bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gerontechnology: The importance of user participation in ICT development for older adults
Authors: Bjering Heidi  , Curry Joanne  , Maeder Anthony
Published: February 2025

With the ageing of our society and the increasing pressure on health and aged care services, the need for technological solutions to help older people stay in their own home for as long as possible is becoming increasingly important. To create information and communications technology (ICT) that will fit with the way older people live their lives and wish to use technology, necessitates their involvement in the design and development process. This paper will highlight some of the issues when designing for and with older people, and highlights the need for more research on how to involve older persons as stakeholders when designing technology for their use, as well as the need for easily accessible guidelines for how to do this.
Plug-and-play Integration of dual-model based Knowledge Artefacts into an Open Source Ehr System
Authors: Krexner Rabea  , Duftschmid Georg
Published: February 2025

In this paper we present our experiences with extending an existing approach for an archetype-compliant collection and export of data according to the openEHR specifications within the open source EHR system OpenMRS. It allows an automatic generation of forms from templates, which were introduced by openEHR as an extension of the dual-model approach. Data entered in these forms can be exported in form of standardized EHR extracts. The use of templates allowed us to solve problems reported for the original archetype-based version of the approach, which were caused by the high optionality within archetypes.
Breast Cancer and Quality of Life: Medical Information Extraction from Health Forums
Authors: Opitz Thomas  , Aze Jérome  , Bringay Sandra  , Joutard Cyrille  , Lavergne Christian  , Mollevi Caroline
Published: February 2025

Internet health forums are a rich textual resource with content generated through free exchanges among patients and, in certain cases, health professionals. We tackle the problem of retrieving clinically relevant information from such forums, with relevant topics being defined from clinical auto-questionnaires. Texts in forums are largely unstructured and noisy, calling for adapted preprocessing and query methods. We minimize the number of false negatives in queries by using a synonym tool to achieve query expansion of initial topic keywords. To avoid false positives, we propose a new measure based on a statistical comparison of frequent co-occurrences in a large reference corpus (Web) to keep only relevant expansions. Our work is motivated by a study of breast cancer patients' health-related quality of life (QoL). We consider topics defined from a breast-cancer specific QoL-questionnaire. We quantify and structure occurrences in posts of a specialized French forum and outline important future developments.
Requirements and tasks of cohorts and registers, the German KoRegIT project
Authors: Michalik Claudia  , Dress Jochen  , Ngouongo Sylvie  , Stäubert Sebastian  , Weber Ulrike  , Brockmeyer Norbert  , Paulus Ursula  , Stausberg Jürgen
Published: February 2025

Epidemiological cohorts and registers (KoReg) are long lasting and complex research projects, which need systematic and extensive planning and steering. The aim of the KoRegIT project was to develop a generic catalogue of requirements to support the organisational- and IT-structure of KoReg. The catalogue of requirements comprises the top level (TL) tasks of the core processes. All TL were classified into the following project phases: 1. Development, 2. Operation, 3. Completion. According to the defined TL tasks, the appropriate use cases (UC) were identified. The catalogue currently specifies 45 TL tasks and 207 UC. The UC were elaborated by a short and standardized description of the task, the involved actors (human or external systems), the preconditions, which have to be fulfilled in order to realize this task, the normal flow of the task and the post conditions. The developed catalogue was reviewed by representatives of different KoReg in Germany. The draft catalogue of requirements was revised according to the reviewer's feedback and discussion. The revised and complete catalogue with all elaborated UC was reviewed again by further experts. The developed KoRegIT catalogue of requirements offers a supporting tool to set-up the organisational structures and processes of KoReg as well as the definition of the needed IT-infrastructure. In addition it can be used to optimize or to expand these structures.
Interpretable Associations over DataCubes: Application to Hospital Managerial Decision Making
Authors: Prados De Reyes Miguel  , Molina Carlos  , Prados Belén  , Peña yañez Carmen
Published: February 2025

The world concern about the costs of the health care systems has raised the importance of counting on precise and interpretable tools, that help the health care institution's managers to make decisions to optimize the use of health resources. In this paper we propose a new Classification based on Association Rules (CAR) algorithm that improves the interpretability of the results, making it specially useful for decision making. Changing the usual way to obtain the rules we follow four goals: first to improve the interpretability of the result by obtaining rules meaningful and interpretable by themselves, secondly to reduce the complexity of the result obtaining a lower number of rules; thirdly, to obtain simpler rules, with less size in number of antecedents; and finally to avoid the usual over-fitting problem of the classification methods by obtaining a generic final result set, where specific rules for specific cases are avoided unless they are necessary. To prove the utility of our proposal we have used it in an example of decision support regarding the planning of the surgery rooms.
The expectations of nurses about the implementation of a barcoded medication administration system: a qualitative study
Authors: Taliercio Vanina  , Schachner Bibiana  , Borbolla Damian  , Luna Daniel  , Villalba Elsa  , Quiros Fernan
Published: February 2025

The implementation of a health system like the Barcode Administration System (BCMA) often disrupts the workflow of nursing staff. Taking into account that system acceptance by nurses is one of the most important factors for successful implementation, this paper describes nurses' expectations regarding the introduction of BCMA. For this purpose, interviews were conducted with 18 nurses in different units of an academic medical center in Argentina. Analysis of the interviews produced six main themes. Among these themes two factors were identified as determinants for system acceptance: ease of use perceptions and usefulness.
Multinational surveys for monitoring eHealth policy implementations – usefulness and pitfalls
Authors: Gilstad Heidi  , Faxvaag Arild  , Hyppönen Hannele  , Koch Sabine  , Nøhr Christian  , Skauli Kristian
Published: February 2025

Development of multinational variables for monitoring eHealth policy implementations is a complex task and requires multidisciplinary, knowledge-based international collaboration. Experts in an interdisciplinary workshop identified useful data and pitfalls for comparative variable development. The results are presented and discussed in this paper.
An Approach for Utilizing Clinical Statements in HL7 RIM to Evaluate Eligibility Criteria
Authors: Bache Richard  , Daniel Christel  , James Julie  , Hussain Sajjad  , McGilchrist Mark  , Delaney Brendan  , Taweel Adel
Published: February 2025

The HL7 RIM (Reference Information Model) is a commonly used standard for the exchange of clinical data and can be employed for integrating the patient care and clinical research domains. Yet it is not sufficiently well specified to ensure a canonical representation of structured clinical data when used for the automated evaluation of eligibility criteria from a clinical trial protocol. We present an approach to further constrain the RIM to create a common information model to hold clinical data. In order to demonstrate our approach, we identified 132 distinct data elements from 10 rich clinical trails. We then defined a taxonomy to (i) identify the types of data elements that would need to be stored and (ii) define the types of predicate that would be used to evaluate them. This informed the definition of a pattern used to represent the data, which was shown to be sufficient for storing and evaluating the clinical statements required by the trials.
Estimating the Impact of Prevention Action: A simulation Model of Cervical Cancer Progression
Authors: Rosen-Zvi Michal  , Shpigelman Lavi  , Kalton Alan  , Weissbrod Omer  , Akindeinde Saheed  , Benefeldt Soren  , Bentley Andrew  , Everett Terry  , Jajinskiji Joseph  , Kweyu Emmanuel  , Neti Chalapathy  , Saab Joe  , Stewart Osamuyimen  , Ward Malcolm  , Xie Guo Tong
Published: February 2025

Cervical cancer is one of the highest occurring cancers for women in East Africa. Many studies have shown that disease occurrences and particularly the number of deaths due to the disease can be reduced significantly by screening and vaccination. East Africa and Kenya in particular are undergoing change and taking actions to reduce disease levels. However, up until today disease level in the different districts in Kenya is not known nor what be the prevalence of disease when prevention actions take place. In this paper we propose a novel Bayesian model for estimating disease levels based on available partial reports and demographic information. The result is a simulation engine that provides estimations of the impact of various potential prevention actions.
Embracing case management for computerization of care pathways
Authors: Mei Jing  , Li Jing  , Yu Yiqin  , Li Xiang  , Liu Haifeng  , Xie Guotong
Published: February 2025

The computerization of care pathways (CPs) has drawn considerable attention, for improving quality of health care and reducing costs. A well-known big challenge of implementing CPs is their flexibility and ad hoc variations in execution of clinical tasks. We observe that case management suits well to address this problem, and this paper proposes a CMMN-based CP model, where CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation) is becoming an industry standard. Via an experimental experience on modelling CHF (congestive heart failure) ambulatory CP, we illustrate that the usage of case management paves the way to popularize CPs, particularly for its quick deployment and execution in industrial products.
Mining Level of Control in Medical Organizations
Authors: Çalimli Olgu  , Türkeli Serkan  , Eken Emir Gökberk  , Gönen Halil Emre
Published: February 2025

In literature of strategic management, there are three layers of control defined in organizational structures. These layers are strategic, tactical and operational, in which resides senior, medium level and low level managers respectively. In strategic level, institutional strategies are determined according to senior managers' perceived state of organization. In tactical level, this strategy is processed into methods and activities of a business management plan. Operational level embodies actions and functions to sustain specified business management plan. An acknowledged lead organization in Turkish medical area is examined using case study and data mining method in the scope of this paper. The level of decisions regarded in managerial purposes evaluated through chosen organization's business intelligence event logs report. Hence specification of management level importance of medical organizations is made. Case study, data mining and descriptive statistical method of taken case's reports present that positions of “Chief Executive Officer”, “Outpatient Center Manager”, “General Manager”, monitored and analyzed functions of operational level management more frequently than strategic and tactical level. Absence of strategic management decision level research in medical area distinguishes this paper and consequently substantiates its significant contribution.
Supporting talk-based mental health interventions with digital whiteboards
Authors: Perlich Anja  , Von Thienen Julia  , Meinel Christoph
Published: February 2025

