Expert Advisor Research Articles

Bodil Begtrup and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: individual agency, transnationalism and intergovernmentalism in early UN human rights

The article investigates the individual agency of the little studied transnational, Bodil Begtrup, in the subfields of women's and minority rights, and refugee and asylum policy. Begtrup fulfilled many roles – as state representative, expert advisor, member of the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women, and president of a national NGO. This article shows how Begtrup enjoyed wide room for manoeuvre in the subfield of women's rights, and acted in this as a transnational norm entrepreneur and process entrepreneur advocating women's rights as an integral part of human rights and forging the change of the institutional design of the UN human rights institutions. In the subfield of minority rights, refugee and asylum policy, Begtrup acted under tight governmental control because the issue at hand was subject to national interest and domestic party politics. Her agency in the two subfields shows how internationalism was a predominant feature in the early shaping of UN human rights. Transnationalism occurred when the subfield in question was not affected by national interest.

On feminism, philosophy and politics in Post-communist Romania: An interview with Mihaela Miroiu (Bucharest, 17 May 2010)

Synopsis Mihaela Miroiu is a Romanian political theorist and East Europe's most prominent feminist philosopher. She is the author of twelve books published in Romanian, including Road to Autonomy: Feminist Political Theories (Polirom, 2004), Priceless Women (Polirom 2006) and Convenio: On Women, Nature and Morals (Alternative Publishing House, 1996). She has also edited or co-edited nine volumes, most of them on feminism and feminist theory. Born in Romania in 1955, she was raised during the communist era under the Ceausescu regime, and emerged after 1989 as one of the country's leading feminist voices. She founded the country's first gender studies Master's program in 1998, and helped to organize two of its earliest independent women's nongovernmental organizations: AnA. –The Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses and The Center for Gender Studies FILIA. Professor Miroiu is an expert advisor to both UNESCO and the European Union, and has won prestigious international fellowships at Cornell University, Indiana University, Oxford and Manchester Universities, and at the Central European University in Budapest. In 2010, the U.S.-based Association of Women in Slavic Studies awarded Professor Miroiu its Outstanding Achievement Award for her accomplishments as a philosopher and her mentorship of a new generation of young Romanian feminists. The European Institute for Gender Equality also featured her in its “Women Inspiring Europe” 2011 calendar. On May 16, 2010, Kristen Ghodsee, an American scholar of East European women's movements and the John. S. Osterweis Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College, accompanied her to a public protest in front of the Romanian presidency against a government plan to cut state subsidies to mothers of young children. The following day, Ghodsee interviewed Professor Miroiu in her home in Bucharest.

An exploration of the collaborative processes of making theatre inspired by science

This research examined the collaborative processes of making theatre inspired by science through the analysis of 16 semi-structured interviews with individual collaborators (eight theatre practitioners and eight scientists). Interviews explored experiences, including their motivations, working processes, challenges, learning and understanding. Roles of scientists in the collaboration ranged from expert advisor to equal creative collaborator. Factors affecting partnerships included curiosity for each other's practice, social interaction and mutual respect. The research suggests that scientists could be motivated to undertake 'Sci-Art' collaborations through personal interest, as well as previously identified motives such as encouragement from their department. The project also identified benefits to researchers from such collaborations, including developing new perspectives on their own practice.

The Alchemy of Occupation: Karl Loewenstein and the Legal Reconstruction of Nazi Germany, 1945–1946

In August 1945, Karl Loewenstein began work as senior expert advisor to the Legal Division of American Military Government (AMG) in Berlin. An eminent German-born and educated political scientist and jurisprudent, Loewenstein had come to assist in the “democratization” of his homeland's Nazified law and legal institutions. It was soon obvious, however, that in its crucial first phase the American legal mission in Germany was in disarray. The development and implementation of American law reform policy was being undercut by ill-prepared leadership, poor planning, and the scarcity of learning about German laws, lawyers, and legal history. By Loewenstein's reckoning, many American officers had been “set to work on problems of which they have not the slightest idea and very little professional qualification.” Critical law reform initiatives had been based upon expedient “over-simplifications” of Nazism and its eradication. By January 1946, his initial misgivings having given way to mordant despair, Loewenstein concluded that the American program for the democratization of the German legal system was irrevocably “lost,” a “failure which stinks to high heaven.” This article sets forth the theoretical and observational bases of Loewenstein's assessment and evaluates its cogency.

