Methodological considerations in analysing anaesthetists' habits of action in clinical situations

Human activity can be seen as an intentional, context-dependent enterprise explained through meanings the actors attach to their activity and their directly observable interactions with the environment. The authors have demonstrated previously a new conceptual framework to describe the anaesthetist's activity. One of the central concepts besides orientation is habit of action referring to the way in which the actor has organized his actions when interacting with his environment, in this case a patient with unique physiological potentials, information monitors and anaesthetic drugs. The activity dependent on contingent, particular circumstances, needs to be studied as it appears in a natural situation. Using an idiographic study design the authors have examined the activity of eight expert anaesthetists in clinical settings to determine the characteristics of their habits of action. To capture the fleeting circumstances during the anaesthetic process, a wide observational basis was necessary. It consisted of videotapes, detailed expert observations, and interviews. The conceptual analysis of the subject, habit of action, is described step-by-step. Two distinct habits of action could be identified, confirming earlier results. The interpretative habit of action was characterized by extensive use of situational information in order to construct a cumulative conception of the patient's physiological potentials to control the process accurately. Moreover, rich dialogue between formal professional knowledge and patient-specific, particular knowledge was evident. The reactive habit of action was characterized by a tendency to regulate the process by means of predetermined conventional ranges of measured patient parameters shown by monitors. The authors discuss their methodological solutions and results, and explicate their differences to the earlier approaches.     

故障诊断专家系统中的PC机与过程计算机间数据通信的实现

本文介绍了ＰＣ机与过程计算机间如何实现正确数据通信的方法。其中ＰＣ机作为上位机,用于运行故障诊断专家系统;过程计算机是德国西门子ＳＩＥＭＥＮＳ Ｒ３０过程计算机,用来监测和控制某钢厂大型冷轧自动化生产线。该方法既保证了故障诊断专家系统对过程计算机及整个生产线实时地进行状态监测和故障,又不影响过程计算机本身对生产过程的监测和控制。     

The effects of reading and writing habits on blog adoption

Blogs are one of the most widely used Internet applications; however, there is a lack of attention paid to understanding blog adoption with respect to individual reading/writing habits. This paper, therefore, investigates how individual reading and writing habits contribute to blog adoption. A survey was conducted in order to understand the relationship between an individual's reading and writing habits, in terms of reading/writing attitude and reading/writing behavioural patterns, and the adoption of blogs. A total of 210 blog users participated in the study. Hypotheses were tested and data were analysed using multiple regression analysis and logistic regression analysis. The results revealed that reading and writing habits are a significant predictor of blog adoption. Furthermore, based on Rogers' diffusion of innovation theory, this study also investigated whether people's habitual characteristics (i.e. heavy and light) have some sort of relationship with the stage of blog adoption (i.e. earlier and later). A subsequent analysis showed that people with a heavier reading habit group tended to adopt at an earlier stage, while this consequence was absent in those with heavier writing habits groups.     

A numerical reconstruction of the effects of late stimulation on a cardiac ventricular action potential.

Numerical simulations of a propagating cardiac action potential utilizing Beeler-Reuter and Drouhard-Roberge physiological routines for the membrane current have been performed. These action potentials show increases in action potential duration when subjected to strong late stimuli of either positive or negative polarity. The mechanism is the same as that reported in an earlier paper which utilized a different physiological approach: repolarizing stimuli can reset the fast sodium gates locally so that they can be retriggered by diffusive return of charge from surrounding tissue. This results in a large depolarizing transient that lengthens action potential duration.     

Breaking or keeping the habits: exploring the role of legacy habits in the process of discontinuing organisational information systems

Users develop habits in relation to information systems (IS) to reduce the cognitive and behavioural efforts needed for using them. However, when these systems have to be discontinued, users face challenges regarding how to stop relying on their legacy habits. Despite their importance, we know little about how legacy habits shape the way users discontinue a legacy system. Through a comparative case-study approach, in a large mortgage firm and an international telecommunication company, we identify three roles that these habits play during the discontinuance process. We demonstrate that legacy habits not only play an ‘inhibiting’ role by keeping users attached to legacy systems; they also play a ‘bridging’ role by acting as a common ground for users to start working with a new system and a ‘deterring’ role when users resent certain habits of working with the legacy systems, despite their orientation to keep relying on these habits. We contribute to the IS habit literature by extending the roles of legacy habits beyond an inhibiting role. We also enrich the conceptualisation of legacy habits beyond the individual level by showing that the socio-technical conditions in which the habits are embedded impact the emergence and evolution of their roles during the discontinuance process. We discuss the implications of our findings for theorising and managing IS discontinuance process.     

