Probabilistic Expert Systems for Reasoning in Clinical Depressive Disorders

Like other real-world problems, reasoning in clinical depression presents cognitive challenges for clinicians. This is due to the presence of co-occuring diseases, incomplete data, uncertain knowledge, and the vast amount of data to be analysed. Current approaches rely heavily on the experience, knowledge, and subjective opinions of clinicians, creating scalability issues. Automating this process requires a good knowledge representation technique to capture the knowledge of the domain experts, and multidimensional inferential reasoning approaches that can utilise a few bits and pieces of information for efficient reasoning. This study presents knowledge-based system with variants of Bayesian network models for efficient inferential reasoning, translating from available fragmented depression data to the desired information in a visually interpretable and transparent manner. Mutual information, a Conditional independence test-based method was used to learn the classifiers

Findings from a literature review

Mentzingen, H., António, N., & Bação, F. (2023). Automation of legal precedents retrieval: Findings from a literature review. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 2023, 1-22. [6660983]. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2292464/v1, https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2292464/v2, https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/6660983---This work was supported by national funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), under the project-UIDB/04152/2020-Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC)/NOVA IMS.Judges frequently rely their reasoning on precedents. Courts must preserve uniformity in decisions while, depending on the legal system, previous cases compel rulings. The search for methods to accurately identify similar previous cases is not new and has been a vital input, for example, to case-based reasoning (CBR) methodologies. This literature review offers a comprehensive analysis of the advancements in automating the identification of legal precedents, primarily focusing on the paradigm shift from manual knowledge engineering to the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML). While multiple approaches harnessing NLP and ML show promise, none has emerged as definitively superior, and further validation through statistically significant samples and expert-provided ground truth is imperative. Additionally, this review employs text-mining techniques to streamline the survey process, providing an accurate and holistic view of the current research landscape. By delineating extant research gaps and suggesting avenues for future exploration, this review serves as both a summation and a call for more targeted, empirical investigations.publishersversionpublishe

Inside the HR and Performance Black Box: how line managers use their people management discretion to influence individual first line employee performance outcomes

This study examines how front line managers use their discretion to influence first line employee performance outcomes while simultaneously meeting their responsibilities for HRM practice enactment. This addresses an academic literature gap as well as providing insight to aid the understanding between line managers and HR functions. The study is a holistic case study set within single function inside a commercial multinational organisation carried out with multiple levels of analysis. It is comprised of confidential primary data collection and triangulation interviews with 11 line managers from above and below average performing teams, 23 of their direct reports and 2 representatives from the HR function. Organisation documentation, reports and performance data were also examined. The study identified the discretionary practices used by line managers to influence employee performance outcomes alongside those they used for enacting their HRM practice responsibilities, while variations in discretionary practice usage between above and below average line managers helped explain differences in employee performance outcomes. Further research is needed to determine whether this is a causal relationship. The study also found new forms of HRM practice enactment carried out by front line managers extending our understanding on how this is carried out in organisations. Further variations in front line manager HRM practice enactment were not found to as related to employee performance outcome differences questioning that lack of compliance with HRM practices leads to poorer employee performance outcomes. There was limited overlap between the discretionary practices found and LMX theory suggesting a limited utility as a method for examining front line manager discretion in this context. The study also offers a practical model using CIMO-logic to help provide those in organisations better understanding between front line managers and the HRM practices they have responsibilities, with potential to build better interactions between front line managers and those in HRM functions. The findings extend our existing theory, suggesting more complex and dynamic approaches are used by some front line managers than previously thought with resultant implications for further research and practice

Sustainable Value Co-Creation in Welfare Service Ecosystems : Transforming temporary collaboration projects into permanent resource integration

The aim of this paper is to discuss the unexploited forces of user-orientation and shared responsibility to promote sustainable value co-creation during service innovation projects in welfare service ecosystems. The framework is based on the theoretical field of public service logic (PSL) and our thesis is that service innovation seriously requires a user-oriented approach, and that such an approach enables resource integration based on the service-user’s needs and lifeworld. In our findings, we identify prerequisites and opportunities of collaborative service innovation projects in order to transform these projects into sustainable resource integration once they have ended

COVID-19: Cost-Benefit Analysis and Politics

The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments around the world to make tough political decisions about the cost of saving lives and the limits of doing so. One of the striking aspects of the debates over these necessary tradeoffs is the relatively little weight individual rights seemed to have carried in these discussions. At first, this might have seen the triumph of cost-benefit analysis (CBA); and in a sense, it was. However, the pandemic has also shown the limitations of CBA, especially in the face of severe uncertainty. This essay reviews some of the sources of uncertainty in the context of the pandemic and shows how, in the face of such uncertainty, different countries fall back onto their political commitments, which include concern for individual rights. I thus argue that rather than being in competition to CBA, political considerations (including concern for individual rights) end up being incorporated into an impressionistic calculation of costs and benefits of government action. I conclude by suggesting that this is where future discussion of the theoretical foundations of CBA should focus on

Regulating Coastal Zones

Regulating Coastal Zones addresses the knowledge gap concerning the legal and regulatory challenges of managing land in coastal zones across a broad range of political and socio-economic contexts. In recent years, coastal zone management has gained increasing attention from environmentalists, land use planners, and decision-makers across a broad spectrum of fields. Development pressures along coasts such as high-end tourism projects, luxury housing, ports, energy generation, military outposts, heavy industry, and large-scale enterprise compete with landscape preservation and threaten local history and culture. Leading experts present fifteen case studies among advanced-economy countries, selected to represent three groups of legal contexts: signatories to the 2008 Mediterranean ICZM Protocol, parties to the 2002 EU Recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management, and the USA and Australia. This book is the first to address the legal-regulatory aspects of coastal land management from a systematic cross-national comparative perspective. By including both successful and less-effective strategies, it aims to inform professionals, graduate students, policy makers, and NGOs of the legal and socio-political challenges as well as the better practices from which others could learn

Regulating Coastal Zones

Regulating Coastal Zones addresses the knowledge gap concerning the legal and regulatory challenges of managing land in coastal zones across a broad range of political and socio-economic contexts. In recent years, coastal zone management has gained increasing attention from environmentalists, land use planners, and decision-makers across a broad spectrum of fields. Development pressures along coasts such as high-end tourism projects, luxury housing, ports, energy generation, military outposts, heavy industry, and large-scale enterprise compete with landscape preservation and threaten local history and culture. Leading experts present fifteen case studies among advanced-economy countries, selected to represent three groups of legal contexts: signatories to the 2008 Mediterranean ICZM Protocol, parties to the 2002 EU Recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management, and the USA and Australia. This book is the first to address the legal-regulatory aspects of coastal land management from a systematic cross-national comparative perspective. By including both successful and less-effective strategies, it aims to inform professionals, graduate students, policy makers, and NGOs of the legal and socio-political challenges as well as the better practices from which others could learn

Building information modeling – A game changer for interoperability and a chance for digital preservation of architectural data?

Digital data associated with the architectural design-andconstruction process is an essential resource alongside -and even past- the lifecycle of the construction object it describes. Despite this, digital architectural data remains to be largely neglected in digital preservation research – and vice versa, digital preservation is so far neglected in the design-and-construction process. In the last 5 years, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has seen a growing adoption in the architecture and construction domains, marking a large step towards much needed interoperability. The open standard IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) is one way in which data is exchanged in BIM processes. This paper presents a first digital preservation based look at BIM processes, highlighting the history and adoption of the methods as well as the open file format standard IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) as one way to store and preserve BIM data