Purposive Pattern Recognition: The Nature of Visual Choice in Graphic Design

Every pamphlet, brochure, booklet, advert, package, poster, etc that has ever been produced involved a visual choice made by a human being - even if the choice were restricted to ‘doing it like the last time’ or ‘copy this one’. Whether graphic designer, information designer, advertising executive, programmer, printer or the Managing Director’s wife, someone decided this picture, this type face, this layout etc rather than some available alternative. How are visual choices made? And, in particular, how do professional graphic designers make choices between visual alternatives. It was decided to probe this question by interviewing professional designers and looking at their work. The initial plan involved some sophisticated analysis of variables but it soon became apparent that such an approach was not possible. Specific interview questions such as, “You decided to use a picture of an elephant. Why an elephant and why this particular one?” met with responses along the lines of, “It just felt right” or “It’s intuitive”. It became clear that although some designers can tell a story about their choices, most designers make use of their experience and the experience of others to arrive at a decision that is not the result of some carefully thought out decision tree or a calculus of competing requirements. It was felt by both of us that there ought to be a better way to describe this process of ‘just knowing its right’ than intuition. Eventually we came up with Purposive Pattern Recognition, abbreviated to PPR. One of us (M A-R) gathered the evidence from interviews, case studies and existing studies of Masters in Design (a title awarded by a US magazine, following a poll of its readership) The other one (J Z L) placed the notion of PPR in a conceptual framework using current thinking in neuroscience and in evolutionary memetics. Keywords: Graphic Design, Intuition, Neuroscience, Memetics.</p

Major clinical approaches to macro and micronutrients in enteral therapy according to international guidelines and clinical studies: a systematic review

Introduction: In the context of Nutritional Therapy (NT), critically ill patients are associated with a state of catabolic stress and a systemic inflammatory response. Patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) have a prevalence of malnutrition greater than 35%. The main objective of parenteral nutrition (PN) is to provide a nutrient mix closely related to requirements safely and avoid complications. However, PN poses a considerable risk of overfeeding, which can be just as harmful as underfeeding. Long-term survival data (expressed as 6-month survival) will also be considered a relevant outcome measure. Objective: It was performed a systematic review to evaluate the main clinical approaches of macro and micronutrients in enteral therapy according to international guidelines and clinical studies. Methods: The present study followed a concise systematic review model, following the systematic review rules (PRISMA). The literary search process was carried out from August to October 2022 and was developed based on Scopus, PubMed, Science Direct, Scielo, and Google Scholar, using scientific articles from 2011 to 2022. The low quality of evidence was attributed to case reports, editorials, and brief communications, according to the GRADE instrument. The risk of bias was analyzed according to the Cochrane instrument. Results and Conclusion: It was found 118 studies that underwent eligibility analysis, and then 20 of the 22 total studies were selected for this systematic review. According to the GRADE instrument, most studies showed homogeneity in their results, with I2 =97.7% &gt;50%. Standard crystalline amino acid solutions, while devoid of side effects, remain incomplete regarding their composition (eg glutamine). Lipid emulsions have come a long way and are now included in bi- and tri-compartment feeding bags, allowing for true total PN as long as daily micronutrients are prescribed. The issue of exact individual needs for energy, macro, and micronutrients has not yet been resolved. Many complications attributed to total PN are the consequence of under or overfeeding. Total PN indications have evolved towards its use alone or in combination with enteral nutrition. The start time varies by country between admission (Australia and Israel), day 4 (Swiss), and day 7 (Belgium, USA). The most important issue may be an individualized and time-dependent prescription of the feeding pathway, energy, and substrates

Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study

In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage. In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi

How do software architects consider non-functional requirements: an exploratory study

© 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Dealing with non-functional requirements (NFRs) has posed a challenge onto software engineers for many years. Over the years, many methods and techniques have been proposed to improve their elicitation, documentation, and validation. Knowing more about the state of the practice on these topics may benefit both practitioners' and researchers' daily work. A few empirical studies have been conducted in the past, but none under the perspective of software architects, in spite of the great influence that NFRs have on daily architects' practices. This paper presents some of the findings of an empirical study based on 13 interviews with software architects. It addresses questions such as: who decides the NFRs, what types of NFRs matter to architects, how are NFRs documented, and how are NFRs validated. The results are contextualized with existing previous work.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Parental problems, case plan requirements, and service targeting in child welfare reunification

Only about half of parents attempting to reunify with their children in foster care succeed in their efforts. Parents are ordered by the court to use treatment services in order to resolve their problems. These treatment services thus play a critical role in reunification, and in fact the use of services appropriately matched to parents\u27 problems has been found to be associated with a greater likelihood of reunification. However, there is little in the literature regarding the specific requirements of reunification case plans, and whether they are accurately targeted at reunifying parents\u27 problems. This mostly descriptive study uses case file data to examine the relationship between parental problems and case plan requirements for a sample of parents reunifying with their children in one large urban California county. Findings show that most reunifying parents had multiple problems, and were required to attend approximately 8 service events per week. There was a positive correlation between the total number of concerns (treatment problems and life challenges) and required weekly service events. While 85% of parents were ordered treatment services for all their identified problems, over 30% were ordered services targeting problems they were not known to have. Overall, 58% of parents were ordered both all appropriate and only appropriate services. Implications for policy and practice are discussed, including the need for models of service delivery that limit the burden of accessing multiple service locations for reunifying parents

How Do Real Options Concepts Fit in Agile Requirements Engineering?

Agile requirements engineering is driven by creating business value for the client and heavily involves the client in decision-making under uncertainty. Real option thinking seems to be suitable in supporting the client’s decision making process at inter-iteration time. This paper investigates the fit between real option thinking and agile requirements engineering. We first look into previously published experiences in the agile software engineering literature to identify (i) ‘experience clusters’ suggesting the ways in which real option concepts fit into the agile requirements process and (ii) ‘experience gaps’ and under-researched agile requirements decision-making topics which require further empirical studies. Furthermore, we conducted a cross-case study in eight agile development organizations and interviewed 11 practitioners about their decision-making process. The results suggest that options are almost always identified, reasoned about and acted upon. They are not expressed in quantitative terms, however, they are instead explicitly or implicitly taken\ud into account during the decision-making process at interiteration time

A Practical Example for Model-Driven Web Requirements

The number of approaches for Web environments has grown very fast in the last years: HDM, OOHDM, and WSDM were among the first, and now a large number can be found in the literature. With the definition of MDA (Model- Driven Architecture) and the acceptance of MDE (Model-Driven Engineering) techniques in this environment, some groups are working in the use of metamodels and transformations to make their approaches more powerful. UWE (UMLBased Web Engineering) or OOWS (Object-Oriented Web Solutions) are only some examples. However, there are few real experiences with Web Engineering in the enterprise environment, and very few real applications of metamodels and MDE techniques. In this chapter the practical experience of a Web Engineering approach, NDT, in a big project developed in Andalusia is presented. Besides, it shows the usability of metamodels in real environments