The probability archive : from essence to uncertainty in the growth of knowledge

From a ‘cultural science’ perspective, this paper traces one aspect of a more general shift, from the realist representational regime of modernity to the productive DIY systems of the internet era. It argues that collecting and archiving is transformed by this change. Modern museums – and also broadcast television – were based on determinist or ‘essence’ theory; while internet archives like YouTube (and the internet as an archive) are based on ‘probability’ theory. The paper goes through the differences between modernist ‘essence’ and postmodern ‘probability’; starting from the obvious difference that in a museum each object is selected by experts for its intrinsic properties, while on the internet you don’t know what you will find. The status of individual objects is uncertain, although the productivity of the overall archive is unlimited. The paper links these differences with changes in contemporary culture – from a Newtonian to a quantum universe, progress to risk, institutional structure to evolutionary change, objectivity to uncertainty, identity to performance. Borrowing some of its methodology from science fiction, the paper uses examples from museums and online archives, ranging from the oldest stone tool in the world to the latest tribute vid on the net.

Engineering curricula in the 21st century : the global scenario and challenges for India

In the 21st century's global economy, the new challenges facing the engineering profession have arrived, confirming the need to restructure engineering curricula, teaching and learning practices, and processes, including assessment. Possessing merely technical knowledge no longer guarantees an engineering graduate a successful career. And while all countries are facing this dilemma, India is struggling the most. It has been argued that most Indian engineering educational institutions struggle with the systemic problem of centralisation coupled with an archaic examination system that is detrimental to student learning. This article examines some internationally renowned educational institutions that are embracing the growing importance of non-technical subjects and soft skills in 21st century engineering curricula. It will then examine the problems that India faces in doing the same.

Engineering curricula in the 21st century : the global scenario and challenges for India

In the 21st century's global economy, the new challenges facing the engineering profession have arrived, confirming the need to restructure engineering curricula, teaching and learning practices, and processes, including assessment. Possessing merely technical knowledge no longer guarantees an engineering graduate a successful career. And while all countries are facing this dilemma, India is struggling the most. It has been argued that most Indian engineering educational institutions struggle with the systemic problem of centralisation coupled with an archaic examination system that is detrimental to student learning. This article examines some internationally renowned educational institutions that are embracing the growingimportance of non-technical subjects and soft skills in 21st century engineering curricula. It will then examine the problems that India faces in doing the same.

A comparison of the 27-item and 12-item intolerance of uncertainty scales

The 27-item Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS) has become one of the most frequently used measure of Intolerance of Uncertainty. More recently, an abridged, 12-item version of the IUS has been developed. The current research used clinical (n = 50) and non-clinical (n = 56) samples to examine and compare the psychometric properties of both versions of the IUS. The two scales showed good internal consistency at both the total and subscale level and had satisfactory test-retest reliability. Both versions were correlated with worry and trait anxiety and had satisfactory concurrent validity. Significant differences between the scores of the clinical and non-clinical sample supported discriminant validity. Predictive validity was also supported for the two scales. Total scores, in the case of the clinical sample, and a subscale, in the case of the non-clinical sample, significantly predicted pathological worry and trait anxiety. Overall, the clinicians and researchers can use either version of the IUS with confidence, due to their sound psychometric properties.

Incorporating parameter uncertainty into quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA)

Modern statistical models and computational methods can now incorporate uncertainty of the parameters used in Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessments (QMRA). Many QMRAs use Monte Carlo methods, but work from fixed estimates for means, variances and other parameters. We illustrate the ease of estimating all parameters contemporaneously with the risk assessment, incorporating all the parameter uncertainty arising from the experiments from which these parameters are estimated. A Bayesian approach is adopted, using Markov Chain Monte Carlo Gibbs sampling (MCMC) via the freely available software, WinBUGS. The method and its ease of implementation are illustrated by a case study that involves incorporating three disparate datasets into an MCMC framework. The probabilities of infection when the uncertainty associated with parameter estimation is incorporated into a QMRA are shown to be considerably more variable over various dose ranges than the analogous probabilities obtained when constants from the literature are simply ‘plugged’ in as is done in most QMRAs. Neglecting these sources of uncertainty may lead to erroneous decisions for public health and risk management.

Uncertainty and innovation in fashion design

Generally speaking, psychologists have suggested three traditional views of how people cope with uncertainty. They are the certainty maximiser, the intuitive statistician-economist and the knowledge seeker (Smithson, 2008). In times of uncertainty, such as the recent global financial crisis, these coping methods often result in innovation in industry. Richards (2003) identifies innovation as different from creativity in that innovation aims to transform and implement rather than simply explore and invent. An examination of the work of iconic fashion designers, through case study and situational analysis, reveals that coping with uncertainty manifests itself in ways that have resulted in innovations in design, marketing methods, production and consumption. In relation to contemporary fashion, where many garments look the same in style, colour, cut and fit (Finn, 2008), the concept of innovation is an important one. This paper explores the role of uncertainty as a driver of innovation in fashion design. A key aspect of seeking knowledge, as a mechanism to cope with this uncertainty, is a return to basics. This is a problem for contemporary fashion designers who are no longer necessarily makers and therefore do not engage with the basic materials and methods of garment construction. In many cases design in fashion has become digital, communicated to an unseen, unknown production team via scanned image and specification alone. The disconnection between the design and the making of garments, as a result of decades of off-shore manufacturing, has limited the opportunity for this return to basics. The authors argue that the role of the fashion designer has become about the final product and as a result there is a lack of innovation in the process of making: in the form, fit and function of fashion garments. They propose that ‘knowledge seeking’ as a result of uncertainty in the fashion industry, in particular through re-examination of the methods of making, could hold the key to a new era of innovation in fashion design.

