ELABORATING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS WITH EXPERTS USING A MULTICRITERIA EVALUATION TOOL. THE CASE OF SOIL BORNE DISEASE CONTROL IN MARKETGARDENING CROPPING SYSTEMS

International audienceMarket-gardening cropping systems in protected cultivation are very sensitive to soil-borne pests and diseases. Their productivity used to rely on pesticides, but alternative systems have now to be found for environmental, societal and health reasons. Many cultural techniques are known to provide some control of soilborne diseases, but are only partially efficient. The aim of the project is to design alternative systems with professionals, by improving the efficiency of the present techniques and/or imagining more innovative systems. The research project takes place in two steps. The first one consists in building a tool to assess the resistance or resilience of a given cropping system to soil-borne pests; the second one consists in using the tool with professionals in order to build alternative cropping and farming systems in cooperation. The model built for evaluation is a qualitative multicriteria tool. As scientific knowledge is not available for each technique or combination of techniques, empirical knowledge collected from growers and technical advisers is used to fill the gaps. The model is already built for root-knot nematodes and under construction for the other fungi. The second step will consist in using the tool with technical advisers and growers to redesign cropping systems and select the promising ones that should be put into trial in R&D stations. Co-building farming systems with stakeholders appears as an absolute necessity, to imagine solutions both efficient and acceptable for growers. The presentation will enable to discuss how combining expert and scientific knowledge may not only fill the knowledge gap, but also enable to build innovative solutions thanks to the diversity of experts' standpoints

A comparative evaluation of dynamic visualisation tools

Despite their potential applications in software comprehension, it appears that dynamic visualisation tools are seldom used outside the research laboratory. This paper presents an empirical evaluation of five dynamic visualisation tools - AVID, Jinsight, jRMTool, Together ControlCenter diagrams and Together ControlCenter debugger. The tools were evaluated on a number of general software comprehension and specific reverse engineering tasks using the HotDraw objectoriented framework. The tasks considered typical comprehension issues, including identification of software structure and behaviour, design pattern extraction, extensibility potential, maintenance issues, functionality location, and runtime load. The results revealed that the level of abstraction employed by a tool affects its success in different tasks, and that tools were more successful in addressing specific reverse engineering tasks than general software comprehension activities. It was found that no one tool performs well in all tasks, and some tasks were beyond the capabilities of all five tools. This paper concludes with suggestions for improving the efficacy of such tools

CARE TEAM EDUCATION ON THE USE OF SENSORY RESOURCES IN INPATIENT PSYCHIATRY

Sensory processing is the way the nervous system receives, organizes, and understands sensory information gained through our body’s senses and physical environment. The deprivation of sensory processing, or the inability of one’s nervous system to use meaningful sensations, can lead to negative outcomes such as anxiety, stress, depression, withdrawal and reduced motivation, or agitation and disturbed behavior. Dr. Ayres\u27 Sensory Integration Theory was used as the guiding framework for this project. Research literature indicates that sensory modulated approaches are an effective treatment approach for patients who are distressed, anxious, agitated, or potentially aggressive, and can be used as an alternative to more coercive actions such as seclusion and restraint. It has also demonstrated that sensory modulated approaches can be helpful for people with various psychiatric diagnoses such as anxiety, depression, mania, psychosis, and post-traumatic stress disorders. The aim of this project was to provide an educational in-service to psychiatric inpatient staff members about the use of sensory modulated approaches as an additional preventive tool for mental health patients. A post evaluation was provided to identify the effectiveness of the educational in-service. Participants of the in-service included sixteen (16) staff members and ten (10) undergraduate nursing students. All participants who completed the post evaluation reported the rating of helpfulness of sensory integration approaches to their current practice. All staff members reported it as very helpful, while eighty-six percent (86%) of students thought it was very helpful to their current practice. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the staff reported the in-service as very helpful for increasing their knowledge of sensory resources, and eighty-six percent (86%) of the students reported it as very helpful. The favorable outcomes demonstrate success in providing staff education. Increased knowledge and understanding allow staff members to adopt the sensory modulated approach to further help reduce behavioral disturbances, empower staff and patients to build positive relationships, and provide alternative strategies to more coercive practices such as seclusion or restraints. Further research on the effect of this educational in-service on the actual implementation of sensory modulated approach is needed to support the true effectiveness of this project. Future implications for advanced nursing practice, education, research, and health policy are to promote and implement this alternative approach, provide evidence based data to improve the quality of clinical practice, and analyze the data collected to improve future practices and overall patient outcomes

