Tight Time Schedule Research Articles

Usability Evaluation in a Remote Access Scenario.

We present an approach to use the think aloud method for formative usability evaluation for medical software in a remote access scenario which combines researchers in two different locations and test persons distributed across five Swiss hospitals into one study using MS-Teams. We could show that a) these tests can be performed remote in a tight time schedule and b) that results valuable for the formative development of the examined mockup solution could be achieved. Two sessions had to be rescheduled for technical problems but all test persons could complete the think aloud study in 30 minutes at their usual working environment. This offers the opportunity to software providers to develop medical software with better usability in close cooperation with future users.

MA-SARNet: A one-shot nowcasting framework for SAR image prediction with physical driving forces

Remote sensing imagery is one of the most widely used data sources for large-scale Earth observations with consistent spatial and temporal quality. However, the current usage scenarios of Earth’s surface remote sensing images, such as those generated from Landsat, Sentinel 2, and SAR, are largely limited to retrospective tasks, as they are often used to reconstruct existing phenomena, such as land use change, flood inundation, and wildfire. This study proposes MA-SARNet, a one-shot nowcasting framework built with a modified MA-Net structure and ResNet50 as the backbone, to predict the backscatter values of Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) images using the previous SAR observations, precipitation, soil moisture, and geomorphic data layers as input. The model was trained, validated, and tested with SAR images collected during the catastrophic 2019 Midwest U.S. Floods that affected several states on the Missouri and Mississippi River tributaries. Compared to the benchmark performance, model predictions show an increase of 31.9% and 17.8% for the mean and median AAI (Assemble Accuracy Index) and an increase of 37.9% and 15.1% for the mean and median NSE (Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency) on the test set. Results showed that the flood extent derived from backscatter predictions has less misclassifications caused by pixel-level noise compared to the flood map derived using the real backscatters. Results from spatial and temporal robustness tests demonstrate that the model has sufficient generalization potential and does not require further fine-tuning to work with new data, and therefore proves its usefulness in real-time Earth surface prediction tasks that are aimed at fast response to and mitigation for upcoming floods on a tight time schedule.

Effect of Bearing Direction and Mounting Techniques on Cross-Laminated Timber Elements in the Field

Vibration reduction index (Kij) measurements in the field have some challenges compared to laboratory measurements. Firstly, the measurement requires access to a construction site during the short time span when the cross-laminated timber (CLT) elements are apparent. Secondly, building contractors are often on a tight time schedule. Therefore, it is important to find a solution that minimizes the measurement time on site. Moreover, Kij measurements in the field include several types of junctions with different bearing directions which may be of importance. This paper aims to evaluate two different mounting techniques with accelerometers on CLT elements and to discuss how the bearing direction could affect the vibration level difference of junctions. Measurement data indicates few deviations between mounting techniques with bee wax or double-sided adhesive tape when accelerometers are attached on CLT elements. Furthermore, field measurements indicate that the vibration level will decrease with an increased number of lamellas over the same CLT element. Double-sided adhesive tape is an adequate substitute for bee wax in the field for mounting accelerometers on CLT elements, with some limitations for high frequencies. Measurement data concludes that the bearing direction of CLT elements can influence the vibration reduction index of a junction.

Double the Trouble?: An Investigation of How Social Stressors and Time Pressure Simultaneously and Interdependently Predict Sleep Quality in Social Workers

PurposeSocial service employees often fulfill their mandate under tight time schedules, and deal with social stressors. This can result in significant health impairments. By means of one cross-sectional and two intensive longitudinal studies, the present paper aimed to understand how time pressure and social stressors might impact sleep quality. It was also tested whether social stressors amplified the negative association between time pressure and sleep impairments in social workers.MethodsStudy 1 was a cross-sectional questionnaire study on 52 social service employees, while study 2 included a 7-day diary study design (N = 62 social workers) with up to 138 daily measurements. Study 3 applied a 2-week diary and actigraphy assessment, involving a complete social service unit sample (N = 9).ResultsConcerning the moderating role of social stressors, study 1 found social stressors to amplify the effects of time pressure on sleep latency. Multilevel regression analyses of studies 2 and 3 revealed daily time pressure to be a significant predictor of sleep fragmentation the upcoming night. Study 3 further uncovered daily social stressors to positively predicted sleep fragmentation and negatively sleep duration. Study 2 again showed the amplifying interaction effect between daily social stressors and time pressure on sleep fragmentation, but study 3 did not show that interaction.ConclusionThe findings show how job stressors might disturb the sleep quality of social workers also with amplifying risk. Accordingly, social work needs work design prevention efforts that consider the complex inter-play between occupational stressors, as only then recovery processes can be protected.

Experiences with the routine use of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale from health visitors’ and midwives’ perspectives – An exploratory qualitative study

BackgroundThe Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale has been practiced as a routine screening for postnatal depression at a municipal health care centre for more than ten years. ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to examine how health visitors and midwives perceive and practice this routine screening. Study designWe chose an exploratory qualitative approach, with analysis of data from focus group interviews. MethodsTen health visitors and two midwives participated in two focus group interviews by sharing their thoughts and reflections. The analysis was performed in collaboration with all authors according to thematic network analysis. FindingsThe Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale is well accepted as a screening tool. In addition to giving health visitors and midwives information about mothers who need special attention concerning mental health challenges, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale is a tool for talking about problems related to early motherhood. A trusting relationship is a prerequisite for these conversations. The health visitors seldom use the word ‘depression’ in contact with the individual mother. They sometimes lose opportunities to identify mothers in need of help because of a tight time schedule and social and cultural factors. Collaboration on a daily basis with colleagues and family therapists, and monthly guidance from mental health professionals are necessary to secure professional quality and confidence. ConclusionThe Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale is a useful screening tool, but there are social and cultural challenges, and the available time during screening consultations is often too short. Collaboration with and guidance from other professionals are necessary.

Critique of “Planetary Normal Mode Computation: Parallel Algorithms, Performance, and Reproducibility” by SCC Team From University of Warsaw

The Supercomputing conference holds a student cluster competition - A competition that aims to introduce undergraduate students to the world of High Performance Computing. One of the tasks at the SC19 conference was to reproduce the scaling results obtained in the article titled Computing Planetary Interior Normal Modes with a Highly Parallel Polynomial Filtering Eigensolver by Jia Shi et al. They introduced a new approach to the problem of calculating planetary normal modes. The developed method is a highly parallel algorithm that approximates the results via the mixed finite element method on unstructured tetrahedral meshes. The cluster used consisted of five 40-core Intel Xeon Cascade Lake nodes, equipped with 384 GB of RAM each. The original study was demonstrated on Stampede2 system on partitions ranging from 2 to 256 nodes with 48-core Intel Xeon Skylake and 192 GB of RAM each. Our cluster was equipped with Infiniband interconnect while Stampede2 used Intel Omni-Path network. We decided to work with HPC-X MPI library in place of Intel MPI used the reference study. The design - sizes and schedule - of experimental runs was the most challenging part of our study. We run both strong and weak scalability experiments in a one set of runs in order to fit in limited computing capacity and very tight time schedule. Due to limitations of our hardware, we had to split the weak scaling study into two separate smaller studies. We didn't manage to reproduce the exact results, however, we achieved similar scalability trend.

Woodsmith project – Construction of a 37 km long mineral transport system for the world's largest Polyhalite resource

AbstractRapidly increasing and urbanized world populations require the use of fertiliser for more efficient food production. Polyhalite provides this by sustainable and low carbon means. The world's largest known high‐grade Polyhalite deposit is located under the North York Moors National Park in the north‐east of England at a depth of about 1,550 m. In order to protect the national park, the mineral is processed outside the park on the coast near Wilton, Teesside. The mineral is transported there on a conveyor belt running in a 37 km long tunnel between the Woodsmith mine and the portal in Wilton. Strabag was awarded with the design and construction of the 37 km long tunnel, including the mineral transport system. The total contract value amounts to several hundred million Euros with a 100 % share for Strabag. The biggest challenges for this very long tunnel drive are especially the logistics. High safety standards and a tight time schedule, funding issues and contractual changes have resulted in additional challenges. Close cooperation with the Client's team on site has been key for achieving best results for the project.

