The impact of IT intervention programs for girls

The goal of our study is to investigate the longitudinal effects of one intervention program for schoolgirls in the Information Technology (IT) field. This bi-annual event has been conducted regularly since 2006 with the aim of confronting a decline in the interest among girls to study IT and promoting study and work opportunities in the field. Each event has been evaluated with pre- and post-event surveys. Longitudinally, both students and teachers have also been surveyed three to four years after the event in which they participated. Results from the 2006 cohort surveyed in 2009-2010 are reported on in this paper. The main conclusion is that, unfortunately, any increase in the uptake of IT in schools that occurred as a result of attending the event was transitory. Therefore, it is crucial that inspiring, engaging, and empowering computing classes are being offered continuously at all secondary schools.

Safety applications using Kinect technology

 Microsoft Kinect sensor was introduced with the XBOX gaming console. It features a simple and portable motion capturing system. Kinect nowadays presents a point of interest in many fields of study and areas of research where its affordable price compared to its capabilities. The Kinect sensor has the capability to capture and track detected 3D objects with accuracy comparable to that captured by state of the art commercial systems. Human safety is considered one of the highest concerns, specially nowadays where the existence of machines and robots is widely used. In this paper we present using the Kinect technology for enhancing the safety of equipment and operations in seven different applications. These applications include 1) positioning of child’s car seat to optimise the child’s position in respected to front and side air-bags; 2) board positioning system to improve the teacher’s arm reach posture; 3) gas station safety to prevent children from accessing the gas pump; 4) indoor pool safety to avoid children access to deep pool area; 5) robot safety emergency stop; 6) Workplace safety; and 7) older adults fall prediction.

Exploring nurses' reactions to a novel technology to support acute health care delivery

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To explore nurses' reactions to new novel technology for acute health care. BACKGROUND: Past failures of technology developers to deliver products that meet nurses' needs have led to resistance and reluctance in the technology adoption process. Thus, involving nurses in a collaborative process from early conceptualisation serves to inform design reflective upon current clinical practice, facilitating the cementing of 'vision' and expectations of the technology. DESIGN: An exploratory descriptive design to capture nurses' immediate impressions. METHODS: Four focus groups (52 nurses from medical and surgical wards at two hospitals in Australia; one private and one public). RESULTS: Nursing reactions towards the new technology illustrated a variance in barrier and enabler comments across multiple domains of the Theoretical Domains Framework. Most challenging for nurses were the perceived threat to their clinical skill, and the potential capability of the novel technology to capture their clinical workflow. Enabling reactions included visions that this could help integrate care between departments; help management and support of nursing processes; and coordinating their patients care between clinicians. Nurses' reactions differed across hospital sites, influenced by their experiences of using technology. For example, Site 1 nurses reported wide variability in their distribution of barrier and enabling comments and nurses at Site 2, where technology was prevalent, reported mostly positive responses. CONCLUSION: This early involvement offered nursing input and facilitated understanding of the potential capabilities of novel technology to support nursing work, particularly the characteristics seen as potentially beneficial (enabling technology) and those conflicting (barrier technology) with the delivery of both safe and effective patient care. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Collaborative involvement of nurses from the early conceptualisation of technology development brings benefits that increase the likelihood of successful use of a tool intended to support the delivery of safe and efficient patient care.

An exploratory study on the factors influencing managers’ use of mobile tablets

Although mobile tablets such as iPads are being used by many managers, there has been a relative dearth of research on the managerial use of the mobile technology. This exploratory study aims toidentify and understand the factors influencing the use of mobile tablets by managers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a panel of seven managers who had incorporated mobile tablets into their work routine. The study has found that the mobile tablet is a suitable device for managerial tasks due to these nine main factors: non-routineness, collaborative nature, time-critical, informationcentric, mobility, user friendliness of the interface, reliability, connectivity, and autonomy. Thisexploratory study fills in the research gap and provides a basis to help managers establish a business case for or against mobile tablets adoption.

Exposing HPC and sequential applications as services through the development and deployment of a SaaS cloud

Cloud and service computing has started to change the way research in science, in particular biology and medicine, is being carried out. Researchers that have taken advantage of this technology (making use of public and private cloud compute resources) can process large amounts of data (big data) and speed up discovery. However, this requires researchers to acquire a solid knowledge and skills in the development of sequential and high performance computing (HPC), and cloud development and deployment background. In response a technology exposing HPC applications as services through the development and deployment of a SaaS cloud, and its proof of concept in the form of implementation of a cloud environment, Uncinus, has been developed and implemented to allow researchers easy access to cloud computing resources. The new technology offers and Uncinus supports the development of applications as services and the sharing of compute resources to speed up applications' execution. Users access these cloud resources and services through web interfaces. Using the Uncinus platform, a bio-informatics workflow was executed on a private (HPC) cloud, server and public cloud (Amazon EC2) resources, performance results showing a 3 fold improvement compared to local resources' performance. Biology and medicine specialists with no programming and application deployment on clouds background could run the case study applications with ease.

