38,156 research outputs found
Endurant Types in Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling: Towards OntoUML 2.0
For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed
to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)
- aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs.
This ontology has led to the development of an Ontology-Driven
Conceptual Modeling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological
micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML
have been successfully employed in a number of academic, industrial and
governmental settings to create conceptual models in a variety of different
domains. These experiences have pointed out to opportunities of
improvement not only to the language itself but also to its underlying
theory. In this paper, we take the first step in that direction by revising
the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The
new version of this theory shows that many of the meta-types present
in OntoUML (differentiating Kinds, Roles, Phases, Mixins, etc.) should
be considered not as restricted to Substantial types but instead should
be applied to model Endurant Types in general, including Relator types,
Quality types and Mode types. We also contribute a formal characterization
of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a
metamodel for OntoUML 2.0. Finally, we propose a computational support
tool implementing this updated metamodel
On vertex adjacencies in the polytope of pyramidal tours with step-backs
We consider the traveling salesperson problem in a directed graph. The
pyramidal tours with step-backs are a special class of Hamiltonian cycles for
which the traveling salesperson problem is solved by dynamic programming in
polynomial time. The polytope of pyramidal tours with step-backs is
defined as the convex hull of the characteristic vectors of all possible
pyramidal tours with step-backs in a complete directed graph. The skeleton of
is the graph whose vertex set is the vertex set of and the
edge set is the set of geometric edges or one-dimensional faces of .
The main result of the paper is a necessary and sufficient condition for vertex
adjacencies in the skeleton of the polytope that can be verified in
polynomial time.Comment: in Englis
Cultivating knowledge sharing through the relationship management maturity model
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present the development of the relationship management maturity model (RMMM), the output of an initiative aimed at bridging the gap between business units and the IT organisation. It does this through improving and assessing knowledge sharing between business and IT staff in Finco, a large financial services organisation. Design/methodology/approach - The objectives were achieved by undertaking ethnographic research with the relationship managers (RMs) as they carried out their activities, and developing the RMMM by visualizing the development of a community of practice (CoP) between business and IT. Findings - The RMMM demonstrates a learning mechanism to bridge the business/IT gap through an interpretive approach to knowledge sharing by defining knowledge sharing processes between business and IT and defining the tasks of the relationship managers as facilitators of knowledge sharing. Research limitations/implications - More research is necessary to determine whether the RMMM is a useful tool on which Finco can base the development of RM over the next few years. Practical implications - The RMMM acts as a practical knowledge management tool, and will act as a future reference for the RMs as they attempt to further develop the business/IT relationship. Originality/value - The findings provide an initial endorsement of the knowledge sharing perspective to understand the business/IT relationship. Also, the RMMM can be used to identify problematic issues and develop processes to address them
CPT and Lorentz-invariance violation
The largest gap in our understanding of nature at the fundamental level is
perhaps a unified description of gravity and quantum theory. Although there are
currently a variety of theoretical approaches to this question, experimental
research in this field is inhibited by the expected Planck-scale suppression of
quantum-gravity effects. However, the breakdown of spacetime symmetries has
recently been identified as a promising signal in this context: a number of
models for underlying physics can accommodate minuscule Lorentz and CPT
violation, and such effects are amenable to ultrahigh-precision tests. This
presentation will give an overview of the subject. Topics such as motivations,
the SME test framework, mechanisms for relativity breakdown, and experimental
tests will be reviewed. Emphasis is given to observations involving antimatter.Comment: 6 page
Structures and waves in a nonlinear heat-conducting medium
The paper is an overview of the main contributions of a Bulgarian team of
researchers to the problem of finding the possible structures and waves in the
open nonlinear heat conducting medium, described by a reaction-diffusion
equation. Being posed and actively worked out by the Russian school of A. A.
