Evolutionary Way Research Articles

A cross-platform model for secure Electronic Health Record communication

During the past decade, there have been many regional, national and European projects focused on the development of platforms for secure access and sharing of distributed patient information. A platform is needed because present local or enterprise-wide information systems are typically not intended for cross-organisational secure access of patient data. Most of the present secure platforms are local or regional. Commonly used platform types in the health care environment vary from secure point-to-point communication systems to internet-based portals. This paper defines an enhanced cross-security platform which makes it possible for different kinds of local, regional, and national health information systems to communicate in a secure way. The proposed evolutionary way interconnects regional or national security domains with the help of a cross-platform zone. A more revolutionary model based on peer-to-peer Grid like networks and dynamic security credentials is also discussed. The proposed evolutionary model uses cross-domain security and interoperability services to ensure secure communication and interoperability between different security domains. The platform supports both communication defined beforehand and adhoc dynamic access to distributed electronic health records (EHRs). The internet is proposed as the “glue” between different regional or national security domains.

"Incipient" primary hyperparathyroidism: a "forme fruste" of an old disease.

Although primary hyperparathyroidism today is often a relatively asymptomatic disease, it has distinct biochemical and skeletal features. These features are present at diagnosis and are generally stable over time, leading to the theory of a biphasic disease course in which alterations occur during a preclinical phase. Measurement of calciotropic hormones in individuals undergoing skeletal evaluation has led to the identification of normocalcemic individuals with elevated PTH levels. We hypothesize that these patients represent the earliest manifestations of primary hyperparathyroidism Twenty-two patients had hyperparathyroidism (94 +/- 29 pg/ml) and normal corrected serum calcium levels (2.40 +/- 0.02 mmol/liter). No secondary causes of hyperparathyroidism were found. PTH levels did not correlate with urinary calcium concentration, renal function, vitamin D concentrations, or bone density. The relationship between PTH and serum calcium (regression slope, +0.004) was identical in normocalcemic and hypercalcemic hyperparathyroid patients. Preferential cortical bone loss, characteristic of patients with primary hyperparathyroidism, was not seen (T-score: spine, -1.6; hip, -1.8; distal one-third radius, -1.3). In up to 12 months of observation, three patients have developed hypercalcemia, and one has had two adenomas removed. These patients with elevated PTH levels in the absence of hypercalcemia may provide a window into this previously unrecognized stage of the disease and permit investigators to track its evolution in ways that have not heretofore been possible.

Emerging uses of SIP in service provider networks

The session initiation protocol (SIP) has emerged as a viable protocol for providing numerous services within today's networks. SIP was closely modeled after http to make it an easily extensible protocol that could provide connectivity in new converged Internet protocol (IP) networks. The inherent extensibility of SIP has allowed SIP to be used in many ways not envisioned by its creators. What started as a simple protocol for setting up a media stream between two endpoints has since found numerous seemingly unrelated uses. With many solutions using SIP being proposed and implemented, it is often hard to determine how best to use SIP for a particular solution. The purpose of this paper is to give the reader a framework for categorizing various SIP capabilities through the concept of usage models and to help the reader understand the various ways SIP can be used in both evolutionary and revolutionary ways in real-world networks. This paper assumes the reader has a basic understanding of SIP and its inner workings. © 2003 Lucent Technologies Inc.

Morphological variability and developmental instability in subpopulations of the Eurasian badger (Meles meles) in Denmark

AbstractAim Local populations from different geographical regions may differ in the selection regimes to which they are exposed. Differences in environmental factors and population density may affect the relative importance of different selective forces (e.g. natural vs. sexual selection). We suggest a direction of investigation concerned with the developmental instability of morphological traits. The goal is to disclose putative small‐scale geographical differences in the evolutionary forces, which may be hard to detect.Location Craniometrical investigations were carried out on ninety‐eight skulls and teeth of the Eurasian badger (Meles meles) collected during the period 1995–97 from three different populations in Denmark. One of these thrives at low population density, whereas the two others are characterized by high local density.Methods The skulls were investigated for developmental instability (DI) using fluctuating asymmetry (FA) as its estimator. FA was measured on canines, molars, premolar teeth and other skull and mandible traits. For the statistical analyses, we applied nonparametric permutation tests.Results Evidence was found suggesting differentiation among populations in mean degree of FA, and the FA values measured on canines were higher in the high‐density populations. FA of the canines was significantly higher in males than females, in contrast to FA of the other traits. Evidence of a negative relationship between canine size and their FA was found, whereas no significant correlations were found between the molar and premolar teeth measures and their FA.Main conclusions Our results suggest that canines could be under directional selection stemming from intrasexual competition, which may be stronger in high‐density zones. The other teeth investigated seem to be under a stabilizing regime hence their FA is mainly affected by environmental stresses. The negative relationship between canine size and FA found in males suggests the capacity of badgers to respond in an evolutionary way to environmental changes, despite the low genetic variability previously found at the molecular level.

