The RoCS Framework to Support the Development of Autonomous Robots

With the expansion of autonomous robotics and its applications (e.g. medical, competition, military), the biggest hurdle in developing mobile robots lies in endowing them with the ability to interact with the environment and to make correct decisions so that their tasks can be executed successfully. However, as the complexity of robotic systems grows, the need to organize and modularize software for their correct functioning also becomes a challenge, making the development of software for controlling robots a complex and intricate task. In the robotics domain, there is a lack of reference software architectures and, although most robot architectures available in the literature facilitate the creation process with their modularity, existing solutions do not provide development guidance on reusing existing modules. Based on the well- known IBM Autonomic Computing reference architecture (known as MAPE-K), this work defines a refined architecture following the Robotics perspective. To explore the capabilities of the proposed refinement, we implemented the RoCS (Robotics and Cognitive Systems) framework for autonomous robots. We successfully tested the framework under simulated robotics scenarios that mimic typical robotics tasks and evidence the framework reuse capability. Finally, we understand the proposed framework needs further experimental evaluation, particularly, assessments on real-world scenarios.

Despairing doctors: professional stress and suicide

Newspaper reporting of inquests reveals 285 instances of medical men who killed themselves in the period 1800-1890. This chapter considers the motives and methods of medical suicides, and uses the circumstances surrounding a minority of deaths to explore the aspects of professional pressure that proved most challenging. Once again, covert medical competition was a prominent source of anxiety.

US WARNS DOCTORS AGAINST AGREEMENTS ON FIXING OF PRICES

The Justice Department issued a stern warning to the nation's doctors today that they are under surveillance for evidence of price fixing and other violations of the antitrust laws. Assistant Attorney General Charles R. Rule, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, told members of the American Medical Association's House of Delegates that agreements by doctors to reduce medical competition and thus harm their patients' interest "can be hazardous to your personal freedom." "You can go to jail," he said. The Justice Department's enforcement policy "is necessary to insure that society's decision to rely on competition to hold down health care costs will not be frustrated by a handful of greedy individuals." The assistant attorney general gave . . . advice to doctors: Do not make any agreement with any competing independent doctors on prices or fee schedules, on patients you will serve or locations from which you will draw patients or on joint refusal to offer services to alternative health delivery systems.