Information-gathering Phase Research Articles

Flemish equine veterinarians' perceptions on the use of and client communication about complementary and alternative veterinary medicine.

Complementary and alternative veterinary medicine (CAVM) is increasingly popular in horses. As CAVM usage could have risks, client-veterinarian communication about CAVM is crucial. Evaluating equine veterinarians' attitude towards CAVM, their CAVM usage and veterinarian-client communication about CAVM. Cross-sectional study. A telephone survey was conducted among equine veterinarians providing ambulatory care on a daily or weekly basis. The first section of the survey included questions about the veterinarians' attitude towards CAVM and their CAVM usage. The second section focused on veterinary-client communication about CAVM. When herbs are included as CAVM modality, 83% of the participants applied CAVM. Nighty-eight percent had already communicated with horse owners about CAVM and 81% agreed to be open to talk about CAVM. However, 95% agreed that sometimes CAVM usage takes place without disclosure to the veterinarian. The majority of participants communicated about CAVM on a weekly (40%) or daily (22%) basis, most often in person during consultations (99%) or via phone (32%). The median percentage of conversations about CAVM initiated by the owner was 50% (range 50%-80%). When the veterinarian initiated the conversation, this was usually by mentioning it as a treatment option, mostly in addition to conventional treatments. Some participants directly asked about CAVM use in the information-gathering phase. A convenience sample was used due to lack of data on the number of equine veterinarians in Flanders. Potential favourability bias with higher participation of veterinarians interested in CAVM. Equine veterinarians generally had a positive attitude towards CAVM use, although this depended on the specific modality. Veterinarian-client communication about CAVM occurs frequently in ambulatory care. An open dialogue with horse owners about CAVM is important to provide information about CAVM and thus enable them to make informed decisions concerning CAVM usage, together with their veterinarian.

Spanish technological development of artificial intelligence applied to journalism: companies and tools for documentation, production and distribution of information

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been progressively expanding over the last decade, with its transversal application to the journalistic process and the engaging of media and technology companies in developing specific tools and services. This research offers a first catalogue of Spanish technological companies and institutions that develop AI systems applicable to journalism, with services and features grouped into three phases of the journalistic process: 1. Automated gathering and documentation of information; 2. Automated production of content; and 3. Information distribution and audience relations. The research uses a methodology of in-depth interviews with 45 innovation heads of Spanish-based companies and technological centres specialised in the development of AI (N = 25), and is supported by questionnaires to systematise four study categories: company profiles, tools, journalism-specific services and future trends. The results confirm a clear evolution of Spanish technological companies within the AI sector, with services and tools available for the whole journalistic process, mainly in the information gathering and content distribution phases related to monetisation; the automated news production phase is thereby overshadowed. The offering is diversified in terms of formats -textual, audiovisual, sound- and platforms, especially web and social media. The companies consulted testify to the profitability of its implementation and note a growing interest from the media, but warn of an uneven progress that reflects “slowness”, “distrust” and “lack of knowledge” regarding the application of AI.

Patient-Reported Quality Measures for Palliative Care: The Time is now.

While progress has been made in the ability to measure the quality of hospice and specialty palliative care, there are notable gaps. A recent analysis conducted by Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed a paucity of patient-reported measures, particularly in palliative care domains such as symptom management and communication. The research team, consisting of quality measure and survey developers, psychometricians, and palliative care clinicians, used established state-of-the art methods for developing and testing patient-reported measures. We applied a patient-centered, patient-engaged approach throughout the development and testing process. This sequential process included 1) an information gathering phase; 2) a pre-testing phase; 3) a testing phase; and 4) an endorsement phase. To fill quality measure gaps identified during the information gathering phase, we selected two draft measures ("Feeling Heard and Understood" and "Receiving Desired Help for Pain") for testing with patients receiving palliative care in clinic-based settings. In the pre-testing phase, we used an iterative process of cognitive interviews to refine draft items and corresponding response options for the proposed measures. The alpha pilot test supported establishment of protocols for the national beta field test. Measures met conventional criteria for reliability, had strong face and construct validity, and there was diversity in program level scores. The measures received National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsement. These measures highlight the key role of patient voices in palliative care and fill a much-needed gap for patient-reported experience measures in our field.

