Development of a probabilistic graphical structure from a model of mental health clinical expertise

This thesis explores the process of developing a principled approach for translating a model of mental-health risk expertise into a probabilistic graphical structure. Probabilistic graphical structures can be a combination of graph and probability theory that provide numerous advantages when it comes to the representation of domains involving uncertainty, domains such as the mental health domain. In this thesis the advantages that probabilistic graphical structures offer in representing such domains is built on. The Galatean Risk Screening Tool (GRiST) is a psychological model for mental health risk assessment based on fuzzy sets. In this thesis the knowledge encapsulated in the psychological model was used to develop the structure of the probability graph by exploiting the semantics of the clinical expertise. This thesis describes how a chain graph can be developed from the psychological model to provide a probabilistic evaluation of risk that complements the one generated by GRiST’s clinical expertise by the decomposing of the GRiST knowledge structure in component parts, which were in turned mapped into equivalent probabilistic graphical structures such as Bayesian Belief Nets and Markov Random Fields to produce a composite chain graph that provides a probabilistic classification of risk expertise to complement the expert clinical judgements

The effect of a clinical practicum on elementary education preservice teachers' development of reading expertise

The purpose of the study was to measure gains in the development of elementary education teachers’ reading expertise, to determine if there was a differential gain in reading expertise, and last, to examine their perceptions of acquiring reading expertise. This research is needed in the field of teacher education, specifically in the field of reading. A quasi-experimental design with a comparison group using pretest-posttest mixed-method, repeated measures was utilized. Quantitative data analysis measured the development of reading expertise of elementary preservice teachers compared to early childhood preservice teachers; and, was used to examine the differential gains in reading expertise. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted on pre- and posttest responses on a Protocol of Questions. Further analysis was conducted on five variables (miscue analysis, fluency analysis, data analysis, inquiry orientation and intelligent action) using a univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA). A one-way ANOVA was carried out on gain scores of the low and middle groups of elementary education preservice teachers. Qualitative data analysis suggested by Merriam (1989) and Miles and Huberman (1994) was used to determine if the elementary education preservice teachers perceived they had acquired the expertise to teach reading. Elementary education preservice teachers who participated in a supervised clinical practicum made significant gains in their development of reading expertise as compared to early childhood preservice teachers who did not make significant gains. Elementary education preservice teachers who were in the low and middle third levels of expertise at pretest demonstrated significant gains in reading expertise. Last, elementary education preservice teachers perceived they had acquired the expertise to teach reading. The study concluded that reading expertise can be developed in elementary education preservice teachers through participation in a supervised clinical practicum. The findings support the idea that preservice teachers who will be teaching reading to elementary students would benefit from a supervised clinical practicum.

Sport-specific practice and the development of expert decision-making in team ball sports

The role of sport-specific practice in the development of decision-making expertise in the sports of field hockey, netball, and basketball was examined. Fifteen expert decision-makers and 13 experienced non-expert athletes provided detailed information about the quantity and type of sport-specific and other related practice activities they had undertaken throughout their careers. Experts accumulated more hours of sport-specific practice from age 12 years onwards than did non-experts, spending on average some 13 years and 4,000 hours on concentrated sport-specific practice before reaching international standard. A significant negative correlation existed between the number of additional activities undertaken and the hours of sportspecific training required before attaining expertise, suggesting a functional role for activities other than sport-specific training in the development of expert decision-making.

Futures of automobile industry and challenges on sustainable development and mobility

Portugal had only very few foresight exercises on the automobile sector, and the most recent one was a survey held in a project on work organisation systems in the automobile industry, its recent historical paths and the special strategies of location of companies (the WorTiS project). This involved several teams with different disciplinary backgrounds and from two Portuguese universities. The provisional main results of the first round of a Delphi survey held in Portugal on the automotive sector were already published, but a further analysis was not yet done. This foresight survey was done under the WorTiS project, developed in 2004 by IET – Research Centre on Enterprise and Work Innovation (at FCT-UNL), and financed by the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology. Some of this experience on foresight analysis is also been transferred to other projects, namely the WORKS project on work organisation restructuring in the knowledge society that received the support from EC and still is running. The majority of experts considered having an average of less knowledge in almost all the scenario topics presented. This means that information on the automotive industry is not spread enough among academics or experts in related fields (regional scientists, innovation economists, engineers, sociologists). Some have a good knowledge but in very specialised fields. Others have expertise on foresight, or macroeconomics, or management sciences, but feel insecure on issues related with futures of automobile sector. Nevertheless, we considered specially the topics where the experts considered themselves to have some knowledge. There were no “irrelevant” topics considered as such by the expert panel. There are also no topics that are not considered a need for co-operation. The lack of technological infrastructures was not considered as a hindered factor for the accomplishment of any scenario. The experts’ panel considered no other international competence besides US, Japan or Germany in these topics. Special focus will be made in this paper on the topic 2. Public policy and automobile industries, and more specifically on the technological and/or research policies issues, where one can specify the automobile’s role in transport policies with further implications like environment, safety, energy, mobility.

