Development of a knowledge-based system for cogeneration plant design: Verification, validation and lessons learned

This paper presents the development of a knowledge-based system (KBS) prototype able to design natural gas cogeneration plants, demonstrating new features for this field. The design of such power plants represents a synthesis problem, subject to thermodynamic constraints that include the location and sizing of components. The project was developed in partnership with the major Brazilian gas and oil company, and involved interaction with an external consultant as well as an interdisciplinary team. The paper focuses on validation and lessons learned, concentrating on important aspects such as the generation of alternative configuration schemes, breadth of each scheme description created by the system, and its module to support economic feasibility analysis. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Typical 3-D localization of tumor remnants of WHO grade II hemispheric gliomas--lessons learned from the use of intraoperative high-field MRI control

Complete resection of grade II gliomas might prolong survival but is not always possible. The goal of the study was to evaluate the location of unexpected grade II gliomas remnants after assumed complete removal with intraoperative (iop) MRI and to assess the reason for their non-detection.

Pathways to vicimization. Lessons learned from research in kindergarten

During the last decade interest in bully/victim problems has grown tremendously and still, studies addressing this issue in the years preceding elementary school areextremely rare. Despite obvious methodological challenges, the study of bullying and victimization in settings such as kindergarten opens up unique opportunities to understand early processes in the pathways to victimization, and to investigate different social and individual risk factors and their interactions in the very beginnings of bullying patterns. In this presentation, key findings that shed light on early vulnerability factors for victimization and factors that may maintain bullying patterns will be addressed. First, results from our and others’ studies in kindergarten are generally consistent with results in school. Second, our studies show that patterns of reactions when children witness victimization are already present in kindergarten settings. Third, all findings confirm that bully-victims must be regarded as being distinct from passive victims and other aggressive children (i.e. bullies) already at kindergarten age. Our studies indicate that bully-victims have significantly more problems associated with ADHD or with a lack of behavioral regulation than all their peers and that they clearly differ from bullies in terms of the type of aggression they display. Furthermore, our longitudinal data show different pathways to victimization for victims and bully-victims. This knowledge of early risk factors and pathways mustbe taken into consideration in future research and may contribute to the improvement of prevention programs.

Lessons Learned from 'Hall of Socialism': Juxtaposing Finnish-American Radicalism with Today's Protest Movements

Historical accounts of revolutionary movements oftentimes occlude the pleasures of countering hegemony or criticize the “frivolity” of what is perceived to be non-political activities. However, turn of the century Finnish-American socialist theater clubs and early twentieth century Finnish-American communist halls and their uncounted social groups and activities prove to be a rich resource in reconsidering the importance of acknowledging and understanding the role that pleasure has played and should play in political protest. Finnish-American radical activities, especially those condemned already at the time as hall socialism, are important historical precedents to today’s alter-globalization student festivals and protest concerts, midnight raves

Tracking Montana’s Groundwater: 20 Years of Lessons Learned

Long-term water-level measurements provide a fundamental indicator of the health of Montana's groundwater resources. For more than 20 years the Groundwater Assessment Program has monitored groundwater levels across the state. This lecture reviews the State's groundwater use and shows how climate variability, groundwater development, and land-use has impacted different aquifers.

Initializing a National Grid Infrastructure: Lessons Learned from the Swiss National Grid Association Seed Project

In addition to multi-national Grid infrastructures, several countries operate their own national Grid infrastructures to support science and industry within national borders. These infrastructures have the benefit of better satisfying the needs of local, regional and national user communities. Although Switzerland has strong research groups in several fields of distributed computing, only recently a national Grid effort was kick-started to integrate a truly heterogeneous set of resource providers, middleware pools, and users. In the following. article we discuss our efforts to start Grid activities at a national scale to combine several scientific communities and geographical domains. We make a strong case for the need of standards that have to be built on top of existing software systems in order to provide support for a heterogeneous Grid infrastruc

Lessons learned from the International Renal Cell Carcinoma-Venous Thrombus Consortium (IRCC-VTC)

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) extension into the renal vein or the inferior vena cava occurs in 4%-10% of all kidney cancer cases. This entity shows a wide range of different clinical and surgical scenarios, making natural history and oncological outcomes variable and poorly characterized. Infrequency and variability make it necessary to share the experience from different institutions to properly analyze surgical outcomes in this setting. The International Renal Cell Carcinoma-Venous Tumor Thrombus Consortium was created to answer the questions generated by competing results from different retrospective studies in RCC with venous extension on current controversial topics. The aim of this article is to summarize the experience gained from the analysis of the world's largest cohort of patients in this unique setting to date.

„Lessons learned“ in der Revision von schriftlichen Prüfungs-Fragen

Fragestellung/Einleitung: Bisher existieren kaum Daten für den deutschsprachigen Raum, welche Fehler häufig bei der Erstellung von schriftlichen Prüfungsfragen gemacht werden. Diese Erkenntnisse könnten hilfreich sein, um Autoren in Schulungsworkshops mit dem Fokus auf die häufigsten Fehler zu schulen. Im vorliegenden Projekt wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Fehler am häufigsten bei der Erstellung von schriftlichen Prüfungsfragen gemacht werden, und welche Schlussfolgerungen daraus für Autorenschulungen gezogen werden können. Methoden: Am Institut für Medizinische Lehre Bern werden die mit der inhaltlichen und/oder formalen Fragenrevision befassten MitarbeiterInnen (N=14) anhand von semi-strukturierten Interviews befragt, mit welcher Art von Mängeln sie bei den Fragen der von ihnen betreuten schriftlichen Prüfungen am häufigsten umgehen. Weiter wird erhoben, wie dem Revisionsbedarf aus ihrer Sicht in Schulungen am besten begegnet werden kann. Ergebnisse: Die vorläufigen Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass in folgenden Bereichen am häufigsten Revisionsbedarf besteht: eindeutiger Focus auf ein konkretes Lernziel authentische und relevante Vignette für den Ausbildungsstand angemessener Schwierigkeitsgrad eindeutige Lösung formale und sprachliche Korrektheit Dementsprechend sollte auf diese Themenbereiche ein besonderer Schwerpunkt bei Schulungen gelegt werden. Diskussion/Schlussfolgerung: Die vorläufigen Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass Mängel von schriftlichen Prüfungsfragen häufig in den Bereichen Focus, Vignette, Schwierigkeitsgrad, Eindeutigkeit und formal-sprachlichen Aspekten liegen. Autorenschulungen sollten diese Aspekte in den Vordergrund stellen. Unsere zum Zeitpunkt der GMA-Tagung vorliegenden definitiven Ergebnisse können dazu beitragen, Workshops zur Fragenerstellung noch besser am Schulungsbedarf auszurichten.