A study day for general practitioners was arranged on the subject of managing the difficult patient. Participants were asked to supply written details of their most difficult patient and the problems they associated with him or her. The issues raised were addressed in a number of formal presentations and formed the basis for discussion in workshops. This paper focuses on the underlying similari...

M ultidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), defined as active TB cases infected by Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains that are resistant to isoniazid and rifampicin (the two most important anti-TB drugs currently in use), and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), defined as active TB cases caused by infection with strains that are resistant to at least one fluoroquinolone and one in...

Stress fractures and other bony stress injuries occur along a spectrum of severity which can impact treatment and prognosis. When treating these injuries, it should be borne in mind that no two stress fractures behave exactly alike. Given that they are not a consistent injury, standardized treatment protocols can be challenging to develop. Treatment should be individualized to the patient or at...

measure the capacity to make abstractions, to learn, and to deal with novel situations. Testing of the visual abilities of the shape understanding system (SUS) is performed based on the visual intelligence tests. In this paper the progressive matrices tests are formulated as tasks given to SUS. These tests require good visual problem solving abilities of the human subject. SUS solves these test...

1 Software design patterns are used in software engineering as a way to improve and maintain software systems. Patterns are abstract solutions to problem categories, and they describe why, how, and when can a pattern be applied. Their description is based on natural language which makes the automation of design patterns a difficult task. In this paper we present an approach for automation of de...

Computational model can be designed with soft computing technologies which are capable of reasoning and learning in an uncertain and imprecise environment. However, in a real practical project, there are many difficult computational bottlenecks in need to break through when using these technologies. This research aims to invent a cultural intelligence computational model, which can process cult...

Wheeze is a common symptom in infants and preschool children. Up to 30% of children wheeze at least once before the age of 3 years and 2% of those have it severe enough to warrant hospital admission. Not only parents but also physicians have difficulty in recognizing wheeze. Wrong diagnosis of the underlying condition leads to inappropriate and unnecessary management and patient morbidity. Asth...

In this paper we present examples of the processes people use in generating qualitative solutions to highly complex diagnostic problem solving. We developed a high fidelity model of the electrical power system for the International Space Station, and presented scenarios of off-nominal and fault situations. The model interface provides rich information about functional organization of the power ...

Interactive software, systems and devices are typically designed for a specific (set of) purpose(s) and the design process used ensures that they will perform satisfactorily when used as specified. In many cases users will use these systems in unintended and unexpected ways where it seems appropriate, which can lead to problems as the differing usage situations have unintended effects on use. W...

Business and enterprise management processes become more and more event-driven. Being event-driven means that processes rely on receiving events to monitor the execution progress, and issuing events to initiate its next stages. What is more important, being event-driven enables these processes to become more active and flexible. There is a paradigm shift today from passive processes to active o...