Coproducing spatial information: Exploring government approaches and motivations at the local level

Recent government initiatives like e-government and open government have led to broader adoption of geospatial tools including mapping platforms to access, use, and analyze open data. These advancements open channels for coproduction in the form of sharing information, change notifications, opinions, or requests to government, based on citizen observation and local knowledge. Though current government initiatives have substantial potentials for coproduction, the practical adoption and implementation of such practices vary reflecting the purposes, contexts, and motivations of those involved. This paper aims to understand how local governments are following different approaches to coproduce information with citizens and what motivates local governments in this process. We report findings based on interviews with 11 cities from the USA and Canada, which reveal four main approaches: the collection of new data, observation of changes, collection of opinions, and observation of preferences involving both explicit and implicit processes. Although these four approaches result from interactions between citizens and government, our findings also indicate a key role to be played by technology and partner organizations.

Light-Weight Cloud Detection Network for Optical Remote Sensing Images with Attention-Based DeeplabV3+ Architecture

Clouds in optical remote sensing images cause spectral information change or loss, that affects image analysis and application. Therefore, cloud detection is of great significance. However, there are some shortcomings in current methods, such as the insufficient extendibility due to using the information of multiple bands, the intense extendibility due to relying on some manually determined thresholds, and the limited accuracy, especially for thin clouds or complex scenes caused by low-level manual features. Combining the above shortcomings and the requirements for efficiency in practical applications, we propose a light-weight deep learning cloud detection network based on DeeplabV3+ architecture and channel attention module (CD-AttDLV3+), only using the most common red–green–blue and near-infrared bands. In the CD-AttDLV3+ architecture, an optimized backbone network-MobileNetV2 is used to reduce the number of parameters and calculations. Atrous spatial pyramid pooling effectively reduces the information loss caused by multiple down-samplings while extracting multi-scale features. CD-AttDLV3+ concatenates more low-level features than DeeplabV3+ to improve the cloud boundary quality. The channel attention module is introduced to strengthen the learning of important channels and improve the training efficiency. Moreover, the loss function is improved to alleviate the imbalance of samples. For the Landsat-8 Biome set, CD-AttDLV3+ achieves the highest accuracy in comparison with other methods, including Fmask, SVM, and SegNet, especially for distinguishing clouds from bright surfaces and detecting light-transmitting thin clouds. It can also perform well on other Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 images. Experimental results indicate that CD-AttDLV3+ is robust, with a high accuracy and extendibility.

Illness experience and coping styles of young and middle-aged patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss: a qualitative study

Background The incidence of Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL) is increasing and tends to occur at a young age. The patient’s disease experience during treatment is related to their physical and mental health. Effective coping styles such as proactively solving problems and asking for help will alleviate the patients’ psychological symptoms and improve their quality of life. Aims and objectives To explore the illness experience and coping styles of young and middle-aged patients with SSNHL (age: 18–64 years), clarify the relationship between the two, and understand the psychological state and needs of the patients. Methods The purposive and maximum difference sampling method was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with 23 young and middle-aged SSNHL patients. The interview data were analyzed by Colaizzi’s seven-step analysis. Results The illness experience of young and middle-aged SSNHL patients was complex, including symptoms during the onset of deafness and emotional experience before and after diagnosis. The coping styles of young and middle-aged SSNHL patients were active and diverse, including active acquisition of information, change in living habits, and seeking the care and attention of medical staff. Illness experience and coping style influence each other: good illness experience leads to active coping styles; active coping style results in good illness experience. Conclusions The illness experience of young and middle-aged SSNHL patients includes not only physical symptoms, but also changes in psychological and emotional reactions. Good illness experience can lead patients to adopt active coping style. Active and effective coping styles, such as positive acquisition of information, change in living habits and seeking care and help, can improve patients’ illness experience.

