Data as a Service (DaaS) for sharing and processing of large data collections in the cloud

Data as a Service (DaaS) is among the latest kind of services being investigated in the Cloud computing community. The main aim of DaaS is to overcome limitations of state-of-the-art approaches in data technologies, according to which data is stored and accessed from repositories whose location is known and is relevant for sharing and processing. Besides limitations for the data sharing, current approaches also do not achieve to fully separate/decouple software services from data and thus impose limitations in inter-operability. In this paper we propose a DaaS approach for intelligent sharing and processing of large data collections with the aim of abstracting the data location (by making it relevant to the needs of sharing and accessing) and to fully decouple the data and its processing. The aim of our approach is to build a Cloud computing platform, offering DaaS to support large communities of users that need to share, access, and process the data for collectively building knowledge from data. We exemplify the approach from large data collections from health and biology domains.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Fighting Poverty, Profitably: Transforming the Economics of Payments to Build Sustainable, Inclusive Financial Systems

The Gates Foundation's Financial Services for the Poor program (FSP) believes that effective financial services are paramount in the fight against poverty. Nonetheless, today more than 2 billion people live outside the formal financial sector. Increasing their access to high quality, affordable financial services will accelerate the well-being of households, communities, and economies in the developing world. One of the most promising ways to deliver these financial services to the poor -- profitably and at scale -- is by using digital payment platforms.These are the conclusions we have reached as the result of extensive research in pursuit of one of the Foundation's primary missions: to give the world's poorest people the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty.FSP conducted this research because we believe that there is a gap in the fact base and understanding of how payment systems can extend digital services to low income consumers in developing markets. This is a complex topic, with fragmented information and a high degree of country-by-country variability. A complete view across the entire payment system has been missing, limiting how system providers, policy makers, and regulators (groups we refer to collectively as financial inclusion stakeholders) evaluate decisions and take actions. With a holistic view of the payment system, we believe that interventions can have higher impact, and stakeholders can better understand and address the ripple effects that changes to one part of the system can have. In this report, we focus on the economics of payment systems to understand how they can be transformed to serve poor people in a way that is profitable and sustainable in aggregate

Passenger Flows in Underground Railway Stations and Platforms, MTI Report 12-43

Urban rail systems are designed to carry large volumes of people into and out of major activity centers. As a result, the stations at these major activity centers are often crowded with boarding and alighting passengers, resulting in passenger inconvenience, delays, and at times danger. This study examines the planning and analysis of station passenger queuing and flows to offer rail transit station designers and transit system operators guidance on how to best accommodate and manage their rail passengers. The objectives of the study are to: 1) Understand the particular infrastructural, operational, behavioral, and spatial factors that affect and may constrain passenger queuing and flows in different types of rail transit stations; 2) Identify, compare, and evaluate practices for efficient, expedient, and safe passenger flows in different types of station environments and during typical (rush hour) and atypical (evacuations, station maintenance/ refurbishment) situations; and 3) Compile short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations for optimizing passenger flows in different station environments

Efficacy of Prucalopride in bowel cleansing before colonoscopy. Results of a pilot study

Colonoscopy is a crucial diagnostic instrument for colorectal cancer screening and an adequate bowel preparation is definitely decisive for the success of the procedure. Especially in elderly patients, bowel cleansing is considered a big issue, because it is often poorly tolerated for many reasons (like inability to swallow large volume of liquids or unlikable taste); this can cause a suboptimal preparation that may lead to miss a neoplastic lesion. There is relatively little data about how to improve preparation tolerability. The purpose of our pilot study was to analyze the effect of prucalopride (Resolor®), a highly selective serotonin 5HT4 receptor agonist used for chronic constipation for its ability to stimulate gastrointestinal peristalsis, undertaken the day before colonoscopy, followed by half volume of polyethylene glycol solution. We found that this can be a good and safe method to achieve an adequate and better-tolerated colon cleansing

Classification of data collection methods (= Deliverable 3.1 of the OrganicDataNetwork project - Report on collection methods)

