Anxiety management training as a strategy for enhancing computer user performance

This study assessed the effects of self-managed relaxation and cognitive coping skills training on the anxiety and performance of 80 apprehensive computer trainees. The influence of a computer's user friendliness upon these measures was also examined. The college student subjects were taught to use spreadsheet software and were then assigned an independent computer task to complete. Experimental sessions included a control condition as well as manipulations in which subjects were trained to use relaxation coping skills, cognitive coping skills, or a combination of the two skills. Half of the subjects worked with “friendly” and half with “less-friendly” software. Training in 3elaxation or cognitive coping skills reduced error rates and task times, but not computer anxiety. Combined relaxation and cognitive coping skills training had similar effects, as did the use of friendly software. The findings indicate that teaching anxiety management skills may be most appropriate when software is relatively difficult to use.     

Knowledge management as a decision support method: a diagnostic workup strategy application

We have explored the potential of a computer-based approach called "knowledge management" to aid in clinical problem solving and education. The major features of the approach are its ability to support flexible and immediate access by a user to relevant knowledge and annotation and organization of the knowledge for personal use and subsequent retrieval. We illustrate this approach with its application to diagnostic workup strategy problems. In this application, knowledge may be in the form of static narrative text, diagrams, pictures, graphs, tables, flow charts, or bibliographic citations. Other more dynamic forms of knowledge may be the result of simulations, "what if" analyses or modeling, quantitative mathematical or statistical calculation, or heuristic inference. User assessment has demonstrated the system's ease of use and user perception of its desirability, but underscores the need for a "critical mass" of knowledge before such an approach will be widely utilized.     

Agent development as a strategy shaper

This paper studies to what extent agent development changes one’s own strategy. While this question has many general implications it is of special interest to the study of peer designed agents (PDAs), which are computer agents developed by non-experts. This latter emerging technology, has been widely advocated in recent literature for the purpose of replacing people in simulations and investigating human behavior. Its main premise is that strategies programmed into these agents reliably reflect, to some extent, the behavior used by their programmers in real life. We show that PDA development has an important side effect that has not been addressed to date—the process that merely attempts to capture one’s strategy is also likely to affect the developer’s strategy. This result has many implications concerning the appropriate design of PDA-based simulations as well as the validity of using PDAs for studying individual decision making. The phenomenon is demonstrated experimentally, using two very different application domains and several performance measures. Our findings suggest that the effects on one’s strategy arise both in situations where it is potentially possible for people to reason about the optimal strategy (in which case PDA development will enhance the use of an optimal strategy) and in those where calculating the optimal strategy is computationally challenging (in which case PDA development will push people to use more effective strategies, on average). Since in our experiments PDA development actually improved the developer’s strategy, PDA development can be suggested as a means for improving people’s problem solving skills. Finally, we show that the improvement achieved in people’s strategies through agent development is not attributed to the expressive aspect of agent development per-se but rather there is a crucial additional gain in the process of designing and programming ones strategy into an agent.     

Critical success factors for a customer relationship management strategy

Most organizations have perceived the customer relationship management (CRM) concept as a technological solution for problems in individual areas, accompanied by a great deal of uncoordinated initiatives. Nevertheless, CRM must be conceived as a strategy, due to its human, technological, and processes implications, at the time an organization decides to implement it. On this basis, the main goal stated in this research is to propose, justify, and validate a model based on critical success factors (CSFs) that will constitute a guide for companies in the implementation and diagnosis of a CRM strategy. The model is conformed by a set of 13 CSFs with their 55 corresponding metrics, which will serve as a guide for organizations wishing to apply this type of strategy. These factors cover the three key aspects of every CRM strategy (human factor, processes, and technology); giving a global focus and propitiating success in the implementation of a CRM strategy. These CSFs – and their metrics – were evaluated by a group of internationally experts allowing determining guidelines for a CRM implementation as well as the probable causes of the deficiencies in past projects.     

Building user commitment to implementing a knowledge management strategy

In the IS literature, commitment is typically considered to involve organizational or managerial support for a system and not that of its users. This paper however reports on a field study involving 16 organizations that attempted to build user involvement in developing a knowledge management strategy by having them design it. Twenty-two IT-supported group workshops (involving 183 users) were run to develop action plans for better knowledge management that users would like to see implemented. Each workshop adopted the same problem structuring technique to assist group members develop a politically feasible action plan to which they were psychologically and emotionally dedicated. In addition to reviewing the problem structuring method, this paper provides qualitative insight into the factors a knowledge management strategy should have to encourage user commitment.     

Network management in a local computer network

The functions and structure of the network management subsystem of the GAMMA-NET, a local computer network at the University of Tsukuba, are presented. The network management subsystem is an integrated subsystem that offers a convenient man-machine interface for the network users during the execution of required jobs, and levels the workload throughout the system, as well as managing the network operations.     