Business development in Siemens global shared services delivery center Portugal

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Monaghan General Hospital - Proposals for further and future development

Monaghan General Hospital – Proposals for further and future development The Independent Review Panel recommended a review of the existing protocol for emergency obstetric cases presenting at Hospitals such as Monaghan which have no on-site obstetric expertise, and the implementation of a revised protocol. They also recommended that each maternity incident should be reviewed by a multidisciplinary team from the Cavan Monaghan Group. Click here to download PDF 49kb Appendix PDF 2.5mb

Interét et limites de l'evaluation du risque de récidive d'actes illégaux dans les expertises psychiatriques [Benefits and limitation of the assessment of second offense risk in psychiatric expertise].

The legislatives evolutions imply an important recourse to the psychiatric expertise in order to evaluate the potential dangerousness of a subject. However, in spite of the development of techniques and tools for this evaluation, the dangerousness assessment of a subject is in practice extremely complex and discussed in the scientific literature. The evolution of the concept of dangerousness to the risk assessment involved a technicisation of this evaluation which should not make forget the limits of these tools and the need for restoring the subject, the meaning and the clinic in this evaluation.

Molecular imaging in the development of a novel treatment paradigm for glioblastoma (GBM): an integrated multidisciplinary commentary.

Current therapeutic strategies against glioblastoma (GBM) have failed to prevent disease progression and recurrence effectively. The part played by molecular imaging (MI) in the development of novel therapies has gained increasing traction in recent years. For the first time, using expertise from an integrated multidisciplinary group of authors, herein we present a comprehensive evaluation of state-of-the-art GBM imaging and explore how advances facilitate the emergence of new treatment options. We propose a novel next-generation treatment paradigm based on the targeting of multiple hallmarks of cancer evolution that will heavily rely on MI.

Improving the effectiveness of supply chain development work – an expert role perspective

This study focuses to the intersection of three sets of activities in a company: expert work, development work and supply chain management, SCM. Experts and expert work represent a set of individuals whose efficiency and impact this study is intended to improve, while development work defines the set of organizational activities to focus on. SCM as an expertise area acts as the platform on which this study is built. The study has two aims. Firstly, it aims to derive a model helping an SCM expert to increase the effectiveness of expert work in development tasks by understanding the encountered organizational situations and processes better, reflecting his/her past and future actions to organizational processes and selecting and adjusting the processes and contents of his/her work accordingly. Secondly, it aims to develop applicable approaches and methods to understand, evaluate and manage the organizational processes and situations in development work. The integrative model on approaches and methods to improve the effectiveness of development processes is split to two aggregate dimensions: technical performance of the developed solution and consumption of resources of the development process. Six potential approaches and methods aiming at helping in the management of organizational dimensions are presented in enclosed publications. The approaches focus on three subtasks of development work: decision making, implementation and change, and knowledge accumulation. The approaches and methods have been tested in case studies representing typical development processes in the area of supply chain management. As a result, four suggestions are presented. Firstly, SCM experts are advised to consider the SCM development work to be consisting of development processes. Secondly, inside these processes they should identify and evaluate the risk of difficult decision-making related to organizational factors. Thirdly, they are prompted for an active role in implementation and change, supporting the implementation through whole process. Finally, the development should be seen in a holistic view, taking into account the stage of knowledge and organizational issues related to it, and adopt a knowledge development strategy.

Integrating environmental aspects into product development process

Various regulations and customer requirements have made it necessary for Vacon Oyj to pay more attention to the environmental aspects in its processes. The main purpose of this master’s thesis project is to define how environmental aspects could be integrated into Vacon’s product development process. The aim is to find out the most important environmental aspects for the company to address, to examine how these could be taken into account during the development process and to map the critical factors that need consideration in order to ensure the successful integration of environmental aspects into the design process. Based on the customer requirements and evolving regulations the most important aspects for Vacon include minimizing the amount of harmful substances, improving the recyclability and energy efficiency of the product and moreover providing meaningful information related to these aspects. To tackle these issues, a new DfE process was developed, tasks in each phase were described and responsibilities were indicated. To ensure the success of the DfE process, management commitment, support of other processes and significant improvements in ways the information is managed are required. The developers should be provided with training and support. Environmental expertise and knowledge in-house should be developed and establishing meaningful environmental indicators is suggested.

