Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Foundations of realistic rendering : a mathematical approach

Die vorliegende Dissertation ist keine gewöhnliche Abhandlung, sondern sie ist als Lehrbuch zum realistischen Rendering für Studenten im zweiten Studienabschnitt, sowie Forscher und am Thema Interessierte konzipiert. Aus mathematischer Sicht versteht man unter realistischem Rendering das Lösen der stationären Lichttransportgleichung, einer komplizierten Fredholm Integralgleichung der 2tenArt, deren exakte Lösung, wenn überhaupt berechenbar, nur in einem unendlich- dimensionalen Funktionenraum existiert. Während in den existierenden Büchern, die sich mit globaler Beleuchtungstheorie beschäftigen, vorwiegend die praktische Implementierung von Lösungsansätzen im Vordergrund steht, sind wir eher daran interessiert, den Leser mit den mathematischen Hilfsmitteln vertraut zu machen, mit welchen das globale Beleuchtungsproblem streng mathematisch formuliert und letzendlich auch gelöst werden kann. Neue, effzientere und elegantere Algorithmen zur Berechnung zumindest approxima- tiver Lösungen der Lichttransportgleichung und ihrer unterschiedlichen Varianten können nur im Kontext mit einem vertieften Verständnis der Lichttransportgleichung entwickelt werden. Da die Probleme des realistischen Renderings tief in verschiedenen mathematis- chen Disziplinen verwurzelt sind, setzt das vollständige Verständnis des globalen Beleuch- tungsproblems Kenntnisse aus verschiedenen Bereichen der Mathematik voraus. Als zen- trale Konzepte kristallisieren sich dabei Prinzipien der Funktionalanalysis, der Theorie der Integralgleichungen, der Maß- und Integrationstheorie sowie der Wahrscheinlichkeitstheo- rie heraus. Wir haben uns zum Ziel gesetzt, dieses Knäuel an mathematischen Konzepten zu entflechten, sie für Studenten verständlich darzustellen und ihnen bei Bedarf und je nach speziellem Interesse erschöpfend Auskunft zu geben.The available doctoral thesis is not a usual paper but it is conceived as a text book for realistic rendering, made for students in upper courses, as well as for researchers and interested people. From mathematical point of view, realistic rendering means solving the stationary light transport equation, a complicated Fredholm Integral equation of 2nd kind. Its exact solution exists|if possible at all|in an infinite dimensional functional space. Whereas practical implementation of approaches for solving problems are in the center of attentionin the existing textbooks that treat global illumination theory, we are more interested in familiarizing our reader with the mathematical tools which permit them to formulate the global illumination problem in accordance with strong mathematical principles and last but not least to solve it. New, more eficient and more elegant algorithms to calculate approximate solutions for the light transport equation and their different variants must be developed in the context of deep and complete understanding of the light transport equation. As the problems of realistic rendering are deeply rooted in different mathematical disciplines, there must precede the complete comprehension of all those areas. There are evolving principles of functional analysis, theory of integral equations, measure and integration theory as well as probability theory. We have set ourselves the target to remerge this bundle of fluff of mathematical concepts and principles, to represent them to the students in an understandable manner, and to give them, if required, exhaustive information

Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets

Focusing on the work of A.R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder, author Leonard Scigaj shows that just as a sustainable society does not depreciate its resource base, so a sustainable poetry does not restrict interest to language. Over the past thirty years many poets have shown an increasing sensitivity to ecological thinking. But critics trained in poststructuralist language theory often fail to explore the substance of ecopoetry. Scigaj is the first to define ecopoetry as separate and distinct from nature or environmental poetry, marked by its concern with balancing the interests of human beings with the needs of nature. Just as science learned that the earth was not the center of the universe, ecopoetry insists on the recognition that humans are not at the center of the natural world. The first book to treat the US’s four foremost ecopoets as ecopoets. -- Choice Scigaj uses his examination of contemporary ecological poetry to mount a direct assault on the way literary theory has been conducted over the past twenty years. -- Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Will join John Elder\u27s Imagining the Earth as the most important contribution to date to the study of contemporary ecopoetry. -- Lawrence Buell A rich context for our understading the work and persons of A.R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder, four outstanding American poets. -- Psychological Reports Anyone who things that nature poetry is a leftover mode from a bygone era, or that all nature poets are alike, needs to read this book before we have no nature left. -- Virginia Quarterly Review Urges readers to distinguish between two kinds of poetry in order to set the stage for an epic intellectual and aesthetic battle. -- Western American Literaturehttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/1001/thumbnail.jp

HSCI2013: proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Hands-on Science

The core topic of the 10th Hands-on Science Conference is "Educating for Science and through Science"Livro de trabalhos extensos aceites para publicação no livro de proceedings da 10ª conferencia HSC

Anymals, Poems, Empathy.:A Zoopoetical Study

Summary A vast body of research addresses the relationships between empathy and novels figuring human protagonists, and the notion that novel reading as a kind of ‘empathy training’ meets little skepticism. As the saying goes, readers can live a thousand lives in the minds of the characters in the novels they read. How different the case when the protagonists are anymals instead of humans. This study focuses on zoopoetry to explore the intricate relation between anymals, poems, and empathy. It addresses the abyss between the anymal and the human, whether an abyss of knowledge or of phenomenal experience, to argue that poets who write about anymals employ ‘zoopoetical tools’ to bridge the gap between the two worlds. They employ an array of traditional poetic tools such as rhythm and metaphor, but they also draw from a previously unnamed zoopoetical lexicon to illustrate how the assumed abyss between the anymal and the human is in fact based on speciesism and Cartesian dualism. In his article “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), the philosopher Thomas Nagel provocatively argues that we are unable to know what it is to feel bat-like. We might be able to imagine to a certain extent what it is to fly around and catch insects in our mouths, he writes, but then we only know what it is like for us to behave like a bat, whereas we can never know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. In trying to imagine what a bat experiences, we stumble on a line we can never cross, between our own subjective worlds and the phenomenal experience of the bat. Researchers in both literary studies and biology often invoke Nagel’s example and presume a skeptical stance concerning the knowability and envisionability of the phenomenal experience of anymal others. In this vein, Jenny Diski writes that there is “an abyss of knowledge that we simply can’t cross” (73). Three central oppositions emerge from speciecism and Cartesian dualism to complicate explorations of zoopoetical anymals: anthropocentrism versus anymals as themselves; projectivism versus empathy or sympathetic identification; and anymals inside a text versus anymals outside a text. Note that the tension in these oppositions is less felt when human subjects receive poetic attention. Zoopoetical anymals, however, seem to be inevitably anthropomorphised by poets and readers alike. As a result, empathy seems to become an unattainable ideal; with whom would we be empathising? In this study I argue, however, that many of these assumptions about anymal minds are based upon Cartesian dualism. This study, therefore, is driven by two central questions that counter these assumptions. In what ways does zoopoetry confront and unsettle Cartesian dualism? How do instances of perspective shift and empathy evoked through zoopoetry contribute to the empathy debate? These questions are not straightforwardly answered. Instead, the chapters show a hermeneutical to-and-fro movement between the poems, philosophical ideas, and the topic of empathy