Troubleshooting and Customized Engineering at the Limit

State-of-the-art design know how combined with specific process experience allows to design column performance and capacity more and more to the limit. This is achieved by reduction of safety margins and the use of customized column internals. On the other hand however, there is a trend towards higher inaccuracies of column shells and dimensions of column attachments (“out-of-tolerance”) as well as lower qualified installation workforce. The trade-off between invest and quality is often dominated by short-term economic considerations. The resulting problems then have to be solved during installation and typically in an extremely tight time-schedule.This paper presents different field experiences that RVT-PE encountered in this context and explains the solutions that were developed.In this example, high support ring tolerances - that were only detected after the trays were installed – led to unacceptably high inclination of many trays in a column. The standard way of repairing uneven trays is very time and cost consuming, due to the fact that the trays have to be partially or fully disassembled. RVT-PE has designed a new, time and money saving solution, with which the sagging of trays is rectified and the unevenness of support ring is corrected.In column test runs of a trough type liquid distributor, a client detected extreme splashing at the inlet and in consequence poor distribution quality. The reason was a too small inlet nozzle and therefore very high liquid velocities. As changing the nozzle size wasn’t feasible, the distribution system had to be optimized to eliminate the negative effects of the high inlet velocity. Additionally the optimized distribution system had to fit to the constricted area in the column.RVT developed a novel liquid distributor for a vacuum column for crude oil distillation. This distributor combines the insensitivity against coking of a spray nozzle distributor with the low liquid entrainment generation of a line distributor.

Use of Analyst-Generated Stakeholder Preference Profiles in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis — Experiences from an Urban Planning Case

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a generic term for approaches supporting the systematic evaluation of alternatives in problems involving multiple criteria and stakeholders. One of the most challenging tasks is to gather preference information from stakeholders in a way that both reflects their true opinions and meets the theoretical requirements of the applied MCDA approach. Various techniques have been used in practice, including interviews and decision conferences. In this paper, we present a new cost-efficient approach in which an analyst generates weight profiles for various stakeholder groups. That is, instead of personally asking specific trade-off questions from the stakeholders, weight profiles are developed on the basis of more general preference information collected from the stakeholders. The potential advantages of this approach are: (i) the collection of the preferences using surveys is less laborious than personal interviews or decision conferences and (ii) the risk of cognitive biases in the weight elicitation can be reduced, because the most challenging task of MCDA — assigning weights to the criteria — is left to the analyst, who should be aware of typical biases and how to avoid them. We developed and tested the approach in a contested public decision-making situation related to the development of a new residential area. We utilised the data gathered from the participants of the workshops (21) as well as the data from a web survey including 177 responds via a randomly sampled closed survey, in addition to 484 responds via an open survey. Four preference profiles each having specific weight distributions to criteria were developed, using a multi-stage procedure. Four development alternatives were compared as based on the developed preference profiles. We were able to realise the MCDA process within a very tight time schedule, create plausible preference profiles and summarise each alternative’s pros and cons from different perspectives. However, we also identified several issues which have to be paid more attention in future cases or require further research.

Knowledge sharing viewed through a pragmatist lens: the case of management consultancy

We explore knowledge sharing in light of a pragmatist understanding of organizational learning. This takes us beyond knowledge as cognition and into an encompassing understanding of what it means to share knowledge. We draw upon a case study on knowledge sharing amongst management consultants, and transcend the idea that knowledge sharing is a matter of either codification or personalization. We do so through an understanding of learning that begins in the embodied experiences of work, and in which inquiry into uncertainties is the pathway to learning and knowing. This also means that we widen the issue of knowledge sharing beyond participation in practice, because we include an explicit learning aspect on participation. In the concrete case of management consultancy, some of the impeding issues were working alone, tight time schedules and insufficient knowledge sharing systems while some of the facilitating issues included social gatherings, play and working together on projects.

The influence of wind selectivity on migratory behavioral strategies

When preferred outcomes to a decision are unavailable, animals must decide when to settle. Migrating birds that are too picky about which winds to use may never reach their goal, but birds that are not picky enough may be blown off-course. By modeling North American migrants, we determined that birds on a tight time-schedule should be less picky, although pickier birds expend less energy while migrating more slowly. Our values match field calculations from Europe.

