The increasing utilization of business process models both in business analysis and information systems development raises several issues regarding quality measures. In this context, this paper discusses understandability as a particular quality aspect and its connection with personal, model, and content related factors. We use an online survey to explore the ability of the model reader to draw...

The present study examined (a) the relative impact visual and phonetic factors have on learning phoneme-grapheme correspondences, and (b) the relationship between measures of visual and phonological processing and children's ability to learn novel phoneme-grapheme correspondence pairs. Participants were 20 children with reading disabilities (RD), 10 normally achieving children matched for menta...

The present paper is a review of the role of individual factors in Spatial Presence. If Spatial Presence is a subjective mental phenomenon psychological factors must have an important role on it. Our review shows that, even though many authors claim about the need for a better understanding about this relation, empirical evidence is still very limited. Personality-related factors as absorption,...

Almost all mammalian cells carry one primary cilium that functions as a biosensor for chemical and mechanical stimuli. Genetic damages that compromise cilia formation or function cause a spectrum of disorders referred to as ciliapathies. Recent studies have demonstrated that some pharmacological agents and extracellular environmental changes can alter primary cilium length. Renal injury is a we...

When making judgments, one may encounter not the appearance of a candidate into consideration, even only justifiable factors, i.e., attributes which the judge though she may want to hire the better-looking candithinks that he/she should take into consideration, but date. In this article, we distinguish between two types also unjustifiable factors, i.e., attributes which the of factors: (a) fact...

OBJECTIVE To explore relationships between patterns of smoking uptake and social context and attitudinal variables. DESIGN Cross sectional survey. SETTING Public schools in Tucson, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico. PARTICIPANTS 982 children in grades 6-9 (ages 11-15 years). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Items measuring smoking history, nicotine dependence and quit attempts, susceptibility to...

Public engagement with eHealth is generally viewed as beneficial. However, despite the potential benefits, public engagement with eHealth services remains variable. This article explores reasons for this variability through a review of published literature. A focused search, conducted in January 2009, of three bibliographic databases, MEDLINE, CINAHL and EMBASE, returned 2622 unique abstracts. ...

This paper proposes a framework based on Defeasible Logic (DL) to reason about normative modifications. We show how to express them in DL and how the logic deals with conflicts between temporalised normative modifications. Some comments will be given with regard to the phenomenon of retroactivity.

In this paper, a forward and backward (FB) fourth order PDEs is presented to denosing and enhancement image simultaneously. The new FB fourth order PDEs preserves the advantage of YK model and avoids leaving isolated black and white speckles. Moreover, the new model preserves fine details, sharp corners, curved structures and thin lines. Experiment results show the effectiveness of the proposed...