The potential of mental health interventions supported by computers has rarely been explored to date, and the use of technology has hence been limited. There is a need for finding new ways of providing engaging psychotherapy services. We introduce the digital whiteboard system Tele-Board MED (TBM) as a new approach of promoting patient-therapist interaction and joint documentation. Based on observations of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) sessions and a text material review we identified possibly useful features. We conducted a qualitative and quantitative feedback study with 34 therapists in the form of a questionnaire based on a video showing the system's fundamental concept and features. This allowed us to evaluate the therapists' attitudes and the ability of a system like TBM to meet user needs. We encountered willingness to use the system primarily driven by practical interest in fulfilling administrative and legal requirements. Skepticism regarding patient file transparency and technology use was also found. The main insight is that reestablishing the nature of CBT sessions towards higher patient engagement can more successfully be pursued if technology provides incentives for therapists, such as features that speed up administrative tasks.
Towards a Web-Based Decision Support Tool for Selecting Appropriate Statistical Test in Medical and Biological Sciences
Authors: Suner Aslı  , Karakülah Gökhan  , Dicle Oğuz
Published: February 2025

Statistical hypothesis testing is an essential component of biological and medical studies for making inferences and estimations from the collected data in the study; however, the misuse of statistical tests is widely common. In order to prevent possible errors in convenient statistical test selection, it is currently possible to consult available test selection algorithms developed for various purposes. However, the lack of an algorithm presenting the most common statistical tests used in biomedical research in a single flowchart causes several problems such as shifting users among the algorithms, poor decision support in test selection and lack of satisfaction of potential users. Herein, we demonstrated a unified flowchart; covers mostly used statistical tests in biomedical domain, to provide decision aid to non-statistician users while choosing the appropriate statistical test for testing their hypothesis. We also discuss some of the findings while we are integrating the flowcharts into each other to develop a single but more comprehensive decision algorithm.
Explicit Evidence for Prognostic Bayesian Network Models
Authors: Yet Barbaros  , Perkins Zane  , Tai Nigel  , Marsh William
Published: February 2025

Many prognostic models are not adopted in clinical practice regardless of their reported accuracy. Doubts about the basis of the model is considered to be a major reason for this as the evidence behind clinical models is often not clear to anyone other than their developers. We propose a framework for representing the evidence behind Bayesian networks (BN) developed for prognostic decision support. The aim of this evidence framework is to be able to present all the evidence alongside the BN itself. We illustrate this framework by a BN developed with clinical evidence to predict coagulation disorders in trauma care.
A Framework for Evaluating and Utilizing Medical Terminology Mappings
Authors: Hussain Sajjad  , Sun Hong  , Sinaci Anil  , Erturkmen Gokce Banu Laleci  , Mead Charles  , Gray Alasdair J.G.  , McGuinness Deborah L.  , Prud'Hommeaux Eric  , Daniel Christel  , Forsberg Kerstin
Published: February 2025

Use of medical terminologies and mappings across them are considered to be crucial pre-requisites for achieving interoperable eHealth applications. Built upon the outcomes of several research projects, we introduce a framework for evaluating and utilizing terminology mappings that offers a platform for i) performing various mappings strategies, ii) representing terminology mappings together with their provenance information, and iii) enabling terminology reasoning for inferring both new and erroneous mappings. We present the results of the introduced framework from SALUS project where we evaluated the quality of both existing and inferred terminology mappings among standard terminologies.
Structuring Medication Related Activities for Information Management
Authors: Luukkonen Irmeli  , Mykkänen Juha  , Kivekäs Eija  , Saranto Kaija
Published: February 2025

Medication treatment and the related information management are central parts of a patient's health care. As a cross-organizational and cooperative process, medication information management is a complex domain for development activities. We studied medication activities and related information management in a regional project in order to produce a shared broad picture of its processes and to understand the main issues and the needs for improvement. In this paper we provide a summary of the findings in a structured form, based on a six-dimensioned framework for design and analysis of activities and processes.
Fall-related Information seeking behavior of seniors on the web
Authors: Askari Marjan  , Eslami Saied  , Medlock Stephanie  , de Rooij Sophia E.  , Abu-Hanna Ameen
Published: February 2025

