Analytic provenance as constructs of behavioural markers for externalizing thinking processes in criminal intelligence analysis

Studying how analysts use interaction in visualization systems is an important part of evaluating how well these interactions support analysis needs, like generating insights or performing tasks. Analytic Provenance commonly known as interaction histories contains information about the sequence of choices that analysts make when exploring data or performing a task. This research work presents a compositional reductionist approach as a way of externalizing analyst’s thinking processes by using markers of analytical behaviour extracted from such interaction histories. Set of Behavioural Markers (BMs) have been identified through a workshop with domain experts and a systematic literature review to use them as cognitive attributes of imagination, insight, transparency, fluidity and rigour to enhance performance in criminal intelligence analysis. A low level semantic action sequence computation also has been proposed as a detection approach of identified BMs and found from computation that BMs can act as bridge between human cognition and computation through semantic interaction. This research work has addressed problems of existing qualitative experiments to extract these BMs through cognitive task analysis and found that the proposed computational technique can be a supplementary approach for validating experimental results

Analytic provenance as constructs of behavioural markers for externalizing thinking processes in criminal intelligence analysis

Studying how analysts use interaction in visualization systems is an important part of evaluating how well these interactions support analysis needs, like generating insights or performing tasks. Analytic Provenance commonly known as interaction histories contains information about the sequence of choices that analysts make when exploring data or performing a task. This research work presents a compositional reductionist approach as a way of externalizing analyst’s thinking processes by using markers of analytical behaviour extracted from such interaction histories. Set of Behavioural Markers (BMs) have been identified through a workshop with domain experts and a systematic literature review to use them as cognitive attributes of imagination, insight, transparency, fluidity and rigour to enhance performance in criminal intelligence analysis. A low level semantic action sequence computation also has been proposed as a detection approach of identified BMs and found from computation that BMs can act as bridge between human cognition and computation through semantic interaction. This research work has addressed problems of existing qualitative experiments to extract these BMs through cognitive task analysis and found that the proposed computational technique can be a supplementary approach for validating experimental results

Faculty Perspectives on the Importance and Place of Nontechnical Competencies in Veterinary Medical Education at Five North American Colleges of Veterinary Medicine

Successful veterinary practice requires a unique combination of medical competence and other professional skills that include empathy, communication skills, business and management skills. Results of two recent national studies have indicated that many veterinarians possess the medical knowledge, but not the ancillary skills, that can determine their economic success. Furthermore, growth in non-practice veterinary careers and changes in food animal production medicine have accentuated the need for veterinarians with exceptional teamwork, management and leadership skills. These nontechnical competencies pose a challenge to veterinary educators, who have traditionally focused on transfer of biomedical knowledge and have had limited involvement in these policy issues. In this study, veterinary faculty from five veterinary colleges were surveyed regarding the importance of nontechnical skills for veterinary graduates, where nontechnical skills should be taught, and their own role and level of preparation in cultivating such skills. Faculty respondents uniformly agreed that nontechnical competencies are important for veterinary graduates and should be cultivated across the spectrum of preveterinary, veterinary and postgraduate education. The support is greatest for critical thinking and intrapersonal competencies and less for management and business competencies. Basic science, nonveterinarian and junior faculty tend to more strongly appreciate the importance of nontechnical skills. Large animal faculty and midcareer faculty exhibit a more reserved level of support. Women faculty are more likely to support the development of nontechnical competencies across the continuum of education. Junior faculty, though supportive of the importance of such skills, are less likely than other faculty to view veterinary clinical education as a primary time for their development. Junior faculty are also less likely to perceive a personal role in the cultivation of nontechnical competencies in veterinary students. Faculty members’ view of the role and composition of preveterinary and preclinical veterinary education, and their perceptions of personal ability in the cultivation of nontechnical competencies, may be unique to an institution. Institutional and professional leaders should tailor faculty development and curricular discussions with these disciplinary and career stage differences in mind. Educational leaders should also work toward building integrated methods of training veterinary students in business, management, coaching and leadership skills

Choreographic and Somatic Approaches for the Development of Expressive Robotic Systems

As robotic systems are moved out of factory work cells into human-facing environments questions of choreography become central to their design, placement, and application. With a human viewer or counterpart present, a system will automatically be interpreted within context, style of movement, and form factor by human beings as animate elements of their environment. The interpretation by this human counterpart is critical to the success of the system's integration: knobs on the system need to make sense to a human counterpart; an artificial agent should have a way of notifying a human counterpart of a change in system state, possibly through motion profiles; and the motion of a human counterpart may have important contextual clues for task completion. Thus, professional choreographers, dance practitioners, and movement analysts are critical to research in robotics. They have design methods for movement that align with human audience perception, can identify simplified features of movement for human-robot interaction goals, and have detailed knowledge of the capacity of human movement. This article provides approaches employed by one research lab, specific impacts on technical and artistic projects within, and principles that may guide future such work. The background section reports on choreography, somatic perspectives, improvisation, the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, and robotics. From this context methods including embodied exercises, writing prompts, and community building activities have been developed to facilitate interdisciplinary research. The results of this work is presented as an overview of a smattering of projects in areas like high-level motion planning, software development for rapid prototyping of movement, artistic output, and user studies that help understand how people interpret movement. Finally, guiding principles for other groups to adopt are posited.Comment: Under review at MDPI Arts Special Issue "The Machine as Artist (for the 21st Century)" http://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special_issues/Machine_Artis

The Development and Testing of a Measurement System to Assess Intensive Care Unit Team Performance

Teamwork is essential for ensuring the quality and safety of healthcare delivery in the intensive care unit (ICU). Complex procedures are conducted with a diverse team of clinicians with unique roles and responsibilities. Information about care plans and goals must also be developed, communicated, and coordinated across multiple disciplines and transferred effectively between shifts and personnel. The intricacies of routine care are compounded during emergency events, which require ICU teams to adapt to rapidly changing patient conditions while facing intense time pressure and conditional stress. Realities such as these emphasize the need for teamwork skills in the ICU. The measurement of teamwork serves a number of different purposes, including routine assessment, directing feedback, and evaluating the impact of improvement initiatives. Yet no behavioral marker system exists in critical care for quantifying teamwork across multiple task types. This study contributes to the state of science and practice in critical care by taking a (1) theory-driven, (2) context-driven, and (3) psychometrically-driven approach to the development of a teamwork measure. The development of the marker system for the current study considered the state of science and practice surrounding teamwork in critical care, the application of behavioral marker systems across the healthcare community, and interviews with front line clinicians. The ICU behavioral marker system covers four core teamwork dimensions especially relevant to critical care teams: Communication, Leadership, Backup and Supportive Behavior, and Team Decision Making, with each dimension subsuming other relevant subdimensions. This study provided an initial assessment of the reliability and validity of the marker system by focusing on a subset of teamwork competencies relevant to subset of team tasks. Two raters scored the performance of 50 teams along six subdimensions during rounds (n=25) and handoffs (n=25). In addition to calculating traditional forms of reliability evidence [intraclass correlations (ICCs) and percent agreement], this study modeled the systematic variance in ratings associated with raters, instances of teamwork, subdimensions, and tasks by applying generalizability (G) theory. G theory was also employed to provide evidence that the marker system adequately distinguishes teamwork competencies targeted for measurement. The marker system differentiated teamwork subdimensions when the data for rounds and handoffs were combined and when the data were examined separately by task (G coefficient greater than 0.80). Additionally, variance associated with instances of teamwork, subdimensions, and their interaction constituted the greatest proportion of variance in scores while variance associated with rater and task effects were minimal. That said, there remained a large percentage of residual error across analyses. Single measures ICCs were fair to good when the data for rounds and handoffs were combined depending on the competency assessed (0.52 to 0.74). The ICCs ranged from fair to good when only examining handoffs (0.47 to 0.69) and fair to excellent when only considering rounds (0.53 to 0.79). Average measures ICCs were always greater than single measures for each analysis, ranging from good to excellent (overall: 0.69 to 0.85, handoffs: 0.64 to 0.81, rounds: 0.70 to 0.89). In general, the percent of overall agreement was substandard, ranging from 0.44 to 0.80 across each task analysis. The percentage of scores within a single point, however, was nearly perfect, ranging from 0.80 to 1.00 for rounds and handoffs, handoffs, and rounds. The confluence of evidence supported the expectation that the marker system differentiates among teamwork subdmensions. Yet different reliability indices suggested varying levels of confidence in rater consistency depending on the teamwork competency that was measured. Because this study applied a psychometric approach, areas for future development and testing to redress these issues were identified. There also is a need to assess the viability of this tool in other research contexts to evaluate its generalizability in places with different norms and organizational policies as well as for different tasks that emphasize different teamwork skills. Further, it is important to increase the number of users able to make assessments through low-cost, easily accessible rater training and guidance materials. Particular emphasis should be given to areas where rater reliability was less than ideal. This would allow future researchers to evaluate team performance, provide developmental feedback, and determine the impact of future teamwork improvement initiatives

Rethinking Management of Technology

This paper discusess how management of technology can be made more critical and a new method of reasoning is incorporated into this dicsipline to stimulate more widely application. Management of technology is found as a discipline that practitioners or academics need to have in order to be able to manage and improve technology. It relies on two streams of reasoning called deduction and induction. These two reasoning methods tends to neglect the human need to make sense and therefore fails to stimulate critical thinking of how to extract meaning from complex reality surrounding technology. It is suggested that abduction is the missing link in managemet of technology which is capable to combine the predominant strands of induction and deduction. Based on abductive thinking, TechnoValue is developed as a methodology to gain understanding the general statements when and how new technology creates value to all related stakeholders. Future research is also presented in this paper

The Pathway to Publishing: A Guide to Quantitative Writing in the Health Sciences

Writing manuscripts is central to the advance of scientific knowledge. For an early career aspiring scientist, writing first author manuscripts is an opportunity to develop critical skills and to credential their expertise. Writing manuscripts, however, is difficult, doubly so for scientists who use English as a second language. Many science students intentionally avoid a writing-intensive curriculum. Careful, thorough reviews of draft manuscripts are difficult to secure, and experienced scientific supervisors face more demands on their time than they have time available. Weak draft manuscripts discourage supervising scientists investing the time to coach revisions. It is easier for experienced scientists to ignore the request, or to simply rewrite the article. Early career scientists are motivated to address these barriers but specific advice is difficult to find, and much of this advice is behind a pay wall. This essential, open access text presents writing lessons organized as common errors, providing students and early-career researchers with an efficient way to learn, and mentors with a quick-reference guide to reviewing. Error descriptions include specific examples drawn from real-world experiences of other early-career writers, and suggestions for how to successfully address and avoid these in the future. Versions of this book have been used by Stanford University, UC Davis, Johns Hopkins, and numerous international institutions and organizations for over a decade.