Economics of Nursing Invitational Conference: Paying for Quality Nursing Care

Summarizes June 2007 discussions on paying for quality nursing care, research and policy strategies, and action plans. Focuses on making a "business case," measuring and accounting for the intensity of care, and pay-for-performance challenges

Proposed methods for reviewing the outcomes of health research: the impact of funding by the UK's Arthritis Research Campaign

Background: External and internal factors are increasingly encouraging research funding bodies to demonstrate the outcomes of their research. Traditional methods of assessing research are still important, but can be merged into broader multi-dimensional categorisations of research benefits. The onus has hitherto been on public sector funding bodies, but in the UK the role of medical charities in funding research is particularly important and the Arthritis Research Campaign, the leading medical charity in its field in the UK, commissioned a study to identify the outcomes from research that it funds. This article describes the methods to be used. Methods: A case study approach will enable narratives to be told, illuminating how research funded in the early 1990s was (or was not) translated into practice. Each study will be organised using a common structure, which, with careful selection of cases, should enable cross-case analysis to illustrate the strengths of different modes and categories of research. Three main interdependent methods will be used: documentary and literature review; semi-structured interviews; and bibliometric analysis. The evaluative framework for organising the studies was previously used for assessing the benefits from health services research. Here, it has been specifically amended for a medical charity that funds a wide range of research and is concerned to develop the careers of researchers. It was further refined in three pilot studies. The framework has two main elements. First, a multi-dimensional categorisation of benefits going from the knowledge produced in peer reviewed journal articles through to the health and potential economic gain. The second element is a logic model, which, with various stages, should provide a way of organising the studies. The stock of knowledge is important: much research, especially basic, will feed into it and influence further research rather than directly lead to health gains. The cross-case analysis will look for factors associated with outcomes. Conclusions: The pilots confirmed the applicability of the methods for a full study which should assist the Arthritis Research Campaign to demonstrate the outcomes from its funding, and provide it with evidence to inform its own policies

Social Media and the Democratization of American Museums

The democratization of American museums has been accelerated by societal changes caused by the development of new, multiway channels of communication created by the Internet and social media. Social media is prompting public participa- tion which has led to a paradigm shift in museology towards public engagement. The rise of vernacular creativity, especially among the younger, digitally native generations who are “curating” their identities by replicating, manipulating and sharing culture on- line, challenges the authority of the museum and curator as arbiters of culture. This paradigm shift also broadens the definition of authenticity from the object to the au- thentic experience. This paper argues that museums have a responsibility to remain relevant and to model the use of new technologies in the service of public good and in the pursuit of democratic ideals. They can only do so through nimble experimentation with social media. An examination of the evolution of the museum’s role in American society is followed by an analysis of the impact of technology on museum practice and philosophy. The description of a number of case studies involving social media initia- tives by museums suggests that engaging the public in the curatorial process throughcrowd-sourced and crowd-curated exhibitions may be the key to museum sustain- ability. Finally, an outline of a social media campaign designed for an exhibition at the University of San Francisco’s Thacher Gallery, co-curated by the M.A. in Museum Studies Curatorial Practicum serves as a lesson in the use of the new media platform,Instagram

AVI CHAI Foundation - 2005 Annual Report

Contains mission statement, board chair's message, project summaries, program information, financial statements, and list of board members and senior staff

Extraction of UML class diagrams from natural language specifications

Dans l’ingénierie dirigée par modèle, les diagrammes de classes UML servent à la planification et à la communication entre les différents acteurs d’un projet logiciel. Dans ce mémoire, nous proposons une méthode automatique pour l’extraction des diagrammes de classes UML à partir de spécifications en langues naturelles. Pour développer notre méthode, nous créons un dépôt de diagrammes de classes UML et de leurs spécifications en anglais fournies par des bénévoles. Notre processus d’extraction se fait en plusieurs étapes: la segmentation des spécifications en phrases, la classification de ces phrases, la génération des fragments de diagrammes de classes UML à partir de chaque phrase, et la composition de ces fragments en un diagramme de classes UML. Nous avons validé notre approche d’extraction en utilisant le dépôt de paires diagramme-spécification. Même si les résultats obtenus montrent une précision et un rappel bas, notre travail a permis d’identifier les éléments qui peuvent être améliorés pour une meilleure extraction.In model-driven engineering, UML class diagrams serve as a way to plan and communicate between developers. In this thesis, we propose an automated approach for the extraction of UML class diagrams from natural language software specifications. To develop our approach, we create a dataset of UML class diagrams and their English specifications with the help of volunteers. Our approach is a pipeline of steps consisting of the segmentation of the input into sentences, the classification of the sentences, the generation of UML class diagram fragments from sentences, and the composition of these fragments into one UML class diagram. We develop a quantitative testing framework specific to UML class diagram extraction. Our approach yields low precision and recall but serves as a benchmark for future research

Reusable components for knowledge modelling

In this work I illustrate an approach to the development of a library of problem solving components for knowledge modelling. This approach is based on an epistemological modelling framework, the Task/Method/Domain/Application (TMDA) model, and on a principled methodology, which provide an integrated view of both library construction and application development by reuse. The starting point of the proposed approach is given by a task ontology. This formalizes a conceptual viewpoint over a class of problems, thus providing a task-specific framework, which can be used to drive the construction of a task model through a process of model-based knowledge acquisition. The definitions in the task ontology provide the initial elements of a task-specific library of problem solving components. In order to move from problem specification to problem solving, a generic, i.e. taskindependent, model of problem solving as search is introduced, and instantiated in terms of the concepts in the relevant task ontology, say T. The result is a task-specific, but method-independent, problem solving model. This generic problem solving model provides the foundation from which alternative problem solving methods for a class of tasks can be defined. Specifically, the generic problem solving model provides i) a highly generic method ontology, say M; ii) a set of generic building blocks (generic tasks), which can be used to construct task-specific problem solving methods; and iii) an initial problem solving method, which can be characterized as the most generic problem solving method, which subscribes to M and is applicable to T. More specific problem solving methods can then be (re-)constructed from the generic problem solving model through a process of method/ontology specialization and method-to-task application. The resulting library of reusable components enjoys a clear theoretical basis and provides robust support for reuse. In the thesis I illustrate the approach in the area of parametric design

How job function characteristics impact performance of diverse teams in high-tech industry

This study examines the effect of diversity in the technology industry across different technical job functions and the possible moderating factors. One-on-one interviews were conducted with 16 participants who have different demographic characteristics and different job roles across multiple companies in the United States. It was found that about two-thirds of participants do not perceive diversity as having any positive or negative impact on the outcomes of work teams. The other participants believe that there are positive effects, but it is inconclusive when it comes to whether certain types of diversity result in better team outcomes. The results also reflect how one’s job function might affect his or her view on the effect of diversity. The study findings and their implications may be useful to practitioners working on DEI initiatives in the technology industry

Nathan Cummings Foundation - 2006 Annual Report

Contains president's message, list of trustees and staff, program descriptions, grants list, and shareholder activities report

A Scenario-Based Methodology for Exploring Risks:Children and Programmable IoT

In this paper we report on research exploring the privacy, security and safety implications of children being able to program Internet of Things devices. We present our methodology for understanding the contexts in which children may wish to use programmable IoT, identifying risks that emerge in such contexts, and creating a set of questions that might guide design of such technologies so that they are safe for child users. We evaluate the success of the methodology, discuss the limitations of the approach, and describe future work