Origin and evolution of the plant genome; with a focus on mitochondrial and plastid genomes

It is generally known that one of the most serious events when eukaryotic cells arose was endosymbiosis. First, an ancestral alpha-proteobacterium had been engulfed into the host cell and evolved into the mitochondrion. Second, an ancestral cyanobacteria had been engulfed and evolved into the plastid. The cell nucleus of plant, therefore, is thought to be the fusion of the three kinds of cell nucleus of the organisms. To clarify the construction of plant cell, we began to analyze the genome structure and gene content of a very primitive plant, Cyanidioschyzon merolae (unicellular rhodophytes). In the course of the determination of complete nucleotide sequence, we first completed the nucleotide sequences of organelles, namely, the mitochondrial genome and the plastid genome. The gene contents of the two organellar genomes clearly show that the C. merolae is thought to be an intermediate along the evolutionary way. Now, whole genome sequencing project of the cell nucleus of C. merolae is proceeding.

Book Review

has supplied a rich source of variation. In effect, by placing research from many disciplines under an evolutionary rubric, this book may stimulate conversations across disciplines and, in the process, attract new adherents to an evolutionary way of thinking. I hope some of the variation generated by these processes will be selected and lead to new and interesting research directions. Thus, in the end, by taking a very eclectic approach, Aldrich has been true to the spirit of his evolutionary framework. Time (and future research) will tell whether the advantages of such a wide-ranging eclectic approach outweigh its disadvantages. Overall, then, this book will make a valuable addition to the libraries of organizational scholars. It should also be a valuable training aid for doctoral students because it will allow them to see how a prominent organizational scholar synthesizes and interprets the diverse research that makes up organizational studies.

Abiding Sovereignty

Over the several hundred years during which the rules of sovereignty including non-intervention and the exclusion of external authority have been widely understood, state control could never be taken for granted. States could never isolate themselves from the external environment. Globalization and intrusive international norms are old, not new, phenomena. Some aspects of the contemporary environment are unique—the number of transnational nongovernmental organizations has grown dramatically, international organizations are more prominent; cyber crime could not exist without cyber space. These developments challenge state control. A loss of control can precipitate a crisis of authority, but even a crisis of authority is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for developing new authority structures. New rules could emerge in an evolutionary way as a result of trial and error by rational but myopic actors. But these arrangements, for instance international policing, are likely to coexist with rather than to supplant conventional sovereign structures. Sovereignty’s resilience is, if nothing else, a reflection of its tolerance for alternatives.

Model-Based Optimization of the Cultivation Process for Recombinant Virus Capsid Proteins in E. coli

A time-efficient development procedure for the fermentation part of the production of recombinant proteins is proposed and applied to the specific case of the virus capsid protein VP1. It is based on an optimization procedure that combines model identification with process optimization in an evolutionary way. The model used is based on a mass balance complemented by a neural network-based representation of the kinetics. Significant improvements of the process performance could be obtained in a few iteration cycles of the optimization procedure.

EPR accident scenarios and provisions

For the EPR an improved defence-in-depth concept is applied. In an evolutionary way, accident control is developed from existing French and German PWR designs, thereby achieving a high safety level quantified by probabilistic safety assessment. Independent of that, severe accidents are considered in the design. By a robust containment and severe accident mitigation measures, the need for offsite emergency response actions (population evacuation or relocation) is restricted to the immediate plant vicinity. This paper gives an overview of the features introduced for, and the analyses correlated to, the dedicated primary depressurization, melt–coolant interaction, melt stabilization, hydrogen control, and containment heat removal.

Evolution and animal welfare.

Animal welfare is a topic often thought to reside outside mainstream biology. The complexity of the methods used to assess welfare (such as health, physiology, immunological state, and behavior) require an understanding of a wide range of biological phenomena. Furthermore, the "welfare" of an animal provides a framework in which a diversity of its responses can be understood as fitness-enhancing mechanisms. Different methods for assessing animal welfare are discussed, with particular emphasis on the role of an animal's own choices and reinforcement mechanisms. No part of biology is as yet able to explain consciousness, but by confronting the possibility that nonhuman animals have conscious experienced of suffering, animal welfare studies force a consideration of even this hardest problem of all biological phenomena in a particularly direct and evolutionary way.

From bookmark managers to distributed indexing: an evolutionary way to the next generation of search engines

This article presents a system designed to substitute current centralized Internet search engines with a distributed indexing scheme in a gradual sequence of steps. The advantage of this transition process is that each of the steps is relatively simple and at the same time makes a significant contribution to the quality of the whole system, resulting in a system with remarkable properties. It is scalable and automatically adaptive, and it facilitates not only the search for information, but also cooperative information filtering and decentralized publishing. Current technology is based on the use of large centralized databases and has potential scalability problems which will become apparent with the further growth of the Internet. This is why the authors believe that sooner or later the transition process presented in this article will take place. The main principles of the new distributed system are presented and discussed. The authors also identify the problems environments such as the Internet present for resource discovery systems. A number of resource discovery projects targeting these problems are analyzed in the second part of the article, and their strengths and disadvantages are identified.

Economic Integration and the Core-Periphery Pattern: an Evolutionary Way to the Core

The paper presents a core-periphery model with export fixed costs. Therefore it is possible to distinguish export and non-export firms and to determine four possible equilibria of regional allocation. The model predicts an evolutionary way to a more concentrated economic geography. (JEL Classification: F)

Re-engineering construction: a new management research agenda

Construction management as an academic discipline appears to be developing in an evolutionary way based on developments in practice which appear to be largely unaffected by mainstream management theories. There appears to be little two-way flow in construction management thought between theory and practice. There is an increasing range of customer-oriented theories emerging within the management discipline which is finding increasing acceptance and application within other management domains both from a theoretical and practical standpoint. Their application within construction appears to be delayed. This short note argues generally for a wider adoption of innovative, emerging management theories to construction. It specifically attempts to do this through an assessment and analysis of the implications of emerging principles of business process analysis based on information technology. Such an analysis results in an argument being made for the re-engineering of construction processes. Business process re-...

Neural classification technique for background rejection in high energy physics experiments

A comparative study of Bayesian and neural classification was done. The mathematical models of neural networks, trained in an evolutionary way, and Bayesian decision rules with Parzen-window multivariate density estimation were applied for background rejection in γ-ray astronomy experiments. A weight function was introduced in classification score to control the relative learning ‘quality’ of alternative classes. The use of a new quality function, instead of classification score, allows: • to avoid usage of Monte Carlo events with inherent misleading simplifications and incorrectness; • to directly optimize the desired quantity: the significance of source detection; • to obtain the complicated nonlinear boundaries of γ-cluster. The proposed technique can be used for background rejection in the constructing experiments of high-energy neutrino point sources identification.

Prisma the Instruments

Our understanding of Solar structure has increased dramatically in the last couple of decades thanks mainly to the opening of new windows of observation providing high quality data to theoreticians with access to powerful computing facilities. Two of the new windows were UV and X-ray images of the Sun, allowing a detailed view of the upper solar atmosphere, and the development of very high resolution spectrometers allowing us to exploit the solar oscillations to probe the internal structure of the Sun. It is the goal of PRISMA to extend these techniques to other stars, which using the Sun as a calibration point will allow us to explore stellar structure and evolution in ways not possible now.In this poster I will present a possible selection of instruments able to achieve this goal, and explain some of the rationale in their design. A more general overview is presented by T. Appouchaux also in these proceedings. It must be stressed that these are not the definitive instruments to be flown on PRISMA, but rather result from a study to show the feasibility of such a mission. Should PRISMA be chosen as the next ESA medium sized mission, an ‘Announcement of Opportunity’ wiH be issued by ESA and the responses of all people interested in constructing the instrument will be considered.

