PUC: préstamo consorciado de las bibliotecas del CBUC

Se describe brevemente el estado de la cuestión sobre el préstamo interbibliotecario (PI) consorciado a nivel internacional, y se explican las limitaciones del anterior servicio de PI del Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya (CBUC) y su evolución hacia el nuevo servicio de préstamo de libros, el PUC, que se ha implementado recientemente. Se detalla la selección del software, el reglamento, la logística del PUC y su funcionamiento técnico. Se destacan las mejoras que ha supuesto el PUC como la de ser un servicio iniciado por el propio usuario, que puede pedir el libro a través del Catàleg Col·lectiu de les Universitats de Catalunya (CCUC) directamente a la biblioteca que lo tiene, sin mediación del personal de biblioteca y la reducción del tiempo de espera y de costes que esto supone.

Las posiciones de los diferentes grupos políticos israelíes sobre la resolución de la situación de los refugiados

La cuestión de los refugiados palestinos es uno de los asuntos clave para alcanzar una resolución firme del conflicto palestino-israelí. Para ello debe resolverse la situación de los cientos de miles de palestinos que fueron expulsados y/o huyeron con la guerra de 1948, y sus descendientes, que hoy suman casi 5 millones. En el proceso de paz, este es uno de los asuntos que ni siquiera fue tenido en cuenta con la profundidad que lo requiere. Los palestinos se acogen a la resolución 194 de la Asamblea de Naciones Unidas y reivindican el Derecho al Retorno. Pero del lado israelí tres argumentos ponen en duda este derecho al retorno: A) El asunto de la responsabilidad en la huida/expulsión de cientos de miles de palestinos de sus hogares. B) La «necesidad» existencial de ser un estado de mayoría judía, que el retorno podría poner en cuestión. C) El hecho de que Israel ya acogió a cientos de miles de judíos originarios de los países árabes. Analizaremos cómo los partidos políticos israelíes tratan este asunto, y cómo los «nuevos historiadores israelíes» pueden ayudar a cambiar el punto de vista israelí al poner en cuestión la narrativa sionista de la guerra del 48.

Iowa Voter Guide, 2003

This Voter Guide is intended to help all eligible Iowans, regardless of health or physical disability, to register and vote on election day. This guide contains information on voter registration, voting accessibility, absentee voting and important election dates and deadlines. The Iowa Department for the Blind has an audio cassette version of this Voter Guide available for your convenience. NOTE: THIS VOTER GUIDE WAS VALID THROUGH 2003. IF YOU WANT THE CURRENT VOTER INFORMATION INCLUDING THE ABSENTEE BALLOT REQUEST FORM GO TO: http://www.sos.state.ia.us/elections/index.html

Missing Persons Bulletin, November 2002

Monthly newsletter for public safety. Information in this document has been redacted at the request of one of the named individuals. To examine the unedited document, please contact Iowa Library Services / State Library of Iowa – Main Library, 1112 E. Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50319, (515) 242-6542, 1-800-248-4483.

Missing Persons Bulletin, October 2002

Monthly newsletter for public safety. Information in this document has been redacted at the request of one of the named individuals. To examine the unedited document, please contact Iowa Library Services / State Library of Iowa – Main Library, 1112 E. Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50319, (515) 242‐6542, 1‐800‐248‐4483.

Missing Persons Bulletin, Iowa Department of Public Safety, September 2002

Monthly newsletter for public safety. Information in this document has been redacted at the request of one of the named individuals. To examine the unedited document, please contact Iowa Library Services / State Library of Iowa – Main Library, 1112 E. Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50319, (515) 242-6542, 1-800-248-4483.

Sudden death: ethical and legal problems of post-mortem forensic genetic testing for hereditary cardiac diseases.

Hereditary non-structural diseases such as catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT), long QT, and the Brugada syndrome as well as structural disease such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) cause a significant percentage of sudden cardiac deaths in the young. In these cases, genetic testing can be useful and does not require proxy consent if it is carried out at the request of judicial authorities as part of a forensic death investigation. Mutations in several genes are implicated in arrhythmic syndromes, including SCN5A, KCNQ1, KCNH2, RyR2, and genes causing HCM. If the victim's test is positive, this information is important for relatives who might be themselves at risk of carrying the disease-causing mutation. There is no consensus about how professionals should proceed in this context. This article discusses the ethical and legal arguments in favour of and against three options: genetic testing of the deceased victim only; counselling of relatives before testing the victim; counselling restricted to relatives of victims who tested positive for mutations of serious and preventable diseases. Legal cases are mentioned that pertain to the duty of geneticists and other physicians to warn relatives. Although the claim for a legal duty is tenuous, recent publications and guidelines suggest that geneticists and others involved in the multidisciplinary approach of sudden death (SD) cases may, nevertheless, have an ethical duty to inform relatives of SD victims. Several practical problems remain pertaining to the costs of testing, the counselling and to the need to obtain permission of judicial authorities.

Tree-based message diffusion for managing replicated data in unreliable and resource-constrained peer-to-peer environment

Abstract This thesis proposes a set of adaptive broadcast solutions and an adaptive data replication solution to support the deployment of P2P applications. P2P applications are an emerging type of distributed applications that are running on top of P2P networks. Typical P2P applications are video streaming, file sharing, etc. While interesting because they are fully distributed, P2P applications suffer from several deployment problems, due to the nature of the environment on which they perform. Indeed, defining an application on top of a P2P network often means defining an application where peers contribute resources in exchange for their ability to use the P2P application. For example, in P2P file sharing application, while the user is downloading some file, the P2P application is in parallel serving that file to other users. Such peers could have limited hardware resources, e.g., CPU, bandwidth and memory or the end-user could decide to limit the resources it dedicates to the P2P application a priori. In addition, a P2P network is typically emerged into an unreliable environment, where communication links and processes are subject to message losses and crashes, respectively. To support P2P applications, this thesis proposes a set of services that address some underlying constraints related to the nature of P2P networks. The proposed services include a set of adaptive broadcast solutions and an adaptive data replication solution that can be used as the basis of several P2P applications. Our data replication solution permits to increase availability and to reduce the communication overhead. The broadcast solutions aim, at providing a communication substrate encapsulating one of the key communication paradigms used by P2P applications: broadcast. Our broadcast solutions typically aim at offering reliability and scalability to some upper layer, be it an end-to-end P2P application or another system-level layer, such as a data replication layer. Our contributions are organized in a protocol stack made of three layers. In each layer, we propose a set of adaptive protocols that address specific constraints imposed by the environment. Each protocol is evaluated through a set of simulations. The adaptiveness aspect of our solutions relies on the fact that they take into account the constraints of the underlying system in a proactive manner. To model these constraints, we define an environment approximation algorithm allowing us to obtain an approximated view about the system or part of it. This approximated view includes the topology and the components reliability expressed in probabilistic terms. To adapt to the underlying system constraints, the proposed broadcast solutions route messages through tree overlays permitting to maximize the broadcast reliability. Here, the broadcast reliability is expressed as a function of the selected paths reliability and of the use of available resources. These resources are modeled in terms of quotas of messages translating the receiving and sending capacities at each node. To allow a deployment in a large-scale system, we take into account the available memory at processes by limiting the view they have to maintain about the system. Using this partial view, we propose three scalable broadcast algorithms, which are based on a propagation overlay that tends to the global tree overlay and adapts to some constraints of the underlying system. At a higher level, this thesis also proposes a data replication solution that is adaptive both in terms of replica placement and in terms of request routing. At the routing level, this solution takes the unreliability of the environment into account, in order to maximize reliable delivery of requests. At the replica placement level, the dynamically changing origin and frequency of read/write requests are analyzed, in order to define a set of replica that minimizes communication cost.

Adaption of Courses and Learning Environment to the User Context in dotLRN

The explosive growth of Internet during the last years has been reflected in the ever-increasing amount of the diversity and heterogeneity of user preferences, types and features of devices and access networks. Usually the heterogeneity in the context of the users which request Web contents is not taken into account by the servers that deliver them implying that these contents will not always suit their needs. In the particular case of e-learning platforms this issue is especially critical due to the fact that it puts at stake the knowledge acquired by their users. In the following paper we present a system that aims to provide the dotLRN e-learning platform with the capability to adapt to its users context. By integrating dotLRN with a multi-agent hypermedia system, online courses being undertaken by students as well as their learning environment are adapted in real time

