Value-Driven Enterprise Architecture Evaluation for the Joint Force Protection Advanced Security System

The U.S. military has placed a strong focus on the importance of operating in a joint environment, where capabilities and missions are shared between service components. Protecting U.S. forces is a major consideration in the joint environment. The Joint Force Protection Advanced Security System (JFPASS) architecture has been created to fill a critical gap in Joint Force Protection guidance for systems acquisition. The systems engineering (SE) field has made wide use of system architectures to represent complex systems. As fundamental SE principles become more widespread, analysis tools provide an objective method for the evaluation of the resulting architectural products. This study used decision analysis to develop a standardized, yet adaptable and repeatable model to evaluate the capabilities of the JFPASS for any installation or facility belonging to the United States Department of Defense (DoD). Using the Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) methods, a value hierarchy was created by consulting with subject matter experts. The resulting model, named Value-Driven Enterprise Architecture (VDEA) score, provides an analysis tool, which enables DoD decision-makers to use JFPASS architecture products to quickly and easily evaluate the value provided by the system; VDEA provides insight into the overall quality and capability of the system. Through the scoring and sensitivity analysis functions, capability gaps and potential improvements can be identified. Future studies in this area will provide a vehicle for rating not only operational level systems, but also individual functional projects against other alternatives

Methodology for Value-Driven Enterprise Architecture Development Goals: Application to DoDAF Framework

The Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DoDAF) describes 29 distinct views but offers limited guidance on view selection to meet system needs. This research extends the Value-Driven Enterprise Architecture Score (VDEA-Score) from a descriptive, evaluation protocol toward a prescriptive one by evaluating each DoDAF view and its contribution to the overall objective of the completed architecture. This extension of VDEA is referred to as VDEA-Development Goals (VDEA-DG). The program manager or other decision-makers may use this insight to justify the allocation of resources to the development of specific architecture views considered to provide maximum value. This research provides insight into the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) process and policy requirements. Existing guidance of a static list of views prior to DoD milestone approval detracts from the creation of vital architecture for system success. This research shows overlap between the most important views for the considered architecture project and the JCIDS requirements and identifies areas for JCIDS policy improvement. This research also identifies areas where DoDAF does not directly support the creation of capabilities. With additional information on the resources required for creating individual views, the tool could be expanded to identify an optimal build sequence given resource constraints

Влияние иностранного банковского капитала на финансовую инновационность страны: взгляд из стран бывшего Советского Союза и молодых членов ЕС

The main hypothesis of the paper was the assumption that the increase in the level of innovation of the financial sector in the post-Soviet states and young European Union (EU) members with an imperfect banking sector and a protracted financial crisis is accompanied by difficulties accessing financing sources and significantly depends on the volume foreign banking capital. The aim of the study is to identify the correlation between the growth of financial innovativeness of the country and the level of foreign banking capital, using Panel data analysis from 2009 to 2019. Unlike previous studies, it was taken into account that the level of financial innovation of the republics of the former Soviet Union is increasingly dependent on external credit resources, while the innovative development of the EU countries becomes financially independent, and this constitutes the scientific novelty of the research. The results confirm the relationship between foreign banking capital and the growth of financial innovativeness of the country, especially with its low and medium levels. To test his hypothesis, the author presented empirical models with the conditions of interaction with the Financial Innovativeness Index. Based on a comparison of indicators of the financial innovation of the country and foreign banking capital, clusters of countries are distinguished according to the nature and direction of the relationship of the analyzed indicators. The author concludes that the increase in the level of innovation in the financial sector of the countries of the former Soviet Union and young EU members depends on the amount of foreign banking capital and the need to consistently expand the tools for the country’s economic growth by attracting it.Основной гипотезой статьи является предположение, что повышение уровня инновационности финансового сектора в постсоветских государствах и молодых членах Европейского союза (ЕС) с несовершенным банковским сектором и затяжным финансовым кризисом сопровождается трудностями доступа к источникам финансирования и значительной зависимостью от объема иностранного банковского капитала. Целью статьи является анализ корреляции между ростом финансовой инновационности страны и уровнем иностранного банковского капитала с использованием анализа панельных данных за 2009–2019 гг. Здесь, в отличие от предыдущих исследований, учитывалось, что уровень финансовой инновационности республик бывшего Советского Союза все больше зависит от внешних кредитных ресурсов, в то время как инновационное развитие стран ЕС становится финансово независимым, и это составляет научную новизну исследования. Результаты подтверждают взаимосвязь между иностранным банковским капиталом и ростом финансовой инновационности стран, особенно с ее низким и средним уровнями. Для проверки своей гипотезы автором были представлены эмпирические модели с условиями взаимодействия с Индексом финансовой инновационности. На основе сравнения показателей финансовой инновационности страны и иностранного банковского капитала выделяются кластеры стран по характеру и направленности взаимосвязи анализируемых показателей. Сделан вывод о зависимости повышения уровня инноваций в финансовом секторе стран бывшего Советского Союза и молодых членов ЕС от размера иностранного банковского капитала и необходимости путем его привлечения последовательно расширять инструментарий для экономического роста страны

Liaison psychiatry—measurement and evaluation of service types, referral patterns and outcomes (LP-MAESTRO): a protocol

Introduction: We describe the protocol for a project that will use linkage of routinely collected NHS data to answer a question about the nature and effectiveness of liaison psychiatry services in acute hospitals in England. Methods and analysis: The project will use three data sources: (1) Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), a database controlled by NHS Digital that contains patient data relating to emergency department (ED), inpatient and outpatient episodes at hospitals in England; (2) ResearchOne, a research database controlled by The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) that contains patient data relating to primary care provided by organisations using the SystmOne clinical information system and (3) clinical databases controlled by mental health trusts that contain patient data relating to care provided by liaison psychiatry services. We will link patient data from these sources to construct care pathways for patients who have been admitted to a particular hospital and determine those patients who have been seen by a liaison psychiatry service during their admission. Patient care pathways will form the basis of a matched cohort design to test the effectiveness of liaison intervention. We will combine healthcare utilisation within care pathways using cost figures from national databases. We will compare the cost of each care pathway and the impact of a broad set of health-related outcomes to obtain preliminary estimates of cost-effectiveness for liaison psychiatry services. We will carry out an exploratory incremental cost-effectiveness analysis from a whole system perspective. Ethics and dissemination: Individual patient consent will not be feasible for this study. Favourable ethical opinion has been obtained from the NHS Research Ethics Committee (North of Scotland) (REF: 16/NS/0025) for Work Stream 2 (phase 1) of the Liaison psychiatry—measurement and evaluation of service types, referral patterns and outcomes study. The Confidentiality Advisory Group at the Health Research Authority determined that Section 251 approval under Regulation 5 of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 was not required for the study ‘on the basis that there is no disclosure of patient identifiable data without consent’ (REF: 16/CAG/0037). Results of the study will be published in academic journals in health services research and mental health. Details of the study methodology will also be published in an academic journal. Discussion papers will be authored for health service commissioners

Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer Earth Probe (TOMS-EP): Critical Design Review Data Package, Day 2

No abstract availabl

Distributional Domain-Invariant Preference Matching for Cross-Domain Recommendation

Learning accurate cross-domain preference mappings in the absence of overlapped users/items has presented a persistent challenge in Non-overlapping Cross-domain Recommendation (NOCDR). Despite the efforts made in previous studies to address NOCDR, several limitations still exist. Specifically, 1) while some approaches substitute overlapping users/items with overlapping behaviors, they cannot handle NOCDR scenarios where such auxiliary information is unavailable; 2) often, cross-domain preference mapping is modeled by learning deterministic explicit representation matchings between sampled users in two domains. However, this can be biased due to individual preferences and thus fails to incorporate preference continuity and universality of the general population. In light of this, we assume that despite the scattered nature of user behaviors, there exists a consistent latent preference distribution shared among common people. Modeling such distributions further allows us to capture the continuity in user behaviors within each domain and discover preference invariance across domains. To this end, we propose a Distributional domain-invariant Preference Matching method for non-overlapping Cross-Domain Recommendation (DPMCDR). For each domain, we hierarchically approximate a posterior of domain-level preference distribution with empirical evidence derived from user-item interactions. Next, we aim to build distributional implicit matchings between the domain-level preferences of two domains. This process involves mapping them to a shared latent space and seeking a consensus on domain-invariant preference by minimizing the distance between their distributional representations therein. In this way, we can identify the alignment of two non-overlapping domains if they exhibit similar patterns of domain-invariant preference.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, full research paper accepted by ICDM 202

High voltage metal oxide thin film transistors to drive arrays of dielectric elastomer actuators

This thesis advances the field of high-voltage thin film transistors (HVTFTs) and dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) by demonstrating a strategy for low-voltage addressing of an array of high voltage soft actuators suspended on a flexible substrate. First, I present the first HVTFTs operating at 1 kV drain-source voltage, switching with an on-off ratio of 20 at 80 V gate-source voltage. The HVTFTs can operate at high voltage thanks to geometrical features increasing the breakdown voltage: a thick gate dielectric composed of a bilayer of alumina (100 nm) and Parylene-C (1 um), a long semiconducting channel (500 um), and a 150 &mlong non-gated region between the drain and the gate electrode called the offset gate. The use of an amorphous oxide semiconductor (AOS), zinc tin oxide (ZTO), enables a high on-currents of 0.1 mA. The ZTO was synthesized by a sol-gel process after spin-coating on a flexible polyimide substrate, previously passivated with alumina. I optimized the HVTFT switching properties by doping the ZTO layer with yttrium (5%). It improved the on-off ratio up to 1000 at 500 V operation voltage by decreasing the leakage current down to 100 nA. Then, I show the first integration of HVTFTs with DEAs. My ZTO HVTFTs switch DEAs on and off with only 30 V gate voltage under a bias voltage of 1.4 kV. The system time response in 50 ms. The demonstrator is a 4x4 array of diaphragm DEAs. A layer of 4x4 DEAs is suspended over a layer of 4x4 HVTFTs built on flexible polyimide. The DEAs and the HVTFTs were interconnected thanks to a flexible PCB in a resistive load inverter circuit architecture. A flexible 3D printed chamber was constantly biasing the DEA diaphragms with a back-pressure. The DEAs were made of PDMS and the active region is defined by overlapping carbon-PDMS electrodes. The device operates down to a 5mm radius of curvature. Finally, I demonstrate latching of the HVTFT and the DEA by using triboelectric sensors. Under a constant 500 V circuit bias, the control of the HVTFT gate with triboelectric generators enabled 4s latching of the inverter output voltage at 470 V for the off-state and at 120 V for the on-state. The latching of the DEAs with the HVTFT circuit finally proves that this approach can lead to a bistable control of DEAs. This PhD thesis results show that my HVTFTs are versatile components usable not only to address DEAs but also to interface low voltage sensors with high voltage actuators