High Priority Information Research Articles

Методологія проектування автоматичної системи структурного моніторингу технічного стану будівель та споруд

The development of smart systems in various architectural structures leads to the fact that if earlier information about the structural condition was not always important, now when talking about the safety of the population, it is a very high-priority information and direction of research. In general, systems for monitoring the condition of structures allow identification, localization and assessment of damage. Such information about the object allows making appropriate decisions in advance to eliminate possible emergency situations. To solve the task of developing a methodology for the design of an automatic structural monitoring system for various architectural structures, a list of stages that allow designing the necessary system was proposed. So, the research is generally divided into three main stages. At the first stage, topologies of sensor networks are considered. Questions regarding the choice of topology for a wireless sensor network are discussed, and the main advantages and disadvantages of each topology are presented. This will allow to choose the right topology for the system. At the second stage, the levels of damage identification that must be performed, which approaches are based on the used algorithms for damage detection are considered. The most popular algorithms used for damage identification are also listed, their disadvantages and advantages were displayed. The third stage is devoted to the selection of the element base of the sensor node, the comparative characteristics of digital and analog accelerometers are highlighted. Also in this section, popular digital accelerometers are presented and an analysis of the characteristics of how and what is affected by each of them is performed. It was described what characteristics should be taken into account when choosing a microcontroller. When designing, it is necessary to take into account the location of sensor nodes and how this affects the distance of data transmission.

Data-driven investigations of using social media to aid evacuations amid Western United States wildfire season

Wildfires have caused increasingly negative impacts with increasing occurrences close to densely populated regions. Evacuations are among the most critical measures in the immediate wildfire relief measures. While social media have been used in natural disasters, there has been limited understanding of the efficacy of using social media to aid evacuations. This paper presents a data-driven study of social media-aided evacuations for the 2020 wildfires in the western United States, based on 53,990 relevant tweets. First, we analyzed the aggregated social media data and validated its reliability against information from official channels. Both the temporal and spatial investigations show good agreements with official information. Further, we classified the tweets into pre- and on-evacuation based on extracted word patterns. The classifications align well with evacuation levels from official channels. Next, we demystified the information dissemination patterns via network analysis. We have found that government channels, news agencies, and public figures prevail among top users. The top users for on-evacuations tend to be more local-focused than pre-evacuations. This study demonstrates the efficacy of using social media to aid evacuations. In addition, it provides guidelines for future studies on extracting high-priority information from social media for disaster relief.

Information-Priority-Oriented Adaptive MAC Protocol for High Dynamic UAV Network

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted wide attention in both military and civilian fields because of their versatility, flexibility, and low-cost characteristics. In this letter, a UAV network architecture oriented to the virtual cloud processing center (VCPC) is considered, where the highly dynamic UAV network can transmit real-time data from sensors on the ground as well as data observed by the UAV nodes to the VCPC. Due to the high dynamic characteristics of UAVs, the topology of networks and traffic load within the coverage of the VCPC change frequently, especially when the priority of the information is different, and it is necessary to design a novel media access control (MAC) protocol to reduce the transmission delay of high priority and improve throughput of UAV networks. Therefore, an information priority oriented adaptive (IPOA-MAC) protocol is presented in this letter for high dynamic UAV networks. The relative length of control channel interval and service channel interval can be adaptively adjusted to improve network throughput in high dynamic application scenarios. Also, priority flag bits are set in data to ensure real-time transmission of high-priority information. Finally, the simulation results show the proposed IPOA-MAC can improve network performance effectively than other existing protocols.

Effects of hunger on emotional arousal responses and attention/memory biases.

In this study, we examined how emotional arousal interacts with hunger states and the processing of food stimuli. In general, arousal enhances the processing of high-priority information at the expense of lower priority information (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). Because food has been a biologically relevant stimulus in primates throughout evolution, detecting it in the environment and remembering its location has high priority. In our study, inducing arousal enhanced attention to subsequent food stimuli. In addition, we manipulated whether participants were hungry or sated to examine how hunger states would influence emotional processing. Previous research reveals that being hungry is associated with increases in norepinephrine, a key neurotransmitter involved in the arousal response. We found that, when sated, participants showed greater pupil dilation to emotional than neutral stimuli. In contrast, when hungry, pupil dilation responses were as strong to neutral as to emotional stimuli. Thus, when hungry, participants were less effective at differentiating the intensity of arousal responses to emotional versus neutral stimuli because of high arousal responses to neutral stimuli. Memory for food stimuli was enhanced compared with memory for nonfood stimuli for all participants but especially for hungry participants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Physician experiences of screen-level features in a prominent electronic health record: Design recommendations from a qualitative study.

