Improving the performance of knowledge and information systems

Dick Kuiper, a rural sociologist, is a research associate with the Department of Extension Science, Wageningen, Agricultural University, Hollandseweg, 6706 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands. He is involved in research on agricultural knowledge and information systems.     

美国CS考试中SP对完善我国医师资格实践技能考试的启示

当前,标准化病人（SP）在国内数十所医学高等院校和医疗机构得到了较为成熟的研究和开发,但在医师执业资格实践技能（CS）考试方面的运用和研究尚未起步,本文在比较中美医考实践技能考试特点的基础上,肯定美国医师执业资格考试（USMLE）运用SP在医学人文性和公平性等方面所彰显的独特优势,并指出我国现行的医师资格实践技能考试存在的不足,结合相关文献和笔者在国家医学考试中心工作和学习经历,借鉴美国CS考试中SP的经验,提出完善对我国医师医学人文素养考查的方式方法和提高考查方式的灵活性、渗透性等建议.     

Licensing Parents Revisited

Although systems for licensing professionals are far from perfect, and their problems and costs should not be ignored, they are justified as a necessary means of protecting innocent people's vital interests. Licensing defends patients from inept doctors, pharmacists, and physical therapists; it protects clients from unqualified lawyers. We should protect people who are highly vulnerable to those who are supposed to serve them, those with whom they have a special relationship. Requiring professionals to be licensed is the most plausible way of doing that. Given the overwhelming support for the licensing of these professionals, I find it odd that so many people categorically reject proposals to license parents. Although the relationship between a parent and her children is different in some respects, it is also relevantly similar to that between a professional and those she serves. To defend these claims, I show how and why the rationale for licensing parents parallels the rational for licensing professionals. I then ask whether such a program could be justifiably implemented. Finally, I describe and reject what I see as the flawed view of the relationship between parents and their children.     

The noosphere vision of pierre teilhard de chardin and Vladimir I. Vernadsky in the perspective of information and of world‐wide communication 1

The noosphere vision of the two great natural scientists and thinkers Teilhard de Chardin and V. 1. Vernadsky is presented critically. Their basic ideas are discussed from the viewpoint of present‐day insights in natural science and of the world‐wide information and communication technology. To date very little has become known about their mutual influence on each other. It is advocated that the development of a noosphere can be supported by the networking and globalization of information and communication techniques. The noosphere is a sphere of human mind and of work, but it must not be identified with the modern technological trend that is changing all sectors of our life. A reference is made to Teilhard de Chardin's warnings against individualism, nationalism and racism, as well as fascism and Stalinism as seductive erroneous developments. The fundamentally teleological vision of T. de Chardin is contrasted in this paper with the idea of creativity in nature and in man. Delimiting conditions, such as structure, information, and at the level of society, the free will of man who has become aware of himself—humanistic values, are considered. All of them operate to limit the number of possibilities for development that are derived from the creativity of nature and man. Thus, new possibilities for development emerge at a higher level. The utilization of technology must be really oriented to human beings among human beings. Only with a strong internal determination of the social processes by understanding the genuine existence of man as man will it be possible to master the ambivalence of the technological effects and to come closer towards a society with deepened human information and communication.

Klaus Fuchs‐Kittowski, born in 1934, is Professor of Informationprocessing. He was head of the Division of Systems Design and Automated Information Processing at the Department of Theory and Organization of Science of Humboldt University Berlin. He was associated with the research at the International Institute for Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. At present he works as Visiting Professor at the Department of Informatics of the University of Hamburg, and at the Beriin College of Technology and Economics he has a teaching assignment in Economy Informatics. He is also an associated member of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A.

Peter Krüger, born in 1934, Dr. rer nat, Dipl. Mineraloge worked at the Bergakademie Freiberg/Sachsen from 1958 to 1961 and from 1961 to 1985 in the Central Geological Institute Berlin. From 1985 to 1992 he worked as historian of science at the Division of History of Science at the Department of Theory and Organization of Science of Humboldt University Berlin. His special fields are history of geology, Russian‐German scientific connections in the 19th and 20th century and unpublished studies of Marx about geology, mineralogy and agrochemistry.     

