Prize Competition Research Articles

Patient, Scan Thyself.

This article focuses on efforts made by different companies and research teams in combining technologies to improve medical diagnosis. Performing some Star Trek-style medical diagnostics may take nothing more than a clever smartphone app. In order to claim the prize, however, teams will have to combine multiple technologies and miniaturize them into a device that can fit in the palm of a hand. The main goal of the X Prize competition is to give consumers, healthcare providers, and insurers new resources to improve healthcare quality and patient outcomes. Pulsewave MAX, an advance over the company’s Pulsewave heartbeat and pulse measuring system, is bulky compared with other X Prize contenders; its sensors are embedded in an arm cuff and finger clip and were designed for immobile hospital patients. Apps can use smartphone cameras to look at other vital signs. Scandu is building on its existing technology in its entry for the Tricorder X Prize. A Cornell University associate professor of mechanical engineering, David Erickson, has led a team that developed a device that works with a smartphone application to detect cholesterol by analyzing color changes in a test strip.

Innovation Award Laser Technology at the AKL'14

AbstractThe Innovation Award Laser Technology 2014, initiated by the associations Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik e.V. and the European Laser Institute ELI and provided with 10 000 Euros prize money, has been conferred to Ralf Preu, director of the division “Photovoltaics — Production Technology and Quality Assurance“ of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg, Germany, on May 7, 2014 in Aachen's town hall. Preu and his team have got the first place in the open prize competition with the innovation “Laser Fired Contact (LFC) technology for the production of highly efficient silicon solar cells“. The jury that was composed by nine international experts has selected three finalists among the 23 submitted applications. In the historical ambience of the Coronation Hall around 300 guests attended the awarding ceremony.

Brand strategies in social media

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to: first, examine why companies create brand pages in social media, how they use them, what policies and strategies they follow, and what outcomes do they expect; and second – from firms’ point of view – how users are benefited from such pages. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative study approach was employed for this study. Data were collected from personal interviews with 14 marketing managers responsible for the social media activity of their company, providing preliminary evidence about the actions firms take, the motivations that led them to getting involved, and the derived outcomes. Findings – The main actions of the firm are making prize competitions, announcing new products/services, interacting with fans, providing advice and useful information, and handling customer service issues. The basic motivations are the increasing popularity of social media, competitors’ presence, headquarters’ strategy, and cost reduction pressure. Interact with customers, create/enhance relationships with customers, brand awareness, customer engagement, promote products/increase of sales, and the more targeted acquisition of new customers, were referred to as the main expected outcomes for companies. Research limitations/implications – Given the qualitative nature of the study and the emerging field of research about social media, findings should be considered as preliminary and exploratory. Interviews with companies from more sectors and also with social media users will provide a more comprehensive view of the topic. Practical implications – The paper identifies several opportunities for company managers, suggesting practices for effective social media handling. Originality/value – Considering the rapid development of social media and their penetration in business marketing actions, this paper is an exploratory step toward the ways firms utilize social media channels.

Virtual Humans and Avatars ‐ Healthcare Personal Agents in the Palm of Your Hand (LB855)

The advent of wireless sensors and miniaturized wearables have made the possibility of home diagnostics prior to a doctor visit and connected healthcare a reality. Engagement of everyday people for self diagnosis, however, remains a continued challenge as in most cases the much needed user friendly and engaging user interface for wireless devices are lacking.Recent advancements in the fields of physiology, psychology, artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language learning, computer graphics, gamification and cinematography have made the development of virtual human/ avatar personal health agents that are engaging, wireless smart phone and tablet native, and personalized possible.We here describe development of a personalized virtual human/ avatar health agent for incentivized, gamified, home self testing of 21 indications using FDA approved miniaturized wearable medical diagnostic devices. The avatars are designed to have multiple characters capable of understanding 15 different languages. Data obtained from patient interactions and device testing is stored in the cloud for analysis. Aesthetics of patient engagement and gamification will be presented. Development of disease specific scripts to determine different stages of a particular disorder including live physician telemedicine capabilities and connected healthcare will be described. Our findings are used as a solution for the development of team SMART McCoy's solution for the Qualcomm Medical Tricorder X Prize competition. In full development this system will assist in lessening the unnecessary primary care doctor visits (i.e., more than $10 billion annual cost in US alone) and provides the mean for making connected healtcare and precision medicine a reality.

Literature and Gossip - An Introduction

Literature and gossip may appear at first sight to be strange bedfellows, given that they seem to be radically different discourses. Conventional wisdom has it that gossip differs from literature because the former involves dialogue and lacks an audience.1 Conversely, and in characteristically provocative style, Truman Capote famously claimed that ‘all literature is gossip’,2 but how true is this? Throughout history, literature has represented the fundamentally human practice of gossip. Gossip plays a key part in the literature of oral traditions, in classical drama, and in the epistolary novel, among many other forms. The six essays collected in this Special Issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies were all submitted to the 2013 Forum Essay Prize competition. In an attempt to illuminate the relationship between literature and gossip, the General Editors invited authors to consider a range of questions: In what ways does literature exploit the concept of gossip? What can the use of gossip in fiction tell us about characters and plot? In what ways is literature itself gossip? What can literary culture tell us about the nature of gossip? Does literature's use of gossip furnish parameters by which gossip can be described or defined? Does the new immediacy made possible by the internet in general, and by social media in particular, offer new ways of thinking about the relationship between gossip and literature?

The Enlightenment in Practice: Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670-1794

In this lively and well documented book, Jeremy Caradonna seeks to broaden our understanding of the Enlightenment by bringing into the picture the important practice of the academic prize competition, a ubiquitous cultural institution of ancien régime France, one that, with few exceptions, has remained largely unexplored. Of course, we have heard of one Rousseau from Geneva who was propelled to literary stardom overnight by the members of the obscure provincial Academy of Dijon (who lived to regret it, as Caradonna shows in a fascinating and highly entertaining chapter)—but that was only one peak of a huge mountain, which it took the Revolution to raze down (even though Marat and Robespierre and a few other revolutionaries, to belabour the metaphor, had used it as a jumping off point). Thanks to extensive research in libraries and archives in Paris and in the provinces, Caradonna has given us the first thorough, in-depth analysis of the prize contest culture. Between 1670 (when the French Academy revived the ancient poetry and eloquence prizes that provincial academies had been sponsoring since the Middle Ages), until 1793, when the Academies were abolished by the revolutionary government, an estimated fifteen thousand competitors from all walks of life put their talents to test in contests that were open (mostly respecting meritocratic principles of fairness and blind submission, with relative independence from royal and ecclesiastical censorship, and qualified tolerance for politely voiced dissent) to a wide swat of the learned, and not-so-learned, public: to women (the book provides a long list of female laureates of the concours between 1671–1790), to ambitious beginners, provincial hacks, obscure scientists and even farmers. In the course of the eighteenth century, scientific, literary and agricultural academies and scholarly societies blossomed and multiplied in every major city of France, and most of them organized their own prize contests: in the 1670s there were thirty-eight yearly competitions across France; by 1780, there were over four hundred. (A nearly complete list of all the prize contests offered by the academies between 1670 and 1793 is available on the author’s web site).

