The International Medical Education Directory (IMED) was a public database of worldwide medical schools. The IMED was published as a joint collaboration of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) and the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER). The information available in IMED was derived from data collected by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) throughout its history of evaluating the medical education credentials of international medical graduates. Using these data as a starting point, Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER) began developing IMED in 2001 and made it publicly available in April 2002. In April 2014, IMED was merged with the Avicenna Directory to create the World Directory of Medical Schools. The World Directory is now the definitive list of medical schools in the world, as IMED and Avicenna were discontinued in 2015.
Z-order
Z-order is an ordering of overlapping two-dimensional objects, such as windows in a stacking window manager, shapes in a vector graphics editor, or objects in a 3D application. One of the features of a typical GUI is that windows may overlap, so that one window hides part or all of another. When two windows overlap, their Z-order determines which one appears on top of the other. == Definition == The term "Z-order" refers to the order of objects along the Z-axis. In coordinate geometry, X typically refers to the horizontal axis (left to right), Y to the vertical axis (up and down), and Z refers to the axis perpendicular to the other two (forward or backward). One can think of the windows in a GUI as a series of planes parallel to the surface of the monitor. The windows are therefore stacked along the Z-axis, and the Z-order information thus specifies the front-to-back ordering of the windows on the screen. An analogy would be some sheets of paper scattered on top of a table, each sheet being a window, the table your computer screen, and the top sheet having the highest Z value. == Use == Typically, users of a GUI can affect the Z-order by selecting a window to be brought to the foreground (that is, "above" or "in front of" all the other windows). Some window managers allow interaction with windows while they are not in the foreground, while others will bring a window to the front whenever it receives input from the user. It is also possible for special windows to be designated "always on top"; these are then fixed to the top of the Z-order so that (with few exceptions) no other window can overlap them. When dealing with visual objects on a computer screen, an object with a Z-order of 1 would be visually "underneath" an object with a Z-order of 2 or greater. This is the same as making "layers" of objects where the Z-order determines what object is on top of another. An HTML page can use CSS to specify the Z-order so that some objects can be layered over others. Z-ordering is also used in 3D applications to determine object visibility based on overlap from other objects. This confers a speed advantage to the user as the computer does not need to render unseen objects. In practice, of course, some objects may be only partially obscured, and this is a complication that must be taken into account. In early real-time 3D graphics, Z-order was applied on a per-polygon basis to avoid using Z-buffer, which was considered expensive at the time. In modern 3D graphics, Z-order is used for order-dependent rendering, for example with semi-transparent objects. It can also be used to reduce the problem of Z-fighting, by either rendering farther objects first and then using weak inequality as the depth test or, conversely, rendering front-to-back and using strict inequality. == z-index == The actual number assigned to a particular place in the Z-order is sometimes known as the z-index. In particular the CSS property that sets the stack order of specific elements is known as the z-index. An element with greater stack order is always in front of another element with lower stack order. Negative values can also be used in the same manner. A negative value will appear behind a positive one. z-index only works on elements that have a position value (e.g. position: relative;) and for many coders, this one of the first things to investigate when debugging why the z-index isn't working. Like all other CSS properties, it can be set with JavaScript, with the following syntax:
Elasticity (computing)
In computing, elasticity is defined as "the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible". Elasticity is a defining characteristic that differentiates cloud computing from previously proposed distributed computing paradigms, such as grid computing. The dynamic adaptation of capacity, e.g., by altering the use of computing resources, to meet a varying workload is called "elastic computing". In the world of distributed systems, there are several definitions according to the authors; some consider the concepts of scalability a sub-part of elasticity, others as being distinct. == Purpose == Elasticity aims to match the amount of resources allocated to a service with the amount of resources it actually requires, avoiding over- or under-provisioning. Over-provisioning, i.e., allocating more resources than required, should be avoided as it may incur extra costs (monetary, energy, operational, etc.) for unused or underutilized resources. For example, if a website is over-provisioned with two cloud computing resources to handle current demand that only requires one resource, the costs of maintaining the second resource would effectively be wasted. Under-provisioning, i.e., allocating fewer resources than required, must be avoided; otherwise, the service cannot serve its users with a good service. For example, under-provisioning a website may make it seem slow or unreachable, because not enough resources have been allocated to meet current demand. == Example == Elasticity can be illustrated through an example of a service provider who wants to run a website on the cloud. At moment t 0 {\displaystyle t_{0}} , the website is unpopular and a