IT supported business process negotiation, reconciliation and execution for cross-organisational e-business collaboration

In modern enterprises, workflow technology is commonly used for business process automation. Established business processes represent successful business practice and become a crucial part of corporate assets. In the Internet era, electronic business is chosen by more and more organisations as a preferred way of conducting business practice. In response to the increasing demands for cross-organisational business automation, especially those raised by the B2B electronic commerce community, the concept of collaboration between automated business processes, i.e. workflow collaboration, is emerging. Otherwise, automation would be confined within individual organisations and cross-organisational collaboration would still have to be carried out manually. However, much of the previous research work overlooks the acquisition of the compatible workflows at build time and simply assumes that compatibility is achieved through face-toface negotiation followed by a design from scratch approach that creates collaborative workflows based on the agreement resulted from the negotiation. The resource-intensive and error-prone approach can hardly keep up with the pace of today’s marketplace with increasing transaction volume and complexity. This thesis identifies the requirements for cross-organisational workflow collaboration (COWCO) through an integrated approach, proposes a comprehensive supporting framework, explains the key enabling techniques of the framework, and implements and evaluates them in the form of a prototype system – COWCO-Guru. With the support of such a framework, cross-organisational workflow collaboration can be managed and conducted with reduced human effort, which will further facilitate cross-organisational e-business, especially B2B e-commerce practices

Neuro-mechanical entrainment in a bipedal robotic walking platform

In this study, we investigated the use of van der Pol oscillators in a 4-dof embodied bipedal robotic platform for the purposes of planar walking. The oscillator controlled the hip and knee joints of the robot and was capable of generating waveforms with the correct frequency and phase so as to entrain with the mechanical system. Lowering its oscillation frequency resulted in an increase to the walking pace, indicating exploitation of the global natural dynamics. This is verified by its operation in absence of entrainment, where faster limb motion results in a slower overall walking pace

Cross-organisational workflow enactment via progressive linking by run-time agents

Driven by popular adoptions of workflow and requirements from the practice of virtual enterprise (VE), research in workflow interoperability is currently on the increase. Nonetheless, it is still in its early stage compared with the maturity of individual workflow technology. Some attempts have been tried, however results are not satisfactory especially in a VE context, where many of the partnerships are dynamic and temporary. Reasons include the rigidity and high initial coordination cost inherently associated with top-down modelling and enactment approaches. Therefore, this paper proposes a bottom-up and WfMS 1 Keywords: Multi-Agent Systems, Workflow Interoperability, Virtual Enterprise -independent approach towards cross-organisational workflow enactment, which is via progressive linking enabled by run-time agents. This is expected to pave the way for further cross-organisational workflow needs

Facilitating B2B E-business by IT-supported business process negotiation services

Due to the complexity of business transactions and growing business automation demands from the B2B e-business community to swiftly respond to the ever-changing environment, workflow technology has been receiving more attention recently. The increasing popularity and adoption of workflow management system (WfMS) within organisations make workflow-based B2B e-business practically viable since more and more business transactions are implemented as automated processes and executed by WfMSs. Having been viewed as services by many researchers and practitioners, process-driven B2B e-business are conducted through service discovery and runtime execution. However, if there is no existing service provided by a desired business partner that matches the requirement then such a process will have to be negotiated and then created. Unfortunately, direct people-to-people negotiation followed by manual transformation of the negotiation outcome into processdriven services can be very resource consuming. Therefore, it is identified that there is a research gap in computer-aided negotiation approach for process-driven B2B e-business. This paper introduces essentials of workflow technology and negotiation. It then describes ways of capturing elements of negotiation from an operational view point. Finally, it explains how to integrate the IT-supported negotiation services into an overall cross-organisational workflow collaboration (COWCO) supporting framework

