Using XML and XSLT for flexible elicitation of mental-health risk knowledge

Current tools for assessing risks associated with mental-health problems require assessors to make high-level judgements based on clinical experience. This paper describes how new technologies can enhance qualitative research methods to identify lower-level cues underlying these judgements, which can be collected by people without a specialist mental-health background. Methods and evolving results: Content analysis of interviews with 46 multidisciplinary mental-health experts exposed the cues and their interrelationships, which were represented by a mind map using software that stores maps as XML. All 46 mind maps were integrated into a single XML knowledge structure and analysed by a Lisp program to generate quantitative information about the numbers of experts associated with each part of it. The knowledge was refined by the experts, using software developed in Flash to record their collective views within the XML itself. These views specified how the XML should be transformed by XSLT, a technology for rendering XML, which resulted in a validated hierarchical knowledge structure associating patient cues with risks. Conclusions: Changing knowledge elicitation requirements were accommodated by flexible transformations of XML data using XSLT, which also facilitated generation of multiple data-gathering tools suiting different assessment circumstances and levels of mental-health knowledge

Gas chromatographic analysis of volatile hydrocarbons to detect irradiated chicken, pork and beef - an intercomparison study A report in English and German

This report provides a detailed description of an inter-laboratory study to detect irradiation treatment of chicken carcasses, pork and beef using a method suitable for routine application. The 17 participating laboratories determined the quantity of four different radiation-induced hydrocarbons (1-tetradecene, pentadecane, 1,7-hexadecadiene, 8-heptadecene) in coded samples approx. 3 and 6 months after irradiation. The quantities detected were used to identify the samples as irradiated or non-irradiated. The samples of each type of meat to be examined had been supplied by two different producers. The dose range that was tested (approx. 0.6 to 7.5 kGy) included commercially used doses (approx. 1 to 5 kGy). The method employed enable 98.3% of a total of 864 samples to be correctly identified as irradiated or non-irradiated. This result is remarkable: Although the marker concentrations in the various samples showed a clear dose dependency, the variation was quite marked. The high rate of correct identifications could be achieved by defining a sample only as irradiated if certain quantities of at least 3 of the radiolytic products to be determined had been found. A similar identification rate was achieved if quantification of markers was omitted to identify a sample only as irradiated when all the expected radiolysis products could be clearly detected. For all three types of meat, no significant differences in marker yields could be shown for the products of the respective two producers. Also, in none of the types of meat, any significant difference could be revealed for the quantiatitive results achieved three and six months after irradiation. These results show that irradiation of chicken carcasses, pork and beef in the commerically used dose range can be clearly detected throughout the entire period in which products are normally stored and that the method described is suitable for routine analyses in food control laboratories. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RR 1068(1993,1) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman