A PC-controlled microwave tomographic scanner for breast imaging

This article presents the design and development of a personal computer based controller for a microwave tomographic system for breast cancer detection. The system uses motorized, dual-polarized antennas and a custom-made GUI interface to control stepper motors, a wideband vector network analyzer (VNA) and to coordinate data acquisition and archival in a local MDSPlus database. Both copolar and cross-polar scattered field components can be measured directly. Experimental results are presented to validate the various functionalities of the scanner.     

Cross-Campus Collaboration to Produce Camtasia-Enhanced Lessons to Improve Distance Learning

This pilot study examines the use of Camtasia-enhanced lessons to supplement distance education provided to medical laboratory science students. More programs of study are available as distance learning opportunities, creating challenges to find better ways to present material. Librarians provided technical expertise necessary to produce a Camtasia video. This helped instructors prepare engaging lectures for phlebotomy to supplement the PowerPoint presentations and self-directed lessons provided in previous courses. Medical laboratory science faculty collaborated with library staff to produce videos that demonstrate proper phlebotomy technique using training personnel and faculty, whom the students eventually interact with in the clinical environment.     

Exploring multi-user interactions with dynamic NFC-displays

Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging technology for touch-based mobile interactions with single- and multi-tagged objects. Although the latter may allow for simultaneous and collaborative interactions, most prototypes were not designed for multiple users and were only evaluated with single-user interactions. In this paper, we investigate the design, usability and user experience of multi-user interactions on dynamic NFC-displays. These interactive surfaces use a grid of NFC-tags for the direct manipulation of projected application user interfaces. In two user studies with three prototypes for multi-user interaction, we evaluated the performance of dynamic NFC-displays, interactions among users and the interplay between mobile devices and large displays.     

Context Aware Terrain Visualization for Wayfinding and Navigation

To assist wayfinding and navigation, the display of maps and driving directions on mobile devices is nowadays commonplace. While existing system can naturally exploit GPS information to facilitate orientation, the inherently limited screen space is often perceived as a drawback compared to traditional street maps as it constrains the perception of contextual information. Moreover, occlusion issues add to this problem if the environment is shown from the popular egocentric perspective. In this paper we describe an interactive visualization system that addresses these problems by reallocating the available screen space. At the heart of our system are three novel visualization techniques: First, we propose a non‐standard perspective that allows to blend between the familiar pedestrian perspective and a standard map depiction with reduced occlusion. Second, we derive an efficient deformation technique that allows an interactive allocation of screen space to areas of interest like e.g. nearby touristic attractions. Finally, a path adaptive isometric perspective is proposed that reveals otherwise hidden facades in top‐down views. We describe efficient implementations of all techniques and exemplify our interactive system on real world urban models.     

从过程价值的角度出发对集成的客户方案进行定价

Integrating products and services to customized solutions can help firms to differentiate from their competitors. In practice, however, various companies fall short in extracting value from their customers. Therefore this paper focuses on pricing aspects as central means for value appropriation in the context of solutions. Following the resource-based view of the firm, we adopt a process-oriented perspective on pricing practices in order to identify crucial factors and activities. Based on 15 in-depth interviews with practitioners from various industries we derive six steps of a price management process for value appropriation in the context of solution selling and present critical activities and routines within each step.     

From IMS Management to SOA Based NGN Management

Although IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based Next Generation Networks (NGNs) are already emerging as the common session control platform for converging fixed, mobile and cable networks, harmonized solutions for the management of these converged platforms have still got to be developed. This document describes a hands-on approach to NGN Management. Started with IMS specific management systems, succeeding research had to take into account the importance of the management of NGN SDPs as well. This work shows that the hybrid nature of an NGN, where services can be delivered at the IMS layer, by SIP signaling mechanisms, as well as at the SDP, via Web Services, requires a harmonized management approach. Taking into account Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles and policy based model driven architectures, this work shows that a unification of service composition and service management already at the workflow creation level, bares significant benefits in terms of automation and harmonization. Following the SOA paradigm, the approach presented here does not differentiate between business process management (BPM) and management process management. Focusing on Telemanagement Forum’s enhanced Telecom Operations Map service fulfillment and service assurance operations, this document describes an New Generation Software and Services (NGOSS) based implementation of a unified Operation Support System (OSS) for NGNs that encompasses many problems of former stovepipe management solutions in terms of automation, flexibility and manageability.     

Versioning XML-based office documents

The ability to reliably merge independent updates of a document is a crucial prerequisite to efficient collaboration in office work. However, merge support for common office document standards like OpenDocument or OfficeOpenXML is still in its infancy. In this paper, we present a consistent versioning model for XML documents in general including merge support. This is achieved by using context-aware fingerprints that identify edit operations and allow for a conflict detection. We show how to extract tracked changes from office documents and map them on our delta model. Experimental results indicate that our fingerprinting technique is efficient and reliable.     

Interactive survival analysis with the OCDM system: From development to application

Medical data mining is currently actively pursued in computer science and statistical research but not in medical practice. The reasons therefore lie in the difficulties of handling and statistically analyzing medical data. We have developed a system that allows practitioners in the field to interactively analyze their data without assistance of statisticians or data mining experts. In the course of this paper we will introduce data mining of medical data and show how this can be achieved for survival data. We will demonstrate how to solve common problems of interactive survival analysis by presenting the Online Clinical Data Mining (OCDM) system. Thereby the main focus is on similarity based queries, a new method to select similar cases based on their covariables and the influence of these on their survival.     

Negotiating SLAs-An Approach for a Generic Negotiation Framework for WS-Agreement

The current Web Services Agreement specification draft proposes a simple request-response protocol for agreement creation only addressing bilateral offer exchanges. This paper proposes a framework augmenting this WS-Agreement to enable negotiations according to a variety of bilateral and multilateral negotiation protocols. The framework design is based on a thorough analysis of taxonomies for negotiations from the literature in order to allow for capturing a variety of different negotiation models within a single, WS-Agreement compatible, framework. In order to provide for the intended flexibility, the proposed protocol takes a two-stage approach: a meta-protocol is conducted among interested parties to agree on a common negotiation protocol first before the real negotiation is carried out in the second step due to the protocol established in the first step.