Humanizing History: Applying Media Storytelling to Lived Experiences

This creative project explores the tendency of individuals to avoid or alter deemed unfavorable, unflattering, or simply humiliating traits or actions in their written and spoken personal stories. Such choices come from fear and pressure to present oneself in a more perfected state for others to “like” rather than a human state for audiences to relate to and learn from. Through a series of written personal accounts to air on UNO’s college radio station and website MavRadio.FM, the project brings attention to habits of human nature more likely to remain unspoken. The goal is to encourage the sharing of more humanizing stories about flaws and needs, rather than simply the stories of success and perfection. Much of the inspiration for the work came from shared accounts in creative nonfiction courses, discussions of primary documents and the perspectives presented by secondary sources in history courses, and the encouragement to humanize voices in journalism courses. Interested audiences can also listen to the following stories on MavRadio.FM under “Podcasts.

Development of a Berry Processing Score for Sorghum Silage

This study was done in an effort to develop a berry processing score (BPS) for sorghum silage, similar to the kernel processing score (KPS) currently used for corn silage. Sorghum silage samples were collected from 3 dairies in Kansas and processed in the Grain Science & Industry grain processing laboratory at Kansas State University using one of four different roll gap settings to give four differently processed samples: unprocessed, 1.5, 1.0, or 0.5 mm. After drying, samples were placed into a Ro-Tap particle separation machine for 10 minutes until the whole sample was separated. Whole samples, as well as separated fiber and whole berry portions were analyzed for percent starch retained on each screen. As the roll gap was reduced, mean particle size (MPS) was also reduced. Percent starch passing through the 1.7 mm screen was greater at the 0.5 mm roll gap for both the whole sample and the whole berry samples, indicating successful processing of the samples. Using these data, we have determined that the appropriate screen to use in determining a BPS for sorghum silage is the 1.7 mm screen. A BPS for any sorghum silage sample can be calculated by analyzing the whole sample for the percent starch that passes through the 1.7 mm screen. This study is still ongoing and more research is needed to determine the recommended BPS in sorghum silage

Architecural Principles and Components of Adaptive Process Management Technology

Process-aware information systems (PAIS) must not freeze business processes, but should enable authorized users to deviate from the implemented workflows on-the-fly and to dynamically evolve them over time. While there has been a lot of work on the theoretical foundations of dynamic process changes, there is still a lack of implemented PAIS providing this dynamics. Designing the architecture of such adaptive PAIS, however, constitutes a big challenge due to the high complexity coming with dynamic changes. Besides this, performance, robustness, security and usability of the PAIS must not be affected by the added flexibility. In the AristaFlow project we follow a holistic approach to master this complexity. Based on a conceptual framework for adaptive process management, we have designed a sophisticated architecture for next generation process management technology. This paper discusses major design goals and basic architectural principles, gives insights into selected system components, and shows how change support features can be realized in an integrated and efficient manner

SeaFlows Toolset - Compliance Verification Made Easy for Process-aware Information Systems

In the light of an increasing demand on business process compliance, the verication of process models against compliance rules has become essential in enterprise computing. The SeaFlows Toolset featured in this paper extends process-aware information systems with compliance checking functionality. It provides a user-friendly environment for modeling compliance rules using a graph-based formalism and for enriching process models with these rules. To address a multitude of verification settings, we provide two complementary compliance checking approaches: The structural compliance checking approach derives structural criteria from compliance rules and applies them to detect incompliance. The data-aware behavioral compliance checking approach addresses the state explosion problem that can occur when the data dimension is explored during compliance checking. It performs context-sensitive automatic abstraction to derive an abstract process model which is more compact with regard to the data dimension enabling more efficient compliance checking. Altogether, SeaFlows Toolset constitutes a comprehensive and extensible framework for compliance checking of process models

Prognostic assessment of liver cirrhosis and its complications: current concepts and future perspectives

Liver cirrhosis is an irreversible stage of chronic liver disease with varying clinical course. Acute decompensation of liver cirrhosis represents a watershed in prognosis and is characterized by the occurrence of clinical complications such as ascites, jaundice, hepatic encephalopathy, infections, or portal-hypertensive hemorrhages. Emergent data indicate that an acute decompensation can be subdivided into stable decompensated cirrhosis (SDC), unstable decompensated cirrhosis (UDC), pre-acute-on chronic liver failure (pre-ACLF) and acute-on chronic liver failure (ACLF), while the mortality risk varies greatly between the respective subgroups. ACLF is the most severe form of acutely decompensated cirrhosis and characterized by the development of organ failure(s) and a high short-term mortality. Due to the dynamic disease course of acute decompensation, it is paramount to detect patients at particular risk for severe complications those at high risk for developing ACLF as early as possible in order to initiate optimal management. This review describes new concepts and perspectives in the definition and classification of decompensated cirrhosis and provides on overview on emerging predictive scoring systems, non-invasive measurement methods and new biomarkers, which allow an early identification of patients with acute decompensation at risk

Development of a Berry Processing Score for Sorghum Silage and Assessment of Processing Effects on Sorghum Silage Starch Digestibility

The objectives of this study were to develop a berry processing score (BPS) for sorghum silage, similar to the kernel processing score currently used for corn silage, and to evaluate the effects of processing on starch digestibility. Sorghum silage samples were collected from commercial farms in Kansas and randomly assigned to 1 of 4 processing levels differing in roll gap spacing: unprocessed (UNP), 1.5 (1.5P), 1.0 (1.0P), or 0.5 (0.5P) mm. Differences in BPS and starch digestibility were found–as the roll gap decreased, both BPS and starch digestibility increased. Thus, by processing sorghum silage during harvest and measuring the extent of processing, sorghum silage starch digestibility can be greatly enhanced. Sorghum silage may serve as a viable alternative to corn silage in the diets of lactating dairy cows in areas of the country where corn silage is a high-risk forage crop due to lack of water

From ADEPT to AristaFlow BPM Suite: A Research Vision has become Reality

During the last decade we have developed the ADEPT next generation process management technology. Its features and its different prototype versions attracted a number of companies. However, an enterprise cannot base the implementation of its process-aware information system (PAIS) on an experimental prototype, especially if maintenance and further development are not assured. At the beginning of 2008, therefore, we founded a spin-off as joint venture with industrial partners to transfer ADEPT into an industrial-strength product version called AristaFlow BPM Suite, and to provide maintenance support for it. The product version is now available for academic and industrial use

Enabling Poka-Yoke Workflows with the AristaFlow BPM Suite

This tool presentation gives insights into the AristaFlow BPM Suite - a next generation process management technology that has originated from our research activities in the ADEPT project. We show how AristaFlow ensures ease of use for process implementers, application developers, and end users. Our overall vision is to realize robust and flexible process support without encountering bad surprises during runtime. We denote such error-safe process executions as Poka-Yoke Workflows