Financial Information Mediation: A Case Study of Standards Integration for Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment Using the COIN Mediation Technology

Each player in the financial industry, each bank, stock exchange, government agency, or insurance company operates its own financial information system or systems. By its very nature, financial information, like the money that it represents, changes hands. Therefore the interoperation of financial information systems is the cornerstone of the financial services they support. E-services frameworks such as web services are an unprecedented opportunity for the flexible interoperation of financial systems. Naturally the critical economic role and the complexity of financial information led to the development of various standards. Yet standards alone are not the panacea: different groups of players use different standards or different interpretations of the same standard. We believe that the solution lies in the convergence of flexible E-services such as web-services and semantically rich meta-data as promised by the semantic Web; then a mediation architecture can be used for the documentation, identification, and resolution of semantic conflicts arising from the interoperation of heterogeneous financial services. In this paper we illustrate the nature of the problem in the Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) industry and the viability of the solution we propose. We describe and analyze the integration of services using four different formats: the IFX, OFX and SWIFT standards, and an example proprietary format. To accomplish this integration we use the COntext INterchange (COIN) framework. The COIN architecture leverages a model of sources and receivers’ contexts in reference to a rich domain model or ontology for the description and resolution of semantic heterogeneity.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Greedy Rectilinear Drawings

A drawing of a graph is greedy if for each ordered pair of vertices u and v, there is a path from u to v such that the Euclidean distance to v decreases monotonically at every vertex of the path. The existence of greedy drawings has been widely studied under different topological and geometric constraints, such as planarity, face convexity, and drawing succinctness. We introduce greedy rectilinear drawings, in which each edge is either a horizontal or a vertical segment. These drawings have several properties that improve human readability and support network routing. We address the problem of testing whether a planar rectilinear representation, i.e., a plane graph with specified vertex angles, admits vertex coordinates that define a greedy drawing. We provide a characterization, a linear-time testing algorithm, and a full generative scheme for universal greedy rectilinear representations, i.e., those for which every drawing is greedy. For general greedy rectilinear representations, we give a combinatorial characterization and, based on it, a polynomial-time testing and drawing algorithm for a meaningful subset of instances.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

DMN for Data Quality Measurement and Assessment

Data Quality assessment is aimed at evaluating the suitability of a dataset for an intended task. The extensive literature on data quality describes the various methodologies for assessing data quality by means of data profiling techniques of the whole datasets. Our investigations are aimed to provide solutions to the need of automatically assessing the level of quality of the records of a dataset, where data profiling tools do not provide an adequate level of information. As most of the times, it is easier to describe when a record has quality enough than calculating a qualitative indicator, we propose a semi-automatically business rule-guided data quality assessment methodology for every record. This involves first listing the business rules that describe the data (data requirements), then those describing how to produce measures (business rules for data quality measurements), and finally, those defining how to assess the level of data quality of a data set (business rules for data quality assessment). The main contribution of this paper is the adoption of the OMG standard DMN (Decision Model and Notation) to support the data quality requirement description and their automatic assessment by using the existing DMN engines.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología RTI2018-094283-B-C33Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología RTI2018-094283-B-C31European Regional Development Fund SBPLY/17/180501/00029

Zigbee Technology

This paper aims at presenting the concept of ZigBee, the name of a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small, low - power digital radios based on the IEEE802.15.4 - 2006 standard for wireless personal area networks (WPANs),such as wireless headphones connecting with cell phones via short - range radio. The technology is intended to be simpler and less expensive than other WPANs, such as Bluetooth. ZigBee is targeted at radio - frequency (RF) applications that require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking. The ZigBee communication is a communication technology to connect local wireless nodes and provides high stability an d transfer rate due to data communication with low power. In the nodes away from coordinator in one PAN, the signal strength is weak causing the net work a shortage of low performance and inefficient use of resources due to transferring delay and increasing delay time and thus cannot conduct seamless communication

Towards certain fixes with editing rules and master data

A variety of integrity constraints have been studied for data cleaning. While these constraints can detect the presence of errors, they fall short of guiding us to correct the errors. Indeed, data repairing based on these constraints may notfind certain fixes that are absolutely correct, and worse, may introduce new errors when repairing the data. We propose a method for finding certain fixes, based on master data, a notion of certain regions, and a class of editing rules. A certain region is a set of attributes that are assured correct by the users. Given a certain region and master data, editing rules tell us what attributes to fix and how to update them. We show how the method can be used in data monitoring and enrichment. We develop techniques for reasoning about editing rules, to decide whether they lead to a unique fix and whether they are able to fix all the attributes in a tuple, relative to master data and a certain region. We also provide an algorithm to identify minimal certain regions, such that a certain fix is warranted by editing rules and master data as long as one of the regions is correct. We experimentally verify the effectiveness and scalability of the algorithm

Qualtra Geothermal Power Plant: Life Cycle, Exergo-Economic, and Exergo-Environmental Preliminary Assessment

Qualtra, an innovative 10 MW geothermal power plant proposal, employs a closed-loop design to mitigate emissions, ensuring no direct release into the atmosphere. A thorough assessment utilizing energy and exergy analysis, life cycle assessment (LCA), exergo-economic analysis, and exergo environmental analysis (EevA) was conducted. The LCA results, utilizing the ReCiPe 2016 midpoint methodology, encompass all the spectrum of environmental indicators provided. The technology implemented makes it possible to avoid direct atmospheric emissions from the Qualtra plant, so the environmental impact is mainly due to indirect emissions over the life cycle. The result obtained for the global warming potential indicator is about 6.6 g CO2 eq/kWh, notably lower compared to other conventional systems. Contribution analysis reveals that the construction phase dominates, accounting for over 90% of the impact for almost all LCA midpoint categories, excluding stratospheric ozone depletion, which is dominated by the impact from the operation and maintenance phase, at about 87%. Endpoint indicators were assessed to estimate the single score value using normalization and weighting at the component level. The resulting single score is then used in an Exergo-Environmental Analysis (EEvA), highlighting the well system as the most impactful contributor, constituting approximately 45% of the total impact. Other substantial contributions to the environmental impact include the condenser (21%), the turbine (17%), and the HEGeo (14%). The exergo-economic analysis assesses cost distribution across major plant components, projecting an electricity cost of about 9.4 c€/kWh

60,000 years of interactions between Central and Eastern Africa documented by major African mitochondrial haplogroup L2

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup L2 originated in Western Africa but is nowadays spread across the entire continent. L2 movements were previously postulated to be related to the Bantu expansion, but L2 expansions eastwards probably occurred much earlier. By reconstructing the phylogeny of L2 (44 new complete sequences) we provide insights on the complex net of within-African migrations in the last 60 thousand years (ka). Results show that lineages in Southern Africa cluster with Western/Central African lineages at a recent time scale, whereas, eastern lineages seem to be substantially more ancient. Three moments of expansion from a Central African source are associated to L2: (1) one migration at 70-50 ka into Eastern or Southern Africa, (2) postglacial movements (15-10 ka) into Eastern Africa; and (3) the southward Bantu Expansion in the last 5 ka. The complementary population and L0a phylogeography analyses indicate no strong evidence of mtDNA gene flow between eastern and southern populations during the later movement, suggesting low admixture between Eastern African populations and the Bantu migrants. This implies that, at least in the early stages, the Bantu expansion was mainly a demic diffusion with little incorporation of local populations.This research received support from the European project “A European Initial Training Network on the History, Archaeology, and New Genetics of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (EUROTAST)” (EU project: 290344). PSo is supported by FCT (the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), European Social Fund, Programa Operacional Potencial Humano and the FCT Investigator Programme (IF/01641/2013). IPATIMUP integrates the i3S Research Unit, which is partially supported by FCT. This work is funded by FEDER funds through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness FactorsCOMPETE and National Funds through FCT, under the project “PEst-C/SAU/LA0003/2013”. FCT/MEC supports CBMA through Portuguese funds (PIDDAC) - PEst-OE/BIA/UI4050/2014. NORTE-07-0162FEDER-00018 (Contributos para o reforço da capacidade do IPATIMUP enquanto actor do sistema regional de inovação) and NORTE-07-0162-FEDER-000067 (Reforço e consolidação da capacidade infraestrutural do IPATIMUP para o sistema regional de inovação), both supported by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (ON.2 – O Novo Norte), through FEDER funds under the Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional (QREN)

