Framing in the Wild: Expressions of Decisions in Real-World Situations

An important phenomenon in the study of behavioral decision-making is the surprising finding that people who are given choices framed in positive vs. negative terms exhibit different preferences. This study focused on a newer question: what factors influence the selection of frames by decision-makers? The development of a decision frame that has positive or negative overall value is a process that can be influenced by a number of factors. Several theoretical approaches to decision-making were examined with respect to making predictions regarding factors that would influence frame selection: mental accounting, task complexity, mental workload, expertise, regulatory focus, and message formulation goals. Predictions were extrapolated from each of these approaches and tested with data from a real-world decision-making situation - planning conversations from a set of NASA mission control meetings. The planning statements were transcribed and coded for frame selection and other behavioral/situational elements that were predicted to be related to frame selection. Mental accounting was not found to be related to frame selection. A predominance of positive framing, along with minimal use of negations, provided some support for the influence of positive expression bias. There was also evidence for aspiration mode impacting the selection of frame. The strongest predictor of frame selection, however, was an increase in expertise that occurred over the course of the mission. Between early and late mission phases, there was a significant decrease in positive framing, and this decrease interacted with task complexity. Based on these results, the hypothesis was proposed that decision-makers use opportunities for action as a means to frame decisions

An intelligent Geographic Information System for design

Recent advances in geographic information systems (GIS) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have been summarised, concentrating on the theoretical aspects of their construction and use. Existing projects combining AI and GIS have also been discussed, with attention paid to the interfacing methods used and problems uncovered by the approaches. AI and GIS have been combined in this research to create an intelligent GIS for design. This has been applied to off-shore pipeline route design. The system was tested using data from a real pipeline design project. [Continues.

Recent Developments in Smart Healthcare

Medicine is undergoing a sector-wide transformation thanks to the advances in computing and networking technologies. Healthcare is changing from reactive and hospital-centered to preventive and personalized, from disease focused to well-being centered. In essence, the healthcare systems, as well as fundamental medicine research, are becoming smarter. We anticipate significant improvements in areas ranging from molecular genomics and proteomics to decision support for healthcare professionals through big data analytics, to support behavior changes through technology-enabled self-management, and social and motivational support. Furthermore, with smart technologies, healthcare delivery could also be made more efficient, higher quality, and lower cost. In this special issue, we received a total 45 submissions and accepted 19 outstanding papers that roughly span across several interesting topics on smart healthcare, including public health, health information technology (Health IT), and smart medicine

A systematic methodology toward creating spatial quality in urban settings

Urban settings, conceived and implemented in the climate of modern-day urbanisation and technology, show undesirable trends. In the typical situation, due to the absence of the urban dweller's participation in the planning and design process, prescriptive decision-making directs and shapes the urban environment on the basis of the objectives of the trained professional or a developer. The disciplines of architecture, urban design, and urban planning, well endowed with research in terms of their philosophical, cultural, and historical dimensions, traditionally overlook systematic and impartial methods in realisation of design objectives. In addition, architects generally focus within the confines of the immediate site, ignoring the wider context. Urban planners and designers tend to follow their perceptions of the urban setting and pragmatic objectives, and to overlook the elements which constitute spatial quality for others. Planning and design tasks performed in this way are prescriptive and perfunctory, and do not meet the urban dweller's perceptions of spatial quality. Although the planning and design disciplines can avail themselves of considerable intellectual resources, systematic methods to synthesise both the subjective opinion of the urban dweller and expert opinion of specialists are lacking. With current global scenarios, the need to develop methods for participation becomes even more relevant and urgent. The likelihood of high-density settings is ominous without changes in planning and design approaches. The overall objective of this thesis is to develop a methodology which meets the demands of the situations described. The data for this study are derived from a theoretical examination of the attributes which contribute to the perceptions of spatial quality in the urban setting. A thematic analysis, carried out against the background of factors, such as spatial patterning, links social well-being with characteristics of the urban environment. Consistent and invariant spatial quality indicators are derived which are then associated with spatial performance. A spatial frame is then identified to structure the methodology into recognisable and manageable urban spatial components. Expectations of spatial performance are translated systematically into primary planning and design generators to complete the elements of the methodology. The problem of how to involve urban dwellers and specialist designers and planners for a consensus useful in the planning process is examined. The comprehensive methodology developed by Sondheim for assessing environmental impacts incorporates the necessary features for adaptation to new urban settings and resolves the problem of polling divergent priorities without requiring discussion or consensus amongst participants. The matrix procedures of the chosen methodology involve both subjective and informed qualitative evaluation without the use of environmental indices, which are found wanting as measures of quality. Post-multiplication of the matrices produces ranking of planning and design generators in order of importance, which, effectively, represents the choice of the urban dweller. The methodology is operationalised to test the matrix and post-multiplication procedures, and the rationality of the result. For the case model presented, a rational result was obtained, which supports the adaptation of the methodology for creative purposes. The ranking is referred to a source book, which allows the systematic transformation of the primary planning and design generators into recognisable and conventional planning directives. As a contribution to the planning and design fields, the methodology is a useful creative tool, effectively addressing the problem of the interface between planner and user in the attainment of spatial quality in the development of new urban settings. Furthermore, the procedures can be operationalised to meet an infinite range of variables, or spatial scenarios within the urban setting

