72 research outputs found
Instructing jurors on detecting deception: is the jury still out?
This thesis established the importance of understanding deception in courtrooms, demonstrating that expert evidence can achieve immediate and long-term benefits by correcting jurors’ biases and misconceptions around flawed stereotypes of deception. Improvements found indicate that psychological evidence can protect jurors from relying on misplaced common sense when assessing witness credibility
Improving construction design : The lean thinking paradigm
A study has been conducted into improving construction design through the
application of the lean thinking paradigm. Its objective was to identify the issues
relating to design efficiency and how a lean thinking approach might address
these issues. The investigation consisted of examining work already
undertaken in the field by other researchers"to identify the state of the art. The
change order request system was examined to gain first insights into waste in
construction design, and to gauge the size of the opportunity for the application
of lean thinking. An Electronic Data Gathering Tool (EDGT) was then
developed to allow further exploration of the design decision making process at
the system / sub-system level. The EDGT was used on three live construction
projects. From the data recorded a design planning tool, Design Decision
Planner (DDP), was created to help improve control of the design process and
lead to a more standardised approach to construction design. Standardising
the approach to product development is an important component of lean
thinking.
The main recommendations for making construction design lean are:
Use DDP to plan and improve control of the design decision making
process, assign design responsibility and to make the process more
transparent.
2. Measuring progress against planned design is a useful process metric.
3. Improve the designer's cost and programme visibility when choosing
between design options.
4. Redefine the role of the quantity surveyor from cost controller to value for
money assessor. The role needs to be better integrated into the design
process to reach its full potential.
5. Need to develop more rigorous methods of assessing the buildability of
design options. This problem could be eased in the short-term by
incorporating construction professionals into the early design phases.
6. Designers need to use more process reason drivers when choosing
between design options, not just functional criteria.
7. The change order request system could be redesigned to identify the root
causes of contract issue design changes and, hence, improve the design
decision making process
A Corpus Driven Computational Intelligence Framework for Deception Detection in Financial Text
Financial fraud rampages onwards seemingly uncontained. The annual cost of fraud in the UK is estimated to be as high as £193bn a year [1] . From a data science perspective and hitherto less explored this thesis demonstrates how the use of linguistic features to drive data mining algorithms can aid in unravelling fraud. To this end, the spotlight is turned on Financial Statement Fraud (FSF), known to be the costliest type of fraud [2]. A new corpus of 6.3 million words is composed of102 annual reports/10-K (narrative sections) from firms formally indicted for FSF juxtaposed with 306 non-fraud firms of similar size and industrial grouping. Differently from other similar studies, this thesis uniquely takes a wide angled view and extracts a range of features of different categories from the corpus. These linguistic correlates of deception are uncovered using a variety of techniques and tools. Corpus linguistics methodology is applied to extract keywords and to examine linguistic structure. N-grams are extracted to draw out collocations. Readability measurement in financial text is advanced through the extraction of new indices that probe the text at a deeper level. Cognitive and perceptual processes are also picked out. Tone, intention and liquidity are gauged using customised word lists. Linguistic ratios are derived from grammatical constructs and word categories. An attempt is also made to determine ‘what’ was said as opposed to ‘how’. Further a new module is developed to condense synonyms into concepts. Lastly frequency counts from keywords unearthed from a previous content analysis study on financial narrative are also used. These features are then used to drive machine learning based classification and clustering algorithms to determine if they aid in discriminating a fraud from a non-fraud firm. The results derived from the battery of models built typically exceed classification accuracy of 70%. The above process is amalgamated into a framework. The process outlined, driven by empirical data demonstrates in a practical way how linguistic analysis could aid in fraud detection and also constitutes a unique contribution made to deception detection studies
Defining the mechanisms of a cooperative computer system based on theories of cooperation
There is a growing interest in the development of computer systems that are
actively involved in the tasks of the users and serve to augment the users' creativity.
Cooperative computing is a major contribution to this research field. A survey of current
developments in knowledge based systems led to the conclusion that there has
hitherto been an absence of a formal definition of the mechanisms of cooperative
computer systems based on theories of cooperation. The work in this thesis seeks to
provide a full definition of cooperation derived from the behaviours of living cooperative
systems.
