High-tech Tools Research Articles

Book Review: Virginia Eubanks Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Book Review: Virginia Eubanks <i>Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor</i>

Review of Eubanks' Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Review of Eubanks' Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

High-tech workplace tools are key to winning the war for talent

PurposeWith HR now at the center of efforts to address the talent crisis, how can HR strategists best deploy their resources to help their organizations to rise to the challenge?Design/methodology/approachData-driven digital solutions can be a good starting point for discovering what’s working with existing employees. A new breed of high-tech tools are giving HR departments the means to more thoroughly and actionably understand the factors that attract, retain and drive away quality employees.FindingsBased on data from these tools, HR teams can design inviting, engaging and productive work environments.Originality/valueThe struggle to attract and retain quality talent in the workplace is real, it is escalating and it has landed right at the doorstep of HR departments. It is perhaps the most pressing priority they – and their entire organizations – must confront to keep pace in the ongoing US economic expansion.

EFFECT OF THE NEW ECONOMY IN BANKING SECTOR: EXPERIENCE OF GHANA

Ghana’s banking sector is a critical component of its economy. However, there are growing trend of banking sector blues which caught the attention of the public recently. It is largely due to the woefully performance of the economy over the last years. In view of this, the research paper analyzed the relationship between the banking sector’s performance and new economy and the contribution of the new economy to the success of Ghana’s banking industry using time series data spanning from 1990 to 2016. The key time series model adopted to achieve the set objectives were the Augmented DickeyFuller (ADF) Test, Johansen Cointegration Test, Granger Causality and Descriptive Statistics. The results shows presence of positive correlation between the banking sector’s performance and the new economy in the long run. The results also indicated that, a good performance in banking industry bolsters economic growth and GDP at large. However, causality test for the anticipated causal relationship between the banking sector and new economy proved to be correlated, thus, a causal relationship. The research recommends that, government policies aim at improving the banking industry should target reducing hyperinflation, stabilizing the monetary policy rate and increasing private sector credits to banks and nonbanks financial institutions and finally encourage foreign direct investment. In conclusion, the new economy has leapfrogged the activities of banking industries in Ghana. Banks have gradually equipped themselves with high tech tools and state –of-art technologies except the rural banks.

La medición del control postural con estabilometría- una revisión documental

La estabilometría es el estudio del equilibrio que permite analizar el control postural y su relacion con la estabilidad en bípedo. Herramientas de alta tecnología se utilizan para medir la estabilidad en bípedo de forma cuantitativa con base en la posición del centro de gravedad de la persona determinado por la distribución de presiones plantares. Este artículo revisa el conocimiento científico sobre los conceptos en el trastorno de la estabilometría y la variedad de uso de estas herramientas en diferentes poblaciones y diagnósticos con base en artículos científicos encontrados en los últimos diez años en revistas indexadas. Se recomienda expandir el uso de las plataformas de fuerza que existen en Colombia a la estabilometría.

