Simplifying Big Data Analytics System with A Reference Architecture

The internet and pervasive technology like the Internet of Things (i.e. sensors and smart devices) have exponentially increased the scale of data collection and availability. This big data not only challenges the structure of existing enterprise analytics systems but also offer new opportunities to create new knowledge and competitive advantage. Businesses have been exploiting these opportunities by implementing and operating big data analytics capabilities. Social network companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Video streaming company like Netflix have implemented big data analytics and subsequently published related literatures. However, these use cases did not provide a simplified and coherent big data analytics reference architecture as well as currently, there still remains limited reference architecture of big data analytics. This paper aims to simplify big data analytics by providing a reference architecture based on existing four use cases and subsequently verified the reference architecture with Amazon and Google analytics services

Implementing a Business Intelligence System for small and medium-sized enterprises

Over the years, Business Intelligence (BI) systems have become critically important to organizations due to the increasing fast-paced competition, the vast amount of daily generated data and the complexity of how to manage collected data. Business intelligence systems empower organizations to gain insights and to understand a clearer view of their vast data, business and customers, which help to make better decisions and hence produce better results and increase profit. BI refers to a collection of an organization’s resources such as tools, technologies, applications, systems and databases which enable organizations to manage insights of their business data, activities and performance in order to make better decision. However the majority of existing BI systems, target and support large organizations, and the small and medium-sized organizations (SMEs) are mostly overlooked due to lack of substantial finance. The paper elaborates the considerations for implementing BI systems for SMEs. Some new trends such as cloud BI solutions, open BI sources solutions are reviewed. The paper finally provides for the implementation of Business Intelligence system for a SME, the purpose and constraints of the system are detailed

Data analysis supported decision making in insurance sector

Big data is nowadays progressively turned into a valuable asset. The ability to produce insights from data, and exploit them into actionable opportunities has increasingly made a great impact on the industries. Thus, the organizations recognize the significant advantage of their enormous data and try to make sense of it. The insurance sector is concerned with many business problems of interest to the research community. By analyzing and gaining insights of their claim data and customers’ claim patterns, claim costs or resources can be reduced and managed effectively as well as risks or fraudulent claims can be recognized and detected. Most importantly, the insights gained from the data can aid in decision-making process. This paper presents a case study involving an independent insurance group Z, a smallmedium insurance company who insures household appliances and gadgets in the UK. The research looks at existing claims, analyses the claim data, and figures out the claim patterns using a variety of techniques within the methods of data mining. In the data analysis, it analysed trends and extracted insights from the claim data; what kind of a claim is driven by a certain set or combined set of factors such as the age of customer, what type of a claim that a customer tends to make. The analysis found that a BMC product (mobile phone) claim tends to be a customer who is younger than 35 years old and the claim tends to be made within 1 month of the policy being active. In the claim pattern analysis, the study used the Association Rule Mining with Apriori and R for finding patterns (rules) from the claim data. It was found that the younger (less than 35 years old) customers with claim type of LOST with unsuccessful result are highly associated with a Product BMC (mobile phone) claim. The research gains better understanding of customer claim data, claim patterns, and enables to provide valuable insights to the insurance group Z, supporting decision-making process

Knowns and unknowns for psychophysiological endophenotypes: Integration and response to commentaries

We review and summarize seven molecular genetic studies of 17 psychophysiological endophenotypes that comprise this special issue of Psychophysiology , address criticisms raised in accompanying Perspective and Commentary pieces, and offer suggestions for future research. Endophenotypes are polygenic, and possibly influenced by rare genetic variants. Because they are not simpler genetically than clinical phenotypes, they are unlikely to assist gene discovery for psychiatric disorder. Once genetic variants for clinical phenotypes are identified, associated endophenotypes are likely to provide valuable insights into the psychological and neural mechanisms important to disorder pathology. This special issue provides a foundation for informed future steps in endophenotype genetics, including the formation of large sample consortia capable of fleshing out the many genetic variants contributing to individual differences in psychophysiological measures.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109647/1/psyp12358.pd

К разработке технологии возведения геокомпозитных охранных систем горных выработок

У статті розглянуто відмінності використання особливо тонко дисперсних в’яжучих (ОТДВ) у підземних умовах для створення елементів геокомпозитних конструкцій.In article the differences of the use especially thinly of dispersible astringent are considered in underground terms for creation elements of geocomposit constructions

Perfect-information games with lower-semicontinuous payoffs

We prove that every multiplayer perfect-information game with bounded and lower-semicontinuous payoffs admits a subgame-perfect epsilon-equilibrium in pure strategies. This result complements Example 3 in Solan and Vieille [Solan, E., N. Vieille. 2003. Deterministic multi-player Dynkin games. J. Math. Econom. 39 911-929], which shows that a subgame-perfect epsilon-equilibrium in pure strategies need not exist when the payoffs are not lower-semicontinuous. In addition, if the range of payoffs is finite, we characterize in the form of a Folk Theorem the set of all plays and payoffs that are induced by subgame-perfect 0-equilibria in pure strategies

An Assessment of the Individual and Collective Effects of Variants on Height Using Twins and a Developmentally Informative Study Design

In a sample of 3,187 twins and 3,294 of their parents, we sought to investigate association of both individual variants and a genotype-based height score involving 176 of the 180 common genetic variants with adult height identified recently by the GIANT consortium. First, longitudinal observations on height spanning pre-adolescence through adulthood in the twin sample allowed us to investigate the separate effects of the previously identified SNPs on pre-pubertal height and pubertal growth spurt. We show that the effect of SNPs identified by the GIANT consortium is primarily on prepubertal height. Only one SNP, rs7759938 in LIN28B, approached a significant association with pubertal growth. Second, we show how using the twin data to control statistically for environmental variance can provide insight into the ultimate magnitude of SNP effects and consequently the genetic architecture of a phenotype. Specifically, we computed a genetic score by weighting SNPs according to their effects as assessed via meta-analysis. This weighted score accounted for 9.2% of the phenotypic variance in height, but 14.3% of the corresponding genetic variance. Longitudinal samples will be needed to understand the developmental context of common genetic variants identified through GWAS, while genetically informative designs will be helpful in accurately characterizing the extent to which these variants account for genetic, and not just phenotypic, variance

Atmospheric pressure plasma and depositions of antibacterial coatings

Healthcare-associated infections (HCAI) are complications of healthcare that result in elevated patient morbidity and mortality. HCAI present a huge financial burden for patients, hospitals and insurers due to extended hospitalisation and associated care. According to the estimations, in the US alone, HCAI affects approximately 2 million patients annually, of whom approximately 90.000 patients die, with an estimated annual cost estimated to range from 28 billion to 45 billion US$. [1] European Union is facing the similar situation, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and control (ECDC) advice that approximately 4.1 million acute care patients acquire a HCAI annually, with 37.000 deaths directly attributed to HCAI. With increasing prevalence of HCAI across European countries and threatening development of antimicrobial resistance to widely used antibiotics, there is a recognised need for novel approach in battle against this healthcare burden [2]. One of the approaches involves a development and fabrication of materials with antimicrobial properties. Usually, these are coatings with integrated antibacterial agent that is responsible for the elimination of microorganisms that come into contact with active surface. There is a variety of different antibacterial compounds integrated in such coatings, such as different antibiotics, chemical compounds, peptides. Recently, metal nanoparticles (NPs) have been increasingly used in designing coatings with antibacterial properties due to their large surface-to-volume ration, physiochemical properties and biological multi-target mechanism of actions. Besides all beneficial properties of NPs their emergence of cytotoxicity is limiting their practical applications in human body. [3-4] To overcome this drawback it is important to design a new class of antibacterial coatings with firmly embedded NPs that allows controlled release of antimicrobial agent into the microenvironment. Atmospheric pressure plasma technology has shown a big promise as an alternative and cost-efficient method for deposition of coatings with antibacterial properties. This contribution explores the potential of plasma-assisted approach for fabrication of antibacterial coatings, containing different metal NPs on medical textiles. Plasma-assisted deposition of coatings was carried out with so-called ˝sandwich technique˝, where nanoparticles were embedded between two layers in order to tailor the desirable ion release and to prolong antibacterial effect of fabrics. Antibacterial effects of different nano-coatings were tested against G+ and G- bacterial species, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, respectively. Besides antibacterial properties, potential cytotoxic effects were also studied. The study demonstrates that atmospheric pressure plasma can be an efficient technique for deposition of antibacterial coatings containing metal NPs. Medical textiles with plasma-assisted nano-coatings showed effective antibacterial properties. The choice of proper metal antimicrobial agent and optimal concentration of NPs should be considered in regards to potential cytotoxic effects when these materials would be used in medical environments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio