96,454 research outputs found
Young Enterprise: Evaluating the impact of the Team programme
This report sets out the findings of the evaluation of the Team programme conducted by the International Centre for Guidance Studies at the University in 2016. The project adopted a mixed methodology which focussed on the experiences of staff, students and business advisers in a sample of twenty schools selected from a possible 40 which are funded for the Team programme as part of the DfE Character programme. The research findings are encouraging and show that the Team programme has a positive impact on the development of the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by young people to make a successful transition to learning, work and the adult world.Young Enterpris
Interoperating Context Discovery Mechanisms
Context-Aware applications adapt their behaviour to the current situation of the user. This information, for instance user location and user availability, is called context information. Context is delivered by distributed context sources that need to be discovered before they can be used to retrieve context. Currently, multiple context discovery mechanisms exist, exhibiting heterogeneous capabilities (e.g. communication mechanisms, and data formats), which can be available to context-aware applications at arbitrary moments during the ap-plication’s lifespan. In this paper, we discuss a middleware mechanism that en-ables a (mobile) context-aware application to interoperate transparently with different context discovery mechanisms available at run-time. The goal of the proposed mechanism is to hide the heterogeneity and availability of context discovery mechanisms for context-aware applications, thereby facilitating their development
Human Computation and Convergence
Humans are the most effective integrators and producers of information,
directly and through the use of information-processing inventions. As these
inventions become increasingly sophisticated, the substantive role of humans in
processing information will tend toward capabilities that derive from our most
complex cognitive processes, e.g., abstraction, creativity, and applied world
knowledge. Through the advancement of human computation - methods that leverage
the respective strengths of humans and machines in distributed
information-processing systems - formerly discrete processes will combine
synergistically into increasingly integrated and complex information processing
systems. These new, collective systems will exhibit an unprecedented degree of
predictive accuracy in modeling physical and techno-social processes, and may
ultimately coalesce into a single unified predictive organism, with the
capacity to address societies most wicked problems and achieve planetary
homeostasis.Comment: Pre-publication draft of chapter. 24 pages, 3 figures; added
references to page 1 and 3, and corrected typ
EU - Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and e-learning in Education Project - Phase II
The training needs analysis was conducted beteeen February and April 2015 for the EU funded project: ICT in Education in Kosovo. The processes required to perform the traning needs analysis have been. The design of a framework of competences; The identification of target groups; The creation and implementation of an online survey to assess the competence of education sector personnel against the competences contained in the framework; The collation, preparation and analysis of the survey data; and Reporting the research findings.European Union Office in KosovoEuropeAid/133846/C/SER/X
Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study
Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software
industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more
reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated
by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving
value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research
still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the
principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper,
we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views,
approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to
microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the
transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and
technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical
activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then
shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice
granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This
study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about
microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered,
guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This
study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to
reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table
A contrasting look at self-organization in the Internet and next-generation communication networks
This article examines contrasting notions of self-organization in the Internet and next-generation communication networks, by reviewing in some detail recent evidence regarding several of the more popular attempts to explain prominent features of Internet structure and behavior as "emergent phenomena." In these examples, what might appear to the nonexpert as "emergent self-organization" in the Internet actually results from well conceived (albeit perhaps ad hoc) design, with explanations that are mathematically rigorous, in agreement with engineering reality, and fully consistent with network measurements. These examples serve as concrete starting points from which networking researchers can assess whether or not explanations involving self-organization are relevant or appropriate in the context of next-generation communication networks, while also highlighting the main differences between approaches to self-organization that are rooted in engineering design vs. those inspired by statistical physics
Integrating big data into a sustainable mobility policy 2.0 planning support system
It is estimated that each of us, on a daily basis, produces a bit more than 1 GB of digital content through our mobile phone and social networks activities, bank card payments, location-based positioning information, online activities, etc. However, the implementation of these large data amounts in city assets planning systems still remains a rather abstract idea for several reasons, including the fact that practical examples are still very strongly services-oriented, and are a largely unexplored and interdisciplinary field; hence, missing the cross-cutting dimension. In this paper, we describe the Policy 2.0 concept and integrate user generated content into Policy 2.0 platform for sustainable mobility planning. By means of a real-life example, we demonstrate the applicability of such a big data integration approach to smart cities planning process. Observed benefits range from improved timeliness of the data and reduced duration of the planning cycle to more informed and agile decision making, on both the citizens and the city planners end. The integration of big data into the planning process, at this stage, does not have uniform impact across all levels of decision making and planning process, therefore it should be performed gradually and with full awareness of existing limitations
IMPORTANCE OF VARIOUS ROLES AND EVALUATION METHODS OF EXTENSION ECONOMISTS AS VIEWED BY EXTENSION ADMINISTRATORS, DEPARTMENT HEADS, AND SPECIALISTS
A survey of extension administrators, department heads, and extension specialists was conducted to determine the best methods for evaluating the performance of extension economists. The results demonstrate how different groups view the relative importance of the various roles played by extension economists and how important the specific attributes of extension economists are within each role. In general all three groups agree on the most important roles and attributes. However, important differences among the groups do exist about the relative importance of certain activities.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,
A Formal Framework for Modeling Trust and Reputation in Collective Adaptive Systems
Trust and reputation models for distributed, collaborative systems have been
studied and applied in several domains, in order to stimulate cooperation while
preventing selfish and malicious behaviors. Nonetheless, such models have
received less attention in the process of specifying and analyzing formally the
functionalities of the systems mentioned above. The objective of this paper is
to define a process algebraic framework for the modeling of systems that use
(i) trust and reputation to govern the interactions among nodes, and (ii)
communication models characterized by a high level of adaptiveness and
flexibility. Hence, we propose a formalism for verifying, through model
checking techniques, the robustness of these systems with respect to the
typical attacks conducted against webs of trust.Comment: In Proceedings FORECAST 2016, arXiv:1607.0200
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