Samarskii and S.P. Kurdyumov since the seventies of the last century, this
problem still contains open and challenging questions.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, the final publication will appear in Springer
Proceedings in Mathematics and Statistics, Numerical Methods for PDEs:
Theory, Algorithms and their Application
SYM, Chern-Simons, Wess-Zumino Couplings and their higher derivative corrections in IIA Superstring theory
We find the entire form of the amplitude of two fermion strings (with
different chirality), a massless scalar field and one closed string
Ramond-Ramond (RR) in IIA superstring theory which is different from its IIB
one. We make use of a very particular gauge fixing and explore several new
couplings in IIA. All infinite - channel scalar poles and - channel
fermion poles are also constructed. We find new form of higher derivative
corrections to two fermion two scalar couplings and show that the first simple
channel scalar pole for case can be obtained by having new
higher derivative corrections to SYM couplings at third order of . We
find that the general structure and the coefficients of higher derivative
corrections to two fermion two scalar couplings are completely different from
the derived higher derivative corrections of type IIB.Comment: 29 pages, no figure,Latex file,published version in EPJ
Gravitational physics with antimatter
The production of low-energy antimatter provides unique opportunities to
search for new physics in an unexplored regime. Testing gravitational
interactions with antimatter is one such opportunity. Here a scenario based on
Lorentz and CPT violation in the Standard- Model Extension is considered in
which anomalous gravitational effects in antimatter could arise.Comment: 5 pages, presented at the International Conference on Exotic Atoms
(EXA 2008) and the 9th International Conference on Low Energy Antiproton
Physics (LEAP 2008), Vienna, Austria, September 200
Electromagnetic form factor via Minkowski and Euclidean Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes
The electromagnetic form factors calculated through Euclidean Bethe-Salpeter
amplitude and through the light-front wave function are compared with the one
found using the Bethe-Salpeter amplitude in Minkowski space. The form factor
expressed through the Euclidean Bethe-Salpeter amplitude (both within and
without static approximation) considerably differs from the Minkowski one,
whereas form factor found in the light-front approach is almost
indistinguishable from it.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the 20th
International Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics (FB20), Pisa, Italy,
September 10-14, 2007. To be published in "Few-Body Systems
Effects of Top-quark Compositeness on Higgs Boson Production at the LHC
Motivated by the possibility that the right-handed top-quark (t_R) is
composite, we discuss the effects of dimension-six operators on the Higgs boson
production at the LHC. When t_R is the only composite particle among the
Standard Model (SM) particles, the (V+A)\otimes (V+A) type four-top-quark
contact interaction is expected to have the largest coefficient among the
dimension-six operators, according to the Naive Dimensional Analysis (NDA). We
find that, to lowest order in QCD and other SM interactions, the cross section
of the SM Higgs boson production via gluon fusion does not receive corrections
from one insertion of the new contact interaction vertex. We also discuss the
effects of other dimension-six operators whose coefficients are expected to be
the second and the third largest from NDA. We find that the operator which
consists of two t_R's and two SM Higgs boson doublets can recognizably change
the Higgs boson production cross section from the SM prediction if the cut-off
scale is \sim 1TeV.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. v2: explanations improved in Section 3, other
minor changes. Version published in JHE
Orbitofrontal cortex volume and brain reward response in obesity.
Background/objectivesWhat drives overconsumption of food is poorly understood. Alterations in brain structure and function could contribute to increased food seeking. Recently, brain orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) volume has been implicated in dysregulated eating but little is known how brain structure relates to function.Subjects/methodsWe examined obese (n=18, age=28.7±8.3 years) and healthy control women (n=24, age=27.4±6.3 years) using a multimodal brain imaging approach. We applied magnetic resonance and diffusion tensor imaging to study brain gray and white matter volume as well as white matter (WM) integrity, and tested whether orbitofrontal cortex volume predicts brain reward circuitry activation in a taste reinforcement-learning paradigm that has been associated with dopamine function.ResultsObese individuals displayed lower gray and associated white matter volumes (P<0.05 family-wise error (FWE)- small volume corrected) compared with controls in the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum and insula. White matter integrity was reduced in obese individuals in fiber tracts including the external capsule, corona radiata, sagittal stratum, and the uncinate, inferior fronto-occipital, and inferior longitudinal fasciculi. Gray matter volume of the gyrus rectus at the medial edge of the orbitofrontal cortex predicted functional taste reward-learning response in frontal cortex, insula, basal ganglia, amygdala, hypothalamus and anterior cingulate cortex in control but not obese individuals.ConclusionsThis study indicates a strong association between medial orbitofrontal cortex volume and taste reinforcement-learning activation in the brain in control but not in obese women. Lower brain volumes in the orbitofrontal cortex and other brain regions associated with taste reward function as well as lower integrity of connecting pathways in obesity (OB) may support a more widespread disruption of reward pathways. The medial orbitofrontal cortex is an important structure in the termination of food intake and disturbances in this and related structures could contribute to overconsumption of food in obesity
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