Browser Technology Research Articles

Identification of User Facility Related Publications

Scientific user facilities provide physical resources and technical support that enable scientists to conduct experiments or simulations pertinent to their respective research. One metric for evaluating the scientific value or impact of a facility is the number of publications by users as a direct result of using that facility. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, capturing accurate values for this metric proves time consuming and error-prone. This work describes a new approach that leverages automated browser technology combined with text analytics to reduce the time and error involved in identifying publications related to user facilities. With this approach, scientific user facilities gain more accurate measures of their impact as well as insight into policy revisions for user access.

Ethical Approaches to Robotic Data Gathering in Academic Research

Internet researchers increasingly have at their disposal of an array of automated software agents, or “bots,” which can rapidly and efficiently retrieve a variety of economic and technical data from publicly accessible web sites. While these automated tools greatly facilitate the retrieval and analysis of data for academic research, they may pose ethical problems for Internet researchers. Specifically, automated software bots place some load on servers being accessed, possibly in contradiction to the expected use of such servers, and possibly in violation of the legal prerogatives of web site owners. Determining how and when to access such web sites, and whether to seek the consent of web site owners for retrieval of publicly accessible data presents an apparent conflict between general principles of information policy and the emerging legal precedent regarding trespass to computers. This conflict may be characterized as pitting utilitarian considerations against deontological considerations in a fashion reminiscent of previous debates over informed consent in on-line research. In this paper, we examine both utilitarian and deontological characterizations of the ethical obligations of researchers employing automated data retrieval bots, and argue that the contrasts between the two approaches do not necessarily result in conflict. Instead, we argue that the tension within the relevant practices indicates the need for a “meta-choice” between utilitarian and deontological considerations. We further suggest certain factors that may differentiate such a “metaethical” choice in the context of automated data retrieval from the “meta-ethical” choice presented in previously identified contexts of human subjects research or of web browser technology design. In the end, we argue that by analyzing the ethical issues in terms of the contrast between utilitarian and deontological ethics, it is possible to resolve some of the ethical dilemmas regarding automated data retrieval in fruitful and cogent ways.

ThermoData Engine (TDE): Software Implementation of the Dynamic Data Evaluation Concept. 6. Dynamic Web-Based Data Dissemination through the NIST Web Thermo Tables

ThermoData Engine (TDE) is the first full-scale software implementation of the dynamic data evaluation concept, as reported recently in this journal. In the present paper, we describe the development of a World Wide Web-based interface to TDE evaluations of pure compound properties, including critical properties, phase boundary equilibria (vapor pressures, sublimation pressures, and crystal-liquid boundary pressures), densities, energetic properties, and transport properties. This includes development of a system for caching evaluation results to maintain high availability and an advanced window-in-window interface that leverages modern Web-browser technologies. Challenges associated with bringing the principal advantages of the TDE technology to the Web are described, as are compromises to maintain general access and speed of interaction while remaining true to the tenets of dynamic data evaluation. Future extensions of the interface and associated Web-services are outlined.

Realtime Visualization of the Connectome in the Browser using WebGL

Event Abstract Back to Event Realtime Visualization of the Connectome in the Browser using WebGL Daniel Ginsburg1*, Stephan Gerhard2, John E. Calle3 and Rudolph Pienaar1 1 Children's Hospital Boston, United States 2 EPFL, Switzerland 3 Vicomtech, Spain Introduction Recent advances in browser technology along with the widespread proliferation of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have enabled new visualization capabilities in the browser. Analyzing the connectome requires intensive preprocessing along with realtime visualization for results exploration. The introduction of WebGL [1] has made exploration of such data possible in the browser, enabling visualizations across a range of devices without any client-side software requirements other than a WebGL-enabled browser. This poster introduces several visualization techniques that were developed for exploration of connectome data. Methods The publicly available Connectome Mapper [2] provides a pipeline to automatically generate structural networks from raw diffusion MRI data for the human brain. In the segmentation stage, T1 MPRAGE MRI is processed by Freesurfer [3] producing gray / white matter segmentations. The Diffusion Toolkit [4] is used for reconstruction, and a deterministic streamline algorithm [2] is used for tractography, generating fiber tracts of the same subject. A parcellation is generated for cortical and subcortical regions-of-interest. These datasets are then coregistered, and a network is generated weighting the connectivity between regions based on the fiber tracts. In our project, the results of the Connectome Mapper are directly loaded in the browser using WebGL and JavaScript. The FreeSurfer cortical surface reconstruction binary files are loaded and processed in JavaScript and converted to WebGL vertex buffer objects for rendering. The surfaces are overlaid with per-vertex curvature values computed during the FreeSurfer processing stream. The tractography data is likewise parsed in the JavaScript code and rendered as line primitives colored based on direction. Finally, the structural network itself is converted to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) as an offline preprocess and loaded into the browser using JavaScript. The networks are visualized in 3D along with the fiber tracts and surfaces enabling exploration of connectivity information in realtime. Results Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the WebGL-based visualization. The visualization is composed of the pial surface colored with the per-vertex mean curvature, fiber tracts colored by direction, regions-of-interest rendered with cubes, and lines between regions denoting connectivity. The connectivity lines are colored based on the mean fiber tract length connecting the two regions-of-interest. The visualization can be tuned interactively and contains user interface elements that allow for display of pial or white matter surface, selection of curvature overlay, restriction of fiber tract length, and selection of connectivity regions-of-interest. Conclusions We presented a realtime visual exploration of the connectome data including FreeSurfer structural reconstruction, tractography, and network data all within the browser. This project establishes the capability of WebGL as a viable visualization platform for structural connectivity data and provides a means for rapidly exploring and validating the results of Connectome Mapper pipeline. WebGL is underpinned by OpenGL ES 2.0, a graphics standard already supported by a wide range of GPUs on handheld devices including the iPhone, iPad, and numerous Android phones. As WebGL proliferates to such devices, techniques such as those demonstrated in our poster will be enabled across a range of devices.

Business Intelligence in Thailand's Higher Educational Resources Management

For the past decade, Thailand's higher education has been expanded beyond the resources funded by The Office of the Higher Commission. There were 76 public universities and 68 private universities and 19 community colleges served about 1.75 million students in both the undergraduate and graduate levels in 2008. To make an effective and efficient resource allocation, the Business Intelligent (BI) was deployed to generate executive decision support information for the management. This paper illustrated the roles of BI in Thailand's higher education resource management, the implementation, the technology, and the key succeed factors. The security concept is employed in this work based on web browser technology.

Towards adaptive Web scriptable user interfaces for virtual environments

The vast majority of Web-based technology, its ability to visualize static and time varying information and the pervasive nature of its content have lead the development of applications and user interfaces that port between a broad range of operating systems, databases and devices. However the integration of this immense resource in virtual environments (VEs) remains elusive. In this paper we present a Web scriptable user interface that utilizes Web browser technology to enable the user to search the internet for arbitrary information and to seamlessly augment this information into the VE. WebVRI provides access to the standard data input and query mechanisms offered by conventional Web browsers, with the difference that it generates active texture-skins of the Web contents that can be mapped onto arbitrary surfaces within the environment. Once mapped, the corresponding texture functions as a fully integrated Web-browser that will respond to traditional events such as the selection of links or text input. As a result, any surface within the environment can be turned into a Web-enabled resource that provides access to user-definable data. Using WebVRI, users can merge Web contents into their VE, control its behavior and collaborate with other users inside and outside the VE. This provides a completely new mechanism to access readily available Web-based data, documents, images, animations, simulations and visualization. WebVRI also enables game-based education by providing the ability to create contents rich, pervasive VR-based edutainment environments.

From the College Democrats to the Falling Illini: Identifying, Appraising, and Capturing Student Organization Websites

For nearly a decade, student organizations have used the Internet to promote events, record activities, issue statements, and maintain officer rosters. Student websites are potentially an important resource for scholarship on twenty-first-century student experience, providing both evidence about the activities of the organizations and information about the student body. Based on findings from a multicomponent case study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this article analyzes the documentary value of student organization websites and discusses ways in which archivists can use offline browser technology to capture extracurricular activity more fully.

