Distant View Research Articles

Breast cancers missed by screening radiologists can be detected by reading mammograms at a distance.

During locally organized quality assurance evaluation sessions for screening radiologists, we noticed that individual screening radiologists did miss tumours which in our opinion could be detected at a distance. To determine whether tumours missed by individual screening radiologists can be detected at a distance. Twenty-eight screening mammograms of 28 females (mean age 63years, range 49-73) with a pathologically proven malignant tumour missed by individual screening radiologists were mixed with 56 normal screening mammograms of 56 females (mean age 63years, range 53-74). This test set was independently assessed by a senior screening radiologist and by a radiology resident without prior training in screening mammography at 1.5m distance from the screen display. Readers were unaware of the prevalence of pathologically proven malignant tumours in the test set. Primary outcome was whether the reader would recall the woman. The senior screening radiologist recalled 28 of 28 women with a pathologically proven malignant tumour (sensitivity of 100%) and 16 of 56 women without pathology (specificity of 71%). The radiology resident recalled 25 of 28 women with a pathologically proven malignant tumour (sensitivity of 89%) and 10 of 56 women without pathology (specificity of 82%). Some malignant tumours missed by an individual screening radiologist can be detected from 1.5m distance. Therefore, we recommend that screening radiologists consciously take a distant view before closely evaluating the mammogram in detail.

동아시아 해항(海港)문화 전파경로와 불교의 한국전래 - 가락국 불교 전래 문제 이해를 위한 원경 스케치 -

동아시아 해항(海港)문화 전파경로와 불교의 한국전래 - 가락국 불교 전래 문제 이해를 위한 원경 스케치 -

Кинофикация живописи 1920-х годов. Опыт художников Общества станковистов

In this article the author aims to define the specifics of the contact between the painting by the Society of Easel Painters (OST; 1925-1932) and the rapidly developing cinematograph of the 1920s. The thesis analyzes the cinema devices that the OST members used to modernize easel painting. Primarily, they explicitly and implicitly expressed the montage principals of composition (notably “gluing” of blow-up and distant view), as well as the principals of “specific-typical” representation, attaching the same value to personages and things, etc. Cinefication determined the working technique of the OST members in numerous series of compositions with small variation of a motive. The OST artists also used the onscreen methods of vision objectification and the organization of viewer’s consciousness. The experience of documentary cinema and, in the first place, of Dziga Vertov was the closest to the practice of the OST group. The last one and the leader of the Kinoki group were interested not only in familiar motives, but also in the design of the pathetic picture of a new world. As for the approach to history, the OST members’ position was akin to the position of Sergei Eisenstein. By the example of the works by the OST artists, we can consider the problems of revitalizing Russian easel art during the 1920s in general. This paper is a work in progress. So further the question of interaction between the OST painting and cinematograph remains in the foreground of my research. Promising in this context is many-sided investigation of the specific time and spatial constructions and distinct illusionism in the OST compositions, which were considered as models for a new visual culture.