Enhancing Access &amp; Effective Care at IPS: The MH Services Conference

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Professional NewsFull AccessEnhancing Access & Effective Care at IPS: The MH Services ConferenceAnita Everett,M.D.Anita Everett,Search for more papers by this authorM.D.Published Online:27 Jul 2017https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2017.8a22It’s been just a few short months since APA’s Annual Meeting in San Diego, and already it’s time to gear up for one of my favorite events of the year, IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Enhancing Access & Effective Care,” and APA’s Division of Education and the Scientific Program Committee have worked together on a fantastic offering of courses and sessions for attendees. The meeting will take place in New Orleans from October 19 to 22, with the goal of training and supporting psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to provide quality care and leadership in the field. The Annual Meeting is like the Super Bowl of psychiatry in the United States. It does so many things well and simultaneously. There are fantastic educational courses and sessions, captivating speakers, and groundbreaking research shared by colleagues from all over the world. The Annual Meeting is a mammoth event; IPS by comparison has a completely different feel, much more intimate. The great work by our APA Division of Education staff carries over to the IPS, but the focus is narrowed considerably, making it easy to plan your day around the sessions you want to attend. The Division of Education has done a great job organizing the content of the meeting into tracks so that attendees can easily make the most of their time at the meeting. They include Addiction Psychiatry, Administrative Psychiatry, Community Psychiatry, Integrated and Collaborative Care, and Psychopharmacology. The Technology track will emphasize how EHRs, telepsychiatry, and mental health apps are changing the way we practice medicine and the best ways to implement the high-tech tools psychiatrists have at their disposal. While networking opportunities abound at the Annual Meeting, the smaller, more intimate setting of IPS gives you the chance to really get to know some of your colleagues and forge lasting relationships. Many people who come to the IPS are repeat attendees who are really invested in the content of the meeting. For me, IPS represents the heart and soul of public and community psychiatry. Those who attend are passionate about doing their best to deliver the highest quality, evidence-based treatments and services possible. Attending a meeting can be a great way to combat burnout as well. Stressors at our jobs can often have a big impact on both our work and home lives, leading to feelings of compassion fatigue and general exhaustion. Meeting with and talking to colleagues who face many of the same challenges in their day-to-day lives can be a great way to relieve that stress and really restore that collegial spirit that is so important to being satisfied at work. Addressing physician burnout is one of the priorities for my presidential year, and with that in mind, IPS will have sessions on that very topic. The Medical Director’s Bootcamp, one of this year’s Learning Labs, will address burnout as well as a range of other topics, including negotiating and working with special populations. I’m very excited about seeing what this and other Learning Labs have to offer at IPS.One of the goals of IPS is to train attendees to be effective leaders in the field. Leadership is such an important quality for a psychiatrist to have, especially as we move into the era of integrated care, where psychiatrists will work alongside primary care physicians as experts in the mental health of our patients. That is why I am especially excited to see U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.), who will speak at the Opening Session of IPS. Lt. Gen. Hertling will discuss how psychiatrists can enhance our leadership role in care systems today and into the future. He is the author of the 2016 book Growing Physician Leaders.I am so excited to be attending this year’s IPS as president of APA and to see how all the individual pieces coalesce into the robust, impactful meeting that has kept me coming back every year for the last 20 years. I hope you’ll join me and many of your other colleagues in New Orleans in October for what is sure to be one of the best psychiatric events of the year. ■Information on the IPS program, registration, and housing can be accessed here. Low advance registration fees are now in effect. ISSUES NewArchived

Shedding light on ancient secrets [cryptology of ancient documents

Many ancient texts have kept their secrets for centuries. But a host of low-tech and high-tech tools are helping cryptologists to reveal the past.WHEN ALAN TURING developed the machine that helped to crack the Enigma code, his aim was to understand messages that the Nazis wanted to keep secret. When ancient writing expert Roger Tomlin came across wooden tablets found recently at an excavation site in central London, he knew the words - now mere scratches on wood but originally marked in beeswax with a metal stylus almost 2,000 years ago - were not meant to be a secret. However, it took him a year to decipher them. The tablets are the oldest handwritten documents found in the UK, detailing financial transactions and events in early London, starting a few years after the Roman invasion of Britain; they even mention events related to the revolt of Queen Boudica of the Celtic Iceni tribe in what is now East Anglia, who stood up against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire.

Pricey, high-tech tools promise innovations in hair and skin care

Bad hair brushed away There is a surprising amount of science to a bad hair day. Now, a smart hairbrush hopes to give consumers more insight into their hair care challenges. The brush, called Hair Coach, includes a package of high-tech sensors that can tell you the health of your hair, explains Guive Balooch, global vice president for L’Oreal’s Research & Innovation Technology Incubator, which developed the device. The brush starts with an acoustic sensor, Balooch says. “While you brush, it can detect the friction and the force on the hair, which can tell you the level of damage the hair has,” he explains. It also detects whether hair needs more conditioning because brushing sounds different when the conditioner polymers no longer coat the hair. Other sensors include an accelerometer and gyroscope, which can examine brushing patterns, and a conductivity sensor, which can detect whether hair is dry or wet.

On the brink of a recycling revolution?

We’re awash in plastics, many of which are hard to recycle. Could innovations, girded by the right incentives, finally whittle down the piles of plastic waste? The waste that arrives at MBA Polymers’ big blue factory in Worksop, in England’s industrial heartland, is a dirty, smelly mess. Fresh from a metals recycler that has extracted hunks of steel from the crushed remains of cars and other trash, it contains many types of plastic jumbled in with carpeting, rubber, glues, bits of metal and glass, and even the occasional dead animal. Inside the cacophonous facility, powerful magnets and other technologies strip out everything but the plastic, which is ground into small 6–8 millimeter particles. Companies are finding better ways to recycle multiple types of plastic, but costs often remain a barrier. Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Warut Chinsai. These flakes are then washed, sorted, melted, filtered, and extruded. The final result: small pellets of pure plastic that can be melted down and then reshaped into anything from printers to vacuum cleaners, thus replacing virgin polymers made from fossil fuel feedstocks. “We take some of the ugliest waste streams and produce high-value products,” says MBA Polymers Inc. director Mike Biddle, who founded the company in his garage in California. Such transformations aren’t confined to MBA Polymers. There’s been a “quiet revolution” in the technology of mechanically sorting waste plastic, says Edward Kosior, managing director of international recycling consultant Nextek. Near-infrared scanners, centrifuges, and other high-tech tools can now sort plastic flakes as small as 2 millimeters from mixed trash. That means recycling companies can produce high-quality plastic not just from the contents of carefully sorted curbside recycle bins, but also from general municipal solid waste. And the advances aren’t limited to sorting. Researchers are using clever chemistry to break apart the polymer molecules in …

Land Use/Land Cover Change Detection Analysis in Holalkere Taluk of Chitradurga District, Karnataka, India using Geoinformatics

Land resource is one of the highly sensitive systems that offers sustainability to all forms of life on earth. The present aim is to focus mainly on planning and management of land resources for environmental and socio-economical outcome for sustainable use to meet the future needs. Mapping of LU/LC Change Detection Analysis (CDA) was analyzed using SoI topomap; geo-rectified multi-spectral and multi-temporal image of IRS-1D PAN+LISS-III through GIS software’s. There is a significant rise in agricultural land as well as in built-up land that affecting other LU/LC categories such as mining, dumping and water crisis. Geo-informatics is one of the advent high-tech tools in analyzing the causes, rates, magnitude, patterns, trends in local scales ecosystem for better mapping and monitoring. The final results highlight the change detected on land surface features for better land utilization.

AM Envelope

This dissertation shows the potential of Additive Manufacturing (AM) for the development of building envelopes: AM will change the way of designing facades, how we engineer and produce them. To achieve today’s demands from those future envelopes, we have to find new solutions. New technologies offer one possible way to do so. They open new approaches in designing, producing and processing building construction and facades. Finding the one capable of having big impact is difficult – Additive Manufacturing is one possible answer. The term ‘AM Envelope’ (Additive Manufacturing Envelope) describes the transfer of this technology to the building envelope. Additive Fabrication is a building block that aids in developing the building envelope from a mere space enclosure to a dynamic building envelope. First beginnings of AM facade construction show up when dealing with relevant aspects like material consumption, mounting or part’s performance. From those starting points several parts of an existing post-and-beam façade system were optimized, aiming toward the implementation of AM into the production chain. Enhancements on all different levels of production were achieved: storing, producing, mounting and performance. AM offers the opportunity to manufacture facades ‘just in time’. It is no longer necessary to store or produce large numbers of parts in advance. Initial investment for tooling can be avoided, as design improvements can be realized within the dataset of the AM part. AM is based on ‘tool-less’ production, all parts can be further developed with every new generation. Producing tool-less also allows for new shapes and functional parts in small batch sizes – down to batch size one. The parts performance can be re-interpreted based on the demands within the system, not based on the limitations of conventional manufacturing. AM offers new ways of materializing the physical part around its function. It leads toward customized and enhanced performance. Advancements can for example be achieved in the semi-finished goods: more effective glueing of window frames can be supported by Snap-On fittings. Solving the most critical part of a free-form structure and allowing for a smart combination with the approved standards has a great potential, as well. Next to those product oriented approaches toward future envelopes, this thesis provides the basic knowledge about AM technologies and AM materials. The basic principle of AM opens a fascinating new world of engineering, no matter what applications can be found: to ‘design for function’ rather to ‘design for production’ turns our way of engineering of the last century upside down. A collection of AM applications therefore offers the outlook to our (built) future in combination with the acquired knowledge. AM will never replace established production processes but rather complement them where this seems practical. AM is not the proverbial Swiss-army knife that can resolve all of today’s façade issues! But it is a tool that might be able to close another link in the ‘file-to-factory chain’. AM allows us a better, more precise and safer realization of today’s predominantly free designs that are based on the algorithms of the available software. With such extraordinary building projects, the digital production of neuralgic system components will become reality in the near future – today, an AM Envelope is close at hand. Still, ‘printing’ entire buildings lies in the far future; for a long time human skill and craftsmanship will be needed on the construction site combined with high-tech tools to translate the designers’ visions into reality. AM Envelope is one possible result of this!

