Modeling social information skills

In a modern economy, the most important resource consists in\ud human talent: competent, knowledgeable people. Locating the right person for\ud the task is often a prerequisite to complex problem-solving, and experienced\ud professionals possess the social skills required to find appropriate human\ud expertise. These skills can be reproduced more and more with specific\ud computer software, an approach defining the new field of social information\ud retrieval. We will analyze the social skills involved and show how to model\ud them on computer. Current methods will be described, notably information\ud retrieval techniques and social network theory. A generic architecture and its\ud functions will be outlined and compared with recent work. We will try in this\ud way to estimate the perspectives of this recent domain

Effect of the Knowledge Acquisition on the Strategic Decision-Making of Industrial Units' Managers

Is the knowledge acquisition related to the strategic and non-strategic decision-making of companies' managers? The explanation of answer for this question is the aim of this research. Research Methodology This research is based on the practical result, "explanatory" aim, "sectional" time, relationship among the variables of "correlation" and the method of survey. Population members of the research sample are 350 managers of companies established in the industrial towns of two Mazandaran and Golestan provinces. Instrument of the data collection is a questionnaire containing 54 questions in Likert range. The data analysis has been conducted by the techniques of descriptive and inferential statistics and Amos 22 and LISREL statistical software SPSS. Results and Findings Results of testing hypotheses and analyzing answer of the research questions shows that the knowledge acquisition has a positive and significant effect on the strategic decision-making (decision-making by the rational and intuitive styles), but hasn’t a significant effect on the non-strategic decision-making (decision-making by the dependent, instantaneous and avoidant styles)

Mind as Machine: Can Computational Processes Be Regarded As Explanatory of Mental Processes?

The aim of the thesis is to evaluate recent work in artificial intelligence (AI). It is argued that such evaluation can be philosophically interesting, and examples are given of areas of the philosophy of AI where insufficient concentration on the actual results of AI has led to missed opportunities for the two disciplines — philosophy and AI — to benefit from cross-fertilization. The particular topic of the thesis is the use of AI techniques in psychological explanation. The claim is that such techniques can be of value in psychology, and the strategy of proof is to exhibit an area where this is the case. The field of model-based knowledge-based system (KBS) development is outlined; a type of model called a conceptual model will be shown to be psychologically explanatory of the expertise that it models. A group of major philosophies of explanation are examined, and it is discovered that such philosophies are too restrictive and prescriptive to be of much value in evaluating many areas of science; they fail to apply to scientific explanation generally. The importance of having sympathetic yardsticks for the evaluation of explanatory practices in arbitrary fields is defended, and a series of such yardsticks is suggested. The practice of providing information processing models in psychology is discussed. A particular type of model, a psychological competence model, is defined, and its use in psychological explanation defended. It is then shown that conceptual models used in model-based KBS development are psychological competence models. It follows therefore that such models are explanatory of the expertise they model. Furthermore, since KBSs developed using conceptual models share many structural characteristics with their conceptual models, it follows that a limited class of those systems are also explanatory of expertise. This constitutes an existence proof that computational processes can be explanatory of mental processes

The effect of multiple knowledge sources on learning and teaching

Current paradigms for machine-based learning and teaching tend to perform their task in isolation from a rich context of existing knowledge. In contrast, the research project presented here takes the view that bringing multiple sources of knowledge to bear is of central importance to learning in complex domains. As a consequence teaching must both take advantage of and beware of interactions between new and existing knowledge. The central process which connects learning to its context is reasoning by analogy, a primary concern of this research. In teaching, the connection is provided by the explicit use of a learning model to reason about the choice of teaching actions. In this learning paradigm, new concepts are incrementally refined and integrated into a body of expertise, rather than being evaluated against a static notion of correctness. The domain chosen for this experimentation is that of learning to solve "algebra story problems." A model of acquiring problem solving skills in this domain is described, including: representational structures for background knowledge, a problem solving architecture, learning mechanisms, and the role of analogies in applying existing problem solving abilities to novel problems. Examples of learning are given for representative instances of algebra story problems. After relating our views to the psychological literature, we outline the design of a teaching system. Finally, we insist on the interdependence of learning and teaching and on the synergistic effects of conducting both research efforts in parallel