Webjacking, and how to boot it out

Webjacking should be fixed firmly on corporate IT security's watch list by now. With 'ransomware', an extortionist infects a computer with code that encrypts a user's documents, then demands a ransom for a key that can be used to decipher them. Don't assume webjackers only have private individuals in their sights. Webjacking - like bull fighting - is a particularly risky venture for the perpetrator, but the rewards are high. For it to work, a communication dialogue must be established to exchange the encryption keys. Currently, one of the most popular infection methods is via web browser technology, such as Internet Explorer. Ransomware is being viewed primarily as a threat to individuals and home computers at the moment. It is argued that the reason corporations have not experienced this form of attack yet is because they have devices at the perimeter that constantly monitor for malicious activity and take steps when signs of malicious activity occur. As the author puts it ''There is a tremendous problem with this argument''. The rise in webjacking activity has received a lot of press lately, and should be firmly on corporate IT security's watch list by now. With ''ransomware'', an extortionist infects a computer with malicious code that encrypts user-based documents, then demands a ransom for a key that can be used to decipher them. Companies are deluding themselves if they think this is just for home users.

The Next Killer App

Like so many 1950s sci-fi movies, predictions about the future of radiology informatics are likely to miss the mark entirely. People do not visit Mars in private spaceships or command humanoid-looking robots to perform our work. However, innumerable technological advances have completely changed the way that information is generated, processed, interfaced, and applied. Informatics as a whole is punctuated by progressive rather than revolutionary changes. The best way to understand the future is often to have a clear perspective of the past. I transitioned to medical school from a fast-track career at Cisco Systems where I worked as an internetwork engineer supporting network operations for customers ranging from NASDAQ to local ISPs. When I entered medical school, I was shocked at how far medicine lagged behind Silicon Valley in the use of information technology. At Cisco, I could accomplish nearly every facet of my work without touching a piece of paper or leaving my cubicle. In contrast, the hospital seemed to be the land that information technology forgot. Ironically, my work at Cisco is very comparable to the practice of medicine. Both are information-based. There is no technical reason why the same efficiency and quality-enabling technologies in place at Cisco cannot be implemented throughout medicine, let alone radiology. The impact technology has had on radiology is nothing short of radical. In fact, it is the ongoing freescale adoption of technology within radiology that attracted me to this field. Many of the advancements such as PACS, 3-D reconstruction, electronic teaching files, and fusion imaging are seen as being today's “killer apps.” In reality, these have existed, at least conceptually, for well over a decade. Available computing power and supporting technologies have allowed for the continual refinement of these tools. This refinement has brought about the incredible advances we see today. These tools will continue to mature as new applications are developed. So what does the future hold? Medicine, like the Cisco world of networking, is about the derivation, processing, continual flow, and application of information. The quality of information at any point is dependent on the previous steps and the availability, quality, and utilization of preexisting data. The “killer app” is the ever-moving target of information acquisition, management, and delivery that ties the patient to the radiologist and clinician. Even within the most bleeding-edge radiology department, there is fracturing of available information. This limits the maximum potential utilization of the available data. While a fully cohesive information system could take many forms, imagine the power of a system where every detail about a patient is accessible and manageable from a single console. Similar to Internet browser technology such as RSS (real simple syndication) that provides real-time news headlines, imagine if your PACS system actively retrieved and populated dynamic patient information. This would not only include a more complete patient medical record, but also actively updated real-time information. These could include items such as real-time patient location, current treating physician location (clinic, OR, office) and contact information, and real-time medication administration data. Imagine clicking a single button to convey results on a study. Rather than simply displaying the ordering clinician's name (who might happen to be unavailable), the system automatically displays the covering physician's contact information and pages that clinician to the phone closest to your workstation. When the covering clinician calls, his clinical workstation is immediately synchronized with your display thus allowing findings to be discussed in detail. Does this scenario sound far-fetched? Years ago, when I left Cisco, it was possible to pack your desk phone in a suitcase and use it at a field office anywhere in the world (i.e., China). If the local number was called in the United States, the phone would ring in China. Application of current technology pieces like this would help bring the goal of an all-inclusive, cohesive, adaptive, and active information management “killer app” closer to reality (but only until the next improvement). Radiology is an exciting field with limitless potential. As stewards of technology, it is our responsibility to assist medicine as a whole with tools to increase, improve, and better utilize the information available to us. I look forward to this pursuit.