single machine is sufficient to serve all users. At moment t 1 {\displaystyle t_{1}} , the website suddenly becomes popular, and a single machine is no longer sufficient to serve all users. Based on the number of web users simultaneously accessing the website and the resource requirements of the web server, ten machines are needed. An elastic system should immediately detect this condition and provision nine additional machines from the cloud to serve all users responsively. At time t 2 {\displaystyle t_{2}} , the website becomes unpopular again. The ten machines currently allocated to the website are mostly idle and a single machine would be sufficient to serve the few users who are accessing the website. An elastic system should immediately detect this condition and deprovision nine machines, releasing them to the cloud. == Problems == === Resource provisioning time === Resource provisioning takes time. A cloud virtual machine (VM) can be acquired at any time by the user; however, it may take up to several minutes for the acquired VM to be ready to use. The VM startup time is dependent on factors such as image size, VM type, data center location, number of VMs, etc. Cloud providers have different VM startup performance. This implies that any control mechanism designed for elastic applications must consider the time needed for the resource provisioning actions to take effect. === Monitoring elastic applications === Elastic applications can allocate and deallocate resources on demand for specific application components. This makes cloud resources volatile, and traditional monitoring tools which associate monitoring data with a particular resource, such as Ganglia or Nagios, are no longer suitable for monitoring the behavior of elastic applications. For example, during its lifetime, a data storage tier of an elastic application might add and remove data storage VMs due to cost and performance requirements, varying the number of used VMs. Thus, additional information is needed in monitoring elastic applications, such as associating the logical application structure over the underlying virtual infrastructure. This in turn generates other problems, such as data aggregation from multiple VMs towards extracting the behavior of the application component running on top of those VMs, as different metrics may need to be aggregated differently (e.g., CPU usage could be averaged, network transfer might be summed up). === Stakeholder requirements === When deploying applications in cloud infrastructures (IaaS/PaaS), stakeholder requirements need to be considered in order to ensure that elastic behavior meets stakeholder needs. Traditionally, the optimal trade-off between cost and quality or performance is considered; however, for real world cloud users, requirements regarding elastic behavior are more complex and target multiple dimensions of elasticity (e.g., SYBL). === Multiple levels of control === Cloud applications vary in type and complexity, with multiple levels of artifacts deployed in layers. Controlling such structures must take into consideration a variety of issues. For multi-level control, control systems need to consider the impact lower level control has upon higher level ones, and vice versa (e.g., controlling virtual machines, web containers, or web services in the same time), as well as conflicts that may appear between various control strategies from various levels. Elastic strategies on in cloud computing can take advantage of control-theoretic methods (e.g., predictive control has been experimented in cloud computing scenarios by showing considerable advantages with respect to reactive methods). One approach to multi-level elastic clouc control is rSYBL.
Diagnostically acceptable irreversible compression
Diagnostically acceptable irreversible compression (DAIC) is the amount of lossy compression which can be used on a medical image to produce a result that does not prevent the reader from using the image to make a medical diagnosis. The term was first introduced at a workshop on irreversible compression convened by the European Society of Radiology (ESR) in Palma de Mallorca October 13, 2010, the results of which were reported in a subsequent position paper. == Determination == The "amount of compression" in irreversible compression used to be determined by the compression ratio, where the acceptable minimum is determined by the algorithm (typically JPEG or J2K) and the data type (body part and imaging method). Such a definition is easy to follow, and has been used by medical bodies in 2010 around the world. However, its downside is obvious: the compression ratio tells nothing about the real quality of the image, as different compressors can produce vastly different qualities under the same file size. For example, the JPEG format of 1992 can perform as well as many modern formats given newer techniques exploited in mozjpeg and ISO libjpeg, yet they would be lumped together with the legacy encoders in such a scheme. The image compression community has long used objective quality metrics like SSIM to measure the effects of compression. In the absence of good data regarding SSIM, the ESR review of 2010 concluded that it is still difficult to establish a criterion for whether a particular irreversible compression scheme applied with particular parameters to a particular individual image, or category of images, avoids the introduction of some quantifiable risk of a diagnostic error for any particular diagnostic task. A 2017 study showed that a SSIM variant called 4-G-r (4-component, gradient, structural component of SSIM) best reflects changes in images that affect the decision of radiologists out of 16 SSIM variants. A 2020 study shows that visual information fidelity (VIF), feature similarity index (FSIM), and noise quality metric (NQM) best reflect radiologist preferences out of ten metrics. It also mentions that the original version of SSIM works as poorly as a basic root-mean-square distance (RMSD) for this purpose, a result echoed by the 2017 study. The 4-G-r modification is not tested in the study.
