Book reviews

Computer Software: legal protection in the United Kingdom Henry Carr & Richard Arnold, 1992 London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2nd ed, xv + 312 pp., £45.00 (hardback)

Advanced Information Systems for Lawyers V. Mital & L. Johnson, 1992 London: Chapman & Hall. pp. 306, £35.00

Law of Contract Laurence Koffman & Elizabeth MacDonald, 1992 London: Fourmat Publishing, 430 pp., paperback £22.50

The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law M. Ethan Katsh, 1991 Oxford: Oxford University Press. £13.95     

Book reviews

Electronic Finance Law Chris Reed, 1993 Hemel Hempstead: Woodhead‐Faulkner. 450 pp. £50.00

Introduction to Computer Law, 2nd Edn David I. Bainbridge, 1993 London: Pitman £18.99

Deontic Logic in Computer Science: normative system specification John‐Jules CH. Meyer & Roel J. Wieringa, 1993 London: John Wiley £34.95, xiv + 317pp.     

Book reviews

Industrial Design Law G Fellner London, Sweet & Maxwell, 1995 xxxiv + 302 pp., £58 (hardback). 0360–0834/96/030253–05

Terrell on the Law of Patents D. Young, A. Watson, S. Thorley & R. Miller London, Sweet & Maxwell, 1994 14th edn, £148 (hardback)     

Book reviews

Crime and the Computer, Martin Wasik, 1991, Oxford: Clarendon Press. £35.00.

Yearbook of Law, Computers and Technology, Volume 5. K.V. Russell (Ed.), 1991. London: Butterworths. £29.50.

Computers, Artificial Intelligence and the Law. Mervyn E. Bennun (Ed.), 1991. London: Ellis Horwood. xx +132 (including bibliography & index), £26.50

Modelling Legal Argument: reasoning with cases and hypotheticals. Kevin D. Ashley, 1990. Cambridge: MIT Press. 329 pp.     

DISCRETE EVENT-DYNAMIC SYSTEMS FOR MODELING DYNAMIC VALUED NETS

The last few years have seen the development of Discrete Event-Dynamic Net Systems^1,2 as instruments for modeling complex systems. They are able to achieve the following objectives:

—formality of the modeling methodology

—ability to model static and dynamic aspects

—ability to pass between levels of differently rich structures by morphisms

—uniform representation of the communication process as

—an information process

—a decision process and

—a control process

—homogeneity of the representation and modeling methods

—ability to derive qualitative and quantitative statements.

The foundation is provided by a Discrete Event-Dynamic Net System which includes the axiomatic declaration of general Petri nets. In order to calculate the structural and dynamic aspects, so-called Petri net machines are developed. It is shown that this approach can even be used to treat the following aspects:

—use of time during the process

—increase of costs during the generation and transportation of information

—augmentation, evaluation and transformation of information objects.

Recursive formulas are derived and some examples calculated.     

Book reviews

Software Copyright Law David Bainbridge, 1992 London: Pitman. 256 pp. £47.50

The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law M. Ethan Katsch. 1989 Oxford: Oxford University Press. 347 pp. £13.95     

The Proactive and Preventive Privacy (3P) Framework for IoT Privacy by Design

The Problem

Internet of Things (IoT) is providing new services and insights by sensing contextual data but there are growing concerns of privacy risks from users that need immediate attention.

The Reason

The IoT devices and smart services can capture Personally Identifiable Information (PII) without user knowledge or consent. The IoT technology has not reached the desired level of maturity to standardize security and privacy requirements.

The Solution

IoT Privacy by Design is a user-centric approach for enabling privacy with security and safety as a ‘win-win’ positive outcome of IoT offerings, irrespective of business domain. The Proactive and Preventive Privacy (3P) Framework proposed in this paper should be adopted by the IoT stakeholders for building trust and confidence in end users about IoT devices and smart services.     

A comfort assessment of existing cervical orthoses

Purpose: Identify location and intensity of discomfort experienced by healthy participants wearing cervical orthoses.

Method: Convenience sample of 34 healthy participants wore Stro II, Philadelphia, Headmaster, and AspenVista^® cervical orthoses for four-hour periods. Participants reported discomfort level (scale 0–6) and location.

Results: Participants reported mean discomfort for all orthoses over the four-hour test between ‘a little discomfort’ and ‘very uncomfortable’ (mean discomfort score = 1.64, SD = 1.50). Seven participants prematurely stopped tests due to pain and six reported maximum discomfort scores. Significant linear increase in discomfort with duration of wear was found for all orthoses. Significantly less discomfort was reported with Stro II than Headmaster and Philadelphia. Age correlated with greater perceived discomfort. Orthoses differed in the location discomfort was experienced.

Conclusion: Existing cervical orthoses cause discomfort influenced by design and duration of wear with orthoses’ design the more significant factor. This work informed the design of a new orthosis and future orthoses developments.

Practitioner Summary: The purpose of this study was to gain greater knowledge about the discomfort caused by wearing of existing neck orthoses in order to inform the design and development of a new neck orthosis. This study gathers empirical data from a surrogate population and concludes that orthosis design is more influential than the duration of wear.     

THEORY OF CYBERNETIC AND INTELLIGENT MACHINE BASED ON LIE COMMUTATORS

Many attempts^{1, 7, 8, 35} have been made to overcome the limit imposed by the Turing Machine³⁴ to realise general mathematical functions and models of (physical) phenomena.

They center around the notion of computability.

In this paper we propose a new definition of computability which lays the foundations for a theory of cybernetic and intelligent machines in which the classical limits imposed by discrete algorithmic procedures are offset by the use of continuous operators on unlimited data. This data is supplied to the machine in a totally parallel mode, as a field or wave.

This theory of machines draws its concepts from category theory, Lie algebras, and general systems theory. It permits the incorporation of intelligent control into the design of the machine as a virtual element. The incorporated control can be realized in many (machine) configurations of which we give three:

a) a quantum mechanical realization appropriate to a possible understanding of the quantum computer and other models of the physical microworld,

b) a stochastic realization based on Kolmogorov-Gabor theory leading to a possible understanding of generalised models of the physical or thermodynamic macroworld, and lastly

c) a classical mechanical realization appropriate lo the study of a new class of robots.

Particular applications at a fundamental level are cited in geometry, mathematics, biology, acoustics, aeronautics, quantum mechanics, general relativity and. Markov chains. The proposed theory therefore opens a new way towards understanding the processes that underlie intelligence.     

A THEORETICAL STUDY ON ADAPTIVE QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEMS

This paper is a study of an adaptive quality control system from a viewpoint of quality goal. The main purpose is to introduce a conceptual framework for setting up quality goals which are in accordance with the external environment and internal capacity of quality control systems. We apply a mathematical general systems approach.

The results of our paper are summarized as follows:

1)As important decision-making in adaptive QCS, the decision-making for estimalion of fitness and examination of attainability are proposed and formalized mathematically.

2)A refinement process is formalized in which models are revised according to the changes of market.

3)Basic steps for setting quality goals are obtained which are based on the above formalization.     

DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATIC OBJECT-ORIENTED CONTINUOUS SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT

The construction of automatic control and modelling environments has been attempted using shallow reasoning expert systems. The inadequacy of this approach for real-life systems has become apparent, and the need for deeper knowledge—which can only be obtained by extensive simulation—is now acknowledged.

The simulation process, which consists of model building and model selection, followed by the generation and execution of a software simulator, can be partially automated if an Object-Oriented methodology is adopted. In this article, a methodology is presented, which is presently under investigation in the DESiRE (Dynamic Expert Systems in Robotic Experimentation)project

In the modelling phase, a hierarchical, uniform way of describing and manipulating continuous and discrete models is needed, if the highly desirable reusability of submodels is to be achieved. This is only possible if a clear distinction is made between bare models (and information about their intrinsic coupling) and causal simulation experiment-related data.

In the simulation phase, before generating numerical simulation code, a symbolic reduction of the continuous parts of the model is performed, thus eliminating inaccuracy introduced by the untimely application of possibly unstable numerical algorithms.

Finally, from the reduced representation, executable simulator-objects are produced for use in a distributed environment.     

A METHODOLOGY OF COORDINATION IN JAPANESE COMPANY-WIDE QUALITY CONTROL

In the practice of Japanese company-wide quality control, some tools which help us to coordinate company-wide activities are developed. One of the main functions of these tools is to organise the diversified information related to the company-wide activities

This report discusses the basic recognition underlying the use of these tools, and presents on a conceptual level an essential philosophy and methodology of coordinating company-wide activities

The basic idea of this report is to make an additional subsystem which helps us to organize the diversified information of activities in order to coordinate activities easily.     

The Observer-Generated Information Process: Composite Stages,Cooperative “Logical” Structure,and Self-Organization

Conventional information science generally considers an information process, but traditionally uses the probability measure for random events, and Shannon’s entropy measure as an uncertainty function of the states. The cutting process on separated states decreases quantity information concealed in the states correlation, holding hidden process information.

Up to now, “information process” has not had a scientifically conclusive definition nor its implicit structure.

The presenting information process performs logical operations with discrete information units (Bits) to achieve a goal, integrating the discrete mutually connected sequence of symbols and the extracting process’ hidden information in the structure of an information Observer. The probing time-space observation develops the unit of space-time geometry-memorizing logic.

The defined information process starts generating observations of a random process via the logic of probing impulses, sequentially cutting the process entropy measure and creating the discrete information units whose integration enfolds the information geometrical structure of an Observer. Found composite stages of the information process and the synthesized optimal process trajectory minimize observation time in an artificially designed information Observer with intellectual searching logic. The analytical modeling, computer simulations, and experimental applications validate the results.     

Push Notifications in Diet Apps: Influencing Engagement Times and Tasks

Background: Smartphones have reached levels of popularity and penetration where they are now suitable for use in population health interventions. A key feature of smartphones is push notification or in app messaging service, which can be used to alert users to messages or instructions pertaining to an installed app. Little evidence exists as to the persuasive power of these messages.

Method: We conducted a 24-week live user evaluation of push notifications used in a behavior-based mobile app for a meal replacement program to understand the role of push notifications in persuading users to engage with self-monitoring tasks.

Results: User perception of the prompts were verified through questionnaires, which in conjunction with the interaction logs show that users were tolerant of multiple daily prompts. The decline in compliance to the tasks set, however, shows that while the participants did not object to receiving prompts, they were less likely to respond to them as the study progressed.

Conclusions: Push notifications and user tasks are appropriate mechanisms to engage users with mobile technology in the short term.     

ON THE REPRESENTATION OF ACTIVITY ARRAYS†

A general methodology for empirical investigaiion is described which consists of: (i) the selection of a system on the object of investigation with respect to the purpose and constraints of investigation, (ii) the gathering of data for the system and organizing them in the form of activity arrays, (iii) the processing of the data through which certain time-invariant properties representing the data are determined, (iv) the interpretation of these time-invariant data representations from the standpoint of the purpose of investigation.

It is shown that each activity array yields many different representations. A procedure through which the various representations can be obtained is described that consists of: (1) the selection of a mask specifying a pattern for sampling the data, (2) the sampling procedure through which certain types of time-invariant relations are determined for the given mask, (3) the simplification of the time-invariant relations, if necessary or desirable.

A basis for the objective comparison of possible representations and ascertainment of the representation with the highest possible degree of determinism, subject to given constraints, is developed.

The procedure is applicable to both well defined and fuzzy variables of any scale. No classification into input and output variables is required, although it is not prohibited.     

Fighter pilots’ heart rate,heart rate variation and performance during instrument approaches

Fighter pilots’ heart rate (HR), heart rate variation (HRV) and performance during instrument approaches were examined. The subjects were required to fly instrument approaches in a high-fidelity simulator under various levels of task demand. The task demand was manipulated by increasing the load on the subjects by reducing the range at which they commenced the approach. HR and the time domain components of HRV were used as measures of pilot mental workload (PMWL). The findings of this study indicate that HR and HRV are sensitive to varying task demands. HR and HRV were able to distinguish the level of PMWL after which the subjects were no longer able to cope with the increasing task demands and their instrument landing system performance fell to a sub-standard level. The major finding was the HR/HRV’s ability to differentiate the sub-standard performance approaches from the high-performance approaches.

Practitioner Summary:

This paper examined if HR and HRV were sensitive to varying task demands in a fighter aviation environment and if these measures were related to variations in pilot’s performance.     

