Interestingness of traces in declarative process mining: The janus LTLPf Approach

Declarative process mining is the set of techniques aimed at extracting behavioural constraints from event logs. These constraints are inherently of a reactive nature, in that their activation restricts the occurrence of other activities. In this way, they are prone to the principle of ex falso quod libet: they can be satisfied even when not activated. As a consequence, constraints can be mined that are hardly interesting to users or even potentially misleading. In this paper, we build on the observation that users typically read and write temporal constraints as if-statements with an explicit indication of the activation condition. Our approach is called Janus, because it permits the specification and verification of reactive constraints that, upon activation, look forward into the future and backwards into the past of a trace. Reactive constraints are expressed using Linear-time Temporal Logic with Past on Finite Traces (LTLp f). To mine them out of event logs, we devise a time bi-directional valuation technique based on triplets of automata operating in an on-line fashion. Our solution proves efficient, being at most quadratic w.r.t. trace length, and effective in recognising interestingness of discovered constraints

Non-vascular interventional procedures: effective dose to patient and equivalent dose to abdominal organs by means of dicom images and Monte Carlo simulation

This study evaluates X-ray exposure in patient undergoing abdominal extra-vascular interventional procedures by means of Digital Imaging and COmmunications in Medicine (DICOM) image headers and Monte Carlo simulation. The main aim was to assess the effective and equivalent doses, under the hypothesis of their correlation with the dose area product (DAP) measured during each examination. This allows to collect dosimetric information about each patient and to evaluate associated risks without resorting to in vivo dosimetry. The dose calculation was performed in 79 procedures through the Monte Carlo simulator PCXMC (A PC-based Monte Carlo program for calculating patient doses in medical X-ray examinations), by using the real geometrical and dosimetric irradiation conditions, automatically extracted from DICOM headers. The DAP measurements were also validated by using thermoluminescent dosimeters on an anthropomorphic phantom. The expected linear correlation between effective doses and DAP was confirmed with an R(2) of 0.974. Moreover, in order to easily calculate patient doses, conversion coefficients that relate equivalent doses to measurable quantities, such as DAP, were obtained

Detection of serum antibodies to hepatitis E virus in domestic pigs in Italy using a recombinant swine HEV capsid protein

Background: The hepatitis E virus (HEV) has been detected in both humans and animals, particularly pigs, worldwide. Several evidences, including human infection following consumption of raw contaminated meat, suggest a zoonotic transmission of HEV. In Italy, large circulation of genotype 3 HEV has been reported in swine, and recent studies have confirmed the involvement of this genotype in autochthonous human cases. Result: In this study 111 sera collected from healthy pigs in two Italian regions were tested for anti-HEV IgG antibodies. For specific HEV antibody detection in swine, we developed ELISA and Western blotting methods, using a truncated capsid (ORF2) protein lacking the first 111 amino acids of a swine HEV genotype 3 strain. The ORF2-based ELISA revealed anti-HEV antibodies in 104 out of 111 pigs compared with 102 detected with a commercial ELISA kit. A lower number of sera reacted with the recombinant ORF2 protein in a Western blotting format (81/111). Using a Latent class analysis (LCA), the estimated sensitivities for ELISA-ORF2 and ELISA-kit tests were 0.961 and 0.936, respectively, whereas specificities were 0.599 and 0.475. The estimated sensitivity of Western blotting was 0.775, and the specificity was 0.944. Conclusions: The overall results confirm the high prevalence of HEV seropositive healthy pigs in Italy. Through comparisons with a commercial ELISA test, the swine genotype 3 HEV antigen produced in this study was proven suitable to detect anti-HEV antibodies in pig sera by both ELISA and Western Blotting

Ataxia with oculomotor apraxia type 2: a clinical, pathologic, and genetic study

BACKGROUND: Ataxia with oculomotor apraxia type 2 (AOA2) is characterized by onset between age 10 and 22 years, cerebellar atrophy, peripheral neuropathy, oculomotor apraxia (OMA), and elevated serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) levels. Recessive mutations in SETX have been described in AOA2 patients. OBJECTIVE: To describe the clinical features of AOA2 and to identify the SETX mutations in 10 patients from four Italian families. METHODS: The patients underwent clinical examination, routine laboratory tests, nerve conduction studies, sural nerve biopsy, and brain MRI. All were screened for SETX mutations. RESULTS: All the patients had cerebellar features, including limb and truncal ataxia, and slurred speech. OMA was observed in two patients, extrapyramidal symptoms in two, and mental impairment in three. High serum AFP levels, motor and sensory axonal neuropathy, and marked cerebellar atrophy on MRI were detected in all the patients who underwent these examinations. Sural nerve biopsy revealed a severe depletion of large myelinated fibers in one patient, and both large and small myelinated fibers in another. Postmortem findings are also reported in one of the patients. Four different homozygous SETX mutations were found (a large-scale deletion, a missense change, a single-base deletion, and a splice-site mutation). CONCLUSIONS: The clinical phenotype of oculomotor apraxia type 2 is fairly homogeneous, showing only subtle intrafamilial variability. OMA is an inconstant finding. The identification of new mutations expands the array of SETX variants, and the finding of a missense change outside the helicase domain suggests the existence of at least one more functional region in the N-terminus of senataxin

