Sharing Open Source License and Copyright Data with SPDX

Organizations across the globe are creating and distributing products that include open source software. To ensure compliance with the open source licenses, each company needs to evaluate exactly what open source licenses and copyrights are included - resulting in duplicated effort and redundancy. This talk will provide an overview of a new Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) specification. This specification will provide a common format to share information about the open source licenses and copyrights that are included in any software package, with the goal of saving time and improving data accuracy. This talk will review the progress of the initiative; discuss the benefits to organizations using open source and share information on how you can contribute.

The effect of age at the first mating and herd size on the lifetime productivity of sows

The effect of age at the first mating and herd size were evaluated in the reference Spanish Databank (BDporc) of 37 698 sows born between 1991 and 1995 and with individual lifetime records. The data included dates of births at entrance and culling, first mating, repetitive mating and conception, first farrowing and weaning records. Individual records were validated before the analysis by screening them through a tolerance “filter” in order to eliminate the extreme values from the analysis. The total database of the sows was classified in 7 classes according to age at the first mating (< 210, 210–220, 221–230, 231–240, 241–250, 251–270, and > 270 days) and in 6 classes of herd size (< 200, 200–300, 301–400, 401–600, 601–800, and > 800 sows). The total number of litters and number of weaned piglets obtained from each sow during the lifetime production were significantly (P < 0.05) greater for gilts between 221 and 240 d of age at the first mating. There was a significant (P < 0.001) effect of the herd size on the reproductive performance of the sow, and the best performance was obtained with herds with 401 to 600 sows compared to < 200 or > 800 sow-herds. Furthermore, a significant (P < 0.001) interaction between age at the first mating and herd size was detected and can be associated with a particular pattern for the herd size class 401–600 sows with the best performances obtained for the sows first mated at less than 200 days. For the other herd sizes, the results indicated that sows mated for the first time at the right age, 221–240 days, are more productive, both in the number and size of the parities throughout lifetime production.

rDock: A Fast, Versatile and Open Source Program for Docking Ligands to Proteins and Nucleic Acids

Identification of chemical compounds with specific biological activities is an important step in both chemical biology and drug discovery. When the structure of the intended target is available, one approach is to use molecular docking programs to assess the chemical complementarity of small molecules with the target; such calculations provide a qualitative measure of affinity that can be used in virtual screening (VS) to rank order a list of compounds according to their potential to be active. rDock is a molecular docking program developed at Vernalis for high-throughput VS (HTVS) applications. Evolved from RiboDock, the program can be used against proteins and nucleic acids, is designed to be computationally very efficient and allows the user to incorporate additional constraints and information as a bias to guide docking. This article provides an overview of the program structure and features and compares rDock to two reference programs, AutoDock Vina (open source) and Schrodinger's Glide (commercial). In terms of computational speed for VS, rDock is faster than Vina and comparable to Glide. For binding mode prediction, rDock and Vina are superior to Glide. The VS performance of rDock is significantly better than Vina, but inferior to Glide for most systems unless pharmacophore constraints are used; in that case rDock and Glide are of equal performance. The program is released under the Lesser General Public License and is freely available for download, together with the manuals, example files and the complete test sets, at http://rdock.sourceforge.net/

eLab, a Personal Learning Environment for the Green Open Innovation Platform

Open Innovation is a relatively new concept which involves a change of paradigm in the R+D+i processes of companies whose aim is to create new technologies or new processes. If to this change, we add the need for innovation in the new green and sustainability economy, and we set out to create a collaborative platform with a learning space where this can happen, we will be facing an overwhelming challenge which requires the application of intelligent programming technologies and languages at the service of education.The aim of the Green IDI (Green Open Innovation) ¿ Economic development and job creation vector in SMEs, based on the environment and sustainability project is to create a platform where companies and individual researchers can perform open innovation processes in the field of sustainability and the environment.The Green IDI (Green Open Innovation) project is funded under the program INNPACTO by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain and is being developed through a consortium formed by the following institutions: GRUPO ICA; COMPARTIA; GRUPO INTERCOM; CETAQUA and the Instituto de Investigación en Inteligencia Artificial (IIIA) from Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Also the consortium include FUNDACIÓ PRIVADA BARCELONA DIGITAL; PIMEC and UNIVERSITAT OBERTA DE CATALUNYA (UOC).Sustainability and positive action for the environment are considered the principle vector of economic development for companies. As Nicolás Scoli says (2007) ¿in short, preventing unnecessary consumption and the efficient consumption of resources means producing greater wealth with less. Both effects lead to reduced pollution linked to production and consumption¿.The Spanish Sustainable Development Strategy (EEDS) plan defends consumption and sustainable production linked to social and economic development by adhering to the commitment not to endanger ecosystems and abolishing the idea that economic growth is directly proportional to the deterioration of the environment.Uniting the Open Innovation and New Green Economy concepts leads to the "Green Open Innovation¿ Platform creation project.This article analyses the concept of open innovation and defines the importance of the new green and sustainable economy. Lastly, it proposes the creation of eLab. The eLab is defined as an Open Green Innovation Platform personal and collaborative education space which is fed by the interactions of users and which enables innovation processes based on new green economy concepts to be carried out.The creation of a personal learning environment such as eLab on the Green Open Innovation Platform meets the need to offer a collaborative space where platform users can improve their skills regarding the environment and sustainability based on collaborative synergies through Information and Communication Technologies.

Human capital in export-based internationalisation. "Managerial determinants and their influence upon the export behaviour of the firm: four case-studies of catalan exporting SMEs"

Export activities are a major source of economic growth and are considered important both at the national level and for individual businesses. Moreover, in the case of SMEs, they gain particular relevance, exporting being the most common foreign market entry mode for these firms. The decision maker’s role in the export activity is crucial, particularly in the case of SMEs. However, the extant literature on internationalization is characterized by a lack of consensus among scholars as to what constitutes the managerial factor in determining exporting. Therefore, this study focuses on the following issue: Which are the decision maker’s characteristics and perceptions that may influence the export behaviour of Catalan SMEs? To address this question a multiple case study method is applied across four Catalan exporting SMEs. The methodology chosen for analysing the empirical data is relying on the proposition testing approach while the investigation is conducted including both within and cross-case analysis. The findings show that high educational level, language skills, high risk tolerance, innovativeness as well as strongly perceived export stimuli as compared to low and easy to overcome export barriers positively influence the export involvement and development of SMEs. The study provides further insights into the research topic by jointly studying managerial characteristics and perceptions. Additionally, the majority of research on exporting topics has been carried out in the USA, so there is a clear need of investigation in the field in other countries, moreover in Spain where the exporting activities have not been as widely studied.

Organizational form and business performance

This project deals with the generation of profitability and the distribution of its benefits. Inspired by Davis (1947, 1955), we define profitability as the ratio of revenue to cost. Profitability is not as popular a measure of business financial performance as profit, the difference between revenue and cost. Regardless of its popularity, however, profitability is surely a useful financial performance measure. Our primary objective in this project is to identify the factors that generate change in profitability. One set of factors, which we refer to as sources, consists of changes in quantities and prices of outputs and inputs. Individual quantity changes aggregate to the overall impact of quantity change on profitability change, which we call productivity change. Individual price changes aggregate to the overall impact of price change on profitability change, which we call price recovery change. In this framework profitability change consists exclusively of productivity change and price recovery change. A second set of factors, which we refer to as drivers, consists of phenomena such as technical change, change in the efficiency of resource allocation, and the impact of economies of scale. The ability of management to harness these factors drives productivity change, which is one component of profitability change. Thus the term sources refers to quantities and prices of individual outputs and inputs, whose changes influence productivity change or price recovery change, either of which influences profitability change. The term drivers refers to phenomena related to technology and management that influence productivity change (but not price recovery change), and hence profitability change.

M-Library in an m-University : changing Models in the Open University of Catalonia

The general perspective of M-technologies and M-Services at the Spanish universities is not still in a very high level when we are ending the first decade of the 21st century. Some Universities and some of their libraries are starting to try out with M-technologies, but are still far from a model of massive exploitation, less than in some other countries. A deep study is needed to know the main reasons, study that we will not do in this paper. This general perspective does not mean that there are no significant initiatives which start to trust in M-technologies from Universities and their libraries. Models based in M-technologies make more sense than ever in open universities and in open libraries. That's the reason why the UOC's Library began in late 90s its first experiences in the M-Technologies and M-Libraries developments. In 1999 the appropriate technology offered the opportunity to carry out the first pilot test with SMS, and then applying the WAP technology. At those moments we managed to link-up mobile phones to the OPAC through a WAP system that allowed searching the catalogue by categories and finding the final location of a document, offering also the address of the library in which the user could loan it. Since then, UOC (and its library) directs its efforts towards adapting the offer of services to all sorts of M-devices used by end users. Left the WAP technology, nowadays the library is experimenting with some new devices like e-books, and some new services to get more feedback through the OPAC and metalibrary search products. We propose the case of Open University of Catalonia, in two levels: M-services applied in the library and M-technologies applied in some other university services and resources.

Open source software expectations in retail businesses of Igualada : an exploratory study

The emergence of open source software in the last years has become a common topic of study in different fields, from the most technical characteristics to the economical aspects. This paper examines the current status about the literature dealing with economics of open source and explores the uses, infrastructure and expectations of retail businesses and institutions of the town of Igualda about it. This qualitative case study finds out that the current equipment and level of uses of ICTs are low and that the current situation of the town stores is receptive to a potential introduction of open source software.

Contribution to Asterisk Open Source Project

With this final master thesis we are going to contribute to the Asterisk open source project. Asterisk is an open source project that started with the main objective of develop an IP telephony platform, completely based on Software (so not hardware dependent) and under an open license like GPL. This project was started on 1999 by the software engineer Mark Spencer at Digium. The main motivation of that open source project was that the telecommunications sector is lack of open solutions, and most of the available solutions are based on proprietary standards, which are close and not compatible between them. Behind the Asterisk project there is a company, Digum, which is the project leading since the project was originated in its laboratories. This company has some of its employees fully dedicated to contribute to the Asterisk project, and also provide the whole infrastructure required by the open source project. But the business of Digium isn't based on licensing of products due to the open source nature of Asterisk, but it's based on offering services around Asteriskand designing and selling some hardware components to be used with Asterisk. The Asterisk project has grown up a lot since its birth, offering in its latest versions advanced functionalities for managing calls and compatibility with some hardware that previously was exclusive of proprietary solutions. Due to that, Asterisk is becoming a serious alternative to all these proprietaries solutions because it has reached a level of maturity that makes it very stable. In addition, as it is open source, it can be fully customized to a givenrequirement, which could be impossible with the proprietaries solutions. Due to the bigness that is reaching the project, every day there are more companies which develop value added software for telephony platforms, that are seriously evaluating the option of make their software fully compatible withAsterisk platforms. All these factors make Asterisk being a consolidated project but in constant evolution, trying to offer all those functionalities offered by proprietaries solutions. This final master thesis will be divided mainly in two blocks totally complementaries. In the first block we will analyze Asterisk as an open source project and Asterisk as a telephony platform (PBX). As a result of this analysis we will generate a document, written in English because it is Asterisk project's official language, which could be used by future contributors as an starting point on joining Asterisk. On the second block we will proceed with a development contribution to the Asterisk project. We will have several options in the form that we do the contribution, such as solving bugs, developing new functionalities or start an Asterisk satellite project. The type of contribution will depend on the needs of the project on that moment.

On the origins of electoral systems and political parties. The role of elections in multi-member districts

The old, understudied electoral system composed of multi-member districts, open ballot and plurality rule is presented as the most remote scene of the origin of both political parties and new electoral systems. A survey of the uses of this set of electoral rules in different parts of the world during remote and recent periods shows its wide spread. A model of voting by this electoral system demonstrates that, while it can produce varied and pluralistic representation, it also provides incentives to form factional or partisan candidacies. Famous negative reactions to the emergence of factions and political parties during the 18th and 19th centuries are reinterpreted in this context. Many electoral rules and procedures invented since the second half of the 19th century, including the Australian ballot, single-member districts, limited and cumulative ballots, and proportional representation rules, derived from the search to reduce the effects of the originating multi-member district system in favor of a single party sweep. The general relations between political parties and electoral systems are restated to account for the foundational stage here discussed.

The provision of relative performance feedback information: An experimental analysis of performance and happiness

This paper studies the effect of providing relative performance feedback information onindividual performance and on individual affective response, when agents are rewardedaccording to their absolute performance. In a laboratory set-up, agents perform a realeffort task and when receiving feedback, they are asked to rate their happiness, arousaland feeling of dominance. Control subjects learn only their absolute performance, whilethe treated subjects additionally learn the average performance in the session.Performance is 17 percent higher when relative performance feedback is provided.Furthermore, although feedback increases the performance independent of the content(i.e., performing above or below the average), the content is determinant for theaffective response. When subjects are treated, the inequality in the happiness and thefeeling of dominance between those subjects performing above and below the averageincreases by 8 and 6 percentage points, respectively.

UVBY-Beta Photometry for 67 Stars in the Region of Alpha-Persei

UVBY-Beta photometric data are presented for 67 stars in the region of alpha-Persei and their relationship to the cluster is analyzed. These data allowed us to confirm at least 16 new members of the alpha-Persei open cluster.

Percolation and cluster Monte Carlo dynamics for spin models

A general scheme for devising efficient cluster dynamics proposed in a previous paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 1541 (1994)] is extensively discussed. In particular, the strong connection among equilibrium properties of clusters and dynamic properties as the correlation time for magnetization is emphasized. The general scheme is applied to a number of frustrated spin models and the results discussed.

Semiquantitative RT-PCR measurement of gene expression in rat tissues including a correction for varying cell size and number

Background: Current methodology of gene expression analysis limits the possibilities of comparison between cells/tissues of organs in which cell size and/or number changes as a consequence of the study (e.g. starvation). A method relating the abundance of specific mRNA copies per cell may allow direct comparison or different organs and/or changing physiological conditions. Methods: With a number of selected genes, we analysed the relationship of the number of bases and the fluorescence recorded at a present level using cDNA standards. A lineal relationship was found between the final number of bases and the length of the transcript. The constants of this equation and those of the relationship between fluorescence and number of bases in cDNA were determined and a general equation linking the length of the transcript and the initial number of copies of mRNA was deduced for a given pre-established fluorescence setting. This allowed the calculation of the concentration of the corresponding mRNAs per g of tissue. The inclusion of tissue RNA and the DNA content per cell, allowed the calculation of the mRNA copies per cell. Results: The application of this procedure to six genes: Arbp, cyclophilin, ChREBP, T4 deiodinase 2, acetyl-CoA carboxylase 1 and IRS-1, in liver and retroperitoneal adipose tissue of food-restricted rats allowed precise measures of their changes irrespective of the shrinking of the tissue, the loss of cells or changes in cell size, factors that deeply complicate the comparison between changing tissue conditions. The percentage results obtained with the present methods were essentially the same obtained with the delta-delta procedure and with individual cDNA standard curve quantitative RT-PCR estimation. Conclusion: The method presented allows the comparison (i.e. as copies of mRNA per cell) between different genes and tissues, establishing the degree of abundance of the different molecular species tested.

Phenological patterns in Mediterranean pastures and scrubs of Catalonia

On the basis of two parallel data sets refering to phenological events in open scrubs and pastures at two sites (Balaguer and Vic), the authors present a comprehensive report of the phenology of these Mediterranean communities. Four main phenophases (vegetative growth, flowering, fruiting and resting) were recorded monthly in 11 communities over 15 months. The results allow comparisons to be drawn between localities and communities, both at community and species levels, and to consider the effects of contemporary climatic data. This yielded useful information on general trends and on the particular responses of each community type to their corresponding constraints.