Clinical Characteristics and Outcome of Hospitalized Patients With Heart Failure in Japan Rationale and Design of Japanese Cardiac Registry of Heart Failure in Cardiology (JCARE-CARD)

Heart failure (HF), defined as a complex clinical syndrome that can result from any structural or functional cardiac disorder that impairs the ability of the ventricle to fill with or eject blood, is a leading cause of mortality and hospitalization for adults older than 65 years in the industrialized countries. The characteristics and outcome of patients with HF have been described by several epidemiological studies and large scale clinical trials, performed mainly in the United States and Europe. Very little information is available on this issue in Japan. The Japanese Cardiac Registry of Heart Failure in Cardiology (JCARE-CARD) is designed to prospectively study the characteristics, treatment, and outcomes of a broad sample of patients hospitalized with HF at teaching hospitals throughout Japan between January 2004 to June 2005 and the outcomes, including death and hospital readmission, will be followed through 2006 (mean follow-up at least 1 year). Participating cardiologists identify patients admitted for worsening of HF symptoms. Demographics, medical history, severity, treatment, and outcome data are collected and entered into a database via secure web browser technology. As of June 2005, baseline data for 2,676 patients with HF have been registered from 164 participating hospitals. The JCARE-CARD will provide important insights into the management of patients with HF in routine clinical practice in Japan, thus providing the framework for improved management strategies for these patients.

GASNet.org: Management of the difficult airway

GASNet.org first went online in 1993; it was among the first 500 websites on the internet and was the first that was dedicated to anesthesia and critical care. GASNET.org is housed at Yale University, but it is a collaborative effort by several American anesthesiologists. Although it is primarily of interest to anesthesiologists, GASNet.org is a huge web site with much to offer from an educational perspective. Among many other resources, it features tutorials on acid–base, transesophageal echocardiography, hemodynamics, a clip art library, a multiplatform library of downloadable freeware and shareware calculators, as well as a database of key articles relevant to anesthesia. The subject of this web report is a multimedia airway tutorial, which provides an excellent and up-to-date review of both basic and advanced airway techniques. The best way to access the tutorial is to go directly to the URL http://www.gasnet.org/airway/airway.htm. The tutorial is divided into 15 sections. It begins with a summary of pathological conditions that may complicate airway management – a feature seldom included in most airway tutorials. Other sections review airway anatomy and examination, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Difficult Airway Algorithm, and setting up a difficult airway cart for the operating room or the intensive care unit. A section on airway adjuncts such as lighted stylets, gum bougies and laryngeal masks instructs on the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative, should conventional direct laryngoscopy be unsuccessful. The tutorial finishes with a step-by-step illustration of rarer techniques such as retrograde intubation, cricothyrotomy and use of airway exchangers. Each of these sections finishes with a video demonstrating the technique. The tutorial's layout is clean and well referenced (with direct links to abstracts on PubMed.com) and it has an excellent navigation system. Many pages feature only a single paragraph, which is an approach that is designed to hold users' attention, rather than requiring them to scroll through line after line of text. The airway tutorial takes advantage of the latest web browser technology to provide a sophisticated navigation panel and streaming video. The authors recommend viewing the site with Internet Explorer 5.0 or Netscape 4.0, or later versions, and the Apple QuickTime 4.0 plug-in is required to view the videos.

Characteristics and outcomes of patients hospitalized for heart failure in the United States: Rationale, design, and preliminary observations from the first 100,000 cases in the Acute Decompensated Heart Failure National Registry (ADHERE)

The ADHERE is designed to study characteristics, management, and outcomes in a broad sample of patients hospitalized with acute decompensated heart failure. Heart failure is a leading cause of hospitalization for adults older than 65 years in the United States. Most available data on these patients are limited by patient selection criteria and study design of clinical trials and single-center studies. Participating hospitals identify patients with a primary or secondary discharge diagnosis of heart failure. Medical history, management, treatments, and health outcomes data are collected through review of medical records and entered into a database via secure web browser technology. As of January 2004, data on 107 362 patients have been received from 282 participating hospitals. Of enrollees with available analyzable data (N = 105 388 from 274 hospitals), the mean age was 72.4 (+/-14.0), and 52% were women. The most common comorbid conditions were hypertension (73%), coronary artery disease (57%), and diabetes (44%). Evidence of mild or no impairment of systolic function was found in 46% of patients. Inhospital mortality was 4.0% and the median hospital length of stay was 4.3 days. The ADHERE demonstrates both the feasibility and significant implications of gathering representative data on large numbers of patients hospitalized with heart failure. Initial data provided important insights into the clinical characteristics and patterns of care of these patients. Ongoing registry work will provide the framework for improved treatment strategies for patients hospitalized with decompensated heart failure.