LQ tracking and disturbance rejecting with invariant zeros on the unit circle

A solution of the problem of optimal linear-quadratic (LQ) tracking and disturbance rejecting with invariant zeros on the unit circle of the plant is given, under a quite general assumption. For that purpose, we transform this problem to a problem of LQ control of an unstabilisable plant by augmentation, and then deal with weakly stabilising controls, defined as the controls such that the unstable modes of the closed-loop system are at most the unstabilisable modes of the augmented pair (A, B).

Then we solve the transformed problem by the newly introduced minimal rank weakly stabilising solution of the most general discrete-time algebraic Riccati system (DARS), associated with the system given by matrix quadruple (A, B, C, D), with unstabilisable matrix pair (A, B).

We show and illustrate by examples that there is a class of LQ tracking problems in the presence of disturbances, which cannot be solved by the existing methods, but can be solved by the introduced minimal rank weakly stabilising solution of the DARS.     

Home is where the head is: a distributed cognition account of personal health information management in the home among those with chronic illness

Managing chronic illness requires personal health information management (PHIM) to be performed by lay individuals. Paramount to understanding the PHIM process is understanding the sociotechnical system in which it frequently occurs: the home environment. We combined distributed cognition theory and the patient work system model to investigate how characteristics of the home interact with the cognitive work of PHIM. We used a 3D virtual reality CAVE that enabled participants who had been diagnosed with diabetes (N = 20) to describe how they would perform PHIM in the home context. We found that PHIM is distinctly cognitive work, and rarely performed ‘in the head’. Rather, features of the physical environment, tasks, people, and tools and technologies present, continuously shape and are shaped by the PHIM process. We suggest that approaches in which the individual (sans context) is considered the relevant unit of analysis overlook the pivotal role of the environment in shaping PHIM.

Practitioner Summary:

We examined how Personal Health Information Management (PHIM) is performed in the homes of diabetic patients. We found that approaches to studying cognition that focus on the individual, to the exclusion of their context, overlook the pivotal role of environmental, social, and technological features in shaping PHIM.     

Distress and worry as mediators in the relationship between psychosocial risks and upper body musculoskeletal complaints in highly automated manufacturing

As a result of changes in manufacturing including an upward trend in automation and the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, the requirement for supervisory monitoring and consequently, cognitive demand has increased in automated manufacturing. The incidence of musculoskeletal disorders has also increased in the manufacturing sector. A model was developed based on survey data to test if distress and worry mediate the relationship between psychosocial factors (job control, cognitive demand, social isolation and skill discretion), stress states and symptoms of upper body musculoskeletal disorders in highly automated manufacturing companies (n = 235). These constructs facilitated the development of a statistically significant model (RMSEA 0.057, TLI 0.924, CFI 0.935). Cognitive demand was shown to be related to higher distress in employees, and distress to a higher incidence of self-reported shoulder and lower back symptoms. The mediation model incorporating stress states (distress, worry) as mediators is a novel approach in linking psychosocial risks to musculoskeletal disorders.

Practitioners’ Summary

With little requirement for physical work in many modern automated manufacturing workplaces, there is often minimal management focus on Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WRMSDs) as important occupational health problems. Our model provides evidence that psychosocial factors are important risk factors in symptoms of WRMSD and should be managed.     

A statistical model including age to predict passenger postures in the rear seats of automobiles

Few statistical models of rear seat passenger posture have been published, and none has taken into account the effects of occupant age. This study developed new statistical models for predicting passenger postures in the rear seats of automobiles. Postures of 89 adults with a wide range of age and body size were measured in a laboratory mock-up in seven seat configurations. Posture-prediction models for female and male passengers were separately developed by stepwise regression using age, body dimensions, seat configurations and two-way interactions as potential predictors. Passenger posture was significantly associated with age and the effects of other two-way interaction variables depended on age. A set of posture-prediction models are presented for women and men, and the prediction results are compared with previously published models. This study is the first study of passenger posture to include a large cohort of older passengers and the first to report a significant effect of age for adults. The presented models can be used to position computational and physical human models for vehicle design and assessment.

Practitioner Summary:

The significant effects of age, body dimensions and seat configuration on rear seat passenger posture were identified. The models can be used to accurately position computational human models or crash test dummies for older passengers in known rear seat configurations.