Sustainable Higher Education Development through Technology Enhanced Learning

[EN] Higher education is incorporating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at a fast rate for different purposes. Scientific papers include within the concept of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) the myriad applications of information and communication technology, e-resources, and pedagogical approaches to the development of education. TEL¿s specific application to higher education is especially relevant for countries under rapid development for providing quick and sustainable access to quality education (UN sustainable development goal 4). This paper presents the research results of an online pedagogical experience in collaborative academic research for analyzing good practice in TEL-supported higher education development. The results are obtained through a pilot implementation providing curated data on TEL competency¿s development of faculty skills and analysis of developing sustainable higher education degrees through TEL cooperation, for capacity building. Given the increased volume and complexity of the knowledge to be delivered, and the exponential growth of the need for skilled workers in emerging economies, online training is the most effective way of delivering a sustainable higher education. The results of the PETRA Erasmus+ capacity-building project provides evidence of a successful implementation of a TEL-supported methodology for collaborative faculty development focused on future online degrees built collaboratively and applied locally.This research was co-funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ KA2 project "Promoting Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Azerbaijani Universities (PETRA)" project number 573630-EPP-1-2016-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP.Orozco-Messana, J.; Martínez-Rubio, J.; Gonzálvez-Pons, AM. (2020). Sustainable Higher Education Development through Technology Enhanced Learning. Sustainability. 12(9):1-13. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093600S113129Abdullah, F., & Ward, R. (2016). Developing a General Extended Technology Acceptance Model for E-Learning (GETAMEL) by analysing commonly used external factors. Computers in Human Behavior, 56, 238-256. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.036Becker, H. J., & Ravitz, J. (1999). The Influence of Computer and Internet Use on Teachers’ Pedagogical Practices and Perceptions. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 31(4), 356-384. doi:10.1080/08886504.1999.10782260Mumford, S., & Dikilitaş, K. (2020). Pre-service language teachers reflection development through online interaction in a hybrid learning course. Computers & Education, 144, 103706. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103706Lee, D., Watson, S. L., & Watson, W. R. (2020). The Relationships Between Self-Efficacy, Task Value, and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies in Massive Open Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(1), 23-39. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v20i5.4389Passey, D. (2019). Technology‐enhanced learning: Rethinking the term, the concept and its theoretical background. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(3), 972-986. doi:10.1111/bjet.12783Lai, Y.-C., & Peng, L.-H. (2019). Effective Teaching and Activities of Excellent Teachers for the Sustainable Development of Higher Design Education. Sustainability, 12(1), 28. doi:10.3390/su12010028Lee, S., Lee, H., & Kim, T. (2018). A Study on the Instructor Role in Dealing with Mixed Contents: How It Affects Learner Satisfaction and Retention in e-Learning. Sustainability, 10(3), 850. doi:10.3390/su10030850“Continuous Improvement in Teaching Strategies through Lean Principles”. Teaching & Learning Symposium, University of Southern Indiana http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12419/455The DeLone and McLean Model of Information Systems Success: A Ten-Year Update. (2003). Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(4), 9-30. doi:10.1080/07421222.2003.11045748Goodman, J., Melkers, J., & Pallais, A. (2019). Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education? Journal of Labor Economics, 37(1), 1-34. doi:10.1086/698895Alexander, J., Barcellona, M., McLachlan, S., & Sackley, C. (2019). Technology-enhanced learning in physiotherapy education: Student satisfaction and knowledge acquisition of entry-level students in the United Kingdom. Research in Learning Technology, 27(0). doi:10.25304/rlt.v27.2073How Can Adaptive Platforms Improve Student Learning Outcomes? A Case Study of Open Educational Resources and Adaptive Learning Platforms https://ssrn.com/abstract=3478134Sun, A., & Chen, X. (2016). Online Education and Its Effective Practice: A Research Review. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 15, 157-190. doi:10.28945/3502EU Commission https://ec.europa.eu/education/education-in-the-eu/digital-education-action-plan_enEssence Project https://husite.nl/essence/Orozco-Messana, J., de la Poza-Plaza, E., & Calabuig-Moreno, R. (2020). Experiences in Transdisciplinary Education for the Sustainable Development of the Built Environment, the ISAlab Workshop. Sustainability, 12(3), 1143. doi:10.3390/su12031143Kurilovas, E., & Kubilinskiene, S. (2020). Lithuanian case study on evaluating suitability, acceptance and use of IT tools by students – An example of applying Technology Enhanced Learning Research methods in Higher Education. Computers in Human Behavior, 107, 106274. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2020.10627

Multilevel and session variability compensated language recognition: ATVS-UAM systems at NIST LRE 2009

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. J. Gonzalez-Dominguez, I. Lopez-Moreno, J. Franco-Pedroso, D. Ramos, D. T. Toledano, and J. Gonzalez-Rodriguez, "Multilevel and Session Variability Compensated Language Recognition: ATVS-UAM Systems at NIST LRE 2009" IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 1084 – 1093, December 2010This work presents the systems submitted by the ATVS Biometric Recognition Group to the 2009 Language Recognition Evaluation (LRE’09), organized by NIST. New challenges included in this LRE edition can be summarized by three main differences with respect to past evaluations. Firstly, the number of languages to be recognized expanded to 23 languages from 14 in 2007, and 7 in 2005. Secondly, the data variability has been increased by including telephone speech excerpts extracted from Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts through Internet in addition to Conversational Telephone Speech (CTS). The third difference was the volume of data, involving in this evaluation up to 2 terabytes of speech data for development, which is an order of magnitude greater than past evaluations. LRE’09 thus required participants to develop robust systems able not only to successfully face the session variability problem but also to do it with reasonable computational resources. ATVS participation consisted of state-of-the-art acoustic and high-level systems focussing on these issues. Furthermore, the problem of finding a proper combination and calibration of the information obtained at different levels of the speech signal was widely explored in this submission. In this work, two original contributions were developed. The first contribution was applying a session variability compensation scheme based on Factor Analysis (FA) within the statistics domain into a SVM-supervector (SVM-SV) approach. The second contribution was the employment of a novel backend based on anchor models in order to fuse individual systems prior to one-vs-all calibration via logistic regression. Results both in development and evaluation corpora show the robustness and excellent performance of the submitted systems, exemplified by our system ranked 2nd in the 30 second open-set condition, with remarkably scarce computational resources.This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education under project TEC2006-13170-C02-01. Javier Gonzalez-Dominguez also thanks Spanish Ministry of Education for supporting his doctoral research under project TEC2006-13141-C03-03. Special thanks are given to Dr. David Van Leeuwen from TNO Human Factors (Utrech, The Netherlands) for his strong collaboration, valuable discussions and ideas. Also, authors thank to Dr. Patrick Lucey for his final support on (non-target) Australian English review of the manuscript

Evaluating how agent methodologies support the specification of the normative environment through the development process

[EN] Due to the increase in collaborative work and the decentralization of processes in many domains, there is an expanding demand for large-scale, flexible and adaptive software systems to support the interactions of people and institutions distributed in heterogeneous environments. Commonly, these software applications should follow specific regulations meaning the actors using them are bound by rights, duties and restrictions. Since this normative environment determines the final design of the software system, it should be considered as an important issue during the design of the system. Some agent-oriented software engineering methodologies deal with the development of normative systems (systems that have a normative environment) by integrating the analysis of the normative environment of a system in the development process. This paper analyses to what extent these methodologies support the analysis and formalisation of the normative environment and highlights some open issues of the topic.This work is partially supported by the PROMETEOII/2013/019, TIN2012-36586-C03-01, FP7-29493, TIN2011-27652-C03-00, CSD2007-00022 projects, and the CASES project within the 7th European Community Framework Program under the grant agreement No 294931.Garcia Marques, ME.; Miles, S.; Luck, M.; Giret Boggino, AS. (2014). Evaluating how agent methodologies support the specification of the normative environment through the development process. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-014-9275-zS120Cossentino, M., Hilaire, V., Molesini, A., & Seidita, V. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook on agent-oriented design processes (Vol. VIII, 569 p. 508 illus.). Berlin: Springer.Akbari, O. (2010). A survey of agent-oriented software engineering paradigm: Towards its industrial acceptance. Journal of Computer Engineering Research, 1, 14–28.Argente, E., Botti, V., Carrascosa, C., Giret, A., Julian, V., & Rebollo, M. (2011). An abstract architecture for virtual organizations: The THOMAS approach. Knowledge and Information Systems, 29(2), 379–403.Argente, E., Botti, V., & Julian, V. (2009). GORMAS: An organizational-oriented methodological guideline for open MAS. In Proceedings of AOSE’09 (pp. 440–449).Argente, E., Botti, V., & Julian, V. (2009). Organizational-oriented methodological guidelines for designing virtual organizations. In Distributed computing, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, soft computing, and ambient assisted living. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 5518, pp. 154–162).Boella, G., Pigozzi, G., & van der Torre, L. (2009). Normative systems in computer science—Ten guidelines for normative multiagent systems. In G. Boella, P. Noriega, G. Pigozzi, & H. Verhagen (Eds.), Normative multi-agent systems, number 09121 in Dagstuhl seminar proceedings.Boella, G., Torre, L., & Verhagen, H. (2006). Introduction to normative multiagent systems. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 12(2–3), 71–79.Bogdanovych, A., Esteva, M., Simoff, S., Sierra, C., & Berger, H. (2008). A methodology for developing multiagent systems as 3d electronic institutions. In M. Luck & L. Padgham (Eds.), Agent-Oriented Software Engineering VIII (Vol. 4951, pp. 103–117). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin: Springer.Boissier, O., Padget, J., Dignum, V., Lindemann, G., Matson, E., Ossowski, S., Sichman, J., & Vazquez-Salceda, J. (2006). Coordination, organizations, institutions and norms in multi-agent systems. LNCS (LNAI) (Vol. 3913).Bordini, R. H., Fisher, M., Visser, W., & Wooldridge, M. (2006). Verifying multi-agent programs by model checking. In Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (Vol. 12, pp. 239–256). Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Botti, V., Garrido, A., Giret, A., & Noriega, P. (2011). The role of MAS as a decision support tool in a water-rights market. In Post-proceedings workshops AAMAS2011 (Vol. 7068, pp. 35–49). Berlin: Springer.Breaux, T. (2009). Exercising due diligence in legal requirements acquisition: A tool-supported, frame-based approach. In Proceedings of the IEEE international requirements engineering conference (pp. 225–230).Breaux, T. D., & Baumer, D. L. (2011). Legally reasonable security requirements: A 10-year ftc retrospective. Computers and Security, 30(4), 178–193.Breaux, T. D., Vail, M. W., & Anton, A. I. (2006). Towards regulatory compliance: Extracting rights and obligations to align requirements with regulations. In Proceedings of the 14th IEEE international requirements engineering conference, RE ’06 (pp. 46–55). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.Bresciani, P., Perini, A., Giorgini, P., Giunchiglia, F., & Mylopoulos, J. (2004). Tropos: An agent-oriented software development methodology. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 8(3), 203–236.Cardoso, H. L., & Oliveira, E. (2008). A contract model for electronic institutions. In COIN’07: Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in agent systems III (pp. 27–40).Castor, A., Pinto, R. C., Silva, C. T. L. L., & Castro, J. (2004). Towards requirement traceability in tropos. In WER (pp. 189–200).Chopra, A., Dalpiaz, F., Giorgini, P., & Mylopoulos, J. (2009). Modeling and reasoning about service-oriented applications via goals and commitments. ICST conference on digital business.Cliffe, O., Vos, M., & Padget, J. (2006). Specifying and analysing agent-based social institutions using answer set programming. In O. Boissier, J. Padget, V. Dignum, G. Lindemann, E. Matson, S. Ossowski, J. Sichman, & J. Vázquez-Salceda (Eds.), Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in multi-agent systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3913, pp. 99–113). Springer. Berlin.Criado, N., Argente, E., Garrido, A., Gimeno, J. A., Igual, F., Botti, V., Noriega, P., & Giret, A. (2011). Norm enforceability in Electronic Institutions? In Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in agent systems VI (Vol. 6541, pp. 250–267). Springer.Dellarocas, C., & Klein, M. (2001). Contractual agent societies. In R. Conte & C. Dellarocas (Eds.), Social order in multiagent systems (Vol. 2, pp. 113–133)., Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies, and Simulated Organizations New York: Springer.DeLoach, S. A. (2008). Developing a multiagent conference management system using the o-mase process framework. In Proceedings of the international conference on agent-oriented software engineering VIII (pp. 168–181).DeLoach, S. A., & Garcia-Ojeda, J. C. (2010). O-mase; a customisable approach to designing and building complex, adaptive multi-agent systems. International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 4(3), 244–280.DeLoach, S. A., Padgham, L., Perini, A., Susi, A., & Thangarajah, J. (2009). Using three aose toolkits to develop a sample design. International Journal Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 3, 416–476.Dignum, F., Dignum, V., Thangarajah, J., Padgham, L., & Winikoff, M. (2007). Open agent systems? Eighth international workshop on agent oriented software engineering (AOSE) in AAMAS07.Dignum, V. (2003). A model for organizational interaction:based on agents, founded in logic. PhD thesis, Utrecht University.Dignum, V., Meyer, J., Dignum, F., & Weigand, H. (2003). Formal specification of interaction in agent societies. Formal approaches to agent-based systems (Vol. 2699).Dignum, V., Vazquez-Salceda, J., & Dignum, F. (2005). Omni: Introducing social structure, norms and ontologies into agent organizations. In R. Bordini, M. Dastani, J. Dix, & A. Seghrouchni (Eds.)Programming multi-agent systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3346, pp. 181–198). Berlin: Springer.d’Inverno, M., Luck, M., Noriega, P., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J., & Sierra, C. (2012). Communicating open systems, 186, 38–94.Elsenbroich, C., & Gilbert, N. (2014). Agent-based modelling. In Modelling norms (pp. 65–84). Dordrecht: Springer.Esteva, M., Rosell, B., Rodriguez, J. A., & Arcos, J. L. (2004). AMELI: An agent-based middleware for electronic institutions. In AAMAS04 (pp. 236–243).Fenech, S., Pace, G. J., & Schneider, G. (2009). Automatic conflict detection on contracts. In Proceedings of the 6th international colloquium on theoretical aspects of computing, ICTAC ’09 (pp. 200–214).Garbay, C., Badeig, F., & Caelen, J. (2012). Normative multi-agent approach to support collaborative work in distributed tangible environments. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work companion, CSCW ’12 (pp. 83–86). New York, NY: ACM.Garcia, E., Giret, A., & Botti, V. (2011). Regulated open multi-agent systems based on contracts. In Information Systems Development (pp. 243–255).Garcia, E., Tyson, G., Miles, S., Luck, M., Taweel, A., Staa, T. V., & Delaney, B. (2012). An analysis of agent-oriented engineering of e-health systems. In 13th international eorkshop on sgent-oriented software engineering (AOSE-AAMAS).Garcia, E., Tyson, G., Miles, S., Luck, M., Taweel, A., Staa, T. V., and Delaney, B. (2013). Analysing the Suitability of Multiagent Methodologies for e-Health Systems. In Agent-Oriented Software Engineering XIII, volume 7852, pages 134–150. Springer-Verlag.Garrido, A., Giret, A., Botti, V., & Noriega, P. (2013). mWater, a case study for modeling virtual markets. In New perspectives on agreement technologies (Vol. Law, Gover, pp. 563–579). Springer.Gteau, B., Boissier, O., & Khadraoui, D. (2006). Multi-agent-based support for electronic contracting in virtual enterprises. IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing (INCOM), 150(3), 73–91.Hollander, C. D., & Wu, A. S. (2011). The current state of normative agent-based systems. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 14(2), 6.Hsieh, F.-S. (2005). Automated negotiation based on contract net and petri net. In E-commerce and web technologies. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3590, pp. 148–157).Kollingbaum, M., Jureta, I. J., Vasconcelos, W., & Sycara, K. (2008). Automated requirements-driven definition of norms for the regulation of behavior in multi-agent systems. In Proceedings of the AISB 2008 workshop on behaviour regulation in multi-agent systems, Aberdeen, Scotland, U.K., April 2008.Li, T., Balke, T., Vos, M., Satoh, K., & Padget, J. (2013). Detecting conflicts in legal systems. In Y. Motomura, A. Butler, & D. Bekki (Eds.), New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 7856, pp. 174–189)., Lecture Notes in Computer Science Berlin Heidelberg: Springer.Lomuscio, A., Qu, H., & Solanki, M. (2010) Towards verifying contract regulated service composition. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (pp. 1–29).Lopez, F., Luck, M., & d’Inverno, M. (2006). A normative framework for agent-based systems. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 12, 227–250.Lpez, F. y, Luck, M., & dInverno, M. (2006). A normative framework for agent-based systems. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 12(2–3), 227–250.Mader, P., & Egyed, A. (2012). Assessing the effect of requirements traceability for software maintenance. In 28th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM) (pp. 171–180), Sept 2012.Mao, X., & Yu, E. (2005). Organizational and social concepts in agent oriented software engineering. In AOSE IV. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 3382, pp. 184–202).Meyer, J.-J. C., & Wieringa, R. J. (Eds.). (1993). Deontic logic in computer science: Normative system specification. Chichester, UK: Wiley.Okouya, D., & Dignum, V. (2008). Operetta: A prototype tool for the design, analysis and development of multi-agent organizations (demo paper). In AAMAS (pp. 1667–1678).Malone, T. W., Smith J. B., & Olson, G. M. (2001). Coordination theory and collaboration technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Oren, N., Panagiotidi, S., Vázquez-Salceda, J., Modgil, S., Luck, M., & Miles, S. (2009). Towards a formalisation of electronic contracting environments. COIN (pp. 156–171).Osman, N., Robertson, D., & Walton, C. (2006). Run-time model checking of interaction and deontic models for multi-agent systems. In AAMAS ’06: Proceedings of the fifth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems (pp. 238–240). New York, NY: ACM.Pace, G., Prisacariu, C., & Schneider, G. (2007). Model checking contracts a case study. In Automated technology for verification and analysis. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 4762, pp. 82–97).Rotolo, A., & van der Torre, L. (2011). Rules, agents and norms: Guidelines for rule-based normative multi-agent systems. RuleML Europe, 6826, 52–66.Saeki, M., & Kaiya, H. (2008). Supporting the elicitation of requirements compliant with regulations. In CAiSE ’08 (pp. 228–242).Siena, A., Mylopoulos, J., Perini, A., & Susi, A. (2009). Designing law-compliant software requirements. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on conceptual modeling, ER ’09 (pp. 472–486).Singh, M. P. Commitments in multiagent systems: Some history, some confusions, some controversies, some prospects.Solaiman, E., Molina-Jimenez, C., & Shrivastav, S. (2003). Model checking correctness properties of electronic contracts. In Service-oriented computing—ICSOC 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 2910, pp. 303–318). Berlin: Springer.Telang, P. R., & Singh, M. P. (2009). Conceptual modeling: Foundations and applications. Enhancing tropos with commitments (pp. 417–435).Vázquez-Salceda, J., Confalonieri, R., Gomez, I., Storms, P., Nick Kuijpers, S. P., & Alvarez, S. (2009). Modelling contractually-bounded interactions in the car insurance domain. DIGIBIZ 2009.Viganò, F., & Colombetti, M. (2007). Symbolic model checking of institutions. In ICEC (pp. 35–44).Walton, C. D. (2007). Verifiable agent dialogues. Journal of Applied Logic, 5(2):197–213, Logic-Based Agent Verification.Winkler, S., & Pilgrim, J. (2010). A survey of traceability in requirements engineering and model-driven development. Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), 9(4), 529–565.Wooldridge, M., Fisher, M., Huget, M., & Parsons, S. (2002). Model checking multi-agent systems with mable. In AAMAS02 (pp. 952–959). ACM

Sustainability and Kaizen: Business Model Trends in Healthcare

[EN] Kaizen, or continuous improvement, is a management tool that allows the identification of activities that have no value in the processes examined. This identification leads to the improvement of these processes within any organization and promotes economic and social sustainability, and to a lesser extent environmental sustainability. Kaizen, already widely and successfully employed in the industrial sector, is now being applied in the health sector. However, the health sector tends to publish only the results of how processes have been improved in finely focused areas and the resulting benefits. The majority of the benefits focus on time and cost reduction. In this study, the authors carried out a bibliometric analysis using the Scimat program, which maps the thematic evolution of Kaizen in the health sector and its relationship with sustainability, in order to promote the interest of the health sector for this type of process improvement. The findings confirm that the implementation of Kaizen is recent and constantly evolves and grows, and that it can help economic and social sustainability, and to a lesser extent environmental sustainability.Morell-Santandreu, O.; Santandreu Mascarell, C.; García Sabater, JJ. (2020). Sustainability and Kaizen: Business Model Trends in Healthcare. Sustainability. 12(24):1-28. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410622S1281224Sepetis, A. (2019). Sustainable Health Care Management in the Greek Health Care Sector. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 07(12), 386-402. doi:10.4236/jss.2019.712030Sustainable Healthcare—Working towards the Paradigm Shift https://www.anhinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/old/files/100617SustainableHealthcare_White-Paper.pdfWeisz, U., Haas, W., Pelikan, J. M., & Schmied, H. (2011). Sustainable Hospitals: A Socio-Ecological Approach. GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 20(3), 191-198. doi:10.14512/gaia.20.3.10McGain, F., & Naylor, C. (2014). Environmental sustainability in hospitals – a systematic review and research agenda. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 19(4), 245-252. doi:10.1177/1355819614534836D’Andreamatteo, A., Ianni, L., Lega, F., & Sargiacomo, M. (2015). Lean in healthcare: A comprehensive review. Health Policy, 119(9), 1197-1209. doi:10.1016/j.healthpol.2015.02.002Norazlan, A. N. I., Habidin, N. F., Roslan, M. H., & Zainudin, M. Z. (2014). Investigation of kaizen blitz and sustainable performance for Malaysian healthcare industry. International Journal of Quality and Innovation, 2(3/4), 272. doi:10.1504/ijqi.2014.066381Patient Safety in Developing and Transitional Countries 2012 www.who.int/patientsafety/research/emro_afro_report.pdfElmontsri, M., Almashrafi, A., Banarsee, R., & Majeed, A. (2017). Status of patient safety culture in Arab countries: a systematic review. BMJ Open, 7(2), e013487. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2016-013487Paul Brunet, A., & New, S. (2003). Kaizenin Japan: an empirical study. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 23(12), 1426-1446. doi:10.1108/01443570310506704Ferreira, D. M. C., & Saurin, T. A. (2019). A complexity theory perspective of kaizen: a study in healthcare. Production Planning & Control, 30(16), 1337-1353. doi:10.1080/09537287.2019.1615649Chahal, H., & Fayza, N. A. (2016). An exploratory study on kaizen muda and organisational sustainability: patients’ perspective. International Journal of Lean Enterprise Research, 2(1), 81. doi:10.1504/ijler.2016.078249Ishijima, H., Nishikido, K., Teshima, M., Nishikawa, S., & Gawad, E. A. (2019). Introducing the «5S-KAIZEN-TQM» approach into public hospitals in Egypt. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 33(1), 89-109. doi:10.1108/ijhcqa-06-2018-0143Mazzocato, P., Stenfors-Hayes, T., von Thiele Schwarz, U., Hasson, H., & Nyström, M. E. (2016). Kaizen practice in healthcare: a qualitative analysis of hospital employees’ suggestions for improvement. BMJ Open, 6(7), e012256. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012256Gowen, C. R., McFadden, K. L., & Settaluri, S. (2012). Contrasting continuous quality improvement, Six Sigma, and lean management for enhanced outcomes in US hospitals. American Journal of Business, 27(2), 133-153. doi:10.1108/19355181211274442Grove, A. L., Meredith, J. O., MacIntyre, M., Angelis, J., & Neailey, K. (2010). UK health visiting: challenges faced during lean implementation. Leadership in Health Services, 23(3), 204-218. doi:10.1108/17511871011061037Ho, S. K. M. (2010). Integrated lean TQM model for global sustainability and competitiveness. The TQM Journal, 22(2), 143+-158. doi:10.1108/17542731011024264DelliFraine, J. L., Langabeer, J. R., & Nembhard, I. M. (2010). Assessing the Evidence of Six Sigma and Lean in the Health Care Industry. Quality Management in Health Care, 19(3), 211-225. doi:10.1097/qmh.0b013e3181eb140eSouza, J. P. E., & Alves, J. M. (2018). Lean-integrated management system: A model for sustainability improvement. Journal of Cleaner Production, 172, 2667-2682. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.11.144Costa, L. B. M., & Godinho Filho, M. (2016). Lean healthcare: review, classification and analysis of literature. Production Planning & Control, 27(10), 823-836. doi:10.1080/09537287.2016.1143131Costa, D. G. da, Pasin, S. S., Magalhães, A. M. M. de, Moura, G. M. S. S. de, Rosso, C. B., & Saurin, T. A. (2018). Analysis of the preparation and administration of medications in the hospital context based on Lean thinking. Escola Anna Nery, 22(4). doi:10.1590/2177-9465-ean-2017-0402Van Aken, J., Chandrasekaran, A., & Halman, J. (2016). Conducting and publishing design science research. Journal of Operations Management, 47-48(1), 1-8. doi:10.1016/j.jom.2016.06.004Glover, W. J., Farris, J. A., Van Aken, E. M., & Doolen, T. L. (2011). Critical success factors for the sustainability of Kaizen event human resource outcomes: An empirical study. International Journal of Production Economics, 132(2), 197-213. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2011.04.005Glover, W. J., Liu, W., Farris, J. A., & Van Aken, E. M. (2013). Characteristics of established kaizen event programs: an empirical study. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 33(9), 1166-1201. doi:10.1108/ijopm-03-2011-0119Aij, K. H., & Rapsaniotis, S. (2017). Leadership requirements for Lean versus servant leadership in health care: a systematic review of the literature. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, Volume 9, 1-14. doi:10.2147/jhl.s120166Garcia, S., Cintra, Y., Torres, R. de C. S. R., & Lima, F. G. (2016). Corporate sustainability management: a proposed multi-criteria model to support balanced decision-making. Journal of Cleaner Production, 136, 181-196. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.01.110The Sustainability Yearbook 2014 https://www.p-plus.nl/resources/articlefiles/SustainabilityYearbook2014.pdfRebelo, M. F., Santos, G., & Silva, R. (2016). Integration of management systems: towards a sustained success and development of organizations. Journal of Cleaner Production, 127, 96-111. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.04.011Cobo, M. J., López-Herrera, A. G., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2011). An approach for detecting, quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: A practical application to the Fuzzy Sets Theory field. Journal of Informetrics, 5(1), 146-166. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2010.10.002Cobo, M. J., López-Herrera, A. G., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2012). SciMAT: A new science mapping analysis software tool. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1609-1630. doi:10.1002/asi.22688Martínez-Jurado, P. J., & Moyano-Fuentes, J. (2014). Lean Management, Supply Chain Management and Sustainability: A Literature Review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 85, 134-150. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.09.042López-Robles, J.-R., Guallar, J., Otegi-Olaso, J.-R., & Gamboa-Rosales, N.-K. (2019). El profesional de la información (EPI): Bibliometric and thematic analysis (2006-2017). El Profesional de la Información, 28(4). doi:10.3145/epi.2019.jul.17WOS Database Available from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology https://www.recursoscientificos.fecyt.es/Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT) www.fecyt.esJiménez-García, M., Ruiz-Chico, J., Peña-Sánchez, A. R., & López-Sánchez, J. A. (2020). A Bibliometric Analysis of Sports Tourism and Sustainability (2002–2019). Sustainability, 12(7), 2840. doi:10.3390/su12072840Chiarini, A., Baccarani, C., & Mascherpa, V. (2018). Lean production, Toyota Production System and Kaizen philosophy. The TQM Journal, 30(4), 425-438. doi:10.1108/tqm-12-2017-0178Garcia, J. A. M., Sabater, J. J. G., & Bonavia, T. (2009). The impact of Kaizen Events on improving the performance of automotive components’ first-tier suppliers. International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, 9(4), 362. doi:10.1504/ijatm.2009.028524Schwerdtle, P. N., Maxwell, J., Horton, G., & Bonnamy, J. (2019). ‘12 tips for teaching environmental sustainability to health professionals’. Medical Teacher, 42(2), 150-155. doi:10.1080/0142159x.2018.1551994Vergunst, F., Berry, H. L., Rugkåsa, J., Burns, T., Molodynski, A., & Maughan, D. L. (2019). Applying the triple bottom line of sustainability to healthcare research—a feasibility study. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 32(1), 48-53. doi:10.1093/intqhc/mzz049Aznar Mínguet, P., & Barrón Ruiz, Á. (2017). El desarrollo humano sostenible: un compromiso educativo. Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, 29(1), 25-53. doi:10.14201/teoredu291253Herrera, J., & de las Heras-Rosas, C. (2020). Corporate Social Responsibility and Human Resource Management: Towards Sustainable Business Organizations. Sustainability, 12(3), 841. doi:10.3390/su12030841Leite, H., Bateman, N., & Radnor, Z. (2019). Beyond the ostensible: an exploration of barriers to lean implementation and sustainability in healthcare. Production Planning & Control, 31(1), 1-18. doi:10.1080/09537287.2019.1623426Maghsoudi, T., Cascón-Pereira, R., & Beatriz Hernández Lara, A. (2020). The Role of Collaborative Healthcare in Improving Social Sustainability: A Conceptual Framework. Sustainability, 12(8), 3195. doi:10.3390/su12083195Stelson, P., Hille, J., Eseonu, C., & Doolen, T. (2017). What drives continuous improvement project success in healthcare? International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 30(1), 43-57. doi:10.1108/ijhcqa-03-2016-0035Alvarado Ramírez, K., & Pumisacho Álvaro, V. (2017). Prácticas de mejora continua, con enfoque Kaizen, en empresas del distrito metropolitano de Quito: Un estudio exploratorio. Intangible Capital, 13(2), 479. doi:10.3926/ic.901Daly, H. E. (1990). Toward some operational principles of sustainable development. Ecological Economics, 2(1), 1-6. doi:10.1016/0921-8009(90)90010-

Welcome to BioResearch Open Access

It is my pleasure to introduce the inaugural issue of the first peer-reviewed, fully open access journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The scientific community has been abuzz with enthusiasm about open access, but with some legitimate concerns about the credibility of some of those journals from less reputable publishers and the level of peer review—or lack thereof—for open access articles. We are taking a unique approach with BioResearch Open Access to address these concerns and guarantee expert review. The strength of our editorial team lies in the unique input from our highly experienced Section Editors, each of whom is the Editor of a leading journal in his or her own field and who recommend articles for publication. The Journal also welcomes unsolicited articles. BioResearch Open Access is a fully peer-reviewed journal, ensuring that the quality and integrity of articles is maintained. I am delighted to acknowledge the support and participation from the following Section Editors: • Stephen C. Ekker, PhD Mayo Addiction Research Center, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota • Domenico Grasso, PhD, PE, DEE The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont • Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey, PhD SENS Foundation, Cambridge, United Kingdom • Stephen Higgs, PhD, FRES Biosecurity Research Institute, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas • Thomas Hope, PhD Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois • Peter C. Johnson, MD Scintellix, LLC, Raleigh, North Carolina • Eugene Kolker, PhD Chief Data Officer, Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, Washington • Antonios G. Mikos, PhD Rice University, Houston, Texas • Graham C. Parker, PhD Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan • Carol Shoshkes Reiss, PhD New York University, New York, New York • Alan J. Russell, PhD Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Ganes C. Sen, PhD Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio • Bruce A. Sullenger, PhD Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina • John B. West, MD, PhD University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California • David L. Woodland, PhD Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology, Silverthorne, Colorado • Professor Sir Ian Wilmut, OBE, FRS, FRSE MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom • James M. Wilson, MD, PhD University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania The Journal provides a new rapid-publication forum for a broad range of scientific topics, including, but not limited to, molecular and cellular biology, tissue engineering and biomaterials, regenerative medicine, bioengineering, stem cells, gene therapy, systems biology, genetics, biochemistry, virology, microbiology, and neuroscience. The purpose of this publication is to create a forum to bring together research from all aspects of biomedical research through open access. This first issue (Volume 1, Issue 1) has accomplished this goal by providing six research articles from internationally acclaimed research groups: • Reovirus-Mediated Cytotoxicity and Enhancement of Innate Immune Responses Against Acute Myeloid Leukemia (University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom) • Differentiation of Human Neural Progenitor Cells in Functionalized Hydrogel Matrices (University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany) • Permeability of 3D Fibrin Constructs Corresponds to Fibrinogen and Thrombin Concentrations (University of California, Los Angeles, California) • Human Skin Cells That Express Stage-Specific Embryonic Antigen 3 Associate with Dermal Tissue Regeneration (University of California, Los Angeles, California) • Phylogenetic Analysis of the Earliest nef Gene from Hemophiliacs and Local Controls in Korea (University of Ulsan, Ulsan, Korea) • The Effect of Biological and Synthetic Matrices on Hepatic Stem Cell Gene Expression (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom) We would like to thank the authors who submitted their work to this new journal and hope that this collection of articles makes them pleased to be a part of the first issue. BioResearch Open Access welcomes basic science and translational research in the form of original research articles, comprehensive review articles, minireviews, rapid communications, brief reports, technology reports, hypothesis articles, perspectives, and letters to the editor. All research articles in BioResearch Open Access will be published online within 4 weeks of acceptance. Articles will be fully open access and posted on PubMedCentral, and the Journal is fully NIH-, HHMI-, and Wellcome Trust–compliant. Instructions for Authors and further information are available at www.liebertpub.com/biores We hope that this new venture will provide a stimulating forum for biomedical research and discussion, and we welcome your active participation and article submissions

Genetic analysis indicate superiority of perfomance of cape goosberry (Physalis peruviana L.) hybrids

The use of hybrids as a new type of cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana L.) cultivars could improve yield in this crop, but little or no information is available on hybrid perfomance. We studied several vegetative characters, yield, fruit weight and fruit shape, soluble solids content (SSC), titratable acidity (TA) and ascorbic acid content (AAC) in three hybrids of cape gooseberry and their parents grown outdoors and in a glasshouse. The highest yields were obtained with hybrids, specially in a glasshouse. Interaction dominance environment for yield was very important; a higher dominance effect was detected in the glasshouse, than that observed outdoors. Quality characters were highly affected by the environment and showed variable results for the different families. For fruit composition traits, the additive and additive environment interactions were most important. Broad-sense heritability for all characters was high to medium (0.48-0.91), indicating that a high response to selection would be expected. Hybrids can improve cape gooseberry yield without impairing fruit quality.Leiva-Brondo, M.; Prohens Tomás, J.; Nuez Viñals, F. (2001). Genetic analysis indicate superiority of perfomance of cape goosberry (Physalis peruviana L.) hybrids. Journal of New Seeds. 3(3):71-84. doi:10.1300/J153v03n03_04718433Abak, K., Güler, H. Y., Sari, N., & Paksoy, M. (1994). EARLINESS AND YIELD OF PHYSALIS (P. IXOCARPA BROT. AND P. PERUVIANA L.) IN GREENHOUSE, LOW TUNNEL AND OPEN FIELD. Acta Horticulturae, (366), 301-306. doi:10.17660/actahortic.1994.366.37Kang, M. S. (1997). Using Genotype-by-Environment Interaction for Crop Cultivar Development. Advances in Agronomy Volume 62, 199-252. doi:10.1016/s0065-2113(08)60569-6Klinac, D. J. (1986). Cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana) production systems. New Zealand Journal of Experimental Agriculture, 14(4), 425-430. doi:10.1080/03015521.1986.10423060Mather, K., & Jinks, J. L. (1977). Introduction to Biometrical Genetics. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-5787-9Mazer, S. J., & Schick, C. T. (1991). Constancy of population parameters for life history and floral traits in Raphanus sativus L. I. Norms of reaction and the nature of genotype by environment interactions. Heredity, 67(2), 143-156. doi:10.1038/hdy.1991.74Nyquist, W. E., & Baker, R. J. (1991). Estimation of heritability and prediction of selection response in plant populations. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 10(3), 235-322. doi:10.1080/07352689109382313Pearcy, R. W. (1990). Sunflecks and Photosynthesis in Plant Canopies. Annual Review of Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Biology, 41(1), 421-453. doi:10.1146/annurev.pp.41.060190.002225Péron, J. Y., Demaure, E., & Hannetel, C. (1989). POSSIBILITIES OF TROPICAL SOLANACEAE AND CUCURBITACEAE INTRODUCTION IN FRANCE. Acta Horticulturae, (242), 179-186. doi:10.17660/actahortic.1989.242.24Proctor, F. J. (1990). THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY MARKET FOR TROPICAL FRUIT AND FACTORS LIMITING GROWTH. Acta Horticulturae, (269), 29-40. doi:10.17660/actahortic.1990.269.

Hypermedia-based discovery for source selection using low-cost linked data interfaces

Evaluating federated Linked Data queries requires consulting multiple sources on the Web. Before a client can execute queries, it must discover data sources, and determine which ones are relevant. Federated query execution research focuses on the actual execution, while data source discovery is often marginally discussed-even though it has a strong impact on selecting sources that contribute to the query results. Therefore, the authors introduce a discovery approach for Linked Data interfaces based on hypermedia links and controls, and apply it to federated query execution with Triple Pattern Fragments. In addition, the authors identify quantitative metrics to evaluate this discovery approach. This article describes generic evaluation measures and results for their concrete approach. With low-cost data summaries as seed, interfaces to eight large real-world datasets can discover each other within 7 minutes. Hypermedia-based client-side querying shows a promising gain of up to 50% in execution time, but demands algorithms that visit a higher number of interfaces to improve result completeness

Research Agenda for Studying Open Source II: View Through the Lens of Referent Discipline Theories

In a companion paper [Niederman et al., 2006] we presented a multi-level research agenda for studying information systems using open source software. This paper examines open source in terms of MIS and referent discipline theories that are the base needed for rigorous study of the research agenda

Open-Source Telemedicine Platform for Wireless Medical Video Communication

An m-health system for real-time wireless communication of medical video based on open-source software is presented. The objective is to deliver a low-cost telemedicine platform which will allow for reliable remote diagnosis m-health applications such as emergency incidents, mass population screening, and medical education purposes. The performance of the proposed system is demonstrated using five atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound videos. The videos are encoded at the clinically acquired resolution, in addition to lower, QCIF, and CIF resolutions, at different bitrates, and four different encoding structures. Commercially available wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3.5G high-speed packet access (HSPA) wireless channels are used to validate the developed platform. Objective video quality assessment is based on PSNR ratings, following calibration using the variable frame delay (VFD) algorithm that removes temporal mismatch between original and received videos. Clinical evaluation is based on atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound video assessment protocol. Experimental results show that adequate diagnostic quality wireless medical video communications are realized using the designed telemedicine platform. HSPA cellular networks provide for ultrasound video transmission at the acquired resolution, while VFD algorithm utilization bridges objective and subjective ratings