从复杂网络角度对即时消息网络进行拓扑建模

本文从复杂网络角度分析了即时消息网络,并对传统的BA模型进行扩展提出一种更适用于即时消息网络的VGBA模型。通过在nioki.com即时消息网络实例中验证和对比随机图,BA模型和VGBA模型的度分布指数,平均最短路径,聚集程度等拓扑度量值,表明VGBA模型很好的具备了复杂系统的无标度特性和小世界特性,并能更好的符合即时消息网络的特征。     

An OO project management strategy

Large object oriented projects pose coordination, logistical, and communication problems for managers. We have developed a strategy designed to help solve these problems. Our strategy calls for an iterative development process. In addition, we call for specialized work teams and the division of projects into strategic and tactical areas. Strategic processes address issues that have system-wide ramifications, such as system architecture. The strategic work is divided into setup, architecture definition, and development phases. Tactical processes address day-to-day activities, such as software design and testing. Dividing a project this way for organization and management purposes allows strategic and tactical issues to be addressed in a more focused and effective manner     

Energy management strategy in cloud computing: a perspective study

Optimizing energy consumption in cloud computing is yet a challenge despite the diversity of the proposed energy management strategies. Indeed, and during our related work study we have observed that the different elements or components which should be considered in order to be able to properly manage energy consumption in a cloud computing context are not well defined and/or discussed in terms of importance. This makes the proper classification and/or comparison of the different proposed strategies or techniques very difficult. Consequently, this paper aims, on the one hand, at defining and discussing properly such components in order to create a guideline and, on the other hand, to ease both the classification and the comparison of these proposed strategies and techniques. Second and after discussing some common weaknesses related to the current energy consumption optimization techniques and methods, this paper proposes energy-saving technique which uses a novel load detecting policy. This policy is based on the median absolute deviation method which uses the median and the standard deviation to calculate upper and lower thresholds which aim to classify hosts into either overloaded or under-loaded state. Simulation results have shown better results of the proposed technique compared to the existing ones especially in reducing energy consumption and the number of virtual machine migrations in addition to better active host time. Indeed, we found that the average of saved energy is around 40% compared to the built in techniques in cloudSim.     

Hardware-in-the-loop validation of a power management strategy for hybrid powertrains

Previously, a hybrid powertrain management strategy was developed that controls the power sources based on frequency content, mitigating aggressive engine transients. This article presents a hardware-in-the-loop validation of this strategy, with a real engine and battery integrated into a diesel hybrid electric vehicle simulation, thereby allowing for a realistic evaluation of fuel economy, soot emissions, and battery life. Considering an aggressive drive cycle and a state-of-charge regulation strategy as a benchmark, the frequency-based strategy yields 5.9% increase in fuel economy, 62.7% decrease in soot emissions, and 23% reduction in effective Amp-hours processed, which should yield an increase in battery life.     

KMoS-RE: knowledge management on a strategy to requirements engineering

This paper introduces the KMoS-RE Strategy, a novel requirements engineering strategy to Informal Structured Domains. Requirements engineering aims to elicit, analyze, evaluate, consolidate, and manage the requirements of a software system. The complexity of this process depends on the application domain. In Informal Structured Domains, not all concepts and their relations are formally defined, most of the problems do not have algorithms to obtain solutions, and the domain specialists use large amounts of tacit knowledge to solve problems. These characteristics generate ambiguous, inappropriate, and incomplete requirements. It could generate an inadequate software solution, or it could be the cause of increasing the project development time. Therefore, it is important to use an appropriate requirements engineering strategy to minimize these problems. The objective of this study is to present the Knowledge Management on a Strategy to Requirements Engineering (KMoS-RE Strategy): a novel requirements engineering strategy oriented to the transformation and transference of knowledge, and with the aim to minimize the percentage of ambiguous, incomplete, and inappropriate requirements. The functionality and utility of the strategy is explained through its application to a real case study. The case study shows that using the KMoS-RE Strategy helps to internalize the domain knowledge, to clarify the solution idea, to reduce the ignorance of symmetry, to structure the domain knowledge, and to detect and correct wrong beliefs about the domain. All of these are performed in the early stage of the project development.     

基于缓存与指针推进的混合移动性管理策略

提出了一种将缓存策略与指针推进策略结合的混合位置管理策略(记为HCF策略),通过利用移动用户移动的移动性以及接受呼入的局部性,在缓存信息失效的情况下,可通过遍历起始于缓存中的推进指针链来获得移动用户的位置信息,从而避免直接访问归属位置寄存器HLR(Home Location Register)数据库。因此,该策略可有效的减少对HLR的访问,减少位置管理中的通信流量。实验结果显示,当一个移动用户的呼叫-移动率较高CMR(Call-to-Mobility Ratio)或HLR的通信流量较大时,提出的策略优于基本策略和现有的缓存策略。     

Surpetitive strategy as a portfolio for the next millennium

Due to the gloom of global economics, competition among manufacturing firms is getting even tougher. Lean production, agile manufacturing, total quality management, and World‐Class philosophies are not providing robust solutions that enable those companies to face such a turbulent environment. This ongoing research work proposes a framework that consists of a set of strategies that enable companies not only to maintain their market share but also to go beyond. It also focuses on speeding‐up time to market as a key driver for business competitiveness. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.