bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Using ELearning Techniques to Support Problem Based Learning Within a Clinical Simulation Laboratory
Authors: Docherty Charles  , Hoy Derek  , Topp Helena  , Trinder Kathryn
Published: February 2025

This paper details the results of the first phase of a project that used eLearning to support students' learning within a simulated environment. The locus was a purpose built Clinical Simulation Laboratory (CSL) where the School's newly adopted philosophy of Problem Based Learning (PBL) was challenged through lecturers reverting to traditional teaching methods. The solution, a student-centred, problem-based approach to the acquisition of clinical skills was developed using learning objects embedded within web pages that substituted for lecturers providing instruction and demonstration. This allowed lecturers to retain their facilitator role, and encouraged students to explore, analyse and make decisions within the safety of a clinical simulation. Learning was enhanced through network communications and reflection on video performances of self and others. Evaluations were positive, students demonstrating increased satisfaction with PBL, improved performance in exams, and increased self-efficacy in the performance of nursing activities. These results indicate that an elearning approach can support PBL in delivering a student centred learning experience.
Preparing Student Nurses, Faculty and Clinicians for 21$^{st}$ Century Informatics Practice: Findings from a National Survey of Nursing Education Programs in the United States
Authors: McNeil Barbara J.  , Elfrink Victoria L.  , Pierce Susan T.
Published: February 2025

Because healthcare delivery increasingly mandates data-driven decision-making, it is imperative that informatics knowledge and skills are integrated into nursing education curricula for all future nurse clinicians and educators. A national online survey of deans/directors of266 baccalaureate and higher nursing education programs in the U.S. identified perceived informatics competencies and knowledge of undergraduate and graduate nursing students; determined the preparedness of nurse faculty to teach and use informatics tools; and elicited perceptions of informatics requirements of local practicing nurses. Frequency data and qualitative responses were analyzed. Approximately half of the programs reported requiring word processing and email skills upon entry into the nursing major. The use of standardized languages and the nurse's role in the life cycle of an information system were the least visible informatics content at all levels. Half of program faculty, rated as “novice” or “advanced beginners”, are teaching information literacy skills. Findings have major implications for nurse educators, staff developers, and program administrators who are planning faculty/staff development opportunities and designing nursing education curricula that prepare nurses for professional practice.
Assessing Informatics in Canadian Schools of Nursing
Authors: Nagle Lynn M.  , Clarke Heather F.
Published: February 2025

The provision of informatics content in the basic education programs for Canadian nurses has been limited to date. In previous years, efforts to engage nurse educators in discussions regarding the significance of informatics for tomorrow's nurses had been met with limited interest and understanding. There was an obvious need to heighten the awareness and active participation of nurse leaders in the development of strategies to attend to the informatics education needs of Canadian nurses. This paper describes the findings of a national study to understand the current state of informatics integration within basic nursing curricula.
The impact of ICT on communication in Healthcare
Authors: Toussaint P.J.  , Verhoef J.  , Vlieland T.P.M. Vliet  , Zwetsloot-Schonk J.H.M.
Published: February 2025

Communication processes are pervasive in the daily practice of health professionals. Reorganizing these daily practices by introducing lCT, inevitably effects one or more communication processes. Understanding exactly what these effects are, is a majorproblem in designing and implementing lCT-applications. In this paper we present an analysis of these effects, based on a theory of communication processes. The concept of ‘decoupling’ is pivotal in our analysis. Based on the identified effects, and some preconditions that have to be met in order for these effects to take place, we derive a number of guidelines for reorganizing communication processes by means of applying lCT. The application of these quidelines will be demonstrated and discussed in the context of the reorganization of a team conference at the Rehabilitation Clinic of the Rheumatology Department of the Leiden University Medical Center (RCRD/LUMC).
ASKNet: Leveraging Bio-Cognitive Models in Natural Language Processing
Authors: Harrington Brian
Published: February 2025

This presentation will detail the inception, development and evaluation of ASKNet. A system which uses natural language processing tools in order to create psycholinguistically inspired, spreading activation based semantic networks from natural language texts.
The What, Why and How of the BI in BICA
Authors: Holland Owen  , Diamond Alan  , Mitra Bhargav  , Devereux David
Published: February 2025

The core ideas of BICA have already generated great interest, with a wide variety of work being submitted and discussed. However, it is certainly not too soon to look around, back, and forward to see if there are any considerations of scope, direction, or focus that might require modification or clarification in the future in order to assist the developmental process of the new discipline. This brief position paper offers some comments and suggestions on the purpose and nature of biological inspiration in the design of cognitive architectures, on ways in which biological characteristics can appear in such architectures other than by design, and on the significance of characterizing performance as human-level or human-like. Some of the comments are illustrated with reference to an ongoing project dealing with a human-like embodiment.
Small Brain Model Architectures
Authors: Peterson James K.
Published: February 2025

