Modelling adaptive web applications

Conceptual Modelling approaches for the web need extensions to specify dynamic personalization properties in order to design more powerful web applications. Current approaches provide techniques to support dynamic personalization, usually focused on implementation details. This article presents an extension of the OO-H conceptual modeling approach to address the particulars associated with the design and specification of dynamic personalization. The main benefit is that this specification can be modified without recompile the rest of the application modules. We describe how conventional navigation and presentation diagrams are influenced by personalization properties. In order to model the variable part of the interface logic OO-H has a personalization architecture that leans on a rule engine. Rules are defined based on a User Model and a Reference Model.

Las TIC al servicio del conocimiento avanzado multilingüe: la Biblioteca Digital Plurilingüe del Mediterráneo-IVITRA

Este estudio analiza la importancia de las TIC al servicio de las bibliotecas en general y, en concreto, el potencial de las bibliotecas digitales. En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la importancia de las bibliotecas digitales no sólo como repositorios de contenidos, sino también como centros de creación de conocimiento. Se reflexiona sobre la importancia de la constitución de bibliotecas digitales especializadas en áreas culturales relacionadas y sobre el hecho de que sean multilingües, a fin de preservar los contenidos en sus lenguas originales, al tiempo que debe trabajarse con la traducción multilingüe (de y a muchas lenguas) como herramienta fundamental para la mejora de la difusión y conocimiento del patrimonio que se contiene en tales bibliotecas. En este sentido se explican las características de la Biblioteca Digital Plurilingüe del Mediterráneo-IVITRA.

Sensemaking tools for understanding research literatures:design, implementation and user evaluation

This paper describes the work undertaken in the Scholarly Ontologies Project. The aim of the project has been to develop a computational approach to support scholarly sensemaking, through interpretation and argumentation, enabling researchers to make claims: to describe and debate their view of a document's key contributions and relationships to the literature. The project has investigated the technicalities and practicalities of capturing conceptual relations, within and between conventional documents in terms of abstract ontological structures. In this way, we have developed a new kind of index to distributed digital library systems. This paper reports a case study undertaken to test the sensemaking tools developed by the Scholarly Ontologies project. The tools used were ClaiMapper, which allows the user to sketch argument maps of individual papers and their connections, ClaiMaker, a server on which such models can be stored and saved, which provides interpretative services to assist the querying of argument maps across multiple papers and ClaimFinder, a novice interface to the search services in ClaiMaker.

Ontological Presentation of East-Christian Iconographical Art Domain

In the recent years the East-Christian iconographical art works have been digitized providing a large volume of data. The need for effective classification, indexing and retrieval of iconography repositories was the motivation of the design and development of a systemized ontological structure for description of iconographical art objects. This paper presents the ontology of the East-Christian iconographical art, developed to provide content annotation in the Virtual encyclopedia of Bulgarian iconography multimedia digital library. The ontology’s main classes, relations, facts, rules, and problems appearing during the design and development are described. The paper also presents an application of the ontology for learning analysis on an iconography domain implemented during the SINUS project “Semantic Technologies for Web Services and Technology Enhanced Learning”.

Digital Libraries and Portals Saving National Cultural Heritage (IMI–BAS Experience)

The current research activities of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMI—BAS) include the study and application of knowledge-based methods for the creation, integration and development of multimedia digital libraries with applications in cultural heritage. This report presents IMI-BAS’s developments at the digital library management systems and portals, i.e. the Bulgarian Iconographical Digital Library, the Bulgarian Folklore Digital Library and the Bulgarian Folklore Artery, etc. developed during the several national and international projects: - "Digital Libraries with Multimedia Content and its Application in Bulgarian Cultural Heritage" (contract 8/21.07.2005 between the IMI–BAS, and the State Agency for Information Technologies and Communications; - FP6/IST/P-027451 PROJECT LOGOS "Knowledge-on-Demand for Ubiquitous Learning", EU FP6, IST, Priority 2.4.13 "Strengthening the Integration of the ICT research effort in an Enlarged Europe" - NSF project D-002-189 SINUS "Semantic Technologies for Web Services and Technology Enhanced Learning". - NSF project IO-03-03/2006 ―Development of Digital Libraries and Information Portal with Virtual Exposition "Bulgarian Folklore Heritage". The presented prototypes aims to provide flexible and effective access to the multimedia presentation of the cultural heritage artefacts and collections, maintaining different forms and format of the digitized information content and rich functionality for interaction. The developments are a result of long- standing interests and work in the technological developments in information systems, knowledge processing and content management systems. The current research activities aims at creating innovative solutions for assembling multimedia digital libraries for collaborative use in specific cultural heritage context, maintaining their semantic interoperability and creating new services for dynamic aggregation of their resources, access improvement, personification, intelligent curation of content, and content protection. The investigations are directed towards the development of distributed tools for aggregating heterogeneous content and ensuring semantic compatibility with the European digital library EUROPEANA, thus providing possibilities for pan- European access to rich digitalised collections of Bulgarian cultural heritage.