창업동향지수개발을 위한 탐색적 연구

글로벌 경쟁환경에서 창업정신은 주요한 산업의 발전요인으로 작용한다. 그러나 창업환경에 대한 활동을 정기적으로 감독하여 창업동향을 전망할 수 있는 지표가 현재 우리나라에는 없다. 본 연구에서는 창업에 영향을 미치는 다양한 변수들을 고려하여 이를 기반으로 창업활동의 수준과 환경에 대한 다양한 분석을 할 수 있는 창업동향지수를 개발하고자 하였다. 탐색적 연구를 통해서 제안하는 창업동향지수는 크게 창업경기지수와 창업환경지수, 그리고 창업 준비지수로 구성되어 있다. 창업경기지수는 창업초기기업과 예비창업자를 대상으로 체감 및 예측 창업 상황에 대해서 기존의 연구 및 전문가들과의 논의를 통해 연구된 항목들을 조사하도록 제안한다. 창업환경지수는 기존 창업기업 또는 법인과 예비 창업자를 대상으로 창업 환경에 대한 다양한 요인들로부터 그 인식 및 인지를 조사하도록 하며, 마지막으로 창업준비지수는 예비창업자를 대상으로 창업자 역량, 창업계획 및 의도 그리고 창업 준비에 대한 인식을 조사하도록 구성할 것을 제안하였다. 연구에서 제안하는 지수를 활용한 실증조사 결과는 산업전반에 걸친 다양한 경제심리지표들과 함께 산업전반의 동향과 전망을 예측하는데 중요한 자료로 활용될 수 있을 것이다. The entrepreneurship is a key success factor of industrial development in global competitive environments. but there is no entrepreneurship index/indicator which gives comprehensive advantages for monitoring and forecasting entrepreneur environments in Korea. The purpose of the study is developing Entrepreneurship Survey Index(ESI) which considering various significant entrepreneur factors. The suggested ESI in this exploratory study consists of entrepreneurship business index(EBI), entrepreneurship environment index(EEI) and entrepreneurship preparation index(EPI). The EBI is composed of overall business factors which revised from practical studies and expert reviews. The EEI is mainly retrieved Global Entrepreneurship Monitor(GEM) and partially modified by an expert advisor to identify entrepreneur environments. The EPI is developed for evaluating and confirming the capability, plan and intention of the pre-entrepreneurship. The practical survey of using the proposed ESI will enhance the power of forecasting the entrepreneurship environment changes and provide effective entrepreneurship policy making for stakeholder.

Auditor–client management relationships and roles in negotiating financial reporting

We carry out an interview based field study of chief financial officer (CFO)–audit partner dyads to examine the assumption that the roles played by each side and the nature of the relationships are similar across negotiations. These dyads freely discussed with us their relationship, a specific issue negotiated and it’s resolution process. Employing the lens of social positioning negotiation research, we find these negotiations are ‘fluid’, with continual redefinition not only of the substantive issues under negotiation, but also of the negotiation roles and relationships (i.e. ‘shadow’ negotiations). The CFO’s actions and expectations in these ‘shadow’ negotiations appear to define the auditor’s role and the relationship’s parameters, but both can evolve over time. The audit partners express a desire to be in the “ideal” relationship where they assume the role of the ‘expert advisor’ (as opposed to a ‘police officer’) but they seemingly have no explicit strategy to move the relationship toward a ‘proactive’ (rather than ‘reactive’) state. Furthermore, the audit partner is always the ‘relationship manager’ whose job it is to see that client management remains “happy”. These roles and relationships negotiated in the ‘shadows’ also affect how the negotiation process unfolds, including the set of alternative accounting treatments considered during negotiations. Finally, audit firms appear to manage the assignment of partners to engagements based on CFO preferences and remove those partners who are in “poor” relationships, irrespective of why the relationship is considered by the CFO to be “poor”. Implications for the broader research program on auditor–client management negotiations are discussed.

