Service - Oriented Challenges for Design Science: Charting the “E”-volution

This article links service-dominant (S-D) logic and design science to advance service system design, which is characterized by the indeterminacy of the design problems and outcome measures. Although much progress has been made in IT and IS toward service-orientation, these developments are often adaptations of goods-dominant (G-D) logic, rather than a full transition to a service orientation. In this paper, the “e”-volution of systems design, transitioning from G-D logic to S-D logic, is described and the IS design challenges implied by S-D logic are identified. To devise new, service-oriented modeling, methods and evaluation measurements, S-D logic endorses a fundamental shift in design thinking for design science from “bounded rationality” for problem solving to “expandable rationality” for design for the unknown. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol2/iss1/3

The Natural History of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma, as well as the most common indication for liver transplantation in many countries. Although the incidence of hepatitis C infection has dramatically decreased during the past decade, the worldwide reservoir of chronically infected persons is estimated at 170 million, or 3% of the global population. There is much controversy surrounding the natural history of hepatitis C infection. The rate of chronic HCV infection is affected by a person's age, gender, race, and viral immune response. Approximately 75%-85% of HCV-infected persons will progress to chronic HCV infection, and are at risk for the development of extrahepatic manifestations, compensated and decompensated cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The rate of progression to cirrhosis is highly variable, and is influenced by several factors, including the amount of alcohol consumption, age of initial HCV infection, degree of inflammation and fibrosis on liver biopsy, HIV and HBV coinfection, and comordid conditions. An estimated 10%-15% of HCV-infected persons will advance to cirrhosis within the first 20 years. Persons with cirrhosis are at increased risk of developing HCC. An understanding of the natural history of hepatitis C is essential to effectively manage, treat, and counsel individuals with HCV infection

An integrated information retrieval and document management system

This paper describes the requirements and prototype development for an intelligent document management and information retrieval system that will be capable of handling millions of pages of text or other data. Technologies for scanning, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), magneto-optical storage, and multiplatform retrieval using a Standard Query Language (SQL) will be discussed. The semantic ambiguity inherent in the English language is somewhat compensated-for through the use of coefficients or weighting factors for partial synonyms. Such coefficients are used both for defining structured query trees for routine queries and for establishing long-term interest profiles that can be used on a regular basis to alert individual users to the presence of relevant documents that may have just arrived from an external source, such as a news wire service. Although this attempt at evidential reasoning is limited in comparison with the latest developments in AI Expert Systems technology, it has the advantage of being commercially available

Silicide induced surface defects in FePt nanoparticle fcc-to-fct thermally activated phase transition

The authors would like to thank the James and Enid Nicol Trust for funding SC's studentship, the Canon Foundation in Europe for supporting PA's visits at the RIKEN and his Fellowship, and the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning, Korea (201000453, 2015001948, 2014M3A6B3063706) for hosting PA's visits during the final write-up and submission stages of the manuscript.Magnetic nanoparticles (MnPs) are relevant to a wide range of applications including high density information storage and magnetic resonance imaging to name but a few. Among the materials available to prepare MnPs, FePt is attracting growing attention. However, to harvest the strongest magnetic properties of FePt MnPs, a thermal annealing is often required to convert face-centered cubic as synthesized nPs into its tetragonal phase. Rarely addressed are the potential side effects of such treatments on the magnetic properties. In this study, we focus on the impact of silica shells often used in strategies aiming at overcoming MnP coalescence during the thermal annealing. While we show that this shell does prevent sintering, and that fcc-to-fct conversion does occur, we also reveal the formation of silicide, which can prevent the stronger magnetic properties of fct-FePt MnPs from being fully realised. This report therefore sheds lights on poorly investigated and understood interfacial phenomena occurring during the thermal annealing of MnPs and, by doing so, also highlights the benefits of developing new strategies to avoid silicide formation.PostprintPeer reviewe

