A visualization framework for the analysis of?neuromuscular?simulations

We present a visualization framework for exploring and analyzing data sets from biomechanical and neuromuscular simulations. These data sets describe versatile information related to the different stages of a motion analysis. In studying these data using a 3D visualization approach, interactive exploring is important, especially for supporting spatial analysis. Moreover, as these data contain many various but related elements, numerical analysis of neuromuscular simulations is complicated. Visualization techniques enhance the analysis process, thus improving the effectiveness of the experiments. Our approach allows convenient definitions of relationships between numerical data sets and 3D objects. Scientific simulation data sets appropriate for this style of analysis are present everywhere motion analysis is performed and are predominant in many clinical works. In this paper, we outline the functionalities of the framework as well as applications embedded within the OpenSim simulation platform. These functionalities form an effective approach specifically designed for the investigation of neuromuscular simulations. This claim is supported by evaluation experiments where the framework was used to analyze gaits and crouch motions.     

New aspects of the elastic net?algorithm for cluster analysis

The elastic net algorithm formulated by Durbin–Willshaw as a heuristic method and initially applied to solve the traveling salesman problem can be used as a tool for data clustering in n-dimensional space. With the help of statistical mechanics, it is formulated as a deterministic annealing method, where a chain with a fixed number of nodes interacts at different temperatures with the data cloud. From a given temperature on the nodes are found to be the optimal centroids of fuzzy clusters, if the number of nodes is much smaller than the number of data points. We show in this contribution that for this temperature, the centroids of hard clusters, defined by the nearest neighbor clusters of every node, are in the same position as the optimal centroids of the fuzzy clusters. The same is true for the standard deviations. This result can be used as a stopping criterion for the annealing process. The stopping temperature and the number and sizes of the hard clusters depend on the number of nodes in the chain. Test was made with homogeneous and nonhomogeneous artificial clusters in two dimensions. A medical application is given to localize tumors and their size in images of a combined measurement of X-ray computed tomography and positron emission tomography.     

Where is evolutionary computation going? A temporal analysis of the EC community

Studying an evolving complex system and drawing some conclusions from it is an integral part of nature-inspired computing; being a part of that complex system, some insight can also be gained from our knowledge of it. In this paper we study the evolution of the evolutionary computation co-authorship network using social network analysis tools, with the aim of extracting some conclusions on its mechanisms. In order to do this, we first examine the evolution of macroscopic properties of the EC co-authorship graph, and then we look at its community structure and its corresponding change along time. The EC network is shown to be in a strongly expansive phase, exhibiting distinctive growth patterns, both at the macroscopic and the mesoscopic level.

Ignorance is bliss? An empirical analysis of the determinants of PSS usefulness in practice

Planning support systems (PSS) enabled by smart city technologies (big data and information and communication technologies (ICTs)) are becoming more widespread in their availability, but have not yet been fully recognized as being useful in planning practice. Thus, a better understanding of the determinants of PSS usefulness in practice helps to improve the functional support of PSS for smart cities. This study is based on a recent international questionnaire (268 respondents) designed to evaluate the perceptions of scholars and practitioners in the smart city planning field. Based on the empirical evidence, this paper recommends that it is imperative for PSS developers and users to be more responsive to the fit for task-technology and user-technology (i.e., utility and usability, respectively) since they positively contribute to PSS usefulness in practice and to be more sensitive to the potential negative effects of contextual factors on PSS usefulness in smart cities. The empirical analyses further suggest that rather than merely striving for integrating smart city technologies into advancing PSS, the way that innovative PSS are integrated into the planning framework (i.e., how well PSS can satisfy the needs of planning tasks and users by considering context-specificities) is of great significance in promoting PSS's actual usefulness.     

