A View of P Systems from Information Theory

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54072-6_22In this work we propose new view of P systems by using the framework of Information Theory. Given a cell-like P system with communication and evolution rules, we analyze the amount of information that it holds as the result of symbol movements across the membranes. Under this approach, we propose new definitions and results related to the information of P systems and their entropy. In addition, we propose a new working manner for P systems based only in the entropy evolution during the computation time.Work partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under EXPLORA Research Project SAF2013-49788-EXP.Sempere Luna, JM. (2017). A View of P Systems from Information Theory. En International Conference on Membrane Computing. Springer Verlag (Germany). 352-362. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54072-6 22S35236

Actor-Network Theory and its role in understanding the implementation of information technology developments in healthcare

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is an increasingly influential, but still deeply contested, approach to understand humans and their interactions with inanimate objects. We argue that health services research, and in particular evaluations of complex IT systems in health service organisations, may benefit from being informed by Actor-Network Theory perspectives.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Despite some limitations, an Actor-Network Theory-based approach is conceptually useful in helping to appreciate the complexity of reality (including the complexity of organisations) and the active role of technology in this context. This can prove helpful in understanding how social effects are generated as a result of associations between different actors in a network. Of central importance in this respect is that Actor-Network Theory provides a lens through which to view the role of technology in shaping social processes. Attention to this shaping role can contribute to a more holistic appreciation of the complexity of technology introduction in healthcare settings. It can also prove practically useful in providing a theoretically informed approach to sampling (by drawing on informants that are related to the technology in question) and analysis (by providing a conceptual tool and vocabulary that can form the basis for interpretations). We draw on existing empirical work in this area and our ongoing work investigating the integration of electronic health record systems introduced as part of England's National Programme for Information Technology to illustrate salient points.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>Actor-Network Theory needs to be used pragmatically with an appreciation of its shortcomings. Our experiences suggest it can be helpful in investigating technology implementations in healthcare settings.</p

The Use of Multidisciplinary Care Teams in Diagnosing and Managing Care of Cancer Patients in Eastern Kentucky

The purpose of this casual comparative quantitative study addressed the lack of individual-level data on the effectiveness of multidisciplinary care teams for cancer patients in rural hospitals. The research questions sought to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of multidisciplinary care teams for cancer patients in rural hospitals and the roadblocks for successful implementation. The study utilized the pragmatism paradigm to focus on the problem rather than the view of reality. This study was conducted with a fixed design using quantitative methods, specifically, casual comparative. This research worked within the framework of a well-established theory prevalent in the pertinent literature: Social Systems Theory. The actors in this casual comparative study included the healthcare organizations, Ackerville Regional Healthcare and Pinkerton Medical Center, administration, clinic managers, and medical teams. Independent variables included partnership, cooperation, and coordination within multidisciplinary cancer teams and the dependent variable was the provision of quality patient care. This study operated from a Biblical perspective. This study sought to fill gaps in the information of why this phenomenon persists. The results of a Kruskal-Wallis Test revealed statistical significance in multidisciplinary care teams between collaboration score (Kruskal-Wallis = 26.34, p \u3c .001), partnership score (Kruskal-Wallis = 37.67, p \u3c .001), and coordination score (Kruskal-Wallis = 24.95, p \u3c .001). Multidisciplinary teams support patient outcomes through coordination in ways that use the resources of time, tools, and skills more effectively

What promotes sustainability in Safe Community programmes?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The theory and practice of safety promotion has traditionally focused on the safety of individuals. This study also includes systems, environments, and organizations. Safety promotion programmes are designed to support community health initiatives taking a bottom-up approach. This is a long-term and complex process. The aim of this study was to try to empirically identify factors that promote sustainability in the structures of programmes that are managed and coordinated by the local government.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Four focus group sessions with local government politicians and administrators in designated Safe Communities were conducted and analyzed using qualitative content analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Collaboration was found to be the basis for sustainability. Networks, enabling municipalities to exchange ideas, were reported to positively influence the programmes. Personal contacts rather than organizations themselves, determine whether collaboration is sustained. Participants reported an increase in cross-disciplinary collaboration among staff categories. Administrators and politicians were reported to collaborate well, which was perceived to speed up decision-making and thus to facilitate the programme work. Support from the politicians and the county council was seen as a prerequisite. Participants reported an increased willingness to share information between units, which, in their view, supports sustainability. A structure in which all local authorities' offices were located in close proximity to one another was considered to support collaboration. Appointing a public health coordinator responsible for the programme was seen as a way to strengthen the relational resources of the programme.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>With a public health coordinator, the 'external' negotiating power was concentrated in one person. Also, the 'internal' programme strength increased when the coordination was based on a bureaucratic function rather than on one individual. Increased relational resources facilitated the transfer of information. A regular flow of information to policy-makers, residents, and staff was needed in order to integrate safety programmes into routines. Adopting a bottom-up approach requires that informal and ad hoc activities in information management be replaced by formalized, organizationally sanctioned routines. In contrast to injury prevention, which focuses on technical solutions, safety promotion tries to influence attitudes. Collaboration with the media was an area that could be improved.</p