An outline of mechanisms that will allow the creation of small brain models is discussed. These models provide useful paradigms for mixed software and hardware devices that model computational cognition devices.
Towards a Biologically-Inspired Model for Relational Mapping Using Spiking Neurons
Authors: Biancaniello Paul  , Rosenbluth David  , Szumowski Tom  , Darvill John  , Hinnerschitz Nick  , Hummel John  , Mihalas Stefan
Published: February 2025

Relational mapping, a cognitive sub-process of relational reasoning, plays a critical role in identifying similarities between abstract constructs. This paper discusses an initial endeavor in developing a biologically-inspired spiking neuron model that performs relational mapping in a similar functional manner to existing cognitive models founded in neuroscience. Using spiking neurons provides a capability to portray neural dynamics that naturally lead to notions of critical relational mapping sub-functions such as binding by synchrony. The model, although still in progress, is a step in the direction of progressing cognitive concepts down to an individual spiking neuron level.
Learning Hierarchical Sparse Representations using Iterative Dictionary Learning and Dimension Reduction
Authors: Tarifi Mohamad  , Sitharam Meera  , Ho Jeffery
Published: February 2025

This paper introduces an elemental building block which combines Dictionary Learning and Dimension Reduction (DRDL). We show how this foundational element can be used to iteratively construct a Hierarchical Sparse Representation (HSR) of a sensory stream. We compare our approach to existing models showing the generality of our simple prescription. We then perform preliminary experiments using this framework, illustrating with the example of an object recognition task using standard datasets. This work introduces the very first steps towards an integrated framework for designing and analyzing various computational tasks from learning to attention to action. The ultimate goal is building a mathematically rigorous, integrated theory of intelligence.
Design concepts for a novel asynchronous space-variant vision sensor
Authors: Bartolozzi Chiara
Published: February 2025

The field of artificial vision could greatly benefit from the use of smart bio-inspired vision sensors capable of extracting relevant information from the luminosity signal, instead of simply sampling the external world at fixed time intervals. State-of-the-art neuromorphic vision sensors asynchronously convey information about local variations of input signals, either over time or over space. A new sensor that builds on such sensors is proposed that merges the two approaches, with the aim of concurrently evaluating the temporal and spatial derivative of visual input. The Asynchronous Space Variant vision sensor reports the temporal derivative and the absolute level of illumination in four regions of the pixel, allowing the computation of the spatial derivative as up/down and left/right difference. Space variance is built by two different resolution regions, a fovea and a periphery, that allow for high central resolution and wide field of view while minimizing the number of pixels and hence the amount of sensory data.
Populating an Online Consultation Tool
Authors: Pulfrey-Taylor Sarah  , Henthorn Emily  , Atkinson Katie  , Wyner Adam  , Bench-Capon Trevor
Published: February 2025

The paper addresses the extraction, formalisation, and presentation of public policy arguments. Arguments are extracted from documents that comment on public policy proposals. Formalising the information from the arguments enables the construction of models and systematic analysis of the arguments. In addition, the arguments are represented in a form suitable for presentation in an online consultation tool. Thus, the forms in the consultation correlate with the formalisation and can be evaluated accordingly. The stages of the process are outlined with reference to a working example.
Right of Access to Documents: The Implementation of Article 42 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights
Authors: Salvadori Margherita
Published: February 2025

Right of access to documents is an integral part of the legal framework seeking to ensure democracy and transparency of the EU decision-making process. The paper discusses the evolution of this right in the European legal order focusing on the EU institutions activities dealing with three essential aspects: the gradual ‘constitutionalization’ of a fundamental right of access to information for citizens, the extension of this right beyond EU citizens to “any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a Member State” and finally the movement towards a position of facilitating such access to information via digital means.
Access to Legislation in the Semantic Web
Authors: Sartor Giovanni
Published: February 2025

This paper analyses implications of realizing the access to legislation in the semantic web. It provides an overview of the context of the digitalization of legislative information and its distribution on the semantic web and the managements of legislative documents outlining new needs, features and trends in accessing legislative information. The role reserved to specific tools such as standards and mark-up languages is also outlined together with the fundamental role played till now buy ICTs focusing on advantages and inputs deriving from their implementation into legislative, social and governance contexts.
Archetypes Based Techniques for Modelling of Business Domains, Requirements and Software
Authors: Piho Gunnar  , Tepandi Jaak  , Roost Mart
Published: February 2025

