Information retrieval expert system “matchmaker”

This paper describes the information system used to search for a potential matrimonial partner. The search is based on comparison of the subject's record, which consists of his/her answers to about 400 items of a specially designed questionnaire, to the records of the potential partners. The basic principle of the system is representation of the set of candidates for the client with psychological warnings about potential “conflict zones” in relationships between client and candidate rather than a ranking of candidates based on hypothetical “psychological compatibility” indices.     

An ergonomic evaluation of VDTs“”

Eight VDTs of different trademarks were analysed in relation to the following properties:

( a) Contrasts of luminance between the screens on the one hand and source documents, as well as other surfaces of the VDT, on the other.

(b) Oscillation degree, sharpness and stability of characters.

( c) Face and legibility of characters.

( d) Dimensions, mobility and reflection degrees of the keyboards.

Special equipment was developed and standardized conditions were applied to the measurements.

The eight VDTs showed essential differences for all the parameters, which might be partially responsible for eye strain and postural complaints. It can be concluded that customers should pay more attention to ergonomic qualities when choosing a VDT. But such an endeavour remains useless if the customer does not, at the same time, look for a proper design of the whole workstation including the working environment.     

Beyond “bouncing back”: Towards an integral,capability‐based understanding of organizational resilience

Academic debates surrounding the notion of resilience still face dissent about definitions, contexts, and managerial implications. By summarizing recent literature on resilience, this paper reveals two dominating paradigms, which I label the Plan to Resist Approach and the Containing Crisis Approach. By pinpointing and challenging the underlying assumptions of both approaches, I elucidate their potential shortcomings. To overcome these limitations, I develop an integral, capability‐based concept of organizational resilience, which builds on a temporal perspective on crises. Thereby it highlights the importance of enacting different yet specific capabilities at different phases of crises. This concept allows integrating the insights of the reviewed literature and sheds light on the recovery phase as being a so far neglected aspect in resilience research.     

Serendipity: “Expect also the Unexpected”

Serendipity is defined as the art of discovering an unsought finding. Over a thousand examples have been collected and examined, including material from unpublished work by the American sociologist, Robert Merton. It is suggested that serendipity play a supporting but essential role in discoveries in science, technology, the arts and daily life. The phenomenon deserves more serious attention as it may offer prospects of unsought benefits in all these fields of endeavour.     

Decision support for “messy” problems

Problems that are non-quantitative and not bound to a narrow knowledge domain have been served unsatisfactorily by decision support and expert systems. Alternative techniques that address this type of problem are explained here using two key concepts: problem type dependent process support and domain related knowledge. Process support refers to the program steps and the data items useful in finding the solution. Domain related knowledge is knowledge drawn from a specific domain, yet through abstraction applicable to a wider range of problems. Results of preliminary empirical analyses suggest that both concepts are useful.     

A Calculus for “environment-aware” computation

We present a calculus for modelling “environment-aware” computations, that is computations that adapt their behaviour according to the capabilities of the environment. The calculus is an imperative, object-based language with extensible objects, equipped with a labelled transition semantics. A notion of bisimulation, lifting to computations a correspondence between the capabilities of different environments, is provided. Bisimulation can be used to prove that a program is “cross-environment”, i.e., it has the same behaviour when run in different environments.     

“BILDLIB:” the image analysis software at IPA

The image analysis software for visual inspection purposes developed at IPA, the Fraunhofer-Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation, is described. Its basic mathematical framework, its organization scheme, some of its contents, as well as some examples are given. Current research and future developments are discussed.     

No-Longer-Foreign: Teaching an ML compiler to speak C “natively”

We present a new foreign-function interface for SML/NJ. It is based on the idea of data-level interoperability—the ability of ML programs to inspect as well as manipulate C data structures directly.The core component of this work is an encoding of the almost² complete C type system in ML types. The encoding makes extensive use of a “folklore” typing trick, taking advantage of ML's polymorphism, its type constructors, its abstraction mechanisms, and even functors. A small low-level component which deals with C struct and union declarations as well as program linkage is hidden from the programmer's eye by a simple program-generator tool that translates C declarations to corresponding ML glue code.     

