Discovering Determinants of Project Participation in an Open Source Social Network

Successful open source software projects often require a steady supply of self motivated software developers. However, little work has been done from a relational/network perspective to study the factors that drive the developers to participate in OSS projects. In this paper, we investigate the participation dynamics in a social network, particularly in an online open source community called Ohloh. Through a REST-based API, we collected information about 11,530 open source software projects involving 94,330 developers. Using social network analysis and statistical analysis methods, we examine a set of social and technical factors in the Ohloh dataset, which we define as the determinants that significantly influence the developers’ participation choices. We found that the determinants include (1)homophily in programming language, (2)project mutual acquaintance, and (3)project age. In addition, our research findings provide the possibility of predicting developers’ participation choices based on the discovered determinants, and therefore can have important implications for OSS project management and in designing social network enabled recommendation systems

Recognizing the influence of social determinants on HIV risk behaviors and the need for structural interventions to prevent HIV in women

The design and implementation of structural interventions may provide for simultaneous and longitudinal responses to prevention needs in multiple contexts as defined by social determinants, thus varied opportunities exist to respond to the HIV prevention needs of women. According to the CDC, in 2010, the rate of new HIV infections among black women was 20 times that of white women, and the rate among Hispanic/Latino women was 4 times the rate of white women. Additionally, 86% of HIV infections in women were attributed to heterosexual contact and 14% to injection drug use (CDC, 2012). These numbers are reflected outside the US with 49% of those infected by HIV being women with a predominant source of infection being related to heterosexual transmission (WHO, 2008). In sub-Saharan Africa, of those living with HIV, 60% are women. Attention to the influential context of social determinants of health provides unique opportunities for innovative prevention practice in HIV/AIDS prevention for women. In this paper, social determinants of health as an influential, behavioral concept is defined both in terms of women’s health and their sexual behavior decision making, along with examples of potential structural interventions that not only address the social determinants of their HIV risks but also reflect the contextual complexity of their life experiences. An earlier study (Abdul-Qader and Collins, 2011) solicited statements from a sample of experts in HIV prevention and areas of public health to identify potential structural interventions that would be feasible and impactful regarding HIV prevention - the DHAP Structural Interventions Mapping project. Data was elicited from these stakeholders most likely to be designing and guiding interventions to determine their perspectives on feasible and impactful structural intervention to address sexual behavior in women. The current paper is based on secondary analysis of 20 of these potential structural interventions generally and specifically applicable to women and their HIV prevention needs. Qualitative analysis resulted in three overall themes of economic interventions, response to violence against women and integrated health service delivery strategies that address key health-belief and socio-cultural issues. The themes are reflected and substantiated in current research literature, and provide a foundation for the next steps regarding research, policy planning and program implementation for developing evidence-based structural interventions focused on preventing HIV in women

Determinants of quality, latency, and amount of Stack Overflow answers about recent Android APIs.

Stack Overflow is a popular crowdsourced question and answer website for programming-related issues. It is an invaluable resource for software developers; on average, questions posted there get answered in minutes to an hour. Questions about well established topics, e.g., the coercion operator in C++, or the difference between canonical and class names in Java, get asked often in one form or another, and answered very quickly. On the other hand, questions on previously unseen or niche topics take a while to get a good answer. This is particularly the case with questions about current updates to or the introduction of new application programming interfaces (APIs). In a hyper-competitive online market, getting good answers to current programming questions sooner could increase the chances of an app getting released and used. So, can developers anyhow, e.g., hasten the speed to good answers to questions about new APIs? Here, we empirically study Stack Overflow questions pertaining to new Android APIs and their associated answers. We contrast the interest in these questions, their answer quality, and timeliness of their answers to questions about old APIs. We find that Stack Overflow answerers in general prioritize with respect to currentness: questions about new APIs do get more answers, but good quality answers take longer. We also find that incentives in terms of question bounties, if used appropriately, can significantly shorten the time and increase answer quality. Interestingly, no operationalization of bounty amount shows significance in our models. In practice, our findings confirm the value of bounties in enhancing expert participation. In addition, they show that the Stack Overflow style of crowdsourcing, for all its glory in providing answers about established programming knowledge, is less effective with new API questions

Cooperation between local action groups. Comparison of networks created by organizations from the Lubuskie and Małopolskie voivodeships.

Lokalne grupy działania mogą realizować tzw. projekty współpracy i za ich pomocą tworzyć sieci kooperacji z innymi organizacjami tego typu. W artykule poddano analizie sieci tworzone przez LGD z województw lubuskiego oraz małopolskiego. Dążono do ustalenia różnic i podobieństw między nimi. Zadano kilka pytań: 1. Czy stosunek tych LGD z Małopolski i województwa lubuskiego, które realizują projekty współpracy do ich ogółu, jest zbliżony? 2. Jakie przesłanki przyświecały podejmowaniu współpracy, czy tylko finansowe (tj. możliwość pozyskania środków na realizację projektów), czy też inne (np. wymiana doświadczeń, wzajemna pomoc), które mogą świadczyć o gotowości LGD do budowania nieinstrumentalnych sieci społecznych? 3. Co zadecydowało o liczbie współpracujących LGD, składzie sieci? 4. Co stanowi przedmiot współpracy lokalnych grup działania? Badania (metodą case study) przeprowadzono w 2012 roku. Wykorzysta- no w nich dwie techniki badawcze: analizę danych zastanych oraz wywiad swobodny. Wykazano, iż między sieciami współpracy LGD zachodzą podobieństwa, ale i istotne różnice. Organizacje z Małopolski charakteryzowały się większą otwartością na kontakty społeczne z nieznanymi sobie podmiotami, częściej podejmowały współpracę z organizacjami z innych województw oraz krajów, co może wskazywać na wyższy poziom kapitału społecznego, jakim dysponują.Local action groups (LAGs) can realize so-called cooperation projects and create networks of cooperation within the framework of the projects with other organisations of the kind. The article includes comparison of networks created by LAGs from the Lubuskie and Małopolskie Voivodeships. The aim was to find out differences and similarities between them. A few questions were posed: 1. Are the ratios of the LAGs from the Małopolskie and Lubuskie Voivodeships which realise cooperation projects to the total numbers of LAGs in those regions similar? 2. What motivated LAGs to take up cooperation, was it only financial goals or other goals as well (such as exchange of experiences or mutual assistance), which might prove that the LAGs are ready to create noninstrumental social networks? 3. What determined the number of cooperating LAGs and composition of the networks? 4. What is the subject of cooperation between local action groups? The research was conducted in 2012 with the method of case study. Two study techniques were used in it: content analysis and free-form interview. It was proved that there are similarities but also significant differences between networks of cooperation of LAGs. Organisations from Małopolska were characterised with greater openness to social contacts with entities unknown to them and more often took up cooperation with organisations from other voivodeships and countries, which may indicate a higher level of social capital they have

HOW MICROBLOG FOLLOWER NETWORKS AFFECT OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECT SUCCESS

Successful open source software (OSS) projects require efficient communication means and a steady supply of voluntary developers. Microblogging, as well as the follower network it generates, is becoming increasingly popular as an emerging Web 2.0 communication technology in many online OSS communities. However, little is known about how microblogging follower networks affect OSS project success. Based on theories drawn from the social network domain, OSS and virtual team research,we hypothesized two follower network mechanisms – preferential attachment and structural holes – which may significantly affect OSS project success, by improving knowledge sharing and attracting more skillful developers. We plan to empirically study a microblog follower network in a large online OSS community, aiming to examine the impacts of the two hypothesized follower network mechanisms on OSS project success. Our potential findings may provide insights for OSS project managers to better manage microblog communications and thereby achieve project success

The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law: Discovering Innovative Solutions for the Most Pressing Health Problems Facing the Nation and the World

The connection between health and an individual’s ability to function in society, as well as the importance of health to a society’s economic, political, and social wellbeing necessitates finding innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing health problems. The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University seeks to demonstrate the role that academia can play in addressing complex national and global health problems in a comprehensive, evidence-based, intellectually-rigorous, and nonpartisan manner. The O’Neill Institute currently has three research programs: global health law, national health law, and the center for disease prevention and outcomes. Projects within these programs examine a broad range of health law and policy issues, such as global health governance, global tobacco control, health worker migration, emergency preparedness, national and Chinese health reform, HIV and AIDS issues, food safety, and personalized medicine. These projects merge the scholarly capacity within the institute with the resources of its partners, which include the World Health Organization, World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. Additionally, the faculty and fellows of the O’Neill Institute regularly produce high-level scholarship and engage in teaching offering multi-disciplinary course offerings and innovative graduate degree programs. URL: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/oneillinstitute/documents/2010-03-09_oneill-solutions.pdf; http://mjlst.umn.edu/uploads/Pf/V1/PfV1QhiCT6lUOsv1AqDTCA/111_gostin.pdf

Pro-growth small businesses: learning 'architecture'

Internationally, a certain market failure has become apparent in terms of the effective engagement of small business owner-managers in business support programs, and in the wider concept of life long learning. There exists a cultural gap between support agencies and the small business sector's perceptions of the utility of formal support and learning interventions to the business performance of their business. Therefore, this paper extends knowledge and understanding within this context relative to what constitutes small business owner-managers' learning disposition, means, obstacles and organisation to be confronted and what form of new 'architecture' needs to be designed to support learning. A theoretical framework supports the analysis of findings from a research project based in Melbourne, Australia, which serves to illuminate pertinent issues towards informing more sensitised support interventions with respect to pro-growth small businesses. Specifically, the attribute of a learning culture was identified as a factor contributing to growth in small businesses, and may represent a distinguishing characteristic between effective and non-effective economic performers

A Comparison of Evaluation Networks and Collaboration Networks in Open Source Software Communities

The open source software (OSS) development communities have experienced rapid growth in recent years. Previous social network studies on OSS communities focused on collaboration relationships. However, information about how OSS community members perceive each other is largely ignored. In this study, we report an empirical investigation of the evaluation network in an online OSS community which includes over 11,800 OSS projects and more than 94,330 developers. A collaboration network is modeled from this data set and analyzed for comparison purposes. We find the evaluation network is significantly different from collaboration network in average degree, average path length and fragmentation rate. Furthermore, we argue that the evaluation networks can be used to locate expertise - skillful developers in OSS communities and capture important social relationships among the developers missed in the collaboration network. These characteristics of the evaluation network may benefit the research of OSS development communities and expert recommendation systems

Health Diplomacy the Adaptation of Global Health Interventions to Local Needs in sub-Saharan Africa and Thailand: Evaluating Findings from Project Accept (HPTN 043).

Study-based global health interventions, especially those that are conducted on an international or multi-site basis, frequently require site-specific adaptations in order to (1) respond to socio-cultural differences in risk determinants, (2) to make interventions more relevant to target population needs, and (3) in recognition of 'global health diplomacy' issues. We report on the adaptations development, approval and implementation process from the Project Accept voluntary counseling and testing, community mobilization and post-test support services intervention. We reviewed all relevant documentation collected during the study intervention period (e.g. monthly progress reports; bi-annual steering committee presentations) and conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with project directors and between 12 and 23 field staff at each study site in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Thailand and Tanzania during 2009. Respondents were asked to describe (1) the adaptations development and approval process and (2) the most successful site-specific adaptations from the perspective of facilitating intervention implementation. Across sites, proposed adaptations were identified by field staff and submitted to project directors for review on a formally planned basis. The cross-site intervention sub-committee then ensured fidelity to the study protocol before approval. Successfully-implemented adaptations included: intervention delivery adaptations (e.g. development of tailored counseling messages for immigrant labour groups in South Africa) political, environmental and infrastructural adaptations (e.g. use of local community centers as VCT venues in Zimbabwe); religious adaptations (e.g. dividing clients by gender in Muslim areas of Tanzania); economic adaptations (e.g. co-provision of income generating skills classes in Zimbabwe); epidemiological adaptations (e.g. provision of 'youth-friendly' services in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania), and social adaptations (e.g. modification of terminology to local dialects in Thailand: and adjustment of service delivery schedules to suit seasonal and daily work schedules across sites). Adaptation selection, development and approval during multi-site global health research studies should be a planned process that maintains fidelity to the study protocol. The successful implementation of appropriate site-specific adaptations may have important implications for intervention implementation, from both a service uptake and a global health diplomacy perspective