Interestingness of traces in declarative process mining: The janus LTLPf Approach

Declarative process mining is the set of techniques aimed at extracting behavioural constraints from event logs. These constraints are inherently of a reactive nature, in that their activation restricts the occurrence of other activities. In this way, they are prone to the principle of ex falso quod libet: they can be satisfied even when not activated. As a consequence, constraints can be mined that are hardly interesting to users or even potentially misleading. In this paper, we build on the observation that users typically read and write temporal constraints as if-statements with an explicit indication of the activation condition. Our approach is called Janus, because it permits the specification and verification of reactive constraints that, upon activation, look forward into the future and backwards into the past of a trace. Reactive constraints are expressed using Linear-time Temporal Logic with Past on Finite Traces (LTLp f). To mine them out of event logs, we devise a time bi-directional valuation technique based on triplets of automata operating in an on-line fashion. Our solution proves efficient, being at most quadratic w.r.t. trace length, and effective in recognising interestingness of discovered constraints

In memoria dei militari cavesi caduti nella guerra libica

Sul front.: Discorso pronunziato l'8 giugno 1913 nel Teatro Comunale "Verdi" di Cava dei Tirren

Conformance Checking of Mixed-paradigm Process Models

Mixed-paradigm process models integrate strengths of procedural and declarative representations like Petri nets and Declare. They are specifically interesting for process mining because they allow capturing complex behaviour in a compact way. A key research challenge for the proliferation of mixed-paradigm models for process mining is the lack of corresponding conformance checking techniques. In this paper, we address this problem by devising the first approach that works with intertwined state spaces of mixed-paradigm models. More specifically, our approach uses an alignment-based replay to explore the state space and compute trace fitness in a procedural way. In every state, the declarative constraints are separately updated, such that violations disable the corresponding activities. Our technique provides for an efficient replay towards an optimal alignment by respecting all orthogonal Declare constraints. We have implemented our technique in ProM and demonstrate its performance in an evaluation with real-world event logs.Comment: Accepted for publication in Information System

A Temporal Logic-Based Measurement Framework for Process Mining

The assessment of behavioral rules with respect to a given dataset is key in several research areas, including declarative process mining, association rule mining, and specification mining. The assessment is required to check how well a set of discovered rules describes the input data, as well as to determine to what extent data complies with predefined rules. In declarative process mining, in particular, some measures have been taken from association rule mining and adapted to support the assessment of temporal rules on event logs. Among them, support and confidence are used more often, yet they are reportedly unable to provide a sufficiently rich feedback to users and often cause spurious rules to be discovered from logs. In addition, these measures are designed to work on a predefined set of rules, thus lacking generality and extensibility. In this paper, we address this research gap by developing a general measurement framework for temporal rules based on Linear-time Temporal Logic with Past on Finite Traces (LTLpf). The framework is independent from the rule-specification language of choice and allows users to define new measures. We show that our framework can seamlessly adapt well-known measures of the association rule mining field to declarative process mining. Also, we test our software prototype implementing the framework on synthetic and real-world data, and investigate the properties characterizing those measures in the context of process analysis

What Automated Planning Can Do for Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) is a central element of today organizations. Despite over the years its main focus has been the support of processes in highly controlled domains, nowadays many domains of interest to the BPM community are characterized by ever-changing requirements, unpredictable environments and increasing amounts of data that influence the execution of process instances. Under such dynamic conditions, BPM systems must increase their level of automation to provide the reactivity and flexibility necessary for process management. On the other hand, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community has concentrated its efforts on investigating dynamic domains that involve active control of computational entities and physical devices (e.g., robots, software agents, etc.). In this context, Automated Planning, which is one of the oldest areas in AI, is conceived as a model-based approach to synthesize autonomous behaviours in automated way from a model. In this paper, we discuss how automated planning techniques can be leveraged to enable new levels of automation and support for business processing, and we show some concrete examples of their successful application to the different stages of the BPM life cycle

The SWORD is Mightier Than the Interview: A Framework for Semi-automatic WORkaround Detection

Workarounds can give valuable insights into the work processes that are carried out within organizations. To date, workarounds are usually identified using qualitative methods, such as interviews. We propose the semi-automated WORkaround Detection (SWORD) framework, which takes event logs as input. This extensible framework uses twenty-two patterns to semi-automatically detect workarounds. The value of the SWORD framework is that it can help to identify workarounds more efficiently and more thoroughly than is possible by the use of a more traditional, qualitative approach. Through the use of real hospital data, we demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the SWORD framework in practice. We focused on the use of three patterns, which all turned out to be applicable to the characteristics of the data set. The use of two of these patterns also led to the identification of actual workarounds. Future work is geared to the extension of the patterns within the framework and the enhancement of techniques that can help to identify these in real-world data

The Italian National Register of infants with congenital hypothyroidism: twenty years of surveillance and study of congenital hypothyroidism

All the Italian Centres in charge of screening, diagnosis, and follow-up of infants with congenital hypothyroidism participate in the Italian National Registry of affected infants, which performs the nationwide surveillance of the disease. It was established in 1987 as a program of the Health Ministry and is coordinated by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. The early diagnosis performed by the nationwide newborn screening programme, the prompt treatment and the appropriate clinical management of the patients carried out by the Follow-up Centres, and the surveillance of the disease performed by the National Register of infants with congenital hypothyroidism are the components of an integrated approach to the disease which has been successfully established in our country

Oral spirochetes : contribution to oral malodor and formation of spherical bodies

Spirochetes are putative periodontal pathogens because they are found in increased numbers in periodontitis. With severity of periodontal disease, there also appears to be an increase in oral malodor. This is due to a greater breakdown of tissues containing sulfurated amino acids such as cysteine, cystine, and methionine. Bacteria in the oral cavity can metabolize these amino acids to produce volatile sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan that contribute to oral malodor. Detection of volatile sulfur compounds is usually performed by gas chromatography or a portable sulfur monitor, but none of these methods provides direct evidence for the production of hydrogen sulfide from oral spirochetes. A successful method has been developed, as described in this thesis, to demonstrate that oral spirochetes are major contributors to oral malodor associated with periodontitis. This has been accomplished by modification of an established method for isolating these bacteria directly from subgingival plaques.A morphological variation of spirochetes, called a spherical body, exists. It has been postulated that this may be a dormant form of spirochetes used as a survival strategy. A number of environmental conditions were tested to determine whether or not they could contribute to spherical body formation in the oral spirochete Treponema denticola ATCC 35405. Cells grown in the absence of rabbit serum, volatile fatty acids, thiamine pyrophosphate, or yeast extract showed a dramatic increase in the numbers of spherical bodies. T. denticola cells grown in the presence of the metabolic end-product lactic acid or at pH 7.42 instead of 6.8 also contained more spherical bodies than the control

Atividade antagônica de linhagens endofíticas de Trichoderma spp. ao endófito Colletotrichum guaranicola isolados de guaranazeiro

O controle de doenças de plantas não é totalmente eficiente, uma vez que o patógeno penetra no tecido vascular da planta. Os insumos químicos também têm causado impactos negativos nos mais diferentes compartimentos dos ecossistemas, representados por contaminação das águas, resíduos químicos no solo, efeitos nos microrganismos, danos à saúde humana e dificuldades da ciclagem de resíduos químicos em ambientes protegidos. Os métodos de controle de doenças de plantas utilizados vêm sendo aperfeiçoados com o objetivo de assegurar o uso correto e racional de produtos químicos, bem como, garantir a rentabilidade da atividade ao agricultor e diminuir os riscos à saúde humana e ao meio ambiente. Sendo assim, o controle biológico se constitui em demanda atual e de alta importância para viabilizar a substituição dos agroquímicos. Uma alternativa para o controle de fitopatógenos é o uso de microrganismos antagonistas, os quais oferecem potencialmente respostas para muitos problemas enfrentados na agricultura. O gênero Trichoderma é um dos fungos antagonistas mais estudados, exibindo considerável variabilidade entre as linhagens com relação à atividade de biocontrole, espectro de ação contra os hospedeiros, propriedades fisiológicas e bioquímicas, como também, adaptabilidade ecológica e ambiental. Além disso, agentes potenciais de biocontrole pertencentes ao gênero Trichoderma podem ser isolados dos ambientes naturais dos patógenos, ou seja, de solos ou de plantas. Algumas espécies de Trichoderma têm sido estudadas com relação à sua capacidade competitiva com fungos fitopatogênicos, devido a sua rápida taxa de crescimento micelial e a um antagonismo direto, envolvendo enrolamento de hifas e penetração, com secreção de antibióticos deletérios ao hospedeiro. Daí esse trabalho ter como objetivo avaliar os efeitos antagônicos do Trichoderma spp. sobre o fungo fitopatogênico, Colletotrichum guaranicola.CNP