Thinking tools that assist by externalizing thought processes and conceptual structures so they can be manipulated potentially improve user learning. We propose the design of a sensemaking assistant that integrates many such tools. Our design emerged from an intensive study of sensemaking by users working on real tasks, providing a link from users to developers. Sensemaking is the process of forming meaningful representations and working with them to gain understanding, possibly communicated in a report, to support planning, decision‑making, problem‑solving, and informed action. At the heart of our design is a set of tightly integrated tools for representing and manipulating a conceptual space: tools for producing and maintaining concept maps, causal maps/influence diagrams, argument maps, with support through self-organizing semantic maps, importing concepts and relationships from external Knowledge Organization Systems, and inferring connections between texts; further a tool for organizing information items (documents, text passages notes, images) linked to the concept map. The sensemaking assistant we envision guides users through the sensemaking process; for each function it suggests appropriate cognitive processes and provides tools that automate tasks. The comprehensive sensemaking model introduced in specifies functions in the iterative process of sensemaking: Task analysis and planning; Gap identification (tools for both: brainstorming, finding documents on the task); information acquisition, data seeking and structure seeking (search tool: finding databases, query expansion, passage retrieval; summarization tool); information organization, building structure, instantiating structure, information synthesis / new ideas / emerging sense (conceptual space tools mentioned above); information presentation, creating reports (from concept map to outline, guide through the writing process, analyze draft writing for coherence and clarity). The system tracks sources. Users using a sensemaking assistant may well internalize good ways for intellectual processes and good conceptual organization in addition to learning a useful application. The paper will provide some evidence from the literature and propose further testing.
The world is facing the dual challenge of closing a vast urban infrastructure financing gap and making urban infrastructure more climate resilient. As estimated by the OECD, USD 95 trillion will be required to develop transport, energy, water, and telecoms from 2016 to 2030 in developing countries. With the temperature rise, the extreme weather will have direct physical harm on infrastructure as the aging infrastructures would be vulnerable to storm surges and sea level rise. In order to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, an additional 10% of investment will be needed to develop climate resilient infrastructure, adding to the USD 6.9 trillion needed per year by 2030.
Based on the concepts of “ancient China studies” and “digital humanities” (DH) in the context of China, this paper first gives a brief review on the development and practice of DH cyberinfrastructure. Under a series of reflections and a brief investigation on ancient Chinese literatures and traditional humanistic activities, this paper puts forward a new DH cyberinfrastructure conceptual model for ancient China studies that can bring people, information, and computational tools together and allow humanistic scholars to perform in a new way and with higher efficiency. On the premise of actual practices to turn a conceptual model into reality, this paper discusses DH cyberinfrastructure and the future of academic libraries.
Abstract The mechanism of aggregation-induced emission, which overcomes the common aggregation-caused quenching problem in organic optoelectronics, is revealed by monitoring the real time structural evolution and dynamics of electronic excited state with frequency and polarization resolved ultrafast UV/IR spectroscopy and theoretical calculations. The formation of Woodward?Hoffmann cyclic intermediates upon ultraviolet excitation is observed in dilute solutions of tetraphenylethylene and its derivatives but not in their respective solid. The ultrafast cyclization provides an efficient nonradiative relaxation pathway through crossing a conical intersection. Without such a reaction mechanism, the electronic excitation is preserved in the molecular solids and the molecule fluoresces efficiently, aided by the very slow intermolecular charge and energy transfers due to the well separated molecular packing arrangement. The mechanisms can be general for tuning the properties of chromophores in different phases for various important applications.
