HyDRA Hybrid workflow Design Recommender Architecture

Workflows are a way to describe a series of computations on raw e-Science data. These data may be MRI brain scans, data from a high energy physics detector or metric data from an earth observation project. In order to derive meaningful knowledge from the data, it must be processed and analysed. Workflows have emerged as the principle mechanism for describing and enacting complex e-Science analyses on distributed infrastructures such as grids. Scientific users face a number of challenges when designing workflows. These challenges include selecting appropriate components for their tasks, spec- ifying dependencies between them and selecting appropriate parameter values. These tasks become especially challenging as workflows become increasingly large. For example, the CIVET workflow consists of up to 108 components. Building the workflow by hand and specifying all the links can become quite cumbersome for scientific users.Traditionally, recommender systems have been employed to assist users in such time-consuming and tedious tasks. One of the techniques used by recommender systems has been to predict what the user is attempting to do using a variety of techniques. These techniques include using workflow se- mantics on the one hand and historical usage patterns on the other. Semantics-based systems attempt to infer a user’s intentions based on the available semantics. Pattern-based systems attempt to extract usage patterns from previously-constructed workflows and match those patterns to the workflow un- der construction. The use of historical patterns adds dynamism to the suggestions as the system can learn and adapt with “experience”. However, in cases where there are no previous patterns to draw upon, pattern-based systems fail to perform. Semantics-based systems, on the other hand infer from static information, so they always have something to draw upon. However, that information first has to be encoded into the semantic repository for the system to draw upon it, which is a time-consuming and tedious task in it self. Moreover, semantics-based systems do not learn and adapt with experience. Both approaches have distinct, but complementary features and drawbacks. By combining the two approaches, the drawbacks of each approach can be addressed.This thesis presents HyDRA, a novel hybrid framework that combines frequent usage patterns and workflow semantics to generate suggestions. The functions performed by the framework include; a) extracting frequent functional usage patterns; b) identifying the semantics of unknown components; and c) generating accurate and meaningful suggestions. Challenges to mining frequent patterns in- clude ensuring that meaningful and useful patterns are extracted. For this purpose only patterns that occur above a minimum frequency threshold are mined. Moreover, instead of just groups of specific components, the pattern mining algorithm takes into account workflow component semantics. This allows the system to identify different types of components that perform a single composite function. One of the challenges in maintaining a semantic repository is to keep the repository up-to-date. This involves identifying new items and inferring their semantics. In this regard, a minor contribution of this research is a semantic inference engine that is responsible for function b). This engine also uses pre-defined workflow component semantics to infer new semantic properties and generate more accurate suggestions. The overall suggestion generation algorithm is also presented.HyDRA has been evaluated using workflows from the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI) repos- itory. These workflows have been chosen for their structural and functional characteristics that help� to evaluate the framework in different scenarios. The system is also compared with another existing pattern-based system to show a clear improvement in the accuracy of the suggestions generated

Youth Development Challenges in Pakistan: Need for Youth Empowerment

This paper discusses challenges related to youth development in Pakistan. Youth bulge is an ever increasing global threat and Pakistan’s majority of population is youth. No doubt, youth is a resource but if left unutilized and ignored, it can be a challenge for a country. Youth in Pakistan is facing multiple challenges that hinder their endeavor for their own development as well country’s wellbeing. This paper suggests creating and implementing effective youth policies with equal participation of young people as stakeholders. It is also recommended to create coordination among provinces of the country for the purpose of improving youth wellbeing. This paper puts forth assumption that developed youth make a developed country, so youth development must be taken as priority task by the policymakers and legislators of Pakistan. Keywords: Youth Development, Youth Empowerment, Youth Policy, Pakista

Participatory governance in smart cities: The urbanAPI case study

Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. This paper presents some results from an EU FP7 RTD project urbanAPI, in which three ICT applications target different aspects of participatory urban governance. The 3D Scenario Creator allows urban planners to visualise urban development proposals in three dimensions, share them with different stakeholders and obtain their feedback. The Mobility Explorer allows urban land use and transport planners to visualise and analyse population distribution and mobility patterns in the city. Finally, the Urban Development Simulator simulates socio-economic activity in response to alternative planning scenarios. These urbanAPI ICT applications are implemented in four pilot cities; Vienna (Austria), Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain), Bologna (Italy) and Ruse (Bulgaria), and evaluated with respect to their various requirements. Results show that the applications are useful tools, enhancing spatial planning assessements, and enabling public participation, communicating proposed plans to different stakeholders and identifying key development issues which can provide crucial inputs in planning and decision making processes

Volunteering Activities in Developing Countries: A Study of Youth Participation in Pakistan