Comparison of various NMR methods for the indirect detection of nitrogen-14 nuclei via protons in solids

We present an experimental comparison of several through-space Hetero-nuclear Multiple-Quantum Correlation experiments, which allow the indirect observation of homo-nuclear single- (SQ) or double-quantum (DQ) ¹⁴N coherences via spy ¹H nuclei. These ¹H-{¹⁴N} D-HMQC sequences differ not only by the order of ¹⁴N coherences evolving during the indirect evolution, t1, but also by the radio-frequency (rf) scheme used to excite and reconvert these coherences under Magic-Angle Spinning (MAS). Here, the SQ coherences are created by the application of center-band frequency-selective pulses, i.e. long and low-power rectangular pulses at the ¹⁴N Larmor frequency, ν0(¹⁴N), whereas the DQ coherences are excited and reconverted using rf irradiation either at ν0(¹⁴N) or at the ¹⁴N overtone frequency, 2ν0(¹⁴N). The overtone excitation is achieved either by constant frequency rectangular pulses or by frequency-swept pulses, specifically Wide-band, Uniform-Rate, and Smooth-Truncation (WURST) pulse shapes. The present article compares the performances of four different ¹H-{¹⁴N} D-HMQC sequences, including those with ¹⁴N rectangular pulses at ν0(¹⁴N) for the indirect detection of homo-nuclear (i) ¹⁴N SQ or (ii) DQ coherences, as well as their overtone variants using (iii) rectangular or (iv) WURST pulses. The compared properties include: (i) the sensitivity, (ii) the spectral resolution in the ¹⁴N dimension, (iii) the rf requirements (power and pulse length), as well as the robustness to (iv) rf offset and (v) MAS frequency instabilities. Such experimental comparisons are carried out for γ-glycine and l-histidine.HCl monohydrate, which contain ¹⁴N sites subject to moderate quadrupole interactions. We demonstrate that the optimum choice of the ¹H-{¹⁴N} D-HMQC method depends on the experimental goal. When the sensitivity and/or the robustness to offset are the major concerns, the D-HMQC sequence allowing the indirect detection of ¹⁴N SQ coherences should be employed. Conversely, when the highest resolution and/or adjusted indirect spectral width are needed, overtone experiments are the method of choice. The overtone scheme using WURST pulses results in broader excitation bandwidths than that using rectangular pulses, at the expense of reduced sensitivity. Numerically exact simulations also show that the sensitivity of the overtone ¹H-{¹⁴N} D-HMQC experiment increases for larger quadrupole interactions.

Revisiting social influence in the ubiquitous computing era

This paper revisits the social influence construct in the era of ubiquitous computing. Despite its rather broad origins in psychology, social influence has to date been operationalized rather narrowly in the information technology adoption literature. We report on a study of mobile technology users in which we studied various social influences on these individuals. We isolate four distinct variants of social influence, operating in both inbound and outbound directions, each with positive and negative impacts. The study integrates three different dimensions of social influence into an analytical framework to facilitate future research. © 2012 IEEE.

Progressive adaptation in physical activity and neuromuscular performance during 520d confinement

To understand whether prolonged confinement results in reductions in physical activity and adaptation in the musculoskeletal system, six subjects were measured during 520 d isolation in the Mars500 study. We tested the hypothesis that physical activity reduces in prolonged confinement and that this would be associated with decrements of neuromuscular performance. Physical activity, as measured by average acceleration of the body's center of mass ("activity temperature") using the actibelt® device, decreased progressively over the course of isolation (p<0.00001). Concurrently, countermovement jump power and single-leg hop force decreased during isolation (p<0.001) whilst grip force did not change (p≥0.14). Similar to other models of inactivity, greater decrements of neuromuscular performance occurred in the lower-limb than in the upper-limb. Subject motivational state increased non-significantly (p = 0.20) during isolation, suggesting reductions in lower-limb neuromuscular performance were unrelated to motivation. Overall, we conclude that prolonged confinement is a form of physical inactivity and is associated with adaptation in the neuromuscular system.