"It's an equation Jim, but not as we know it!"

Silver (2013) in “The Signal and the Noise” refers to Drake’s equation, which has fascinated me since my teens. It is a formula that provides a framework for predicting the number of intelligent extraterrestrial species in the galaxy. Due to the high number of parameters and uncertainties that make up Drake's equation, Silver describes how the extreme range of results depend on the initial ‘inputs’. Given the variables presented they are estimates. I made a connection to Drake's work through BBC BASIC programming:

'The Nursing Process'
'Computer-Aided Patient Assessment'
'Blood Groups'
'Shades of Grey'

As time went on the simplicity of 'The NP' gave way to DIM arrays, which can provide data structures, and DEF PROC and DEF FN with parameters. 

The evidence for the elements of Drake's equation has made great strides since the 1990s. Despite the remaining uncertainties, Silver notes that Drake's equation has provided a useful lens for astronomers, plus - philosophers and the lay-person to think about life, the universe and everything.

Is there an implicit theory – an equation – in Hodges’ model?

See also: BBC BASIC

Previously: 'Sagan' : 'SETI' ; 'math' : 'Publication list (2024)'

Nate Silver (2013). “The Signal and the Noise”, Notes 89, London: Penguin. p.488.

Title Ack. the original is often misattributed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE

Healthcare Evolution through AI and Digital twins - HEAD 2026

Dear colleagues,

We do hope this Call for Papers may be of your interest.
We do apologize if this CfP reaches you more than once.

Yours sincerely
HEAD Organizers

=========================================================

Healthcare Evolution through AI and Digital twins - HEAD 2026

18 - 21 May, 2026 - Sydney, Australia

https://www.head.icar.cnr.it/

- in conjunction with the 26th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid 2026) and in-cooperation with ACM SIGHPC

Submit your paper by using the link:

https://easychair.org/conferences/submission_new?a=35863199

=======================================================

MISSION:
------------

All over the world, the number of investments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for healthcare and wellbeing (eHealth) is rapidly increasing. GLOBE NEWSWIRE has predicted that the Global eHealth market is expected to reach $123.78 billion by 2030. This means that digital health is of considerable interest worldwide, as it has the potential to improve both the quality of services and users’ access to health information, while also saving time and reducing the workload and associated costs for health service providers in the long term.

In this context, an increasing interest is growing around eHealth and ICT technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Twins, Cloud computing, Edge and Fog computing, and Internet of Things (IoT),

which are at the basis of revolutionising healthcare by bringing innovative network applications and services. In fact, modern healthcare applications are becoming increasingly dependent on heterogeneous infrastructures, including IoT and edge medical devices, as well as High-Performance Computing (HPC) backends, to support the execution of AI-driven models and patient-specific Digital Twins.

The HEAD workshop would explore the open challenges and current issues surrounding the application of these technologies, while bridging the gap between healthcare innovation and the hardware and software systems that support scalable and reliable computing. HEAD aims to encourage interdisciplinary discussion about how technologies such as HPC, distributed systems and performance optimisation can facilitate the deployment of reliable and scalable Digital Twins for healthcare. The workshop will highlight the role of computing infrastructures as key enablers of future digital medicine by linking algorithmic advances with architectural and systems-level innovations.


TOPICS:
----------

■ AI Algorithms and Learning Frameworks for Healthcare
■ Modeling and Simulation Methodologies for Healthcare
■ Programming Techniques and Architectures for Healthcare
■ Data Management, Analytics, and Knowledge Extraction
■ ICT Infrastructure and Tools for Healthcare Digital Twins
■ Cloud Computing, Edge and Fog Computing for Healthcare
■ Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Wearable Devices for Healthcare
■ Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of ICT for Healthcare
■ Accelerator-based architectures (GPUs, NPUs, FPGAs and DPUs) for Healthcare
■ Parallel and Distributed Training and Multi-GPU/Multi-Node Execution for Healthcare Applications
■ Energy-Efficient, Sustainable, and Optimization-Oriented Computing for AI in Healthcare


IMPORTANT DATES:
--------------------------

• Submission deadline: February 01, 2026
• Notification of paper acceptance: February 28, 2026
• Submission of camera-ready papers: March 15, 2026
• Registration: March 15, 2026


PAPER SUBMISSION:
---------------------------

Manuscripts should describe original work and should be formatted according to the IEEE conference proceedings format. 

Papers will be submitted through the CCGrid 2026 submission system.

Submit your paper here:

https://easychair.org/conferences/submission_new?a=35863199

All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer-review process. Each paper will be reviewed by at least three members of the Technical Program Committee. Reviews will be double-blind.

Accepted papers will be published in the CCGrid 2026 workshop proceedings and will be submitted for inclusion in IEEE Xplore.


BEST PAPER AWARD:
---------------------------

A Best Paper Award certificate will be conferred on the author(s) of a paper presented at the workshop, selected by the Chairs based on scientific significance, originality, and technical quality, as evaluated by the Program Committee.

Please visit https://www.head.icar.cnr.it/  for more information and if you have any questions kindly get back to us by sending an email

Kind regards,
HEAD 2026 Organizers

My source: Dr. Giovanna Sannino

NURSING -:- INFOTECH - worlds apart? Software testing

Another draft from over a decade ago ... duly revisited and updated:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/793628/worldwide-developer-survey-most-used-languages/

Reading up on Ruby and Rails and attending Scotland on Rails, I've been struck by the emphasis on testing. Testing in this context is about reliable software and building this into the 'product' from the outset. A book on Rails gets criticized because it leaves the chapter on 'Testing' until the end (even if the authors had their reasons - as they explained).

This take on testing is sufficient if (of course) it is appropriate and it is applied (as per the manual) to the application concerned. There are other more formal methods that extend to writing a specification for code which entails the use of formal specification languages such as Zed (as encountered in BA(Hons.) studies. This arises in situations were software is being developed for safety-critical situations. Clearly, robotic surgery, nuclear energy, and keeping an aircraft in the sky, take-off and landing are mission-critical. In the latter case a company is still dealing with life threatening loss of life that can follow, should the software system fail or more covertly introduce an error.

Reading about Rails, there are specific tests and these are provided as a result of scaffolding, a process whereby the bones of a web application are created within the Rails framework: with tests.

Rails creates a test directory for you as soon as you create a Rails project using bin/rails new application_name. If you list the contents of this directory then you will see:

$ ls -F test
application_system_test_case.rb  controllers/                     helpers/                         mailers/                         system/                          fixtures/                        integration/                     models/                          test_helper.rb

Source: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html

Rails uses a popular convention to organise and integrate the elements of a web application that includes a database, and dynamic interface. The approach is known as:

Models, Views and Controllers - MVC

MVC underpins several programming languages and frameworks. As displayed above, the tests that Rails creates have specific names and you can quickly see where they come from and how they encompass Rails (an essential property of course).

Today, I still wonder [ what's new! 😉 ] what is the equivalent to MVC in nursing? Models seems to fit! Over the years at many IT events, you can't help but reflect on nursing and its 'API' - application programming interface. Worryingly, in humanistic terms there is an instrumental potential in Hodges' model. If Nursing on Rails was a thing, what would the tests look like? Identity would be a feature, to demonstrate person-centredness, safety in medication and other treatment procedures. Is there a way to demonstrate the integration of care, and for a patient - the extent of holistic bandwidth? Of course, nursing comprises just a part of a clinical information system. It must be in sync in accord with other disciplines, medical and pharmacy and other multidisciplinary team members and yet ensure that 'nursing is visible'.

Previously: API : 'Waste not - want not'

‘Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot’ by Lawrence Lek

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

	Carebot

Adnan, M.Z. Can robots have nervous breakdowns, Collecting, FTWeekend, 5-6 October 2024, p.7.

There is this thing - 'universal construction'

The problem of bugs in software is an ongoing problem across all IT industries. For application that are safety critical we are still reminded of the risk implications and consequences if bugs are software is not tested and bugs - errors identified and corrected.

Back in the 90s during BA(Joint Hons. Philosophy & Computing) studies, I was introduced to the formal specification language 'Z'. It was designed for definition, and modelling of computer software, working from specification to implementation, as per these images:

https://personalpages.bradley.edu/~young/CS592M120_OLD/handoutZed.pdf

https://personalpages.bradley.edu/~young/CS592M120_OLD/handoutZed.pdf

To be clear I've never worked as part of a software project and my 'tinkering' - Drupal, Pharo, online groups, hosting platform - reveals how the development stack and work processes have developed apace. The challenge is keeping up. Simultaneously, there is the sense of being on the bank of deep water; or, a vertiginous cliff:

A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir’d at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc’d, behold with strange surprise
New, distant scenes of endless science rise! 

Pope. https://interestingliterature.com/2021/09/a-little-learning-is-a-dangerous-thing-meaning-analysis-origin/

 Acknowledging the need for an 'evidence-base' and theoretical underpinning the effort to 'push' Hodges' model forward is ongoing. Maths remains an alien territory to me, but the 'secret garden' is as tantalizing as ever. Over the years I have posted - with much overlap about:

• maths
• relation
• logic

- and more recently:

• isomorphism
• category theory
• and as previously posted - laws of form.

In an effort to get to grips with the above, I'm following various online videos, books and papers. Bartosz Milewski's videos, blog and publications are aimed at programmers, but are very interesting nonetheless. The first video provides an introduction to the motivation and philosophy of category theory. In another, Milewski refers to 'universal construction' on YouTube and in a blog post about 'Function Types'.

The 'universal' figures in healthcare too: universal health access, and universal health coverage appear to over-shadow 'universal health care'. The quality of 'universal' also creeps into assessment. Data gathering is not merely complete, it is comprehensive. It has to be, to contribute not just to a care plan, for one that is (supposedly) person-centred, with risks identified, strengths, weaknesses - needs, history, social network, and much more. The care plan informs and orchestrates the interventions; then evaluation follows. Are we delivering? What is the patient's (client's, carer's) level of satisfaction. Have care stages and actions been completed as per policy (in time!)? (More on this to follow later this year in light of UK mental health/illness news.)

So as I consider (wrestle with...) initial, and terminal objects, sets and categories … I can hopefully, especially with help, extend the number of posts tagged 'universal' here on W2tQ. In this vein, is Hodges' model a universal construction? There may not be a universal truth to reveal, but it will prove a marvellous learning journey.

Vera Spencer - Artist versus Machine c.1954

Tate Etc.

"The paper card used to create this collage by the artist Vera Spencer may look unassuming, but the idea behind them is monumental. Around 1800, the French merchant and weaver Joseph Marie Jacquard first developed the automated loom, a machine which used perforated cards to store advanced weaving patterns. These perforations - a series of holes or not-holes - created the world's first large-scale system of binary data storage. Jacquard's loom went on to inspire British mathematician Charles Babbage to design the Analytical Engine, the first punch-card calculator and a precursor to the modern computer - the potential of which was grasped by the mathematician Ada Lovelace, regarded as the first computer programmer. . . . 

By modifying punched cards, Vera Spencer started up a material fight with the very tissue of automation. The same automation that today, with the invention of self-learning image and text-creating algorithms like Dall-E and ChatGPT, has reached the practices of artists and writers, challenging our very concept of creativity and ultimately threatening their work." p.99.

 

 Individual
  |

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

creativity	automation material size-scale: loom <> punched card computer  tissue
Vera Spencer Artist versus Machine c.1954

Smith, A., on Vera Spencer Artist versus Machine c.1954, Summer 2023, Tate Etc., Issue 58, p.99.

Previous posts on W2tQ:
Ada Lovelace 

Automation by Design: Politics, Culture, and Landscape in an Age of Machines That Learn

The virtual one and a half-day symposium will be held Friday, February 17 & Saturday, February 18, 2023.

Registration closes February 15

 

More details ... 

 

My source: https://twitter.com/BabbageInst/status/1584913168886661120?s=20&t=RWwJKfY572yfCl3CukGSvg

 

 

Agile Visualization with Pharo: Normalizers

 INDIVIDUAL

|

 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

shapes?	normalization SHAPES
shapes? normalization	shapes?

Agile Visualization
with Pharo

"Normalizers: Shapes may be shaped and colored in a meaningful way to represent attributes and properties of the objects represented by the shapes." p.49.

Bergel, A. (2022). Overview of Roassal. In: Agile Visualization with Pharo. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7161-2_5

Adapting Gärdenfors' - 'event boards' figure

Further to the post:

c/o Gärdenfors: "Events and Causal Mappings Modeled in Conceptual Spaces" 

[ re. Gärdenfors (2020) ]

A related work (Gärdenfors et al., 2019) includes 'figure 1' copied here:

 

Fig. 1. The components of the holistic AI architecture
Gärdenfors et al., 2019

 

I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but am left to wonder. I say this in all seriousness, having come across individuals who need formal assessment (autism too) and hence referral. Listening to others, it seems many people have 'unfinished' writing projects. One here (>40k words) still proves helpful, with notes on Gärdenfors' work and trying to relate this to the Health Career Model.

With some notes, I have copied the tables below from Gärdenfors (2000) and you can see the development in figure 1 above.

Cognitive Science
Goals	explanation and construction
constraint	problem of representation
Solution	SYMBOLIC	ASSOCIATIVISM	CONCEPTUAL

Table 6 Cognitive Science as explanation and construction 

These solutions to the problem of representation have been applied and their respective strengths identified in the construction of ANNs as per table 4.

	Levels of Representation p.253
SYMBOLIC:	Searching, matching and rule following
CONCEPTUAL:	Vector calculations, coordinate transformations and other geometrical operations
SUBCONCEPTUAL:	Pattern recognition, pattern transformation and dynamic adaptation of values

Table 7 Levels of Representation

When presented with evidence in support of my project, I must utilise it. So, quoting Gärdenfors again:

"In this way, simulations can provide the robotic system the power
to imagine events that is needed to understand the physical, social
and, eventually, the emotional world we live in." Gärdenfors (2020)

Here, Gärdenfors' reference to: physical, social, and emotional I read as:

physical - SCIENCES domain

social - SOCIOLOGY domain

emotional - INTRA- INTERPERSONAL domain

Of course, Gärdenfors defines domain* and other terms (quality dimensions), and domain differs within Hodges' Health Career Model.

Students and artificial intelligence [AI] have something in common in that we want to enroll student nurses who have an aptitude and attitude that equips them with basic nursing skills and knowledge. This knowledge is nuanced, and would draw upon the plethora of proposed literacies, emotional, social and spiritual in this instance. Even before lectures begin, and the curriculum begins its march, the point is the need for common sense, general intelligence and ability to problem solve and reason.

Englemore, Robert; Morgan, Tony (1988).
Blackboard Systems. Addison-Wesley.
ISBN 978-0-201-17431-1.

 

In Englemore and Morgan's Blackboard Systems, Chapter 12, AGE: (Attempt to GEneralize) A Knowledge-Based Program for Building Knowledge-Based Programs (Nii and Aiello), there are two levels of irony.

H2cm is a long-term project and the journey here covers aspects of knowledge engineering, information processing to arrive at a care architecture and care assurance.

Below I've re-created figure 1, retaining 'symbolic' and 'conceptual' capabilities. The conceptual capability extends beyond conceptual spaces, to include threshold concepts, a concept-based curricula, semantic networks and more. The 'symbolic capability' is retained as I still maintain that h2cm can be represented within a computer program. The 'sub-conceptual level' has in a way been reversed - 'exploded' to take-in the primary focus and purposes for h2cm: the student, the patient, the public. 