The Journal of Physiology Annual Report 2013–14:Another year of progress

We have just completed another busy and fruitful year for The Journal of Physiology as we continue our mission to promote excellence in the communication of physiology to the world. The Journal is without international boundaries, and below is a summary of where we have recently been, and where we plan to go in 2014–15. We value the support of our readers and those who publish their outstanding findings with us. At the beginning of 2013, The Journal of Physiology Consulting Editor Carol Robinson FRS was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) for Services to Science and Industry. She is widely recognised for her ground-breaking research in mass spectrometry and as a role model for women scientists. In the 2014 New Year Honours list, Peter Ratcliffe FRS, another of The Journal's esteemed Consulting Editors, was awarded a knighthood for his services to clinical medicine. Sir Peter is Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine based at the Henry Wellcome Building for Molecular Physiology in Oxford. His laboratory works on understanding the mechanisms by which cells sense and signal hypoxia. In 2013 we published a paper based on the Annual Review Prize Lecture which Peter delivered at Physiology 2012 (the annual meeting of The Physiological Society), Edinburgh, UK, 4 July 2012. Oxygen sensing and hypoxia signalling pathways in animals: the implications of physiology for cancer Ratcliffe PJ (2013) J Physiol 591, 2027–2042 http://jp.physoc.org/content/591/8/2027.full Sadly in 2013 we said goodbye to one of the legends in the field of physiology who had his Nobel Prize winning work in The Journal. David H. Hubel FRS passed away in October after a long and distinguished career in visual neuroscience. Physiology lost one of its giants. The Journal of Physiology lost one of its heroes. David H. Hubel – A man of vision J Physiol 592, issue 1. http://jp.physoc.org/content/592/1.toc

"The Prize of Innovation: Define, Broadcast, Attract, and Select"

Prize competitions, an alternative to patents and grants for motivating potential inventors, have gained renewed interest in recent years. We analyze targeted prizes that are formalized into standa...

Notices

Announcement of the Morris D. Forkosch book prize competition. Announcement of the Selma V. Forkosch prize for the best article published in the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Historical Claims Data based Hybrid Predictive Models for Hospitalization

Over $30 billion are wasted on unnecessary hospitalization each year, therefore it is needed to find a better quantitative way to identify patients who are mostly likely to be hospitalized and then provide them utmost care. As a good starting point, the objective of this paper was to develop a predictive model to predict how many days patients may spend in the hospital next year based on patients’ historical claims dataset, which is provided by the Heritage Health Prize Competition. The proposed predictive model applied the ensemble of binary classification and regression techniques. The model is evaluated on testing dataset in terms of the Root-Mean- Square-Error (RMSE). The best RMSE score was 0.474, and the corresponding prediction accuracy 81.9% was reasonably high. Therefore it is convincing to conclude that predictive models have the potentials to predict hospitalization and improve patients’ quality of life.

From The Two

from The Two Marina Tsvetaeva (bio) —translated from the Russian by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie Fate does not will it that strong and strongUnite with each other in earthly life.Therefore Brunhilde and Siegfried’s songEnds not in marriage but sword and strife. Joined each to each in fraternal hatred—Yoked like two oxen!—or stone against stone—He quit the marital bed a stranger,She—a stranger—slept on alone. Separate!—even in wedded slumber—Separate!—even clasped hand in hand—Separate!—in a tongue half-remembered—Too late and separate—that’s our bond! But there’s another wound still more ancient:Amazon crushed beneath lion-like paws—Thus they failed to become acquainted:Son of Thetis and daughter of Mars. O, bold Achilles, recall her contemptuousGaze! as an unseated knight uncowedMight gaze! but no longer from high Olympus—A gaze from the slush—yet still as proud! So what if now he has one last care:Snatching his true love from death’s dark heat.Fate does not will it that peer with peerUnite . . . And so you and I won’t meet. 1924 [End Page 145] Marina Tsvetaeva Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) was born in Moscow, although her family’s years abroad allowed her to learn Italian, French, and German. Among her translations are Russian versions of Goethe and Rilke, and French versions of Pushkin. Her affairs with the poet Sofia Parnok and with Konstantin Rodzevich inspired her two great cycles of love poems, “Poem of the Mountain” and “Poem of the End.” In addition to poetry, she wrote diaries, literary criticism, and verse dramas. Judged to be one of the most important writers of the era, she produced several celebrated collections, including Craft (1923) and After Russia (1928), as well as “The Ratcatcher” (1925), a satirical version of the Pied Piper legend in which Bolshevik rats gradually take on features of the German burghers they have ousted. After being evacuated from wartime Moscow, Tsvetaeva hanged herself. No one attended her funeral. Alyssa Dinega Gillespie Alyssa Dinega Gillespie is Associate Professor of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame. Her books include A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva (2001) and Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations (2012). A lapsed (or very occasional) poet, she has received several international prizes for her poetic translations from Russian, including first prize in the 2012 Compass Awards and joint third prize in the 2011 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition. Copyright © 2014 Middlebury College Publications

The Jolt

The Jolt Anna Semyonovna Prismanova (bio) —translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk The jolt must come from far away:the start of bread is in the grain.A stream, although still underground,aspires to reflect the sky. A future Sunday’s distant lightreaches us early in the week.The jolt must come from far awayto trigger earthquakes in the heart. A shoulder alien to mecontrols the movement of my hand.In order to acquire such strength,the jolt must come from far away. late 1930s to early 1940s [End Page 147] Anna Semyonovna Prismanova Anna Semyonovna Prismanova (1892–1960), one of the most original Russian poets of her generation, was born in Latvia into the family of a Jewish doctor. The family moved to Moscow in 1918. By 1924 she had moved to Paris, where she married the poet Aleksandr Ginger, with whom she had two sons. Writing for her was a full-time but private activity; she played little part in the cultural life of the Russian émigré world. The first of her four collections appeared in 1937. Boris Dralyuk Boris Dralyuk teaches Russian literature at UCLA and has translated several collections of poetry and prose from Russian and Polish. He received first prize in the 2011 Compass Translation Award competition and, with Irina Mashinski, first prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition. Along with with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, he is a co-editor of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, 2014). Copyright © 2014 Middlebury College Publications

Annual Prize Competition

Annual Prize Competition

Winners in the 2012 Naylor prize competition

Winners in the 2012 <scp>N</scp>aylor prize competition

Notices

Announcement of the Morris D. Forkosch book prize competition. Announcement of the Selma V. Forkosch prize for the best article published in the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Conversando con... Cruz y Ortiz

Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz got their degrees from the School of Architecture in Madrid in the early 70’s. From that moment on they have worked together in Seville, and since 2000 they also have a studio in Amsterdam.Their prolific work, awarded with almost 25 honors, has been the object of many exhibitions and publications. They have gained more than 20 prizes in architectural competitions, both national and international. They possess academic experience as professors in Schools in Seville, Zurich, Harvard, Cornell, Lausanne, Pamplona, and Columbia, and they both have given countless lectures all over the world.This interview was taken on a Wednesday evening in September 14th 2011. It focuses on the process of architectural graphic ideation, with questions formulated by the architect Antonio Gámiz Gordo, who also transcribed the answers. He is a former student-collaborator in their office in 1986, and nowadays is a Senior Lecturer at the Seville School of Architecture.

Table of Contents

Abstract Resources Website “facelift” simplifies Grants.gov Grants alert Prize Competition Registration opens for NASA‐WPI 2014 Sample Return Robot Challenge

Notices

Announcement of the Morris D. Forkosch book prize competition. Announcement of the Selma V. Forkosch prize for the best article published in the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Telecommunications for people with disability: This year’s Christopher Newell Prize-winning papers

This editorial provides a brief history of initiatives taken within the Australian telecommunications industry since 1980 to assist people with major disabilities to remain 'connected' via modern telecommunications. It provides background to the annual Telstra-TJA Christopher Newell Prize competition, running since 2010, and concludes by announcing the winners of the 2013 Telstra-TJA Christopher Newell Prize competition.

HYBRID INNOVATION IN MEIJI, JAPAN*

Japan’s hybrid innovation system during the Meiji era provides a useful laboratory for examining the effectiveness of complementary incentives to patents. Patents were introduced in 1885, and by 1911 1.2 million mostly nonpecuniary prizes were awarded at 8,503 competitions. Prizes provided a strong boost to patents, especially in less developed prefectures, and they also induced large spillovers of technical knowledge in prefectures adjacent to those with prizes, relative to distant control prefectures without prizes. Linking competition expenditures with the expected market value of patents induced by the prizes permits a cost–benefit assessment of the prize competitions to be made.