For complex services composed of many (component) services, logging is an integral middleware aspect, especially for providing transactions and monitoring. In the event of a failure, the log allows us to deduce the cause of failure (diagnosis) and recover by compensating the executed services (atomicity). However, for heterogeneous services with parts of the functionality provided by multiple o...

Timetabling is a typical application of constraint programming whose task is to allocate activities to slots in available resources respecting various constraints like precedence and capacity. In this paper we present a basic concept, a constraint model, and a solution algorithm for interactive timetabling. Interactive timetabling combines automated timetabling (the computer allocates the activ...

Uncertainty is very important in risk analysis. A natural way to describe this uncertainty is to describe a set of possible values of each unknown quantity (this set is usually an interval), plus any additional information that we may have about the probability of different values within this set. Traditional statistical techniques deal with the situations in which we have a complete informatio...

Racial disparities in cognitive performance exist across the life course, but it is not known whether mediators of disparities differ by age. Understanding sources of cognitive disparities at different ages can inform policies and interventions. Data were obtained for non-Hispanic Black and White respondents to The National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States from 3 age groups: 2...

BACKGROUND Adult weight gain is generally associated with ethnicity of African descent, in addition to low socioeconomic position (SEP), but little information is available from the African diaspora in less-developed countries. We evaluated ethnic differences in adult weight change and the role of life course SEP in those differences. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of baselin...

Intractable diplopia occurs in approximately 0.8% of patients following strabis-mus surgery, with considerable detriment to visual quality of life. Long-term therapeutic occlusion is required to permit functional vision. Black intraocular lens (IOL) implantation is an effective therapeutic option associated with high rates of postoperative satisfaction. 1 Black IOL implantation entails a cost t...