The goal of this qualitative study was to assess physicians' perceptions around features of key screens within a prominent commercial EHR, and to solicit end-user recommendations for improved retrieval of high-priority clinical information. We conducted a qualitative, descriptive study of 25 physicians in a medical ICU setting. at a tertiary academic medical center. An in-depth, semi-structured interview guide was developed to elicit physician perceptions on information retrieval as well as favorable and unfavorable features of specific EHR screens. Transcripts were independently coded in a qualitative software management tool by at least two trained coders using a common code book. We successfully obtained vendor permission to map physicians perception's on full Epic© screenshots. Among the 25 physician participants (13 female; 5 attending physicians, 9 fellows, 11 residents), the majority of participants reported experiencing challenges finding clinical information in the EHR. We present the most favorable and unfavorable screen-level features for four central EHR screens: Flowsheet, Notes/Chart Review, Results Review, and Vital Signs. We also compiled participants' recommendations for a comprehensive EHR dashboard screen to better support clinical workflow and information retrieval in the medical ICU through User-Centered Design. ICU physicians demonstrated a mix of positive and negative attitudes toward specific screen-level features in a major vendor-based EHR system. Physician perceptions of information overload emerged as a theme across multiple EHR screens. Our findings underscore the importance of qualitative research and end-user feedback in EHR software design and interface optimization at both the vendor and institutional level.

Analysis of efficient unmanned aerial vehicles to handle medical emergency data transmission surveillance system by using wireless body area network

The Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) gathers medical data from remote patients using wireless sensor nodes and transmits to the physician or server. The allocation of bandwidth to all network nodes demands the priority for communication because the high priority information presupposes people’s lives. The reduced propagation delay or nearly real-time transmission environment is necessary for top concern or chronic illness systems to transmit data from patients to the care worker comparing healthy patients. In indoor Wireless communication, particularly in hospitals, there is a risk of a significant packet error or failure during transmission. Based on the requirements of the studies, the dynamic cycle-based signal acquisition and bandwidth allocation technique created to reduce the emergency node propagation delay and enhance the signal quality of an emergency node. First, a patient’s priority-based data acquisition and sampling approach completed. Second, the calculation of duty cycle-based bandwidth requirements for non-emergency nodes made. Finally, a dynamic scheduling approach to the allocation of bandwidth using a regression method introduced. In this study, to regulate or handle a significant quantity of wireless node (1000 nodes, the abstract Software Defined Network (SDN) in the WBAN setting used. The controller monitors the network priority based on assigning the bandwidth to the particular nodes using the regression analysis technique.

A Study on User Experience of Automotive HUD Systems: Contexts of Information Use and User-Perceived Design Improvement Points

ABSTRACTDespite three decades of use and related research efforts, how automotive HUD can be designed to best serve the driver is still an on-going research issue. For any human-machine system, studying the experiences of the existing users is an important first step towards design improvement and innovation. Nonetheless, surprisingly few studies have investigated the user experience of the existing commercial automotive HUD systems. In an effort to address the research gap, the current study conducted a user survey on the usage contexts and design improvement points of the existing automotive HUD systems focusing on eleven high-priority HUD information items selected among those displayed by the existing commercial HUD systems. A total of fifty-one drivers with significant prior HUD use experience participated. Design implications were derived from the survey responses. They may be useful for improving the existing automotive HUD systems in both the system functions and the interface/interaction design.

