Specific Context Of Use Research Articles

Rapid Ethnography – The Study of Behavior, Communication, and Context in Cosmetic Surgery Consultations and the Design of a New Medical Device

Ethnographic research methods are increasingly popular within the general field of Human Factors, usability, user experience and design. Through a case story from the development and design of a medical device called 3D Surgery – a decision aid to be used in surgeon-patient consultations for cosmetic breast surgery – the presentation exemplifies the value and efficiency of the use of rapid ethnography used as stand-alone method and in combination with other methods. The case study describes an iterative approach encompassing continuous adjustment of method repertoire as well as continuous adjustment of use of analytical tools through which insights into the specific context of use are built. The case study further illustrates how the pre-surgery consultation and decision making process of the patient can be analyzed, and how the knowledge acquired can be transferred into design criteria for the 3D Surgery System.

Spontaneous Linguistic Understanding: a few Introductory Remarks

Let me try to explain from the outset what I mean by “spontaneous linguistic understanding” (SLU). As a first approximation, it is the non-reflexive, fluent, direct and mostly non-inferential process by which a speaker-hearer dynamically, by considering usually stretches of discourse rather than isolated sentences, determines the intuitive truth conditions (or, in general, the satisfaction conditions) of the utterances performed in a specific context of use. Most people on Earth enjoy that kind of experience all the time in their mother tongue. The view of SLU I shall try to develop here takes actions and plans as a starting point, that is, utterances usually performed as part of bigger plans. Rarely do we perform isolated actions; our actions, as a rule, are parts of plans, steps towards the achievement of a project. This, of course, holds for sequences of speech acts in a discourse or conversation. As there are always different ways to perform the same act-type, it is no surprise that there may be different ways to perform any speech act-type. 1 Utterances are actions, and SLU, as we shall see, is tied to occurrent understanding of utterances. SLU is also a dynamic process that considers a topic that can be developed in different ways. However, it is obvious that what has been said in a discourse or a conversation smoothly restricts what can be relevantly said soon afterwards. In this process, truth conditions are grasped, especially those actually grasped and considered by the

Considerations in the development of circulating tumor cell technology for clinical use

This manuscript summarizes current thinking on the value and promise of evolving circulating tumor cell (CTC) technologies for cancer patient diagnosis, prognosis, and response to therapy, as well as accelerating oncologic drug development. Moving forward requires the application of the classic steps in biomarker development–analytical and clinical validation and clinical qualification for specific contexts of use. To that end, this review describes methods for interactive comparisons of proprietary new technologies, clinical trial designs, a clinical validation qualification strategy, and an approach for effectively carrying out this work through a public-private partnership that includes test developers, drug developers, clinical trialists, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the US National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Information and Living Systems: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives.G. Terzis and R. Arp (Eds.). (2011, MIT Press.) $50.

