Intelligent Software Tools Research Articles

How to write a paper for Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry

How to write a paper for <i>Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry</i>

SIGNATURE: A workbench for gene expression signature analysis

BackgroundThe biological phenotype of a cell, such as a characteristic visual image or behavior, reflects activities derived from the expression of collections of genes. As such, an ability to measure the expression of these genes provides an opportunity to develop more precise and varied sets of phenotypes. However, to use this approach requires computational methods that are difficult to implement and apply, and thus there is a critical need for intelligent software tools that can reduce the technical burden of the analysis. Tools for gene expression analyses are unusually difficult to implement in a user-friendly way because their application requires a combination of biological data curation, statistical computational methods, and database expertise.ResultsWe have developed SIGNATURE, a web-based resource that simplifies gene expression signature analysis by providing software, data, and protocols to perform the analysis successfully. This resource uses Bayesian methods for processing gene expression data coupled with a curated database of gene expression signatures, all carried out within a GenePattern web interface for easy use and access.ConclusionsSIGNATURE is available for public use at http://genepattern.genome.duke.edu/signature/.

Improving Users' Mental Models of Intelligent Software Tools

Intelligent software algorithm are increasingly becoming a tool in consumers daily lives. Users understand the basic mechanics of the intelligent software systems they rely on, but often novices have no direct knowledge of their intelligent devices algorithm, data requirements, limitations, and representations. Problems can go beyond those caused by a poor user interface design and a user's ability to under stand a tool's simple components, which could be alleviated with proper instruction. This article describes the Experiential User Guide (EUG), a concept designed to address these challenges.

An Intelligent Software Workflow Process Design for Location Management on Mobile Devices

Advances in the technologies of networking, wireless communication and trimness of computers lead to the rapid development in mobile communication infrastructure, and have drastically changed information processing on mobile devices. Users carrying portable devices can freely move around, while still connected to the network. This provides flexibility in accessing information anywhere at any time. For improving more flexibility on mobile devices, the new challenges in designing software systems for mobile networks include location and mobility management, channel allocation, power saving and security. In this paper, we are proposing intelligent software tool for software design on mobile devices to fulfill the new challenges on mobile location and mobility management. In this study, the proposed Business Process Redesign (BPR) concept aims at an extension of the capabilities of an existing, widely used process modeling tool in industry with ‘Intelligent’ capabilities to suggest favorable alternatives to an existing software workflow design for improving flexibilities on mobile devices.

Toward a Fuzzy Domain Ontology Extraction Method for Adaptive e-Learning

With the widespread applications of electronic learning (e-Learning) technologies to education at all levels, increasing number of online educational resources and messages are generated from the corresponding e-Learning environments. Nevertheless, it is quite difficult, if not totally impossible, for instructors to read through and analyze the online messages to predict the progress of their students on the fly. The main contribution of this paper is the illustration of a novel concept map generation mechanism which is underpinned by a fuzzy domain ontology extraction algorithm. The proposed mechanism can automatically construct concept maps based on the messages posted to online discussion forums. By browsing the concept maps, instructors can quickly identify the progress of their students and adjust the pedagogical sequence on the fly. Our initial experimental results reveal that the accuracy and the quality of the automatically generated concept maps are promising. Our research work opens the door to the development and application of intelligent software tools to enhance e-Learning.

Investigating Current Social, Economic and Educational Issues using Framework and Tools of Complexity Science

There exists compelling evidence that as evolution follows its course the complexity of our social, economic, educational and cultural environments increases. Methods and tools that were suitable for resolving issues arising in stable environments are not effective under conditions of uncertainty created by the occurrence of frequent, unpredictable events. The new Science of Complexity offers a framework and software tools for resolving issues which change during the problem-solving process. The power of Complexity Science concepts (self-organisation, emergence, autonomy, evolution, adaptation) backed by intelligent software tools is illustrated by a variety of case studies from the author's rich experience as a researcher and practitioner, including large-scale logistics, social security provision, fraud detection, security screening, data mining, knowledge discovery, education and many others.

Evaluation metrics and methodologies for user-centered evaluation of intelligent systems

In the past four years, we have worked with several research programs that were developing intelligent software for use by intelligence analysts. Our involvement in these programs was to develop the metrics and methodologies for assessing the impact on users; in this case, on intelligence analysts. In particular, we focused on metrics to evaluate how much the intelligent systems contribute to the users’ tasks and what the cost is to the user in terms of workload and process deviations. In this paper, we describe the approach used. We started with two types of preliminary investigations – first, collecting and analyzing data from analysts working in an instrumented environment for a period of 2 years, and second, developing and conducting formative evaluations of research software. The long-term studies informed our ideas about the processes that analysts use and provided potential metrics in an environment without intelligent software tools. The formative evaluations helped us to define sets of application-specific metrics. Finally, we conducted assessments during and after technology insertions. We describe the metrics and methodologies used in each of these activities, along with the lessons learned.