A Global Doll's House: Ibsen and Distant Visions by Julie Holledge et al

Reviewed by: A Global Doll's House: Ibsen and Distant Visions by Julie Holledge et al Antje Budde A GLOBAL DOLL'S HOUSE: IBSEN AND DISTANT VISIONS. By Julie Holledge, Jonathan Bollen, Frode Helland, and Joanne Tompkins. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology series. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016; pp. 234. Reflecting on their project, the authors of A Global Doll's House write that "[t]he study of so many productions of a single play is unprecedented in the historiography of modern drama, and the techniques of data analysis and visualization that we used have far-reaching possibilities for the field" (202). One might assume that there cannot possibly be anything substantial or even minor left to be said about the globally performed production of Henrik Ibsen's well-known Et dukkehjem (A Doll's House). This book will convince the reader otherwise. A Global Doll's House sets out to map the contradictory forces of the global production history of this canonical play in order to meticulously identify factors for its global success on five continents and across many cultures. There have been other valuable publications discussing Ibsen's work within the context of globalization and cross-cultural exchange. However, this book, using digital data analytics as a major methodological tool, opens an entirely new door to the Ibsen research of the future. The writing style is very concise and scientific, yet leaves space for playfulness and surprise. This stylistic dynamic mirrors—and quite joyfully so—the research methodology that is based on a very effective dialectical integration of close readings and distant visions, an interesting switching between tree and forest vision. The authors state that the "underlying premise of the book is that new ways of looking produce new ways of thinking" (6; emphasis in original). In this particular case I am very much in agreement, as this is precisely what this book does. While close readings are an established method of critical analysis in literature and theatre studies, exercising a distant view enabled by digital data visualization offers immense potential for research. The book is divided into two parts, "Cultural Transmission" and "Adaptation," which are the two chosen angles through which it explores the mechanics, dynamics, and historical stages of the play's growing global significance over the last 135 years. The organizing pattern of each of its parts introduces its use of terminology and methodology, before it launches into the analysis of two very specific aspects or case studies, and then concludes with a summary of its major findings. Part 1 includes "Mapping the Early Noras," in which we learn about the early commercial history of this play and patterns of transmission that challenge conventional narratives of Ibsen's success as a playwright. This is juxtaposed with brief vignettes about the lives of performers who played Nora—each vignette a breathtaking miniature provocation, ready to set off a cascade of new research in the future. This is followed by "'Peddling' Et dukkehjem: The Role of the State," which reveals "the intertwined forces of major theatre companies, theatrical families, state departments, and state policy initiatives in producing Et dukkehjem" (103). It also addresses a set of motivations for these transmissions on the Norwegian side that are not at all necessarily grounded in artistic appreciation of Ibsen's work or the desire for social/feminist change and/or individual liberation. Part 2, "Adaptation," is broken down into "Adaptation at a Distance" and "Ibsen's Challenge: The Tarantella Rehearsal." These two chapters provide exciting new insights into the patterns and structures of dramaturgical and performative engagement with Ibsen's dramatic text, exemplified through visualizations and critical discussions of artistic, cultural, and political interventions that speak to the enormous flexibility that Ibsen's play offers to theatre artists across time and space. My personally favorite section, which will inform my teaching, research, and [End Page 261] creative praxis, is the discussion of physical scores embedded in dramatic writing, of which Ibsen was a highly sophisticated maker. The book includes not only rigorous scholarly narratives, but also visualized graphs, maps, and networks that allow us to understand patterns, structures, and models of Ibsen's global success from a metaphorical bird...

Monocentric imaging system with wide field of view and high resolution for distant view observation

An imaging system with wide field of view (FOV) and high resolution is proposed in this paper. The optical design employed monocentric objective lens design combined with the unique arrangement of multi-aperture array, which empowers the system of good tradeoff between imaging performances and structural complexity. A prototype is built based on the design, achieving the field angle of 55° as well as the angular resolution of 40μrad. Experiments show excellent performances in distant view observation and images with 0.1 gigapixels can be finally obtained after image mosaicing, in addition, the proposed system has potential applications in airborne ground observation and crops survey in the future.

Apllication of high resolution electronic staining endoscopy in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal diseases

I-scan technology is the newly developed image enhanced endoscopy technology from PENTAX, Japan, which can visualize the capillary and the gap of glandular duct of gastrointestinal mucosa. i-scan images are as bright as conventional white-light images. Therefore, i-scan is able to observe much larger areas in a distant view compared with NBI. It has a broad application prospects. However, due to the lack of a unified diagnostic standard, the application of i-scan technology needs further study. This review summarizes the applications of high-resolution electron-staining endoscopy in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal diseases. Key words: Endoscopy, gastrointestinal; Elasticity imaging techniques