Information and Living Systems: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives. G. Terzis and R. Arp (Eds.). (2011, MIT Press.) $50. In his seminal and pioneering work on the social context of science, Ludwick Fleck [2] argues that ideas acquire “magical power” simply by being used. “Information” is a concept that has acquired magical power despite the fact that its specific context of use—Shannonʼs theory of communication— was far removed from various fields in which it has been applied, such as biology. In retrospect, one cannot separate the magical power information has acquired from the revolutionary success of information technology and its widespread use. Nevertheless, the meaning of information and its relevance as an organizing concept for other fields of inquiry, such as biology, is far from clear. In this context, examining the meaning and role of information in living systems is a welcomed venture. The current book has 13 chapters organized around (1) the definition of life, (2) information and biological organization, and (3) information and the biology of cognition, value, and language. As it is impossible to review all the chapters, I have focused on three representative examples that reflect my personal interest. The opening chapter by Ruiz-Mirazo and Moreno deals with the definition of life. The authors criticize the reductionist approach, arguing that it overshadowed the “idea that there is something else relevant for biology to do, namely to explain the complex dynamic integration of those components into functional units.” This awareness is clearly in line with the non-reductionist and systemic approach to biology (e.g., [1, 5, 7]). In this context, what should a definition of life look like? That is a tricky issue, as I have recently argued in response to a novel definition [6]. The authors are well aware of the difficulty in dealing with a definition of life. Interestingly, they suggest that in order to define life, what matters “is determining the set of enabling constraints on the physical and chemical laws.” This proposal clearly echoes Michael Polanyiʼs seminal article and avoids the essentialist fallacy they criticize. Here we get into the authorsʼ tentative definition of life, which involves two interacting and complementary levels of analysis: the individual autonomous agent and the meta-network of these agents, which generate information that is fed back and forth between the levels. This idea echoes Gregory Batesonʼs idea of a recursive hierarchy [3] and his idea of information as a relational construct. The challenge facing the authors in defining life along these lines is to identify the precise nature of the constraints operating on living systems and to discuss them in terms of information in order to better describe their role in constituting the organization of living systems and their landscape of potential complexity. In the second part of the book, Queiroz, Emmeche, Kull, and El-Hani present the biosemiotic approach to biology. The appearance of a chapter dealing with biosemiotics in a book dedicated to information is far from trivial. From the perspective of information theory, living systems are just one concrete realization of a Turing machine that processes strings of letters. For the semiotician, in contrast, the basic unit of analysis is the sign that has a totally different sense from a bit. From the biosemiotic perspective (e.g., [4]), living systems process signs rather than information. The authors draw on a specific semiotic perspective, the one developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, to describe the genetic system and signal transduction in the immune system. They present the argument that the probabilistic measure of information is indifferent to meaning, whereas the way living systems make sense of signals is crucial for understanding their behavior. In contrast to information theory, the idea of meaning is built into Peirceʼs triadic definition of the sign. According to this thesis, a sign, whether a biological sign or a linguistic sign, is a non-reducible triad composed of the sign, the signified, and the interpretant—the effect the sign produces on the interpreter. Applying this perspective to the genetic

Implementation of proteomic biomarkers: making it work

While large numbers of proteomic biomarkers have been described, they are generally not implemented in medical practice. We have investigated the reasons for this shortcoming, focusing on hurdles downstream of biomarker verification, and describe major obstacles and possible solutions to ease valid biomarker implementation. Some of the problems lie in suboptimal biomarker discovery and validation, especially lack of validated platforms with well-described performance characteristics to support biomarker qualification. These issues have been acknowledged and are being addressed, raising the hope that valid biomarkers may start accumulating in the foreseeable future. However, successful biomarker discovery and qualification alone does not suffice for successful implementation. Additional challenges include, among others, limited access to appropriate specimens and insufficient funding, the need to validate new biomarker utility in interventional trials, and large communication gaps between the parties involved in implementation. To address this problem, we propose an implementation roadmap. The implementation effort needs to involve a wide variety of stakeholders (clinicians, statisticians, health economists, and representatives of patient groups, health insurance, pharmaceutical companies, biobanks, and regulatory agencies). Knowledgeable panels with adequate representation of all these stakeholders may facilitate biomarker evaluation and guide implementation for the specific context of use. This approach may avoid unwarranted delays or failure to implement potentially useful biomarkers, and may expedite meaningful contributions of the biomarker community to healthcare.

Lessons for public health campaigns from analysing commercial food marketing success factors: a case study

BackgroundCommercial food marketing has considerably shaped consumer food choice behaviour. Meanwhile, public health campaigns for healthier eating have had limited impact to date. Social marketing suggests that successful commercial food marketing campaigns can provide useful lessons for public sector activities. The aim of the present study was to empirically identify food marketing success factors that, using the social marketing approach, could help improve public health campaigns to promote healthy eating.MethodsIn this case-study analysis, 27 recent and successful commercial food and beverage marketing cases were purposively sampled from different European countries. The cases involved different consumer target groups, product categories, company sizes and marketing techniques. The analysis focused on cases of relatively healthy food types, and nutrition and health-related aspects in the communication related to the food. Visual as well as written material was gathered, complemented by semi-structured interviews with 12 food market trend experts and 19 representatives of food companies and advertising agencies. Success factors were identified by a group of experts who reached consensus through discussion structured by a card sorting method.ResultsSix clusters of success factors emerged from the analysis and were labelled as "data and knowledge", "emotions", "endorsement", "media", "community" and "why and how". Each cluster subsumes two or three success factors and is illustrated by examples. In total, 16 factors were identified. It is argued that the factors "nutritional evidence", "trend awareness", "vertical endorsement", "simple naturalness" and "common values" are of particular importance in the communication of health with regard to food.ConclusionsThe present study identified critical factors for the success of commercial food marketing campaigns related to the issue of nutrition and health, which are possibly transferable to the public health sector. Whether or not a particular factor contributes to future success depends on the specific context of use, the combination of factors and the environment. Consideration of the specific applicability of the success factors identified in this study during the design of marketing activities could benefit public sector food and health-related campaigns.

