Using Intelligent Agents to Manage Business Processes

This paper describes work undertaken in the ADEPT (Advanced Decision Environment for Process Tasks) project towards developing an agent-based infrastructure for managing business processes. We describe how the key technology of negotiating, service providing, autonomous agents was realised and demonstrate how this was applied to the BT business process of providing a customer quote for network services

Spatial scales of interactions among bacteria and between bacteria and the leaf surface.

Microbial life on plant leaves is characterized by a multitude of interactions between leaf colonizers and their environment. While the existence of many of these interactions has been confirmed, their spatial scale or reach often remained unknown. In this study, we applied spatial point pattern analysis to 244 distribution patterns of Pantoea agglomerans and Pseudomonas syringae on bean leaves. The results showed that bacterial colonizers of leaves interact with their environment at different spatial scales. Interactions among bacteria were often confined to small spatial scales up to 5-20 μm, compared to interactions between bacteria and leaf surface structures such as trichomes which could be observed in excess of 100 μm. Spatial point-pattern analyses prove a comprehensive tool to determine the different spatial scales of bacterial interactions on plant leaves and will help microbiologists to better understand the interplay between these interactions

Is Virtual Reality an Effective Tool for Reducing Procedural Pain in Pediatric Patients?

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this selective evidence-based medicine review is to determine whether or not, “Is virtual reality an effective tool for reducing procedural pain in pediatric patients?” STUDY DESIGN: Included the review of three English language primary studies, published between 2014 and 2018. Articles were selected based on outcomes measured and relevance to the objective. DATA SOURCES: PubMed was utilized to find two randomized controlled trials and one quasiexperimental study. The selected studies analyzed how the use of virtual reality impacted the amount of pain experienced by the pediatric patient undergoing either a venipuncture or burn wound care procedure. OUTCOMES MEASURED: Patient outcomes were measured with the Faces Pain Scale – Revised (FPS-R), the Adolescent Pediatric Pain Tool and Word Graphic Rating Scale (APPT-WGRS) and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). RESULTS: All three studies showed a statistically significant reduction in the level of procedural pain experienced by pediatric patients that utilized virtual reality while undergoing either a venipuncture or burn wound care procedure. The Gold et al. study showed a statistically significant reduction in procedural pain experienced with venipuncture vs. standard of care via the FPS-R. The Jeffs et al. study showed a statistically significant reduction in procedural pain experienced with burn wound care vs. passive distraction via the APPT-WGRS. The Piskorz et al. study showed a statistically significant reduction in procedural pain experienced with venipuncture vs. no virtual reality via the VAS. CONCLUSION: The result of two randomized controlled trials and the one quasi-experimental study, which compared procedural pain in pediatric patients using virtual reality during venipuncture or burn wound care compared to a control group using either conventional standard of care, passive distraction or no virtual reality during the same type of procedure, showed virtual reality to be an effective tool for providing a statistically significant reduction in procedural pain in the pediatric patient population

Series approximations for Rayleigh distributions of arbitrary dimensions and covariance matrices

The multivariate Rayleigh distribution is of crucial importance to many applied problems of engineering, such as in the analysis of multi-antenna wireless systems. Due to the lack of a generalised closed form of the distribution, the dependence on effective approximation methods for evaluation has created numerous numerical approaches with considerable restrictions in both dimensionality, as well as the structure of covariance matrices. In this paper we extend a previously introduced method [1] without either of these limitations. We then compare the performance of the new algorithms to recent integration methods of fixed dimension, presented by Beaulie and Zhang [2] and highlight the advantages of the new method

HIPS DON’T LIE: ANALYZING FRONTAL PLANE KINEMATICS IN ADULTS OF VARYING AGES DURING STEP TASKS

M. Jain, K. Wiegand Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA Aging is linked to reduced physical activity, which can lead to loss of strength and coordination. Previous research indicates older individuals display greater asymmetries and altered kinematic patterns in fundamental movements, which can contribute to injury risk. PURPOSE: Assess the relationships between age and frontal plane kinematics of the hip and knee during step-up and step-down tasks. METHODS: Five of 75 participants have completed the study thus far: 2 males and 3 females, age 42.8±15.4. Participants completed three single leg step-ups and step-downs on each limb from a 25 cm height while 2D frontal plane kinematics were recorded. Following informed consent, markers were placed bilaterally on anterior and posterior landmarks of the lower extremity. Knee Valgus and hip drop angles were calculated from exported kinematic data. Average maximum and minimum values of the dominant limb were calculated across trials. Range of motion (ROM) for each angle was calculated as average minimum value minus average maximum value. The relationships between age and hip drop ROM, age and knee valgus ROM, and age and symmetry were assessed using bivariate correlations (α=0.05). RESULTS: Means and standard deviations are presented in Table 1. Initial findings indicate a strong positive correlation between age and contralateral hip drop (r=0.14, p\u3e0.05). No correlations between age and knee valgus (r=0.08, p\u3e0.05), age and hip drop symmetry (r=-0.21, p\u3e0.05) or age and knee valgus symmetry (r=-0.11, p\u3e0.05) were found. CONCLUSION: Preliminary data observed increased age may be associated with risky frontal plane hip kinematics. Further testing on a broader age range and remaining participants is necessary. Supported by the ACSM NW Student Research Award

New generalised approximation methods for the cumulative distribution function of arbitrary multivariate Rayleigh random variables

Based on our previous works, we revise a simple series expansion for multivariate probability density functions (PDF) of the Rayleigh distribution. From there we derive a similar expression for the cumulative density function (CDF) of multivariate Rayleigh random variables of arbitrary dimension and covariance matrix. The CDF is of particular interest as it can be used to compute outage probabilities of multi-channel wireless systems, for which we provide an example. We compare the performance of the newly proposed approximation to recently proposed methods based on numerical integration methods