168 research outputs found
Contracts for Cross-Organizational Workflow Management
Nowadays, many organizations form dynamic partnerships to deal effectively with market requirements. As companies use automated workflow systems to control their processes, a way of linking workflow processes in different organizations is useful in turning the co-operating companies into a seamless operating virtual enterprise. The CrossFlow Esprit project aims at developing information technology for advanced process support in dynamic virtual organizations with contract based service trading. Contracts are necessary for flexible service outsourcing. This report presents contracts as a way of finding suitable partners, connect WFMSs of different kinds, control outsourced workflow, and share an abstraction of the workflow specification between the partners. The contract defines the data, process, and conditions relevant to the co-operation and the outsourced workflow on an abstract level. This information can be fed through an interface to the WFMSs on both sides of the outsourcing in order to automate fully the co-operation between the partners
A strongly interacting Bose gas: Nozi\`eres and Schmitt-Rink theory and beyond
We calculate the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas
of bosonic atoms across a Feshbach resonance, and show how medium effects at
negative scattering lengths give rise to pairs reminiscent of the ones
responsible for fermionic superfluidity. We find that the formation of pairs
leads to a large suppression of the critical temperature. Within the formalism
developed by Nozieres and Schmitt-Rink the gas appears mechanically stable
throughout the entire crossover region, but when interactions between pairs are
taken into account we show that the gas becomes unstable close to the critical
temperature. We discuss prospects of observing these effects in a gas of
ultracold Cs133 atoms where recent measurements indicate that the gas may be
sufficiently long-lived to explore the many-body physics around a Feshbach
resonance.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, RevTeX. Significantly expanded to include effects
beyond NS
Misrepresentation of health research in exertion games literature
HCI often requires scholars to build upon research from fields outside their expertise, creating the risk that foundational work is misunderstood and misrepresented. The prevailing goal of âexergamesâ research towards ameliorating obesity appears to be built on just such a misunderstanding of health research. In this paper, we analyse all citations to a single influential study, which has been extensively cited to justify research on exergames. We categorise the 375 citations based on whether they represent the findings of that study accurately or inaccurately. Our findings suggest that 69% of exergames papers citing this study misrepresent the findings, demonstrating a systematic failure of scholarship in exergames research. We argue that exergaming research should cease focusing on games as treatment for obesity, and that HCI publications should demand more critical and scholarly engagement with research from outside HCI
Present Effects of Past Wildfires on Leaf Litter Breakdown in Stream Ecosystems
We investigated the present effects from a 10-year-old wildfire on leaf litter breakdown rates in 3 headwater streams in central Idaho. These systems experienced a massive debris flow one year after the fire. Based on soil instability and burn patterns, we identified 3 stream conditions: unburned, burned only, and burned/scoured. We placed leaf bags containing willow leaves (Salix sp.) in each stream type and removed bags at various time intervals until all bags were collected 100 days after their introduction. Leaf material was dried and weighed, and decay rate coefficients were calculated. Macroinvertebrates colonizing the bags were enumerated and identified, and selected taxa were placed into trophic groups. We found that the unburned stream had the fastest leaf litter breakdown rate, the lowest level of incident light reaching the stream, and the largest amount of benthic organic matter. The burned/scoured stream was nearly opposite in all respects. Numbers of 2 detritivore invertebrate taxa, Serratella tibialis and Zapada oregonensis, were highest in the unburned stream but lowest in the burned/scoured stream. A third taxon, Baetis sp., showed the opposite relationship. Presence of predatory invertebrates did not affect detritivore abundance or leaf decay rate in the bags. Our research suggests that recovery response variables of some stream systems may not have returned to prefire levels even a decade after the initial wildfire. In this study, the recovery of our streams appears to be connected to the return of the riparian zone, though fire-induced debris flows may slow or alter final recovery of the stream system
A user-friendly web portal for T-Coffee on supercomputers
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Parallel T-Coffee (PTC) was the first parallel implementation of the T-Coffee multiple sequence alignment tool. It is based on MPI and RMA mechanisms. Its purpose is to reduce the execution time of the large-scale sequence alignments. It can be run on distributed memory clusters allowing users to align data sets consisting of hundreds of proteins within a reasonable time. However, most of the potential users of this tool are not familiar with the use of grids or supercomputers.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we show how PTC can be easily deployed and controlled on a super computer architecture using a web portal developed using Rapid. Rapid is a tool for efficiently generating standardized portlets for a wide range of applications and the approach described here is generic enough to be applied to other applications, or to deploy PTC on different HPC environments.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The PTC portal allows users to upload a large number of sequences to be aligned by the parallel version of TC that cannot be aligned by a single machine due to memory and execution time constraints. The web portal provides a user-friendly solution.</p
Minimally Invasive Stent Screw-Assisted Internal Fixation Technique Corrects Kyphosis in Osteoporotic Vertebral Fractures with Severe Collapse: A Pilot "Vertebra Plana" Series.