Cancer biomarkers: selecting the right drug for the right patient

This Perspective highlights biomarkers that are expressed as a consequence of cancer development and progression. We focus on those biomarkers that are most relevant for identifying patients who are likely to respond to a given therapy, as well as those biomarkers that are most effective for measuring patient response to therapy. These two measures are necessary for selecting the right drug for the right patient, regardless of whether the setting is in drug development or in the post-approval use of the drug for patients with cancer. We also discuss the innovative designs of clinical trials and methodologies that are used to validate and qualify biomarkers for use in specific contexts. Furthermore, we look ahead to the promises and challenges in the field of cancer biomarkers.

Quality assessment for mobile media-enriched services: impact of video lengths

The inclusion of multimedia content in different web-based services has increased significantly. Through an extensive subjective testing campaign, we analyse the quality of experience concerning video transmissions associated to these types of services when accessed from mobile devices and mobile Internet connections. Contrary to traditional normalised quality assessment studies, we point out the service context as a key aspect in quality assessments. Specifically, we analyse the impact of the duration of the test material on quality assessments. We find out that tolerance to visual degradations is higher in the specific context of use compared to when using standardised methodologies for quality assessment, which has a significant impact in terms of commercial service acceptability.

Musics, Cultures and Meanings: Music as Communication

This commentary explores interpretations of concepts that lie at the focus of Richard Widdess's paper—music, and culture—with the aim of specifying frameworks within which issues of musical meaning can fruitfully be addressed. RICHARD WIDDESS'S thought-provoking paper in this volume illuminates the idea that meaning— and in particular, meaning in music—in is best explored in terms of lived experience rather than through verbal enquiry by reference to three specific cultural examples that I suspect we can all recognise as being distinct and as being other. At the same time he relies—I think, quite correctly—on the idea that the same kind of phenomenon, music, is being manifested in each distinct cultural context. It may seem trivial and somewhat truistic even to raise these points, but I think that they can be used to point up some of the issues that I see as being involved in the understanding of meaning in cultural context. To start where Widdess started, what do we mean by I'd suggest that when we seek to explore the nature of musical meaning, this question actually breaks down into two sub-questions: what do we mean by and what do we mean by culture per se? We can think of these two questions as reflecting different facets of the concept of culture, one adverting to the dynamics of intracultural processes and the delineation of cultural boundaries, whereas the other addresses the prospectively immanent actuality of supracultural processes. How can one define culture? Supplementing Tylor's and Bloch's definitions, one can start by suggesting that is the particular means by which people have everyday lives, hence a is whatever its members think, make, believe, do, and learn amongst each other in order to live their normal, everyday lives. As Widdess points out, the dynamics of a specific are best understood through lived experience rather than mediated by linguistic representations. But what precisely determines culture, particularly a musical culture? As a complex example, in the context of Northern Territories Australian aboriginal cultures, as Widdess noted, there are particular musical entities—not works, but songs or specific song-types—and specific contexts of use of these songs that recognisably attach to one or other particular local culture. But members of these cultures also engage with—creating, performing and listening to—other musics such as rock or country music that could suggest that many of these cultures' members have been assimilated into a broader, westernised, Australian musical culture. The determining features of the local musical cultures may seem to be in the process of being obliterated by the juggernaut of global, commercial musical culture, as appears to have occurred in the case of the rich Venda musical memorialised by John Blacking (according to Jaco Kruger, 2006). In fact, rather than being obliterated, the musics of some local Australian Aboriginal cultures have been extended, not just in structure but in function; in a self-conscious process of ganma, or bi-culturalisation, earlier indigenous musical practices still persist while new practices such as heavy rock or reggae—that seem to an outsider to be wholly Western—have been assimilated into the cultural repertoire to be put to local, indigenous uses, as in the case of the Yolŋu rock band Yothu Yindi (see Corn, 2010), in this case as a means of re-articulating and sustaining Yolŋu in its local, national and global context. Perhaps it is only when a is exposed to reflective scrutiny that the issue of what constitutes arises in the first place. As Bashkow notes (2004, p. 454), …cultural boundaries are necessary for thinking and writing about human cultural worlds, but those human cultural worlds—cultures—about which we can write and speak must be understood as neither emically distinct domains nor anthropologically isolable entities but as dynamic constructs engaged in a continual process of mutual refashioning.

Metabolomics data and the biomarker qualification process

Since its initial applications in healthcare research over a decade ago, metabolomics has matured into a technology that can now reliably detect and quantify hundreds of metabolites in biofluids and tissue samples. With substantial improvements in analytical capabilities in recent years, metabolomics now has the potential to provide sensitive and specific biomarkers of health and disease status, drug toxicity and therapeutic efficacy. Although many of the clinical biomarkers currently in use are metabolites such as glucose, cholesterol, and creatinine, few, if any, new metabolites (or panel of metabolites) derived from metabolomic analyses have been submitted to the FDA as biomarker candidates. Under a recent FDA draft Guidance for Industry from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), biomarkers discovered using metabolomics, like those derived from genetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic studies, may be submitted to CDER for consideration as new drug development tools and entered into a formal biomarker qualification process. The qualification process begins with a letter of intent from the submitter, followed by discussions with FDA and then the submission of data supporting the performance of the biomarker within a specific context of use. CDER forms a Biomarker Qualification Review Team at the start of the interactive process to advise the biomarker developer on the type of information important to support the proposed context of use, and review the data that evaluates the biomarker for the proposed context of use when the biomarker development appears complete and the full supporting data are submitted. Once qualified, a biomarker can be used in drug development within the qualified context of use without requesting additional regulatory review concerning its suitability.

Circulating Tumor Cells as Biomarkers in Prostate Cancer

Unmet needs in prostate cancer drug development and patient management are the ability to monitor treatment effects and to identify therapeutic targets in a tumor at the time treatment is being considered. This review focuses on establishing analytically valid biomarkers for specific contexts of use in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), emphasizing a biomarker currently in clinical use, circulating tumor cells (CTC). The FDA Critical Path provides a road map for these investigations, which, if followed, will facilitate the incorporation of these types of assays into clinical decision-making. CTC enumeration at baseline and post-treatment is prognostic of survival, with no threshold effect, and the shedding of cells into the circulation represents an intrinsic property of the tumor, distinct from extent of disease. The clinical utility of monitoring CTC changes with treatment, as an efficacy-response surrogate biomarker of survival, is currently being tested in large phase III trials, with the novel antiandrogen therapies abiraterone acetate and MDV3100. Molecular determinants can be identified and characterized in CTCs as potential predictive biomarkers of tumor sensitivity to a therapeutic modality. Additionally, we discuss novel technologies to enrich and characterize CTCs from more patients, the potential clinical uses of CTCs in determining prognosis and monitoring treatment effects, and CTCs as a source of tissue to identify predictive markers of drug sensitivity to guide treatment selection. Prospective studies, designed around the biomarker itself and the specific clinical context for which it is applied, are needed to further assess the role of these and novel markers in clinical practice.

Genre-based tasks in foreign language writing: Developing writers’ genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence

This study examines how novice foreign language (FL) writers develop their genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence in a genre-based writing course that incorporates email-writing tasks. To define genre, the study draws on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) that sees language as a resource for making meaning in a particular context of use rather than as a set of fixed rules and structures ( Halliday, 1994). To design genre-based syllabi that can promote both language and writing development, the study also attempts to link genre to task ( Norris, 2009). In the fifteen-week writing course, Japanese undergraduate students ( n = 70) engaged in carefully designed genre-based tasks, where they learned the ways in which different genres are shaped by different linguistic resources to achieve their goals through sequenced task phases. Three sets of qualitative and quantitative data were collected to examine students’ changes as a FL writer: survey, interviews, and the emails written at the beginning and the end of the semester. The results showed that the students made progress in their genre awareness and perceptions, and that changes in their awareness were apparent in their actual written products. The study discusses that a combination of genre and task can create a crucial pedagogical link between socially situated writing performance and choices of language use, which is expected to serve as a springboard to create interfaces between writing and language development in FL contexts.

A usability evaluation toolkit for In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVISs)

Usability must be defined specifically for the context of use of the particular system under investigation. This specific context of use should also be used to guide the definition of specific usability criteria and the selection of appropriate evaluation methods. There are four principles which can guide the selection of evaluation methods, relating to the information required in the evaluation, the stage at which to apply methods, the resources required and the people involved in the evaluation. This paper presents a framework for the evaluation of usability in the context of In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVISs). This framework guides designers through defining usability criteria for an evaluation, selecting appropriate evaluation methods and applying those methods. These stages form an iterative process of design–evaluation–redesign with the overall aim of improving the usability of IVISs and enhancing the driving experience, without compromising the safety of the driver.

World Englishes and Higher Education

This paper explores the relationship between World Englishes and Higher Education by focusing on the meaning making resources used by “users” of different varieties/dialects of World Englishes. The results of the study indicate that if we focus on the “uses” of language in particular contexts, we find patterns of similarities that are shared by speakers of diverse varieties of World Englishes. These findings support the broader literature on genres that show that language patterns on use—that is, patterns in language relate to specific contexts of use. In such contexts, the identity of the user seems to be less important than the purpose or use of the text. It is this “use” dimension of World Englishes that is explored in this paper using SFL as an informing linguistic theory. The paper shows that such studies can lead to interesting new ways of looking at variation across Englishes and that they can contribute greatly to our ability to use World Englishes research in our work on education, linguistics, and socio-economic development.

Context of use as a factor in determining the usability of in-vehicle devices

In recent years, the issue of usability of in-vehicle devices has received growing attention. This is in line with the increase in functionality of these devices, which has been accompanied by the introduction of various new interfaces to facilitate the user–device interaction. The complexity and diversity of the driving task presents a unique challenge in defining usability: user interaction with in-vehicle devices creates a ‘dual task’ scenario, in which conflicts can arise between primary and secondary driving tasks. This, and the safety-critical nature of driving, must be accounted for in defining and evaluating the usability of in-vehicle devices. It is evident that defining usability depends on the context of use of the device in question. The aim of this review therefore is to define usability for in-vehicle devices by selecting a set of criteria to describe the various factors which contribute to usability in this specific context of use.

Appropriation Infrastructure

End User Development offers technological flexibility to encourage the appropriation of software applications within specific contexts of use. Appropriation needs to be understood as a phenomenon of many collaborative and creative activities. To support appropriation, we propose integrating communication infrastructure into software application that follows an“easy-to-collaborate”-principle. Such an appropriation infrastructure stimulates the experience sharing among a heterogeneous product community and supports the situated development of usages. Taking the case of the BSCWeasel groupware, we demonstrate how an appropriation infrastructure can be realized. Empirical results from the BSCWeasel project demonstrate the impact of such an infrastructure on the appropriation and design process. Based on these results, we argue that the social construction of IT artifacts should be tightly integrated in the material construction of IT artifacts in bridging design and use discourses.

