Efficient Decision Support Systems

This series is directed to diverse managerial professionals who are leading the transformation of individual domains by using expert information and domain knowledge to drive decision support systems (DSSs). The series offers a broad range of subjects addressed in specific areas such as health care, business management, banking, agriculture, environmental improvement, natural resource and spatial management, aviation administration, and hybrid applications of information technology aimed to interdisciplinary issues. This book series is composed of three volumes: Volume 1 consists of general concepts and methodology of DSSs; Volume 2 consists of applications of DSSs in the biomedical domain; Volume 3 consists of hybrid applications of DSSs in multidisciplinary domains. The book is shaped decision support strategies in the new infrastructure that assists the readers in full use of the creative technology to manipulate input data and to transform information into useful decisions for decision makers

Perceptions of Shifting Time: Life Crossing the Edges of Conflict ; A phenomenological study of the changing nature of worldview schema and temporal constructs when experiencing cultural conflict

The conflict process has numerous facets and characteristics, but one of the least discussed within conflict or peace studies literature is the effect that time has upon, or within the conflict continuum. This project’s focus was the identification of changes within certain temporally sensitive worldview schema by members of the Charlotte, North Carolina area refugee community when entering cultural conflict. This exploration specifically focused on the shifts that occur between moving from their transient locations prior to coming to the United States, whether that be a refugee camp or living in another country under refugee status, and their final relocation to Charlotte. The research was conducted using transcendental phenomenology supplemented with Relational Mapping. The research was designed to answer the primary research question: “How do recently arrived (within two years) refugee individuals within the Charlotte, NC region experience cultural conflict within their enculturation experience?” as well as several secondary research questions. Individual interviews were conducted with ten members of the diverse refugee population in the Charlotte North Carolina region. With the specific strain of conflict being explored defined as cultural conflict, three key schemata were identified as experience focal points: Cultural Belonging, Refugee Transnationalism, and Expectations. Non-verbal signals termed spatial construals of time (SCTs) were utilized to identify chronological and experiential time orientations within their refugee experiences. From these findings suggestions are made towards the development or augmentation of existing conflict intervention modalities where refugees are involved to increase the chances for a successful transformation of the specific conflict

Coordinating over time: The micro-processes of integrating creativity and control in a dramatic television production

The pressures of continuous innovation in response to shorter product lifecycles and changing customer tastes or requirements create a constant challenge for firms expected to deliver predictable growth. Yet, the creativity needed for new product development projects often emerges in unpredictable and non-linear ways. Projects such as software development, new drug exploration, and filmmaking are knowledge-intensive undertakings where creativity is not confined to the conceptual stage of the project, but required for its duration. Different groups are often involved at different stages of the project and their creative contributions need to be conjunctive. Consequently, formal controls are required to coordinate their creative inputs. My research explores how the competing tensions of creativity and control are balanced through coordinating mechanisms over time in large-scale creative collaborations (LSCCs). Given the long implicit function of the budget as a coordinating mechanism, it became the focal point of this exploration. My dissertation is focused on answering two related research questions. First, how are budgets used to accomplished coordination over time? Second, how are budgets used to mediate the tensions between creativity and control? In this study, I used a qualitative approach to build new theory. My enquiry is situated in the film and television industry where creative aspirations must be continually balanced within the parameters of time and money. Using an in-depth, single case study design, I studied the coordinating practices of the crew of a dramatic television series production in ‘real time’ as they created and produced each script of the season. In the film and television industry, each product is a new creation that comes to fruition through the collaborative efforts of teams of artists, designers and specialized crafts people

Automatic production and integration of knowledge to the support of the decision and planning activities in medical-clinical diagnosis, treatment and prognosis.

