A speculative computation approach for conflict styles assessment with incomplete information

Thispaperanalysesawaytocopewithincompleteinformation,namely information regarding the conflict style used by parties. This analysis is important because it enables us to develop a more accurate and informed conflict style classification method to promote better strategies. To develop this proposal, an experiment using a combination of Bayesian Networks with Speculative Computation is depicted. Thus, in this work, was firstly identified and applied a set of methods for classifying conflict styles with incomplete information; secondly, the approach was validating opposing data collected from a web-based negotiationgame.Fromtheexperimentoutcomes,wecanconcludedthatitispossibleto copewithincompleteinformationbyproducingvalidconflictstyledefaultvalues and, particularly, to anticipate competing postures through the dynamic generation of recommendations for a conflict manager. The findings suggest that this approach is suitable for handling incomplete information in this context and can be applied in a viable and feasible way.This work has been supported by COMPETE:POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A web platform and a decision model for computer-interpretable guidelines

Situations of medical error and defensive medicine are com- mon in healthcare environments and have repercussions in the quality of care under o er. The occurrence of adverse events and the increase of healthcare expenses are some of the consequences of medical malpractice. Indeed, these situations may be prevented by encouraging the compli- ance with Clinical Guidelines (CGs). However, the current format of CGs proved to be disadvantageous for real-time application, i.e., they may not provide recommendations to healthcare professionals when required, and on time. The introduction of Computer-Interpretable Guidelines (CIGs) may provide a solution to this problem, however they are not widely implemented and there are some issues that need to be contemplated. Indeed, in this paper it is presented the CompGuide project for guideline representation and sharing, combined with the handling of incomplete information in that context

Natural variability of lotic Mediterranean ecosystems or wildfire perturbations: who will win?

This study evaluates the impacts of wildfires in lotic Mediterranean ecosystems. It was carried out at Monchique ridge after big wildfires occurred during 2002 and 2003. Deferential impacts were evaluated comparing historical results obtained before the wildfires (1999 and 2001), with the post fire ones (2006 and 2007). Physical and chemical parameters of the water, habitat morphology, diatoms, macrophytes, macroinvertebrates and fishes were evaluated at 10 collecting places, before and after wildfires. High recovering rates were observed to the vegetation, but it is still possible to found fire impacts over macrophytes and river morphology. Wildfires, contributed to canopy decrease and, consequently to the growth of plants that usually are controlled by shadow. As a result, vegetation biodiversity tend to increase. River banks tend also to be invaded by terrestrial plants. Higher post fires recover rates were observed to the more aquatic communities (diatoms, macroinvertebrates and fishes). For those communities, comparing spring situations before and after the fires no substantial differences were observed. Sometimes differences between consecutive years are even higher. So it can be concluded that magnitude of wildfire impacts is less than the natural inter-annual variability of Mediterranean rivers. Long-term effects of forest fires, resulting from large woody debries, were also detected by morphological alterations, like debries dams. Habitat diversity increase and impacts on aquatic communities are expected

Developing an individualized survival prediction model for rectal cancer

This work presents a survivability prediction model for rectal cancer patients developed through machine learning techniques. The model was based on the most complete worldwide cancer dataset known, the SEER dataset. After preprocessing, the training data consisted of 12,818 records of rectal cancer patients. Six features were extracted from a feature selection process, finding the most relevant characteristics which affect the survivability of rectal cancer. The model constructed with six features was compared with another one with 18 features indicated by a physician. The results show that the performance of the six-feature model is close to that of the model using 18 features, which indicates that the first may be a good compromise between usability and performance.FCT - Fuel Cell Technologies Program (SFRH/BD/85291/2012)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The role of ontologies and decision frameworks in computer-interpretable guideline execution

