal learning theory. Finally, we outline a neurobiological model of language acquisition and processing based on an adaptive, recurrent, spiking network architecture. This architecture implements an asynchronous, event-driven, parallel system for recursive processing. We conclude that the brain represents grammars (or more precisely, the parser/generator) in its connectivity, and its ability for syntax is based on neurobiological infrastructure for structured sequence processing. The acquisition of this ability is accounted for in an adaptive dynamical systems framework. Artificial language learning (ALL) paradigms might be used to study the acquisition process within such a framework, as well as the processing properties of the underlying neurobiological infrastructure. However, it is necessary to combine and constrain the interpretation of ALL results by theoretical models and empirical studies on natural language processing. Given that the faculty of language is captured by classical computational models to a significant extent, and that these can be embedded in dynamic network architectures, there is hope that significant progress can be made in understanding the neurobiology of the language faculty.

The neurobiology of syntax: beyond string sets

PubMed Central

Petersson, Karl Magnus; Hagoort, Peter

2012-01-01

The human capacity to acquire language is an outstanding scientific challenge to understand. Somehow our language capacities arise from the way the human brain processes, develops and learns in interaction with its environment. To set the stage, we begin with a summary of what is known about the neural organization of language and what our artificial grammar learning (AGL) studies have revealed. We then review the Chomsky hierarchy in the context of the theory of computation and formal learning theory. Finally, we outline a neurobiological model of language acquisition and processing based on an adaptive, recurrent, spiking network architecture. This architecture implements an asynchronous, event-driven, parallel system for recursive processing. We conclude that the brain represents grammars (or more precisely, the parser/generator) in its connectivity, and its ability for syntax is based on neurobiological infrastructure for structured sequence processing. The acquisition of this ability is accounted for in an adaptive dynamical systems framework. Artificial language learning (ALL) paradigms might be used to study the acquisition process within such a framework, as well as the processing properties of the underlying neurobiological infrastructure. However, it is necessary to combine and constrain the interpretation of ALL results by theoretical models and empirical studies on natural language processing. Given that the faculty of language is captured by classical computational models to a significant extent, and that these can be embedded in dynamic network architectures, there is hope that significant progress can be made in understanding the neurobiology of the language faculty. PMID:22688633

Distributed Data Networks That Support Public Health Information Needs.

PubMed

Tabano, David C; Cole, Elizabeth; Holve, Erin; Davidson, Arthur J

Data networks, consisting of pooled electronic health data assets from health care providers serving different patient populations, promote data sharing, population and disease monitoring, and methods to assess interventions. Better understanding of data networks, and their capacity to support public health objectives, will help foster partnerships, expand resources, and grow learning health systems. We conducted semistructured interviews with 16 key informants across the United States, identified as network stakeholders based on their respective experience in advancing health information technology and network functionality. Key informants were asked about their experience with and infrastructure used to develop data networks, including each network's utility to identify and characterize populations, usage, and sustainability. Among 11 identified data networks representing hundreds of thousands of patients, key informants described aggregated health care clinical data contributing to population health measures. Key informant interview responses were thematically grouped to illustrate how networks support public health, including (1) infrastructure and information sharing; (2) population health measures; and (3) network sustainability. Collaboration between clinical data networks and public health entities presents an opportunity to leverage infrastructure investments to support public health. Data networks can provide resources to enhance population health information and infrastructure.

Neural Network Based Intrusion Detection System for Critical Infrastructures

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

Todd Vollmer; Ondrej Linda; Milos Manic

2009-07-01

Resiliency and security in control systems such as SCADA and Nuclear plant’s in today’s world of hackers and malware are a relevant concern. Computer systems used within critical infrastructures to control physical functions are not immune to the threat of cyber attacks and may be potentially vulnerable. Tailoring an intrusion detection system to the specifics of critical infrastructures can significantly improve the security of such systems. The IDS-NNM – Intrusion Detection System using Neural Network based Modeling, is presented in this paper. The main contributions of this work are: 1) the use and analyses of real network data (data recordedmore » from an existing critical infrastructure); 2) the development of a specific window based feature extraction technique; 3) the construction of training dataset using randomly generated intrusion vectors; 4) the use of a combination of two neural network learning algorithms – the Error-Back Propagation and Levenberg-Marquardt, for normal behavior modeling. The presented algorithm was evaluated on previously unseen network data. The IDS-NNM algorithm proved to be capable of capturing all intrusion attempts presented in the network communication while not generating any false alerts.« less

An atom is known by the company it keeps: Content, representation and pedagogy within the epistemic revolution of the complexity sciences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blikstein, Paulo

The goal of this dissertation is to explore relations between content, representation, and pedagogy, so as to understand the impact of the nascent field of complexity sciences on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning. Wilensky & Papert coined the term "structurations" to express the relationship between knowledge and its representational infrastructure. A change from one representational infrastructure to another they call a "restructuration." The complexity sciences have introduced a novel and powerful structuration: agent-based modeling. In contradistinction to traditional mathematical modeling, which relies on equational descriptions of macroscopic properties of systems, agent-based modeling focuses on a few archetypical micro-behaviors of "agents" to explain emergent macro-behaviors of the agent collective. Specifically, this dissertation is about a series of studies of undergraduate students' learning of materials science, in which two structurations are compared (equational and agent-based), consisting of both design research and empirical evaluation. I have designed MaterialSim, a constructionist suite of computer models, supporting materials and learning activities designed within the approach of agent-based modeling, and over four years conducted an empirical inves3 tigation of an undergraduate materials science course. The dissertation is comprised of three studies: Study 1 - diagnosis . I investigate current representational and pedagogical practices in engineering classrooms. Study 2 - laboratory studies. I investigate the cognition of students engaging in scientific inquiry through programming their own scientific models. Study 3 - classroom implementation. I investigate the characteristics, advantages, and trajectories of scientific content knowledge that is articulated in epistemic forms and representational infrastructures unique to complexity sciences, as well as the feasibility of the integration of constructionist, agent-based learning environments in engineering classrooms. Data sources include classroom observations, interviews, videotaped sessions of model-building, questionnaires, analysis of computer-generated logfiles, and quantitative and qualitative analysis of artifacts. Results shows that (1) current representational and pedagogical practices in engineering classrooms were not up to the challenge of the complex content being taught, (2) by building their own scientific models, students developed a deeper understanding of core scientific concepts, and learned how to better identify unifying principles and behaviors in materials science, and (3) programming computer models was feasible within a regular engineering classroom.

Increasing the resilience and security of the United States' power infrastructure

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

Happenny, Sean F.

2015-08-01

The United States' power infrastructure is aging, underfunded, and vulnerable to cyber attack. Emerging smart grid technologies may take some of the burden off of existing systems and make the grid as a whole more efficient, reliable, and secure. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is funding research into several aspects of smart grid technology and grid security, creating a software simulation tool that will allow researchers to test power infrastructure control and distribution paradigms by utilizing different smart grid technologies to determine how the grid and these technologies react under different circumstances. Understanding how these systems behave in real-worldmore » conditions will lead to new ways to make our power infrastructure more resilient and secure. Demonstrating security in embedded systems is another research area PNNL is tackling. Many of the systems controlling the U.S. critical infrastructure, such as the power grid, lack integrated security and the aging networks protecting them are becoming easier to attack.« less

A Development of Lightweight Grid Interface

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Iwai, G.; Kawai, Y.; Sasaki, T.; Watase, Y.

2011-12-01

In order to help a rapid development of Grid/Cloud aware applications, we have developed API to abstract the distributed computing infrastructures based on SAGA (A Simple API for Grid Applications). SAGA, which is standardized in the OGF (Open Grid Forum), defines API specifications to access distributed computing infrastructures, such as Grid, Cloud and local computing resources. The Universal Grid API (UGAPI), which is a set of command line interfaces (CLI) and APIs, aims to offer simpler API to combine several SAGA interfaces with richer functionalities. These CLIs of the UGAPI offer typical functionalities required by end users for job management and file access to the different distributed computing infrastructures as well as local computing resources. We have also built a web interface for the particle therapy simulation and demonstrated the large scale calculation using the different infrastructures at the same time. In this paper, we would like to present how the web interface based on UGAPI and SAGA achieve more efficient utilization of computing resources over the different infrastructures with technical details and practical experiences.

Design principles in the development of (public) health information infrastructures.

PubMed

Neame, Roderick

2012-01-01

In this article the author outlines the key issues in the development of a regional health information infrastructure suitable for public health data collections. A set of 10 basic design and development principles as used and validated in the development of the successful New Zealand National Health Information Infrastructure in 1993 are put forward as a basis for future developments. The article emphasises the importance of securing clinical input into any health data that is collected, and suggests strategies whereby this may be achieved, including creating an information economy alongside the care economy. It is suggested that the role of government in such developments is to demonstrate leadership, to work with the sector to develop data, messaging and security standards, to establish key online indexes, to develop data warehouses and to create financial incentives for adoption of the infrastructure and the services it delivers to users. However experience suggests that government should refrain from getting involved in local care services data infrastructure, technology and management issues.

Changing Medical School IT to Support Medical Education Transformation.

PubMed

Spickard, Anderson; Ahmed, Toufeeq; Lomis, Kimberly; Johnson, Kevin; Miller, Bonnie

2016-01-01

Many medical schools are modifying curricula to reflect the rapidly evolving health care environment, but schools struggle to provide the educational informatics technology (IT) support to make the necessary changes. Often a medical school's IT support for the education mission derives from isolated work units employing separate technologies that are not interoperable. We launched a redesigned, tightly integrated, and novel IT infrastructure to support a completely revamped curriculum at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine. This system uses coordinated and interoperable technologies to support new instructional methods, capture students' effort, and manage feedback, allowing the monitoring of students' progress toward specific competency goals across settings and programs. The new undergraduate medical education program at Vanderbilt, entitled Curriculum 2.0, is a competency-based curriculum in which the ultimate goal is medical student advancement based on performance outcomes and personal goals rather than a time-based sequence of courses. IT support was essential in the creation of Curriculum 2.0. In addition to typical learning and curriculum management functions, IT was needed to capture data in the learning workflow for analysis, as well as for informing individual and programmatic success. We aligned people, processes, and technology to provide the IT infrastructure for the organizational transformation. Educational IT personnel were successfully realigned to create the new IT system. The IT infrastructure enabled monitoring of student performance within each competency domain across settings and time via personal student electronic portfolios. Students use aggregated performance data, derived in real time from the portfolio, for mentor-guided performance assessment, and for creation of individual learning goals and plans. Poorly performing students were identified earlier through online communication systems that alert the appropriate instructor or coach of low quiz grades or missed learning goals. Graphical and narrative displays of a student's competency performance across courses and clinical experiences informed high-stake decisions made about student progress by the promotions committee. Similarly, graphical display of aggregate student outcomes provided education leaders with information needed to adjust and improve the curriculum. With the alignment of people, processes, and technology, educational IT can facilitate transformational steps in the training of medical students.

Secure, Network-Centric Operations of a Space-Based Asset: Cisco Router in Low Earth Orbit (CLEO) and Virtual Mission Operations Center (VMOC)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ivancic, William; Stewart, Dave; Shell, Dan; Wood, Lloyd; Paulsen, Phil; Jackson, Chris; Hodgson, Dave; Notham, James; Bean, Neville; Miller, Eric

2005-01-01

This report documents the design of network infrastructure to support operations demonstrating the concept of network-centric operations and command and control of space-based assets. These demonstrations showcase major elements of the Transformal Communication Architecture (TCA), using Internet Protocol (IP) technology. These demonstrations also rely on IP technology to perform the functions outlined in the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Space Link Extension (SLE) document. A key element of these demonstrations was the ability to securely use networks and infrastructure owned and/or controlled by various parties. This is a sanitized technical report for public release. There is a companion report available to a limited audience. The companion report contains detailed networking addresses and other sensitive material and is available directly from William Ivancic at Glenn Research Center.

Open Data in Global Environmental Research: The Belmont Forum's Open Data Survey.

PubMed

Schmidt, Birgit; Gemeinholzer, Birgit; Treloar, Andrew

2016-01-01

This paper presents the findings of the Belmont Forum's survey on Open Data which targeted the global environmental research and data infrastructure community. It highlights users' perceptions of the term "open data", expectations of infrastructure functionalities, and barriers and enablers for the sharing of data. A wide range of good practice examples was pointed out by the respondents which demonstrates a substantial uptake of data sharing through e-infrastructures and a further need for enhancement and consolidation. Among all policy responses, funder policies seem to be the most important motivator. This supports the conclusion that stronger mandates will strengthen the case for data sharing.

Modeling hospitals' adaptive capacity during a loss of infrastructure services.

PubMed

Vugrin, Eric D; Verzi, Stephen J; Finley, Patrick D; Turnquist, Mark A; Griffin, Anne R; Ricci, Karen A; Wyte-Lake, Tamar

2015-01-01

Resilience in hospitals - their ability to withstand, adapt to, and rapidly recover from disruptive events - is vital to their role as part of national critical infrastructure. This paper presents a model to provide planning guidance to decision makers about how to make hospitals more resilient against possible disruption scenarios. This model represents a hospital's adaptive capacities that are leveraged to care for patients during loss of infrastructure services (power, water, etc.). The model is an optimization that reallocates and substitutes resources to keep patients in a high care state or allocates resources to allow evacuation if necessary. An illustrative example demonstrates how the model might be used in practice.

Cyber-Critical Infrastructure Protection Using Real-Time Payload-Based Anomaly Detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Düssel, Patrick; Gehl, Christian; Laskov, Pavel; Bußer, Jens-Uwe; Störmann, Christof; Kästner, Jan

With an increasing demand of inter-connectivity and protocol standardization modern cyber-critical infrastructures are exposed to a multitude of serious threats that may give rise to severe damage for life and assets without the implementation of proper safeguards. Thus, we propose a method that is capable to reliably detect unknown, exploit-based attacks on cyber-critical infrastructures carried out over the network. We illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by conducting experiments on network traffic that can be found in modern industrial control systems. Moreover, we provide results of a throughput measuring which demonstrate the real-time capabilities of our system.

