An Uncertain Destination: On the Development of Conflict Management Systems in U.S. Corporations

[Excerpt] Our survey and field research have led us to some tentative conclusions that do not conform to the conventional wisdom of our field. From its inception, ADR has been controversial. On the one hand, ADR has been embraced by a coterie of champions who have always believed that its advantages over litigation were so obvious and compelling it would only be a matter of time before ADR was adopted universally. These champions have also been missionaries, proselytizing their faith in all quarters and making numerous converts. Like all true believers, ADR champions cannot understand why others have not yet gotten the faith. On the other hand, there has always been a group of ADR opponents who believe ADR undercuts our system of justice and must be resisted. ADR champions believe in the inevitability of ADR, while ADR opponents believe the movement to ADR can be stopped and even reversed. On balance, we believe in ADR\u27s merits and share many of its champions\u27 convictions. Our research — which is based on the analytical model we present in this paper — suggests, however, that there is nothing inevitable about the ultimate triumph of ADR

Condition Monitoring of Large-Scale Facilities

This document provides a summary of the research conducted for the NASA Ames Research Center under grant NAG2-1182 (Condition-Based Monitoring of Large-Scale Facilities). The information includes copies of view graphs presented at NASA Ames in the final Workshop (held during December of 1998), as well as a copy of a technical report provided to the COTR (Dr. Anne Patterson-Hine) subsequent to the workshop. The material describes the experimental design, collection of data, and analysis results associated with monitoring the health of large-scale facilities. In addition to this material, a copy of the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory data fusion visual programming tool kit was also provided to NASA Ames researchers

Structural Properties of the Caenorhabditis elegans Neuronal Network

Despite recent interest in reconstructing neuronal networks, complete wiring diagrams on the level of individual synapses remain scarce and the insights into function they can provide remain unclear. Even for Caenorhabditis elegans, whose neuronal network is relatively small and stereotypical from animal to animal, published wiring diagrams are neither accurate nor complete and self-consistent. Using materials from White et al. and new electron micrographs we assemble whole, self-consistent gap junction and chemical synapse networks of hermaphrodite C. elegans. We propose a method to visualize the wiring diagram, which reflects network signal flow. We calculate statistical and topological properties of the network, such as degree distributions, synaptic multiplicities, and small-world properties, that help in understanding network signal propagation. We identify neurons that may play central roles in information processing and network motifs that could serve as functional modules of the network. We explore propagation of neuronal activity in response to sensory or artificial stimulation using linear systems theory and find several activity patterns that could serve as substrates of previously described behaviors. Finally, we analyze the interaction between the gap junction and the chemical synapse networks. Since several statistical properties of the C. elegans network, such as multiplicity and motif distributions are similar to those found in mammalian neocortex, they likely point to general principles of neuronal networks. The wiring diagram reported here can help in understanding the mechanistic basis of behavior by generating predictions about future experiments involving genetic perturbations, laser ablations, or monitoring propagation of neuronal activity in response to stimulation

Cognitive Engineering Research Methodology: A Proposed Study of Visualization Analysis Techniques

The rapid development of new sensors and wide-band communications provides the capability to collect enormous amounts of data. An increasing challenge involves how to understand and interpret the data to yield knowledge about evolving situations or threats (e.g., of military situations, state of complex systems, etc.). New visualization tools and techniques are becoming available to support advanced visualization including three-dimensional, full immersion display environments and tools to support novel visualizations. Examples include network system display tools and evolving multi-sensory situation environments. Despite the emergence of such tools, there has been limited systematic test and evaluations to determine the efficacy of such tools for knowledge understanding and decision making. This paper provides an overview of this problem and argues for the need to conduct controlled experiments. A sample experiment is suggested

The posterior nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: serial reconstruction of identified neurons and complete pattern of synaptic interactions

Serial-section electron microscopy has been used to reconstruct the cellular architecture of the posterior nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Each of 40 neurons in the tail of the adult hermaphrodite can be reproducibly and unambiguously identified by a set of morphological features, including cell body position, fiber geometry and size, and staining properties. A complete list of synapses has been assembled for 2 isogenic animals, and these lists are compared with a third isogenic animal reconstructed by White et al. (1986). The set of neurons and their pattern of synaptic interactions is simple and reproducible. Most of the cells are involved in sensory transduction or in local signal processing to relay signals via a few interneurons to motoneurons and thence to body muscles. Because the tail neurons are well separated and fairly reproducible in position, the hermaphrodite tail lends itself to laser-ablation studies of sensory processing (cf. Chalfie et al., 1985). Most of the synapses in the tail are concentrated in the preanal ganglion. Among the approximately 150 synapses there, about 85% are dyadic chemical synapses. The dyadic synapses are involved in reproducible patterns that have several interesting features. Most neurons synapse onto a few preferred pairs of target cells, in patterns that suggest a combinatorial model of synapse specification that may be open to genetic analysis. Furthermore, most dyadic contacts A----B,C fit a pattern in which the 2 postsynaptic partners are involved elsewhere in unidirectional synapses B----C. Thus, the dyadic synapse may serve to diverge sensory signals into parallel pathways, which then reconverge. This divergence/reconvergence pattern eventually directs processed sensory signals to the ventral cord interneurons PVCL and PVCR. About 80–90% of the synapses fall into repeated classes of synapses. Many of the remaining synapses are widely scattered and irreproducible from one animal to the next. Some of these contacts may be developmental mistakes reflecting a degree of “noise” in synapse specification (Waddington, 1957)

The posterior nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: serial reconstruction of identified neurons and complete pattern of synaptic interactions

Serial-section electron microscopy has been used to reconstruct the cellular architecture of the posterior nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Each of 40 neurons in the tail of the adult hermaphrodite can be reproducibly and unambiguously identified by a set of morphological features, including cell body position, fiber geometry and size, and staining properties. A complete list of synapses has been assembled for 2 isogenic animals, and these lists are compared with a third isogenic animal reconstructed by White et al. (1986). The set of neurons and their pattern of synaptic interactions is simple and reproducible. Most of the cells are involved in sensory transduction or in local signal processing to relay signals via a few interneurons to motoneurons and thence to body muscles. Because the tail neurons are well separated and fairly reproducible in position, the hermaphrodite tail lends itself to laser-ablation studies of sensory processing (cf. Chalfie et al., 1985). Most of the synapses in the tail are concentrated in the preanal ganglion. Among the approximately 150 synapses there, about 85% are dyadic chemical synapses. The dyadic synapses are involved in reproducible patterns that have several interesting features. Most neurons synapse onto a few preferred pairs of target cells, in patterns that suggest a combinatorial model of synapse specification that may be open to genetic analysis. Furthermore, most dyadic contacts A----B,C fit a pattern in which the 2 postsynaptic partners are involved elsewhere in unidirectional synapses B----C. Thus, the dyadic synapse may serve to diverge sensory signals into parallel pathways, which then reconverge. This divergence/reconvergence pattern eventually directs processed sensory signals to the ventral cord interneurons PVCL and PVCR. About 80–90% of the synapses fall into repeated classes of synapses. Many of the remaining synapses are widely scattered and irreproducible from one animal to the next. Some of these contacts may be developmental mistakes reflecting a degree of “noise” in synapse specification (Waddington, 1957)

Efficient Implementation of Elastohydrodynamics via Integral Operators

The dynamics of geometrically non-linear flexible filaments play an important role in a host of biological processes, from flagella-driven cell transport to the polymeric structure of complex fluids. Such problems have historically been computationally expensive due to numerical stiffness associated with the inextensibility constraint, as well as the often non-trivial boundary conditions on the governing high-order PDEs. Formulating the problem for the evolving shape of a filament via an integral equation in the tangent angle has recently been found to greatly alleviate this numerical stiffness. The contribution of the present manuscript is to enable the simulation of non-local interactions of multiple filaments in a computationally efficient manner using the method of regularized stokeslets within this framework. The proposed method is benchmarked against a non-local bead and link model, and recent code utilizing a local drag velocity law. Systems of multiple filaments (1) in a background fluid flow, (2) under a constant body force, and (3) undergoing active self-motility are modeled efficiently. Buckling instabilities are analyzed by examining the evolving filament curvature, as well as by coarse-graining the body frame tangent angles using a Chebyshev approximation for various choices of the relevant non-dimensional parameters. From these experiments, insight is gained into how filament-filament interactions can promote buckling, and further reveal the complex fluid dynamics resulting from arrays of these interacting fibers. By examining active moment-driven filaments, we investigate the speed of worm- and sperm-like swimmers for different governing parameters. The MATLAB(R) implementation is made available as an open-source library, enabling flexible extension for alternate discretizations and different surrounding flows.Comment: 37 pages, 17 figure