A Fairness–Throughput Tradeoff Perspective on NOMA Multiresolution Broadcasting

We propose an analytical framework for characterizing the tradeoff between fairness and throughput that arises in a cellular or satellite downlink when multicast information is encoded in two resolution levels (high versus low priority information). Given a target fairness (measured in terms of the ratio between the information rates of low versus high resolution stream), the operator seeks to optimize the modulation and coding schemes so as to maximize the average cell throughput. Viewing operating points as fairness–throughput pairs allows to meaningfully quantify and interpret the superiority of non-orthogonal multiple access techniques such as superposition coding against simple orthogonal time division. The optimal fairness–throughput tradeoff curve for superposition coding versus time division is derived in the Gaussian setting. A practical implementation with 16-QAM constellations and multilevel coding is proposed and its tradeoff curve is numerically evaluated.

Experimental Phase Separation Differential Chaos Shift Keying Wireless Communication Based on Matched Filter

New findings have been identified recently for chaos application in communication systems, including the simplest matched filter to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the ability to resist multi-path propagation. However, chaos has a broad band frequency spectrum, which impedes its application in the conventional wireless communication systems due to the antenna and transducer bandwidth. To deal with such problem, the chaos generated by a second order hybrid system (SOHS) with a fixed basis function is used for Differential Chaos Shift Keying (DCSK) communication. A sinusoidal and its orthogonal signal are used to separate the reference signal and the information bearing signal, which are transmitted in the wireless channel. In such a way, the obstacle to broadband signal transmission in a wireless channel is overcome. A matched filter, using the convolution of the received signal and the time reverse of the basis function, maximizes the SNR at the receiver. Moreover, the proposed SOHS-DCSK provides an additional bitstream due to the chaotic signal generated by the SOHS, being capable to encode information as well. The two information sub-streams can be transmitted simultaneously in the proposed method, which possesses different bit transmission rates and reliability. In this way, the High Priority (HP) information bits are transmitted at a low transmission rate, while the Low Priority (LP) information bits are transmitted at a higher transmission rate. Hence, the proposed SOHS-DCSK method not only provides a higher data transmission rate as compared to the conventional DCSK but also makes the transmitted signal to be compatible with the conventional transducer and antenna. Due to the matched filter used, the proposed method achieves a lower bit error rate of the HP information as compared to the other existing enhanced DCSK variants for both additive white Gaussian noise channel and wireless communication channel. The numerical simulations and experiments based on the wireless open-access research platform show the validity and superiority of the proposed method.

Critical Care in the Military Health System: A 24-h Point Prevalence Study.

Healthcare expenditures are a significant economic cost with critical care services constituting one of its largest components. The Military Health System (MHS) is the largest, global healthcare system of its kind. In this project, we sought to describe critical care services and the patients who receive them in the MHS. We surveyed 26 military treatment facilities (MTFs) representing 38 critical care services or intensive care units (ICUs). MTFs with multiple ICUs and critical care services responded to the survey as services (e.g., surgical or medical ICU service), whereas MTFs with only one ICU responded as a unit and gave information about all types of patients (i.e., medical and surgical). Our survey was divided into an administrative portion and a 24-h point prevalence survey of patients and patient care. The administrative portion is reported separately in this journal. The 24-h point prevalence survey collected information about all patients present in, admitted to, or discharged from participating services/units during the same 24-h period in December 2014. The survey was anonymous and protected health information was not collected. Sixteen MTFs (69%) and 27 ICU services/units (71%) returned the point prevalence survey. MTFs with >200 beds (n = 3, 22%) were categorized as "high capacity centers" (HCCs) whereas those with ≤200 beds (n = 13, 78%) were characterized as low capacity centers (LCCs). Two MTFs (one HCC and one LCC) returned only administrative data. The remaining 16 MTFs reported data about 151 patients. In all, 100 (67%) of the patients were at three HCCs during this study period. One HCC accounted for 39% (59 patients) of all patient care during this study. Most patients were cared for in mixed medical/surgical ICUs (34.4%), followed by medical (21.2%), surgical (18.5%), trauma (11.9%), cardiac (7.9%), and burn (6.0%) ICUs. The most common medical indication for admission was cardiac followed by general medical. The most common surgical indications for admission were trauma, other, and cardiothoracic surgery. The average APACHE II score of all patients across both LCCs and HCCs was 11 ± 8.1 (8 ± 7.8 vs. 13 ± 7.7 p = 0.008). The lower acuity of patients in this study is reflected in a high turnover rate, low rate of arterial and central line placements (33%), and low rates of life support (all types, 30%; mechanical ventilation only, 21.2%; noninvasive mechanic ventilation only, 7.9%; and vasoactive medications, 6.6%). Thirty-five (23.2%) patients within the study were affected by a total of 57 complications. The three most common complications experienced were acute kidney injury, bleeding, and sepsis. This is the first detailed report about MHS critical care services and the patients receiving care. It describes a low acuity ICU patient population, concentrated at larger MTFs. This study highlights the need for the establishment of a system that allows for the continuous collection of high priority information about clinical care in the MHS in order to facilitate implementation of standardized protocols and process improvements.

Evaluation of harvest and information needs for North American sea ducks.

Wildlife managers routinely seek to establish sustainable limits of sport harvest or other regulated forms of take while confronted with considerable uncertainty. A growing body of ecological research focuses on methods to describe and account for uncertainty in management decision-making and to prioritize research and monitoring investments to reduce the most influential uncertainties. We used simulation methods incorporating measures of demographic uncertainty to evaluate risk of overharvest and prioritize information needs for North American sea ducks (Tribe Mergini). Sea ducks are popular game birds in North America, yet they are poorly monitored and their population dynamics are poorly understood relative to other North American waterfowl. There have been few attempts to assess the sustainability of harvest of North American sea ducks, and no formal harvest strategy exists in the U.S. or Canada to guide management. The popularity of sea duck hunting, extended hunting opportunity for some populations (i.e., special seasons and/or bag limits), and population declines have led to concern about potential overharvest. We used Monte Carlo simulation to contrast estimates of allowable harvest and observed harvest and assess risk of overharvest for 7 populations of North American sea ducks: the American subspecies of common eider (Somateria mollissima dresseri), eastern and western populations of black scoter (Melanitta americana) and surf scoter (M. perspicillata), and continental populations of white-winged scoter (M. fusca) and long-tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis). We combined information from empirical studies and the opinions of experts through formal elicitation to create probability distributions reflecting uncertainty in the individual demographic parameters used in this assessment. Estimates of maximum growth (rmax), and therefore of allowable harvest, were highly uncertain for all populations. Long-tailed duck and American common eider appeared to be at high risk of overharvest (i.e., observed harvest < allowable harvest in 5–7% and 19–26% of simulations, respectively depending on the functional form of density dependence), whereas the other populations appeared to be at moderate risk to low risk (observed harvest < allowable harvest in 22–68% of simulations, again conditional on the form of density dependence). We also evaluated the sensitivity of the difference between allowable and observed harvest estimates to uncertainty in individual demographic parameters to prioritize information needs. We found that uncertainty in overall fecundity had more influence on comparisons of allowable and observed harvest than adult survival or observed harvest for all species except long-tailed duck. Although adult survival was characterized by less uncertainty than individual components of fecundity, it was identified as a high priority information need given the sensitivity of growth rate and allowable harvest to this parameter. Uncertainty about population size was influential in the comparison of observed and allowable harvest for 5 of the 6 populations where it factored into the assessment. While this assessment highlights a high degree of uncertainty in allowable harvest, it provides a framework for integration of improved data from future research and monitoring. It could also serve as the basis for harvest strategy development as management objectives and regulatory alternatives are specified by the management community.

Norepinephrine ignites local hotspots of neuronal excitation: How arousal amplifies selectivity in perception and memory.

Emotional arousal enhances perception and memory of high-priority information but impairs processing of other information. Here, we propose that, under arousal, local glutamate levels signal the current strength of a representation and interact with norepinephrine (NE) to enhance high priority representations and out-compete or suppress lower priority representations. In our "glutamate amplifies noradrenergic effects" (GANE) model, high glutamate at the site of prioritized representations increases local NE release from the locus coeruleus (LC) to generate "NE hotspots." At these NE hotspots, local glutamate and NE release are mutually enhancing and amplify activation of prioritized representations. In contrast, arousal-induced LC activity inhibits less active representations via two mechanisms: 1) Where there are hotspots, lateral inhibition is amplified; 2) Where no hotspots emerge, NE levels are only high enough to activate low-threshold inhibitory adrenoreceptors. Thus, LC activation promotes a few hotspots of excitation in the context of widespread suppression, enhancing high priority representations while suppressing the rest. Hotspots also help synchronize oscillations across neural ensembles transmitting high-priority information. Furthermore, brain structures that detect stimulus priority interact with phasic NE release to preferentially route such information through large-scale functional brain networks. A surge of NE before, during, or after encoding enhances synaptic plasticity at NE hotspots, triggering local protein synthesis processes that enhance selective memory consolidation. Together, these noradrenergic mechanisms promote selective attention and memory under arousal. GANE not only reconciles apparently contradictory findings in the emotion-cognition literature but also extends previous influential theories of LC neuromodulation by proposing specific mechanisms for how LC-NE activity increases neural gain.