 

H2CM: The components of a holistic care architecture -
See also: Gärdenfors et al., 2019

Our 'event board' is Nursing, Health and Social care situated using h2cm. Simulation is retained, its central location does not imply importance - quite the contrary. Theory combines lectures, research, the evidence-base, self-study, models and theories of nursing. Placements brings in clinical encounters with patients, carers and the public; plus mentors and the scope of learning opportunities. I have kept peers separate with the process of professional socialisation - which (should) span all.

*I will revisit this and my notes (definitions) at some point.

Gärdenfors P (2020) Events and Causal Mappings Modeled in Conceptual Spaces. Front. Psychol. 11:630. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00630

Gärdenfors, P., Williams, M.-A., Johnston, B., Billingsley, R., Vitale, J., Peppas, P., et al. (2019). “Event boards as tools for holistic AI,” in Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Cognition, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 2418, eds A. Chella, I. Infantino, and A. Lieto (Palermo: University of Technology Sydney), 1–10.

Gärdenfors, P. (2000). Conceptual Spaces, MIT Press, Cambridge.

NHS Independent Report: "Better, broader, safer: using health data for research and analysis"

"Professor Ben Goldacre’s review into how the efficient and safe use of health data for research and analysis can benefit patients and the healthcare sector."

 

 

INDIVIDUAL

|

 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

"Better, broader, safer: using health data for research and analysis"	"Raw data - such as NHS patients’ electronic health records - is prepared, analysed, and visualised by writing code that issues instructions to computers. Data preparation and analysis are hugely complex technical tasks."
PUBLIC: Safety Privacy Accountability [inc. Value for Money] Benefits Trust Literacy Awareness / Understanding of Science(s) Self-care, Care of family and Social Care (Inoculation: Fake news, Dis-, Mis-, Malinformation)? 'Broader' (a further post ...?)	“Nobody wants to work in an NHS trust on NHS data, it’s a nightmare and we can't pay people appropriately.” - Interviewee

Department of Health & Social Care, Independent report. "Better, broader, safer: using health data for research and analysis". Published 7 April 2022.

 

My source: 

Trevor Peacock, Head of Governance, Risk & Compliance, Information Security Group, Information Services Division University College London 

c/o NHS-HE-FORUM

 

Dries! I promise ...

... if you get your blogging mojo back I will pick up Drupal and put this blog (and twitter) in much more than semi-stasis.

Clearly, my Drupal use may not be as profound, but after a decade I have quite a requirement (some might describe it as 'stonking'), but this merely demonstrates the seductive nature of 'ideas'. How easy it is to appear clever, to have thoughts - compared to action.

As I've been told and blogged before: I need to do something instead of blogging and twitter.

So yes, there's an irony here for me, but good luck and thanks for the (much-needed) prompt!

c/o Dries Buytaert:

Wanted: a new blogging routine

DrupalCon Summits: Higher Education & Healthcare

DrupalCon Attendee

DrupalCon North America 2021 started today and the programme includes  several summit events; two of particular interest next week:

Higher Education Summit

Using Drupal at a college or university? Attend this summit to connect with other Higher Education Drupal users, typically web developers, managers, communicators, graphic designers,  editors and the like. 

Learn from peer Drupal users and experts, working in a variety of contexts in the higher education sector, about the ever-changing Drupal and web landscape, including new trends and current best practices. 

Expect small group discussions, lightning talks, a keynote, and other formats allowing you to engage with your peers. 

The DrupalCon Higher Education Summit is informal, and focuses on best practices, case studies, and discussing solutions to the unique situations inherent to higher education.

Who should attend?

The DrupalCon Higher Education Summit is open to all higher education staff, volunteers, and service providers who are using, or considering using, Drupal as part of their technology stack. This summit is not intended for vendors to pitch new business. 

https://events.drupal.org/drupalcon2021/summit/higher-ed 

Plus:

Healthcare Summit

The healthcare space is now, more than ever, a critical area for all development communities. Digital communication and technologies offer the promise of improved access for patients, but building good solutions requires a solid foundation in accessibility, security and compliance.

Whether you are at a pharma working towards the next vaccine or therapy, a hospital network treating patients with AND without COVID, an insurance company making sure all patients have access to critical healthcare during this tough time, there is much for you to gain from this summit.