Prediction of Severity of Diabetes Mellitus using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

The objective to develop this research paper is concerned with a system which helps diagnose the severity of diabetes. The disease named diabetes mellitus makes the body unable to handle sugar so it causes thirst, frequency of urination, tiredness and many other symptoms. The diabetes mellitus describes a metabolic disorder characterized by chronic hyperglycemia with disturbances of carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. It can be caused by number of factors like pancreatic dysfunction, obesity, hereditary, stress, drugs, alcohol etc. It includes long term damage, dysfunction and failure of various organs. The effects of diabetes mellitus include long term damage and failure of various organs. Diabetes mellitus may present with characteristic symptoms such as thirst, polyuria, blurring of vision, and weight loss. This Paper is implemented on soft computing technique, namely Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) to find out the presence or absence of diabetes mellitus based on the input of sign/symptoms recorded at three fuzzy levels developed by the domain experts. The large amount of data and information that needs to be handled and integrated requires specific methodologies and tools. The FCM based decision support system was developed with a view to help medical and nursing personnel to assess patient status assist in making a diagnosis. The software tool was tested on 50 cases, showing results with an accuracy of 96%. The analysis of experimental results of different applicants checks the correctness and consistency of decision Support system for correct decision making. Keywords: Fuzzy Logic, FCM, Diabetes Mellitus, Prediction, Symptoms

A knowledge acquisition assistant for the expert system shell Nexpert-Object

This study addresses the problems of knowledge acquisition in expert system development examines programs whose goal is to solve part of these problems. Among them are knowledge acquisition tools, which provide the knowledge engineer with a set of Artificial Intelligence primitives, knowledge acquisition aids, which offer to the knowledge engineer a guidance in knowledge elicitation, and finally, automated systems, which try to replace the human interviewer with a machine interface. We propose an alternative technique to these approaches: an interactive syntactic analyzer of an emerging knowledge base written with the expert system shell called Nexpert Object. This program intends to help the knowledge engineer during the editing of a knowledge base, both from a knowledge engineering and a knowledge representation point of view. The implementation is a Desk Accessory written in C, running on Macintosh concurrently with Nexpert Object

Structuring an event ontology for disease outbreak detection

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This paper describes the design of an event ontology being developed for application in the machine understanding of infectious disease-related events reported in natural language text. This event ontology is designed to support timely detection of disease outbreaks and rapid judgment of their alerting status by 1) bridging a gap between layman's language used in disease outbreak reports and public health experts' deep knowledge, and 2) making multi-lingual information available.</p> <p>Construction and content</p> <p>This event ontology integrates a model of experts' knowledge for disease surveillance, and at the same time sets of linguistic expressions which denote disease-related events, and formal definitions of events. In this ontology, rather general event classes, which are suitable for application to language-oriented tasks such as recognition of event expressions, are placed on the upper-level, and more specific events of the experts' interest are in the lower level. Each class is related to other classes which represent participants of events, and linked with multi-lingual synonym sets and axioms.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We consider that the design of the event ontology and the methodology introduced in this paper are applicable to other domains which require integration of natural language information and machine support for experts to assess them. The first version of the ontology, with about 40 concepts, will be available in March 2008.</p

Troubleshooting in Mechanics: A Heuristic Matching Process

International audienceThis paper deals with expert operators' reasoning processes in troubleshooting. We want to know more about the information that experienced operators use. In a previous study we studied electronics troubleshooting. We found that experts used surface cues in order to implement heuristic rules even if the latter are not relevant to the current fault. We now wish to study the field of mechanics. An experiment was conducted in order to test the hypothesis of a heuristic rule-based level of control responsible for errors among experts. This paper adopts a naturalistic and ergonomic point of view about troubleshooting in mechanics. Our results show that expert mechanics operators' errors rely on heuristics in the troubleshooting process. This strategy relies on an automated matching process between symptoms and procedures. Although this strategy is usually powerful, it is rigid and may lead the operator to not locate the fault of the latter is atypica