Confidentiality and Mental Health/Chaplaincy Collaboration

Confidentiality can both facilitate and inhibit working relationships of chaplains and mental health professionals addressing the needs of service members and veterans in the United States. Researchers conducted this study to examine opportunities for improving integration of care within the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Interviews were conducted with 198 chaplains and 201 mental health professionals in 33 DoD and VA facilities. Using a blended qualitative research approach, researchers identified several themes from the interviews, including recognition that integration can improve services; chaplaincy confidentiality can facilitate help seeking behavior; and mental health and chaplain confidentiality can inhibit information sharing and active participation on interdisciplinary teams. Cross-disciplinary training on confidentiality requirements and developing policies for sharing information across disciplines is recommended to address barriers to integrated service delivery.     

Needed: Standards for Occupational Licensing

Occupational licensing in the states constitutes a growing public problem from the legislator's point of view. No standards exist to permit sound judgments on specific proposals, and the operation of licensing acts tends to be in the hands of the occupation itself, operating with the sanction of the state. No groups exist to act as counter-lobbyists or disinterested public representatives to protect the public interest. Licensing sometimes closes off employment opportunities to young people entering the employment market. Standards for occupational licensing and the administration of licensing acts must be developed. Those involved in guidance and personnel work could perform a valuable public service by taking an interest in occupational licensing both from the theoretical standpoint and by actively providing advice to legislatures considering occupational licensing proposals.     

Trusting in others’ biases: Fostering guarded trust in collaborative filtering and recommender systems

Collaborative filtering is being used within organizations and in community contexts for knowledge management and decision support as well as the facilitation of interactions among individuals. This article analyzes rhetorical and technical efforts to establish trust in the constructions of individual opinions, reputations, and tastes provided by these systems. These initiatives have some important parallels with early efforts to support quantitative opinion polling and construct the notion of “public opinion.” The article explores specific ways to increase trust in these systems, albeit a “guarded trust” in which individuals actively seek information about system foibles and analyze the reputations of participants. She received her MBA, MA, MS, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She taught computer information systems and public policy at Baruch College of the City University of New York and also taught in the School of Business and the Computer Sciences Department at UW-Madison. In the 1990s, she served as the chair of the Privacy Council of the State of Wisconsin, the nation’s first state-level council dealing with information technology and privacy issues. She has written several books (including Virtual Individuals, Virtual Groups: Human Dimensions of Groupware and Computer Networking, Cambridge University Press and Home as Information Space: Electronic Commerce and the Domestication of Computer Networking, forthcoming). She has worked for public television and developed software along with her academic ventures.     

The Self‐Directed Violence Classification System and the Columbia Classification Algorithm for Suicide Assessment: A Crosswalk

The lack of a standardized nomenclature for suicide‐related thoughts and behaviors prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the Veterans Integrated Service Network 19 Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center, to create the Self‐Directed Violence Classification System (SDVCS). SDVCS has been adopted by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. Another classification system, the Columbia Classification Algorithm for Suicide Assessment, has been recommended by the Food and Drug Administration. To facilitate the use of both systems, this article provides a “crosswalk” between the two classification systems.     

The political economy of information exchange politics and property rights in the development and use of interorganizational information systems

Interorganizational information systems are information systems that cross organizational boundaries. Information managers and system developers often assume that the more integrated these information systems are, the more successful the system will be. Such an assumption is indeed intuitively appealing, and, from a technological standpoint, readily understandable. In practice, development and use of integrated information systems that cross organizational boundaries often result in confusing power struggles, politicking, and sometimes manifest sabotage. Based on economic and political organization theory, this article concludes that data ownership and incentives, rather than integration, are of vital importance for the success of interorganizational information systems. He has studied Public Administration and Policy Science (Twente University, the Netherlands) and received his Ph. D. in Management and Organization Science in 1999 (Groningen University, the Netherlands). His research interests include information management and interorganizational relations, especially in the public sector.     

Why open content matters

Knowledge must forever govern ignorance, and a people who would be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. Popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy—or perhaps both.—James Madison, 1815 Bryan Pfaffenberger teaches in the Department of Technology, Culture, and Communication at the University of Virginia where he specializes in cyberlaw, intellectual property and other social aspects of information technology. He is also the author of several trade and reference titles, including Webster’s New World Dictionary of Computer Terms, 9th ed. (Hungry Minds) and Computers in Your Future, 4th ed. (Prentice-Hall). He may be reached at bp@virignia.edu or via the web at: 〈www.people.virginia.edu/~bp〉.     

A Structural Approach to the Understanding of Causes, Effects, and Judgment. Review of Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, by Judea Pearl

Judea Pearl is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Statistics and Director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at University of California, Los Angeles. He has authored the books Heuristics (1984) and Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems (1988). He has also published close to 300 articles on automated reasoning, learning, and inference. In 1999, he was awarded the IJCAI Research Excellence Award in Artificial Intelligence fundamental work in heuristic search, reasoning under uncertainty, and causality.Susan F. Butler is a doctoral student at Tufts University. Her work is in modeling of judgment and decision making, stochastic processes, and the examination of choice behavior under uncertainty.     

Ideology,modernization and politico-economic development in Latin America

The authors state that social and political processes are continuously interrelated and modify each other in a circular fashion. The economic variable seems to be the most independent and strategic one in the complex and circular causal process of contemporary history. Its importance is due to the fact that economic forces have become the means that contribute the most to the attainment of varied social and political goals. holding appointments in the Department of International Relations, Economics, Political Science and Sociology/Anthropology. He is also a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Miami’s Graduate School of International Studies. He has been a Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution and is presently a staff member there. He has published more than thirty books and over one hundred articles.     

Comparing motivations of individual programmers and firms to take part in the open source movement: From community to business

The first urgent question for any scholar willing to study the Open Source (OS) movement has been clearly put by Glass (1999, 104): I don’t know who these crazy people are who want to write, read and even revise all that code without being paid anything for it at all. A growing body of economic literature has been addressing the motivations at the basis of the participation in the OS movement since when the new paradigm has become successful and triggered the entrance on the market of firms offering Open Source based products and services (Open Source firms). However, most of the empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect companies that adopt Open Source business models. This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the incentives of the firms that engage in OS activities. Findings on firms’ motivations are compared His recent research interests are in the economics of science, industrial dynamics in high technology industries, and theory and empirics of diffusion of technologies with network externality. He has authored or edited five books and written 80 papers in international journals and conferences. His studies have been published in several top refereed journals. He is member elected of the Executive Committee of the PRIME (Policies for Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area) Network of Excellence (6^th Framework Programme) and has previously coordinated or contributed actively to several EU research projects (within TACIS-ACE, DG III, DG XII and DG XXII). She got her Ph.D. in economics and management of innovation at Sant’ Anna School in November 2003. At present, she collaborates also with the Department of Electrical Systems and Automation of the University of Pisa. Her research interests deal with the economics of open source software (OSS) and focus on profit-oriented firms that offer open source-based products and services (open source firms). Under a theoretical point of view, she is now investigating the motivations that lead individuals to provide a continuous stream of contributions to collective goods that are immaterial in their nature (e.g., participation in OSS projects, participation in the scientific community). with the results of the surveys on individual programmers aiming at analyzing the role played by different classes of incentives (social, economic and technological) in determining the involvement in the movement of different typologies of agents (Individual vs. organizations).     

