33249562
The Transfusion Medicine Tutor: Using Expert Systems Technology to Teach Domain-Specific Problem-Solving Skills
This study provides data regarding the effectiveness of the expert system-based Transfusion Medicine Tutor (TMT) when used by medical technology students to learn an important problem-solving task, the identification of alloantibodies in a patient's blood for the purpose of finding compatible blood for transfusion. The results show that the students who were taught by an instructor using TMT to provide the instructional environment went from 0% correct on a pre-test case to 87%–93% correct on post-tests (N=15). This compares with an improvement rate of 20% by a control group (N=15) who used a passive version of the system with the tutoring functions turned off. The results also demonstrate the importance of relying on objective performance data rather than questionnaire data to evaluate systems, as there was no difference in the subjective responses of the students to these two different versions of the system.
38655618
EP-X: A Knowledge-Based System to Aid in Searches of the Environmental Pollution Literature
59784824
A cognitive systems engineering approach to the design of decision support systems
38064374
A Catalog of Errors
Abstract This paper reviews various errors that have been described by comparing human behavior to the norms of probability, causal connection and logical deduction. For each error we review evidence on whether the error has been demonstrated to occur. For many errors, the occurrence of a bias has not been demonstrated; for other, a bias does occur, but arguments can be made that the bias is not always an error. Based on the conclusions of this review, we caution researchers and practitioners in referring to well known biases and errors.
14822422
Knowledge-based search tactics for an intelligent intermediary system
Research on the nature of knowledge-based systems for bibliographic information retrieval is summarized. Knowledge-based search tactics are then considered in terms of their role in the functioning of a semantically based search system for bibliographic information retrieval, EP-X. This system uses such tactics to actively assist users in defining or refining their topics of interest. It does so by applying these tactics to a knowledge base describing topics in a particular domain and to a database describing the contents of individual documents in terms of these topics. This paper, then, focuses on the two central concepts behind EP-X: semantically based search and knowledge-based search tactics.
7962345
Online Library Catalog Systems: An Analysis of User Errors
Abstract A study of 30 first-time users of LCS, the online library catalog system at the Ohio State University, was conducted. Subjects were provided with the online and offline help available to users of this system and were asked to conduct four standard searches (author, title, subject, etc.). While conducting the online searches, the subjects were asked to “think aloud”. A detailed analysis of errors and associated verbal protocols provided insights into the design features and mental processes contributing to the commission of errors. Of particular significance are: (1) the profound influence that incorrect mental representations have on the viewing and interpretation of online and offline help and instructions; and (2) the snowballing effects of a misconception as a user tries to seek and interpret additional information in attempts to recover from an error.
209401863
ELSA: An Electronic Library Search Assistant (Demo).
1517725
Virtual Smoke: an interactive 3D flow visualization technique
A technique is given for computer visualization of simultaneous three-dimensional vector and scalar fields such as velocity and temperature in reacting fluid flow fields. The technique, which is called Virtual Smoke, simulates the use of colored smoke for experimental gaseous fluid flow visualization. However, it is noninvasive and can animate, in particular, the dynamic behaviors of steady-state or instantaneous flow fields obtained from numerical simulations. Virtual Smoke is based on volume seeds and volume seedlings, which are direct volume visualization methods previously developed for highly interactive scalar volume data exploration. Data from combustion simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of Virtual Smoke.<<ETX>>
27065306
ELSA (abstract): an electronic library search assistant
interface for the Gratefid Med system. Because about 30% of all Grateful Med searches result in no hits, our contract from the National Library of Medicine was focused on query formulation and intermediate results. In the first phase of the project, we designed guidelines and prototype smens for the existing character-based system. Inthe second phase presented he~, we designed guidelines and prototypes for a GUI. The prototype anchors the user on a query form screen to avoid disorientation provides systematic and consistent feedback for seamh progress, and provides simple suggestions for the special cases of no hits and too many hits. The prototype was mocked up using HyperCard and illustrates what we believe is an impmved component for Grateful Med without assuming Internet access speeds or high-performance workstations. Suggestions for interfaces that am less-constrained by
117003092
VISUALIZING TURBULENT MIXING OF GASES AND PARTICLES
A physical model and interactive computer graphics techniques have been developed for the visualization of the basic physical process of stochastic dispersion and mixing from steady-state CFD calculations. The mixing of massless particles and inertial particles is visualized by transforming the vector field from a traditionally Eulerian reference frame into a Lagrangian reference frame. Groups of particles are traced through the vector field for the mean path as well as their statistical dispersion about the mean position by using added scalar information about the root mean square value of the vector field and its Lagrangian time scale. In this way, clouds of particles in a turbulent environment are traced, not just mean paths. In combustion simulations of many industrial processes, good mixing is required to achieve a sufficient degree of combustion efficiency. The ability to visualize this multiphase mixing can not only help identify poor mixing but also explain the mechanism for poor mixing. The information gained from the visualization can be used to improve the overall combustion efficiency in utility boilers or propulsion devices. We have used this technique to visualize steady-state simulations of the combustion performance in several furnace designs.
16502051
Parallelization and integration of fire simulations in the Uintah PSE
A physics-based stand-alone serial code for fire simulations is integrated in a unified computational framework to couple with other disciplines and to achieve massively parallel computation. Uintah, the computational framework used, is a component-based visual problem-solving environment developed at the University of Utah. It provides the framework for large-scale parallelization for different applications. The integration of the legacy fire code in Uintah is built on three principles: I) Develop different reusable physics-based components that can be used interchangeably and interact with other components, 2) reuse the legacy stand-alone fire code (written in Fortran) as much as possible, and 3) use components developed by third parties, specifically non-linear and linear solvers designed for solving complex-flow problems. A helium buoyant plume is simulated using the Nirvana machine at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Linear scalability is achieved up to 128 processors. Issues related to scaling beyond 128 processors are also discussed.