In this report, a number of evaluation and quality criteria for data collection and compilation methods were defined. The results of an online survey on all existing organic market data collection methods in Europe were compiled and assessed. Subsequently the quality of existing data collection and processing approaches was evaluated using the following data quality dimensions: relevance, accuracy, comparability, coherence, accessibility and clarity, and timeliness and punctuality. The quality assessment was carried out exemplary to determine some good examples of data collection and processing. These cases were chosen because they delivered a very holistic and comprehensive presentation of their approaches regarding data collection methods, analyses, quality checks, and publication

A critical examination of the effectiveness of faculty-based student learning support

This thesis presents an investigation into the effectiveness of faculty-based student learning support and comprises three volumes. Volume 1 provides an overview of the background literature, research methodology, ethical and reliability considerations linked to two projects whose overarching theme is the support and improvement of the student experience. The overview begins with an outline of the aim of this thesis, followed by a synopsis of the literature concerning student support in higher education and the use of technology to support learners. The methodological framework is then discussed and a brief introduction to the projects is provided. The overview concludes with an exploration of the effectiveness of faculty-based student learning support and the presentation of a new blended approach to the organisation, delivery and typology of advising. This seeks to demonstrate the strength of a blended approach and thus makes a contribution to the practice, theory and method of supporting student learning. Volume 2 discusses the Advice Shop project and considers the processes, methods and ethics of this student learning support. A summary of eight interventions is presented together with details of how the project was subsequently rolled out across the University. A consideration of the organisational model and personnel involved in student advising is also offered. The volume concludes with student and staff feedback and a discussion of how the project aims have been achieved. Evidence of the research output and components of practice relating to Project 1 can be found in Volume2 Part 2. Volume 3 presents a discussion of Project 2 - the use of technology to support learners. The project presents two technology-enhanced interventions - an electronic student attendance monitoring scheme, and the development of two online learner support tools using QuestionMark Perception as the delivery software. The methods and ethical considerations used to establish and implement these interventions are present together with feedback from students and staff. The volume concludes with a discussion of how the aims of the project have been achieved. Evidence of the research output and components of practice relating to Project 2 can be found in Volume 3 Part 2

Evaluation of an Internet Document Delivery Service

An Internet-based Document Delivery Service (DDS) has been developed within the framework of the CNR ( the Italian Research National Council) Project BiblioMIME, in order to take advantage of new Internet technologies and promote cooperation among CNR and Italian university libraries. Adopting such technologies changes the traditional organisation of DDS and may drastically reduce costs and delivery times. An information system managing DDS requests and monitoring the temporal evolution of the service has been implemented, running on the local-area network of a test-site library. It aims to track number and types of documents requested and received, user distribution, delivery times and types (surface mail, fax, Internet), to automate repetitive manual procedures and to deal with the various accounting methods used by other libraries. Transmission of documents is carried out by means of an e-mail/Web gateway system supporting document exchange via Internet, which assists receiving libraries in retrieving requested documents. This paper describes the architecture and main design features of the e-mail/Web gateway server (the BiblioMime server). This approach permits librarians to continue using e-mail service to send large documents, while resolving problems that users may encounter when downloading large size files with e-mail agents. The library operator sends the document as an attachment to the destination address; on fly the e-mail server extracts and saves the attachments in a web-server disk file and substitutes them with a new message part that includes an URL pointing to the saved document. The receiver can download these large objects by means of a user-friendly browser. We further discuss the data gathered during the triennium 1998-2000; this consists of about 5,000 DDS transactions per annum with 300 other Italian scientific and bio-medical libraries and commercial document suppliers. Use of the instruments described above allowed us to evaluate the performance of service “before” and “after” the use of Internet Document Delivery and to extract some critical data regarding DDS. Those include: a) libraries with which we have greater numbers of exchanges and their turnaround times; b) extraordinary reduction in costs and delivery times; c) the most frequently requested serial titles (allowing cost-effective decisions on new subscriptions); d) impact on DDS of library participation in consortia which allow user access to greater numbers of online serials