Neuromechanical Property Identification in Spastic Muscles: Perspectives for Instrumented Assessment, Modeling and Intervention Evaluation

2021 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlheinz Sonntag

Zusammenfassung. Führungskräfte und Mitarbeiter müssen kontinuierliche Anpassungsleistungen in immer kürzeren Zyklen erbringen, individuelle und kollektive Wissensbestände verändern sich, nicht automatisierbare Aufgaben werden komplexer und deren Bewältigung kognitiv anspruchsvoller. Diese Entwicklungen erfordern ein Ressourcenmanagement, das auf ständige Weiterentwicklung der beruflichen Handlungskompetenz ausgerichtet ist. Die Förderung und Entwicklung kompetenter Organisationsmitglieder mit dem Ziel der Wissensvermittlung, Verhaltensmodifikation und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung geschieht auf individueller, gruppenbezogener und organisationaler Ebene in vielfältiger Art und Weise und ist äußerst facettenreich. Eine zukunftsorientierte und wirksame Personalentwicklung ist ohne psychologisches Grundlagen- und Methodenwissen nicht mehr durchführbar. Der Beitrag leistet eine aktuelle Bestandsaufnahme deutscher und angloamerikanischer psychologischer Forschungsarbeiten zur Personalentwicklung. Die State of the Art-Analyse und Diskussion folgt dabei einem Phasenmodell, aufgeteilt nach Analyse, Intervention, Evaluation und Transfer.


Methodology ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merton S. Krause

There is another important artifactual contributor to the apparent improvement of persons subjected to an experimental intervention which may be mistaken for regression toward the mean. This is the phenomenon of random error and extreme selection, which does not at all involve the population regression of posttest on pretest scores but involves a quite different and independent reversion of subjects’ scores toward the population mean. These two independent threats to the internal validity of intervention evaluation studies, however, can be detected and differentiated on the sample data of such studies.


Author(s):  
Tiago NUNES ◽  
Miguel COUTINHO

After almost a century of several attempts to establish a coherent land registration system across the whole country, in 2017 the Portuguese government decided to try a new, digital native approach to the problem. Thus, a web-based platform was created, where property owners from 10 pilot municipalities could manually identify their lands’ properties using a map based on satellite images. After the first month of submissions, it became clear that at the current daily rate, it would take years to achieve the goal of 100% rural property identification across just the 10 municipalities. Field research during the first month after launch enabled us to understand landowners’ relationships with their land, map their struggles with the platform, and prototype ways to improve the whole service. Understanding that these improvements would still not be enough to get to the necessary daily rate, we designed, tested and validated an algorithm that allows us to identify a rural property shape and location without coordinates. Today, we are able to help both Government and landowners identify a rural property location with the click of a button.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (12) ◽  
pp. 942-947
Author(s):  
Pol Mac Aonghusa ◽  
Susan Michie

Abstract Background Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the process of scientific research. AI, coupled with availability of large datasets and increasing computational power, is accelerating progress in areas such as genetics, climate change and astronomy [NeurIPS 2019 Workshop Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning, Vancouver, Canada; Hausen R, Robertson BE. Morpheus: A deep learning framework for the pixel-level analysis of astronomical image data. Astrophys J Suppl Ser. 2020;248:20; Dias R, Torkamani A. AI in clinical and genomic diagnostics. Genome Med. 2019;11:70.]. The application of AI in behavioral science is still in its infancy and realizing the promise of AI requires adapting current practices. Purposes By using AI to synthesize and interpret behavior change intervention evaluation report findings at a scale beyond human capability, the HBCP seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of research activities. We explore challenges facing AI adoption in behavioral science through the lens of lessons learned during the Human Behaviour-Change Project (HBCP). Methods The project used an iterative cycle of development and testing of AI algorithms. Using a corpus of published research reports of randomized controlled trials of behavioral interventions, behavioral science experts annotated occurrences of interventions and outcomes. AI algorithms were trained to recognize natural language patterns associated with interventions and outcomes from the expert human annotations. Once trained, the AI algorithms were used to predict outcomes for interventions that were checked by behavioral scientists. Results Intervention reports contain many items of information needing to be extracted and these are expressed in hugely variable and idiosyncratic language used in research reports to convey information makes developing algorithms to extract all the information with near perfect accuracy impractical. However, statistical matching algorithms combined with advanced machine learning approaches created reasonably accurate outcome predictions from incomplete data. Conclusions AI holds promise for achieving the goal of predicting outcomes of behavior change interventions, based on information that is automatically extracted from intervention evaluation reports. This information can be used to train knowledge systems using machine learning and reasoning algorithms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feifei Zhang ◽  
Yuncai Ran ◽  
Ming Zhu ◽  
Xiaowen Lei ◽  
Junxia Niu ◽  
...  

Background and Purpose: 3D pointwise encoding time reduction magnetic resonance angiography (PETRA-MRA) is a promising non-contrast magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) technique for intracranial stenosis assessment but it has not been adequately validated against digital subtraction angiography (DSA) relative to 3D-time-of-flight (3D-TOF) MRA. The aim of this study was to compare PETRA-MRA and 3D-TOF-MRA using DSA as the reference standard for intracranial stenosis assessment before and after angioplasty and stenting in patients with middle cerebral artery (MCA) stenosis.Materials and Methods: Sixty-two patients with MCA stenosis (age 53 ± 12 years, 43 males) underwent MRA and DSA within a week for pre-intervention evaluation and 32 of them had intracranial angioplasty and stenting performed. The MRAs' image quality, flow visualization within the stents, and susceptibility artifact were graded on a 1–4 scale (1 = poor, 4 = excellent) independently by three radiologists. The degree of stenosis was measured by two radiologists independently on DSA and MRAs.Results: There was an excellent inter-observer agreement for stenosis assessment on PETRA-MRA, 3D-TOF-MRA, and DSA (ICCs > 0.90). For pre-intervention evaluation, PETRA-MRA had better image quality than 3D-TOF-MRA (3.87 ± 0.34 vs. 3.38 ± 0.65, P < 0.001), and PETRA-MRA had better agreement with DSA for stenosis measurements compared to 3D-TOF-MRA (r = 0.96 vs. r = 0.85). For post-intervention evaluation, PETRA-MRA had better image quality than 3D-TOF-MRA for in-stent flow visualization and susceptibility artifacts (3.34 ± 0.60 vs. 1.50 ± 0.76, P < 0.001; 3.31 ± 0.64 vs. 1.41 ± 0.61, P < 0.001, respectively), and better agreement with DSA for stenosis measurements than 3D-TOF-MRA (r = 0.90 vs. r = 0.26). 3D-TOF-MRA significantly overestimated the stenosis post-stenting compared to DSA (84.9 ± 19.7 vs. 39.3 ± 13.6%, p < 0.001) while PETRA-MRA didn't (40.6 ± 13.7 vs. 39.3 ± 13.6%, p = 0.18).Conclusions: PETRA-MRA is accurate and reproducible for quantifying MCA stenosis both pre- and post-stenting compared with DSA and performs better than 3D-TOF-MRA.


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