Increasing health worker capacity through distance learning: a comprehensive review of programmes in Tanzania.

PubMed

Nartker, Anya J; Stevens, Liz; Shumays, Alyson; Kalowela, Martin; Kisimbo, Daniel; Potter, Katy

2010-12-31

Tanzania, like many developing countries, faces a crisis in human resources for health. The government has looked for ways to increase the number and skills of health workers, including using distance learning in their training. In 2008, the authors reviewed and assessed the country's current distance learning programmes for health care workers, as well as those in countries with similar human resource challenges, to determine the feasibility of distance learning to meet the need of an increased and more skilled health workforce. Data were collected from 25 distance learning programmes at health training institutions, universities, and non-governmental organizations throughout the country from May to August 2008. Methods included internet research; desk review; telephone, email and mail-in surveys; on-site observations; interviews with programme managers, instructors, students, information technology specialists, preceptors, health care workers and Ministry of Health and Social Welfare representatives; and a focus group with national HIV/AIDS care and treatment organizations. Challenges include lack of guidelines for administrators, instructors and preceptors of distance learning programmes regarding roles and responsibilities; absence of competencies for clinical components of curricula; and technological constraints such as lack of access to computers and to the internet. Insufficient funding resulted in personnel shortages, lack of appropriate training for personnel, and lack of materials for students.Nonetheless, current and prospective students expressed overwhelming enthusiasm for scale-up of distance learning because of the unique financial and social benefits offered by these programs. Participants were retained as employees in their health care facilities, and remained in their communities and supported their families while advancing their careers. Space in health training institutions was freed up for new students entering in-residence pre-service training. A blended print-based distance learning model is most feasible at the national level due to current resource and infrastructure constraints. With an increase in staffing; improvement of infrastructure, coordination and curricula; and decentralization to the zonal or district level, distance learning can be an effective method to increase both the skills and the numbers of qualified health care workers capable of meeting the health care needs of the Tanzanian population.

Increasing health worker capacity through distance learning: a comprehensive review of programmes in Tanzania

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background Tanzania, like many developing countries, faces a crisis in human resources for health. The government has looked for ways to increase the number and skills of health workers, including using distance learning in their training. In 2008, the authors reviewed and assessed the country's current distance learning programmes for health care workers, as well as those in countries with similar human resource challenges, to determine the feasibility of distance learning to meet the need of an increased and more skilled health workforce. Methods Data were collected from 25 distance learning programmes at health training institutions, universities, and non-governmental organizations throughout the country from May to August 2008. Methods included internet research; desk review; telephone, email and mail-in surveys; on-site observations; interviews with programme managers, instructors, students, information technology specialists, preceptors, health care workers and Ministry of Health and Social Welfare representatives; and a focus group with national HIV/AIDS care and treatment organizations. Results Challenges include lack of guidelines for administrators, instructors and preceptors of distance learning programmes regarding roles and responsibilities; absence of competencies for clinical components of curricula; and technological constraints such as lack of access to computers and to the internet. Insufficient funding resulted in personnel shortages, lack of appropriate training for personnel, and lack of materials for students. Nonetheless, current and prospective students expressed overwhelming enthusiasm for scale-up of distance learning because of the unique financial and social benefits offered by these programs. Participants were retained as employees in their health care facilities, and remained in their communities and supported their families while advancing their careers. Space in health training institutions was freed up for new students entering in-residence pre-service training. Conclusions A blended print-based distance learning model is most feasible at the national level due to current resource and infrastructure constraints. With an increase in staffing; improvement of infrastructure, coordination and curricula; and decentralization to the zonal or district level, distance learning can be an effective method to increase both the skills and the numbers of qualified health care workers capable of meeting the health care needs of the Tanzanian population. PMID:21194417

The Electronic Data Methods (EDM) forum for comparative effectiveness research (CER).

PubMed

Holve, Erin; Segal, Courtney; Lopez, Marianne Hamilton; Rein, Alison; Johnson, Beth H

2012-07-01

AcademyHealth convened the Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum to collect, synthesize, and share lessons from eleven projects that are building infrastructure and using electronic clinical data for comparative effectiveness research (CER) and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR). This paper provides a brief review of participating projects and provides a framework of common challenges. EDM Forum staff conducted a text review of relevant grant programs' funding opportunity announcements; projects' research plans; and available information on projects' websites. Additional information was obtained from presentations provided by each project; phone calls with project principal investigators, affiliated partners, and staff from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); and six site visits. Projects participating in the EDM Forum are building infrastructure and developing innovative strategies to address a set of methodological, and data and informatics challenges, here identified in a common framework. The eleven networks represent more than 20 states and include a range of partnership models. Projects vary substantially in size, from 11,000 to more than 7.5 million individuals. Nearly all of the AHRQ priority populations and conditions are addressed. In partnership with the projects, the EDM Forum is focused on identifying and sharing lessons learned to advance the national dialogue on the use of electronic clinical data to conduct CER and PCOR. These efforts have the shared goal of addressing challenges in traditional research studies and data sources, and aim to build infrastructure and generate evidence to support a learning health care system that can improve patient outcomes.

Towards usable and interdisciplinary e-infrastructure (Invited)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Roure, D.

2010-12-01

e-Science and cyberinfrastucture at their outset tended to focus on ‘big science’ and cross-organisational infrastructures, demonstrating complex engineering with the promise of high returns. It soon became evident that the key to researchers harnessing new technology for everyday use is a user-centric approach which empowers the user - both from a developer and an end user viewpoint. For example, this philosophy is demonstrated in workflow systems for systematic data processing and in the Web 2.0 approach as exemplified by the myExperiment social web site for sharing workflows, methods and ‘research objects’. Hence the most disruptive aspect of Cloud and virtualisation is perhaps that they make new computational resources and applications usable, creating a flourishing ecosystem for routine processing and innovation alike - and in this we must consider software sustainability. This talk will discuss the changing nature of e-Science digital ecosystem, focus on the e-infrastructure for cross-disciplinary work, and highlight issues in sustainable software development in this context.

System Architecture Development for Energy and Water Infrastructure Data Management and Geovisual Analytics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berres, A.; Karthik, R.; Nugent, P.; Sorokine, A.; Myers, A.; Pang, H.

2017-12-01

Building an integrated data infrastructure that can meet the needs of a sustainable energy-water resource management requires a robust data management and geovisual analytics platform, capable of cross-domain scientific discovery and knowledge generation. Such a platform can facilitate the investigation of diverse complex research and policy questions for emerging priorities in Energy-Water Nexus (EWN) science areas. Using advanced data analytics, machine learning techniques, multi-dimensional statistical tools, and interactive geovisualization components, such a multi-layered federated platform is being developed, the Energy-Water Nexus Knowledge Discovery Framework (EWN-KDF). This platform utilizes several enterprise-grade software design concepts and standards such as extensible service-oriented architecture, open standard protocols, event-driven programming model, enterprise service bus, and adaptive user interfaces to provide a strategic value to the integrative computational and data infrastructure. EWN-KDF is built on the Compute and Data Environment for Science (CADES) environment in Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Collaborative Multi-Scale 3d City and Infrastructure Modeling and Simulation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Breunig, M.; Borrmann, A.; Rank, E.; Hinz, S.; Kolbe, T.; Schilcher, M.; Mundani, R.-P.; Jubierre, J. R.; Flurl, M.; Thomsen, A.; Donaubauer, A.; Ji, Y.; Urban, S.; Laun, S.; Vilgertshofer, S.; Willenborg, B.; Menninghaus, M.; Steuer, H.; Wursthorn, S.; Leitloff, J.; Al-Doori, M.; Mazroobsemnani, N.

2017-09-01

Computer-aided collaborative and multi-scale 3D planning are challenges for complex railway and subway track infrastructure projects in the built environment. Many legal, economic, environmental, and structural requirements have to be taken into account. The stringent use of 3D models in the different phases of the planning process facilitates communication and collaboration between the stake holders such as civil engineers, geological engineers, and decision makers. This paper presents concepts, developments, and experiences gained by an interdisciplinary research group coming from civil engineering informatics and geo-informatics banding together skills of both, the Building Information Modeling and the 3D GIS world. New approaches including the development of a collaborative platform and 3D multi-scale modelling are proposed for collaborative planning and simulation to improve the digital 3D planning of subway tracks and other infrastructures. Experiences during this research and lessons learned are presented as well as an outlook on future research focusing on Building Information Modeling and 3D GIS applications for cities of the future.

Data Intensive Scientific Workflows on a Federated Cloud: CRADA Final Report

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

Garzoglio, Gabriele

The Fermilab Scientific Computing Division and the KISTI Global Science Experimental Data Hub Center have built a prototypical large-scale infrastructure to handle scientific workflows of stakeholders to run on multiple cloud resources. The demonstrations have been in the areas of (a) Data-Intensive Scientific Workflows on Federated Clouds, (b) Interoperability and Federation of Cloud Resources, and (c) Virtual Infrastructure Automation to enable On-Demand Services.

Security Analysis of Smart Grid Cyber Physical Infrastructures Using Modeling and Game Theoretic Simulation

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

Abercrombie, Robert K; Sheldon, Frederick T.

Cyber physical computing infrastructures typically consist of a number of sites are interconnected. Its operation critically depends both on cyber components and physical components. Both types of components are subject to attacks of different kinds and frequencies, which must be accounted for the initial provisioning and subsequent operation of the infrastructure via information security analysis. Information security analysis can be performed using game theory implemented in dynamic Agent Based Game Theoretic (ABGT) simulations. Such simulations can be verified with the results from game theory analysis and further used to explore larger scale, real world scenarios involving multiple attackers, defenders, andmore » information assets. We concentrated our analysis on the electric sector failure scenarios and impact analyses by the NESCOR Working Group Study, From the Section 5 electric sector representative failure scenarios; we extracted the four generic failure scenarios and grouped them into three specific threat categories (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) to the system. These specific failure scenarios serve as a demonstration of our simulation. The analysis using our ABGT simulation demonstrates how to model the electric sector functional domain using a set of rationalized game theoretic rules decomposed from the failure scenarios in terms of how those scenarios might impact the cyber physical infrastructure network with respect to CIA.« less

Launch Vehicle Demonstrator Using Shuttle Assets

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Threet, Grady E., Jr.; Creech, Dennis M.; Philips, Alan D.; Water, Eric D.

2011-01-01

The Marshall Space Flight Center Advanced Concepts Office (ACO) has the leading role for NASA s preliminary conceptual launch vehicle design and performance analysis. Over the past several years the ACO Earth-to-Orbit Team has evaluated thousands of launch vehicle concept variations for a multitude of studies including agency-wide efforts such as the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS), Constellation, Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLLV), Heavy Lift Propulsion Technology (HLPT), Human Exploration Framework Team (HEFT), and Space Launch System (SLS). NASA plans to continue human space exploration and space station utilization. Launch vehicles used for heavy lift cargo and crew will be needed. One of the current leading concepts for future heavy lift capability is an inline one and a half stage concept using solid rocket boosters (SRB) and based on current Shuttle technology and elements. Potentially, the quickest and most cost-effective path towards an operational vehicle of this configuration is to make use of a demonstrator vehicle fabricated from existing shuttle assets and relying upon the existing STS launch infrastructure. Such a demonstrator would yield valuable proof-of-concept data and would provide a working test platform allowing for validated systems integration. Using shuttle hardware such as existing RS-25D engines and partial MPS, propellant tanks derived from the External Tank (ET) design and tooling, and four-segment SRB s could reduce the associated upfront development costs and schedule when compared to a concept that would rely on new propulsion technology and engine designs. There are potentially several other additional benefits to this demonstrator concept. Since a concept of this type would be based on man-rated flight proven hardware components, this demonstrator has the potential to evolve into the first iteration of heavy lift crew or cargo and serve as a baseline for block upgrades. This vehicle could also serve as a demonstration and test platform for the Orion Program. Critical spacecraft systems, re-entry and recovery systems, and launch abort systems of Orion could also be demonstrated in early test flights of the launch vehicle demo. Furthermore, an early demonstrator of this type would provide a stop-gap for retaining critical human capital and infrastructure while affording the current emerging generation of young engineers opportunity to work with and capture lessons learned from existing STS program offices and personnel, who were integral in the design and development of the Space Shuttle before these resources are no longer available. The objective of this study is to define candidate launch vehicle demonstration concepts that are based on Space Shuttle assets and determine their performance capabilities and how these demonstration vehicles could evolve to a heavy lift capability to low earth orbit.

Federal/State Regulatory Enhancement, Cost Allocation, and CATV/TELCO Distance Learning Initiatives in Connecticut.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pietras, Jesse John

Connecticut has adopted a moderate approach to communications infrastructure modernization, covering a 4-year implementation period from 1993 to 1996. The state's remote educational framework, with regulatory enhancements, will allow the state to be technologically competitive with neighboring states as it allows subscribers to use evolving…

Blueprint for Tomorrow: Redesigning Schools for Student-Centered Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nair, Prakash

2014-01-01

The United States has about $2 trillion tied up in aging school facilities. School districts throughout the country spend about $12 billion every year keeping this infrastructure going. Yet almost all of the new money we pour into school facilities reinforces an existing--and obsolete--model of schooling. In "Blueprint for Tomorrow,"…

School Resources and Student Achievement: Data from Rural India

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chudgar, Amita; Chandra, Madhur; Iyengar, Radhika; Shanker, Rishikesh

2015-01-01

In addition to basic infrastructure, what school resources are important to improve learning? This question is hard to answer due to lack of availability of appropriate data. Collaboration between researchers at US universities and a large, well-established educational foundation in India enabled this study to overcome the challenge of data…

Investigation into Attitudes of Pre-Service Teachers towards e-Learning with Respect to Their Individual Innovativeness Levels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Özcan, Seher; Gökçearslan, Sahin; Solmaz, Ebru

2016-01-01

Owing to advancements in both information and communication technologies and especially in the internet infrastructure, globalization has shifted to the next dimension; and these developments in technology has expressed its significance in online education like other domains of life. Utilization from new technologies has significantly minimized…

The Instructional Effects of Knowledge-Based Community of Practice Learning Environment on Student Achievement and Knowledge Convergence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Draper, Darryl C.

