Informatics

The health care industry is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based community that is connected to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and customers for sharing knowledge, reducing administrative costs and improving the quality of care. Thus, the success of health care depends critically on the collection, analysis and seamless exchange of clinical, billing, and utilization information or knowledge within and across the above organizational boundaries. This research envisions a knowledge management-enabled health care management system that would help integrate clinical, administrative, and financial processes in health care through a common technical architecture; and provides a decision support infrastructure for clinical and administrative decision-making. Hence, the objective of this research is to present and describe the knowledge management capabilities, the technical infrastructure, and the decision support architecture for such a health care management system. The research findings would immensely help the health care information technology (IT) managers and knowledge based system developers to identify their IT needs and to plan for and develop the technical infrastructure of the health care management system for their organizations. q

International Journal of Managing Information Technology (IJMIT) is a quarterly open access peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles that contribute new results in all areas of the strategic application of information technology (IT) in organizations. The journal focuses on innovative ideas and best practices in using IT to advance organizations – for-profit, non-profit, and governmental. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, government and industry to focus on understanding both how to use IT to support the strategy and goals of the organization and to employ IT in new ways to foster greater collaboration, communication and information sharing both within the organization and with its stakeholders. The International Journal of Managing Information Technology seeks to establish new collaborations, new best practices, and new theories in these areas

Teaching the research paper has been considered a “present controversy” for over fifty years (Saalbach, 1963). Some scholars believe that it prepares students for “generalized academic writing” (Reiff and Bawarshi, 2011; Sutton, 1997; Schwegeler and Shamoon, 1982). However, others have referred to the research paper as a “fossilized,” “pseudo-academic,” “mutt genre” (Nowacek, 2011; Wardle, 2007; Carroll, 1999; Larsen, 1982). This chapter argues that radical openness and information overload--two major features of new media composing environments--compromise the relevance of the traditional research paper. First, the research paper has been praised and blamed for its (in)ability to help students learn the importance of writing from sources (Brent 2013, Rooney 2000). However, the parameters of most research assignments are incapable of matching the scale of data available at any given time. For instance, typical constraints like “use 5-7 sources” for a first-year college writing course seems ridiculous when it takes seconds to retrieve thousands, if not millions, of possible sources. Next, open-access publishing and collaborative authorship have transformed the way that research is conducted and recognized across disciplines. Although teaching students how to crowdsource research makes the most sense in a data deluge, the research paper privileges single authorship. Moreover, the problems of authorship and source attribution implicate the research paper in certain kinds of fraud. For instance, plagiarism and term paper mills are a “built-in” problem of research papers (Howell, 1977).  In sum, this chapter focuses on what the term "research" means in a context of too much information.  It concludes by offering a brief discussion of literature relevant to this topic.

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is currently  repared at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR ) in Darmstadt. Its purpose is the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in
the region of high baryon densities during highenergy nucleusnucleus
collisions. CBM will utilize various particle detectors: Micro Vertex Detector (MVD), Ring Imaging Cherenkov Detector (RICH), Transition Radiation Detector (TRD), Time of Flight Detector (TOF), Projectile Spectator Detector (PSD), Silicon Tracking System (STS), Muon hamber (MUCH). In the first version of the CBM readout chain the Data Processing Boards (DPB) were important components responsible for communication between the Front End Electronics (FEE) boards, the Timing and Fast Control (TFC) system, the Experiment Control System (ECS) and the first stage of the data acquisition system First
Level Event Selector (FLES). To achieve required level of flexibility, it was necessary to implement it in a parametrized highlevel VHDL code. For even greater flexibility (e.g., for automatic generation of registers with associated IPbus address tables), it was necessary to create new solutions based on automatic generation of the VHDL, XML and Python code from the common description of the system. The system may be a good example of the flexible and parametrized control and data processing firmware. The firmware is currently used in development of readout chain for mCBM and CBM.

The kynurenine pathway (KP) is the principle route of L-Tryptophan (TRP) metabolism, producing several neurotoxic and neuroprotective metabolic precursors before complete oxidation to the essential pyridine nucleotide nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD + ). KP inhibition may prove therapeutic in central nervous system (CNS) inflammation by reducing the production of excitotoxins such as quinolinic acid (QUIN). However, KP metabolism may also be cytoprotective through the de novo synthesis of intracellular NAD + . We tested the hypothesis that the KP is directly involved in the maintenance of intracellular NAD + levels and SIRT1 function in primary astrocytes and neurons through regulation of NAD + synthesis. Competitive inhibition of indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase (IDO), and quinolinic acid phosphoribosyltransferase (QPRT) activities with 1-methyl-L-Tryptophan (1-MT), and phthalic acid (PA) respectively, resulted in a dose-dependent decrease in intracellular NAD + levels and sirtuin deacetylase-1 (SIRT1) activity, and correlated directly with reduced cell viability. These results support the hypothesis that the primary role of KP activation during neuroinflammation is to maintain NAD + levels through de novo synthesis from TRP. Inhibition of KP metabolism under these conditions can compromise cell viability, NAD-dependent SIRT1 activity and CNS function, unless alternative precursors for NAD + synthesis are made available.

previous sections, are: scalability with respect to the number of nodes in the network, self-organization, self-healing, energy efficiency, a sufficient degree of connectivity among nodes, low-complexity, low cost and size of nodes. Those protocol architectures and technical solutions providing such features can be considered as a potential framework for the creation of these networks, but, unfortunately, the definition of such a protocol architecture and technical solution is not simple, and the research still needs to work on it.

The rapid growth and adoption of the World Wide Web has further exacerbated the user need for efficient mechanisms for information and knowledge location, selection and retrieval. Much work is required to address knowledge retrieval; for instance, users' information needs could be better interpreted, leading to accurate information retrieval. This paper is to suggest knowledge retrieval as a new research field and also proposes a knowledge retrieval model combining knowledge search with data mining technologies. In this model, data mining is integrated into the whole retrieval procedure of query optimizing, searching, results analyzing, and resources constructing. It realizes knowledge retrieval by various approaches, different levels, and multi-modes, and significantly improves knowledge retrieval level and efficiency. Furthermore, we explore related knowledge retrieval methods and algorithms including association analysis-based concept retrieval and inductive learning-based classification retrieval.

Computer Science (CS) Education research, specifically when focusing on secondary education, faces the difficulty of regionally differing political, legal, or curricular constraints. To date, many different studies exist that document the specific regional situations of teaching CS in secondary schools. This ITiCSE working group report documents the process of collecting, evaluating, and integrating research findings about CS in secondary schools from different countries. As an outcome, it presents a category system (Darmstadt Model), as a first step towards a framework that supports future research activities in this field and that supports the transfer of results between researchers and teachers in CS education (CSE) across regional or national boundaries. Exemplary application of the Darmstadt model shows in several important categories how different the situation of CSE in secondary education in various countries can be. The Darmstadt Model (DM) is now ready for discussion and suggestions for improvement by the CSE-community.

Software reuse is one of the technical approach that many believe can reduce software development time and cost. Reuse is clearly a partial solution to the long and costly development problems with complex control systems.This paper discusses why software is hard to reuse and why we cannot extend reuse analogies in other fields to software. The proposed approach is based on an incremental strategy and addresses managerial, economic, performance and technology transfer issues. This approach is practical, effective, and has potential to make reuse a regular practice in the software development process. This paper explores what is necessary for accomplishing systematic reuse and recommends strategic approach for reuse of software

Various sensors are already in a broad use today as part of different devices or as standalone devices connected to a network usually to monitor industrial processes, equipments or installations. The advancements in technology, wireless communications have enhanced development of small, low power and low cost devices. Such devices when organized into a network, present a powerful platform that can be used in many interesting applications. Bluetooth is a low cost, short-range, wireless technology with small footprint, low power consumption and reasonable throughput. Bluetooth wireless technology has become global technology specification for "always on" wireless communication not just as a point-to-point but was a network technology as well.

We present a general model and information server for the digital annotation of printed documents. The resulting annotation framework supports both informal and structured annotations as well as context-dependent services. A demonstrator application for mammography that features both enhanced writing and reading activities is described.

The increased level of air pollution in big cities has become a major concern for several organizations and authorities because of the risk it represents to human health. In this context, the technology has become a very useful tool in the contamination monitoring and the possible mitigation of its impact. Particularly, there are different proposals using the internet of things (IoT) paradigm that use interconnected sensors in order to measure different pollutants. In this paper, we develop a systematic mapping study defined by a five-step methodology to identify and analyze the research status in terms of IoT-based air pollution monitoring systems for smart cities. The study includes 55 proposals, some of which have been implemented in a real environment. We analyze and compare these proposals in terms of different parameters defined in the mapping and highlight some challenges for air quality monitoring systems implementation into the smart city context.

