This paper presents a model for Flexible Interactive Guidance System (FIGS) that provides people with instructions about natural tasks. The model is developed on the basis of a phenomenological analysis of human guidance and illustrated by a system that gives directions in geographical domains. The instructions are provided through a dialog adapted both in form and content to user's needs. The ...

October 10th, 2016 marked the 9th anniversary for the Journal of Biological Engineering (JBE), the official journal of Institute of Biological Engineering (IBE), published by BioMed Central. We are entering into the 10th year of its exciting and productive history. In this editorial, a brief history of JBE is summarized, along with a series of analyses on average number of citations, breakdown ...

In medical education and clinical care, representations of the patient help health care teams in planning and coordinating patient care, sometimes over geographic distances. This takes forms ranging from telemedicine consultations to using simulations and information and communication technology representations to plan, and at times, perform clinical procedures such as are done in intensive car...

This paper uses the establishment of federal agricultural experiment stations to provide new evidence on the effects of university research on long-term regional development. Our analysis of county-level agricultural census data from 1870 to 2000 reveals that station establishment increased local crop revenue per acre for 30-40 years, but localization effects do not persist to the present day. ...

This paper proposes optimal prediction intervals for the future generalized order statistic (GOS) based on the first GOS (ordinary order statistics, usual record values, -record values) from an exponential population. A conditional argument is considered for obtaining an optimal prediction interval for future GOS. A numerical example illustrates this technique.

Agile software development represents a major approach that has gained increasing popularity in recent years. Economy forces agile organizations to overcome geographical distances to benefit from accessing a larger resource pool and to reduce development costs. However, agile and distributed development approaches differ significantly in their key tenets. While agile methods mainly rely on info...

The idea of the creative individualist spawning innovations as a solitude effort is no longer realistic. Huge innovation projects, relying on project teams, have to be permanently conducted by organizations to assure their competitiveness. These projects often take place in distributed teams, making use of groupware to bridge temporal and geographical distances. Research in social psychology on...

This paper explores the management of expertise in offshore outsourcing projects. While the study of expertise development and coordination gained some attention in recent years, much of this research has been on co-located teams. Little is known about the way expertise is managed in distributed contexts and the challenges distributed teams face when attempting to develop and share expertise. T...

using tidal potential, the effect of tide on the gravity field, crustal deformation due to tidal force, and gravity variations resulted from the crustal deformation are presented. tidal potential is divided into constant and periodic (diurnal and semi-diurnal) constituents, and for each constituents crustal displacements in radial, south-north, and east-west directions are computed. the aforeme...

How does the geographic distance between potential acquiring and target firms affect acquisition strategy? Although popular discussions suggest that distance may be critically important to strategy, formal research on acquisition-based growth has paid little attention to spatial factors. This study examines how the distance between acquiring and target firms influences target selection, explori...