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

Knowledge and Management Models for Sustainable Growth

In the last years sustainability has become a topic of global concern and a key issue in the strategic agenda of both business organizations and public authorities and organisations. Significant changes in business landscape, the emergence of new technology, including social media, the pressure of new social concerns, have called into question established conceptualizations of competitiveness, wealth creation and growth. New and unaddressed set of issues regarding how private and public organisations manage and invest their resources to create sustainable value have brought to light. In particular the increasing focus on environmental and social themes has suggested new dimensions to be taken into account in the value creation dynamics, both at organisations and communities level. For companies the need of integrating corporate social and environmental responsibility issues into strategy and daily business operations, pose profound challenges, which, in turn, involve numerous processes and complex decisions influenced by many stakeholders. Facing these challenges calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge as well as the development of proper management models, approaches and tools aimed to contribute to the development and realization of environmentally and socially sustainable business strategies and practices

Standardized metadata for human pathogen/vector genomic sequences

High throughput sequencing has accelerated the determination of genome sequences for thousands of human infectious disease pathogens and dozens of their vectors. The scale and scope of these data are enabling genotype-phenotype association studies to identify genetic determinants of pathogen virulence and drug/insecticide resistance, and phylogenetic studies to track the origin and spread of disease outbreaks. To maximize the utility of genomic sequences for these purposes, it is essential that metadata about the pathogen/vector isolate characteristics be collected and made available in organized, clear, and consistent formats. Here we report the development of the GSCID/BRC Project and Sample Application Standard, developed by representatives of the Genome Sequencing Centers for Infectious Diseases (GSCIDs), the Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRCs) for Infectious Diseases, and the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), informed by interactions with numerous collaborating scientists. It includes mapping to terms from other data standards initiatives, including the Genomic Standards Consortium's minimal information (MIxS) and NCBI's BioSample/BioProjects checklists and the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI). The standard includes data fields about characteristics of the organism or environmental source of the specimen, spatial-temporal information about the specimen isolation event, phenotypic characteristics of the pathogen/vector isolated, and project leadership and support. By modeling metadata fields into an ontology-based semantic framework and reusing existing ontologies and minimum information checklists, the application standard can be extended to support additional project-specific data fields and integrated with other data represented with comparable standards. The use of this metadata standard by all ongoing and future GSCID sequencing projects will provide a consistent representation of these data in the BRC resources and other repositories that leverage these data, allowing investigators to identify relevant genomic sequences and perform comparative genomics analyses that are both statistically meaningful and biologically relevant

Intellectual property law and e-commerce in Sri-Lanka: towards a jurisprudence based on constitution, Roman-Dutch law and Buddhist principle

PhDModem developments in technology, connnerce and the cultural industries pose problems for intellectual property in Sri Lanka, as everywhere. Case law may be used for judicial guidance but there are comparatively few reported cases from the Sri Lankan courts. By examining Sri Lanka's juridical history and Constitution, together with constitutionally recognised Buddhist principles, it is possible to suggest further sources of guidance for judges. Using the proposed framework, it may be possible for the judges to apply existing law to new situations and avoid the need for constant legislative change in an attempt to keep up with developments and comply with Sri Lanka's international obligations. The extent to which such guidance may be useful is explored by looking at specific issues, which have caused difficulty in other jurisdictions. It is hoped that the proposed techniques could be used to build up a body of Sri Lankan jurisprudence. Ms may prove more stable and effective than incremental legislation. 'Status juris - 'Mis study (unless otherwise stated) based on material available as at 0 1.12.2004 and the law in force on that date

Innovation ouverte : vers la génération 2.0

L'innovation ouverte reste un concept très large, un peu fourre-tout, dont les frontières, les formes et les enjeux doivent encore d'être clarifiés. C'est précisément ce que nous nous proposons de faire dans cette contribution. Dans un premier temps, nous définissons le concept d'innovation ouverte et nous le confrontons aux théories existantes en économie et gestion de l'innovation. Cela nous amène notamment à distinguer les deux faces de l'innovation ouverte l'" inside-out et l'" outside-in " et à montrer que seule la première est réellement nouvelle en sciences de gestion. Cela nous permet également d'insister sur l'importance des droits de propriété intellectuels (DPI) et notamment du brevet dans l'essor et le succès des stratégies d'innovation ouverte. Dans un second temps nous présentons les différentes modalités de l'innovation ouverte. Nous insistons essentiellement sur la différence entre les formes traditionnelles d'innovation ouverte qui sont peu ouvertes et peu interactives (par exemple un accord bilatéral de collaboration de recherche entre une entreprise et une université) et des modalités qui ont émergé plus récemment et qui sont largement plus ouvertes et plus interactives (par exemple le crowdsourcing ou l'innovation avec des communautés open source). Nous appelons la première " innovation ouverte 1.0 " et la seconde " innovation ouverte 2.0 ", faisant ainsi référence à l'importance des TIC et notamment de l'Internet dit 2.0 pour favoriser la mise en place des modalités d'innovation ouverte 2.0. Enfin, dans un troisième temps nous analysons les enjeux stratégiques de l'innovation ouverte et nous évaluons la rationalité et les problématiques économiques soulevées par ce type de pratiques

REDISCOVERY OF A NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL LANDSCAPE: THE CHICKASAW HOMELAND AT REMOVAL

Little information beyond generalities exists regarding the cultural landscape of the Chickasaw Indians in their ancestral homelands prior to Removal in the late 1830s. This dissertation evaluates one possible archival source for specifics of Chickasaw land use, the field notes and survey plats compiled as part of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The process of original survey following land cession treaty divided the ceded area up into the familiar square-mile rectangular system of townships and ranges that extends from the Mississippi Territory westwards, in the so-called public land states. The research compiles all cultural observations made by the surveyors within a fourteen township area (totaling 504 square miles). This study area, generally located on the west bank of Town Creek between present-day Tupelo and Pontotoc MS, was chosen to cover the traditional center of Chickasaw settlement and elements of important roads such as the Natchez Trace. The resulting catalog of observations was compared to similar features on the township plats and to other cultural resource inventories to identify patterns of inscription and possible erasure of Native American cultural activities. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology was used to consolidate and compare these data resources. The PLSS survey documents provide a useful but not complete resource for identifying Chickasaw cultural presence within the study area. No consistent pattern of omission or erasure of Chickasaw activities was identified. The analysis identifies several opportunities and caveats for future researchers who might extend this analysis, including technical challenges in applying GIS technology to this data