Kinds Of Users Research Articles

Knowledge representation for diagnosis of care problems through an expert system: Model of the auto-care deficit situations

The caregiver role strain is today an increasing problem because of the population aging; moreover, its diagnosis is highly difficult. In this article, we summarize the design of an Expert System for the diagnosis of this health problem. The Expert System Knowledge Base is composed by a set of production rules written in classic bi-valued logic and by a set of potential facts. In order to build this Knowledge Base it has been necessary to design previously a Model of the problem treatment. The Expert System Inference Engine uses Gröbner Bases and Normal Form to obtain the diagnosis from the information stored in the Knowledge Base. Furthermore, a Graphic User’s Interface has been implemented to make easier the access to the System by all kinds of users.

Education as a New Goal for National Libraries

Education has not been, per se, an objective for national libraries. This is not the situation in the national libraries in the less developed countries, where learning is an essential tool for development. However, there has been a great change with regard to this question in national libraries in developed countries, essentially due to the pressure to have new kinds of users, not only scholars and intellectuals. Learning is now of great importance for national libraries, although with great differences depending on the level of development in the particular country. The article presents a brief portrait of the situation in countries as diverse as Benin, Trinidad and Tobago, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Les systèmes et niveaux de détermination du comportement alimentaire

Eating behaviours are ruled simultaneously by physiological; psychological, technical, social, and economic systems. In practice, human subjects manage the complexity of these multiple determinants by following mental and technical routines, which progressively incorporate the results of experience. Social representations are a key mode of transmission and guidance of behaviour; a kind of user’s manual of everyday objects. To modify behaviour, one has to act simultaneously upon all levels of determination in order to open new behavioural paths, and this can be done only in collaborative process involving all stakeholders.

Disrupting digital library development with scenario informed design

In recent years, there has been great interest in scenario-based design and other forms of user-centred design. However, there are many design processes that, often for good reason, remain technology-centred. We present a case study of introducing scenarios into two digital library development processes. This was found to disrupt established patterns of working and to bring together conflicting value systems. In particular, the human factors approach of identifying users and anticipating what they are likely to do with a system (and what problems they might encounter) did not sit well with a development culture in which the rapid generation and informal evaluation of possible solutions (that are technically feasible and compatible with stable system components) is the norm. We found that developers tended to think in terms of two kinds of user: one who was exploring the system with no particular goal in mind and one who knew as much as the developer; scenarios typically work with richer user descriptions that challenge that thinking. In addition, the development practice of breaking down the design problem into discrete functions to make it manageable does not fit well with a scenario-based approach to thinking about user behaviour and interactions. The compromise reached was scenario-informed design, whereby scenarios were generated to support reasoning about the use of selected functions within the system. These scenarios helped create productive common ground between perspectives.

Analysing rationing policies: drought and its effects on urban users’ welfare (Analysing rationing policies during drought)

The aim of this paper is to study the impact on consumers of rationing policies implemented during water shortages. Water scarcity gives rise to the need for rationing, and various methods, including supply cutoffs, can be used. A model is devised to quantify the welfare losses associated with qualitive and quantitive restrictions. Based on virtual prices and using the consumer surplus as a welfare measurement, welfare variations for different users have been calculated. To achieve the aim, information relative to Seville (Spain) has been used, analysing the drought period that took place in the first half of the 1990s. It has been possible to observe the main source that led to welfare losses for each kind of user.

Level of Labour Force and Average Wage: Correlation Aspect

Many years have passed and the world changed beyond recognition since Adam Smith originated his supply and demand theory of labour market. Consequently the question comes to the fore: Do the models of economy from extramundane satisfy real situation of present-day market? This article presents the latest situation of the labour market. The number of employees in the labour market is not a vital factor but the most important is knowledge they have. To evaluate the knowledge of labour market is not so easy, because it is the qualitative parameter. But we can use statistical information which lets us estimate the correlation between knowledge level of labour force and average wages. The technical achievements make a man study hard in order to maintain his personal value in the labour market. The latest achievements and globalization process oblige employers to find such employees who pass universal abilities and have very good orientation in the dynamic environment. The number of employees has decreased to minimum because figures in employment are not too important. The main focus is on employee’s abilities and knowledge. The concept of these thoughts is: classical supply and demand theory of labour market does not work anymore, as it was created when we do not have modern transport system, huge capital, data and labour flows. Innovations in information technologies are changing economy. Organizational changes require complex processes and learning of new skills in enterprises. All areas of economy are transformed, because new technologies demand to be adopted. As a consequence, the demand for knowledge is constantly growing everyday because the knowledge creation by professional groups such as researchers and engineers as well as by the different social communities, developing different forms of life, working life, family life, leisure and public space. As the competition in labour market is very tough, lifelong learning becomes the most important. For a modern man one learning cycle during his life time is not enough because knowledge gets outdated very quickly. The interviews showed that distance studies are really a good proof in favour of lifelong learning, because in the era of globalization this fits the best. Recently education and training systems have been facing the challenge of building a so called learning society, improving their access to knowledge to different kinds of users taking advantage of the different kinds of media.

Learning from users for radical innovation

Our study focuses on the question of what kinds of users are able to actively contribute to the development of radical innovations and what firms can learn from them to improve their innovative capability. A multiple case study analysis was conducted in the field of medical technology. The case study analysis reveals that users with a unique set of characteristics can contribute substantially to the development of radical innovations. By interacting with these users, firms learned on the product innovation dimension, process dimension and technology dimension.

L'industrie japonaise des machines-outils et les États-Unis pendant les périodes de l'avant-guerre et de la guerre

Abstract Both builders and users in Japan continued to learn advanced technology from US machines tools. The purchase of machine tools as capital goods necessitated the learning of know-how on machine working that the US builders had accumulated through production and sales activities for various kinds of users, both within the US and abroad. Although there were only a small number of manufacturers in the Japanese machine tool industry at which foreign engineers stayed for a long time to deliver technical guidance, engineers from abroad had a decisive impact on the development of technology in each company.

Learning from users for radical innovation

In today's environment of rapid technological change companies can not rely on incremental innovations alone. To sustain long-term competitiveness companies need to develop radical innovations as well. Such innovations typically incorporate new and highly complex technologies, create new markets or shift existing market structures, and require user learning as they often induce significant behaviour changes on side of the users. To systematically develop radical innovations firms need to involve the proper actors. One such important external actor in the development process of new products is the user. Our study focuses on the question what kind of users are able to actively contribute to the development of radical innovations and what firms can learn from them to improve their innovative capability. A multiple case study analysis was conducted in the field of medical technology. Five radical innovation projects were selected including medical robots and computer-assisted navigation systems. The case study analysis reveals that users with a unique set of characteristics can contribute substantially to the development of radical innovations. These users have a high motivation toward new solutions, are open to new technologies, possess diverse competencies, and are embedded into a very supportive context. Manufacturers that took over the ideas and prototypes of the inventive users benefited significantly. By learning from these users, firms were able to significantly improve their radical innovative capability. The paper contributes to technology and innovation management research in two ways. First, by exploring critical user characteristics for distinct phases of the radical innovation process, we provide first insights how manufacturing firms can more effectively identify and leverage valuable users for their radical innovation work. Thereby, we highlight the involvement of capable users as an effective learning mechanism to improve the radical innovation capability of a firm. Second, new perspectives on lead user research are provided by enriching the lead user concept with other crucial characteristics of innovative users.

Impact of Availability in P2P File Sharing System Caused by Active Peers

The availability of a P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing system is heavily affected by the high churn rate of users. When the largest P2P file sharing system Maze in CERNET is developed, the log collected in the system is used to get a better understanding of the users' characteristics, to find the key factor which influences the resource availability, and to instruct the future development of Maze system. In this paper, the concept of P2P file sharing systems' availability is redefined from users' perspective. With the log of Maze, it is the first study to use clustering technique to quantitatively categorize users in a P2P file sharing system. Based on the thorough study of behavior of the active users amounting to 0.77% of the total users and the impact on Maze's availability, this paper concludes that this kind of users plays a similar role to server so that they greatly increase the availability of system and are

정보 시스템 이용기록 분석을 통한 정보 서비스 개선방안 연구

정보 시스템을 이용한 정보 서비스의 향상을 위해서는 이용자의 이용기록을 저장하고, 이를 분석하고 검토함으로써 개선된 서비스를 제공할 수 있는 프로세스의 도입이 요구되고 있다. 또한, 정보센터의 기관특성과 서비스 전략에 따라 필요로 하는 이용기록 및 분석방법에도 차이점이 나타날 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 이용자가 정보 센터에서 제공하는 정보 서비스를 활용하면서 발생하는 이용기록에 대하여 유형별 특징을 살펴보았다. 또한 이를 실제로 운영하는 정보 센터의 분석사례를 통하여 정보 서비스를 개선할 수 있는 구체적인 방안을 모색하였다. For the improvement of information service, users' transaction log can be stored to the system, and the log analysis should be included in the process of service improvement. Also there are differences within kinds of users' log records and methods of analysis according to the institution's strategy. This paper describes the kinds of log records from users' behavior on information system. And its goal is to consider the case of information center which operates log analysis, and to derive a plan for improvement of information services.

Agile or analytic? Book reviews: Cohn versus Lavi and Kudish

Every now and again a pair of books come on to the market offering interestingly contrasting perspectives on the same area. Since Kent Beck’s dramatic Extreme Programming burst onstage in 2000, there has been a stream of books from the object-oriented software community on the theme of first ‘extreme’ and now ‘agile’ development approaches. These have argued, sometimes roughly and forcefully, that the traditional software development life cycle was too cumbersome and often ineffective. Meanwhile, the more traditional requirements of engineering and systems communities have continued to do their own thing, tutting politely at the behaviour of the young bolsheviks torching outside their institutions. Cohn’s readable book offers a practical introduction to the use of brief scenarios in the form of Kent Beck’s user stories. A user story is just what it says on the tin: it is a short, informal description of how some class of user could interact with and benefit from the proposed software. Is not that exactly what Ivar Jacobson meant to do with his use cases? Sssh! Of course, both scenarios and use cases now have (a range of) different meanings. Cohn is careful to distinguish user stories from these in Chap. 12, ‘What Stories Are Not’. Something that is particularly welcome is recognition that there are many kinds of user; Cohn suggests brainstorming possible kinds, perhaps an odd choice of technique here, but much better than just assuming that all users are rather like programmers. And that is not all; Cohn shows in a practical way with examples and advice how to use stories to drive software development, so the book in fact covers all the early part of the life cycle, and even strays into XP to show how the whole cycle works. But instead of shouting in the streets, Cohn ventures inside the requirements literature, and reflects in a fresh and practical way on what is good and not so good in the tradition. First to go is vague talk of ‘‘elicitation’’ or ‘‘capture’’ (several well-known books are criticised at this point): requirements do not run about by themselves, nor are they waiting fully formed inside people’s heads just to be elicited. The Robertsons’ ‘‘trawling’’ is however taken up with enthusiasm: you would not catch all the requirements in one trawl, so the process is inevitably iterative—which chimes well with the agile theme. We may argue that we knew it was iterative already, but far too many projects were not; and it is really welcome to see the Agile community engaging with the ongoing debate. However, Chap. 12 of Cohn also attacks traditional IEEE 830-style requirements as

