Making decisions in the absence of clear facts: a historical perspective

Recently, a claim has been made that executive decisions makers, far from being fact collectors, are actually fact users and integrators. As such, the claim continues, executive decision makers need help in understanding how to interpret facts, as well as guidance in making decisions in the absence of clear facts. This report justifies this claim against the backdrop of the modern history of decision making, from 1956 to the present. The historical excursion serves to amplify and clarify the claim, as well as to develop a theoretical framework for making decisions in the absence of clear facts. Two essential issues are identified that impact upon decision making in the absence of clear facts, as well criteria for decision making effectiveness under such circumstances. Methodological requirements and practical objectives round off the theoretical framework. The historical analysis enables the identification of one particular established methodology as claiming to meet the methodological requirements of the theoretical framework. Since the methodology has yet to be tried on information-poor situations, a further project is proposed that will test its validity.

Making decisions in the absence of clear facts

The effectiveness of a decision maker is not demonstrated through access to better or more information. Effectiveness is demonstrated in an ability to use, more resourcefully, whatever limited information is available, and to portray its implications more usefully. This paper demonstrates how decision makers can make systemic decisions in situations characterized by extremely limited information and, furthermore, what form such decisions take.

Clear The Way

Trilha componente do jogo “Armas e Barões (http://www.loa.sead.ufscar.br/armasebaroes.html)” desenvolvido pela equipe do Laboratório de Objetos de Aprendizagem da Universidade Federal de São Carlos (LOA/UFSCar).

Facebook3d

INTRODUCTION With the advent of Web 2.0, social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn have become hugely popular. According to (Nilsen, 2009), social networking websites have global1 figures of almost 250 millions unique users among the top five2, with the time people spend on those networks increasing 63% between 2007 and 2008. Facebook alone saw a massive growth of 566% in number of minutes in the same period of time. Furthermore their appeal is clear, they enable users to easily form persistent networks of friends with whom they can interact and share content. Users then use those networks to keep in touch with their current friends and to reconnect with old friends. However, online social network services have rapidly evolved into highly complex systems which contain a large amount of personally salient information derived from large networks of friends. Since that information varies from simple links to music, photos and videos, users not only have to deal with the huge amount of data generated by them and their friends but also with the fact that it‟s composed of many different media forms. Users are presented with increasing challenges, especially as the number of friends on Facebook rises. An example of a problem is when a user performs a simple task like finding a specific friend in a group of 100 or more friends. In that case he would most likely have to go through several pages and make several clicks till he finds the one he is looking for. Another example is a user with more than 100 friends in which his friends make a status update or another action per day, resulting in 10 updates per hour to keep up. That is plausible, especially since the change in direction of Facebook to rival with Twitter, by encouraging users to update their status as they do on Twitter. As a result, to better present the web of information connected to a user the use of better visualizations is essential. The visualizations used nowadays on social networking sites haven‟t gone through major changes during their lifetimes. They have added more functionality and gave more tools to their users, but still the core of their visualization hasn‟t changed. The information is still presented in a flat way in lists/groups of text and images which can‟t show the extra connections pieces of information. Those extra connections can give new meaning and insights to the user, allowing him to more easily see if that content is important to him and the information related to it. However showing extra connections of information but still allowing the user to easily navigate through it and get the needed information with a quick glance is difficult. The use of color coding, clusters and shapes becomes then essential to attain that objective. But taking into consideration the advances in computer hardware in the last decade and the software platforms available today, there is the opportunity to take advantage of 3D. That opportunity comes in because we are at a phase were the hardware and the software available is ready for the use of 3D in the web. With the use of the extra dimension brought by 3D, visualizations can be constructed to show the content and its related information to the user at the same screen and in a clear way. Also it would allow a great deal of interactivity. Another opportunity to create better information‟s visualization presents itself in the form of the open APIs, specifically the ones made available by the social networking sites. Those APIs allow any developers to create their own applications or sites taking advantage of the huge amount of information there is on those networks. Specifically to this case, they open the door for the creation of new social network visualizations. Nevertheless, the third dimension is by itself not enough to create a better interface for a social networking website, there are some challenges to overcome. One of those challenges is to make the user understand what the system is doing during the interaction with the user. Even though that is important in 2D visualizations, it becomes essential in 3D due to the extra dimension. To overcome that challenge it‟s necessary the use of the principles of animations defined by the artists at Walt Disney Studios (Johnston, et al., 1995). By applying those principles in the development of the interface, the actions of the system in response to the user inputs became clear and understandable. Furthermore, a user study needs to be performed so the users‟ main goals and motivations, while navigating the social network, are revealed. Their goals and motivations are important in the construction of an interface that reflects the user expectations for the interface, but also helps in the development of appropriate metaphors. Those metaphors have an important role in the interface, because if correctly chosen they help the user understand the elements of the interface instead of making him memorize it. The last challenge is the use of 3D visualization on the web, since there have been several attempts to bring 3D into it, mainly with the various versions of VRML which were destined to failure due to the hardware limitations at the time. However, in the last couple of years there has been a movement to make the necessary tools to finally allow developers to use 3D in a useful way, using X3D or OpenGL but especially flash. This thesis argues that there is a need for a better social network visualization that shows all the dimensions of the information connected to the user and that allows him to move through it. But there are several characteristics the new visualization has to possess in order for it to present a real gain in usability to Facebook‟s users. The first quality is to have the friends at the core of its design, and the second to make use of the metaphor of circles of friends to separate users in groups taking into consideration the order of friendship. To achieve that several methods have to be used, from the use of 3D to get an extra dimension for presenting relevant information, to the use of direct manipulation to make the interface comprehensible, predictable and controllable. Moreover animation has to be use to make all the action on the screen perceptible to the user. Additionally, with the opportunity given by the 3D enabled hardware, the flash platform, through the use of the flash engine Papervision3D and the Facebook platform, all is in place to make the visualization possible. But even though it‟s all in place, there are challenges to overcome like making the system actions in 3D understandable to the user and creating correct metaphors that would allow the user to understand the information and options available to him. This thesis document is divided in six chapters, with Chapter 2 reviewing the literature relevant to the work described in this thesis. In Chapter 3 the design stage that resulted in the application presented in this thesis is described. In Chapter 4, the development stage, describing the architecture and the components that compose the application. In Chapter 5 the usability test process is explained and the results obtained through it are presented and analyzed. To finish, Chapter 6 presents the conclusions that were arrived in this thesis.

