Let's Dance: A Language for Service Behavior Modeling

In Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), software systems are decomposed into independent units, namely services, that interact with one another through message exchanges. To promote reuse and evolvability, these interactions are explicitly described right from the early phases of the development lifecycle. Up to now, emphasis has been placed on capturing structural aspects of service interactions. Gradually though, the description of behavioral dependencies between service interactions is gaining increasing attention as a means to push forward the SOA vision. This paper deals with the description of these behavioral dependencies during the analysis and design phases. The paper outlines a set of requirements that a language for modeling service interactions at this level should fulfill, and proposes a language whose design is driven by these requirements.

A-REIT seasoned equity offerings : determinants and market reaction

The paper examines the decision by Australian Real Estate Trusts (A-REITs) to issue seasoned equity offerings from 2000 - 2008 and stock market reaction to the offerings using panel data and event study methodologies, respectively. The global financial crisis has resulted in freezing of the Australian bond markets, with several A-REITs left with seasoned equity issuance and asset sales as the only viable modes of raising additional capital. The findings review that leverage and operating risk are negative significant determinants of seasoned equity offerings; profitability and growth opportunities are positive significant determinants. Of the structure and type of properties held by the A-REIT, only stapled management structure and international operations are significant determinants. Type of properties held by A-REITs show inconsistent results. Similar to previous studies of seasoned equity offerings, we find a significant negative abnormal return associated with their announcement and no evidence of excessive leakage of information. Cross-sectional regressions show that the issued amount raised and leverage are significant factors affecting abnormal returns.

Effects of fare collection policy on operating characteristics of a Brisbane busway station

Transit agencies across the world are increasingly shifting their fare collection mechanisms towards fully automated systems like the smart card. One of the objectives in implementing such a system is to reduce the boarding time per passenger and hence reduce the overall dwell time for the buses at the bus stops/bus rapid transit (BRT) stations. TransLink, the transit authority responsible for public transport management in South East Queensland, has introduced ‘GoCard’ technology using the Cubic platform for fare collection on its public transport system. In addition to this, three inner city BRT stations on South East Busway spine are operating as pre-paid platforms during evening peak time. This paper evaluates the effects of these multiple policy measures on operation of study busway station. The comparison between pre and post policy scenarios suggests that though boarding time per passenger has decreased, while the alighting time per passenger has increased slightly. However, there is a substantial reduction in operating efficiency was observed at the station.

Real estate agency practice and profitability : an analysis of house sales and agency profitability in Sydney

Large cities provide a broad range of residential property types, as well as a range of socio-economic locations. This results in a significant variation in residential property prices across both the city itself and the individual suburbs. The only constant across such a diverse range of residential property is the need for the majority of residential property owners to employ the services of a real estate agent to sell their property or to purchase a residential property. This paper will analyse the Sydney residential property market over the period 1994 to 2002 to determine the change in real estate offices numbers over the period, the profitability of real estate agency offices based on the residential house price performance of houses and units in these specific locations and the extent of changing residential house prices on agency profitability. Suburbs have been selected to provide a full range of housing types, socio-economic areas, older established and developing residential suburbs and location from the

Analysis of road potential and bottlenecks based on operating speed

Vehicle detectors have been installed at approximately every 300 meters on each lane on Tokyo metropolitan expressway. Various traffic data such as traffic volume, average speed and time occupancy are collected by vehicle detectors. We can understand traffic characteristics of every point by comparing traffic data collected at consecutive points. In this study, we focused on average speed, analyzed road potential by operating speed during free-flow conditions, and identified latent bottlenecks. Furthermore, we analyzed effects for road potential by the rainfall level and day of the week. It’s expected that this method of analysis will be utilized for installation of ITS such as drive assist, estimation of parameters for traffic simulation and feedback to road design as congestion measures.

Online scheduling in the operating theatre

Online scheduling is considered in this paper for the Operating Theatre. Robust elective schedules are determined in the offline environment prior to the day of surgery for the online environment. Changes to the offline schedule during project implementation are minimized using an online scheduling model that operates in real-time. The model aims to minimise cancellations of pre-scheduled elective patients whilst also allowing for additional scheduling of emergency cases, time permitting, which may arise during the schedules implementation. Surgical durations are modelled with a lognormal distribution. The single theatre case is solved and the computationally complex multiple theatre case, which is left for future work, is discussed.

Determinants and market impact of seasoned equity offerings : the case of A-REITs

The paper examines the decision by Australian Real Estate Trusts (A-REITs) to issue seasoned equity offerings from 2000 - 2008 and stock market reaction to the offerings. The findings reveal that highly leveraged A-REITs with variable earnings are less likely to issue seasoned equity offerings. Inconsistent results for structure and type of properties held by the A-REIT do not allow for inference to be drawn. Similar to previous studies of seasoned equity offerings, we find a significant negative abnormal return associated with their announcement and no evidence of excessive leakage of information. Furthermore, market reaction differences to announcements of SEOs for the pre-global financial crisis (GFC) (2000-2006) and GFC eras (2007-2008) are noted with GFC era shareholders incurring larger abnormal return losses at 1.13% in comparison to the pre-GFC era shareholder loss of 0.34% on the SEO announcement day. Cross-sectional regressions show that the issued amount, leverage and profitability are significant factors affecting abnormal returns. Growth opportunities, tangibility, operating risk, size of A-REIT and other variables capturing A-REIT structure and property types held do not have an impact on abnormal returns

Enhancing the standard operating range of a placido disk videokeratoscope for corneal surface estimation

Abstract—Corneal topography estimation that is based on the Placido disk principle relies on good quality of precorneal tear film and sufficiently wide eyelid (palpebral) aperture to avoid reflections from eyelashes. However, in practice, these conditions are not always fulfilled resulting in missing regions, smaller corneal coverage, and subsequently poorer estimates of corneal topography. Our aim was to enhance the standard operating range of a Placido disk videokeratoscope to obtain reliable corneal topography estimates in patients with poor tear film quality, such as encountered in those diagnosed with dry eye, and with narrower palpebral apertures as in the case of Asian subjects. This was achieved by incorporating in the instrument’s own topography estimation algorithm an image processing technique that comprises a polar-domain adaptive filter and amorphological closing operator. The experimental results from measurements of test surfaces and real corneas showed that the incorporation of the proposed technique results in better estimates of corneal topography, and, in many cases, to a significant increase in the estimated coverage area making such an enhanced videokeratoscope a better tool for clinicians.

The growth-profitability relationship : strategic orientations as moderator

Principal Topic: In this study we investigate how strategic orientation moderates the impact of growth on profitability for a sample of Danish high growth (Gazelle) firms. ---------- Firm growth has been an essential part of both management research and entrepreneurship research for decades (e.g. Penrose 1959, Birch 1987, Storey 1994). From a societal point of view, firm growth has been perceived as economic generator and job creator. In entrepreneurship research, growth has been an important part of the field (Davidsson, Delmar and Wiklund 2006), and many have used growth as a measure of success. In strategic management, growth has been seen as an approach to achieve competitive advantages and a way of becoming increasing profitable (e.g. Russo and Fouts 1997, Cho and Pucic 2005). However, although firm growth used to be perceived as a natural pathway to profitability recently more skepticism has emerged due to both new theoretical development and new empirical insights. Empirically, studies show inconsistent and inconclusive empirical evidence regarding the impact of growth on profitability. Our review reveals that some studies find a substantial positive relationship, some find a weak positive relationship, some find no relationship and further some find a negative relationship. Overall, two dominant yet divergent theoretical positions can be identified. The first position, mainly focusing on the environmental fit, argues that firms are likely to become more profitable if they enter a market quickly and on a larger scale due to first mover advantages and economic of scale. The second position, mainly focusing the internal fit, argues that growth may lead to a range of internal challenges and difficulties, including rapid change in structure, reward systems, decision making, communication and management style. The inconsistent empirical results together with two divergent theoretical positions call for further investigations into the circumstances by which growth generate profitability and into the circumstances by which growth do not generate profitability. In this project, we investigate how strategic orientations influence the impact of growth on profitability by asking the following research question: How is the impact of growth on profitability moderated by strategic orientation? Based on a literature review of how growth impacts profitability in areas such as entrepreneurship, strategic management and strategic entrepreneurship we develop three hypotheses regarding the growth-profitability relationship and strategic orientation as a potential moderator. ---------- Methodology/Key Propositions: The three hypotheses are tested on data collected in 2008. All firms in Denmark, including all listed and non-listed (VAT-registered) firms who experienced a 100 % growth and had a positive sales or gross profit over a four years period (2004-2007) were surveyed. In total 2,475 fulfilled the requirements. Among those 1,107 firms returned usable questionnaires satisfactory giving us a response rate on 45 %. The financial data together with data on number of employees were obtained from D&B (previously Dun & Bradstreet). The remaining data were obtained through the survey. Hierarchical regression models with ROA (return on assets) as the dependent variable were used to test the hypotheses. In the first model control variables including region, industry, firm age, CEO age, CEO gender, CEO education and number of employees were entered. In the second model, growth measured as growth in employees was entered. Then strategic orientation (differentiation, cost leadership, focus differentiation and focus cost leadership) and then interaction effects of strategic orientation and growth were entered in the model. ---------- Results and Implications: The results show a positive impact of firm growth on profitability and further that this impact is moderated by strategic orientation. Specifically, it was found that growth has a larger impact on profitability when firms do not pursue a focus strategy including both focus differentiation and focus cost leadership. Our preliminary interpretation of the results suggests that the value of growth depends on the circumstances and more specifically 'how much is left to fight for'. It seems like those firms who target towards a narrow segment are less likely to gain value of growth. The remaining market shares to fight for to these firms are not large enough to compensate for the cost of growing. Based on our findings, it therefore seems like growth has a more positive relationship with profitability for those who approach a broad market segment. Furthermore we argue that firms pursuing af Focus strategy will have more specialized assets that decreases the possibilities of further profitable expansion. For firms, CEOs, board of directors etc., the study shows that high growth is not necessarily something worth aiming for. It is a trade-off between the cost of growing and the value of growing. For many firms, there might be better ways of generating profitability in the long run. It depends on the strategic orientation of the firm. For advisors and consultants, the conditional value of growth implies that in-depth knowledge on their clients' situation is necessary before any advice can be given. And finally, for policy makers, it means they have to be careful when initiating new policies to promote firm growth. They need to take into consideration firm strategy and industry conditions.

Demo abstract : FOS —- a new operating system for sensor networks

FOS, the Fleck Operating System, is a new operating system that implements cooperative threads—providing a simple and productive environment for applications programmers. This paper discusses sensor network operating systems in general and places this development in context.

Use of face masks by non-scrubbed operating room staff : a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Ambiguity remains about the effectiveness of wearing surgical face masks. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact on surgical site infections when non-scrubbed operating room staff did not wear surgical face masks. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Participants: Patients undergoing elective or emergency obstetric, gynecological, general, orthopaedic, breast or urological surgery in an Australian tertiary hospital. Intervention: 827 participants were enrolled and complete follow-up data was available for 811 (98.1%) patients. Operating room lists were randomly allocated to a ‘Mask roup’ (all non-scrubbed staff wore a mask) or ‘No Mask group’ (none of the non-scrubbed staff wore masks). Primary end point: Surgical site infection (identified using in-patient surveillance; post discharge follow-up and chart reviews). The patient was followed for up to six weeks. Results: Overall, 83 (10.2%) surgical site infections were recorded; 46/401 (11.5%) in the Masked group and 37/410 (9.0%) in the No Mask group; odds ratio (OR) 0.77 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.49 to 1.21), p = 0.151. Independent risk factors for surgical site infection included: any pre-operative stay (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.43 (95% CI, 0.20; 0.95), high BMI aOR, 0.38 (95% CI, 0.17; 0.87), and any previous surgical site infection aOR, 0.40 (95% CI, 0.17; 0.89). Conclusion: Surgical site infection rates did not increase when non-scrubbed operating room personnel did not wear a face mask.