El concepto de procedimiento médico se refiere al conjunto de actividades seguidas por los profesionales de la salud para solucionar o mitigar el problema de salud que afecta a un paciente. La toma de decisiones dentro del procedimiento médico ha sido, por largo tiempo, uno de las áreas más interesantes de investigación en la informática médica y el contexto de investigación de esta tesis. La motivación para desarrollar este trabajo de investigación se basa en tres aspectos fundamentales: no hay modelos de conocimiento para todas las actividades médico-clínicas que puedan ser inducidas a partir de datos médicos, no hay soluciones de aprendizaje inductivo para todas las actividades de la asistencia médica y no hay un modelo integral que formalice el concepto de procedimiento médico. Por tanto, nuestro objetivo principal es desarrollar un modelo computable basado en conocimiento que integre todas las actividades de decisión y planificación para el diagnóstico, tratamiento y pronóstico médico-clínicos. Para alcanzar el objetivo principal, en primer lugar, explicamos el problema de investigación. En segundo lugar, describimos los antecedentes del problema de investigación desde los contextos médico e informático. En tercer lugar, explicamos el desarrollo de la propuesta de investigación, basada en cuatro contribuciones principales: un nuevo modelo, basado en datos y conocimiento, para la actividad de planificación en el diagnóstico y tratamiento médico-clínicos; una novedosa metodología de aprendizaje inductivo para la actividad de planificación en el diagnóstico y tratamiento médico-clínico; una novedosa metodología de aprendizaje inductivo para la actividad de decisión en el pronóstico médico-clínico, y finalmente, un nuevo modelo computable, basado en datos y conocimiento, que integra las actividades de decisión y planificación para el diagnóstico, tratamiento y pronóstico médico-clínicos.The concept of medical procedure refers to the set of activities carried out by the health care professionals to solve or mitigate the health problems that affect a patient. Decisions making within a medical procedure has been, for a long time, one of the most interesting research areas in medical informatics and the research context of this thesis. The motivation to develop this research work is based on three main aspects: Nowadays there are not knowledge models for all the medical-clinical activities that can be induced from medical data, there are not inductive learning solutions for all the medical-clinical activities, and there is not an integral model that formalizes the concept of medical procedure. Therefore, our main objective is to develop a computable model based in knowledge that integrates all the decision and planning activities for the medical-clinical diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. To achieve this main objective: first, we explain the research problem. Second, we describe the background of the work from both the medical and the informatics contexts. Third, we explain the development of the research proposal based on four main contributions: a novel knowledge representation model, based in data, to the planning activity in medical-clinical diagnosis and treatment; a novel inductive learning methodology to the planning activity in diagnosis and medical-clinical treatment; a novel inductive learning methodology to the decision activity in medical-clinical prognosis, and finally, a novel computable model, based on data and knowledge, which integrates the decision and planning activities of medical-clinical diagnosis, treatment and prognosis

Animal economics: livestock, pastoralism and capitalism in post-socialist Mongolia

In Mongolia, a range of activities configures time in a spatial way, something echoed in anthropological and social scientific concerns with various forms of ‘timespace’ (May and Thrift 2001, Bear 2014, 2015). Drawing inspiration from the indigenous Mongol term üye (lit. joint, time, generation), I develop a concept of ‘jointed-ness’ to analyse articulated interconnections between different forms of pastoral (and non-pastoral) timespace. Attending to the interconnections of different fora of spatio-temporalised activity, I reveal the dynamic and emergent nature of a livestock-based economy. Since the end of socialism (early 1990s), subsistence household-based herding has replaced collectives employing salaried labourers. Livestock and animal products, sold at seasonally specific times, form major sources of income in conditions I refer to as ‘animal-originating capitalism’. Exploring how the time of pastoral economic life is spatialised in animals as commodities for sale, my work moves beyond studies of the social origins of commodity status (Appadurai 1986, Kopytoff 1986). I thereby show how current Mongolian human-animal relations are not only indexical of the collapse of collective herding, but motors of new forms of economic life. This thesis has three Parts. Part I explores human-animal relations underpinning pastoral economic life, including views of plenty in livestock (Chapter 1) and the temporality of rural labour (Chapter 2). Part II examines the accumulation of livestock, and how this relates to particular forms of personhood. It examines ethics linking livestock accumulation and masculinity (Chapter 3) and, conversely, how these ethics can be destabilized (Chapter 4). Part III analyses how these economic forms are scaled. It examines the temporalisation of cash loans secured against local livestock (Chapter 5), and how this sense of locality is scaled in relation to national and international trade networks (Chapter 6)

Modality and learner academic writing across genres:an analysis of discourse, socialisation and teacher cognition on a 20-week pre-sessional programme