New and Misclassified Planetary Nebulae

This fourth supplementary list to the CGPN (Perek, Kohoutek, 1967) contains 81 new objects (Table 1) which were published mainly between 1987 and 1990. We did not include as new PN those objects, which are in a transition phase between AGB and PN (no emission lines), and possible post-PN namely objects having central stars on the evolutionary way to WD and without nebulae. The possible pre–PN are summarized in a separate incomplete list as an Appendix to Table 1.

Software engineering in the twenty-first century

There is substantial evidence that AI technology can meet the requirements of the large potential market that will exist for knowledge-based software engineering at the turn of the century. In this article, which forms the conclusion to the AAAI Press book Automating Software Design, edited by Michael Lowry and Robert McCartney, Michael Lowry discusses the future of software engineering, and how knowledge-based software engineering (KBSE) progress will lead to system development environments. Specifically, Lowry examines how KBSE techniques promote additive programming methods and how they can be developed and introduced in an evolutionary way.

A source of conventions

Douglass North, in his Institutions, institutional Change and Economic Pedormance (New York: Cambridge University PRESS, 1990, pp. 42, 43, 1381, emphasizes the importance of custom, moral principal, and institutions in our society, but truthfully says that we do not fully understand their source or why they change. The purpose of this commentary is not to completely solve North’s problem but to provide a partial answer. A biologist of my acquaintance once said: “Human beings are readily indoctrinable.” I think in many ways this is fundamental to any answer to North’s problem. People do tend to accept indoctrination. This then raises the question of why are people designed so that they do accept indoctrination? The first thing to be noted is that we are, like any other species, the result of biological evolution. There is no reason to believe that evolution has perfectly fitted us to our present day role, particularly since most of it occurred in the Old Stone Age which was quite different from the present day world. Nevertheless, evolutionary considerations did fix a good many characteristics of human beings in an at least moderately efficient way. I must digress here to say that I am not going to follow the sociobiologists and argue that various things that we see in other social species necessarily are true of human beings. There do, indeed, seem to be some similarities between human society and, let us say, the wolves or baboons, but they are weak and distant. Animal societies are interesting in themselves but are, to put it mildly, poor guides for human social design. Nevertheless, that we are a species that evolved is quite true. One of the outstanding characteristics which differentiates human beings from other species is the existence of a complex language. Since most of the parts of the human body which are involved with speech-the brain, the larynx, etc .-are soft, they did not survive in the fossils. We know little or nothing, then, about the details of the evolution of speech. We can likely be certain, though, that it did not come suddenly overnight, but developed slowly, and that as it developed, those members of the species that had superior speech abilities gradually replaced those who had poor abilities in the normal evolutionary way. This particular human characteristic is unusual in that my ability to speak and to understand speech is of value only insofar as other people with whom I associate can also do so. To some extent, it thus must have evolved by group rather than individual selection.

Unity in the Social Thought of Adolph Lowe: A Review of “Essays in Political Economics: Public Control in a Democratic Society”

Abstract. From the economist Adolph Lowe's voluminous‐writings, Allen Oakleyh has selected eight essays which present the gist of Lowe's thought. It unifies his structural analyses and his instrumental analyses into the system Lowe calls “Political Economics.” This pre‐orders desired ends or effects and then determines or applies goal‐adequate means to achieve these ends. Lowe's Essays in Political Economics sketches the economic paradigm by which he expands the evolutionary way of thinking from the subject —economic behavior— to the object, the socioeconomic world. He argues that instability is fundamental, basic and inherent in contemporary industrial capitalism as it has evolved physically, technologically and socially and stability can be restored by an approach which reverses the continuum to end‐means. He holds that if the world evolves, and it does, so must the goal‐adequate methods and instrumentalities to deal with it.

Life after the White Paper

This paper reviews the contents of the White Paper — the NHS Review, ‘Working for Patients’ published in January 1989’ — and the initial reactions to it. It is easy to fault the White Paper for its unevenness and incompleteness. On the other hand, just because it leaves so many loose‐ends and is non‐prescriptive in detail, there is scope to fashion what happens next in an experimental, evolutionary way. The author seeks to move the debate on from analysis of the document's strengths and weaknesses to consideration of what those who care about the British National Health Service can do to shape the future that the White Paper has begun to create.