Join us for a day of facilitated peer-to-peer problem solving combined with industry leaders sharing their experience solving common challenges like building a digital roadmap for a healthcare system, vaccine distribution platforms, and building user-centered patient experiences.

Who should attend? 

Anyone interested in hearing how companies and the community are creating rich Digital Experiences in the Healthcare space and all levels of colleagues in the Pharma, Medical, Clinical, Hospital, Payers, Caregivers and Healthcare Professional space.

https://events.drupal.org/northamerica2021/summit/healthcare 

Persistent or Global navigation: Hodges' model

Interfaces are hardly novel these days, even our acknowledging them is a moot point. An interface that is effective will be transparent to the 'user' who is able to get on with the task, the process that is their purpose. For web design, medical devices and

There are many posts on 'interfaces' here on 'Welcome to the QUAD' from 2007 to 2020:

Hodges model: What is it? [2] It’s an interface... 

(Contrast this view, perhaps, with recent posts on Hodges' model as a matrix.)

VerbAtlas 1.0 - Semantic Role Labeling and beyond! c/o Roberto Navigli 

- and the tag 'interfaces' (59).

 

Hodges' model remains an interface to me.

 

The homepage for the website 1998-2015 presents Hodges' model - as the interface - to the user (visitor).

In revisiting (before it visits the charity shop) Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think (2006) reference to persistent navigation or global navigation (p.62) reinforces the fact that humanity needs an interface for health and care. Two qualities that such an interface needs include:

1. Persistence in being Cognitive (isn't everything?) but in the sense here of being simple and so ready-to-mind.
2. Being Global as in Global Health, plus Universal Health Coverage, generic, applicable to all persons, contexts and situations.
   

30 Years of Progress: Nursing informatics and Nursing theory

Going through some papers I found some notes written in the 90s:

Allan Curtis a clinical services manager described the experience of setting up a 24 hour information service to a hospital paediatric hospital service.

Creating a system using Sensible Solution (a database package), Curtis noted how:

"The intricacies of programming were more difficult than I imagined."

Problems occurred when the school of nursing changed its adopted model of nursing, some information was then either redundant or incompatible.

"Although it would be nice to redesign the program to take account of such changes, it would take too much time - and money."

  <>

I do not have the article and a search failed to locate the full reference. I am assuming the link above is the 1980s-90s database package in question. When able to visit a university library I will update accordingly. It would be interesting to see if the model of nursing and the change was noted and any reasons. I'm sure they were? The point for me are the divides in skills, academic - service settings, finance and the status of 'models of nursing' (care). There is also the extent of change in programming and information systems. What is now referred to as 'the development stack' is far more powerful and yet more complex and complicated.

Curtis, A. (1990) Nursing Times, February 28, 86, 9, pp.69-70.

ERCIM News No. 120 Special theme "Educational Technology"

Dear ERCIM News Reader,

ERCIM News No. 120 has just been published at https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/

ERCIM News 120

This special theme addresses the state of the art in educational technologies, “EdTech”, illustrating the range of scientific fields and challenges faced by the research community when it comes to integrating tools and systems that apply to real-life learning situations.


Guest editors: Vassilis Katsouros (Athena Research and Innovation Centre) and Martin Hachet (Inria)


This issue is also available for download in pdf and ePub.

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News. Feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested.

Next issue:
No. 121, April 2020
Special Theme: The Climate Action: Mathematics, Informatics and Socio-Economics Accelerating the Sustainability Transition
Announcements in this issue:

Follow us on twitter @ercim_news
https://twitter.com/ercim_news
and join the open ERCIM LinkedIn Group http://www.linkedin.com/groups/ERCIM-81390
---------------

Peter Kunz                       
ERCIM Office
2004, Route des Lucioles
BP93
F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex

https://www.ercim.eu  
-----------------------------
@ercim_news
http://twitter.com/ercim_news

join the ERCIM Linkedin Group
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/ERCIM-81390

