Capturing What’s in People’s Heads to Learn from Successes and Failures and Provide Effective Ways Forward

PresentationIn industry, much can be gained by drawing from different people’s experiences and what they have learned or can collectively learn from successes as well as failures. However, capturing and utilizing this knowledge is often challenging in many areas such as product development, testing, and operations, particularly due to the following circumstances: New information is continually being generated Many employees are specialized Much information is sought out for specific situations There are many different circumstances and ways to utilize information and resources Not all valuable information can be captured in employee/training programs This paper explains a process for capturing people’s knowledge and translating it into useful directions that can guide various business functions to move forward and increase their success. Using the process facilitates the spreading of valuable resources, information, solutions, and practices within and across business groups, functions, and organizations by drawing from workers’ experiences to piece them together so that they can be utilized most effectively. Benefits of this process include: Gaining confidence and effective directions to move forward with solutions/technologies or new endeavors Solidifying circumstances to get the most out of resources and minimize problems and wasted effort Optimizing solutions Reducing the time and effort seeking out information and resources; avoiding “reinventing the wheel” Improving business choices This paper covers applications of this process to safety and loss prevention in product development, testing, and operations with examples from the oil and gas industry

Relationship between Social Cognition, Language, Executive Functioning and Theory of Mind Ability in High-Functioning Autism

Whereas it is generally accepted that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have deficits in theory of mind, or the ability to understand that other people have thoughts and to infer or predict what those thoughts might be, the relationship of this deficit to other aspects of ASD is still debated. This study examined the relationship between measures of social cognition, language, and the specific executive functions of working memory and cognitive flexibility, and measures of ToM using a large sample of 272 children and adults with high-functioning autism (HFA). The results of a series of hierarchical linear regression models indicated that the strongest relationship occurred between a general measure of language ability (Verbal IQ) and two different measures of ToM. In both children and adults with ASD, ToM abilities appear to be related to overall language abilities rather than a more generalized ability in social cognition or executive function

Preservation and development in Japanese architecture and town planning

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture and Planning, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (v 2., leaves 309-325).The study examines the architectural preservation program as it has developed over the past century in Japan, and demonstrates how relics of the past have been manipulated and re-interpreted by individuals and communities seeking to define a modern identity. The study chronicles the development of preservation practice from a national perspective, followed by a local historical analysis of the town of Tsumago in Nagano Prefecture. It is proposed that a nativist and modernist construction of the common Japanese house has had a special place in the history of the modern movement in Japan which influenced the conceptualization, study and preservation of traditional architecture over the past century. Also, the legal tools and field practices of both the national preservation program and the grass-roots district preservation movement have been tied to ideological and political concerns which have affected building designation, restoration, and public presentation. The most important example of the grass-roots district preservation movement in Japan is Tsumago-juku in Nagano Prefecture, the first example of such a movement in Asia. It is demonstrated that Tsumago's place in the formation of Japan's modern national identity was of primary importance to the success of its preservation effort. Restoration work there resulted in important national legislation and created a conflict between the "living tradition" of local carpentry and community vs. professional preservationist. This centered on the nature of architectural tradition and definition of authenticity. As a result of the preservation effort, the town's history and traditions have been re-invented to suit the needs of the present, and its material historicity has been compromised in the name of a greater authenticity in the building process. Yet the modernist ideal of a structurally "honest" and materially "natural" Japanese house has made the acceptance of preservation intervention problematic in the architectural community, further demonstrating that the way old houses are preserved is as much a reflection of the architectural and political ideology of our time as they are a portrait of the past.by Cherie Wendelken-Mortensen.Ph.D

Scanning-Tunneling-Microscopy Study of Pb on Si(111)

Scanning-tunneling microscopy has been used to study temperature and coverage dependence of the structure of lead on the Si(111)-7×7 surface. For low Pb coverage, the Pb atoms favored the faulted sites. The ratio between the number of Pb atoms on faulted to unfaulted sites increased after sample annealing. An energy difference of 0.05 eV associated with a Pb atom on these two sites is estimated. The mobility of Pb atoms on Si(111) was observed at a temperature as low as 260°C for a coverage of 0.1 and 1 ML. © 1995 The American Physical Society

Characterizing Behavioral and Brain Changes Associated with Practicing Reasoning Skills

We have reported previously that intensive preparation for a standardized test that taxes reasoning leads to changes in structural and functional connectivity within the frontoparietal network. Here, we investigated whether reasoning instruction transfers to improvement on unpracticed tests of reasoning, and whether these improvements are associated with changes in neural recruitment during reasoning task performance. We found behavioral evidence for transfer to a transitive inference task, but no evidence for transfer to a rule generation task. Across both tasks, we observed reduced lateral prefrontal activation in the trained group relative to the control group, consistent with other studies of practice-related changes in brain activation. In the transitive inference task, we observed enhanced suppression of task-negative, or default-mode, regions, consistent with work suggesting that better cognitive skills are associated with more efficient switching between networks. In the rule generation task, we found a pattern consistent with a training-related shift in the balance between phonological and visuospatial processing. Broadly, we discuss general methodological considerations related to the analysis and interpretation of training-related changes in brain activation. In summary, we present preliminary evidence for changes in brain activation associated with practice of high-level cognitive skills.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research FellowshipEunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.) (F32HD079143-01

Flexible rule use: Common neural substrates in children and adults

AbstractFlexible rule-guided behavior develops gradually, and requires the ability to remember the rules, switch between them as needed, and implement them in the face of competing information. Our goals for this study were twofold: first, to assess whether these components of rule-guided behavior are separable at the neural level, and second, to identify age-related differences in one or more component that could support the emergence of increasingly accurate and flexible rule use over development. We collected event-related fMRI data while 36 children aged 8–13 and adults aged 20–27 performed a task that manipulated rule representation, rule switching, and stimulus incongruency. Several regions – left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), left posterior parietal cortex, and pre-supplementary motor area – were engaged by both the rule representation and the rule-switching manipulations. These regions were engaged similarly across age groups, though contrasting timecourses of activation in left DLPFC suggest that children updated task rules more slowly than did adults. These findings support the idea that common networks can contribute to a variety of executive functions, and that some developmental changes take the form of changes in temporal dynamics rather than qualitative changes in the network of brain regions engaged

A Connectionist model of Planning via Back-chaining Search

A connectionist model for emergent planning behavior is proposed. The model demonstrates that a simple planning schema, acting in concert with two general purpose cognitive functionalities, namely, episodic memory and perception, can solve a restricted class of planning problems by backchaining from the goal to the current state. In spite of its simple structure, the schema can search for and execute plans involving multiple steps. We discuss how this simple model can be extended into a more powerful and expressive planning system by incorporating additional control and memory structures

Evolution of Two-Dimensional Wormlike Nanoclusters on Metal Surfaces

A pinch-off phenomenon is discovered in the evolution of 2D wormlike nanoclusters formed in homoepitaxial adlayers. This feature is shown to distinguish mass transport via periphery diffusion from other mechanisms. Continuum modeling of such evolution accurately describes experimental observations, particularly if one incorporates the anisotropy in step-edge line tension