Autopsy of an airplane crash: a transactional approach to forensic cognitive science

In considerations of cognition in complex, technologically enhanced work environments, the question often concerns the boundaries of the phenomena to be researched. In classical cognitive science, the boundary of cognition is the brain case. More recent approaches, including distributed cognition and joint cognitive systems, draw the boundaries so that human operators and aspects of their environment are included; and the foci of the inquiries are interactions and representations that are passed around between players. This study makes a case for a transactional approach, which acknowledges a unity/identity of agent and environment. To understand the effect of agent characteristics in performance requires knowing the environment characteristics; and to understand the effect of the environment characteristics on performance requires knowing the agent characteristics. The approach is exemplified in the analysis of key instants of the spectacular and widely publicized crash of TransAsia Flight GE235 in which 43 lives were lost. The transactional analysis exhibits the internal cognitive dynamic in the cockpit that actually explains why agents acted as they did (rather than what they did not do because situation awareness lacked). It is better suited as a foundation of forensic cognitive science than the classical view on human error.     

Performance metric alerting: a new design approach for complexalerting problems

Alerting systems and related decision-making automation are widely used to enhance the safety and capability of controlled processes across many applications. Traditional alerting systems use physical metrics such as temperature, distance between vehicles, or time-to-impact as bases for making alerting decisions. Threshold values on these metrics are typically derived using an iterative process to ensure the achievement of desired performance goals, defined by higher-level metrics such as false alarm, safety, or success probabilities. We generalize this problem and develop two state spaces: one representing physical metrics and one representing performance metrics. A traditional alerting system operates completely within the physical space, using decision thresholds that have been developed off-line during the design process by examining how the physical threshold translates across to the performance state space. The physical metrics thus act as an indirect means to control the performance of the system. We propose an alternate approach that enables the system to operate online in the performance space. Alerting decisions are based directly on the computed values of metrics such as false alarm probability rather than on surrogate physical metrics. These two design approaches are then contrasted in case studies of recently-developed alerting systems     

Toward a reference process for developing wireless Internet services

Wireless Internet services such as mobile Web applications promise an enormous market potential. The field is characterized by extreme time-to-market pressure and insufficient knowledge about development procedures and technical constraints. This results in insufficient guidance for project managers and software developers on selecting appropriate development processes, techniques, methods, and tools. In addition, there is an enormous lack of knowledge about the effects (such as effort consumption, defect injection) of such technologies that hinders the transfer of innovative technologies into practice. This article describes an initial reference process by summarizing essential technologies for the development of wireless Internet services and experience with these technologies on the levels of life cycle processes, engineering processes, and managerial processes. The reference process is based on a comprehensive literature survey and the execution of development projects for wireless Internet services. The goal of the article is to provide domain-specific guidance for project managers and software developers with accompanying lessons learned from the past.     

Toward a model for the acceptance of Internet banking in developing countries

The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been used in much of the research into technology diffusion conducted in the United States and other developed Western countries. There is, however, no empirical evidence that information-technology acceptance models established in developed countries can apply equally well to less-developed countries without some modification to account for the different context. This article questions the appropriateness of the traditional TAM model for the study of e-commerce in a developing country. It discusses the literature and presents the preliminary results of an investigation into the penetration of Internet banking in Jordan, a strategic developing country of the Middle East. The research results are used to suggest and evaluate modifications to the TAM to make it more relevant for research on technological acceptance in less-developed and developing countries. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Toward an object-oriented and automated approach for achieving robotic assembly

This paper elaborates an object-oriented and automated approach for generating assembly sequences and achieving robotic assembly. This system, built with database and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, provides the robot with the assembly sequence layout for the automatic handling rule. The critical set of problems is derived from various schemes such as model-based object recognition, features information, geometric and physical constraints between components, knowledge interpretation and robot task sequencing. Pattern recognition regarding shapes and features, along with a knowledge-based assembly, are the key issues of the authors' work. The methodology is shown through two illustrative examples involving different designs of parts in an assembly environment.     

Toward an agent-based and context-oriented approach for Web services composition

This paper presents an agent-based and context-oriented approach that supports the composition of Web services. A Web service is an accessible application that other applications and humans can discover and invoke to satisfy multiple needs. To reduce the complexity featuring the composition of Web services, two concepts are put forward, namely, software agent and context. A software agent is an autonomous entity that acts on behalf of users and the context is any relevant information that characterizes a situation. During the composition process, software agents engage in conversations with their peers to agree on the Web services that participate in this process. Conversations between agents take into account the execution context of the Web services. The security of the computing resources on which the Web services are executed constitutes another core component of the agent-based and context-oriented approach presented in this paper.     

Toward intelligent assistance for a data mining process: an ontology-based approach for cost-sensitive classification

A data mining (DM) process involves multiple stages. A simple, but typical, process might include preprocessing data, applying a data mining algorithm, and postprocessing the mining results. There are many possible choices for each stage, and only some combinations are valid. Because of the large space and nontrivial interactions, both novices and data mining specialists need assistance in composing and selecting DM processes. Extending notions developed for statistical expert systems we present a prototype intelligent discovery assistant (IDA), which provides users with 1) systematic enumerations of valid DM processes, in order that important, potentially fruitful options are not overlooked, and 2) effective rankings of these valid processes by different criteria, to facilitate the choice of DM processes to execute. We use the prototype to show that an IDA can indeed provide useful enumerations and effective rankings in the context of simple classification processes. We discuss how an IDA could be an important tool for knowledge sharing among a team of data miners. Finally, we illustrate the claims with a demonstration of cost-sensitive classification using a more complicated process and data from the 1998 KDDCUP competition.     

Toward a unified approach for the classification of NP-complete optimization problems

Two notions which have been introduced with the aim of classifying NP-complete optimization problems are compared: the notion of strong NP-completeness, due to Garey and Johnson, and that of simple and rigid problems, due to Paz and Moran. In particular, we show under what conditions reductions preserve rigidity, simplicity, strong simplicity and p-simplicity and we show that under reasonable hypothesis, p-simple problems are solved by pseudo-polynomial algorithms and strong NP-complete problems are weakly rigid.     

Toward prioritization of self-admitted technical debt: an approach to support decision to payment

Software Quality Journal - Technical Debt (TD) is a metaphor that describes the cost–benefit relationship between postponing technical development activities and the consequences of this...     

Toward an efficient and scalable feature selection approach for internet traffic classification

There is significant interest in the network management and industrial security community about the need to identify the “best” and most relevant features for network traffic in order to properly characterize user behaviour and predict future traffic. The ability to eliminate redundant features is an important Machine Learning (ML) task because it helps to identify the best features in order to improve the classification accuracy as well as to reduce the computational complexity related to the construction of the classifier. In practice, feature selection (FS) techniques can be used as a preprocessing step to eliminate irrelevant features and as a knowledge discovery tool to reveal the “best” features in many soft computing applications. In this paper, we investigate the advantages and disadvantages of such FS techniques with new proposed metrics (namely goodness, stability and similarity). We continue our efforts toward developing an integrated FS technique that is built on the key strengths of existing FS techniques. A novel way is proposed to identify efficiently and accurately the “best” features by first combining the results of some well-known FS techniques to find consistent features, and then use the proposed concept of support to select a smallest set of features and cover data optimality. The empirical study over ten high-dimensional network traffic data sets demonstrates significant gain in accuracy and improved run-time performance of a classifier compared to individual results produced by some well-known FS techniques.     

An approach to developing the SIEM system for the Internet of Things

This article suggests an approach to building systems for analyzing security incidents in the Internet of Things as a self-similar system within the ambit of the normal operation of its constituent objects. The graph model of the Internet of Things as a cyberphysical system has been developed and used as basis to prove that the analysis of paired relations selected from a discrete message stream from devices will be enough to detect security incidents.     

An approach to developing computational supports for reciprocal tutoring

This study presents a novel approach to developing computational supports for reciprocal tutoring. Reciprocal tutoring is a collaborative learning activity, where two participants take turns to play the role of a tutor and a tutee. The computational supports include scaffolding tools for the tutor, and a computer-simulated virtual participant. The approach, including system architecture, implementations of scaffolding tools for the tutor and of a virtual participant is presented herein. Furthermore, a system for reciprocal tutoring is implemented as an example of the approach.     

Toward a practical approach for BGP stability with root cause check

The instability issues of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), such as route oscillations and path explorations, can decrease the performance of packet forwarding and place heavy workload on routers. While BGP instability has been extensively studied, existing solutions mainly solve individual instances of BGP instability. Thus, with the existing solutions, the route selection processes of ASes or routers may not realize the actual root cause of BGP instability and hence cannot effectively solve the BGP instability problem. In this paper, we propose a simple, integrated solution called stable BGP (stableBGP) that practically solve a general class of BGP instability issues, including route oscillations and path explorations. stableBGP seeks to adapt the route selection process to best address the root cause of route changes so that the route selection process can quickly stabilize. We formally prove that stableBGP can achieve BGP stability. Extensive simulation results show that in the link failure scenario, stableBGP significantly reduces the number of route changes, the convergence time, and the number of route update messages when compared to prior solutions. We also analyze the performance of stableBGP when it is partially deployed. Our work provides insights into developing a practical solution that addresses the BGP instability problem.     

Toward a theoretical approach to medical error reporting system research and design

The release of the Institute of Medicine (Kohn et al., 2000) report "To Err is Human", brought attention to the problem of medical errors, which led to a concerted effort to study and design medical error reporting systems for the purpose of capturing and analyzing error data so that safety interventions could be designed. However, to make real gains in the efficacy of medical error or event reporting systems, it is necessary to begin developing a theory of reporting systems adoption and use and to understand how existing theories may play a role in explaining adoption and use. This paper presents the results of a 9-month study exploring the barriers and facilitators for the design of a statewide medical error reporting system and discusses how several existing theories of technology acceptance, adoption and implementation fit with many of the results. In addition we present an integrated theoretical model of medical error reporting system design and implementation.     

