Virtual Microscopy and Digital Pathology in Training and Education

Traditionally, education and training in pathology has been delivered using textbooks, glass slides and conventional microscopy. Over the last two decades, the number of web-based pathology resources has expanded dramatically with centralized pathological resources being delivered to many students simultaneously. Recently, whole slide imaging technology allows glass slides to be scanned and viewed on a computer screen via dedicated software. This technology is referred to as virtual microscopy and has created enormous opportunities in pathological training and education. Students are able to learn key histopathological skills, e.g. to identify areas of diagnostic relevance from an entire slide, via a web-based computer environment. Students no longer need to be in the same room as the slides. New human–computer interfaces are also being developed using more natural touch technology to enhance the manipulation of digitized slides. Several major initiatives are also underway introducing online competency and diagnostic decision analysis using virtual microscopy and have important future roles in accreditation and recertification. Finally, researchers are investigating how pathological decision-making is achieved using virtual microscopy and modern eyetracking devices. Virtual microscopy and digital pathology will continue to improve how pathology training and education is delivered.

Hermit crabs perceive the extent of their virtual bodies

A flexible body image is required by animals if they are to adapt to body changes and move effectively within a structurally complex environment. Here, we show that terrestrial hermit crabs, Coenobita rugosus, which frequently change shells, can modify walking behaviour, dependent on the shape of the shell. Hermit crabs walked along a corridor that had alternating left and right corners; if it was narrow at the corner, crabs rotated their bodies to avoid the wall, indicating an awareness of environmental obstacles. This rotation increased when a plastic plate was attached to the shell. We suggest that the shell, when extended by the plate, becomes assimilated to the hermit crab's own body. While there are cases of a tool being assimilated with the body, our result is the first example of the habitat where an animal lives and/or carries being part of a virtual body. This journal is © 2012 The Royal Society.

Automated Methods for Virtual Maintainability & Aerospace Maintenance Planning

Abstract. Modern business practices in engineering are increasingly turning to post manufacture service provision in an attempt to generate additional revenue streams and ensure commercial sustainability. Maintainability has always been a consideration during the design process but in the past it has been generally considered to be of tertiary importance behind manufacturability and primary product function in terms of design priorities. The need to draw whole life considerations into concurrent engineering (CE) practice has encouraged companies to address issues such as maintenance, earlier in the design process giving equal importance to all aspects of the product lifecycle. The consideration of design for maintainability (DFM) early in the design process has the potential to significantly reduce maintenance costs, and improve overall running efficiencies as well as safety levels. However a lack of simulation tools still hinders the adaptation of CE to include practical elements of design and therefore further research is required to develop methods by which ‘hands on’ activities such as maintenance can be fully assessed and optimised as concepts develop. Virtual Reality (VR) has the potential to address this issue but the application of these traditionally high cost systems can require complex infrastructure and their use has typically focused on aesthetic aspects of mature designs. This paper examines the application of cost effective VR technology to the rapid assessment of aircraft interior inspection during conceptual design. It focuses on the integration of VR hardware with a typical desktop engineering system and examines the challenges with data transfer, graphics quality and the development of practical user functions within the VR environment. Conclusions drawn to date indicate that the system has the potential to improve maintenance planning through the provision of a usable environment for inspection which is available as soon as preliminary structural models are generated as part of the conceptual design process. Challenges still exist in the efficient transfer of data between the CAD and VR environments as well as the quantification of any benefits that result from the proposed approach. The result of this research will help to improve product maintainability, reduce product development cycle times and lower maintenance costs.

Small–scale fading characteristics of diversity combining schemes used for body–to–body communications within an urban environment at 2.45 GHz

In this paper, an analysis of spatial diversity and small-scale fading characteristics for body-to-bodycommunications is presented. The measurements were made at 2.45 GHz in an urban environment with uncontrolled pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The virtual array of four distributed receive antennas where situated on the centralchest, central waist, left waist and left wrist of the user’s body. Combining of the received signal measured at each ofthe antennas in the virtual array has shown that an average diversity gain of up to 11.8 dB can be achieved when usingfour distributed antennas and a maximal ratio combining scheme. To model the small-scale fading characteristics obtained at the output of the virtual combiners, we use diversity specific, theoretical probability density functions for multi-branch receivers operating in Nakagami-m fading channels. It is shown that these equations provide an excellent fit to the measured channel data.