Application of Choquet integral in interval type‐2 Pythagorean fuzzy sustainable supply chain management under risk

The purpose of this study is to offer requisite models for unravelling the complex issues that arise in a supplier selection-order allocation problem by soothing the risk and disturbances. To do this, a new uncertain environment, interval type-2 Pythagorean fuzzy set (IT2PFS) is introduced to assist the experts for assuring secure and reliable outcomes in hesitant situations. The operational laws on IT2PFS under Dombi t-norm and t-conorm are defined, which are further utilized to develop geometric Bonferroni mean and Bonferroni mean operators based on Choquet integral (CI) under IT2PFS. The aggregation operators can ennoble the pliability of the information blending process through the adjustment of several parameters and can make good interactions among the criteria with their weights. Thereafter, to determine the weights of the criteria, an empirical method, namely the decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is amplified by conjoining CI and IT2PFS into it. A multicriteria decision making method, namely, the multiattribute border approximation area comparison (MABAC) and subsequently the CI based grey relational analysis method are then employed to classify the suppliers and derive their corresponding weights with reference to the sustainable criteria. Over and above, a new multiobjective optimization model is exhibited to uphold the purchasing managers for assembling suppliers keeping in mind the sustainability aspects and overall risk of suppliers by following Markowitz portfolio theory. A real-life supply chain management problem is demonstrated to elucidate the aptness and efficiency of the proposed work. Furthermore, the effectiveness and importance of the study are validated via the comparative analysis with existing approaches. The main contribution of the study is in handling the difficulty and confusion that arise during information gathering, information aggregation, suppliers evaluation and order allocation phases.

Load balancing mechanism using Mobile agents

Distributed systems need to perform load balancing on their hosts, so that the computation runs as quickly as possible. Research in this field has seen the emergence of mobile agents’ paradigm as a promising solution. In this present work, we use this paradigm to propose a load balancing approach that benefits from the advantages of agent mobility, more particularly, in the information gathering phase. In which, we aim to have an overall system vision while reducing network communication overhead, as well as other benefits such as fault tolerance and extensibility for large scale networks. Thus, the purpose of our contribution is to improve the distribution of loads in a balanced way to get loads as close as possible to the system average load. The experimental results show the efficiency of our approach on balancing the loads and in decreasing the response time.

Strategy for addressing research-site overlap in pragmatic clinical trials: lessons learned from the NIH-DOD-VA Pain Management Collaboratory (PMC)

BackgroundThe Pain Management Collaboratory (PMC) is a multi-site network of pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) focused on nonpharmacological approaches to pain management, conducted in health care systems of the US Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and co-funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Concerns about potential research-site overlap prompted the PMC investigator community to consider strategies to avert this problem that could negatively affect recruitment and contaminate interventions and thus pose a threat to trial integrity.MethodsWe developed a two-step strategy to identify and remediate research-site overlap by obtaining detailed recruitment plans across all PMC PCTs that addressed eligibility criteria, recruitment methods, trial settings, and timeframes. The first, information-gathering phase consisted of a 2-month period for data collection from PIs, stakeholders, and ClinicalTrials.gov. The second, remediation phase consisted of a series of moderated conference calls over a 1-month time period to develop plans to address overlap. Remediation efforts focused on exclusion criteria and recruitment strategies, and they involved collaboration with sponsors and stakeholder groups such as the Military Treatment Facility Engagement Committee (MTFEC). The MTFEC is comprised of collaborating DoD and university-affiliated PIs, clinicians, and educators devoted to facilitating successful pragmatic trials in DoD settings.ResultsOf 61 recruitment sites for the 11 PMC PCTs, 17 (28%) overlapped. Four PCTs had five overlapping Military Treatment Facilities (MTFs), and eight PCTs had 12 overlapping VA Medical Centers (VAMCs). We developed three general strategies to avoid research-site overlap: (i) modify exclusion criteria, (ii) coordinate recruitment efforts, and/or (iii) replace or avoid any overlapping sites. Potential overlap from competing studies outside of the PMC was apparent at 26 sites, but we were not able to confirm them as true conflicts.ConclusionProactive strategies can be used to resolve the issue of overlapping research sites in the PMC. These strategies, combined with open and impartial mediation approaches that include researchers, sponsors, and stakeholders, provide lessons learned from this large and complex pragmatic research effort.

