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Mammographic screening programmes generate large numbers of highly variable, complex images, most of which are unequivocally normal. When present, abnormalities may be small or subtle. Two processes critical to the success of screening programmes are the perception of potential abnormalities and the subsequent analy-sis of each detected lesion to determine its clinical significance. The consequences of errors are costly, and in many screening centres, films are read by two radiologists in an attempt to reduce errors. The prime objective of our research is to improve the accuracy of the detection and analysis of breast lesions by providing radiologists with computer-aided digital image analysis tools. In this paper we focus on the detection and analysis of mammographic microcalcifications.

We describe a philosophy of research aimed at generating useful computer-based aids for radiologists. Firstly, it is necessary to accurately identify specific tasks which are difficult for the human observer. Having correctly identified a problem, appropriate computer vision methods must be developed and their performance evaluated. It is then important to determine effective ways of using such methods to aid radiologists, and it is essential to prove that the effect on radiologists’ performance is entirely beneficial.

We present results of experiments to determine factors affecting radiologists’ perception of microcalcifications, and to investigate the effects of attention-cueing on detection performance. Our results show that radiologists’ performance can be significantly improved with the use of prompts generated from automatically-detected microcalcification clusters.

We describe a new method for the delineation of mammographic abnormalities based on the analysis of multiple high quality X-ray projections of excised lesions. Biopsy specimens are secured inside a rigid tetrahedron, the edges of which provide a reference frame to which the locations of features can be related. A three-dimensional representation of an abnormality can be formed and rotated to resemble its appearance in the original mammogram.

Many of the new high-speed high-integration density Integrated Circuits (ICs) and future generation of microprocessor powering requirements can be successfully achieved with voltage-mode hysteretic control applied to interleaved multiphase Point-of-Load (POL) DC–DC converters or Voltage Regulator Modules (VRMs). This is because of the several advantages that can be achieved by combining the advantages of hysteretic control and interleaving. However, there are several challenges in combining the two techniques, the most prominent being the current sharing and equalization between the interleaved phases. In this communication, we present a solution based on a real-time DSP controller. Challenges of the implementation will be discussed and experimental results obtained from a prototype will be presented.

This paper propounded a novel method of design and realization of a digital fuzzy controlled buck integrated power factor correction (PFC) converter. It derives its advantages through the low buck capacitor voltage and single control switch (SW1), which leads to reduced complex control and price. Sub-harmonic oscillations generated in the peak current mode technique can be nullified by using the ramp signal, thereby improving the overall performance of the converter. The fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is robust and effective than the conventional linear controllers like P, PI, PID. In this paper, the digital fuzzy current mode controlled integrated PFC converter with external ramp compensation signal for 100 W load operating in the universal range of voltage (90V–265V), 50Hz has been designed and implemented using MATLAB/Simulink, verified in hardware using the TMS320F2812 digital processor board, and the results are found to be complying with international regulatory standards (IEC 6100-3-2 and IEEE 519-1992).

With the rapid development of information technology, enterprise digitalization, and Internet + application, the digitalization and improvement of the used car trading business and its management process improvement are facing many challenges. This paper attempts to use the CMMI process improvement model to analyze the factors affecting the digital construction, business process optimization, and digital management process improvement of the used car market through research on the digital management process and the related theories of CMMI, such as talent training, application of information technology, immature business development, irregular business process, and industry policy restriction. The FAHP analysis method is used to establish a comparison matrix to explore the construction of an evaluation system model for the improvement of the digital management process of the used car trading market based on the CMMI model.

The future of pharma: Digital, personalized, and dynamic.

Using real world evidence in the development of new medicine.

Hunting for new drugs to treat mental illness.

Clean cow starts now.

For the month of February 2021, APBN takes a look into the future. Our Features section highlights the key points from the STEM Conference 2020organised by the Science Centre Singapore where experts in the field discuss the future of STEM education. In the Spotlights section APBN interviewed Fabrice Leguet, Managing Director and President, Southeast Asia for Siemens Healthineers to gain insight to the company's efforts in bridging technology gaps in the healthcare industry as well as its COVID-19 response. For the Columns section, we take a look at the future of digital technology in the healthcare industry and how the internet of things (IoT) and blockchain technology could pave the way for new innovations.

Open banking has recently been advanced as a measure to foster competition and innovation in the retail banking sector. Since its introduction in the UK, a number of banks have created new digital business models (BMs) that offer individuals and businesses access to more personalized financial services. Yet, it is still unclear what new entrants (smaller and newer banks) have done to potentially disrupt incumbents (larger and well-established banks). To shed light on the innovations in BMs that have been initiated by digital banks to move away from traditional retail banking BM, seven digital BMs operating in the UK financial sector were examined using the BM innovation analysis framework. Our findings suggest that innovation in the new digital BMs has been achieved by building on the existing retail banking activities, developing new digitally enabled activities, and leveraging open innovation activities. Implications of our findings for researchers, managers and policy makers will be outlined.

Digital innovations are happening all over the globe with the advent of technology. The digital platforms are not only introducing the traditional services online but are also continuously engaged in making frequent modifications to them in the form of incremental innovations. In our quest of creating a time horizon for innovation adoption, and determining levels of adopters of incremental innovations 837 participants from India were asked about their level of adoption of digital innovations. While most of the respondents did not seem affected by the digital transition, amongst the ones adopting these innovations are mostly Early Adopters and Early Majority. The study arrived at an adoption score for the respondents based on the time from the introduction of the innovation and their adoption. The time horizon suggests the increase in adoption of innovation with each new digital innovation introduced. In the case of incremental innovations, ten levels of adoption, and three categories consisting of the ten levels of adoption are formulated based on the LoA model. The users in India fall majorly on the Beginner category in which maximum is aware of the incremental innovations but are skeptical about using them. The study further suggests certain measures for the digital platform providers for each category of users to make them accustomed to the process of incremental innovations.

Despite the worldwide strides in advancing financial inclusion amongst the youth, a significant percentage of the population is still financially disadvantaged. While traditional banks have long offered basic financial services to the younger generations, a further opportunity has been spotted to provide better and slicker digital banking to tech-savvy kids and teenagers. This chapter summarises the ongoing development of Digital Youth Banking while highlighting its latest trends. It then explores challenges and opportunities relating to digital youth banking from the accessibility, practicability, and sustainability perspectives. This chapter further presents three exemplary cases to highlight the unleashed potential of digital youth banking from the traditional bank, neobank, and fintech points of view before setting out a series of recommendations to ramp up the endeavours towards financial inclusion of young people in society.

In the past decade, the insurance business has experienced remarkable growth, as evidenced by the introduction of numerous novel products such as chatbots, digital claims, telemetric insurance and robo-advisors. The insurance industry is also experiencing a significant transformation resulting from the digital transformation. The use of digital technology opens the door for inventive architectures and the development of innovative products in the future that will benefit both insurance companies and their clients. By integrating Internet of Things devices, digital innovation revolutionizes how insurance companies collaborate with industries, ultimately benefiting all parties. This chapter reviews the history of digital innovation in insurance, also known as insurance technology (InsurTech), as well as how technology has underpinned the expansion of InsurTech in recent years. The chapter also examines previous and current studies on the use of technology in insurance transactions and how the implementation of digitalization affects the industry’s long-term viability. The research identified three key InsurTech concepts that have revolutionized the insurance sector. New entrants could disrupt the entire insurance distribution process and introduce new consumer value propositions to attract and retain clients, challenging current business models. InsurTech improves incumbent insurers’ value chain by providing innovative technologies and solutions that boost efficiency and reduce costs.

Blockchains as digitized, decentralized ledgers allow recordkeeping of peer-to-peer transactions, thus eliminating the need for intervening trusted third parties. This makes the technology useful in altering business processes and transactions not just across industrial sectors but also across economies. However, little research exists on the factors that impede and sponsor blockchain technology adoption in developed relative to developing country contexts. We highlight blockchain technology issues which sponsor/impede its adoption across developing/developed economic contexts. We focus on assessing the flow of money and land registries in these contexts in relation to the propensity to deploy blockchain systems. We then apply our analytical frame resting on real options principles to explore the decision point at which blockchain would be adopted relative to economic development.

Blockchain technology has been hailed as the technology of the future, not only for banking and finance but also for supply chain management and logistics. As lack of transparency in global supply chains is a major risk for sustainability, blockchain offers an attractive solution in the form of a reliable platform to create transparency and risk management. Not considering the nascent stage of the technology, companies are investing millions of dollars into blockchain solutions for many business problems including that of supply chains. However, blockchain-enabled networkwide transparency and visibility also inject new dynamics into supply chains through introduction of structural changes like redefining what is organizational boundary, creating new resources, and a new transactional economy for supply chain management. The structural changes also create a fundamental need for organizations in a supply network to adapt their supply chain processes to this new and emerging supply chain structural dynamics for organizational and network-level efficiency and sustainability. For efficient restructuring of the supply chain processes, organizations need clarity regarding what should be the focus of their processes for creating sources of competitive advantage.

Using topic modeling, a text mining technique, this work finds the focus areas of supply chain processes in organizations with examples of successful application of blockchain technology. Apart from how these organizations have integrated the strengths of blockchain in their supply chain processes, we also provide an exhaustive theoretical explanation about how firms can create sources of competitive advantage from blockchain technology. Identification of the focus areas will also help operations and supply chain managers planning to implement blockchain technology and devise plans for data-centric decision-making for their SCM processes for efficiency.

