Bitemporal Complex Event Processing of Web Event Advertisements

Abstract. The web is the largest bulletin board of the world. Events of all types, from flight arrivals to business meetings, are announced on this board. Tracking and reacting to such event announcements, however, is a tedious manual task, only slightly alleviated by email or similar notifications. Announcements are published with human readers in mind, and updates or delayed announcements are frequent. These characteristics have hampered attempts at automatic tracking. PEACE provides the first integrated framework for event processing on top of web event ads. Given a schema of events to be tracked, the framework populates this schema through compact wrappers for event announcement sources. These wrappers produce events including updates and retractions. PEACE then queries these events to detect complex events, often combining announcements from multiple sources. To deal with updates and delayed announcements, PEACE's schemas are bitemporal so as to distinguish between occurrence and detection time. This allows complex event specifications to track updates and to react to differences in occurrence and detection time. Our evaluation shows that extracting the event from an announcement dominates the processing of PEACE and that the complex event processor deals with several event announcement sources even with moderate resources. We further show, that simple restrictions on the complex event specifications suffice to guarantee that PEACE only requires a constant buffer to process arbitrarily many event announcements

Bitemporal Support for Business Process Contingency Management

Modern organisations are increasingly moving from traditional monolithic business systems to environments where more and more tasks are outsourced to third party providers. Therefore, processes must operate in an open and dynamic environment in which the management of time plays a crucial role. Handling time, however, remains a challenging issue yet to be fully addressed. Traditional processing systems only consider business events in a single time dimension, but are unable to handle bitemporal events: events in two time dimensions. Recently, backend systems have started to provide increased support for handling bitemporal events, but these enhanced capabilities have not been carried through to business process management systems. In this paper, we consider the possible relationships that exist between bitemporal properties of events and we show how these relationships affect a business process. In addition, we demonstrate how bitemporal events can be handled to prevent certain undesired effects on the business process

PEACE-ful Web Event Extraction and Processing

Abstract. PEACE, our proposed tool, integrates complex event processing and web extraction into a unified framework to handle web event advertisements and to run a notification service atop. Its bitemporal schemata distinguish occurrence and detection time, enabling PEACE to deal with updates and delayed announcements, as often occurring on the web. To consolidate the arising event streams, PEACE combines simple events into complex ones. Depending on their occurrence and detection time, these complex events trigger actions to be executed. We demonstrate PEACE's capabilities with a business trip scenario, involving as raw events business trips, flight bookings, scheduled flights, and flight arrivals and departures. These events are scrapped from the web and combined into complex events, triggering actions to be executed, such as updating facebook status messages. Our demonstrator records and reruns event sequences at different speeds to show the system dealing with complex scenarios spanning several days

Advances in Eating Disorders

Eating disorders (ED) are a group of mental disorders characterized by an altered food intake and the presence of inappropriate behaviors and thoughts about weight and shape. All EDs lead to physical and psychosocial functioning impairments in the patients which, in turn, may contribute to the persistence of the disease. The severity of EDs has been highlighted by their chronicity, medical complications, comorbidity, and high rates of mortality. Therefore, to address this important health issue, the current Special Issue collected 21 articles (i.e., three reviews and 18 research articles) focusing on the most recent and relevant scientific findings regarding advances in ED, such as genetic and epigenetic factors, biomarkers, comorbidity, clinical phenotypes, neurocognition, treatment predictors, and treatment models and therapeutic targets. Altogether, we believe that the articles contained in this Special Issue have largely achieved the initial objective of providing increased knowledge about the pathogenesis, the risk factors, the maintenance factors, and the most appropriate treatments tools for ED

Music and time: tempomorphism: nested temporalities in perceived experience of music.

This thesis represents the results of a theoretical and practical investigation of acoustic and electro-acoustic elements of Western music at the start of the twentyfirst century, with specific attention to soundscapes. A commentary on the development of soundscapes is drawn from a multidisciplinary overview of concepts of time, followed by an examination of concepts of time in music. As a response to Jonathan Kramer's concept of `vertical' music (a characteristic aesthetic of which is an absence of conventional harmonic teleology), particular attention is paid to those theories of multiple nested temporalities which have been referred to by Kramer in support of non-teleological musical structures. The survey suggests that new musical concepts, such as vertical music, have emerged from sensibilities resulting from the musical and associated styles of minimalism, and represent an ontological development of aesthetics characteristic of the twentieth century. An original contention of the debate is that innovations in the practice of music as the result of technological developments have led to the possibility of defining a methodology of process in addition to auditive strategies, resulting in a duality defined as 'tempomorphic'. Further observations are supplied, using findings derived from original creative practical research, to define tempomorphic performance, which complete the contribution to knowledge offered by the investigation. Tempomorphism, therefore, is defined as a duality of process and audition: as auditive tool, tempomorphic analysis provides a listening strategy suited to harmonically static music; as a procedural tool, it affords a methodology based primarily on duration

Spatial Transformations

This book examines a variety of subjective spatial experiences and knowledge production practices in order to shed new light on the specifics of contemporary socio-spatial change, driven as it is by inter alia, digitalization, transnationalization and migration. Considering the ways in which emerging spatial phenomena are conditioned by an increasing interconnectedness, this book asks how spaces are changing as a result of mediatization, increased mobility, globalization and social dislocation. With attention to questions surrounding the negotiation and (visual) communication of space, it explores the arrangements, spatialities and materialities that underpin the processes of spatial refiguration by which these changes come about. Bringing together the work of leading scholars from across diverse range disciplines to address questions of socio-spatial transformation, this volume will appeal to sociologists and geographers, as well as scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture

Bitemporal Complex Event Processing of Web Event Advertisements.

