Social media for openness and accountability in the public sector: cases in the Greek context

This paper explores the use of government social media for opennessand accountability. The extant literature has highlighted the benefits of social media use in this context to enhance citizen participation and engagement in decision-making and policy development, facilitate openness and transparency efforts, and reduce corruption. Yet, there are limited studies that discuss those properties of social media that can afford openness and accountability, and their implications for policy and practise. To address these gaps, a study is conducted in the Greek context using interviews with top managers, policy makers, and relevant stakeholders across five initiatives. We discuss distinct affordances for openness and accountability, and propose their inclusion as building blocks of the national ICT policy for openness and accountability. Finally, we provide the implications of the affordances lens for policy and practise, the limitations of the study and future research avenues

Dynamic Offline Conflict-Free Coloring for Unit Disks

Abstract. A conflict-free coloring for a given set of disks is a coloring of the disks such that for any point p on the plane there is a disk among the disks covering p having a color different from that of the rest of the disks that covers p. In the dynamic offline setting, a sequence of disks is given, we have to color the disks one-by-one according to the order of the sequence and maintain the conflict-free property at any time for the disks that are colored. This paper focuses on unit disks, i.e., disks with radius one. We give an algorithm that colors a sequence of n unit disks in the dynamic offline setting using O(log n) colors. The algorithm is asymptotically optimal because Ω(log n) colors is necessary to color some set of n unit disks for any value of n [9].

Automated line scan analysis to quantify biosensor activity at the cell edge

Biosensors are valuable tools used to image the subcellular localization and kinetics of protein activity in living cells. Signaling at the edge of motile cells that regulates cell protrusion and retraction is important in many aspects of cell physiology, and frequently studied using biosensors. However, quantitation and interpretation is limited by the heterogeneity of this signaling behavior; automated analytical approaches are required to systematically extract large data sets from biosensor studies for statistical analysis. Here we describe an automated analysis to relate the velocity at specific points along the cell edge with biosensor activity in adjoining regions. Time series of biosensor images are processed to interpolate a smooth edge of the cell at each time point. Profiles of biosensor activity (‘line scans’) are then calculated along lines perpendicular to the cell edge. An energy minimization method is used to calculate a velocity associated with each line scan. Sorting line scans by the proximal velocity has generated novel biological insights, as exemplified by analysis of the Src merobody biosensor. With the large data sets that can be generated automatically by this program, conclusions can be drawn that are not apparent from qualitative or ‘manual’ quantitative techniques. Our ‘LineScan’ software includes a graphical user interface (GUI) to facilitate application in other studies. It is available at hahnlab.com and is exemplified here in a study using the RhoC FLARE biosensor