Group support systems in Hong Kong: an action research project

The last dozen years have seen a considerable investment of resources into the research and development of group support systems (GSS) technology. This paper describes how GSS was used to support a process improvement project in a Hong Kong accounting firm. Although the project encountered many difficulties, the application of action research facilitated the adaptation of the GSS to the shifting circumstances, and the project was successfully completed. A variety of lessons concerning the use of GSS are presented, while increased use of action research in complex organizational contexts is recommended.     

Action research in policy making: a case in the dairy industry in Gujarat,India

Action research has been extensively used world-wide for decision making related to policy due to its nature of involving the researcher and decision maker in the process. Following independence in India, one of the major revolutions was brought about in the dairy sector with regard to complete management systems. Most innovations and changes occurred in the line function while the staff function was more often neglected in the overall change. The authors undertook an action research study focusing on staff function and relayed improvements that can influence policy related to decision making. The authors have also developed the MPS model for staff function which can help a company or industry in appraising their own staff and functions which can thereby aid in utilising their potential.     

Migrating from target-controlled infusion to closed-loop control in general anaesthesia

The target-controlled infusion (TCI) technique has been successfully and commercially used in clinical general anaesthesia with the intravenous anaesthetic agent propofol. The technique is based on a population pharmacokinetic model and is an open-loop control system. Closed-loop control requires a reliable and consistent signal for feedback utilisation. With all anaesthetic agents the somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP) have been shown to give increased latency as anaesthetic depth is increased. Using infusion rate and SEP response data from rats anaesthetised with propofol a mathematical model was derived to describe the anaesthetic process. This model was used as a design reference to develop a proportional integral (PI) closed-loop control system using SEP as the feedback measure. A serials of 10 trials were conducted to investigate the difference between continuous bolus injection and infusion, all under closed-loop control. The trials showed that the use of SEPs in closed-loop control of anaesthesia is feasible.     

Emerging expertise in process control

This paper presents a discussion of expertise in process control through a study of power production regulation in a French nuclear power plant. Cognitive research generally characterizes expert process control as the ability to foresee future process states, to select and time appropriate actions, to project their consequences. According to this view, expertise lies in the mental processes that prepare action by envisioning the evolution of events and planning the future course of action to deal with the events. The extensive and detailed in situ observations of expert operators engaged in power production regulation show that expert operators regulate power level through a series of progressively adjusted control actions that are neither extensively planned beforehand nor parametrized in any detail. The activity of power production regulation is understood as the creation of a balanced trade-off between multiple objectives and parameters. The findings of the study suggest that expertise lies also in the interactions between operators and process via the interface and that the balanced trade-off is constructed in the course of this interaction, and not beforehand.     

Self-organization of conceptual generalities and pattern-directed learning

Human expert decision makers can be characterized by their ability to perceive a hypothetical conceptual generality or pattern that is underlying a given collection of objects. The conventional cluster analysis is unable to generate such patterns since its clustering process is far from what the human experts actually do. That is, human experts form some concepts inductively from individual observations based on the conceptual “meaning” which the objects have. In this paper, by introducing an idea of prototype theory from a psychological domain with respect to human concept formation, an algorithm for human classification process is proposed. Based on this, the role of human generalization capability in his classification process is discussed with respect to the background semantic knowledge. The algorithm can be roughly divided into two phases; inductive prototype formation from training examples in a bottom-up fashion, and pattern-directed clustering of the instances being affected by the acquired concepts in a top-down fashion. Using a schematically-modelled example, the algorithm is illustrated with its implemented results. Our modelling method for the human classification process can be utilized for conceptual clustering that classifies a number of unknown objects into a distinguished group being affected by pre-acquired concepts.     