We present archetypes based techniques we are using in developing of real life laboratory information management systems (LIMS) software and LIMS Software Factory. These archetypes based techniques utilize software engineering triptych together with archetypes and archetype patterns for software factories. Following the software engineering triptych, to write software we have to know requirements; to know requirements we have to know domain; to know the domain we have to analyze and model one. We call our techniques as Archetypes Based Development (ABD). In ABD the domain is analyzed according to Zachman Framework by asking questions what, how, where, who, when, and why. The domain model is developed by using the product (what), business process (how), organization structure (where), person (who), order and inventory (when), as well as rule (why) archetype patterns. We use the domain model analyzed and developed in this way as a domain specific language for prescribing requirements. In our understanding, with ABD it is possible to increase the dependability of developed software; reduce semantic heterogeneity of models and data types; improve the maturity of the development process; and lead developments of one-off software towards software factory.
Modeling Reliable Session Management in Multitier Web Applications
Authors: Kurz Peter  , Sikorski Andrzej
Published: February 2025

A robust and reliable transactional processing is a key quality factor in many database internet information systems. We give three design patterns that model reliable session and transaction management in transactional web applications. These are: session timeout, server default action and split client-server state representation. Only the first design pattern can be successfully implemented with the standard WCF communication facilities available for Silverlight .NET subset. Therefore we include also a simple, robust and WCF compatible communication stack. Surprisingly, overriding the standard WCF facility has resulted in an almost factor 30 performance boost for local calls.
Training Diagnosis and Treatment of Cervical Spine Trauma Using a New Educational Program for Visualization Through Imaging and Simulation (VIS): A First Evaluation by Medical Students
Authors: Hedman Leif  , Fahlstedt Madelen  , Schlickum Marcus  , Möller Hans  , Halldin Peter  , von Holst Hans  , Felländer-Tsai Li
Published: February 2025

In this pilot study we investigated how medical students evaluated a VIS practice session. Immediately after training 43 students answered a questionnaire on the training session. They evaluated VIS as a good interactive scenario based educational tool.
Augmented Environments for Minimally Invasive Therapy: Implementation Barriers from Technology to Practice
Authors: Linte C.A.  , Davenport K.P.  , Cleary K.  , Peters C.  , Vosburgh K.G.  , Edwards P.  , Jannin P.  , Peters T.M.  , Holmes III D.R.  , Robb R.A.
Published: February 2025

Augmented environments for medical applications have been explored and developed in an effort to enhance the clinician's view of anatomy and facilitate the performance of minimally invasive procedures. These environments must faithfully represent the real surgical field and require seamless integration of pre- and intra-operative imaging, surgical instrument tracking and display technology into a common framework centered around the patient. However, few image guidance environments have been successfully translated into clinical use. Several challenges that contribute to the slow progress of integrating such environments into clinical practice are discussed here in terms of both technical and clinical limitations.
Real-Time Human Pose Detection and Tracking for Tele-Rehabilitation in Virtual Reality
Authors: Obdržálek Štěpán  , Kurillo Gregorij  , Han Jay  , Abresch Ted  , Bajcsy Ruzena
Published: February 2025

We present a real-time algorithm for human pose detection and tracking from vision-based 3D data and its application to tele-rehabilitation in virtual environments. We employ stereo camera(s) to capture 3D avatars of geographically dislocated patient and therapist in real-time, while sending the data remotely and displaying it in a virtual scene. A pose detection and tracking algorithm extracts kinematic parameters from each participant and determines pose similarity. The pose similarity score is used to quantify patient's performance and provide real-time feedback for remote rehabilitation.
Virtual Worlds Are an Innovative Tool for Medical Device Training in a Simulated Environment
Authors: Patel Vishal  , Lee Henry  , Taylor Dave  , Aggarwal Rajesh  , Kinross James  , Darzi Ara
Published: February 2025

Medical infusion devices are an integral component within the delivery of healthcare management. The aim of this study was to develop a training simulation in the virtual world of Second Life for the management of adverse events associated with infusion devices. Forty nurses were subsequently recruited to participate within the simulation and assess its feasibility.
Concurrent and Face Validity of a Capsulorhexis Simulation with Respect to Human Patients
Authors: Banerjee P. Pat  , Edward Deepak P.  , Liang Shun  , Bouchard Charles S.  , Bryar Paul J.  , Ahuja Richard  , Dray Phillip  , Bailey Daniel P.
Published: February 2025

