Quality of life of women with lower-limb lymphedema following gynecological cancer

Secondary lower-limb lymphedema can develop following treatment for gynecological cancers, and has debilitating effects on quality of life (QoL). Lymphedema can limit mobility and ability to perform daily activities, and have adverse effects on psychological and social wellbeing. When assessing the effect of lymphedema treatment methods, the focus is on change in clinically measured lymphedema status, rather than QoL outcomes. Considering that treatment for lymphedema involves a significant and ongoing commitment from patients, it is essential to determine whether the benefits to patients outweigh the burden associated with treatment. This article summarizes the results of studies assessing the impact of lower-limb lymphedema on QoL in women with gynecological cancer, evaluates their methodologies and discusses limitations and priorities for future research.

3D ellipsoid fitting for multi-view gait recognition

Gait recognition approaches continue to struggle with challenges including view-invariance, low-resolution data, robustness to unconstrained environments, and fluctuating gait patterns due to subjects carrying goods or wearing different clothes. Although computationally expensive, model based techniques offer promise over appearance based techniques for these challenges as they gather gait features and interpret gait dynamics in skeleton form. In this paper, we propose a fast 3D ellipsoidal-based gait recognition algorithm using a 3D voxel model derived from multi-view silhouette images. This approach directly solves the limitations of view dependency and self-occlusion in existing ellipse fitting model-based approaches. Voxel models are segmented into four components (left and right legs, above and below the knee), and ellipsoids are fitted to each region using eigenvalue decomposition. Features derived from the ellipsoid parameters are modeled using a Fourier representation to retain the temporal dynamic pattern for classification. We demonstrate the proposed approach using the CMU MoBo database and show that an improvement of 15-20% can be achieved over a 2D ellipse fitting baseline.

An assessment of development funding for new housing post GFC in Queensland, Australia

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify changes in bank lending criteria due to the GFC and to explore the associated impacts on new housing supply in Queensland, Australia. Design/methodology/approach: This research involves a survey of each of Australia’s big four banks, as well as two prominent arrangers of development finance. Data on key lending criteria was collected: Pre GFC, during the GFC, and GFC recovery stage. Findings: The GFC has resulted in a retraction of funds available for residential development. The few institutions lending are filtering out only the best credit risks by way of constrictive loan covenants including: low loan to value ratios, high cash equity requirements, regional “no go” zones, and demonstrated borrower track record. The ability of developers to proceed with new housing developments is being constrained by their inability to obtain sufficient finance. Research limitations/implications: This research uses survey data, together with an understanding of the project finance process to extrapolate impacts on the residential development industry across Queensland. No regional or sub-market analysis is included. Future research will include subsequent surveys to track any loosening of credit policies over time and sub-market sector analysis. Practical implications: The inability to obtain project finance is identified as a key constraint to new housing supply. This research will inform policy makers and provide important quantitative evidence of the importance of availability of development finance in the housing supply chain. Social implications: Queensland is facing a supply shortfall, which if not corrected, may lead to upward pressure on house prices and falling housing affordability. Originality/value: There is very little academic research on development funding. This research is unique in linking bank lending criteria to new housing supply and demonstrating the impact on the development industry.

What the hare can teach the tortoise about make-buy strategies for radical innovations

Purpose of this paper – The purpose of this investigation is to help establish: whether or not strong relationships between suppliers and customers improve performance; and if prescriptive frameworks on outsourcing radical innovations are dependent on industry clockspeed. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of UK-based manufacturers, followed by a statistical analysis. Findings – Long-term supplier links seem not to play a role in the development of radical innovations. Moreover, industry clockspeed has no significant bearing on the success or failure of any outsourcing strategy for radically new technologies. Research limitations/implications – Literature about outsourcing in the face of radical innovation can be more confidently applied to industries of all clockspeeds. Practical implications – Prescriptions for fast clockspeed industries should be applied more broadly: all industries should maintain a high degree of vertical integration in the early days of a radical innovation. Originality/value – Prior papers had explored whether or not a company should outsource radical innovations, but none had determined if this is equally true for slow industries and fast ones. Therein lies the original contribution of this paper.

Outsourcing strategies for radical innovations: does industry clockspeed make a difference?

Purpose – To determine whether or not clockspeed is an important variable in outsourcing strategies throughout the development of radical innovations. Design/methodology/approach – An internet-based survey of manufacturing firms from all over the world. Findings – An industry's clockspeed does not play a significant role in the success or failure of a particular outsourcing strategy for a radical innovation. Research limitations/implications – Conclusions from earlier research in this area are not necessarily industry-specific. Practical implications – Lessons learned via previous investigations about the computer industry need not be confined to that sector. Vertical integration may be a more robust outsourcing strategy when developing a radical innovation in industries of all clockspeeds. Originality/value – Previous research efforts in this field focused on a single technology jump, but this approach may have overlooked a potentially important variable: industry clockspeed. Thus, this investigation explores whether clockspeed is an important factor.