Intranet use: a study of five Swedish organizations

This paper presents a study of intranet in five Swedish organisations The purpose with the study was to investigate in what way different aspects influences the use and understanding of intranet. The method used was an explorative approach, based on two interview guides. The first interview guide was directed to managers and IS representatives, dealt with background aspects of the intranets as well as data about the businesses and their intranets. The second interview guide directed to all kind of users covered aspects about use of intranet and in what way users could influence the content of intranet and the understanding of intranet. The persons interviewed represented end-users, managers and members of the IS-staffs. The interviews were carried out from May to November 2002. The results showed that the intranets in the study were poor matured and the main use mode was publishing. The underlying philosophy of the intranets seemed to be more that the users were informing themselves instead of inform others Furthermore, the use and understanding of intranet differed between end-users vs. managers and the IS-staff. Finally, we have identified important aspects to be considered when investigating use of intranets in further research. These aspects are strategies, context, further development process, competence, and the intranets belonging to the organisation as well as the culture of the organisation.

A methodology based on distributed object-oriented technologies for providing remote access to industrial plants

Remote access to industrial plants has proven a serious competitive advantage. However, building efficient and safe systems is not a trivial task. It requires the integration of diverse complex technologies at different levels. Even though these technologies are not extended in industrial environments, in the authors’ opinion, they are mature enough to be used in industrial applications. This paper proposes a systematic object-oriented methodology to build applications with remote access to industrial plants through Internet-like networks. The methodology guides the designer regarding key issues, such as security, concurrency, distribution of alarms and monitoring information to different kinds of users. A generic architecture for building remote access applications is proposed. The central components of the architecture are the so-called Application Servers (ASs). Each of them offers services to remote users and directly accesses to specific parts of the physical plants. The proposed methodology suggests the basic structure for these ASs, based on several reusable components, as well as mechanisms to determine the number of ASs required. The instantiation of the generic architecture as well as the stages of the methodology are validated through an industrial case study: a laboratory manufacturing cell.

A new cache document replacement policy considering the contribution to sales

Most traditional cache document replacement policies are focused on the efficiency aspect and these documents are replaced according to their last access times, request frequencies, and sizes. However, in addition to providing efficient document acquisition service, a successful commercial website also has to create incentives for customers, so as to gain sufficient revenues to support the continuing operation of the website. For this reason, a new cache document replacement policy considering the contribution-to-sales of every document is proposed in this study. In order to evaluate the contribution-to-sales of a document, two web mining techniques are applied. Then the traditional GDSF policy is modified to incorporate this new factor. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, an experimental EC website has been constructed, and a series of computer programs have been developed to simulate the accesses by various kinds of users to the website and to obtain some data for rudimentary analyses. The results showed that the proposed replacement policy could at most increase the hit rate and the byte hit rate by 16% and 9%, respectively, for customers compared with traditional replacement policies.

Critical Issues in Contraceptive and STI Acceptability Research

We review conceptual issues and theoretical frameworks related to users' acceptability of new technologies designed to protect reproductive health and prevent unwanted pregnancy. Special attention is given to distinctions among different kinds of users' perspectives regarding acceptability, as well as differentiating acceptability from assessments of the efficacy of innovative methods. Emphasis is also given to the larger context of couple decision‐making and cultural variation. We argue that concern for sexual pleasure plays a central role in determining user perspectives regarding new methods. The female condom, contraceptive ring, contraceptive skin patch, microbicides, vaccines, emergency contraception, and PERSONA are discussed within the context of the identified critical issues.

