Search

A framework for private and secure communication and interaction between agents interacting in transportation services is developed. An agent, i.e. a user, can ask questions or submit queries regarding whether the other agents, i.e. drivers, use the desired road at specific times of the day in an encrypted fashion. The authors developed the framework using semi-homomorphic encryption (namely, the Paillier's encryption method) to enable the algebraic manipulation of plain data without the need for decryption using appropriate computations over the encrypted data. Strong privacy and security guarantees are proved for the agents. Subsequently, the semi-homomorphic encryption method is utilised to develop privacy-aware ride-sharing and routing algorithms without the need for disclosing the origin and destination of the user.

Interoperability is the ability of a system to correctly interpret and function with another system's components and products. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework for the verification of (geometric) interoperability that would allow distinct CAD systems to interact with each other through a query-based data acquisition and exchange. In this regard, we establish a correspondence based on a topological equivalence and a geometric similarity between model instances authored by distinct systems. We generate shape equivalence classes by constructing proxy models, namely a point cloud and a union of balls, that serve as reference models in the property comparisons of models. The proxy models can be considered as identifiers of CAD models in property spaces, and they provide estimates for the models' properties with accuracies that depend on model-specific data which is implicitly related to systems' attributes. We note that the proxy model constructions and the property computations are completely carried out through a query-based approach, which allows us to liberate the model instances from their system-dependent representations. We show that the systems would interoperate in carrying out the tasks that solely depend on the shape properties that are invariant with a pre-computable accuracy and the model instances that belong to the same shape property equivalence class can be used interchangeably within the context of these tasks. We further show that our methodology can be used as a supplementary technique in the validation of model transfers and/or representation conversions. • A new theoretical framework for geometric interoperability based on in-variant shape properties. • Proxy models serve as independent reference systems for models comparisons. • The query-based approach enables model comparison without representation conversions or translations. • Demonstrated applications include verification of model interchangeability, validation of model transfer, and categorization of comparison and validation tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rational management of defluoridation works must include surveillance of defluoride filters, estimation of individual operation periods, and on-time recharge of saturated filters. This is done best in a database, where all necessary information is included, i.e., about the client, the site, the raw water, the water analyses, the filter, its recharges, and, most importantly, its first expected date of exhaustion and recharge. Automatically, the database would produce up-to-date lists of installed filters that would need recharge and further merge E-mails to clients indicating to them the length of time their filters have been operating, offering them new recharges on time, and stating to them the prices and conditions. Our experience shows that the database and the E-mail reminders made the maintenance and the surveillance of the filters more efficient and this has contributed to a higher sustainability of defluoridation works. The principles and setup of the Defluoridation Technology Project database are explained further. It is concluded that defluoridation works can only be sustainable if managed efficiently through a database system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slow uptake of biosimilars in some regions is often attributed to a lack of knowledge combined with concerns about safety and efficacy. To alleviate physician and patient apprehensions, regulatory reviews from four major regulatory authorities (RAs) (European Medicines Agency, US Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada, and Japan Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Authority) across a portfolio of eight biosimilars were analyzed to provide insight into RA review focus and approach. RA queries were evaluated in an unbiased and systematic manner by major classification (Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls [CMC], nonclinical, clinical or regulatory) and then via detailed sub-classification. There was a consistent, predominant focus on CMC from all RAs. The review focus based on sub-classification of clinical and regulatory queries was influenced by molecular complexity, with significant differences between categories (monoclonal antibody or protein) in the distribution of query topics; specifically, bioanalytical (p = 0.023), comparative safety and efficacy (p = 0.023), and statutory (including the justification of extrapolation) (p = 0.00033). Each biosimilar had a distinct distribution of clinical query topics, tailored to product-specific data. This analysis elucidated areas of heightened RA interest, and validated their application of regulatory science in the evaluation of biosimilar safety and efficacy.

As the complexity of safety-critical systems increases, it becomes more and more challenging to assure that these systems will operate safely and reliably. This has led to the development of industry-specific safety standards that regulate the development of these systems. These standards involve developing model-based safety artifacts to assure the system is safe, such as safety cases and fault trees. Given the significant safety implications of these models, tool assistance is needed to support their creation and management throughout their lifecycle while maintaining traceability to their associated system models. To address this need, we have developed MMINT-A , a tool-supported framework that facilitates the creation, analysis and evolution of system safety models. In this paper, we report on recent extensions to MMINT-A supporting the development of provably correct assurance arguments. We highlight MMINT-A 's features, demonstrate them over an example of a fleet of systems for a warehouse facility, and discuss MMINT-A 's impact on research in assurance model management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The complexity of drug therapies has increased the need to evaluate the drug information scientifically. In this regard, the aim of drug information centers (DICs) is to promote rational use of drugs in a health-care setting. DI pharmacists play a vital role in providing the necessary and reliable information on drugs to promote the concept of rational drug use, eventually leading to a better patient outcome. The objective of the present study was to assess the drug-related queries received by the DIC at the King Saud Medical City (KSMC) from health-care professionals working in a large tertiary care setting. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted from February 2016 to January 2017. Data were collected using the DI request form, available in both printed and electronic formats for use by the health-care professionals. Descriptive statistics were used to calculate frequencies and percentages. Data analysis was performed using the Statistical Package of the Social Sciences software, version 16.0. Results: The current study received a total of 139 queries that were answered by the DIC pharmacists over a period of 1 year. The majority of queries were asked by pharmacists (61.2%), followed by physicians (23.7%) and nurses (10.10%). About half of the queries were related to the dosage and administration of the drugs. Lexicomp® acted as the common resource of information. Conclusion: DIC has been instrumental in the dissemination of drug-related information to health-care professionals since its inception in February 2016, resulting in the provision of quality health care to the patients. However, based on yearly queries, there still exists a need to increase the awareness of health-care professionals about the DIC at KSMC, which will urge them to take drug consultation from DIC pharmacists and promote patient safety.

A cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown aetiology was reported from Wuhan, Hubei province of China on 31st December, 2019. The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30th January, 2020. Thereafter, it has spread through China and reached the level of a pandemic expanding to 210 countries with 77.9M confirmed cases and 1.71M deaths as per Corona virus Disease (COVID-19) situation report issued by WHO based on data received upto 23rd December, 2020. A number of questions remain unanswered regarding pathogen-associated variables for amplification dynamics, host environment and agent interaction. This short communication makes an effort to compile the information gathered from published articles of renowned journals and newsletters to explore the epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19. Hereby in this article, authors have tried to assemble the epidemiological lacunae created by the novel characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2) which presently pose a rather puzzling transmission dynamics of COVID-19 that still remain unanswered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Search Engine retrieves significant and essential information from the web based on query terms given by the user. Due to the lack of background knowledge about the information required, shorter length queries posed by the user, the ambiguity of query keywords and dynamic growth of the web, irrelevant and redundant results are also retrieved by the search engine. Query recommendations is an important technique which analyze the real search intent of the user and suggests the alternative queries to be used by the user in future to satisfies their information need. The proposed method recommends and ranks the alternative queries and evaluates the ranking order of the recommendations with the help of the ranking measures Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (NDCG) and Coefficient of Variance (CV). These measures identify the relationship between the ranking techniques. The proposed strategies are experimentally evaluated using a real time search engine query log.

The article presents a discussion of the optimisation methods involving the modification of query syntax on the example of the use of indexes that served for the application of the methods in practice, and the presentation and analysis of the test results and their comparison. All the queries were made in a Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2014 environment, using the AdventureWorksDW2012 test database provided by Microsoft. The object of the research were SELECT queries, which consequently returned the desired set of output data.

Information is playing an important role in our lives. One of the major sources of information is databases. Databases and database technology are having major impact on the growing use of computers. In order to retrieve information from a database, one needs to formulate a query in such way that the computer will understand and produce the desired output. The Structured Query Language (SQL) norms are been pursued in almost all languages for relational database systems. However, not everybody is able to write SQL queries as they may not be aware of the structure of the database. So there is a need for non-expert users to query relational databases in their natural language instead of working with the values of the attributes. The idea of using natural language instead of SQL, has promoted the development of Natural Language Interface to Database systems (NLIDB). The need of NLIDB is increasing day by day as more and more people access information through web browsers, PDA's and cell phones. In this paper we introduce an intelligent interface for database. We prove that our NLIDB is guaranteed to map a natural language query to the corresponding SQL query. We have tested our system on Northwind database and show that our NLIDB compares favourably with MS English Query product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The complexity of drug therapies has increased the need to evaluate the drug information scientifically. In this regard, the aim of drug information centers (DICs) is to promote rational use of drugs in a health-care setting. DI pharmacists play a vital role in providing the necessary and reliable information on drugs to promote the concept of rational drug use, eventually leading to a better patient outcome. The objective of the present study was to assess the drug-related queries received by the DIC at the King Saud Medical City (KSMC) from health-care professionals working in a large tertiary care setting. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted from February 2016 to January 2017. Data were collected using the DI request form, available in both printed and electronic formats for use by the health-care professionals. Descriptive statistics were used to calculate frequencies and percentages. Data analysis was performed using the Statistical Package of the Social Sciences software, version 16.0. Results: The current study received a total of 139 queries that were answered by the DIC pharmacists over a period of 1 year. The majority of queries were asked by pharmacists (61.2%), followed by physicians (23.7%) and nurses (10.10%). About half of the queries were related to the dosage and administration of the drugs. Lexicomp® acted as the common resource of information. Conclusion: DIC has been instrumental in the dissemination of drug-related information to health-care professionals since its inception in February 2016, resulting in the provision of quality health care to the patients. However, based on yearly queries, there still exists a need to increase the awareness of health-care professionals about the DIC at KSMC, which will urge them to take drug consultation from DIC pharmacists and promote patient safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the objective of analyzing the results of the implantation of electronic systems and tools, used to perform the regulation of high complexity access, that is, consultation schedules and specialized outpatient exams, this research starts from an exploratory descriptive analysis, promoting a greater knowledge on the history of the Regulation of Access to Assistance (Also called regulation of access or care regulation) and the implementation of a computerized system that acts in this practice. The approach used was qualitative and quantitative, because it intends to describe and interpret the phenomena, besides analyzing the information collected. The main objective of the research consists of analyzing the indicators of satisfaction and absenteeism, because, these are the ones that reveal how the image of the institution is and their use in relation to supply and demand. In August 2010, the Central of Regulation of the Health Services Offering - CROSS, and was implanted in the Hospital of this work with its various functions, allowing a more practical and organized flow to promote access to SUS users, so in this work will be evaluated the impact of the schedules made through the CROSS system allowing outpatient access and evaluating the indicators that effectively present the impact of its implementation. The obtained results indicate positive changes and improvements in the quality of care, since it adopts more adequate protocols in the practice of health care regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data size growth rate arose massively day to day due to database and internet applications. It has become a challenging task to organize those data and to provide the user a relevant data in time with correct and compatible manner. Further choice was a pervasive feature of social life that profoundly affects people. They work with assumptions that stored data represent the proper subset of real world data and make a quick decision based on imprecise knowledge in daily life for survivals which tends to get irrelevant output. Sometimes for other input, this may be exact so it should not remove instead, managed to utilize appropriately to minimize the processing time. Moreover, optimism significance relies on user satisfactions. This paper provides a vision to tackle these issues by assessing the imprecise incoming query and reutilizing for future user instead of rejecting as wrong or irrelevant. To address optimization issues in this paper, we proposed the techniques for optimizing the queries to provide customers with fast data retrieval. In our model, Query processing: A 3-step process that transforms a high-level query (MongoDB) into an equivalent and more efficient lower-level query (relational algebra). Further MEAN stack based cooperative semantic approach was deployed in cloud environments as novelty to provide solution with the level of performance significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article an approach to get statistical data about ultrasound examinations, carried out in the framework of SonaRes, the decision support system for ultrasound diagnostics, is described. A list and description of respective queries for data base of patients' examinations sessions is provided to get the information interesting for ultrasonographers and the system developers.

We discuss a new algorithmic type of problem in random graphs studying the minimum number of queries one has to ask about adjacency between pairs of vertices of a random graph [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Web of Linked Data is composed of tons of RDF documents interlinked to each other forming a huge repository of distributed semantic data. Effectively querying this distributed data source is an important open problem in the Semantic Web area. In this paper, we propose LDQL, a declarative language to query Linked Data on the Web. One of the novelties of LDQL is that it expresses separately (i) patterns that describe the expected query result, and (ii) Web navigation paths that select the data sources to be used for computing the result. We present a formal syntax and semantics, prove equivalence rules, and study the expressiveness of the language. In particular, we show that LDQL is strictly more expressive than all the query formalisms that have been proposed previously for Linked Data on the Web. We also study some computability issues regarding LDQL. We first prove that when considering the Web of Linked Data as a fully accessible graph, the evaluation problem for LDQL can be solved in polynomial time. Nevertheless, when the limited data access capabilities of Web clients are considered, the scenario changes drastically; there are LDQL queries for which a complete execution is not possible in practice. We formally study this issue and provide a sufficient syntactic condition to avoid this problem; queries satisfying this condition are ensured to have a procedure to be effectively evaluated over the Web of Linked Data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a new setting of algorithmic problems in random graphs, studying the minimum number of queries one needs to ask about the adjacency between pairs of vertices of [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activity is almost always intentional, be it in a physical context or as part of an interaction with a computer system. By understanding why user-generated events are happening and what purposes they serve, a system can offer a significantly improved and more engaging experience. However, goals cannot be easily captured. Analyzing user actions such as clicks and purchases can reveal patterns and behaviors, but understanding the goals behind these actions is a different and challenging issue. Our work presents a unified, multidisciplinary viewpoint for goal management that covers many different cases where goals can be used and techniques with which they can be exploited. Our purpose is to provide a common reference point to the concepts and challenging tasks that need to be formally defined when someone wants to approach a data analysis problem from a goal-oriented point of view. This work also serves as a springboard to discuss several open challenges and opportunities for goal-oriented approaches in data management, analysis, and sharing systems and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ethnological writing about the Wadi Wadi people undertaken by squatter Peter Beveridge in the 1850s and 1860s. In the north of the colony of Victoria, both Beveridge and the Wadi Wadi laid claim to the land upon which they lived. In this ambiguous space, lengthy and close relationships developed between Beveridge and Wadi Wadi people with information and experiences shared. Valuing the knowledge of Wadi Wadi people, Beveridge was able to adapt and challenge aspects of the British ethnological ideas through which he framed his analysis of Wadi Wadi life. The article explores specifically Beveridge's response to the 1841 Queries Respecting the Human Race. It appears that Beveridge purposefully ignored the questions on Physical Characters and recognised spiritual belief as an integral part of Wadi Wadi daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]