Monitoring water quality through a telematic sensor network and a fuzzy expert system

Abstract: In this paper we present an expert system that monitors seawater quality and pollution in northern Greece through a sensor network called Andromeda. The expert system monitors sensor data collected by local monitoring stations and reasons about the current level of water suitability for various aquatic uses, such as swimming and piscicultures. The aim of the expert system is to help the authorities in the decision-making process in the battle against pollution of the aquatic environment, which is vital for public health and the economy of northern Greece. The expert system determines, using fuzzy logic, when certain environmental parameters exceed certain pollution limits, which are specified either by the authorities or by environmental scientists, and flags up appropriate alerts.     

基于动作推导引擎下的故障检测方法

本文根据文[2]介绍的软件管理者方法,提出了基于动作推导引擎的软件管理者方法。软件管理者单元是一种自动的实时监控软件故障的软件工具,适用于实时软件系统特别是通信类软件系统的故障侦测。它通过监控目标系统的输入和输出,使用获得的输入和目标系统的管理模型推算出对应此输入序列的期望输出值．与目标系统的实际输出做比较．如果实际输出没有在期望输出集中,则管理者单元断定目标系统出现错误。基于动作推导引擎的软件管理者方法,采用了动作推导引擎产生的目标系统管理模型,使该管理模型独立于软件管理者方法。可以实现管理模块与动作推导引擎同步实时更新．而不会导致软件管理者单元的改动。     

From the times of the first scribes: innovation and technology within graphic design

The authors use their different work and training background as perspectives for discussing the changing world of graphical design. In this digital world, expert knowledge of the technology is essential, but the authors argue that a consequence of prioritising technical expertise in the new interdisciplinary IT- design studies may be a loss of quality in design. To improve the depth in design the authors introduce a psychological framework for design work and on this basis they suggest a systematic method. The method is a 4-step conceptual model: reason, function, emotion and senses, and technology. The model interacts with all phases of the design, and functions as a generating-creating and execution-evaluation system. The authors emphasise that evaluation is embedded throughout the design process. They suggest that a systematic method becomes the guiding tool in interdisciplinary design education, an essential part of the students design qualifications as well as an essential tool in design work.     

The design process of expert systems development: some concerns

Abstract: A discussion is presented of why some expert systems that organizations have developed are not successful. The concept of design process plays a very significant role at the outset of the expert system development process. This concept has not been the subject of much debate and attention in expert systems development. From the author's point of view, one of the main issues is how the designer (knowledge engineer) thinks about the design process. In general, the designer's process is influenced by the knowledge engineer's conception. This paper endeavors to disclose some of the main factors related to the knowledge engineer's conception of the design process and an attempt is made to put forward a conceptual model of the expert system design process. This conceptual model is an initial step towards a successful implementation of expert system projects.     

Action recognition from only somatosensory information using spectral learning in a hidden Markov model

Human action classification is fundamental technology for robots that have to interpret a human’s intended actions and make appropriate responses, as they will have to do if they are to be integrated into our daily lives. Improved measurement of human motion, using an optical motion capture system or a depth sensor, allows robots to recognize human actions from superficial motion data, such as camera images containing human actions or positions of human bodies. But existing technology for motion recognition does not handle the contact force that always exists between the human and the environment that the human is acting upon. More specifically, humans perform feasible actions by controlling not only their posture but also the contact forces. Furthermore these contact forces require appropriate muscle tensions in the full body. These muscle tensions or activities are expected to be useful for robots observing human actions to estimate the human’s somatosensory states and consequently understand the intended action. This paper proposes a novel approach to classifying human actions using only the activities of all the muscles in the human body. Continuous spatio-temporal data of the activity of an individual muscle is encoded into a discrete hidden Markov model (HMM), and the set of HMMs for all the muscles forms a classifier for the specific action. Our classifiers were tested on muscle activities estimated from captured human motions, electromyography data, and reaction forces. The results demonstrate their superiority over commonly used HMM-based classifiers.     

Artificial intelligence and expert systems applications in new product development—a survey

The authors review and categorize the research in applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and expert systems (ES) in new product development (NPD) activities. A brief overview of NPD process and AI is presented. This is followed by a literature survey in regard to AI and ES applications in NPD, which revealed twenty four articles (twenty two applications) in the 1990–1997 period. The applications are categorized into five areas: expert decision support systems for NPD project evaluation, knowledge-based systems (KBS) for product and process design, KBS for QFD, AI support for conceptual design and AI support for group decision making in concurrent engineering. Brief review of each application is provided. The articles are also grouped by NPD stages and seven NPD core elements (competencies and abilities). Further research areas are pointed out.     

动作推导引擎及其在语音通信软件设计中的应用

动作逻辑作为描述程序行为的语言,常应用于智能机器人的开发上。该文把动作逻辑作为程序设计中的一种形式化语言,把动作解释为造成系统状态改变的原因,将引擎的思想引入到软件的开发过程中。所谓引擎的思想,就是将状态集合、动作集合输入到引擎中,根据这些输入,引擎自动查找相应的算法并执行,从而形成一个完成特定功能的软件系统。将引擎的思想引入到软件开发过程中,可以实现程序自动生成程序,大大提高了代码的重用,减少软件出错的几率,并且程序可读性、可扩充性和易维护性都大大地被提高。把这种根据用户输入自动生成软件系统的引擎称为动作推导引擎。     

Increasing teacher candidates' ways of interaction and levels of learning through action research in a blended course

Within the scope of this research, efforts were exerted to increase teacher candidates' interaction ways through action research in a blended teaching profession course in higher education level. Teacher candidates participated in various blended learning activities during a semester-long course, and the problems related to learners' participation in blended learning activities and their interactions during learning process were solved via action decisions. Blended learning activities were developed according to Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model and the lessons learned from previous two pilot studies. In order to conduct the activities; face-to-face and synchronous virtual classroom sessions were combined with asynchronous from discussions and blog. At the beginning of the course, teacher candidates chosed activity sets according to learning style model and throughout a semester-long course, they participated in the activities. Throughout the action research process, the ways of interactions between students, students and instructor, and students and the content were examined as well as the levels of learning accomplished by students during the learning process. This study has revealed indicators pointing to an increase both in students’ interactions and levels of learning during the blended learning process.     

Incremental acquisition of search knowledge

The development of highly effective heuristics for search problems is a difficult and time-consuming task. We present a knowledge acquisition approach to incrementally model expert search processes. Though, experts do not normally have complete introspective access to that knowledge, their explanations of actual search considerations seem very valuable in constructing a knowledge-level model of their search processes.Furthermore, for the basis of our knowledge acquisition approach, we substantially extend the work done on Ripple-down rules which allows knowledge acquisition and maintenance without analysis or a knowledge engineer. This extension allows the expert to enter his domain terms during the KA process; thus the expert provides a knowledge-level model of his search process. We call this framework nested ripple-down rules.Our approach targets the implicit representation of the less clearly definable quality criteria by allowing the expert to limit his input to the system to explanations of the steps in the expert search process. These explanations are expressed in our search knowledge interactive language. These explanations are used to construct a knowledge base representing search control knowledge. We are acquiring the knowledge in the context of its use, which substantially supports the knowledge acquisition process. Thus, in this paper, we will show that it is possible to build effective search heuristics efficiently at the knowledge level. We will discuss how our system SmS1.3 (SmS for Smart Searcher) operates at the knowledge level as originally described by Newell. We complement our discussion by employing SmS for the acquisition of expert chess knowledge for performing a highly pruned tree search. These experimental results in the chess domain are evidence for the practicality of our approach.     

Expert systems in organizations: Legal and ethical considerations

Information technology is not only driving productivity worldwide, but also is creating many structural and processing changes within organizations. Alterations in people's work habits and in their relationships in the workplace create many questions, which may become critical organizational problems in the future if they are not identified early. These questions are ethical or legal in nature, and their understanding is vitally important Within the realm of artificial intelligence systems, a significant amount of attention is received by the domain of expert systems, which enhance or replace existing organizational decision‐making processes. This article highlights some of the basic considerations arising within the organizational setting as a result of expert systems utilization.