User-representative feature selection for keystroke dynamics

Continuous user authentication with keystroke dynamics uses characters sequences as features. Since users can type characters in any order, it is imperative to find character sequences (n-graphs) that are representative of user typing behavior. The contemporary feature selection approaches do not guarantee selecting frequently-typed features which may cause less accurate statistical user-representation. Furthermore, the selected features do not inherently reflect user typing behavior. We propose four statistical based feature selection techniques that mitigate limitations of existing approaches. The first technique selects the most frequently occurring features. The other three consider different user typing behaviors by selecting: n-graphs that are typed quickly; n-graphs that are typed with consistent time; and n-graphs that have large time variance among users. We use Gunetti’s keystroke dataset and k-means clustering algorithm for our experiments. The results show that among the proposed techniques, the most-frequent feature selection technique can effectively find user representative features. We further substantiate our results by comparing the most-frequent feature selection technique with three existing approaches (popular Italian words, common n-graphs, and least frequent ngraphs). We find that it performs better than the existing approaches after selecting a certain number of most-frequent n-graphs.

The Long-Term Irrelevance of Trust in Outsourcing Decisions for New Technologies: Insights from an Agent-Based Model

Significant empirical data from the fields of management and business strategy suggest that it is a good idea for a company to make in-house the components and processes underpinning a new technology. Other evidence suggests exactly the opposite, saying that firms would be better off buying components and processes from outside suppliers. One possible explanation for this lack of convergence is that earlier research in this area has overlooked two important aspects of the problem: reputation and trust. To gain insight into how these variables may impact make-buy decisions throughout the innovation process, the Sporas algorithm for measuring reputation was added to an existing agent-based model of how firms interact with each other throughout the development of new technologies. The model�s results suggest that reputation and trust do not play a significant role in the long-term fortunes of an individual firm as it contends with technological change in the marketplace. Accordingly, this model serves as a cue for management researchers to investigate more thoroughly the temporal limitations and contingencies that determine how the trust between firms may affect the R&D process.

Acetabular impaction grafting in total hip replacement

Background and purpose: Acetabular impaction grafting has been shown to have excellent results, but concerns regarding its suitability for larger defects have been highlighted. We report the use of this technique in a large cohort of patients with the aim of better understanding the limitations of the technique. Methods: We investigated a consecutive group of 339 cases of impaction grafting of the cup with morcellised impacted allograft bone for survivorship and mechanisms for early failure. Results: Kaplan Meier survival was 89.1% (95% CI 83.2 to 95.0%) at 5.8 years for revision for any reason, and 91.6% (95% CI 85.9 to 97.3%) for revision for aseptic loosening of the cup. Of the 15 cases revised for aseptic cup loosening, nine were large rim mesh reconstructions, two were fractured Kerboull-Postel plates, two were migrating cages, one medial wall mesh failure and one impaction alone failed. Interpretation: In our series, results were disappointing where a large rim mesh or significant reconstruction was required. In light of these results, our technique has changed in that we now use predominantly larger chips of purely cancellous bone, 8-10 mm3 in size, to fill the cavity and larger diameter cups to better fill the mouth of the reconstructed acetabulum. In addition we now make greater use of i) implants made of a highly porous in-growth surface to constrain allograft chips and ii) bulk allografts combined with cages and morcellised chips in cases with very large segmental and cavitary defects.

Quantitative fit assessment of a precontoured fracture fixation plate : its automation and an investigation on the borderline cases

Virtual methods to assess the fitting of a fracture fixation plate were proposed recently, however with limitations such as simplified fit criteria or manual data processing. This study aims to automate a fit analysis procedure using clinical-based criteria, and then to analyse the results further for borderline fit cases. Three dimensional (3D) models of 45 bones and of a precontoured distal tibial plate were utilized to assess the fitting of the plate automatically. A Matlab program was developed to automatically measure the shortest distance between the bone and the plate at three regions of interest and a plate-bone angle. The measured values including the fit assessment results were recorded in a spreadsheet as part of the batch-process routine. An automated fit analysis procedure will enable the processing of larger bone datasets in a significantly shorter time, which will provide more representative data of the target population for plate shape design and validation. As a result, better fitting plates can be manufactured and made available to surgeons, thereby reducing the risk and cost associated with complications or corrective procedures. This in turn, is expected to translate into improving patients' quality of life.

An exploration of the technical, social and macro-societal pressures influencing the adoption of online social networking services by organisations

Measuring the business value that Internet technologies deliver for organisations has proven to be a difficult and elusive task, given their complexity and increased embeddedness within the value chain. Yet, despite the lack of empirical evidence that links the adoption of Information Technology (IT) with increased financial performance, many organisations continue to adopt new technologies at a rapid rate. This is evident in the widespread adoption of Web 2.0 online Social Networking Services (SNSs) such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These new Internet based technologies, widely used for social purposes, are being employed by organisations to enhance their business communication processes. However, their use is yet to be correlated with an increase in business performance. Owing to the conflicting empirical evidence that links prior IT applications with increased business performance, IT, Information Systems (IS), and E-Business Model (EBM) research has increasingly looked to broader social and environmental factors as a means for examining and understanding the broader influences shaping IT, IS and E-Business (EB) adoption behaviour. Findings from these studies suggest that organisations adopt new technologies as a result of strong external pressures, rather than a clear measure of enhanced business value. In order to ascertain if this is the case with the adoption of SNSs, this study explores how organisations are creating value (and measuring that value) with the use of SNSs for business purposes, and the external pressures influencing their adoption. In doing so, it seeks to address two research questions: 1. What are the external pressures influencing organisations to adopt SNSs for business communication purposes? 2. Are SNSs providing increased business value for organisations, and if so, how is that value being captured and measured? Informed by the background literature fields of IT, IS, EBM, and Web 2.0, a three-tiered theoretical framework is developed that combines macro-societal, social and technological perspectives as possible causal mechanisms influencing the SNS adoption event. The macro societal view draws on the concept of Castells. (1996) network society and the behaviour of crowds, herds and swarms, to formulate a new explanatory concept of the network vortex. The social perspective draws on key components of institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983, 1991), and the technical view draws from the organising vision concept developed by Swanson and Ramiller (1997). The study takes a critical realist approach, and conducts four stages of data collection and one stage of data coding and analysis. Stage 1 consisted of content analysis of websites and SNSs of many organisations, to identify the types of business purposes SNSs are being used for. Stage 2 also involved content analysis of organisational websites, in order to identify suitable sample organisations in which to conduct telephone interviews. Stage 3 consisted of conducting 18 in-depth, semi-structured telephone interviews within eight Australian organisations from the Media/Publishing and Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum (GLAM) industries. These sample organisations were considered leaders in the use of SNSs technologies. Stage 4 involved an SNS activity count of the organisations interviewed in Stage 3, in order to rate them as either Advanced Innovator (AI) organisations, or Learning Focussed (LF) organisations. A fifth stage of data coding and analysis of all four data collection stages was conducted, based on the theoretical framework developed for the study, and using QSR NVivo 8 software. The findings from this study reveal that SNSs have been adopted by organisations for the purpose of increasing business value, and as a result of strong social and macro-societal pressures. SNSs offer organisations a wide range of value enhancing opportunities that have broader benefits for customers and society. However, measuring the increased business value is difficult with traditional Return On Investment (ROI) mechanisms, ascertaining the need for new value capture and measurement rationales, to support the accountability of SNS adoption practices. The study also identified the presence of technical, social and macro-societal pressures, all of which influenced SNS adoption by organisations. These findings contribute important theoretical insight into the increased complexity of pressures influencing technology adoption rationales by organisations, and have important practical implications for practice, by reflecting the expanded global online networks in which organisations now operate. The limitations of the study include the small number of sample organisations in which interviews were conducted, its limited generalisability, and the small range of SNSs selected for the study. However, these were compensated in part by the expertise of the interviewees, and the global significance of the SNSs that were chosen. Future research could replicate the study to a larger sample from different industries, sectors and countries. It could also explore the life cycle of SNSs in a longitudinal study, and map how the technical, social and macro-societal pressures are emphasised through stages of the life cycle. The theoretical framework could also be applied to other social fad technology adoption studies.

Extending client-centered support : counselors’ proposals to shift from email to telephone counseling

The availability and use of online counseling approaches has increased rapidly over the last decade. While research has suggested a range of potential affordances and limitations of online counseling modalities, very few studies have offered detailed examinations of how counselors and clients manage asynchronous email counseling exchanges. In this paper we examine email exchanges involving clients and counselors through Kids Helpline, a national Australian counseling service that offers free online, email and telephone counseling for young people up to the age of 25. We employ tools from the traditions of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to analyze the ways in which counselors from Kids Helpline request that their clients call them, and hence change the modality of their counseling relationship, from email to telephone counseling. This paper shows the counselors’ three multi-layered approaches in these emails as they negotiate the potentially delicate task of requesting and persuading a client to change the trajectory of their counseling relationship from text to talk without placing that relationship in jeopardy.