Strategies Applied in Translating Information Technology (IT) Terms in Manual Books: Iphone 12 Pro and Samsung S20 FE

This research focused on the translation of technological terms from English into Indonesian in the translation of the manual book of iPhone 12 Pro and Samsung S20 FE. Descriptive The descriptive-analytical study was employed in this research. Then Chesterman’s translation strategies were used to find out how Information Technology (IT) terms were translated from English into Indonesian. The research finds that four translation strategies are used to translate the manual book of the iPhone 12 Pro and Samsung S20 FE from English into Indonesian. From the total 60 data, the four strategies are loan (35 data), calque (11 data), unit shift (13 data), and the least used strategies are information change (1 data). It can be concluded that the most frequently used strategies are loan (35 data), while the least used strategies are information change (1 data).

11-Year Study of Fentanyl in Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) Casework

Prior to 2017, heroin and other prescription opioids were the most prevalent opioids implicated in driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) investigation cases and fentanyl was rarely included in the scope of toxicological analysis. Fentanyl has become the most frequently identified opioid in DUID cases with many suspected heroin cases turning out to be only fentanyl. A review of fentanyl positive DUID cases at NMS Labs was performed to provide prevalence information, change in concentration, patterns of combined drug use, indicators of impairment, and driving behavior in order to assist with toxicological interpretation of DUID scenarios involving fentanyl. Fentanyl positive DUID cases received between January 2010 and December 2020 were examined. Blood results were confirmed and quantitated for fentanyl, norfentanyl and acetylfentanyl using a liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS-MS) analysis with a limit of quantitation (LOQ) of 0.10, 0.20 and 0.10 ng/mL, respectively. Of 153,234 blood cases examined for DUID over 11 years, fentanyl confirmed positive in 6,779 (4.4%) cases. However, there were significant changes in positivity over time. Fentanyl percent positivity increased from 0.60% in 2010 to 12% in 2020. Of 5,976 confirmed fentanyl positive cases in 2018 through 2020, blood concentrations greater than 4.0 ng/mL were observed in 44% (2018), 55% (2019), and 59% (2020) of cases. Polypharmacy was common with 87% of blood samples confirming positive for fentanyl and at least one other compound. Stimulants was the most commonly identified drug class in cases where at least one additional drug class was present. This study illustrates the importance of including fentanyl in a routine blood DUID panel.

SAR Image Recording Strategy to Improve Characteristics

The low information consistency and serious interference caused by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging characteristics and target attributes affect the accuracy of SAR image information description, which reduces the performance of SAR image registration. In this work, the polar speeded up robust features (PSURF) descriptor is proposed for SAR image registration. In PSURF, according to the advantages of pole space in the relationship between pixels, a quantitative model of information change based on pole space is established to improve the integrity, consistency, and separability of image features. Firstly, the support region is transformed into polar coordinates. Then, the image gray level changes in the radial and angular directions are quantified with different scales. Finally, the PSURF descriptor based on the scale of keypoints is constructed covering the omnidirectional space.

Change of information by positive frequency-dependent selection in two very different models (laser-like and chirality of shell-coiling in the snail Partula suturalis)

Although according to the second law of thermodynamics the world tends toward maximum disorder, over millions of years evolution has given rise to an enormous variety of complex organisms. To explain this, one must assume that natural selection is a process of information acquisition. Since some years an information theory of selection exists that can quantify this change and thus helps to understand the apparent contradiction between the existence of biological complexity and the tendency toward disorder that generally prevails in nature. Here I apply this theory to examples of frequency-dependent selection (this means: in which phenotype frequency determines its fitness).The snail Partula suturalis gave an evolutionary and ecologically unique and hence very valuable example of this type of selection before it became extinct about thirty years ago on its native island. Spatially separated populations with left- and right-coiled shells occurred on Moorea, but also hybridization zones. Since both types of shells were the same except for chirality, the question is whether selection happened at all. The inheritance of this character is monogenic and in this respect simple, but is complicated by the fact that it is the maternal genotype, not the own, that determines the phenotype. This causes that for the calculation of the information change by selection not the genotype or phenotype frequencies are sufficient, but one must consider their combination. The simulation shows that frequency-dependent selection in P. suturalis indeed increased information.It has already been shown that selection can also be important outside animate nature, for example in the generation of laser light, which has extraordinary properties: it is monochromatic, monoaxial and monophasic. Phase selection is frequency(=density)-dependent and therefore of interest here. In selection theory the mean fitness ω is of special significance. In a laser-like model, in modeling phase selection, we find that ω=1+A2, where A2 is the the light intensity or the square of the amplitude, respectively. During selection, ω increases and, in parallel, since selection is a process of information acquisition, so does the information. Because of the connection between ω and A2 this also means for the laser-like model that – assuming a constant number of photons – a larger amplitude always means more information (less entropy).

