Databases and Information Systems in the AI Era: Contributions from ADBIS, TPDL and EDA 2020 Workshops and Doctoral Consortium

Research on database and information technologies has been rapidly evolving over the last couple of years. This evolution was lead by three major forces: Big Data, AI and Connected World that open the door to innovative research directions and challenges, yet exploiting four main areas: (i) computational and storage resource modeling and organization; (ii) new programming models, (iii) processing power and (iv) new applications that emerge related to health, environment, education, Cultural Heritage, Banking, etc. The 24th East-European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS 2020), the 24th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2020) and the 16th Workshop on Business Intelligence and Big Data (EDA 2020), held during August 25–27, 2020, at Lyon, France, and associated satellite events aimed at covering some emerging issues related to database and information system research in these areas. The aim of this paper is to present such events, their motivations, and topics of interest, as well as briefly outline the papers selected for presentations. The selected papers will then be included in the remainder of this volume

Breakthroughs and emerging insights from ongoing design science projects: Research-in-progress papers and poster presentations from the 11th international conference on design science research in information systems and technology (DESRIST) 2016. St. John, Newfoundland, Canada, May 23-25

This volume contains selected research-in-progress papers and poster presentations from DESRIST 2016 - the 11th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology held during 24-25 May 2016 at St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. DESRIST provides a platform for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss Design Science research. The 11th DESRIST built on the foundation of ten prior highly successful international conferences held in Claremont, Pasadena, Atlanta, Philadelphia, St. Gallen, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Helsinki, Miami, and Dublin. This year's conference places a special emphasis on using Design Science to engage with the growing challenges that face society, including (but not limited to) demands on health care systems, climate change, and security. With these challenges in mind, individuals from academia and industry came together to discuss important ongoing work and to share emerging knowledge and ideas. Design Science projects often involve multiple sub-problems, meaning there may be a delay before the final set of findings can be laid out. Hence, this volume "Breakthroughs and Observations from Ongoing Design Science Projects" presents preliminary findings from studies that are still underway. Completed research from DESRIST 2016 is presented in a separate volume entitled "Tackling Society's Grand Challenges with Design Science", which is published by Springer International Publishing, Switzerland. The final set of accepted papers in this volume reflects those presented at DESRIST 2016, including 11 research-in-progress papers and 4 abstracts for poster presentations. Each research-in-progress paper and each poster abstract was reviewed by a minimum of two referees. We would like to thank the authors who submitted their research-in-progress papers and poster presentations to DESRIST 2016, the referees who took the time to construct detailed and constructive reviews, and the Program Committee who made the event possible. Furthermore we thank the sponsoring organisations, in particular Maynooth University, Claremont Graduate University, and Memorial University of Newfoundland, for their financial support. We believe the research described in this volume addresses some of the most topical and interesting design challenges facing the field of information systems. We hope that readers find the insights provided by authors as valuable and thought-provoking as we have, and that the discussion of such early findings can help to maximise their impact

