Is there an information field in the life world? Empirical approach using electrophotonic analysis

This paper presents a brief review of distant biological communication phenomena, information fields explained as a transduction of information without energy displacement, experimental requirements for testing this hypothesis with human beings using electrophotonic analysis, oxymetry and electromagnetic shielding. Finally, authors present preliminary results and future work on this new field of interdisciplinary research1119120

Improving Version-Aware Word Documents

Coakley~\textit{et al.} described how they developed Version Aware Word Documents, which is an enhanced document representation that includes a detailed version history that is self-contained and portable. However, they were not able to adopt the unique-ID-based techniques that have been shown to support efficient merging and differencing algorithms. This thesis describes how it is possible to adapt existing features of MS Word\u27s OOXML representation to provide a system of unique element IDs suitable for those algorithms. This requires taking over Word\u27s Revision Save ID (RSID) system and also defining procedures for specifying ID values for elements that do not support the RSID mechanism. In addition, we provide an updated version of the MS plug-in developed by Coakley~\textit{et al.}. Important limitations remain but appear surmountable

Software Traceability for Multi-Agent Systems Implemented Using BDI Architecture

The development of multi-agent software systems is considered a complex task due to (a) the large number and heterogeneity of documents generated during the development of these systems, (b) the lack of support for the whole development life-cycle by existing agent-oriented methodologies requiring the use of different methodologies, and (c) the possible incompleteness of the documents and models generated during the development of the systems. In order to alleviate the above problems, in this thesis, a traceability framework is described to support the development of multi-agent systems. The framework supports automatic generation of traceability relations and identification of missing elements (i.e., completeness checking) in the models created during the development life-cycle of multi-agent systems using the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture. Traceability has been recognized as an important activity in the software development process. Traceability relations can guarantee and improve software quality and can help with several tasks such as the evolution of software systems, reuse of parts of the system, validation that a system meets its requirements, understanding of the rationale for certain design decisions, identification of common aspects of the system, and analysis of implications of changes in the system. The traceability framework presented in this thesis concentrates on multi-agent software systems developed using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Here, a traceability reference model is presented for software artefacts generated when using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Different types of relations between the artefacts are identified. The framework is based on a rule-based approach to support automatic identification of traceability relations and missing elements between the generated artefacts. Software models represented in XML were used to support the heterogeneity of models and tools used during the software development life-cycle. In the framework, the rules are specified in an extension of XQuery to support (i) representation of the consequence part of the rules, i.e. the actions to be taken when the conditions are satisfied, and (ii) extra functions to cover some of the traceability relations being proposed and completeness checking of the models. A prototype tool has been developed to illustrate and evaluate the work. The work has been evaluated in terms of recall and precision measurements in three different case studies. One small case study of an Automatic Teller Machine application, one medium case study of an Air Traffic Control Environment application, and one large case study of an Electronic Bookstore application

The influence of corporate social responsibility on the quality of accounting statements of Brazilian companies

Diante de um mercado cada vez mais exigente, consciente das necessidades e efeitos das ações organizacionais, cresce o interesse de evidenciação e controle das informações divulgadas. Assim, com o objetivo de investigar a influência da Responsabilidade Social Corporativa (RSC) na qualidade das demonstrações contábeis de empresas brasileiras, realizou-se uma pesquisa descritiva junto a 300 empresas listadas na B3, aplicando-se estatística descritiva, teste de diferença entre médias, correlação e regressão logística para o tratamento dos dados. Foram analisadas a Responsabilidade Social Corporativa (RSC) medida pela métrica geral CSRHub, e a qualidade da informação representada pela republicação dos seus demonstrativos financeiros, considerando-se que esse parâmetro sinaliza baixa qualidade da informação inicialmente divulgada. Os resultados evidenciaram que existem diferenças estatisticamente significantes na RSC referente às empresas que republicam suas demonstrações contábeis comparadas as empresas que não republicam seus demonstrativos, denotando que, as empresas que não republicam suas informações tendem a apresentar um maior investimento em RSC. Constatou-se, ainda, que quanto maior a RSC e o tamanho organizacional, menor a republicação das demonstrações contábeis pelas empresas. Por fim, verificou-se que existe uma influência negativa da RSC na republicação das demonstrações contábeis, apresentando que quanto maior a RSC, menor a probabilidade de republicação das demonstrações contábeis pelas empresas. Desta forma, empresas com maiores níveis de RSC apresentam maior possibilidade de elevar os cuidados com a informação divulgada, e, assim, denotar maior qualidade da informação contábil. Dessa maneira, aceitou-se a hipótese deste estudo de que empresas que apresentam maiores práticas de RSC divulgam demonstrações contábeis de maior qualidade.The interest in revealing and controlling disclosed information grows due to an increasingly demanding market that is aware of the need and effect of organizational actions. Thus, a descriptive survey was conducted with 300 companies listed on B3 in order to investigate the influence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the quality of financial statements of Brazilian companies, treating data by applying descriptive statistics, test of difference between means, correlation, and logistic regression. We analyzed the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) measured by the general metric CSRHub, and the quality of information represented by the republishing of their financial statements, considering that this parameter signals low quality of the information initially disclosed. The results showed that there are statistically significant differences in the CSR concerning the companies that republish their financial statements compared to those that do not, denoting that their tends to be a higher investment in CSR in companies that do not republish their information. It was also found that the greater the CSR and the organizational size, the lower the republishing of the financial statements by the companies. Finally, it was found that the CSR negatively affects the republishing of the financial statements, presenting that the higher the CSR, the lower the probability of that the companies will republish the financial statements. Thus, companies with higher CSR levels are more likely to increase the care with the information disclosed, therefore denoting higher quality of accounting information. Thus, the hypothesis of this study that companies with higher CSR practices disclose higher quality financial statements was accepted