New Version of the AGRIS Web Portal – Overcoming the Digital Divide by Providing Rural Areas with Relevant Information

The present paper brings the outcomes of the second stage of a complex AGRIS web portal upgrade (technological, functional, content and design upgrade) called Agris 5.0. The Agris 5.0 version is recently being tested and will be launched in January 2012 on http://www.agris.cz. Agris 5.0 is built and runs on Microsoft technologies (MS Windows Server 2008, MS IIS 7 web server, MS SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, SP2) using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) SW architectural pattern version 3, .NET framework 4, programming language C#, Razor template system, XML and XHTML 1.1 markup languages, CSS 2.1 styles and JavaScript encoding with the jQuery framework. From the user point of view, the Agris portal usability and availability meeting international standards were the utmost priority of the present upgrade.Agris, portal, MVC, digital divide, agrarian sector, rural areas, information resource., Agribusiness, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, GA, IN,

Design of teacher assistance tools in an exploratory learning environment for algebraic generalisation

The MiGen project is designing and developing an intelligent exploratory environment to support 11-14 year-old students in their learning of algebraic generalisation. Deployed within the classroom, the system also provides tools to assist teachers in monitoring students' activities and progress. This paper describes the architectural design of these Teacher Assistance tools and gives a detailed description of one such tool, focussing in particular on the research challenges faced, and the technologies and approaches chosen to implement the necessary functionalities given the context of the project

Changes in the French Defence Innovation System: New roles and capabilities for the Government Agency for Defence.

Defence innovation systems are structured around two main groups of players that interact in the development of complex programmes: the state (the client and the government agency) and the systems integrators. Technological and institutional changes since the 1990s have affected the division of labour and knowledge in the industry. In this paper, we show the origins of these changes based on information derived from 45 qualitative interviews conducted between 2000 and 2008, which demonstrate the new capabilities that have been created within the national innovation system (NIS). We explain how the role and the capabilities of the French Government Agency for Defence (Direction Générale de l'Armement—DGA) have developed from “project architect” to “project manager”. These new capabilities create new interactions in the French defence innovation system and new roles for the DGA.Defence; Institutional change; National innovation system; co-evolution; Government agency; Knowledge; Capabilities; Technological systems;

ArCo: the Italian Cultural Heritage Knowledge Graph

ArCo is the Italian Cultural Heritage knowledge graph, consisting of a network of seven vocabularies and 169 million triples about 820 thousand cultural entities. It is distributed jointly with a SPARQL endpoint, a software for converting catalogue records to RDF, and a rich suite of documentation material (testing, evaluation, how-to, examples, etc.). ArCo is based on the official General Catalogue of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MiBAC) - and its associated encoding regulations - which collects and validates the catalogue records of (ideally) all Italian Cultural Heritage properties (excluding libraries and archives), contributed by CH administrators from all over Italy. We present its structure, design methods and tools, its growing community, and delineate its importance, quality, and impact

Active Model Patterns with Interactive Model Transformation

With the proliferation of domain-specific languages, the generalization of OO patterns is a natural demand. Concepts and tools supporting pattern specification and execution for arbitrary domain-specific languages facilitate to meet these requirements. Our previous work introduced the Active Model Pattern Infrastructure and possible realizations for its static aspect. In this paper, we contribute a realization for the operational aspect of the framework. We propose graph rewriting-based interactive model transformation to describe and automate often recurring operational patterns in domain-specific modeling. We have extended a general transformation system with localized application of the rules and facilitate run-time customization possibilities for the domain engineer to influence the execution of the operations. We can specialize this approach to provide an implementation of the static aspect as well. We have realized our solution in the Visual Modeling and Transformation System

Changes in the French defence innovation system: New roles and capabilities for the Government Agency for Defence

Defence innovation systems are structured around two main groups of players that interact in the development of complex programmes: the state (the client and the government agency) and the systems integrators. Technological and institutional changes since the 1990s have affected the division of labour and knowledge in the industry. In this paper we show the origins of these changes based on information derived from 45 qualitative interviews conducted between 2000 and 2008, which demonstrate the new capabilities that have been created within the national innovation system (NIS). We explain how the role and the capabilities of the French Government Agency for Defence (Direction Générale de l'Armement - DGA) have developed from " project architect " to " project manager ". These new capabilities create new interactions in the French Defence innovation system and new roles for the DGA.Technological systems, Capabilities, Knowledge, Government agency, Co-evolution, National Innovation System, Defence, Institutional Change.