The web is the largest bulletin board of the world. Events of all types, from flight arrivals to business meetings, are announced on this board. Tracking and reacting to such event announcements, however, is a tedious manual task, only slightly alleviated by email or similar notifications. Announcements are published with human readers in mind, and updates or delayed announcements are frequent. These characteristics have hampered attempts at automatic tracking. PeaCE provides the first integrated framework for event processing on top of web event ads. Given a schema of events to be tracked, the framework populates this schema through compact wrappers for event announcement sources. These wrappers produce events including updates and retractions. PeaCE then queries these events to detect complex events, often combining announcements from multiple sources. To deal with updates and delayed announcements, PeaCE's schemas are bitemporal so as to distinguish between occurrence and detection time. This allows complex event specifications to track updates and to react to differences in occurrence and detection time. Our evaluation shows that extracting the event from an announcement dominates the processing of PeaCE and that the complex event processor deals with several event announcement sources even with moderate resources. We further show, that simple restrictions on the complex event specifications suffice to guarantee that PEACE only requires a constant buffer to process arbitrarily many event announcements. © 2013 Springer-Verlag

Relatives' experiences of 'last resort' interventions for people with mental health difficulties

The thesis entitled ‘Relatives’ experiences of ‘last resort’ interventions for people with mental health difficulties’ explores how families experience the psychiatric hospitalisation of a relative and their treatment with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Section one presents a meta-synthesis of 14 qualitative studies considering how families experience the psychiatric hospitalisation of a relative. The synthesis yielded six key concepts. Four concepts described the process that relatives experienced during the hospitalisation: (1) Seeking help is frustrating and overwhelming; (2) Conflicting emotions on admission; (3) Navigating the hospital environment; and (4) Reconceptualising and coming to terms with altered circumstances. The final two concepts influenced, and were perpetuated by, relatives’ experiences: (5) The role of stigma; (6) Power, isolation and exclusion. Section two presents a research study exploring how families experience their relatives’ treatment with ECT. Six participants were interviewed and the data analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Five overall themes were developed that capture participants’ experiences of supporting their relative through the ECT process: (1) You take the treatment because the alternative is just horrific; (2) Professional power silences resistance from relatives; (3) Moving from emotional responses to pragmatic reasoning; (4) Relatives’ struggle to find a role in the ECT process; and (5) ECT changes people and relationships. Section three presents a critical appraisal of the research study, specifically focussing on the importance of researcher reflexivity in qualitative research

Music and time : tempomorphism : nested temporalities in perceived experience of music

This thesis represents the results of a theoretical and practical investigation of acoustic and electro-acoustic elements of Western music at the start of the twentyfirst century, with specific attention to soundscapes. A commentary on the development of soundscapes is drawn from a multidisciplinary overview of concepts of time, followed by an examination of concepts of time in music. As a response to Jonathan Kramer's concept of 'vertical' music (a characteristic aesthetic of which is an absence of conventional harmonic teleology), particular attention is paid to those theories of multiple nested temporalities which have been referred to by Kramer in support of non-teleological musical structures. The survey suggests that new musical concepts, such as vertical music, have emerged from sensibilities resulting from the musical and associated styles of minimalism, and represent an ontological development of aesthetics characteristic of the twentieth century. An original contention of the debate is that innovations in the practice of music as the result of technological developments have led to the possibility of defining a methodology of process in addition to auditive strategies, resulting in a duality defined as 'tempomorphic'. Further observations are supplied, using findings derived from original creative practical research, to define tempomorphic performance, which complete the contribution to knowledge offered by the investigation. Tempomorphism, therefore, is defined as a duality of process and audition: as auditive tool, tempomorphic analysis provides a listening strategy suited to harmonically static music; as a procedural tool, it affords a methodology based primarily on duration.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The Largest Unethical Medical Experiment in Human History

This monograph describes the largest unethical medical experiment in human history: the implementation and operation of non-ionizing non-visible EMF radiation (hereafter called wireless radiation) infrastructure for communications, surveillance, weaponry, and other applications. It is unethical because it violates the key ethical medical experiment requirement for “informed consent” by the overwhelming majority of the participants. The monograph provides background on unethical medical research/experimentation, and frames the implementation of wireless radiation within that context. The monograph then identifies a wide spectrum of adverse effects of wireless radiation as reported in the premier biomedical literature for over seven decades. Even though many of these reported adverse effects are extremely severe, the true extent of their severity has been grossly underestimated. Most of the reported laboratory experiments that produced these effects are not reflective of the real-life environment in which wireless radiation operates. Many experiments do not include pulsing and modulation of the carrier signal, and most do not account for synergistic effects of other toxic stimuli acting in concert with the wireless radiation. These two additions greatly exacerbate the severity of the adverse effects from wireless radiation, and their neglect in current (and past) experimentation results in substantial under-estimation of the breadth and severity of adverse effects to be expected in a real-life situation. This lack of credible safety testing, combined with depriving the public of the opportunity to provide informed consent, contextualizes the wireless radiation infrastructure operation as an unethical medical experiment