A guide on taking the leadership of your life

Having control over your life requires selected modern and classical concepts of leadership and tranquillity to assist you in analysing and approaching different situations in life and business. Based on Heifetz (1994) a method of building a distant view on events is introduced to enable more rational decision-making. A theory of contextual awareness is developed based on classical philosophies. Responsibilities in a certain context are identified and classified in order to help you understand the effects of your actions. For proper interaction with the own context, a model of integrity based on Erhard, Jensen, and Zaffron (2014) is suggested. Finally, a selection of sources for strength and courage are introduced to lead us a happy and meaningful life constantly. This paper should serve as an expandable framework for the application of inspired and reflected theories on leadership in the reader’s life. Therefore, the present study concludes with recapitulating questions to support putting theories into action and applying the presented instruments.

Zilda e o avião: repensando migrações rural-urbanas no Rio Grande do Sul (1943-1963)

Part of the analytic bibliography about internal migrations explains this phenomenon relating it mainly to macroeconomic processes. Without denying this approach, but instead problematizing it, this paper discusses individual trajectories of migrants that came from rural areas of Rio Grande do Sul and settled in Porto Alegre, the state capital, and its adjacencies between 1943 and 1963. This paper observes carefully an example that is particularly revealing about this subject. The analysis is based on recent interviews, supported by oral history and collated with newspapers stories from the same historic period ( Correio do Povo and Diario de Noticias ). This approach intends to establish an interlocution between the retrospective and internal view of the utterances and the coeval and distant view of the press. Therefore, we intend to bring features that escape from the simplified interpretation based on the idea of need (“escape from the rural area”) that would invariably result in unfavorable conditions for later development. There is evidence of multiple conditions, stimuli and aspirations related to migration, and we think that these observations are essential to understand the social processes. Therefore, this paper analyzes in a complex way the view that minimizes the peculiarities of individual trajectories in favor of macroeconomic explanations by giving real attention to the capacity of the social subjects themselves, verifying the possibilities of social ascension of migrants. Keywords: internal migrations, trajectories, social subjects.

Scene‐adaptive single image dehazing via opening dark channel model

Many traditional dark channel prior based haze removal schemes often suffer from the colour distortion and generate halo artefacts in the remote scenes. To tackle these issues, the authors present an efficient scene-adaptive single image dehazing approach via opening dark channel model (ODCM). First, the authors detect the image depth information and separate it into close view and distant view. Then, an ODCM is proposed to optimise the whole atmospheric veil, in which the values of close view are regularised by a minimum channel image while the distant parts are estimated by an appropriate lower constant. Accordingly, the transmission map can be further optimised by guide filter and smoothed by domain transform filter. Finally, the haze degraded image can be well restored by the atmosphere scattering model. The extensive experiments have shown that the proposed image dehazing approach has significantly increased the perceptual visibility of the scene and achieved a better colour fidelity visually.

Laser Imaging Facilitates Early Detection of Synchronous Adenocarcinomas in Patients with Barrett's Esophagus.

Barrett’s adenocarcinoma may occur in multiple sites, and recurrence and metachronous lesions are the major problems with endoscopic resection. Therefore, early detection of such lesions is ideal to achieve complete resection and obtain improved survival rates with minimally invasive treatment. Laser imaging systems allow multiple modalities of endoscopic imaging by using white light laser, flexible spectral imaging color enhancement (FICE), blue laser imaging (BLI), and linked color imaging even at a distant view. However, the usefulness of these modalities has not been sufficiently reported regarding Barrett’s adenocarcinoma. Here, we report on a patient with three synchronous lesions followed by one metachronous lesion in a long segment with changes of Barrett’s esophagus, all diagnosed with this new laser endoscopic imaging system and enhanced by using FICE and/or BLI with high contrast compared with the surrounding mucosa. Laser endoscopic imaging may facilitate the detection of malignancies in patients with early Barrett’s adenocarcinoma.

The Effect of Distance on Moral Engagement: Event Related Potentials and Alpha Power are Sensitive to Perspective in a Virtual Shooting Task.

