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BackgroundMitral valve surgery (MVS) is an effective treatment for mitral valve diseases. There is a lack of reliable personalized risk prediction models for mortality in patients undergoing mitral valve surgery. Our aim was to develop a risk stratification system to predict all-cause mortality in patients after mitral valve surgery.MethodsDifferent machine learning models for the prediction of all-cause mortality were trained on a derivation cohort of 1,883 patients undergoing mitral valve surgery [split into a training cohort (70%) and internal validation cohort (30%)] to predict all-cause mortality. Forty-five clinical variables routinely evaluated at discharge were used to train the models. The best performance model (PRIME score) was tested in an externally validated cohort of 220 patients undergoing mitral valve surgery. The model performance was evaluated according to the area under the curve (AUC). Net reclassification improvement (NRI) and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) were compared with existing risk strategies.ResultsAfter a median follow-up of 2 years, there were 133 (7.063%) deaths in the derivation cohort and 17 (7.727%) deaths in the validation cohort. The PRIME score showed an AUC of 0.902 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.849–0.956) in the internal validation cohort and 0.873 (95% CI: 0.769–0.977) in the external validation cohort. In the external validation cohort, the performance of the PRIME score was significantly improved compared with that of the existing EuroSCORE II (NRI = 0.550, [95% CI 0.001–1.099], P = 0.049, IDI = 0.485, [95% CI 0.230–0.741], P < 0.001).ConclusionMachine learning-based model (the PRIME score) that integrate clinical, demographic, imaging, and laboratory features demonstrated superior performance for the prediction of mortality patients after mitral valve surgery compared with the traditional risk model EuroSCORE II.Clinical Trial Registration[http://www.clinicaltrials.gov], identifier [NCT05141292].

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to adopt an assemblage theory lens to examine the socio-material forces shaping the development of an infrastructure for the recovery of archived historical marine weather records for use in contemporary climate data sets.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted a data journeys approach to research design, conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with climate scientists, citizen scientists and a climate historian who were engaged at key sites across the journey of data from historical record to the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set database. Interview data were complemented by further qualitative data collected via observations of working practices, a digital ethnography of citizen scientists’ online forums, and documentation relevant to the circulation and governance of climate data across emergent data infrastructures. Data were thematically analysed (Ryan and Bernard, 2003), with themes being informed primarily by the theoretical framework.FindingsThe authors identify and critically examine key points of friction in the constitution of the data recovery infrastructure and the circulation of data through it, and identify the reflexive and adaptive nature of the beliefs and practices fostered by influential actors within the assemblage in order to progress efforts to build an infrastructure despite significant challenges. The authors conclude by addressing possible limitations of some of these adaptive practices within the context of the early twenty-first century neoliberal state, and in light of current debates about data justice.Originality/valueThe paper draws upon original empirical data and a novel theoretical framework that draws together Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory with key concepts from the field of critical data studies (data journeys, data friction and data assemblage) to illuminate the socio-material constitution of the data recovery infrastructure within the context of the early twenty-first century neoliberal state.

Turkey provides EMI researchers with a unique context that has roots of teaching academic subjects formally through languages other than Turkish (L1), going as far back as the mid-19th century. To date, however, lecturers and students still face challenges when teaching/learning through a language other than their L1. This chapter describes a project conducted in Turkey to promote collaboration between content subject teachers and language teachers in EMI classrooms. Language teachers from the English language preparatory programmes and content-subject teachers from disciplinary departments were provided with a Collaborative Lesson Planning Tool in facilitating collaboration between content and language teaching in EMI classrooms. Reflective interviews were conducted to evaluate the usefulness of the collaboration tool. The teachers discussed factors that affected the effectiveness of joint collaboration between content and language teaching and their challenges in teaching at Preparatory Year Programme.

