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In this paper, I present contextualizing factors, dimensions, and key markers of algorithm literacies, paying attention to the context of parenting and parenthood amidst datafication. Analyzing data from "think-aloud" interviews with 30 parents of children aged between 0 and 18, across England, I draw upon media and digital literacies scholarship to focus, first, in this paper, on the competencies, conversations, and events which contextualize parents' literacies with algorithmic interfaces. Next, I draw out four dimensions of parents' algorithm literacies including algorithm awareness, technical competencies, critical capacities, and championing their and their children's best interests, identifying practical markers for each dimension. I reflect on the broader implications of these for parenting and parenthood in datafied societies, and note that algorithm literacies are, forever, a work in progress, in fluidity and flux across the diverse courses of parenting journeys, deeply contextualized in the resources and restraints that parents encounter in their daily lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of a screening test for looked after children in order to identify undetected psychiatric disorders. Design/methodology/approach – Children aged four to 16 in care in one London Borough for four consecutive months were eligible for screening. Carers, teachers and children aged over 11 were asked to complete the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Where the SDQ suggested that a psychiatric disorder was "possible" or "probable", participants were then invited to complete the Developmental and Well-Being Assessment, which was rated by a senior psychiatrist to generate diagnoses if appropriate. Findings – The paper finds that over one year, 23 children were eligible for screening. A total of 18 underwent the initial stage of screening, and seven were subsequently diagnosed with a formal psychiatric disorder. Originality/value – This study illustrates the unmet need for mental health interventions among children looked after by the local authority and confirms the feasibility of a simple screening protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large-scale multiple surveillance system for infectious disease outbreaks has been in operation in England and Wales since the early 1990s. Changes to the statistical algorithm at the heart of the system were proposed and the purpose of this paper is to compare two new algorithms with the original algorithm. Test data to evaluate performance are created from weekly counts of the number of cases of each of more than 2000 diseases over a twenty-year period. The time series of each disease is separated into one series giving the baseline (background) disease incidence and a second series giving disease outbreaks. One series is shifted forward by twelve months and the two are then recombined, giving a realistic series in which it is known where outbreaks have been added. The metrics used to evaluate performance include a scoring rule that appropriately balances sensitivity against specificity and is sensitive to variation in probabilities near 1. In the context of disease surveillance, a scoring rule can be adapted to reflect the size of outbreaks and this was done. Results indicate that the two new algorithms are comparable to each other and better than the algorithm they were designed to replace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automated zone-design methods are increasingly being used to create zoning systems for a range of purposes, such as the release of census statistics or the investigation of neighbourhood effects on health, Inevitably, the characteristics originally underpinning the design of a zoning system (eg, population size or homogeneity of the built environment) change through time. Rather than designing a completely new system every time substantive change occurs, or retaining an existing system which will become increasingly unfit for purpose, an alternative is to modify the existing system such that zones which still meet the design criteria are retained, but those which are no longer fit for purpose are split or merged. This paper defines the first generic methodology for the automated maintenance of existing zoning systems. Using bespoke, publicly available, software (AZTo0I), the methodology is employed to modify the 2001 Census output geographies within six local authority districts in England and Wales in order to make them suitable for the release of contemporary population-related data. Automated maintenance of an existing system is found to be a more iterative and constrained problem than designing a completely new system; design constraints frequently have to be relaxed and manual intervention is occasionally required. Nonetheless, existing zone-design techniques can be successfully adapted and implemented to automatically maintain an existing system. The findings of this paper are of direct relevance both to the Office for National Statistics in their design of the 2011 Census output geographies for England and Wales and to any other countries or organisations seeking to maintain an existing zoning system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer-Aided Assessments (CAAs) have been used increasingly at Brunel University for over 10 years to test students' mathematical abilities. Recently, we have focussed on providing very rich feedback to the students; given the work involved in designing and coding such feedback, it is important to study the impact of the interaction between students and feedback. To make feedback more focussed, examination scripts have been analysed to identify common student errors and misconceptions. These have then been used to code distracters in multiple-choice and responsive numerical input-type questions. Since random parameters are used in all questions developed, distracters have to be coded as algebraic or algorithmic mal-rules. This paper reports on the methodology used to identify students' errors and misconceptions and how the evidence collected was used to code the distracters. The paper also provides hard evidence that real learning has taken place while students have interacted with the CAAs. Statistical analyses of exam performance over eight years indicate that students are able to improve performance in subsequent formative and summative assessments provided that they have truly engaged with the CAA, especially by spending time studying the feedback provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012, The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) developed a National Early Warning Score (NEWS) as a standardised approach to assessment and response to critical illness. This paper reports the authors’ experiences whilst implementing NEWS across one large inner London NHS Trust. NEWS was introduced to all adult areas between November 2013 and January 2014. All healthcare staff completed the RCP’s online e-learning module and received scenario-based teaching. One of the challenges was the Trust’s geographical location over three sites. Comparisons across all sites will be made over time as data become available. Introducing NEWS has been a challenging but exciting initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Airborne Lidar (Light detection and ranging) is an efficient tool for the generation of Digital Terrain Models (DTMs). Although many studies have been conducted in generating DTMs using Lidar data, it is still a challenging research area. The difficulty in filtering large buildings as well as a diversity of urban features makes the design of urban DTM generating methods an ongoing priority. This research adopted an upward-fusion methodology to generate urban DTMs using airborne Lidar data. Firstly, several preliminary DTMs of different resolutions were obtained using a local minimum method. Next, upward fusion was conducted between these DTMs. This process began with the DTM of the largest grid size, which was treated as a trend surface. A finer DTM was compared with this large scale DTM. By setting appropriate thresholds, a new DTM was achieved by selecting qualified elevation values from the finer DTM and retaining the value of the trend surface when the value from the finer DTM was beyond the threshold. This process continued iteratively until all preliminary DTMs had been included in the upward fusion and a refined DTM of high resolution was achieved. To further reduce possible errors in the resulting DTM, an extended local minimum method was proposed for filtering outliers and generating preliminary DTMs. A case study was carried out in the city of Cambridge, which represents an urban landscape with a variety of building forms, street patterns and vegetation structures. The time efficiency, results of the accuracy assessments and comparison with leading software proved the success of the case study and indicated that upward-fusion was an effective method for the generation of urban DTMs with airborne Lidar data and could improve the accuracy of other DTM generating algorithms. This paper also proposed possible approaches for further improvements on this methodology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: Establishing and sustaining enteral feeding in critically ill children is challenging and has met with many problems. Aims and objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate (a) how actual calorie intake compared with estimated caloric requirements and (b) whether feeding guideline adherence resulted in improved nutritional intake. Design and methods: A prospective observational study was undertaken over 1 month in a tertiary referral paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in the northwest of England. Results: Forty-seven children were studied, with a wide range of diagnoses in a 1-month period. Only 47% of the children had enteral feeds started within our 6 h post-admission target. Over half (55%) of the children received less than half of their estimated calorie requirements, but if feeding guidelines were followed, this resulted in a significantly higher ( p = 0·004) delivery of the child's estimated requirements. Conclusions: This study found that many children are not receiving adequate nutrition in PICU and that the use of feeding guidelines significantly improves calorie delivery in PICU patients. Relevance to clinical practice: This paper highlights the dearth of research related to enteral feeding in critically ill children. We found that the use of feeding guidelines improved calorie delivery and so units should be encouraged to develop their own guidelines based on the best evidence available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates occupant behaviour of window-use in night-time naturally ventilated offices on the basis of a pilot field study, conducted during the summers of 2006 and 2007 in Cambridge, UK, and then demonstrates the effects of employing night-time ventilation on indoor thermal conditions using predictive models of occupant window-use. A longitudinal field study shows that occupants make good use of night-time natural ventilation strategies when provided with openings that allow secure ventilation, and that there is a noticeable time of day effect in window-use patterns (i.e. increased probability of action on arrival and departure). We develop logistic models of window-use for night-time naturally ventilated offices, which are subsequently applied to a behaviour algorithm, including Markov chains and Monte Carlo methods. The simulations using the behaviour algorithm demonstrate a good agreement with the observational data of window-use, and reveal how building design and occupant behaviour collectively affect the thermal performance of offices. They illustrate that the provision of secure ventilation leads to more frequent use of the window, and thus contributes significantly to the achievement of a comfortable indoor environment during the daytime occupied period. For example, the maximum temperature for a night-time ventilated office is found to be 3°C below the predicted value for a daytime-only ventilated office. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The recent development of satellite meteorology has allowed us to estimate spatially and frequently number of basic meteorological parameters. This paper presents the proposed methodology for retrieving visibility values based on the application of the darkest pixel atmospheric correction algorithm on satellite image data. The method is based on the use of the radiative transfer calculations followed by some key assumptions. Landsat-5 TM band 1 images (0.45–0.52μm) have been used to determine the visibility value for each image date. A direct comparison between the measured visibility data from the airport meteorological stations with the determined visibility data was performed showing high correlation values. Indeed, by relating the determined visibility data with those measured on the Heathrow Airport station in the West London (UK), a correlation coefficient of r 2 =0.97 has been found with the observed significance for the regression model to be less than 0.05, for four multi-temporal images acquired on 1985 and 1986. The algorithm has been tested also to Landsat TM images of the Paphos Airport area in Cyprus with satisfactory agreement between the visibilities measured at the meteorological station and those found from the images. The algorithm presented may be useful for assessing the atmospheric conditions of satellite images and also can assist the improvement and effectiveness of the available atmospheric correction algorithms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) GOLD is an extremely influential U.K. primary care dataset for epidemiological research having a number of published papers based on its data much bigger than any other U.K. primary care dataset. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) death data for England can be linked to GOLD at the patient level and are considered the gold standard on mortality. GOLD, which also holds death data, has been recently assessed against ONS linked dataset and the accuracy of its dates of death has been deemed sufficient for the majority of observational studies. However, there is a lack of guidance on how to manage the challenges existing when ONS mortality and GOLD datasets are linked, including linkage coverage period, linkage correctness likelihood, linkage regional limitations and data discrepancy.Objectives: Provide reconciling guidelines on how to make maximum and at the same time trustworthy use of mortality information coming from both GOLD and ONS linked datasets with the aim of improving the quality, reproducibility, transparency and comparison of clinical research.Method and Results: We have developed recommendations on how to manage mortality data coming from both GOLD and linked ONS, taking into account linkage coverage period, linkage correctness likelihood, linkage regional limitations and data discrepancies between these two datasets. We have also implemented these guidelines in an SQL algorithm for researchers to use.Conclusion: We have provided detailed guidelines on the reconciliation of mortality data between GOLD and ONS linked death datasets, taking into account both their strengths and limitations. The consistent application of these guidelines made practical by an SQL algorithm, has the potential to improve clinical research quality, reproducibility, transparency and comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the annual BINDT conference regarding radiography in Harrogate, England. Presentations of the automated digital and computed radiography theme; Use of defect recognition algorithms on digital images; Selection of the papers related to the topics discuss in the conference.