Configurable Process Models as a Basis for Reference Modeling

Off-the-shelf packages such as SAP need to be configured to suit the requirements of an organization. Reference models support the configuration of these systems. Existing reference models use rather traditional languages. For example, the SAP reference model uses Eventdriven Process Chains (EPCs). Unfortunately, traditional languages like EPCs do not capture the configuration-aspects well. Consider for example the concept of "choice" in the control-flow perspective. Although any process modeling language, including EPCs, offers a choice construct (e.g., the XOR connector in EPCs), a single construct will not be able to capture the time dimension, scope, and impact of a decision. Some decisions are taken at run-time for a single case while other decisions are taken at build-time impacting a whole organization and all current and future cases. This position paper discusses the need for configurable process models as a basic building block for reference modeling. The focus is on the control-flow perspective. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006

Women's perceptions of their needs and perferences in an intramural sports program : a critical analysis of intramural sports participants and potential participants at Oregon State University

The purpose of this study was to determine women's perceptions of their physical activity needs and preferences, survey their evaluation of how the Intramural Sports Department accommodates those needs and preferences, and determine if and how intramural sports programming might be adjusted to serve women better. An open-ended survey was administered to female Oregon State University intramural sports participants and potential participants; the survey probed for customer needs, communication aspects, and assessment of program services. Utilizing a grounded theory analysis, five significant findings emerged from the survey results. The first category, women participate in intramural sports for the social aspects, revealed that female respondents participate in the intramural sports program to enjoy the camaraderie that takes place with friends and other participants; this finding is consistent with past research. A lack of opportunities and a desire for a team formation service emerged as the second category; this category indicated a barrier to participation in intramural sports. The third category that emerged indicated that respondents have a desire for multiple skill levels from which to choose to participate; however, a lack of female participation prohibits a multiple skill level option. Although past research has suggested that women prefer a cooperative playing environment, the fourth significant finding indicated that survey results did not confirm nor disconfirm that theory. Female participants and potential participants reported a desire for both competitiveness and cooperativeness in their playing environments. The final significant finding indicated that women are getting the message about intramural sports; however, the message does not entice them to participate. Interactive interviews with three participants and two potential participants confirmed the research findings and analysis. Suggestions to assist with team formation, increase female participation, reduce participation barriers, provide a mixture of competitiveness and cooperativeness, enhance promotion efforts, and conduct future research are presented

Oat Intake and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) remain the top disease and mortality burdens worldwide. Oats have been shown to benefit cardiovascular health and improve insulin resistance. However, the evidence linking oat consumption with CVD, T2D and all-cause mortality remains inconclusive. We conducted a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies to evaluate the associations between oat consumption and risks of T2D, CVD and all-cause mortality in the general population. Five electronic databases were searched until September, 2020. Study specific relative risks (RR) were meta-analyzed using random effect models. Of 4686 relevant references, we included 9 articles, based on 8 unique studies and 471,157 participants. Comparing oat consumers versus non-consumers, RRs were 0.86 (95% CI 0.72–1.03) for T2D incidence and 0.73 (95% CI 0.5–1.07) for combined CVD incidence. Comparing participants with highest versus lowest oat intake, RRs were 0.78 (95% CI 0.74–0.82) for T2D incidence, 0.81 (95% CI 0.61–1.08) for CHD incidence and 0.79 (95% CI 0.59–1.07) for stroke. For all-cause mortality one study based on three cohorts found RR for men and women were 0.76 (95% CI 0.69–0.85) and 0.78 (95% CI 0.70–0.87), respectively. Most studies (n = 6) were of fair to good quality. This meta-analysis suggests that consumption of oat could reduce the risk for T2D and all-cause mortality, while no significant association was found for CVD. Future studies should address a lack of standardized methods in assessing overall oat intake and type of oat products, and investigate a dose-dependent response of oat products on cardiometabolic outcomes in order to introduce oat as preventive and treatment options for the public