Managing the tensions between exploration and exploitation in large construction projects

PurposePrior studies highlight the importance of building ambidextrous capabilities to achieve both exploitation of current knowledge and technologies to make profits today, and exploration of new knowledge and technologies to adapt to and prepare for tomorrow’s demands. In spite of its theoretical and practical importance, research on organizational ambidexterity in project-based organizations is scarce. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to study how ambidexterity may be managed and how exploration and exploitation may be achieved in construction projects. The research identifies some drivers and barriers to exploration and exploitation and also sheds light on how various management approaches interact and affect exploration and exploitation activities.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical material is drawn from 40 semi-structured interviews with managers representing the client, the contractor and the designer involved in each of the seven large construction projects in the sample.FindingsIn contrast to prior literature in high-tech industries where exploitation focuses on continuous development, exploitation in construction projects often involves adopting conventional methods and solutions based on existing knowledge without any development efforts at all. This may enhance short-term efficiency and lower risk at the project level but increase risk at the firm level. Tight time schedules hinder both radical innovations and incremental developments, and the findings also reveal that to invest in efforts on explorative solutions, it must be possible to exploit the solutions in the same project.Research limitations/implicationsIn this empirical context, the traditional structural and sequential ambidexterity solutions are not sufficient. In construction projects, contextual ambidexterity solutions in which key project actors collaborate in developing systemic innovations and fine-tuning solutions across projects are more effective.Practical implicationsSufficient project size and/or long-term contracts over a series of projects enhance both investments in explorative activities and exploitation through continuous developments from project to project. In design–bid–build contracts, the client and consultant often miss opportunities to explore new technical solutions that rely on contractor competencies. Early procurement of contractors (e.g. in collaborative design–build contracts) thereby enables the achievement of both exploration and exploitation.Originality/valueThis study provides important input to the authors’ understanding of how exploration and exploitation may be managed in project-based industries, which has been scarcely studied in previous ambidexterity literature.

Theory for processing data on the Web

Abstract The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops a wide range of standards for data processing on the Web. Prominent examples are RDF, SPARQL, XML, XPath, XQuery, and XSLT. Since these standards are widely used, they bring many interesting challenges for researchers. During the development of these standards, the W3C often works under a rather tight time schedule and does not always have all the cards on the table when design decisions need to be made. This is a situation in which research and practice can greatly benefit from each other. The W3C continuously releases drafts of the standards which researchers can investigate. Researchers can inform the W3C of their results and, conversely, the W3C can give the opportunity to immediately incorporate research results into practice.

PENGENDALIAN KOMPUTER JARAK JAUH DENGAN MEMANFAATKAN JARINGAN INTERNET BERBASIS PERANGKAT LUNAK

The phenomenon of a big city in Indonesia such as Jakarta in particular, with a wide range of business sense is always tied and pursued by a tight time schedule and make everything should be in good management, on the one hand there is a computer application program disorder / damage and should be fixed at that moment while the place (office, home) no one will understand it as the venue hire a consultant for computer maintenance. The condition of the road with busy traffic congestion and have to throw at least the time should be used appropriately. Remote computer control is one solution, with this remote computer control between technicians and the user does not need to be met, by simply calling a computer consultant / technician then connect the computer to the intenet, then in a matter of hours or minutes, the user's application program has been healthy come back This remote computer control for businesses has several advantages, which are able to save time and also save on the budget so as to increase the productivity of existing. Unfortunately, this method on the days are still very dependent on the feasibility and reliability of the network infrastructure because it is highly influential on access interconnection between two (2) The corresponding computer

Introduction to special issue on high performance computing

This special issue of Springer Computing journal provides a forum for presenting advances of current research and development in different aspects of high performance computing. With the rapid growth in computing and communications technology, the past decadehaswitnessed aproliferationof powerful parallel anddistributed systems and an ever-increasing demand for practice of high performance computing,which hasmoved into the mainstream of computing and has become a key technology in determining future research and development activities in many academic and industrial branches, especially when the solution of large and complex problems must cope with very tight timing schedules. This special issue aims to present and discuss advances of current research and development in many aspects of high performance computing. This special issue contains papers selected from a set of invited papers presented at the 14th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC-2012) or the associated workshops, held in Liverpool, UK, June 26–28, 2012. The objective of HPCC 2012 was to provide a forum for scientists and engineers in academia and industry to exchange and discuss their experiences, new ideas, research results, and applications about all aspects of high performance