Processing temporal information in unstructured documents

Tese de doutoramento, Informática (Ciência da Computação), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2013Temporal information processing has received substantial attention in the last few years, due to the appearance of evaluation challenges focused on the extraction of temporal information from texts written in natural language. This research area belongs to the broader field of information extraction, which aims to automatically find specific pieces of information in texts, producing structured representations of that information, which can then be easily used by other computer applications. It has the potential to be useful in several applications that deal with natural language, given that many languages, among which we find Portuguese, extensively refer to time. Despite that, temporal processing is still incipient for many language, Portuguese being one of them. The present dissertation has various goals. On one hand, it addresses this current gap, by developing and making available resources that support the development of tools for this task, employing this language, and also by developing precisely this kind of tools. On the other hand, its purpose is also to report on important results of the research on this area of temporal processing. This work shows how temporal processing requires and benefits from modeling different kinds of knowledge: grammatical knowledge, logical knowledge, knowledge about the world, etc. Additionally, both machine learning methods and rule-based approaches are explored and used in the development of hybrid systems that are capable of taking advantage of the strengths of each of these two types of approach.O processamento de informação temporal tem recebido bastante atenção nos últimos anos, devido ao surgimento de desafios de avaliação focados na extração de informação temporal de textos escritos em linguagem natural. Esta área de investigação enquadra-se no campo mais lato da extração de informação, que visa encontrar automaticamente informação específica presente em textos, produzindo representações estruturadas da mesma, que podem depois ser facilmente utilizadas por outras aplicações computacionais. Tem o potencial de ser útil em diversas aplicações que lidam com linguagem natural, dado o caráter quase ubíquo da referência ao tempo cronólogico em muitas línguas, entre as quais o Português. Apesar de tudo, o processamento temporal encontra-se ainda incipiente para bastantes línguas, sendo o Português uma delas. A presente dissertação tem vários objetivos. Por um lado vem colmatar esta lacuna existente, desenvolvendo e disponibilizando recursos que suportam o desenvolvimento de ferramentas para esta tarefa, utilizando esta língua, e desenvolvendo também precisamente este tipo de ferramentas. Por outro serve também para relatar resultados importantes da pesquisa nesta área do processamento temporal. Neste trabalho, mostra- -se como o processamento temporal requer e beneficia da modelação de conhecimento de diversos níveis: gramatical, lógico, acerca do mundo, etc. Adicionalmente, são explorados tanto métodos de aprendizagem automática como abordagens baseadas em regras, desenvolvendo-se sistemas híbridos capazes de tirar partido das vantagens de cada um destes dois tipos de abordagem.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, SFRH/BD/40140/2007