A Personalized System for Conversational Recommendations

Searching for and making decisions about information is becoming increasingly difficult as the amount of information and number of choices increases. Recommendation systems help users find items of interest of a particular type, such as movies or restaurants, but are still somewhat awkward to use. Our solution is to take advantage of the complementary strengths of personalized recommendation systems and dialogue systems, creating personalized aides. We present a system -- the Adaptive Place Advisor -- that treats item selection as an interactive, conversational process, with the program inquiring about item attributes and the user responding. Individual, long-term user preferences are unobtrusively obtained in the course of normal recommendation dialogues and used to direct future conversations with the same user. We present a novel user model that influences both item search and the questions asked during a conversation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system in significantly reducing the time and number of interactions required to find a satisfactory item, as compared to a control group of users interacting with a non-adaptive version of the system

The Development of a Common Investment Appraisal for Urban Transport Projects.

In December 1990 we were invited by Birmingham City Council and Centro to submit a proposal for an introductory study of the development of a common investment appraisal for urban transport projects. Many of the issues had arisen during the Birmingham Integrated Transport Study (BITS) in which we were involved, and in the subsequent assessment of light rail schemes of which we have considerable experience. In subsequent discussion, the objectives were identified as being:- (i) to identify, briefly, the weaknesses with existing appraisal techniques; (ii) to develop proposals for common methods for the social cost-benefit appraisal of both urban road and rail schemes which overcome these weaknesses; (iii) to develop complementary and consistent proposals for common methods of financial appraisal of such projects; (iv) to develop proposals for variants of the methods in (ii) and (iii) which are appropriate to schemes of differing complexity and cost; (v) to consider briefly methods of treating externalities, and performance against other public sector goals, which are consistent with those developed under (ii) to (iv) above; (vi) to recommend work to be done in the second phase of the study (beyond March 1991) on the provision of input to such evaluation methods from strategic and mode-specific models, and on the testing of the proposed evaluation methods. Such issues are particularly topical at present, and we have been able to draw, in our study, on experience of:- (i) evaluation methods developed for BITS and subsequent integrated transport studies (MVA) (ii) evaluation of individual light rail and heavy rail investment projects (ITS,MVA); (iii) the recommendations of AMA in "Changing Gear" (iv) advice to IPPR on appraisal methodology (ITS); (v) submissions to the House of Commons enquiry into "Roads for the Future" (ITS); (vi) advice to the National Audit Office (ITS) (vii) involvement in the SACTRA study of urban road appraisal (MVA, ITS

Inclusion and online learning opportunities: Designing for accessibility

Higher education institutions worldwide are adopting flexible learning methods and online technologies which increase the potential for widening the learning community to include people for whom participation may previously have been difficult or impossible. The development of courseware that is accessible, flexible and informative can benefit not only people with special needs, but such courseware provides a better educational experience for all students

Implementation and analysis of several keyframe-based browsing interfaces to digital video

In this paper we present a variety of browsing interfaces for digital video information. The six interfaces are implemented on top of Físchlár, an operational recording, indexing, browsing and playback system for broadcast TV programmes. In developing the six browsing interfaces, we have been informed by the various dimensions which can be used to distinguish one interface from another. For this we include layeredness (the number of “layers” of abstraction which can be used in browsing a programme), the provision or omission of temporal information (varying from full timestamp information to nothing at all on time) and visualisation of spatial vs. temporal aspects of the video. After introducing and defining these dimensions we then locate some common browsing interfaces from the literature in this 3-dimensional “space” and then we locate our own six interfaces in this same space. We then present an outline of the interfaces and include some user feedback

Screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit

This chapter discusses screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit