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

Mapping Nanomedicine Terminology in the Regulatory Landscape

A common terminology is essential in any field of science and technology for a mutual understanding among different communities of experts and regulators, harmonisation of policy actions, standardisation of quality procedures and experimental testing, and the communication to the general public. It also allows effective revision of information for policy making and optimises research fund allocation. In particular, in emerging scientific fields with a high innovation potential, new terms, descriptions and definitions are quickly generated, which are then ambiguously used by stakeholders having diverse interests, coming from different scientific disciplines and/or from various regions. The application of nanotechnology in health -often called nanomedicine- is considered as such emerging and multidisciplinary field with a growing interest of various communities. In order to support a better understanding of terms used in the regulatory domain, the Nanomedicines Working Group of the International Pharmaceutical Regulators Forum (IPRF) has prioritised the need to map, compile and discuss the currently used terminology of regulatory scientists coming from different geographic areas. The JRC has taken the lead to identify and compile frequently used terms in the field by using web crawling and text mining tools as well as the manual extraction of terms. Websites of 13 regulatory authorities and clinical trial registries globally involved in regulating nanomedicines have been crawled. The compilation and analysis of extracted terms demonstrated sectorial and geographical differences in the frequency and type of nanomedicine related terms used in a regulatory context. Finally 31 relevant and most frequently used terms deriving from various agencies have been compiled, discussed and analysed for their similarities and differences. These descriptions will support the development of harmonised use of terminology in the future. The report provides necessary background information to advance the discussion among stakeholders. It will strengthen activities aiming to develop harmonised standards in the field of nanomedicine, which is an essential factor to stimulate innovation and industrial competitiveness.JRC.F.2-Consumer Products Safet

Computer Science & Technology Series : XVIII Argentine Congress of Computer Science. Selected papers

CACIC’12 was the eighteenth Congress in the CACIC series. It was organized by the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Universidad Nacional del Sur. The Congress included 13 Workshops with 178 accepted papers, 5 Conferences, 2 invited tutorials, different meetings related with Computer Science Education (Professors, PhD students, Curricula) and an International School with 5 courses. CACIC 2012 was organized following the traditional Congress format, with 13 Workshops covering a diversity of dimensions of Computer Science Research. Each topic was supervised by a committee of 3-5 chairs of different Universities. The call for papers attracted a total of 302 submissions. An average of 2.5 review reports were collected for each paper, for a grand total of 752 review reports that involved about 410 different reviewers. A total of 178 full papers, involving 496 authors and 83 Universities, were accepted and 27 of them were selected for this book.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

LEARN Toolkit of Best Practice for Research Data Management

Research data is the new currency of the digital age. From sonnets to statistics, and genes to geodata, the amount of material being created and stored is growing exponentially. The LERU Roadmap for Research Data identifies a serious gap in the level of preparation amongst research performing organisations. This gulf is prominent in areas such as policy development, awareness of current issues, skills development, training, costs, community building, governance, disciplinary/legal/terminological and geographical differences. LEARN will help decision and policy makers identify sound solutions. Stakeholders can follow this LEARN Toolkit of Best Practice Case Studies, all of which will help organisations to grapple with the data deluge

Organising knowledge in the age of the semantic web: a study of the commensurability of ontologies

 This study is directed towards the problem of conceptual translation across different data management systems and formats, with a particular focus on those used in the emerging world of the Semantic Web. Increasingly, organisations have sought to connect information sources and services within and beyond their enterprise boundaries, building upon existing Internet facilities to offer improved research, planning, reporting and management capabilities. The Semantic Web is an ambitious response to this growing demand, offering a standards-based platform for sharing, linking and reasoning with information. The imagined result, a globalised knowledge network formed out of mutually referring data structures termed "ontologies", would make possible new kinds of queries, inferences and amalgamations of information. Such a network, though, is premised upon large numbers of manually drawn links between these ontologies. In practice, establishing these links is a complex translation task requiring considerable time and expertise; invariably, as ontologies and other structured information sources are published, many useful connections are neglected. To combat this, in recent years substantial research has been invested into "ontology matching" - the exploration of algorithmic approaches for automatically translating or aligning ontologies. These approaches, which exploit the explicit semantic properties of individual concepts, have registered impressive precision and recall results against humanly-engineered translations. However they are unable to make use of background cultural information about the overall systems in which those concepts are housed - how those systems are used, for what purpose they were designed, what methodological or theoretical principles underlined their construction, and so on. The present study investigates whether paying attention to these sociological dimensions of electronic knowledge systems could supplement algorithmic approaches in some circumstances. Specifically, it asks whether a holistic notion of commensurability can be useful when aligning or translating between such systems.      The first half of the study introduces the problem, surveys the literature, and outlines the general approach. It then proposes both a theoretical foundation and a practical framework for assessing commensurability of ontologies and other knowledge systems. Chapter 1 outlines the Semantic Web, ontologies and the problem of conceptual translation, and poses the key research questions. Conceptual translation can be treated as, by turns, a social, philosophical, linguistic or technological problem; Chapter 2 surveys a correspondingly wide range of literature and approaches.      The methods employed by the study are described in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 critically examines theories of conceptual schemes and commensurability, while Chapter 5 describes the framework itself, comprising a series of specific dimensions, a broad methodological approach, and a means for generating both qualitative and quantitative assessments. The second half of the study then explores the notion of commensurability through several empirical frames. Chapters 6 to 8 applies the framework to a series of case studies. Chapter 6 presents a brief history of knowledge systems, and compares two of these systems - relational databases and Semantic Web ontologies. Chapter 7, in turn, compares several "upper-level" ontologies - reusable schematisations of abstract concepts like Time and Space . Chapter 8 reviews a recent, widely publicised controversy over the standardisation of document formats. This analysis in particular shows how the opaque dry world of technical specifications can reveal the complex network of social dynamics, interests and beliefs which coordinate and motivate them. Collectively, these studies demonstrate the framework is useful in making evident assumptions which motivate the design of different knowledge systems, and further, in assessing the commensurability of those systems. Chapter 9 then presents a further empirical study; here, the framework is implemented as a software system, and pilot tested among a small cohort of researchers. Finally, Chapter 10 summarises the argumentative trajectory of the study as a whole - that, broadly, an elaborated notion of commensurability can tease out important and salient features of translation inscrutable to purely algorithmic methods - and suggests some possibilities for further work

Promoting Andean children's learning of science through cultural and digital tools

Conference Theme: To see the world and a grain of sand: Learning across levels of space, time, and scaleIn Peru, there is a large achievement gap in rural schools. In order to overcome this problem, the study aims to design environments that enhance science learning through the integration of ICT with cultural artifacts, respecting the Andean culture and empower rural children to pursue lifelong learning. This investigation employs the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework, and the Design-Based Research (DBR) methodology using an iterative process of design, implementation and evaluation of the innovative practice.published_or_final_versio

E-Governance: Strategy for Mitigating Non-Inclusion of Citizens in Policy Making in Nigeria

The Nigerian federation that currently has 36 states structure adopted the Weberian Public Administrative system before now as an ideal way of running government, which was characterized with the traditional way of doing things without recourse to the deployment of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Today e-governance is seen as a paradigm shift from the previous way of governance. Research has shown that, the adoption and implementation of e-governance is more likely to bring about effective service delivery, mitigate corruption and ultimately enhance citizens’ participation in governmental affairs. However, it has been argued that infrastructure such as regular electricity power and access to the Internet, in addition to a society with high rate of literacy level are required to effectively implement and realize the potentials of e-governance for improved delivery of services. Due to the difficulties currently experienced, developing nations need to adequately prepare for the implementation of e-governance on the platform of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Hence, this study seeks to examine whether the adoption and implementation of e-governance in the context of Nigeria would mitigate the hitherto non-inclusion of citizens in the formulation and implementation of government policies aimed at enhanced development. To achieve the objective of the study, data were sourced and analyzed majorly by examining government websites of 20 states in the Nigerian federation to ascertain if there are venues for citizens to interact with government in the area of policy making and feedback on government actions, as a way of promoting participatory governance. The study revealed that the adoption and implementation of e-governance in the country is yet to fully take place. This is due to lack of infrastructure, low level of literacy rate and government inability to provide the necessary infrastructure for e-governance to materialize. The paper therefore, recommends among others the need for the Federal Government to involve a sound and clear policy on how to go about the adoption and implementation of egovernance through deliberate effort at increasing budgetary allocation towards infrastructural development and mass education of citizens