What Automated Planning Can Do for Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) is a central element of today organizations. Despite over the years its main focus has been the support of processes in highly controlled domains, nowadays many domains of interest to the BPM community are characterized by ever-changing requirements, unpredictable environments and increasing amounts of data that influence the execution of process instances. Under such dynamic conditions, BPM systems must increase their level of automation to provide the reactivity and flexibility necessary for process management. On the other hand, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community has concentrated its efforts on investigating dynamic domains that involve active control of computational entities and physical devices (e.g., robots, software agents, etc.). In this context, Automated Planning, which is one of the oldest areas in AI, is conceived as a model-based approach to synthesize autonomous behaviours in automated way from a model. In this paper, we discuss how automated planning techniques can be leveraged to enable new levels of automation and support for business processing, and we show some concrete examples of their successful application to the different stages of the BPM life cycle

Vitamin D in cancer chemoprevention

Context: There is increasing evidence that Vitamin D (Vit D) and its metabolites, besides their well-known calcium-related functions, may also exert antiproliferative, pro-differentiating, and immune modulatory effects on tumor cells in vitro and may also delay tumor growth in vivo. Objective: The aim of this review is to provide fresh insight into the most recent advances on the role of Vit D and its analogues as chemopreventive drugs in cancer therapy. Methods: A systematic review of experimental and clinical studies on Vit D and cancer was undertaken by using the major electronic health database including ISI Web of Science, Medline, PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar. Results and conclusion: Experimental and clinical observations suggest that Vit D and its analogues may be effective in preventing the malignant transformation and/or the progression of various types of human tumors including breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, and some hematological malignances. These findings suggest the possibility of the clinical use of these molecules as novel potential chemopreventive and anticancer agent

A Declarative Framework for Specifying and Enforcing Purpose-aware Policies

Purpose is crucial for privacy protection as it makes users confident that their personal data are processed as intended. Available proposals for the specification and enforcement of purpose-aware policies are unsatisfactory for their ambiguous semantics of purposes and/or lack of support to the run-time enforcement of policies. In this paper, we propose a declarative framework based on a first-order temporal logic that allows us to give a precise semantics to purpose-aware policies and to reuse algorithms for the design of a run-time monitor enforcing purpose-aware policies. We also show the complexity of the generation and use of the monitor which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first such a result in literature on purpose-aware policies.Comment: Extended version of the paper accepted at the 11th International Workshop on Security and Trust Management (STM 2015

Reconnection surgery in adult post-operative short bowel syndrome < 100 cm: is colonic continuity sufficient to achieve enteral autonomy without autologous gastrointestinal reconstruction? Report from a single center and systematic review of literature

A systematic bibliographic research concerning patients operated on for SBS was performed: inclusion criteria were adult age, reconnection surgery and SBS &lt; 100 cm. Autologous gastrointestinal reconstruction represented an exclusion criteria. The outcomes of interest were the rate of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) independence and the length of follow-up (minimum 1 year) after surgery. We reviewed our experience from 2003 to 2013 with minimum 1-year follow-up, dealing with reconnection surgery in 13 adults affected by &lt; 100 cm SBS after massive small bowel resection: autologous gastrointestinal reconstruction was not feasible. Three (out of 5168 screened papers) non randomized controlled trials with 116 adult patients were analysed showing weaning from TPN (40%, 50% and 90% respectively) after reconnection surgery without autologous gastrointestinal reconstruction. Among our 13 adults, mean age was 54.1 years (53.8 % ASA III): 69.2 % had a high stomal output (&gt; 500 cc/day) and TPN dependence was 100%. We performed a jejuno-colonic anastomosis (SBS type II) in 53.8%, in 46.1% of cases without ileo-cecal valve, leaving a mean residual small bowel length of 75.7 cm. In-hospital mortality was 0%. After a minimum period of 1 year of intestinal rehabilitation, all our patients (100%) went back to oral intake and 69.2% were off TPN (9 patients). No one was listed for transplantation. A residual small bowel length of minimum 75 cm, even if reconnected to part of the colon, seems able to produce a TPN independence without autologous gastrointestinal reconstruction after a minimum period of 1 year of intestinal rehabilitation