Requirements specification and architecture design for internet-based control

The Internet is playing an important role not only in information retrieving, but also in industrial processes manipulation. This paper describes an approach to writing requirements specification for Internet-based control systems and to deriving architecture for this new type of control systems according to the requirements specification. Specification is described in terms of a functional model and then extended into information architecture. Distinct from the functional model, the information architecture gives an indication to the architecture of the Internet-based control systems. An integrated-distributed architecture has been derived from the functional model and the information architecture as a case study

Energy- and exergy-based working fluid selection and performance analysis of a high-temperature PEMFC-based micro combined cooling heating and power system

A combined cooling heating and power (CCHP) system based on high-temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is proposed. This CCHP system consists of a PEMFC subsystem, an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) subsystem and a vapor compression cycle (VCC) subsystem. The electric power of the CCHP system is 8 kW under normal operating conditions, the domestic hot water power is approximately 18 kW, and the cooling and heating capacities are 12.5 kW and 20 kW, respectively. Energy and exergy performance of the CCHP system are thoroughly analyzed for six organic working fluids using Matlab coupled with REFPROP. R601 is chosen as the working fluid for ORC subsystem based on energy and exergy analysis. The results show that the average coefficient of performance (COP) of the CCHP system is 1.19 in summer and 1.42 in winter, and the average exergy efficiencies are 46% and 47% under normal operating conditions. It can also be concluded that both the current density and operating temperature have significant effects on the energy performance of the CCHP system, while only the current density affects the exergy performance noticeably. The ambient temperature can affect both the energy and exergy performance of the CCHP system. This system has the advantages of high facility availability, high efficiency, high stability, low noise and low emission; it has a good prospect for residential applications

Los congresos internacionales de la lengua española

Desde 1997, con aparente periodicidad trienal, se celebra el Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española (CILE) y en este documento se recogen las ideas más destacadas ofrecidas en los diferentes congresos a lo largo de los años. En todas sus ediciones expertos hispanistas y demás intelectuales discuten acerca de la lengua española, su situación actual, sus dilemas y sus desafíos de futuro. En su última edición, los debates han girado en torno al libro, en todos sus formatos, como herramienta de educación, de aprendizaje y de difusión del idioma español

Characterization of Adenocarcinoma\u27s Autofluorescence Properties Using Multiexcitation Analysis Method

General purpose of this research is to get an early cancer detection method based on the properties of optical analysis between normal and adenocarsinoma tissue using the multiexcitation autofluorescence method. Observation of autofluorescence properties was done on the biopsy sample of adenocarcinoma tissues, GR mice transplanted by adenocarsinoma, and cell culture SM 1. Excitation on tissue was done by using  the lamp Light Emitting Diode (LED) at some visible light wavelength range. This research obtained that the value of Intensity Auto fluorescence (IAF) at range red wavelength of cells and adenocarsinoma tissues tend to lower compared to the cells normal tissues if its were excited by blue LED. On the contrary, the value of IAF at infra red wavelength from cells and carcinoma tissues tend to higher compared to the cells and normal tissues if its were excited by red LED

Gift-Giving and Network Structure in Rural China: Utilizing Long-Term Spontaneous Gift Records

<div><p>The tradition of keeping written records of gift received during household ceremonies in many countries offers researchers an underutilized means of data collection for social network analysis. This paper first summarizes unique features of the gift record data that circumvent five prevailing sampling and measurement issues in the literature, and we discuss their advantages over existing studies at both the individual level and the dyadic link level using previous data sources. We then document our research project in rural China that implements a multiple wave census-type household survey and a long-term gift record collection. The pattern of gift-giving in major household social events and its recent escalation is analyzed. There are significantly positive correlations between gift network centrality and various forms of informal insurance. Finally, economic inequality and competitive marriage market are among the main demographic and socioeconomic determinants of the observed gift network structure.</p></div

Summary Statistics (at the end of 2009).

<p><i>Source:</i> Authors' survey data for five out of 26 villages where we collected gift records. N = 184.</p