A B2B Architecture and Protocol for Researchers Cooperation

Acknowledgement: Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, Volume 22, Issue 02, 2013, DOI: 10.1142/S021884301350010X © World Scientific Publishing Company http://www.worldscientific.com/Some works on the researchers cooperation's literature provide the key lines for building research networks and propose new protocols and standards for business to business (B2B) data exchange, but none of them explains how researchers should contact and the procedure to select the most appropriate partner of a research enterprise, institute or university. In this paper, we propose a B2B architecture and protocol between research entities, that uses ebXML protocol. The contacts for cooperation are established based on some defined parameters and an information retrieval system. We explain the information retrieval system, the researcher selection procedure, the XML-based protocol and the workflow of our proposal. We also show the information that has to be exchanged to contact other researchers. Several simulations demonstrate that our proposal is a feasible architecture and may be used to promote the research cooperation. The main purpose of this paper is to propose an efficient procedure for searching project partners.Lloret, J.; Tomás Gironés, J.; García Pineda, M.; Lacuesta Contreras, R. (2013). A B2B Architecture and Protocol for Researchers Cooperation. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems. 22(2):1-27. doi:10.1142/S021884301350010XS127222B. Wellman and S. D. Berkowitz, Social Structures: A Network Approach (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988) pp. 19–61.Wasserman, S., & Faust, K. (1994). Social Network Analysis. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511815478Wellman, B., Salaff, J., Dimitrova, D., Garton, L., Gulia, M., & Haythornthwaite, C. (1996). Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community. Annual Review of Sociology, 22(1), 213-238. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.213Fulk, J., & Steinfield, C. (1990). Organizations and Communication Technology. doi:10.4135/9781483325385B. Wellman and M. Gulia, Networks in the Global Village (Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1997) pp. 331–367.Marsden, P. V., & Campbell, K. E. (1984). Measuring Tie Strength. Social Forces, 63(2), 482-501. doi:10.1093/sf/63.2.482Wellman, B., & Wortley, S. (1990). Different Strokes from Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support. American Journal of Sociology, 96(3), 558-588. doi:10.1086/229572Adamic, L., & Adar, E. (2005). How to search a social network. Social Networks, 27(3), 187-203. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2005.01.007Ebel, H., Mielsch, L.-I., & Bornholdt, S. (2002). Scale-free topology of e-mail networks. Physical Review E, 66(3). doi:10.1103/physreve.66.035103Jung, J.-Y., Kim, H., & Kang, S.-H. (2006). Standards-based approaches to B2B workflow integration. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 51(2), 321-334. doi:10.1016/j.cie.2006.02.011Lloret, J., Palau, C., Boronat, F., & Tomas, J. (2008). Improving networks using group-based topologies. Computer Communications, 31(14), 3438-3450. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2008.05.030Lloret, J., Garcia, M., Tomás, J., & Boronat, F. (2008). GBP-WAHSN: A Group-Based Protocol for Large Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks. Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 23(3), 461-480. doi:10.1007/s11390-008-9147-6Lloret, J., Garcia, M., Bri, D., & Diaz, J. R. (2009). Study and performance of a group-based Content Delivery Network. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 32(5), 991-999. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2009.03.008Lloret, J., Garcia, M., Tomas, J., & Sendra, S. (2010). A group-based architecture for grids. Telecommunication Systems, 46(2), 117-133. doi:10.1007/s11235-010-9279-1Lin, T.-C., & Huang, C.-C. (2010). Withholding effort in knowledge contribution: The role of social exchange and social cognitive on project teams. Information & Management, 47(3), 188-196. doi:10.1016/j.im.2010.02.001Maron, M. E., & Kuhns, J. L. (1960). On Relevance, Probabilistic Indexing and Information Retrieval. Journal of the ACM, 7(3), 216-244. doi:10.1145/321033.321035Tomás, J., Lloret, J., & Casacuberta, F. (2005). Phrase-Based Alignment Models for Statistical Machine Translation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 605-613. doi:10.1007/11492542_74Turel, O., & Zhang, Y. (Jenny). (2011). Should I e-collaborate with this group? A multilevel model of usage intentions. Information & Management, 48(1), 62-68. doi:10.1016/j.im.2010.12.004Okuda, T., Tanaka, E., & Kasai, T. (1976). A Method for the Correction of Garbled Words Based on the Levenshtein Metric. IEEE Transactions on Computers, C-25(2), 172-178. doi:10.1109/tc.1976.500923

Arthropod communities in fungal fruitbodies are weakly structured by climate and biogeography across European beech forests

Aim The tinder fungus Fomes fomentarius is a pivotal wood decomposer in European beech Fagus sylvatica forests. The fungus, however, has regionally declined due to centuries of logging. To unravel biogeographical drivers of arthropod communities associated with this fungus, we investigated how space, climate and habitat amount structure alpha and beta diversity of arthropod communities in fruitbodies of F. fomentarius. Location Temperate zone of Europe. Taxon Arthropods. Methods We reared arthropods from fruitbodies sampled from 61 sites throughout the range of European beech and identified 13 orders taxonomically or by metabarcoding. We estimated the total number of species occurring in fruitbodies of F. fomentarius in European beech forests using the Chao2 estimator and determined the relative importance of space, climate and habitat amount by hierarchical partitioning for alpha diversity and generalized dissimilarity models for beta diversity. A subset of fungi samples was sequenced for identification of the fungus’ genetic structure. Results The total number of arthropod species occurring in fruitbodies of F. fomentarius across European beech forests was estimated to be 600. Alpha diversity increased with increasing fruitbody biomass; it decreased with increasing longitude, temperature and latitude. Beta diversity was mainly composed by turnover. Patterns of beta diversity were only weakly linked to space and the overall explanatory power was low. We could distinguish two genotypes of F. fomentarius, which showed no spatial structuring. Main conclusion Fomes fomentarius hosts a large number of arthropods in European beech forests. The low biogeographical and climatic structure of the communities suggests that fruitbodies represent a habitat that offers similar conditions across large gradients of climate and space, but are characterized by high local variability in community composition and colonized by species with high dispersal ability. For European beech forests, retention of trees with F. fomentarius and promoting its recolonization where it had declined seems a promising conservation strategy

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Internet-based e-learning workflow process

[Abstract]: More and more people are interested in Internet-based e-learning. Internet-based e-learning has become one very important arena of modern education system. This paper is based our Internet-based e-learning teaching experience which comes from one of the leading e-learning university, the University of Southern Queensland. The Internet-based e-learning system can effectively reach the expected achievement through a well-designed workflow mechanism. The whole e-learning environment is made of four sub-workflow systems, teaching, learning, administration and technology support. Through well-designed four sub-workflow systems, all key activities are identified from these sub-workflow systems. Through improving these key activities, the whole Internet-based e-learning process has got a significant improvement. The performance of learning and teaching through this new-designed e-learning workflow system has better satisfied all aspects of learning, teaching, administration and technology support