Use Of Styles Research Articles

Collaborative conversational interfaces

This paper proposes a method of designing human-computer speech interfaces based on principles of human conversation. It argues that conversation is the primary mode of language use and that it is fundamentally collaborative. Speech interfaces should therefore be designed to recreate the collaborative nature of natural conversations. The paper presents five strategies for designingcollaborative conversational interfaces, and it describes the principles of human-language use that underly these strategies. The paper also argues that collaborative conversational interfaces have a crucial advantage over other kinds of interfaces in that they are readily adaptive to different levels of experience and styles of use. The paper gives examples of collaborative conversational interfaces that we have developed, and discusses the ways in which these interfaces have been made adaptive.

Structural Analysis on Users' Evaluation to the Environment in Beach Use

This study clarifies whether the users' evaluation structure on coastal spaces varies in the “style of use” and the “users' characteristics”. Through the covariance structure analysis based on the stated preference survey data about the coastal use, there exists a certain level of difference, and the importance is stressed to grasp both the expected style of use and the users' characteristics for better development planning.

“Aboutness” and Other Problems of Text Retrieval in the Pharmaceutical Industry

In-house text databases of biomedical publications, as used by medical information departments in the pharmaceutical industry, are described in terms of their general features and styles of use. Problems in their upkeep include loss of precision in searching as the volume of publications grows, inconsistency in contents and in indexing philosophy, thesaurus maintenance, and the handling of newly emergent concepts or terms. The need to capture implicit information and the “aboutness” of documents impose heavy requirements for intellectual effort, but are essential for effective retrieval. Another conflict is between the need to identify specific documents and the need to create syntheses of state-of-the-art information in the form of knowledge bases. The extraction of meaning as opposed to the identification of possibly relevant documents remains a central task for information retrieval in the pharmaceutical industry.

Empirical Groupings of Perceptions of Alcohol Use Among Alcohol Dependent Persons: A Cluster Analysis of the Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI) Scales

Scales of the Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI) for 217 consecutive admissions (174 men, 43 women; 178 white, 39 black) to a substance abuse treatment program were cluster analyzed to empirically identify patterns of subjective perceptions regarding benefits of use, deleterious consequences of use, and styles of use. Five groupings emerged which were cross-validated by randomly splitting the total sample in half and applying the K-Means procedure to each half. Differences among these groups were found on age, education, and the personality and symptom scales of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (MCMI-II). The implications of these clusters for understanding and treating alcohol abuse/dependence are discussed.

The Usefulness of Computer-Based Information to Public Managers

This study uses data from 260 public managers to assess two broad images of the potential of information technology and computer-based information (CBI) to serve public managers: the knowledge executive and the CBI consumer. The data were collected as part of a longitudinal study of computer user in more than 40 U.S. cities conducted in 1976 and again in 1988. The results show that computer-based information is important for most managers, and many report they are extremely dependent upon it. Also, the managers currently find the information more valuable for control of financial resources than for management of operations. Furthermore, among four sets of factors that might account for differences in the usefulness of computer-based information to managers, quality and accessibility of the information and the manager's style of use are particularly important. Finally, managers who are most satisfied with the usefulness of computer-based information are those who use support staff to mediate their computer-based information environment, rather than those who use the computer to access information directly. Such indirect use of computing might be the most appropriate mode for many contemporary managers. Therefore, the focus of design efforts for information systems for managers should be as much on these intermediaries as on the executives themselves.

On Ada packages, types and task types

Two important uses of Ada packages are analyzed. Namely, for defining abstract data types and for defining task subsystems. Their advantages are only summarized, since they are well known, but the advantages and drawbacks of alternative ways of achieving such purposes are discussed and a uniform style of use is sustained, as well as the need for a specific notation for compound task types.

Cortaro Points and the Archaic of Southern Arizona

ABSTRACTA new Archaic projectile point style, the Cortaro point, is introduced and described. Its morphology, manufacturing technology and distribution are documented, and it is shown to be a morphologically and technologically consistent point style. Available data indicate that it is limited to southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Temporal data for the Cortaro point are presented and suggest that it may be of late Middle or Late Archaic age. Cortaro points may, therefore, prove to be useful temporal markers and may constitute yet another projectile point style in use in the southern Southwest during the Archaic period. The cultural implications of Cortaro points are explored, and four hypotheses are presented for consideration by researchers.

The map geometric transformation

A geometric transformation useful for the positioning, orientation, and shape alteration of graphical objects is introduced. The form of its invocation in the language for interactive graphics (LIG) is described. The approach can easily specify complex transformations and functions effectively in combinations. Sample applications showing two styles of use and a description of the mathematics used to implement the transformation are included.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Psychosociocultural perspectives on chronic cannabis use: the Costa Rican follow-up.

The social standing of marijuana use in Costa Rica becomes important as one examines the results of this study. Before 1968, marijuana use itself defined Costa Rican consumers of the drug as lower class. Its coming to fashionability among Costa Rican upper-middle-class youths during the late 1960's and early 1970's temporarily blurred marijuana's class identification. Nevertheless, the lower-class users' dress, speech and style of use kept them distinct from these youths. In 1986, working-class users participating in the present intensive study still occupied the lowest positions in the Costa Rican social strata. Their marijuana use does not appear to be a major factor in blocking upward mobility. The social stations in which users were raised were more powerful in determining their present fates than taking up or not taking up marijuana use. Users speak the language differently, employing a mix of lexical changes and wordplay to keep the decent Costa Ricans out of their clandestine business. Smokers of marijuana also dress differently from other Costa Ricans and tend to live in disreputable barrios, according to the stereotype. The Costa Rican image of a marijuana smoker is one of a streetwise, corrupt and uncomfortably distinctive character who is not to be trusted. The main problem in assessing the relationship between marijuana use and the human condition of marijuana users is the pervasive influence of the general social disapproval of marijuana smoking in Costa Rican society.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

The future of the microcomputer as a classroom teaching aid: An empirical approach to crystal gazing

A microcomputer can be a valuable teaching aid but its current use in secondary schools is so infrequent as to make it difficult to assess its future potential. We observed 174 school lessons during which 17 teachers employed a microcomputer regularly with a chosen class for a whole term. The aim was to provide a glimpse into the future when there will be better computer facilities and more expertise among teachers. During the term, we detected no drop in interest as the novelty diminished and lessons tended to improve as teachers became more experienced in using the medium. Two terms later the majority of teachers were still using a microcomputer regularly as a teaching aid and there was some spread of interest to other teachers in the same schools. The results suggest that, in subjects like mathematics, computer-aided teaching will be successfully adopted by the majority of teachers if the necessary resources are available. The computer appears to be a very versatile teaching aid and we found no grounds for strongly recommending any particular style of use.

Solvent abuse from a health education perspective.

1 The development of health education and preventive strategies for solvent abuse requires the adaptation of findings and data from other fields and other countries. Experience with illicit drugs suggests that simply denying access to a particularly abused substance may only serve to shift abusers towards other substances. It is, therefore, necessary to acquire evidence on which to judge the relative harmfulness of different substances. Data from the USA on the overall mortality from solvent abuse and on the relative involvement of different solvents is summarized. 2 Findings from health education researches lead to the conclusion that (a) health education is not an effective way of preventing experimentation with solvents, but (b) health education can be effective in modifying abusers' choices of substance and styles of use. 3 Combining these different types of information led to the production of a leaflet suggesting health education strategies that might reduce the likelihood of physical harm befalling solvent abusers. 4 Finally, a plea is made for reports of toxic effects from abused substances to include the kind of data that would assist the development of preventive strategies.

Initiatives toward effective decision making and laboratory use

Escalating health care costs constitute a public issue of paramount importance today, Among the leading growth factors in this rise is the cost of hospital services, notably laboratory services. With respect to the clinical laboratory, rising costs appear to be almost entirely attributable to expanding utilization and introduction of new services. The clinical laboratory has gone through a technological revolution in two decades that has changed it from a largely manual to a highly automated system of great speed and capacity. This change has produced a change in the style of providing services, a change that includes the provision of quantities of unsolicited data. A parallel change in the style of use of the laboratory has taken place on the part of patient care physicians from a relatively sparing, problem oriented use pattern to a relatively lavish, data oriented one. These reciprocal changes have transformed medicine, in the United States, at least, into a relatively high laboratory use culture. Abandonment of the new technology and return to a simpler, more primitive laboratory world would be a drastic and most inappropriate response to the new situation. Furthermore, arbitrary measures such as rationing, quotas, and tariffs are, if enacted, almost certain to fail. The most effective long term strategies, though more demanding of time and effort, lie through modification of physician behavior through the pathways of education and research. Educational and research initiatives now in progress can in time influence laboratory use patterns of physicians at all career levels, improving the logic of test use and providing more strategic, prudent, and cost effective overall laboratory utilization practices. These approaches will require much improved communication between laboratory and bedside and a new intense involvement of laboratory physicians and scientists in the tasks of helping to improve the use of laboratory tests and laboratory data.

Programming in the home of the future

For computers to be truly useful in the home of the future, they should be programmable by their users. The traditional idea of a program must be abandoned in favour of that of an environment of objects; programming becomes the act of augmenting this environment, and all interaction consists of evaluating expressions in it. Developments in language design and software engineering indicate how this very uniform interface might be possible, though this style of use imposes some difficult requirements. In the right such environment simple programming can yield useful results and lead to greater understanding both of the programming process and of the problem being approached. Such a powerful system could be used in three main areas: the local manipulation of data, including games and simulations; device control, which can be sophisticated and energy-conserving; and to communicate with other systems. This last possibility leads us to discuss several uses including mailing, teleconferencing, and access to databases of various kinds. Some social effects of the widespread availability of computer power are indicated.

Book reviews

Book reviews A. S. Osley, Luminario. An introductiorn to the Italian writing-books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nieuwkoop, Miland Publishers, 1972, f°, xiii, 173 pp., incl. 116 illus., ISBN 9060042956, fl. 180,-. That the often widely differing methods of teaching writing in primary schools in Western Europe today have led to a great diversity of styles in use, will come as no surprise to those readers who keep up an internationally oriented handwritten correspondence on any significant scale - though such, it might be added, are coming more and more to belong to the happy few. However, although there