Bibliotecas digitais em Arquitetura e urbanismo: um estudo sobre a arquitetura da informação digital

The goal of this paper was to search the state of the art from the Digital Libraries in Architecture and Urbanism in the Higher Education Institutions (IES) through conceptualizations and showing the importance of Digital Libraries in the disclosure and easing of information transferring. Questions about digital information architecture, usability, digital preservation and accessibility were approached. The research was made in the websites of Brazilian Universities, firstly to identify the institutions which offered the Architecture and Urbanism course, focusing on postgraduate education. After identifying the offering, the research was done by analyzing the contents, storage and dissemination and access to information, these libraries. It was found that the digital libraries are increasingly and taking part of organizations and educational institutions focusing on the knowledge dissemination releasing digitally information that may be needed for institution or the individual. A monitoring was done over of the physical and computational restructuring of the Board of Studies and Research in Architecture and Urbanism (Câmara de Estudos e Pesquisa em Arquitetura e Urbanismo, CEPAU), from the Architecture and Urbanism Course of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), showing the need of installing a Digital Library to integrate the databases of PPGAU s research groups, which today remain independent, with no interface among themselves. The research chosen area was Architecture and Urbanism, because there is a gap and little documentation about digital libraries in this area

The hybrid library: a view from the UK

This paper aims to provide an overview of digital library devcelopment in the UK, concentrating on the eLib (Electronic Libraries) programme. It also discusses the idea of the Hybrid Library and considers how it fits into current electronic library developments. The paper is divided into the following areas. First, it summarises the background to the eLib programme and discusses some of its preliminary findings. It then discusses the concept of the Hybrid Library, followed by a summary of the of the current eLib (phase 3) projects which include hybrid library development projects. Finally, it identifies a number of common themes between the different projects which are currently being investigated.

The hybrid library: a view from the UK

This paper aims to provide an overview of digital library development in the UK, concentrating on the eLib (Electronic Libraries) programme. It also discusses the idea of the Hybrid Library and considers how it fits into current electronic library developments. The paper is divided into the following areas. First, it summarises the background to the eLib programme and discusses some of its preliminary findings. It then discusses the concept of the Hybrid Library, followed by a summary of the of the current eLib (phase 3) projects which include hybrid library development projects. Finally, it identifies a number of common themes between the different projects which are currently being investigated.

Bibliotecas digitais em Arquitetura e urbanismo: um estudo sobre a arquitetura da informação digital

The goal of this paper was to search the state of the art from the Digital Libraries in Architecture and Urbanism in the Higher Education Institutions (IES) through conceptualizations and showing the importance of Digital Libraries in the disclosure and easing of information transferring. Questions about digital information architecture, usability, digital preservation and accessibility were approached. The research was made in the websites of Brazilian Universities, firstly to identify the institutions which offered the Architecture and Urbanism course, focusing on postgraduate education. After identifying the offering, the research was done by analyzing the contents, storage and dissemination and access to information, these libraries. It was found that the digital libraries are increasingly and taking part of organizations and educational institutions focusing on the knowledge dissemination releasing digitally information that may be needed for institution or the individual. A monitoring was done over of the physical and computational restructuring of the Board of Studies and Research in Architecture and Urbanism (Câmara de Estudos e Pesquisa em Arquitetura e Urbanismo, CEPAU), from the Architecture and Urbanism Course of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), showing the need of installing a Digital Library to integrate the databases of PPGAU s research groups, which today remain independent, with no interface among themselves. The research chosen area was Architecture and Urbanism, because there is a gap and little documentation about digital libraries in this area

Performance analysis of Java APIS for XML processing

Over time, XML markup language has acquired a considerable importance in applications development, standards definition and in the representation of large volumes of data, such as databases. Today, processing XML documents in a short period of time is a critical activity in a large range of applications, which imposes choosing the most appropriate mechanism to parse XML documents quickly and efficiently. When using a programming language for XML processing, such as Java, it becomes necessary to use effective mechanisms, e.g. APIs, which allow reading and processing of large documents in appropriated manners. This paper presents a performance study of the main existing Java APIs that deal with XML documents, in order to identify the most suitable one for processing large XML files.

