Automating the Procurement of Web Services

As government agencies and business become more dependent on web services, software solutions to automate their procurement gain importance. Current approaches for automating the procurement of web services suffer from an important drawback: neither uncertainty measures nor non-linear, and complex relations among parameters can be used by providers to specify quality-ofservice in offers. In this paper, we look deeply into the roots of this drawback and present a proposal which overcomes it. The key point to achieve this improvement has been using the constraint programming as a formal basis, since it endows the model with a very powerful expressiveness. A XML-based implementation is presented along with some experimental results and comparisons with other approaches.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC 2000–1106–C02–01Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2003-02737-C02-01Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología FIT-150100-2001-7

Treatment of palm oil mill secondary effluent (POMSE) using ultrafiltration and nanofiltration membranes

Malaysian palm oil industry has grown rapidly over the last few decades, to becoming the world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil. This success story however, comes with a greater challenge and equally required more sacrifices in order to maintain the tempo. In the year of 2004, it has been recorded that 26.7 million tons of solid biomass and approximately a 30 million tons of palm oil mill effluent (POME) were generated from 381 palm oil mills in Malaysia [1]. Although different kind of wastes are generated in the palm oil mills, the perceived harmful waste among all the waste generated is the palm oil mill effluent (POME) due to its associated harm if discharged into the environment untreated [2]. POME is a colloidal suspension originating from mixture of sterilizer condensate, separator sludge and hydro cyclone wastewater in a ratio of 9:15:1 respectively [3]. It is a brownish colored, thick liquid that is containing high amount of oil, solids, and grease with high Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) values. Table 15.1 describes the characteristic of POME obtained from Malaysian Palm Oil Board

Performance modeling of e-procurement workflow using Generalised Stochastic Petri net (GSPN)

This paper proposes a Generalised Stochastic Petri net (GSPN) model representing a generic e-procurement workflow process. The model displays the dynamic behaviour of the system and shows the inter relationship of process activities. An analysis based on matrix equation approach enabled users to analyse the critical system's states, and thus justify the process performance. The results obtained allow users for better decision making in improving e-procurement workflow performance

OpenTED Browser: Insights into European Public Spendings

We present the OpenTED browser, a Web application allowing to interactively browse public spending data related to public procurements in the European Union. The application relies on Open Data recently published by the European Commission and the Publications Office of the European Union, from which we imported a curated dataset of 4.2 million contract award notices spanning the period 2006-2015. The application is designed to easily filter notices and visualise relationships between public contracting authorities and private contractors. The simple design allows for example to quickly find information about who the biggest suppliers of local governments are, and the nature of the contracted goods and services. We believe the tool, which we make Open Source, is a valuable source of information for journalists, NGOs, analysts and citizens for getting information on public procurement data, from large scale trends to local municipal developments.Comment: ECML, PKDD, SoGood workshop 201

States Buying Smarter: Lessons Learned From Minnesota and Virginia

Profiles successful government procurement practices, including aggregating demand, promoting innovation, streamlining processes, emphasizing price, and strengthening negotiating skills and vendor relationships; challenges; and principles across states

Kesan pembelajaran koperatif terhadap pencapaian pendidikan alam sekitar dalam kalangan pelajar sekolah menengah rendah

Pembelajaran koperatif merupakan satu teknik pembelajaran yang melibatkan pelajar bekerjasama dalam satu kumpulan untuk mencapai matlamat tertentu. Dalam topik Pendidikan Alam Sekitar, pelajar didapati agak lemah dalam memahami sesuatu istilah dan tidak dapat mengaitkan topik dengan pengalaman serta persekitaran mereka. Sebelum ini, pengajaran dan pembelajaran lebih berpusatkan guru. Pembelajaran koperatif pula hanya melibatkan mata pelajaran yang menggunakan makmal atau bengkel. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meninjau kesan pembelajaran berkumpulan terhadap pencapaian pelajar dalam Pendidikan Alam Sekitar melalui mata pelajaran Geografi. Bentuk kajian yang digunakan ialah kuasi-eksperimen yang dijalankan dengan menggunakan ujian pra dan ujian pasca ke atas kumpulan eksperimen dan kumpulan kawalan. Sampel kajian adalah dua kumpulan pelajar tingkatan 1 dari Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Luar Bandar di negeri Johor. Sampel kajian terdiri daripada 37 orang pelajar kumpulan eksperimen dan 35 orang pelajar kumpulan kawalan. Kumpulan eksperimen merupakan kumpulan yang menggunakan kaedah pembelajaran koperatif manakala kumpulan kawalan diajar tanpa pembelajaran koperatif. Instrumen kajian ialah ujian pencapaian, borang soal selidik, jadual pemerhatian dan temubual. Hasil kajian mendapati min pencapaian kumpulan eksperimen adalah tinggi iaitu 18.16 berbanding dengan min kumpulan kawalan, iaitu 13.91. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan terdapat peningkatan pencapaian bagi pelajar yang menjalani pembelajaran koperatif berbanding dengan pelajar yang tidak mengamalkan kaedah pembelajaran tersebut. Pelajar juga dapat menerima penggunaan pembelajaran koperatif dalam proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran. Kesimpulannya, pembelajaran koperatif bukan sahaja dapat meningkatkan hasil malah dapat meningkatkan kualiti proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran

Agent Technology in Supply Chains and Networks: An exploration of high potential future applications

This paper reports on an ongoing research project that\ud is aimed at evaluating how software agents can improve\ud performance of supply chains and networks. To conduct\ud this evaluation, first a framework is developed to classify\ud potential applications of software agents to supply\ud networks. The framework was used in workshop sessions\ud with logistics and information systems experts from\ud industry, software/consultancy and academia to identify\ud promising areas for agents. Based on the framework and\ud the outcome of the workshop sessions, this paper presents\ud promising application areas for the near future and\ud beyond

Iowa 100% E News, March 2001, Vol.1, no.2

Newsletter for Information Technology Departmen