The rise of the digital citizen-stakeholder: rebalancing multistakeholder governance

The principle feature in the evolution of the internet has been its ever growing reach to include old and young, rich and poor. The internet’s ever encroaching presence has transported it from our desktop to our pocket and into our glasses. This is illustrated in the Internet Society Questionnaire on Multistakeholder Governance, which found the main factors affecting change in the Internet governance landscape were more users online from more countries and the influence of the internet over daily life. The omnipresence of the internet is self- perpetuating; its usefulness grows with every new user and every new piece of data uploaded. The advent of social media and the creation of a virtual presence for each of us, even when we are not physically present or ‘logged on’, means we are fast approaching the point where we are all connected, to everyone else, all the time. We have moved far beyond the point where governments can claim to represent our views which evolve constantly rather than being measured in electoral cycles.
The shift, which has seen citizens as creators of content rather than consumers of it, has undermined the centralist view of democracy and created an environment of wiki democracy or crowd sourced democracy. This is at the heart of what is generally known as Web 2.0, and widely considered to be a positive, democratising force. However, we argue, there are worrying elements here too. Government does not always deliver on the promise of the networked society as it involves citizens and others in the process of government. Also a number of key internet companies have emerged as powerful intermediaries harnessing the efforts of the many, and re- using and re-selling the products and data of content providers in the Web 2.0 environment. A discourse about openness and transparency has been offered as a democratising rationale but much of this masks an uneven relationship where the value of online activity flows not to the creators of content but to those who own the channels of communication and the metadata that they produce.
In this context the state is just one stakeholder in the mix of influencers and opinion formers impacting on our behaviours, and indeed our ideas of what is public. The question of what it means to create or own something, and how all these new relationships to be ordered and governed are subject to fundamental change. While government can often appear slow, unwieldy and even irrelevant in much of this context, there remains a need for some sort of political control to deal with the challenges that technology creates but cannot by itself control. In order for the internet to continue to evolve successfully both technically and socially it is critical that the multistakeholder nature of internet governance be understood and acknowledged, and perhaps to an extent, re- balanced. Stakeholders can no longer be classified in the broad headings of government, private sector and civil society, and their roles seen as some sort of benign and open co-production. Each user of the internet has a stake in its efficacy and each by their presence and participation is contributing to the experience, positive or negative of other users as well as to the commercial success or otherwise of various online service providers. However stakeholders have neither an equal role nor an equal share. The unequal relationship between the providers of content and those who simple package up and transmit that content - while harvesting the valuable data thus produced - needs to be addressed. Arguably this suggests a role for government that involves it moving beyond simply celebrating and facilitating the on- going technological revolution. This paper reviews the shifting landscape of stakeholders and their contribution to the efficacy of the internet. It will look to critically evaluate the primacy of the individual as the key stakeholder and their supposed developing empowerment within the ever growing sea of data. It also looks at the role of individuals in wider governance roles. Governments in a number of jurisdictions have sought to engage, consult or empower citizens through technology but in general these attempts have had little appeal. Citizens have been too busy engaging, consulting and empowering each other to pay much attention to what their governments are up to. George Orwell’s view of the future has not come to pass; in fact the internet has insured the opposite scenario has come to pass. There is no big brother but we are all looking over each other’s shoulder all the time, while at the same time a number of big corporations are capturing and selling all this collective endeavour back to us.

Network Based Malware Detection in Virtualised Environment

While virtualisation can provide many benefits to a networks infrastructure, securing the virtualised environment is a big challenge. The security of a fully virtualised solution is dependent on the security of each of its underlying components, such as the hypervisor, guest operating systems and storage.

This paper presents a single security service running on the hypervisor that could potentially work to provide security service to all virtual machines running on the system. This paper presents a hypervisor hosted framework which performs specialised security tasks for all underlying virtual machines to protect against any malicious attacks by passively analysing the network traffic of VMs. This framework has been implemented using Xen Server and has been evaluated by detecting a Zeus Server setup and infected clients, distributed over a number of virtual machines. This framework is capable of detecting and identifying all infected VMs with no false positive or false negative detection.

Understanding perception and action in sport:How can virtual reality technology help?

Although technology can facilitate improvements in performance by allowing us to understand, monitor and evaluate performance, improvements must ultimately come from within the athlete. The first part of this article will focus on understanding how perception and action relate to performance from two different theoretical viewpoints. The first will be predominantly a cognitive or indirect approach that suggests that expertise and decision-making processes are mediated by athletes accruing large knowledge bases that are built up through practice and experience. The second, and alternative approach, will advocate a more 'direct' solution, where the athlete learns to 'tune' into the relevant information that is embedded in their relationship with the surrounding environment and unfolding action. The second part of the article will attempt to show how emerging virtual reality technology is revealing new evidence that helps us understand elite performance. Possibilities of how new types of training could be developed from this technology will also be discussed. © 2014 Crown Copyright.

Improvisation, Indeterminacy and Game-Mediated Participation in Network Music Performance

This chapter focuses on the relationship between improvisation and indeterminacy. We discuss the two practices by referring to play theory and game studies and situate it in recent network music performance. We will develop a parallel with game theory in which indeterminacy is seen as a way of articulating situations where structural decisions are left to the discernment of the performers and discuss improvisation as a method of play. The improvisation-indeterminacy relationship is discussed in the context of network music performance, which employs digital networks in the exchange of data between performers and hence relies on topological structures with varying degrees of openness and flexibility. Artists such as Max Neuhaus and The League of Automatic Music Composers initiated the development of a multitude of practices and technologies exploring the network as an environment for music making. Even though the technologies behind “the network” have shifted dramatically since Neuhaus’ use of radio in the 1960’s, a preoccupation with distribution and sharing of artistic agency has remained at the centre of networked practices. Gollo Föllmer, after undertaking an extensive review of network music initiatives, produced a typology that comprises categories as diverse as remix lists, sound toys, real/virtual space installations and network performances. For Föllmer, “the term ‘Net music’ comprises all formal and stylistic kinds of music upon which the specifics of electronic networks leave considerable traces, whereby the electronic networks strongly influence the process of musical production, the musical aesthetic, or the way music is received” (2005: 185).

Generating analysis topology using virtual topology operators

Virtual topology operations have been utilized to generate an analysis topology definition suitable for downstream mesh generation. Detailed descriptions are provided for virtual topology merge and split operations for all topological entities, where virtual decompositions are robustly linked to the underlying geometry. Current virtual topology technology is extended to allow the virtual partitioning of volume cells. A valid description of the topology, including relative orientations, is maintained which enables downstream interrogations to be performed on the analysis topology description, such as determining if a specific meshing strategy can be applied to the virtual volume cells. As the virtual representation is a true non-manifold description of the sub-divided domain the interfaces between cells are recorded automatically. Therefore, the advantages of non-manifold modelling are exploited within the manifold modelling environment of a major commercial CAD system without any adaptation of the underlying CAD model. A hierarchical virtual structure is maintained where virtual entities are merged or partitioned. This has a major benefit over existing solutions as the virtual dependencies here are stored in an open and accessible manner, providing the analyst with the freedom to create, modify and edit the analysis topology in any preferred sequence.

Tools and Environments for Networked Electronic Performance

A collection of software and hardware tools and environments that facilitate collective networked performance between electronic musicians. Tools include 'Chat Monkey', a live chat tool for performance, 'DMA Sequencing', a step sequencer using open sound control messaging and multi nodal control, 'tutti, duet, trio, solo, quartet', an ensemble management environment, and 'Por Larrañaga', a cigar box based electro-acoustic instrument with embedded sensors and controllers. Notable performances: w/BLISS, NCAD, Dublin, 1 March 2015; w/BLISS, NI Science Festival, Belfast, 21 Feb 2015

Design of a Virtual Reality Framework for Maintainability and assemblability test of complex systems

This paper presents a unique environment whose features are able to satisfy requirements for both virtual maintenance and virtual manufacturing through the conception of original virtual reality (VR) architecture. Virtual Reality for the Maintainability and Assemblability Tests (VR_MATE) encompasses VR hardware and software and a simulation manager which allows customisation of the architecture itself as well as interfacing with a wide range of devices employed in the simulations. Two case studies are presented to illustrate VR_MATE's unique ability to allow for both maintainability tests and assembly analysis of an aircraft carriage and a railway coach cooling system respectively. The key impact of this research is the demonstration of the potentialities of using VR techniques in industry and its multiple applications despite the subjective character within the simulation. VR_MATE has been presented as a framework to support the strategic and operative objectives of companies to reduce product development time and costs whilst maintaining product quality for applications which would be too expensive to simulate and evaluate in the real world.

Using virtual topology operations to generate analysis topology

Virtual topology operations have been utilized to generate an analysis topology definition suitable for downstream mesh generation. Detailed descriptions are provided for virtual topology merge and split operations for all topological entities. Current virtual topology technology is extended to allow the virtual partitioning of volume cells and the topological queries required to carry out each operation are provided. Virtual representations are robustly linked to the underlying geometric definition through an analysis topology. The analysis topology and all associated virtual and topological dependencies are automatically updated after each virtual operation, providing the link to the underlying CAD geometry. Therefore, a valid description of the analysis topology, including relative orientations, is maintained. This enables downstream operations, such as the merging or partitioning of virtual entities, and interrogations, such as determining if a specific meshing strategy can be applied to the virtual volume cells, to be performed on the analysis topology description. As the virtual representation is a non-manifold description of the sub-divided domain the interfaces between cells are recorded automatically. This enables the advantages of non-manifold modelling to be exploited within the manifold modelling environment of a major commercial CAD system, without any adaptation of the underlying CAD model. A hierarchical virtual structure is maintained where virtual entities are merged or partitioned. This has a major benefit over existing solutions as the virtual dependencies are stored in an open and accessible manner, providing the analyst with the freedom to create, modify and edit the analysis topology in any preferred sequence, whilst the original CAD geometry is not disturbed. Robust definitions of the topological and virtual dependencies enable the same virtual topology definitions to be accessed, interrogated and manipulated within multiple different CAD packages and linked to the underlying geometry.

Virtual Reality as a tool to Assist Learning in Aerospace Assembly

This study examines whether virtual reality (VR) is more superior to paper-based instructions in increasing the speed at which individuals learn a new assembly task. Specifically, the work seeks to quantify any learning benefits when individuals have been given the opportunity and compares the performance of two groups using virtual and hardcopy media types to pre-learn the task. A build experiment based on multiple builds of an aircraft panel showed that a group of people who pre-learned the assembly task using a VR environment completed their builds faster (average build time 29.5% lower). The VR group also made fewer references to instructional materials (average number of references 38% lower) and made fewer errors than a group using more traditional, hard copy instructions. These outcomes were more pronounced during build one with differences in build time and number of references showing limited statistical differences.