A prototype version of the ImmersiveTouch® virtual reality simulator was applied to capsulorhexis, the creation of circular tear or “rhexis” in the lens capsule of the eye during cataract surgery. Virtual and live surgery scores by residents were compared. The same three metrics are used in each mode: circularity of the rhexis, duration of surgery (sec), and number of forceps grabs of the capsule per completed rhexis (fewer is better). The average simulator circularity score correlated closely with the average live score (P = 0.0002; N = 4), establishing “concurrent validity” for this metric. Individuals performed similarly to each other in both modes, as shown by the low standard deviations for average circularity (virtual 0.92 ± 0.04; live 0.88 ± 0.04). By contrast, the standard deviations are high for the other two metrics, capsulorhexis duration (virtual 96.91 ± 44.23 sec; live 94.42 ± 65.74 sec, N = 8) and number of forceps grabs (virtual 10.66 ± 4.81; live 10.31 ± 5.23, N = 8). Nevertheless, the simulator was able to demonstrate that the surgeons with wide variations in total duration and number of capsular grabs in 2 to 4 trials of simulated surgery also had similar variations in live surgery, so that the simulator retains some realism or “face validity.”
Haptic Editing of MRI Brain Data
Authors: Sourin Alexei  , Yasmin Shamima
Published: February 2025

Automated brain segmentation may leave errors which can be identified by comparing the location of the actual MRI voxels with reference to the reconstructed pial polygonal surface of the brain. Location of the segmentation errors can be marked by displaying color spots on the brain surface followed by its interactive editing, as we previously proposed. In this paper, a new haptic friction-based approach of identifying and correcting errors has been discussed. The user can feel as different friction the discrepancy along the reconstructed surface by moving a haptic proxy along it followed by rubbing the surface as if it is being polished. The proposed approach does not only limit its application in editing of medical data, but can also be successfully used for visually impaired group as this dynamic friction-based editing helps any novice user identify error prone area just by touching the surface.
Translating Surgical Metrics into Automated Assessments
Authors: Wiet Gregory  , Hittle Bradley  , Kerwin Thomas  , Stredney Don
Published: February 2025

In the effort to promote more continuous and quantitative assessment of surgical proficiency, there is an increased need to define and establish common surgical metrics. Furthermore, as various pressures such as limited duty hours and access to educational resources, including materials and expertise, place increased demands on training, the value of quantitative automated assessment becomes increasingly apparent. We present our methods to establish common surgical metrics within the otology and neurotology community and our initial efforts in the subsequent transfer of these metrics into objective automated assessments provided via a simulation environment.
Structure Simulation with Calculated NMR Parameters — Integrating COSMOS into the CCPN Framework
Authors: Schneider Olaf  , Fogh Rasmus H.  , Sternberg Ulrich  , Klenin Konstantin  , Kondov Ivan
Published: February 2025

The Collaborative Computing Project for NMR (CCPN) has build a software framework consisting of the CCPN data model (with APIs) for NMR related data, the CcpNmr Analysis program and additional tools like CcpNmr FormatConverter. The open architecture allows for the integration of external software to extend the abilities of the CCPN framework with additional calculation methods. Recently, we have carried out the first steps for integrating our software Computer Simulation of Molecular Structures (COSMOS) into the CCPN framework. The COSMOS-NMR force field unites quantum chemical routines for the calculation of molecular properties with a molecular mechanics force field yielding the relative molecular energies. COSMOS-NMR allows introducing NMR parameters as constraints into molecular mechanics calculations. The resulting infrastructure will be made available for the NMR community. As a first application we have tested the evaluation of calculated protein structures using COSMOS-derived13C Cαand Cβchemical shifts. In this paper we give an overview of the methodology and a roadmap for future developments and applications.
A Service-based BLAST command tool supported by Cloud Infrastructures
Authors: Carrión Abel  , Blanquer Ignacio  , Hernández Vicente
Published: February 2025

Notwithstanding the benefits of distributed-computing infrastructures for empowering bioinformatics analysis tools with the needed computing and storage capability, the actual use of these infrastructures is still low. Learning curves and deployment difficulties have reduced the impact on the wide research community. This article presents a porting strategy of BLAST based on a multiplatform client and a service that provides the same interface as sequential BLAST, thus reducing learning curve and with minimal impact on their integration on existing workflows. The porting has been done using the execution and data access components from the EC project Venus-C and the Windows Azure infrastructure provided in this project. The results obtained demonstrate a low overhead on the global execution framework and reasonable speed-up and cost-efficiency with respect to a sequential version.
Application of Thermally Curved Glass in the Building Industry
Authors: Elstner Michael  , Kramer Markus
Published: February 2025

Curved, or bent, glass units are used more and more often in modern architecture. The curved elements can create flowing contours, organic bodies, or bold arch and vault constructions. Technical developments in the manufacture and refinement of glass are constantly attaining new heights. Necessary, for this reason, is not only a scientific examination of this product but also a detailed description of its application. Since there presently exist no – or very few – standards, regulations, or guidelines bearing on this product, the Bundesverband Flachglas has drawn up a manual for thermally-curved glass which may be considered as a brief work dealing with the fundaments of this topic. There are described here both the boundary conditions in terms of German building legislation and the particular features of the dimensioning of this type of glass. In addition to this, advice and pointers are given regarding possible tolerances and assembly/installation. Curved glass (made from float glass, fully TG, heat-soaked fully TG or LSG) may, at present, only be applied and installed in Germany on the basis of an Exceptional Approval (Zustimmung im Einzelfall, or ZiE) or of an already-acquired National Technical Approval (Allgemeine bauaufsichtliche Zulassung, or AbZ). Also explained are the structural dimensioning of curved glass, which differ fundamentally from those applying to flat sheets of glass. The manual provides here, among other information, general strength- and resistance-values for guidance in pre-dimensioning.
Inter-examiner, intra-session and inter-session reliability of gait measurement
Authors: Leszczewska Justyna  , Czaprowski Dariusz  , Pawłowska Paulina  , Białobrzewska Karolina  , Gębicka Anna  , Kotwicki Tomasz
Published: February 2025

