Industrial Movement Research Articles

Optimizing the Use of Electronic Data Sources in Clinical Trials: The Landscape, Part 1.

TransCelerate BioPharma has created the eSource Initiative with the intent to facilitate the industry's movement toward optimal usage of electronic data sources. Although guidance and standards have been in place for some time, data collection methods and technology have not been utilized to their fullest capability, and transcription between electronic systems continues to be the norm. The TransCelerate approach for the eSource Initiative is to understand the current landscape and highlight factors that are influencing the adoption of new technologies. As a preliminary step in this process, TransCelerate surveyed member companies regarding eSource usage and barriers. Literature review, stakeholder engagement, and the member survey have provided insight into the current landscape, which will help TransCelerate to develop proposals for best practices for industry utilization of electronic data collection tools and methods to benefit all stakeholders. Based on survey results, companies generally have taken steps to leverage current eSource technologies and prepare for optimal utilization of electronic data sources. The TransCelerate eSource Initiative will continue to evaluate the technology, regulatory, standards, and health care landscape to support the goal of improving global clinical science and global clinical trial execution. Forthcoming publications will focus on technology landscape, future vision, and demonstration projects.

Dynamic terrain for multiuser real-time environments.

Despite the pursuit for increased realism in VR training simulations and massively multiplayer online games, we find little deployed capability to modify terrain. Usually, terrain is stored in a static database and then preprocessed to support multiple levels of detail and to rectify features with the ground. Also, dynamic-terrain research has concentrated on graphics simulations for single users; we've found no research on systems that can support 500 or more user systems. Many obstacles to implementing large-scale dynamic-terrain simulations are hardware based such simulations need large amounts of memory and computing power. However, recent advances in computer hardware can help ameliorate these problems. In particular, high-performance computing clusters (HPCCs) offer an expandable set of computing elements, large amounts of memory and storage, and high-speed connections that remove many of the hardware limitations. Additionally, the industry's movement toward multi- or many-core machines indicates that research done today on high-performance computers (HPCs) could find its way into future commodity systems.

IEEE P896—the Futurebus project

In 1978, the IEEE decided that a new bus standard should be drawn up which would cater for the industry's movement towards multimicroprocessor systems. It was important, though, that this standard should preempt the emergence of a new generation of proprietary buses which become de facto, like Multibus, before they are completely specified. This paper describes the background to P896 (Futurebus), how it has developed and where it stands at the moment. The paper then details the goals and objectives set up for Futurebus and explains why decisions were made. Since the standard has yet to be completed, the paper can only predict, though with some authority, how the standard will progress.