Bioinformatics and the politics of innovation in the life sciences: Science and the state in the United Kingdom, China, and India

The governments of China, India, and the United Kingdom are unanimous in their belief that bioinformatics should supply the link between basic life sciences research and its translation into health benefits for the population and the economy. Yet at the same time, as ambitious states vying for position in the future global bioeconomy they differ considerably in the strategies adopted in pursuit of this goal. At the heart of these differences lies the interaction between epistemic change within the scientific community itself and the apparatus of the state. Drawing on desk-based research and thirty-two interviews with scientists and policy makers in the three countries, this article analyzes the politics that shape this interaction. From this analysis emerges an understanding of the variable capacities of different kinds of states and political systems to work with science in harnessing the potential of new epistemic territories in global life sciences innovation

Scalable Peer-to-Peer Streaming for Live Entertainment Content

We present a system for streaming live entertainment content over the Internet originating from a single source to a scalable number of consumers without resorting to centralized or provider-provisioned resources. The system creates a peer-to-peer overlay network, which attempts to optimize use of existing capacity to ensure quality of service, delivering low startup delay and lag in playout of the live content. There are three main aspects of our solution: first, a swarming mechanism that constructs an overlay topology for minimizing propagation delays from the source to end consumers; second, a distributed overlay anycast system that uses a location-based search algorithm for peers to quickly find the closest peers in a given stream; and finally, a novel incentive mechanism that encourages peers to donate capacity even when the user is not actively consuming content

A systematic review of protocol studies on conceptual design cognition: design as search and exploration

This paper reports findings from the first systematic review of protocol studies focusing specifically on conceptual design cognition, aiming to answer the following research question: What is our current understanding of the cognitive processes involved in conceptual design tasks carried out by individual designers? We reviewed 47 studies on architectural design, engineering design and product design engineering. This paper reports 24 cognitive processes investigated in a subset of 33 studies aligning with two viewpoints on the nature of designing: (V1) design as search (10 processes, 41.7%); and (V2) design as exploration (14 processes, 58.3%). Studies on search focused on solution search and problem structuring, involving: long-term memory retrieval; working memory; operators and reasoning processes. Studies on exploration investigated: co-evolutionary design; visual reasoning; cognitive actions; and unexpected discovery and situated requirements invention. Overall, considerable conceptual and terminological differences were observed among the studies. Nonetheless, a common focus on memory, semantic, associative, visual perceptual and mental imagery processes was observed to an extent. We suggest three challenges for future research to advance the field: (i) developing general models/theories; (ii) testing protocol study findings using objective methods conducive to larger samples and (iii) developing a shared ontology of cognitive processes in design

A digital ecosystem for ICT educators, ICT industry and ICT students

Worldwide ICT education (Information Communication Technology) is facing a major challenge of declining student enrolments; battling to keep its curriculum relevant and up-to-date while trying to meet the high demand of ICT skilled workers in domain, such as resources, health, government and commerce. This paper, documenting research in progress, discusses these issues and challenges in ICT education and proposes a solution in the form of a digital ecosystem in ICT education involving three main stakeholders: academics, students and the IT industry, and how they could come together to tackle the problems faced

Exemplary Bilingual Teachers in Puerto Rico: a Multiple-Case Study

Problem. Within a context of inadequate pre-service training, insufficient administrative support, and an ambivalent social environment regarding the teaching of ESL in Puerto Rico, a number of conscientious bilingual teachers try to overcome the odds of the system and have an impact on students\u27 ability to speak English. Some even become exemplary teachers. How do they learn to meet so many expectations successfully in spite of real short comings found in their job, and how do they acquire the skills and competencies necessary to be exemplary bilingual teachers in Puerto Rico? Method. A qualitative multiple-case study design was used for this research. Two elementary and two intermediate bilingual teachers were observed and interviewed during the course of one school year. Their training, classroom practices, and life experiences are described in narrative form. Results. All four teachers were found to have exemplary practice, according to NABE (1992) and the Puerto Rican Teachers Association (1976) standards, in spite of insufficient pre-service training in their area of specialization and inadequate administrative support. Further analysis of similarities and differences in the teachers\u27 experiences led to the emergence of themes such as their moral sensibility and sense of calling to the teaching vocation that made them search for ways to make up for their limitations in terms of training and administrative support. Each of the four had substantiated learning experiences in the United States. While the local communities appeared to support bilingual education, the larger context of bilingual education in Puerto Rico is not supported by a unified national agenda. Conclusions. The teachers in this study continue their personal and professional growth because they embrace it as a personal mission and as a moral act. Their life experiences strongly influence their ability to provide exemplary education to Puerto Ricans

How to be FAIR with your data

This handbook was written and edited by a group of about 40 collaborators in a series of six book sprints that took place between 1 and 10 June 2021. It aims to support higher education institutions with the practical implementation of content relating to the FAIR principles in their curricula, while also aiding teaching by providing practical material, such as competence profiles, learning outcomes, lesson plans, and supporting information. It incorporates community feedback received during the public consultation which ran from 27 July to 12 September 2021

Collective action and information and communication technologies: The case of consensus movements

Tese de Doutoramento - Programa Doutoral em Tecnologias e Sistemas de InformaçãoAtualmente, as tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC) são utilizadas em diferentes facetas da vida humana. Para além da aplicação destas tecnologias em contextos relacionados com o trabalho, cada vez mais as TIC estão implicadas em interações sociais e em formas informais de organização. Por exemplo, uma considerável parte da socialização ocorre em contextos electrónicos e, frequentemente, pessoas com interesses comuns coordenam ações de grupo através de diferentes plataformas electrónicas, tais como sites de redes sociais, forums de discussão em grupo, e sites de comunidades virtuais. A existência de pessoas que se organizam informalmente para desenvolver interesses comuns ou para colaborar em atividades em prol de uma comunidade ou de um grupo não é uma coisa rara nem nova. Na verdade, isso é essencialmente ação coletiva – entendida como atividade intencional e coordenada de indivíduos com interesse na provisão de bens comuns, ou seja, bens que geram benefícios coletivos para uma comunidade ou um grupo independentemente das contribuições individuais dos seus membros. A ação coletiva é um fenómeno que tem sido investigado por várias áreas científicas, nomeadamente economia, sociologia, ciência política, e ciências da comunicação. Apesar de os fundamentos teóricos deste fenómeno estarem já bem estabelecidos, as implicações do actual contexto tecnológico para a organização de ação coletiva não são ainda bem conhecidas. A fim de estreitar esta lacuna de conhecimento, esta tese investiga o entrelaçamento da organização de ação coletiva com as TIC. O trabalho empírico consiste em estudos de caso de dois movimentos cívicos que organizaram ações coletivas de âmbito consensual, em Portugal e na Estónia, e explica de que forma a organização dessas ações foi facilitada ou dificultada pela utilização destas tecnologias. Os resultados desta tese desvendam sete dimensões de ação coletiva estreitamente entrelaçadas com a utilização das TIC, e desenredam o papel facilitador ou constrangedor destas tecnologias em cada uma dessas dimensões. Esta investigação também enfatiza a agência dos organizadores de ação coletiva e a utilização das TIC como amplificadores de capacidades e de intenções humanas. Estes resultados permitem compreender melhor o papel das TIC nos processos de mudança social que são organizados online e portanto contribuem para a literatura sobre sociedade de informação e consequências societais das TIC.The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) currently permeates different facets of human lives. Beyond the application of these technologies in workrelated contexts, ICTs are increasingly supporting social interactions and facilitating informal ways of organizing. For example, a significant part of sociality is nowadays enjoyed through social media, and people with common interests often assemble and coordinate group action through different ICT platforms (e.g. social networking sites, community websites). People organizing informally to further common interests or to collaborate on communal goals is not something unusual or even new. In fact, that is the essence of collective action – understood as coordinated action undertaken by individuals who have a shared interest in the provision of common goods, that is, goods that yield collective benefits to all members of a community irrespective of their individual contributions. Collective action is a phenomenon that has drawn scholarship from various scientific areas, namely economics, political science, sociology, and, more recently, communication studies. Although the theoretical underpinnings of collective action are well established, the implications of the contemporary technological mediated context for the organizing of collective action are not well understood. In order to narrow this knowledge gap, this thesis examines the entwinement of ICTs with collective action organizing. Through the study of two cases of civic movements that organized consensual collective action, this research explains how this kind of organizing is facilitated and hindered by the use of ICTs. The results of this thesis unveil seven dimensions of collective action closely entwined with the use of ICTs and extricate the constraining and facilitating role of ICTs within each of these dimensions. This research also underscores the agency of organizers of collective action and the instrumental role of ICTs, which worked as an amplifier of human forces and intents. These findings constitute an improved understanding of ICTs’ role in the process of organizing online for societal change and thus contribute to the literature about the information society and societal impacts of ICTs

Knowledge Extraction and Summarization for Textual Case-Based Reasoning: A Probabilistic Task Content Modeling Approach

Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique that has been successfully used for building knowledge systems for tasks/domains where different knowledge sources are easily available, particularly in the form of problem solving situations, known as cases. Cases generally display a clear distinction between different components of problem solving, for instance, components of the problem description and of the problem solution. Thus, an existing and explicit structure of cases is presumed. However, when problem solving experiences are stored in the form of textual narratives (in natural language), there is no explicit case structure, so that CBR cannot be applied directly. This thesis presents a novel approach for authoring cases from episodic textual narratives and organizing these cases in a case base structure that permits a better support for user goals. The approach is based on the following fundamental ideas: - CBR as a problem solving technique is goal-oriented and goals are realized by means of task strategies. - Tasks have an internal structure that can be represented in terms of participating events and event components. - Episodic textual narratives are not random containers of domain concept terms. Rather, the text can be considered as generated by the underlying task structure whose content they describe. The presented case base authoring process combines task knowledge with Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to perform the needed knowledge extraction and summarization