Three-dimensional gait analysis is commonly used in the objective evaluation of children with idiopathic scoliosis. However, interpretation of results requires carefulness because the gait measurements are error prone. Assessing the reliability of gait analysis in each laboratory may be contribute to assess sources and magnitude of errors in gait analysis as well as determine the direction of the training of examiners.
Bracing does not change the sport habits of patients
Authors: Negrini Stefano  , Donzelli Sabrina  , Negrini Francesco  , Romano Michele  , Zaina Fabio
Published: February 2025

Introduction. In our Institute for many years we have asked patients to perform sport activities freely while in treatment, wearing braces or not, because of the physical and psychological advantages. Our aim was to verify whether it is really possible for patients to perform sport with the brace on, and if they complied with this proposal.
A Similar Approach in Bracing of Adolescent Scoliosis and Kyphosis with the Use of Growth Itself in Thoracolumbar Lordotic Intervention (TLI)
Authors: Van Loon P.J.M.  , Roukens M.  , Thunnissen F.B.  , Munneke(†) J.
Published: February 2025

Using older and new concepts on aetiology a new brace technique with thoracolumbar lordotic intervention in adolescent scoliotic and kyphotic deformities was created. The technique with symmetrical forces in the sagittal plane only on the thoracolumbar joint and its effect on the formative function of the extending muscles is explained.
Using Ontology for IT-enabled Comprehensive Management of Mass Gatherings
Authors: Delir Haghighi Pari  , Burstein Frada  , Arbon Paul  , Zaslavsky Arkady
Published: February 2025

Management in mass gatherings is a complex process that consists of three major phases: planning, operational response, and debriefing. Each of these phases involves information exchange between different agencies involved in planning and running the event. It has been widely recognized that the data quality and access to critical information impact on the efficiency of the response and overall effectiveness of the emergency management. Therefore, there is a need for solid understanding of the information needs of the agencies pertinent to designing efficient decision support systems, which are truly integrated into the context of business environment and facilitate IT-enabled work of the personnel organizing and running mass gathering events. Introduction of such ubiquitous systems depends on availability of ontology of the problem domain, which provides a common ground for information integration, gathering and exchange. We propose a conceptual architecture for ontology-based, IT-enabled decision support that extends to all phases of mass gatherings. As an example, we describe a case-based reasoning (CBR) system which takes advantage of such an ontology and ontology reasoning and can be used for prediction of medical workload and providing better understanding of mass gathering events during planning or training of new staff.
Decision Making in the Context of Regulatory Policy: Is there a Role for DSS?
Authors: Csáki Csaba  , Prier Eric  , Adam Frederic
Published: February 2025

Organizations in various business areas operate in an increasingly regulated environment. Policy makers and regulators rely on certain assumptions rooted in various theoretical models when designing schemes to influence the decision making of economic actors. Using examples from different regulated domains this paper argues that various dimensions of a decision making situation – such as the definition of the problem, the role of participants, the strategy of the decision maker, the management of information, or the process – may be utilized by regulations or agencies as mechanisms to manipulate organizational decision making. Beyond policy design, it is contended that these dimensions can be used (1) to understand the role decision support systems play in regulated environments and (2) to make recommendations pertaining to the design and implementation of DSS dedicated to supporting managers in heavily regulated environments.
An Agent Based Decision Support System for Spunlace Nonwovens Production Management: Case Study of INOTIS Enterprise
Authors: Taghezout Noria  , Ascar Bouabdellah  , Bessedik Imene
Published: February 2025

We describe the development of an agent-based Decision Support System in the spunlace nonwovens production industry. This work constitutes the first pilot system that models and evaluates major products costs by using Activity Based Costing methodology in INOTIS enterprise. One of the main aspects addressed in the decision-making process is the knowledge management of the most frequently failures of machines as the card, aqua jet etc. This paper mainly focuses on proposing an agent model composed of six agents namely Resource Agent (RA), Cost Agent (CA), COordinator Agent (COA), Data Manager Agent (DMA), Maintenance Agent (MA) and Scheduling Decision selection Agent (SDA). Not only was possible to support the necessary decisions, but several models were also displayed so that production manager or decision -maker could support new problems.
Qualitative Assessment of Data-Mining Workflows
Authors: Žnidaršič Martin  , Bohanec Marko  , Trdin Nejc
Published: February 2025

Data-mining is aimed at discovering knowledge from data. Advanced data-mining software, such as Weka, Orange and Rapid Miner, provide hundreds of data-mining methods. In order to perform a given data-mining task, these methods have to be selected and combined into a data-mining workflow. Traditionally, workflows are designed by data-mining experts, but this is difficult and there is a strong need to automate workflow design. In doing so, it is essential to be able to assess the quality of workflows. So far, this was usually assessed only through performance indicators, such as classification accuracy. In this paper, we present a workflow assessment model that uses an extended set of user-oriented indicators, which include understandability for the user, generality of used components, and robustness of the workflow. The model, which was developed using software DEXi, is qualitative, multi-attribute, hierarchical, and rule-based. We describe its components, current implementation of the model, and illustrate its performance on the case of two workflows.
Use of an electronic drug monitoring system for ambulatory patients with chronic disease: How does it impact on nurses' time spent documenting clinical care?
Authors: Hordern Antonia  , Callen Joanne  , Gibson Kathryn  , Robertson Louise  , Li Ling  , Hains Isla M.  , Westbrook Johanna I.
Published: February 2025

Medication monitoring of ambulatory rheumatology patients on Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs (DMARDS) is time consuming and complex, with possibilities for error. Electronic systems have the potential to improve the process. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of an electronic Drug Monitoring System (eDMS) on the time nurses' spent on clinical documentation associated with monitoring. The study was conducted with all nurses (n=4) in the Rheumatology Department of a large metropolitan Australian teaching hospital. The eDMS was designed as a module of the Hospital Clinical Information System (HCIS) to assist clinicians in monitoring rheumatology patients on DMARDS. Timing data were collected using a modified time and motion work measurement technique using software on a handheld computer. Data included the time nurses spent on documentation regarding medication monitoring before and after the implementation of the eDMS. Results showed that following implementation of the eDMS nurses spent significantly less time documenting medication monitoring information (13.6% to 7.2%, P<.0001). The cumbersome paper-based Drug Monitoring Patient List was replaced entirely by the eDMS. Consequently, there was a significant decrease in the time nurses spent using the HCIS (13.01% to 2.8%, p<.0001) for monitoring and the use of loose-leaf paper also decreased (7.6% to 5.0%, p = 0.002). The eDMS made the process of drug monitoring quicker and simpler for nurses and thus permitted them to increase their time spent in direct patient care.
Preliminaries to a formal ontology of failure of engineering artifacts
Authors: Del Frate Luca
Published: February 2025

The aim of this paper is to offer a conceptual analysis of the notion of failure of engineering artifacts focusing on aspects that are of import for a possible ontological formalization. Failure is a central notion in engineering, yet different taxonomies exist in the various industries and engineering domains that are not mutually compatible thereby hindering knowledge exchange. A formal definition of failure would contribute to improve knowledge exchange. However, in order to be successful such formalization should rest on shared conceptualizations. The paper analyses how the notion of failure is used in engineering, starting with the so-called “traditional definition”. Then, it is shown that engineers are willing to consider as failures also events and circumstances that are at odds with this traditional definition. Therefore, it is argued that, in order to capture adequately engineering conceptualizations, three independent notions of failure should be distinguished, which are called function-based failure, specification-based failure, and material-based failure.
Security and Privacy Services in Pathology for Enabling Trustworthy Personal Health
Authors: Blobel Bernd
Published: February 2025

Ubiquitous personalized health services including ePathology require comprehensive, but trusted interoperability. Contrary to regulated traditional health services with pre-defined policies, the solutions enabled by mobile, pervasive and autonomous technology have to follow dynamic policies reflecting the customers changing health services needs, expectations and wishes as well as contextual and environmental conditions. The paper introduces an advanced approach to trustworthy architecture-centric, policy-driven pHealth solutions. To some details, it also addresses security and privacy ontologies to represent the required policies.
Cure4Kids for Kids: School-Based Cancer Education Outreach
Authors: Van Kirk Villalobos Aubrey  , Quintana Yuri  , Ribeiro Raul C.
Published: February 2025

In 2006, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital created Cure4Kids for Kids, a school-based outreach program. The objectives of this community education program are to teach about cancer and healthy lifestyles and to inspire an interest in science and health-related careers. A multidisciplinary team of St. Jude and outside experts developed and pilot tested age-appropriate educational materials and activities with 4thgrade students. Eight schools and more than 800 children have participated in the program since 2006. Teachers and students have demonstrated a very positive response to the program for it being both fun and educational. Cure4Kids for Kids resources have been collected into a teacher's kit and are now freely available online at www.cure4kids.org/kids.
Glooveth: Healthy Living, Fun and Serious Gaming
Authors: Macías Enric  , García Oscar  , Moreno Pau  , Presno Maria Montserrat  , Forrest Tallulah
Published: February 2025

Serious Games and Gamification deliver powerful and truthful experiences by providing the user with goals, challenges, problem solving and rules, besides a clear internal value and an interactive experience. In fact, Serious Games can be considered memorable experiences that deliver intense moments with the support of different platforms and social networks while ensuring high degrees of motivation, efficiency and performance. Here, we describe Glooveth, an educational game for children ages 6 to 12 years, which was the winner of the Silver Award in the Global eHealth Challenge 2010. Glooveth is a platform computer game that teaches healthy living. We developed a game to be used by three different peripherals: a mouse and two special gloves. These peripherals provide the user with a more intense gameplaying and learning experience. The paper explains the project, from concept to application to usability testing.
Evaluation of an Assurance Case development method (d*)
Authors: Saruwatari Takuya  , Hoshino Takashi  , Yamamoto Shuichiro
Published: February 2025

Information systems are now developed as open systems which mutually depend on each other. Although assurance cases are expected to confirm dependability of open systems, it is difficult to clearly describe dependency among co-related systems, because systems are not explicitly represented in structured trees of assurance cases. By using the case study of an elevator control system, we evaluated the d* framework which can describe the dependability of inter-related open systems.
Towards Decentralised AGV Control With Negotiations
Authors: Schwarz Christoph  , Sauer Jürgen
Published: February 2025

Flexible solutions in the field of intralogistics are needed more and more because of a higher dynamic in the environment. A possible solution to achieve higher flexible and are robuster system is the use of an automated guided vehicle (agv) system. In this paper current research in the field of decentralized agv system control i.e. in conflict free routing and in decentralized order allocation is described. Furthermore approaches to improve self-control by introducing negotiations are presented as well as the challenges that arise when such approaches should be realized.
Counterfactual dependency and actual causation in CP-logic and structural models: a comparison
Authors: Beckers Sander  , Vennekens Joost
Published: February 2025

The solution to the problem of actual causation - i.e. determining what caused an effect in a specific scenario - put forward by Halpern and Pearl recently has received a lot of attention. It forms the basis for many other approaches within the dominant tradition of counterfactual theories of causation. However, their solution runs into a number of difficulties for a certain type of examples exhibiting so-called switching causation and early preemption. We discuss these in the light of the core concept of counterfactual dependency, and offer a comparison with the recent definition of actual causation formulated in CP-logic. We argue both that for this type of examples the CP-logic definition provides better anwers, and that it does more justice to the fundamental intuitions underlying counterfactual dependency.
WissKI: A Virtual Research Environment for Cultural Heritage
Authors: Scholz Martin  , Goerz Guenther
Published: February 2025

In this paper we present the WissKI System, an open source Virtual Research Environment and Content Management System for Cultural Heritage. It promotes semantic enrichment of data on the basis of OWL / RDF using the ontology CIDOC CRM / ISO 21127. The data is rendered in a Wikipedia-like fashion, combining textual, visual and structured information (info boxes) for a documented object on one page. Likewise, data can be acquired using field–based forms and semi–automatically annotated free text, resembling the most common traditional modes of documentation in the cultural heritage domain. This retains a user–friendly visualisation while at the same time providing detailed RDF triple data for automatic processing and data exchange.
The Possible Winner Problem with Uncertain Weights
Authors: Baumeister Dorothea  , Roos Magnus  , Rothe Jörg  , Schend Lena  , Xia Lirong
Published: February 2025

The original possible winner problem is: Given an unweighted election with partial preferences and a distinguished candidate c, can the preferences be extended to total ones such that c wins? We introduce a novel variant of this problem in which not some of the voters' preferences are uncertain but some of their weights. Not much has been known previously about the weighted possible winner problem. We present a general framework to study this problem, both for integer and rational weights, with and without upper bounds on the total weight to be distributed, and with and without ranges to choose the weights from. We study the complexity of these problems for important voting systems such as scoring rules, Copeland, ranked pairs, plurality with runoff, and (simplified) Bucklin and fall-back voting.
Executable Logic for Dialogical Argumentation
Authors: Black Elizabeth  , Hunter Anthony
Published: February 2025