Information needs in groundwater protection policy: Agenda-setting for knowledge development

Water policymaking strongly depends on expert knowledge, and yet there is a gap between policy makers and research professionals. This article addresses this issue by presenting a conceptual framework and method for identification of information needs in a particular policymaking context. The framework deduces information needs not only from pertaining laws and regulations, but also from strategic stakeholder behavior that can be anticipated in this context. The outcome is then matched with empirically observed information needs and available knowledge. Framework and method have been applied to the Dutch groundwater protection policy situation, establishing their effectiveness in exploring strategies to stimulate knowledge development to match stakeholder information needs. specializing in water management. He recently graduated on the main subject of policy analysis (MSc in 2001). He did his thesis research project at the Netherlands Institute of Geological Science TNO—National Geological Survey. Educated in the field of computer science at Leiden University (MSc in 1985), his research interests have moved from decision support systems (PhD from Delft University of Technology in 1989) to methods and tools for policy analysis in general. He currently focuses on the development of Dynamic Actor Network Analysis (DANA) and a Modeling Environment for Design Impact Assessment (MEDIA).     

Predecisional information acquisition: Effects of task variables on suboptimal search strategies

Effective overall performance in judgment tasks generally involves both acquisition of information and integration of the information acquired. When information is costly the decision maker must balance acquisition costs against improved decisional accuracy, a complex balancing problem in which, laboratory evidence suggests, humans often do poorly. The three experiments reported here extend this earlier evidence to different task structures, subject pools, incentive systems, information volumes, decision aids, and kind of data sources. Though each of these factors was found to affect performance, the general finding was of persistent underpurchase (buying less information overall than is optimal) and mispurchase (buying poor sources when better sources are available at the same cost), with significant inflation of overall costs. It is proposed that unaided human judgment is unequal to the complexity of the cost/benefit trade-offs involved in acquiring costly information, and that formal decision analysis should be preferred whenever the stakes justify.     

Equity of access: Adaptive technology

In this age of information technology, it is morally imperative that equal access to information via computer systems be afforded to people with disabilities. This paper addresses the problems that computer technology poses for students with disabilities and discusses what is needed to ensure equity of access. particularly in a university environment. A version of this paper was presented at ETHICOMP98, the Fourth International Conference on Ethical Issues of Information Technology. March 25–27, 1998, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. Frances S. Grodzinsky is a Professor of Computer Science and Information Technology. Her area of research is computer ethics.     

How Organizational Hunger May Have Contributed to the American Psychological Association’s Scandal Over the Ethics of Torture

The recent scandal over the American Psychological Association’s (APA) change in ethical policy on torture has been reported by journalists and by a team led by an independent reviewer, a former federal prosecutor. Additional observations have been provided by current and former APA leaders and members at large posting on the APA website. There seems to be a consensus that the APA, through a corruptive subgroup, colluded with the United States Government to change the APA ethical standards to provide cover for the Department of Defense’s “enhanced interrogation” of suspected terrorists. Examining the flawed decision-making process through a group dynamics lens, the author examines the extent to which corruptive motives and manipulative (if not deceptive) practices led to collusion and a policy inconsistent with APA values and mission. He also offers recommendations to other professional organizations as to how to avoid corruptogenic group processes.     

Suicide Risk by Military Occupation in the DoD Active Component Population

Suicide risk based on occupational cohorts within the U.S. military was investigated. Rates of suicide based on military occupational categories were computed for the Department of Defense (DoD) active component population between 2001 and 2010. The combined infantry, gun crews, and seamanship specialist group was at increased risk of suicide compared to the overall military population even when adjusted for gender, age, and deployment history. The results provide useful information that can help inform the DoD's suicide prevention mission. Data limitations and recommended areas for future research are discussed.     

复杂系统的下向因果关系

复杂性科学的发展重新掀起了突现研究的新浪潮,其中关键的问题是探索突现的下向因果关系。在心灵哲学中,许多学者对依随突现、因果突现、模拟突现进行了细致的概念分析,形成了一种将下向因果关系与复杂系统突现结合起来研究的新进路,可称之为复杂系统的下向因果关系研究。