Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

PROBING THE BRAIN\ubfS CAPACITY FOR CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH THE SPATIOTEMPORAL COMPLEXITY OF THE CORTICAL ACTIVITY EVOKED BY TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATION

Neuroscience faces the challenging task of developing and implementing objective measures of consciousness that can be applied to patients who are unable to interact with their external environment. The standard clinical assessment of these patients relies heavily on the subjective distinction between voluntary and involuntary or reflexive movements and electrophysiological and neuroimaging protocols have been recently developed to improve diagnosis and probe for signs of awareness. However, because the ability to unambiguously infer the capacity for consciousness through these novel techniques is determined ultimately not by consciousness itself but the awareness of a specific stimulus, their use to diagnose consciousness at the single-patient level is challenged by difficulties related to the application and interpretation of results. This thesis addresses the possibility for investigating the brain\u2019s capacity for consciousness, instead of the neural correlates of particular conscious perceptions, following a path that has not yet been explored. General considerations about what constitutes the content of consciousness led us to hypothesize that consciousness depends on the brain\u2019s capacity to sustain complex patterns of causal interactions between different areas of the thalamocortical system. To investigate this hypothesis, we employed the combination of navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and high-density electroencephalography (hd-EEG) and developed a feasible measure of brain complexity, the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI), that was calculated in healthy subjects during alert wakefulness, sleep and anesthesia; and at the bedside of brain-injured, non-communicating patients, who gradually recovered from coma. PCI is a measure of the spatiotemporal complexity of the cortical activity evoked by TMS and is high only if many regions of the cerebral cortex react to the initial perturbation quickly and in different ways. Remarkably, in a total of 116 TMS sessions collected from 19 healthy subjects and 17 brain-injured patients, we invariably found high PCI values in conditions in which consciousness was clearly present and low PCI values in conditions in which consciousness was unambiguously reduced. This difference was able to reliably discriminate between conscious and unconscious healthy subjects, producing disjoint distributions that were independent of the stimulation parameters, the strength and the extent of the cortical activation. Moreover, PCI was able to detect progressive changes in consciousness, such as those that occur while a subject is falling asleep, and to discriminate between ambiguous consciousness levels (minimally conscious state) in patients suffering from disorders of consciousness from both lower (vegetative state, sleep/anesthesia) and higher (locked-in syndrome, healthy wakefulness) levels of consciousness. The spatiotemporal complexity of the cortical activity evoked by TMS is a single number that can be calculated at the bedside with little a priori information. Because this measure aims at the brain\u2019s capacity for consciousness, instead of behavioral or neural correlations of conscious perception, this technique does not depend on the willingness or ability of the patient to engage in assessment protocols and can be employed bypassing sensory pathways and subcortical structures to directly probe the thalamocortical system. Our results support PCI as an appropriate tool to approximate an objective measure of the neural correlate of consciousness with the potential to assist the diagnosis and prognosis in brain-injured patients and with unique theoretical implications to a science of consciousness

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ROMANIA

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main opportunities and limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The survey was defined with the aim to involve the highest possible number of relevant CSR topics and give the issue a more wholesome perspective. It provides a basis for further comprehension and deeper analyses of specific CSR areas. The conditions determining the success of CSR in Romania have been defined in the paper on the basis of the previously cumulative knowledge as well as the results of various researches. This paper provides knowledge which may be useful in the programs promoting CSR.Corporate social responsibility, Supportive policies, Romania

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Preventing overweight and improving parenting skills from birth to age 3 years: preliminary results

Background. Parenting has been associated with child weight status. This study aims to evaluate the effects on parenting skills and BMI-SDS of the BBOFT+ overweight prevention program, compared to care-as-usual (CAU). Method. In a cluster-randomized trial, 2500 parents participated. Parent-reported weight and length were used. Parenting was measured with subscales control and reinforcement of the parenting strategies for eating and activity scale (PEAS) and the warmth subscale from the Child Rearing Questionnaire. Results. The first univariate analyses show that at age 15 months, no statistically significant differences in BMI- SDS, parental control, reinforcement or warmth were found between the BBOFT+ and the CAU group. Further cluster analyses need to be conducted. Results from age 36 months will be presented during the conference, which will include all subscales of the PEAS and an assessment of parenting styles. Conclusion. The intervention does not seem to have an effect on BMI-SDS or parenting