The construction industry's environment is continually changing. Employees are now more geographically widespread and diverse, both culturally and educationally, than ever before. A great deal of research has been carried out on knowledge acquisition and storage, but there is still a distinct lack of research into knowledge presentation and communication. Information and knowledge presentation play a significant role in daily decision-making processes, when inappropriate decisions may result from inaccurate or poorly communicated information. The simplified, filtered coherent presentation of explicit knowledge can be instrumental to a successful, profitable and safety conscious business. Wates Construction is a major construction company and employs around 1300 people directly, as well as various subcontractors on different projects. Their current turn over is around £1billion, they are based in the UK and have branches in Ireland and Abu Dhabi. Wates realised their existing information system was inefficiently conveying information to its employees and the need to provide a simplified system, to assist staff's decision-making processes. Earlier IT professionals' attempts to make the system more usable had made no significant difference to its performance.

The aim of this field study was to investigate the relationship between visual perceptual processes and drawing ability in Year 7 students in the Australian Capital Territory. A random sample of five classes from five High Schools, consisting of 113 year 7 students, was tested for their ability in representational and memory drawing, and a sample of good drawers was chosen by a panel of five Independent judges. The drawing ability of the "Good" Drawers Sample was tested by means of Field's Visual Information Transformation Test (VIT), and the visual perceptual processes were tested using MacGregor's Perceptual Index.(MPI) A statistical analysis of the ranked scores was made using the Kruskal Wallis Analysis of Variance, the Spearman Rho rank order correlation, and the Mann Whitney U Test.

<p>This thesis explored the development of infants’ ability to preserve spatio-temporal continuity of moving objects in situations where they disappeared completely (Study I & II) or partially (Study III) behind other objects (occluders). We recorded infants gaze direction with the help of two different techniques: 1) infants’ gaze shifts in Study I were measured with electro-oculogram (EOG) in combination with a motion analyzing system (Qualisys) that recorded the reflected infrared light from markers placed on the infant’s head and the moving object; 2) in Studies II and III a cornea reflection eye tracker was used (Tobii 1750) . </p><p>The results presented in this thesis demonstrate that 4-month-old infants are able to represent the temporal aspects of object motion during different periods of complete occlusion (Study I). At 6 months of age infants are able not only to predict the time when a moving object will reappear after complete occlusion but they are also capable to extrapolate pre-occlusion trajectory of the moving object and, thus, to accurately predict its reappearance (Study II). Moreover, in the situation where a linear pre-occlusion trajectory of the moving object is violated (the object turns by 90 degrees behind the occluder), infants at this age are capable of rapidly learning this new experience and base their future gaze shifts over occluder on the newly acquired knowledge. They are also able to preserve this new experience over a 24-hour period. </p><p>In the situations where occlusion is not complete and some visual information is still available (Study III), 9-month-old infants and to a lesser extent 5-month-old infants are able to reconstruct the moving pattern and to follow its direction of motion with the smooth eye movements. Moreover, 9-month-olds are capable to produce such smooth pursuit at an adult-like level.</p>

This thesis explored the development of infants’ ability to preserve spatio-temporal continuity of moving objects in situations where they disappeared completely (Study I &amp; II) or partially (Study III) behind other objects (occluders). We recorded infants gaze direction with the help of two different techniques: 1) infants’ gaze shifts in Study I were measured with electro-oculogram (EOG) in combination with a motion analyzing system (Qualisys) that recorded the reflected infrared light from markers placed on the infant’s head and the moving object; 2) in Studies II and III a cornea reflection eye tracker was used (Tobii 1750) . The results presented in this thesis demonstrate that 4-month-old infants are able to represent the temporal aspects of object motion during different periods of complete occlusion (Study I). At 6 months of age infants are able not only to predict the time when a moving object will reappear after complete occlusion but they are also capable to extrapolate pre-occlusion trajectory of the moving object and, thus, to accurately predict its reappearance (Study II). Moreover, in the situation where a linear pre-occlusion trajectory of the moving object is violated (the object turns by 90 degrees behind the occluder), infants at this age are capable of rapidly learning this new experience and base their future gaze shifts over occluder on the newly acquired knowledge. They are also able to preserve this new experience over a 24-hour period. In the situations where occlusion is not complete and some visual information is still available (Study III), 9-month-old infants and to a lesser extent 5-month-old infants are able to reconstruct the moving pattern and to follow its direction of motion with the smooth eye movements. Moreover, 9-month-olds are capable to produce such smooth pursuit at an adult-like level.

