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In most previous research on group decision making systems, all participants are assumed to be working on the same decision. But, in electric power systems and the like, in-service fault handling must deal with a variety of externally caused problems in real time. The system described here assumes a hierarchical organization in which the upper levels issue broad strategic directives and the lower levels take specific actions based on them. Even in the making of seemingly diverse decisions, this decision process is actually cooperative. It requires a correct comprehension of system states and of the intentions of others (goals and strategies). A representation that superimposed goals, strategies, and states of the system is capable of revealing inconsistencies between intentions and circumstances. The proposed system has undergone expert evaluation in applications to two malfunctions in an electric power system. The representation method promotes a focus on errors in strategy and in the transmission of strategy from upper to lower levels and facilitates the revision of strategy in case of error. © 1997 Scripta Technica, Inc. Electron Comm Japan Pt 3, 80(2): 78–91, 1997

Lymphocytic hypophysitis (LYH) is a chronic inflammation that primarily affects the pituitary gland. This disorder has recently been classified into lymphocytic adenohypophysitis (LAH), lymphocytic infundibulo-neurohypophysitis (LINH), and lymphocytic infundibulo-panhypophysitis (LIPH) according to the affected area. We report a case of LINH in a 68-year-old woman who presented with diabetes insipidus (DI). In this case, the posterior lobe was affected in both endocrinological assessment and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings. In contrast, the anterior pituitary was not affected in endocrinological assessment but was affected in MRI findings. Indeed, the patient did not develop hypopituitarism. We believed that these clinical and radiological features were unique in regard to the classification of LYH. To confirm the classification of LYH and the distinction from pituitary adenoma, a pituitary biopsy was performed. Based on the pathological and endocrinological assessment, the patient's disorder was finally diagnosed as a variant of LINH. Current evidence recommends that surgical intervention for LYH should be avoided because the natural course of LYH is essentially self-limiting. Therefore, the accumulation of the knowledge of many variants of LYH is important for the preoperative differential diagnosis of pituitary masses. Our clinical observation could be useful for avoiding unnecessary surgical intervention.

A context-sensitive method that predicts a subsequent utterance to reduce ambiguity in speech recognition candidates for use in a spoken-language processing system is described. Current speech recognition technology cannot accomplish perfect speech recognition, and in many cases ambiguities remain in the results. On the other hand, linguistic processing techniques assume error-free input. Therefore the effectiveness of this processing is reduced when there are multiple candidates in the input. In particular, in spite of the importance to dialogue translation of the degree of ambiguity in the sentence-final expressions that indicate the speaker's intention and colloquial fragmentary expressions that are characteristic of spoken language, conventional techniques do not address this problem. This paper describes first a method for dialogue understanding by means of a layered plan recognition method which uses knowledge on the conduct of a dialogue as well as knowledge concerning the topic, and the use of stacks to manage the states of understand-ing that this method produces. Then a method is presented for obtaining abstract contextual information concerning the next utterance by referring to the stack contents. Next, a method of applying that contextual information in the selection of speech recognition candidates is described. Finally, pragmatic knowledge concerning utterance intention is specified, and the effectiveness of these methods in reducing the ambiguity of expressions concerning utterance intention is demonstrated by experiment.

In this paper, we proposed an approach to permit the development of a testing platform in parallel with application development by accumulating knowledge of a testing platform developed in the past. First, we will define a Meta-Model called the System Testing Development Platform, and describe how to accumulate a testing platform. Then, we show how to find an appropriate testing platform. This will help system architects or application developers get information about testing platforms they are working on. Last, we explain the creation of template testing codes that will help application developers concentrate on developing test data.

In this paper, we describe a method and a system to support a creative design process. This method is characterized by its ability to infer the designer's intention based on case-based reasoning(CBR) methodology, so that the system can provide more useful and cooperative information on the current design.

An experimental system for dialogue structure analysis based on a new type plan recognition model for spoken dialogues has been implemented. This model is realized by using four typed plans which are categorized into three kinds of universal pragmatics and a kind of task-dependent knowledge related to common action hierarchies. Two experimental system is characterized by higher modularity and computational efficiency through defining a hierarchical usage order between these knowledges. The system can grasp a dialogue structure making it possible to solve problems related to spoken dialogue interpretation.