Digital, memory and mixed-signal test engineering education: five centres of competence in Europe

The launching of the EuNICE-Test project was announced two years ago at the first DELTA Conference. This project is now completed and the present paper describes the project actions and outcomes. The original idea was to build a long-lasting European Network for test engineering education using both test resource mutualisation and remote experiments. This objective is fully fulfilled and we have now, in Europe, five centres of competence able to deliver high-level and high-specialized training courses in the field of test engineering using a high-performing industrial ATE. All the centres propose training courses on digital testing, three of them propose mixed-signal trainings and three of them propose memory trainings. Taking into account the demand in test engineering, the network is planned to continue in a stand alone mode after project end. Nevertheless a new European proposal with several new partners and new test lessons is under construction

Keeping Research Data Safe 2: Final Report

The first Keeping Research Data Safe study funded by JISC made a major contribution to understanding of long-term preservation costs for research data by developing a cost model and indentifying cost variables for preserving research data in UK universities (Beagrie et al, 2008). However it was completed over a very constrained timescale of four months with little opportunity to follow up other major issues or sources of preservation cost information it identified. It noted that digital preservation costs are notoriously difficult to address in part because of the absence of good case studies and longitudinal information for digital preservation costs or cost variables. In January 2009 JISC issued an ITT for a study on the identification of long-lived digital datasets for the purposes of cost analysis. The aim of this work was to provide a larger body of material and evidence against which existing and future data preservation cost modelling exercises could be tested and validated. The proposal for the KRDS2 study was submitted in response by a consortium consisting of 4 partners involved in the original Keeping Research Data Safe study (Universities of Cambridge and Southampton, Charles Beagrie Ltd, and OCLC Research) and 4 new partners with significant data collections and interests in preservation costs (Archaeology Data Service, University of London Computer Centre, University of Oxford, and the UK Data Archive). A range of supplementary materials in support of this main report have been made available on the KRDS2 project website at http://www.beagrie.com/jisc.php. That website will be maintained and continuously updated with future work as a resource for KRDS users

EMBRACE (EMbedding Repositories And Consortial Enhancement) project: final report

EMBRACE (EMBedding Repositories And Consortial Enhancement) was an 18-month project led by UCL on behalf of the SHERPA-LEAP (London Eprints Access Project) Consortium, a group of 13 University of London institutions with institutional repositories. The project had two strands, technical and strategic. In its technical strand, EMBRACE aimed to implement a number of technical improvements to enhance the functionality of the SHERPA-LEAP repositories. In a concurrent strategic strand, EMBRACE set out to investigate the challenges of embedding repositories of digital assets in institutional strategy to ensure repository sustainability. The technical work of the project resulted in the successful enhancement of the partner repositories, and a cover page generating tool has been released on an open source basis. The strategic work delivered two main outputs: a full report on the work of RAND in drawing on stakeholder interviews which identifies drivers for, and barriers to, repository sustainability; and a supplementary, "briefing paper" digest of the main report, concentrating on the interventions which can be taken by repository managers and champions to address the challenges of embedding repositories. Both documents are in the public domain. The Briefing Paper is explicitly designed for adaptation and local customisation by HEIs. The RAND report emphasises the importance of establishing a clear vision for the repository, and of close communication with stakeholders, if a repository is to succeed

Dwarna : a blockchain solution for dynamic consent in biobanking

Dynamic consent aims to empower research partners and facilitate active participation in the research process. Used within the context of biobanking, it gives individuals access to information and control to determine how and where their biospecimens and data should be used. We present Dwarna—a web portal for ‘dynamic consent’ that acts as a hub connecting the different stakeholders of the Malta Biobank: biobank managers, researchers, research partners, and the general public. The portal stores research partners’ consent in a blockchain to create an immutable audit trail of research partners’ consent changes. Dwarna’s structure also presents a solution to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation’s right to erasure—a right that is seemingly incompatible with the blockchain model. Dwarna’s transparent structure increases trustworthiness in the biobanking process by giving research partners more control over which research studies they participate in, by facilitating the withdrawal of consent and by making it possible to request that the biospecimen and associated data are destroyed.peer-reviewe

The EU-funded EuropeanaTravel project

EuropeanaTravel is a targeted project for cultural content in the target area digital libraries of the eContentplus 2008 Work Programme funded by the European Commission.1 Its overall objective is to digitise content on the theme of travel and tourism for use in Europeana2 as requested by the EDL Foundation.3 The themed content will come from the wonderful collections of major university libraries and national libraries. The project is supported by CENL4 and LIBER,5 two founder members of the EDL Foundation, and by the Foundation itself. A secondary objective of the project is further to strengthen collaboration between CENL and LIBER by extending their experience of joint working, thus increasing human interoperability in support of Europeana. Other objectives include creating a LIBER closed access aggregation service to aggregate material from LIBER members for Europeana, continuing to mobilise support for Europeana amongst university libraries in a systematic way, and supporting the spread of best practice in digitisation by libraries. The consortium’s 19 members include 17 library members providing content from 16 countries drawn roughly equally from the membership of CENL and LIBER and from all European regions. The project will run for two years and work closely and flexibly with the Europeana team. The EuropeanaTravel project was launched in Tallinn on 11 May 2009 and this article has been compiled to celebrate that event

MoPark Initiative, Metadata Options Appraisal (Phase I)

Examines – and makes recommendations on - the needs of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park as regards the metadata, metadata standards, and metadata management required for the competent handling of digital materials both now and in the future. Proposes an iterative approach to determining metadata requirements, working within a METS-based framework

VCU Media Lab

We propose the establishment of a VCU Media Lab – a professional creative media technology unit whose mission is to support the development, design, production and delivery of innovative media, multimedia, computer-based instruction, publications and tools in support of VCU education, research and marketing initiatives. This centrally administered, budgeted and resourced facility will acknowledge, refine, focus and expand media services that are currently being provided at VCU in a decentralized manner

Workshop for annual review of Building Resilient Agro-sylvopastoral Systems in West Africa through Participatory Action Research (BRAS-PAR) Project and planning “Partnerships for Scaling Climate-Smart Agriculture (P4S) Phase II

