Decentralised Clinical Guidelines Modelling with Lightweight Coordination Calculus

Background: Clinical protocols and guidelines have been considered as a major means to ensure that cost-effective services are provided at the point of care. Recently, the computerisation of clinical guidelines has attracted extensive research interest. Many languages and frameworks have been developed. Thus far, however,an enactment mechanism to facilitate decentralised guideline execution has been a largely neglected line of research. It is our contention that decentralisation is essential to maintain a high-performance system in pervasive health care scenarios. In this paper, we propose the use of Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC) as a feasible solution. LCC is a light-weight and executable process calculus that has been used successfully in multi-agent systems, peer-to-peer (p2p) computer networks, etc. In light of an envisaged pervasive health care scenario, LCC, which represents clinical protocols and guidelines as message-based interaction models, allows information exchange among software agents distributed across different departments and/or hospitals. Results: We outlined the syntax and semantics of LCC; proposed a list of refined criteria against which the appropriateness of candidate clinical guideline modelling languages are evaluated; and presented two LCC interaction models of real life clinical guidelines. Conclusions: We demonstrated that LCC is particularly useful in modelling clinical guidelines. It specifies the exact partition of a workflow of events or tasks that should be observed by multiple "players" as well as the interactions among these "players". LCC presents the strength of both process calculi and Horn clauses pair of which can provide a close resemblance of logic programming and the flexibility of practical implementation

A User Satisfaction Study of the London Congestion Charging e-Service

This research seeks to measure citizen satisfaction with the electronic London Congestion Charging (LCC) payment system offered by Transport For London (TFL) in the United Kingdom (UK). The paper reports on the findings of a survey of 500 users of the TFL LCC online payment system. Satisfaction is measured using the four dimensions from the COBRA framework 0that comprise the cost, opportunity, benefits and risk assessment constructs. The results show that most citizens using the LCC electronic service are satisfied with the service and that the service meets their essential needs. The paper also presents the results of qualitative feedback obtained from the participants that can be used to determine the areas that need further improvement in the current electronic LCC electronic-service (e-service) system and potential influences on user satisfaction

Electrochemical energy storage subsystems study, volume 1

The effects on life cycle costs (LCC) of major design and performance technology parameters for multi kW LEO and GEO energy storage subsystems using NiCd and NiH2 batteries and fuel cell/electrolysis cell devices were examined. Design, performance and LCC dynamic models are developed based on mission and system/subsystem requirements and existing or derived physical and cost data relationships. The models define baseline designs and costs. The major design and performance parameters are each varied to determine their influence on LCC around the baseline values

Life-cycle cost analysis task summary

The DSN life cycle cost (LCC) analysis methodology was completed. The LCC analysis methodology goals and objectives are summarized, as well as the issues covered by the methodology, its expected use, and its long range implications

As companhias aéreas de baixo custo e o desenvolvimento dos destinos turísticos: um estudo de caso do aeroporto do Porto, Portugal

Mobility is one of the characteristics of modern society. The world today, despite the uncertainties brought by globalization is an interconnected reality of networks, whether physical or virtual. In Europe this mobility is higher than before due to the new offer of routes and frequencies of airlines, mainly of the low cost carriers (LCC). Portugal is one of the countries that grew in terms of new routes, new destinations and above all new customers with economic impacts in the regions. Over the last decade, LCC at Oporto (OPO) airport have boosted their traffic volume by approximately 260%. The evolution of OPO airport, generated by LCC, has meant that other regional airports have followed this trend and have also experienced a positive and growing net impact on their local economy. The main issue of this study is to analyse the evolution of LCC air traffic at Francisco Sa Carneiro Airport in OPO and its economic impact on this airport's area of influence. We use a cost-benefit analysis model to determine the costs, benefits and net impact of low cost routes on the development of the local economy between 2005 and 2012. In 2005 these carriers started operating at OPO Airport.A mobilidade é uma das características da sociedade moderna. O mundo de hoje, apesar das incertezas trazidas pela globalização, é uma realidade interconectada de redes, sejam elas físicas ou virtuais. Na Europa, essa mobilidade é maior do que antes devido à nova oferta de rotas e frequências de companhias aéreas, principalmente das companhias de baixo custo (LCC). Portugal é um dos países que cresceu quer em termos de novas rotas, novos destinos e, sobretudo, novos clientes, gerando impactos económicos regionais. Ao longo da última década, as companhias áreas de baixo custo que operam no aeroporto do Porto (OPO) aumentaram o volume de tráfego em aproximadamente 260%. Esta evolução, gerada pelas LCC, significou que outros aeroportos regionais seguiram essa tendência e também experimentaram um impacto líquido positivo e crescente na sua economia local. Este estudo tem como principal objetivo analisar a evolução do tráfego aéreo do LCC no Aeroporto Francisco Sá Carneiro (OPO) e o seu impacto económico na área de influência. Foi utilizado um modelo de análise de custo-benefício para determinar os custos, benefícios e impacto líquido das rotas de baixo custo no desenvolvimento da economia local entre 2005 e 2012. As operadoras áreas de baixo custo começaram a operar no aeroporto OPO em 2005.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Vertical liquid controlled adiabatic waveguide coupler

A broadband vertical liquid controlled optical waveguide coupler (LCC) is demonstrated. The fabricated vertical LCC with silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides can switch light between 2 stacked photonic circuit layers with zero energy consumption in a steady switch state. In combination with low-loss interlayer waveguide crossovers they enable large scale non-volatile switch circuits with low loss. The fabricated vertical LCC has a loss less than 2.0 dB in bar state and less than 2.6 dB in cross state over the telecommunication wavelength range 1260 nm to 1630 nm. Interlayer waveguide crossovers with the same interlayer oxide thickness as the LCC have a loss less than 0.06 dB over the same wavelength range. The crosstalk of the LCC is less than 21 dB over the wavelength range 1500 nm to 1630 nm for both bar and cross state. (c) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreemen

Lagrange Coded Computing: Optimal Design for Resiliency, Security and Privacy

We consider a scenario involving computations over a massive dataset stored distributedly across multiple workers, which is at the core of distributed learning algorithms. We propose Lagrange Coded Computing (LCC), a new framework to simultaneously provide (1) resiliency against stragglers that may prolong computations; (2) security against Byzantine (or malicious) workers that deliberately modify the computation for their benefit; and (3) (information-theoretic) privacy of the dataset amidst possible collusion of workers. LCC, which leverages the well-known Lagrange polynomial to create computation redundancy in a novel coded form across workers, can be applied to any computation scenario in which the function of interest is an arbitrary multivariate polynomial of the input dataset, hence covering many computations of interest in machine learning. LCC significantly generalizes prior works to go beyond linear computations. It also enables secure and private computing in distributed settings, improving the computation and communication efficiency of the state-of-the-art. Furthermore, we prove the optimality of LCC by showing that it achieves the optimal tradeoff between resiliency, security, and privacy, i.e., in terms of tolerating the maximum number of stragglers and adversaries, and providing data privacy against the maximum number of colluding workers. Finally, we show via experiments on Amazon EC2 that LCC speeds up the conventional uncoded implementation of distributed least-squares linear regression by up to $13.43\times$, and also achieves a $2.36\times$-$12.65\times$ speedup over the state-of-the-art straggler mitigation strategies