A phenomenographic study of English faculty's conceptions of information literacy

The purpose of this research is to identify UK English academics' conceptions of information literacy and compare those conceptions with current information literacy standards and frameworks

Evolving IT management frameworks towards a sustainable future

Information Technology (IT) Management Frameworks are a fundamental tool used by IT professionals to efficiently manage IT resources and are globally applied to IT service delivery and management. Sustainability is a recent notion that describes the need for economic, environmental and social development with- out compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs; this applies to businesses as well as society in general. Unfortunately, IT Management Frameworks do not take sustainability into account. To the practitioner this paper demonstrates sustainability integration thereby allowing CIOs and IT managers to improve the sustainability of their organisation. To the researcher this paper argues that sustainability concerns need to be provided to IT Management through its integration into the mainstream of IT Management Frameworks. This is demonstrated through the high-level integration of sustainability in Six Sigma, C OBI T, ITIL and PRINCE2

Perspectives on ageing, later life and ethniciy: Ageing research in ethnic minority contexts

This special issue focuses broadly upon questions and themes relating to the current conceptualisations, representations and use of ‘ethnicity’ (and ethnic minority experiences) within the field of social gerontology. An important aim of this special issue is to explore and address the issue of ‘otherness’ within the predominant existing frameworks for researching those who are ageing or considered aged, compounded by the particular constructions of their ethnicity and ethnic ‘difference’. The range of theoretical, methodological and empirical papers included in this collection provide some critical insights into particular facets of the current research agendas, cultural understandings and empirical focus of ethnic minority ageing research. The main emphasis is on highlighting the ways in which ethnic cultural homogeneity and ‘otherness’ is often assumed in research involving older people from ethnic minority backgrounds, and how wider societal inequalities are concomitantly (re)produced, within (and through) research itself – for example, based on narrowly defined research agendas and questions; the assumed age and/or ethnic differences of researchers vis-à-vis their older research participants; the workings of the formalised ethical procedures and frameworks; and the conceptual and theoretical frameworks employed in the formulation of research questions and interpretation of data. We examine and challenge here the simplistic categorisations and distinctions often made in gerontological research based around research participants’ ethnicity, age and ageing and assumed cultural differences. The papers presented in this collection reveal instead the actual complexity and fluidity of these concepts as well as the cultural dynamism and diversity of experiences within ethnic groups. Through an exploration of these issues, we address some of the gaps in existing knowledge and understandings as well as contribute to the newly emerging discussions surrounding the use of particular notions of ethnicity and ethnic minority ageing as these are being employed within the field of ageing studies.This special issue is one of the outcomes from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) seminar series on ‘Ageing, Race and Ethnicity’ (project reference ES/J021547/1),held in the UK during 2012-2014. Open access for this editorial has been provided through the University of Nottingham open access funds

A Testability Analysis Framework for Non-Functional Properties

This paper presents background, the basic steps and an example for a testability analysis framework for non-functional properties

On the role of Prognostics and Health Management in advanced maintenance systems

The advanced use of the Information and Communication Technologies is evolving the way that systems are managed and maintained. A great number of techniques and methods have emerged in the light of these advances allowing to have an accurate and knowledge about the systems’ condition evolution and remaining useful life. The advances are recognized as outcomes of an innovative discipline, nowadays discussed under the term of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM). In order to analyze how maintenance will change by using PHM, a conceptual model is proposed built upon three views. The model highlights: (i) how PHM may impact the definition of maintenance policies; (ii) how PHM fits within the Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) and (iii) how PHM can be integrated into Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) programs. The conceptual model is the research finding of this review note and helps to discuss the role of PHM in advanced maintenance systems.EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020, 645733 - Sustain-Owner - H2020-MSCA-RISE-201

EU Economic Governance: Less Might Work Better Than More

The European Commission has recently proposed a new package of reforms of the Stability and Growth Pact. The package contains a number of good proposals. In particular, the increased focus on debt ratios is a very positive suggestion though this should be strengthened further. However, some of the other proposals, such as the new principle of prudent fiscal management and the scoreboard for non-fiscal imbalances, are poorly thought out and perhaps unworkable. A smaller number of well-focused proposals may end up working better than this complex, and perhaps overly ambitious, package. And a coherent policy to allow for orderly sovereign defaults in Euro area member states would probably place more pressure, via bond markets, on states to get their fiscal houses in order than would the proposed system of fines.

A two-step fusion process for multi-criteria decision applied to natural hazards in mountains

Mountain river torrents and snow avalanches generate human and material damages with dramatic consequences. Knowledge about natural phenomenona is often lacking and expertise is required for decision and risk management purposes using multi-disciplinary quantitative or qualitative approaches. Expertise is considered as a decision process based on imperfect information coming from more or less reliable and conflicting sources. A methodology mixing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a multi-criteria aid-decision method, and information fusion using Belief Function Theory is described. Fuzzy Sets and Possibilities theories allow to transform quantitative and qualitative criteria into a common frame of discernment for decision in Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST ) and Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) contexts. Main issues consist in basic belief assignments elicitation, conflict identification and management, fusion rule choices, results validation but also in specific needs to make a difference between importance and reliability and uncertainty in the fusion process