Parkinson's Disease can be treated by a micro-electrode guided neurosurgery called a Pallidotomy or Deep Brain Stimulus. A new software program, called Onetrack, is being developed and incorporates a three dimensional virtual model of the brain, a advanced digital signal processor and a knowledge based system (KBS). This thesis discusses the design and development of this KBS. The purpose of the KBS is to assist the surgical team in identifying the different anatomical structures and neuronal cell types of the brain. Therefore, improving the efficiency of the procedure.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 42 pages. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--University of South Florida, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: When medical researchers test a new treatment procedure, they recruit patients with appropriate health problems and medical histories. An experiment with a new procedure is called a clinical trial. The selection of patients for clinical trials has traditionally been a labor-intensive task, which involves matching of medical records with a list of eligibility criteria. A recent project at the University of South Florida has been aimed at the automation of this task. The project has involved the development of an expert system that selects matching clinical trials for each patient. / If a patient's data are not sufficient for choosing a trial, the system suggests additional medical tests. We report the work on the representation and entry of the related selection criteria and medical tests. We first explain the structureof the system's knowledge base, which describes clinical trials and criteria for selecting patients. We then present an interface that enables a clinician to add new trials and selection criteria without the help of a programmer. Experiments show that the addition of a new clinical trial takes ten to twenty minutes, and that novice users learn the full functionality of the interface in about an hour. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This thesis is concerned with the applicability of model reference adaptive control to the control of robot manipulators under a wide range of configuration and payload changes, and a comparison of the performance of this technique with that of the non-adaptive schemes. The dynamic equations of robot manipulators are highly nonlinear and are difficult to determine precisely. For these reasons there is an interest in applying adaptive control techniques to robot manipulators. In this work, the detailed performance of three adaptive controllers are studied and compared with that of a non-adaptive controller, namely, the computed torque control scheme. Computer simulation results show that the use of adaptive control improves the performance of the manipulator despite changes in the payload or in the manipulator configuration. Making use of these results, a rule-based controller is developed by dividing a given manipulation task into portions where a particular adaptive control scheme, based on a specific linearized subsystem model, performs best. This strategy of selecting the proper controller during each portion of the overall task yields a performance having the least deviation from the desired trajectory during the entire length of the task.

Research report presented to SBL, Unisa, Midrand. / No abstract / Graduate School of Business Leadership / MBL

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1987 / Town and Country Hotel, San Diego, California / In an Independent Research and Development (IR&D) effort, the Telemetry Systems Operation (TSO) of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) sought to determine the feasibility of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in a real-time processing environment. Specifically, the use of an expert system to assist in telemetry data acquisition processing was studied. A prototype expert system was implemented with the purpose of monitoring F15 Vertical Short Take Off and Landing (VSTOL) aircraft engine tests in order to predict engine stalls. This prototype expert system was implemented on a Symbolics 3670 symbolic processor using Inference Corporation's Artificial Reasoning Tool (ART) expert system compiler/generator. The Symbolics computer was connected to a Gould/SEL 32/6750 real-time processor using a Flavors, Inc. Bus Link for real-time data transfer.

Η κατάθλιψη είναι από τα πιο συχνά ψυχικά νοσήµατα µε τα οποία έρχεται αντιµέτωπος τόσο ο ψυχίατρος όσο και ο νοσηλευτής της πρωτοβάθµιας φροντίδας, στην καθηµερινή τους κλινική πράξη. Τα νοσήµατα αυτά προσθέτουν µεγάλο φορτίο τόσο ψυχολογικό όσο και οικονοµικό στους ασθενείς, τις οικογένειές τους αλλά και το κοινωνικό σύνολο. Ειδικά για την κατάθλιψη το µέλλον δεν φαίνεται και τόσο ευοίωνο. Σε µια πρόσφατη κοινή ανακοίνωση της Παγκόσµιας Τράπεζας, της Παγκόσµιας Οργάνωσης Υγείας και του Πανεπιστηµίου Harvard αναφέρεται ότι στα επόµενα 5 χρόνια η κατάθλιψη θα καταλάβει τη δεύτερη θέση στον κατάλογο µε τις καταστάσεις που προκαλούν σηµαντική απώλεια χρόνου υγείας και παραγωγικής ζωής. Στην παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία περιγράφεται η δημιουργία ένός ευφυούς συστήματος υποστήριξης αποφάσεων, προκειμένου να συνδράμει στην ανάπτυξη της κρίσης του αρχάριου νοσηλευτή για την καλύτερη και ασφαλέστερη εφαρμογή των ιατρικών και νοσηλευτικών κανόνων στον τομέα της Ψυχιατρικής. Ένας δεύτερος στόχος της διπλωματικής είναι η σύγκριση διαφορετικών μεθόδων δημιουργίας του. Δημιουργήθηκαν τέσσερα διαφορετικά συστήματα, όσον αφορά το είδος των κανόνων που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν (π.χ. απλοί κανόνες από τους ειδικούς, κανόνες με συντελεστές βεβαιότητας και υβριδικοί κανόνες από αυτόματη παραγωγή με μεθόδους μηχανικής μάθησης), και έχει γίνει σύγκριση της αποτελεσματικότητάς τους με βάση διεθνώς χρησιμοποιούμενες μετρικές. Η υβριδική μορφή κανόνων παρουσίασε και την μεγαλύτερη αποτελεσματικότητα μεταξύ των τεσσάρων συστημάτων (ακρίβεια 94% ενάντι 89 % και 84 % και 82 % αντίστοιχα). Τα συστήματα αυτά μπορούν να λειτουργήσουν στα πλαίσια μιας πλήρους εφαρμογής όχι ως ανταγωνιστικά αλλά ως συμπληρωματικά για την γρήγορη και πιό αξιόπιστη διαλογή και διάγνωση των παθήσεων των ασθενών που προσέρχονται στα Επείγοντα Περιστατικά ενός Νοσηλευτικού Ιδρύματος με πιθανή Νευροψυχιατρική διαταραχή από νέους νοσηλευτές. / -

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Over the past decade, two types of decision aids, i.e., decision support systems (DSS) and expert systems (ES), have been developed along parallel paths, showing some significant differences in their software architectures, capabilities, limitations, and other characteristics. The synergy of DSS and ES, however, has great potential for helping make possible a generalized approach to developing a decision aid that is powerful, intelligent, and friendly. This research establishes a framework for such decision aids in order to determine the elementary components and their interactions. Based on this framework, a generalized intelligent problem solving system (GIPSS) is deveolped as a decision aid generator. A relational model is designed to provide a unified logical view of each type of knowledge including factual data, modeling knowledge, and heuristic rules. In this knowledge model, a currently existing relational DBMS, with some extension, is utilized to manage each type of knowledge. For this purpose a relational resolution inference mechanism has been devised. A prototype GIPSS has been developed based on this framework. Two domain specific decision aids, COCOMO which estimates software development effort and cost, and CAPO which finds optimal process organization, have been implemented by using the GIPSS as a decision aid generator, demonstrating such features as its dynamic modeling capabilities and learning capabilities.

This report addresses the research applied towards the automation of the engineering design process, in particular the structural design process. The three important stages of the structural design process are: the specifications, preliminary design and the detailed design. An iterative redesign architecture of the structural design process lends itself to automation. The automation of the structural design can improve both the cost and the reliability, and enhance the productivity of the human designers. To the extent that the assumptions involved in the design process are explicitly represented and automatically inforced, the design errors resulting from the violated assumptions can be avoided. Artificial Intelligence (AI) addresses the automation of complex and knowledge-intensive tasks such as the structural design process. It involves the development of the Knowledge Based Expert System (KBES). There are several tools, also known as expert shells, and languages available for the development of knowledge-based expert systems. A general purpose language, called LISP, is very popular among researchers in AI and is used as an environmental tool for the development of the KBES for the structural design process. The resulting system, called Expert-SEISD, is very generic in nature. The Expert-SEISD is composed of the user interface, inference engine, domain specific knowledge and data bases and the knowledge acquisition. The present domain of the Expert-SEISD encompasses the design of structural components such as beams and plates. The knowledge acquisition module is developed to facilitate the incorporation of new capabilities (knowledge or data) for beams, plates and for new structural components. The decision making is an integral part of any design process. A decision-making model suitable for the specifications extraction and the preliminary design phases of the structural design process is proposed and developed based on the theory of fuzzy sets. The methods developed here are evaluated and compared with similar methods available in the literature. The new method, based on the union of fuzzy sets and contrast intensification, was found suitable for the proposed model. It was implemented as a separate module in the Expert-SEISD. A session with the Expert-SEISD is presented to demonstrate its capabilities of beam and plate designs and knowledge acquisition.

No description available.