CPT Corporation
CPT Corporation was founded in 1971 by Dean Scheff in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with co-founders James Wienhold and Richard Eichhorn. CPT first designed, manufactured, and marketed the CPT 4200, a dual-cassette-tape machine that controlled a modified IBM Selectric typewriter to support text editing and word processing. The CPT 4200 was followed in 1976 by the CPT VM (Visual Memory), a partial-page display-screen dual-cassette-tape unit, and shortly thereafter by the CPT 8000, a full-page display dual-diskette desktop microcomputer that drove stand-alone daisy wheel printers. Subsequent products included (1) variants on the 8000 series; (2) the CPT 6000 series, which had a lower capacity, smaller screen, and was less expensive; (3) the CPT 9000 series, which had a larger capacity and could run IBM personal computer software; (4) the CPT Phoenix series, which had a graphical capabilities; (5) CPT PT, a software-only reduced version that ran on IBM personal computers and clones; and (6) other related products. The CPT logo—originally three letters chosen to sound well together—began to be taken as an acronym for "cassette powered typewriting," and subsequently for "computer processed text," and numerous other variants. Major competition was IBM, Wang, Lanier, Xerox, and other word processing vendors. CPT Corporation was fifth in size among Minnesota-based top high-tech companies, after 3M, Honeywell, Control Data, and Medtronic. Corporate revenues grew to approximately a quarter-billion dollars per year in the mid-1980s, then declined with the proliferation of personal computers. CPT ultimately ceased major manufacturing late in the 20th century. == Selected products == === Cassette based === The CPT 4200 was a dual-cassette-tape unit with a small built-in keyboard that controlled a modified IBM Selectric typewriter. Keystrokes entered on the typewriter appeared on the paper as they were recorded on the output cassette, which formed a magnetic replica of the characters printed on the page. That output cassette could later be used as an input cassette, where it would be played back to the typewriter along with new keystrokes to accomplish text editing. The keyboard of the CPT 4200 had action keys for "skip", "read" and "stop", mode keys for "word", "line", "paragraph," and "page." Pressing "read" transferred a word, line, paragraph, or page (depending on which mode key had been selected) from the input tape to both the typewriter and the output tape. Line boundaries (aka printer margins) recorded on the input tape were ignored or retained depending on whether or not the "adjust" key had been selected. Alternatively, pressing "skip" moved past the corresponding amount of text on the input tape without sending it to the typewriter or to the output tape. The Selectric's keyboard was active for any new typing, which would appear on the paper and transferred to the output tape. Thus a document was edited by reading back those parts of the text to be retained and skipping those parts to be discarded, with new typing added from the Selectric's keyboard. Price: approx. $5000, 1980-era values. The CPT Communicator was an add-on to the CPT 4200 that allowed data to be transferred from one text-editing machine to another, or between a text-editing machine and a remote computer, via phone lines. Price: not available. === Microprocessor based === ==== CPT 8000 series ==== The CPT 8000 was the company's first microcomputer product, exhibited in spring of 1976. It was a self-contained desktop machine with two 8-inch floppy diskette drives, a movable keyboard, and a full-page vertically oriented CRT display simulating paper with black characters on a white background, for a wysiwyg view of text on paper. It was promoted as familiar and easy to use for those experienced with typewriters. A keyboard with a large set of extra keys made operating the 8000 quite easy even for people without any computer skills or background. IN, OUT, PRINT, OOPS OOPS was changed thinking it was insulting to the buyer to assume they would ever make an error. The CPT 8000 was designed to show a full page of text with a static line showing the margin and tab stops. An additional line would display status or error messages with a times square like display. The times square error and status messages were very well done, "The printer needs a new ribbon" rather than "ERROR 034892". The text page could both smooth pan and scroll by the hardware in the display board and nothing quite like it existed for a very long time. The 8000 ran its own multitasking hardware interrupt-driven operating system but it also ran CP/M quite well. So unlike other companies that sold Wordprocessor only systems, CPT had a system that could run any of the many popular CP/M applications. Using the CP/M OS users could develop Fortran, CBasic, Cobol and other language's programs. The 8000 used Intel's 8080 microprocessor. The display board was bleeding-edge, high-speed logic. The parts available at this time were pushed to their limits to provide the speed needed to display this much text. There were times that batches of parts from one manufacturer simply could not be clocked as fast as the 8000 display required. Memory was initially 64K, but larger boards of 128K were most common then later 256K were offered. The 8080 accessed this additional RAM by running a custom page flipping circuit. The 8000 was originally priced at $8000 and its daisy wheel printer an additional $8000. The model number having been confused with the price at its first