DRD4 long allele carriers show heightened attention to high-priority items relative to low-priority items.

Humans with seven or more repeats in exon III of the DRD4 gene (long DRD4 carriers) sometimes demonstrate impaired attention, as seen in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and at other times demonstrate heightened attention, as seen in addictive behavior. Although the clinical effects of DRD4 are the focus of much work, this gene may not necessarily serve as a "risk" gene for attentional deficits, but as a plasticity gene where attention is heightened for priority items in the environment and impaired for minor items. Here we examine the role of DRD4 in two tasks that benefit from selective attention to high-priority information. We examine a category learning task where performance is supported by focusing on features and updating verbal rules. Here, selective attention to the most salient features is associated with good performance. In addition, we examine the Operation Span (OSPAN) task, a working memory capacity task that relies on selective attention to update and maintain items in memory while also performing a secondary task. Long DRD4 carriers show superior performance relative to short DRD4 homozygotes (six or less tandem repeats) in both the category learning and OSPAN tasks. These results suggest that DRD4 may serve as a "plasticity" gene where individuals with the long allele show heightened selective attention to high-priority items in the environment, which can be beneficial in the appropriate context.

Dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene modulates the influence of informational masking on speech recognition

Listeners vary substantially in their ability to recognize speech in noisy environments. Here we examined the role of genetic variation on individual differences in speech recognition in various noise backgrounds. Background noise typically varies in the levels of energetic masking (EM) and informational masking (IM) imposed on target speech. Relative to EM, release from IM is hypothesized to place greater demand on executive function to selectively attend to target speech while ignoring competing noises. Recent evidence suggests that the long allele variant in exon III of the DRD4 gene, primarily expressed in the prefrontal cortex, may be associated with enhanced selective attention to goal-relevant high-priority information even in the face of interference. We investigated the extent to which this polymorphism is associated with speech recognition in IM and EM conditions. In an unscreened adult sample (Experiment 1) and a larger screened replication sample (Experiment 2), we demonstrate that individuals with the DRD4 long variant show better recognition performance in noise conditions involving significant IM, but not in EM conditions. In Experiment 2, we also obtained neuropsychological measures to assess the underlying mechanisms. Mediation analysis revealed that this listening condition-specific advantage was mediated by enhanced executive attention/working memory capacity in individuals with the long allele variant. These findings suggest that DRD4 may contribute specifically to individual differences in speech recognition ability in noise conditions that place demands on executive function.

Hierarchical Multilevel Space-Shift Keying for Unequal Error Protection under Rician Fading

Hierarchical Multilevel Space-Shift Keying Modulation is proposed for Unequal Error Protection under Line-Of Sight conditions in Rician fading channels. The High Priority (HP) information is conveyed via the number of active antennas employed to transmit a codeword. The Low Priority (LP) information is transmitted employing Generalized Space Shift Keying (GSSK) in the codeword subsets corresponding to the transmission of the HP symbols. Hierarchical modulation is accomplished by associating phase shifts with every transmit antenna and adjusting these phase shifts to achieve different levels of Unequal Error Protection. The simulations demonstrate the performance and design options offered by the proposed scheme.

Influenza vaccine-related information needs of US primary care physicians

Objective To explore influenza-related information needs of primary care providers, given expanded influenza vaccine recommendations and new influenza vaccine products. Methods A cross-sectional, mailed survey of a national sample of primary care physicians (family physicians, general internists, pediatricians), conducted in July–October 2010. The overall response rate was 70%. Results Among respondents who offer immunizations, almost all expected to provide injectable influenza vaccine for the 2010–11 influenza season, while only pediatricians planned wide use of intranasal vaccine. The information needs most frequently rated as high priority were subpopulations to prioritize if vaccine supply is limited and use of a higher dose formulation for the elderly. Most physicians who do not currently use intranasal vaccine rated that topic as a low priority. Conclusion Primary care providers have a number of high-priority information needs related to influenza vaccination. However, the limited interest of family physicians and internists in receiving more information about intranasal vaccine may impede efforts to expand its use among healthy adults.

