This paper presents an approach to the development of concurrent engineering software applications based on a knowledge sharing technology. In this approach, individual programmers write their programs in the form of separate modules called Software Agents, which interoperate with their peers using an expressive communication standard called Agent Communication Language. The runtime activities ...

In this paper, we propose a new spatial clustering method, called DBRS+, which aims to cluster spatial data in the presence of both obstacles and facilitators. It can handle datasets with intersected obstacles and facilitators. Without preprocessing, DBRS+ processes constraints during clustering. It can find clusters with arbitrary shapes and varying densities. DBRS+ has been empirically evalua...

AIM To identify nurses' barriers and facilitators to monitoring of nurse-sensitive outcomes in intensive care units (ICUs), and to explore influential nurse characteristics and work environment factors. DESIGN A cross-sectional survey in three Dutch ICUs between October 2013 - June 2014. METHODS A questionnaire with questions regarding facilitators and three types of barriers: knowledge, at...

People with Parkinson's disease often have walking difficulty, and this is likely to be exacerbated while walking in places in the community, where people are likely to face greater and more varied challenges. This study aims to understand the facilitators and the barriers to walking in the community perceived by people with Parkinson's disease. This qualitative study involved 5 focus groups (n...

Facilitators1 provides an infrastructure a collection of networked task-independent system programs supporting automated interoperation between distributed heterogeneous software agents. Through a flexible communication model, the Facilitators infrastructure provides a variety of services to heterogeneous software agents based on both request/reply and publish/subscribe protocols, the communica...

Despite increasing recognition of the role nutrition plays in the health of current and future generations, many women struggle to eat healthy. We used the PhotoVoice method to engage 10 rural women in identifying perceived barriers and facilitators to healthy eating in their homes and community. They took 354 photographs, selected and wrote captions for 62 images, and explored influential fact...

In this article we describe an evolutionary ontology approach that distinguishes between major ontology changes and minor ontology changes. We divide the community in three (possibly overlapping) groups, i.e. facilitators, contributors, and users. Facilitators are a selected group of domain experts who represent the intended community. These facilitators define the intended goals of the ontolog...

Teaching bioinformatics is a longstanding challenge for educators who need to demonstrate to students how skills developed in the classroom may be applied to real world research. This study employed an action research methodology which utilised student-staff partnership and peer-learning. It was centred on the experiences of peer-facilitators, students who had previously taken a postgraduate bi...

BACKGROUND Given the potential impact school-based daily physical activity (DPA) policies can have on the health outcomes of Canadian children, it is surprising that such little research has examined the implementation and student-level effectiveness of these policies, and that even less have used theory to understand the barriers and facilitators affecting uptake of this policy by teachers. Th...

51 Background. Although asthma morbidity can be prevented through long-term controller 52 medication, most patients with persistent asthma do not take their daily inhaled corticosteroid. 53 The objective of this study was to gather patients’ insights into barriers and facilitators to taking 54 long-term daily inhaled corticosteroids as basis for future knowledge translation interventions. 55 Me...