A tool for handling uncertainty in segmenting regions of interest in medical images

We have developed intelligent software tools for handling the uncertainty in delineating the boundaries of complex structures when segmenting regions of interest (ROIs) in medical images. The focus is on efficiently delineating the boundary of complex 3D organ structures, enabling accurate measurement of their structural and physiologic properties. We employ intensity based thresholding algorithms for interactive and semi-automated analysis. We also explore fuzzy-connectedness concepts in order to deal with the uncertainty in identifying organ surrounding tissue and fully automate the segmentation process. We apply the proposed tools to 3D single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images visualising gastric accommodation and emptying and compare their performance to that of the manual segmentation performed by a human expert. We show that the proposed tools achieve highly accurate delineation of the complex three-dimensional gastric boundaries shown in 3D SPECT images. We also demonstrate their ability to obtain accurate volume calculations based on the segmentation procedure, in order to quantitatively assess organ functional properties such as measuring the gastric mass variation.

Improving automatic control of complex water systems, using AI techniques: design of an expert component for the alarms analysis

The aim of this paper is to present an intelligent software tool, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, which allows the execution of an alarm analysis, during the remote sensing activity of complex plants. The AI component allows to identify all the primary faults of the system, discriminating them from the side effect alarms. In other words this tool shows which alarms are directly connected to primary faults and which alarms are consequential effects of the primary ones. The core of the software is an algorithm which uses a knowledge ontology and a set of alarm propagation rules, which are both based on a Multilevel Flow Modelling (MFM) paradigm. The algorithm has been tested implementing a rule based expert system (RBES) referred to an existing water plant. The main features of the water plant have been identified and all the main components and their possible alarm states have been analyzed to carry out the knowledge base.

Algorithmic Foundations of Creation of an Intelligent Software Tool for Investigation and Solution of Cauchy Problems for Systems of Ordinary Differential Equations

Methods are proposed for computer investigation of properties of systems of ordinary differential equations. Based on these methods, algorithms are created for computation of the value of the integration step that provides the stability of a numerical method and obtaining its results with a preassigned accuracy. The components and modes of operation of an intelligent software tool supporting the proposed methods are presented.

Management of remaining life of power plant components by means of intelligent software tools developed at Stuttgart

In last years a series of large intelligent information management and decision support systems (“intelligent software tools”) has been developed at the MPA Stuttgart (MPA - Staatliche Materialprüfungsanstalt - State Institute for Testing of Materials), Germany. The projects have been sponsored mainly by power plant industry (electric utility companies, usually) and by The Commission of the European Communities within its framework programs like BRITE and SPRINT. This paper highlights some of these projects and intelligent software tools developed within these projects for analysis and assessment of remaining life, damage evolution and similar issues relevant for the modern power plant life management. Tools developed in two large European projects (Sprint SP249 and BRITE BE5935), for component life assessment and inspection planning, respectively, will be presented more in detail. Tools developed in SP249 cover issues like large high temperature materials database, large hypertext documentation base, various methods for life prediction (e.g. the those based on German TRD standards, A-parameter analysis, oxide thickness measurements, hardness-based methods, etc.). Tools developed in BE5935 support planning of annual inspection in power plants. They suggest answers to questions like when to inspect, using which techniques, to what extent, etc. Practical examples given in the paper illustrate abilities, usability and applicability limits of these systems.

A Multicomputer Software Interface for Parallel Dynamic System Simulation

This paper describes the creation of an intelligent software tool that performs automatic parallelization of dynamic system simulations for excecution on arbitrary message-passing multi- computing configurations. The tool greatly decreases the amount of time needed to obtain a viable multiple processor implementation of large-scale simulations and can be expanded to include the latest methodologies that exploit functional and data parallelism present within the simulation model and algorithm. Such a unifying tool is designed to increase the likelihood that a parallel realization of a simulation problem can be obtained which has an acceptable level of performance. To illustrate the feasibility of developing such a tool, this paper describes the prototype implementation of the Automated Partitioning and Mapping Engine (APME) and demonstrates its effectiveness when applied to a large-scale simulation executed on a number of multicomputer systems and topological configurations.

Development of intelligent design associates: a case study

A number of human factors data sets provides guidelines and recommendations for the system design process. Much of this information is available to the human factors engineer in design handbooks, textbooks, and periodicals. While human factors design information is both available and abundant, it is not necessarily readily accessible or in a format that is easily assimilated into a particular design scenario. This paper discusses the feasibility of incoporating human factors design data into intelligent, knowledge-based systems referred to as design associates. Successful implementation of any design associate is dependent upon two key issues: conversion of human factors data into a valid knowledge base, and overcoming the knowledge representation constraints imposed by an intelligent software tool. Detailed results of a recent effort to address these issues, and subsequently implement a design associate on a commercially available intelligent software tool, are presented. This particular associate, implemented in a rule-based tool environment, aids in the selection of visual display technologies.