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Restructuring a business process (BP) model may enhance the BP performance and improve its understandability. So-far proposed restructuring methods use either refactoring which focuses on structural aspects, social network discovery which uses semantic information to guide the affiliation process during its analysis, or social network rediscovery which uses structural information to identify clusters of actors according to their relationships. The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid method that exploits both the semantic and structural aspects of a BP model.

The proposed method first generates a social network from the BP model. Second, it applies hierarchical clustering to determine the performers’ partitions; this step uses the social context which specifies features related to performers, and two new distances that account for semantic and structural information. Finally, it applies a set of behavioral and organizational restructuring rules adapted from the graph optimization domain; each rule uses the identified performers’ partitions and the business context to reduce particular quality metrics.

The efficiency of the proposed method is illustrated through well-established complexity metrics. The illustration is made through the development of a tool that fully supports the proposed method and proposes a strategy for the application of the restructuring rules.

The proposed method has the merit of combining the semantic and structural aspects of a Business Process Modeling Notation model to identify restructuring operations whose ordered application reduces the complexity of the initial model.

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are known to experience academic deficits across core subject areas such as reading and mathematics. Until recently, less attention had been paid to the academic deficits of students with EBD. This was due, in part, to a common belief that academic deficits could not be addressed until problem behaviors were under control. However, within the past decade, we have seen an increase in studies investigating and documenting the academic characteristics of students with EBD and instructional practices that improve the academics of this population. This chapter discusses the general academic characteristics of students with EBD, how teachers can address the academic needs of students with EBD through specific instructional techniques (e.g., Direct Instruction, Strategy Instruction), and future directions and implications for practice.

A major problem of business process modelling languages that primarily express the flow of activities is the limited support for actor modelling provided by rigid swimlane concepts. Thus, the aim of this work is to present a general approach for actor modelling in business processes that supports different layers of abstraction, thereby increasing the expressiveness and avoiding inaccuracy and redundancy.

The proposed actor modelling approach supports task-based assignment of actors and roles based on deontic logic and speech act theory. The semantics of the approach is formally specified based on abstract state machines.

The new approach for actor modelling is more expressive and provides the possibility to reduce the structural complexity of the process flow as shown by a case study and a comparison of an ordinary business process modelling approach using swimlanes and the actor modelling approach based on the workflow resource patterns. In particular, the evaluation showed that important patterns such as separation of duties and retain familiar are only supported by the actor modelling approach.

The research is to some degree in the context of the business process model and notation as a representative of a business process modelling language using swimlanes.

Different gradations concerning the extent to which actor modelling is supported make the new approach outstanding for modelling activities, actors, and constraints in an expressive and legible way.

Technological entrepreneurship concerns the transformation of potentially viable technological opportunities into successful businesses. Absorptive capacity is argued to be essential for this transformation, since it can facilitate the prediction of new technology trends and the assimilation and application of new knowledge to produce new commercial outputs. The investigation of the relationships between absorptive capacity, technological entrepreneurship and their impact on Guangdong technology firms' performance is the purpose of this study.

In this aim a positive causal chain from absorptive capacity to technological entrepreneurship and from this latter to performance is tested through a mediation analysis, which uses an ordinary least squares regression‐based path analytical framework for estimating indirect effects on a sample of 113 Guangdong technology‐based firms.

Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that greater absorptive capacity leads to greater technological entrepreneurship, which in turn leads to greater performance. Therefore evidence is provided about both the mediating role of technological entrepreneurship and the role of absorptive capacity as its antecedent in relation to Guangdong‐based technology firms' performance.

A relevant but somewhat neglected relationship is examined using an integrative model in the Guangdong context. Moreover the study uses direct measures of absorptive capacity as a capability and provides a firm‐level operationalization of technological entrepreneurship. In so doing it also adopts state‐of‐the‐art analysis techniques and highlights the relevance of investments in soft factors for Guangdong technology firms' path towards excellence.

Diagnosing pain and pain inflicting diseases are crucial issues in the health care of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to delineate possible peculiarities in pain perception, characterizing a syndrome-specific spectrum of pain causing diseases as well as particular features of pain expression in Rett syndrome (RTT).

A selective review of the literature on pain, dolorous disorders and diseases, molecular aspects of pain transduction, pain perception, and expression of painful conditions in RTT was undertaken.

RTT causing mutations in the methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MECP2) have an impact on various endogenous molecules modulating pain transmission. Individuals with RTT are specifically prone to numerous pathological states which can cause pain. By thorough observation/application of proper tools, it is possible to recognize painful states in persons with RTT.

This paper imparts empirical/evidence-based data on pain perception/transmission, possible syndrome-specific causes of pain and pain expression/assessment in RTT, with the objective of promoting the quality of clinical practice in this crucial issue.