Map to Service-Oriented Business and IT: A Stratified Approach

To succeed in the current business environment, organizations need to be innovative, flexible and faster in the face of uncertainty, complexity and change. As the perspective has moved from products to services, enterprises have componentized their structures to operate in the newly emerging collaborative ecosystems. Service-oriented information technology approaches have proven to be well suited to this business transformation. Increasingly, IT capabilities also drive business strategy. To create a ‘big picture’ that brings together different viewpoints and their relations and helps positioning and comparing various approaches to service systems, we put forth a new artifact, the Map to Service-Oriented Business and IT. The map uses a layered approach and is divided to four viewpoints along two dimensions: business-IT continuum and distinction between internal and external aspects. The layering is grounded in the Stratified Systems Theory, a cognitively motivated theory on organizations

Imaging affective and non-affective touch processing in two-year-old children

Touch is an important component of early parent-child interaction and plays a critical role in the socio-emotional development of children. However, there are limited studies on touch processing amongst children in the age range from one to three years. The present study used frequency-domain diffuse optical tomography (DOT) to investigate the processing of affective and non-affective touch over left frontotemporal brain areas contralateral to the stimulated forearm in two-year-old children. Affective touch was administered by a single stroke with a soft brush over the child's right dorsal forearm at 3 cm/s, while non-affective touch was provided by multiple brush strokes at 30 cm/s. We found that in the insula, the total haemoglobin (HbT) response to slow brushing was significantly greater than the response to fast brushing (slow > fast). Additionally, a region in the postcentral gyrus, Rolandic operculum and superior temporal gyrus exhibited greater response to fast brushing than slow brushing (fast > slow). These findings confirm that an adult-like pattern of haemodynamic responses to affective and non-affective touch can be recorded in two-year-old subjects using DOT. To improve the accuracy of modelling light transport in the two-year-old subjects, we used a published age-appropriate atlas and deformed it to match the exterior shape of each subject's head. We estimated the combined scalp and skull, and grey matter (GM) optical properties by fitting simulated data to calibrated and coupling error corrected phase and amplitude measurements. By utilizing a two-compartment cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) model, the accuracy of estimation of GM optical properties and the localization of activation in the insula was improved. The techniques presented in this paper can be used to study neural development of children at different ages and illustrate that the technology is well-tolerated by most two-year-old children and not excessively sensitive to subject movement. The study points the way towards exciting possibilities in functional imaging of deeper functional areas near sulci in small children.Peer reviewe

Random Access Heterogeneous Mimo Networks

This paper presents the design and implementation of 802.11n+, a fully distributed random access protocol for MIMO networks. 802.11n+ allows nodes that differ in the number of antennas to contend not just for time, but also for the degrees of freedom provided by multiple antennas. We show that even when the medium is already occupied by some nodes, nodes with more antennas can transmit concurrently without harming the ongoing transmissions. Furthermore, such nodes can contend for the medium in a fully distributed way. Our testbed evaluation shows that even for a small network with three competing node pairs, the resulting system about doubles the average network throughput. It also maintains the random access nature of today's 802.11n networks.United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Information Theory for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks ProgramNational Science Foundation (U.S.)

Relationship between maternal pregnancy-related anxiety and infant brain responses to emotional speech – a pilot study

Background: Maternal pregnancy-related anxiety (PRA) is reportedly related to neurodevelopmental outcomes of infants. However, the relationship between maternal PRA and the processing of emotions in the infant brain has not been extensively studied with neuroimaging. The objective of the present pilot study is to investigate the relationship between maternal PRA and infant hemodynamic responses to emotional speech at two months of age. Methods: The study sample included 19 mother-infant dyads from a general sample of a population of Caucasian mothers. Self-reported Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire (PRAQ-R2) data was collected from mothers during pregnancy at gestational weeks (gwks) 24 (N = 19) and 34 (N = 18). When their infants were two months old, the infants' brains functional responses to emotional speech in the left fronto-temporoparietal cortex were recorded using diffuse optical tomography (DOT). Results: Maternal PRAQ-R2 scores at gwk 24 correlated negatively with the total hemoglobin (HbT) responses to sad speech on both sides of the temporoparietal junction (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient rho = -0.87). The correlation was significantly greater at gwk 24 than gwk 34 (rho = -0.42). Limitations: The field of view of the measurement did not include the right hemisphere or parts of the frontal cortex. The sample size is moderate and the mothers were relatively highly educated, thus there may be some differences between the study sample and the general population. Conclusions: Maternal pregnancy-related anxiety may affect child brain emotion processing development. Further research is needed to understand the functional and developmental significance of the findings.Peer reviewe

Early childhood and adolescent risk factors for psychotic depression in a general population birth cohort sample

Background and purpose In the group of severe mental disorders, psychotic depression (PD) is essentially under-researched. Knowledge about the risk factors is scarce and this applies especially to early risk factors. Our aim was to study early childhood and adolescent risk factors of PD in a representative birth cohort sample with a follow-up of up to 50 years. Methods The study was carried out using the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 (NFBC 1966). We used non-psychotic depression (NPD) (n = 746), schizophrenia (SZ) (n = 195), psychotic bipolar disorder (PBD) (n = 27), other psychoses (PNOS) (n = 136) and healthy controls (HC) (n = 8200) as comparison groups for PD (n = 58). We analysed several potential early risk factors from time of birth until the age of 16 years. Results The main finding was that parents' psychiatric illness [HR 3.59 (1.84-7.04)] was a risk factor and a high sports grade in school was a protective factor [HR 0.29 (0.11-0.73)] for PD also after adjusting for covariates in the multivariate Cox regression model. Parental psychotic illness was an especially strong risk factor for PD. The PD subjects had a parent with psychiatric illness significantly more often (p < 0.05) than NPD subjects. Differences between PD and other disorder groups were otherwise small. Conclusions A low sports grade in school may be a risk factor for PD. Psychiatric illnesses, especially psychoses, are common in the parents of PD subjects. A surprisingly low number of statistically significant risk factors may have resulted from the size of the PD sample and the underlying heterogeneity of the etiology of PD

Imaging affective and non-affective touch processing in two-year-old children

Touch is an important component of early parent-child interaction and plays a critical role in the socio-emotional development of children. However, there are limited studies on touch processing amongst children in the age range from one to three years. The present study used frequency-domain diffuse optical tomography (DOT) to investigate the processing of affective and non-affective touch over left frontotemporal brain areas contralateral to the stimulated forearm in two-year-old children. Affective touch was administered by a single stroke with a soft brush over the child's right dorsal forearm at 3 cm/s, while non-affective touch was provided by multiple brush strokes at 30 cm/s. We found that in the insula, the total haemoglobin (HbT) response to slow brushing was significantly greater than the response to fast brushing (slow > fast). Additionally, a region in the postcentral gyrus, Rolandic operculum and superior temporal gyrus exhibited greater response to fast brushing than slow brushing (fast > slow). These findings confirm that an adult-like pattern of haemodynamic responses to affective and non-affective touch can be recorded in two-year-old subjects using DOT. To improve the accuracy of modelling light transport in the two-year-old subjects, we used a published age-appropriate atlas and deformed it to match the exterior shape of each subject's head. We estimated the combined scalp and skull, and grey matter (GM) optical properties by fitting simulated data to calibrated and coupling error corrected phase and amplitude measurements. By utilizing a two-compartment cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) model, the accuracy of estimation of GM optical properties and the localization of activation in the insula was improved. The techniques presented in this paper can be used to study neural development of children at different ages and illustrate that the technology is well-tolerated by most two-year-old children and not excessively sensitive to subject movement. The study points the way towards exciting possibilities in functional imaging of deeper functional areas near sulci in small children

Hemodynamic responses to emotional speech in two-month-old infants imaged using diffuse optical tomography

Emotional speech is one of the principal forms of social communication in humans. In this study, we investigated neural processing of emotionalspeech (happy, angry, sad and neutral) in the left hemisphere of 21 two-month-old infants using diffuse optical tomography. Reconstructed total hemoglobin (HbT) images were analysed using adaptive voxel-based clustering and region-of-interest (ROI) analysis. We found a distributedhappy > neutral response within the temporo-parietal cortex, peakingin the anterior temporal cortex; a negative HbT response to emotional speech (the average of the emotional speech conditions angry in the anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), happy > angry in the superior temporal gyrus and posterior superior temporal sulcus, angry </p

Hemodynamic responses to emotional speech in two-month-old infants imaged using diffuse optical tomography

Emotional speech is one of the principal forms of social communication in humans. In this study, we investigated neural processing of emotional speech (happy, angry, sad and neutral) in the left hemisphere of 21 two-month-old infants using diffuse optical tomography. Reconstructed total hemoglobin (HbT) images were analysed using adaptive voxel-based clustering and region-of-interest (ROI) analysis. We found a distributed happy > neutral response within the temporo-parietal cortex, peaking in the anterior temporal cortex; a negative HbT response to emotional speech (the average of the emotional speech conditions angry in the anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), happy > angry in the superior temporal gyrus and posterior superior temporal sulcus, angry <baseline in the insula, superior temporal sulcus and superior temporal gyrus and happy <baseline in the anterior insula. These results suggest that left STS is more sensitive to happy speech as compared to angry speech, indicating that it might play an important role in processing positive emotions in two-month-old infants. Furthermore, happy speech (relative to neutral) seems to elicit more activation in the temporo-parietal cortex, thereby suggesting enhanced sensitivity of temporo-parietal cortex to positive emotional stimuli at this stage of infant development.Peer reviewe

Relationship between maternal pregnancy-related anxiety and infant brain responses to emotional speech – a pilot study

Background: Maternal pregnancy-related anxiety (PRA) is reportedly related to neurodevelopmental outcomes of infants. However, the relationship between maternal PRA and the processing of emotions in the infant brain has not been extensively studied with neuroimaging. The objective of the present pilot study is to investigate the relationship between maternal PRA and infant hemodynamic responses to emotional speech at two months of age.Methods: The study sample included 19 mother-infant dyads from a general sample of a population of Caucasian mothers. Self-reported Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire (PRAQ-R2) data was collected from mothers during pregnancy at gestational weeks (gwks) 24 (N = 19) and 34 (N = 18). When their infants were two months old, the infants’ brains functional responses to emotional speech in the left fronto-temporoparietal cortex were recorded using diffuse optical tomography (DOT).Results: Maternal PRAQ-R2 scores at gwk 24 correlated negatively with the total hemoglobin (HbT) responses to sad speech on both sides of the temporoparietal junction (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient ρ = -0.87). The correlation was significantly greater at gwk 24 than gwk 34 (ρ = -0.42).Limitations: The field of view of the measurement did not include the right hemisphere or parts of the frontal cortex. The sample size is moderate and the mothers were relatively highly educated, thus there may be some differences between the study sample and the general population.Conclusions: Maternal pregnancy-related anxiety may affect child brain emotion processing development. Further research is needed to understand the functional and developmental significance of the findings.</p

Consultocracy and its discontents : A critical typology and a call for a research agenda

Peer reviewe