Software and Sociology in UK Astronomy

I discuss the remit of Starlink's software strategy groups and a particular item on the agenda of a meeting of the image processing software strategy group held on 26th January 2001: `Why don't people use Starlink software?'. The answer to this question was speculated to be primarily a sociological effect: those people supervising UK astronomy Ph.D. students are largely people who had learnt their trade at a time when Starlink had a less than perfect reputation. I report on the recommendations made to Starlink to counter this effect.Comment: 3 pages. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Geophysics (formerly QJRAS

Game on! a report on the interactive leisure software subsector in London

There is a paucity of good quality data on the UK video games industry. Information such as value-added, investment on R&D, average annual expenditure on training and the value of video games in terms of exports, for example, is thin or incomplete. This is a serious problem. If we are to improve the competitiveness of the UK games development sector then we must have better quality information. Games developers will then be able to benchmark their business activities against industry averages. Overseas investors will also then be better informed about the benefits of investing in the UK leisure software sector. This Report confirms the lacunae in our knowledge that exists about the video games industry. For example, the Office of National Statistics still does not have a specific code to identify interactive leisure software businesses. Yet the Report also shines a light on the video games industry in the UK in general and in London in particular

The OMII Software Distribution

This paper describes the work carried out at the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII) and the key elements of the OMII software distribution that have been developed in collaboration with members of the Managed Programme Initiative. The main objective of the OMII is to preserve and consolidate the achievements of the UK e-Science Programme by collecting, maintaining and improving the software modules that form the key components of a generic Grid middleware. Recently, the activity at Southampton has been extended beyond 2009 through a new project, OMII-UK, that forms a partnership that now includes the OGSA-DAI activities at Edinburgh and the myGrid project at Manchester

Achieving higher capability maturity in construction process improvement

Process improvement has been identified as one of the potential mechanisms to achieve the desired performance improvements within the UK construction industry. In addition, it has further been recognised the importance of learning construction process improvement lessons from other industry examples. Software industry has exemplified a successful implementation of a process improvement strategy, based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which evaluate the capabilities and maturities of organisations in concern to establish the next level of process improvements needed. This model consists of five maturity levels where level 1 being the least matured and level 5 being the most matured. After considering the close similarities between the software industry and the construction industry, the principles of software CMM were attempted to be applied within the construction industry, under the research project “Structured Process Improvement in Construction Enterprises (SPICE)”. Within this research the Key Process Areas (KPAs) of level 1, 2 and 3 of software CMM were evaluated and customised to the UK construction industry, after taking its unique characteristics into consideration. This leaves the software CMM level 4 and 5 KPAs unevaluated and un-customised, leaving the maximum potential of SPICE un-revealed. This paper aims at addressing this gap by reviewing the literature on construction process improvement and the software CMM to evaluate the applicability of software CMM higher capability maturity level KPAs within the UK construction context

Elasticity of demand and highway scheme benefit evaluation

DIADEM (Dynamic Integrated Assignment and Demand Modelling) software package has been recently introduced to complement the variable demand modeling process. The fundamental impetus of DIADEM is to test the robustness of highway scheme benefits and this software package is intended to be complementary to conventional demand modeling software. This paper tests a small hypothetical network of a town in the UK to compare the benefits under the current conventional methodology and under the DIADEM methodology

Software engineering challenges: Achieving zero carbon buildings by 2019

The planet Earth is warming up. There is an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings account for almost 50% of UK carbon dioxide emissions. [1] The UK Government have set out a programme to make all new buildings zero carbon by 2019. This will require a paradigm shift in how buildings are designed, with an increased reliance on computational modelling of building performance early in the design process. This paper outlines how architects have traditionally worked, the available software and how it is used. It discusses the challenges faced by building designers in achieving zero carbon buildings and then outlines how software tools might develop to meet not only the zero carbon challenge but also take the concept further to help design sustainable buildings

Proprietary software tools as learning aids

Proprietary software tools, though not designed for educational use, have considerable educational potential. This paper describes, as case studies, the use of proprietary graphics- and audio-editing tools in two distance-taught courses produced by the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at the UK Open University – Europe's largest distance teaching institution. The paper examines the potential advantages and disadvantages of this type of software relative to conventional educational software in terms of constructivist learning theory, and describes how students use the software in the courses concerned. The paper concludes by suggesting further developments of this approach

Introducing TaCEM and the TIAALS software.

This paper introduces the TaCEM project (Technology and Creativity in Electroacoustic Music), funded for 30 months by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, investigating the relationship between technological innovation and creative practice in electroacoustic music of the last 40 years (http://www.hud.ac.uk/research/researchcentres/tacem/). It is a collaborative project between the universities of Huddersfield and Durham in the UK and outputs from the project will include a book and freely available interactive software. This paper explains the context for the project and its goals, and discusses some of the generic software that is being developed as part of the project, intended not only for use in the project itself but also to be freely available for others to use in the study of any electroacoustic work as appropriate

Needing a new programme : why is union membership so low among software workers?

In terms of employee characteristics, software workers represent a particularly fascinating and important group of workers to explore in terms of their behaviour towards unions. They represent an expanding cohort of so-called knowledge workers in the UK and other countries, many possessing considerable latent power through their proximity to and involvement with electronic means of production and accumulation. An early study of technical workers' unionism by Smith (1987) provides evidence that computer personnel possess at least some of Batstone et al's (1978) four potential sources of industrial power, namely: skill scarcity, strategic position, immediate impact on production, and potential to create uncertainty (Smith 1987: 104). Other writers, however, have hinted that software workers are no less immune to management pressures to routinise and Taylorise their work than are any other group of skilled workers (Kraft and Dubnoff 1986; Beirne et al 1998). Software workers also enjoy familiarity with information technology, an increasingly effective tool in organising union membership both in the USA (Fiorito et al 2002) and the UK (Diamond and Freeman 2002)