The Coastal Barrier Island Network (CBIN): Future management strategies for barrier islands

Barrier islands are ecosystems that border coastal shorelines and form a protective barrier between continental shorelines and the wave action originating offshore. In addition to forming and maintaining an array of coastal and estuarine habitats of ecological and economic importance, barrier island coastlines also include some of the greatest concentrations of human populations and accompanying anthropogenic development in the world. These islands have an extremely dynamic nature whereby major changes in geomorphology and hydrology can occur over short time periods (i.e. days, hours) in response to extreme episodic storm events such as hurricanes and northeasters. The native vegetation and geological stability of these ecosystems are tightly coupled with one another and are vulnerable to storm-related erosion events, particularly when also disturbed by anthropogenic development. (PDF contains 4 pages

Global factors which influence the directions of social development

This study identifies global factors conditioning the global problematics of the direction of social development. Global threats were evaluated and defined as dangerous processes, phenomena, and situations that cause harm to health, safety, well-being, and the lives of all humanity, and require removal. The essence of global risks was defined. These risks were defined as events or conditions that may cause a significant negative effect for several countries or spheres within a strategic period if they occur. Global problems were conceptualized. These problems were defined as phenomena, matters, and situations that are not completely understandable, interesting, actual, require solving and regulation, and in addition do not have unified solutions. Current global challenges were analyzed, defined as strategic guidelines that cause transformational changes and are receiving attention from humanity. Global trends were defined as courses of social development. The composition and role of global actors were described, and defined as international organizations, leading states, regional organizations, powerful corporations, institutional investors, large cities, and well-known personalities. The directions of positive courses of social development were developed by means of using the authors’ mechanism of solving the global problematics

Developing the vision: preparing teachers to deliver a digital world-class education system

In 2008 Australians were promised a \u27Digital Education Revolution\u27 by the government to dramatically change classroom education and build a \u27world-class education system\u27. Eight billion dollars have been spent providing computer equipment for upper secondary classrooms, yet there is little evidence that a revolution has occurred in Australian schools. Transformation of an education system takes more than a simplistic hardware solution. Revolutions need leaders and leaders need vision. In this paper, I argue that we must first develop educational leaders by inspiring future teachers with a vision and by designing our teacher-education courses as technology-rich learning-spaces. A multi-layered scenario is developed as the inspiration for a vision of a future-orientated teacher-education system that prepares teachers to deliver a \u27worldclass digital education\u27 for every Australian child. Although written for the Australian context this paper has broad relevance internationally for teacher education

Management and Service-aware Networking Architectures (MANA) for Future Internet Position Paper: System Functions, Capabilities and Requirements

Future Internet (FI) research and development threads have recently been gaining momentum all over the world and as such the international race to create a new generation Internet is in full swing: GENI, Asia Future Internet, Future Internet Forum Korea, European Union Future Internet Assembly (FIA). This is a position paper identifying the research orientation with a time horizon of 10 years, together with the key challenges for the capabilities in the Management and Service-aware Networking Architectures (MANA) part of the Future Internet (FI) allowing for parallel and federated Internet(s)

Responsible Data Governance of Neuroscience Big Data

Open access article.Current discussions of the ethical aspects of big data are shaped by concerns regarding the social consequences of both the widespread adoption of machine learning and the ways in which biases in data can be replicated and perpetuated. We instead focus here on the ethical issues arising from the use of big data in international neuroscience collaborations. Neuroscience innovation relies upon neuroinformatics, large-scale data collection and analysis enabled by novel and emergent technologies. Each step of this work involves aspects of ethics, ranging from concerns for adherence to informed consent or animal protection principles and issues of data re-use at the stage of data collection, to data protection and privacy during data processing and analysis, and issues of attribution and intellectual property at the data-sharing and publication stages. Significant dilemmas and challenges with far-reaching implications are also inherent, including reconciling the ethical imperative for openness and validation with data protection compliance and considering future innovation trajectories or the potential for misuse of research results. Furthermore, these issues are subject to local interpretations within different ethical cultures applying diverse legal systems emphasising different aspects. Neuroscience big data require a concerted approach to research across boundaries, wherein ethical aspects are integrated within a transparent, dialogical data governance process. We address this by developing the concept of “responsible data governance,” applying the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) to the challenges presented by the governance of neuroscience big data in the Human Brain Project (HBP)