In recent decades there has been numerous and growing interest of researchers in volunteering. Where there are a substantial number of studies in the developed countries, not much work is present on developing countries. This paper studies the types of volunteering activities among youth in selected areas of Pakistan and analyses the various perspectives of volunteerism in Pakistan. Data was collected from two different provinces of the country through questionnaire. Then through SPSS software data was analyzed. The research shows that people are not much introduced to volunteering or formal volunteering whereas they think they do have time and lesser commitments and do want to volunteer. People are more motivated towards general areas of volunteering like volunteering in medical centers or educational institutions and have been involved in volunteering religious activities in the area however other areas should be introduced to them. Although volunteerism provides young people with opportunity to get engaged in constructive activities, we have found lack of volunteerism opportunities and awareness. There is need for seminars and programs to be held to make general public aware of volunteering, its uses and benefits to them and the society. The research can help organizations and researchers to study the volunteering activity according to specified volunteering areas. Volunteering activities can be increased by focusing on the individual areas. Keywords: Volunteerism, Types of Volunteering activities, volunteering in developing countries, Youth, Volunteer Management, Volunteer Motivation

Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics: A Practical Introduction, edited by Juanita Heigham and Robert Croker

This review makes a point in favor of the assertion made for the book that it is a practical introduction to the qualitative research in applied linguistics. The book consists of four parts: an overview of qualitative research, qualitative research methods, qualitative data collection methods, ethical practice issues and the writing of research reports. After proving a rich introduction to the qualitative research, the book discusses qualitative research approaches using a reader-friendly and interactive structure: pre-reading and post-reading questions along with the list of further readings. Then the data collection tools have been thoroughly discussed. What makes this book more useful is the use of illustrative examples for each qualitative research approach and data collection tool. The last part discusses core issues of ethics and drafting a research report. From the perspective of a novice researcher, it has achieved the goal of educating readers about qualitative research methods and data collection tools, as it gradually tracks the reader and provides them with a linking concept for a better understanding. However, reference to one study for both ethnography and case study remains a confusing point. Besides, the review suggests addition of some images to make reading of the book more interesting, especially for visual learners. Besides, a diagram should be given at the end of research methods chapters to outline the steps taken by researchers to do their studies

ICT enabled participatory urban planning and policy development: The UrbanAPI project

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to present the effectiveness of participatory information and communication technology (ICT) tools for urban planning, in particular, supporting bottom-up decision-making in urban management and governance. Design/methodology/approach: This work begins with a presentation on the state of the art literature on the existing participatory approaches and their contribution to urban planning and the policymaking process. Furthermore, a case study, namely, the UrbanAPI project, is selected to identify new visualisation and simulation tools applied at different urban scales. These tools are applied in four different European cities - Vienna, Bologna, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Ruse - with the objective to identify the data needs for application development, commonalities in requirements of such participatory tools and their expected impact in policy and decision-making processes. Findings: The case study presents three planning applications: three-dimensional Virtual Reality at neighbourhood scale, Public Motion Explorer at city-wide scale and Urban Growth Simulation at city-region scale. UrbanAPI applications indicate both active and passive participation secured by applying these tools at different urban scales and hence facilitate evidence-based urban planning decision-making. Structured engagement with the city administrations indicates commonalities in user needs and application requirements creating the potential for the development of generic features in these ICT tools which can be applied to many other cities throughout Europe. Originality/value: This paper presents new ICT-enabled participatory urban planning tools at different urban scales to support collaborative decision-making and urban policy development. Various technologies are used for the development of these IT tools and applied to the real environment of four European cities. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Teacher Training in Pakistan: Overview of Challenges and their Suggested Solutions

Education is a key component of progress in the present-day world. But this progress cannot be made without efforts of teachers. Therefore, teacher education, in particular teacher training becomes extremely important. In this regard, several trainings programs are initiated and executed across Pakistan but the desired outcomes have not been achieved so far. Hence, this study was conducted to explore the challenges in teacher training in Pakistan and the ways through which these issues can be resolved. The sources for the data of the study were the published studies in the field in the context of Pakistan, national education policy, and other relevant literature. Based on secondary data, the study concludes that the issues with teacher training in Pakistan are administrative as well as faculty related. The findings reveal that the challenges related to policy and planning, poor induction of teachers, lack of resources in teacher training institutions, demotivation among teachers, and unequal distribution of skilled and productive teachers, dual training system and infrequent trainings. These issues can be fixed by fostering encouraging environment, ensuring accountability and merit, providing necessary resources, systematizing professional training programs and their continuation. The findings of this study will, therefore, positively guide policymakers to develop the right and effective policy to improve the standard of teacher education in the country