A decision making aid for evaluating total ship system effectiveness.

The aim of this study was to contribute to the knowledge of Total Systems theory and methodologies, by developing an aid to decision making on the effectiveness of complex man-machine organisations. Sponsored by the Ministry of Defence (Navy) as a collaborative research project, the study was to be based on Royal Navy ships and also linked with certain MOD(N) projects working on related effectiveness problems. Initial pre-feasibility, then feasibility studies established a simple model of Effectiveness as the combination of Availability, Performance and Human Factors, which was followed by a more thorough examination of the Availability Function. The development of an Information System designed for the collection and analysis of reliability and maintainability data was central to this phase of the research. This culminates in a comprehensive description of the Phase I hardware, software requirements and information distribution network to be installed and operating commencing in 1983. The Human Factors research was linked to two additional Ministry of Defence (Navy) projects who made available the Human Factors data. This data, collected from five ships of the Type 42 Guided Weapons Destroyer Class, was concerned with the Operations Room organization. Using this data base, a subjective analysis resulted in key indicators being produced which were used with a rating scale technique to develop profiles. Following a systemic overview three interactive indicators - Variable Disjunction of Information, Knowledge and Information Processing were used as the basis of an Information Transfer Function conceptual model. This model, when combined with Systems Interaction Diagrams enabled a Methodology to be designed which was evaluated against a three man-function element within a total Operations Room complement of 33 men. On the premise that the Human Factors function could be transformed to metric data the framework of a Human Factors model was developed, based on an existing Total Ship Availability Model with the potential that these could be combined to produce an Effectiveness model. The information System, the proposed Methodology and the framework of a Ship Effectiveness Model were then incrementally and theoretically linked in order to develop the organisation of a decision making aid for evaluating the effectiveness of complex man-machine systens. The research was not intended to test or validate the decision making aid, as aspects of this will need to be approved by Ministry of Defence (Navy) authorities before proceeding to the next phase of implementing the results so far produced

Supporting personalised content management in smart health information portals

Information portals are seen as an appropriate platform for personalised healthcare and wellbeing information provision. Efficient content management is a core capability of a successful smart health information portal (SHIP) and domain expertise is a vital input to content management when it comes to matching user profiles with the appropriate resources. The rate of generation of new health-related content far exceeds the numbers that can be manually examined by domain experts for relevance to a specific topic and audience. In this paper we investigate automated content discovery as a plausible solution to this shortcoming that capitalises on the existing database of expert-endorsed content as an implicit store of knowledge to guide such a solution. We propose a novel content discovery technique based on a text analytics approach that utilises an existing content repository to acquire new and relevant content. We also highlight the contribution of this technique towards realisation of smart content management for SHIPs.<br /

A study of spatial data models and their application to selecting information from pictorial databases

People have always used visual techniques to locate information in the space surrounding them. However with the advent of powerful computer systems and user-friendly interfaces it has become possible to extend such techniques to stored pictorial information. Pictorial database systems have in the past primarily used mathematical or textual search techniques to locate specific pictures contained within such databases. However these techniques have largely relied upon complex combinations of numeric and textual queries in order to find the required pictures. Such techniques restrict users of pictorial databases to expressing what is in essence a visual query in a numeric or character based form. What is required is the ability to express such queries in a form that more closely matches the user's visual memory or perception of the picture required. It is suggested in this thesis that spatial techniques of search are important and that two of the most important attributes of a picture are the spatial positions and the spatial relationships of objects contained within such pictures. It is further suggested that a database management system which allows users to indicate the nature of their query by visually placing iconic representations of objects on an interface in spatially appropriate positions, is a feasible method by which pictures might be found from a pictorial database. This thesis undertakes a detailed study of spatial techniques using a combination of historical evidence, psychological conclusions and practical examples to demonstrate that the spatial metaphor is an important concept and that pictures can be readily found by visually specifying the spatial positions and relationships between objects contained within them

Subontology Extraction Using Hyponym and Hypernym Closure on is-a Directed Acyclic Graphs

International audienceOntologies are successfully used as semantic guides when navigating through the huge and ever increasing quantity of digital documents. Nevertheless, the size of numerous domain ontologies tends to grow beyond the human capacity to grasp information. This growth is problematic for a lot of key applications that require user interactions such as document annotation or ontology modification/evolution. The problem could be partially overcome by providing users with a sub-ontology focused on their current concepts of interest. A sub-ontology restricted to this sole set of concepts is of limited interest since their relationships can generally not be explicit without adding some of their hyponyms and hypernyms. This paper proposes efficient algorithms to identify these additional key concepts based on the closure of two common graph operators: the least common-ancestor and greatest common descendant. The resulting method produces ontology excerpts focused on a set of concepts of interest and is fast enough to be used in interactive environments. As an example, we use the resulting program, called OntoFocus (http://www.ontotoolkit.mines-ales.fr/), to restrict, in few seconds, the large Gene Ontology (~30,000 concepts) to a sub-ontology focused on concepts annotating a gene related to breast cancer

Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research

This thesis investigates tow key questions: firstly, how do two broad groups - academic, family and local historians, and the public - evaluate, use, and contribute to digital history resources? And consequently, what impact have digital technologies had on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research? Analysing the impact of design on participant experiences and the reception of digital historiography by demonstrating the value of methods drawn from human-computer interaction, including heuristic evaluation, trace ethnography and semi-structured interviews. This thesis also investigates the relationship between heritage crowdsourcing projects (which ask the public to help with meaningful, inherently rewarding tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge) and the development of historical skills and interests. It situates crowdsourcing and citizen history within the broader field of participatory digital history and then focuses on the impact of digitality on the research practices of faculty and community historians. Chapter 1 provides an overview of over 400 digital history projects aimed at engaging the public or collecting, creating or enhancing records about historical materials for scholarly and general audiences. Chapter 2 discusses design factors that may influence the success of crowdsourcing projects. Following this, Chapter 3 explores the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history. Chapter 4 shifts our focus from public participation to scholarly practices in historical research, presenting the results of interviews conducted with 29 faculty and community historians. Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads that link public participation and scholarly practices, teasing out the ways in which the practices of discovering, gathering, creating and sharing historical materials and knowledge have been affected by digital methods, tools and resources

Development and application of computer software techniques to human factors task data handling problems Final report, 21 Jun. 1965 - 21 Jun. 1966

Computer software techniques applied to human factors task data handling problem

Special Libraries, December 1964

Volume 55, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1964/1009/thumbnail.jp

Special Libraries, December 1964

Volume 55, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1964/1009/thumbnail.jp

The appropriation of ideas, theories, concepts and models by management practitioners

During the second half of the 20th century there has been both a burgeoning intellectual interest in business and management as a topic and an exponential growth in the formal study of business and management as an academic subject. Indeed by the end of the century it was\ud estimated that worldwide there were 8,000 business schools and more than 13 million students of business and management. In addition, it was estimated that worldwide annual expenditure on university level business and management education had reached US $15 billion (The\ud Global Foundation for Management Education, 2008).\ud However, despite this there is a lack of clarity regarding both the scale and the nature of the influence that academic scholarship exerts over managers. Accordingly this research study has sought to investigate the appropriation of ideas, theories, concepts and models by management practitioners. The thesis has reviewed and evaluated the two most obvious, most established and most influential potential explanations. These were diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1962) and fashion theory (Abrahamson, 1991 & 1996; Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999). It has been concluded that whilst both these potential explanations provided important insights, neither was able to provide a comprehensive theoretical foundation for this research study. Accordingly, a much broader range of pertinent scholarship was reviewed and evaluated. This included, but is not limited to, the scholarship that is associated with learning by adults (Dewey, 1933; Bartlett, 1967; Schank & Abelson, 1976; Mezirow, 1977). Although this additional scholarship provided a further range of potential explanations, the extent to which any of these would be found within the particular setting of management\ud practitioners remained unclear. In addition, the literature review highlighted a number of unresolved debates regarding issues such as (i) whether management was a science or an\ud applied science; (ii) whether it was a craft or a profession; (iii) whether in reality there were\ud fashionable trends in management practice or whether in fact such practices were remarkably stable; and (iv) whether management theoreticians, gurus and consultants actually exerted significant influence over management practitioners. The literature review also highlighted\ud methodological concerns relating to the use of citation analysis as a proxy for primary information regarding managerial practice. \ud Hence, this research is situated in a gap which is delineated by the unresolved issues that are associated with both diffusion theory and fashion theory; the applicability of the broader range of scholarship to a management setting; the unresolved debates within this field of interest and the need to obtain primary information relating to management practice, rather than being dependant upon citation analysis.\ud The research study has utilised qualitative data and inductive reasoning to examine these matters and the overarching research philosophy has been that of realism (Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). Ultimately, 39 semi-structured, recorded interviews were undertaken using the critical\ud incident technique (Flanagan, 1954). Collectively these interviews lasted for 35 hours and obtained information relating to 160 critical incidents. The verbatim transcripts of the interviews totalled 350,000 words.\ud A case study analysis of this data was undertaken to examine the decision making of the interviewees in relation to some of their most challenging managerial situations. This analysis concluded that for the ‘generality’ of these interviewees; theory played little, or no, overt part in\ud their decision making. The data was also subjected to a content analysis using a bespoke compendium of 450 ‘terms’ that represented the development of theorising about management over the whole of the 20th century. This analysis concluded that the influence of the 20th\ud century’s management theoreticians over these interviewees was weak. Finally, the possibility that any such influence might be a covert, rather than an overt; phenomenon was examined using both the insights of intertextuality (Allen, 2000; Bazerman, 2004) and the framework analysis technique (Ritchie, Spencer & O’Connor, 2003). This analysis demonstrated that the discourse, dialogue and language of these interviewees could be indexed to four domains; (i)\ud the theoretical; (ii) the conceptual; (iii) the tactical; and (iv) the practical.\ud The intertextual indexing outcomes were corroborated both by substantial extracts from the verbatim interview transcripts and by three unrelated strands of scholarship. These were (i)\ud adaptive memory systems (Schacter, 2001); (ii) the realities of management (Carlson, 1954;\ud Stewart, 1983; Mintzberg, 1989) and (iii) the role of concepts and conceptual thinking in nursing\ud (McFarlane, 1977; Gordon, 1998; Orem, 2001).\ud On this basis it has been concluded that management can be characterised as a conceptual discipline; that in its essential nature management is at least as conceptual as it is either theoretical or practical; and that managers appropriate concepts and ideas, rather than theories\ud and models per se