Fierce competition exists between most stem-twining lianas and the trunks of host trees. However

Introduction: This study aims to establish normal reference values of peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) for cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in Chinese adults using cardiorespiratory exercise testing (CPET). Methods: A cross-sectional study was done in four communities, two in the North (Beijing) and two in the South (Hezhou, Guangxi) of China from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2018, with one urban and one rural in each region. Out of 1642 participants screened, 1114 were eligible and completed CPET using a cycle ergometer (Ergosana320F) without abnormal ECG and were included in the analysis. The 2nd and 98th percentiles of V·O2peak were used as the lower and upper limits of the normal reference values. Results: Significant difference in mean V·O2peak was shown between men (27.0 mL·min−1·kg−1) and women (23.7 mL·min−1·kg−1). The mean V·O2peak decreased with age in both sexes, from 35.8 mL·min−1·kg−1 in age 20–29 years to 20.5 mL·min−1·kg−1 in 70–79 years in men and from 29.2 mL·min−1·kg−1 to 17.0 mL·min−1·kg−1 in women. Thus, the age- and sex-specific normal reference values of V·O2peak were presented for each 10-year age group by men and women separately. Conclusions: This first community-based study in China provides age- and sex-specific normal references of V·O2peak as a measure of CRF in Chinese adults, which differed significantly from those established in Western populations. Future studies with national representative samples should be warranted.

Olive trees, which are planted widely in China, are economically significant. Timely and accurate acquisition of olive tree crown information is vital in monitoring olive tree growth and accurately predicting its fruit yield. The advent of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and deep learning (DL) provides an opportunity for rapid monitoring parameters of the olive tree crown. In this study, we propose a method of automatically extracting olive crown information (crown number and area of olive tree), combining visible-light images captured by consumer UAV and a new deep learning model, U2-Net, with a deeply nested structure. Firstly, a data set of an olive tree crown (OTC) images was constructed, which was further processed by the ESRGAN model to enhance the image resolution and was augmented (geometric transformation and spectral transformation) to enlarge the data set to increase the generalization ability of the model. Secondly, four typical subareas (A–D) in the study area were selected to evaluate the performance of the U2-Net model in olive crown extraction in different scenarios, and the U2-Net model was compared with three current mainstream deep learning models (i.e., HRNet, U-Net, and DeepLabv3+) in remote sensing image segmentation effect. The results showed that the U2-Net model achieved high accuracy in the extraction of tree crown numbers in the four subareas with a mean of intersection over union (IoU), overall accuracy (OA), and F1-Score of 92.27%, 95.19%, and 95.95%, respectively. Compared with the other three models, the IoU, OA, and F1-Score of the U2-Net model increased by 14.03–23.97 percentage points, 7.57–12.85 percentage points, and 8.15–14.78 percentage points, respectively. In addition, the U2-Net model had a high consistency between the predicted and measured area of the olive crown, and compared with the other three deep learning models, it had a lower error rate with a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 4.78, magnitude of relative error (MRE) of 14.27%, and a coefficient of determination (R2) higher than 0.93 in all four subareas, suggesting that the U2-Net model extracted the best crown profile integrity and was most consistent with the actual situation. This study indicates that the method combining UVA RGB images with the U2-Net model can provide a highly accurate and robust extraction result for olive tree crowns and is helpful in the dynamic monitoring and management of orchard trees.

This article adopts a feminist perspective to examine masculine work culture in the development of free/libre open source software. The authors draw on a case study of ‘the Heidi Bug’ discovered during the development of the Mozilla Firefox web browser to examine how 'gendered talk' was (en)-acted to facilitate 'bricolage' in an online work environment. Such gendered talks contain cultural references familiar to male developers. Though seemingly innocuous, such acts could be seen as a performance of gender that simply reflects the hegemonic heterosexual masculine culture manifested in online virtual work space. The virtual work space therefore can be exclusive to those who shared the cultural references. Although it may not necessarily be ignorance or insensitivity of male developers, a more gender-balanced, women-friendly and inclusive work place certainly would benefit from a more diverse environment. This paper highlights the gendered aspect of software development through examining the language use and mainstream 'bricolage' practice, and establishes a compelling ground for enlarging the talent pool to include more women and integrating gender ethics (e.g., raising awareness of sensitive languages and design approaches) into computer ethics education.