Modality is a complex yet pervasive feature of the English language which is typically difficult for non-native speakers of English to acquire. It is even more so for learners of English who wish to undertake advanced academic study in an English-speaking context, as it requires knowledge of both discipline and genre specific norms and to be able to adapt to reader expectations. This study uses a mixed methods design to analyse the longitudinal development of modality in learner academic writing on a 20-week pre-sessional programme at a UK university. The research triangulates the findings obtained from the analysis of three distinct datasets in order to identify the factors involved in influencing amateur writer output in their assessed written texts. The main focus of the study is an in-depth discourse analysis contrasting expert (successful Masters students) and amateur (pre-sessional) writing in three genres of academic writing within the discipline of Business and Economics. A functional approach is adopted to analyse the expression of modality. This is complemented by an analysis of the teaching material used on the programme and combined with insights on teacher cognition from a series of interviews. The findings show a development in interlanguage, with movement to closer alignment in modal expressions between the types of writers as the programme progresses. However, the findings also show that modality is marginalised as a language item in the teaching materials, in the assessment task types and in the marking criteria, with preference given to rhetorical structures within texts. Tutors also report varying degrees of comfort, expertise and familiarity with regards to modality. The research concludes by making a series of pedagogical recommendations in order to re-direct some of the attention in academic writing instruction back to modality and to integrate it more explicitly and appropriately within the course design

Felt_space infrastructure: Hyper vigilant spatiality to valence the visceral dimension

Felt_space infrastructure: Hypervigilant spatiality to valence the visceral dimension. This thesis evolves perception as a hypothesis to reframe architectural praxis negotiated through agent-situation interaction. The research questions the geometric principles of architectural ordination to originate the ‘felt_space infrastructure’, a relational system of measurement concerned with the role of perception in mediating sensory space and the cognised environment. The methodological model for this research fuses perception and environmental stimuli, into a consistent generative process that penetrates the inner essence of space, to reveal the visceral parameter. These concepts are applied to develop a ‘coefficient of affordance’ typology, ‘hypervigilant’ tool set, and ‘cognitive_tope’ design methodology. Thus, by extending the architectural platform to consider perception as a design parameter, the thesis interprets the ‘inference schema’ as an instructional model to coordinate the acquisition of spatial reality through tensional and counter-tensional feedback dynamics. Three site-responsive case studies are used to advance the thesis. The first case study is descriptive and develops a typology of situated cognition to extend the ‘granularity’ of perceptual sensitisation (i.e. a fine-grained means of perceiving space). The second project is relational and questions how mapping can coordinate perceptual, cognitive and associative attention, as a ‘multi-webbed vector field’ comprised of attractors and deformations within a viewer-centred gravitational space. The third case study is causal, and demonstrates how a transactional-biased schema can generate, amplify and attenuate perceptual misalignment, thus triggering a visceral niche. The significance of the research is that it progresses generative perception as an additional variable for spatial practice, and promotes transactional methodologies to gain enhanced modes of spatial acuity to extend the repertoire of architectural practice

Practising the Urban Night in Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Rhythms, Frames, Affects, Assemblages and Subjectivities

This thesis explores attempts to intervene on behaviour in the urban night in Newcastle, in order to look at the relationship between the discourses and visions of policy-makers and the lived practice of cities. At its heart is an interest in how imagining and encouraging the emergence of new subjectivities has been a central part of the neoliberal ‘night-time economy’ – a term which I challenge as being too restrictive to describe the urban night. I seek to expand upon previous researchers who have too narrowly focused on the alcohol and leisure industry, abstracted from the rest of the night, which results in an inadequate description of the variety of actants involved in producing the subjectivities associated with the urban night. This thesis thus focuses on the four-way relationship between the built environment, legislation/policy, bodies, and subjectivities, as governed in the urban night. To do this, I conducted ethnographic and interview research with street-cleaners, taxi drivers, policy makers and bar staff in order to focus on the role of peripheral actors in producing the urban night. As thesis develops, I explore a ‘vocabulary of practice’ in order to set out the process of the emergence of subjectivities, and the different ways in which these are acted upon: in doing so, I introduce concepts of framing, assemblage, multiplicity, enunciation and affect, amongst others. This, then, draws from a diverse group of theorists, including the work of Felix Guattari, Giles Deleuze, Henri Lefebvre, Gregory Bateson, actor-network theory and non-representational theories. The thesis concludes by suggesting that further work is required on the relationship between policy formation and cities as practiced in everyday life, and that the theoretical approach used in this thesis provides suggestions as to how this might be developed