Pre-existing Resources Research Articles

AI and memes: Across the boundaries

Memes have become one of the most popular cultures encapsulated by digital artifacts across digital spaces of all kinds. Users can create memes by themselves but can also use online services or tools. Among these, AI tools are popularly used because they can quickly generate creative memes by exploring vast stores of preexisting resources. Depending on the configurations of their algorithms and storehouses of resources, different AI meme generators can create different memes with the same prompt; further, the same generator can create different memes at different times with the same prompt. In addition, AI-generated memes may include controversial content through images and captions or other components, unanticipated by the writer of the prompt. In this study, we will examine several AI meme generators by creating memes using identical prompts and a series of prompts and compare the outputs, with a focus on cross-world ethical issues through the theoretical lens of information domains (Burnett, 2015; Burnett & Burnett, 2019). The results will provide insights into learning, meme generation, and ethical issues related to the use of AI tools.

A qualitative analysis of health service problems and the strategies used to manage them in the COVID-19 pandemic: exploiting generic and context-specific approaches

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health systems around the globe. Lessons from health systems responses to these challenges may help design effective and sustainable health system responses for future challenges. This study aimed to 1/ identify the broad types of health system challenges faced during the pandemic and 2/ develop a typology of health system response to these challenges.MethodsSemi-structured one-on-one online interviews explored the experience of 19 health professionals during COVID-19 in a large state health system in Australia. Data were analysed using constant comparative analysis utilising a sociotechnical system lens.ResultsParticipants described four overarching challenges: 1/ System overload, 2/ Barriers to decision-making, 3/ Education or training gaps, and 4/ Limitations of existing services. The limited time often available to respond meant that specific and well-designed strategies were often not possible, and more generic strategies that relied on the workforce to modify solutions and repair unexpected gaps were common. For example, generic responses to system overload included working longer hours, whilst specific strategies utilised pre-existing technical resources (e.g. converting non-emergency wards into COVID-19 wards).ConclusionDuring the pandemic, it was often not possible to rely on mature strategies to frame responses, and more generic, emergent approaches were commonly required when urgent responses were needed. The degree to which specific strategies were ready-to-hand appeared to dictate how much a strategy relied on such generic approaches. The workforce played a pivotal role in enabling emergent responses that required dealing with uncertainties.

The rules of multiplayer cooperation in networks of communities.

Community organisation permeates both social and biological complex systems. To study its interplay with behaviour emergence, we model mobile structured populations with multiplayer interactions. We derive general analytical methods for evolutionary dynamics under high home fidelity when populations self-organise into networks of asymptotically isolated communities. In this limit, community organisation dominates over the network structure and emerging behaviour is independent of network topology. We obtain the rules of multiplayer cooperation in networks of communities for different types of social dilemmas. The success of cooperation is a result of the benefits shared among communal cooperators outperforming the benefits reaped by defectors in mixed communities. Under weak selection, cooperation can evolve and be stable for any size (Q) and number (M) of communities if the reward-to-cost ratio (V/K) of public goods is higher than a critical value. Community organisation is a solid mechanism for sustaining the evolution of cooperation under public goods dilemmas, particularly when populations are organised into a higher number of smaller communities. Contrary to public goods dilemmas relating to production, the multiplayer Hawk-Dove (HD) dilemma is a commons dilemma focusing on the fair consumption of preexisting resources. This game yields mixed results but tends to favour cooperation under larger communities, highlighting that the two types of social dilemmas might lead to solid differences in the behaviour adopted under community structure.

Factors shaping network emergence: A cross-country comparison of quality of care networks in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda.

The Quality-of-Care Network (QCN) was conceptualized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other global partners to facilitate learning on and improve quality of care for maternal and newborn health within and across low and middle-income countries. However, there was significant variance in the speed and extent to which QCN formed in the involved countries. This paper investigates the factors that shaped QCN's differential emergence in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda. Drawing on network scholarship, we conducted a replicated case study of the four country cases and triangulated several sources of data, including a document review, observations of national-level and district level meetings, and key informant interviews in each country and at the global level. Thematic coding was performed in NVivo 12. We find that QCN emerged most quickly and robustly in Bangladesh, followed by Ethiopia, then Uganda, and slowest and with least institutionalization in Malawi. Factors connected to the policy environment and network features explained variance in network emergence. With respect to the policy environment, pre-existing resources and initiatives dedicated to maternal and newborn health and quality improvement, strong data and health system capacity, and national commitment to advancing on synergistic goals were crucial drivers to QCN's emergence. With respect to the features of the network itself, the embedding of QCN leadership in powerful agencies with pre-existing coordination structures and trusting relationships with key stakeholders, inclusive network membership, and effective individual national and local leadership were also crucial in explaining QCN's speed and quality of emergence across countries. Studying QCN emergence provides critical insights as to why well-intentioned top-down global health networks may not materialize in some country contexts and have relatively quick uptake in others, and has implications for a network's perceived legitimacy and ultimate effectiveness in producing stated objectives.

Incorporating an Unconscious Bias Curriculum into Audit Education

ABSTRACT In this learning strategy, we share how we incorporated an unconscious bias curriculum into our accounting program to better prepare students as future professionals in a diverse workforce. Our unconscious bias curriculum leverages preexisting resources that are publicly available and free of charge. Based on data collected across five different institutions, we find that students completing the curriculum report improvements in their understanding of how to recognize and mitigate unconscious biases (e.g., halo effect, horns effect, prototype bias, and similarity bias). To help students understand how these biases can affect decisions they make in their future careers, we introduce these topics within an audit class alongside more traditional auditing topics, such as professional judgments and the auditing of complex estimates. However, the nature of the curriculum offers flexibility such that we encourage instructors to consider how the curriculum could be adopted in other accounting classes, undergraduate or graduate.

Supporting Local Public Health and Planning Professionals to Implement Built Environment Changes: A Technical Assistance Program to Promote Physical Activity in Texas.

Built environment approaches that improve active transportation infrastructure and environmental design can increase physical activity. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Texas Department of State Health Services rejuvenated the Texas Plan4Health program from 2018 to 2023 to expand such approaches in Texas by providing technical assistance to teams of local public health professionals and planners to identify and implement projects connecting people to everyday destinations via active transport in their communities. However, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Texas Plan4Health to modify the delivery of technical assistance to accommodate restrictions on travel and in-person gatherings. We used qualitative methods to conduct a postintervention process evaluation to describe the modified technical assistance process, understand the experiences of the 4 participating communities, and identify short-term outcomes and lessons learned. Texas Plan4Health helped communities overcome common barriers to built environment change, facilitated collaboration across community public health and planning professionals, and educated professionals about active transportation infrastructure and the relationship between their disciplines, thereby increasing community capacity to implement built environment improvements. This outcome, however, was mediated by the pre-existing resources and previous experiences with active transportation planning among the participating communities. Public health practitioners seeking to improve active transportation infrastructure and environmental design for physical activity should consider community-engaged approaches that advance partnership-building and collaborative experiential education among public health, planning, and other local government representatives, directing particular attention and additional training toward communities with fewer resources.

Identifying how pre-existing resources combine to shape the experiences of work and family life of a diverse sample of working parents with at least one child in primary school in Scotland during COVID-19 pandemic-related social restrictions: a qualitative descriptive design

ObjectivesThis study aimed to identify factors that shaped working parents (WPs’) experiences of COVID-19-related social restrictions and analyse the relationships between those factors.DesignA qualitative descriptive design was used to collect...

Investigation of unexpected silane ions caused by gas-phase reactions in Orbitrap gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

The mass spectra of compounds containing dimethyl (phenyl)silyl group (-SiMe2Ph) sometimes exhibit unusual ion peaks when measured using Orbitrap gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). This would complicate the mass spectra and may limit the matching of spectral data with preexisting resources for compound annotation. These peaks were identified as products from reactions with residual water. A series of dimethyl (phenyl)silyl compounds were dissolved in methanol and investigated using Orbitrap GC-MS. Certain ions reacted with residual water in the C-trap. The reaction was confirmed using accurate mass and elemental composition analysis via MS studies, and the active center of the reaction was determined using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Two types of gas-phase reactions between gaseous water and cations from a series of silanes were identified. DFT calculations indicate that silicon (Si) acts as the active center for these gas-phase water reactions. Compounds with multiple Si atoms generate a larger number of additional ions, which would complicate the mass spectra. The mass spectra of vinylsilanes and alkylsilanes with -SiMe2Ph indicate that the conjugated group linked to -SiMe2Ph can affect the water adduction process. Silane ions could react with residual water in the C-trap of an Orbitrap mass spectrometer. The mass spectra of these compounds may exhibit unexplained peaks arising from gas-phase reactions. Although these reactions may decrease spectral matching scores for compound annotation, they offer opportunities for systematic investigations into the mechanistic and kinetic aspects of high-energy ion reactivity.

Cost and economic evidence for asset-based approaches to health improvement and their evaluation methods: a systematic review

BackgroundAsset-based approaches (ABAs) tackle health inequalities by empowering people in more disadvantaged communities, or targeted populations, to better utilise pre-existing local community-based resources. Using existing resources supports individuals to better manage their own health and its determinants, potentially at low cost. Targeting individuals disengaged with traditional service delivery methods offers further potential for meaningful cost-savings, since these people often require costly care. Thus, improving prevention, and management, of ill-health in these groups may have considerable cost implications.AimTo systematically review the extent of current cost and economic evidence on ABAs, and methods used to develop it.MethodsSearch strategy terms encompassed: i) costing; ii) intervention detail; and iii) locality. Databases searched: Medline, CENTRAL and Wed of Science. Researchers screened 9,116 articles. Risk of bias was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool. Narrative synthesis summarised findings.ResultsTwelve papers met inclusion criteria, representing eleven different ABAs. Within studies, methods varied widely, not only in design and comparators, but also in terms of included costs and outcome measures. Studies suggested economic efficiency, but lack of suitable comparators made more definitive conclusions difficult.ConclusionEconomic evidence around ABAs is limited. ABAs may be a promising way to engage underserved or minority groups, that may have lower net costs compared to alternative health and wellbeing improvement approaches. ABAs, an example of embedded services, suffer in the context of economic evaluation, which typically consider services as mutually exclusive alternatives. Economics of the surrounding services, mechanisms of information sharing, and collaboration underpin the success of assets and ABAs. The economic evidence, and evaluations in general, would benefit from increased context and detail to help ensure more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the economics of ABAs. Further evidence is needed to reach conclusions about cost-effectiveness of ABAs.

NeuroLab 2.0: An Alternative Storyline Design Approach for Translating a Research-Based Summer Experience into an Advanced STEM+M Curriculum Unit that Supports Three-Dimensional Teaching and Learning in the Classroom.

In this case study, we describe an alternative storyline design approach that we adopted to translate an informal, out-of-school summer science experience with a strong emphasis on developmental neuroscience and data literacy into a more inclusive, replicable, and scalable experience for formal high school science instruction. Combining elements of problem- and project-based learning, a storyline is a curriculum model that engages students in the application of investigative science and engineering practices to incrementally build conceptual models that explain an observable (anchoring) phenomenon. Published reports on the storyline design process describe procedures and tools that are well suited to the creation of novel instructional units. However, these design methods are difficult to apply to projects aimed at translating pre-existing science experiences and resources into classroom storyline units. In this descriptive case study, we discuss a series of alternative design procedures that we utilized to achieve this adaptation. Our overarching project goal was to create the resources necessary to engage high school students in the construction of a multidimensional explanatory model for an unusual movement disorder that assimilates converging lines of behavioral, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, molecular genetic, developmental, and cellular data. The methods described in this case study establish a design template for other biomedical scientists who are interested in adopting a storyline approach to bring aspects of their work or educational projects into science classrooms and into closer alignment with a new vision for science teaching and learning articulated in the National Research Council's A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards.

An AI-Based Ventilation KPI Using Embedded IoT Devices

The air ventilation of enclosed premises has a direct impact on the occupants well-being. If not properly regulated, the air ventilation can originate a multitude of diseases and pathologies. The present study proposes a new KPI (ventilation KPI) adapted to Smart Cities. It is especially designed for academic environments (Smart Universities) in which community members spend a long time gathered in classrooms, seminars, laboratories, etc. The ventilation KPI (or KPIv) was designed to support decision-making and is based on the estimation of the number of occupants of an enclosed space and the accumulation of existing CO2. Two AI techniques are proposed to perform these estimations, specifically, two regressive neural networks. The resulting models, together with the KPI were implemented through the development of value-added services for the University of Alicantes Smart University platform. The network models were designed to be embedded within the built IoT device prototypes. These prototypes are small and inexpensive. They act as intelligent sensors and are connected via a low consumption and emission network (LoRa). The case study showed that it is possible to take advantage of the pre-existing services and resources of these platforms, and to validate the KPIv.

