Category Archives: Basic science

by | May 16, 2013

A Case Study of the First Expert System for Scientific Hypothesis Formation

A Study about the First Expert System for Scientific Hypothesis Formation

Abstract:~ The DENDRAL Project was one of the first large-scale programs to embody the strategy of using detailed, task-specific knowledge about a problem domain as a source of heuristics, and to seek generality through automating the acquisition of such knowledge. This paper summarizes the major conceptual contributions and accomplishments of that project. It is an attempt to distill from this research the lessons that are of importance to artificial intelligence research and to provide a record of the final status of two decades of work.

Case Study on Hypothesis Formation

Introduction:~ Within computer science the DENDRAL Project is noteworthy in several ways. It was the first major application of heuristic programming to experimen- tal analysis in an empirical science, a practical problem of some importance. It was one of the first large-scale programs to embody the strategy of using detailed, task-specific knowledge about the problem domain as a source of heuristics, and to seek generality through automating the acquisition of such knowledge. It has achieved a high level of performance, because it used a substantial amount of knowledge of chemistry. Keep reading…

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by | May 15, 2013

Case Study in the Participatory Design of a Collaborative Science-Based Learning Environment

Study for the Participatory Design of a Collaborative Science-Based Learning Environment

Abstract: Educational technology research studies have found computer and software technologies to be underutilized in U.S. classrooms. In general, many teachers have had difficulty integrating computer and software technologies into learning activities and classroom curriculums because specific technologies are ill-suited to their needs, or they lack the ability to make effective use of these technologies. In the development of commercial and business applications, participatory design approaches have been applied to facilitate the direct participation of users in system analysis and design. Among the benefits of participatory design include mutual learning between users and developers, envisionment of software products and their use contexts, empowerment of users in analysis and design, grounding of design in the practices of users, and growth of users as designers and champions of technology.

Case Study on Participatory Design

Executive Summary: Despite the rapid growth and availability of computer and Internet access in K-12 schools, educational studies have found that computer technology has been largely underutilized in the American classroom (Byrom, 1998; Cohen, 1988; Silva and Breuleux, 1994; U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1995; U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1998). This under-utilization of computer technology may be attributed to the lack of teacher involvement in the educational software system development process, and the lack of effective integration strategies for incorporating educational technology into classroom curriculums. Traditionally, teachers have very limited or non-existent roles in educational software system development. In recent years, various design techniques and approaches have emerged to promote the participation of users in system development and to better capture and represent work processes and contexts in the designs of software systems. Among such approaches, participatory design. Keep reading…

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by | May 11, 2013

A Case Study in Cognitive Impairment, Depression, and Severe Hypoglycemia

A Study about Cognitive Impairment, Depression, and Severe Hypoglycemia

Cognitive impairment can present a difficult diagnostic problem for clinicians because it can be symptomatic of many underlying and undetected clinical conditions. Careful diagnosis is crucial because some causes may be progressive and irreversible, whereas other causes may be reversible with medical or psychiatric treatment. Some of the more noteworthy causes are related to medication, alcohol, aging, depression, and, as in this case study, the possible consequences of recurrent severe hypoglycemia related to diabetes.

Case Study on Severe Hypoglycemia

Diabetes, of course, may cause an increase in cognitive decline over the course of time because of vascular risk factors. Some evidence suggests that acute hyperglycemia may have a negative impact on cognitive performance. Depression is the most common of the reversible causes of memory impairment, and people with diabetes are twice as likely to suffer from depression as those without diabetes. Recent evidence suggests that diabetes may create alterations in regions of the brain that are assoc iated with affect regulation and increase the risk for developing a depressive disorder. Fortunately, problematic medications can be modified, and alcohol misuse or depression can be treated. keep reading…

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by | May 11, 2013

A Case Study on Sex Differences in Memory Performance in Response to an Examination Stressor

A Study for Sex Differences in Memory Performance in Response to an Examination Stressor

Abstract: Previous research on emotional arousal and memory performance has demonstrated that acute stressors work to enhance memory consolidation while chronic, or unremitting, stress usually results in a decrease in memory performance. Both of these alterations in memory performance are thought to be mediated by the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine. While the bulk of the research in this area typically involves a male rat model of stress, natural stressors in humans is increasingly commonly used to investigate the potential effects of a stress response on memory performance. However, since males (rats and humans) are most commonly used in stress research, it is currently unclear if there are gender differences in the influence of stress on memory performance. Moreover, the type of stressors used in human research includes both physical stressors (e.g. cold water immersion) and psychological stressors (e.g. public speaking in laboratory environment). Although physical and psychological stress is mediated through unique neurological and endocrine pathways, they are not typically differentiated from each other in the literature.

Case Study on Examination Stressor

In response to a threat, the nervous system has two distinct but overlapping systems to hormonally respond to stress- the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. The ANS can be further divided into two subsections: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). As explained by Kolb and Whishaw (2004), the SNS serves the critical role in response to stress by releasing norepinephine (i.e. noradrenaline) through subcortical activation of the locus coeruleus. On the other hand, the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) is known for supplying the body with prolonged energy supply and targeting the immune system. Keep reading…

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by | May 11, 2013

A Study for The Effects of Stress on Different Stages of Memory

A Study about The Effects of Stress on Different Stages of Memory

Research suggests that memory is influenced by stress and the associated rise of glucocorticoids, such as cortisol. While human studies have generally found a negative effect of stress and elevated cortisol on memory, animal studies have demonstrated a dose-dependent facilitative effect. These discrepant findings may be a result of methodological limitations in the human literature, which often confound the differentstages of memory by elevating cortisol levels prior to encoding, consolidation and retrieval. The purpose of the current study was to parse the effects of an acute psychosocial stressor on these separate memory processes by varying the timing of the stressor. Based on recent evidence, we predicted that stress would enhance encoding and consolidation, but impair retrieval.

Case Study on Effects of Stress

208 college students (63 male, 138 female, mean age = 18.9) were randomly assigned to a no-stress control group (n = 51) or one of three groups stressed at different time points: prior to stimulus presentation (encoding/ consolidation, n = 51), immediately after stimuli presentation (consolidation, n = 56), or just before memory testing 48 hours later (retrieval, n = 50). Salivary cortisol was measured at baseline and 20 minutes after the stressor. Both verbal and visual memory was measured at the 48-hr delay using a film stimulus developed by the investigator and vii with the WMS-III narrative. Results demonstrated that the group stressed prior to consolidation significantly outperformed controls on the film recognition at delay for verbal and total scores. This effect may have been related to cortisol response, as this was the only stress group to exhibit a significant increase in cortisol (40%) following the stressor. keep reading…

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by | May 10, 2013

A Case Study for Department of Quantitative Social Science

A Case Study about Department of Quantitative Social Science

Abstract: The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are two highly respected cross-national studies of pupil achievement. These have been speci cally designed to study how di erent countries’ educational systems are performing against one another, and how this is changing over time. These are, however, politically sensitive issues, where di erent surveys can produce markedly di erent results.

Case Study on Quantitative Social Science

This is shown via a case study for England, where apparent decline in PISA test performance has caused policymakers much concern. Results suggest that England’s drop in the PISA international ranking is not replicated in TIMSS, and that this contrast may well be due to data limitations in both surveys. keep reading…

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by | May 9, 2013

A Study on International Programme on Chemical Safety

A Study about International Programmed on Chemical Safety

Executive Summary: The goals of chemical safety programs encompass the prevention, assessment, and management of both short-term and long-term adverse effects to humans and the environment resulting from the production, use, transport and disposal of chemicals. The tools used internationally to assess and manage the risks of chemicals on human health have generally eveloped independently from the tools used to assess risks to the environment for practical and historical reasons.

Case Study on Chemical Safety

However, with increased recognition of the need to protect both humans and the environment more effectively, an integrated approach to risk assessment that addresses situations of multichemical, multimedia, multiroute, and multispecies exposures holistically is needed. Keep reading…

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by | May 7, 2013

A Study report on Key Influence on Nursing Students Experience of Belongingness

A Study report for Key Influence on Nursing Students Experience of Belongingness

Introduction: Belongingness is a phenomenon of importance to nursing students and to those involved in their education. For the majority of the participants in this study, the duration and structure of clinical placementswas a key influence on their experienceof belongingness. Students from three universities (two in Australia and one in the United Kingdom) emphasised the importance of having adequate time to settle in, so they could familiarise themselves with the personnel, culture and practices of each unit or ward they were assigned to.

Case Study on Nursing Students Experience

They described the uncertainly that surrounded their clinical placement experiences during this settling in phase and how they often felt lost and unsure of themselves, not knowing staff, patients or ward routines. Once settled, students often progressed from feeling like an outsider to feeling like an accepted member of the nursing team. Importantly, students felt that until they were settled and comfortable in the clinical environment they were unable to confidently engage with learning opportunities. Keep reading…

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by | May 7, 2013

A Case Study on Research in Reverse

A Case Study about Research in Reverse

Epidemiologists benefit greatly from having case-control study designs in their research armamentarium. Case-control studies can yield important scientific findings with relatively little time, money, and effort compared with other study designs. This seemingly quick road to research results entices many newly trained epidemiologists. Indeed, investigators implement case-control studies more frequently than any other analytical epidemiological study. Unfortunately, case-control designs also tend to be more susceptible to biases than other comparative studies. Although easier to do, they are also easier to do wrong. Five main notions guide investigators who do, or readers who assess, case-control studies. First, investigators must explicitly define the criteria for diagnosis of a case and any eligibility criteria used for selection. Second, controls should come from the same population as the cases, and their selection should be independent of the exposures of interest.

Case Study on Research in Reverse

Third, investigators should blind the data gatherers to the case or control status of participants or, if impossible, at least blind them to the main hypothesis of the study. Fourth, data gatherers need to be thoroughly trained to elicit exposure in a similar manner from cases and controls; they should use memory aids to facilitate and balance recall between cases and controls. Finally, investigators should address confounding in case-control studies, either in the design stage or with analytical techniques. Devotion of meticulous attention to these points enhances the validity of the results and bolsters the reader’s confidence in the findings. Keep reading…

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by | May 4, 2013

A Case Study on Connectionist Neuropsychology

Case Study about Connectionist Neuropsychology

Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder marked by the Occurrence of semantic errors (e.g. reading RIVER as “ocean”). In addition, patients exhibit a number of other symptoms, including visual and morphological effects in their errors, a part-of-speech effect, and an advantage for concrete over abstract words. Deep dyslexia poses a distinct challenge for cognitive neuropsychology because there is little understanding of why such a variety of symptoms should CO-OCCur in virtually all known patients. Hinton and Shallice (1991) replicated the co-occurrence of visual and semantic errors by lesioning a recurrent connectionist network trained to map from orthography to semantics. Although the success of their simulations is encouraging.

Case Study on Connectionist Neuropsychology

There is little understanding of what underlying principles are responsible for them. In this paper we evaluate and, where possible, improve on the most important design decisions made by Hinton and Shallice, relating to the task, the net- work architecture, the training procedure, and the testing procedure. We identify four properties of networks that underly their ability to reproduce the deep dyslexic symptom-complex: distributed orthographic and semantic representations, gradient descent learning, attractors for word meanings, and greater richness of concrete vs. abstract semantics. The first three of these are general connectionist principles and the last is based on earlier theorising.  read more on Connectionist Neuropsychology

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