This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (methodology). The objectives are as follows:
To estimate differences in effects between pharmacological active placebo interventions and standard placebo ...interventions in randomised trials.
To understand current practice and explore the potential for more comprehensive evaluations of 3D immersive sketching, drawing, and painting, we present a survey of evaluation methodologies used in ...existing 3D sketching research, a breakdown and discussion of important phases (sub-tasks) in the 3D sketching process, and a framework that suggests how these factors can inform evaluation strategies in future 3D sketching research. Existing evaluations identified in the survey are organized and discussed within three high-level categories: 1) evaluating the 3D sketching activity, 2) evaluating 3D sketching tools, and 3) evaluating 3D sketching artifacts. The new framework suggests targeting evaluations to one or more of these categories and identifying relevant user populations. In addition, building upon the discussion of the different phases of the 3D sketching process, the framework suggests to evaluate relevant sketching tasks, which may range from low-level perception and hand movements to high-level conceptual design. Finally, we discuss limitations and challenges that arise when evaluating 3D sketching, including a lack of standardization of evaluation methods and multiple, potentially conflicting, ways to evaluate the same task and user interface usability; we also identify opportunities for more holistic evaluations. We hope the results can contribute to accelerating research in this domain and, ultimately, broad adoption of immersive sketching systems.
This paper addresses the problem of single-target tracker performance evaluation. We consider the performance measures, the dataset and the evaluation system to be the most important components of ...tracker evaluation and propose requirements for each of them. The requirements are the basis of a new evaluation methodology that aims at a simple and easily interpretable tracker comparison. The ranking-based methodology addresses tracker equivalence in terms of statistical significance and practical differences. A fully-annotated dataset with per-frame annotations with several visual attributes is introduced. The diversity of its visual properties is maximized in a novel way by clustering a large number of videos according to their visual attributes. This makes it the most sophistically constructed and annotated dataset to date. A multi-platform evaluation system allowing easy integration of third-party trackers is presented as well. The proposed evaluation methodology was tested on the VOT2014 challenge on the new dataset and 38 trackers, making it the largest benchmark to date. Most of the tested trackers are indeed state-of-the-art since they outperform the standard baselines, resulting in a highly-challenging benchmark. An exhaustive analysis of the dataset from the perspective of tracking difficulty is carried out. To facilitate tracker comparison a new performance visualization technique is proposed.
This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (qualitative). The objectives are as follows:
This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (qualitative). The review aims to explore the factors associated with a ...person’s decision to take part in a pandemic or epidemic vaccine trial.
Coatings with micro- or nano-scaled structure are always fabricated by various techniques to fulfill the requirements of unique performances according to special working conditions. The differences ...in preparation techniques always result in large differences in their properties, even for the same coating materials. High-performance coatings are solely up to surface integrity, morphology, microstructure, stress state, interfacial structure, cohesion and adhesion that are all strongly affected by preparation processes. Therefore, how to take advantage of the numerous deposition techniques to design a right preparation process to produce coatings of high performance to meet the demands is the real question. This work set out to answer this question. We first discuss the overall strategies towards making of high-performance coatings including deposition techniques, coatings and characterizations. We then move on to superior performances and durability of protective coatings and functional coatings. These strategies are readily applicable in making of various high-performance protective and functional coatings.
Microalgae biomass energy is an environmentally friendly and sustainable renewable energy source. Accelerating its development can address energy scarcity, improve the environment, and achieve carbon ...sequestration and emission reduction goals. However, research on calculating carbon footprints for biomass energy production is deficient. Existing evaluation methods fail to allocate emission responsibilities and inadequately assessed the low-carbon production potential of biomass energy. This study presents a comprehensive method for calculating and evaluating carbon footprints, enabling direct estimation of product carbon emissions and analysis of the potential for low-carbon production in various industries. This method aimed to calculate the carbon footprint of microalgae biodiesel production and evaluate it using specific evaluation parameters. The results demonstrated that the carbon footprint of microalgae biodiesel is −2995.37 kg CO2/ton. The calculated microalgae biodiesel production exhibits a significant negative carbon emission, accurately depicting the carbon footprint of the entire biodiesel production process. Based on these carbon footprint results and evaluation parameters, improvements were made to the biodiesel production process, and its development prospects were explored. The novel approach presented to calculate and assess carbon footprints in energy production can provide valuable theoretical insights and technical support to promote low-carbon development and carbon reduction in the energy industry.
