The Biography of Quesnay

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The European Commission’s stronger role in economic governance has made it an unexpected ‘winner’ from the Eurozone crisis

Several commentators have argued that the Eurozone crisis has resulted in more intergovernmental EU decision-making, with the European Commission in particular being weakened by the role taken on by the European Council in the area of economic governance. Michael W. Bauer and Stefan Becker write, however, that while the Commission’s agenda setting powers have been curtailed, it has been considerably strengthened in managerial terms. They argue that far from being weakened, the Commission has emerged as an unexpected institutional ‘winner’ from the recent transformations of economic governance in the EU

Bridging the Gap Between Business Process Models and Service Composition Specifications

Fundamental goals of any Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) include the flexible support and adaptability of business processes as well as improved business-IT alignment. Existing approaches, however, have failed to fully meet these goals. One of the major reasons for this deficiency is the gap that exists between business process models on the one hand and workflow specifications and implementations (e.g., service composition schemes) on the other hand. In practice, each of these two perspectives has to be regarded separately. In addition, even simple changes to one perspective (e.g. due to new regulations or organizational change) require error-prone, manual re-editing of the other one. Over time, this leads to degeneration and divergence of the respective models and specifications. This aggravates maintenance and makes expensive refactoring inevitable. This chapter presents a flexible approach for aligning business process models with workflow specifications. In order to maintain the complex dependencies that exist between high-level business process models (as used by domain experts) and technical workflow specifications (i.e., service composition schemas), respectively, (as used in IT departments) we introduce an additional model layer – the so-called system model. Furthermore, we explicitly document the mappings between the different levels (e.g., between business process model and system model). This simplifies model adoptions by orders of magnitudes when compared to existing approaches

Computerized Response Inhibition Training For Children With Trichotillomania

Evidence suggests that trichotillomania is characterized by impairment in response inhibition, which is the ability to suppress pre-potent/dominant but inappropriate responses. This study sought to test the feasibility of computerized response inhibition training for children with trichotillomania. Twenty-two children were randomized to the 8-session response inhibition training (RIT; n = 12) or a waitlisted control (WLT; n = 10). Primary outcomes were assessed by an independent evaluator, using the Clinical Global Impression-Improvement (CGI-I), and the NIMH Trichotillomania Severity (NIMH-TSS) and Impairment scales (NIMH-TIS) at pre, post-training/waiting, and 1-month follow-up. Relative to the WLT group, the RIT group showed a higher response rate (55% vs. 11%) on the CGI-I and a lower level of impairment on the NIMH-TIS, at post-training. Overall symptom reductions rates on the NIMH-TSS were 34% (RIT) vs. 21% (WLT) at post-training. The RIT\u27s therapeutic gains were maintained at 1-month follow-up, as indicated by the CGI-I responder status (= 66%), and a continuing reduction in symptom on the NIMH-TSS. This pattern of findings was also replicated by the 6 waitlisted children who received the same RIT intervention after post-waiting assessment. Results suggest that computerized RIT may be a potentially useful intervention for trichotillomania

Improving the Quality and Cost-effectiveness of Process-oriented, Service-driven Applications: Techniques for Enriching Business Process Models

A key objective of any Service-driven architectural approach is to improve the alignment between business and information technology (IT). Business process management, service composition, and service orchestration, play major roles in achieving this goal. In particular, they allow for the process-aware integration of business actors, business data, and business services. To optimize business-IT alignment and to achieve high business value, the business processes implemented in process-aware information systems (PAISs) must be defined by domain experts, and not by members of the IT department. In current practice, however, the information relevant for process execution is usually not captured at the required level of detail in business process models. In turn, this requires costly interactions between IT departments and domain experts during process implementation. To improve this situation, required execution information should be captured at a sufficient level of detail during business process design (front-loading). As another drawback, existing methods and tools for business process design do not consider available Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) artifacts such as technical service descriptions during process design (look-ahead). Both front-loading and look-ahead are not adequately supported by existing business process modeling tools. In particular, for many process aspects, appropriate techniques for specifying them at a sufficient level of detail during business process design are missing. This chapter presents techniques for enabling front-loading and look-ahead for selected process aspects and investigates how executable process models can be derived from business process models when enriched with additional information

Interface Theories for (A)synchronously Communicating Modal I/O-Transition Systems

Interface specifications play an important role in component-based software development. An interface theory is a formal framework supporting composition, refinement and compatibility of interface specifications. We present different interface theories which use modal I/O-transition systems as their underlying domain for interface specifications: synchronous interface theories, which employ a synchronous communication schema, as well as a novel interface theory for asynchronous communication where components communicate via FIFO-buffers.Comment: In Proceedings FIT 2010, arXiv:1101.426