The emergence of the identity of a fictional expert advice-giver in an American Internet advice column

This paper is a contribution to research on the expression of expert advicegiving (e.g., Heritage and Sefi 1992; Silverman et al. 1992). We present a linguistic analysis of the ways in which the identity of the fictional expert advisor Lucy emerges in an Internet advice column run by professional health educators as part of a university health service. In discourseanalytical close readings of 280 question–answer records, we identify and discuss seven recurring strategies (the advisor’s name, self-reference and use of address terms; expert information-giving; giving options and making readers think; the choice of vocabulary; o¤ering opinions; the use of empathy; the display of humor), which together contribute to Lucy’s voice as an expert advice-giver if the readers repeatedly access the question–answer exchanges. This emerging identity is in line with the site’s mission to provide information designed to facilitate independent and responsible decision processes and corresponds to an ideal of nondirectiveness, as also identified in the literature on other advisory settings (He 1994; Sarangi and Clarke 2002; Vehvilainen 2003). The constructed identity of Lucy thus makes ‘Lucy Answers’ an attractive site to (re)turn to for advice and complements the other services provided by the health educators.

Planning a research project.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During this work, the first author was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Public Health Postdoctoral Fellowship Number 997096 and National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Travelling Fellowship Grant ID 235610. This paper is one of a series of short papers on aspects of research by Linda Shields and Alison Twycross You may have noticed something in your practice which intrigues you or which seems to be managed in different ways by different people. All nurses have an understanding of research so you will know that your question or idea could be investigated, but where do you start? Take a note pad and put down all your thoughts about the question. Forget about research at first; just write down what it is about the question that intrigues you. It doesn’t matter if what you write seems silly; if it relates to your question then include it. Two minds are better than one, so find a colleague to help you, perhaps someone with whom you work who has noticed the same problem. Once you have your ideas on paper, see if you can form a clear and concise question from them. Link ideas with lines, arrows, circles. You will find that patterns develop. Themes illustrating your ideas will emerge, others will show factors that may influence your question. Some will be outcomes you think you may find. Form themes into sentences, lists and points. You will find your research question there; it may need rewording, but from it you will be able to define the aims of the project. Once you are certain about what it is you want to investigate, go to the databases – Medline, CINAHL, Sociofile, ERIC, Psychlit, Cochrane and others to see if there is any research already done in the area. Read, read, read, and while you do so, think all the time about how the projects you have found relate to your ideas, if comparisons can be made, and note the methods used. If you find tools used by others that might help answer your question then find the author’s contact details so you can ask permission to use their tool. They may have used standardised instruments (questionnaires, interview guides, etc.) and details will be provided so you can find the same instrument. At this point you may need some expert help. Find someone who has a similar interest to you, or who can help you find an expert in your area. Don’t be afraid to ask colleagues in areas other than nursing. Many doctors are only too happy to help with research and some have been doing research for generations. Will the question best be investigated by quantitative or qualitative methods? Your research advisor can help with this, and there are some excellent research books. Polit and Hungler (1999) is one of the best. Your plan will begin to form and you must write a research proposal. Polit and Hungler (1999) contains detailed and simple explanations of how to do this. The literature you have found will provide background for the proposal, you have your question and aims already, and will have worked out confounding variables – remember those ‘influencing factors’ you wrote in your brainstorming sessions? Your methods will be guided by what others have done (the literature), by your expert advisor and by what you want to investigate. If you are using quantitative methods you may need the help of a statistician to determine how many subjects to include in your sample. Your trust or university may have access to a statistician. Next is the timetable and this will be governed by the question, the research methods, the sample size and by practicalities such as how much time you have. You may be able to apply for a grant that will pay for you to have some time off work, or perhaps pay someone to collect the data. Your ‘expert researcher’ will help with this. Finally comes ethical approval, for which every researcher must apply. To conduct research without ethical approval is tantamount to career suicide, as well as being ethically unacceptable. Contact your local ethics committee for their guidelines and application forms. Finally, once you have ethical approval (and this may take some months (Shields and Twycross 2003) you will be ready to go. Good luck! PN

The readers' advisory guide to genre fiction

This revised edition provides a way of understanding the vast universe of genre fiction in an easy-to-use format. Expert readers' advisor Joyce Saricks offers groundbreaking reconsideration of the connections among genres, providing: key authors and themes within 15 genres; an explanation as to how the different genres overlap; and, the elements of fiction most likely to entice readers. Provocative and spirited, The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction, 2nd Edition offers hands-on strategies for librarians who want to become experts at figuring out what their readers are seeking and how to match books with those interests.

A rule-based expert system approach to process selection for cast components

Abstract A knowledge-based expert system at the discretion of casting product designers can be employed as a real-time expert advisor to assist product designers to achieve the correct casting design and select the most appropriate casting process for a given component. This paper proposes a rule-based expert system approach for casting process selection, and describes an ongoing rule prototype development. The system in its present development state consists of five interconnected levels each concerning a particular process selection parameter or group of parameters including alloy to be cast, casting geometric features, casting accuracy, production quantity and overall comparative costs. The system progressively evaluates the user's specifications against the capabilities of various casting processes and in each level selects the processes that satisfy the design parameters specified. The final comparative cost level compares the processes that have satisfied all the criteria in the previous levels and recommends the most economical option.

The claims of compensation for awareness with recall during general anaesthesia in Finland.

Awareness during anaesthesia has been estimated to occur in 0.2%-0.4% of patients undergoing general surgery. In Finland, according to the Patient Injury Act, compensation is paid for an injury caused by medical treatment. We have analysed the claims for compensation involving awareness under anaesthesia filed between May, 1987 and December, 1993. Original claims, hospital notes, and expert advisor's comments as well as the comments of the anaesthesiologist in charge of the anaesthesia, and decisions of the Patient Injury Association, were reviewed. A total of 23363 claims of patient injury were made during the study period. Of these, 391 considered anaesthetic treatments, and there were four cases of awareness with recall. Claims of compensation for awareness during anaesthesia were surprisingly few, possible reasons of which are discussed. Compensations paid were low in comparison with some other countries.

A knowledge-based advisor for the automatic selection and sequencing of orienting devices for vibratory feeding

The selection and sequencing of orienting devices used in vibratory feeders is integral to the design of the feeders. However, because of the lack of organized, published guidelines, the selection and sequencing of orienting devices depends almost entirely on the experience of the skilled artisans who tool up the vibratory feeders. This paper discusses a knowledge-based framework by which a CAD model of the part to be oriented and fed is analysed for its significant orienting feature(s), and a suitable match of orienting devices is determined. The outcome of a consultation with the expert advisor typically yields more than one feasible sequence of orienting devices, leaving the user free to decide on the most appropriate sequence to adopt. The paper also discusses the hierarchical classification of the features of the part, as well as those of the orienting devices. The knowledge-based advisor was implemented on a 486-DX33 personal computer within the Microsoft® Windows 3.1 environment, which integrates both the CAD and the expert system. A benchmarking exercise carried out for two rotational and two prismatic parts yielded solutions that compared favorably with those used in industry, and those proposed by the UMASS system.

An expert systems technology approach to maintenance proficiency

Traditional maintenance training curricula use paper technical manuals to teach “tricks of the trade” in corrective and preventive maintenance which requires multiple adjustments, lengthy calibrations and labor-intensive test/checkout procedures. Rotation often delays personnel assignment to a platform which requires these maintenance skills. The non-availability of skilled maintenance personnel poses a tremendous threat to readiness conditions for mission critical equipment. In order to best support the Navy's maintenance requirements and improve maintenance efficiency, the Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi developed an Expert Maintenance Advisor (EMA). This paper discusses an approach which implements Expert Systems technology methods to develop an expert maintenance reference. It also addresses the impact of performance support systems and interactive electronic technical manuals in maintenance training.

A methodology for real time fault detection, isolation and correction

Mission critical timelines and availability requirements of large, complex ground stations demand some form of a distributed real-time system with an embedded rule-based expert advisor for recognizing and responding to changes within the system. The failure management optimization support system (FMOSS), which develops unique sets of status values, is discussed. The live status returned from the segment hardware forms a set of values, or signature vector, for each equipment string. The signature vector is compared to the signature that occurs when the equipment string is operational. If the processed status signatures do not match the signature that indicates the equipment string is operational, the expert advisor notifies the command center that a fault has been detected. The expert advisor continues processing until it has found a match from the pool of preengineered failure-mode signature vectors. Based on the match, Boolean logic is used to perform fault isolation and correction, with results provided to the command center.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Dissolved oxygen in streams and reservoirs

Dissolved oxygen in streams and reservoirs

ESWorkstations-the next generation

Integrated packages of computer programs that support specific electric utility engineering functions, known as electrical systems workstations (ESWorkstations), and their integration with utility-developed software are discussed. Various suggestions for making ESWorkstations more useful are examined. A built-in expert advisor, MENTOR, and the use of open systems architecture for workstations are discussed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Decision support system for treatment selection: Application of a statistical expert advisor to the problem of prostate cancer treatment selection

