A grid-based infrastructure for distributed retrieval

In large-scale distributed retrieval, challenges of latency, heterogeneity, and dynamicity emphasise the importance of infrastructural support in reducing the development costs of state-of-the-art solutions. We present a service-based infrastructure for distributed retrieval which blends middleware facilities and a design framework to ‘lift’ the resource sharing approach and the computational services of a European Grid platform into the domain of e-Science applications. In this paper, we give an overview of the DILIGENT Search Framework and illustrate its exploitation in the field of Earth Science

Toward a Strategic Human Resource Management Model of High Reliability Organization Performance

In this article, we extend strategic human resource management (SHRM) thinking to theory and research on high reliability organizations (HROs) using a behavioral approach. After considering the viability of reliability as an organizational performance indicator, we identify a set of eight reliability-oriented employee behaviors (ROEBs) likely to foster organizational reliability and suggest that they are especially valuable to reliability seeking organizations that operate under “trying conditions”. We then develop a reliability-enhancing human resource strategy (REHRS) likely to facilitate the manifestation of these ROEBs. We conclude that the behavioral approach offers SHRM scholars an opportunity to explain how people contribute to specific organizational goals in specific contexts and, in turn, to identify human resource strategies that extend the general high performance human resource strategy (HPHRS) in new and important ways

Digital or Diligent? Web 2.0's challenge to formal schooling

This paper explores the tensions that arise for young people as both 'digital kids' and 'diligent students'. It does so by drawing on a study conducted in an elite private school, where the tensions between 'going digital' and 'being diligent' are exacerbated by the high value the school places on academic achievement, and on learning through digital innovation. At the school under study, high levels of intellectual and technological resourcing bring with them an equally high level of expectation to excel in traditional academic tasks and high-stakes assessment. The students, under constant pressure to perform well in standardised tests, need to make decisions about the extent to which they take up school-sanctioned digitally enhanced learning opportunities that do not explicitly address academic performance. The paper examines this conundrum by investigating student preparedness to engage with a new learning innovation – a student-led media centre – in the context of the traditional pedagogical culture that is relatively untouched by such digital innovation. The paper presents an analysis of findings from a survey of 481 students in the school. The survey results were subjected to quantitative regression tree modelling to flesh out how different student learning dispositions, social and technological factors influence the extent to which students engage with a specific digital learning opportunity in the form of the Web 2.0 Student Media Centre (SMC) designed to engage the senior school community in flexible digital-networked learning. What emerges from the study is that peer support, perceived ease of use and usefulness, learning goals and cognitive playfulness are significant predictors of the choices that students make to negotiate the fundamental tensions of being digital and/or diligent. In scrutinising the tensions around a digital or a diligent student identity in this way, the paper contributes new empirical evidence to understanding the problematic relationship between student-led learning using new digital media tools and formal schooling

Theoretical and methodological knowledge of the information economy under the prism of innovation and digitization

This electronic document is a “live” template and already defines the components Features of theoretical and methodological knowledge of the informational economy are researched and generalized in the article. The content of the dialectical system “information-knowledge” is revealed. It is established that the effectiveness of “information-knowledge” system depends on the joint activity of the individual and social environment. It is argued that the cloud business transformation through innovation on the basis of Microsoft Azure can be presented qualitatively: adaptive logistics, strategy for developing cloud solutions, smart cities and buildings, artificial intelligence and machine learning, industry 4.0, smart office, smart parking, implementation of solutions for business process automation and data management, rapid migration from outdated systems on modern information technologies, automation of testing processes, etc. The content of the nucleus of VI and VII technological processes through the prism of innovation and digitalization is revealed. It is concluded that information infrastructure services and digitalization security should be carried out in the following areas: personal data management; backup/restore data; configuration management; cyber security services; monitoring. Therefore, for a successful business, information and digital transformation is a vital necessity. And to do it, you need the right IT tools, verified by time and great data, with excellent user feedback and a diligent professional support service

Functional adaptivity for digital library services in e-infrastructures: the gCube approach

We consider the problem of e-Infrastructures that wish to reconcile the generality of their services with the bespoke requirements of diverse user communities. We motivate the requirement of functional adaptivity in the context of gCube, a service-based system that integrates Grid and Digital Library technologies to deploy, operate, and monitor Virtual Research Environments defined over infrastructural resources. We argue that adaptivity requires mapping service interfaces onto multiple implementations, truly alternative interpretations of the same functionality. We then analyse two design solutions in which the alternative implementations are, respectively, full-fledged services and local components of a single service. We associate the latter with lower development costs and increased binding flexibility, and outline a strategy to deploy them dynamically as the payload of service plugins. The result is an infrastructure in which services exhibit multiple behaviours, know how to select the most appropriate behaviour, and can seamlessly learn new behaviours

Jatropha Assessment. Agronomy, socio-economic issues, and ecology. Facts from literature.

Jatropha (Jatropha curcas L.) has been promoted as a potential renewable energy source for many of its advantageous properties in comparison to other biomass feedstock. This report summarises the agronomy, socio-economic issues, and ecology facts from literature on Jatropha. Such an overview is essential to formulate recommendations and policy guidelines to stimulate best project practices and also help to avoid the promotion of unviable or unsustainable practices

The Energy Sector and Groundwater

No abstract available

Talent in the Professional Practice - The Hungarian higher education with a practice based approach, the example of the University of Pecs

The study presents a research carried out among the students of Hungary’s one of the most successful university faculties, at the University of Pécs Faculty of Business and Economics (PTE KTK). The aim of the study is to highlight the expectations of employers and students regarding professional practice. Our results show that the employers do not focus on creativity. By employing a new staff member fast integration, adaptation, diligent and precise work becomes important. Primarily employers want to hire such appropriate person who fits into their own corporate culture. The PTE KTK students have developed emotional intelligence, which allows for better integration.After presenting the results of empirical research we give a brief overview of the Hungarian and Romanian situation of higher education on the basis of criteria for the European Higher Education Area and the Bologna process. Subsequently, we formulate our recommendations, which are primarily based on the experience of professional practice. The system of professional practice serves as a highly effective feedback, and this shows the removal of the conventional belief. Secondly, there is a demand for bipolar system of knowledge and skill-application (that manifested in competence-principle).professional practice; talent management; career management; labor market; requirements; skills of students.