2013-01-01

The increased accessibility of technology and Internet connections has enabled organizations to provide their workforces with the opportunity to engage in distributed education. "Harnessing this innovation calls for organizational and technological infrastructures that support the interplay of knowledge and knowing" (Cook & Brown, 1999, p. 381).…

Smart Grid Educational Series | Energy Systems Integration Facility | NREL

Science.gov Websites

generation through transmission, all the way to the distribution infrastructure. Download presentation | Text on key takeaways from breakout group discussions. Learn more about the workshop. Text Version Text presentation PDF | Text Version Using MultiSpeak Data Model Standard & Essence Anomaly Detection for ICS

Computer Access and Use: Understanding the Expectations of Indian Rural Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kumar, B. T. Sampath; Basavaraja, M. T.

2016-01-01

Purpose: This study aims to understand the expectations of rural students with respect to their computer access and use. It also made an attempt to learn the expectations of rural students from their schools and local government in providing the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure. Design/methodology/approach: Interview…

Stormwater Non-Potable Beneficial Uses and Effects on Urban Infrastructure (WERF Report INFR3SG09)

EPA Science Inventory

This project shows that lessons learned and successes from a wide variety of international stormwater beneficial use projects cover a range of conditions that may be found in the U.S. Examined are case studies from developing countries in both arid and wet climates, case studies...

A Framework for Analysing ICT Adoption in Australian Primary Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Way, Jenni; Webb, Colin

2007-01-01

Over 400 e-learning grant applications from Australian primary schools were analysed to determine the nature of the proposed ICT based projects in literacy and numeracy. Three key dimensions emerged from the teacher descriptions: ICT infrastructure, motivation and ICT use, and pedagogy and innovation. The three dimensions, and the interactions…

Media-Rich Learning through Universal Computing and Wireless Thin Client.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cain, Mark

There is a whole infrastructure that must support a successful universal student computing requirement. Conventional approaches would have the students plugging into a wired network. That would necessitate network wires and hubs or many ports in each classroom. Students would need access to course-related software. Because the needs would change…

School Facilities: America's Schools Not Designed or Equipped for 21st Century. Report to Congressional Requesters.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

General Accounting Office, Washington, DC. Health, Education, and Human Services Div.

This document presents findings of a General Accounting Office study that examined the extent to which America's schools have the physical capacity to support learning into the 21st century. Specifically, it looked at facilities requirements, environmental conditions, educational technologies, and facility infrastructure. Data were collected…

Cross-infrastructure learnings for alternative bridge system designs : a case study on the hybrid composite bridge system.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2015-04-30

The hybrid composite beam (HCB) technology has been presented as a system for short and medium span beam bridges as an alternative to traditional materials such as concrete and steel. A HCB consists of a concrete tied arch encased in a fiber-reinforc...

From Networked Learning to Operational Practice: Constructing and Transferring Superintendent Knowledge in a Regional Instructional Rounds Network

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Travis, Timothy J.

2015-01-01

Instructional rounds are an emerging network structure with processes and protocols designed to develop superintendents' knowledge and skills in leading large-scale improvement, to enable superintendents to build an infrastructure that supports the work of improvement, to assist superintendents in distributing leadership throughout their district,…

Differences in ICT Usage across Subject Areas: A Case of an Elementary School in Singapore

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tay, Lee Yong; Lim, Cher Ping; Lim, Siew Khiaw

2015-01-01

Many factors affect the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for teaching and learning in schools: policy and school leadership, physical and technological infrastructure, teachers' practices and beliefs, curriculum and assessment, and professional development. The subject area, that has not been given as much attention in…

Adapting Corporate Portal Technology for Management E-Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hamlin, Michael D.; Griffy-Brown, Charla

As the largest provider of MBA talent in the Western United States, the Graziadio School of Business and Management (Malibu, California) had a need to create a technology infrastructure to support students and staff distributed in seven educational centers throughout California. This paper describes the process by which the School came to…

Librarianship and Documentation Studies: A Handbook of Teaching and Learning Materials. Volume 2.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huttemann, Lutz, Ed.

The improvement of information infrastructures in the eastern and southern sub-region of Africa through the adequate training of personnel for libraries and information establishments is one of the major objectives of the Education, Science and Documentation Centre of the German Foundation for International Development (DSE). This reader, designed…

Campus Technology Innovators Awards 2011: Technology All-Stars

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lloyd, Meg; Raths, David

2011-01-01

Out of a total of 393 entries for the 2011 Campus Technology Innovators award, 10 winners rose to the top in six categories: (1) Leadership, Governance, and Policy; (2) Teaching and Learning; (3) Student Systems and Services; (4) Administrative Systems; (5) IT Infrastructure and Systems; and (6) Education Futurists. These innovative IT leaders…

The Tortoise and the Hare Enigma in E-Transformation in Japanese and Korean Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Latchem, Colin; Jung, Insung; Aoki, Kumiko; Ozkul, Ali Ekrem

2008-01-01

Japan and Korea have highly developed information and communications technology infrastructures and have recently reformed their higher education systems and encouraged e-transformation. However, Japanese universities have not embraced e-learning as wholeheartedly as their Korean counterparts. The paper concludes that this is due to governmental…

Curriculum-Guided Crowd Sourcing of Assessments in a Developing Country

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zualkernan, Imran A.; Raza, Anjana; Karim, Asad

2012-01-01

Success of Wikipedia has opened a number of possibilities for crowd sourcing learning resources. However, not all crowd sourcing initiatives are successful. For developing countries, adoption factors like lack of infrastructure and poor teacher training can have an impact on success of such systems. This paper presents an exploratory study to…

Undergraduate Research and Service-Learning Programs in a Kinesiology Program at a Teaching University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O, Jenny; Sherwood, Jennifer J.; Yingling, Vanessa R.