Building Resilient Agro-sylvo-pastoral Systems in West Africa through Participatory Action Research (BRAS-PAR) is a CCAFS Flagship 2 funded four year (2015-2018) project coordinated by the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and implemented in collaboration with partners namely national agricultural research institutions (INERA in Burkina Faso, SARI in Ghana, INRAN in Niger and ISRA in Senegal) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN in Burkina Faso). BRAS-PAR sought to develop up-scalable technological and social innovations of climatesmart agriculture integrating tree-crop-livestock systems through improved understanding of farmer's perceptions and demands, by addressing barriers to adoption taking into consideration gender and social differentiation. The specific objectives include 1) testing, evaluating and validating with rural communities and other stakeholders, scalable climate-smart models of integrated tree-crop-livestock systems, the dominant farming systems in the region, that include climate-risk management strategies; 2) simulating options for improving water and tree-crop-livestock systems under different climate and socio-economic scenarios using models (WaNuLCAS, SWAT, etc.) for informed decision making; 3) assessing the conditions of success and failure of technological interventions on adaptation to climate change. The work here focus on research that evaluates climate-smart practices and technologies that are defined through participatory identification by multistakeholders in each site. Beyond these sites, the approach capitalizes lessons learnt from on-going climate resilient projects to encourage partners to add missing components to the climate-smart village model or initiate new activities when deemed appropriate. Started in 2015, BRAS-PAR targeted three main outcomes: (i) National agricultural research institutions institutionalize the principles of PAR through integration of non-traditional partners in technologies development to generate wider context specific information to be fed into programs and policies to create the enabling environment for the scaling of CSA technologies; (ii) National extension services, development projects and farmer’s organizations widely disseminate and ensure better access to information on best fit CSA portfolios to cope with climate change; and (iii) The private sector including NGOs (FNGN, Larwaal, ARCAD, Care international), microcredit institutions, agro-dealers, rural radios are scaling up/out relevant CSA portfolios through new incentive programs. This project has ended in December 2018 and the meeting review edthe main achievements. During the same first phase of CCAFS , the project “Partnerships for Scaling (P4S) Climate-Smart Agriculture (P56)” was implemented mainly in East Africa with a focus on supporting countries and partners to plan and program CSA actions. It developed new innovations (e.g., The Compendium and Climate Risk Profiles), refreshed and adapted others (e.g., Climate Wizard, mobile-based monitoring) and collaborated on tools (e.g., Rural Household Multi-Indicator Survey, CSA MRV Profile) to develop a comprehensive set of evidence and information to serve diverse stakeholder needs for situation analysis, targeting and prioritizing, program support and monitoring and evaluation (aka ‘CSA-Plan’, Girvetz et al. 2018). Merging the actions of BRAS-PAR and P4S I to become P4S II was done with the intention to use tools and evidence/lessons learned from the Climate-Smart Villages and other development activities, with existing and new partners through direct scientific support to decision makers (e.g., governments, civil society, and researchers) and capacity building to help bring CSA to scale. The scientific activities will be combined with dedicated communication activities such as photo essays, tweets, blog posts, etc. from field staff and partners to raise the visibility of the project and help show case of its successes in supporting countries and position of ICRAF, CIAT, and CCAFS as the go to research organization for the science of scaling up CSA. The key activity areas of P4S II will be around: supporting CSA investment and programming, de-risking agriculture, digital delivery and monitoring and, communauty based scaling of CSA. The present meeting was thought to plan the new activities around these areas for 2019 and beyond

A Proposal for Supply Chain Management Research That Matters: Sixteen High Priority Research Projects for the Future

On May 4th, 2016 in Milton, Ontario, the World Class Supply Chain 2016 Summit was held in partnership between CN Rail and Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business & Economics to realize an ambitious goal: raise knowledge of contemporary supply chain management (SCM) issues through genuine peer-­‐to-­‐peer dialogue among practitioners and scholars. A principal element of that knowledge is an answer to the question: to gain valid and reliable insights for attaining SCM excellence, what issues must be researched further? This White Paper—which is the second of the summit’s two White Papers—addresses the question by proposing a research agenda comprising 16 research projects. This research agenda covers the following: The current state of research knowledge on issues that are of the highest priority to today’s SCM professionals Important gaps in current research knowledge and, consequently, the major questions that should be answered in sixteen future research projects aimed at addressing those gaps Ways in which the research projects can be incorporated into student training and be supported by Canada’s major research funding agencies That content comes from using the summit’s deliberations to guide systematic reviews of both the SCM research literature and Canadian institutional mechanisms that are geared towards building knowledge through research. The major conclusions from those reviews can be summarized as follows: While the research literature to date has yielded useful insights to inform the pursuit of SCM excellence, several research questions of immense practical importance remain unanswered or, at best, inadequately answered The body of research required to answer those questions will have to focus on what the summit’s first White Paper presented as four highly impactful levers that SCM executives must expertly handle to attain excellence: collaboration; information; technology; and talent The proposed research agenda can be pursued in ways that achieve the two inter-­‐related goals of creating new actionable knowledge and building the capacity of today’s students to become tomorrow’s practitioners and contributors to ongoing knowledge growth in the SCM field This White Paper’s details underlying these conclusions build on the information presented in the summit’s first White Paper. That is, while the first White Paper (White Paper 1) identified general SCM themes for which the research needs are most urgent, this White Paper goes further along the path of industry-academia knowledge co-creation. It does so by examining and articulating those needs against the backdrop of available research findings, translating the needs into specific research projects that should be pursued, and providing guidelines for how those projects can be carried out