appearance at the Hanover fair. An RS-232 serial communication option was available for the 8000 series that allowed the electronic transfer of documents. One very popular use of this was to access the Westlaw system. A tempest approved version of the 8000 was developed that was RF tight with nothing being emitted that could be monitored or spied on. === Storage Systems === ==== CPT WordPak ==== The CPT WordPak series was CPT's first external document storage system that enabled multiple 8000 series workstations to store documents in an electronic filing cabinet. Prior to WordPak, all documents were stored on removable 8-inch floppy diskettes. Sharing documents involved handing off the original disk, or copying the document to a second disk and 'sneaker-net-ing' (walking it over) to the second 8000. But this resulted in two copies of the document, one at each workstation. A circuit board with a proprietary cable connector was installed in the 8000/6000 family of "workstations" and connected to the WordPak by a multi-conductor cable. WordPak 1 consisted of a single Shugart Associates SA4000 14"-diameter hard disk with a capacity of 30 megabytes. WordPak 2 added a 2nd drive for a total of 60 megabytes. ==== CPT SRS 45 ==== The CPT SRS 45 was what would now be called a server (quite likely the first of its kind) but in practice was much more. It was maybe the worlds easiest networking shared resource system. It combined a ZIP drive for backup and hard disk(s) that would be shared simultaneously by up to eight CPT machines that had the PC AT bus. The primary person responsible for its development was Bill Davidson whose wife Cheryl was responsible for bringing up CP/M, MP/M and other Digital Research products running on the Phoenix. The brilliance of the system were the networking cards that plugged into the individual machines. These used the 55AA installable driver of the IBM BIOS to simply add the zip and hard disk drives to each computers drives list. So a system that started with floppy drives A and B and a C hard disk on the machine would have the SRS 45 drives added as drives D (E, F depending on the number of hard disk) and Z for the zip drive. Sharing (avoiding writing to the same file at the same time) was handled by simply assigning parts of the drives for individuals and other directories for shared use. No "driver" software was needed. You simply plugged in the networking card and your machine had additional drives that were internal to the SRS45. This approach was far ahead of its time and sadly never recognized for its brilliance. The SRS45 as were all CPT machines not just dedicated Word Processors. === Personal-computer based === ==== CPT PT software ==== CPT PT was a reduced a version of the software that ran under MS-DOS as an application on IBM PC compatible computers. The corporation intended it as a bridge to allow data to flow in and out of personal computer packages, as well as providing a personal-computer word processing application for those familiar with standalone CPT equipment or who preferred the CPT style of dual-window text editing. Price: approx. $200, 1980-era values. ==== CPT Genius Display ==== The Genius display was a stand-alone, vertically-oriented (portrait) configuration monochrome grey-scale CRT monitor unit and an IBM PC form factor display card to allow high-resolution, full-page text & graphics on IBM PC compatible computers.
XRX (web application architecture)
In software development XRX is a web application architecture based on XForms, REST and XQuery. XRX applications store data on both the web client and on the web server in XML format and do not require a translation between data formats. XRX is considered a simple and elegant application architecture due to the minimal number of translations needed to transport data between client and server systems. The XRX architecture is also tightly coupled to W3C standards (CSS, XHTML 2.0, XPath, XML Schema) to ensure XRX applications will be robust in the future. Because XRX applications leverage modern declarative languages on the client and functional languages on the server they are designed to empower non-developers who are not familiar with traditional imperative languages such as JavaScript, Java or .Net. == Overview of XRX == XRX is a zero translation application architecture that uses XML to store data in the client web browser, on the application server and in the database server. It is because each of these layers uses XML as the same structural data model that XRX applications do not have to translate data structures to and from both object and relational data structures. Because of the lack of need for translation, XRX is considered to have a clean and elegant design. The XRX web application architecture allows developers to focus on the business problem and not the translation problem. XRX benefits from several advances in software technology: === Client Architectural Features === A model–view–controller (MVC) architecture that separates the data from its presentation and business logic. A single element (xf:submission) for all server submissions. This replaces much of the JavaScript code required in most AJAX applications. An advanced event model (XML Events) consistent with W3C standards that frees applications from having to deal with vendor-specific and browser-specific event handling. A Dependency graph that is used to store the dependency structure of the client controllers. This frees the developer from having to manually update either the model or the views when data changes in an application. This allows spreadsheet-like applications to be created on the client with very little effort. A declarative programming style that allows most client XForms applications to be created using a small set of approximately 20 elements. This allows rich client applications to be created without knowledge of JavaScript or other procedural scripting languages. An easy-to-extend system for creating new user interface controls using the EXtensible Bindings Language. This allows developers to add new controls at any time without fear of incompatibilities with W3C standards. === Server Architecture Features === Many native XML databases have built-in REST interfaces making each XQuery inherently a RESTful web service. A functional programming model that promotes side-effect free systems that are easier to debug and easier to run on multiple processors. An easy-to-extend system using XQuery function and modules. === Both Client and Server === Both XRX client and server components support a wide range of XML related standards such as XPath, XML Schema and XML Namespaces. Consistent use of REST interfaces to exchange data between the client and server for all transfers of data including as-you-type data checking and suggest functions. Consistent integration of W3C standards including use of XPath and XML Schema data types. A large library of standard of functions used on both the client and server. == Overall Benefits of XRX == One of the principal benefits of the XRX architecture is that it avoids the requirement to "shred" complex data structures into relational structures and then reconstitute the data back into structures when a record is edited on the client. Another benefits of the XRX Web application architecture is that it avoids most of the problems around the object-relational impedance mismatch. Another advantage is that the client developer does not have to learn JavaScript on the client. == Comparison with Traditional Object/Relational Web Application Architectures == Many traditional web application architectures created in the late 1990 were based on middle object tiers and persistence layers that used tabular data streams and relational database systems. Because each of these layers used different structures to store the models the systems required much additional complexity to translate between layers. == History of XRX == Early examples of using a zero-translation architecture in multi-tier systems can be traced back to the rise of object-oriented databases in the 1990s. See OODBMS History Mark Birbeck suggested that the combination of XForms, XQuery with REST interfaces between the two had many advantages in a meeting to the UK XML User Group in September 2006 . His presentation was one of the first to specifically suggest that the combination of three technologies: XForms and XQuery with REST interfaces would have surprisingly beneficial effects. Mark termed this process "Skimming" but that term did not seem to be contagious. Erik Bruchez of Orbeon spoke at the XML 2007 conference on Boston in December 2007. In his presentation "XForms and the eXist XML database: a perfect couple", Bruchez showed that many people were discovering synergistic benefits of XForms on the client and XQuery on the server. The label for XRX was suggested by a blog posting by Dan McCreary on December 14, 2007. It was in this article that Dan suggested the need for a contagious meme for the ideas behind the XRX architecture. == Generalizations of XRX == Although XRX was originally intended to connote the use of XForms on the client, REST as an interface and XQuery on the server, other proponents of the symmetrical use of XML on the client and server have generalized the term to encompass any XML-centric web client and any server that can store and query XML documents. This use of XRX is generally referred to as "shallow XRX". These generalizations do benefit from a simplified zero-translation architecture but many do not benefit from REST interfaces, XPath for consistent data selection, declarative systems in the client, and functional languages on the server (one of the key aspects of XRX). Use of all three technologies (XForms, REST and XQuery) is referred to as "deep XRX". Although XRX architecture is centred on XForms and XQuery, it does not preclude the use of other technologies that manipulate XML natively, such as XSLT, XProc, and XSL-FO.
Mentimeter
Mentimeter (or Menti for short) is a Swedish company based in Stockholm that develops and maintains an eponymous app used to create presentations with real-time feedback. == Foundation and background == Based in Stockholm, Sweden, the Mentimeter app was started by Swedish entrepreneur Johnny Warström and Niklas Ingvar as a response to unproductive meetings. The initial start-up budget was $500,000 raised by a group of prominent investors, including Per Appelgren in 2014, following the market's tendency to invest in Scandinavia. The app also focuses on online collaboration for the education sector, allowing students or public members to answer questions anonymously. The app enables users to share knowledge and real-time feedback on mobile devices with presentations, polls or brainstorming sessions in classes, meetings, gatherings, conferences and other group activities. == Achievements == By 2021, Mentimeter had over 270 million users and was one of Sweden's fastest-growing startups. The company also ranked #10 on 20 Fastest Growing 500 Startups Batch 16 Companies. It was ranked Stockholm's fastest growing company of the 2018 edition of the DI Gasell Award. Mentimeter has a freemium business model.