The influence of tropospheric biennial oscillation on mid-tropospheric CO_2

Mid-tropospheric CO_2 retrieved from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) was used to investigate CO_2 interannual variability over the Indo-Pacific region. A signal with periodicity around two years was found for the AIRS mid-tropospheric CO_2 for the first time, which is related to the Tropospheric Biennial Oscillation (TBO) associated with the strength of the monsoon. During a strong (weak) monsoon year, the Western Walker Circulation is strong (weak), resulting in enhanced (diminished) CO_2 transport from the surface to the mid-troposphere. As a result, there are positive (negative) CO2 anomalies at mid-troposphere over the Indo-Pacific region. We simulated the influence of the TBO on the mid-tropospheric CO_2 over the Indo-Pacific region using the MOZART-2 model, and results were consistent with observations, although we found the TBO signal in the model CO_2 is to be smaller than that in the AIRS observations

Properties of the symplectic structure of General Relativity for spatially bounded spacetime regions

We continue a previous analysis of the covariant Hamiltonian symplectic structure of General Relativity for spatially bounded regions of spacetime. To allow for near complete generality, the Hamiltonian is formulated using any fixed hypersurface, with a boundary given by a closed spacelike 2-surface. A main result is that we obtain Hamiltonians associated to Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions on the gravitational field coupled to matter sources, in particular a Klein-Gordon field, an electromagnetic field, and a set of Yang-Mills-Higgs fields. The Hamiltonians are given by a covariant form of the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner Hamiltonian modified by a surface integral term that depends on the particular boundary conditions. The general form of this surface integral involves an underlying ``energy-momentum'' vector in the spacetime tangent space at the spatial boundary 2-surface. We give examples of the resulting Dirichlet and Neumann vectors for topologically spherical 2-surfaces in Minkowski spacetime, spherically symmetric spacetimes, and stationary axisymmetric spacetimes. Moreover, we show the relation between these vectors and the ADM energy-momentum vector for a 2-surface taken in a limit to be spatial infinity in asymptotically flat spacetimes. We also discuss the geometrical properties of the Dirichlet and Neumann vectors and obtain several striking results relating these vectors to the mean curvature and normal curvature connection of the 2-surface. Most significantly, the part of the Dirichlet vector normal to the 2-surface depends only the spacetime metric at this surface and thereby defines a geometrical normal vector field on the 2-surface. Properties and examples of this normal vector are discussed.Comment: 46 pages; minor errata corrected in Eqs. (3.15), (3.24), (4.37) and in discussion of examples in sections IV B,

Liver Disease in Burn Injury: Evidence From a National Sample of 31,338 Adult Patients

Objective: To assess mortality risk and extent of increased length of hospital stay in patients with burn injury with preexisting liver disease. Methods: Records of 31,338 adults who were admitted with burns to 70 burn centers were reviewed from the American Burn Association National Burn Repository. Demographics, percentage burn, and medical characteristics of 180 patients with liver disease were compared with all patients without liver disease and to a propensity score–matched sample of 180 patients without liver disease. Risk of mortality as well as lengths of both intensive care and total stay were compared after matching for demographics, burn injury, and preexisting medical conditions. Results: Patients with liver disease were significantly more likely to have a history of a number of medical comorbidities, including alcohol abuse, drug abuse, a psychiatric diagnosis, chronic pulmonary disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Patients with liver disease were significantly more likely to die in the hospital (27.2% vs 6.9%, odds ratio = 5.0, 95% confidence interval = 3.6–7.0, P < .01), and this held even when compared with a propensity score–matched group of patients without liver disease, but with similar demographics, burn injury, and medical profiles. Lengths of both intensive care and total hospital stay were 122.5% (P < .01) and 86.7% (P < .01) longer, respectively, among patients with liver disease than among all other patients. In a matched sample, lengths of both intensive care and total stays were longer, albeit not significantly so (41.6%, P = .12; 35.5%, P = .07). Conclusions: Liver impairment worsens the prognosis in patients with thermal injury