Computer-Interpretable Guidelines (CIGs) are machine readable representations of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) that serve as the knowledge base in many knowledge-based systems oriented towards clinical decision support. Herein we disclose a comprehensive CIG representation model based on Web Ontology Language (OWL) along with its main components. Additionally, we present results revealing the expressiveness of the model regarding a selected set of CPGs. The CIG model then serves as the basis of an architecture for an execution system that is able to manage incomplete information regarding the state of a patient through Speculative Computation. The architecture allows for the generation of clinical scenarios when there is missing information for clinical parameters.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/85291/ 2012)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A personal assistant for health care professionals based on clinical protocols

Current tools to operationalize Computer-Interpretable Guidelines focus mainly on displaying recommendations rather than assisting health care professionals in their daily activities. Furthermore, their underlying models have limitations at the level of temporal representation that hinder the accurate depiction of clinical protocols in a few specific situations. This work identifies such situations and proposes a comprehensive temporal model based on OntologyWeb Language (OWL), along with a web-based tool that provides an alternative way to deploy and view clinical protocols. This is evaluated through a case study featuring a clinical protocol for the treatment of colon cancer. It was possible to observe that the model was able to represent the majority of temporal patterns, specially those with periodic events and temporal restrictions about the state of a patient.This work has been supported by FCT Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of Tiago Oliveira is supported by a FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/85291/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Compguide: Acquisition and editing of computer-interpretable guidelines

The formalization of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) as Computer-Interpretable Guidelines (CIGs) has the potential to positively influence the behaviour of health practitioners by being available at the point and time of care. Existing tools for acquiring and editing CIGs for automatic interpretation present limitations in their ease of use and the support they offer to a CIG encoder. Besides characterizing these limitations and identifying improvements to include in future tools, this work describes the CompGuide Editor, a Protégé tool for the management of CIGs that guides a user throughout the several steps of CIG encoding, without requiring the user to have programming knowledge, and through the use of interfaces that are simple and intuitive.FCT - Fuel Cell Technologies Program (SFRH/BD/85291/2012)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A mobile and evolving tool to predict colorectal cancer survivability

In this work, a tool for the survivability prediction of patients with colon or rectal cancer, up to five years after diagnosis and treatment, is presented. Indeed, an accurate survivability prediction is a difficult task for health care professionals and of high concern to patients, so that they can make the most of the rest of their lives. The distinguishing features of the tool include a balance between the number of necessary inputs and prediction performance, being mobile-friendly, and featuring an online learning component that enables the automatic evolution of the prediction models upon the addition of new cases.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of Tiago Oliveira is supported by a FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/85291/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An orientation method with prediction and anticipation features

Nowadays, progress is constant and inherent to a living society. This may occur in different arenas, namely in mathematical evaluation and healthcare. Assistive technologies are a topic under this evolution, being extremely important in helping users with diminished capabilities (physical, sensory, intellectual). These technologies assist people in tasks that were difficult or impossible to execute. A common diminished task is orientation, which is crucial for the user autonomy. The adaptation to such technologies should require the minimum effort possible in order to enable the person to use devices that convey assistive functionalities. There are several solutions that help a human being to travel between two different locations, however their authors are essentially concerned with the guidance method, giving special attention to the user interface. The CogHelper system aims to overcome these systems by applying a framework of Speculative Computation, which adds a prediction feature for the next user movement giving an anticipation ability to the system. Thus, an alert is triggered before the user turn towards an incorrect path. The travelling path is also adjusted to the user preferences through a trajectory mining module.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of João Ramos is supported by a doctoral the FCT grant SFRH/BD/89530/2012. The work of Tiago Oliveira is also supported by the FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/85291/2012info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Quantum Magnetic Impurities in Magnetically Ordered Systems

We discuss the problem of a spin 1/2 impurity immersed in a spin S magnetically ordered background. We show that the problem maps onto a generalization of the dissipative two level system (DTLS) with two independent heat baths, associated with the Goldstone modes of the magnet, that couple to different components of the impurity spin operator. Using analytical perturbative renormalization group (RG) methods and accurate numerical renormalization group (NRG) we show that contrary to other dissipative models there is quantum frustration of decoherence and quasi-scaling even in the strong coupling regime. We make predictions for the behavior of the impurity magnetic susceptibility that can be measured in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. Our results may also have relevance to quantum computation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure