bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Choices of Japanese Patients in the Face of Disagreement
Authors: Asai Atsushi , Kishino Minako , Fukui Tsuguya , Sakai Masahiko , Yokota Masako , Nakata Kazumi , Sasakabe Sumiko , Sawada Kiyomi , Kaiji Fumie 
Published: March 2003

Background: Patients in different countries have different attitudes toward self‐determination and medical information. Little is known how much respect Japanese patients feel should be given for their wishes about medical care and for medical information, and what choices they would make in the face of disagreement.Methods: Ambulatory patients in six clinics of internal medicine at a university hospital were surveyed using a self‐administered questionnaire.Results: A total of 307 patients participated in our survey. Of the respondents, 47% would accept recommendations made by physicians, even if such recommendations were against their wishes; 25% would try to persuade their physician to change their recommendations; and 14% would leave their physician to find a new one.Seventy‐six percent of the respondents thought that physicians should routinely ask patients if they would want to know about a diagnosis of cancer, while 5% disagreed; 59% responded that physicians should inform them of the actual diagnosis, even against the request of their family not to do so, while 24% would want their physician to abide by their family's request and 14% could not decide. One‐third of the respondents who initially said they would want to know the truth would yield to the desires of the family in a case of disagreement.Interpretations: In the face of disagreement regarding medical care and disclosure, Japanese patients tend to respond in a diverse and unpredictable manner. Medical professionals should thus be prudent and ask their patients explicitly what they want regarding medical care and information.
Visual Elements and Container Metaphors for Multi‐Media
Authors: Howarth Mike 
Published: March 2003

The paper describes the research behind three elements of an interactive product created from education radio resources. Firstly, a main menu interface that takes into account physical classroom conditions. Secondly, interactive learning interfaces that accommodate eye and vision requirements of children. Thirdly, a story interface design informed by the “container” metaphor and the 2D metaphors in radio script structures mapped in 3D using a “Radio Rooms” model.The work was carried out as a Senior Radio Producer with BBC Education, on a project using educational radio materials to create interactive multimedia resources, part of a MPhil/PhD sponsored by the BBC.
Making Values and Beliefs Explicit as a Tool for the Effective Development of Educational Multimedia Software—a Prototype
Authors: Shabajee Paul 
Published: March 2003

This paper puts forward a prototype process for the development of educational multimedia materials, which can help educational multimedia software developers produce more coherent and effective learning resources by making explicit the value/belief system on which the project is founded. The prototype is presented as an object and stimulus for debate and discussion, around the many issues it raises.The paper critically reviews some current models of educational multimedia software development with regard to the role of “values/beliefs” and discusses why there is a need for these factors to be taken into account. It particularly focuses on environmental issues and is more widely applicable to those subject areas which involve the teaching of “controversial issues”.The basic process put forward involves three steps: 1) identifying and agreeing a prioritized list of the core values and beliefs on which the project is based 2) using these to inform the specification/design process 3) using them as part of the evaluation/quality control process. The process is illustrated using a small number of examples and the paper ends by looking forward to a full trial of the prototype and suggestions for further work.
Development and evaluation of an interactive computer–assisted learning program—a novel approach to teaching gynaecological surgery
Authors: Jha Vikram , Widdowson Shelley , Duffy Sean 
Published: March 2003

Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) is increasingly being recognised as an effective means of teaching and learning. In Gynaecology, the anatomy and surgical steps in vaginal surgery such as vaginal hysterectomy are confusing due to limited access and restricted view of the operative field. The objective of this pilot project was to develop an interactive CAL program on CD–ROM, combining video, illustrations and three–dimensional images to enhance understanding of vaginal hysterectomy in terms of the anatomy and steps of the surgical procedure.Macromedia Director was used to develop the program. With Director, it is possible to combine text, graphics, animation, video and sound to create interactive material for the web, presentations or CD–ROMS. The CD–ROM takes you through the individual steps of a vaginal hysterectomy combining video clips with voice–over, illustrations and text. The three‐dimensional image was included to enhance understanding of the complex relationships between the uterus, bladder and rectum. There is an interactive self–assessment section with multiple–choice questions and an anatomy self–test. The CD–ROM has been evaluated as an educational tool by 12 undergraduate students and 16 trainees in Gynaecology. Most were satisfied with the program. A need for development of further similar educational software has been identified.The CD–ROM has identified an innovative and useful approach to teaching operative surgery. The results from the evaluation have been positive in terms of the need for similar programs in future.
Employers’ Unfair Advantage in the United States of America: Symposium on the Human Rights Watch Report on the State of Worker’s Freedom of Association in the United States, continued
Authors: Friedman Sheldon , Wood Stephen 
Published: March 2003

