The open discovery initiative & promoting transparency in discovery

NISO recently updated the Open Discovery Initiative Recommended Practice (https://www.niso.org/publications/rp-19-2020-odi), which outlines best practices for working with library discovery services. It defines ways for libraries to assess the level of content provider participation; streamlines the process by which libraries, content providers and discovery service providers work together; defines models for “fair” linking; and suggests usage statistics that should be collected for libraries and for content providers. The recommendations in this document, created by members of the Open Discovery Initiative Standing Committee, enable libraries, discovery service providers, and content providers to work together to the full extent of their abilities - providing the most effective and rich experience to end users.

Pain Talk in Hospice Care: A Conversation Analysis

Background A large number of the hospice patients have been reported to be with symptoms of pain. Thus, managing the patient’s pain is one aspect of hospice care provision. The delivery of pain care services could be facilitated through effective communication. However, little has been done to explore the interactional details of the delivery of pain care services in palliative care. Methods Conversation analysis is a useful method to explore the interactional details of interaction by hospice care providers and terminally ill patients. Using the method of Conversation Analysis (CA), this study aims to demonstrate how the hospice care provider employs different types of interactional practices to address the patient’s pain concerns. The data showed in this study are collected from the Alexander St website http://ctiv.alexanderstreet.com, an educational resource presenting a large collection of psycho-therapeutic videos. Results In this study, an illustrative analysis is demonstrated to show the potential of conversation analysis for research on pain talk in palliative care. It has been shown that conversation analysis could contribute to unfolding the interactional details regarding “pain talk” in hospice care settings. Specifically, conversation analysis could provide a detailed description and interpretation of the conversational practices, which are used to construct hospice care provider participation in delivering pain talk. In addition, conversation analysis could also demonstrate the interactional resources by which patients disclose their experiences of physical or spiritual pain to the hospice care provider and the way how the hospice care provider responds to the patient’s troubles talk or feelings talk. Conclusions This study identifies five types of interactional resources which are used to deal with the patient’s pain concerns in hospice care setting. A conversation analytical study of pain talk in hospice care could provide a turn-by-turn description of how the hospice care provider communicates with the terminally ill patient in terms of the patient’s pain concerns. The findings in this study could inform how the hospice care provider initiates, delivers and develops a pain talk with the terminally ill patient effectively.

Nature Prescriptions for Health: A Review of Evidence and Research Opportunities

Nature prescription programs have emerged to address the high burden of chronic disease and increasingly sedentary and screen-based lifestyles. This study examines the base of evidence regarding such programs. We conducted a narrative review of published literature using four electronic databases. We included case studies, research design articles, and empirical studies that discussed any type of outdoor exposure or activities initiated by a health-care provider from an outpatient clinic. We examined articles for information on target populations, health outcomes, and structural and procedural elements. We also summarized evidence of the effectiveness of nature prescription programs, and discussed needs and challenges for both practice and research. Eleven studies, including eight empirical studies, have evaluated nature prescription programs with either structured or unstructured formats, referring patients either to nearby parks or to formal outdoor activity programs. Empirical studies evaluate a wide variety of health behaviors and outcomes among the most at-risk children and families. Research is too sparse to draw patterns in health outcome responses. Studies largely tested program structures to increase adherence, or patient follow-through, however findings were mixed. Three published studies explore providers’ perspectives. More research is necessary to understand how to measure and increase patient adherence, short and long-term health outcomes for patients and their families, and determinants of provider participation and participation impacts on providers’ own health.

Development of User-Participatory Crowdsensing System for Improved Privacy Preservation

Recently, crowdsensing, which can provide various sensing services using consumer mobile devices, is attracting considerable attention. The success of these services depends on active user participation and, thus, a proper incentive mechanism is essential. However, if the sensing information provided by a user includes personal information, and an attacker compromises the service provider, participation will be less active. Accordingly, personal information protection is an important element in crowdsensing services. In this study, we resolve this problem by separating the steps of sensing data processing and the reward payment process. An arbitrary node in a sensing data processing pool consisting of user nodes is selected for sensing data processing, and only the processing results are sent to the service provider server to reward the data providing node. The proposed user-participatory crowdsensing system is implemented on the Kaa Internet of things (IoT) platform to evaluate its performance and demonstrate its feasibility.