Revision Cycle Research Articles

IEEE 841- 1994 versus IEEE 841 - 2001

IEEE 841 has been widely accepted throughout various process industries as a simple way to specify and purchase a reliable energy-efficient severe-duty motor off the shelf. During the next standard revision cycle, IEEE 841 should be made more user-friendly and provide more consistency between suppliers, as the specification was originally intended. This article will discuss the basic differences between IEEE 841-1994 and IEEE 841-2001 revisions. The features added to the 2001 revision were intended to improve motor reliability and life.

Editorial

Editorial

Ideas about control of skeletal and cardiac muscle blood flow (1876-2003): cycles of revision and new vision.

This perspective examines origins of some key ideas central to major issues to be addressed in five subsequent mini-reviews related to Skeletal and Cardiac Muscle Blood Flow. The questions discussed are as follows. 1). What causes vasodilation in skeletal and cardiac muscle and 2). might the mechanisms be the same in both? 3). How important is muscle's mechanical contribution (via muscle pumping) to muscle blood flow, including its effect on cardiac output? 4). Is neural (vasoconstrictor) control of muscle vascular conductance and muscle blood flow significantly blunted in exercise by muscle metabolites and what might be a dominant site of action? 5). What reflexes initiate neural control of muscle vascular conductance so as to maintain arterial pressure at its baroreflex operating point during dynamic exercise, or is muscle blood flow regulated so as to prevent accumulation of metabolites and an ensuing muscle chemoreflex or both?

Behavior-based model construction

In this paper, we review behavior-based model construction from a point of view characterized by verification, model checking, and abstraction. It turns out that abstract interpretation is the key to scaling known learning techniques for practical applications, that model checking may serve as a teaching aid in the learning process underlying the model construction, and that there are various synergies with other validation and verification techniques. We will illustrate our discussion by means of a realistic telecommunications scenario, where the underlying system has grown over the last two decades, the available system documentation consists of not much more than user manuals and protocol standards, and the revision cycle times are extremely short. In this situation, behavior-based model construction provides a sound basis, e.g., for test-suite design and maintenance, test organization, and test evaluation.

Explanation‐driven inquiry: Integrating conceptual and epistemic scaffolds for scientific inquiry

AbstractScience education reforms consistently maintain the goal that students develop an understanding of the nature of science, including both the nature of scientific knowledge and methods for making it. This paper articulates a framework for scaffolding epistemic aspects of inquiry that can help students understand inquiry processes in relation to the kinds of knowledge such processes can produce. This framework underlies the design of a technology‐supported inquiry curriculum for evolution and natural selection that focuses students on constructing and evaluating scientific explanations for natural phenomena. The design has been refined through cycles of implementation, analysis, and revision that have documented the epistemic practices students engage in during inquiry, indicate ways in which designed tools support students' work, and suggest necessary additional social scaffolds. These findings suggest that epistemic tools can play a unique role in supporting students' inquiry, and a fruitful means for studying students' scientific epistemologies. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 88:345–372, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/.sce10130