In a shooting video game we investigated whether increased distance reduces moral conflict. We measured and analyzed the event related potential (ERP), including the N2 component, which has previously been linked to cognitive conflict from competing decision tendencies. In a modified Go/No-go task designed to trigger moral conflict participants had to shoot suddenly appearing human like avatars in a virtual reality scene. The scene was seen either from an ego perspective with targets appearing directly in front of the participant or from a bird's view, where targets were seen from above and more distant. To control for low level visual features, we added a visually identical control condition, where the instruction to “shoot” was replaced by an instruction to “detect.” ERP waveforms showed differences between the two tasks as early as in the N1 time-range, with higher N1 amplitudes for the close perspective in the “shoot” task. Additionally, we found that pre-stimulus alpha power was significantly decreased in the ego, compared to the bird's view only for the “shoot” but not for the “detect” task. In the N2 time window, we observed main amplitude effects for response (No-go > Go) and distance (ego > bird perspective) but no interaction with task type (shoot vs. detect). We argue that the pre-stimulus and N1 effects can be explained by reduced attention and arousal in the distance condition when people are instructed to “shoot.” These results indicate a reduced moral engagement for increased distance. The lack of interaction in the N2 across tasks suggests that at that time point response execution dominates. We discuss potential implications for real life shooting situations, especially considering recent developments in drone shootings which are per definition of a distant view.

SUNDAY MIRROR

8 Y S U N D A Y M I R R O R S T E P H E N E D G A R Curbside clean-up week: the suburban streets’ Tree-lined and mown decorum is debased With heaps of rubbish that each house repeats, As though the third-world slum, Perennially stacked with rancid waste, It hopes not to become. The sagging cardboard boxes of chipped plates And pans, old videos, the broken chairs And bookshelves, limbless dolls and roller skates, The oddments that one stores For years and never uses or repairs, Keyboards and monitors; And then the molded blocks of styrofoam And labeled packaging indicative Of shining new additions to the home: Surround sound, plasma screen, All those essential luxuries to live A life that’s never been So satisfied. And next to one such pile A dressing table, perfectly intact, With swivel mirror poised, stands to beguile Each stray particular The play of light and shadow may enact, Turning into an open-air boudoir The length of Sunday morning. Depending on The angle, in that stare appear odd scraps Of passing cars, heads, birds, and then are gone, 9 R Like ramblings of a mind, Or random proofs of theorems, perhaps, That reason has declined. Or in the tilting glass the sky processes – A window looking on a distant view, Projected film, or memory that guesses Beyond its own extent Somewhere for which, alas, the likes of you Were clearly never meant. Or every now and then the plain matte gray That marks amnesia, or oblivion, As though there were a blank spot in the day, A cyclic vacancy, As though it kept forgetting to go on, Forgetting how to be. ...

The “Shikotan Group” and Two Tendencies of Soviet Landscape Painting.

In the mid-1960s, young Russian artists from Moscow and the cities of Vladivostok and Ussuriysk in Primorsky Krai formed the Shikotan Group, named after the island where they summered for months at a time and created thousands of landscape paintings. Their activities lasted until 1991, when the group disappeared soon after the demise of the communist regime. The area including Shikotan Island forms the southern Kuril Islands in the Okhotsk Sea. Fascinated with the wilderness of Shikotan’s picturesque sea coasts, rolling hills and beauty of young women-workers of the largest fish factory in the Far East of Russia, the artists represented Shikotan’s landscape idyllically, with a tranquil bay and a distinctive form of a double volcano. A particular composition (for example, Oleg Loshakov’s Shikotan, the Bay of Malokuril’skoe) comprising a bay in the middle plane and a distant view of the volcanic Mt. Tyatya on Kunashir Island, recalls views of Naples, an unmissable stop on the Grand Tours of Europe, especially for nineteenth-century Russian artists eager to work abroad. This paper intends to reconstruct the Shikotan Group’s activities based on field research and interviews with the artists, including the group’s leader, Oleg Loshakov. Further, it aims to describe the characteristics of the style of their paintings, which can be well-illustrated by comparing with the so-called “Soviet Impressionist Paintings,” a recently-coined definition, favored especially by American collectors.