As times pass by, new technologies have been invented, and new approaches have been applied to the spread of information in this age of globalization—and they are obvious specifically in music. While the transformation of how musicians produce music and make themselves heard differ from the early days, the process of the transformation is often overlooked and viewed as inevitable. In fact, the users of these new, modern tools need time for adaption. The most noticeable change in musical production is how it shifts from analog to digital. This includes change of ways to create, quickly, and almost simultaneously the musical works in terms of content, length, how they are marketed and presented, and so on. Thus, the change actually goes deep—technology has changed the ways artists create, and the artists who adapt to these new approaches have changed music. In this paper, I will choose hip hop as the musical genre to elaborate on how it grows and develops in Taiwan in relation to the external factors.

The development of the rural cultural industry has a vital role in promoting the implementation of a rural revitalization strategy. Under the background of digitalization, using digital technology to empower the development of the rural cultural industry can promote the high-quality output of the rural cultural industry, optimize the transmission and dissemination of rural culture, improve the outcome of rustic cultural patterns and cultural sectors, and make the rural culture come to life. To break through the barriers of the rural cultural sector and realize the integrated development of the rural industry is to improve the infrastructure, use digitalization to transform rural culture into digital scenes, such as digital platforms and digital memory museums, and move rural culture to the network cloud. The second is to strengthen digital literacy and skills for farmers, enhance digital countryside publicity, and attract and create cultural industry-related talents. The last is to integrate the development of rural industries, while the rural cultural sector under digital empowerment will usher in more significant economic and social benefits.

One of the major change drivers which emerged in the 21st century is the birth of the internet. Internet-led digitalisation has impacted almost all the sectors across the board positively and in some cases negatively. The healthcare sector is no exception to the transformation. We are witnessing dramatic changes in the healthcare sector across all its verticals due to increasing digital health innovations. The Government of India is aggressively pushing for digital health reforms in India. The inception of key healthcare digitalisation initiatives, like national digital health mission, legalisation of telemedicine, E-pharmacies and the Health ID project, indicates the government’s strong resolve towards taking forward the digitalisation transformation at a rapid pace.

All these digital health innovations led to new strata of medical consumers like Digital Medical Consumers. In this chapter, a conceptual framework of three types of medical consumers based on their buying behaviour has been postulated. In addition, digital health innovations are playing a major role in the evolution of the holistic digital health ecosystem in India. We anticipate the evolution of Holistic Digital Health Start-ups (HDHSs) because of the government’s push towards digitalisation in health and its subsequent willingness to create digital health infrastructure and the rising penetration of health informatics. Hence, this paper has proposed a conceptual framework for Holistic Digital Health Start-ups (HDHSs).

Digital innovations are happening all over the globe with the advent of technology. The digital platforms are not only introducing the traditional services online but are also continuously engaged in making frequent modifications to them in the form of incremental innovations. In our quest of creating a time horizon for innovation adoption, and determining levels of adopters of incremental innovations 837 participants from India were asked about their level of adoption of digital innovations. While most of the respondents did not seem affected by the digital transition, amongst the ones adopting these innovations are mostly Early Adopters and Early Majority. The study arrived at an adoption score for the respondents based on the time from the introduction of the innovation and their adoption. The time horizon suggests the increase in adoption of innovation with each new digital innovation introduced. In the case of incremental innovations, ten levels of adoption, and three categories consisting of the ten levels of adoption are formulated based on the LoA model. The users in India fall majorly on the Beginner category in which maximum is aware of the incremental innovations but are skeptical about using them. The study further suggests certain measures for the digital platform providers for each category of users to make them accustomed to the process of incremental innovations.

A number of articles have been published in recent years relating to the field or embedded librarian. In addition to this changing model of librarianship, many more librarians are working a virtual world with users approaching them through chat or IM reference sites and e-mail. What are the other ways in which reference is provided in the virtual world, and more importantly, how do we assess these avenues? This paper will discuss the variety of tools that are available to the embedded librarian who works without a physical library and will also explore efficient and effective ways to assess of virtual reference that are both quantitative and qualitative.

A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is an alpha-numeric standard for the use of identifying intellectual property within computer networks and is a recent trend in the field of the electronic publishing of scholarly articles. This study examines the publishing patterns in the scholarly literature of digital object identifiers. The research includes core journals, professional affiliations, gender, and geographic locations. Additionally, the primary disciplines represented in the authorship of the DOI literature are observed. This paper was submitted in the LIS651 course, Introduction to Library and Information Science, during April 2007, as a partial requirement for a Master's degree in the School of Library and Information Science, at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.