Analysis of the suitability of existing medical ontologies for building a scalable semantic interoperability solution supporting multi-site collaboration in oncology

Semantic interoperability is essential to facilitate efficient collaboration in heterogeneous multi-site healthcare environments. The deployment of a semantic interoperability solution has the potential to enable a wide range of informatics supported applications in clinical care and research both within as ingle healthcare organization and in a network of organizations. At the same time, building and deploying a semantic interoperability solution may require significant effort to carryout data transformation and to harmonize the semantics of the information in the different systems. Our approach to semantic interoperability leverages existing healthcare standards and ontologies, focusing first on specific clinical domains and key applications, and gradually expanding the solution when needed. An important objective of this work is to create a semantic link between clinical research and care environments to enable applications such as streamlining the execution of multi-centric clinical trials, including the identification of eligible patients for the trials. This paper presents an analysis of the suitability of several widely-used medical ontologies in the clinical domain: SNOMED-CT, LOINC, MedDRA, to capture the semantics of the clinical trial eligibility criteria, of the clinical trial data (e.g., Clinical Report Forms), and of the corresponding patient record data that would enable the automatic identification of eligible patients. Next to the coverage provided by the ontologies we evaluate and compare the sizes of the sets of relevant concepts and their relative frequency to estimate the cost of data transformation, of building the necessary semantic mappings, and of extending the solution to new domains. This analysis shows that our approach is both feasible and scalable.

Remaking Movie Making: The Environmental Impacts of the Film Industry in Southern California

The film and television industry is integral to the economics and culture of the Southern California region. It is also a major contributing factor to the environmental problems in the region. Currently the Motion Picture, Television, and Commercial Industries Act of 1984 is the only regulation written specifically for the entertainment industry. This regulation was created with the purpose of streamlining the film permitting process to prevent run-away production, taking production out of state, and encourage growth. A change in this regulation is needed since studios routinely fail to meet environmental standards or work towards improvement during on-location filming. Amendments to this regulation requiring permits to contain environmental conditions would improve environmental conditions and stay true to the original purpose of the act.

Development of a Cleanup Management Plan for the San Benito River in San Benito County, California

Trash and car/truck bodies in the San Benito River and along its banks continue to present a challenge as state mandated basin plans often fail to address these pollutants. To measure the extent of the problem, an assessment of trash and car/truck bodies was completed along four locations of the river. The survey results indicated a need for a Cleanup Management Plan that should include a streamlining process for the removal of car/truck bodies, as well as guidelines for river cleanups. Existing cleanup plans and internet resources were analyzed for creation of the Cleanup Management Plan for the San Benito River.

The new European framework for managing bank crises. CEPS Policy Brief No. 304, 21 November 2013

This Policy Brief describes and discusses the proposals for a European Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) for banks and for a Directive on Bank Recovery and Resolution (BRR). The authors find that the proposals are generally well designed and present a consistent approach, yet there is room for improvement, including the streamlining of procedures for the start of resolution, which now entail much overlap in the powers attributed to the various institutions involved (the Commission, the Single Resolution Board and the European Central Bank). The paper makes a number of key recommendations to facilitate discussions for stakeholders and regulators.

Making the Most of EU Labour Mobility. Report of a CEPS Task Force in Cooperation with the Bertelsmann Foundation. CEPS Task Force Report, 7 October 2014

This Task Force report combines the most recent data from Eurostat with national sources to highlight the most significant labour mobility trends within the EU. Overall, the recent recession has not induced previously immobile workers to become more mobile, at least not in the larger member states. Mobility flows have moved away from crisis countries in response to the economic downturn but the desired increase in south-north mobility has not been observed so far. This leads the authors to conclude that successfully fostering mobility within EU15 countries requires tremendous effort. It is important that workers who are willing and able to move are not discouraged from doing so by unnecessary barriers to mobility. Improving the workings of the EURES system and its online job-matching platform; better cooperation of national employment agencies; streamlining the recognition of qualifications; and supporting language training within the EU are important contributions to labour mobility. The authors conclude that the EU is right to defend the free movement of workers. National governments should keep in mind that their ability to tap into an attractive foreign labour supply also hinges upon the perception of how mobile workers are treated in destination countries. If the political imperative requires regulations to be changed, such as the one guiding the coordination of social security, it is essential that no new mobility barriers are put in place.

Effective Regional Energy Policy Cooperation in South East Europe: A Proposal. CEPS Background Briefing Paper, 2 July 2015

Key Points. The implementation of regional energy policy cooperation initiatives is a priority of both the Energy Union and the so-called 2030 Energy and Climate Framework. The Energy Union proposal has singled out south east Europe as one area in which to act. This report identifies the seven key elements that need to be addressed to bring existing and planned regional energy policy cooperation initiatives in south east Europe to life: i) a sound geographical definition, ii) a governance structure, iii) voluntary participation, iv) exchange of information and best practice, v) the development of an external dimension, vi) regional infrastructure planning and development and vii) streamlining the financing instruments across the region. The study finds that significant progress has been made in many areas, and makes concrete proposals to unlock the full potential of coordination in those areas where there is limited progress. These proposals have been tested in discussions in the region.

Acquisition reform : DOD Acquisition Law Advisory Panel's operations and report : report to Congressional requesters /

"B-255112"--P. 1.

Recommendations /

The Illinois General Assembly charged the Streamlining Illinois' Educational Delivery Systems Task Force with examining the duties of all of the educational service agencies (ESAs) in Illinois including regional offices of education, intermediate service centers, special education cooperatives, education for systems, learning technology centers and services provided by ISBE.

Extending the theory of Owicki and Gries with asynchronous message passing

We describe an extension of the theory of Owicki and Gries (1976) to a programming language that supports asynchronous message passing based on unconditional send actions and conditional receive actions. The focus is on exploring the fitness of the extension for distributed program derivation. A number of experiments are reported, based on a running example problem, and with the aim of exploring design heuristics and of streamlining derivations and progress arguments.

Facets of operational performance in an emergency room (ER)

This paper, using detailed time measurements of patients complemented by interviews with hospital management and staff, examines three facets of an emergency room's (ER) operational performance: (1) effectiveness of the triage system in rationing patient treatment; (2) factors influencing ER's operational performance in general and the trade-offs in flow times, inventory levels (that is the number of patients waiting in the system), and resource utilization; (3) the impacts of potential process and staffing changes to improve the ER's performance. Specifically, the paper discusses four proposals for streamlining the patient flow: establishing designated tracks (fast track, diagnostic track), creating a holding area for certain type of patients, introducing a protocol that would reduce the load on physicians by allowing a registered nurse to order testing and treatment for some patients, and potentially and in the longer term, moving from non-ER specialist physicians to ER specialists. The paper's findings are based on analyzing the paths and flow times of close to two thousand patients in the emergency room of the Medical Center of Leeuwarden (MCL), The Netherlands. Using exploratory data analysis the paper presents generalizable findings about the impacts of various factors on ER's lead-time performance and shows how the proposals fit with well-documented process improvement theories. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A deontic analysis of inter -organizational control requirements

This research focuses on the design and verification of inter-organizational controls. Instead of looking at a documentary procedure, which is the flow of documents and data among the parties, the research examines the underlying deontic purpose of the procedure, the so-called deontic process, and identifies control requirements to secure this purpose. The vision of the research is a formal theory for streamlining bureaucracy in business and government procedures. ^ Underpinning most inter-organizational procedures are deontic relations, which are about rights and obligations of the parties. When all parties trust each other, they are willing to fulfill their obligations and honor the counter parties’ rights; thus controls may not be needed. The challenge is in cases where trust may not be assumed. In these cases, the parties need to rely on explicit controls to reduce their exposure to the risk of opportunism. However, at present there is no analytic approach or technique to determine which controls are needed for a given contracting or governance situation. ^ The research proposes a formal method for deriving inter-organizational control requirements based on static analysis of deontic relations and dynamic analysis of deontic changes. The formal method will take a deontic process model of an inter-organizational transaction and certain domain knowledge as inputs to automatically generate control requirements that a documentary procedure needs to satisfy in order to limit fraud potentials. The deliverables of the research include a formal representation namely Deontic Petri Nets that combine multiple modal logics and Petri nets for modeling deontic processes, a set of control principles that represent an initial formal theory on the relationships between deontic processes and documentary procedures, and a working prototype that uses model checking technique to identify fraud potentials in a deontic process and generate control requirements to limit them. Fourteen scenarios of two well-known international payment procedures—cash in advance and documentary credit—have been used to test the prototype. The results showed that all control requirements stipulated in these procedures could be derived automatically.^

