Macroinvertebrates Reveal Water Quality Differences in Various Agricultural Management

Monitoring benthic communities under different agricultural practices and management could potentially become an important tool to evaluate ecosystem health and stability. Benthic macroinvertebrates have been widely used as water quality bioindicators. This study aims to analyze macroinvertebrates in rice field ecosystems affected by three types of management practices, including conventional, semi-organic, and organic. This study was conducted in Sumberjambe and Kemiri, Jember Regency. Macroinvertebrate samples were collected at three sampling stations for each type of rice field, giving out a total of nine stations. Through Ekman grab, samples were obtained and transferred into a jam jar filled with 70% ethanol using a brush. Six ecological indices were selected to describe the diversity of each station. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) using PAST3 software provided the sample's preference towards the stations and the higher taxa (Class). We also analyzed the similarity of the macroinvertebrate communities between the sampling stations using the Jaccard Similarity Index (JSI). A total of 11 families and 4 classes of macroinvertebrates are recorded. The Shannon-Wiener index shows high diversity for stations with organic management practices (1.318), while the Evenness index shows the highest value for conventional stations (0.9449). The Jaccard similarity index value reports two stations with semi-organic stations as well as semi-organic and organic stations having the highest similarity (JSI = 76.47%), while the lowest similarity value is characterized for conventional and organic stations (JSI = 13.19%)

Software acquisition: a business strategy analysis

The paper argues that there are new insights to be gained from a strategic analysis of requirements engineering. The paper is motivated by a simple question: what does it take to be a world class software acquirer? The question has relevance for requirements engineers because for many organisations market pressures mean that software is commonly acquired rather than developed from scratch. The paper builds on the work of C. H. Fine (1998) who suggests that product, process and supply chain should be designed together, i.e., 3D concurrent engineering. Using a number of reference theories, it proposes a systematic way of carrying out 3D concurrent engineering. The paper concludes that the critical activity in supply chain design is the design of the distribution of skills and the nature of contract

Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework

The DREAM innovative software architecture for high DG-RES distribution grids

The DREAM software architecture model describes a reference class model, that aids in integrating the different components for active distribution grids. Theapplication domains, in which the framework can be used range from simulation (proof-of-concept) to implementation (proof-of feasibility). The frameworkfacilitates interoperability on the software and hardware level as well as from the communication technology level. The framework was designed from a use casesperspective. The major functionality implemented relates to flexible, heterarchic aggregation and coordination ofdevices involved in demand and supply of electricity. In the grid context aim, is to achieve a common objective, prioritize actions and operate on various timescales of grid operational and market functions. To that end, in the framework, monitoring data are handled and stored in a distributed fashion in order to directly steer or coordinate the operation of devices. These persistent dataalso allow handling forecasts and create interaction possibilities with actors or communities of actors on global and local markets and with operations in activedistribution grids and customer energy management. A first implementation is now being built