Falls form a major health problem for older persons, and increasingly strain the healthcare system. The Internet is a potentially useful platform for empowering seniors. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the information-seeking behavior about falls among elderly Internet users. A web-based survey was distributed among all members of an association of elderly people (> 60 years old). Fallers and non-fallers, seniors with and without experience with information seeking and the willingness of elderly for undertaking self-assessment tests on the Internet versus solely receiving information about falls were compared. In general, there was much stated interest in receiving information about conditions and medications that increase the risk of falls and information on safety in the house. Around half of the 62 respondents did not feel that they are well-informed about falls. Searching for fall-related information was not significantly associated with having falls in the previous 12 months (OR 2.11, CI: 0.55–8.16). The majority expressed higher interest in receiving fall-related information than undertaking a self-assessment test. However, only a small proportion had searched for this information already.
A novel personal health system with integrated decision support and guidance for the management of chronic liver disease
Authors: Kiefer Stephan  , Schäfer Michael  , Bransch Marco  , Brimmers Peter  , Bartolomé Diego  , Baños Janie  , Orr James  , Jones Dave  , Jara Maximilian  , Stockmann Martin
Published: February 2025

A personal health system platform for the management of patients with chronic liver disease that incorporates a novel approach to integrate decision support and guidance through care pathways for patients and their doctors is presented in this paper. The personal health system incorporates an integrated decision support engine that guides patients and doctors through the management of the disease by issuing tasks and providing recommendations to both the care team and the patient and by controlling the execution of a Care Flow Plan based on the results of tasks and the monitored health status of the patient. This Care Flow Plan represents a formal, business process based model of disease management designed off-line by domain experts on the basis of clinical guidelines, knowledge of care pathways and an organisational model for integrated, patient-centred care. In this way, remote monitoring and treatment are dynamically adapted to the patient's actual condition and clinical symptoms and allow flexible delivery of care with close integration of specialists, therapists and care-givers.
Heuristic evaluation and thinking aloud test of a digitized questionnaire for diabetes outpatient clinics
Authors: Schaarup Clara  , Hejlesen Ole K.
Published: February 2025

Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by hyperglycaemia. The number of patients with diabetes is expected to exceed 592 million in 2035. The growing number of diabetics is a great burden for the Danish healthcare system. The Danish government desires a modern and efficient healthcare system with a high patient security and a coherent continuity of care. To achieve these outcomes medical record-keeping, paper questionnaires and notes must be digitized. The current system enforces that the diabetics fill out questionnaires in paper form after which the healthcare personnel enter the same information in the electronic health record. In this study, an online questionnaire was designed and the usability was evaluated using the following parameters: learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction. The parameters were evaluated by using the discount usability engineering method. 5 double specialists and 6 patients diagnosed with diabetes provided the data of the study. The results indicated that simple and obvious figures were preferred in the online questionnaire, as well as error preventing in the form of validation fields. This study inspire to further development in the digitizing process.
A semi-automatic web based tool for the selection of research projects reviewers
Authors: Pupella Valeria  , Monteverde Maria Eugenia  , Lombardo Claudio  , Belardelli Filippo  , Giacomini Mauro
Published: February 2025

The correct evaluation of research proposals continues today to be problematic, and in many cases, grants and fellowships are subjected to this type of assessment. A web based semi-automatic tool to help in the selection of reviewers was developed. The core of the proposed system is the matching of the MeSH Descriptors of the publications submitted by the reviewers (for their accreditation) and the Descriptor linked to the research keywords, which were selected. Moreover, a citation related index was further calculated and adopted in order to discard not suitable reviewers. This tool was used as a support in a web site for the evaluation of candidates applying for a fellowship in the oncology field.
Monitoring health IT integration – the effect of an EMR on laboratory service timeliness across six Australian hospitals
Authors: Georgiou Andrew  , Vecellio Elia  , Li Ling  , Eigenstetter Alex  , Wilson Roger  , Toouli George  , Westbrook Johanna I.
Published: February 2025

The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) incorporates computerised provider order entry systems which allow clinicians to order diagnostic tests electronically, thus eliminating the need for cumbersome handwritten orders. In many situations the EMR relies on a manual transition of information across systems (e.g., integration with the Laboratory Information System). This study, based in a laboratory setting requiring such a transition across systems, aimed to compare the data entry time (from when a specimen arrives in the Central Specimen Reception [CSR] area of the laboratory, to when it is forwarded on for processing), along with a laboratory turnaround time (TAT) (from the time a specimen is received to the time a verified result is issued) for paper and EMR orders, for two high volume tests, across six hospitals. Results showed that the median data entry time for all hospitals combined, was three minutes shorter for EMR entered orders than paper orders. This difference was consistent and significant for Electrolytes, Urea, Creatinine (EUC) and Automated Differential (including full blood count) tests in 2010 and 2011. These decreases contributed to significantly lower median Laboratory TATs for EMR orders (for EUC tests the difference in medians was 12 minutes in 2010 and six minutes in 2011; for Automated Differential tests, the difference was four minutes in 2010 and two minutes in 2011).
Enhancing informatics competency under uncertainty at the point of decision: a knowing about knowing vision
Authors: Kaltoft Mette Kjer  , Nielsen Jesper Bo  , Salkeld Glenn  , Dowie Jack
Published: February 2025

Most informatics activity is aimed at reducing unnecessary errors, mistakes and misjudgements at the point of decision, insofar as these arise from inappropriate accessing and processing of data and information. Healthcare professionals use the results of scientific research, when available, and ‘big data’, when rigorously analysed, as inputs into the probability judgements that need to be made in decision making under uncertainty. But these judgements are needed irrespective of the state of ‘the evidence’ and personalised evidence on person/patient-important criteria is very often poor or lacking. This final stage in ‘translation to the bedside’ has received relatively little attention in the medical, nursing, or health informatics literature, until the recent appearance of ‘cognitive informatics’. Positive experience and feed-back from several thousand students who have experienced exercises in assigning probabilities informs our future vision in which better decisions result from healthcare professionals – indeed all of us – having accepted that probability assignment is a skill, with the internal coherence and external correspondence of the probabilities assigned as twin evaluative criteria. As a route to improved correspondence – in the absence of the systematic recording and monitoring of real world judgments that would be the normal pathway to quality improvement – a ‘Prober’ is a set of statements to which the respondent supplies their personal probabilities that a statement is true. They receive the proper Brier score and its decomposition as analytical feedback, along with graphic representations of their discrimination and calibration, the two key components of good correspondence. Provided with estimates of their sensitivity (mean probability true for true statements) and specificity (1 minus mean probability true for false statements) they can visualise themselves as a ‘test’ when making diagnostic and prognostic judgements , thereby being given the cognitive foundation for such reflection in their clinical practice, including ‘reflection in action’. They acknowledge that an appropriate balance of intuition and analysis is required, as in Hammond's Cognitive Continuum, and are made aware of the cognitive and motivated biases that can prevent us knowing ‘how much we know about how much we know’, with its deleterious effect on decision quality. Probability exercises, such as ‘Probers’, are proposed as an enhancement of professional courses and virtual learning environments, such as the TIGER initiative in nursing, through which the competency portfolio of all those seeking to deliver high quality person/patient-centred care can be expanded.
Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Based Prediction of Object Oriented Software Maintainability
Authors: Olatunji S.O.  , Selamat Ali
Published: February 2025

In this paper, a maintainability prediction model for an object-oriented software system based on type-2 fuzzy logic system is presented. With the proliferation of object-oriented software systems, it has become very essential for concerned organizations to maintain those systems appropriately and effectively. However, it is pathetic to note that just very few number of maintainability prediction models are currently available for object oriented software systems. In this work, maintainability prediction model based on type-2 fuzzy logic systems is developed for an object-oriented software system. Earlier published object-oriented metric dataset was used in building the proposed model. Comparative studies involving the prediction accuracy of the proposed model was carried out in relation to the earlier used models on the same datasets. Empirical results from experiments carried out indicates that the proposed type-2 fuzzy logic system produced better and interesting results in terms of prediction accuracy measures authorized in object oriented software maintainability literatures. In fact, the proposed method satisfies the three major conditions stated in the literatures as basis to determining a good maintainability prediction model.
Methodologies for Agile Product Line Engineering: A Survey and Evaluation
Authors: Farahani Farima Farmahini  , Ramsin Raman
Published: February 2025

Agile Product Line Engineering (APLE) is a relatively new approach which has emerged as the result of combining two successful approaches: Software Product Line Engineering and Agile Software Development. The goal of this combined approach is to cover the weaknesses of each of the two approaches while maximizing the advantages of both. Several methodologies exist which provide a practical process for applying APLE. In this paper, a select set of these methodologies are evaluated using a criteria-based approach, the results of which highlight each methodology's strengths and weaknesses. The evaluation framework and the results can be helpful in selecting, comparing, and modifying APLE methodologies; they can also be used for developing bespoke APLE methodologies, tailored to fit the specific needs of organizations and projects.
Simulated Annealing Based Strategy for Test Redundancy Reduction
Authors: Zamli Kamal Z.  , Mohd Hassin Mohd Hafiz  , Al-Kazemi Basem  , Naseer Atif
Published: February 2025