Community Participation and the Enhancement of the Roman Thermae of St Thomas, Mesolongi

This paper examines the process of enhancing an archaeological site and rendering it accessible to the wider public within a very tight time schedule, and will contemplate the role of the local community in this process. Focusing on the case study of the Roman Thermae of St Thomas (Agios Thomas) near Mesolongi, Western Greece, the various challenges and problems encountered during the excavation, partial restoration, and enhancement of the site (funded by the INTERREG II cross-border program of the 2nd Community Support Framework) will be addressed. Issues of community participation will be highlighted through the crucial involvement of the local people in the project and with a reflective outlook on the way heritage management is operating in Greece.

R-AIMS: a reactive multi-agent system-based incident/emergency management system

Emergency management is one of the most important areas where the opportunities of new techniques and technologies should be used. Emergency management is a special case of management where involved people have to act decisively within tight time schedules with often incomplete information. Information flow in emergency cases is as many as in usual situations, generally irregular and lacks in reliability. It is very difficult for decision makers who are under stress to take right decisions under these circumstances. Intelligent agent-based systems decision support systems are capable to work in these unstable, dynamic environments where parts of the system interact with themselves and their environment. The goal of this paper is to present a complex adaptive system approach to emergency management decision support systems via an agent-based application. This application called as R-AIMS is a novel system for intelligent decision support systems in emergency management based on a reactive agent architecture.

Vapor–Liquid Equilibrium, Excess Molar Enthalpies, and Excess Molar Volumes of Binary Mixtures Containing Methyl Isobutyl Ketone (MIBK) and 2-Butanol, tert-Pentanol, or 2-Ethyl-1-hexanol

Phase equilibrium and calorimetric measurements provide complementary data that are vital for process models. The combined use of vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) data and excess enthalpies (HE) makes the thermodynamic model more reliable in extrapolation outside the conditions of the measurement. This is important during the tight time schedule of process development. In this work, phase equilibrium and excess enthalpies of binary mixtures were measured by using three apparatuses. Two types of VLE runs were conducted by using a circulation still of the Yerazunis-type and by using Agilent headspace sampler with a gas chromatograph (HS-GC). A SETARAM C80 calorimeter equipped with a flow mixing cells was taken into use for excess enthalpy measurements. New data of phase equilibrium, excess molar enthalpy, and excess molar volume were obtained for industrially relevant binary mixtures of methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) with alcohols (2-butanol, tert-pentanol, 2-ethyl-1-hexanol). Excess enthalpy data at 298.15 K are well in line with equilibrium data obtained in the range of (294 to 368) K. Azeotropic behavior was observed in the MIBK + tert-pentanol system. The experimental data were used for the optimization of Wilson and Redlich–Kister equation parameters.

Managing the Everyday Health Puzzle in Swedish Families With Children

In this article, issues of children, food, and health are discussed with the help of the concept of a “health puzzle,” which is defined as the many pieces of family life that need to be put together to reach the goal of a healthy family lifestyle. The data derives from a qualitative study, where parents and children in twelve Swedish families were interviewed at three occasions. The aim was to find out how the healthy life of the family is defined, created, and sustained. The healthy family showed to be composed of different practices and drew on values of bodily, emotional, and social well-being. The dilemmas mentioned concerned how to serve “proper food” and have “proper meals,” and making this fit into a tight time schedule. Solutions to the dilemmas were, for example, to prioritize spending time together; to promote healthy eating by having a weekly menu or a fruit bowl available; and to mark the contrast between weekdays and weekends with the help of “Cosy Friday,” “Saturday Sweets,” and an elaborate weekend dinner. Depending on the family economy, working hours, and the number of children's leisure activities, the solutions were mainly dictated by either money or time.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Special Section on ISIP 2011

