Adaptive Process Management in Highly Dynamic and Pervasive Scenarios

Process Management Systems (PMSs) are currently more and more used as a supporting tool for cooperative processes in pervasive and highly dynamic situations, such as emergency situations, pervasive healthcare or domotics/home automation. But in all such situations, designed processes can be easily invalidated since the execution environment may change continuously due to frequent unforeseeable events. This paper aims at illustrating the theoretical framework and the concrete implementation of SmartPM, a PMS that features a set of sound and complete techniques to automatically cope with unplanned exceptions. PMS SmartPM is based on a general framework which adopts the Situation Calculus and Indigolog

The State of the Art in Multilayer Network Visualization

Modelling relationships between entities in real-world systems with a simple graph is a standard approach. However, reality is better embraced as several interdependent subsystems (or layers). Recently the concept of a multilayer network model has emerged from the field of complex systems. This model can be applied to a wide range of real-world datasets. Examples of multilayer networks can be found in the domains of life sciences, sociology, digital humanities and more. Within the domain of graph visualization there are many systems which visualize datasets having many characteristics of multilayer graphs. This report provides a state of the art and a structured analysis of contemporary multilayer network visualization, not only for researchers in visualization, but also for those who aim to visualize multilayer networks in the domain of complex systems, as well as those developing systems across application domains. We have explored the visualization literature to survey visualization techniques suitable for multilayer graph visualization, as well as tools, tasks, and analytic techniques from within application domains. This report also identifies the outstanding challenges for multilayer graph visualization and suggests future research directions for addressing them

Characterization of Coastal Urban Watershed Bacterial Communities Leads to Alternative Community-Based Indicators

BACKGROUND: Microbial communities in aquatic environments are spatially and temporally dynamic due to environmental fluctuations and varied external input sources. A large percentage of the urban watersheds in the United States are affected by fecal pollution, including human pathogens, thus warranting comprehensive monitoring. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a high-density microarray (PhyloChip), we examined water column bacterial community DNA extracted from two connecting urban watersheds, elucidating variable and stable bacterial subpopulations over a 3-day period and community composition profiles that were distinct to fecal and non-fecal sources. Two approaches were used for indication of fecal influence. The first approach utilized similarity of 503 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) common to all fecal samples analyzed in this study with the watershed samples as an index of fecal pollution. A majority of the 503 OTUs were found in the phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria. The second approach incorporated relative richness of 4 bacterial classes (Bacilli, Bacteroidetes, Clostridia and alpha-proteobacteria) found to have the highest variance in fecal and non-fecal samples. The ratio of these 4 classes (BBC:A) from the watershed samples demonstrated a trend where bacterial communities from gut and sewage sources had higher ratios than from sources not impacted by fecal material. This trend was also observed in the 124 bacterial communities from previously published and unpublished sequencing or PhyloChip- analyzed studies. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study provided a detailed characterization of bacterial community variability during dry weather across a 3-day period in two urban watersheds. The comparative analysis of watershed community composition resulted in alternative community-based indicators that could be useful for assessing ecosystem health

Usability- and Accessibility-Focused Requirements Engineering - First International Workshop, UsARE 2012, Held in Conjunction with {ICSE} 2012, Zurich, Switzerland, June 4, 2012 and Second International Workshop UsARE 2014, Held in Conjunction with {RE} 2014, Karlskrona, Sweden, August 25, 2014, Revised Selected Papers

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of theFirst International Workshop on Usability and Accessibility focused RequirementsEngineering, UsARE 2012, held in Zurich, Switzerland, in June 2012 in conjunctionwith ICSE 2012, the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering, and theSecond International Workshop, UsARE 2014, held in Karlskrona, Sweden, in August2014, in the course of RE 2014, the 22nd International Requirements EngineeringConference.This book consists of 10 chapters of which 9 are extended versions of the paperspresented at the two UsARE events. Amongst them, 3 are extended versions of thepapers presented at UsARE 2012 and 6 are extended versions of papers presented atUsARE 2014 - rounded off by a new chapter that was added as authors are doingrelevant work on the same topic. The chapters are organized into three sectionsaccording to their main focus: usability and user experience, accessibility andapplications

First international workshop on usability and accessibility focused requirements engineering (UsARE 2012): summary report

Usability and accessibility issues are common causes why software fails to meet user requirements. However, requirements engineers still focus on functional requirements and might ignore to also elicit system usability and accessibility requirements. This is a high risk which can lead to project and software failure. Improving the usability and accessibility of a system in a later development stage is costly and time consuming. Targeting these concerns, the workshop envisioned that research must address the proper integration of system usability and accessibility requirements into the requirements engineering process and also must focus on how to manage and control the evaluation of these requirements in a systematic way. UsARE 2012 provided a platform for discussing issues which are relevant for both fields, the Requirements Engineering (RE) and the Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The workshop aim was to bring\ together people from these two communities (RE and HCI) to explore this integration. Researchers and practitioners were invited to submit contributions including problem statements, technical solutions, experience reports, planned work and vision papers. Envisioned results may help aligning RE and HCI processes in order to overcome open issues in these fields

Prevalence and characterization of Escherichia coli isolated from the Upper Oconee Watershed in Northeast Georgia.

Surface waters are important sources of water for drinking, industrial, agricultural, and recreational uses; hence, contamination of water by fecal, pathogenic, or antimicrobial resistant (AR) bacteria is a major environmental and public health concern. However, very little data is available on prevalence of these bacteria in surface water throughout a watershed. This study aimed to characterize Escherichia coli present in the Upper Oconee Watershed, a mixed-use watershed in Athens, GA, USA for potential pathogenicity and AR. E. coli were enumerated by colony counts, cultured by enrichment and direct plating, and characterized by phylo-groups, diarrheagenic pathotypes, and antimicrobial susceptibility. From the analysis, 99.3% (455/458) of the total samples were positive for E. coli resulting in 496 isolates. E. coli counts were as high as 1.2×104 CFU/100 ml, which is above the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) threshold for recreational water (235 CFU/100 ml based on a one-time measurement). Phylo-groups B2 (31.7%; 157/496) and B1 (30.8%; 153/496) were the most prevalent among the isolates. Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) (19/496) and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) (1/496) were the only diarrheagenic pathotypes detected. AR was observed in 6.9% (34/496) of the isolates, 15 of which were multidrug resistant (MDR; resistance to two or more classes of antimicrobials). Tetracycline resistance was most often detected (76.5%; 26/34), followed by ampicillin (32.4%; 11/34), streptomycin (23.5%; 8/34), sulfisoxazole (23.5%; 8/34), and nalidixic acid (14.7%; 5/34). Results from this study showed that E. coli is prevalent in high levels in the Upper Oconee Watershed, suggesting possible widespread fecal contamination. The presence of pathogenic, AR E. coli in the watershed indicates that environmental water can serve as a reservoir of resistant bacteria that may be transferred to humans through drinking and recreational activities

Sites with <i>E</i>. <i>coli</i> counts exceeding the U.S. EPA threshold for each sampling event^a.

<p>Sites with <i>E</i>. <i>coli</i> counts exceeding the U.S. EPA threshold for each sampling event<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0197005#t002fn001" target="_blank">^a</a>.</p

Antimicrobial resistant and pathogenic <i>E</i>. <i>coli</i> isolated from surface water, phylo-group, and sample site location from Fig 1.

<p>Antimicrobial resistant and pathogenic <i>E</i>. <i>coli</i> isolated from surface water, phylo-group, and sample site location from <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0197005#pone.0197005.g001" target="_blank">Fig 1</a>.</p