Uso de habitat, orçamento temporal e influência da maré da geomorfologia do fundo sobre o comportamento do boto Sotalia guianensis Van Bénéden, 1864 (Cetacea: Delphinidae) no Porto de Maceió - Alagoas, Brasil

The physical and environmental factors presented by each habitat and the rhythm of behavior patterns strongly influence the ecology and behavior of the all living beings. At same time this factors may provide clues about the structure of a population and its ecological balance. The organizational structure, ecology and behavior of a species appraised in a region if we know be in balance when compared to the same type of appraisal made in a degraded area can provide a clear view of how the anthropogenic influences acted on these species and what steps can be taken in order to mitigate the effects and keep the population. The region where this study was conducted is, like most areas of port, subject to intense physical and environmental degradation. With the emerging interest of change in the quality of these environments also by the companies themselves that use the port services, the proposed study aimed to characterize the use of habitat, the distribution of behavioral activities carried out throughout the day and influence of geomorphology of the bed, depth and variation of tide on the expression of the behavior of Sotalia guianensis in the port of Maceio - Alagoas. From this information will be possible establish parameters for comparison with other populations of S. guianensis and establish conservation measures for the population occurring in the port of Maceio - AL, serving also as a basis for conservation actions future performed in other port regions

A reafirmação do bairro:um estudo geo-histórico do bairro do Alecrim na cidade de Natal-RN

By the end of the 21st Century, economy globalization trends to show a velocity process through which market being expanded characterized by an intense going on of the internationalization of finance, after that marginalizing the periphery of the social spaces. It is clear to see that this process occurred in those less developed countries happens in an accentuated way just because income distribution that is so regressive and also because the insufficient enclosing of the social programs, we find this situation in a big part of Brazilian cities. The marginalizing social economical process observed in Natal, a city located in the east coast part of Northeast region in Brazil and that owns a population upper to 778 thousand in habitants is nearly linked to the extension of goods and services commerce. The installation of new urban activities in the city pointed out tourist activity as the greater impulsive thing in the phenomenon promotion, most of them aiming to promote Natal to the national and international scenery. It privilege strongly in the South zone with economical implementations such as shopping s centers, supermarkets, and home buildings condominiums leading to a loss of functionality of some traditional district located in central areas of the city. Notwithstanding, some spaces, for instance Alecrim district officially created in 1911, has notably resisted to the expansion of the urban process pointed out in Natal in the last years. So that this put Alecrim District as a district with originally characteristics reaffirmed along the historical process form old times. The predominance of some residential characteristics such as the incidence of some villages and a concentration of a big and confuse popular commerce distributed along streets puts Alecrim District as a resistant space in Natal. The same way analyze Alecrim District under the prism of Historic Geography because we understand this way it accomplishes a fundamental role in the theoretical methodological development of our work, just when we analyze the time as a variant in our object of study. It is still inside this theoretical field that we carry out a brief reviewing about quarter/district definition, under the optic from several registered and scientific resources taken into account along this work, because we understand that it was necessary to think this important spatial unit especially to know exactly what we are referring to as a district and so we can reaffirm Alecrim as an important and traditional district to Natal and it has been resisting to spatial transformation verified in the last years in Natal city. To give support to our reflection we used methodological tools related to inhabitants lifestyles knowledge and also the study of Alecrim District as a space that promote a certain centrality in Natal as some indicators to keep original characteristics in the district in Natal

Concordance between macroinvertebrate communities and the typological classification of white and clear-water streams in Western Brazilian Amazonia

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

An intelligent system for pavement management

This paper describes a method for the evaluation of pavement condition through artificial neural networks using the MLP backpropagation technique. Two of the most used procedures for detecting the pavement conditions were applied: the overall severity index and the irregularity index. Tests with the model demonstrated that the simulation with the neural network gives better results than the procedures recommended by the highway officials. This network may also be applied for the construction of a graphic computer environment.

Alcohol effects on the principal and clear cells of the caput epididymis of albino rats

Ultrastructural observations of principal cells of the epithelium lining of the proximal caput epididymis in experimental alcoholic albino rats at 180 days of treatment showed pyknotic nuclei, ill-defined cellular organelles and clusters of electrondense bodies, perhaps lysosomes. It was also verified for a progressive accumulation of lipid droplets initially in the basal and perinuclear cytoplasm and finally in the apical cytoplasm of principal cells at 60, 120 and 180 days of experimentation, respectively. The clear cells of alcoholic rats at 180 days showed the cytoplasm totally filled with lipid droplets. These findings were taken comparatively with the morphological features of the same epididymal cells in control (normal) rats.

Calcifications in a clear cell mucoepidermoid carcinoma: a case report with histological and immunohistochemical findings

The aim of this study was to report an unusual case of mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC) in a 39-year-old woman. The tumor showed a prominent population of clear and intermediate basal cells. Clear cells rarely predominate over other cell types. Such cases are called clear cell variant of MEC. The case also revealed a variable amount of calcified material in the tumor mass. Calcifications are rare in clear cell MEC. These structures were periodic acid- Schiff positive and diastase resistant, excluding glycogen origin. Immunohistochemistry was performed, and the epidermoid component was positive for cytokeratin (CK) 7, CK13, CK14, and CK19. The mucous and clear cells presented mild staining for CK7. Cytokeratins 7, 13, and 19 stained luminal cells, and intermediate cells exhibited positivity for CK7, CK14, and vimentin. The origin of the calcifications is speculated to be the result of dystrophic calcification of the amorphous eosinophilic material secreted by intermediate basal cells.

Associação entre o achado de cárdia incompetente à endoscopia digestiva alta e presença de esofagite de refluxo

Incompetent cardia (IC) or loose cardia is not uncommon at endoscopic examination but its meaning is not clear. Such incompetence could facilitate gastroesophageal reflux and the appearance of esophagitis as a consequence. The aim of this study is to investigate if there is an association between IC and reflux esophagitis (RE). A review was made of 395 consecutive endoscopic reports of adult males and females performed at the Botucatu Clinics Hospital, of the Unesp - University of the State of São Paulo. Diagnosis of IC is defined by the endoscopic image in which the cardia is partially opened and/or involves the endoscope in a loose manner. Esophagitis characterization was based in the Los Angeles classification. The statistical analysis showed a significant association between CI and RE (p < 0.0001). Although there is not a clear explanation for this association, some hypotheses could be suggested involving hypotonic LES, diaphragmatic crura ineffectiveness and TLESR disorders as conditions able not only to keep the cardia relaxed but also to the reflux followed by esophagitis.

Do men and women use similar adaptive locomotion to clear static and dynamic obstacles?

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of gender on the adaptive locomotion in the clearance of obstacles. Specifically, it was evaluated if there are differences in the space-temporal parameters between male and female in the clearance of and dynamic obstacles moving at both slow and fast speeds. Basic procedures. Five young male adults and five young female adults took part in this study. The task was performed in three conditions: static obstacle and dynamic obstacle - clearance perpendicular to the participant's trajectory at slow speed (1.07 m/s) and at fast speed (1.71 m/s). The trials were recorded by two digital cameras and spatial-temporal information was obtained. Main findings. The dynamic obstacle conditions required more visual inspection. The results showed different adaptive locomotion between the sexes. The distinct gait patterns were evidenced for the spatial and temporal variables and cadence in the three conditions. Conclusions. The women presented a more conservative behavior, which was evidenced by the increase of the length in the penultimate step and in the toe clearance.

A atuação de professores de acordo com as orientações da Proposta Curricular de Química do Estado de São Paulo

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)