IT Complexity Revolution: Intelligent Tools for the Globalised World Development

Globalised-civilisation interaction intensity grows exponentially, involving all dimensions and regions of planetary environment. The resulting dynamics of critically high, exploding complexity urgently needs consistent understanding and efficient management. The new, provably universal concept of unreduced dynamic complexity of real interaction processes described here provides the former and can be used as a basis for the latter, in the form of "complexity revolution" in information systems controlling such "critically globalised" civilisation dynamics. We outline the relevant dynamic complexity properties and the ensuing principles of anticipated complexity transition in information and communication systems. We then emphasize key applications of unreduced complexity concept and complexity-driven IT to various aspects of post-industrial civilisation dynamics, including intelligent communication, context-aware information and control systems, reliable genetics, integral medicine, emergent engineering, efficient risk management at the new level of socio-economic development and resulting realistic sustainability.Comment: 13 pages, 10 eqs, 18 refs; presented at the First International ICST Conference "I.T. Revolutions 2008" (17-19 December 2008, Venice, Italy), http://www.itrevolutions.org/2008

Controlling Tools in IT-Innovation Processes

Numerous studies have shown that innovation is the main driving force behind business value creation or the production of value-added. But what exactly is innovation, and why has it become so critical to business success and what connections it has to information technology? The article approaches the question by introducing the system of innovation. After appointing the place of the assessment of IT-novelties with a new conception, explores the very interesting area in the intersection of IT, innovation and controlling with the aim of giving a map in the hand of decision makers.information technology (IT), innovation, controlling, Stage-Gate process

Cross‐curricular IT tools for university students: Developing an effective model

Information technology is now recognized as a key study‐enhancement measure in higher education, and there is increasing demand for the provision of basic IT awareness and skills across the whole range of subject departments. One response to this demand is the central provision of a generic IT course or programme of courses. We draw upon the experience of such courses at the Universities of Glasgow and York to identify some of the significant dimensions in the development and operation of generic IT programmes. These include the policy context, the structure, content and educational stance of the programme, relationship of the programme to existing curricula, and the extent and nature of resourcing, assessment and certification. Operation of such courses raises important issues, such as questions of compulsory IT preparation, study skills, staff development, standardization, institutional policy and evaluation. This discussion is set within current trends in higher education

Introduction to the Research Tools Mind Map

With the increasing use of information and communications technology (ICT), researchers are able to use computer software tools to find, organise, manipulate, analyse, and share relevant information. However, there are hundreds of such tools to select from, for various research-related uses. I have collected over 700 tools that can help researchers do their work efficiently. It is assembled as an interactive Web-based mind map, titled Research Tools, which is updated periodically. Created using the MindMeister software platform, Research Tools provides a convenient interface with zoom in/out, screen drag, and other user-friendly features. Being a mind map, Research Tools consists of a hierarchical set of nodes. It has four main nodes: (1) Searching the literature, (2) Writing a paper, (3) Targeting suitable journals, and (4) Enhancing visibility and impact, and six auxiliary nodes. In the mind map, each parent node has several child nodes associated with it, which can be accessed by clicking on the plus (+) sign. Several free tools can be found in the child nodes. Some paid tools are also included. The four main nodes are described below, listing some tools as examples. In the mind map, a green tick sign indicates my preference for some tools. Users can access the tools by clicking on the arrow sign that appears next to the tool title

Pathway Tools version 23.0: Integrated Software for Pathway/Genome Informatics and Systems Biology

Pathway Tools is a bioinformatics software environment with a broad set of capabilities. The software provides genome-informatics tools such as a genome browser, sequence alignments, a genome-variant analyzer, and comparative-genomics operations. It offers metabolic-informatics tools, such as metabolic reconstruction, quantitative metabolic modeling, prediction of reaction atom mappings, and metabolic route search. Pathway Tools also provides regulatory-informatics tools, such as the ability to represent and visualize a wide range of regulatory interactions. The software creates and manages a type of organism-specific database called a Pathway/Genome Database (PGDB), which the software enables database curators to interactively edit. It supports web publishing of PGDBs and provides a large number of query, visualization, and omics-data analysis tools. Scientists around the world have created more than 9,800 PGDBs by using Pathway Tools, many of which are curated databases for important model organisms. Those PGDBs can be exchanged using a peer-to-peer database-sharing system called the PGDB Registry.Comment: Reflects Pathway Tools version 23.0 in 2019; new information since the previous version is in blue text. 111 pages, 40 figure

How Effective are Smart Contract Analysis Tools? Evaluating Smart Contract Static Analysis Tools Using Bug Injection

Security attacks targeting smart contracts have been on the rise, which have led to financial loss and erosion of trust. Therefore, it is important to enable developers to discover security vulnerabilities in smart contracts before deployment. A number of static analysis tools have been developed for finding security bugs in smart contracts. However, despite the numerous bug-finding tools, there is no systematic approach to evaluate the proposed tools and gauge their effectiveness. This paper proposes SolidiFI, an automated and systematic approach for evaluating smart contract static analysis tools. SolidiFI is based on injecting bugs (i.e., code defects) into all potential locations in a smart contract to introduce targeted security vulnerabilities. SolidiFI then checks the generated buggy contract using the static analysis tools, and identifies the bugs that the tools are unable to detect (false-negatives) along with identifying the bugs reported as false-positives. SolidiFI is used to evaluate six widely-used static analysis tools, namely, Oyente, Securify, Mythril, SmartCheck, Manticore and Slither, using a set of 50 contracts injected by 9369 distinct bugs. It finds several instances of bugs that are not detected by the evaluated tools despite their claims of being able to detect such bugs, and all the tools report many false positivesComment: ISSTA 202

Understanding Effects and Determinants of Mobile Support Tools: A Usability-Centered Field Study on IT Service Technicians

The integration of mobile workplaces is a major challenge for companies. First-wave mobile solutions mostly support existing business processes through adding value in terms of increased efficiency. Second-wave mobile solutions comprise a re-engineering of the mobile business processes, add value through increased effectiveness and may even enable new forms of mobility. In order to achieve a systematic approach to mobile integrated business processes it is important to analyze existing processes, focusing on the effects and determinants of mobile solutions that might be used to support those processes. For this purpose we examined a typical example, the field technician support process of an IT service providing company. Our research approach combines usability and process performance issues. The results show which tasks are suitable for mobile application support, which personnel is most likely to benefit from mobile technology and what improvements on business metrics such as labor time, back office capacity, and invoice cycle are to be expected.

Circular Economy Case Study: Toronto Tool Library

Founded on a disruptive vision to transform consumption in society, the Toronto Tool Library is a non-profit social enterprise that lends specialized tools to community members. The Tool Library's members borrow tools in the same way they would borrow a library book. The Tool Library has over 3,000 tools available for loan including home repair, construction and renovation, gardening and landscaping, and bicycle repair tools. The tools range from simple screw drivers and drills, to table saws, welding equipment, power generators. Four3-D printers and a laser cutter are available for use onsite. It took less than a year for the Tool Library to move from an idea to its grand opening.The library is a money- and space-saving alternative to ownership. Tool sharing reduces consumption and waste. The philosophy of the library – and what sets it apart as a social enterprise – is that it is not trying to maximize profit but trying to maximize membership and access

GPU cards as a low cost solution for efficient and fast classification of high dimensional gene expression datasets

The days when bioinformatics tools will be so reliable to become a standard aid in routine clinical diagnostics are getting very close. However, it is important to remember that the more complex and advanced bioinformatics tools become, the more performances are required by the computing platforms. Unfortunately, the cost of High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms is still prohibitive for both public and private medical practices. Therefore, to promote and facilitate the use of bioinformatics tools it is important to identify low-cost parallel computing solutions. This paper presents a successful experience in using the parallel processing capabilities of Graphical Processing Units (GPU) to speed up classification of gene expression profiles. Results show that using open source CUDA programming libraries allows to obtain a significant increase in performances and therefore to shorten the gap between advanced bioinformatics tools and real medical practic

Religious education projects with collaborative teaching and IT tools

Session 155 - Religious Libraries in DialogueTechnology is the tool that can help theological colleges in many areas such as providing education platforms, making connection with the community and reaching existing students and even potential lay people. However technology cannot replace the strength of collaboration of people and community. In this paper, two projects of HKSKH Ming Hua Theological College Lai Wong Yan Lin Library (MH Library) will be highlighted. One project provides religious courses to people around the world; the other project is for local secondary schools students using the theme of “Life Education with positive thinking” to help their personal growth and digital literacy skills. These projects show how a theological library team acts as an academic link for a theological college to spread knowledge and creates inter-religious possibilities beyond the physical limitation of the College buildings. The MH library team uses collaborative teaching (religious and Life Education courses by teachers; digital literacy skills by librarians), and develops IT tools (especially the MH Global Classroom System and online IT tools) as learning and communication platforms for teachers, students, public and outside organizations with different religious and non-religious backgrounds.published_or_final_versio