Articles featured in the symposium:Author’s reply to Wheeler–Getman–Brody papers by Lance Compa, School of Industrial and Labor RelationsThe Wagner Act Model: A Toxic System beyond Repair by Roy J. Adams De Groote, School of Business, McMaster University, Hamilton, OntarioChoosing an Interpretation of the Right to Freedom of Association by Sheldon Leader, Department of Law and the Centre for Human Rights, University of Essex
Social responsibility in the marketplace: asymmetric information in food labelling
Authors: Pearce Richard 
Published: March 2003

This paper takes as its focus the adoption by the Co‐operative Wholesale Society of what appears to be a socially responsible stance on food labelling practice and policy through the publication of a public report and a proposed code of practice.The central issue in the debate surrounding labelling is the question of ‘asymmetric information’ (when one party knows more about a product than the other). In order to function, markets need perfect information. The existence of asymmetric information gives rise to ‘market failure’ which prevents the ‘free market’ from functioning according to the laissez faire model. It can be argued that regulation will overcome this problem. However, this paper counters this argument on several grounds. In the first part of the paper labelling is examined as a textual construction, and ethical dimensions are revealed through an awareness of discourse and signification, which gives rise to a view of packaging as a version of reality partially built through connotation and association.The second part of the paper examines political and regulatory concerns. Marketing and economic theories are discussed in terms of their impact upon ethical issues in food labelling. Sense is made of various arguments about the policy and practice of food regulation – particularly in the wake of the James Report calling for the establishment of a Food Standards Agency. Tactics for resisting regulation are also examined. The paper analyses the role and motivation of the CWS in taking these steps.Consideration is given to the issue of where responsibility for information giving and public health education might lie, and what phenomena act as barriers to increased public awareness and action on dietary matters. Finally the debate over food labelling is used as an example of why it is problematic (and possibly unethical) to promote the free market model as the only sensible alternative to other modes of economic organisation.
Transatlantic business ethics
Authors: Zsolnai Laszlo 
Published: March 2003

The Business Ethics Center of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences organized a Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit on September 15–17, 2000 in Budapest, Hungary. The Summit was sponsored by the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS) and Procter & Gamble.The main function of the Summit was to provide a forum for leading American and European scholars to explore the background theories and value bases of business ethics from the perspective of the 21st century. The participants reflected on the state of the art of business ethics as it has been practised in the USA and Europe; however, the future of business ethics as a discipline was the main focus of the Summit. Since business ethics is closely related to business and capitalism, some considerations of the 21st century economic, political, and social reality were presented too. The paper is based on and composed from the abstracts provided by the participants of the Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit. The abstract booklet can be obtained from Laszlo Zsolnai, the Convenor of the Summit.
Architectural Components of Information–Sharing Societies
Authors: Carter Jonathan , Ghorbani Ali A. , Marsh Stephen 
Published: March 2003

Two similar multi–agent systems have been designed to address the issue of information sharing within a multi–agent system. This paper examines the architectural components that have been added to our information–sharing societies, ACORN and MP3. Through this exploration, we conclude that these components and their underlying concepts can be added to other information–retrieval societies.ACORN consists of a set of information–sharing locations referred to as cafés. Cafés are defined as meeting locations for like–minded agents. Like–minded agents are defined as agents that share a common set of interests. As an example, a café may contain agents that are interested in information relating to cars. A dynamic café clustering method is developed. The performance evaluation of the proposed structure for the café is presented. The concept of a fat/thin agent architecture is introduced. This agent architecture allows for minimizing network traffic as agents traverse the network in search of or distribution of knowledge. The directory server component is presented along with its relation to the fat/thin agent architecture. Finally, an anonymity service provider which allows anonymity for users is introduced.The MP3 society exists with the sole purpose of finding MP3s throughout a given network. Through this society, the core design issues of agent verification and agent validation are addressed and solutions are presented through respective interface components.
A Bernstein‐Bézier Based Approach to Soft Tissue Simulation
Authors: Roth S.H. , Gross Markus H. , Turello Silvio , Carls Friedrich R. 
Published: March 2003

This paper discusses a Finite Element approach for volumetric soft tissue modeling in the context of facial surgery simulation. We elaborate on the underlying physics and address some computational aspects of the finite element discretization.In contrast to existing approaches speed is not our first concern, but we strive for the highest possible accuracy of simulation. We therefore propose an extension of linear elasticity towards incompressibility and nonlinear material behavior, in order to describe the complex properties of human soft tissue more accurately. Furthermore, we incorporate higher order interpolation functions using a Bernstein‐Bézier formulation, which has various advantageous properties, such as its integral polynomial form of arbitrary degree, efficient subdivision schemes, and suitability for geometric modeling and rendering. In addition, the use of tetrahedral Finite Elements does not put any restriction on the geometry of the simulated volumes.Experimental results obtained from a synthetic block of soft tissue and from the Visible Human Data Set illustrate the performance of the envisioned model.
Fast Polyhedral Cell Sorting for Interactive Rendering of Unstructured Grids
Authors: Comba João , Klosowsk James T. , Max Nelson , Mitchell Joseph S. B. , Silva Cláudio T. , Williams Peter L. 
Published: March 2003