Blue laser imaging endoscopy system for the early detection and characterization of colorectal lesions: a guide for the endoscopist.

Blue laser imaging is a new system for image-enhanced endoscopy using laser light. Blue laser imaging utilizes two monochromatic lasers (410 and 450 nm) instead of xenon light. A 410 nm laser visualizes vascular microarchitecture, similar to narrow band imaging, and a 450 nm laser provides white light by excitation. According to three recently published reports, the diagnostic ability of polyp characterization using blue laser imaging compares favorably with narrow band imaging. No published data are available to date regarding polyp detection with blue laser imaging. However, blue laser imaging has the possibility to increase the detection of colorectal polyps by depicting brighter and clearer endoscopic images, even at a distant view, compared with first-generation image-enhanced endoscopy. A clinical trial to compare the detection between blue laser imaging and xenon light is warranted.

A Study on Evaluation of the Rurality by the Distance of View

Improve the rural views of the Government and the municipalities with the intention of rural landscape planning. However, rural scenery evaluation of landscape types and element categories, landscape scenes, such as the valuation of resources selected, form a coherent system and ecological point of view is not only a Visual perspective of evaluation, or evaluation is made. This study evaluates the rural landscape through the rural landscape for rurality is implemented can explain the image. Rural amenity 100 represented the rural landscape in rurality with photos of photos, and scenes, photos, location-based rural Vista rurality landscapes drawn components. Selected landscape photography scenic landscapes in the u.s. survey and image vocabularies through surveys is representative of the landscape in rurality of each Vista location-specific photos and images began extracted factors. As a result, the Distant view is a town and village in the rolling hills of the surrounding environment is an image behind the Vista Skyline, Farmland Rural village forests, Behind the hills, Individual housing roof, Housing arrangement, The number of household includes landscape components. Factor analysis `openness`, `intimacy`, `activity`, `complexity`, `safety` was down to five factors, such as a description of the overall factors that force was 66.45 percent. Middle distance view is close to being out of town houses and village environment, an image in the skyline hills Vista, farmlands, village forests, rolling hills, behind the scenes of the housing component of the neck, the sperm will honor an individual factor analysis results are `intimacy`, `safety`, `openness`, `specificity`, `complexity` five factors the whole description of the capacity factors compared to 67.24 percent. Close-range view is mainly in Vista village embraced the individual elements and an image of a harmonious location in the surroundings of the sperm, individual houses, fences, gates, courtyard, Garden, garage, agricultural facilities, including, but not limited to, factors assay but an `intimacy`, `complexity`, `safety`, `activity`, `openness` five factors, such as a description of the overall factors that force was 65.29%. This research seeks to determine the extent to which rurality of rural landscape Vista by location attributes and elements and representative officer in photo selection and rurality to extract the image. To date, followed by a comprehensive study, which was presented through the readjustment could not overlook the Visual elements. The future rural development officer for the evaluation of rural landscape classification and quantitative and objective assessment will have to come up with ways to do.

Effects of the visual landscape factors of an ecological waterscape on acoustic comfort

In an ecological waterscape, acoustic comfort is an important element of the landscape experience; however, there is still a lack of study on the relationships between sounds and landscape factors. In this study, the acoustic comfort influenced by three visual landscape factors was examined based on audiovisual experiments. The results indicate that although landscape factors can influence the acoustic comforts of 11 types of sounds in different ways, the audiovisual matching contexts resulting in higher acoustic comforts are presented regularly. The analysis of the effect of landscape objects suggests that the acoustic comforts of the sounds relating to people’s participation are increased by artificial landscape objects compared with those under the effect of natural landscape objects, whereas natural landscape objects closely match natural sounds, as well as the sounds with music-related and melodic characteristics. In terms of the effect of the distance to water edge, the acoustic comfort score (based on a five-point scale) of children frolic is higher with a closer view of a waterscape, by 1.06, compared to that with a distant view, whereas the distant view continuously increases the evaluation scores of road traffic sound by 0.50 per 10dBA at 30–50dBA compared to those with the closer view. In terms of the effect of the appearance of animals and humans, the coherence between audio and visual environment is: with the appearance of animals, the evaluations of natural sounds are higher compared to those without, whereas with the appearance of humans, the evaluations of the sounds relating to people’s participation are higher compared to those without.

SCALES OF TIME AND THE ANTICIPATION OF THE FUTURE: GIBBON, SMITH, PLAYFAIR

This essay shows how Adam Smith addressed concerns about economic decline not only by proposing quantifiable categories through which relative decline could be measured, but also by characterizing the century as the proper timescale in which such quantities could be observed. What sometimes appears up close to be a process of decline and fall, Smith suggested, could, with a shift to a more distant long view, be explained instead as part of a normal business cycle. William Playfair then used Smith's emphasis on quantification to develop elaborate graphic techniques—what we now call the time-series line graph and the pie chart—to visualize more easily the patterns Smith sought to identify. Collectively, the reordering of temporal scale by Smith and Playfair helps us to rethink not only discourses of decline, but also our understanding of the temporalities of political economy as a problem of historical distance that needs to be thought about beyond temporal terms.

광한루원의 경관변화양상에 관한 고찰

본 연구는 누원(樓園) 조성의 관점에서 광한루원의 경관변화양상을 파악하고자 관련 문헌을 바탕으로 공간구조 중심의 변화과정을 4시기의 공간변화로 구분할 수 있었으며, 현존하지 않거나 기록에서 나타나지 않는 경관요소를 설화나 소설에서 나타나는 상상환경에 도입하여 도식화한 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 광한루가 처음으로 조성되는 시기는 광한루(廣寒樓)의 전신인 광통루(廣通樓)가 조성되는 기간으로, 작은 개울을 근경으로 그 일대의 지리산을 원경으로 하는 등 경관이 수려한 장소에 위치하고 있으며, 문헌을 통해 광한루는 광통루의 경관을 그대로 계승한 것임을 알 수 있다. 둘째, 광한루가 원(園)의 성격을 가지는 시기는 1582년 이후로. 신선사상이 반영된 이상세계 구현을 위하여 삼신산을 조성하고, 은하수를 상징하는 호수와 오작교를 조성하였다. 셋째, 광한루원이 복구되는 시기는 정유재란 이후부터 일제강점기 기간으로 광한루원의 원형을 회복하는 과정은 매우 부분적으로 진행되어 오랜 시간에 걸쳐 진행되었다. 이 당시 기록에서 나타나는 광한루원은 정유재란 이전의 경관을 계승하여 여전히 선경의 모습에 비유되는 것을 확인할 수 있었다. 넷째, 근대에 이르러 광한루는 춘향전의 배경으로 관광지의 성격을 지니게 되었으며, 세 차례에 걸쳐 권역이 확장되어 현재에 이르고 있다. 다섯째, 광한루원의 각 시기별 변화양상은 광한루를 중심으로 외부로 확장되고 있음을 알 수 있었으나, 외부로 확장되는 요소는 관아누각인 광한루원의 진정성과는 무관한 시설이 다수 유입된 것으로 보인다. 여섯째, 광한루원 일원의 주요 요소들이 설화와 소설 속에 내재된 상상환경에 공통적으로 나타나고, 당시의 정원문화가 묘사되고 있는 것을 통해 문헌상의 한계로 인해 확인할 수 없었던 광한루원의 문화경관을 추정할 수 있었다. This study aims to comprehend that Gwanghalluwon for aspects of landscape change in terms of construction garden(樓園). Transformation focused on the spatial structure is divided into four periods based on literature. And reflect of landscape elements in defunct or unattributable records from tale and novel. The results were as follows. First, The beginning of Gwanghanllu pavilion(廣寒樓) was the composition of the Gwangtongnu Pavilion(廣通樓). The pavilion is located amid beautiful scenery such as the close-range view of a small stream, and distant view Jiri Mountain. Analysis of literature shows that Gwanghallu pavilion was in succession to Gwangtongnu Pavilion's landscape. Secondly, Gwanghallu(廣寒樓) pavilion represents the characteristic of the garden since 1582. Built the Samsinsan(三神山), Construct Lake and bridge that represents the galaxy for realization of utopia reflect in Taoist ideology. Thirdly, Gwanghalluwon garden was recovered when from Jeong-yu-jae-ran(丁酉再亂) to the Japanese Ruling Era. It took Gwanghalluwon garden a long while to recover from original form. According to records, Gwanghalluwon garden is still being likened to the landscape of fairyland by inheriting landscape in the previous of Jeong-yu-jae-ran(丁酉再亂). Fourth, By the modern times, Gwanghalluwon Garden has personality of tourist attractions. Until now, the area of the Gwanghalluwon garden has been expended during the processes of three times. Fifth, Aspect of landscape change of Gwanghalluwon is wide-spreading mainly Gwanghallu pavilion. But elements of external expansion in garden by introduced into the facility irrelevant to the authenticity of the garden. Sixth, Comprehension the cultural landscape of the garden are limited by deficient records. But, the main elements in the Gwanghalluwon garden are commonly appeared on imaginary environment within a tale and a novel. In addition, culture of garden at the time was depicted in tale and novel. In this sense, cultural landscape in garden was able to estimate through imaginary environment within novel.