A “static” optimal strategy for a service robot: A one dimensional case

In this paper we present a method for creating a strategy to control the movements of a service robot, servicing thread rewinding machines. The robot moves from one machine to another detecting a dropped or broken thread. When this is detected the robot will restart the machine.

A previous paper considered a number of naive strategies and compared them to the simple strategy of just moving back and forth from one end of the line to the other. In this paper we will propose a new method for determining the strategy and we will examine the effects of this new strategy with the aid of simulation.     

A broadband inverted umbrella shaped cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna for “WLAN” and “C” band applications

The main objective of the present article is to improve the bandwidth of a low profile Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna (CDRA) and operate it for WLAN and “C” band applications. An inverted umbrella shaped CDRA excited by a microstrip feedline with single stub is proposed here. Efficient coupling has been achieved by means of a single stub microstrip feed between DRA and the feed. The new shape of DRA and a single stub microstrip feed improves the bandwidth significantly as high as 28% from 5 to 6.67 GHz which is quite useful for both WLAN and “C” band applications. The proposed antenna is simple in construction, easy to fabricate, low profile and thickness of CDRA is only 5 mm. A parametric study is performed using Ansoft HFSS simulation software to optimize the antenna performance. The proposed CDRA is fabricated and the characteristics of the antenna are measured.     

Who are “stinkybug” and “Packerfan4”? Email Pseudonyms and Participants’ Perceptions of Demography,Productivity, and Personality

This study explores whether in the absence of face‐to‐face interaction individuals rely on mediated “clues” for constructing their perceptions of other individuals. Specifically, we assess whether individuals use the information in email usernames to create basic assumptions about the sender of a message. Ninety‐four male and 206 female participants completed self‐report surveys asking their perceptions of an instructor‐assigned, fictional group member including sex, age, race, and work productivity. A majority of participants assigned biological sex, ethnicity, and age to the fictional member. Participants often identified the creative emails as belonging to Caucasian males, while plain usernames were unknown and perceived as significantly more productive. The majority of participants chose to delete the message, listing lack of recognition as a reason for avoidance. These results suggest that email usernames may shape perceptions when other, nonverbal cues are absent.     

“Probability transforms” of digital pictures

Let g be any local property (e.g., gray level or gradient magnitude) defined on a digital picture. Let p_g(z) be the relative frequency with which g has value z. At each point (x,y) of the picture we can display p_g[g(x,y)], appropriately scaled; the result is called the p_g transform of the picture. Alternatively, we can use joint or conditional frequencies of pairs of local properties to define transforms. This note gives examples of such transforms for various gs and discusses their possible uses and limitations.     

Creative discovery in the lexical “validation gap”

Compound terms play a surprisingly key role in the organization of lexical ontologies. However, their inclusion forces one to address the issues of completeness and consistency that naturally arise from this organizational role. In this paper, we show how creative exploration in the space of literal compounds can reveal not only additional compound terms to systematically balance an ontology, but can also discover new and potentially innovative concepts in their own right.     

“Electric” Zip Tips™, Preliminary Results

Induction based fluidics (IBF), a new, simple patented approach for transporting liquids in the micro and the macro world, is discussed. Electric fields are shown to energize liquid/s in a container/s to execute an array of purposes. IBF is shown uniquely to energize N liquids in simple off the shelf devices, inductively. We discuss calibration and other issues, as we demonstrate how simple devices can dispense nanoliters and microliters with high precision and accuracy. Furthermore, we show preliminary single and eight channel data for the Zip Tip™ made by Millipore where the device transports liquids “electrically.” We briefly consider how such new devices, “electric” Zip Tips™, might automate desalting and the placement of digests for MALDI TOF analysis.     

“Hits” (not “Discussion Posts”) predict student success in online courses: A double cross-validation study

The efficacy of individual components of an online course on positive course outcome was examined via stepwise multiple regression analysis. Outcome was measured as the student’s total score on all exams given during the course. The predictors were page hits, discussion posts, and discussion reads. The vast majority of the variance of outcome was accounted for by total page hits. Participation in discussion had little to no effect on performance as measured by outcome on exams. The results were double cross-validated with a sample chosen from another class. There was no shrinkage, indicating that the equations derived from the two samples were very reliable.