2017-01-01

High-impact practices foster student success, but faculty faced with heavy teaching loads and lack of resources and infrastructure are challenged to implement such practices. Kinesiology faculty at California State University, East Bay collaborated to implement two student programs: Kinesiology Research Group and Get Fit! Stay Fit! The Kinesiology…

How Pennsylvania School Libraries Pay Off: Investments in Student Achievement and Academic Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lance, Keith Curry; Schwarz, Bill

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of Pennsylvania school library programs on student learning--specifically, the infrastructure (staffing, budgets, collections, technology, and access hours) that contributes most to student achievement, the costs and benefits associated with them, and the gap between current Pennsylvania school…

Organizational Decision Making Related to Instructional Technology at Small Liberal Arts Colleges and Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vandover, William Frederick

2013-01-01

This study examines the factors that influence the creation, purchase, and selection of free instructional technology. Specifically, this study uses the RIPPLES Model to examine the perceptions and reflections of instructional technology directors and staff members with regard to the Resources, Infrastructure, People, Policies, Learning,…

Annual Rural Technology Institute (2nd, Lawrence, Kansas, July 29-31, 2002).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

2002

The second annual Rural Technology Institute (RTI) was a 3-day training event designed to help rural educators increase their school's or district's capacity to use technology for learning. Three strands focused on technology issues within the areas of administration, curriculum, or infrastructure support. Participating schools or districts were…

Integrating Outcomes Assessment into Optometry Education: A Strategic Guide for Enhancing Student Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beck, Diane E.; Daum, Kent M.

2003-01-01

Outlines eight steps that will help optometry schools transition a faculty from "denial" of the need for assessment to "institutionalization": establish a collaborative environment, establish an infrastructure that makes assessment an integral activity, recruit a leader for full implementation of outcomes assessment, conduct a needs assessment,…

In Search of the Best On-Line Degree Programs in Human Resources.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kirk, James J.; Waltemyer, Holly

The advent of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and global infrastructures for e-learning are revolutionizing how colleges and universities deliver degree programs to adult students. Benefits of on-line degree programs to working adults include flexibility, convenience, and time and cost savings. New technologies that greatly affect how online…

The First Wave: The Beginnings of Radio in Canadian Distance Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buck, George H.

2006-01-01

This article describes one of the first developments and deployment of radio for distance learning and education in Canada, beginning in the early 1920s. Anticipating a recent initiative of public-private partnerships, the impetus, infrastructure, and initial programs were provided by a large corporation. Description of the system, its purpose,…

Employment of Active Learning at HEIs in Bangladesh to Improve Education Quality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chowdhury, Faieza

2016-01-01

In recent years, education quality and quality assessment have received a great deal of attention at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Bangladesh. Most of the HEIs in Bangladesh face severe resource constraints and find it difficult to improve education quality by improving inputs, such as better infrastructure and modernized classroom…

Case study of the science, engineering, mathematics, and aerospace academy: Participant and parental perceptions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Graves, Catherine

The science, engineering, mathematics, and aerospace academy (SEMAA) is a federally-funded national out-of-school time (OST) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program that provides K-12 grade participants with hands-on activities and access to an aerospace education laboratory with the goals of increasing participants' engagement and interest in STEM and STEM careers. The SEMAA also provides support, resources, and training for SEMAA participants' parents through the Family Cafe. This multiple-case study investigated participants' and their parents' reasons for enrolling in the SEMAA and characterized the SEMAA in terms of its operations and infrastructure, instructors, learning environment, curriculum and instruction, and parental engagement. This study also assessed the role of the SEMAA in supporting participants' STEM college degree and career interests. Additionally, this study assessed the participants' attitudes towards science and science motivation factors. The findings of this study have implications for SEMAA and other OST STEM program providers related to: (a) recruitment and retention, (b) operations and infrastructure, (c) learning environments, (d) instructors, (e) curriculum and instruction, (f) parental engagement, and (g) OST STEM program outcomes.

Developing a data infrastructure for a learning health system: the PORTAL network.

PubMed

McGlynn, Elizabeth A; Lieu, Tracy A; Durham, Mary L; Bauck, Alan; Laws, Reesa; Go, Alan S; Chen, Jersey; Feigelson, Heather Spencer; Corley, Douglas A; Young, Deborah Rohm; Nelson, Andrew F; Davidson, Arthur J; Morales, Leo S; Kahn, Michael G

2014-01-01

The Kaiser Permanente & Strategic Partners Patient Outcomes Research To Advance Learning (PORTAL) network engages four healthcare delivery systems (Kaiser Permanente, Group Health Cooperative, HealthPartners, and Denver Health) and their affiliated research centers to create a new national network infrastructure that builds on existing relationships among these institutions. PORTAL is enhancing its current capabilities by expanding the scope of the common data model, paying particular attention to incorporating patient-reported data more systematically, implementing new multi-site data governance procedures, and integrating the PCORnet PopMedNet platform across our research centers. PORTAL is partnering with clinical research and patient experts to create cohorts of patients with a common diagnosis (colorectal cancer), a rare diagnosis (adolescents and adults with severe congenital heart disease), and adults who are overweight or obese, including those with pre-diabetes or diabetes, to conduct large-scale observational comparative effectiveness research and pragmatic clinical trials across diverse clinical care settings. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Practical Team-Based Learning from Planning to Implementation

PubMed Central

Bell, Edward; Eng, Marty; Fuentes, David G.; Helms, Kristen L.; Maki, Erik D.; Vyas, Deepti

2015-01-01

Team-based learning (TBL) helps instructors develop an active teaching approach for the classroom through group work. The TBL infrastructure engages students in the learning process through the Readiness Assessment Process, problem-solving through team discussions, and peer feedback to ensure accountability. This manuscript describes the benefits and barriers of TBL, and the tools necessary for developing, implementing, and critically evaluating the technique within coursework in a user-friendly method. Specifically, the manuscript describes the processes underpinning effective TBL development, preparation, implementation, assessment, and evaluation, as well as practical techniques and advice from authors’ classroom experiences. The paper also highlights published articles in the area of TBL in education, with a focus on pharmacy education. PMID:26889061

Applications of UAVs for Remote Sensing of Critical Infrastructure

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wegener, Steve; Brass, James; Schoenung, Susan

2003-01-01

The surveillance of critical facilities and national infrastructure such as waterways, roadways, pipelines and utilities requires advanced technological tools to provide timely, up to date information on structure status and integrity. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are uniquely suited for these tasks, having large payload and long duration capabilities. UAVs also have the capability to fly dangerous and dull missions, orbiting for 24 hours over a particular area or facility providing around the clock surveillance with no personnel onboard. New UAV platforms and systems are becoming available for commercial use. High altitude platforms are being tested for use in communications, remote sensing, agriculture, forestry and disaster management. New payloads are being built and demonstrated onboard the UAVs in support of these applications. Smaller, lighter, lower power consumption imaging systems are currently being tested over coffee fields to determine yield and over fires to detect fire fronts and hotspots. Communication systems that relay video, meteorological and chemical data via satellite to users on the ground in real-time have also been demonstrated. Interest in this technology for infrastructure characterization and mapping has increased dramatically in the past year. Many of the UAV technological developments required for resource and disaster monitoring are being used for the infrastructure and facility mapping activity. This paper documents the unique contributions from NASA;s Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program to these applications. ERAST is a UAV technology development effort by a consortium of private aeronautical companies and NASA. Details of demonstrations of UAV capabilities currently underway are also presented.

New York City Transit Authority automated transit infrastructure maintenance demonstration.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2009-04-01

The objective of this pilot project was to demonstrate that the safety and reliability of the New York City : Transit transportation system can be improved by automating the correlation and analysis of disparate : track related data. Through the use ...

