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In a context where human–machine interaction is growing, understanding the limits between automated and human-based methods may leverage qualitative research. This paper aims to compare human and machine analyses, highlighting the challenges and opportunities of both approaches.

This study applied qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) with machine learning-based text mining on qualitative data from 25 interviews previously analyzed with traditional qualitative content analysis.

By analyzing both techniques' strengths and weaknesses, this study complements the results from the original research work. The previous human model failed to point to a particular aspect of the case, while the machine analysis did not recognize the sequence of time in the interviewee's discourse.

This study demonstrates that combining content analysis with text mining techniques improves the quality of the research output. Researchers may, therefore, better handle biases from humans and machines in traditional qualitative and quantitative research.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the structural design of customer teams (CuTes) working with external teams to implement customized information systems (IS). Design consists of theoretically based measures and a first set of real-world, empirical values.

A search in the organizational literature suggested that the adhocracy is the preferred structure for CuTes. Adhocracy-like measures were then developed and applied to a high-performance CuTe to reveal a first benchmark for a team’s adhocratic design.

High-performance CuTes do not necessarily implement the adhocratic principles to the highest degree.

It is still open whether all the structural measures described here are necessary and sufficient to describe the adhocracy-like structural design of CuTes.

The CuTe is highlighted as the key incumbent of cooperation with the technology supplier and consultants in terms of project authority and responsibility. A psychometric instrument and real-world values are proposed as a reference for the structural design of high-performance CuTes.

The performance of IS projects is a social concern, since IS products should be aimed at serving people better both inside and outside the organization. Professionals who work in CuTes to develop better IS should receive institutional recognition and management attention.

This study seems to be the first to discuss the structure of CuTes in customized IS projects from a theoretical and applied perspective.

The application of the Internet to traditional business and administrative activities has introduced considerable digitisation and process automation. One key area of development from a research perspective is the use of electronic (e‐)surveys, based on Internet technology. E‐surveys can bring many benefits from a research perspective, including extremely low marginal costs, automation of processes, and the ability to collect and manage very large samples. However, experience in the use of e‐surveys has found considerable challenges in achieving a quality sample frame and response rates. This paper explores the development of an e‐survey tool for assessing information needs of growth enterprises in Brazil. A key learning from the use of the survey is the use of control methods for both improving the response rate, and, as a consequence, the sample frame.

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) design is a complex problem which is concerned with the selection from a wide variety of available system configurations and control strategy alternatives in the light of several criteria (costs, production, flexibility etc.), many of which are difficult to quantify. Although there is a reasonable number of currently available modelling tools to be applied in FMS design, they are based on an erroneous approach, in which design is considered as a separated, local and myopic activity. Design is divided into isolated and unconnected subproblems whose individual solutions may result in a poor global solution. This paper describes a methodology of analysis and evaluation of FMS design competitive alternatives. It examines the use of an integrated, systemic, global, and user‐centred approach for solving the FMS design problem.

Postal companies around the world have been seeking methods to support their operational practices in order to keep or increase their market share. The Brazilian Mail and Telegraph Company (ECT) has a portfolio of products and services to offer to its customers through several similar postal offices all over Brazil. The units use several resources with different intensities, currently having their performance evaluated by a single economical factor: revenues over expenses. We propose a performance evaluation method based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), a linear programming technique that makes it possible to include other factors beyond the simplistic, purely economical approach. The objectives of this paper are to define which factors can be used to evaluate the units; to define sets of similar units that develop the same functions, differing only in the intensity of resource usage; to generate, through the technique, the results of the evaluation process obtained from the quantitative factors defined, providing a sensitivity analysis, and to provide useful information to help managers in their decision‐making process.

The purpose of this paper is to experimentally validate the crack growth control based on the topological derivative of the famous Rice's integral.

Single edge notch tensile specimens with two configurations were tested. Displacement fields near notch were experimentally obtained using the digital image correlation method. These displacements were used to verify the minimization of the associated shape functional, which is defined in terms of the Rice's integral, when a set of controls (holes) positioned according to the topological derivative information, is inserted. Based on the Griffth's energy criterion, this minimization represents an improvement in the fracture toughness of cracked bodies.

The experimental tests confirmed that a decrease around 27% in the value of the associated shape functional can be obtained following this approach. Therefore, the results allow us to conclude that the predictive methodology for crack growth control based on the topological derivative is feasible.

This is the first work concerning experimental validation of crack growth control based on the topological derivative method.

One of the main causes of long-term prosthetic abandonment is the lack of ownership over the prosthesis, which was caused mainly by the absence of sensory information regarding the lost limb. The period where the patient learns how to interact with a prosthetic device is critical in rehabilitation. This ideally happens within the first months after amputation, which is also a period associated with the consolidation of brain changes. Different studies have shown that the introduction of feedback mechanisms can be crucial to bypass the lack of sensorial information. To develop a biofeedback system for the rehabilitation of transfemoral amputees – controlled via electromyographic (EMG) activity from the leg muscles – that can provide real-time visual and/or vibratory feedback for the user.

The system uses surface EMG to control two feedback mechanisms, which are the knee joint of a prosthetic leg of a humanoid avatar in a virtual reality (VR) environment (visual feedback) and a matrix of 16 vibrotactile actuators placed in the back of the user (vibratory feedback). Data acquisition was inside a Faraday Cage using an OpenEphys® acquisition board for the surface EMG recordings. The tasks were performed on able-bodied participants, with no amputation, and for this, the dominant leg of the user was immobilized using an orthopedic boot fixed on the chair, allowing only isometric contractions of target muscles, according to the Surface EMG for Non-Invasive Assessment of Muscles (SENIAM) standard. The authors test the effectiveness of combining vibratory and visual feedback and how task difficulty affects overall performance.

The authors' results show no negative interference combining both feedback modalities and that performance peaked at the intermediate difficulty. These results provide powerful insights of what can be accomplished with the population of amputee people. By using this biofeedback system, the authors expect to engage another sensory modality in the process of spatial representation of a virtual leg, bypassing the lack of information associated with the disruption of afferent pathways following amputation.

The authors developed a showcase with a new protocol and feedback mechanisms showing the protocol's safety, efficiency and reliability. However, since this system is designed for patients with leg amputation, the full extent of the effects of the biofeedback training can only be assessed after the evaluation with the amputees, and the results obtained so far establish a safe and operational protocol to accomplish this.

In this study, the authors proposed a new biofeedback device intended to be used in the preprosthetic rehabilitation phase for people with transfemoral amputation. With this new system, the authors propose a mechanism to bypass the lack of sensory information from a virtual prosthesis and help to assimilate visual and vibrotactile stimuli as a cue for movement representation.

With this new system, the authors propose a mechanism to bypass the lack of sensory information from a virtual prosthesis and help to assimilate visual and vibrotactile stimuli as a cue for movement representation.

The authors' results show that all users were capable of recognizing both feedback modalities, both separate and combined, being able to respond accordingly throughout the tasks. The authors also show that for a one-session protocol, the last difficulty level imposed a greater challenge for most users, explained by the significant drop in performance disregarding the feedback modality. Lastly, the authors believe this paradigm can provide a better process for the embodiment of prosthetic devices, fulfilling the lack of sensory information for the users.

The classic case for competitiveness as a force driving change was made by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859). Adaptation, the ability to react successfully to a changed environment, accounts for multiplicity in the world of nature. Long billed birds are better able to dip beneath the surface of shallow lagoons for their food; the sharp, hard, short beaks of certain finches allow them to crack nuts and seeds. Darwin's reading of nature, so immediately popular and at the same time so controversial, fit well within the goals of nineteenth‐century scientific thought. Tracing the causes of change to fixed, logical patterns allowed scientists to remove non‐objective elements from their equations for evolution. Such issues as value, valor, or virtue held no place in a system of analysis unless they had survival value.