My Moon Mission? "The Stack"

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

I choose  ... [still] to try . 4.6 . . . 8.7.5 and c o u n t i n g . WAMP Windows Apache MySQL PHP Command Line Interface [VirtualBox, Vagrant ...] PHPMyAdmin  JQuery git HTML5 CSS Drupal APIs Themes & Modules*^ Create Custom T&Ms #? . to journey ... to explore ... to learn ...	Saturn V Reference Dimensions: http://heroicrelics.org
The Drupal slogan is: "Come for the software, stay for the community."	The Stack

*What are the requirements of your project?
^What themes and modules are available 'out of the box'?

^#If the themes and modules you require are not available you can create your own.

The idea of using Drupal (or other CMS) is to use the software to do the 'heavy lifting'.


Image source:
http://heroicrelics.org/info/saturn-v/saturn-v-general.html

Talk @PHPNW Manchester 2nd April 7pm

Responding to a couple of tweets by @phpnw, I am now (happily) tasked with giving a talk on Tuesday evening:

Concepts, Spaces and Thresholds and why they matter

57 Thomas Street

Northern Quarter

Manchester

M4 1NA

Within the Drupal community and online I've heard frequent mention of imposter syndrome as reflected here. I'm no 'programmer', as much as I might wish and after stepping in to help with a quick editorial I'm also conscious of the risks of self-plagiarism - repeating myself yet again.

On Tuesday I'm pulling together threshold concepts, conceptual spaces and #h2cm in that order. I still believe there is a very worthy project here. Even if only having a sense that all the jig-saw pieces are present even if not quite 'correct'?

Recognising the expertise and professionalism of the audience I'm trying to make it relevant with an exercise too. I'm very grateful for the faith of the organisers as I fill a gap of sorts.

Thank goodness the talk is not a day earlier- which might be quite apt in respect of the 'new' site.

With changes in my full-time work status there will be more time.

Always good to see an excuse bite the dust...

Drupalcamp London: And all that jazz

Drupalcamp London was a bootcamp literally in light of the weather. This affected the schedule a bit but it was well worth attending.

The first session on my list was not the intended module development but:

Flexible content editing with paragraphs and Drupal 8 - with Baddý Sonja Breidert who stepped in at short notice. We were encouraged to look at Open Doors as an example of Paragraphs being deployed. The fact that there were 25 types of paragraphs prompts the thought - not so much how many would I would need but the users? Apparently, paragraphs are not that user friendly to edit. Navigation was indicated 'Manage Display' - 'Preview' - 'Paragraph'. The 'environment indicator' flagged whether the site in use was live or dev: a reminder. A future tip included not using entities, but media for anything reusable. Reusable paragraphs were applied to banner and images, using simple entities. There were some special functions (and specific modules) in the table of contents, entity embed, entity browser, insert view and add map.

In considering when to use paragraphs this connects with choosing content types - another key question for me. There was a lot more in what was a 'changed session'. I'll check the slides / videos were available and for those below. The three keynotes were excellent too:

Let’s take the best route - Exploring Drupal 8 Routing System

Drupal in the era of microservices

"Hi user, I am Drupal. How can I help you?"

Accelerating Drupal projects with Thunder: a case study

In 'Make your site findable' dutchyoda Dick Rensema pulled me up short. So, I will check out the metatags module and use this from the outset. As for being findable - it's also best to have separate text and images not have both within a WYSIWYG editor. Another point is to 'make it long'. That sits well for the archive pages for Hodges' model.

Lunchtime on Sunday was preceded with gambry on Plugin API, a key idea being:

ENTITY - Same model different data
PLUGIN - Same "thing" type different ways

This was a captivating, dense, rich session and one to revisit.

Finally, the 0930 start in London helped as I'd been up late. Ronnie Scott's is an amazing experience, the second house from 1030 doors open through to 0300: I left at 3 thanks also to Resolution 88.

Fences too far? Prevention, Health Education and Promotion

On my community visits I see many horses out in the fields. There are 'horses' in information systems too:

What are "horses"?

“As an intentional nod to Clever Hans, a 'horse' is just a system that is not actually addressing the problem it appears to be solving.” (Sturm, 2014).

In healthcare we keep talking about the need for more emphasis on prevention, health education and promotion. So much of what we do is not futile, despite the growing^* debate on euthanasia, but as a 'system' that incorporates and enacts prevention, health education and health promoting principles (and literacies) we continue to fail. In short, the healthcare system is a horse as defined by Sturm.

I'm certain - even without evidence (intuition influenced by the quality^# media?) that public health AND public mental health have been going backwards. Or if you like, the politicians keep talking the talk but this is limited to the political domain (or paddock)? So many promises in the form of committees, consultations, green, white papers that could be betting slips. In fact the government seems to favour those betting slips or the associated behaviours that produce tax revenue as opposed to the 25 year cross-party plan that would really herald change. This level of change will take longer and would be realised in younger people. Perhaps there are signs of change as many young adults eschew drugs and alcohol (UK)..?

There are two ways in which Hodges' model is a horse; or not:

1. Firstly, there is (still) no information system based on Hodges' model that might appear to be solving a problem.
2. Secondly, Hodges' model has not really had the opportunity to address the health and social care problem. As such it cannot be judged in such equestrian terms.

In the meantime the horses remain in their respective paddocks. Some are racing about, others jumping, a group do dressage, while increasing others are out to pasture - they graze and neigh-say (everything is fine DO carry on)!

^*Whatever one's respective views this debate will grow - a consequence of demographics driven through the heart of the political divide.
^#A sticky wicket then?

B. L. Sturm, “A simple method to determine if a music information retrieval system is a 'horse',” IEEE Trans. Multimedia 16(6):1636–1644, 2014. Winner of the 2017 IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Prize Paper Award.

My source: B. L. Sturm email to: http://digitalhumanities.org/humanist

HORSE2017

On “Horses” in Applied Machine Learning

Research workshop, QMUL, London

Wednesday 20 September 2017, approx. 9h30-17h 

Location: Arts One Lecture Theatre, QMUL, London E1 4NS

http://c4dm.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/horse2017/

Hodges' model: Combined Care Feature Capture - Black Box + White Box?

Nursing is, in theory and practice, far removed from multimedia; which in turn has changed markedly from when the poster quoted below was published in 1999. 

Nursing is 'multi-media' in the sense of combining several data sources across several domains of knowledge and from a range of media.

[From a conference poster no longer available:]

"Feature Detectors 

Feature detectors are used to build a semantically rich index entry for the original multimedia object. They do this on two different levels:

1. Blackbox detectors are implemented in a programming language to access the raw multimedia data and to derive the desired features from it. Example: the web_header detector sends a HTTP HEAD request to the specified HTTP server and extracts the content type from the response.
2. Whitebox detectors consist of queries over the already collected feature values. Example: the page_type detector uses the content type to determine if an object is a page.

In the general case blackbox detectors will derive low-level feature data, e.g., the color distribution of an image. But they can also be used for more complex tasks, like finding a face in an image. The function of whitebox detectors is to relate low-level features to concepts, e.g., an image is a portrait because its color distribution classifies it as a photo and it contains exactly one face."

Hodges' model is situated and in healthcare context is everything. Behind a hospital clinic or ward door we might expect certain features to be found. Out in the community following a referral again certain features will be found. The features take on a personalised nature as key features confirming a diagnosis, problem or care issue are presented by the patient (client) or their carer. I'm not sure whether this is useful or not, but the domains of Hodges' model suggests quite a few boxes are required to tick the box that is holistic - integrated care.

And that does not take account of exactly where the knowledge resides; that is another test.

M., A. Schmidt, M. Kersten. Acoi: A System for Indexing Multimedia Objects. In International Workshop on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, November 1999. (n.b. The link in the poster is no longer valid.)

My original source:

ERCIM News No. 59 October 2004 Grammar Enables Effective Multimedia Search Queries. pp.63-64.