Reducing the Democratic Deficit: Representation, Diversity, and the Canadian Judiciary, or Towards a Triple P Judiciary

The authors review the current structures for judicial appointments in Canada and provide statistical information about the results of these mechanisms in respect to diversity of representation on the courts. They are also critical of the fairness and openness of judicial appointments processes. After examining several variants of the dominant liberal view of law and of judges, the authors proffer and articulate a neo-realist theory of law and what they term a bungee cord theory of judging. According to the former, law is inevitably a form of politics; according to the latter, judges are unavoidably political actors. In consequence, the judiciary is properly subject to democratic norms, including especially the norms of representation and diversity. The authors then argue that, judged against those democratic norms, the present systems of judicial appointment (and the judiciary which it has put in place) suffers from what they term a democratic deficit. After a detailed examination of past attempts to reform this system, of arguments for and against a more democratic and representational approach to judicial selection, and possible models of judicial selection, the authors propose their own reform: the establishment by statute of Judicial Appointments Commissions. Such an approach might help cure the democratic deficit and produce what they dub a Triple-P judiciary, that is, one that is politically accountable, professionally qualified, and proportionally representative

Modeling of Decision Trees Through P systems

[EN] In this paper, we propose a decision-tree modeling in the framework of membrane computing. We propose an algorithm to obtain a P system that is equivalent to any decision tree taken as input. In our case, and unlike previous proposals, we formulate the concepts of decision trees endogenously, since there is no external agent involved in the modeling. The tree structure can be defined naturally by the topology of the regions in the P system and the decision rules are defined by communication rules of the P system.Sempere Luna, JM. (2019). Modeling of Decision Trees Through P systems. New Generation Computing. 37(3):325-337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00354-019-00052-4325337373Breiman, L., Friedman, J., Olshen, R., Stone, C.: Classification and Regression Trees. Chapman & Hall, Boca Raton (1984)Cardona, M., Colomer, M.A., Margalida, A., Palau, A., Pérez-Hurtado, I., Pérez-Jiménez, M.J., Sanuy, D.: A computational modeling for real ecosystems based on P systems. Nat. Comput. 10(1), 39–53 (2011)Cecilia, J.M., García, J.M., Guerrero, G.D., Martínez-del-Amor, M.A., Pérez-Hurtado, I., Pérez-Jiménez, M.J.: Simulation of P systems with active membranes on CUDA. Brief. Bioinform. 11(3), 313–322 (2010)Díaz-Pernil, D., Peña-Cantillana, F., Gutiérrez-Naranjo, M.A.: Self-constructing Recognizer P Systems. In: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Brainstorming Week on Membrane Computing. Fénix Editora, pp. 137–154 (2014)Fayyad, U.M., Irani, K.B.: On the handling of continuous-valued attributes in decision tree generation. Mach. Learn. 8, 87–102 (1992)Kingsford, C., Salzberg, S.L.: What are decision trees ? Nat. Biotechnol. 26(9), 1011–1013 (2008)Martín-Vide, C., Păun, Gh, Pazos, J., Rodríguez-Patón, A.: Tissue P systems. Theor. Comput. Sci. 296, 295–326 (2003)Martínez-del-Amor, M.A., García-Quismondo, M., Macías-Ramos, L.F., Valencia-Cabrera, L., Riscos-Núñez, A., Pérez-Jiménez, M.J.: Simulating P systems on GPU devices: a survey. Fund. Inf. 136(3), 269–284 (2015)Mitchell, T.: Machine Learning. McGraw-Hill, New York City (1997)Păun, Gh: Membrane Computing, An Introduction. Springer, Berlin (2002)Păun, Gh, Rozenberg, G., Salomaa, A. (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Membrane Computing. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2010)Quinlan, J.R.: C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning. Morgan Kaufmann, Burlington (1993)Sempere, J.M.: A View of P systems from information theory. In: Proceedings of the 17th international conference on membrane computing (CMC 2016) LNCS vol. 10105. Springer, pp. 352–362 (2017)Sammut, C., Webb, G.I. (eds.): Encyclopedia of Machine Learning. Springer, Berlin (2011)Wang, J., Hu, J., Peng, H., Pérez-Jiménez, M.J., Riscos-Núñez, A.: Decision tree models induced by membrane systems. Rom. J. Inf. Sci. Technol. 18(3), 228–239 (2015)Zhang, C., Ma, Y. (eds.): Ensemble Machine Learning, Methods and Applications. Springer, Berlin (2012)Zhang, X., Wang, B., Ding, Z., Tang, J., He, J.: Implementation of membrane algorithms on GPU. J. Appl. Math. 2014, 7 (2014

Quantum proof systems and entanglement theory

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-106).Quantum complexity theory is important from the point of view of not only theory of computation but also quantum information theory. In particular, quantum multi-prover interactive proof systems are defined based on complexity theory notions, while their characterization can be formulated using LOCC operations. On the other hand, the main resource in quantum information theory is entanglement, which can be considered as a monotonic decreasing quantity under LOCC maps. Indeed, any result in quantum proof systems can be translated to entanglement theory, and vice versa. In this thesis I mostly focus on quantum Merlin-Arthur games as a proof system in quantum complexity theory. I present a new complete problem for the complexity class QMA. I also show that computing both the Holevo capacity and the minimum output entropy of quantum channels are NP-hard. Then I move to the multiple-Merlin-Arthur games and show that assuming some additivity conjecture for entanglement of formation, we can amplify the gap in QMA(2) protocols. Based on the same assumption, I show that the QMA(k)-hierarchy collapses to QMA(2). I also prove that QMAlog(2), which is defined the same as QMA(2) except that the size of witnesses is logarithmic, with the gap n-(3+e) contains NP. Finally, motivated by the previous results, I show that the positive partial transpose test gives no bound on the trace distance of a given bipartite state from the set of separable states.by Salman Abolfathe Beikidezfuli.Ph.D

When all information is not created equal

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-196).Following Shannon's landmark paper, the classical theoretical framework for communication is based on a simplifying assumption that all information is equally important, thus aiming to provide a uniform protection to all information. However, this homogeneous view of information is not suitable for a variety of modern-day communication scenarios such as wireless and sensor networks, video transmission, interactive systems, and control applications. For example, an emergency alarm from a sensor network needs more protection than other transmitted information. Similarly, the coarse resolution of an image needs better protection than its finer details. For such heterogeneous information, if providing a uniformly high protection level to all parts of the information is infeasible, it is desirable to provide different protection levels based on the importance of those parts. The main objective of this thesis is to extend classical information theory to address this heterogeneous nature of information. Many theoretical tools needed for this are fundamentally different from the conventional homogeneous setting. One key issue is that bits are no more a sufficient measure of information. We develop a general framework for understanding the fundamental limits of transmitting such information, calculate such fundamental limits, and provide optimal architectures for achieving these limits. Our analysis shows that even without sacrificing the data-rate from channel capacity, some crucial parts of information can be protected with exponential reliability. This research would challenge the notion that a set of homogenous bits should necessarily be viewed as a universal interface to the physical layer; this potentially impacts the design of network architectures. This thesis also develops two novel approaches for simplifying such difficult problems in information theory. Our formulations are based on ideas from graphical models and Euclidean geometry and provide canonical examples for network information theory. They provide fresh insights into previously intractable problems as well as generalize previous related results.by Shashibhushan Prataprao Borade.Ph.D

Efficient deterministic finite automata split-minimization derived from Brzozowski's algorithm

Minimization of deterministic finite automata is a classic problem in Computer Science which is still studied nowadays. In this paper, we relate the different split-minimization methods proposed to date, or to be proposed, and the algorithm due to Brzozowski which has been usually set aside in any classification of DFA minimization algorithms. In our work, we first propose a polynomial minimization method derived from a paper by Champarnaud et al. We also show how the consideration of some efficiency improvements on this algorithm lead to obtain an algorithm similar to Hopcroft s classic algorithm. The results obtained lead us to propose a characterization of the set of possible splitters.García Gómez, P.; López Rodríguez, D.; Vázquez-De-Parga Andrade, M. (2014). Efficient deterministic finite automata split-minimization derived from Brzozowski's algorithm. International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science. 25(6):679-696. doi:10.1142/S0129054114500282S679696256Vázquez de Parga, M., García, P., & López, D. (2013). A polynomial double reversal minimization algorithm for deterministic finite automata. Theoretical Computer Science, 487, 17-22. doi:10.1016/j.tcs.2013.03.005Courcelle, B., Niwinski, D., & Podelski, A. (1991). A geometrical view of the determinization and minimization of finite-state automata. Mathematical Systems Theory, 24(1), 117-146. doi:10.1007/bf02090394POLÁK, L. (2005). MINIMALIZATIONS OF NFA USING THE UNIVERSAL AUTOMATON. International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, 16(05), 999-1010. doi:10.1142/s0129054105003431Gries, D. (1973). Describing an algorithm by Hopcroft. Acta Informatica, 2(2). doi:10.1007/bf00264025Blum, N. (1996). An O(n log n) implementation of the standard method for minimizing n-state finite automata. Information Processing Letters, 57(2), 65-69. doi:10.1016/0020-0190(95)00199-9Knuutila, T. (2001). Re-describing an algorithm by Hopcroft. Theoretical Computer Science, 250(1-2), 333-363. doi:10.1016/s0304-3975(99)00150-