From the Editors: Perspectives on Turnaround Time

Editors are frequently asked about the turnaround time at their journals, but there is no standard way this “simple” statistic is defined, making comparisons across journals somewhat risky. The easiest number for an editor to access is based on all the time to reach a decision for all submissions. This lumps together the time it takes to immediately reject manuscripts (about 20 to 30 percent at Health Services Research [HSR]) with the more time-consuming process of getting external reviews back for the first submission and (usually faster) subsequent submissions. (This overall average also makes the review process look fast.) For the past several years at HSR, the “simple statistic” we reported has been in the 10- to 14-week range. Regardless of how it is calculated, reducing the turnaround time is obviously in the interest of authors and editors, especially if it can occur without reduction in the quality of the review process. Time to get external reviews, however, is not the only thing that authors are interested in; some want to know how long it takes from submission to acceptance (or rejection), which is quite another thing because that may involve several revisions and, thus, also include steps where the manuscript is in the author's hands. Others want to know how long it takes until an accepted manuscript appears officially in print and electronically. (That statistic at HSR is approximately five to six months.) In exploring the breadth of issues implied in the question, “How long will it take?”, it became clear that the authors' and editors' perspectives might be quite different. From the perspective of one trying to manage the review process, the primary concern is how long it takes us to reach a decision on a particular manuscript. The numerous steps involved are discussed elsewhere, but the simplified version is that a manuscript first goes to the editorial staff (usually one of the coeditors-in-chief, but occasionally also to one of the senior associate editors), who make a decision as to whether the manuscript will go on to an external peer review. If it does, then once the reviewers' comments are back, the editorial staff review the comments, reviews, and manuscript again. Then the coeditor-in-chief for the manuscript makes the final decision and notifies the author. (The reviewers are notified about the decision and reviews, blinded from names, at the same time.) Total turnaround time from the editor's perspective (what we will call “cycle time”) is measured as the time from receipt of the manuscript until a decision letter about that particular submitted version is sent to the author. For some authors, this is a definitive end to our process, that is, a rejection, or very rarely, an acceptance. For others, the decision is usually a “revise and resubmit” on a first submission, and it may be a long time before the entire process is finished, reaching a definitive rejection or acceptance. If one takes the perspective of an author who is primarily interested in “how long will it take until I know that my paper has finally been accepted or rejected?” the additional time for the multiple cycles of revisions and decisions is relevant.

Changing the national electrical code

The changing National Electrical Code (NEC) governs all electrical installations in industrial facilities as well as commercial and residential occupancies. This article defines the complete revision cycle and provides guidance for submitting proposals and comments to change the NEC.

Promoting signing of advance directives in faith communities

To develop a participatory educational program implemented in faith communities that would increase discussion and signing of two types of advance directives-living will and durable power of attorney for health care decisions. Longitudinal study with four annual cycles of program implementation, evaluation, and revision incorporating a program that fostered the discussion, signing, and/or revision of advance directives. The program involved an educational workbook and ongoing support by parish nurses. Seventeen faith communities in Wichita, Kansas. Faith communities included several predominantly white congregations, as well as several primarily African-American and Hispanic congregations. Seventeen faith communities, their pastors, and 25 parish nurses worked with 361 self-selected residents, living in community settings, to participate in the program as members of their faith communities. Congregations were recruited by the executive director of a local interfaith ministries organization and parish nurses. Two hundred forty-eight (69%) of the congregants who started the program completed it. Of the program completers, 83 (33%) had a directive prior to the program and 140 (56%) had a directive after completion. One hundred eighty-six of the completers discussed directives with family members. Overall, 89 (36%) of the 248 program completers revised an existing directive or signed one for the first time. Age was positively related to having signed/revised a directive prior to the program. Fear that advance directives would be used to deny medical care was negatively related to signing both prior to the program and after program completion, and contributed to participants' reluctance to sign directives. Educational programs implemented by parish nurses in faith communities can be effective in increasing rates of discussion, revision, and/or signing of advance directives.

Reflective and Collaborative Teaching Practice: Working towards quality student learning outcomes

A cycle of reflection and revision can be used to involve students and teaching staff in the development of curriculum and teaching methods, with a resultant increase in quality learning outcomes. The paper describes the process used in an undergraduate management ethics course, which resulted in an increased emphasis on collaborative teaching and the introduction of integrated communication skills. Qualitative analysis (student evaluation of teaching, student e-mail communication and feedback) and quantitative data (grade comparisons) are used to show the learning outcomes.