The Obscure Features Hypothesis in design innovation

A new cognitive theory of innovation, the Obscure Features Hypothesis (OFH), is applied to the area of engineering design innovation. The OFH states that all innovative solutions are built upon at least one overlooked (i.e., obscure) feature of the problem at hand. In this paper, we first highlight the types of features that exist and the cognitive obstacles that hinder people's ability to notice the obscure members of various feature types. We then detail five innovation techniques we have developed to help designers search the obscure realms of the space of features. Each of these techniques counteracts a specific cognitive obstacle to innovation: design fixation, functional fixedness, narrow verb associations, assumption blindness, and analogy blindness. We compare our approach with other approaches to innovation in psychology (the representation change view and the distant association view) and engineering (theory of inventive problem solving and C–K theory). Finally, we show how the innovation techniques can be implemented in software to assist users in the design process.

Prevalence and characteristics of moral case deliberation in Dutch health care

The attention for Moral case deliberation (MCD) has increased over the past years. Previous research on MCD is often written from the perspective of MCD experts or MCD participants and we lack a more distant view to the role of MCD in Dutch health care institutions in general. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the state of the art concerning MCD in the Netherlands. As part of a larger national study on clinical ethics support in the Netherlands, we will focus on the prevalence and characteristics of MCD in Dutch health. A mixed methods design was used in which we combined two survey questionnaires (sent to all health care institutions), two focus groups and 17 individual interviews with top managers or ethics support staff. The findings demonstrate that the prevalence of MCD is relatively high in Dutch health care (44 % has MCD), especially in mental health care (in which MCD is mentioned as present in the organization by 62 % of the respondents). Institutions with MCD differ from institutions without MCD concerning size, kind of problems and importance of ideological background. Characteristic of MCD is that it often exists for 3 years or more, has a high participation of health professionals and middle managers and is both organized scheduled as unscheduled. As well integration in existing policy as key persons emerge as important issues in relation to the positioning of MCD. We conclude that MCD is a part of an integrated ethics policy and serves as a (bottom up) catalyst for such an integrated ethics policy.