Reification and Truthmaking Patterns

Reification is a standard technique in conceptual modeling, which consists of including in the domain of discourse entities that may otherwise be hidden or implicit. However, deciding what should be rei- fied is not always easy. Recent work on formal ontology offers us a simple answer: put in the domain of discourse those entities that are responsible for the (alleged) truth of our propositions. These are called truthmakers. Re-visiting previous work, we propose in this paper a systematic analysis of truthmaking patterns for properties and relations based on the ontolog- ical nature of their truthmakers. Truthmaking patterns will be presented as generalization of reification patterns, accounting for the fact that, in some cases, we do not reify a property or a relationship directly, but we rather reify its truthmakers

A Call to Arms: Revisiting Database Design

Good database design is crucial to obtain a sound, consistent database, and - in turn - good database design methodologies are the best way to achieve the right design. These methodologies are taught to most Computer Science undergraduates, as part of any Introduction to Database class. They can be considered part of the "canon", and indeed, the overall approach to database design has been unchanged for years. Moreover, none of the major database research assessments identify database design as a strategic research direction. Should we conclude that database design is a solved problem? Our thesis is that database design remains a critical unsolved problem. Hence, it should be the subject of more research. Our starting point is the observation that traditional database design is not used in practice - and if it were used it would result in designs that are not well adapted to current environments. In short, database design has failed to keep up with the times. In this paper, we put forth arguments to support our viewpoint, analyze the root causes of this situation and suggest some avenues of research.Comment: Removed spurious column break. Nothing else was change

The conceptual schema of Ethereum

There is an abundant literature on Ethereum, but as far as we know what is missing is its explicit conceptual schema. We present here the conceptual schema of Ethereum in UML. The schema should be useful to those that want to understand Ethereum. We also show that the schema is necessary for developing the schema of Ethereum–based DApps. We present a few population constraints, and show that they suffice for the specification at the conceptual level of what is understood by immutability of a blockchain. We also show that the well–known reification construct and an initial constraint suffice to specify at the conceptual level that the Ethereum blockchain stores the full state history.Peer ReviewedPreprin

Myofibrillar myopathies: new developments

Purpose of review: Myofibrillar myopathies (MFMs) are a heterogeneous group of skeletal and cardiac muscle diseases. In this review, we highlight recent discoveries of new genes and disease mechanisms involved in this group of disorders.Recent findings: The advent of next-generation sequencing technology, laser microdissection and mass spectrometry-based proteomics has facilitated the discovery of new MFM causative genes and pathomechanisms. New mutations have also been discovered in older' genes, helping to find a classification niche for MFM-linked disorders showing variant phenotypes. Cell transfection experiments using primary cultured myoblasts and newer animal models provide insights into the pathogenesis of MFMs.Summary: An increasing number of genes are involved in the causation of variant subtypes of MFM. The application of modern technologies in combination with classical histopathological and ultrastructural studies is helping to establish the molecular diagnosis and reach a better understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms of each MFM subtype, thus putting an emphasis on the development of specific means for prevention and therapy of these incapacitating and frequently fatal diseases

Towards a marine sdi: A methodology to allow metadata interoperability

Peer Reviewe

Decision making and model M. Mishel. Accept or not accept replacement surgery knee prosthetic

Introducción: La artroplastia total de rodilla (PTR) es eficaz en el alivio del dolor y la función en los casos de artrosis de rodilla (AR) grave. Representa un problema de salud pública por su prevalencia. A pesar de los resultados clínicos obtenidos con la PTR, diversos estudios refieren que entre un 14-30% de pacientes se muestran insatisfechos con el resultado, al no alcanzar los beneficios esperados, lo que conlleva que otros desestimen el tratamiento quirúrgico. El modelo de cuidados de M. Mishel pertenece al paradigma de la transformación, parte de la teoría social crítica e incorpora principios de la teoría del caos para elaborar su teoría de la incertidumbre; la enfermedad crónica desencadena un desequilibrio y las personas que la experimentan pueden incorporar esta incertidumbre para adquirir un nuevo sentido de la vida

Adapting integrity checking techniques for concurrent operation executions

One challenge for achieving executable models is preserving the integrity of the data. That is, given a structural model describing the constraints that the data should satisfy, and a behavioral model describing the operations that might change the data, the integrity checking problem consists in ensuring that, after executing the modeled operations, none of the specified constraints is violated. A multitude of techniques have been presented so far to solve the integrity checking problem. However, to the best of our knowledge, all of them assume that operations are not executed concurrently. As we are going to see, concurrent operation executions might lead to violations not detected by these techniques. In this paper, we present a technique for detecting and serializing those operations that can cause a constraint violation when executed concurrently , so that, previous incremental techniques, exploiting our approach, can be safely applied in systems with concurrent operation executions guaranteeing the integrity of the data.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft