21 research outputs found
Computational Methods for the Analysis of Genomic Data and Biological Processes
In recent decades, new technologies have made remarkable progress in helping to understand biological systems. Rapid advances in genomic profiling techniques such as microarrays or high-performance sequencing have brought new opportunities and challenges in the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics. Such genetic sequencing techniques allow large amounts of data to be produced, whose analysis and cross-integration could provide a complete view of organisms. As a result, it is necessary to develop new techniques and algorithms that carry out an analysis of these data with reliability and efficiency. This Special Issue collected the latest advances in the field of computational methods for the analysis of gene expression data, and, in particular, the modeling of biological processes. Here we present eleven works selected to be published in this Special Issue due to their interest, quality, and originality
Advances in Information Security and Privacy
With the recent pandemic emergency, many people are spending their days in smart working and have increased their use of digital resources for both work and entertainment. The result is that the amount of digital information handled online is dramatically increased, and we can observe a significant increase in the number of attacks, breaches, and hacks. This Special Issue aims to establish the state of the art in protecting information by mitigating information risks. This objective is reached by presenting both surveys on specific topics and original approaches and solutions to specific problems. In total, 16 papers have been published in this Special Issue
Advances in Computational Social Science and Social Simulation
Aquesta conferència és la celebració conjunta de la "10th Artificial Economics Conference AE", la "10th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association ESSA" i la "1st Simulating the Past to Understand Human History SPUHH".Conferència organitzada pel Laboratory for Socio-Historical Dynamics Simulation (LSDS-UAB) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Readers will find results of recent research on computational social science and social simulation economics, management, sociology,and history written by leading experts in the field. SOCIAL SIMULATION (former ESSA) conferences constitute annual events which serve as an international platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion of cutting edge research in the field of social simulations, both from the theoretical as well as applied perspective, and the 2014 edition benefits from the cross-fertilization of three different research communities into one single event. The volume consists of 122 articles, corresponding to most of the contributions to the conferences, in three different formats: short abstracts (presentation of work-in-progress research), posters (presentation of models and results), and full papers (presentation of social simulation research including results and discussion). The compilation is completed with indexing lists to help finding articles by title, author and thematic content. We are convinced that this book will serve interested readers as a useful compendium which presents in a nutshell the most recent advances at the frontiers of computational social sciences and social simulation researc
Fuelling the zero-emissions road freight of the future: routing of mobile fuellers
The future of zero-emissions road freight is closely tied to the sufficient availability of new and clean fuel options such as electricity and Hydrogen. In goods distribution using Electric Commercial Vehicles (ECVs) and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (HFCVs) a major challenge in the transition period would pertain to their limited autonomy and scarce and unevenly distributed refuelling stations. One viable solution to facilitate and speed up the adoption of ECVs/HFCVs by logistics, however, is to get the fuel to the point where it is needed (instead of diverting the route of delivery vehicles to refuelling stations) using "Mobile Fuellers (MFs)". These are mobile battery swapping/recharging vans or mobile Hydrogen fuellers that can travel to a running ECV/HFCV to provide the fuel they require to complete their delivery routes at a rendezvous time and space. In this presentation, new vehicle routing models will be presented for a third party company that provides MF services. In the proposed problem variant, the MF provider company receives routing plans of multiple customer companies and has to design routes for a fleet of capacitated MFs that have to synchronise their routes with the running vehicles to deliver the required amount of fuel on-the-fly. This presentation will discuss and compare several mathematical models based on different business models and collaborative logistics scenarios
Library websites popularity: does Facebook really matter?
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the utilization of social media (Facebook) is an important factor in increasing the visibility of the library site usage in Malaysian public universities. Nine top ranked Malaysian public universities involved in this research and number of Facebook followers for each library website is listed. Alexa software was used as the approach to study the issue of visibility. Alexa is able to determine web site usage, by showing the percentage of visitors of library related subdomain(s) as listed in the top subdomains for each University website (domain) over a month. It is found that Universiti Utara Malaysia library website scored the highest percentage of visitors based on the library related subdomain(s) as listed in the top subdomains for the University website in Alexa. To check such irregularities in access, this paper use EvalAccess 2.0 and it is found that Universiti Sains Malaysia’s library website scored higher irregularities. In term of number of Facebook followers, Univesity of Malaya library has the highest score. It is showed that the utilization of social media (Facebook) is not yet an important factor in increasing the visibility of the library websites. However, expectedly, top ranked universities’ library web sites, are more visible and popular. This research is limited to the situation in Malaysia where public universities are more noticeable and seldom face financial constraints rather than private universities. It is highly important for those universities’ library web sites that are not highly visible to initiate the necessary measures in improving the development of their web sites as the usage of the website is an indicator of online quality
An empirical investigation in the decision-making processes of new infrastructure development
The aim of this research is to present and discuss the development and deployment of Lean thinking models and techniques applied to improve the decision-making within the planning and design processes of new infrastructures, within a healthcare organisation.
In the UK, healthcare organisations are responsible for planning, designing, building and managing their own infrastructures, through which their services are delivered to the local population (Kagioglou & Tzortzopoulos, 2010). These processes are long and complex, involving a large range of stakeholders who are implicated within the strategic decision-making. It is understood that the NHS lacks models and frameworks to support the decision-making associated with their new infrastructure development and that ad-hoc methods, used at local level, lead to inefficiencies and weak performances, despite the contractual efforts made throughout the PPP and PFI schemes (Baker & Mahmood, 2012; Barlow & Koberle-Gaiser, 2008). This is illustrated by the long development cycle time – it can take up to 15 years from conception to completion of new infrastructure.
Hence, in collaboration with an NHS organisation, an empirical action research embedded within a mixed-methodology approach, has been designed to analyse the root-cause problems and assess to what extent Lean thinking can be applied to the built environment, to improve the speed and fitness for purpose of new infrastructures. Firstly, this multiphase research establishes the main issues responsible for the weak process performances, via an inductive-deductive cycle, and then demonstrates how Lean thinking inspired techniques: Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) using ER and AHP, Benchmarking and Quality Function Deployment (QFD), have been implemented to optimise the decision-making in order to speed up the planning and design decision-making processes and to enhance the fitness for purpose of new infrastructures.
Academic literatures on Lean thinking, decision theories and built environment have been reviewed, in order to establish a reliable knowledge base of the context and to develop relevant solutions. The bespoke models developed have been tested and implemented in collaboration with a local healthcare organisation in UK, as part of the construction of a £15 million health centre project. A substantial set of qualitative and quantitative data has been collected during the 450 days, which the researcher was granted full access, plus a total of 25 sets of interviews, a survey (N=85) and 25 experimental workshops. This mixed-methodology research is composed of an exploratory sequential design and an embedded-experiment variant, enabling the triangulation of different data, methods and findings to be used to develop an innovative solution, thus improving the new infrastructure development process.
The emerging developed conceptual model represents a non-prescriptive approach to planning and designing new healthcare infrastructures, using Lean thinking principles to optimise the decision-making and reduce the complexity. This Partial & Bespoke Lean Construction Framework (PBLCF) has been implemented as good practice by the healthcare organisation, to speed up the planning phases and to enhance the quality of the design and reduce the development cost, in order to generate a competitive edge. It is estimated that a reduction of 22% of the cycle time and 7% of the cost is achievable. This research makes a contribution by empirically developing and deploying a partial Lean implementation into the healthcare‟s built environment, and by providing non-prescriptive models to optimise the decision-making underpinning the planning and design of complex healthcare infrastructure. This has the potential to be replicated in other healthcare organisations and can also be adapted to other construction projects