Self-Configuring Socio-Technical Systems: Redesign at Runtime

Modern information systems are becoming more and more socio-technical systems, namely systems composed of human (social) agents and software (technical) systems operating together in a common environment. The structure of such systems has to evolve dynamically in response to the changes of the environment. When new requirements are introduced, when an actor leaves the system or when a new actor comes, the socio-technical structure needs to be redesigned and revised. In this paper, an approach to dynamic reconfiguration of a socio-technical system structure in response to internal or external changes is proposed. The approach is based on planning techniques for generating possible alternative configurations, and local strategies for their evaluation. The reconfiguration mechanism is presented, which makes the socio-technical system self-configuring, and the approach is discussed and analyzed on a simple case study

General Approach To Compute Phosphorescent OLED Efficiency

Phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PhOLEDs) are widely used in the display industry. In PhOLEDs, cyclometalated Ir(III) complexes are the most widespread triplet emitter dopants to attain red, e.g., Ir(piq)3 (piq = 1-phenylisoquinoline), and green, e.g., Ir(ppy)3 (ppy = 2-phenylpyridine), emissions, whereas obtaining operative deep-blue emitters is still one of the major challenges. When designing new emitters, two main characteristics besides colors should be targeted: high photostability and large photoluminescence efficiencies. To date, these are very often optimized experimentally in a trial-and-error manner. Instead, accurate predictive tools would be highly desirable. In this contribution, we present a general approach for computing the photoluminescence lifetimes and efficiencies of Ir(III) complexes by considering all possible competing excited-state deactivation processes and importantly explicitly including the strongly temperature-dependent ones. This approach is based on the combination of state-of-the-art quantum chemical calculations and excited-state decay rate formalism with kinetic modeling, which is shown to be an efficient and reliable approach for a broad palette of Ir(III) complexes, i.e., from yellow/orange to deep-blue emitters

Evaluation of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Families for Health V2 for the treatment of childhood obesity : study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Effective programs to help children manage their weight are required. Families for Health focuses on a parenting approach, designed to help parents develop their parenting skills to support lifestyle change within the family. Families for Health V1 showed sustained reductions in overweight after 2 years in a pilot evaluation, but lacks a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evidence base. Methods/design: This is a multi-center, investigator-blind RCT, with parallel economic evaluation, with a 12-month follow-up. The trial will recruit 120 families with at least one child aged 6 to 11 years who is overweight (≥91st centile BMI) or obese (≥98th centile BMI) from three localities and assigned randomly to Families for Health V2 (60 families) or the usual care control (60 families) groups. Randomization will be stratified by locality (Coventry, Warwickshire, Wolverhampton). Families for Health V2 is a family-based intervention run in a community venue. Parents/carers and children attend parallel groups for 2.5 hours weekly for 10 weeks. The usual care arm will be the usual support provided within each NHS locality. A mixed-methods evaluation will be carried out. Child and parent participants will be assessed at home visits at baseline, 3-month (post-treatment) and 12-month follow-up. The primary outcome measure is the change in the children’s BMI z-scores at 12 months from the baseline. Secondary outcome measures include changes in the children’s waist circumference, percentage body fat, physical activity, fruit/vegetable consumption and quality of life. The parents’ BMI and mental well-being, family eating/activity, parent–child relationships and parenting style will also be assessed. Economic components will encompass the measurement and valuation of service utilization, including the costs of running Families for Health and usual care, and the EuroQol EQ-5D health outcomes. Cost-effectiveness will be expressed in terms of incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year gained. A de novo decision-analytic model will estimate the lifetime cost-effectiveness of the Families for Health program. Process evaluation will document recruitment, attendance and drop-out rates, and the fidelity of Families for Health delivery. Interviews with up to 24 parents and children from each arm will investigate perceptions and changes made. Discussion: This paper describes our protocol to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a parenting approach for managing childhood obesity and presents challenges to implementation. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN4503220

Transformations of agricultural extension services in the EU: Towards a lack of adequate knowledge for small-scale farms

This paper examines the consequences of the transformations of extension services for small scale farms. It presents the results of investigations embedded in regulation theory, which combine a comparative institutional analysis, statistical data processing (national agricultural census) and direct surveys. We describe the transformations in the EU and show that they make it more difficult for small farms to access extension services and to benefit from “front office” support (i.e. direct advice from extensionists). Finally, we emphasize that due to the modification of the knowledge production regime, these small farms may also suffer new specific adverse effects resulting from the re-organization of the "back-office" R&D activities of these extension services (i.e. knowledge base updating, database building, scientific experiments, etc.).Agricultural extension services, Small-scale farms, Institutional Analysis, Europe, Knowledge, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q16, Q12, B52, P51, D83,

Towards Intelligent Databases

This article is a presentation of the objectives and techniques of deductive databases. The deductive approach to databases aims at extending with intensional definitions other database paradigms that describe applications extensionaUy. We first show how constructive specifications can be expressed with deduction rules, and how normative conditions can be defined using integrity constraints. We outline the principles of bottom-up and top-down query answering procedures and present the techniques used for integrity checking. We then argue that it is often desirable to manage with a database system not only database applications, but also specifications of system components. We present such meta-level specifications and discuss their advantages over conventional approaches