Requirements engineering in health care: the example of chemotherapy planning in paediatric oncology

Health care is characterized by highly complex processes of patient care that require unusual amount of communication between different health care professionals of different institutions. Sub-optimal processes can significantly impact on the patient’s health, increase the consumption of services and resources and in severe cases can lead to the patient death. For these reasons, requirements engineering for the development of information technology in health care is a complex process as well: without constant and rigorous evaluation, the impact of new systems on the quality of care is unknown and it is possible that badly designed systems significantly harm patients. To overcome these limitations, we present and discuss an approach to requirements engineering that we applied for the development of applications for chemotherapy planning in paediatric oncology. Chemotherapy planning in paediatric oncology is complex and time-consuming and errors must be avoided by all means. In the multi-hospital/multi-trial-centre environment of paediatric oncology, it is especially difficult and time-consuming to analyse requirements. Our approach combines a grounded theory approach with evolutionary prototyping based on the constant development and refinement of a generic domain model, in this case a domain model for chemotherapy planning in paediatric oncology. The prototypes were introduced in medical centres and final results show that the developed generic domain model is adequate.     

Responding to the Global Challenges: Regional Entrepreneurship within the Change Society

In this paper, some fundamental aspects of societal change processes are described, leading to proposals of how to cope with such changes through continuous learning within society. This change society is presently emerging worldwide. It is very much shaped by advanced networked information and communication technology. Correspondingly, certain trends are identified in this paper which indicate the change processes towards this new emerging society. Subsequently, different personal skills are described which are required for all members of society to cope with these trends. The paper finishes with a case study which deals with regional development through open networked business processes. The aim of the project described was to develop a joint family vacation concept in the former socialist East German state of Saxonia. Thus, it illustrates the change and learning processes across society which have taken place in many countries after the socialist era.     

A Polygonal Approximation for General 4-Contours Corresponding to Weakly Simple Curves

Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision - The paper proposes a polygonal approximation for closed 4-paths obtained from standard contour following under 4-connectivity. Those 4-contours generate...     

Improving the accuracy of decision tree induction by feature preselection

Selecting the right set of features for classification is one of the most important problems in designing a good classifier. Decision tree induction algorithms such as C4.5 have incorporated in their learning phase an automatic feature selection strategy, while some other statistical classification algorithms require the feature subset to be selected in a preprocessing phase. It is well known that correlated and irrelevant features may degrade the performance of the C4.5 algorithm. In our study, we evaluated the influence of feature preselection on the prediction accuracy of C4.5 using a real-world data set. We observed that accuracy of the C4.5 classifier could be improved with an appropriate feature preselection phase for the learning algorithm. Beyond that, the number of features used for classification can be reduced, which is important for image interpretation tasks since feature calculation is a time-consuming process.     

Silicate Release from Sand-Manipulated Sediment Cores: Biogenic or Adsorbed Si?

The influence of an addition of either sand and/or spring-bloom algae on the efflux of nutrients from intact sediment cores from the Baltic Sea was studied in a flow-through experiment. The addition of sand significantly increased the efflux of silicon (Si) from sediment, but the algal addition did not. The effects on phosphorus (P) were not as clear, and fluxes of nitrogen (NH₄ and NO_2?+?3) remained relatively unaffected by the additions. The small effect of the algal addition was caused by the short time-period covered by the experiment and possibly by adsorption of released Si by the sediment. A follow-up bottle experiment showed that despite the apparently lower content of easily available Si and biogenic silica, BSi, in the sand, the sand-induced Si efflux was caused by release of Si from the sand itself, rather than by indirectly increasing the dissolution of BSi present in the sediment.     

Species richness, structural diversity and species composition in meadows created by visitors of a botanical garden in Switzerland

Biodiversity is an increasingly important criterion in designing ecological compensation areas and urban green areas. However, little is known about how important biodiversity is to the general public. This paper presents the results of two complementary studies investigating the meadow preferences of visitors to a botanical garden in Switzerland. In the first study, 152 people were asked to create their own favourite meadow patch by selecting 25 out of 779 local wild plants (54 species) that were displayed in flowerpots. In the second study, 143 people were asked with the help of a written questionnaire to imagine a bare piece of land the size of 100 m × 100 m close to their place of living and mentally create the meadow of their dreams. In both cases, study participants assembled meadows that were species-rich and rich in structural diversity (expressed by plant height and leaf forms). Moreover, they explicitly stated diversity as their main assemblage criterion. Although study participants favoured plants with large or colourful flowers, only a third of all plants in the meadows created with real plants were flowering and in people's imagined meadows grasses were frequently included, indicating that people like diverse meadows consisting of a green matrix with some colourful flowers.     

Algorithmen zum automatischen Zeichnen von Graphen

Zusammenfassung   Das Zeichnen von Graphen ist ein junges aufblühendes Gebiet der Informatik. Es befa?t sich mit Entwurf, Analyse, Implementierung und Evaluierung von neuen Algorithmen für ?sthetisch sch?ne Zeichnungen von Graphen. Anhand von selektierten Anwendungsbeispielen, Problemstellungen und L?sungsans?tzen wollen wir in dieses noch relativ unbekannte Gebiet einführen und gleichzeitig einen überblick über die Aktivit?ten und Ziele einer von der DFG im Rahmen des Schwerpunktprogramms „Effiziente Algorithmen für Diskrete Probleme und ihre Anwendungen“ gef?rderten Arbeitsgruppe aus Mitgliedern der Universit?ten Halle, K?ln und Passau und des Max-Planck-Instituts für Informatik in Saarbrücken geben. Eingegangen am 22.05.1996, in überarbeiteter Form am 19.02.1997