Software testing relates to the process of accessing the functionality of a program against some defined specifications. To ensure conformance, test engineers often generate a set of test cases to validate against the user requirements. When dealing with large line of codes (LOCs), there are potentially issue of redundancies as new test cases may be added and old test cases may be deleted during the whole testing process. In order to address this issue, we have developed a new strategy, called tReductSA, to systematically minimize test cases for testing consideration. Unlike existing works which rely on the Greedy approaches, our work adopts the random sequence permutation and optimization algorithm based on Simulated Annealing with systematic merging technique. Our benchmark experiments demonstrate that tReductSA scales well with existing works (including that of GE, GRE and HGS) as far as optimality is concerned. On the other note, tReductSA also offers more diversified solutions as compared to existing work.
Strategy to Activate Rural Areas Using Web Advertising and Social Networks
Authors: Komatsu Issei  , Takagi Masanori  , Yamada Keizo  , Sasaki Jun
Published: February 2025

In Japan, the population flow into urban areas has seen the economic power of rural areas decrease. This has made it difficult for rural areas to maintain their historical and cultural heritage. Strategies combining information technology with tourism have been applied in many local areas, but the effects have not been significant. In this study, we aim to discover local features of interest that are buried within rural areas, and publicize them on a nationwide or worldwide scale using information systems. We develop a system for discovering local features that may be broadly unknown, and discuss issues related to the activation of local areas using information technology. We then propose a strategy to activate rural areas using web advertising and social network services. The effect of web advertising and the possibility of targeting users are further examined based on the experimental results.
Performance Comparison of Popular Routing Algorithms in Pocket Switched Networks
Authors: Yulianti Deni  , Mandala Satria  , Nasien Dewi  , Ngadi Md. Asri  , Yahaya Coulibaly
Published: February 2025

Internet is popular in our daily life and has become ubiquitous. However, not all places have Internet access, such as in roads, highways, stadiums, gardens, and other places that have lack of adequate infrastructure for Internet access. Fortunately, the increasing number of smart phones has made it possible to access Internet in these areas due to the advanced mobility features of these devices. Pocket Switched Network (PSN) is a future of Internet. PSN provides a new paradigm to distribute messages in the network by taking advantage of roaming nodes from one place to another place. In this paper, the performance of five different routing protocols is investigated. The investigated protocols are Epidemic, PRotocol using History of Encounter and Transitivity (PRoPHET), Spray and wait, Binary spray and wait, and PRoPHETv2. The performance metrics are packet delivery probability, overhead ratio and average latency. ONE was used to carry the aforementioned evaluations. The results of the experiments show that Epidemic protocol has a better performance in term of message delivery ratio, but it has a high overhead ratio. PRoPHETv2 has a better performance than PRoPHET in terms of delivery ratio and overhead. Finally, Binary spray and wait outperforms in term of delivery ratio than spray and wait protocol.
Arguments and Their Strength: Revisiting Pollock's Anti-Probabilistic Starting Points
Authors: Verheij Bart
Published: February 2025

Pollock's concepts of reasons and defeaters have been widely adopted, but his anti-probabilistic treatment of argument strength less so. After an explanation of how Pollock's concerns can be addressed probabilistically, the paper continues with a formal treatment of reasons, defeaters, and argument strength, while remaining within standard probability theory and its underlying classical logic. Pollock studied puzzles about self-defeat and collective defeat (associated with the lottery paradox), and it is shown how these can be addressed probabilistically. A normative framework for arguments and their strength, as provided here, is needed for the development of rationality support tools for the prevention of reasoning errors.
Applying the Realism-Based Ontology-Versioning Method for Tracking Changes in the Basic Formal Ontology
Authors: Seppälä Selja  , Smith Barry  , Ceusters Werner
Published: February 2025

Changes in an upper level ontology have obvious consequences for the domain ontologies that use it at lower levels. It is therefore crucial to document the changes made between successive versions of ontologies of this kind. We describe and apply a method for tracking, explaining and measuring changes between successive versions of upper level ontologies such as the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The proposed change-tracking method extends earlier work on Realism-Based Ontology Versioning (RBOV) and Evolutionary Terminology Auditing (ETA). We describe here the application of this evaluation method to changes between BFO 1.0, BFO 1.1, and BFO 2.0. We discuss the issues raised by this application and describe the extensions which we added to the original evaluation schema in order to account for changes in this type of ontology. The results of our study show that BFO has undergone eight types of changes that can be systematically explained by the extended evaluation schema. Finally, we discuss problematic cases, possible pitfalls and certain limits of our study that we propose to address in future work.
An Ontological Analysis of Reference in Health Record Statements
Authors: Schulz Stefan  , Martínez-Costa Catalina  , Karlsson Daniel  , Cornet Ronald  , Brochhausen Mathias  , Rector Alan
Published: February 2025

