Measuring the Maturity of Open Source Software for Digital Libraries: a Case Study of DSpace

The assessment of maturity of software is an important area in the general software sector. The field of OSS also applies various models to measure software maturity. However, measuring maturity of OSS being used for several applications in libraries is an area left with no research so far. This study has attempted to fill the research gap. Measuring maturity of software contributes knowledge on its sustainability over the long term. Maturity of software is one of the factors that positively influence adoption. The investigator measured the maturity of DSpace software using Woods and Guliani‟s Open Source Maturity Model-2005. The present study is significant as it addresses the aspects of maturity of OSS for libraries and fills the research gap on the area. In this sense the study opens new avenues to the field of library and information science by providing an additional tool for librarians in the selection and adoption of OSS. Measuring maturity brings in-depth knowledge on an OSS which will contribute towards the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use as explained in the Technology Acceptance Model theory.

Nachhaltige Energie für ländliche Entwicklung in dem Sub-Sahara Afrika: interdisziplinäre Herangehensweise und organisatorische Herausforderung

Angesichts der Geschichte der Entwicklungspolitik, ist diese Arbeit darauf ausgerichtet, einige Beobachtungen in Bezug auf die so genannte Entwicklung hervorzuheben; insbesondere auf die andauernde prekäre Situation und Armut in ländlichen afrikanischen Gebieten. Armut ist nach Amartya SEN – weiter präzisiert von J.L. Dubois – die Deprivation von „Fähigkeiten“, die Individuen und lokale Gemeinschaften zu ausgeschlossenen und vergessenen Akteuren des Systems machen. Das nennt Paulo Freire, das Menschen zu „Objekten“ gemacht werden. Es rechtfertigt die starke Annahme, die in dieser Studie getroffen wird, dass vielmehr die Menschen als „Subjekte“ ihrer Veränderung und Entwicklung im Mittelpunkt stehen. Die Arbeit zeigt und erklärt in historischer Chronologie, wie die Entwicklungspolitiken und unterschiedliche Beteiligte auf allen Ebenen diese Situation verursachen. Trotz alledem bleiben die Individuen und lokalen Gemeinschaften, die in Symbiose mit ihrer natürlichen Umwelt leben, die reich an verschiedenen Ressourcen und Potentialen ist, als Reaktion darauf und gleichzeitig als Überlebensstrategie zutiefst verbunden mit dem, was sie vor Ort haben, womit sie eine tiefere und intensive Beziehung besitzen, wenn man von ihrer Geschichte, ihrer Kultur und der Handlungslogik ausgeht. Für externe Akteure, die sie über das vorhandene System dominieren und beeinflussen bleiben sie „Objekte“, aber in der Vielzahl ihrer endogenen Initiativen, zeigen sie die Fähigkeit und Substanz, die beweisen, dass sie auf ihrer Ebene das eigentliche Subjekt sind, die dynamischen Akteure. Aber isolierte Initiativen auf spezifische reale Bedürfnisse bei gleichzeitiger Dominierung durch das System mit seiner Marktlogik, führt dies langfristig nur zu dem Zirkulus Vitiosus der Armut. Daher ist eine ganzheitliche Sicht entscheidend für nachhaltige Entwicklung und für die notwendige Veränderung. Es geht nicht nur um die Veränderung des Systems und die Wahl politischer Maßnahmen, sondern genau genommen um das Verhalten der Akteure auf allen Ebenen und die Art der Beziehungen zwischen ihnen allen. Es ist eine Frage des erneuten Überdenkens des Entwicklungspfades, der andere Logik, Visionen, Interessen und Strategien aller Beteiligten, unserer so genannten Akteure einschließt. Ob dies von endogenen Initiativen oder neuen gemeinsamen Projekten ausgeht: man wird in einen Prozess kollektiven Lernens eintreten, den Paul Singer und Clarita Müller-Plantenberg erläutern und entwickeln in dem Konzept der Inkubation und Solidarischen Ökonomie, die Eigeninitiative, Selbstbestimmung und Selbstverwaltung von