Understanding the Gap Between Information Models and Realism-Based Ontologies Using the Generic Component Model

The wide-spread use of Common Data Models and information models in biomedical informatics encourages assumptions that those models could provide the entirety of what is needed for knowledge representation purposes. Based on the lack of computable semantics in frequently used Common Data Models, there appears to be a gap between knowledge representation requirements and these models. In this use-case oriented approach, we explore how a system-theoretic, architecture-centric, ontology-based methodology can help to better understand this gap. We show how using the Generic Component Model helps to analyze the data management system in a way that allows accounting for data management procedures inside the system and knowledge representation of the real world at the same time.

Quality of life of individuals receiving kidney transplantation in Amazonas State

Abstarct Objective: to analyze the quality of life of kidney transplant receivers in the State of Amazonas. Method: a cross-sectional, descriptive study, performed with 222 individuals after renal transplantation registered in a private clinic and in a health public ambulatory. Data collection took place through structured interviews where the quality of life was measured by the Kidney Disease Quality of Life - Short Form. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. Results: the quality of life scores found ranged from 36.5 to 83.1. The quality of life domains, specifics of renal disease, have proved to be superior to generic ones. The most compromised were work situation; sleep; physical function and emotional function, with scores of 36.5; 53.7; 52.4; 55.1, respectively, and correlated moderately and significantly with each other. Conclusion: the majority (63.2%) of the quality of life domains obtained high scores and the specific component of renal disease had higher scores than the generic component.

A genre-pragmatic analysis of Arabic academic book reviews (ArBRs)

This study aims to investigate the rhetorical genre components and the pragmatic evaluation options used to articulate the communicative function of ArBR genre, and find out how these generic and evaluation options contrast with those reported in other languages and cultures. To this end, a corpus of 50 book reviews written by 50 Arab reviewers was collected and analyzed within the rhetorical components developed and applied by Motta-Roth (1998) to English book reviews. The present study drew on Hyland (2000), Gea Valor (2000–2001), Moreno and Suárez (2008a) and Alcaraz-Ariza (2010) in order to examine how the qualities of ArBRs are evaluated and in which terms (i.e., criticism or praise). The results indicated that the Arab reviewers employed additional sub-moves that have not been used by other researchers. Unlike English book reviewers, Arab reviewers try to avoid criticism. Instead, they usually devote most of their book reviews to describe and summarize uncritically although critical appraisal is supposed to be the backbone of this genre. These purposive generic component preferences and evaluation tendencies can be explained with reference to the goal of the academic community and the writing culture that constrain Arab reviewers' academic behavior. I hope that the results of this study will provide graduate students and novice researchers with further awareness of the acceptable generic strategies, the linguistic choices and pragmatic evaluative options that can be used to write an evaluation of a piece of research.

THE MICRO- AND SMALL ENTERPRISES IN CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: A BUSINESS MODEL PERSPECTIVE

Advertising, architecture and design are perceived as an important subset of the creative industries and as having an increasing role in innovations and competitiveness of economies. However, issues such as identifying the underlying business model (BM) of the micro- and small enterprises in these industries, the manner in which BMs evolve or the degree to which their evolution is innovative remains unresolved. In the context of creative professional services (CPSs), an analysis of the six case studies involving microenterprises indicates a heterogeneity in designing BMs. Talented professionals, sophisticated management of human resources and creativity processes as well as trustworthy partners are considered generic components of value creation, whereas personalized relationships with customers are a generic component of value delivery in advertising, architecture and design. In addition, the findings indicate that microenterprises in advertising, architecture and design have a capacity to differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition through creation of complex and radical changes in their BMs.

Research on the Relationship Between Feature Commonality of Generic Component and Manufacturing Cost

How to leverage the contradiction between commonality and diversity within a product family has been regarded as one of the crucial problems in Mass Customization. In order to support the process of product family design and optimization, a quantitative methodology for analyzing the relationship between feature commonality of generic components and manufacturing cost is proposed. Firstly, the information representation model for generic components is constructed based on generic bill-of-material (GBOM) and tabular layouts of article characteristics (SML). Then, by interviewing domain-specific experts and according to the relative importance of features and the influence of value difference of feature parameters on manufacturing process, the similarity matrix of generic component instances and overall feature commonality index (FCI) are proposed. After that, the manufacturing cost is estimated by customized activity-based costing (ABC) and the relationship between feature commonality and manufacturing cost is discussed to identify conditions of rational commonality decisions. Finally, a simple case study of rectangular steel plate product family is presented to verify the rationality of the proposed process and indexes.

Generic Component Based Aggregation Modelling for Reconfigurable Control

In this paper, we propose an approach based on generic component model to realize the model aggregation for reconfigurable control. This is a component –oriented method. Two elementary notions, the service and the operating mode, are introduced to construct a hierarchical system and to assure the coherences between specification and realization at each level and between levels. The consideration of aggregated, complex components leads to extend this description to the possibilities of reconfiguration.

Template Metaprogramming Techniques for Concept-Based Specialization

In generic programming, software components are parameterized on types. When available, a static specialization mechanism allows selecting, for a given set of parameters, a more suitable version of a generic component than its primary version. The normal C++ template specialization mechanism is based on the type pattern of the parameters, which is not always the best way to guide the specialization process: type patterns are missing some information on types that could be relevant to define specializations. The notion of a concept, which represents a set of requirements (including syntactic and semantic aspects) for a type, is known to be an interesting approach to control template specialization. For many reasons, concepts were dropped from C++11 standard, this article therefore describes template metaprogramming techniques for declaring concepts, modeling relationships (meaning that a type fulfills the requirements of a concept), and refinement relationships (meaning that a concept refines the requirements of another concept). From a taxonomy of concepts and template specializations based on concepts, an automatic mechanism selects the most appropriate version of a generic component for a given instantiation. Our purely library-based solution is also open for retroactive extension: new concepts, relationships, and template specializations can be defined at any time; such additions will then be picked up by the specialization mechanism.