Quels termes pour communiquer ? Autour des néologismes officiels dans le domaine de la communication sur FranceTerme

"The article aims to review the processes of enrichment of French terminology in the field of communication, paying attention to the modification of pre-existing resources in the French language (derivation, improper derivation, abbreviation, composition, complex terms), various forms of borrowings, as well as the use of pre-existing resources, i. e. semantic neology (terminologization of words from everyday language, metaphors, and metonymies). The 113 terms contained in the FranceTerme database under the heading Communication were subjected to qualitative and, partially, quantitative analyses. Attention is paid to some other features of the neologisms, such as their variation and synonymy."

"Publish First": A Rapid, GPT-4 Based Digitisation System for Small Institutes with Minimal Resources

We present a streamlined technical solution ("Publish First") designed to assist smaller, resource-constrained herbaria in rapidly publishing their specimens to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Specimen data from smaller herbaria, particularly those in biodiversity-rich regions of the world, provide a valuable and often unique contribution to the global pool of biodiversity knowledge (Marsico et al. 2020). However, these institutions often face challenges not applicable to larger herbaria, including a lack of staff with technical skills, limited staff hours for digitization work, inadequate financial resources for specialized scanning equipment, cameras, lights, and imaging stands, limited (or no) access to computers and collection management software, and unreliable internet connections. Data-scarce and biodiversity rich countries are also often linguistically diverse (Gorenflo et al. 2012), and staff may not have English skills, which means pre-existing online data publication resources and guides are of limited use. The "Publish First" method we are trialing, addresses several of these issues: it drastically simplifies the publication process so technical skills are not necessary; it minimizes administrative tasks saving time; it uses simple, cheap and easily available hardware; it does not require any specialized software; and the process is so simple that there is little to no need for any written instructions. "Publish first" requires staff to attach QR code labels containing identifiers to herbarium specimen sheets, scan these sheets using a document scanner costing around €300, then drag and drop these files to an S3 bucket (a cloud container that specialises in storing files). Subsequently, these images are automatically processed through an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) service to extract text, which is then passed on to OpenAI's Generative Pre-Transformer 4 (GPT-4) Application Programming Interface (API), for standardization. The standardized data is integrated into a Darwin Core Archive file that is automatically published through GBIF's Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) (GBIF 2021). The most technically challenging aspect of this project has been the standardization of OCR data to Darwin Core using the GPT-4 API, particularly in crafting precise prompts to address the inherent inconsistency and lack of reliability in these Large Language Models (LLMs). Despite this, GPT-4 outperformed our manual scraping efforts. Our choice of GPT-4 as a model was a naive one: we implemented the workflow on some pre-digitized specimens from previously published Norwegian collections, compared the published data on GBIF with GPT-4's Darwin Core standardized output, and found the results satisfactory. Moving forward, we plan to undertake more rigorous additional research to compare the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of different LLMs as Darwin Core standardization engines. We are also particularly interested in exploring the new "function calling" feature added to the GPT-4 API, as it promises to allow us to retrieve standardized data in a more consistent and structured format. This workflow is currently under trial in Tajikistan, and may possibly be used in Uzbekistan, Armenia and Italy in the near future.

What Got You through Lockdown?

What Got You through Lockdown?

Dynamic ventilation certificate for smart universities using artificial intelligence techniques

The issue of room ventilation has recently gained momentum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ventilation is in fact of particular relevance in educational environments. Smart University platforms, today widespread, are a good starting point to offer control services of different relevant indicators in universities. This study advances a Ventilation Quality Certificate (VQC) for Smart Universities. The certificate informs the university community of the ventilation status of its buildings and premises. It also supports senior management's decision-making, because it allows assessing preventive measures and actions taken. The VQC algorithm models the adequacy of classroom ventilation according to the number of persons present. The input used is the organisation's existing data relating to CO2 concentration and number of room occupants. AI techniques, specifically Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), were employed to determine the relationship between the different data sources included. A prototype of value-added services was developed for the Smart University platform of the University of Alicante, which allowed to implement the resulting models, together with the VQC. The prototype is currently being replicated in other universities. The case study allowed us to validate the VQC, demonstrating both its usefulness and the advantage of using pre-existing university services and resources.

“We Never Really Talked About politics”: Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces Structuring Information Disorder Within the Vietnamese Diaspora

ABSTRACT This paper joins a growing effort within mis/disinformation research to better address the transnational spread of misinformation and, in particular, the impact of political mis/disinformation on historically marginalized and immigrant communities. While misinformation spreads across cultural, sociolinguistic, and geo-political contexts, it impacts communities differently according to preexisting power structures and information resources. Through focus groups with Vietnamese Americans across two generations and several geographic locations, we explore the complexities of misinformation within one such immigrant community. Findings highlight how a prevalence of intergenerational divides in political information seeking, lasting historical and political traumas of immigration, and language barriers underpin the saliency and impact of misinformation for Vietnamese Americans. Further, we explore how misinformation impacts political engagement, highlighting the consequences of misinformation at a familial and community-level. This research highlights the need for researchers of misinformation to better attend to the inequities of informational access and the vulnerabilities of already marginalized communities as targets of problematic information and information disorder.

CREMMA Medii Aevi: Literary Manuscript Text Recognition in Latin

This paper presents a novel segmentation and handwritten text recognition dataset for Medieval Latin from the 11th to the 16th century. It connects with Medieval French datasets, as well as earlier Latin datasets, by enforcing common guidelines, bringing 263,000 new characters and now totaling over a million characters for medieval manuscripts in both languages. We provide our own addition to Ariane Pinche’s Old French guidelines to deal with specific Latin cases. We also offer an overview of how we addressed this dataset compilation through the use of pre-existing resources. With a higher abbreviation ratio and a better representation of abbreviating marks, we offer new models that outperform the Old French base model on Latin datasets, improving accuracy by 5% on unknown Latin manuscripts.

Factors underpinning an improved menopausal experience in the workplace for doctors: a UK-based qualitative study

ObjectivesA recent British Medical Association survey revealed that very few National Health Service (NHS) doctors felt comfortable discussing symptoms with their managers, and many feel unable to make changes to...

Lifestyle Medicine Electives: Options for Creating Curricula Within Medical School Training.

Lifestyle medicine (LM) offers future generations of clinicians practical tools to effectively prevent, manage and reverse chronic disease. Due to a variety of factors, introduction of such curricula in medical training has been slow. Until LM becomes more standard in medical schools, electives and tracks are an innovative way to introduce curricula in a time-efficient manner so students can have access to this valuable information during their formative training years. Creating a culture for the acceptance of LM is a critical first step and can be accomplished by collaborating with like-minded faculty as well as developing student interest groups. The latter can also be a strong driver for curricular change. This article provides an overview of several structures that can be implemented within existing curricula to offer students a foundation in LM. Included are offerings during the pre-clinical years, third/fourth year electives, culinary medicine rotations, online opportunities, and the development of a full track. Specific components of each structure are shared as well as examples of successful use of community partnerships, use of pre-existing educational resources, and activities implemented. The authors conclude that implementing electives is a promising avenue for educators to expose medical students to LM and can be molded to work within a variety of current educational structures.

KEEPING COMMUNITY DURING A PANDEMIC: LGBTQ+ OLDER ADULTS AND THE VIRTUAL SENIOR CENTER

Abstract During the initial stages of the pandemic, 96% of all senior centers ceased in-person programming, leaving many older adults without resources for meals, socialization, and critical services (NCOA, 2020). As a result of this shutdown, risk factors such as being a member of the underserved LGBTQ+ community, identifying as part of a racial or ethnic minoritized group, and/or experiencing poverty contributed to an increased likelihood of experiencing difficulties in meeting basic needs, reduced immunity to COVID and experiencing isolation (Berg-Weger and Morley, 2020; Kuehn, 2021). Despite the closure of many senior centers, some organizations were well positioned to strategically utilize pre-existing resources to help the community (Pendergrast, 2021). One organization, SAGE Advocacy and Services for LGBTQ+ Elders, the first publicly funded senior advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ older adults in the US, was one of the first to effectively transition to becoming a virtual senior center within days after the start of the pandemic (NYC DOA, 2020). Having a group of front-line workers who were highly embedded in their community, helped facilitate effective organizational adaptation and transition to a virtual senior center. This presentation seeks to describe how staff and program facilitators became vital resources for maintaining connection to the community of LGBTQ+ older adults. Focus groups with SAGE senior center employees and program facilitators were conducted in summer of 2021. Data identified resiliencies and barriers for maintaining community, providing vital services, and mitigating isolation with LGBTQ+ elders. Lessons learned and implications for organizations facing crises will be shared.