Transplacental Viral Infection: Mechanisms and Manifestations

&lt;p&gt; In 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; century, infectious disease control is much faster than never before. In combination of robotic instruments and high-tech analytic tools, we are able to put pieces of knowledge of how immune networks interact to fight against infectious agents, and to develop vaccines and better treatments. Treatments for pregnant women for highly contagious diseases have been a major challenge for current medicine because the complications of the interactions between fetal and maternal immune systems during pregnancy, including suppression of maternal immune system to avoid rejection of fetus and to protect fetus from pathogens or any harmful agents during gestation. This article focuses on what defense systems are built in nature to prevent viral transplacental infection, and to ensure a safe pregnancy for the mother and healthy development of the fetus. In addition to innate and acquired immunity to decease pathogens, placental barrier and placental immunity further provide restriction of viral entry and viral replication in placenta. Viral pathogens are able to utilize various means to infect placental trophoblasts and to transplacentally infect the fetus. The teratogenic effects of several viruses and potential clinical manifestations of congenital infections are also discussed. Because of the efficiency of placental barrier and the placental immunity, to restrict most of viral infection, only very few viruses can transplacentally infect fetus in pregnant women. The consequences of the transplacental infection also vary at different stages of gestation. Transplacental infections happened in early gestation can lead to more adverse outcomes, including stillbirth, abortion, and congenital malformations of fetus, such as ZIKV transplacental infection associated with developing microcephaly and neurological disorders of affected fetus. Therefore, prevention of viral infection in pregnant women, and understanding mechanisms of transplacental infections may help to develop better therapeutic strategy for congenital infectious diseases.&lt;/p&gt;

Learning When No One Is Watching

We gain most of our knowledge without any instruction. Cognitive scientists are using virtual reality and other high-tech tools to unravel how we do it

To protect everything, please click here: does a revolution in data collection guarantee one in conservation?

An editorial published in Nature (2007) states that “… it can sometimes comes as a surprise for outsiders to learn how far removed the conservation biologist often is from actual efforts to save species”. For conservation biologists who are involved in practical conservation work particularly in countries where the national capacity and infrastructure for conservation is limited, it is clear that it will take more than technology to save the world. We observe an increasing emphasis on technology in the literature and among the research community and ask: How can a revolution in data collection best lead to one in conservation?

Norway Faces Up to Harsh Conditions

Offshore Norway is an unlikely spot for optimism. The continental shelf is home to a mature basin, with harsh sea conditions, a reputation for high costs, and an exploration frontier well north of the Arctic Circle. Last year’s version of low oil prices, when benchmark crudes traded for around USD 50/bbl, led to news stories in Norway pointing out that the shares of the 10 largest local oil-industry-related companies, excluding Statoil, were worth less than the 10 biggest aquaculture companies. While raising salmon is expected to grow into a big business, with big oil industry suppliers such as Kongsberg working on high-tech tools to raise millions of fish, those working in the oil business are not talking about a career change. “Oil [/bbl] is selling for the same prices as 4.5 kilo salmon. We could all start farming salmon, but I do not think so,” said Arve Iverson, ROV operations manager for Oceaneering, at the recent Subsea Valley Conference in Oslo. The show put on by the organization created to increase the visibility of the engineering-driven oil industry in southeast Norway, also amounted to a rally in support of the future of oil offshore Norway, and the global markets these companies_serve. Eldar Sætre, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Statoil, pointed out that the national oil company has lowered its average break-even cost for new projects from USD 70/bbl to USD 40/bbl, and emphasized that the bulk of the improvement was in savings that will remain after supplier discounts are gone. The themes of standardization, simplifying requirements, and working together were common ones when hearing from oil industry experts. The test of whether the Norwegian industry can deliver on its goal of profitably producing oil in a era of low prices, is the Johan Sverdrup field, a multibillion-barrel find which is moving forward in the midst of the slump, showcasing innovations backed by the Norwegian government and Statoil.

Integration of industrial videogrammetry and artificial neural networks for monitoring and modeling the deformation or displacement of structures

The need to monitor structures permanently and the necessity of performing measurements in a continuous space are of the most important factors which cause some restrictions, such as the rising cost, the dependence on the environment conditions and requirement for high-tech tools for permanent control of displacement and deformation of structures. Videogrammetry, which is used in different fields of industry and manufacturing as a precise and low-cost measurement method, can be utilized in this field. But the use of videogrammetry to control a structure deformation or displacement has four problems including synchronization of cameras in a permanent and long-term monitoring, the need for approximate values of unknown parameters, the necessity for automating the prediction of structure deformation or displacement and the need for high-speed computing. The evaluation of the system designed and implemented in this research shows that using videogrammetry based on the method presented in the research and the integration of videogrammetry and artificial neural networks can solve these problems. The system can be applied to produce the data which are needed for decision support systems to control displacement or deformation of structures intelligently.

