The Third NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies

This report contains copies of nearly all of the technical papers and viewgraphs presented at the Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies held in October 1993. The conference served as an informational exchange forum for topics primarily relating to the ingestion and management of massive amounts of data and the attendant problems involved. Discussion topics include the necessary use of computers in the solution of today's infinitely complex problems, the need for greatly increased storage densities in both optical and magnetic recording media, currently popular storage media and magnetic media storage risk factors, data archiving standards including a talk on the current status of the IEEE Storage Systems Reference Model (RM). Additional topics addressed System performance, data storage system concepts, communications technologies, data distribution systems, data compression, and error detection and correction

Fourth NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies

This report contains copies of all those technical papers received in time for publication just prior to the Fourth Goddard Conference on Mass Storage and Technologies, held March 28-30, 1995, at the University of Maryland, University College Conference Center, in College Park, Maryland. This series of conferences continues to serve as a unique medium for the exchange of information on topics relating to the ingestion and management of substantial amounts of data and the attendant problems involved. This year's discussion topics include new storage technology, stability of recorded media, performance studies, storage system solutions, the National Information infrastructure (Infobahn), the future for storage technology, and lessons learned from various projects. There also will be an update on the IEEE Mass Storage System Reference Model Version 5, on which the final vote was taken in July 1994

Audiovisual preservation strategies, data models and value-chains

This is a report on preservation strategies, models and value-chains for digital file-based audiovisual content. The report includes: (a)current and emerging value-chains and business-models for audiovisual preservation;(b) a comparison of preservation strategies for audiovisual content including their strengths and weaknesses, and(c) a review of current preservation metadata models, and requirements for extension to support audiovisual files

Service-oriented models for audiovisual content storage

What are the important topics to understand if involved with storage services to hold digital audiovisual content? This report takes a look at how content is created and moves into and out of storage; the storage service value networks and architectures found now and expected in the future; what sort of data transfer is expected to and from an audiovisual archive; what transfer protocols to use; and a summary of security and interface issues

Developing a service quality measurement instrument for archival institutions

The service sector of the global economy is undoubtedly growing and increasingly highlighting the criticality of service quality to enhanced profitability in most service organisations. The demand for accountability from different stakeholders, including clients, has also made service quality a highly debated, researched and most powerful competitive trend shaping marketing and business strategy. Developing reliable measurement instruments of service quality and strategies for the improvement of service quality invariably become the most important responsibilities for managers in many organisations. In the absence of conceptual clarity on service quality, divergent views on the dimensionality of service quality and the lack of a psychometrically valid service quality measure in archival institutions, this study set out to develop and subsequently validate a measurement instrument to assess service quality in an archival institutional setting. The two research questions investigated in this study were: (1) what are the dimensions for measuring service quality in archival institutions, and (2) how can the dimensions of service quality in archival institutions be measured effectively. The methodology for this study involved a two-phased qualitative and quantitative analysis addressing these two research questions. The study followed the standard psychometric procedure for developing constructs. This research has resulted in the important findings and relevant conclusions for both academics and practitioners interested in service quality in the archival environment. The service quality measurement instrument formulated is called ARCHIVqual and has three dimensions, namely (1) security of information (with 4 items), (2) integrity of information (with 3 items) and (3) usability of information (with 2 items). Besides measuring service quality in the archival environment, ARCHIVqual will also serve as a tool for conducting periodic surveys thereby identifying specific problematic areas in archival institutions.Graduate School for Business LeadershipD.B.L

Efficient Decision Support Systems

This series is directed to diverse managerial professionals who are leading the transformation of individual domains by using expert information and domain knowledge to drive decision support systems (DSSs). The series offers a broad range of subjects addressed in specific areas such as health care, business management, banking, agriculture, environmental improvement, natural resource and spatial management, aviation administration, and hybrid applications of information technology aimed to interdisciplinary issues. This book series is composed of three volumes: Volume 1 consists of general concepts and methodology of DSSs; Volume 2 consists of applications of DSSs in the biomedical domain; Volume 3 consists of hybrid applications of DSSs in multidisciplinary domains. The book is shaped decision support strategies in the new infrastructure that assists the readers in full use of the creative technology to manipulate input data and to transform information into useful decisions for decision makers

Automated techniques for bat echolocation call analysis

Acoustic bat detectors are an extraordinarily valuable tool in bat research as they enable researchers to listen in on the otherwise secretive world of bats, providing the means to nqn-invasively survey and monitor bats in their natural habitats. Technological advances facilitate unprecedented data collection, considerably expanding the scope of field studies. However, the burden of manual analysis, and difficulty in identifying some species reliably from their calls, hampers the development of systematic survey and long- term monitoring methods. We developed a series of algorithms for the automated analysis of bat detector recordings, used to detect and extract calls from continuous recordings, and measure temporal and spectral call variables. By hand-labelling the .location of calls in field recordings, we were able to evaluate the accuracy of the automated method at detecting calls. Comparison on the same dataset with two conventional bioacoustic signal detectors revealed our algorithm was more accurate and robust. Using machine learning (ML) classification algorithms that learn to identify calls following training using a reference library, we developed a fully automated species identification system. Evaluation of the system was carried out by cross-validation of our reference call library, containing recordings of >5000 calls from known British species, comparing classifier predictions to ground- truth labels. The ML approach outperformed conventional statistical analysis using discriminant function analysis (DFA). We applied our novel system to two field studies that highlight its utility. Firstly, monitoring multi- species bat activity at a remote cave system over a period of three months, analysing >20,000 audio files to investigate temporal patterns in activity. Secondly, separating acoustically cryptic Myotis species from data collected in the Lake District National Park, to generate presence data for species distribution modelling, facilitatinq the creation of species-specific habitat suitability maps projected over the entire Park (ea, 3,300 km")

Particle Physics Reference Library

This second open access volume of the handbook series deals with detectors, large experimental facilities and data handling, both for accelerator and non-accelerator based experiments. It also covers applications in medicine and life sciences. A joint CERN-Springer initiative, the “Particle Physics Reference Library” provides revised and updated contributions based on previously published material in the well-known Landolt-Boernstein series on particle physics, accelerators and detectors (volumes 21A,B1,B2,C), which took stock of the field approximately one decade ago. Central to this new initiative is publication under full open access