The 1980s and 1990s saw a reorientation of the field of artificial intelligence (AI) away from disembodied software, a domain where AI research continues predominantly as software engineering, and toward situated and embodied robotics. Crucially, the publication of Braitenberg's (1984) Vehicles and, later on, the behavior-based robotics movement (e.g., Brooks, 1995) catalyzed this emphasis on a...

fast and holistic access to the patients’ clinical record is a major requirement of modern medical decision support systems (dss). while electronic health records (ehrs) have replaced the traditional paper-based records in most healthcare organization, the data entry into these systems remains largely manual. speech recognition technology promises substitution of the more convenient speech-base...

The Environmental Health Investigations Branch (EHIB), within the California Department of Health Services (CDHS), under a cooperative agreement with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), is conducting investigations of an on-the-job exposure to environmental contaminants at a sign construction site. This specific health consultation was requested by the United States En...

PURPOSE Targeted cancer therapies (TCTs) are drugs that specifically act on molecular targets within the cancer cell, causing its regression and/or destruction. Although TCTs offer clinically important gains in survival in one of the most challenging therapeutic areas, these gains are followed by considerable increases in health care expenditures. The aim of this study was to identify differenc...

OBJECTIVES To examine the extent of variation in public health agency spending levels across communities and over time, and to identify institutional and community correlates of this variation. DATA SOURCES AND SETTING Three cross-sectional surveys of the nation's 2,900 local public health agencies conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials in 1993, 1997, and 20...

We analyze the conditions for agency in natural and artificial systems. In the case of basic (natural) autonomous systems, self-construction and activity in the environment are two aspects of the same organization, the distinction between which is entirely conceptual: their sensorimotor activities are metabolic, realized according to the same principles and through the same material transformat...

Mechanistic explanations of cognitive activities are ubiquitous in cognitive science. Humanist critics often object that mechanistic accounts of the mind are incapable of accounting for the moral agency exhibited by humans. We counter this objection by offering a sketch of how the mechanistic perspective can accommodate moral agency. We ground our argument in the requirement that biological sys...

Communities that undertake systems change in accordance with the system of care philosophy commit to creating new systems entities for children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance. These new entities are values-based, voluntary, and cross-agency alliances that include formal child-serving entities, youth, and families. Describing the scope and intent of one such implementation of...

This research described here examines the role of e-health and medical informatics through the lens of one e-health knowledge broker in Canada. Eating disorders are an important issue in Canadian health and it is difficult to find accurate information online. Theoretical models examined include those which describe the roles of health knowledge brokers, including those who advocate for critical...