Computer-derived management information in a special library

Not the least of the benefits of automating libraries and information centers is the enhanced ability to monitor processes and services, to collect, structure, analyze, and report critical or useful data hitherto largely unavailable or excessively difficult and costly to obtain. Good management of information requires good management information information that is as cogent, correct, current, clear, concise, and complete as cost effectiveness and enlightened decision-making demand. Computeraided information systems offer not only opportunities to gain new insights into the services they support; they challenge the systems designer to build in the feedback necessary to control and improve the systems themselves. The focus of this paper is computer-supplied management information in the special library environment. The particular context is that of an extensively computerized, corporate library network in a large research and development organization Bell Laboratories.published or submitted for publicatio

Creating Fragility Functions for Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering

The Applied Technology Council is adapting PEER's performance-based earthquake engineering methodology to professional practice. The methodology's damage-analysis stage uses fragility functions to calculate the probability of damage to facility components given the force, deformation, or other engineering demand parameter (EDP) to which each is subjected. This paper introduces a set of procedures for creating fragility functions from various kinds of data: (A) actual EDP at which each specimen failed; (B) bounding EDP, in which some specimens failed and one knows the EDP to which each specimen was subjected; (C) capable EDP, where specimen EDPs are known but no specimens failed; (D) derived, where fragility functions are produced analytically; (E) expert opinion; and (U) updating, in which one improves an existing fragility function using new observations. Methods C, E, and U are all introduced here for the first time. A companion document offers additional procedures and more examples

A Hermit in Suburbia

Solo exhibition. This exhibition included paintings, animations and drawings and was part of a long-term enquiry into the ways in the largely Western and urban-based population perceive and encounter the natural world. This show focused on the ornamental hermit, a curious invention of the English Landscape Garden tradition. These were not real hermits, but were employed to live within large estates to provide human subjects for their picturesque grounds, for the amusement of the owner and guests alike. The hermits in this exhibition have been redeployed to the contemporary British suburbs asking the viewer to think anew about our relationship with nature in these ‘hybridised spaces’ whilst considering ideas about the wilderness, retreat and solitude

Shorting the Future: Capital Markets and the Launch of the British Electrical Industry, 1880-1892

Drawing on a comprehensive data set consisting of dividend payments, security prices, and stock exchange disclosures, this paper argues that, contrary to common interpretation, potentially damaging government regulations imposed in 1882 cannot explain the retarded development of the nascent British electrical industry in its first decade. Instead, as informed opinion at the time maintained, wildly inflated expectations had by the spring of 1882 driven the publicly-traded security prices of putative electrical enterprises to manifestly unsustainable levels. When initial demand and operating profits failed to meet these grossly extravagant expectations, �irrational exuberance� quickly turned to equally undisciplined pessimism in a classic case of stock market boom and bust - with predictable consequences, most notably a collapse of subsequent investment and development at a time of great technological ferment, when durable early-mover advantages were being established among electrical manufacturers globally. This debilitating sequence of market boom and bust was further exacerbated by the fact that during the brief boom surprisingly little money was invested in the promising technologies that were available. Technological rather than regulatory risk was the dominant factor in the 1882 electrical debacle, with long lasting consequences.

Tuning the generalized Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm

We discuss the analytic computation of autocorrelation functions for the generalized Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm applied to free field theory and compare the results with numerical results for the $O(4)$ spin model in two dimensions. We explain how the dynamical critical exponent $z$ for some operators may be reduced from two to one by tuning the amount of randomness introduced by the updating procedure, and why critical slowing down is not a problem for other operators.Comment: 4 pages, to be published in the Proceedings of Lattice 95, uuencoded PostScript fil

Development of a menu of performance tests self-administered on a portable microcomputer

Eighteen cognitive, motor, and information processing performance subtests were screened for self-administration over 10 trials by 16 subjects. When altered presentation forms of the same test were collectively considered, the battery composition was reduced to 10 distinctly different measures. A fully automated microbased testing system was employed in presenting the battery of subtests. Successful self-administration of the battery provided for the field testing of the automated system and facilitated convenient data collection. Total test administration time was 47.2 minutes for each session. Results indicated that nine of the tests stabilized, but for a short battery of tests only five are recommended for use in repeated-measures research. The five recommended tests include: the Tapping series, Number Comparison, Short-term Memory, Grammatical Reasoning, and 4-Choice Reaction Time. These tests can be expected to reveal three factors: (1) cognition, (2) processing quickness, and (3) motor. All the tests stabilized in 24 minutes, or approximately two 12-minute sessions

Preliminary evaluation of a micro-based repeated measures testing system

A need exists for an automated performance test system to study the effects of various treatments which are of interest to the aerospace medical community, i.e., the effects of drugs and environmental stress. The ethics and pragmatics of such assessment demand that repeated measures in small groups of subjects be the customary research paradigm. Test stability, reliability-efficiency and factor structure take on extreme significance; in a program of study by the U.S. Navy, 80 percent of 150 tests failed to meet minimum metric requirements. The best is being programmed on a portable microprocessor and administered along with tests in their original formats in order to examine their metric properties in the computerized mode. Twenty subjects have been tested over four replications on a 6.0 minute computerized battery (six tests) and which compared with five paper and pencil marker tests. All tests achieved stability within the four test sessions, reliability-efficiencies were high (r greater than .707 for three minutes testing), and the computerized tests were largely comparable to the paper and pencil version from which they were derived. This computerized performance test system is portable, inexpensive and rugged