Encapsulating and representing the knowledge on the evaluation of an engineering system

This paper proposes a cross-disciplinary methodology for a fundamental question in product development: How can the innovation patterns during the evolution of an engineering system (ES) be encapsulated, so that it can later be mined through data mining analysis methods? Reverse engineering answers the question of which components a developed engineering system consists of, and how the components interact to make the working product. TRIZ answers the question of which problem-solving principles can be, or have been employed in developing that system, in comparison to its earlier versions, or with respect to similar systems. While these two methodologies have been very popular, to the best of our knowledge, there does not yet exist a methodology that reverseengineers and encapsulates and represents the information regarding the complete product development process in abstract terms. This paper suggests such a methodology, that consists of mathematical formalism, graph visualization, and database representation. The proposed approach is demonstrated by analyzing the design and development process for a prototype wrist-rehabilitation robot

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

Visualising ergonomics data for design

Existing ergonomics data are not effectively used by designers; this is mainly because the data are not presented in a designer-friendly format. In order to help designers make better use of ergonomics data, we explored the potential of representing existing ergonomics data in a more dynamic and visual way, and making them look more relevant to design. The Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES) was adopted to turn static ergonomics data into manipulative and comparative data sets. Contextual information in a visual format was added; clearer illustrations and scenarios relevant to design were developed; design case studies were compiled and linked to the relevant ergonomics data sets – the process resulted in a new design support tool: the ErgoCES. The tool was consequently brought to both design students and professionals for evaluation. The results suggested that the ErgoCES had helped making ergonomics data more accessible to designers, and many new features (e.g. scenarios and case studies) were highly valued by the designers. Among the participants, 100% of the design students and 79% of the professionals indicated that they would use the tool when it becomes widely available.The research project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Grant EP/F0 32145/1. The authors would like to thank all the participants for helping evaluating the tool. Hua Dong is currently sponsored by The Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

A new approach to teaching feedback

The Control and Dynamical Systems (CDS) Department at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has revised its entry-level curriculum in dynamics, feedback, and control with the goals of updating the subject matter to include modern tools and making control tools accessible to a nontraditional audience. One of the approaches made was to divide the introductory control theory class into two tracks, with a conceptual track geared toward students who need only a conceptual overview of control tools and an analytical track providing a more detailed mathematical treatment of feedback. The conceptual track, CDS 101, which is mainly discussed in the paper, is intended for advanced students in science and engineering who can benefit from an overview of control techniques but who might not have the need for the mathematical depth underlying the material. Special attention is paid to ensuring that the course is accessible to students from biological, physical, and information sciences, using examples from these domains to illustrate concepts. The goal of the course is to enable students to use the principles and tools of feedback in their research activities

Supporting active database learning and training through interactive multimedia

The learning objectives of a database course include aspects from conceptual and theoretical knowledge to practical development and implementation skills. We present an interactive educational multimedia system based on the virtual apprenticeship model for the knowledge- and skills-oriented Web-based education of database course students. Combining knowledge learning and skills training in an integrated environment is a central aspect of our system. We show that tool-mediated independent learning and training in an authentic setting is an alternative to traditional classroom-based approaches

Teaching Big Brother to be a team player: Computer monitoring and quality

Computer monitoring should not be seen as a way of gathering information about workers, per se, but rather as one part of a production and quality strategy that provides needed information to a diverse team of workers. In its most powerful and effective form. computer monitoring is the use of computers to collect. process, and provide feedback information about work with the intent of improving performance and developing employees. Unfortunately, computer monitoring has also been used to punish employees. Here, a study of a successful computer monitoring system at Hughes Aircraft Company is described. The study shows that computer monitoring can facilitate integrated production and quality control strategies withouf negative effects on employee quality of work life. Managers who wish to design and effectively use computer monitoring systems should: (1) Use the monitoring system to provide feedback data to the workforce-not to gather social information (e.g., time taken for bathroom breaks): (2) Determine the type of data that employees believe will help them and be willing to adapt the system as they get ideas about how to use the data; (3) Design a system that gathers integrated data-data that will allow for useful comparisons between, as well as within, specific tasks; and (4) Realize that computer monitoring is only as noxious as the management system itself

Knowledge formalization in experience feedback processes : an ontology-based approach

Because of the current trend of integration and interoperability of industrial systems, their size and complexity continue to grow making it more difficult to analyze, to understand and to solve the problems that happen in their organizations. Continuous improvement methodologies are powerful tools in order to understand and to solve problems, to control the effects of changes and finally to capitalize knowledge about changes and improvements. These tools involve suitably represent knowledge relating to the concerned system. Consequently, knowledge management (KM) is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Particularly, the capitalization and sharing of knowledge resulting from experience feedback are elements which play an essential role in the continuous improvement of industrial activities. In this paper, the contribution deals with semantic interoperability and relates to the structuring and the formalization of an experience feedback (EF) process aiming at transforming information or understanding gained by experience into explicit knowledge. The reuse of such knowledge has proved to have significant impact on achieving themissions of companies. However, the means of describing the knowledge objects of an experience generally remain informal. Based on an experience feedback process model and conceptual graphs, this paper takes domain ontology as a framework for the clarification of explicit knowledge and know-how, the aim of which is to get lessons learned descriptions that are significant, correct and applicable

Enabling the Autonomic Management of Federated Identity Providers

The autonomic management of federated authorization infrastructures (federations) is seen as a means for improving the monitoring and use of a service provider’s resources. However, federations are comprised of independent management domains with varying scopes of control and data ownership. The focus of this paper is on the autonomic management of federated identity providers by service providers located in other domains, when the identity providers have been diagnosed as the source of abuse. In particular, we describe how an autonomic controller, external to the domain of the identity provider, exercises control over the issuing of privilege attributes. The paper presents a conceptual design and implementation of an effector for an identity provider that is capable of enabling cross-domain autonomic management. The implementation of an effector for a SimpleSAMLphp identity provider is evaluated by demonstrating how an autonomic controller, together with the effector, is capable of responding to malicious abuse