The piety of optimization: The rhetoric of health awareness in ParticipACTION and Fitbit

This article uses the tools of rhetorical study to investigate how health awareness, as both a concept and a set of beliefs that reinforce ideals of health, permeates everyday life and affects ways of being. I explore how health awareness is communicated through both public health and commercial marketing campaigns, and argue that as the sources of information change, so too do the ideas of health that we are asked to be aware of. Through an analysis of the websites of ParticipACTION, a publicly funded health and fitness campaign, and Fitbit, a corporation that produces wearable technologies, I show that these organizations provide their audiences with instructions for self-conduct in the pursuit of health through the piety that time is a resource to be managed. Through this piety, ParticipACTION and Fitbit’s websites each reify an altar of health where health is represented as a socially and physically fitter (optimized) self, always just out of reach and attainable in the future. I conclude with a call for critical descriptions of health awareness to move beyond the explanatory power of neoliberalization of health, and turn to the work of Rachel Sanders, Annmarie Mol, and Donna Haraway as possible avenues for resisting optimization.

The effect of the standing angle on reducing fatigue among prolonged standing workers

BACKGROUND: Many occupations require workers to stand for prolonged periods, which can cause discomfort, pain and even injures. Some supermarkets in life provide a foot pad for checkout staff to let them stand on it at work, thereby reducing standing fatigue caused by standing for a long time. The inclined platform is the same as the foot pad mentioned above. That is, the staff stepped on it and relieved standing fatigue to a certain extent. OBJECTIVE: The study aims to analyze how the standing angle affects fatigue among prolonged standing workers and tries to find an inclined platform with a specific angle to reduce standing fatigue. METHODS: This experiment studied fatigue of the inclined platforms with different angles on prolonged standing workers, eight participants were selected to participate in the test. The plantar pressures and sEMG (Surface Electromyography) were used to collect the physiological information change of prolonged standing participants in the lower limb and waist. The visual analogue scale was used as a subjective method to measure the psychological fatigue. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The study highlights the relationship between standing angle and lower limb fatigue. The inclination of the standing platform has different effects on the participants under different time conditions. When participants stand on inclined platforms at 0°, 5° and 10°, the iEMG (Integrated Electromyography) values of the gastrointestinal muscle were not significantly different until the third sampling point (40 minutes). After that self-regulation of lower limb muscles is better when standing on an inclined platform between 5° and 10°, it has a certain effect on alleviating lower limb fatigue. This knowledge is crucial for the design of the inclined working platforms fitting the needs of prolonged standing workers.

A comparative study of information change in translation of nonfiction literature

The present paper compares translations from Russian into Finnish, Swedish, and English of a work of political non-fiction, Всякремлевскаярать: КраткаяисториясовременнойРоссии(lit. All the Kremlin men: A short history of contemporary Russia) by Mikhail Zygar (2016a) and investigates the use of information change as a translation strategy. Information change covers addition and omission of non-inferable content, used either separately or sequentially (i.e. addition following omission resulting in substitution). De Metsenaere’s and Vandepitte’s (2017) notions of addition and omission are applied. The study shows that the translations into Finnish and Swedish exhibit similarly infrequent use of information changing strategies while the English translation appears more liberal in their use. Possible reasons for the additions, omissions, substitutions, and their effects are discussed, as is the potential impact of the English translations on translation norms