Skill Development in Music Reading. The Eye-Movement Approach

This dissertation examined skill development in music reading by focusing on the visual processing of music notation in different music-reading tasks. Each of the three experiments of this dissertation addressed one of the three types of music reading: (i) sight-reading, i.e. reading and performing completely unknown music, (ii) rehearsed reading, during which the performer is already familiar with the music being played, and (iii) silent reading with no performance requirements. The use of the eye-tracking methodology allowed the recording of the readers’ eye movements from the time of music reading with extreme precision. Due to the lack of coherence in the smallish amount of prior studies on eye movements in music reading, the dissertation also had a heavy methodological emphasis. The present dissertation thus aimed to promote two major issues: (1) it investigated the eye-movement indicators of skill and skill development in sight-reading, rehearsed reading and silent reading, and (2) developed and tested suitable methods that can be used by future studies on the topic. Experiment I focused on the eye-movement behaviour of adults during their first steps of learning to read music notation. The longitudinal experiment spanned a nine-month long music-training period, during which 49 participants (university students taking part in a compulsory music course) sight-read and performed a series of simple melodies in three measurement sessions. Participants with no musical background were entitled as “novices”, whereas “amateurs” had had musical training prior to the experiment. The main issue of interest was the changes in the novices’ eye movements and performances across the measurements while the amateurs offered a point of reference for the assessment of the novices’ development. The experiment showed that the novices tended to sight-read in a more stepwise fashion than the amateurs, the latter group manifesting more back-and-forth eye movements. The novices’ skill development was reflected by the faster identification of note symbols involved in larger melodic intervals. Across the measurements, the novices also began to show sensitivity to the melodies’ metrical structure, which the amateurs demonstrated from the very beginning. The stimulus melodies consisted of quarter notes, making the effects of meter and larger melodic intervals distinguishable from effects caused by, say, different rhythmic patterns. Experiment II explored the eye movements of 40 experienced musicians (music education students and music performance students) during temporally controlled rehearsed reading. This cross-sectional experiment focused on the eye-movement effects of one-bar-long melodic alterations placed within a familiar melody. The synchronizing of the performance and eye-movement recordings enabled the investigation of the eye-hand span, i.e., the temporal gap between a performed note and the point of gaze. The eye-hand span was typically found to remain around one second. Music performance students demonstrated increased professing efficiency by their shorter average fixation durations as well as in the two examined eye-hand span measures: these participants used larger eye-hand spans more frequently and inspected more of the musical score during the performance of one metrical beat than students of music education. Although all participants produced performances almost indistinguishable in terms of their auditory characteristics, the altered bars indeed affected the reading of the score: the general effects of expertise in terms of the two eye- hand span measures, demonstrated by the music performance students, disappeared in the face of the melodic alterations. Experiment III was a longitudinal experiment designed to examine the differences between adult novice and amateur musicians’ silent reading of music notation, as well as the changes the 49 participants manifested during a nine-month long music course. From a methodological perspective, an opening to research on eye movements in music reading was the inclusion of a verbal protocol in the research design: after viewing the musical image, the readers were asked to describe what they had seen. A two-way categorization for verbal descriptions was developed in order to assess the quality of extracted musical information. More extensive musical background was related to shorter average fixation duration, more linear scanning of the musical image, and more sophisticated verbal descriptions of the music in question. No apparent effects of skill development were observed for the novice music readers alone, but all participants improved their verbal descriptions towards the last measurement. Apart from the background-related differences between groups of participants, combining verbal and eye-movement data in a cluster analysis identified three styles of silent reading. The finding demonstrated individual differences in how the freely defined silent-reading task was approached. This dissertation is among the first presentations of a series of experiments systematically addressing the visual processing of music notation in various types of music-reading tasks and focusing especially on the eye-movement indicators of developing music-reading skill. Overall, the experiments demonstrate that the music-reading processes are affected not only by “top-down” factors, such as musical background, but also by the “bottom-up” effects of specific features of music notation, such as pitch heights, metrical division, rhythmic patterns and unexpected melodic events. From a methodological perspective, the experiments emphasize the importance of systematic stimulus design, temporal control during performance tasks, and the development of complementary methods, for easing the interpretation of the eye-movement data. To conclude, this dissertation suggests that advances in comprehending the cognitive aspects of music reading, the nature of expertise in this musical task, and the development of educational tools can be attained through the systematic application of the eye-tracking methodology also in this specific domain.