lokalen Gemeinschaften und die Öffnung für eine Neu-Konzeptualisierung und Institutionalisierung einschließt. So ein Prozess ist nur mit einem interdisziplinären Rahmen möglich. Dieser Rahmen soll auf einer zusätzlicher Kommunikation zwischen den Akteuren und Sozialwissenschaften beruhen und mit jenen, die auf dem Feld der Technologie arbeiten. So können dann technische „Experten“ angesichts eines technischen Projektfehlers, der aufgrund von bestimmten sozialen und kulturellen Realitäten zustande kam sagen, „es ist kein Scheitern ; es war ein Schritt innerhalb eines Lernprozesse der in die technischen Projekte und Studien einbezogen werden muss“. Wir haben das Energiethema gewählt; und insbesondere, Energie für eine nachhaltige ländliche Entwicklung in Subsahara-Afrika, um den Weg von der Theorie in die Praxis zu illustrieren und experimentell auszuprobieren, den Weg von den Beobachtungen zu der Veränderung, wobei Fragen, Annahmen, Strategien und konkrete Aktionen für den Wandel behandelt werden. Wir nennen unseren experimentellen Weg: DRIEE, das heißt auf Deutsch Ländliche Entwicklung und Inkubation von Energieunternehmen. Dabei gehen wir davon aus, dass: - Energie im Allgemeinen auf der internationalen Ebene fast gleichbedeutend mit Elektrizität ist. Heute bestehen die wichtigsten Bedürfnisse nach Energie dort wo die agro-pastorale Produktion, das Kochen, die Nahrungsmittelkonservierung und Verarbeitung …etc. stattfindet. - Diese ländliche Bevölkerung zu etwa 80% der nationalen Wirtschaft ausmacht. Dass sie gleichzeitig aber nur zu weniger als 5% der Energieproduktion Zugang hat, was oft auf Licht reduziert ist und nicht einmal ihrer Produktion zugute kommen kann. - Die Projekte für Energie und Elektrizität vor allem auf die Technologischen Fragen konzentriert sind und weniger auf die Bedürfnisse. Fast die Gesamtheit der Fonds für Energie wird in Bezug auf die Investitionen Infrastruktur der Produktion und Verteilung durch die konventionellen zentralisierten Netze geplant. Angesichts dieser Analysen gehen die in dieser Arbeit vorgenommenen Studien in Gambia und Kamerun von Bestandsaufnahmen und / oder beschreibenden regionalen Analysen aus: - von Bedürfnissen, von Praktiken und lokalen Initiativen von Fragen der Energie, für einzelne Professionen, Haushalte, Gruppen, spezifische Gruppen, wie Frauen, ländliche Gemeinden mit ihren spezifischen Charakteristika. - Von Potentialen: natürliche lokale Energieressourcen, soziokulturelle Ressourcen – so z.B. die empirisch feststellbaren menschliche Ressourcen wie endogenes Wissen und praktische organisatorische Fähigkeiten gegenüber den Problemen der Energie. Dieser experimentelle Schritt von Handlungsforschung (DRIEE) in Kamerun führte zu der Gründung einer Organisation, über die und mit der wir die Logik der Inkubation und Solidarischen Ökonomie einführen. Das ist FERDEDSI, das heißt auf Deutsch „Forum für Erneuerbare Energie – Nachhaltige Entwicklung und Internationale Solidarität“. Zunächst war dies eine Energiegenossenschaft und dann (im Prozess) wurde es zu einer institutionellen Nische von mehreren Mikro Initiativen in ländlichen Gebieten. FERDEDSI ist ein Prozess der Inkubation und ein Inkubator ist also gleichzeitig ein inkubiertes Energieunternehmen aber auch ein Inkubator für lokale Organisationen. Die ersten Aktionen finden in den Departments von Noun und Ménoua in der westlichen Provinz von Kamerun statt. Während der Forschungsperiode findet akademische Austausch statt (Nord-Süd und Süd-Süd), diese ist dabei zu formalen Partnerschaften zu werden, nicht nur zwischen Universitäten sondern genauer lokale Organisationen und Universitäten. Dieser letzte Typ von Partnerschaften, die die solidarische Ökonomie ausmachen ist auch eine Innovation des Prozesses für die afrikanischen Fälle, die dem Beispiel dessen, was in Lateinamerika geschieht, folgen. So kommt es zu gegenseitiger sinnvoller Ausbildung in den internationalen Arbeitsgruppen und Seminaren der Universität.