Defining Cultural Competence in Context: Dyadic Norms of Friendship Among U.S. High School Students

Abstract Cultural competence is often defined as the ability to adhere to a core set of beliefs and practices. In this article, I argue that in many cases competence also involves the creative and occasionally idiosyncratic use of conventional knowledge to meet both personal goals and the specific requirements of local relationships and settings. I illustrate this tension between adopting broadly shared cultural norms and adapting them to local circumstances by examining how U.S. high school students prioritize their expectations of “good friends.” Drawing from cultural consensus approaches in cognitive anthropology, I analyze patterns of agreement among students to show that despite some population‐wide sharing, friends share more similar priorities than do nonfriends, and individuals also maintain stable differences in their personal priorities. These patterns of agreement and disagreement support the view that individuals strike a balance between fitting their personal models of friendship to broad cultural norms and accommodating the goals and needs of particular partners. More generally, I argue that competence in a cultural domain (in this case appropriate friendship behaviors) must be examined in relation to the specific contexts of use and the scale of social interaction for that domain. [competence, cultural consensus, friendship, quadratic assignment procedure, adolescence]

Administering Fair Use

Fair use is not working. As written by Congress and applied by the courts, the fair use law fails to give individuals sufficiently clear guidance to determine in advance whether their uses of copyrighted works are fair and therefore noninfringing. When the law does not regulate adequately, markets can supply the rules. Thus, copyright owners and prospective users of copyrighted works can - and do - negotiate over and enter into contracts specifying permissible uses. However, leaving fair use to the market is far from desirable. Fair use is not meant to be something that is sold and bought like other market goods. Fair use is free use. Nobody is meant to be paying for the privilege of using a copyrighted work in a manner that the law deems not to infringe the copyright in the work. Moreover, the fair use market is not a fair market. The failure of Congress and of the courts to provide clear guidance on the meaning of fair use permits copyright owners to leverage the vagueness of the law and persuade prospective users that virtually any unauthorized use constitutes copyright infringement - and that if the use is not paid for it will result in a lawsuit and substantial damages. This Article offers a new approach to fair use. It proposes a role for the one branch of the federal government that has so far been left out of the picture: the executive branch. In most areas of the law where clear legal directives are needed to guide behavior in particular contexts and where Congress and the courts are unable to supply the clarity, we turn to administrative agencies. An administrative agency can, and should, regulate fair use. Accordingly, the Article offers two possible models of agency regulation. In the first model, an agency is responsible for generating regulations that determine what constitutes fair use in specific contexts as well as preventing efforts to interfere with fair uses of copyrighted works. In the second model, an agency issues fair use regulations and determines prior to any copyright infringement claim being brought in court whether the use in question constitutes fair use. Agency regulation can bring much needed clarity and predictability to fair use in ways that neither Congress nor the courts are able to accomplish; an agency can also protect fair use in ways that the market does not.

A toolkit for capturing and sharing FuGE experiments

The Functional Genomics Experiment Object Model (FuGE) supports modelling of experimental processes either directly or through extensions that specialize FuGE for use in specific contexts. FuGE applications commonly include components that capture, store and search experiment descriptions, where the requirements of different applications have much in common. We describe a toolkit that supports data capture, storage and web-based search of FuGE experiment models; the toolkit can be used directly on FuGE compliant models or configured for use with FuGE extensions. The toolkit is illustrated using a FuGE extension standardized by the proteomics standards initiative, namely GelML. The toolkit and a demonstration are available at http://code.google.com/p/fugetoolkit

Measuring the effects of business intelligence systems: The relationship between business process and organizational performance

Business intelligence (BI) systems provide the ability to analyse business information in order to support and improve management decision making across a broad range of business activities. They leverage the large data infrastructure investments (e.g. ERP systems) made by firms, and have the potential to realise the substantial value locked up in a firm's data resources. While substantial business investment in BI systems is continuing to accelerate, there is a complete absence of a specific and rigorous method to measure the realised business value, if any. By exploiting the lessons learned from prior attempts to measure business value of IT-intensive systems, we develop a new measure that is based on an understanding of the characteristics of BI systems in a process-oriented framework. We then employ the measure in an examination of the relationship between the business process performance and organizational performance, finding significant differences in the strength of the relationship between industry sectors. This study reinforces the need to consider the specific context of use when designing performance measurement for IT-intensive systems, and highlights the need for further research examining contextual moderators to the realisation of such performance benefits.