A Deontic Analysis of Inter-Organizational Control Requirements

This research focuses on the design and verification of inter-organizational controls. Instead of looking at a documentary procedure, which is the flow of documents and data among the parties, the research examines the underlying deontic purpose of the procedure, the so-called deontic process, and identifies control requirements to secure this purpose. The vision of the research is a formal theory for streamlining bureaucracy in business and government procedures. Underpinning most inter-organizational procedures are deontic relations, which are about rights and obligations of the parties. When all parties trust each other, they are willing to fulfill their obligations and honor the counter parties’ rights; thus controls may not be needed. The challenge is in cases where trust may not be assumed. In these cases, the parties need to rely on explicit controls to reduce their exposure to the risk of opportunism. However, at present there is no analytic approach or technique to determine which controls are needed for a given contracting or governance situation. The research proposes a formal method for deriving inter-organizational control requirements based on static analysis of deontic relations and dynamic analysis of deontic changes. The formal method will take a deontic process model of an inter-organizational transaction and certain domain knowledge as inputs to automatically generate control requirements that a documentary procedure needs to satisfy in order to limit fraud potentials. The deliverables of the research include a formal representation namely Deontic Petri Nets that combine multiple modal logics and Petri nets for modeling deontic processes, a set of control principles that represent an initial formal theory on the relationships between deontic processes and documentary procedures, and a working prototype that uses model checking technique to identify fraud potentials in a deontic process and generate control requirements to limit them. Fourteen scenarios of two well-known international payment procedures -- cash in advance and documentary credit -- have been used to test the prototype. The results showed that all control requirements stipulated in these procedures could be derived automatically.

Karst hazard analysis towards the development of predictive karst models for southern Ontario

An investigation into karst hazard in southern Ontario has been undertaken with the intention of leading to the development of predictive karst models for this region. The reason these are not currently feasible is a lack of sufficient karst data, though this is not entirely due to the lack of karst features. Geophysical data was collected at Lake on the Mountain, Ontario as part of this karst investigation. This data was collected in order to validate the long-standing hypothesis that Lake on the Mountain was formed from a sinkhole collapse. Sub-bottom acoustic profiling data was collected in order to image the lake bottom sediments and bedrock. Vertical bedrock features interpreted as solutionally enlarged fractures were taken as evidence for karst processes on the lake bottom. Additionally, the bedrock topography shows a narrower and more elongated basin than was previously identified, and this also lies parallel to a mapped fault system in the area. This suggests that Lake on the Mountain was formed over a fault zone which also supports the sinkhole hypothesis as it would provide groundwater pathways for karst dissolution to occur. Previous sediment cores suggest that Lake on the Mountain would have formed at some point during the Wisconsinan glaciation with glacial meltwater and glacial loading as potential contributing factors to sinkhole development. A probabilistic karst model for the state of Kentucky, USA, has been generated using the Weights of Evidence method. This model is presented as an example of the predictive capabilities of these kind of data-driven modelling techniques and to show how such models could be applied to karst in Ontario. The model was able to classify 70% of the validation dataset correctly while minimizing false positive identifications. This is moderately successful and could stand to be improved. Finally, suggestions to improving the current karst model of southern Ontario are suggested with the goal of increasing investigation into karst in Ontario and streamlining the reporting system for sinkholes, caves, and other karst features so as to improve the current Ontario karst database.

Life-cycle modification in open oceans accounts for genome variability in a cosmopolitan phytoplankton

Emiliania huxleyi is the most abundant calcifying plankton in modern oceans with substantial intraspecific genome variability and a biphasic life cycle involving sexual alternation between calcified 2N and flagellated 1N cells. We show that high genome content variability in Emiliania relates to erosion of 1N-specific genes and loss of the ability to form flagellated cells. Analysis of 185 E. huxleyi strains isolated from world oceans suggests that loss of flagella occurred independently in lineages inhabiting oligotrophic open oceans over short evolutionary timescales. This environmentally linked physiogenomic change suggests life cycling is not advantageous in very large/diluted populations experiencing low biotic pressure and low ecological variability. Gene loss did not appear to reflect pressure for genome streamlining in oligotrophic oceans as previously observed in picoplankton. Life-cycle modifications might be common in plankton and cause major functional variability to be hidden from traditional taxonomic or molecular markers.

Life-cycle modification in open oceans accounts for genome variability in a cosmopolitan phytoplankton

Emiliania huxleyi is the most abundant calcifying plankton in modern oceans with substantial intraspecific genome variability and a biphasic life cycle involving sexual alternation between calcified 2N and flagellated 1N cells. We show that high genome content variability in Emiliania relates to erosion of 1N-specific genes and loss of the ability to form flagellated cells. Analysis of 185 E. huxleyi strains isolated from world oceans suggests that loss of flagella occurred independently in lineages inhabiting oligotrophic open oceans over short evolutionary timescales. This environmentally linked physiogenomic change suggests life cycling is not advantageous in very large/diluted populations experiencing low biotic pressure and low ecological variability. Gene loss did not appear to reflect pressure for genome streamlining in oligotrophic oceans as previously observed in picoplankton. Life-cycle modifications might be common in plankton and cause major functional variability to be hidden from traditional taxonomic or molecular markers.