This special section comprises of nine selected papers from the fourth International Symposium on Intelligent Information Technology and Security Informatics (ISIP 2011). The conference received 310 paper submissions from 11 countries and regions, of which 157 papers were selected for presentation after a rigorous review process. From these 157 research papers, through two rounds of reviewing, the guest editors selected nine as the best papers on the Multimedia track of the Conference. The candidates of the Special Issue are all the authors, whose papers have been accepted and presented at the ISIP 2011, with the contents not been published elsewhere before. The ISIP 2011 was co-sponsored by Henan Polytechnic University, China; Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, Russia; Feng Chia University, Taiwan; Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, China;Fudan University, China; South China University of Technology, China; Nanchang Hang Kong University, China; Jiaxing University, China; Academy Publisher of Finland, Finland and took place on August 19-22, 2011, in Jiaozuo, China. “Speech Separation in the Vehicle Environment Based on FastICA Algorithm”, by Jindong Zhang, Guihe Qin and Ye Liu. In this paper, the FastICA algorithm in signal process and statistics was studied and used to separate the driver’s speech in the vehicle environment, and realizes the pretreatment in recognizing driver’s speech. “Semantic Analysis of Traffic Video Using Image Understanding”, by Jian Wu, Zhi-ming Cui, Heng-jun Yue, and Guang-ming Zhang. This paper introduces the methods of image understanding and proposes a video semantic analysis framework using scene analysis for recognizing some semantic events in the traffic video. “Research on Video Quality Assessment”, by Chunting Yang, Yang Liu and Jing Yu. In this paper, research has been focused on developing novel objective evaluation metrics which enable prediction of the perceived quality level. The temporal correlations of video frames and the visual interest feature are considered in this method. Meanwhile the metrics are capable of capturing spatial distortions in video sequences. “Tele-Immersive Interaction with Intelligent Virtual Agents Based on Real-Time 3D Modeling”, by Shujun Zhang and Wan Ching Ho. In this paper author explored the combination of real-time 3D modelling and HAI and proposed a prototype of mixed reality system for tele-immersion. Image-based real-time 3D modeling techniques offer essential ways to support tele-immersion and natural HAI. “The Research of Image Encryption Algorithm Based on Chaos Cellular Automata”, by Shuiping Zhang and Huijune Luo, In this paper, the Research puts forwards an image encryption algorithm based on chaos cellular automata , to take full use of the two-dimensional chaotic system's extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and the features with parallelism, complexity and randomness of two-dimensional reversible cellular automata, to make the encrypted key, encrypted image and original image much more have complexity, randomness and unpredictability. “Improved MFCC Feature Extraction Combining Symmetric ICA Algorithm for Robust Speech Recognition”, by Huan Zhao, Kai Zhao, He Liu and Fei Yu.This paper proposed using symmetric orthogonalization in ICA for projecting log Mel spectrum into a new feature space as a substitute in extracting speech features to solve the problem of cumulative error and unequal weights that deflation orthogonalization brings, so as to improve the robustness of speech recognition systems, and increase the efficiency of estimation at the same time. “A Watermarking Technique based on the Frequency Domain”, by Huang-Chi Cheni, Yu-Wen Chang and Rey-Chue Hwang. In this paper, a modified algorithm is presented to improve the defect of the JPEG quantification in order to reduce the bit error rate (BER) of the retrieved watermark. “Image Copy-Move Forgery Detecting Based on Local Invariant Feature”, Li Jing, and Chao Shao. This paper firstly analyzes and summarizes block matching technique, then introduces a copy-move forgery detecting method based on local invariant feature matching. “OWL-S based Service Composition of Three-dimensional Geometry Modeling”, by Jiangning Yu, Hongming Cai and Ailing Liu. This paper proposes an OWL-S framework for distributed CAD system based on the combination of semantic web service and CAD technology. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the authors for the efforts they put in the preparation of the manuscripts and for their valuable contributions. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to the program committee members for their help in selecting papers for this issue and especially the referees of the extended versions of the selected papers for their thorough reviews under a tight time schedule. Last, but not least, our thanks go to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Multimedia for the exceptional effort they did throughout this process. In closing, we sincerely hope that you will enjoy reading this special issue.