Overview of Acutely Decompensated Congestive Heart Failure (ADHF): A Report from the ADHERE Registry

Acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) has emerged as a major public health problem, and HF has become the leading cause of hospitalization in persons over 65 years of age. It is estimated that there are 6.5 million hospital days attributed to ADHF each year. Patients hospitalized with ADHF face a substantial risk of readmission, as high as 50% by 6 months after discharge. Despite the large number of patients hospitalized and this substantial risk, data on these patients have been limited and there has been little effort to improve the quality of care for patients hospitalized with ADHF. The Acute Decompensated Heart Failure National Registry (ADHERE) was designed to bridge this gap in knowledge and care by prospectively studying the characteristics, management, and outcomes of a broad spectrum of patients hospitalized with ADHF. Participating community and university hospitals identified patients with a primary or secondary discharge diagnosis of HF and collected medical history, management, treatments, and health outcomes via secure Web browser technology. As of October 2004, more than 160,000 patients from 281 hospitals have been enrolled. These patients differ substantially from those typically enrolled in randomized clinical trials. Initial data from the ADHERE registry have provided important insights into the clinical characteristics, patterns of care, and outcomes of patients with ADHF. ADHERE has documented significant delays in diagnosis and initiation of ADHF therapies as well as a substantial under-use of evidenced-based, guideline-recommended chronic HF therapies at hospital discharge. As such, there are substantial opportunities to improve the quality of care for ADHF patients in the nation's hospitals.

Contested artifact: technology sensemaking, actor networks, and the shaping of the Web browser

Much of IT research focuses on issues of adoption and adaptation of established technology artifacts by users and organizations and has neglected issues of how new technologies come into existence and evolve. To fill this gap, this paper depicts a complex picture of technology evolution to illustrate the development of Web browser technology. Building on actor‐network theory as a basis for studying complex technology evolution processes, it explores the emergence of the browser using content analysis techniques on archival data from 1993‐1998. Identifies three processes of inscribing, translating, and framing that clarify how actors acted and reacted to each other and to the emergent technological definition of the browser. This spiral development pattern incorporates complex interplay between base beliefs about what a browser is, artifacts that are the instantiation of those beliefs, evaluation routines that compare the evolving artifact to collective expectations, and strategic moves that attempt to skew the development process to someone's advantage. This approach clarifies the complex interdependence of disparate elements that over time produced the Web browser as it is known today.

New Web Browser Applications

Summarises new and developing Web browser technologies. Describes three browsers, one with a “tabbed browsing” capability, another which includes a new productivity tool called a “search information manager”, and a voice operated browser which is still in development.

International exchange of emergency phase information and assessments: an aid to national/international decision makers.

This paper discusses a collaborative project (1) to demonstrate the feasibility and benefit of a system seeking early review, in a 'quasi peer review' mode, of nuclear accident plume and dose assessment predictions by four major international nuclear accident emergency response systems before release of calculations to respective national authorities followed by (2) sharing these results with responsible national/international authorities, (3) development of an affordable/accessible system to distribute results to countries without prediction capabilities and (4) utilisation for exercises and collaboration studies. The project exploits Internet browser technology and low-cost PC hardware, incorporates an Internet node, with access control, for depositing a minimal set of XML-based graphics files for presentation in an identical map format. Side-by-side viewing and televideo conferencing will permit rapid evaluation, data elaboration and recalculation (if necessary) and should produce strong consensus among decision makers. Successful completion affords easy utilisation by national/international organisations and non-nuclear states at risk of trans-boundary incursion.