Trustworthy 100-year digital objects

In ancient times, wax seals impressed with signet rings were affixed to documents as evidence of their authenticity. A digital counterpart is a message authentication code fixed firmly to each important document. If a digital object is sealed together with its own audit trail, each user can examine this evidence to decide whether to trust the content---no matter how distant this user is in time, space, and social affiliation from the document's source.We propose an architecture and design that accomplish this: encapsulation of digital object content with metadata describing its origins, cryptographic sealing, webs of trust for public keys rooted in a forest of respected institutions, and a certain way of managing information identifiers. These means will satisfy emerging needs in civilian and military record management, including medical patient records, regulatory records for aircraft and pharmaceuticals, business records for financial audit, legislative and legal briefs, and scholarly works.This is true for any kind of digital object, independent of its purposes and of most data type and representation details, and provides every kind of user---information authors and editors, librarians and collection managers, and information consumers---with autonomy for implied tasks. Our prototype will conform to applicable standards, will be interoperable over most computing bases, and will be compatible with existing digital library software.The proposed architecture integrates software that is mostly available and widely accepted.

Síndrome de abstinencia y otros efectos en jóvenes fumadores de hachís

This study examines the effects derived from hashish use and the appearance of abstinence symptoms in a population of 145 young users who were in a treatment programme from May to October 2002 in order to avoid paying a fine imposed by the courts. Differentiating two kinds of user (daily and sporadic or at weekends only), they all answered an anonymous questionnaire to evaluate the frequency of their use of other drugs, the effects caused by hashish smoking, and the relationship with the appearance of withdrawal symptoms and subsequent secondary effects. The results show a pattern of the multiple use of hashish, alcohol and tobacco by young users, the majority with their friends. They also confirm the appearance of abstinence symptoms such as a rise in tobacco consumption, alterations in sleep and appetite, irritability and depressive symptoms. Moreover, the daily users had greater cravings to smoke hashish and were more restless. The rate of consumption in this last group was even higher in dangerous situations such as driving a car, and they also showed more symptoms of apathy. The doses of hashish necessary to cause withdrawal symptomatology, were not clear, however, and nor was the existence of individual vulnerability factors.

Idoneidad y formación de los catequistas de confirmación e itinerarios formativos en España

In the context of the new evangelisation, every task which favours education in the faith, especially catechesis, occupies an prime place. Everything from simple projects to more elaborate plans bear witness to this. Catechists, catechisms and catechetical materials are a serious challenge for the Church in Spain as she tries to respond adequately to the growing difficulties of teaching and shaping the faith of new generations. Through catechesis in general and the process of Confirmation in particular, today as in its earliest times the Church is the «smother that offers her lap to those not regenerated and whose breast feeds the regenerated» (St. Augustine). How does the Church in Spain today strive to exercise this maternity with the adolescents and young people who approach Confirmation? From the point of view of catechetical action the author tries to reply by following the process of the three sections which the title itself offers us: firstly, on the suitability of the catechist: Who are you? What do you say about yourself? What are your attitudes and aptitudes?; secondly, on formation: What must be known? What has to be transmitted? How can this be done; and finally, on the processes: What are the most used materials? Where is the nucleus of their contents? What kind of users are they devised for? The author, a specialist in pastoral catechetical activity, offers us his reflection from what he calls the three tables: that of study, reflection; that of the prie Dieu (kneeler), prayer; and that of the ambo, pastoral involvement. Because of this he is conscious that the saving efficacy of all pastoral activity in the Church depends exclusively on the Holy Spirit. Our job is to be mediators -and intercessors- of this action of the Spirit, trying to accomplish it as best we can.

The 'Self-service' Student: Building Enterprise-wide Systems into Universities 1

This article investigates the take-up by universities of enterprise-wide computer systems and the development of a new module for the management and administration of students. Having its origins in Electronic Commerce, the system assumes the existence of a certain kind of user, one with particular roles and responsibilities--Aa self-service user. The notion of 'self-service' is deployed as an integral part of the system rollout where students are to view, input and modify administrative and financial information on themselves and their courses. Drawing from the sociology of science and technology, and material from a 3-year ethnographic study, we describe the system's implementation in a British university. While accepting of the need for an ERP system the campus community reject self-service. However, as we will show, because Campus Management is a 'global product' unwanted functionality can be difficult to resist outright and this can have important implications for the autonomy of the university and the reshaping of fundamental principles and relationships.