Computer assisted education in health economics for medical advisers

A computer-based distance learning study aid on health economics (HELP) for medical advisers was developed from an existing paper course using a user-centred, prototyping approach. We illustrate and discuss this approach. The prototypes were iteratively tested and refined with potential users. The initial prototype was used for market research which included a survey of medical and pharmaceutical advisers. Results from the market research established the study aid's feasibility. The design of the study aid was guided by the market research and by application of an architectural analysis and design framework. HELP was designed in the form of an electronic, frame-based book with self-tests and navigational facilities that permit additional exploration. On-line journal articles were included for users' reference. The strategy adopted for delivery of the new course consists of presenting the computer study aid together with the paper course. The authoring shell that was developed is generically reusable for other courses with other teaching and learning strategies.     

Managed care: a call for strategic management in the dental office

Strategic management of any business will enable it to prosper in challenging times of change. Strategic planning is not characteristically found only in large corporations. Indeed, small business, such as solo private practices, can gain much from the process. The successful practice is one that is proactive rather than reactive; it has learned to become the beneficiary of change, rather than its victim.     

Collaborative Writing of Text and Hypertext

A good writer understands his audience. Collaborative writing allows authors to act as readers and thus to create text which an audience is more likely to appreciate. This paper describes four sets of experiences in collaborative writing. In one of the experiences secondary school students who were unable to produce a sophisticated document independently were able to produce a quality document through a group process. Given the correct combination of authors and goals, a simple computer editor can be very helpful. Hypertext differs from text in that links among chunks of text are made explicit. It could be argued that collaborative writing would work particularly well with hypertext because the links among the writers' ideas could be more easily explored. In experiences with graduate students at two universities, this hypothesis has not been supported. The students did not understand how these links should be created and thus could not collaboratively write hypertext.     

Intensity of the absorption lines of spin wave resonance modes in garnet films with nanometer-thick pinning layers

We have studied the influence of the thickness of the spin-pinning layer on the intensity of spin wave resonance (SWR) modes in two-layer garnet ferrite films. For pinning layers with thicknesses in the nanometer range, the SWR mode absorption lines exhibit periodic variations for a certain orientation of the magnetic field relative to the film plane. At thicknesses equal to a quarter of the wavelength of the spin wave in the pinning layer, the intensity of SWR mode absorption lines exhibits a sharp (approximately 3.5-fold) increase.     

The cross-lingual lexical substitution task

In this paper we provide an account of the cross-lingual lexical substitution task run as part of SemEval-2010. In this task both annotators (native Spanish speakers, proficient in English) and participating systems had to find Spanish translations for target words in the context of an English sentence. Because only translations of a single lexical unit were required, this task does not necessitate a full blown translation system. This we hope encouraged those working specifically on lexical semantics to participate without a requirement for them to use machine translation software, though they were free to use whatever resources they chose. In this paper we pay particular attention to the resources used by the various participating systems and present analyses to demonstrate the relative strengths of the systems as well as the requirements they have in terms of resources. In addition to the analyses of individual systems we also present the results of a combined system based on voting from the individual systems. We demonstrate that the system produces better results at finding the most frequent translation from the annotators compared to the highest ranked translation provided by individual systems. This supports our other analyses that the systems are heterogeneous, with different strengths and weaknesses.