An approach for automated service selection and ranking using services choreography

In today’s highly competitive market, it is critical to provide customers services with a high level of configuration to answer their business needs. Knowing in advance the performance associated with a specific choreography of services (e.g., by taking into account the expected results of each component service) represents an important asset that allows businesses to provide a global service tailored to customers’ specific requests. This research work aims at advancing the state-of-the-art in this area by proposing an approach for service selection and ranking using services choreography, predicting the behavior of the services considering customers’ requirements and preferences, business process constraints and characteristics of the execution environment.

6D Visual Odometry with Dense Probabilistic Egomotion Estimation

Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications, 361-365, 2013, Barcelona, Spain

Dynamic group formation in mobile computer supported collaborative learning environment

Forming suitable learning groups is one of the factors that determine the efficiency of collaborative learning activities. However, only a few studies were carried out to address this problem in the mobile learning environments. In this paper, we propose a new approach for an automatic, customized, and dynamic group formation in Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (MCSCL) contexts. The proposed solution is based on the combination of three types of grouping criteria: learner’s personal characteristics, learner’s behaviours, and context information. The instructors can freely select the type, the number, and the weight of grouping criteria, together with other settings such as the number, the size, and the type of learning groups (homogeneous or heterogeneous). Apart from a grouping mechanism, the proposed approach represents a flexible tool to control each learner, and to manage the learning processes from the beginning to the end of collaborative learning activities. In order to evaluate the quality of the implemented group formation algorithm, we compare its Average Intra-cluster Distance (AID) with the one of a random group formation method. The results show a higher effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in forming homogenous and heterogeneous groups compared to the random method.

How collaboration could contribute to make Catalan journals visible on the Internet?

Cooperation between libraries is a universal language spoken in different dialects. In 1996 the libraries of the state-funded universities and the National Library of Catalonia (Spain) formed the Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia (CBUC) to act as a channel for cooperation. The organization and activities of CBUC are an example of how this universal language has been adapted to the specific characteristics of the Libraries of Catalonia. Catalonia is an autonomous region of Spain with 7 million inhabitants with its own language, history and traditions and with a strong feeling of own identity that facilitates the cooperation. Thanks to this (and also to the hard work of the member libraries), since then, CBUC has created a union catalogue, an interlibrary lending program, the Digital Library of Catalonia, a cooperative store, different cooperatives repositories and other cooperation programs. One of these cooperatives repositories is RACO (Catalan Journals in Open Access, www.raco.cat) where can be consulted, in open access, the full-text articles of scientific, cultural and scholar Catalan journals. The main purpose of RACO is to increase the visibility and searches of the journals included and to spread the scientific and academic production published in Catalonia. This purpose makes specific in three aims: encourage the electronic edition of Catalan journals; be the interface that allows the whole search of all the journals and provide the instruments for its preservation. There are currently 244 journals in RACO, that includes more than 85.000 articles (80% in OA) from 50 publishing institutions. Since it got into operation it has had more than 4 millions of queries. These 244 journals offer the full-text of all the published issues. Nevertheless, some journal can have a delay between the introduction of the table of contents and the full-text for the recent issues. From 2005 we have a plan of retrospective digitization that has allowed to digitize more than 350.000 pages of back issues. The RACO repository works with the open source program OJS (Open Journal Systems, http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) and uses Dublin Core Metadata and the interoperability protocol created by Open Archives Initiative (OAI) which allows to increase the visibility of the articles published in journals offering oneself together with other international repositories.

Globalization and international relations: the Olympic Movement and European Integration

Essay elaborated by Shaelyne Johnson, undergraduate student of Global Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara, during her internship at CEO-UAB for the academic course 2008/2009. She compares the organisational structure, goals and objectives of the institutions in the Olympic Movement and the European Integration, in order to find connections between both movements which were caused by globalization. The paper begins with an introduction of the changing world nowadays, followed by an overview on the structural similarities in the historical unfolding between these two parallel movements and, before concluding, new means for international relations are considered. This document is available in English through the digital library at the CEO-UAB Portal of Olympic Studies and the digital repository RECERCAT.