Achieving Bounded Matching Delay and Maximized Throughput in Information Dissemination Management

The demand for high performance information dissemination is increasing in many applications, such as e-commerce and security alerting systems. These applications usually require that the desired information be matched between numerous sources and sinks based on established subscriptions in a timely manner while a maximized system throughput be achieved to find more matched results. Existing work primarily focuses on only one of the two requirements, either timeliness or throughput. This can lead to an unnecessarily underutilized system or poor guarantees on matching delays. In this paper, we propose an integrated solution that controls both the matching delay and CPU utilization in information dissemination systems to achieve bounded matching delay for high-priority information and maximized system throughput in an example information dissemination system. In addition, we design an admission control scheme to meet the timeliness requirements for selected low-priority information. Our solution is based on optimal control theory for guaranteed control accuracy and system stability. Empirical results on a hardware testbed demonstrate that our controllers can meet the timeliness requirements while achieving maximized system throughput.

Error-resilient first-order multiplexed source codes: performance bounds, design and decoding algorithms

This paper describes a new family of error-resilient variable-length source codes (VLCs). The codes introduced can be regarded as generalizations of the multiplexed codes described by Je/spl acute/gou and Guillemot. They allow to exploit first-order source statistics while, at the same time, being resilient to transmission errors. The design principle consists of creating a codebook of fixed-length codewords (FLCs) for high-priority information and in using the inherent codebook redundancy to describe low-priority information. The FLC codebook is partitioned into equivalence classes according to the conditional probabilities of the high-priority source. The error propagation phenomenon, which may result from the memory of the source coder, is controlled by choosing appropriate codebook partitions and index assignment strategies. In particular, a context-dependent index assignment strategy, called crossed-index assignment, is described. For the symbol error rate criterion, the approach turns out to maximize the cardinality of a set of codewords, called the code kernel, offering synchronization properties. The decoder resynchronization capability is shown to be further increased by periodic use of memoryless multiplexed codes. Theoretical and practical performances in terms of compression efficiency and error resilience are analyzed.

Robust Multiplexed Codes for Compression of Heterogeneous Data

Compression systems of real signals (images, video, audio) generate sources of information with different levels of priority which are then encoded with variable-length codes (VLCs). This paper addresses the issue of robust transmission of such VLC encoded heterogeneous sources over error-prone channels. VLCs are very sensitive to channel noise: when some bits are altered, synchronization losses can occur at the receiver. This paper describes a new family of codes, called multiplexed codes, that confine the de-synchronization phenomenon to low-priority data while reaching asymptotically the entropy bound for both (low- and high-priority) sources. The idea consists of creating fixed-length codes for high-priority information and of using the inherent redundancy to describe low-priority data, hence the name multiplexed codes. Theoretical and simulation results reveal a very high error resilience at almost no cost in compression efficiency.

Setting the stage for the development of a science-based Tongass land management plan

This paper describes the physical nature of the Tongass National Forest, its salient natural resources, the social and economic importance of the resources, the complexity of the land management planning process, the chronology of the plan development, and the structure and function of the Pacific Northwest Research Station and Tongass National Forest planning partnership. Three features of the planning process were unique to the revision of the Tongass National Forest plan. First, a major goal was to produce a landscape-scale plan for long-term resource sustainability. Second, the 23-person planning team included six research scientists as full members. Finally, an agreement was reached between the Pacific Northwest Research Station and the Tongass National Forest to collaborate and obtain high-priority information needed for the next planning cycle. Benefits accrued to the Pacific Northwest Research Station by demonstrating the relevance of sound science in successful forest planning. Benefits also accrued to the USDA Forest Service Alaska Region in more informed, credible, and defensible decisions. Finally, benefits accrued at the national level when the process of conducting a science consistency check was incorporated into the regulations for forest planning.