AbstractFor clinical cases with difficult combinations of patient parameter values, treatment selection may be complex or controversial and require considerable time. Treatment selection may be affected by a clinician's experience with a disease and expertise with a treatment, existing protocols, capabilities of local medical facilities, and patient preference. We discuss the concepts and clinical applications of an interactive statistical package (isp) software shell which can create systems that reproduce the judgment of one or more expert clinicians in the management of a patient. An isp system can 1) be taught, verified, updated, and tailored to local facilities quickly and easily by an individual clinician, 2) compute and rank treatment selection probabilities for a presented case in accord with the treatment preferences of its human teacher and explain to a clinician the logical and statistical basis of each step of the decision process, 3) identify sensitive variables of a case for additional verification and to allow questions of the type “what would be the treatment preferences if the value of this variable were changed?”, 4) accumulate statistics for unusual cases (rare combinations of patient parameter values), and 5) continue to learn and achieve further (statistical) insight by recognizing variable combinations (joint variables) whose values are more sensitive to the selection of a particular treatment. An isp system can be used for 1) second opinions, by estimating the treatment preferences of one or more clinical experts for a particular case, 2) allowing patient involvement in the treatment decision in cases for which several treatment options may provide the same outcome, 3) quality assurance, by helping a clinician to identify and review critical patient parameter values and pivotal questions, and to check a treatment decision with his own isp system and those of colleagues, 4) avoiding unnecessary diagnostic tests, by identifying parameters that do not affect the treatment selection for a case, 5) documenting the decision factors of a case, 6) finding the reasons for differences among experts in treatment selection for different types of cases, and 7) teaching residents. The concepts and clinical application of an isp system are discussed. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Database usage in a knowledgebase environment for building design

The Computer Aided Design (CAD) Research Unit of the Design Institute at Cal Poly is engaged in a long term development of an Intelligent Computer Aided Design System (ICADS). The system is intended to become a valuable assistant to the designer throughout the entire design activity. Currently a working prototype, called DEMO2, provides a subset of the necessary assistance. DEMO2 is a distrubutive system that can run with a variety of hardware processors in a Unix environment. It includes an Expert Design Advisor that has six knowledgebase systems working as domain experts, a blackboard coordination expert, a CAD drawing system, a custom graphics interface for user interactions and several databases. The system concurrently monitors an evolving floorplan as it is being drawn by a designer. Currently this review is limited to the viewpoints of experts in the domains of Access, Climate(thermal), Cost, Lighting, Sound(acoustics), and Structure. It functions primarily to help realize a design that is free from conflicts in the six areas listed. This paper describes the development and use of databases in the ICADS working model. Specifically, it shows how the building design prototype information is organized and referenced to derive a design program for a particular project. In addition it discusses how another database of reference information is integrated into the design activity.

Development of an expert system advisor for anaesthetic control

A review is given of numerous approaches which have been taken to provide automated control of depth of anaesthesia. Most of these approaches use a single indicator for anaesthetic state, and do not perform adequately for such a complex system. It is desirable, therefore, to merge a number of qualitative clinical signs and quantitative on-line measurements to provide decision-support for control of anaesthetic depth. The paper describes such an expert system called Resac (Real time Expert System for Advice and Control). Details of the knowledge representation and inference structure are given, together with the method adopted for propagating uncertainty measures, combining fuzzy information and merging quantitative and qualitative indicators. The importance of good human machine interface design is shown via the GEM-based graphics of Resac.

ICADS expert design advisor: an aid to reflective thinking

An Intelligent Computer Aided Design System ( ICADS ) is under long-term development. Central to this work is the philosophy that the system should be a valuable assistant to the designer throughout the entire design activity. The current working ICADS prototype is a distributive system that can run with a variety of hardware processors in a Unix environment. It includes an expert design advisor that has six knowledge-based systems working as domain experts, a blackboard-coordination expert, two knowledge bases, and several sources of reference data. The expert design advisor in the prototype interprets a drawing as it is being made by a designer working in a CAD environment. It reacts in real time to monitor the evolving floorplan from the viewpoints of experts in the domains of access, climate, cost, lighting, sound and structure. The system also provides for additional interaction with the designer outside the CAD system to help in the realization of a resultant design that is free from conflicts in the six areas listed above.