The relation between an information entity and its referent can be described as a second-order statement, as long as the referent is a type. This is typical for medical discourse such as diagnostic statements in electronic health records (EHRs), which often express hypotheses or probability assertions about the existence of an instance of, e.g. a disease type. This paper presents several approximations using description logics and a query language, the entailments of which are checked against a reference standard. Their pros and cons are discussed in the light of formal ontology and logic.
Unit of Organizational Learning Ontology based on LOM Standard and IMS Learning Design
Authors: Menolli André  , Pinto H. Sofia  , Reinehr Sheila  , Malucelli Andreia
Published: February 2025

Organizational learning helps companies to improve their processes through the reuse of experiences. An area that may contribute to promote organizational learning is social learning. Collaborative tools, such as social networks and wikis, enable collaborative work and are important facilitators of social learning processes. However, collaboration is just one of the several needed components for learning. It is important that all acquired knowledge is organized to be reused faster, more easily and efficiently. For this, we propose using learning objects and units of learning to organize the content inserted in collaborative tools. In this context, there are some learning objects and units of learning metadata to describe relevant learning objects and units of learning characteristics, but since this metadata is proposed to describe educational units of learning and learning objects, it does not take into account organizational characteristics, important for knowledge-intensive organizations. Moreover, metadata is formally modeled through XML-Schema language, which lacks expressiveness. Thus, trying to solve these limitations, and integrate concepts from different models, this paper presents an ontology for organizational units of learning based on IEEE LOM standard, the IMS LD and IMS CP, to be used specifically by software development companies. This paper describes the ontology building process and shows how this ontology can be used in a software development company.
Adding Convexity to Mereotopology
Authors: Haemmerli Marion  , Varzi Achille C.
Published: February 2025

Convexity predicates and the convex hull operator continue to play an important role in theories of spatial representation and reasoning, yet their first-order axiomatization is still a matter of controversy. In this paper, we present a new approach to adding convexity to a mereotopological theory with boundary elements by specifying first-order axioms for a binary segment operator s. We show that our axioms yield a convex hull operator h that supports, not only the basic properties of convex regions, but also complex properties concerning region alignment. We also argue that h is stronger than convex hull operators from existing axiomatizations and show how to derive the latter from our axioms for s.
Uses of Machine Translation in the Sentiment Analysis of Tweets
Authors: Peisenieks Jānis  , Skadiņš Raivis
Published: February 2025

This paper reports on the viability of using machine translation (MT) for determining the original sentiment of tweets, when translating tweets made in internationally less used language into more frequently used ones. The results of the study show that it is possible to use MT and sentiment analysis (SA) systems to produce SA results with significant precision.
Building the World's Best General Domain MT for Baltic Languages
Authors: Skadiņš Raivis  , Šics Valters  , Rozis Roberts
Published: February 2025

In this paper we present our experience in building machine translation (MT) systems for the languages of the Baltic States: Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. The paper reports on the implementation, research, data, data collection methods, and evaluation of the MT. Results of the evaluation show that it is possible to collect a sufficient amount of data and train MT systems that can compete with Google in quality and even overtake it in general domain MT.
Error-Annotated Corpus of Latvian
Authors: Deksne Daiga  , Skadiņa Inguna
Published: February 2025

This paper reports on the development of the annotated Latvian language error corpus designed for grammar checker development and evaluation. We describe the error classification system introduced for this purpose, the annotation process, and guidelines. Two corpora (the corpus of student papers and the balanced text corpus) consisting of a total of 20,877 sentences have been created and annotated. A general characterisation of the corpora and a summary of the annotation results are presented.
Automatic and Manual Annotations in First Encounter Dialogues
Authors: Jokinen Kristiina  , Wilcock Graham
Published: February 2025

As manual annotations are notoriously time- and resource-consuming there is great interest in developing automatic annotation tools. We explore how well automatic annotations of head nodding compare with those made by humans.
How Availability of Explicit Temporal Cues Affects Manual Temporal Relation Annotation
Authors: Orasmaa Siim
Published: February 2025

We investigate how presence and absence of explicit temporal cues (temporal expressions and verb tenses past simple and present) affect the quality of manually provided temporal relation annotations in Estonian. Results support the hypothesis that there is higher inter-annotator agreement and less vagueness in determining temporal relations in the presence of explicit temporal cues.
Hybrid Lemmatizer for Estonian
Authors: Tkachenko Alexander  , Petmanson Timo  , Laur Sven
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we present a lemmatizer for the Estonian language, which employs a hybrid approach to handle both in- and out-of-vocabulary words. Our method uses only publicly available data and does not require any external tools such as a POS tagger. In the process of experimentation, we achieved the accuracy of 91%.
Baseline for Keyword Spotting in Latvian Broadcast Speech
Authors: Darǵis Roberts  , Znotiņš Artūrs
Published: February 2025

This paper describes the first efforts of keyword identification in unconstrained Latvian broadcast speech. During this research a large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR), spotting in LVCSR lattices and acoustic keyword spotting had been compared. Open source tools and recently created 100 hours of Latvian Speech Recognition Corpus have been used.
Normalization and Automatized Sentiment Analysis of Contemporary Online Latvian Language
Authors: Garkāje Ginta  , Zilgalve Evelīna  , Darǵis Roberts
Published: February 2025

We describe contemporary language transliteration influence on automatized sentiment analysis. We state that the text normalization helps to achieve better results in automatized sentiment analysis and provide results to support the claim. Data used for the experiments are gathered via project Virtual Aggression Barometer. We use a normalization tool and an automatized classifier for the internet user comments with aggressive and non-aggressive sentiment.
The Social Data Environment
Authors: Elliot Mark  , Mackey Elaine
Published: February 2025

In previous work, we have introduced the data environment as a powerful explanatory concept in the realm of data privacy, with specific regard to the concepts of anonymisation and statistical disclosure. Here, we explain the concept more fully and examine how the socio technical system, that is titled social media, embodies and transforms the social data environment. We draw on both a social philosophy and sociological framework, but populate that framework with both agents and artefacts. We argue, that the data environment concept is an important organising principal, which has implications in epistemology and ontology, and for how we understand notions like disclosure, identity, society and perhaps most critically, privacy.
Local and Global Similarities in Fuzzy Class Theory
Authors: Armengol Eva  , Dellunde Pilar  , García-Cerdaña Àngel
Published: February 2025

Similarity is a central issue in many topics from psychology to artificial intelligence. In the present paper we want to contribute to the study of the similarity relation between objects represented as attribute-value pairs in the logical context. Following the idea that similarity is a phenomena essentially fuzzy, we introduce fuzzy similarities and prove some logical properties in the framework of Fuzzy Class Theory based on the logic MTLΛ. We prove that the global similarity inherits the usual properties of the local similarities (reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity). We also show that similar objects have similar properties, being these properties expressed by MTLΛ∀ formulas evaluated in these objects.
On the Characterization of the Maximal Ideal Recursive Semantics of RP-DeLP
Authors: Alsinet Teresa  , Béjar Ramón  , Godo Lluís  , Guitart Francesc
Published: February 2025

Possibilistic Defeasible Logic Programming (P-DeLP) is a logic programming framework which combines features from argumentation theory and logic programming, in which defeasible rules are attached with weights expressing their relative belief or preference strength. In P-DeLP a conclusion succeeds if there exists an argument that entails the conclusion and this argument is found to be undefeated by a warrant procedure that systematically explores the universe of arguments in order to present an exhaustive synthesis of the relevant chains of pros and cons for the given conclusion. Recently, we have proposed a new warrant recursive semantics for P-DeLP, called Recursive P-DeLP (RP-DeLP for short), based on the claim that the acceptance of an argument should imply also the acceptance of all its subarguments which reflect the different premises on which the argument is based. In RP-DeLP, an output of a program is a pair of sets, a set of warranted and a set of blocked conclusions.Arguments for both warranted and blocked conclusions are recursively based on warranted conclusions but, while warranted conclusions do not generate any conflict with the set of already warranted conclusions and the strict part of program (information we take for granted they hold true), blocked conclusions do. Conclusions that are neither warranted nor blocked correspond to rejected conclusions. This paper explores the relationship between the exhaustive dialectical analysis based semantics of P-DeLP and the recursive based semantics of RP-DeLP, and analyzes a non-monotonic inference operator for RP-DeLP which models the expansion of a given program by adding new weighed facts associated with warranted conclusions.
Telehealth as a tool for independent self-management by people living with long term conditions
Authors: Bond Carol S.
Published: February 2025

Telehealth is seen as a key component of 21stcentury healthcare, and studies have explored its cost effectiveness and impact on hospital admissions. Research has been carried out into how to best implement it, and the barriers to its adoption. The impact of telehealth on self-management however has been a neglected area. An evaluation of the implementation of a telehealth programme in one area in the South of England found that some patients were using the telehealth equipment provided to enhance their own self management abilities. Whilst the nurses managing the scheme felt that they had an education role they did not involve their patients in setting goals. The patients equally did not feel that were being educated by their nurses. Patients were using the monitoring equipment independently of the nurses and the scheme to support their self-management strategies. Therefore the concept of graduating from telehealth once good self-management is established needs to be rethought. Patients in this study experienced less face to face contact with their nurse, but also reported that they were happy with the changes. This suggests that for some patients the contact with the nurse may well be able to be reduced or withdrawn however removing the monitoring equipment will remove the very tools essential to continued self-management.