What to do when invaders are out of control?

AbstractBiological invasions threaten species and ecosystems worldwide. Impacts from invasions are especially prevalent in freshwaters, where managers have struggled to contain the problem. Conventional approaches to managing invaders focus on prevention and control. In practice, these measures have proven to be variably effective. Control or eradication of established invaders is particularly difficult and, even if ecologically feasible, it may not be socially desirable. Here we propose a new alternative to managing invasive species: managing impact modifiers (MIM). The MIM approach focuses on managing impacts, rather than controlling the invader directly. We reviewed the literature for the world's worst invasive fishes in freshwaters to show there is strong evidence to support the potential for MIM as an effective means of managing impacts of invasions. This included evidence pointing to characteristics of the environment or species themselves that modify impacts of invasions. Detail of three case studies reinforces the potential for MIM as a viable option. Although MIM appears promising, effective application could involve significant investment in an information gathering phase to identify impact modifiers and the means to manage them. Accordingly, MIM is best incorporated into management plans that include a strong learning or adaptive component. Ultimately, MIM may be one of the only viable alternatives for managing invasive species that are truly out of control.This article is categorized under: Water and Life > Nature of Freshwater Ecosystems Water and Life > Stresses and Pressures on Ecosystems Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness

What Matters to Patients and Families: A Content and Process Framework for Clarifying Preferences, Concerns, and Values.

Background. Values clarification, or sorting out what matters to a patient or family relevant to a health decision, is a fundamental part of shared decision making. We aimed to describe how values clarification occurs in routine primary care. Methods. Using framework analysis and an established taxonomy, 2 independent researchers analyzed 260 consultations in 5 family medicine clinics across Quebec. Two questions guided our analyses: 1) What categories exist regarding what matters to patients? 2) What patterns exist in discussions of what matters to patients? Results. 1) Five distinct categories of what matters to patients and families were discussed during values clarification: preferences, concerns, treatment-specific values, life goals or philosophies, and broader contextual or sociocultural values. Preferences and concerns were the matters most commonly raised. 2) Diverse patterns of values clarification emerged based on 3 analytical questions: Who initiates the discussion about what matters to patients? When? What information is discussed? The most frequent pattern was clinicians soliciting patients' concerns and preferences during the information-gathering phase. The second most common pattern was similar, except that patients' spontaneously raised what matters to them. Limitations. The study was descriptive and based on audio-recorded visits. We did not interview patients and clinicians to elicit their perspectives. Conclusions. There are 5 distinct categories of what matters to patients and families as well as clear patterns of how values clarification occurs in routine primary care consultations. Clinicians could be sensitive to these categories when engaging in the process of values clarification and may wish to pay particular attention to the opening minutes of a consultation. This study provides a structure for future identification of best practices in values clarification.

No implementation without cultural adaptation: a process for culturally adapting low-intensity psychological interventions in humanitarian settings

BackgroundDespite the widely recognised importance of cultural adaptation to increase the effectiveness of psychological interventions, there is little guidance on its process. Developed based on existing theory, we applied a four-step process to culturally adapt a low-intensity psychological intervention for use in humanitarian settings.MethodsThe four-step process was applied to adapt a WHO low-intensity psychological intervention (i.e. Problem Management Plus, or PM+) for use with displaced Venezuelans and Colombians in Colombia. First, a rapid desk review was used as an (1) information gathering tool to identify local population characteristics. Next, the results were taken forward for the (2) formulation of adaptation hypotheses, whereby PM+ protocols were screened to identify components for adaptation, drawing on the Ecological Validity Model. Third, the elements flagged for adaptation were taken forward for (3) local consultation to firstly, verify the components identified for adaptation, to identify other areas in need of adaptation, and thirdly, to adapt the intervention protocols. Finally, the adapted intervention protocols were reviewed through (4) external evaluations with local experts.ResultsThe information gathering phase yielded key information on the socioeconomic aspects of the groups targeted for intervention, the availability and need for mental health and psychosocial support, and existing barriers to accessing care. The adaptation hypotheses phase further identified the need for clearer explanations of key concepts, the need for sensitive topics to match local attitudes (e.g., domestic violence, thoughts of suicide), and the identification of culturally appropriate social supports. Building on these first two phases, local consultation subsequently resulted in revised PM+ protocols. The adapted protocols differed from the original format in their focus on the problems unique to these population groups, the way that psychological distress is expressed in this context, and the inclusion of locally available supports. The results of the external evaluation supported the adaptations made to the protocols.ConclusionThe proposed four-step process offers a useful guide for how to adapt low-intensity psychological intervention within humanitarian settings. Despite some limitations, we show that even when time and resources are scarce it is possible and necessary to culturally adapt psychological interventions. We invite further testing, replication, and improvements to this methodology.

Cortical Coding of Whisking Phase during Surface Whisking

In rodent whisker sensation, whisker position signals, including whisking phase, are integrated with touch signals to enable spatially accurate tactile perception, but other functions of phase coding are unclear. We investigate how phase coding affects the neural coding of surface features during surface whisking. In mice performing rough-smooth discrimination, S1 units exhibit much stronger phase tuning during surface whisking than in prior studies of whisking in air. Among putative pyramidal cells, preferred phase tiles phase space, but protraction phases are strongly over-represented. Fast-spiking units are nearly all protraction tuned. This protraction bias increases the coding of stick-slip whisker events during protraction, suggesting that surface features are preferentially encoded during protraction. Correspondingly, protraction-tuned units encode rough-smooth texture better than retraction-tuned units and encode the precise spatial location of surface ridges with higher acuity. This suggests that protraction is the main information-gathering phase for high-resolution surface features, with phase coding organized to support this function.

“Innovation Management Concept Support Entrepreneurship

SummaryResearch PhenomenonThe world today is characterized by the third millennium, globalization, technological development, intense competition and the hypothetical market, there will be rapid changes in all areas of life, especially economic areas, and in light of these data the concept of entrepreneurship has emerged, so many concepts have been generated related to In the term leadership and its use to mean innovation, creativity, invention, discovery, new, unusual thing, something full of power and activity, or innovation, or risk tolerance. In particular.. Research ProblemThe problem of research is that traditional labors of all kinds, whether small or large, are interested in focusing on the creativity of management, where they act in creative ways to turn material and human resources into supporting the economy of the enterprise. While entrepreneurship needs another type of management, namely, creative management, which contributes a great deal to supporting entrepreneurship activities and achieving its goals, especially at the beginning of the implementation of the entrepreneurship project.. Research Objective Reveal the role of the concept of creative management in supporting entrepreneurship Research Methodology The research is based on the inductive approach through which the issue of research can be explained and revealed the philosophy of creative management and its impact on the concept of entrepreneurship Research plan The research plan includes a set of integrated phases of the first stage, the survey and information gathering phase: at this stage the available parts of knowledge on the subject of the research are collected, the most important

Audience Participation in PSM from a Media-centric to a Society-centric Approach

Audience participation in production of public service media programs appears to achieve objectives that are more often media-centric than society-centric. The Monitor, a journalism program of Dutch public broadcaster NPO chooses not to focus on participation in production but on participation in the information-gathering phase. We investigate whether and how participation in this stage involves society-centric participation. We carry out expert interviews with the journalists, questioning their intentions and how they evaluate audience input in terms of societal objectives. In the conclusion, we discuss how participation in pre-production can help journalists to step out of their bubble.