The work accomplished in this thesis concerns development of an autonomous machine cognition system. The proposed solution reposes on the assumption that it is the curiosity which motivates a cognitive system to acquire new knowledge. Further, two distinct kinds of curiosity are identified in conformity to human cognitive system. On this I build a two level cognitive architecture. I identify its lower level with the perceptual saliency mechanism, while the higher level performs knowledge acquisition from observation and interaction with the environment. This thesis brings the following contribution: A) Investigation of the state of the art in autonomous knowledge acquisition. B) Realization of a lower cognitive level in the ensemble of the mentioned system, which is realizing the perceptual curiosity mechanism through a novel fast, real-world robust algorithm for salient object detection and learning. C) Realization of a higher cognitive level through a general framework for knowledge acquisition from observation and interaction with the environment including humans. Based on the epistemic curiosity, the high-level cognitive system enables a machine (e.g. a robot) to be itself the actor of its learning. An important consequence of this system is the possibility to confer high level multimodal cognitive capabilities to robots to increase their autonomy in real-world environment (human environment). D) Realization of the strategy proposed in the context of autonomous robotics. The studies and experimental validations done had confirmed notably that our approach allows increasing the autonomy of robots in real-world environment

Managing projects in an organization, especially a project-oriented organization, is a challenging task. Project data has a large volume and is complex to manage. It is different from managing a single project, because one needs to integrate and synthesize information from multiple projects and multiple perspectives for high-level strategic business decisions, such as aligning projects with business objectives, balancing investment and expected return, and allocating resources. Current methods and tools either do not well integrate multiple aspects or are not intuitive and easy to use for managers and executives. In this dissertation project, a multidimensional and visual exploration approach was designed and evaluated to provide a unique and intuitive option to support decision making in project portfolio management. The research followed a general design science research methodology involving phases of awareness of problem, suggestion, development, evaluation and conclusion. The approach was implemented into a software system using a prototyping method and was evaluated through user interviews. The evaluation result demonstrates the utility and ease-of-use of the approach, and confirms design objectives. The research brings a new perspective and provides a new decision support tool for project portfolio management. It also contributes to the design knowledge of visual exploration systems for business portfolio management by theorizing the system.

No matter what domain, the judgment of performance occupies a key area of investment. Experts are trained and societal institutions are constructed to judge performance, and to identify, develop, and reward the highest levels of achievement. This research demonstrates that experts are just as vulnerable as novices to being confounded by the vision heuristic--the dominance of visual information over more relevant evaluation metrics. Using a multi-method approach spanning laboratory experiments, surveys, interviews, and field data, this research explores the impact of visual information on judgment and decision making in performance contexts. The first paper indicates that professional musicians use primarily visual information to judge music performance, even when they report that sound is most important to their evaluations. The second paper highlights the underlying mechanisms that account for the dominance of visual information. Additional work elaborates on the generalizability of the vision heuristic to management domains. The third paper suggests that visible cues about leadership and team dynamics matter more to expert judges than the group performances themselves. In another set of studies, venture capitalists and investors are found to neglect the content of entrepreneur pitches, instead overweighting dynamic visual cues. Finally, the latest study demonstrates that the visual performance cues displayed by firm managers can lead financial analysts to make less accurate forecasts of firm performance. In sum, this research shows that both laymen and experts rely heavily on visual information in their judgments; this dominance extends to organizational contexts, where it can strongly bias performance assessments. These findings have implications for the optimal design of processes for professional selection and advancement, and communication in organizations.

