On the Modeling of Correct Service Flows with BPEL4WS

Frameworks for composing Web Services offer a promising approach for realizing enterprise-wide and cross-organizational business applications. With BPEL4WS a powerful composition language exists. BPEL implementations allow orchestrating complex, stateful interactions among Web Services in a process-oriented way. One important task in this context is to ensure that respective flow specifications can be correctly processed, i.e., there will be no bad surprises (e.g., deadlocks, invocation of service operations with missing input data) at runtime. In this paper we subdivide BPEL schemes into different classes and discuss to which extent instances of these classes can be analyzed for the absence of control flow errors and inconsistencies. Altogether our work shall contribute to a more systematic evolution of the BPEL standard instead of overloading it with too many features

The labial gene is required to terminate proliferation of identified neuroblasts in postembryonic development of the Drosophila brain

The developing brain of Drosophila has become a useful model for studying the molecular genetic mechanisms that give rise to the complex neuronal arrays that characterize higher brains in other animals including mammals. Brain development in Drosophila begins during embryogenesis and continues during a subsequent postembryonic phase. During embryogenesis, the Hox gene labial is expressed in the developing tritocerebrum, and labial loss-of-function has been shown to be associated with a loss of regional neuronal identity and severe patterning defects in this part of the brain. However nothing is known about the expression and function of labial, or any other Hox gene, during the postembryonic phase of brain development, when the majority of the neurons in the adult brain are generated. Here we report the first analysis of Hox gene action during postembryonic brain development in Drosophila. We show that labial is initially expressed in six larval brain neuroblasts, of which only four give rise to the labial expressing neuroblast lineages present in the late larval brain. Although MARCM-based clonal mutation of labial in these four neuroblast lineages does not result in an obvious phenotype, a striking and unexpected effect of clonal labial loss-of-function does occur during postembryonic brain development, namely the formation of two ectopic neuroblast lineages that are not present in wild-type brains. The same two ectopic neuroblast lineages are also observed following cell death blockage and, significantly, in this case the resulting ectopic lineages are Labial-positive. These findings imply that labial is required in two specific neuroblast lineages of the wildtype brain for the appropriate termination of proliferation through programmed cell death. Our analysis of labial function reveals a novel cell autonomous role of this Hox gene in shaping the lineage architecture of the brain during postembryonic development

ADEPT - Next Generation Process Management Technology

In the ADEPT project we have been working on the design and implementation of a next generation process management technology for several years. Based on a conceptual framework for dynamic process changes, on innovative process support functions, and on advanced implementation concepts, the developed system enables the realization of adaptive, process-aware information systems (PAIS). Basically, process changes can take place at the process type as well as the process instance level: Changes of single process instances may have to be carried out in an ad-hoc manner (e.g., to deal with an exceptional situation) and must not affect system robustness and consistency. Process type changes, in turn, must be quickly accomplished in order to adapt the PAIS to business process changes. This may also include the migration of (thousands of) instances to the new process schema (if desired). Important requirements are to perform respective migrations on-the-fly, to preserve correctness, and to avoid performance penalties

ADEPT2 - Next Generation Process Management Technology

If current process management systems shall be applied to a broad spectrum of applications, they will have to be significantly improved with respect to their technological capabilities. In particular, in dynamic environments it must be possible to quickly implement and deploy new processes, to enable ad-hoc modifications of single process instances at runtime (e.g., to add, delete or shift process steps), and to support process schema evolution with instance migration, i.e., to propagate process schema changes to already running instances. These requirements must be met without affecting process consistency and by preserving the robustness of the process management system. In this paper we describe how these challenges have been addressed and solved in the ADEPT2 Process Management System. Our overall vision is to provide a next generation process management technology which can be used in a variety of application domains

Pointing errors in solar absorption spectrometry - correction scheme and its validation

A method for quantification of sun-pointing inaccuracies in solar absorption spectrometry is presented along with a correction scheme for the resulting errors in trace gas vertical column or profile retrievals. A posteriori correction of pointing errors requires knowledge of both coordinates of the mispointing vector on the solar disk. In principle, quantitative information on the mispointing can be retrieved from Doppler shifts of solar lines derived from measured spectra. However, this yields only one component of the mispointing vector, namely the one which is perpendicular to the solar rotation axis. Missing information on the second vector component has hindered a posteriori correction of mispointing errors so far. Our idea to overcome this problem is to obtain estimates of both coordinates of the mispointing by combining subsequent measurements with differing orientations of the solar rotation axis relative to the zenith direction. An implementation of this original concept is demonstrated using measurements from the solar absorption Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer at the Zugspitze (47.42° N, 10.98° E, 2964 m a.s.l.). Soundings in the September 2012 to September 2014 time interval were impacted by mispointing problems due to a non-optimum solar tracking optics configuration. They show a mean mispointing in zenith direction of -0.063°. This causes biases in vertical soundings of trace gases, e.g. -2.82 ppb in monthly means of dry-air column-averaged mole fractions of methane (XCH4). Measurements made with the more stable pre-September 2012 and post-September 2014 optics configurations show considerably smaller mispointing effects. Applying the mispointing correction, the April 2006-March 2014 XCH4 trend determined from Zugspitze measurements is reduced from 6.45 [5.84, 7.04] to 6.07 [5.55, 6.59] ppb yr-1. The correction thereby restores consistency with results from the nearby Garmisch FTIR site (47.48° N, 11.06° E, 743 m a.s.l.). The mispointing correction is applicable to solar absorption measurements in the mid infrared and near infrared. It will be of particular benefit for refining existing records of high-accuracy-and-precision greenhouse gas soundings for the purpose of improved trend analysis or source-sink inversions