Computer applications, such as servers, databases and middleware, ubiquitously emit execution traces stored in log files. The use of logs for the analysis of application failures is known since the ...early days of computers. Field data studies have shown that application logs are fraught with uncertainty, i.e., missing or noisy events in the logs. A body of research that has dealt successfully with uncertainty in event logs is process mining from the business process management community, specifically by discovering process models. The literature has shown the value of process mining across several domains, but as yet there is no study that quantifies possible improvements from using process models, and the impact of uncertainty in the context of application failures. This work addresses the use of process mining for detecting failures from application logs. First, process models are discovered from logs; then conformance checking is used to detect deviations from the models. We contribute to knowledge engineering research with a systematic measurement study that quantifies the failure detection capability of conformance checking in spite of missing events, and its accuracy with respect to process models obtained from noisy logs. Analysis is done with a dataset of 55,462 execution traces from three independent real-life applications. We obtain a mixed answer depending on the application under test; our measurements provide insights into the use of process mining for failure analysis.
Radar sensors have great advantages over other sensors in estimating the motion states of moving objects, because they detect velocity components within one measurement cycle. Moreover, numerous ...successes have already been achieved regarding the classification of such objects. However, the advantage of instantaneous velocity measurement is lost when detecting static objects, so that their classification is much more demanding. In this paper, we use semantic segmentation networks to distinguish between frequently occurring infrastructure objects. The resulting semantic grids provide a location-based classification of the vehicle environment. Since even modern radars have a significantly poorer angular resolution than lidars, the relatively thin radar point cloud is accumulated in advance and transformed into 2D or 3D grids that act as network inputs. Occupancy grids are particularly advantageous here, since they calculate not only the obstacles but also the free spaces. With suitable parameter selection, which is very challenging due to the complexity of radar measurement, the resulting grids allow for good association with camera images. Finally, in order to evaluate possible advantages of 3D grids as network input with respect to the segmentation result, we created and evaluated a simulation dataset and two different real-world datasets in car parks and on motorways. As a result, Jaccard coefficients between 81% and 88% were achieved, depending on the dataset. It was also found that 3D input images lead to improvements in the car park dataset.
Healthcare's environmental sustainability is increasingly an area of research and advocacy focus. The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) has produced a professional document, ...PS64, 'Statement on Environmental Sustainability in Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine Practice', and a background paper, PS64 BP. The purpose of the statement is to affirm ANZCA's commitment to environmental sustainability and support anaesthetists in promoting environmentally sustainable work practices. This article presents the main features of PS64 and its background paper, and the associated supporting evidence. The healthcare sector is highly interconnected with activities that emit pollution to air, water and soils, considerably adding to humanity's collective ecological footprint. As anaesthetists, we are uniquely high-carbon doctors due to our work anaesthetising with greenhouse gases (particularly desflurane and nitrous oxide) and our exposure and contribution to large amounts of resource and energy use and waste generation in operating theatres. Discussion is made of the improving research base of anaesthetic life-cycle assessments - that is, cradle-tograve studies of how much energy, water and so on a product or process requires throughout its entire life. Thereafter, reducing, reusing and recycling as well as water use are examined. Ongoing research efforts within environmentally sustainable anaesthesia are highlighted. Environmentally sustainable anaesthesia requires scholarship, health advocacy, leadership, communication and collaboration. The focus is placed on practical initiatives within PS64 and the background paper that can be achieved by all anaesthetists striving towards more sustainable healthcare practices that reduce waste, reap financial benefits and improve health.
We adapted the EQ-5D-3L questionnaire and visual analog scale to assess health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and persistent symptoms in 79 patients with laboratory-confirmed dengue in Morelos, ...Mexico. The lowest HRQOLs were 0.53 and 38.1 (febrile phase). Patients recovered baseline HRQOL in ≈2 months.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The usage of process choreographies and decentralized Business Process Management Systems has been named as an alternative to centralized business process orchestration. In choreographies, control ...over a process instance is shared between independent parties, and no party has full control or knowledge during process runtime. Nevertheless, it is necessary to monitor and verify process instances during runtime for purposes of documentation, accounting, or compensation.
To achieve business process runtime verification, this work explores the suitability of the Bitcoin blockchain to create a novel solution for choreographies. The resulting approach is realized in a fully-functional software prototype. This software solution is evaluated in a qualitative comparison. Findings show that our blockchain-based approach enables a seamless execution monitoring and verification of choreographies, while at the same time preserving anonymity and independence of the process participants. Furthermore, the prototype is evaluated in a performance analysis.
•Usage of the (Bitcoin) blockchain to establish trust in processes.•Development of a blockchain-based runtime verification approach.•Evaluation of the prototype in a qualitative comparison and a performance analysis.
The design and analysis of process models is a critical factor for organizational improvement across various industries. Thanks to its potential to enable common understanding and foster automation, ...process modeling is increasingly adopted in the healthcare sector. However, the complexity of the healthcare domain makes process modeling a challenging task, potentially explaining the modest uptake of process modeling standards like the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). In this paper, we identify common challenges of process modeling in healthcare, elicited from healthcare process modeling initiatives and supported by the literature. For each challenge, we present some BPMN best practices in the form of ready-to-use process fragments that guide the standard modeling of complex healthcare aspects. Also, we report the results of a first evaluation of the use and perceived usefulness of best practices conducted with junior experts in medicine and IT. We observed that the domain-specific process fragments help to capture healthcare aspects in detail and are perceived as a source of learning, turning out to be especially useful for modelers with a basic understanding of BPMN and the healthcare domain.
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•A structured elicitation of relevant modeling needs and challenges in healthcare processes.•The definition of a set of one or more BPMN best practices for each identified challenge in the form of ready-to-use process fragments applicable in existing BPMN modeling and execution tools.•An indicative evaluation of the influence and perception of the BPMN best practices through a modeling experiment with participants having a mixed background in medicine or IT without and with the help of the best practices.
OBJECTIVE:To determine if preoperative intravenous (IV) iron improves outcomes in abdominal surgery patients.
SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA:Preoperative iron deficiency anemia (IDA) occurs frequently; ...however if left untreated, increases the risk of blood transfusion allogeneic blood transfusion (ABT). Limited evidence supports IDA treatment with preoperative IV iron. This randomized controlled trial aimed to determine whether perioperative IV iron reduced the need for ABT.
METHODS:Between August 2011 and November 2014, 72 patients with IDA were assigned to receive either IV iron or usual care. The primary endpoint was incidence of ABT. Secondary endpoints were various hemoglobin (Hb) levels, change in Hb between time points, length of stay, iron status, morbidity, mortality, and quality of life 4 weeks postsurgery.
RESULTS:A 60% reduction in ABT was observed in the IV iron group compared with the usual care group (31.25% vs 12.5%). Hb values, although similar at randomization, improved by 0.8 g/dL with IV iron compared with 0.1 g/dL with usual care (P = 0.01) by the day of admission. The IV iron group had higher Hb 4 weeks after discharge compared with the usual care group (1.9 vs 0.9 g/dL, P = 0.01), and a shorter length of stay (7.0 vs 9.7 d, P = 0.026). There was no difference in discharge Hb levels, morbidity, mortality, or quality of life.
CONCLUSIONS:Administration of perioperative IV iron reduces the need for blood transfusion, and is associated with a shorter hospital stay, enhanced restoration of iron stores, and a higher mean Hb concentration 4 weeks after surgery.
Blockchain is an innovative distributed ledger technology which has attracted a wide range of interests for building the next generation of applications to address lack-of-trust issues in business. ...Blockchain as a service (BaaS) is a promising solution to improve the productivity of blockchain application development. However, existing BaaS deployment solutions are mostly vendor-locked: they are either bound to a cloud provider or a blockchain platform. In addition to deployment, design and implementation of blockchain-based applications is a hard task requiring deep expertise. Therefore, this paper presents a unified blockchain as a service platform (uBaaS) to support both design and deployment of blockchain-based applications. The services in uBaaS include deployment as a service, design pattern as a service and auxiliary services. In uBaaS, deployment as a service is platform agnostic, which can avoid lock-in to specific cloud platforms, while design pattern as a service applies design patterns for data management and smart contract design to address the scalability and security issues of blockchain. The proposed solutions are evaluated using a real-world quality tracing use case in terms of feasibility and scalability.
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