Efficient Characterisation and Optimal Control of Open Quantum Systems - Mathematical Foundations and Physical Applications

Since no physical system can ever be completely isolated from its environment, the study of open quantum systems is pivotal to reliably and accurately control complex quantum systems. In practice, reliability of the control field needs to be confirmed via certification of the target evolution while accuracy requires the derivation of high-fidelity control schemes in the presence of decoherence. In the first part of this thesis an algebraic framework is presented that allows to determine the minimal requirements on the unique characterisation of arbitrary unitary gates in open quantum systems, independent on the particular physical implementation of the employed quantum device. To this end, a set of theorems is devised that can be used to assess whether a given set of input states on a quantum channel is sufficient to judge whether a desired unitary gate is realised. This allows to determine the minimal input for such a task, which proves to be, quite remarkably, independent of system size. These results allow to elucidate the fundamental limits regarding certification and tomography of open quantum systems. The combination of these insights with state-of-the-art Monte Carlo process certification techniques permits a significant improvement of the scaling when certifying arbitrary unitary gates. This improvement is not only restricted to quantum information devices where the basic information carrier is the qubit but it also extends to systems where the fundamental informational entities can be of arbitary dimensionality, the so-called qudits. The second part of this thesis concerns the impact of these findings from the point of view of Optimal Control Theory (OCT). OCT for quantum systems utilises concepts from engineering such as feedback and optimisation to engineer constructive and destructive interferences in order to steer a physical process in a desired direction. It turns out that the aforementioned mathematical findings allow to deduce novel optimisation functionals that significantly reduce not only the required memory for numerical control algorithms but also the total CPU time required to obtain a certain fidelity for the optimised process. The thesis concludes by discussing two problems of fundamental interest in quantum information processing from the point of view of optimal control - the preparation of pure states and the implementation of unitary gates in open quantum systems. For both cases specific physical examples are considered: for the former the vibrational cooling of molecules via optical pumping and for the latter a superconducting phase qudit implementation. In particular, it is illustrated how features of the environment can be exploited to reach the desired targets.

Field dependence-independence (FDI) congnitive style : an analysis of attentional functioning. ' Estilo cognitivo dependencia-independencia de campo : un análisis del funcionamiento atencional'.

Resumen tomado de la publicación. Resumen también en inglés

The calibration and use of probe-test microphones

This paper examines the characteristics of the probe-tube microphone and its use in measuring sound pressure in the ear canal. Specifically the paper studies the free field and the coupler calibrations of several probe-tube microphones with tubes of different sizes and determines which characteristics of a probe tube are necessary for accurate measurements in both a free field and in a closed coupler.

Evaluating lexically controlled word lists for open set speech perception testing in profoundly hearing impaired children

This paper evaluates speech perception testing in pediatric cochlear implant users. Using pre-recorded stimulus presentation, the author replicated an earlier experiment comparing the Lexical Neighborhood List (LNT) test to the Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten (PB-K) test in estimating speech perception abilities in hearing impaired children.

Contrasting Effects of Cattle Grazing Intensity on Upland-Nesting Duck Production at Nest and Field Scales in the Aspen Parkland, Canada

The Aspen Parkland of Canada is one of the most important breeding areas for temperate nesting ducks in North America. The region is dominated by agricultural land use, with approximately 9.3 million ha in pasture land for cattle grazing. However, the effects of using land for cattle grazing on upland-nesting duck production are poorly understood. The current study was undertaken during 2001 and 2002 to investigate how nest density and nesting success of upland-nesting ducks varied with respect to the intensity of cattle grazing in the Aspen Parkland. We predicted that the removal and trampling of vegetation through cattle grazing would reduce duck nest density. Both positive and negative responses of duck nesting success to grazing have been reported in previous studies, leading us to test competing hypotheses that nesting success would (1) decline linearly with grazing intensity or (2) peak at moderate levels of grazing. Nearly 3300 ha of upland cover were searched during the study. Despite extensive and severe drought, nest searches located 302 duck nests. As predicted, nest density was higher in fields with lower grazing intensity and higher pasture health scores. A lightly grazed field with a pasture score of 85 out of a possible 100 was predicted to have 16.1 nests/100 ha (95% CI = 11.7–22.1), more than five times the predicted nest density of a heavily grazed field with a pasture score of 58 (3.3 nests/100 ha, 95% CI = 2.2–4.5). Nesting success was positively related to nest-site vegetation density across most levels of grazing intensity studied, supporting our hypothesis that reductions in vegetation caused by grazing would negatively affect nesting success. However, nesting success increased with grazing intensity at the field scale. For example, nesting success for a well-concealed nest in a lightly grazed field was 11.6% (95% CI = 3.6–25.0%), whereas nesting success for a nest with the same level of nest-site vegetation in a heavily grazed field was 33.9% (95% CI = 17.0–51.8%). Across the range of residual cover observed in this study, nests with above-average nest-site vegetation density had nesting success rates that exceeded the levels believed necessary to maintain duck populations. Our findings on complex and previously unreported relationships between grazing, nest density, and nesting success provide useful insights into the management and conservation of ground-nesting grassland birds.

