Development and pilot testing of the Neuromuscular Blockade Advisory System

The neuromuscular blocker advisory system (NMBAS) is a computer program developed to provide advisory guidance to anesthesiologists on the timing and dose of rocuronium to paralyze patients during surgery. It is believed that the use of such a system will administer the minimally effective amount of drug, maintaining the patient in a state of paralysis that is useful for surgery yet easily reversible. This will improve patient safety and result in more efficient care. In this paper we present the NMBAS, its basic methodology, and its development though a pilot study. Novel methods of handling neuromuscular response data are presented, including relaxation measurement and the enhanced-train-of-four sensing modality. New methods of handling nonlinearities at the neuromuscular junction to allow application of adaptive control techniques are presented. A novel form of modelling combining model swapping and RLSE adaptation to accommodate the patient variation seen with NMB drugs is introduced. A pilot study testing the NMBAS was undergone to prepare the NMBAS for application in a full clinical trial, in which patients undergoing prostate brachytherapy surgeries using rocuronium for intubation were admitted.     

Querying business processes with BP-QL

We present in this paper BP-QL, a novel query language for querying business processes. The BP-QL language is based on an intuitive model of business processes, an abstraction of the emerging BPEL (business process execution language) standard. It allows users to query business processes visually, in a manner very analogous to how such processes are typically specified, and can be employed in a distributed setting, where process components may be provided by distinct providers.     

Re-examining the causal structure of information technology impact research

About 20 years ago, Markus and Robey noted that most research on IT impacts had been guided by deterministic perspectives and had neglected to use an emergent perspective, which could account for contradictory findings. They further observed that most research in this area had been carried out using variance theories at the expense of process theories. Finally, they suggested that more emphasis on multilevel theory building would likely improve empirical reliability. In this paper, we reiterate the observations and suggestions made by Markus and Robey on the causal structure of IT impact theories and carry out an analysis of empirical research published in four major IS journals, Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), Information Systems Research (ISR), the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), and Information and Organization (I&O), to assess compliance with those recommendations. Our final sample consisted of 161 theory-driven articles, accounting for approximately 21% of all the empirical articles published in these journals. Our results first reveal that 91% of the studies in MISQ, ISR, and EJIS focused on deterministic theories, while 63% of those in I&O adopted an emergent perspective. Furthermore, 91% of the articles in MISQ, ISR, and EJIS adopted a variance model; this compares with 71% from I&O that applied a process model. Lastly, mixed levels of analysis were found in 14% of all the surveyed articles. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

The Use of Context-Aware Policies and Ontologies to Facilitate Business-Aware Network Management

The purpose of autonomic networking is to manage the business and technical complexity of networked components and systems. However, existing network management data has no link to business concepts. This makes it very difficult to ensure that services offered by the network are meeting business objectives. This paper describes a novel context-aware policy model that uses a combination of modeled and ontological data to determine the current context, which policies are applicable to that context, and what services and resources should be offered to which users and applications.

Practical Interdomain Routing Security

This article reviews risks and vulnerabilities in interdomain routing and best practices that can have near-term benefits for routing security. It includes examples of routing failures and common attacks on routers, and countermeasures to reduce router vulnerabilities.     

Practice, systems and technology for seniors

This paper explores how research teams in Intel’s Digital Health Group are using ethnography to identify ‘designable moments’—spaces, times, objects, issues and practices which suggest opportunities for appropriate interventions. It argues that technology innovation should aim to incorporate the views, experiences and practices of users from the start of the design process to support independent living and develop culturally sensitive enhancements that contribute towards wellbeing and a life of quality for local older populations.     

Supporting casual interactions between board games on public tabletop displays and mobile devices

As more interactive surfaces enter public life, casual interactions from passersby are bound to increase. Most of these users can be expected to carry a mobile phone or PDA, which nowadays offers significant computing capabilities of its own. This offers new possibilities for interaction between these users’ private displays and large public ones. In this paper, we present a system that supports such casual interactions. We first explore a method to track mobile phones that are placed on a horizontal interactive surface by examining the shadows which are cast on the surface. This approach detects the presence of a mobile device, as opposed to any other opaque object, through the signal strength emitted by the built-in Bluetooth transceiver without requiring any modifications to the devices’ software or hardware. We then go on to investigate interaction between a Sudoku game running in parallel on the public display and on mobile devices carried by passing users. Mobile users can join a running game by placing their devices on a designated area. The only requirement is that the device is in discoverable Bluetooth mode. After a specific device has been recognized, a client software is sent to the device which then enables the user to interact with the running game. Finally, we explore the results of a study which we conducted to determine the effectiveness and intrusiveness of interactions between users on the tabletop and users with mobile devices.     

A logical approach to efficient Max-SAT solving

Weighted Max-SAT is the optimization version of SAT and many important problems can be naturally encoded as such. Solving weighted Max-SAT is an important problem from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in finding efficient solving techniques. Most of this work focuses on the computation of good quality lower bounds to be used within a branch and bound DPLL-like algorithm. Most often, these lower bounds are described in a procedural way. Because of that, it is difficult to realize the logic that is behind.In this paper we introduce an original framework for Max-SAT that stresses the parallelism with classical SAT. Then, we extend the two basic SAT solving techniques: search and inference. We show that many algorithmic tricks used in state-of-the-art Max-SAT solvers are easily expressible in logical terms in a unified manner, using our framework.We also introduce an original search algorithm that performs a restricted amount of weighted resolution at each visited node. We empirically compare our algorithm with a variety of solving alternatives on several benchmarks. Our experiments, which constitute to the best of our knowledge the most comprehensive Max-SAT evaluation ever reported, demonstrate the practical usability of our approach.     

Yet another cybersecurity risk assessment framework

IT systems pervade our society more and more, and we become heavily dependent on them. At the same time, these systems are increasingly targeted in cyberattacks, making us vulnerable. Enterprise and cybersecurity responsibles face the problem of defining techniques that raise the level of security. They need to decide which mechanism provides the most efficient defense with limited resources. Basically, the risks need to be assessed to determine the best cost-to-benefit ratio. One way to achieve this is through threat modeling; however, threat modeling is not commonly used in the enterprise IT risk domain. Furthermore, the existing threat modeling methods have shortcomings. This paper introduces a metamodel-based approach named Yet Another Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Framework (Yacraf). Yacraf aims to enable comprehensive risk assessment for organizations with more decision support. The paper includes a risk calculation formalization and also an example showing how an organization can use and benefit from Yacraf.