BACKGROUND: The College of American Pathologists (CAP) introduced the first cancer synoptic reporting protocols in 1998. However, the objective of a fully computable and machine-readable cancer synoptic report remains elusive due to insufficient definitional content in Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) and Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC). To address this terminology gap, investigators at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) are developing, authoring, and testing a SNOMED CT observable ontology to represent the data elements identified by the synoptic worksheets of CAP. METHODS: Investigators along with collaborators from the US National Library of Medicine, CAP, the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization, and the UK Health and Social Care Information Centre analyzed and assessed required data elements for colorectal cancer and invasive breast cancer synoptic reporting. SNOMED CT concept expressions were developed at UNMC in the Nebraska Lexicon© SNOMED CT namespace. LOINC codes for each SNOMED CT expression were issued by the Regenstrief Institute. SNOMED CT concepts represented observation answer value sets. RESULTS: UNMC investigators created a total of 194 SNOMED CT observable entity concept definitions to represent required data elements for CAP colorectal and breast cancer synoptic worksheets, including biomarkers. Concepts were bound to colorectal and invasive breast cancer reports in the UNMC pathology system and successfully used to populate a UNMC biobank. DISCUSSION: The absence of a robust observables ontology represents a barrier to data capture and reuse in clinical areas founded upon observational information. Terminology developed in this project establishes the model to characterize pathology data for information exchange, public health, and research analytics.

OBJECTIVE: To improve semantic interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs) by ontology-based mediation across syntactically heterogeneous representations of the same or similar clinical information. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Our approach is based on a semantic layer that consists of: (1) a set of ontologies supported by (2) a set of semantic patterns. The first aspect of the semantic layer helps standardize the clinical information modeling task and the second shields modelers from the complexity of ontology modeling. We applied this approach to heterogeneous representations of an excerpt of a heart failure summary. RESULTS: Using a set of finite top-level patterns to derive semantic patterns, we demonstrate that those patterns, or compositions thereof, can be used to represent information from clinical models. Homogeneous querying of the same or similar information, when represented according to heterogeneous clinical models, is feasible. DISCUSSION: Our approach focuses on the meaning embedded in EHRs, regardless of their structure. This complex task requires a clear ontological commitment (ie, agreement to consistently use the shared vocabulary within some context), together with formalization rules. These requirements are supported by semantic patterns. Other potential uses of this approach, such as clinical models validation, require further investigation. CONCLUSION: We show how an ontology-based representation of a clinical summary, guided by semantic patterns, allows homogeneous querying of heterogeneous information structures. Whether there are a finite number of top-level patterns is an open question.

The relation between an information entity and its referent can be described as a second-order statement, as long as the referent is a type. This is typical for medical discourse such as diagnostic statements in electronic health records (EHRs), which often express hypotheses or probability assertions about the existence of an instance of, e.g. a disease type. This paper presents several approximations using description logics and a query language, the entailments of which are checked against a reference standard. Their pros and cons are discussed in the light of formal ontology and logic.

In the modern automotive industry, feature models have been widely used as a domain-specific requirements model, which can capture commonality and variability of a software product line through a set of features. Product variants can thus be configured by selecting different sets of features from the feature model. For feature-oriented requirements validation, the variability of feature sets often makes the hidden flaws such as behavioral inconsistencies of features, hardly to avoid. In this paper, we present an approach to feature-oriented requirements validation for automotive systems w.r.t. both functional behaviors and non-functional properties. Our approach first starts with the behavioral specification of features and the associated requirements by following a restricted use case modeling approach, and then formalizes such specifications by using a formal yet literate language for analysis. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach through an industrial application of a Vehicle Locking-Unlocking system.