Partial Correctness of a Power Algorithm

This work continues a formal verification of algorithms written in terms of simple-named complex-valued nominative data [6],[8],[15],[11],[12],[13]. In this paper we present a formalization in the Mizar system [3],[1] of the partial correctness of the algorithm: i := val.1 j := val.2 b := val.3 n := val.4 s := val.5 while (i n) i := i + j s := s * b return s computing the natural n power of given complex number b, where variables i, b, n, s are located as values of a V-valued Function, loc, as: loc/.1 = i, loc/.3 = b, loc/.4 = n and loc/.5 = s, and the constant 1 is located in the location loc/.2 = j (set V represents simple names of considered nominative data [17]).The validity of the algorithm is presented in terms of semantic Floyd-Hoare triples over such data [9]. Proofs of the correctness are based on an inference system for an extended Floyd-Hoare logic [2],[4] with partial pre- and post-conditions [14],[16],[7],[5].Institute of Informatics, University of Białystok, PolandGrzegorz Bancerek, Czesław Byliński, Adam Grabowski, Artur Korniłowicz, Roman Matuszewski, Adam Naumowicz, and Karol Pąk. The role of the Mizar Mathematical Library for interactive proof development in Mizar. Journal of Automated Reasoning, 61(1):9–32, 2018. doi:10.1007/s10817-017-9440-6.R.W. Floyd. Assigning meanings to programs. Mathematical aspects of computer science, 19(19–32), 1967.Adam Grabowski, Artur Korniłowicz, and Adam Naumowicz. Four decades of Mizar. Journal of Automated Reasoning, 55(3):191–198, 2015. doi:10.1007/s10817-015-9345-1.C.A.R. Hoare. An axiomatic basis for computer programming. Commun. ACM, 12(10): 576–580, 1969.Ievgen Ivanov and Mykola Nikitchenko. On the sequence rule for the Floyd-Hoare logic with partial pre- and post-conditions. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on ICT in Education, Research and Industrial Applications. Integration, Harmonization and Knowledge Transfer. Volume II: Workshops, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 14–17, 2018, volume 2104 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pages 716–724, 2018.Ievgen Ivanov, Mykola Nikitchenko, Andrii Kryvolap, and Artur Korniłowicz. Simple-named complex-valued nominative data – definition and basic operations. Formalized Mathematics, 25(3):205–216, 2017. doi:10.1515/forma-2017-0020.Ievgen Ivanov, Artur Korniłowicz, and Mykola Nikitchenko. Implementation of the composition-nominative approach to program formalization in Mizar. The Computer Science Journal of Moldova, 26(1):59–76, 2018.Ievgen Ivanov, Artur Korniłowicz, and Mykola Nikitchenko. On an algorithmic algebra over simple-named complex-valued nominative data. Formalized Mathematics, 26(2):149–158, 2018. doi:10.2478/forma-2018-0012.Ievgen Ivanov, Artur Korniłowicz, and Mykola Nikitchenko. An inference system of an extension of Floyd-Hoare logic for partial predicates. Formalized Mathematics, 26(2): 159–164, 2018. doi:10.2478/forma-2018-0013.Ievgen Ivanov, Artur Korniłowicz, and Mykola Nikitchenko. Partial correctness of GCD algorithm. Formalized Mathematics, 26(2):165–173, 2018. doi:10.2478/forma-2018-0014.Ievgen Ivanov, Artur Korniłowicz, and Mykola Nikitchenko. On algebras of algorithms and specifications over uninterpreted data. Formalized Mathematics, 26(2):141–147, 2018. doi:10.2478/forma-2018-0011.Artur Kornilowicz, Andrii Kryvolap, Mykola Nikitchenko, and Ievgen Ivanov. Formalization of the algebra of nominative data in Mizar. In Maria Ganzha, Leszek A. Maciaszek, and Marcin Paprzycki, editors, Proceedings of the 2017 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, FedCSIS 2017, Prague, Czech Republic, September 3–6, 2017., pages 237–244, 2017. ISBN 978-83-946253-7-5. doi:10.15439/2017F301.Artur Kornilowicz, Andrii Kryvolap, Mykola Nikitchenko, and Ievgen Ivanov. Formalization of the nominative algorithmic algebra in Mizar. In Leszek Borzemski, Jerzy Świątek, and Zofia Wilimowska, editors, Information Systems Architecture and Technology: Proceedings of 38th International Conference on Information Systems Architecture and Technology – ISAT 2017 – Part II, Szklarska Poręba, Poland, September 17–19, 2017, volume 656 of Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, pages 176–186. Springer, 2017. ISBN 978-3-319-67228-1. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-67229-8_16.Artur Korniłowicz, Andrii Kryvolap, Mykola Nikitchenko, and Ievgen Ivanov. An approach to formalization of an extension of Floyd-Hoare logic. In Vadim Ermolayev, Nick Bassiliades, Hans-Georg Fill, Vitaliy Yakovyna, Heinrich C. Mayr, Vyacheslav Kharchenko, Vladimir Peschanenko, Mariya Shyshkina, Mykola Nikitchenko, and Aleksander Spivakovsky, editors, Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on ICT in Education, Research and Industrial Applications. Integration, Harmonization and Knowledge Transfer, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 15–18, 2017, volume 1844 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pages 504–523. CEUR-WS.org, 2017.Artur Korniłowicz, Ievgen Ivanov, and Mykola Nikitchenko. Kleene algebra of partial predicates. Formalized Mathematics, 26(1):11–20, 2018. doi:10.2478/forma-2018-0002.Andrii Kryvolap, Mykola Nikitchenko, and Wolfgang Schreiner. Extending Floyd-Hoare logic for partial pre- and postconditions. In Vadim Ermolayev, Heinrich C. Mayr, Mykola Nikitchenko, Aleksander Spivakovsky, and Grygoriy Zholtkevych, editors, Information and Communication Technologies in Education, Research, and Industrial Applications: 9th International Conference, ICTERI 2013, Kherson, Ukraine, June 19–22, 2013, Revised Selected Papers, pages 355–378. Springer International Publishing, 2013. ISBN 978-3-319-03998-5. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-03998-5_18.Volodymyr G. Skobelev, Mykola Nikitchenko, and Ievgen Ivanov. On algebraic properties of nominative data and functions. In Vadim Ermolayev, Heinrich C. Mayr, Mykola Nikitchenko, Aleksander Spivakovsky, and Grygoriy Zholtkevych, editors, Information and Communication Technologies in Education, Research, and Industrial Applications – 10th International Conference, ICTERI 2014, Kherson, Ukraine, June 9–12, 2014, Revised Selected Papers, volume 469 of Communications in Computer and Information Science, pages 117–138. Springer, 2014. ISBN 978-3-319-13205-1. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-13206-8_6.27218919

Radar Investigation of Mars, Mercury, and Titan

Radar astronomy is the study of the surfaces and near surfaces of Solar System objects using active transmission of modulated radio waves and the detection of the reflected energy. The scientific goals of such experiments are surprisingly broad and include the study of surface slopes, fault lines, craters, mountain ranges, and other morphological structures. Electrical reflectivities contain information about surface densities and, to some extent, the chemical composition of the surface layers. Radar probes the subsurface layers to depths of the order of 10 wavelengths, providing geological mapping and determinations of the object’s spin state. Radar also allows one to study an object’s atmosphere and ionic layers as well as those of the interplanetary medium. Precise measurements of the time delay to surface elements provide topographic maps and powerful information on planetary motions and tests of gravitational theories such as general relativity. In this paper, we limit our discussion to surface and near-surface probing of Mercury, Mars, and Titan and review the work of the past decade, which includes fundamentally new techniques for Earth-based imaging. The most primitive experiments involve just the measurement of the total echo power from the object. The most sophisticated experiments would produce spatially resolved maps of the reflected power in all four Stokes’ parameters. Historically, the first experiments produced echoes from the Moon during the period shortly after World War II (see e.g. Evans 1962), but the subject did not really develop until the early 1960s when the radio equipment was sufficiently sensitive to detect echoes from Venus and obtain the first Doppler strip "maps" of that planet. The first successful planetary radar systems were the Continuous Wave (CW) radar at the Goldstone facility of the Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the pulse radar at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. All of the terrestrial planets were successfully studied during the following decade, yielding the spin states of Venus and Mercury, a precise value of the astronomical unit, and a host of totally new discoveries concerning the surfaces of the terrestrial planets and the Moon. This work opened up at least a similar number of new questions. Although the early work was done at resolution scales on the order of the planetary radii, very rapid increases in system sensitivities improved the resolution to the order of 100 km, but always with map ambiguities. Recently, unambiguous resolution of 100 m over nearly the entire surface of Venus has been achieved from the Magellan spacecraft using a side-looking, synthetic aperture radar. Reviews of the work up to the Magellan era can be found in Evans (1962), Muhleman et al (1965), Evans & Hagfors (1968, see chapters written by G Pettengill, T Hagfors, and J Evans), and Ostro (1993). The radar study of Venus from the Magellan spacecraft was a tour de force and is well described in special issues of Science (volume 252, April 12, 1991) and in the Journal of Geophysical Research (volume 97, August 25 and October 25, 1992). Venus will not be considered in this paper even though important polarization work on that planet continues at Arecibo, Goldstone, and the Very Large Array (VLA). In this paper we review the most recent work in Earth-based radar astronomy using new techniques of Earth rotation, super synthesis at the VLA in New Mexico (operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory), and the recently developed "long-code" techniques at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (operated by Cornell University). [Note: It was recently brought to our attention that the VLA software "doubles" the flux density of their primary calibrators. Consequently, it is necessary to half the radar power and reflectivity numerical values in all of our published radar results from the VLA/Goldstone radar.] The symbiotic relationship in these new developments for recent advances in our understanding of Mercury and Mars is remarkable. VLA imaging provides for the first time, unambiguous images of an entire hemisphere of a planet and the long-code technique makes it possible to map Mars and Mercury using the traditional range-gated Doppler strip mapping procedure [which was, apparently, developed theoretically at the Lincoln Laboratory by Paul Green, based on a citation in Evans (1962)]. Richard Goldstein was the first to obtain range-gated planetary maps of Venus as reported in Carpenter & Goldstein (1963). Such a system was developed earlier for the Moon as reported by Pettengill (1960) and Pettengill & Henry (1962). We first discuss the synthesis mapping technique

Characterization of wash-off from urban impervious surfaces and SuDS design criteria for source control under semi-arid conditions

[EN] Knowledge about pollutant wash-off from urban impervious surfaces is a key feature for developing effective management strategies. Accordingly, further information is required about urban areas under semi-arid climate conditions at the sub-catchment scale. This is important for designing source control systems for pollution. In this study, a characterization of pollutant wash-off has been performed over sixteen months, at the sub-catchment scale for urban roads as impervious surfaces. The study was conducted in Valencia, Spain, a city with a Mediterranean climate. The results show high event mean concentrations for suspended solids (98 mg/l), organic matter (142 mgCOD/l, 25 mg BOD5/l), nutrients (3.7mgTN/l, 0.4 mg TP/l), and metals (0.23, 0.32, 0.62 and 0.17 mg/l for Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn, respectively). The results of the runoff characterization highlight the need to control this pollution at its source, separately from wastewater because of their different characteristics. The wash-off, defined in terms of mobilized mass (g/m(2)) fits well with both process-based and statistical models, with the runoff volume and rainfall depth being the main explanatory variables. Based on these results and using information collected from hydrographs and pollutographs, an approach for sizing sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS), focusing on water quality and quantity variables, has been proposed. By setting a concentration-based target (TSS discharged to receiving waters < 35 mg/l), the results indicate that for a SuDS type detention basin (DB), an off-line configuration performs better than an on-line configuration. The resulting design criterion, expressed as SuDS volume per unit catchment area, assuming a DB type SuDS, varies between 7 and 10 l/m(2).This research was funded through the SUPRIS-SUReS projects (Ref. BIA2015-65240-C2-1-R MINECO/ERDF, UE) and SUPRIS-SUPeI (Ref. BIA2015-65240-C2-2-R MINECO/ERDF, UE), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by the project IMBORNAL (Ref. SP20120732), financed by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.Andrés Doménech, I.; Hernández Crespo, C.; Martín Monerris, M.; Andrés-Valeri, VC. (2018). Characterization of wash-off from urban impervious surfaces and SuDS design criteria for source control under semi-arid conditions. The Science of The Total Environment. 612:1320-1328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.011S1320132861

Kinetics of the thermal response of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide co methacrylic acid) hydrogel microparticles under different environmental stimuli: a time-lapse NMR study

Hypothesis: Hydrogels of N-isopropylacrylamide and methacrylic acid (P(NIPAm-co-MAA)) display pH sensitivity and complex positively charged molecules through carboxylate groups, while having a critical solution temperature at which they reduce in volume and dehydrate. We aimed to elucidate how the responsiveness of MAA to environmental changes alters PNIPAm hydrogels at the molecular level using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Time-lapse NMR allows us to follow the evolution of NMR signal under a temperature stimulus, providing unique information on conformational freedom of the hydrogel polymers. Experiments: We used time-lapse NMR to follow the evolution of the NMR signal with time over a temperature change from 25 to 40 °C and to study the swelling/deswelling kinetics of P(NIPAm-co-MAA) microgels at different pH values and ionic strengths, and in the presence of positively charged molecules complexing carboxylate groups. Findings: At acid pH, hydrogel collapse is favored over neutral pH, and at basic pH the carboxylates remain steadily hydrated during temperature increase. Increasing ionic strength results in a faster, more effective collapse than decreasing pH. Complexation of medium-sized molecules with several charges (spermine, spermidine) causes a faster collapse than complexation with large molecular weight poly(allylamine) hydrochloride, but similar to the collapse effected by large poly(diallyldimethylammonium) chloride. This work opens new perspectives to using time-lapse NMR to study thermoresponsive systems that respond to multiple stimuli, with particular relevance in designing hydrogels for drug delivery.Fil: Martinez Moro, Marta. Basque Research and Technology Alliance; EspañaFil: Jenczyk, Jacek. Adam Mickiewicz University; PoloniaFil: Giussi, Juan Martín. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Jurga, Stefan. Adam Mickiewicz University; PoloniaFil: Moya, Sergio E.. Basque Research and Technology Alliance; Españ

An NLP Analysis of Health Advice Giving in the Medical Research Literature

Health advice – clinical and policy recommendations – plays a vital role in guiding medical practices and public health policies. Whether or not authors should give health advice in medical research publications is a controversial issue. The proponents of actionable research advocate for the more efficient and effective transmission of science evidence into practice. The opponents are concerned about the quality of health advice in individual research papers, especially that in observational studies. Arguments both for and against giving advice in individual studies indicate a strong need for identifying and accessing health advice, for either practical use or quality evaluation purposes. However, current information services do not support the direct retrieval of health advice. Compared to other natural language processing (NLP) applications, health advice has not been computationally modeled as a language construct either. A new information service for directly accessing health advice should be able to reduce information barriers and to provide external assessment in science communication. This dissertation work built an annotated corpus of scientific claims that distinguishes health advice according to its occurrence and strength. The study developed NLP-based prediction models to identify health advice in the PubMed literature. Using the annotated corpus and prediction models, the study answered research questions regarding the practice of advice giving in medical research literature. To test and demonstrate the potential use of the prediction model, it was used to retrieve health advice regarding the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a treatment for COVID-19 from LitCovid, a large COVID-19 research literature database curated by the National Institutes of Health. An evaluation of sentences extracted from both abstracts and discussions showed that BERT-based pre-trained language models performed well at detecting health advice. The health advice prediction model may be combined with existing health information service systems to provide more convenient navigation of a large volume of health literature. Findings from the study also show researchers are careful not to give advice solely in abstracts. They also tend to give weaker and non-specific advice in abstracts than in discussions. In addition, the study found that health advice has appeared consistently in the abstracts of observational studies over the past 25 years. In the sample, 41.2% of the studies offered health advice in their conclusions, which is lower than earlier estimations based on analyses of much smaller samples processed manually. In the abstracts of observational studies, journals with a lower impact are more likely to give health advice than those with a higher impact, suggesting the significance of the role of journals as gatekeepers of science communication. For the communities of natural language processing, information science, and public health, this work advances knowledge of the automated recognition of health advice in scientific literature. The corpus and code developed for the study have been made publicly available to facilitate future efforts in health advice retrieval and analysis. Furthermore, this study discusses the ways in which researchers give health advice in medical research articles, knowledge of which could be an essential step towards curbing potential exaggeration in the current global science communication. It also contributes to ongoing discussions of the integrity of scientific output. This study calls for caution in advice-giving in medical research literature, especially in abstracts alone. It also calls for open access to medical research publications, so that health researchers and practitioners can fully review the advice in scientific outputs and its implications. More evaluative strategies that can increase the overall quality of health advice in research articles are needed by journal editors and reviewers, given their gatekeeping role in science communication

Trust and Personal Innovativeness as the Prerequisites for Using Digital Lending Services Offered by FinTech Lenders

Theoretical background: Contemporary financial systems have been going through a period of dynamic changes since the beginning of this century. A special role in this process is played by technological innovations, especially the process of digitalization of financial systems, which resulted in the development of FinTech lenders. These entities are active in various segments of the financial services market, including the area of consumer loans (FinTech lenders). The conducted research confirms the dynamic development of FinTech lending activity worldwide and indicates the leading position of Poland among the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in terms of the volume of digital lending. A review of the source literature shows a small number of scientific studies devoted to identifying the reasons underlying the growing interest of consumers in the offer of FinTech lenders. The perceived research gap became the motivation to undertake research addressing this topic in relation to the Polish market of non-banking digital loan services.Purpose of the article: Determining the place and importance of trust and personal innovativeness for consumers’ decisions to use digital loan services offered by FinTech lenders in Poland.Research methods: Critical analysis of the source literature, descriptive and comparative analysis, diagnostic survey as well as simple statistical methods, i.e. analysis of the structure or Kendall’s Tau correlation analysis. The empirical data were collected in May 2022 using the CAWI (computer-assisted web interview) method. The research sample was representative and included 1,000 representatives of Polish population.Main findings: Among the factors determining the adoption decisions of FinTech lenders’ clients, two groups of constructs can be distinguished. The first one consists of classic prerequisites (e.g. perceived ease of use [PEU], perceived usefulness [PU]), identified for a wide range of entities offering financial services based on information technologies. The second group consists of the factors attributed mainly to FinTech lenders, among which the leading position is taken by expressed trust (T) and personal innovativeness (PI). The analyzes carried out in the article confirmed that the expressed trust and personal innovativeness represent the statistically significant factors influencing the decisions made by Poles related to using digital loan services offered by FinTech lenders. The influence of these constructs on the adopted attitudes is a function of their mutual relationship, based on the reciprocal reinforcement of these factors. The conducted research also resulted in developing the economic and demographic profile of a person using the services of FinTech lenders. It is a man, aged 25–34, a university graduate earning an income exceeding PLN 5,000 and residing in a city populated by over 500,000 residents