Recent acquisition of Helicobacter pylori by Baka Pygmies

Both anatomically modern humans and the gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori originated in Africa, and both species have been associated for at least 100,000 years. Seven geographically distinct H. pylori populations exist, three of which are indigenous to Africa: hpAfrica1, hpAfrica2, and hpNEAfrica. The oldest and most divergent population, hpAfrica2, evolved within San hunter-gatherers, who represent one of the deepest branches of the human population tree. Anticipating the presence of ancient H. pylori lineages within all hunter-gatherer populations, we investigated the prevalence and population structure of H. pylori within Baka Pygmies in Cameroon. Gastric biopsies were obtained by esophagogastroduodenoscopy from 77 Baka from two geographically separated populations, and from 101 non-Baka individuals from neighboring agriculturalist populations, and subsequently cultured for H. pylori. Unexpectedly, Baka Pygmies showed a significantly lower H. pylori infection rate (20.8%) than non-Baka (80.2%). We generated multilocus haplotypes for each H. pylori isolate by DNA sequencing, but were not able to identify Baka-specific lineages, and most isolates in our sample were assigned to hpNEAfrica or hpAfrica1. The population hpNEAfrica, a marker for the expansion of the Nilo-Saharan language family, was divided into East African and Central West African subpopulations. Similarly, a new hpAfrica1 subpopulation, identified mainly among Cameroonians, supports eastern and western expansions of Bantu languages. An age-structured transmission model shows that the low H. pylori prevalence among Baka Pygmies is achievable within the timeframe of a few hundred years and suggests that demographic factors such as small population size and unusually low life expectancy can lead to the eradication of H. pylori from individual human populations. The Baka were thus either H. pylori-free or lost their ancient lineages during past demographic fluctuations. Using coalescent simulations and phylogenetic inference, we show that Baka almost certainly acquired their extant H. pylori through secondary contact with their agriculturalist neighbors

Genetic landscape of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease identifies heterogeneous cell-type and phenotype associations

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the leading cause of respiratory mortality worldwide. Genetic risk loci provide new insights into disease pathogenesis. We performed a genome-wide association study in 35,735 cases and 222,076 controls from the UK Biobank and additional studies from the International COPD Genetics Consortium. We identified 82 loci associated with P < 5 × 10−8; 47 of these were previously described in association with either COPD or population-based measures of lung function. Of the remaining 35 new loci, 13 were associated with lung function in 79,055 individuals from the SpiroMeta consortium. Using gene expression and regulation data, we identified functional enrichment of COPD risk loci in lung tissue, smooth muscle, and several lung cell types. We found 14 COPD loci shared with either asthma or pulmonary fibrosis. COPD genetic risk loci clustered into groups based on associations with quantitative imaging features and comorbidities. Our analyses provide further support for the genetic susceptibility and heterogeneity of COPD

Novel Blood Pressure Locus and Gene Discovery Using Genome-Wide Association Study and Expression Data Sets From Blood and the Kidney.

Elevated blood pressure is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and has a substantial genetic contribution. Genetic variation influencing blood pressure has the potential to identify new pharmacological targets for the treatment of hypertension. To discover additional novel blood pressure loci, we used 1000 Genomes Project-based imputation in 150 134 European ancestry individuals and sought significant evidence for independent replication in a further 228 245 individuals. We report 6 new signals of association in or near HSPB7, TNXB, LRP12, LOC283335, SEPT9, and AKT2, and provide new replication evidence for a further 2 signals in EBF2 and NFKBIA Combining large whole-blood gene expression resources totaling 12 607 individuals, we investigated all novel and previously reported signals and identified 48 genes with evidence for involvement in blood pressure regulation that are significant in multiple resources. Three novel kidney-specific signals were also detected. These robustly implicated genes may provide new leads for therapeutic innovation