Organisational learning and self-adaptation in dynamic disaster environments.

PubMed

Corbacioglu, Sitki; Kapucu, Naim

2006-06-01

This paper examines the problems associated with inter-organisational learning and adaptation in the dynamic environments that characterise disasters. The research uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate whether organisational learning took place during and in the time in between five disaster response operations in Turkey. The availability of information and its exchange and distribution within and among organisational actors determine whether self-adaptation happens in the course of a disaster response operation. Organisational flexibility supported by an appropriate information infrastructure creates conditions conducive to essential interaction and permits the flow of information. The study found that no significant organisational learning occurred within Turkish disaster management following the earthquakes in Erzincan (1992), Dinar (1995) and Ceyhan (1998). By contrast, the 'symmetry-breaking' Marmara earthquake of 1999 initiated a 'double loop' learning process that led to change in the organisational, technical and cultural aspects of Turkish disaster management, as revealed by the Duzce earthquake response operations.

Prioritizing recovery of urban lifelines in the aftermath of hazards: Transportation in post-Harvey Houston

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Warner, M. E.; Bhatia, U.; Sela, L.; Wang, R.; Kodra, E.; Ganguly, A. R.

2017-12-01

A well-designed recovery strategy for lifeline infrastructure networks can lead to faster and more reliable restoration of essential services in the aftermath of natural catastrophes such as hurricanes or earthquakes. Urban and regional lifelines impact one another, while the recovery of urban lifelines in turn impacts regional infrastructural resilience, owing to the interdependence of lifelines across scales. Prior work by our team, often in collaboration, has led to the development of new recovery approaches based on network science and engineering, including centrality measures from network science, information theoretic metrics, and network optimization approaches. We have developed proof-of-concept demonstrations at both regional scales, such as for the Indian Railways Network and the US National Airspace System both subjected to multiple hazards, and to urban settings, such as the post-Hurricane recovery of combined power-subway system-of-systems in Boston and the New York City MTA after Hurricane Sandy. Here we make an attempt to understand how such methods may have been, or continue to be, applicable to the transportation network in Houston post-Harvey, and more broadly, how and to what extent lessons learned in urban and regional resilience may generalize across cases. We make an assessment of the state of the literature, process understanding, simulation models, data science methods, and best practices, necessary to address problems of this nature, with a particular focus on post-Harvey recovery of transportation services in Houston.

Virginia Offshore Wind Technology Advancement Project (VOWTAP) DOE EE0005985 Final Technical Report Rev 1a

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

Pietryk, Steven

The primary purpose of the VOWTAP was to advance the offshore wind industry in the United States (U.S.) by demonstrating innovative technologies and process solutions that would establish offshore wind as a cost-effective renewable energy resource. The VOWTAP Team proposed to design, construct, and operate a 12 megawatt (MW) offshore wind facility located approximately 27 statute miles (mi) (24 nautical miles [nm], 43 kilometers [km]) off the coast of Virginia. The proposed Project would consist of two Alstom Haliade™ 150-6 MW turbines mounted on inward battered guide structures (IBGS), a 34.5-kilovolt (kV) alternating current (AC) submarine cable interconnecting the WTGsmore » (inter-array cable), a 34.5-kV AC submarine transmission cable (export cable), and a 34.5 kV underground cable (onshore interconnection cable) that would connect the Project with existing Dominion infrastructure located in Virginia Beach, Virginia (Figure 1). Interconnection with the existing Dominion infrastructure would also require an onshore switch cabinet, a fiber optic cable, and new interconnection station to be located entirely within the boundaries of the Camp Pendleton State Military Reservation (Camp Pendleton). The VOWTAP balanced technology innovation with commercial readiness such that turbine operations were anticipated to commence by 2018. Dominion, as the leaseholder of the Virginia Wind Energy Area (WEA), anticipated leveraging lessons learned through the VOWTAP, and applying them to future commercial-scale offshore wind development.« less

Infrastructure Vulnerability Assessment Model (I-VAM).

PubMed

Ezell, Barry Charles

2007-06-01

Quantifying vulnerability to critical infrastructure has not been adequately addressed in the literature. Thus, the purpose of this article is to present a model that quantifies vulnerability. Vulnerability is defined as a measure of system susceptibility to threat scenarios. This article asserts that vulnerability is a condition of the system and it can be quantified using the Infrastructure Vulnerability Assessment Model (I-VAM). The model is presented and then applied to a medium-sized clean water system. The model requires subject matter experts (SMEs) to establish value functions and weights, and to assess protection measures of the system. Simulation is used to account for uncertainty in measurement, aggregate expert assessment, and to yield a vulnerability (Omega) density function. Results demonstrate that I-VAM is useful to decisionmakers who prefer quantification to qualitative treatment of vulnerability. I-VAM can be used to quantify vulnerability to other infrastructures, supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA), and distributed control systems (DCS).

Autonomous rendezvous and capture development infrastructure

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bryan, Thomas C.; Roe, Fred; Coker, Cindy; Nelson, Pam; Johnson, B.

1991-01-01

In the development of the technology for autonomous rendezvous and docking, key infrastructure capabilities must be used for effective and economical development. This involves facility capabilities, both equipment and personnel, to devise, develop, qualify, and integrate ARD elements and subsystems into flight programs. One effective way of reducing technical risks in developing ARD technology is the use of the ultimate test facility, using a Shuttle-based reusable free-flying testbed to perform a Technology Demonstration Test Flight which can be structured to include a variety of additional sensors, control schemes, and operational approaches. This conceptual testbed and flight demonstration will be used to illustrate how technologies and facilities at MSFC can be used to develop and prove an ARD system.

Demonstration and Validation of Corrosion-Mitigation Technologies for Mechanical Room Utility Piping and Cooling-Tower Pumps

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-05-01

Infrastructure, Task 2.1” ERDC/CERL TR-15-5 ii Abstract Two critical infrastructure corrosion issues at Fort Bragg, NC, are the cor- rosion of steel utility...piping union joints in mechanical rooms and the cor- rosion of steel pump housings in cooling tower systems. Reliable operation of these components...pump 5 incorporating 316 stainless steel housing. .................................... 19 Figure 13. New pump 5 being installed

Design Document for the Technology Demonstration of the Joint Network Defence and Management System (JNDMS) Project

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-02-06

Event Interface Custom ASCII JSS Client Y (Spectrum) 3.2 8 IT Infrastructure Performance Data/Vulnerability Assessment eHealth , Spectrum NSM...monitoring of infrastructure servers.) The Concord product line. Concord products ( eHealth and Spectrum) can provide both real-time and historical...Network and Systems Management (NSM) • Unicenter Asset Management • Spectrum • eHealth • Centennial Discovery Table 12 summarizes the the role of

Evaluating SafeClub: can risk management training improve the safety activities of community soccer clubs?

