A Methodology for Engineering Collaborative and ad-hoc Mobile Applications using SyD Middleware

Today’s web applications are more collaborative and utilize standard and ubiquitous Internet protocols. We have earlier developed System on Mobile Devices (SyD) middleware to rapidly develop and deploy collaborative applications over heterogeneous and possibly mobile devices hosting web objects. In this paper, we present the software engineering methodology for developing SyD-enabled web applications and illustrate it through a case study on two representative applications: (i) a calendar of meeting application, which is a collaborative application and (ii) a travel application which is an ad-hoc collaborative application. SyD-enabled web objects allow us to create a collaborative application rapidly with limited coding effort. In this case study, the modular software architecture allowed us to hide the inherent heterogeneity among devices, data stores, and networks by presenting a uniform and persistent object view of mobile objects interacting through XML/SOAP requests and responses. The performance results we obtained show that the application scales well as we increase the group size and adapts well within the constraints of mobile devices

Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better

This report was produced through a joint research project of the Monitor Institute and the Foundation Center. The research included an extensive literature review on collaboration in philanthropy, detailed analysis of trends from a recent Foundation Center survey of the largest U.S. foundations, interviews with 37 leading philanthropy professionals and technology experts, and a review of over 170 online tools.The report is a story about how new tools are changing the way funders collaborate. It includes three primary sections: an introduction to emerging technologies and the changing context for philanthropic collaboration; an overview of collaborative needs and tools; and recommendations for improving the collaborative technology landscapeA "Key Findings" executive summary serves as a companion piece to this full report

Models of financing research: public funding mechanisms for universities in Flanders

This paper gives an overview of the models of financing research at universities in Flanders, Belgium. The Flemish government installed parallel mechanisms to distribute financial means for scientific research at the universities: research is supported via the allocation of block grants to the universities based on specific interuniversity allocation keys on the one hand and via project-based funding allocated on competitive basis by public funding agencies on the other hand. The composition of the allocation key of both the Special Research Fund and the Industrial Research Fund and the impact of the research performance-based parameters of these allocation keys on the research policy of universities and on the peer-reviewed assessment of the quality of research proposals submitted to the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders, one of the Flemish public funding agencies, are discussed

Event-based personal retrieval

People who work in a research, academic or business environment often have personal information collections which are large enough to need retrieval aids. A major difference between personal information retrieval and normal document retrieval is that the items to be retrieved are often associated with events in the searcher's life and can be retrieved by their relationship to other events as well as by content. This paper describes some of the background to event-based retrieval and then describes a prototype graphical event-based retrieval system

Volume 11, Issue 20: February 28, 2011

https://ecommons.luc.edu/wsgs_digest/1021/thumbnail.jp

Towards a Cloud-Based Service for Maintaining and Analyzing Data About Scientific Events

We propose the new cloud-based service OpenResearch for managing and analyzing data about scientific events such as conferences and workshops in a persistent and reliable way. This includes data about scientific articles, participants, acceptance rates, submission numbers, impact values as well as organizational details such as program committees, chairs, fees and sponsors. OpenResearch is a centralized repository for scientific events and supports researchers in collecting, organizing, sharing and disseminating information about scientific events in a structured way. An additional feature currently under development is the possibility to archive web pages along with the extracted semantic data in order to lift the burden of maintaining new and old conference web sites from public research institutions. However, the main advantage is that this cloud-based repository enables a comprehensive analysis of conference data. Based on extracted semantic data, it is possible to determine quality estimations, scientific communities, research trends as well the development of acceptance rates, fees, and number of participants in a continuous way complemented by projections into the future. Furthermore, data about research articles can be systematically explored using a content-based analysis as well as citation linkage. All data maintained in this crowd-sourcing platform is made freely available through an open SPARQL endpoint, which allows for analytical queries in a flexible and user-defined way.Comment: A completed version of this paper had been accepted in SAVE-SD workshop 2017 at WWW conferenc

Te Rau Puawai 2002-2004: An evaluation

Established in 1999 as a joint workforce initiative between the former Health Funding Authority and Massey University, Te Rau Puawai aimed to support 100 Maori students to graduate with mental health qualifications within a five year period. The goal of Te Rau Puawai is to contribute to the building of capacity for Maori in the mental health workforce. The programme exceeded its performance expectations in the first two years (1999-2001) with 56 bursars completing their qualifications. Bursars achieved an 80% pass rate compared with 65% for all students at Massey University as a whole. In 2004, this pass rate has continued, a significant achievement in light of increasing numbers of bursars being accepted and many without previously studying at the tertiary level. In 2001 the Maori & Psychology Research Unit (MPRU) at the University of Waikato undertook an evaluation of Te Rau Puawai reporting on the programme's success and identifying any barriers the programme needed to address. The 2002 evaluation report outlines critical success factors and recommendations for improvement. In 2003 Te Rau Puawai negotiated further funding from the Mental Health Directorate (MeHD) of the Ministry of Health under the Mental Health Workforce Development Strategy (2002). Workforce development is critical in building capacity and capability in the mental health workforce to increase appropriately skilled workers required to meet the mental health needs of Maori communities. In 2004 the Ministry of Health requested a follow-up evaluation to provide a descriptive record of programme activities and progress from April 2002 to December 2004. This report provides an overview of Te Rau Puawai activities between 2002 and 2004; the progress and contributions made by bursars to the mental health workforce; and a reassessment of the programme's critical success factors