Evolution and overview of Linked USDL

For more than 10 years, research on service descriptions has mainly studied software-based services and provided languages such as WSDL, OWL-S, WSMO for SOAP, and hREST for REST. Nonetheless, recent developments from service management (e.g., ITIL and COBIT) and cloud computing (e.g. Software-as-a-Service) have brought new re- quirements to service descriptions languages: the need to also model business services and account for the multi-faceted nature of services. Business-orientation, co-creation, pricing, legal aspects, and security issues are all elements which must also be part of service descriptions. While ontologies such as e service and e value provided a first modeling attempt to capture a business perspective, concerns on how to contract services and the agreements entailed by a contract also need to be taken into account. This has for the most part been disregarded by the e family of ontologies. In this paper, we review the evolution and provide an overview of Linked USDL, a comprehensive language which provides a (multi-faceted) description to enable the commercialization of (business and technical) services over the web

Unlocking Solver Potential: A Framework for Analysis and Inter-Comparison of Optimisation Solvers

Linear and mixed integer optimisation problems have demonstrated their strength in the field of logistics and supply chain management for years. However, real-world optimisation problems are complex in nature, and various mathematical programming solvers are leveraged to solve these problems today. With several advances in solver technologies in recent years, there has been growing interest in carrying out comparative evaluations of solvers for a range of applications. However, there appears a lack of guidance for decision makers to conduct solver performance assessment and inter-comparison. To address this gap, we aim to derive a framework of parameters deemed most relevant for evaluating and comparing different solvers for a given application. To this end, we perform a systematic literature review. The resulting parameters are classified into three core categories: performance metrics, stopping conditions, and performance enhancing elements of a solver

Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC

Portuguese SKA white book

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A verified and optimized Stream X-Machine testing method, with application to cloud service certification

The Stream X-Machine (SXM) testing method provides strong and repeatable guarantees of functional correctness, up to a specification. These qualities make the method attractive for software certification, especially in the domain of brokered cloud services, where arbitrage seeks to substitute functionally equivalent services from alternative providers. However, practical obstacles include: the difficulty in providing a correct specification, the translation of abstract paths into feasible concrete tests, and the large size of generated test suites. We describe a novel SXM verification and testing method, which automatically checks specifications for completeness and determinism, prior to generating complete test suites with full grounding information. Three optimisation steps achieve up to a ten-fold reduction in the size of the test suite, removing infeasible and redundant tests. The method is backed by a set of tools to validate and verify the SXM spec-ification, generate technology-agnostic test suites and ground these in SOAP, REST or rich-client service implementations. The method was initially validated using seven specifications, three cloud platforms and five grounding strategies

Lumières informationnelles de la Science de Service éclairant la progression de la Société

L’esprit des Lumières du XVII–XVIIIe siècle, celui de la raison, de la science, de l’humanisme et du progrès – par opposition à l’obscurantisme, a conduit à l’émergence de connaissances scientifiques disruptives – même en ce qui concerne les fondements de la Société – et indiscutables pour quiconque fait appel à sa raison. Il a ainsi induit de nombreuses transformations dans tous les secteurs de la Société. Aujourd’hui, dans tous les secteurs de la Société, les technologies numériques, présentes et futures, induisent l’émergence d’une multitude de connaissances disruptives de phénomènes invisibles sans elles, ainsi que d’une multitude de pratiques disruptives impossibles sans elles. Il s’agit de les intégrer dans une progression de la Société ou d’une entreprise. Ce livre a pour objet de faire ressortir l’intelligence de la progression de la Société ou de l’entreprise en permettant à l’intelligence du vivre ensemble (Sciences humaines), à l’intelligence des solutions (Sciences exactes) et à l’intelligence de l’artificiel (Sciences de l’ingénieur, y compris le numérique), de se relier entre elles par l’intelligence informationnelle des services. Une telle connexion est établie grâce à la science des services. Elle constitue la base des Lumières informationnelles. Michel Léonard est professeur de l’université de Genève depuis 1977 en systèmes d’information et Science de Service. Il a été l’initiateur de nombreux cours et cursus dont le DEA MATIS franco-suisse ainsi que de la série de conférences internationales scientifiques IESS (International Conference on Exploring Service Science). Ses recherches ont porté d’une part sur des méthodes de conception et d’évolution des systèmes d’information, et d’autre part, sur la réalisation de systèmes de gestion de bases de données en concordance avec ces méthodes. Elles portent maintenant sur la Science de Service en y apportant la dimension informationnelle

Bibliometric Studies and Worldwide Research Trends on Global Health

Global health, conceived as a discipline, aims to train, research and respond to problems of a transboundary nature, in order to improve health and health equity at the global level. The current worldwide situation is ruled by globalization, and therefore the concept of global health involves not only health-related issues, but also those related to the environment and climate change. Therefore, in this Special Issue, the problems related to global health have been addressed from a bibliometric approach in four main areas: environmental issues, diseases, health, education and society

Sustainable Value Co-Creation in Welfare Service Ecosystems : Transforming temporary collaboration projects into permanent resource integration

The aim of this paper is to discuss the unexploited forces of user-orientation and shared responsibility to promote sustainable value co-creation during service innovation projects in welfare service ecosystems. The framework is based on the theoretical field of public service logic (PSL) and our thesis is that service innovation seriously requires a user-oriented approach, and that such an approach enables resource integration based on the service-user’s needs and lifeworld. In our findings, we identify prerequisites and opportunities of collaborative service innovation projects in order to transform these projects into sustainable resource integration once they have ended