On the combination of logical and probabilistic models for?information analysis

Formal logical tools are able to provide some amount of reasoning support for information analysis, but are unable to represent uncertainty. Bayesian network tools represent probabilistic and causal information, but in the worst case scale as poorly as some formal logical systems and require specialized expertise to use effectively. We describe a framework for systems that incorporate the advantages of both Bayesian and logical systems. We define a formalism for the conversion of automatically generated natural deduction proof trees into Bayesian networks. We then demonstrate that the merging of such networks with domain-specific causal models forms a consistent Bayesian network with correct values for the formulas derived in the proof. In particular, we show that hard evidential updates in which the premises of a proof are found to be true force the conclusions of the proof to be true with probability one, regardless of any dependencies and prior probability values assumed for the causal model. We provide several examples that demonstrate the generality of the natural deduction system by using inference schemes not supportable directly in Horn clause logic. We compare our approach to other ones, including some that use non-standard logics.     

Statistical methods for analysis of Parkinson’s disease gait pattern and classification

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Understanding the human gait and extracting intrinsic feature helps to classify walking patterns of Parkinson disease patients. The measurement of time series...     

What is the relation between slow feature analysis and independent component analysis?

We present an analytical comparison between linear slow feature analysis and second-order independent component analysis, and show that in the case of one time delay, the two approaches are equivalent. We also consider the case of several time delays and discuss two possible extensions of slow feature analysis.     

Teaching science for the workplace? An analysis of Canadian science curriculum documents

Abstract

This article reports on the analysis of 108 science curriculum documents from the 13 Canadian provinces and territories exploring the explicit links that the science curriculum makes with the world of work. The document analysis was undertaken to examine the extent to which the contemporary Canadian provincial and territorial science curriculum documents represent objectives and goals that relate to science in the workplace. Because Canadian curriculum documents are reviewed periodically, the research was timed so that it captured the moment at which a significant number of these policy documents had been revised and released: December 2004. The article begins with a review of the nature of the knowledge or New Economy. Then previous document analysis research on science curriculum policy is discussed. The present study's findings suggest that curriculum policy makers are generally inattentive to the world of work and, in particular, to the demands of the New Economy. Implications of the research include the need to review the purposes of science education in Canada. Questions we might ask include, ‘To what extent might school science attempt to bridge the worlds of school and work?’ and ‘How might the bridge be built to this large part of life after school?’     

Who are the users? Who are the developers? Webs of users and developers in the development process of a technical standard

The paper presents an empirical study of user involvement in developing a technical standard for a scientific community's information system project. The case illustrates how multiple perspectives are involved when considering the user role in practice. The case presents a situation where both developers and users were pre‐defined in the design and development phases of the standard as homogeneous groups of actors. Groups of actors changed to become more heterogeneous and ‘fluid’ in the deployment and implementation phases, thus forming ‘webs of developers’ and ‘webs of users’. Detailed analysis of the process in its entirety shows the blurredness of boundaries between ‘developer’ and ‘user’ categories and roles, and reveals challenges at social and organizational levels. Three models pertaining to the system development process are presented in order to illuminate differing perspectives on the user and on the development process itself. The paper draws theoretically from information systems, social informatics, and science and technology studies. The research contributes to a deeper, interdisciplinary understanding of ‘the’ user, of multiple roles in systems development, and of dynamic sets of user–developer relations.     

What is the Right R&D Strategy for Overcoming the Difficulties of the South Korean IT Industry?

This study proposes new strategies for the information technology (IT) industry in South Korea, provides objectives for the South Korean IT industry and articulates the roles of the Korean government agencies, companies and users. Specifically, it covers South Korean IT strategies employed during several periods, including a stagnant period and a more recent period reflecting new successful IT environments of developed countries. South Korean IT companies should recognize the importance of user interface and user experience technologies as a next key global IT industry trend. Raising this awareness is critical in increasing the global competitiveness of the Korean IT industry. Furthermore, South Korean government agencies should take more active role in constructing and improving interactive environments that would benefit both companies and users. For future research, it is imperative to investigate the specific roles of companies, users and government agencies with respect to IT usage.     