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Background
Recruiting participants to trials can be extremely difficult. Identifying strategies that improve trial recruitment would benefit both trialists and health research.
Objectives
To quantify ...the effects of strategies for improving recruitment of participants to randomised trials. A secondary objective is to assess the evidence for the effect of the research setting (e.g. primary care versus secondary care) on recruitment.
Search methods
We searched the Cochrane Methodology Review Group Specialised Register (CMR) in the Cochrane Library (July 2012, searched 11 February 2015); MEDLINE and MEDLINE In Process (OVID) (1946 to 10 February 2015); Embase (OVID) (1996 to 2015 Week 06); Science Citation Index & Social Science Citation Index (ISI) (2009 to 11 February 2015) and ERIC (EBSCO) (2009 to 11 February 2015).
Selection criteria
Randomised and quasi‐randomised trials of methods to increase recruitment to randomised trials. This includes non‐healthcare studies and studies recruiting to hypothetical trials. We excluded studies aiming to increase response rates to questionnaires or trial retention and those evaluating incentives and disincentives for clinicians to recruit participants.
Data collection and analysis
We extracted data on: the method evaluated; country in which the study was carried out; nature of the population; nature of the study setting; nature of the study to be recruited into; randomisation or quasi‐randomisation method; and numbers and proportions in each intervention group. We used a risk difference to estimate the absolute improvement and the 95% confidence interval (CI) to describe the effect in individual trials. We assessed heterogeneity between trial results. We used GRADE to judge the certainty we had in the evidence coming from each comparison.
Main results
We identified 68 eligible trials (24 new to this update) with more than 74,000 participants. There were 63 studies involving interventions aimed directly at trial participants, while five evaluated interventions aimed at people recruiting participants. All studies were in health care.
We found 72 comparisons, but just three are supported by high‐certainty evidence according to GRADE.
1. Open trials rather than blinded, placebo trials. The absolute improvement was 10% (95% CI 7% to 13%).
2. Telephone reminders to people who do not respond to a postal invitation. The absolute improvement was 6% (95% CI 3% to 9%). This result applies to trials that have low underlying recruitment. We are less certain for trials that start out with moderately good recruitment (i.e. over 10%).
3. Using a particular, bespoke, user‐testing approach to develop participant information leaflets. This method involved spending a lot of time working with the target population for recruitment to decide on the content, format and appearance of the participant information leaflet. This made little or no difference to recruitment: absolute improvement was 1% (95% CI −1% to 3%).
We had moderate‐certainty evidence for eight other comparisons; our confidence was reduced for most of these because the results came from a single study. Three of the methods were changes to trial management, three were changes to how potential participants received information, one was aimed at recruiters, and the last was a test of financial incentives. All of these comparisons would benefit from other researchers replicating the evaluation. There were no evaluations in paediatric trials.
We had much less confidence in the other 61 comparisons because the studies had design flaws, were single studies, had very uncertain results or were hypothetical (mock) trials rather than real ones.
Authors' conclusions
The literature on interventions to improve recruitment to trials has plenty of variety but little depth. Only 3 of 72 comparisons are supported by high‐certainty evidence according to GRADE: having an open trial and using telephone reminders to non‐responders to postal interventions both increase recruitment; a specialised way of developing participant information leaflets had little or no effect. The methodology research community should improve the evidence base by replicating evaluations of existing strategies, rather than developing and testing new ones.
How do people appropriate their virtual hand representation when interacting in virtual environments? In order to answer this question, we conducted an experiment studying the sense of embodiment ...when interacting with three different virtual hand representations, each one providing a different degree of visual realism but keeping the same control mechanism. The main experimental task was a Pick-and-Place task in which participants had to grasp a virtual cube and place it to an indicated position while avoiding an obstacle (brick, barbed wire or fire). An additional task was considered in which participants had to perform a potentially dangerous operation towards their virtual hand: place their virtual hand close to a virtual spinning saw. Both qualitative measures and questionnaire data were gathered in order to assess the sense of agency and ownership towards each virtual hand. Results show that the sense of agency is stronger for less realistic virtual hands which also provide less mismatch between the participant's actions and the animation of the virtual hand. In contrast, the sense of ownership is increased for the human virtual hand which provides a direct mapping between the degrees of freedom of the real and virtual hand.
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