Studies on human cooperation and cooperation in the animal kingdom, established
that cooperation is a dynamic behaviour; in that the interaction processes
between the cooperative partners serve to facilitate the achievement of a common
goal, or a set of goals that are mutually desired by the partners. Partners in cooperation
are interdependent: one member's actions are contingent on another. Therefore,
the underlying processes which induce and maintain cooperation were identified.
These are: communication between the partners; emergence of norms and roles governing
the behaviour of the cooperating members; resolution of conflicts; distributed
and coordinated activities. These factors were further elucidated within the context of
small problem solving groups. A model of cooperationw hich encapsulatedth esef actors
was produced. From the discussionso f the advantageso f cooperationw ithin different
contexts, the potential for synergy was found to be the main benefit of
cooperation. The potential for achieving this synergy between a human and a
computer is the main motivation for the work undertaken in this research.
From the theoretical analysis of cooperation, the underlying mechanisms of a
cooperative computer were successfully defined. A conceptual model of human-computer
cooperation was presented. It was established that the quality of cooperation is
closely associated with the nature of the task. Therefore, it is not practicable to
produce a general purpose cooperative system. A specific task must be used. Creative
tasks of a problem identifying and solving nature, were found to be more suitable
to cooperative behaviour than others. Typical of these, and the one selected, was
computer screen design. Current screen design practice was analysed, and the
functional requirements and knowledge base needs of the systems were established.
The underlying mechanisms of cooperation were formalised and successfully
implemented within a software exemplar, named COSY. COSY exhibits the behavioural
characteristics of cooperation, and utilises the knowledge of screen design to
support users in the task of formatting computer screens. COSY successfully
demonstrated the synergistic relationship in its cooperation with the users.
It is concluded that the approach undertaken in this thesis has lead to a successful
definition and implementation of the formal mechanisms of cooperation in a computer
system, one which potentially enhances the innovative and creative aspects of
design work
Composition Studies as a Creative Art: Teaching, Writing, Scholarship, Administration
This work focuses on the creative dynamics that arise from the interrelation of writing, teaching writing, and ways of reading—and the scholarship and administrative issues engendered by it. To regard composition studies as a creative art is to engage in a process of intellectual or aesthetic free play, and then to translate the results of this play into serious work that yet retains the freedom and playfulness of its origins. The book is fueled by a mixture of faith in the fields that compose composition studies, hope that efforts of composition teachers can make a difference, and a sense of community in its broadest meaning.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1121/thumbnail.jp
Making Things Up: Workshop Practice as a Place of Design
This thesis considers workshop practice, specifically the production of three-dimensional prototype products, as a place of design. I study techniques used to make emergent artefacts, in an effort to better understand how they structure design practice.
I begin by presenting an argument that recasts the making process as a means of thinking, rather than merely transcribing antecedent ideas. I draw on literature from disciplines where this argument has been well-rehearsed, and contribute a novel synthesis of existing ideas in terms relevant to design studies and practice. This provides a theoretical foundation from which I can understand techniques as means of both doing things to the world, and finding out how those things are going.
I then introduce the term epistemic character in order to frame a new subject of interest – how techniques structure design processes. I argue that we may investigate the epistemic character of techniques, and I provide examples of how such investigations may be pursued. To this end, I combine my interdisciplinary literature review with first-hand studies of designing and making techniques. With reference to these studies, I describe three questions that may be asked to interrogate epistemic character: What are the questions posed by a technique?; What is its step-character?; and what is the nature of the emergent result?
I end with a discussion of how these features of epistemic character influence the distribution of decision making throughout design processes. I suggest there is an important distinction to be made, between processes throughout which things emerge step-by-step, and processes in which things are planned in advance of their execution.
The thesis provides design and craft theory with a novel and useful insight into how practitioners might think through making
Advanced Automation for Space Missions
The feasibility of using machine intelligence, including automation and robotics, in future space missions was studied
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