Russian national guidelines on insulin pump therapy and continuous glucose monitoring for diabetes mellitus patients. DRAFT

Insulin pump therapy (continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion, CSII) and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) are high-tech treatment and diagnostic tools for diabetes patients management which are actively used worldwide. CSII initiation and pump-users supervision became a part of routine clinical practice in Russia along with the CGM. Present project of clinical guidelines is based on international and domestic experience in CSII and CGM for diabetes treatment. Guidelines should ensure uniformity of CGM and CSII usage in Russia by health care professionals and diabetes patients and provide them an international experience to guarantee height performance of the technology. This article contains a preliminary version of the guidelines (draft) prepared for further expert’s discussion and review. The final version of the clinical guidelines will be sent to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation for approval.

Reprint of 'Draw your assay: Fabrication of low-cost paper-based diagnostic and multi-well test zones by drawing on a paper'

Interest in low-cost diagnostic devices has recently gained attention, in part due to the rising cost of healthcare and the need to serve populations in resource-limited settings. A major challenge in the development of such devices is the need for hydrophobic barriers to contain polar bio-fluid analytes. Key approaches in lowering the cost in diagnostics have centered on (i) development of low-cost fabrication techniques/processes, (ii) use of affordable materials, or, (iii) minimizing the need for high-tech tools. This communication describes a simple, low-cost, adaptable, and portable method for patterning paper and subsequent use of the patterned paper in diagnostic tests. Our approach generates hydrophobic regions using a ball-point pen filled with a hydrophobizing molecule suspended in a solvent carrier. An empty ball-point pen was filled with a solution of trichloro perfluoroalkyl silane in hexanes (or hexadecane), and the pen used to draw lines on Whatman® chromatography 1 paper. The drawn regions defined the test zones since the trichloro silane reacts with the paper to give a hydrophobic barrier. The formation of the hydrophobic barriers is reaction kinetic and diffusion-limited, ensuring well defined narrow barriers. We performed colorimetric glucose assays and enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA) using the created test zones. To demonstrate the versatility of this approach, we fabricated multiple devices on a single piece of paper and demonstrated the reproducibility of assays on these devices. The overall cost of devices fabricated by drawing are relatively lower (<US $0.001 per device) than those derived from wax-printing (US$0.05–0.003) or other approaches.

Accurate Estimation of Petrophysical Indexes by RBF, ANFIS, and MLP Networks

Production and management of oil and gas in today’s highly competitive environment require the use of high tech tools. These tools provide the means by which the cost of exploration, production, and management of hydrocarbon resources may be reduced. Petrophysical characteristics of underlying formation have an important role in reservoir management and drilling wells. One of the most common ways to reach this information is well log analysis. Meanwhile, sometimes well logging does not implement well or some log data are accompanied by many errors. Thus, highly skilled experts and laboratory information are needed for interpretation and evaluation of data. Therefore, designing a model that is able to evaluate the petrophysical index using well log data without laboratory information will be very economical. In this study, after selecting the best logs (minimum information and maximum accuracy) some parameters, such as porosity, saturation, sonic, and density logs, were predicted by adaptive neuro fuzzy intelligence system, radial basis function, and artificial neural network models. Finally, the best models for each parameter were optimized and optimal epoch, neuron, function, and spread clarified. In fact, due to these new models, some important parameters of formations were predicted well and cost and time of data gathering were reduced.

Smart Diagnosis Using an On-Board Middleware

Recent approaches to preventive maintenance have shifted from periodic maintenance based on static parameters to a continuous and a periodic maintenance that deploys high-tech tools to track remotely the “health” of equipments. In this paper, we propose an approach to maintain a high level of reliability and to achieve the maximum efficient use of the working parts within vehicles and machines. This paper marks the use of various techniques in the remote maintenance and diagnostics by means of classical and new methods for monitoring equipments remotely. And hence identifying their failure at earlier stages and preventing their breakdown. The technique relies on an onboard device that monitors and analyses the vibrations of the targeted parts using local knowledge stored within the middleware data base and global knowledge obtained remotely from the server.