A cintilografia renal é um exame amplamente utilizado para a avaliação visual do funcionamento do córtex renal. Ele permite visualizar a concentração do radiofármaco, o tamanho, a forma, a simetria e a posição dos rins. No entanto, a avaliação visual das impressões diagnósticas dessas imagens tende a ser um processo subjetivo. Isso faz com que ocorra uma significativa variabilidade entre as interpretações feitas por diferentes especialistas. Assim, este trabalho tem como objetivo propor medidas quantitativas que refletem impressões diagnósticas comumente observadas por especialistas nas imagens de cintilografia renal. São atribuídos valores numéricos a essas impressões, o que, potencialmente, reduz a subjetividade e a variabilidade da interpretação das descobertas. A fim de permitir a extração dessas medidas, um método de segmentação específico para essas imagens também é proposto. Os resultados indicam que as medidas propostas atingem níveis de concordância de no mínimo 90% dos casos quando comparadas com a avaliação visual de especialistas. Esses resultados sugerem que as medidas podem ser usadas para reduzir a subjetividade na avaliação das imagens, já que elas fornecem uma alternativa quantitativa e objetiva para reportar as impressões diagnosticas das imagens de cintilografia renal. / Renal scintigraphy is a well established functional technique for the visual evaluation of the renal cortical mass. It allows the visualization of the radiopharmaceutical tracer distribution, the size, the shape, the symmetry, and the position of the kidneys. However, the visual diagnostic impressions for these images tend to be a subjective process. It causes significant variability in the interpretation of findings. Thus, this work aims at proposing quantitative measures that reflect common diagnostic impressions for those images. These measures can potentially minimize the inter-observer variability. In order to make possible the extraction of these measures, a specific segmentation method is also proposed. The results indicate that our proposed features agree in at least 90% of the cases with the specialists visual evaluation. These results suggest that the features could be used to reduce the subjectivity in the evaluation of the images, since they provide a quantitative and objective alternative to report the diagnostic impressions.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-09-29Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:34:34Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 xavier_rf_me_mar.pdf: 1231843 bytes, checksum: d4c761feb071f93faee1532f9b12c4b3 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O advento da Web e o conseqüente aumento no volume de informações eletrônicas acarretaram muitos problemas em relação ao acesso, busca, localização e recuperação de informação em grandes volumes de dados. O presente trabalho realiza uma revisão dos diferentes modelos, métodos e algoritmos existentes para a geração de Interfaces Visuais para Recuperação da Informação, classificados segundo ao seu processo de produção: Análise e Transformação dos Dados, Aplicação de Algoritmos de Classificação e Distribuição Visual e Aplicação de Técnicas de Transformação Visual. Os resultados pretendem servir a outros investigadores como ferramenta para a eleição de uma ou outra combinação metodológica no desenvolvimento de propostas específicas de Interfaces Visuais para Recuperação da Informação, além de sugerir a necessidade de maiores investigações sobre novas técnicas de transformação visual. / The advent of the Web and the consequent increase in the volume of electronic information had caused many problems about access, search, location and retrieval of information in large volumes of data. This work is a revision of the different models, methods and algorithms to create interfaces for Visual Information Retrieval, classified according to their production process: Analysis and Data Processing, Implementation of algorithms for classification and distribution of Visual and Application Processing Techniques of Visual. The results of other researchers want to serve as a tool for the election of one or another combination methodology in the development of specific proposals for visual interfaces for information retrieval, and suggest the need for more research into new techniques for processing visual.

A cintilografia renal é um exame amplamente utilizado para a avaliação visual do funcionamento do córtex renal. Ele permite visualizar a concentração do radiofármaco, o tamanho, a forma, a simetria e a posição dos rins. No entanto, a avaliação visual das impressões diagnósticas dessas imagens tende a ser um processo subjetivo. Isso faz com que ocorra uma significativa variabilidade entre as interpretações feitas por diferentes especialistas. Assim, este trabalho tem como objetivo propor medidas quantitativas que refletem impressões diagnósticas comumente observadas por especialistas nas imagens de cintilografia renal. São atribuídos valores numéricos a essas impressões, o que, potencialmente, reduz a subjetividade e a variabilidade da interpretação das descobertas. A fim de permitir a extração dessas medidas, um método de segmentação específico para essas imagens também é proposto. Os resultados indicam que as medidas propostas atingem níveis de concordância de no mínimo 90% dos casos quando comparadas com a avaliação visual de especialistas. Esses resultados sugerem que as medidas podem ser usadas para reduzir a subjetividade na avaliação das imagens, já que elas fornecem uma alternativa quantitativa e objetiva para reportar as impressões diagnosticas das imagens de cintilografia renal. / Renal scintigraphy is a well established functional technique for the visual evaluation of the renal cortical mass. It allows the visualization of the radiopharmaceutical tracer distribution, the size, the shape, the symmetry, and the position of the kidneys. However, the visual diagnostic impressions for these images tend to be a subjective process. It causes significant variability in the interpretation of findings. Thus, this work aims at proposing quantitative measures that reflect common diagnostic impressions for those images. These measures can potentially minimize the inter-observer variability. In order to make possible the extraction of these measures, a specific segmentation method is also proposed. The results indicate that our proposed features agree in at least 90% of the cases with the specialists visual evaluation. These results suggest that the features could be used to reduce the subjectivity in the evaluation of the images, since they provide a quantitative and objective alternative to report the diagnostic impressions.