Learning the harmonic analysis: is visualization an effective approach?

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Understanding the structure of music compositions requires an ability built over time, through the study of the music theory and the application of countless...     

A spatial–spectral kernel-based approach for the classification of remote-sensing images

Classification of remotely sensed images with very high spatial resolution is investigated. The proposed method deals with the joint use of the spatial and the spectral information provided by the remote-sensing images. A definition of an adaptive neighborhood system is considered. Based on morphological area filtering, the spatial information associated with each pixel is modeled as the set of connected pixels with an identical gray value (flat zone) to which the pixel belongs: The pixel's neighborhood is characterized by the vector median value of the corresponding flat zone. The spectral information is the original pixel's value, be it a scalar or a vector value. Using kernel methods, the spatial and spectral information are jointly used for the classification through a support vector machine formulation. Experiments on hyperspectral and panchromatic images are presented and show a significant increase in classification accuracies for peri-urban area: For instance, with the first data set, the overall accuracy is increased from 80% with a conventional support vectors machines classifier to 86% with the proposed approach. Comparisons with other contextual methods show that the method is competitive.     

Who exactly is the moderator? A consideration of online knowledge management network moderation in educational organisations

In the knowledge society, the appearance and development of new networked working and learning environments is increasingly common. In the Accelera project, which is the basis for this paper, we have developed an online community of practice which enables experiences and knowledge to be shared between various educational agents, and analysis of the processes generated, in order to produce and validate a model for the networked creation and management of knowledge.     

Is there a language of sentiment? An analysis of lexical resources for sentiment analysis

In recent years, sentiment analysis (SA) has emerged as a rapidly expanding field of application and research in the area of information retrieval. In order to facilitate the task of selecting lexical resources for automated SA systems, this paper sets out a detailed analysis of four widely used sentiment lexica. The analysis provides an overview of the coverage of each lexicon individually, the overlap and consistency of the four resources and a corpus analysis of the distribution of the resources’ lexical contents in general and specialised language. This work aims to explore the characteristics of affective language as represented by these lexica and the implications of the findings for developers of SA systems.     

What is the role of IT in innovation? A bibliometric analysis of research development in IT innovation

With the wide diffusion of information technology (IT) in our daily life and work, it is clear that product innovation and service innovation have more and more connection with IT, and IT has become an important tool or component in innovation. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into future studies pertaining to this area by investigating the research development of IT innovation using bibliometric analysis. The status of IT innovation study is analysed through citation analysis with the help of CiteSpace. Influential references, hot topics, top-tier journals and important institutes are all detected, and the intellectual structure of recent studies is also mapped in this study, and we find that research on IT innovation is mainly from two directions, innovation study group and information systems study group. Finally, we follow the logic of Nambisan [2013. “Information Technology and Product/Service Innovation: A Brief Assessment and Some Suggestions for Future Research.” Journal of the Association for Information Systems 14 (4): 215–226] to explore the relationship between IT and innovation through reviewing papers in the top journals in this field. We find that most studies treat IT as an enabler of innovation. Although some recent studies try to pay attention to the role of IT as a trigger for innovation and give some rationale for the IT–innovation relationship, further studies are still required to uncover the trigger effect mechanism.     

What is the Basis of Choice Reaction-Time ?

In an 8-choice reaction task times for responses by the ring and middle fingers were found to be substantially longer than those for responses by the index and little fingers. Supplementary experiments showed that the inequalities were not due to motor factors but rather to perceptual features which affected the ease with which the positions of signals and response keys could be identified.

The inequalities observed are incompatible with several types of model which have been proposed to account for the linear rise of reaction-time with the logarithm of degree of choice; in particular, the serial classification model which assumes a simple progressive dichotomization, and models which assume that evidence from all the possible signal sources is examined simultaneously. However, the times for 2-, 4- and 8-choice tasks accorded remarkably well with predictions from a modified serial-classification model proposed by the author in 1960.