Computer System Reliability Allocation Method and Supporting Tool

This paper presents a computer system reliability allocation method that is based on the theory of statistic and Markovian chain,which can be used to allocate reliability to subsystem, to hybrid system and software modules. A relevant supporting tool built by us is introduced.

To scan or not to scan:Use of transient elastography in an integrated health system

BACKGROUND Non-invasive tests,such as Fibrosis-4 index and transient elastography(com-monly FibroScan),are utilized in clinical pathways to risk stratify and diagnose non-alcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD).In 2018,a clinical decision support tool(CDST)was implemented to guide primary care providers(PCPs)on use of FibroScan for NAFLD.AIM To analyze how this CDST impacted health care utilization and patient outcomes.METHODS We performed a retrospective review of adults who had FibroScan for NAFLD indication from January 2015 to December 2017(pre-CDST)or January 2018 to December 2020(post-CDST).Outcomes included FibroScan result,laboratory tests,imaging studies,specialty referral,patient morbidity and mortality.RESULTS We identified 958 patients who had FibroScan,115 before and 843 after the CDST was implemented.The percentage of FibroScans ordered by PCPs increased from 33%to 67.1%.The percentage of patients diagnosed with early F1 fibrosis,on a scale from F0 to F4,increased from 7.8%to 14.2%.Those diagnosed with ad-vanced F4 fibrosis decreased from 28.7%to 16.5%.There were fewer laboratory tests,imaging studies and biopsy after the CDST was implemented.Though there were more specialty referrals placed after the CDST was implemented,multivariate analysis revealed that healthcare utilization aligned with fibrosis score,whereby patients with more advanced disease had more referrals.Very few patients were hospitalized or died.CONCLUSION This CDST empowered PCPs to diagnose and manage patients with NAFLD with appropriate allocation of care towards patients with more advanced disease.

To design and construct an embedded knowledge integration service platform:Taking ISCAS subject group platform as an example

Purpose:As scientific resources are widely distributed,researchers often have difficulties in acquiring information from different individual sources.This paper intends to present a new approach to construct a subject-knowledge-based integration platform which was carried out by the Institute of Software,Chinese Academy of Sciences(ISCAS).Our aim is to use technique tools to strengthen the library service by combining a variety of information service resources with knowledge tools.Design/methodology/approach:Based on the analysis of users’ needs,we established a collaborative team across ISCAS Library,National Science Library of CAS(NSL CAS),and ISCAS’ research groups or research labs.With the service tools developed by ISCAS Library,we embedded other multipurpose utility tools of knowledge integration into the platform as to make full use of software tools in knowledge integration,knowledge fusion,and intelligent push of library services to end users.Findings:With a hard effort of the construction team,the ISCAS subject group platform(hereinafter as ISCAS Platform) has integrated such information resources as institutional repository(IR) of ISCAS,open resources from websites and subject resources of computer sciences.Up to date,ISCAS platform can provide integrated information services including data collection for computer science and intelligent generation of citation reports,by means of embedding self-developed discovering tools for domain experts and subject content,and generation tools for scientific citation reports.Research limitations:Knowledge organization need be further improved in the ISCAS subject group platform.In addition,functions for academic exchanges need be maximized as to meet the individual demands of researchers for library services at the Platform.Practical implications:Since we Platform has been put into use through the Library website of the ISCAS in June 2012,many academic libraries from both domestic universities and CAS institutes have showed their strong interest for our self-developed tools,among which more than 10 cooperation partnerships have been formed.Originality/value:Through self-developed service tools and the integration of multiple-type resources,our Platform has solved such key problems as timely access and update of the trusted resources from a third party,and the rapid fusion and extension of library resources while establishing subject knowledge environment.So the ISCAS library can provide a flexible customization of library services according to the need of different users.

A Components Library System Model and the Support Tool

Component-based development needs a well-designed components library and a set of support tools. This paper prasents the design and implementation of a components library system model and its support tool UMLCASE, A set of practical CASE tools is constructed. UMLCASE can use UML to design Use Case Diagram, Class Diagram etc. And it integrates with components library system. Key words component technology - components library - support tool for components library CLC number TP 311. 52 - TP 311 Foundation item: Supported by the National Natural Science Fundation of China (60373072) and National 973 Program (2002CB312001)Biography: MIAO Huai-kou (1953-), male. Professor, research direction: formal methods, software engineering and automatic reasoning.

Analysis and Improvement of Standing-Up Action for Elderly People from a Chair Using a Cushion-Type Support Tool

This paper reports the problems that elderly people have when they stand up from a chair, and proposes an adequate standing-up procedure that solves these problems. The important points for an adequate standing-up procedure are ＂leaning the upper body forward＂ and ＂pulling the legs to the side＂. Furthermore, this paper proposes a standing-up support tool. The characteristics of the support tool are a cushion-type shape with an adjustable flange and an air-pressure-driven mechanism. When the proposed standing-up procedure and support tool are applied to elderly people, the measured values related to standing-up, such as maximum acceleration, arm force, standing-up time, heel position and forward-bending angle, are improved. Furthermore, elderly people felt that it made the standing-up action easy. We could confirm the effectiveness of the proposed standing-up procedure and support tool.

Supporting integrative maritime spatial planning by operationalising SEANERGY – a tool to study cross-sectoral synergies and conflicts

With growing pressures on marine ecosystems and on marine space,an increasingly needed strategy to optimise the use of marine space is to co-locate synergic marine human uses in close spatial–temporal proximity while separating conflicting marine human uses.The ArcMap toolbox SEANERGY is a new,cross-sectoral spatial decision support tool(DST)that enables maritime spatial planners to consider synergies and conflicts between marine uses to support assessments of co-location options.Cross-sectoral approaches are important to reach more integrative maritime spatial planning(MSP)processes.As this article demonstrates through a Baltic Sea analysis,SEANERGY presents a crosssectoral use catalogue for MSP through enabling the tool users to answer important specific questions to spatially and/or numerically weight potential synergies/conflicts between marine uses.The article discusses to what degree such a cross-sectoral perspective can support integrative MSP processes.While MSP integrative challenges still exist,SEANERGY enables MSP processes to move towards developing shared goals and initiate discussions built on best available knowledge regarding potential use-use synergies and use-use conflicts for whole sea basins at once.

rCOS： a formal model-driven engineering method for component-based software

Model-driven architecture （MDA） has become a main stream technology for software-intensive system design. The main engineering principle behind it is that the inherent complexity of software development can only be mastered by building, analyzing and manipulating system models. MDA also deals with system complexity by provid- ing component-based design techniques, allowing indepen- dent component design, implementation and deployment, and then system integration and reconfiguration based on com- ponent interfaces. The model of a system in any stage is an integration of models of different viewpoints. Therefore, for a model-driven method to be applied effectively, it must pro- vide a body of techniques and an integrated suite of tools for model construction, validation, and transformation. This requires a number of modeling notations for the specifica- tion of different concerns and viewpoints of the system. These notations should have formally defined syntaxes and a unified theory of semantics. The underlying theory of the method is needed to underpin the development of tools and correct use of tools in software development, as well as to formally ver- ify and reason about properties of systems in mission-critical applications. The modeling notations, techniques, and tools must be designed so that they can be used seamlessly in sup- porting development activities and documentation of artifactsin software design processes. This article presents such a method, called the rCOS, focusing on the models of a system at different stages in a software development process, their se- mantic integration, and how they are constructed, analyzed, transformed, validated, and verified.

Implementation issues of the planning support tool in Japan:Focusing on urban disaster mitigation

This study determined the issues of Planning Support System(PSS)implementation in the field of urban disaster mitigation in Japan by understanding its analytical perspective through a review of Western literature,a questionnaire survey of urban planning consultant companies,and PSS implementation for a practical project in a municipality.Regarding the instrum ental perspective,there was difficulty in conducting the simulationbased PSS due to the enormous simulation time required.Regarding the transfer perspective,the importance of the municipality^decision of adopting the PSS to a project,securing the budget and continuous running costs,track record of the practical project,and lack of human resource for the PSS use were clarified.Regarding the user perspective,the difficulty in data collection and update as well as im portance of the cooperative system/support from the developer in the initial period were clarified.Especially,considering the low number of implementations,a platform may be important for the promotion of PSS awareness.This may be also useful for the diffusion of PSS.It is necessary for the developers to fully comm unicate the benefits of PSS adoption.It is thought that a close cooperative system and support are required in the initial stage.For prom oting and understanding the benefits of PSS adoption,a guideline or manual seems to be useful.This is effective for ensuring the budget and providing an explanation to high-level members of the organizations about the effect of utilizing these tools.For the final implementation,the possibility of installation,maintenance,and operation of the PSS by the municipality was discussed.

Dual-modal Physiological Feature Fusion-based Sleep Recognition Using CFS and RF Algorithm

Research has demonstrated a significant overlap between sleep issues and other medical conditions.In this paper,we consider mild difficulty in falling asleep(MDFA).Recognition of MDFA has the potential to assist in the provision of appropriate treatment plans for both sleep issues and related medical conditions.An issue in the diagnosis of MDFA lies in subjectivity.To address this issue,a decision support tool based on dual-modal physiological feature fusion which is able to automatically identify MDFA is proposed in this study.Special attention is given to the problem of how to extract candidate features and fuse dual-modal features.Following the identification of the optimal feature set,this study considers the correlations between each feature and class and evaluates correlations between the inter-modality features.Finally,the recognition accuracy was measured using 10-fold cross validation.The experimental results for our method demonstrate improved performance.The highest recognition rate of MDFA using the optimal feature set can reach 96.22%.Based on the results of current study,the authors will,in projected future research,develop a real-time MDFA recognition system.

An Intelligent Tool to Support Requirements Analysis and Conceptual Design of Database Design

As an application of artificial intelligence and expert system technology to database design,this paper presents an intelligent design tool NITDT,which comprises a requirements specification lan- guage NITSL,a knowledge representation language NITKL,and an inference engine with uncertainty reasoning capability.NITDT now covers the requirements analysis and conceptual design of database design.However,it is possible to be integrated with another database design tool, NITDBA,developed also at NIT to become an integrated design tool supporting the whole process of database design.

Quantifying golf course nitrogen use efficiency

Background:Previous studies have surveyed golf courses to determine nitrogen(N)fertilizer application rates on golf courses,but no previous studies have attempted to quantify how efficiently golf courses use nitrogen.Methods:This study tests the ability of the growth potential(GP)N Requirement model as a benchmarking tool to predict a target level of N use on 76 golf courses in 5 regions of the US(Midwest,Northeast,East Texas,Florida,Northwest)and 3 countries in Europe(Denmark,Norway,UK).Results:The ratio of the golf course-wide N application rate to the GP N requirement prediction(termed the nitrogen efficiency score or NES)was 0.27,indicating that golf courses used 73%less N than predicted by the model.As such,the GP N Requirement model needs to be recalibrated to predict N use on golf courses.This was achieved by adjusting the Nmax coefficient in the model.N rates on golf courses were widely variable both within and across regions.All regions had a coefficient of variation in N rates of 0.46 or greater.Conclusions:The high variation in N rates,which is largely unexplained by climate,economic factors,grass type,and soil type,may be indicative of inefficient N use in golf course management.