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Compliance checking is gaining importance as today's organizations need to show that operational processes are executed in a controlled manner while satisfying prede¿ned (legal) requirements. Deviations may be costly and expose the organization to severe risks. Compliance checking is of growing importance for the business process management and auditing communities. This paper presents an approach for checking compliance of observed process executions recorded in an event log to control-¿ow and temporal compliance requirements. We show a collection of 54 control ¿ow and 15 temporal compliance rules, distributed respectively over 10 and 7 categories. In addition we present how temporal compliance requirements discussed in literature can be uni¿ed and formalized using a generic temporal compliance rule. To check compliance with respect to a compliance rule, the event log describing the observed behavior is aligned with the corresponding rule. The alignment then shows which events occurred out of speci¿ed order and which events deviated by which amount of time from the prescribed behavior. The approach is ¿exible (easy to express new rules), and allowing for multi-perspective diagnostic information in case of compliance violations. The technique and corresponding tool support have been experimentally validated using a case study. Keywords: compliance checking, process mining, conformance checking, data-aware conformance checking, Petri-nets

Traditionally, extra high voltage (EHV) transmission systems consist exclusively of overhead lines (OHL) but in the recent years the utilization of high voltage AC (HVAC) power cables is increasing due to environmental, political and operational aspects. To study the impact of HVAC power cables on temporary overvoltages and slow front transients, a simulation model of the large-scale network is required. Guidelines concerning the modeling detail for the surrounding network need to be established to ensure sufficient accurate results. Existing guidelines for purely OHL transmission networks may not be adequate since the integration of HVAC power cables shift the harmonic impedance of the network to lower frequencies and that can affect the extent of the needed simulation model. Much effort can be saved from obtaining detailed data for an extensive but proper model, but a less detailed model might not describe the network behavior with sufficient accuracy. In this study, simplification options are considered, for which the time to construct and analyze a simulation model can be reduced. The simplification options are compared with the reference model (full detail), and judged based on three indicators for the level of accuracy: frequency and amplitude of the main resonance, and maximum over-voltage. As a result, guidelines on the extent of the simulated network and in which detail the model has to be built are proposed. The inverse approach, i.e. increasing level of detail until simulation results hardly change leads to similar results, but requires equivalent short-circuit networks for the rest of the grid. The method is tested for the Dutch 380 kV grid where an underground cable connection of 10.8 km length is introduced in 2013 and a second connection is planned for 2017.

Most organizations have process models describing how cases need to be handled. In fact, legislation and standardization (cf. the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Basel II Accord, and the ISO 9000 family of standards) are forcing organizations to document their processes. These processes are often not enforced by information systems. However, torrents of event data are recorded by today's information systems. These recorded events reflect how processes are really executed. Often reality deviates from the modeled behavior. Therefore, measuring the extent process executions conform to a predefined process model is increasingly important. In this paper, we propose an approach to measure the precision of a process model with respect to an event log. Unlike earlier approaches, we first align model and log thus making our approach more robust, even in case of deviations. The approach has been implemented in the ProM 6 tool and evaluated using both artificial and real life cases.

Sample groups of children (n = 50) and adults (n = 38) were selected from pools of 207 children, (11-13-year olds from two primary schools) and 94 adults (25-44-year olds from four governmental agencies) who were the subjects of an oral health survey among Tibetans living in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region. Mean ages of the study groups of children (38% females) and adults (61% females) were 11.6 ± 0.9 and 37.1 ± 6.1 years, respectively. All had lived in Tibet since birth. Oral rinse samples were selective cultured to isolate, quantify and speciate aerobic and facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative rods (using the API 20E kit) and yeasts (using API 20C AUX and API ZYM kits). For children, the isolation rates for oral coliform bacteria and yeasts were 84 and 14%, respectively, for adults, the respective rates were 26 and 40%. The corresponding quantities of coliforms/yeasts for children and adults were 0.4 ± 1.6 × 103 c.f.u./15.8 ± 72.3 and 0.2 ± 0.6 × 103 c.f.u./57.2 ± 137.5 c.f.u. per millilitre oral rinse, respectively. Aerobic and facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative rods and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, a free-Living saprophytic and ubiquitous bacterial species of wide geographic distribution, were significantly more frequently recovered from the children's oral rinses. The isolation rates of facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative rods in adults and yeasts in both groups were similar to those found in similar cohorts from southern China in earlier studies. Randomly amplified polymeric DNA analysis showed that the S. maltophilia spp. isolated from children were of several different clonal types and were school specific. This study shows that the colonisation rate of facultatively anaerobic Gram-negative rods in adults and yeasts in both groups are similar to those in populations living at lower altitudes, the native young, urban Tibetans appear to exhibit a high oral carriage rate of S. maltophilia spp. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. ; postprint

The United Nations Integrated Civil Society database was utilized in empirical case studies of UN-affiliated civil society organizations (CSOs) in a spatial comparison as to whether they were headquartered in developed or developing nations. The purpose was to gauge plurality/proportionality in the representation of CSOs by world region within the UN-Economic and Social Council consultative status program. Findings indicate substantial variation in regional representation of CSOs within the UN consultative status framework with developed regions represented to a greater degree proportionate to their populations. Both Africa and Asia were underrepresented relative to their proportions of global population. The findings challenge perceptions that the UN relationship with civil society reflects regional pluralism as reflected via proportional representation.

Defenders of male circumcision increasingly argue that female 'circumcision' (cutting of the clitoral hood or labia) should be legally allowed in Western liberal democracies even when non-consensual. In his target article, Richard Shweder (2022) gives perhaps the most persuasive articulation of this argument to have so far appeared in the literature. In my own work, I argue that no person should be subjected to medically unnecessary genital cutting of any kind without their own informed consent, regardless of the sex characteristics with which they were born or the religious or cultural background of their parents. Professor Shweder and I agree that Western law and policy on child genital cutting is currently beset with cultural, religious and sex-based double standards. We disagree about what should be done about this. In this commentary, I argue that 'legalising' childhood FGC so as to bring it into line with current treatment of childhood MGC is not an acceptable solution to these problems. Instead, all medically unnecessary genital cutting of non-consenting persons should be opposed on moral and legal grounds and discouraged by all appropriate means.

The age-structures of rabbit populations at 4 climatically different sites in South Australia were found to have altered significantly since the introduction of Spilopsyllus cuniculi (Dale) as a vector of myxomatosis. The ratio of young of the year to older rabbits in summer was greatly reduced. There was evidence of decreases in size of all observed populations and (for 1 population) in ability to increase rapidly in favourable years. The ratio of young of the year to older rabbits was a convenient and sensitive index of changes in population structure; for analytical purposes, the log transformation (ln [ratio] or ln [ratio + 1]) was biologically and statistically sound. Since the fleas became established, field-strain viruses may have become more virulent and morbidity rates may have increased, but the factors enabling rabbit fleas to enhance myxomatosis as a cause of mortality are unknown. The apparent virulence may have increased because of selection for viruses of high virulence, which are best suited for transmission by S. cuniculi, and possibly because the dose of virus transmitted by fleas is considerably greater than that by mosquitoes or other agents.

Rabbits given an excess of air-dry food but only small amounts of drinking water had a lower food intake and lost more weight than those given food and water freely. They lost weight because they had less digesta in the gut and less water in the skin, and had catabolized more tissue. Their response to water shortage was similar to that seen in other grazing mammals. With low food intake, gut contents fell and the digestibility of food rose, while the daily mass of and water loss in faeces fell; the moisture content in faeces remaining the same. Dehydrated rabbits produced relatively small amounts of urine, up to 1.9 M urea, which was twice as concentrated as that of rabbits given water freely. The rabbits were not able to reduce their requirement for water to less than 55% of their total intake of food and water. As pasture species in mediterranean-type environments become relatively dry in summer and contain only 10 to 5% water, a shortage of water in natural pastures in those areas may, therefore, limit the amount of food which rabbits can use, and the ability of rabbits to survive in summer would, therefore, depend upon the availability of succulent, drought-resistant perennial vegetation.

Shortage of water in natural pastures led to a sharp decline in a large rabbit population in arid, northeastern
South Australia. The pastures were dry and some rabbits drank at springs and water troughs.
Further from water, rabbits climbed trees and shrubs to obtain succulent leaves and twigs. Rabbits
provided with water maintained their weight and apparently survived better than those which did not
drink. It seems unlikely that the rabbits lost weight because the water shortage reduced the amount of dry
food they could eat. In caged rabbits, water shortage limits food intake but also results in low gut fill;
whereas the wild rabbits had the normal amount of digesta in their guts. It is more likely that, as the
pastures became dry, rabbits ate woody twigs and bark which were moist enough to meet their water
requirements but contained too little digestible energy for maintenance. The water shortage apparently
arose because rabbits were numerous and had eaten out the succulent pasture plants. Normally, it takes a
long drought to reduce arid-zone plants to dry straw, and overgrazing is probably the usual cause of a
lack of adequate water for rabbits.

Rabbits could be controlled by various combinations of warren ripping, poisoning and fumigation, without the need for clearing roadside Eucalyptus spp.