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Fractures with "vertebra plana" morphology are characterized by severe vertebral body collapse and segmental kyphosis; there is no established treatment standard for these fractures. Vertebroplasty and balloon kyphoplasty might represent an undertreatment, but surgical stabilization is challenging in an often elderly osteoporotic population. This study assessed the feasibility, clinical outcome, and radiologic outcome of the stent screw-assisted internal fixation technique using a percutaneous implant of vertebral body stents and cement-augmented pedicle screws in patients with non-neoplastic vertebra plana fractures.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Thirty-seven consecutive patients with vertebra plana fractures were treated with the stent screw-assisted internal fixation technique. Vertebral body height, local and vertebral kyphotic angles, outcome scales (numeric rating scale and the Patient's Global Impression of Change), and complications were assessed. Imaging and clinical follow-up were obtained at 1 and 6 months postprocedure.
RESULTS
Median vertebral body height restoration was 7âmm (+74%), 9âmm (+150%), and 3âmm (+17%) at the anterior wall, middle body, and posterior wall, respectively. Median local and vertebral kyphotic angles correction was 8° and 10° and was maintained through the 6-month follow-up. The median numeric rating scale score improved from 8/10 preprocedure to 3/10 at 1 and 6âmonths (Pâ<â.001). No procedural complications occurred.
CONCLUSIONS
The stent screw-assisted internal fixation technique was effective in obtaining height restoration, kyphosis correction, and pain relief in patients with severe vertebral collapse
Achieving the Neel state in an optical lattice
We theoretically study the possibility of reaching the antiferromagnetic
phase of the Hubbard model by starting from a normal gas of trapped fermionic
atoms and adiabatically ramping up an optical lattice. Requirements on the
initial temperature and the number of atoms are determined for a three
dimensional square lattice by evaluating the Neel state entropy, taking into
account fluctuations around the mean-field solution. We find that these
fluctuations place important limitations on adiabatically reaching the Neel
state.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, RevTeX. Revised version incorporates minor
corrections. Journal reference adde
Skin color independent assessment of aging using skin autofluorescence
Skin autofluorescence (AF) for the non-invasive assessment of the amount of accumulated tissue Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs) increases with aging. In subjects with darker skin colors, measurements typically result in lower AF values than in subjects with fair skin colors, e.g. due to selective absorption by skin compounds. Our aim was to provide a new method for calculating skin AF, yielding values that are independent of skin color. The deviation of skin AF of healthy subjects with various darker skin types (N = 99) compared to reference values from Caucasians showed to be a function of various parameters that were derived from reflectance and emission spectra in the UV and visible range (adjusted R(2) = 80%). Validation of the new algorithm, based on these findings, in a separate dataset (N = 141) showed that results of skin AF can now be obtained to assess skin AGEs independently of skin colo
Challenging the 'New Professionalism': from managerialism to pedagogy?
In recent years there have been changes made to the conceptualisation of continuing professional development for teachers in both the Scottish and English systems of education. These changes have been instigated by successive UK governments (and more recently, by the Scottish Executive), together with the General teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) and the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE). This paper argues that these changes have not provided a clear rationale for CPD, but instead have introduced tensions between the concept of teacher education and that of training. The need for a less confused understanding of CPD and its purposes is underlined, as is the need for school based approaches to continuing teacher education. Arguably, teacher education must move from technicist emphases to a model which integrates the social processes of change within society and schools with the individual development and empowerment of teachers
- âŚ