Who Pooped and How It Was Found

Author(s):  
Tricia Coakley

Tracking the sources of fecal pollution in Kentucky streams is an important task to allow for removal of the associated pollution. Modern molecular biology techniques, analyzing the DNA of fecal bacteria, provide cost effective methods and make fecal source tracking possible for municipalities and non-profit organizations. This is a story of the use of these methods by a collaboration of stakeholders to solve a real world fecal pollution problem in Lexington, Kentucky.

Author(s):  
Claudia Flores-Saviaga ◽  
Ricardo Granados ◽  
Liliana Savage ◽  
Lizbeth Escobedo ◽  
Saiph Savage

Crowdsourced content creation like articles or slogans can be powered by crowds of volunteers or workers from paid task markets. Volunteers often have expertise and are intrinsically motivated, but are a limited resource, and are not always reliably available. On the other hand, paid crowd workers are reliably available, can be guided to produce high-quality content, but cost money. How can these different populations of crowd workers be leveraged together to power cost-effective yet high-quality crowd-powered content-creation systems? To answer this question, we need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each. We conducted an online study where we hired paid crowd workers and recruited volunteers from social media to complete three content creation tasks for three real-world non-profit organizations that focus on empowering women. These tasks ranged in complexity from simply generating keywords or slogans to creating a draft biographical article. Our results show that paid crowds completed work and structured content following editorial guidelines more effectively. However, volunteer crowds provide content that is more original. Based on the findings, we suggest that crowd-powered content-creation systems could gain the best of both worlds by leveraging volunteers to scaffold the direction that original content should take; while having paid crowd workers structure content and prepare it for real world use.


Author(s):  
Hao Zhang ◽  
Liangxiao Jiang ◽  
Wenqiang Xu

Crowdsourcing services provide a fast, efficient, and cost-effective means of obtaining large labeled data for supervised learning. Ground truth inference, also called label integration, designs proper aggregation strategies to infer the unknown true label of each instance from the multiple noisy label set provided by ordinary crowd workers. However, to the best of our knowledge, nearly all existing label integration methods focus solely on the multiple noisy label set itself of the individual instance while totally ignoring the intercorrelation among multiple noisy label sets of different instances. To solve this problem, a multiple noisy label distribution propagation (MNLDP) method is proposed in this study. MNLDP first transforms the multiple noisy label set of each instance into its multiple noisy label distribution and then propagates its multiple noisy label distribution to its nearest neighbors. Consequently, each instance absorbs a fraction of the multiple noisy label distributions from its nearest neighbors and yet simultaneously maintains a fraction of its own original multiple noisy label distribution. Promising experimental results on simulated and real-world datasets validate the effectiveness of our proposed method.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne M Luescher ◽  
Julian Koch ◽  
Wendelin J Stark ◽  
Robert N Grass

Aerosolized particles play a significant role in human health and environmental risk management. The global importance of aerosol-related hazards, such as the circulation of pathogens and high levels of air pollutants, have led to a surging demand for suitable surrogate tracers to investigate the complex dynamics of airborne particles in real-world scenarios. In this study, we propose a novel approach using silica particles with encapsulated DNA (SPED) as a tracing agent for measuring aerosol distribution indoors. In a series of experiments with a portable setup, SPED were successfully aerosolized, re-captured and quantified using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Position-dependency and ventilation effects within a confined space could be shown in a quantitative fashion achieving detection limits below 0.1 ng particles per m3 of sampled air. In conclusion, SPED show promise for a flexible, cost-effective and low-impact characterization of aerosol dynamics in a wide range of settings.


2019 ◽  

Programs that encouraged investments in residential energy efficiency had limited returns in several impact evaluations in real-world settings. Relatively small impacts on energy savings coupled with low take-up meant that encouraging these investments through information campaigns and subsidies was not a cost-effective strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146808742110387
Author(s):  
Stylianos Doulgeris ◽  
Zisimos Toumasatos ◽  
Maria Vittoria Prati ◽  
Carlo Beatrice ◽  
Zissis Samaras

Vehicles’ powertrain electrification is one of the key measures adopted by manufacturers in order to develop low emissions vehicles and reduce the CO2 emissions from passenger cars. High complexity of electrified powertrains increases the demand of cost-effective tools that can be used during the design of such powertrain architectures. Objective of the study is the proposal of a series of real-world velocity profiles that can be used during virtual design. To that aim, using three state of the art plug-in hybrid vehicles, a combined experimental, and simulation approach is followed to derive generic real-world cycles that can be used for the evaluation of the overall energy efficiency of electrified powertrains. The vehicles were tested under standard real driving emissions routes, real-world routes with reversed order (compared to a standard real driving emissions route) of urban, rural, motorway, and routes with high slope variation. To enhance the experimental activities, additional virtual mission profiles simulated using vehicle simulation models. Outcome of the study consists of specific driving cycles, designed based on standard real-world route, and a methodology for real-world data analysis and evaluation, along with the results from the assessment of the impact of different operational parameters on the total electrified powertrain.


Stroke ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Baraban ◽  
Richard Nelson ◽  
Alexandra Lesko ◽  
Jennifer Majersik ◽  
Archit Bhatt ◽  
...  

Objective: An obstacle for community hospitals in joining a telestroke network is often the cost of implementation. Yet, previous analyses examining the cost and cost-effectiveness have only used estimates from the literature. Using real-world data from a Pacific Northwest telestroke network, we examined the cost-effectiveness of telestroke for spokes by level of financial responsibility for these costs and how this changes with patient stroke severity. Methods: We constructed a decision analytic model and parameterized it using patient-level clinical and financial data from the Providence Telestroke Network (PTN) pre and post telestroke implementation. Data included patients presenting at 17 spokes within 4.5 hours of symptom onset. Probability inputs included observed IV-tPA treatment rates, transfer status and hospital costs and reimbursements. Effectiveness, measured as quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and cost per patient were used to calculate incremental cost effectiveness ratios (ICERs). ICER’s of <$50,000-$120,000/QALY are considered cost-effective. Outcomes were generated overall and separately by admit NIHSS, defined as low (0-10), medium (11-20) and high (>20) and percentage of implementation costs paid by spokes (0%, 50%, 100%). Results: Data for 594 patients, 105 pre- and 489 post-implementation, were included. See Table 1. Conclusions: Our results support previous theoretic models showing good value, overall. However, costs and ICERs varied by stroke severity, with telestroke being most cost-effective for severe strokes. Telestroke was least cost effective if spokes paid for half or more of implementation costs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. S129
Author(s):  
F. Fiorentino ◽  
R. Ascenção ◽  
J. Costa ◽  
M. Gouveia ◽  
M. Borges

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