On the convergence of the no response test

The no response test is a new scheme in inverse problems for partial differential equations which was recently proposed in [D. R. Luke and R. Potthast, SIAM J. Appl. Math., 63 (2003), pp. 1292–1312] in the framework of inverse acoustic scattering problems. The main idea of the scheme is to construct special probing waves which are small on some test domain. Then the response for these waves is constructed. If the response is small, the unknown object is assumed to be a subset of the test domain. The response is constructed from one, several, or many particular solutions of the problem under consideration. In this paper, we investigate the convergence of the no response test for the reconstruction information about inclusions D from the Cauchy values of solutions to the Helmholtz equation on an outer surface $\partial\Omega$ with $\overline{D} \subset \Omega$. We show that the one‐wave no response test provides a criterion to test the analytic extensibility of a field. In particular, we investigate the construction of approximations for the set of singular points $N(u)$ of the total fields u from one given pair of Cauchy data. Thus, the no response test solves a particular version of the classical Cauchy problem. Also, if an infinite number of fields is given, we prove that a multifield version of the no response test reconstructs the unknown inclusion D. This is the first convergence analysis which could be achieved for the no response test.

A multiwave range test for obstacle reconstructions with unknown physical properties

We develop a new multiwave version of the range test for shape reconstruction in inverse scattering theory. The range test [R. Potthast, et al., A ‘range test’ for determining scatterers with unknown physical properties, Inverse Problems 19(3) (2003) 533–547] has originally been proposed to obtain knowledge about an unknown scatterer when the far field pattern for only one plane wave is given. Here, we extend the method to the case of multiple waves and show that the full shape of the unknown scatterer can be reconstructed. We further will clarify the relation between the range test methods, the potential method [A. Kirsch, R. Kress, On an integral equation of the first kind in inverse acoustic scattering, in: Inverse Problems (Oberwolfach, 1986), Internationale Schriftenreihe zur Numerischen Mathematik, vol. 77, Birkhäuser, Basel, 1986, pp. 93–102] and the singular sources method [R. Potthast, Point sources and multipoles in inverse scattering theory, Habilitation Thesis, Göttingen, 1999]. In particular, we propose a new version of the Kirsch–Kress method using the range test and a new approach to the singular sources method based on the range test and potential method. Numerical examples of reconstructions for all four methods are provided.

Construction management research: a field of application

Research in construction management is diverse in content and in quality. There is much to be learned from more fundamental disciplines. Construction is a sub-set of human experience rather than a completely separate phenomenon. Therefore, it is likely that there are few problems in construction requiring the invention of a completely new theory. If construction researchers base their work only on that of other construction researchers, our academic community will become less relevant to the world at large. The theories that we develop or test must be of wider applicability to be of any real interest. In undertaking research, researchers learn a lot about themselves. Perhaps the only difference between research and education is that if we are learning about something which no-one else knows, then it is research, otherwise it is education. Self-awareness of this will help to reduce the chances of publishing work which only reveals a researcher’s own learning curve. Scientific method is not as simplistic as non-scientists claim and is the only real way of overcoming methodological weaknesses in our work. The reporting of research may convey the false impression that it is undertaken in the sequence in which it is written. Construction is not so unique and special as to require a completely different set of methods from other fields of enquiry. Until our research is reported in mainstream journals and conferences, there is little chance that we will influence the wider academic community and a concomitant danger that it will become irrelevant. The most useful insights will come from research which challenges the current orthodoxy rather than research which merely reports it.

Construction research: a field of application

Research in construction management is diverse in content and in quality. There is much to be learned from more fundamental disciplines. Construction is a sub-set of human experience rather than a completely separate phenomenon. Therefore, it is likely that there are few problems in construction requiring the invention of a completely new theory. If construction researchers base their work only on that of other construction researchers, our academic community will become less relevant to the world at large. The theories that we develop or test must be of wider applicability to be of any real interest. In undertaking research, researchers learn a lot about themselves. Perhaps the only difference between research and education is that if we are learning about something which no-one else knows, then it is research, otherwise it is education. Self-awareness of this will help to reduce the chances of publishing work which only reveals a researcher’s own learning curve. Scientific method is not as simplistic as non-scientists claim and is the only real way of overcoming methodological weaknesses in our work. The reporting of research may convey the false impression that it is undertaken in the sequence in which it is written. Construction is not so unique and special as to require a completely different set of methods from other fields of enquiry. Until our research is reported in mainstream journals and conferences, there is little chance that we will influence the wider academic community and a concomitant danger that it will become irrelevant. The most useful insights will come from research which challenges the current orthodoxy rather than research which merely reports it.