Loosely-coupled approach towards multi-modal browsing

Contemplating the concept of universal-access multi-modal browsing comes as one of the emerging "killer" technologies that promises broader and more flexible access to information, faster task completion, and advanced user experience. Inheriting the best from GUI and speech, based on the circumstances, hardware capabilities, and environment, multi-modality's great advantage is to provide application developers with a scalable blend of input and output channels that may accommodate any user, device, and platform. This article describes a flexible multi-modal browser architecture, named Ferda the Ant, which reuses uni-modal browser technologies available for VoiceXML, WML, and HTML browsing. A central component, the Virtual Proxy, acts as a synchronization coordinator. This browser architecture can be implemented in either a single client configuration, or by distributing the browser components across the network. We have defined and implemented a synchronization protocol to communicate the changes occurring in the context of a component browser to the other browsers participating in the multi-modal browser framework. Browser wrappers implement the required synchronization protocol functionality at each of the component browsers. The component browsers comply with existing content authoring standards, and we have designed a set of markup-level authoring conventions that facilitate maintaining the browser synchronization .

The future of network-provided communications services

Next-generation services represent a real opportunity to network service providers for growth and retention of the customer base, as well as for new revenue generation from an existing customer base. This issue of the Bell Labs Technical Journal will treat many aspects relating to this opportunity. Three key ingredients for offering next-generation services are intelligent endpoints, network servers capable of providing such services, and flexible transport amenable to multiple traffic types. Easy programmability of the network servers can be critical: “killer apps” are elusive and trial and error with rapid turnover of services and service variants is expected. Supporting an application programming interface (API) may not be sufficiently useful for customers; Lucent Technologies' Full Circle™ program, discussed in this issue, includes various additional forms of support. Equipping the network servers with a set of base capabilities is also needed to give multimedia support, a unified look and feel for multiple service add-ons, and acceptable operations and maintenance. A variety of technologies are being used to support next-generation service capabilities. These include portal technology for adapting to a range of endpoint capabilities, policy management, object-oriented technologies (for example, frameworks and components), protocols and meta-protocols such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Internet-related technologies (for example, browser and language technologies).

Worldlets: 3-D Thumbnails for Wayfinding in Large Virtual Worlds

Finding one's way to sites of interest on the Web can be problematic, and this difficulty has been recently exacerbated by widespread development of 3-D Web content and virtual-world browser technology using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Whereas travelers can often navigate 2-D Web sites based on textual and 2-D thumbnail image representations of the sites' content, finding one's way to destinations in 3-D environments is notoriously troublesome. Wayfinding literature provides clear support for the importance of landmarks in building a cognitive map and then using that map to navigate in a 3-D environment, be it real or virtual. Textual and 2-D image landmark representations, however, lack the depth and context needed for travelers to reliably recognize 3-D landmarks. This paper describes a novel 3-D thumbnail landmark affordance called a worldlet. Containing a 3-D fragment of a virtual world, worldlets offer travelers first-person, multi-viewpoint experience with faithful representations of potential destinations. To facilitate an investigation into the comparative advantages of landmark affordances for wayfinding, worldlet capture algorithms were designed, implemented, and incorporated into two VRML-based virtual environment browsers. Findings from a psychological experiment using one of these browsers revealed that, compared to textual and image guidebook usage, worldlet guidebook usage: nearly doubled the time subjects spent studying the landmarks in the guidebook, significantly reduced the time required for subjects to reach landmarks, and reduced backtracking to almost zero. These results support the hypothesis that worldlets facilitate traveler landmark knowledge, expedite wayfinding in large virtual environments, and enable skilled wayfinding.

A JAVA-based DICOM server with integration of clinical findings and DICOM-conform data encryption

The transfer of large amounts of medical data within heterogeneous hard and software infrastructures and the exploitation of distributed resources require a fast, secure, and platform-independent data exchange. To avoid costly vendor-specific solutions, a DICOM server was implemented in JAVA. Data access was enabled via internet browser technology. Relevant patient and image acquisition information was extracted from the DICOM images and stored into a relational database. Patient information such as radiological findings were transferred from the Radiological Information System into the database. Image data were accessed either by a fast preview tool or using a JAVA-based DICOM viewer. Since data security mechanisms are not yet part of the DICOM standard, a DICOM-conform encryption of sensitive patient data was implemented. The method allowed a dynamic selection of the data to be encrypted. Integrating this module into the image server enabled the fast and secure transfer of image data across insecure networks as well as long-term storage on CD-Recordables.