Direct volume rendering based on projective methods works by projecting, in visibility order, the polyhedral cells of a mesh onto the image plane, and incrementally compositing the cell’s color and opacity into the final image. Crucial to this method is the computation of a visibility ordering of the cells. If the mesh is “well‐behaved” (acyclic and convex), then the MPVO method of Williams provides a very fast sorting algorithm; however, this method only computes an approximate ordering in general datasets, resulting in visual artifacts when rendered. A recent method of Silva et al. removed the assumption that the mesh is convex, by means of a sweep algorithm used in conjunction with the MPVO method; their algorithm is substantially faster than previous exact methods for general meshes.In this paper we propose a new technique, which we call BSP‐XMPVO, which is based on a fast and simple way of using binary space partitions on the boundary elements of the mesh to augment the ordering produced by MPVO. Our results are shown to be orders of magnitude better than previous exact methods of sorting cells.
Haptic Device Control – Will it Fit Standardized Input Models?
Authors: Arnold D. B. , Day A. M. , Jennings V. , Courtenay A. , Duce D. A. 
Published: March 2003

Over recent years a wide variety of interaction devices involving haptic feedback have been brought to the market, but they vary widely in terms of input measures recorded. These range from one dimensional input on a haptic feedback steering wheel to a six degree of freedom position and orientation device and further, to assemblies of such devices. On the surface most of the variations can be accommodated logically with standardized input models combining existing logical input devices and haptic feedback processes as acknowledgement/echos. However it is very uncertain whether such a model can adequately model the system requirements for effective haptic feedback.In this paper we review the input models that have developed over the past 20 years and ask “Is it the end of the road for the conceptual model of input incorporated into the early graphics standards and elaborated over the years?” In addition, to highlight the problems of implementation with haptic interaction, we describe a typical application, the simulation of a collision with a virtual wall.
Simulation of Facial Muscle Actions Based on Rational Free Form Deformations
Authors: Kalra Prem , Mangili Angelo , Thalmann Nadia Magnenat , Thalmann Daniel 
Published: March 2003

AbstractThis paper describes interactive facilities for simulating abstract muscle actions using Rational Free Form Deformations (RFFD). The particular muscle action is simulated as the displacement of the control points of the control‐unit for an RFFD defined on a region of interest. One or several simulated muscle actions constitute a Minimum Perceptible Action (MPA), which is defined as the atomic action unit, similar to Action Unit (AU) of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), to build an expression.
Implementing RenderMan ‐ Practice, Problems and Enhancements
Authors: Slusallek Philipp , Pflaum Thomas , Seidel Hans‐Peter 
Published: March 2003

AbstractThe RenderMan interface has been proposed as a general interface to rendering systems, yet only a few implementations of the interface exist. In this paper we describe the implementation of the RenderMan interface on a general rendering architecture that supports various rendering algorithms. Specifically we discuss the implementation of the RenderMan Shading Language and its integration into our rendering architecture. Special attention is focused on the problems that we have encountered and how they can be solved. Additionally, we suggest extensions and enhancements to the current interface definition, which would make RenderMan easier to implement and more flexible to use.
Animation using NURBS
Authors: Preston M. , Hewitt W. T. 
Published: March 2003

AbstractAll animation, whether generated by pen or processor, is concerned with the changing behaviour of synthetic actors through time. Computer animation has allowed an animator to regard different actors as functionally equivalent entities for the purpose of generating their behaviours. This has opened the door to visually impressive effects, such as actors changing their appearance, thereby becoming other actors.For NURBS to become a tool which is useful to the writer of animation packages, it is necessary to provide this ability to in‐between objects of different appearances through time.This paper aims to present a technique for creating higher dimensional NURBS to model object deformation, as well as to illustrate its advantages.
Topologically exact evaluation of polyhedra defined in CSG with loose primitives
Authors: Banerjee Raja (P.K.) , Rossignac Jarek R. 
Published: March 2003