The analysis of social capital in online social communities

Social networks have proven to be an attractive avenue of investigation for researchers since humans are social creatures. Numerous literature have explored the term “social networks” from different perspectives and in diverse research fields. With the popularity of the Internet, social networking has taken on a new dimension. Online social communities therefore have become an emerging social avenue for people to communicate in today’s information age. People use online social communities to share their interests, maintain friendships, and extend their so-called circle of “friends”. Likewise, social capital, also known as human capital, is an important theory in sociology. Researchers usually utilise social capital theory when they investigate the topic relating to social networks. However, there is little literature that can provide an explicit and strong assertion in that research area due to the complexity of social capital. This thesis therefore focuses on the issue related to providing a better understanding about the relationship between social capital and online social communities. To enhance the value within the scope of this analysis, an online survey was conducted to examine the effects of the dimensions of social capital: relational capital, structural capital, and cognitive capital, determining the intensity of using online social communities. The data were derived from a total of 350 self-selected respondents completing an online survey during the research period. The main results indicate that social capital exists in online social communities under normal circumstances. Finally, this thesis also presents three contributions for both theory and practice in Chapter 5. The main results contribute to the understanding of connectivity in the interrelationships between individual social capital exchange within online social networks. Secondly, social trust was found to have a weak effect in influencing the intensity of individuals using online social communities. Third, the perpetual role of information sharing has an indirect influence on individual users participating in online social communities. This study also benefits online marketing consultants as marketers can not only gain consumer information easier from online social communities but also this understanding assists in designing effective communication within online social communities. The cross-sectional study, the reliability of Internet survey data, and sampling issues are the major three limitations in this research. The thesis provides a new research model and recommends that the mediating effects, privacy paradox, and social trust on online social communities should be further explored in future research.

Collision warning dissemination in vehicles strings : an empirical measurement

Inter-Vehicular Communications (IVC) are considered a promising technological approach for enhancing transportation safety and improving highway efficiency. Previous theoretical work has demonstrated the benefits of IVC in vehicles strings. Simulations of partially IVC-equipped vehicles strings showed that only a small equipment ratio is sufficient to drastically reduce the number of head on collisions. However, these results are based on the assumptions that IVC exhibit lossless and instantaneous messages transmission. This paper presents the research design of an empirical measurement of a vehicles string, with the goal of highlighting the constraints introduced by the actual characteristics of communication devices. A warning message diffusion system based on IEEE 802.11 wireless technology was developed for an emergency breaking scenario. Preliminary results are presented as well, showing the latencies introduced by using 802.11a and discussing early findings and experimental limitations

Improving self-report measures of speeding

There is continuing debate regarding the psychometric properties of self-report measures of behaviour, particularly in road safety research. Practical considerations often preclude the use of objective assessments, leading to reliance on self-report measures. Acknowledging that such measures are likely to remain commonly used, this pilot project sought not to argue whether self-report measures should continue to be used, but to explore factors associated with how individuals respond to self-reported speeding measures. This paper reports preliminary findings from a qualitative study (focus groups and in-depth interviews) conducted with licensed drivers to explore the operational utility of self-reported speeding behaviour measures. Drawing upon concepts from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB; Ajzen, 1991) and Agency Theory (Bandura, 2001), we identified four dimensions of self-reported speeding: including timeframe, speed zone, degree over the speed limit and, overall frequency of the behaviour, and examined participants’ perceptions of the operational utility of these factors. Issues related to comprehensibility, perceived accuracy, response format and layout were also explored. Results indicated that: heterogeneity in the timeframe of behavioural reflections suggests a need to provide a set timeframe for participants to consider when thinking about their previous speeding behaviour; response categories and formats should be carefully considered to ensure the most accurate representations of the frequency and degree of speeding are captured; the need to clearly articulate “low-level” speeding on self-report measures; and, that self-reports of speeding behaviour are typically context-irrelevant unless stipulated in the question. Limitations and directions for further research are discussed.

Sky high and back again : the evolution of simulation-based design from aerospace to construction

Emerging from the challenge to reduce energy consumption in buildings is a need for research and development into the more effective use of simulation as a decision-support tool. Despite significant research, persistent limitations in process and software inhibit the integration of energy simulation in early architectural design. This paper presents a green star case study to highlight the obstacles commonly encountered with current integration strategies. It then examines simulation-based design in the aerospace industry, which has overcome similar limitations. Finally, it proposes a design system based on this contrasting approach, coupling parametric modelling and energy simulation software for rapid and iterative performance assessment of early design options.