In the automotive industry, the Automotive Open System Architecture AUTOSAR is established as a de-facto standard and is applied in a steadily increasing number of development projects. In addition, AUTOSAR attracted the attention of other non-automotive industries, like railway, agriculture and construction machines, power generation and marine technology. The first versions of the standard successfully achieved the objective of integrating in a common framework various components from different suppliers and ensuring their interfaces interoperability. In actual and future versions of the standard, the objective becomes even more ambitious as it considers behavioral and timing characteristics of these components. Therefore, this paper presents the current status of AUTOSAR Release 4.0 concerning the behavioral modeling and timing characterization of components and opens several research and development directions for future extensions of the standard.

Today most universities are using course evaluations. However, course evaluations are often discussed and questioned. This paper reports on a survey where we aim at finding out (1) if students have a preconceived notion of a course, (2) if course evaluation scores can be predicted early in a course, (3) if exam throughput impacts course evaluation, and (4) if web-based evaluation reflects the general opinion from students. The results from the study indicate that students do not let preconceived notion impact nor does exam throughput matter to course evaluation. Further, the final web-based results seem to correlate with opinion of students attending lectures. However, the evaluation grades tend to be defined early in the course; hence first impression lasts.

This paper presents an effective approach to formally verify SystemC designs. The approach translates SystemC models into a Petri-Net based representation. The Petri-net model is then used for model checking of properties expressed in a timed temporal logic. The approach is particularly suitable for, but not restricted to, models at a high level of abstraction, such as transaction-level. The efficiency of the approach is illustrated by experiments.

This paper proposes a validation approach, based on simulation, which addresses problems related to both state space explosion of formal methods and low coverage of informal methods. Formal methods, in particular model checking, are used to aid the simulation process in certain situations in order to boost coverage. The invocation frequency of the model checker is dynamically controlled by estimating certain parameters, based on statistics collected previously during the same validation session, in order to minimise verification time and at the same time achieve reasonable coverage. The approach has been demonstrated feasible by numerous experimental results.

System-wide disturbances in power systems are a challenging problem for the utility industry because of the large scale and the complexity of the power system. When a major power system disturbance occurs, protection and control actions are required to stop the power system degradation, restore the system to a normal state, and minimize the impact of the disturbance. In some cases, the present control actions are not designed for a fast-developing disturbance and may be too slow. The report explores special protection schemes and new technologies for advanced, wide-area protection. There seems to be a great potential for advanced wide-area protection and control systems, based on powerful, flexible and reliable system protection terminals, high speed, communication, and GPS synchronization in conjunction with careful and skilled engineering by power system analysts and protection engineers in cooperation.

This paper describes basic principles and philosophy for wide-area protection schemes, also known as remedial action schemes (RAS) or system protection schemes (SPS). In the areas of power system automation and substation automation, there are two parallel trends in different directions: centralization and decentralization. More and more functions are moved from local and regional control centers toward the central or national control center. At the same time we also observe more and more "intelligence" and "decision-power" moving closer toward the actual power system process. We also see a great deal of functional integration, i.e., more and more functionality enclosed in the same hardware. This raises discussions concerning reliability (security and dependability). The main targets for this paper is therefore to: 1) sort out the terminology used in this area; 2) describe different application areas and related requirements; 3) illustrate different design principles-"top-down", "bottom-up", hierarchy, flat, etc., for different applications; and 4) identify similarities and differences between classic equipment protection and system protection-concerning philosophy as well as concerning product and system design. The theme of the paper is on the use of information technology to obtain more flexibility and smartness in power-system controls.

This paper proposes a formal verification methodology which smoothly integrates with component-based system-level design, using a divide and conquer approach. The methodology assumes that the system consists of several reusable components, each of them already verified by their designers and which are considered correct under the assumption that the environment satisfies certain properties assumed by the component. What remains to be verified is the glue logic inserted between the components. Each such glue logic is verified one at a time using model checking techniques. Experiments, performed on a real-life example (mobile telephone), demonstrating the efficiency and intuitivity of the methodology, are moreover thoroughly presented. Three different properties have been verified on one part of the system.