Combining abductive reasoning and inductive learning to evolve requirements specifications

The development of requirements specifications inevitably involves modification and evolution. To support modification while preserving particular requirements goals and properties, the use of a cycle composed of two phases: analysis and revision is proposed. In the analysis phase, a desirable property of the system is checked against a partial specification. Should the property be violated, diagnostic information is provided. In the revision phase, the diagnostic information is used to help modify the specification in such a way that the new specification no longer violates the original property. An instance of the above analysis–revision cycle that combines new techniques of logical abduction and inductive learning to analyse and revise specifications, respectively is investigated. More specifically, given an (event-based) system description and a system property, abductive reasoning is applied in refutation mode to verify whether the description satisfies the property and, if it does not, identify diagnostic information in the form of a set of examples of property violation. These (counter) examples are then used to generate a corresponding set of examples of system behaviours that should be covered by the system description. Finally, such examples are used as training examples for inductive learning, changing the system description in order to resolve the property violation. This is accomplished with the use of the connectionist inductive learning and logic programming system—a hybrid system based on neural networks and the backpropagation learning algorithm. A case study of an automobile cruise control system illustrates the approach and provides some early validation of its capabilities.

Step-Wise Evolution of Mental Models of Electric C ircuits: A "Learning-Aloud" Case Study

Various methods have been tried for fostering conceptual change in science including the use of analogies, discrepant events, and visual models. In this article we describe an approach to teaching complex models in science that takes a model construction cycle of generation, evaluation, and modification as an organizing framework for thinking about when to use each of the previous strategies. This approach of model evolution uses all of the previous methods as students are led to reassess and revise their model many times in the course of the lessons. We reported on the case study of a student in a tutoring experiment using this approach in the study of electric circuits. We concentrated on the student's moments of surprise as motivators of conceptual change. Most of these came from discrepant events, but 1 of them appeared to come from the student's own sensed lack of coherence in an intermediate model. In this case study, the teaching method appears to lead to the construction of an explanatory model that is fairly deeply understood by the student in the sense that it can generate predictions and coherent explanations of a complex system in a transfer problem. Some of our conclusions and hypotheses generated with respect to learning processes are as follows: (a) Discrepant events produced reactions of surprise and were eventually followed by model revisions, leading us to hypothesize a motivating and guiding role for these events; (b) the subject was able to map and apply an air pressure analogy used for electric potential and continued to exhibit traces of it through the posttest interview; (c) the subject's spontaneous use of similar depictive hand motions during the instruction and during the posttest provides initial evidence that the instruction fostered development of dynamic mental models, such as those of fluid-like flows caused by pressure differences, that can generate new mental simulations for understanding relatively difficult transfer problems. This leads us to describe the core of her new knowledge as explanatory models at an intermediate level of generality that allow her to run imagistic simulations and to hypothesize a "transfer of runnability" from the analog conception to the model in this case; (d) we hypothesize that the process underlying model generations and revisions was 1 of scaffolded abductive knowledge construction rather than induction or deduction; that evaluation and revision cycles can make up for the conjectural nature of individual abductions; and that engagement and comprehension in the cycle was fostered by small step sizes for revisions from using multiple "small" discrepant events and analogies built into the lessons.

IEEE 844-2000: Recommended Practice for Electrical Impedance, Induction, and Skin Effect Heating of Pipelines and Vessels

IEEE Std 844 Recommended Practice for Electrical Impedance, Induction, and Skin Effect Heating of Pipelines and Vessels has recently completed its second revision cycle. Major changes include the addition of testing requirements for systems within the scope and the addition of a new clause-Induction Susceptor Heating Furnaces within a Vessel. This paper presents the major changes and reviews the background and development of the approved standard.

BASS STRAIT OFFSHORE FACILITY SAFETY CASES: A CASE STUDY ON EFFECTIVE WORKFORCE INVOLVEMENT IN THE MODERN SAFETY CASE REGIME

In 2001, Esso submitted 18 different Bass Strait Facility Safety Cases as part of their five year revision cycle, and obtained regulatory acceptance for each of them. These revised safety cases incorporated the accumulated learning from our many previous offshore safety case submissions, the 1998 Longford accident and our work with the WorkSafe Victoria Major Hazards Division. A number of significant challenges were met and overcome. This paper discusses our experiences and describes the processes we used to successfully develop useful, easy to use living safety cases for our offshore workforce.Although our priority was to demonstrate that we knew our facilities, had identified hazards, assessed the risks associated with those hazards and had control measures in place to reduce those risks to as low as reasonably practicable, we also wanted to bring about behavioural change. This paper will explain how our safety case revision processes were used to successfully change workforce behaviours with consequent changes to collective attitudes and values across the organisation.Extensive and highly effective employee involvement was integral to all stages of the safety case planning and development process. The paper examines how a skilled team comprising a workforce-elected Health and Safety Representative, an Offshore Installation Manager and specialist safety professionals collaborated to deliver a true program of workforce involvement and buy-in that in turn delivered the behavioural changes necessary for a true safety case culture to flourish.Esso’s approach of developing a safety case as a shopfloor friendly tool highlighting the linkages between routinely used safety management system controls and the major accident event risks present at the workplace has delivered significant benefit in developing a risk averse health and safety culture. A comprehensive ongoing learning program designed to give the workforce the knowledge, skills and confidence needed to use the safety case to maximum advantage, has been developed as a key component of our safety case program. This paper explores the successful planning, development and implementation of this innovative learning program that has been widely recognised by regulators and industry.

A Critique Of Stephen Downes' Article, "Learning Objects": A Middle Eastern Perspective

The discipline of computing is definitely influencing and shaping almost every aspect of our life, including education. One decade ago, the WWW was not critical to education. However, nowadays, it has become an integral part of the learning process. A huge number of educational institutes have some form of online courses. This number is increasing tremendously. The quality of an online course depends heavily on the learning material’s content and the tools (including images, sound, video, animation) used to accompany the explanation of that learning material. Also, to cope with the rapid advances in the field, the contents of each course must be reviewed within short revision cycles. In addition, the continuous change in many disciplines has broadened the synergy and the overlapping between courses. Moreover, courses must be stored efficiently using computer software that facilitates fast retrieval of their contents. All of the above has made it necessary to seek greater efficiency via: (a) approaches that hasten course design and development, (b) techniques that facilitate sharability between courses, and (c) tools that support reusability of course’s components and templates for publishing on the WWW.

Editorial

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to take over as editor-in-chief after Holly Rushmeier's strong leadership of the past three years. ACM has made a big effort to get TOG back on schedule after the delays caused by changing to a new publication system. With this issue, we are almost on schedule again and the backlog of accepted papers is significantly reduced. I hope to further shorten the time the return reviews to authors and to get accepted paper to readers. As part of that effort, I have asked Steve Fortune for Bell Labs, John Hart from Washington State, Joe Marks from MERL, and Jorg Peters from the University of Florida to be new members of the editorial board to replace those who retired with the end of Holly's term. I expect that we'll see significant changes in the role of journals during my three-year term. Right now, journals utilize peer reviews and a revision cycle to provide accreditation to research, but this process is tied to a particular distribution medium and requires financial support in the form of subscription fees. With the increasing use of web-baed publishing, I expect that the accreditation and distribution functions will begin to separate. Accreditation will continue to play an important role in scientific reputations and academic careers, while the publication media will become far more diverse. This diversification is particularly important for graphics because many of its important results are not represented well on paper. TOG has moved in this direction with a web page that is expertly maintained by Eric Haines and contains occasional supplemental material (http://www.acm.org./tog/). If TOG is to represent the true breadth of graphics, however, we will have to make much more of an effort in this direction. During the next three years, we will almost certainly see significant changes in graphics as well. Clearly, the field is expanding beyond the creation of beautiful and useful images and image sequences. New emphases include increasingly realistic physical modeling, interactive worlds, and nonvisual modalities. Graphics is a fascinating field, in part because researchers are able to adopt and adapt new ideas from so many other fields: art, vision, physics, materials science, control, optimization and biomechanics. I look forward to the innovative and creative work that the community will submit to TOG during the next three years.

MAPPING THE ROAD TO QUALITY COLLABORATIVE PATIENT CARE IN A BEHAVIORAL HEALTH COMMUNITY TREATMENT CENTER: Avoiding the Detours of Managed Care

At this writing, the system and tools described have improved the author's organization's ability to meet managed care requirements better and support a collaborative care and case management model. Refer to the boxed information for the key functions and outcomes of the system. The Behavioral Health Multiaxial Protocol CareMapping System offers one approach to addressing the dilemma of health environmental change, managed care requirements, and financial constraints that have the potential to endanger the quality of clinical practice and to have a negative effect on patient and family outcomes. The tools illustrated in this article are in a constant cycle of revision and improvement and requires adequate clerical support to accommodate revision and tool improvement. Many more improvement initiatives are needed to improve the patient care process and organizational performance continuously. Because quality is a journey, the author hopes that her institution is on the right road and carries the correct map.

Getting the Best from Freelance Writers

Contracting out can significantly relieve pressure on internal resources, but it can also be a time-consuming and frustrating activity. The success of contracting out is significantly enhanced by a planning stage to decide: why the job is being contracted out (time, expertise), what exactly is needed, who the writer should be, where the writer should be based, when the document is needed, and how much the work should cost. During planning, internal issues must be resolved, a written brief prepared, timelines constructed, and the budget determined. The writer will need a data package and should provide regular updates on progress throughout the writing phase. At least one cycle of revision will normally be required. The final stage is the evaluation of the project and payment of the freelancer. In conclusion, the use of freelancers can bring substantial benefits as long as the process is properly planned and managed.

Accreditation issues in post-doctoral general dentistry programs.

There has been increasing interest in the organization and accreditation of post-doctoral general dentistry programs (PGD). Numerous national organizations have called for increases in the number of PGD positions and programs. At the same time, there has been a movement to incorporate concepts of competency-based education into dental education programs to stress the outcomes of education rather then the process. These movements have coincided with the current accreditation standards revision cycles for GPR and AEGD programs. These events suggest that PGD educators have a major opportunity and responsibility to assess the goals and educational directions of PGD programs in light of the many changes in dental health care delivery, health policy, and dental education activities. These opportunities will be realized only if the organizations involved with PGD education can find common ground and pool their resources to promote the interests of PGD education.

Voluntary Standards for the Operation of Clinical Pharmacology Units

Clinical Pharmacology Units (CPUs) are a special class of clinical research units for investigating the pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, and toxicologic properties of drugs in man. The Association of Clinical Pharmacology Units (ACPU) is a national professional society with a membership drawn from academic and in-house pharmaceutical industry CPUs. It was established to provide a forum facilitating cooperation and the exchange of information and ideas between CPUs. One of its major objectives has been to promote the establishment of voluntary minimum standard of practice and guidelines for clinical pharmacology units.In October 1992, ACPU's Standards Committee undertook to draft a set of principles which would guide CPUs in the development of local standards and procedures. The product of this work was adopted by the membership in October 1994 after several review and revision cycles. ACPU invites comments from the clinical research community concerning its Voluntary Standards for the Operation of Clinic...

Advanced geometric modeler with hybrid representation

When IBM's John Backus first developed the Fortran programming language, back in 1957, he certainly never dreamt that it would become a world-wide success and still be going strong many years later. Given the oft-repeated predictions of its imminent demise, starting around 1968, it is a surprise, even to some of its most devoted users, that this much-maligned language is not only still with us, but is being further developed for the demanding applications of the future. What has made this programming language succeed where most slip into oblivion? One reason is certainly that the language has been regularly standardized. In this paper we will trace the evolution of the language from its first version and though six cycles of formal revision, and speculate on how this might continue. Now, modern Fortran is a procedural, imperative, compiled language with a syntax well suited to a direct representation of mathematical formulas. Individual procedures may be compiled separately or grouped into modules, either way allowing the convenient construction of very large programs and procedure libraries. Procedures communicate via global data areas or by argument association. The language now contains features for array processing, abstract data types, dynamic data structures, objectoriented programming and parallel processing.