In many scenarios, users must be able to demonstrate the (time) existence, integrity and validity of data including signed data for long or undetermined period of time. This document specifies XML syntax and processing rules for creating evidence for long-term nonrepudiation of existence of data. ERS-XML incorporates alternative syntax and processing rules to ASN.1 ERS syntax by using XML language.

When using computer-aided translation systems in a typical, professional translation workflow, there are several stages at which there is room for improvement. The SCATE (Smart Computer-Aided Translation Environment) project investigated several of these aspects, both from a human-computer interaction point of view, as well as from a purely technological side. This paper describes the SCATE research with respect to improved fuzzy matching, parallel treebanks, the integration of translation memories with machine translation, quality estimation, terminology extraction from comparable texts, the use of speech recognition in the translation process, and human computer interaction and interface design for the professional translation environment. For each of these topics, we describe the experiments we performed and the conclusions drawn, providing an overview of the highlights of the entire SCATE project.

Innovation is a key driver for organizations to survive and thrive in increasingly hyper-competitive markets. This study investigates the effects of boundary-spanning search on innovation capability. Specifically, it examines the mediating and moderating effects of network ties and absorptive capacity on boundary-spanning search and innovation in Chinese companies. We constructed a theoretical model of an organization’s boundary-spanning search and innovation capability and distributed a survey questionnaire to a sample of specific industries with upstream and downstream relations in Sichuan Province in China for their responses. Results from the study reveal that boundary-spanning search has a positive and significant impact on innovation capability as well as a positive moderating effect on absorptive capacity and innovation capability. This paper shows that enterprises need to continuously focus on exploring networking opportunities in direct and indirect ways to get access to ef...

Abstract— With the continuous development of the wireless technology, securing wireless sensor networks became more and more a crucial but also a demanding task. In this paper we propose a combined strategy that is meant to discover malicious nodes within a wireless sensor ...

While a comprehensive model for organizational learning (OL) remains elusory, the wide web of scholarly conversation and debate has spurred rich insight into the central questions of how and what people learn in organizational settings. This paper is aimed at exploring some of those debates, with a view to identifying a complementary set of factors that, if present, might tip the balance towards more fruitful learning in organizations. I begin by exploring the debates shaping the literature through two central questions: 1) What is learning? and 2) Can organizations learn? Based on the insights gained, I turn to the question of how organizations can increase their capacity to learn. I define learning in organizations as a multilevel process whereby members individually and collectively acquire knowledge by acting together and reflecting together. Knowledge is acquired, or created, and applied by individuals. In turn, individual knowledge is shared, combined, expanded, tested, and applied amongst individuals to become group or community knowledge. As that knowledge is captured, spread and embedded in organizational features, such as strategies and protocols, it becomes part of an organizational context, or code, that, in turn, influences what and how groups, communities, and individuals learn. The code continues to evolve as it consumes the learning of individuals and groups. Rather than searching for the ultimate recipe for learning, I offer a set of questions as a starting place for this exploration. The questions and commentary are meant to tap into the tremendous amount of wisdom that has been generated in the area of organizational learning.

Implementing information management system is still a challenging task for any organization. A lot of surveys are conducted to find out the root causes of implementation problems and propose new methods that can improve and simplify this process. In this paper we suggest using an ontology-based decision support system to avoid some implementation challenges.

During the last decades, Steganography has found many applications. Many steganographic systems have been developed and used in various areas, e.g., in digital assets (DRM), Telecommunications, Medicine etc. In this paper, we prove that the set CF, which is a union of a certain set of Fibonacci numbers and a certain set of Catalan numbers, satisfies conditions, similar to those of Zeckendorf's Theorem. Therefore, it can be used for the encoding of data. Using this result, we propose a method that improves the Fibonacci data hiding technique.

This paper proposes the real-coded clonal selection algorithm (RCSA) for use in electromagnetic design optimization. Some features of the algorithm, such as the number of clones, mutation range, and the fraction of the population selected each generation are discussed. The TEAM Workshop problem 22 is investigated, in order to illustrate the performance of the algorithm in a real electromagnetic problem. The results obtained, a set of optimal solutions representing a broader range of options for the designer, are compared with those achieved by a genetic algorithm, showing the efficiency of the RCSA in practical optimization problems.