PubMed

Abbott, K; Klarenaar, P; Donaldson, A; Sherker, S

2008-06-01

To evaluate a sports safety-focused risk-management training programme. Controlled before and after test. Four community soccer associations in Sydney, Australia. 76 clubs (32 intervention, 44 control) at baseline, and 67 clubs (27 intervention, 40 control) at post-season and 12-month follow-ups. SafeClub, a sports safety-focused risk-management training programme (3x2 hour sessions) based on adult-learning principles and injury-prevention concepts and models. Changes in mean policy, infrastructure and overall safety scores as measured using a modified version of the Sports Safety Audit Tool. There was no significant difference in the mean policy, infrastructure and overall safety scores of intervention and control clubs at baseline. Intervention clubs achieved higher post-season mean policy (11.9 intervention vs 7.5 controls), infrastructure (15.2 vs 10.3) and overall safety (27.0 vs 17.8) scores than did controls. These differences were greater at the 12-month follow-up: policy (16.4 vs 7.6); infrastructure (24.7 vs 10.7); and overall safety (41.1 vs 18.3). General linear modelling indicated that intervention clubs achieved statistically significantly higher policy (p<0.001), infrastructure (p<0.001) and overall safety (p<0.001) scores compared with control clubs at the post-season and 12-month follow-ups. There was also a significant linear interaction of time and group for all three scores: policy (p<0.001), infrastructure (p<0.001) and overall safety (p<0.001). SafeClub effectively assisted community soccer clubs to improve their sports safety activities, particularly the foundations and processes for good risk-management practice, in a sustainable way.

Quantifying habitat impacts of natural gas infrastructure to facilitate biodiversity offsetting

PubMed Central

Jones, Isabel L; Bull, Joseph W; Milner-Gulland, Eleanor J; Esipov, Alexander V; Suttle, Kenwyn B

2014-01-01

Habitat degradation through anthropogenic development is a key driver of biodiversity loss. One way to compensate losses is “biodiversity offsetting” (wherein biodiversity impacted is “replaced” through restoration elsewhere). A challenge in implementing offsets, which has received scant attention in the literature, is the accurate determination of residual biodiversity losses. We explore this challenge for offsetting gas extraction in the Ustyurt Plateau, Uzbekistan. Our goal was to determine the landscape extent of habitat impacts, particularly how the footprint of “linear” infrastructure (i.e. roads, pipelines), often disregarded in compensation calculations, compares with “hub” infrastructure (i.e. extraction facilities). We measured vegetation cover and plant species richness using the line-intercept method, along transects running from infrastructure/control sites outward for 500 m, accounting for wind direction to identify dust deposition impacts. Findings from 24 transects were extrapolated to the broader plateau by mapping total landscape infrastructure network using GPS data and satellite imagery. Vegetation cover and species richness were significantly lower at development sites than controls. These differences disappeared within 25 m of the edge of the area physically occupied by infrastructure. The current habitat footprint of gas infrastructure is 220 ± 19 km2 across the Ustyurt (total ∼ 100,000 km2), 37 ± 6% of which is linear infrastructure. Vegetation impacts diminish rapidly with increasing distance from infrastructure, and localized dust deposition does not conspicuously extend the disturbance footprint. Habitat losses from gas extraction infrastructure cover 0.2% of the study area, but this reflects directly eliminated vegetation only. Impacts upon fauna pose a more difficult determination, as these require accounting for behavioral and demographic responses to disturbance by elusive mammals, including threatened species. This study demonstrates that impacts of linear infrastructure in regions such as the Ustyurt should be accounted for not just with respect to development sites but also associated transportation and delivery routes. PMID:24455163

Quantifying habitat impacts of natural gas infrastructure to facilitate biodiversity offsetting.

PubMed

Jones, Isabel L; Bull, Joseph W; Milner-Gulland, Eleanor J; Esipov, Alexander V; Suttle, Kenwyn B

2014-01-01

Habitat degradation through anthropogenic development is a key driver of biodiversity loss. One way to compensate losses is "biodiversity offsetting" (wherein biodiversity impacted is "replaced" through restoration elsewhere). A challenge in implementing offsets, which has received scant attention in the literature, is the accurate determination of residual biodiversity losses. We explore this challenge for offsetting gas extraction in the Ustyurt Plateau, Uzbekistan. Our goal was to determine the landscape extent of habitat impacts, particularly how the footprint of "linear" infrastructure (i.e. roads, pipelines), often disregarded in compensation calculations, compares with "hub" infrastructure (i.e. extraction facilities). We measured vegetation cover and plant species richness using the line-intercept method, along transects running from infrastructure/control sites outward for 500 m, accounting for wind direction to identify dust deposition impacts. Findings from 24 transects were extrapolated to the broader plateau by mapping total landscape infrastructure network using GPS data and satellite imagery. Vegetation cover and species richness were significantly lower at development sites than controls. These differences disappeared within 25 m of the edge of the area physically occupied by infrastructure. The current habitat footprint of gas infrastructure is 220 ± 19 km(2) across the Ustyurt (total ∼ 100,000 km(2)), 37 ± 6% of which is linear infrastructure. Vegetation impacts diminish rapidly with increasing distance from infrastructure, and localized dust deposition does not conspicuously extend the disturbance footprint. Habitat losses from gas extraction infrastructure cover 0.2% of the study area, but this reflects directly eliminated vegetation only. Impacts upon fauna pose a more difficult determination, as these require accounting for behavioral and demographic responses to disturbance by elusive mammals, including threatened species. This study demonstrates that impacts of linear infrastructure in regions such as the Ustyurt should be accounted for not just with respect to development sites but also associated transportation and delivery routes.

A novel critical infrastructure resilience assessment approach using dynamic Bayesian networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cai, Baoping; Xie, Min; Liu, Yonghong; Liu, Yiliu; Ji, Renjie; Feng, Qiang

2017-10-01

The word resilience originally originates from the Latin word "resiliere", which means to "bounce back". The concept has been used in various fields, such as ecology, economics, psychology, and society, with different definitions. In the field of critical infrastructure, although some resilience metrics are proposed, they are totally different from each other, which are determined by the performances of the objects of evaluation. Here we bridge the gap by developing a universal critical infrastructure resilience metric from the perspective of reliability engineering. A dynamic Bayesian networks-based assessment approach is proposed to calculate the resilience value. A series, parallel and voting system is used to demonstrate the application of the developed resilience metric and assessment approach.

Open Data in Global Environmental Research: The Belmont Forum’s Open Data Survey

PubMed Central

Schmidt, Birgit; Gemeinholzer, Birgit; Treloar, Andrew

2016-01-01

This paper presents the findings of the Belmont Forum’s survey on Open Data which targeted the global environmental research and data infrastructure community. It highlights users’ perceptions of the term “open data”, expectations of infrastructure functionalities, and barriers and enablers for the sharing of data. A wide range of good practice examples was pointed out by the respondents which demonstrates a substantial uptake of data sharing through e-infrastructures and a further need for enhancement and consolidation. Among all policy responses, funder policies seem to be the most important motivator. This supports the conclusion that stronger mandates will strengthen the case for data sharing. PMID:26771577