Semantic integrity for persistent objects

Modelling constructs for specifying semantic integrity are reviewed, and their implicit execution semantics discussed. An integrity maintenance model based on these constructs is presented. An implementation of this model in a persistent programming language is described, allowing exible automated dynamic integrity management for applications updating a persistent store; this implementation is based on an event-driven architecture

ERAWATCH Country Reports 2012: Greece

This analytical country report is one of a series of annual ERAWATCH reports produced for EU Member States and Countries Associated to the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Union (FP7). The main objective of the ERAWATCH Annual Country Reports is to characterise and assess the performance of national research systems and related policies in a structured manner that is comparable across countries. The Country Report 2012 builds on and updates the 2011 edition. The report identifies the structural challenges of the national research and innovation system and assesses the match between the national priorities and the structural challenges, highlighting the latest developments, their dynamics and impact in the overall national context. They further analyse and assess the ability of the policy mix in place to consistently and efficiently tackle these challenges. These reports were originally produced in December 2012, focusing on policy developments over the previous twelve months. The reports were produced by independent experts under direct contract with IPTS. The analytical framework and the structure of the reports have been developed by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the Joint Research Centre (JRC-IPTS) and Directorate General for Research and Innovation with contributions from external experts.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt

Quality Assurance in Competency Training of Pre-anesthesia Consultation Skills

The absence of quality assurance in training clinicians to perform pre-anesthesia consultations at a Canadian university is the Problem of Practice addressed in this Organizational Improvement Plan. This competency requires learners to apply their anesthesia knowledge to take medical histories; perform physical examinations; diagnose anesthetic risks; and generate anesthesia plans. Random chart audits of many learners identify deficiencies and suggest inconsistent training of this competency. This Organizational Improvement Plan analyzes the anesthesia program’s organizational context to be a complex adaptive system; organizational structure to be a hierarchy; and organizational state to be static. Through the paradigms of complexity theory, interpretivism, critical theory, and pragmatism, this proposal describes how adaptive, enabling, and administrative leadership strategies will (1) improve competency training of pre-anesthesia consultations; (2) build capacity of the anesthesia program’s stakeholders; and (3) foster a collaborative culture. An Integrated Framework of the Change Path Model and the Modified Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle will serve to implement change in this organization. The research and recommendations offered in this work can be adapted for use in other clinical programs aiming to improve competency training

Rhiz|comics: The Structure, Sign, and Play of Image and Text

This dissertation combines Gregory Ulmer\u27s post-criticism with multimodal composition resulting in a work that critiques the medium of comics in comics format. Six traditional text chapters forge a theoretical and practical foundation; punctuated within and without by occasional visual interludes and three comic sections. I advocate teaching multimodal composition through comics\u27 interplay of image and text

Towards Visual Localization, Mapping and Moving Objects Tracking by a Mobile Robot: a Geometric and Probabilistic Approach

Dans cette thèse, nous résolvons le problème de reconstruire simultanément une représentation de la géométrie du monde, de la trajectoire de l'observateur, et de la trajectoire des objets mobiles, à l'aide de la vision. Nous divisons le problème en trois étapes : D'abord, nous donnons une solution au problème de la cartographie et localisation simultanées pour la vision monoculaire qui fonctionne dans les situations les moins bien conditionnées géométriquement. Ensuite, nous incorporons l'observabilité 3D instantanée en dupliquant le matériel de vision avec traitement monoculaire. Ceci élimine les inconvénients inhérents aux systèmes stéréo classiques. Nous ajoutons enfin la détection et suivi des objets mobiles proches en nous servant de cette observabilité 3D. Nous choisissons une représentation éparse et ponctuelle du monde et ses objets. La charge calculatoire des algorithmes de perception est allégée en focalisant activement l'attention aux régions de l'image avec plus d'intérêt. ABSTRACT : In this thesis we give new means for a machine to understand complex and dynamic visual scenes in real time. In particular, we solve the problem of simultaneously reconstructing a certain representation of the world's geometry, the observer's trajectory, and the moving objects' structures and trajectories, with the aid of vision exteroceptive sensors. We proceeded by dividing the problem into three main steps: First, we give a solution to the Simultaneous Localization And Mapping problem (SLAM) for monocular vision that is able to adequately perform in the most ill-conditioned situations: those where the observer approaches the scene in straight line. Second, we incorporate full 3D instantaneous observability by duplicating vision hardware with monocular algorithms. This permits us to avoid some of the inherent drawbacks of classic stereo systems, notably their limited range of 3D observability and the necessity of frequent mechanical calibration. Third, we add detection and tracking of moving objects by making use of this full 3D observability, whose necessity we judge almost inevitable. We choose a sparse, punctual representation of both the world and the moving objects in order to alleviate the computational payload of the image processing algorithms, which are required to extract the necessary geometrical information out of the images. This alleviation is additionally supported by active feature detection and search mechanisms which focus the attention to those image regions with the highest interest. This focusing is achieved by an extensive exploitation of the current knowledge available on the system (all the mapped information), something that we finally highlight to be the ultimate key to success

Strategies Clinic Managers Use to Reduce Missed Medical Appointments

Patients who miss their medical appointments increase health care costs for themselves and for clinics. The purpose of this qualitative, single exploratory case study was to explore strategies health care clinic managers use to reduce medical no-shows for patient-scheduled appointments. Change management theory guided the scope and analysis. The data collection included a single clinical operations manager who have strategies to mitigate no-shows for patient-scheduled appointments participated in a semistructured interview in southeastern Virginia, the direct observation of 2 office workers in their natural setting of scheduling appointments, and for methodological triangulation, a review of organizational archival documents about missed medical appointments. Member checking was used to strengthen the credibility and trustworthiness of analyses, which were carried out using Yin\u27s 5-step analysis process. Major themes were forgetfulness and high deductible plan; minor themes were lead-time and inclement weather that lead to no-shows. This study explored the strategies necessary to reduce costs and increase revenues; it could free funds to provide services to patients, such as education and counseling support. The findings from this study could contribute to social change by adding new knowledge or informing the strategies to reduce medical no-shows. These findings may also benefit organizational worth and increase community health

The enterprise architecting framework applied to the supply organization of a sourcing management center of excellence

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-92).The basis to develop this thesis was performed after executing an internship in ABB Inc. The main objective of the study was to design the organization to operate the procurement function at a new manufacturing campus.The enterprise architecting roadmap was applied to decompose the complex problem of designing an organization into building blocks that could be easily developed. For this purpose, two enterprise architecture tools were applied: stakeholder analysis and enterprise relevant views. Once the basic building blocks of the enterprise were defined, different analytical tools were applied to design the details of each one. The analytical tools applied to this project were process mapping, total cost modeling, organization design and information technology selection.The outcome of the study was the detailed definition of the following building blocks of an enterprise: processes, process costs, organization and information technology. The conclusions of the thesis generalize the applied concepts to companies that are in the situation of starting new operations.by Leon Felipe Villegas Kavanagh.S.M.M.B.A

Multi-Quality Auto-Tuning by Contract Negotiation

A characteristic challenge of software development is the management of omnipresent change. Classically, this constant change is driven by customers changing their requirements. The wish to optimally leverage available resources opens another source of change: the software systems environment. Software is tailored to specific platforms (e.g., hardware architectures) resulting in many variants of the same software optimized for different environments. If the environment changes, a different variant is to be used, i.e., the system has to reconfigure to the variant optimized for the arisen situation. The automation of such adjustments is subject to the research community of self-adaptive systems. The basic principle is a control loop, as known from control theory. The system (and environment) is continuously monitored, the collected data is analyzed and decisions for or against a reconfiguration are computed and realized. Central problems in this field, which are addressed in this thesis, are the management of interdependencies between non-functional properties of the system, the handling of multiple criteria subject to decision making and the scalability. In this thesis, a novel approach to self-adaptive software--Multi-Quality Auto-Tuning (MQuAT)--is presented, which provides design and operation principles for software systems which automatically provide the best possible utility to the user while producing the least possible cost. For this purpose, a component model has been developed, enabling the software developer to design and implement self-optimizing software systems in a model-driven way. This component model allows for the specification of the structure as well as the behavior of the system and is capable of covering the runtime state of the system. The notion of quality contracts is utilized to cover the non-functional behavior and, especially, the dependencies between non-functional properties of the system. At runtime the component model covers the runtime state of the system. This runtime model is used in combination with the contracts to generate optimization problems in different formalisms (Integer Linear Programming (ILP), Pseudo-Boolean Optimization (PBO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Multi-Objective Integer Linear Programming (MOILP)). Standard solvers are applied to derive solutions to these problems, which represent reconfiguration decisions, if the identified configuration differs from the current. Each approach is empirically evaluated in terms of its scalability showing the feasibility of all approaches, except for ACO, the superiority of ILP over PBO and the limits of all approaches: 100 component types for ILP, 30 for PBO, 10 for ACO and 30 for 2-objective MOILP. In presence of more than two objective functions the MOILP approach is shown to be infeasible

Education, sustainability and intersubjectivity: Exploring the possibility of the emergence of new ways of knowing, being and acting in the world

In this conceptual thesis I explore a paradox inherent in sustainability, namely that to 'sustain' something it needs to be allowed to emerge into something different than it currently is. Moreover, it is not always knowable in advance what that ‘something’ will be. I also argue that education is fundamentally about sustainability, as its role is to allow/encourage a human being to emerge into someone different than he/she currently is. I assert, however, that whilst this is education’s role, it currently, and paradoxically, works against itself by defining the human subject in advance (as a particular ‘ideal’ kind of rational autonomous being), hence closing the matter of what a human can grow into before education even starts. I argue that complexity thinking and what Osberg (2015) calls complexity- compatible thinking, posthumanist/posthuman and feminist thinking provide logics to approach the issue of emergence, including the emergence of what it is to be a human subject. It is through engaging with these logics to keep the abundant possibilities of the future radically open that my thesis makes a contribution to the field of education and sustainability. To make such a contribution I first of all identify that Biesta (2006, 2013) and his ‘pedagogy of interruption’ are working within the logic of complexity thinking. In his theory Biesta identifies how fleeting moments can interrupt existing rational autonomous understandings of human subjectivity. Whilst acknowledging that one cannot programme such ‘fleeting moments’ into education, I draw on ideas from Arendt, Mouffe, Rancière and Masschelein and Simons to encourage the possibility of such moments - moments which open up spaces in which, through acting and speaking with others, who one is as an initium, a beginner can emerge. However, emergence of the new raises the important issue of ethics. I argue that in her two-fold concept of forgiveness and mutual promising Arendt provides a way to develop an immanent ethics arising from horizontal relationships between people speaking and acting together. Finally, I focus on the fleeting moment or event of interruption itself. Drawing on Arendt, Loidolt, Keller and Braidotti I argue that this can be understood as a first-person intersubjective encounter under conditions of plurality. I understand plurality as speaking and acting together with unique others open to the stance one expresses and vice versa. In intersubjective encounters one does not reveal an inner essence to others. Instead who one is emerges intersubjectively, in and through the encounter, creating a surplus, something new that was not in the world before. I also argue how such encounters have the potential to be ethical encounters. I then go beyond Arendt and draw on posthumanist and posthuman thinking to consider the possibility of intersubjective first-being ethical encounters with(in) the wider natural world. I argue that allowing some time for school understood as skholé – a safe space, protected from politicisation by the issues of the day, to reflect and explore who one is, and how one can act in the world – has an important role in encouraging, valuing and reflecting on such encounters. I conclude that education which understands sustainability as an emergent process builds a bridge between education as a sustainable and education as a democratic process. In such an education who one is as a subject appears through intersubjective encounters, bringing into the world the possibility of the emergence of new, unexpected ways of knowing, being and acting essential for sustainability