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

FILLING THE GAPS

Urban fragmentation caused by The Interstate Highway System’s top-down integration into Atlanta’s urban fabric can be redeveloped into a hub of pedestrian use and connectivity. This project seeks to address urban fragmentation by reprogramming existing architectural infrastructure into a symbiotic system of adaptive reuse and new development capable of growing between selected nodes to reclaim the many void spaces left in the wake of The Interstate’s planning and construction. To avoid past failures, we must ask, How can Atlanta’s existing architectural, infrastructural, and cultural capital be redeveloped to convert the divisive urban condition of our city’s roadways into a connective tissue into a new urban promise capable of facilitating meaningful pedestrian interactions? Atlanta’s fragmented pedestrian condition results directly from The Interstate Highway System’s top-down integration through the city’s urban context. Roadways meant to increase mobility & facilitate economic expansion now serve as a means of division & congestion. Discussions around resolving connectivity issues resulting from the interstate’s institutional implementation have been ongoing for decades, with little to no tangible action resulting. The most recent bout of discourse has resulted in procuring a 1.16-million-dollar design budget. While allocating this money is an essential step towards solving the issue of urban segmentation, many of the officials and designers tasked with tackling this issue continue to trek the same tired trails of thought that have led to year after year of inaction. Plan after plan suggests that another mega-urban project is the final solution to Atlanta’s roadway issue. Like introducing one invasive species to limit the population of another, these mega projects seek to undo the top-down errors of the past century with new “well-intentioned” top-down developments. The leading proposal is an urban stitch project centered around capping the interstate with public green space and redeveloping adjacent properties into private urban developments. This thesis seeks to argue that challenges endemic to infrastructural fragmentation can be reconstituted to meet the needs of today’s public. Through parameter-based reprogramming, existing architectural infrastructure can be synthesized into a symbiotic system of adaptive reuse & new development capable of growing between selected nodes to reclaim void spaces created by the interstate rather than simply covering up past mistakes with more of the same top-down policies. The parameters guiding this “multifunctional” system will focus on maximizing the ecological, cultural, and aesthetic benefits of its formal, spatial, and programmatic outputs. James Corner’s infrastructural adaptive reuse projects go beyond aesthetics to craft landscapes with ecological, social, and economic benefits, as is seen in the flagship NYC project Highline. Building on this framework, the result of this thesis will be a design system distilled from existing structures in proximity to the interstate. These existing structures will serve as physical and theoretical anchor points for in filling the void left by the roadway with new inhabitable construction. To test my hypothesis, I selected the stretch of Atlanta’s downtown connector, where Peachtree Street crosses the interstate. Once a crucial transitional zone between Atlanta’s midtown & downtown, this urban condition now serves as a hard-edge segregating two of the city’s most vibrant programmatic sectors. In step with the methodology of this thesis, three pertinent structures have been selected to serve as anchor points for redevelopment. The chosen structures are the Atlanta Medical Arts Building, Civic Center MARTA Station, & Peachtree on Pine Homeless Shelter

Schema Languages & Internationalization Issues: A survey

Many XML-related activities (e.g. the creation of a new schema) already address issues with different languages, scripts, and cultures. Nevertheless, a need exists for additional mechanisms and guidelines for more effective internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) in XML-related contents and processes. The W3C Internationalization Tag Set Working Group (W3C ITS WG) addresses this need and works on data categories, representation mechanisms and guidelines related to i18n and l10n support in the XML realm. This paper describes initial findings from the (W3C ITS WG). Furthermore, the paper discusses how these findings relate to specific schema languages, and complementary technologies like namespace sectioning, schema annotation and the description of processing chains. The paper exemplifies why certain requirements only can be met by a combination of technologies, and discusses these technologies