Using idealized snow forcing to test teleconnections with the Indian summer monsoon in the Hadley Centre GCM

Anomalous heavy snow during winter or spring has long been regarded as a possible precursor of deficient Indian monsoon rainfall during the subsequent summer. However previous work in this field is inconclusive, in terms of the mechanism that communicates snow anomalies to the monsoon summer, and even the region from which snow has the most impact. In this study we explore these issues in coupled and atmosphere-only versions of the Hadley Centre model. A 1050-year control integration of the HadCM3 coupled model, which well represents the seasonal cycle of snow cover over the Eurasian continent, is analysed and shows evidence for weakened monsoons being preceded by strong snow forcing (in the absence of ENSO) over either the Himalaya/Tibetan Plateau or north/west Eurasia regions. However, empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of springtime interannual variability in snow depth shows the leading mode to have opposite signs between these two regions, suggesting that competing mechanisms may be possible. To determine the dominant region, ensemble integrations are carried out using HadAM3, the atmospheric component of HadCM3, and a variety of anomalous snow forcing initial conditions obtained from the control integration of the coupled model. Forcings are applied during spring in separate experiments over the Himalaya/Tibetan Plateau and north/west Eurasia regions, in conjunction with climatological SSTs in order to avoid the direct effects of ENSO. With the aid of idealized forcing conditions in sensitivity tests, we demonstrate that forcing from the Himalaya region is dominant in this model via a Blanford-type mechanism involving reduced surface sensible heat and longwave fluxes, reduced heating of the troposphere over the Tibetan Plateau and consequently a reduced meridional tropospheric temperature gradient which weakens the monsoon during early summer. Snow albedo is shown to be key to the mechanism, explaining around 50% of the perturbation in sensible heating over the Tibetan Plateau, and accounting for the majority of cooling through the troposphere.

Ground deformation at Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat during 1998-2000 measured by radar interferometry and GPS

We examine the motion of the ground surface on the Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat between 1998 and 2000 using radar interferometry (InSAR). To minimise the effects of variable atmospheric water vapour on the InSAR measurements we use independently-derived measurements of the radar path delay from six continuous GPS receivers. The surfaces providing a measurable inter-ferometric signal are those on pyroclastic flow deposits, mainly emplaced in 1997. Three types of surface motion can be discriminated. Firstly, the surfaces of thick, valley-filling deposits subsided at rates of 150-120 mm/year in the year after emplacement to 50-30 mm/year two years later. This must be due to contraction and settling effects during cooling. The second type is the near-field motion localised within about one kilometre of the dome. Both subsidence and uplift events are seen and though the former could be due to surface gravitational effects, the latter may reflect shallow (< 1 km) pressurisation effects within the conduit/dome. Far-field motions of the surface away from the deeply buried valleys are interpreted as crustal strains. Because the flux of magma to the surface stopped from March 1998 to November 1999 and then resumed from November 1999 through 2000, we use InSAR data from these two periods to test the crustal strain behaviour of three models of magma supply: open, depleting and unbalanced. The InSAR observations of strain gradients of 75-80 mm/year/krn uplift during the period of quiescence on the western side of the volcano are consistent with an unbalanced model in which magma supply into a crustal magma chamber continues during quiescence, raising chamber pressure that is then released upon resumption of effusion. GPS motion vectors agree qualitatively with the InSAR displacements but are of smaller magnitude. The discrepancy may be due to inaccurate compensation for atmospheric delays in the InSAR data. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Impact of coronal mass ejections, interchange reconnection, and disconnection on heliospheric magnetic field strength

An update of Owens et al. (2008) shows that the relationship between the coronal mass ejection (CME) rate and the heliospheric magnetic field strength predicts a field floor of less than 4 nT at 1 AU. This implies that the record low values measured during this solar minimum do not necessarily contradict the idea that open flux is conserved. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that CMEs add flux to the heliosphere and interchange reconnection between open flux and closed CME loops subtracts flux. An existing model embracing this hypothesis, however, overestimates flux during the current minimum, even though the CME rate has been low. The discrepancy calls for reasonable changes in model assumptions.