A continuous finite-time control scheme for rigid robotic manipulators is proposed using a new form of terminal sliding modes. The robustness of the controller is established using the Lyapunov stability theory. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that faster and high-precision tracking performance is obtained compared with the conventional continuous sliding mode control method.

Seit jeher hegen Entscheidungsträger insbesondere in Politik und Wirtschaft den Wunsch nach einer optimalen Informationsbasis für ihre Tätigkeit.
Informationssystemen zur Entscheidungsunterstützung, die ein solches Optimum an Information verheißen, gilt daher die besondere Förderung durch diese Kreise. Nichtsdestoweniger mangelt es aber vor allem für komplexe Entscheidungsprozesse an den geeigneten Modellen, die deren Abbildung auf Informationssysteme ermöglichten.
Anhand des statistischen Informationssystems der DDR bietet sich nun die Möglichkeit, den Versuch zu begutachten, eine gesamte Volkswirtschaft mit Hilfe eines solchen Systems zur Entscheidungsunterstützung zu planen und zu leiten. Daß es sich hierbei um ein ausgesprochen komplexes Unterfangen handelte, das die Verarbeitung großer Datenmengen erforderte, macht dieses Beispiel in meinen Augen zu einem Untersuchungsgegenstand von hohem Aussagewert.
Den technischen und organisatorischen Lösungen, die zur Bewältigung dieser Aufgabe entwickelt worden waren, habe ich mich in meiner ersten Arbeit über das Informationssystem der staatlichen Statistik recht ausführlich gewidmet 1). Die Ausführungen belegten den hohen Grad an Perfektion, den diese Lösungen aufwiesen, und den Nutzen für die Implementierung großer Informationssysteme, der sich aus einem sorgfältigen Studium dieser Entwicklungen ziehen ließe.
Darüberhinaus läßt sich jedoch vermuten, daß gerade gewisse grundlegende Problembereiche hinsichtlich der Konzeption von Entscheidungsunterstützungssystemen bei der Untersuchung dieses Systems weitaus schärfer zu Tage treten werden, als dies bei der Analyse von weniger umfassenden Systemen der Fall wäre. Dieser Gedanke nun scheint es mir wert zu sein, ihn weiter zu verfolgen.
Auch hinsichtlich der Quellenlage bietet sich das statistische Informationssystem der DDR für eine solche konzeptionelle Untersuchung an.
Das jähe Ende der DDR schuf insoweit günstige Voraussetzungen, als man es mit einem modernen und somit aktuellen Informationssystem zu tun hat, für das die meisten relevanten Unterlagen noch verfügbar und viele der an der Informationsgewinnung und -nutzung beteiligten Personen noch befragbar sind. Gleichzeitig jedoch wird eine Untersuchung nicht mehr durch die Schutzbedürfnisse eines Betreibers behindert, wie es bei einem im Einsatz befindlichen Informationssystem zweifellos der Fall wäre.
In meinen Augen lassen sich anhand des Informationssystems der staatlichen Statistik der DDR zwei Problembereiche besonders deutlich aufzeigen, die im Bereich der Entscheidungsunterstützung von grundsätzlicher Natur sind. Dies betrifft zum einen die Frage der Umsetzung umfangreicher Datenmengen in Entscheidungen seitens der verantwortlichen Entscheidungsträger. Zum anderen geht es um den Einfluß des politischen, wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Umfeldes auf die Wirksamkeit der geleisteten Entscheidungsunterstützung. Diese Zusammenhänge werde ich im Folgenden als Ausgangsthesen meiner Untersuchung formulieren.
Eine kurze Darstellung des Informationssystems und des ihm zugrundeliegenden Entscheidungsmodells soll dann die notwendigen Kenntnisse  über das System vermitteln, die es dem Leser gestatten werden, dem weiteren Argumentationsverlauf kritisch zu folgen. Für Interessenten an detaillierteren Informationen über das System und seine Funktion innerhalb der Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft der DDR sei hier noch einmal auf meine erste Arbeit zu diesem Thema(1) verwiesen.
Wie erwähnt, finden Systeme zur Entscheidungsunterstützung bei den verantwortlichen Entscheidungsträgern allgemein sehr große Beachtung, ja, es wird an sie sogar nicht selten die Hoffnung geknüpft, Informations- und Entscheidungsproblemen auf weit höherer Ebene begegnen zu können.
Der Versuch einer kritischen Untersuchung dieser Thematik erfordert daher eine sehr differenzierte Betrachtung des Untersuchungsgegenstandes sowie eine sorgfältige und genaue Argumentation. Diese Anforderungen zu erfüllen, wird die notwendige Voraussetzung sein, um aus der Bestätigung der Ausgangsthesen konstruktive Gestaltungsvorschläge abzuleiten.
Ein weiteres Argument für die Anwendung größter Sorgfalt liegt in der Tatsache begründet, daß eine Untersuchung anhand des Beispiels der staatlichen Statistik der DDR auf eine Bewertung der jüngsten Vergangenheit hinausläuft. Der Betrachter muß also damit umgehen, daß er selbst und ebenso der Leser erst wenig Zeit hatten, sich ein differenziertes Bild der Zusammenhänge zu machen. Darüberhinaus berührt eine solche Bewertung fast zwangsläufig die ganz aktuellen Interessen unterschiedlicher Personen, was das Finden von Wertmaßstäben nicht eben erleichtert.
Es eröffnet sich aber auch die Chance, aus Erfahrungen zu lernen, die bisher weder durch den Prozeß des Vergessens oder des Verdrängens noch durch eine Idealisierung der Vergangenheit getrübt sind. Empirische Erkenntnisse in die Überlegungen einzubeziehen, kann also nur von Vorteil für die Untersuchung sein.
Die Ergebnisse der zahlreichen Gespräche, die ich mit Statistikern und Informatikern, die für die staatliche Statistik der DDR tätig waren, sowie mit ehemaligen Wirtschaftsleitern bis hinauf zur Ministerebene führte, werden aus diesem Grund sowohl Ausgangspunkte als auch Prüfsteine für meine Thesen und ebenso für die theoretischen Überlegungen sein. Die Aussagen meiner Gesprächspartner werde ich nur insoweit, wie sie von verschiedenen Seiten bestätigt sind und als gesichert gelten können, unkommentiert wiedergeben. Andernfalls sind sie unter Beachtung des Kontextes als persönliche Ansichten erkennbar.
Ich hoffe nun, indem ich die zu formulierenden Thesen belege, einige neue Aspekte zur Diskussion über die Informationssysteme zur Entscheidungsunterstützung beizutragen bzw. Erkenntnisse auf diesem Gebiet anhand von aussagekräftigen Beispielen verdeutlichen und in Erinnerung bringen zu können.


1) Markus Güttler, Die Datenverarbeitung im statistischen Informationssystem der DDR - Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Vereinigung und zur Geschichte der Informatik, Technische Universität Berlin, Forschungsberichte des Fachbereichs Informatik, Bericht 1990-36, Berlin 1990

Asthma is a critical disease that causes airway inflammation and recurrent episodes and has caused many patients to require high doses of inhaled corticosteroids. Informatics is helping patients and physicians to monitor the use of medications and also protect against misuse and insistent exacerbations. Informatics has also been used in discovering reactions to certain medications which help to improve asthmatic treatment prescriptions.

In this paper we introduce a new test-data compression method for IP cores with unknown structure. The proposed method encodes the test data provided by the core vendor using a new, very effective compression scheme based on multilevel Huffman coding. Specifically, three different kinds of information are compressed using the same Huffman code, and thus significant test data reductions are achieved. A simple architecture is proposed for decoding on-chip the compressed data. Its hardware overhead is very low and comparable to that of the most efficient methods in the literature. Additionally, the proposed technique offers increased probability of detection of unmodeled faults since the majority of the unknown values of the test set are replaced by pseudorandom data generated by an LFSR.

There are little available toxicity data on the vast majority of chemicals in commerce. High-throughput screening (HTS) studies, such as being carried out by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ToxCast program in partnership with the federal Tox21 research program, can generate biological data to inform models for predicting potential toxicity. However, physicochemical properties are also needed to model environmental fate and transport, as well as exposure potential. The purpose of the present study was to generate an open-source Quantitative Structure-Property Relationship (QSPR) workflow to predict a variety of physicochemical properties that would have cross-platform compatibility to integrate into existing cheminformatics workflows. In this effort, decades-old experimental property data sets available within EPA EPI SuiteTM were reanalyzed using modern cheminformatics workflows to build updated QSPR models capable of supplying computationally efficient, open, and tra...

I am not a big fan of meta-critiques, but James Stieb's article ''A Critique of Positive Responsibility in Computing''[1] includes claims that I judge to be overstated and should be challenged. Stieb's article also discusses at least three important questions that I think should be further explored.