An incremental approach to developing intelligent neural networkcontrollers for robots

By beginning with simple reactive behaviors and gradually building up to more memory-dependent behaviors, it may be possible for connectionist systems to eventually achieve the level of planning. This paper focuses on an intermediate step in this incremental process, where the appropriate means of providing guidance to adapting controllers is explored. A local and a global method of reinforcement learning are contrasted-a special form of back-propagation and an evolutionary algorithm. These methods are applied to a neural network controller for a simple robot. A number of experiments are described where the presence of explicit goals and the immediacy of reinforcement are varied. These experiments reveal how various types of guidance can affect the final control behavior. The results show that the respective advantages and disadvantages of these two adaptation methods are complementary, suggesting that some hybrid of the two may be the most effective method. Concluding remarks discuss the next incremental steps toward more complex control behaviors.     

网络化智能仪表是仪器仪表的发展方向

O前言 网络化仪表是指该表除具备一般仪表功能外还具有通过电话线直接与计算机通信联网的功能,利用网络化仪表可以上网,发e-mail,还应具有下载数据、资料同步等功能,我们可以把网络化仪表定义为具备网络功能的新型仪表,它将普通电子仪表赋予信息功能,并可以进行远程监控.网络化仪表利用了计算机的软件和硬件优势,既增加了测量功能,又提高了技术性能.     

Successes and challenges in developing a hybrid approach to sentiment analysis

This article covers some success and learning experiences attained during the developing of a hybrid approach to Sentiment Analysis (SA) based on a Sentiment Lexicon, Semantic Rules, Negation Handling, Ambiguity Management and Linguistic Variables. The proposed hybrid method is presented and applied to two selected datasets: Movie Review and Sentiment Twitter datasets. The achieved results are compared against those obtained when Naïve Bayes (NB) and Maximum Entropy (ME) supervised machine learning classification methods are used for the same datasets. The proposed hybrid system attained higher accuracy and precision scores than NB and ME, which shows its superiority when applied to the SA problem at the sentence level. Finally, an alternative strategy to calculating the orientation polarity and polarity intensity in one step instead of the two steps method used in the hybrid approach is explored. The analysis of the yielded mixed results achieved with this alternative approach shows its potential as an aid in the computation of semantic orientations and produced some lessons learnt in developing a more effective mechanism to calculating the orientation polarity and polarity intensity.     

A knowledge engineering approach to developing mindtools for context-aware ubiquitous learning

Recent developments in computing and mobile technologies have enabled the mobile and ubiquitous learning approach, which situates students in an environment that combines real-world and digital-world learning resources. Although such an approach seems to be innovative and interesting, several problems have been revealed when applying it to practical learning activities. One major problem is owing to the lack of proper learning strategies or tools that can guide or assist the students to learn in such a complex learning scenario. Students might feel excited or interested when using the mobile devices to learn in the real world; however, their learning achievements could be disappointing. To cope with this problem, in this study, a knowledge engineering approach is proposed to develop Mindtools for such innovative learning scenarios. Experimental results from a natural science course of an elementary school show that this innovative approach not only enhances learning motivation, but also improves the learning achievements of the students.     

Toward a feasible variable structure control design for a synchronous machine connected to an infinite bus

This note details the design of a nonlinear controller to achieve transient stability of a synchronous machine connected to an infinite bus. The design method combines the use of variable structure control, nonlinear transformation techniques, and linear system theory to develop a switched control law to drive the machine from a perturbed, unstable state to a desired equilibrium point and to maintain it there. This note demonstrates the effectiveness of the control via a digital simulation.     

Modified particle swarm optimization structure approach to direction of arrival estimation

This study considers the problem of estimating the direction-of-arrival (DOA) for code-division multiple access (CDMA) signals. In this type of problem, the associated cost function of the DOA estimation is generally a computationally-expensive and highly-nonlinear optimization problem. A fast convergence of the global optimization algorithm is therefore required to attain results within a short amount of time. In this paper, we propose a new application of the modify particle swarm optimization (MPSO) structure to achieve a global optimal solution with a fast convergence rate for this type of DOA estimation problem.The MPSO uses a first-order Taylor series expansion of the objective function to address the issue of enhanced PSO search capacity for finding the global optimum leads to increased performance. The first-order Taylor series approximates the spatial scanning vector in terms of estimating deviation results in and reducing to a simple one-dimensional optimization problem and the estimating deviation has the tendency to fly toward a better search area. Thus, the estimating deviation can be used to update the velocity of the PSO. Finally, several numerical examples are presented to illustrate the design procedure and to confirm the performance of the proposed method.