Diseases of the digestive system and a system for patient classification: diagnostic-related groups (DRG)

In the last years different classification systems for hospitalized patients have been developed in the United States, that allow to evaluate different aspects of any Hospital: The quality, the efficacy and the efficiency. The classification of "The Diagnosis Related Groups" (DRG) relates the hospitalized patients with the expenses that they generate, and it is the most used in Europe. In the version DRG-All Patient, all the diagnoses and procedures of the hospitalized patients, using the International Classification of Diseases, are divided in to 25 Major Diagnostic Categories (MDC) where each one excludes all the others. We describe the behavior with respect to the age, sex and stay of all the GDR integrated in the CDM 6 and 7: diseases and disorders of the digestive tract, and diseases and disorders of the hepatobiliary system and the pancreas. The study has been carried out with a national data base of two millions of cases seen from 214 acute-care Hospitals. The MDC number 6 is the most frequent, with an important number of patients in the pediatric age; it is more frequent in males; the average stay is 8.59 days and 19 GDR (36.5%) have a variation coefficient greater than one. The other MDC, number 7 is less frequent, the majority of the patients are between 60-80 years of age, the average stay is 12.2 days with a coefficient of variation greater than one in 4 GDR (17.4%). Clinical Services should know the characteristics and behavior of their patients, as well as the comparison with the national data bases. This may allow a control of the quality and the costs by using a common "language" with the managers.     

Automatic metro map layout using multicriteria optimization

This paper describes an automatic mechanism for drawing metro maps. We apply multicriteria optimization to find effective placement of stations with a good line layout and to label the map unambiguously. A number of metrics are defined, which are used in a weighted sum to find a fitness value for a layout of the map. A hill climbing optimizer is used to reduce the fitness value, and find improved map layouts. To avoid local minima, we apply clustering techniques to the map-the hill climber moves both stations and clusters when finding improved layouts. We show the method applied to a number of metro maps, and describe an empirical study that provides some quantitative evidence that automatically-drawn metro maps can help users to find routes more efficiently than either published maps or undistorted maps. Moreover, we have found that, in these cases, study subjects indicate a preference for automatically-drawn maps over the alternatives.     

TRIMS,a privacy-aware trust and reputation model for identity management systems

Electronic transactions are becoming more important everyday. Several tasks like buying goods, booking flights or hotel rooms, or paying for streaming a movie, for instance, can be carried out through the Internet. Nevertheless, they are still some drawbacks due to security threats while performing such operations. Trust and reputation management rises as a novel way of solving some of those problems. In this paper we present our work TRIMS (a privacy-aware trust and reputation model for identity management systems), which applies a trust and reputation model to guarantee an acceptable level of security when deciding if a different domain might be considered reliable when receiving certain sensitive user’s attributes. Specifically, we will address the problems which surfaces when a domain needs to decide whether to exchange some information with another possibly unknown domain to effectively provide a service to one of its users. This decision will be determined by the trust deposited in the targeting domain. As far as we know, our proposal is one of the first approaches dealing with trust and reputation management in a multi-domain scenario. Finally, the performed experiments have demonstrated the robustness and accuracy of our model in a wide variety of scenarios.     

A new fast prototype selection method based on clustering

In supervised classification, a training set T is given to a classifier for classifying new prototypes. In practice, not all information in T is useful for classifiers, therefore, it is convenient to discard irrelevant prototypes from T. This process is known as prototype selection, which is an important task for classifiers since through this process the time for classification or training could be reduced. In this work, we propose a new fast prototype selection method for large datasets, based on clustering, which selects border prototypes and some interior prototypes. Experimental results showing the performance of our method and comparing accuracy and runtimes against other prototype selection methods are reported.     

Real-time massive convolution for audio applications on GPU

Massive convolution is the basic operation in multichannel acoustic signal processing. This field has experienced a major development in recent years. One reason for this has been the increase in the number of sound sources used in playback applications available to users. Another reason is the growing need to incorporate new effects and to improve the hearing experience. Massive convolution requires high computing capacity. GPUs offer the possibility of parallelizing these operations. This allows us to obtain the processing result in much shorter time and to free up CPU resources. One important aspect lies in the possibility of overlapping the transfer of data from CPU to GPU and vice versa with the computation, in order to carry out real-time applications. Thus, a synthesis of 3D sound scenes could be achieved with only a peer-to-peer music streaming environment using a simple GPU in your computer, while the CPU in the computer is being used for other tasks. Nowadays, these effects are obtained in theaters or funfairs at a very high cost, requiring a large quantity of resources. Thus, our work focuses on two mains points: to describe an efficient massive convolution implementation and to incorporate this task to real-time multichannel-sound applications.     

A Survey of Airworthiness and Certification for UAS

The Italian SMAT project is a civilian program supported by Piemonte Region developed for the territorial monitoring and surveillance and for the prevention of natural hazards. In a different way from the previous surveillance programs, the SMAT project is based on the use of several unmanned platforms that are able to cooperate through ground coordination and control station. The flight in non-segregated airspace, needed in order to accomplish the territorial monitoring mission, is a main issue to be investigated and defined, because of the current lack of a common consensus and agreement on the regulations of UAS. The present work outlines the international initiatives that deal with the development of the regulatory framework on airworthiness and certification of UAS and their potential impact on the SMAT project.     

Air management in a diesel engine using fuzzy control techniques

Air management for diesel engines is a major challenge from the control point of view because of the highly nonlinear behavior of this system. For this reason, linear control techniques are unable to provide the required performance, and nonlinear controllers are used instead. This article discusses two fundamental steps when designing a control system. Firstly, a methodology to identify Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) structures using experimental data is proposed. Secondly, the design of a fuzzy controller in PDC structure (Parallel Distributed Compensation) is presented. The parameters of this controller are obtained from a LMI (Linear Matrix Inequalities) minimization problem.     

Agent mobility architecture based on IEEE-FIPA standards

Mobile agents are autonomous software entities driven by a set of goals and tasks. Reactivity, social ability, autonomy, the ability to move to different network locations, and the weak agent notion of proactiveness, allow for autonomous processing of distributed information according to their environment (context awareness).Although agent mobility has been devised for homogeneous environments, deployment of agent mobility in heterogeneous environments has been hindered by the absence of a common set of interoperation rules and ontologies for different agent middlewares.In this article, an agent migration model based on the communication standards of the IEEE-FIPA organisation is proposed. The approach described encompasses the definition of several specifications to achieve interoperability in the migration process in heterogeneous environments.The model provides a basic and extensible common migration process, which is flexible enough to support different kinds of migration methods and future upgrades. It is completely independent of any specific middleware implementation.     

Reinforcement learning of pedagogical policies in adaptive and intelligent educational systems

In an adaptive and intelligent educational system (AIES), the process of learning pedagogical policies according the students needs fits as a Reinforcement Learning (RL) problem. Previous works have demonstrated that a great amount of experience is needed in order for the system to learn to teach properly, so applying RL to the AIES from scratch is unfeasible. Other works have previously demonstrated in a theoretical way that seeding the AIES with an initial value function learned with simulated students reduce the experience required to learn an accurate pedagogical policy. In this paper we present empirical results demonstrating that a value function learned with simulated students can provide the AIES with a very accurate initial pedagogical policy. The evaluation is based on the interaction of more than 70 Computer Science undergraduate students, and demonstrates that an efficient and useful guide through the contents of the educational system is obtained.