AbstractFloating point round‐off causes erroneous and inconsistent decisions in geometric modelling algorithms. These errors lead to the generation of topologically invalid boundary models for CSG objects and significantly reduce the reliability of CAD applications. Previously known methods that guarantee topological consistency by relying on arbitrary precision rational arithmetic or on symbol‐manipulation techniques are too expensive for practical purposes. This paper presents a new solution which takes as input a “fixed precision” regularized Boolean combination of linear half‐spaces and produces a polyhedral boundary model that has the exact topology of the corresponding solid. Each half‐space is represented by four homogeneous coefficients infixed precision format (La bits for the three direction cosines and Ld bits for the constant term, i.e. the distance from the origin). Exact answers to all topological and ordering questions are computed using a fixed length, 3 La+ Ld+ 2 bits, integer format. This new guaranteed tight limit on the number of bits necessary for performing intermediate calculations is achieved by expressing all of the topological decisions based on geometric computations in terms of the signs of 4 by 4 determinants of the input coefficients. The coordinates of intersection vertices are not required for making the correct topological decisions and hence vertices and lines are represented implicitly in terms of planes.
The Bulgar title KANAΣYBIΓI: reconstructing the notions of divine kingship in Bulgaria, AD 822–836
Authors: Stepanov Tsvetelin 
Published: March 2003

This paper deals with the notions of divine kingship, formulated in the Bulgar title KANAΣYBIΓI. The author considers that ΣYBIΓI is the second part of the title and that it can be translated as ‘(ruler) from God’, from the Indo‐European *su‐and baga‐, i.e. *su‐baga, connected with notions such as ‘shining’, ‘glimmering’ etc., which were signs of the supreme celestial god.The Bulgars used the Byzantine formula ‘ho ek Theou archon’ as a translation of their original title KANAΣYBIΓI, thus emphasizing the idea of God's approval of the sovereign. This was a typical strategy for the kings in early medieval Europe, both Christians and pagans. Probably the use of KANAΣYBIΓI (AD 822–36) has to be connected with the processes of centralization of power in Bulgaria during the first three decades of the ninth century and with the influence of the two mightiest states of that time in Europe, Byzantium and the Frankish Empire, and most of all with the Bulgar aims to equal and oppose the Rhomaioi (Byzantines) and their political ideology.
Growth, income distribution and well‐being in transition countries
Authors: Grün Carola , Klasen Stephan 
Published: March 2003

We apply several well‐being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to international and intertemporal comparisons of well‐being in transition countries. Our well‐being measures drastically change the impression of levels and changes in well‐being compared to a traditional reliance on income measures. Due to low inequality and moderate income levels, socialist countries enjoyed relatively high levels of economic well‐being. In the transition process, rising inequality and falling incomes have led to a dramatic absolute decline in well‐being and a considerable drop in relative well‐being vis‐à‐vis non‐transition countries. We also find a close correlation between income losses and inequality increases. While the transition has been successful in expanding political and civil rights, our indicators suggest that most transition countries are still below the level of economic well‐being of the late 1980s.JEL classification: D6, O15, P27.
Inequality and income: The mediating effects of social spending and risk
Authors: Castronova Edward 
Published: March 2003

This paper estimates models of social spending, income risk, and per capita income levels using data from a post‐war panel of OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. The objective is to test two theories about the pathway from inequality to per capita income. According to one theory, inequality reduces incomes because it induces social spending, which acts as a drag on the economy. The results here suggest, however, that inequality does not seem to induce social spending, and social spending does not seem to lower per capita incomes. According to a second theory, inequality causes upheaval which adds to the volatility of per capita income, which may reduce the level of per capita income. The results suggest, however, that volatility, measured here as the standard deviation of per capita income, has little measurable impact on either per capita income or social spending. The mainsprings of per capita income are more likely to be the traditional factors: the work force, human capital, and physical capital.JEL classification: E6.
Income mobility and risk during the business cycle: Comparing adjustments in labour markets in two Latin‐American countries
Authors: Wodon Quentin 
Published: March 2003

This paper uses panel data from Argentina and Mexico and a new measure of mobility ‐ the Gini index of mobility ‐ to answer three questions. First, is there a trend towards rising labour income mobility over time in these two countries? Second, is there a relationship between income mobility and growth common to both countries, or does that relationship depend on the institutional features of each country’s labour markets? Third, do we observe more labour income mobility within some groups such as the young and the less educated than within other groups?JEL classification: D31, E32, J63.
The effects of transition on the distribution of income in China
Authors: Gustafsson Björn , Shi Li 
Published: March 2003

Using two large samples for 1988 and 1995 we decompose the Gini coefficient of household income according to type of income with the purpose of analyzing reasons for the rapid increase of inequality. The results show that the change in relative size of money income and its changed profile are found to be the major processes behind the rapid increase of income inequality in rural China. Changes in housing allocation and an increased number of retirees in combination with higher benefits have made inequality increase in urban China and in China as a whole.JEL classification: D31, P27.