Argumentation between agents through dialogue is an important cognitive activity. There have been a number of proposals for formalizing dialogical argumentation. However, each proposal involves a number of quite complex definitions, and there is significant diversity in the way different proposals define similar features. This complexity and diversity has hindered analysis and comparison of the space of proposals. To address this, we present a general approach to defining a wide variety of systems for dialogical argumentation. Our solution is to use an executable logic to specify individual systems for dialogical argumentation. This means we have a common language for specifying a wide range of systems, we can compare systems in terms of a range of standard properties, we can identify interesting classes of system, and we can execute the specification of each system to analyse it empirically.
Interval Temporal Logics over Finite Linear Orders: the Complete Picture
Authors: Bresolin D.  , Della Monica D.  , Montanari A.  , Sala P.  , Sciavicco G.
Published: February 2025

Interval temporal logics provide a natural framework for temporal reasoning about interval structures over linearly ordered domains, where intervals are taken as the primitive ontological entities. In this paper, we identify all fragments of Halpern and Shoham's interval temporal logic HS whose finite satisfiability problem is decidable. We classify them in terms of both relative expressive power and complexity. We show that there are exactly 62 expressively-different decidable fragments, whose complexity ranges from NP-complete to non-primitive recursive (all other HS fragments have been already shown to be undecidable).
Compression-based AODE Classifiers
Authors: Corani G.  , Antonucci A.  , De Rosa R.
Published: February 2025

We propose the COMP-AODE classifier, which adopts the compression-based approach [1] to average the posterior probabilities computed by different non-naive classifiers (SPODEs). COMP-AODE improves classification performance over the well-known AODE [10] model. COMP-AODE assumes a uniform prior over the SPODEs; we then develop the credal classifier COMP-AODE*, substituting the uniform prior by a set of priors. COMP-AODE* returns more classes when the classification is prior-dependent, namely if the most probable class varies with the prior adopted over the SPODEs. COMP-AODE* achieves higher classification utility than both COMP-AODE and AODE.
Preferring Properly: Increasing Coverage while Maintaining Quality in Anytime Temporal Planning
Authors: Eyerich Patrick
Published: February 2025

Temporal Fast Downward (TFD) is a successful temporal planning system that is capable of dealing with numerical values. Rather than decoupling action selection from scheduling, it searches directly in the space of time-stamped states, an approach that has shown to produce plans of high quality at the price of coverage. To increase coverage, TFD incorporates deferred evaluation and preferred operators, two search techniques that usually decrease the number of heuristic calculations by a large amount. However, the current definition of preferred operators offers only limited guidance in problems where heuristic estimates are weak or where subgoals require the execution of mutex operators. In this paper, we present novel methods for refinement of this definition and show how to combine the diverse strengths of different sets of preferred operators using a restarting procedure incorporated into a multi-queue best-first search. These techniques improve TFD's coverage drastically and preserve the average solution quality, leading to a system that solves more problems than each of the competitors of the temporal satisficing track of IPC 2011 and clearly outperforms all of them in terms of IPC score.
Fixed-Parameter Algorithms for Closed World Reasoning
Authors: Lackner Martin  , Pfandler Andreas
Published: February 2025

Closed world reasoning and circumscription are essential tasks in AI. However, their high computational complexity is a serious obstacle for their practical application. In this work we employ the framework of parameterized complexity theory in order to search for fixed-parameter algorithms. We consider eleven parameters describing different characteristics of the input. For several combinations of these parameters we are able to design efficient fixedparameter tractable algorithms. All our algorithms have a runtime only single-exponential in the parameters and linear in the input size. Furthermore, by providing parameterized hardness results we show that we have actually found all tractable fragments involving these eleven parameters. We hereby offer a complete picture of the parameterized complexity of brave closed world reasoning and circumscription.
An Empirical Study of Argumentation Schemes for Deliberative Dialogue
Authors: Toniolo Alice  , Norman Timothy J.  , Sycara Katia
Published: February 2025

Collaborative decision making among agents in a team is a complex activity, and tasks to achieve individual objectives may conflict in a team context. A number of argumentation-based models have been proposed to address the problem, the rationale being that the revelation of background information and constraints can aid in the discovery and resolution of conflicts. To date, however, no empirical studies have been conducted to substantiate these claims. I this paper, we discuss a model, grounded on argumentation schemes, that captures potential conflicts due to scheduling and causality constraints, and individual goals and norms. We evaluate this model in complex collaborative planning problems and show that such a model facilitates the sharing of relevant information pertaining to plan, goal and normative conflicts. Further, we show that this focussed information sharing leads to more effective conflict resolution, particularly in the most challenging problems.
Ontology-supported clinical profiling for the evaluation of obesity and related comorbidities
Authors: Scala Paolo L.  , Di Pasquale Davide  , Tresoldi Daniele  , Lafortuna Claudio L.  , Rizzo Giovanna  , Padula Marco
Published: February 2025

An ontology-supported e-knowledge base aimed to the evaluation of obesity and related co-morbidities is presented. The main goal of such a clinical profiling tool is to help determine the health status of a subject, supporting the knowledge transfer between medical researchers and general practitioners.