Modeling the cardiac indices of stress and performance of nuclear power plant operators during simulated fault scenarios.

Acute stress can affect cognitive processing and decrease performance in demanding, stressful situations. Here, we recorded the cardiac indices of stress, that is, the heart rate and heart rate variability together with the physical activity of nuclear power plant operators, and examined their association with crew performance, while the operator crews were managing simulated incident and accident situations. Crew performance was evaluated both by the operator instructor and as the time taken to resolve the situation. In total, 64% of the variance in the information-seeking performance (adj-R2 =.64, p<.01), and 41% of variation in the performance time (adj-R2 =.41, p<.01) were explained by the psychophysiology. The cardiac measures indicated that increased stress was associated with poorer information-seeking performance and longer performance time. Increased physical activity was associated with poorer information seeking only. Otherwise, crew performance was robust, as the diagnosis and corrective actions, use of emergency operations procedures, and collaboration, were only weakly associated with the stress physiology. The association between information-seeking performance and stress might be explained by the larger requirement for cognitive processing at the information-gathering phase of the task. The results of the study show that psychophysiological measurements of stress and activity can provide valuable information on stress and its association with cognitive performance at work.

Ecological Interface Design, the Proximity Compatibility Principle, and Automation Reliability in Road Traffic Management

In this paper, two user interfaces (UIs) are compared for supporting decision making in a road traffic management activity. Both UIs provide the information needed to make critical decisions related to traffic management and are designed according to ecological interface design (EID) concepts. One user interface design also incorporates concepts from the proximity compatibility principle (PCP). In addition to comparing the two UI designs, this paper considers the impact of the reliability of automation on user decision time and accuracy. It is shown that the UI designed with a combined of EID and PCP leads to significantly faster total task time, due to faster performance on the information gathering phase of the task. Contrary to expectations, time to gather information is not affected by automation reliability. Participants adapted their decisions according to automation reliability, even without explicit feedback to indicate reliability. Implications for UI design and decision making are discussed.

High-Deductible Health Plans and the Challenges They Pose to Radiologists

Patients with high-deductible health plans will increasingly be motivated to contact their hospitals or various websites to try to obtain information about the costs of expensive services like advanced imaging. Unfortunately, they will not find price transparency but rather confusion and opaqueness. Hospital personnel and commercial websites often unwittingly provide erroneous pricing information. The reasons for this are explained. Detailed examples of the erroneous information are provided. State-mandated websites may be somewhat of an improvement, but their methodology seems to vary from state to state, and they too can be confusing. All this obviously creates problems for patients, who are left not knowing what their true costs will be. The situation also creates problems for radiologists and their hospitals. Because of misunderstandings that can occur during the information-gathering phase, the pricing information shown for many hospital facilities may be greatly inflated, placing them at a competitive disadvantage. Certain strategic solutions to the problems are available, and these are discussed.

Youth Services System Review: Moving From Knowledge Gathering to Implementation Through Collaboration, Youth Engagement, and Exploring Local Community Needs

This article describes a two-phase, multi-sectoral project aimed at enhancing youth services addressing substance use in Ontario. In the information gathering phase, a youth-focused website and survey, focus groups, and interviews were used to elicit perspectives from multiple stakeholders. In the implementation phase, capacity-building and consultations on transition-aged youth needs were conducted to inform youth transition-readiness checklists. We discuss the importance of engaging youth as collaborators as well as respondents and the processes used to tailor findings to local contexts for implementation.

THE VIEWS OF PROFESSIONALS ON FAMILY PLAY THERAPY IN THE CONTEXT OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IN SOUTH AFRICA

This article reports on the information gathering and synthesis phase of an intervention research process. The aim was to obtain the views of professionals working in the field of child sexual abuse (CSA) in South Africa on family play therapy. This article outlines the findings based on data gathered from focus groups with professionals. Data were analysed and four themes emerged. The first theme centred on the importance of moving increasingly to systemic approaches in the context of CSA. Theme 2 outlined the views of professionals on inadequate knowledge and skills to engage in family play therapy. The third theme expanded on a family play therapy framework with suggestions that gestalt therapy theory can be valuable. Theme 4 pointed to a structured an individualised approach with a helping process where there is a balance between process goals and problem goals.

Stakeholders' Voices: Defining Needs of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Transitioning between School Settings.

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) too often do not receive adequate services or care in their school settings, particularly during transitions in educational placements. In addition, school support teams often struggle with creating transition plans that honor the needs of students with input from key stakeholders responsible for supporting student success. This article presents findings from the information-gathering phase of an iterative project that aims to develop a support program for students with EBD transitioning from day-treatment schools to district schools. We conducted 5 semistructured, qualitative focus groups with parents and teachers to explore needs during students' transitions between school settings. Five themes emerged from the focus groups: (a) consistent, behavior-specific feedback and positive reinforcement are vital to sustaining learned prosocial skills; (b) students benefit from regular opportunities to learn and practice social skills; (c) transition programming should emphasize communication between school and home; (d) routines at home and school should be coordinated; and (e) parents need support at school meetings. We will use findings from this study to develop a multifaceted intervention that aims to support students, their caregivers, and their teachers during transitions between the aforementioned types of schools.

Application-aware deduplication for performance improvement of flash memory

Deduplication in flash memory improves performance as well as reliability thanks to mitigating drawbacks of flash memory, which is done by eliminating duplicate data from flash memory. However, existing works mainly focus on efficiency of runtime data management without considering program flows. We propose a new application-aware deduplication method called unmodified region detection (URD) for flash memory. URD reconstructs loop blocks of an application program to avoid duplicate update operations, which aims to reduce the size of in-place updated data. This entails information gathering, loop reconstruction and code instrumentation phases. From experiments, we found that, in our URD scheme, block-based deduplication always improves performance regardless of the duplication degree of write traffic, while page-based deduplication obtains performance enhancement or performance degradation, depending on the duplication degree of write traffic.

Estudio descriptivo de la presentación de brucelosis humana en Colombia desde 2000 hasta 2012

El objetivo de la investigación fue realizar un estudio descriptivo de la ocurrencia de brucelosis humana en Colombia entre 2000 y 2012, y con base en estudios previos conocer la prevalencia e incidencia de la enfermedad, las limitaciones para el diagnóstico oportuno y el reconocimiento de la enfermedad por el sistema laboral colombiano. La investigación se basó en la búsqueda y análisis de la información publicada en artículos relacionados con brucelosis humana entre 2000 y 2012 en Colombia. En esta investigación se incluyó una fase de recopilación de información y entrevistas no estructuradas a representantes de programas de control de brucelosis y a profesionales expertos. Se analizaron 17 trabajos de brucelosis humana realizados en el personal a riesgo en plantas de beneficio, expendedores y vacunadores del programa de brucelosis animal, en los cuales se reportaron 10 estudios con prevalencias entre 0,14 % y 10,4 % y 7 con seropositividad. En estos se encontró alguna información pertinente a las limitaciones del diagnóstico y se evidenció el poco conocimiento de la comunidad médica frente a la enfermedad. En Colombia no hay una política clara respecto a esta zoonosis de riesgo ocupacional. Solo se menciona la brucelosis en el Decreto 2566 de 2009, en la cual se adopta la nueva tabla de enfermedades profesionales. Se concluye que la brucelosis humana en Colombia es una enfermedad subdiagnosticada y, por lo tanto, subnotificada, ya que no existe un sistema de notificación obligatoria.