Désir de mort, désir de vie et fin de vie [Desire to die, desire to live at the end of life]

Since a couple of years, physicians are confronted with an increasing request of end of life patients asking for a dying facilitated process. The reasons for this are multiple and complex. Existential suffering, increased by depression, a feeling of loss of meaning or dignity and/or being a burden, seems to be a significant factor. Social isolation and physical symptoms seem to be only contributory. The identification of "protecting elements" such as spiritual well-being or a preserved sense of dignity offers new opportunities for care. Providing a space for dialogue by exploring the patient's expectations and fears, his knowledge of care options available at the end of life, his own resources and difficulties frequently contribute to decrease suffering.

State of Iowa Inmates at Mid-Year, 2001

This report was compiled at the request of the Department of Corrections. The statewide analysis of Iowa’s prison population at mid-year (June 30) 2001 includes the following information: · Type of Most Serious Offense (e.g., arson, assault, burglary, etc.) · Offense Class of Most Serious Offense · Sex · Race/Ethnicity · Age (median, or middle value) · Inmate Custody Level (minimum, medium, maximum security) · Educational Level (average) · Reading Score (average)

State of Iowa Inmates at Mid-Year, 2000

This report was compiled at the request of the Department of Corrections. The statewide analysis of Iowa’s prison population at mid-year (June 30) 2000 includes the following information: l. Type of Most Serious Offense (e.g., arson, assault, burglary, etc.) 2. Offense Class of Most Serious Offense 3. Sex 4. Race/Ethnicity 5. Age (median, or middle value) 6. Inmate Custody Scores (median value) 7. Educational Level (average) 8. Reading Scores (average)

State of Iowa 1999 Inmate Profile, 2000

This report was compiled at the request of the Department of Corrections. The statewide analysis of Iowa’s prison population at mid-year (June 30) 1999 includes the following information: • Type of Most Serious Offense (e.g., arson, assault, burglary, etc.) • Offense Class of Most Serious Offense • Sex • Race/Ethnicity • Age (median, or middle value) • Inmate Custody Scores (median value) • Educational Level (average) • Reading Scores (average)

Algorithmic aspects of bio-inspired string operations

We present building blocks for algorithms for the efficient reduction of square factor, i.e. direct repetitions in strings. So the basic problem is this: given a string, compute all strings that can be obtained by reducing factors of the form zz to z. Two types of algorithms are treated: an offline algorithm is one that can compute a data structure on the given string in advance before the actual search for the square begins; in contrast, online algorithms receive all input only at the time when a request is made. For offline algorithms we treat the following problem: Let u and w be two strings such that w is obtained from u by reducing a square factor zz to only z. If we further are given the suffix table of u, how can we derive the suffix table for w without computing it from scratch? As the suffix table plays a key role in online algorithms for the detection of squares in a string, this derivation can make the iterated reduction of squares more efficient. On the other hand, we also show how a suffix array, used for the offline detection of squares, can be adapted to the new string resulting from the deletion of a square. Because the deletion is a very local change, this adaption is more eficient than the computation of the new suffix array from scratch.

SGP-1: prediction and validation of homologous genes based on sequence alignments

Conventional methods of gene prediction rely on the recognition of DNA-sequence signals, the coding potential or the comparison of a genomic sequence with a cDNA, EST, or protein database. Reasons for limited accuracy in many circumstances are species-specific training and the incompleteness of reference databases. Lately, comparative genome analysis has attracted increasing attention. Several analysis tools that are based on human/mouse comparisons are already available. Here, we present a program for the prediction of protein-coding genes, termed SGP-1 (Syntenic Gene Prediction), which is based on the similarity of homologous genomic sequences. In contrast to most existing tools, the accuracy of SGP-1 depends little on species-specific properties such as codon usage or the nucleotide distribution. SGP-1 may therefore be applied to nonstandard model organisms in vertebrates as well as in plants, without the need for extensive parameter training. In addition to predicting genes in large-scale genomic sequences, the program may be useful to validate gene structure annotations from databases. To this end, SGP-1 output also contains comparisons between predicted and annotated gene structures in HTML format. The program can be accessed via a Web server at http://soft.ice.mpg.de/sgp-1. The source code, written in ANSI C, is available on request from the authors.