From access and integration to mining of secure genomic data sets across the grid

The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) funded BRIDGES project (Biomedical Research Informatics Delivered by Grid Enabled Services) has developed a Grid infrastructure to support cardiovascular research. This includes the provision of a compute Grid and a data Grid infrastructure with security at its heart. In this paper we focus on the BRIDGES data Grid. A primary aim of the BRIDGES data Grid is to help control the complexity in access to and integration of a myriad of genomic data sets through simple Grid based tools. We outline these tools, how they are delivered to the end user scientists. We also describe how these tools are to be extended in the BBSRC funded Grid Enabled Microarray Expression Profile Search (GEMEPS) to support a richer vocabulary of search capabilities to support mining of microarray data sets. As with BRIDGES, fine grain Grid security underpins GEMEPS

TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2009

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Impact of Digital Technology on Library Resource Sharing: Revisiting LABELNET in the Digital Age

The digital environment has facilitated resource sharing by breaking the time and distance barriers to efficient document delivery. However, for the librarians, this phenomenon has brought more challenging technical and technological issues demanding addition of more knowledge and skills to learn and new standards to develop. The overwhelming speed and growing volume of digital information is now becoming unable to acquire and manage by single libraries. Resource sharing, which used to be a side business in the librarianship trade, is now becoming the flagship operation in the library projects

Building Programmable Wireless Networks: An Architectural Survey

In recent times, there have been a lot of efforts for improving the ossified Internet architecture in a bid to sustain unstinted growth and innovation. A major reason for the perceived architectural ossification is the lack of ability to program the network as a system. This situation has resulted partly from historical decisions in the original Internet design which emphasized decentralized network operations through co-located data and control planes on each network device. The situation for wireless networks is no different resulting in a lot of complexity and a plethora of largely incompatible wireless technologies. The emergence of "programmable wireless networks", that allow greater flexibility, ease of management and configurability, is a step in the right direction to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the architectures proposed in literature for building programmable wireless networks focusing primarily on three popular techniques, i.e., software defined networks, cognitive radio networks, and virtualized networks. This survey is a self-contained tutorial on these techniques and its applications. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges in building next-generation programmable wireless networks and identify open research issues and future research directions.Comment: 19 page

Introduction & Coda, Multi-Party Dispute Resolution, Democracy and Decision Making: Vol. II of Complex Dispute Resolution

The Complex Dispute Resolution series collects essays on the development of foundational dispute resolution theory and practice and its application to increasingly more complex settings of conflicts in the world, including multi-party and multi-issue decision making, negotiations in political policy formation and governance, and international conflict resolution. Each volume contains an original introduction by the editor, which explores the key issues in the field. All three volumes feature essays which span an interdisciplinary range of fields, law, political science, game theory, decision science, economics, social and cognitive psychology, sociology and anthropology and consider issues in the uses of informal and private processes, as well as more formal and public processes. The essays question whether the development of universal theoretical insights about conflict resolution is possible with variable numbers of parties and issues and in multi-cultural and multi-jural settings. Each volume also presents a coda, summarizing key issues in the field and suggesting further avenues for research. The second volume (and the introductory essay here) applies the theoretical foundations and practices of primary processes in dispute resolution–negotiation, mediation, arbitration and some hybrid processes in both public and private, informal and formal settings to more complex multi-party and multi issue settings, and asks whether foundational theories must be altered when there are more parties and issues. What difference do larger numbers make in theory and practice of dispute resolution and decision making? Other theoretical and empirical observations of the role of third party neutrals and facilitators in multi-party settings are explored, and applied disciplines such as game theory and decision sciences are applied to complex dispute resolution settings. Illustrations of uses of these processes in different substantive areas, e.g. legal disputes, public policy decision making, politics and governance, environmental matters, institutional relations, and high conflict settings are provided. The volume collects classic articles in multi-party, multi-issue theory and practice while interrogating the issues of how the numbers of parties and issues, different contexts and cultures challenges our efforts to create generalizable theory and practice of human conflict resolution. The review essay also discusses recent efforts to seek correspondences and learning from application of conflict resolution theory and practice to the work on deliberative democracy and political decision making. The coda suggests avenues for future research. Some attention is paid to issues of ethics and political theory, as well as evaluation of efficacy, in the use of third party facilitators in public policy and governance disputes

Social media: a guide for researchers

This guide has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available. One of the most important things that researchers do is to find, use and disseminate information, and social media offers a range of tools which can facilitate this. The guide discusses the use of social media for research and academic purposes and will not be examining the many other uses that social media is put to across society. Social media can change the way in which you undertake research, and can also open up new forms of communication and dissemination. It has the power to enable researchers to engage in a wide range of dissemination in a highly efficient way.Research Information Networ