Malaysia high-rise residential property management : 2004-2010 trends and scenario

Property management requires an understanding of infrastructure management, service life planning and quality management. Today, people are beginning to realize that effective property management in high-rise residential property can sustain the property value and maintaining high returns on their investment. The continuous growth of high-rise residential properties indicates that there is a need for an effective property management system to provide a sustainable high-rise residential property development. As intensive as these studies are, they do not attempt to investigate the correlation between property management systems with the trends of Malaysia high-rise residential property development. By examining the trends and scenario of Malaysia high-rise residential property development, this paper aims to gain an understanding of impacts from the effectiveness of property management in this scope area. Findings from this scoping paper will assist in providing a greater understanding and possible solutions for the current Malaysian property management systems for the expanding high-rise residential unit market. With current high rise units in excess of 1.3 million and increasing, the need for more cost effective management systems are of highly important to the Malaysian Property Industry.

Elicitator : a user-friendly, interactive tool to support scenario-based elicitation of expert knowledge

Expert elicitation is the process of determining what expert knowledge is relevant to support a quantitative analysis and then eliciting this information in a form that supports analysis or decision-making. The credibility of the overall analysis, therefore, relies on the credibility of the elicited knowledge. This, in turn, is determined by the rigor of the design and execution of the elicitation methodology, as well as by its clear communication to ensure transparency and repeatability. It is difficult to establish rigor when the elicitation methods are not documented, as often occurs in ecological research. In this chapter, we describe software that can be combined with a well-structured elicitation process to improve the rigor of expert elicitation and documentation of the results

The probability archive : essence, uncertainty, and the ‘Olduvai imperative.’

Starting from a local problem with finding an archival clip on YouTube, this paper expands to consider the nature of archives in general. It considers the technological, communicative and philosophical characteristics of archives over three historical periods: 1) Modern ‘essence archives’ – museums and galleries organised around the concept of objectivity and realism; 2) Postmodern mediation archives – broadcast TV systems, which I argue were also ‘essence archives,’ albeit a transitional form; and 3) Network or ‘probability archives’ – YouTube and the internet, which are organised around the concept of probability. The paper goes on to argue the case for introducing quantum uncertainty and other aspects of probability theory into the humanities, in order to understand the way knowledge is collected, conserved, curated and communicated in the era of the internet. It is illustrated throughout by reference to the original technological 'affordance' – the Olduvai stone chopping tool.

On the data consumption benefits of accepting increased uncertainty

In the context of learning paradigms of identification in the limit, we address the question: why is uncertainty sometimes desirable? We use mind change bounds on the output hypotheses as a measure of uncertainty and interpret ‘desirable’ as reduction in data memorization, also defined in terms of mind change bounds. The resulting model is closely related to iterative learning with bounded mind change complexity, but the dual use of mind change bounds — for hypotheses and for data — is a key distinctive feature of our approach. We show that situations exist where the more mind changes the learner is willing to accept, the less the amount of data it needs to remember in order to converge to the correct hypothesis. We also investigate relationships between our model and learning from good examples, set-driven, monotonic and strong-monotonic learners, as well as class-comprising versus class-preserving learnability.

An approach to access control under uncertainty

In dynamic and uncertain environments such as healthcare, where the needs of security and information availability are difficult to balance, an access control approach based on a static policy will be suboptimal regardless of how comprehensive it is. The uncertainty stems from the unpredictability of users’ operational needs as well as their private incentives to misuse permissions. In Role Based Access Control (RBAC), a user’s legitimate access request may be denied because its need has not been anticipated by the security administrator. Alternatively, even when the policy is correctly specified an authorised user may accidentally or intentionally misuse the granted permission. This paper introduces a novel approach to access control under uncertainty and presents it in the context of RBAC. By taking insights from the field of economics, in particular the insurance literature, we propose a formal model where the value of resources are explicitly defined and an RBAC policy (entailing those predictable access needs) is only used as a reference point to determine the price each user has to pay for access, as opposed to representing hard and fast rules that are always rigidly applied.

An economic evaluation of the Safe Motherhood programme in Guangxi, China

Maternal and infant mortality is a global health issue with a significant social and economic impact. Each year, over half a million women worldwide die due to complications related to pregnancy or childbirth, four million infants die in the first 28 days of life, and eight million infants die in the first year. Ninety-nine percent of maternal and infant deaths are in developing countries. Reducing maternal and infant mortality is among the key international development goals. In China, the national maternal mortality ratio and infant mortality rate were reduced greatly in the past two decades, yet a large discrepancy remains between urban and rural areas. To address this problem, a large-scale Safe Motherhood Programme was initiated in 2000. The programme was implemented in Guangxi in 2003. Interventions in the programme included both demand-side and supply side-interventions focusing on increasing health service use and improving birth outcomes. Little is known about the effects and economic outcomes of the Safe Motherhood Programme in Guangxi, although it has been implemented for seven years. The aim of this research is to estimate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the interventions in the Safe Motherhood Programme in Guangxi, China. The objectives of this research include: 1. To evaluate whether the changes of health service use and birth outcomes are associated with the interventions in the Safe Motherhood Programme. 2. To estimate the cost-effectiveness of the interventions in the Safe Motherhood Programme and quantify the uncertainty surrounding the decision. 3. To assess the expected value of perfect information associated with both the whole decision and individual parameters, and interpret the findings to inform priority setting in further research and policy making in this area. A quasi-experimental study design was used in this research to assess the effectiveness of the programme in increasing health service use and improving birth outcomes. The study subjects were 51 intervention counties and 30 control counties. Data on the health service use, birth outcomes and socio-economic factors from 2001 to 2007 were collected from the programme database and statistical yearbooks. Based on the profile plots of the data, general linear mixed models were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme while controlling for the effects of baseline levels of the response variables, change of socio-economic factors over time and correlations among repeated measurements from the same county. Redundant multicollinear variables were deleted from the mixed model using the results of the multicollinearity diagnoses. For each response variable, the best covariance structure was selected from 15 alternatives according to the fit statistics including Akaike information criterion, Finite-population corrected Akaike information criterion, and Schwarz.s Bayesian information criterion. Residual diagnostics were used to validate the model assumptions. Statistical inferences were made to show the effect of the programme on health service use and birth outcomes. A decision analytic model was developed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the programme, quantify the decision uncertainty, and estimate the expected value of perfect information associated with the decision. The model was used to describe the transitions between health states for women and infants and reflect the change of both costs and health benefits associated with implementing the programme. Result gained from the mixed models and other relevant evidence identified were synthesised appropriately to inform the input parameters of the model. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios of the programme were calculated for the two groups of intervention counties over time. Uncertainty surrounding the parameters was dealt with using probabilistic sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty relating to model assumptions was handled using scenario analysis. Finally the expected value of perfect information for both the whole model and individual parameters in the model were estimated to inform priority setting in further research in this area.The annual change rates of the antenatal care rate and the institutionalised delivery rate were improved significantly in the intervention counties after the programme was implemented. Significant improvements were also found in the annual change rates of the maternal mortality ratio, the infant mortality rate, the incidence rate of neonatal tetanus and the mortality rate of neonatal tetanus in the intervention counties after the implementation of the programme. The annual change rate of the neonatal mortality rate was also improved, although the improvement was only close to statistical significance. The influences of the socio-economic factors on the health service use indicators and birth outcomes were identified. The rural income per capita had a significant positive impact on the health service use indicators, and a significant negative impact on the birth outcomes. The number of beds in healthcare institutions per 1,000 population and the number of rural telephone subscribers per 1,000 were found to be positively significantly related to the institutionalised delivery rate. The length of highway per square kilometre negatively influenced the maternal mortality ratio. The percentage of employed persons in the primary industry had a significant negative impact on the institutionalised delivery rate, and a significant positive impact on the infant mortality rate and neonatal mortality rate. The incremental costs of implementing the programme over the existing practice were US $11.1 million from the societal perspective, and US $13.8 million from the perspective of the Ministry of Health. Overall, 28,711 life years were generated by the programme, producing an overall incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of US $386 from the societal perspective, and US $480 from the perspective of the Ministry of Health, both of which were below the threshold willingness-to-pay ratio of US $675. The expected net monetary benefit generated by the programme was US $8.3 million from the societal perspective, and US $5.5 million from the perspective of the Ministry of Health. The overall probability that the programme was cost-effective was 0.93 and 0.89 from the two perspectives, respectively. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of the programme was insensitive to the different estimates of the three parameters relating to the model assumptions. Further research could be conducted to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the decision, in which the upper limit of investment was US $0.6 million from the societal perspective, and US $1.3 million from the perspective of the Ministry of Health. It is also worthwhile to get a more precise estimate of the improvement of infant mortality rate. The population expected value of perfect information for individual parameters associated with this parameter was US $0.99 million from the societal perspective, and US $1.14 million from the perspective of the Ministry of Health. The findings from this study have shown that the interventions in the Safe Motherhood Programme were both effective and cost-effective in increasing health service use and improving birth outcomes in rural areas of Guangxi, China. Therefore, the programme represents a good public health investment and should be adopted and further expanded to an even broader area if possible. This research provides economic evidence to inform efficient decision making in improving maternal and infant health in developing countries.