Insights from the Field: Forests for Water

This issue brief describes analyses by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in support of emerging payments for watershed services (PWS) programs in two major watersheds in Maine and North Carolina and insights gleaned from work in progress. The three pilot initiatives discussed represent different approaches to establishing PWS programs that protect forests and other green infrastructure elements. In the Neuse River Basin in North Carolina, WRI is working with partners to identify beneficiaries and their water-related dependencies. We learned that clear documentation of the risks that beneficiaries face from water pollution, drought, and watershed degradation will help jump-start their participation in emerging PWS programs. In the Sebago Lake Watershed in Maine, WRI is finalizing a methodology for "green-gray" analysis that will provide beneficiaries a way to identify cost-effective green infrastructure solutions to water infrastructure demands of the 21 st century. Green infrastructure comprises all natural, seminatural and artificial networks of multifunctional ecological systems within, around, and between urban areas at all spatial scales. We learned that, to convince public investment managers to invest in green rather than gray, it is important to make the financial and business case using the same basic methodologies that are used for calculating the costs and benefits of conventional gray approaches. WRI is also working to develop PWS programs that help the city of Raleigh meet streetscape, conservation development, tree conservation, storm water management, and water quality goals contained in its Unified Development Ordinance in a least cost manner. We learned that market-based solutions like PWS can play a large role in land-use planning processes and that these processes may represent a large untapped demand driver for PWS programs throughout the Sout

Online grocery retailing in Jordan: Future perspectives

Electronic commerce (e-Commerce) has been considered as the way of conducting business transactions online. The use of e-commerce technologies is widely accepted around the world since it offers organizations many opportunities to improve their performance. However, it is still skeptical that using this technology will come up with positive expectations. This study aimed at identifying the possible benefits and barriers that may affect the Jordanian grocery retailers’ decision to adopt this kind of technologies

Trade development strategy, regional economic development and cooperation: The case of the Murmansk region, Russia

The purpose of the article is to explore the concept of a trade development strategy and to identify its impact on cross-border trade and cooperation. The case focuses on the Murmansk region and cross-border trade with Finland. This study is designed as a qualitative, single-case, embedded study. Primary data collection was executed by means of a survey and semi-structured interviews. The acquired data were analyzed by developing a case description. In this study trade development strategy is understood from the practice theory perspective and is defined as a set of strategic activities initiated by formal and informal institutions. The concept of a trade development strategy includes activities related to (1) intelligent growth, (2) trade promotion, (3) infrastructure development, and (4) support for market access and international trade cooperation. This study reveals that the absence of a thoroughly devised international trade´development strategy in the Murmansk region does not allow for the streamlining of strategizing activities related to trade development; therefore the activities tend to be uncoordinated and unbalanced

Data integration through service-based mediation for web-enabled information systems

The Web and its underlying platform technologies have often been used to integrate existing software and information systems. Traditional techniques for data representation and transformations between documents are not sufficient to support a flexible and maintainable data integration solution that meets the requirements of modern complex Web-enabled software and information systems. The difficulty arises from the high degree of complexity of data structures, for example in business and technology applications, and from the constant change of data and its representation. In the Web context, where the Web platform is used to integrate different organisations or software systems, additionally the problem of heterogeneity arises. We introduce a specific data integration solution for Web applications such as Web-enabled information systems. Our contribution is an integration technology framework for Web-enabled information systems comprising, firstly, a data integration technique based on the declarative specification of transformation rules and the construction of connectors that handle the integration and, secondly, a mediator architecture based on information services and the constructed connectors to handle the integration process