SnS nanoparticles (SnS NPs) electrostatically anchored on a 3D N-doped graphene (3DNG) network exhibit the best cycling performance reported so far for SnS-based anodes. The stronger affinity of 3DNG to SnS NPs and to the discharge product compared to pure graphene is the fundamental reason for achieving a stable electrode architecture during cycling.

The interaction of CO molecules adsorbed on Au–Rh bimetallic nanoclusters supported on an ordered thin film of Al2O3/NiAl(100) was studied, primarily with infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy and density-functional-theory calculations. The bimetallic clusters, grown by sequential deposition of vapor Au and Rh onto the Al2O3/NiAl(100) surface at 300 K, had diameters of 1.2–3.0 nm and heights of 0.4–1.2 nm; they had a fcc phase and grew in the orientation (100). The infrared absorption line for CO adsorbed on Au sites (COAu) of the bimetallic clusters at 110 K was narrow (centered about 2100 cm−1) and intense, which results largely from the small adsorption energy and large dipole moment of COAu, whereas that on Rh sites (CORh) was broad (1880–2100 cm−1) and weak, which contrasts also with its counterpart on pure Rh clusters. Upon increasing the temperature to remove COAu, the absorption line for CORh narrowed and the intensity increased; at 300 K, the line width decreased by 30–40% and the absorption intensity was enhanced by 40–60%. The former arose, after the desorption of COAu, from a decreased CO–CO interaction and inhomogeneous broadening; the latter corresponded to an enhanced dipole moment of CORh, attributed to a promoted charge transfer from the CORh-binding Rh to the neighboring Au and consequently increased charge donated from CORh to Rh. The varied IR absorption for adsorbed CO can thus serve as an indicator for the charge transfer between the components in bimetallic clusters.

Self-organized alloying of Au with Rh in nanoclusters on an ordered thin film of Al2O3/NiAl(100) was investigated via various surface probe techniques under ultrahigh-vacuum conditions and calculations based on density-functional theory. The bimetallic clusters were formed on the sequential deposition of vapors of Au and Rh onto Al2O3/NiAl(100) at 300 K. The formation was more effective on the oxide seeded with Rh, since all post-deposited Au joined the pregrown Rh clusters; for metal deposition in the reverse order, some separate Rh clusters were formed. The contrasting behavior is rationalized through the easier nucleation of Rh on the oxide surface, due to the stronger Rh-oxide and Rh-Rh bonds. The alloying in the clusters proceeded, regardless of the order of metal deposition, toward a specific structure: an fcc phase, (100) orientation and Rh core-Au shell structure. The orientation, structural ordering and lattice parameters of the Au-Rh bimetallic clusters resembled Rh clusters, rather than Au clusters, on Al2O3/NiAl(100), even with Rh in a minor proportion. The Rh-predominated core-shell structuring corresponds to the binding energies in the order Rh-Rh > Rh-Au > Au-Au. The core-shell segregation, although active, was somewhat kinetically hindered, since elevating the sample temperature induced further encapsulation of Rh. The bimetallic clusters became thermally unstable above 500 K, for which both Rh and Au atoms began to diffuse into the substrate. Moreover, the electronic structures of surface elements on the bimetallic clusters, controlled by both structural and electronic effects, show a promising reactivity.

Sodium ion batteries (SIBs) have been considered a promising alternative to lithium ion batteries for large-scale energy storage. However, their inferior electrochemical performances, especially cyclability, become the major challenge for further development of SIBs. Large volume change and sluggish diffusion kinetics are generally considered to be responsible for the fast capacity degradation. Here we report the strong chemical bonding of nanostructured Sb2S3 on sulfur-doped graphene sheets (Sb2S3/SGS) that enables a stable capacity retention of 83% for 900 cycles with high capacities and excellent rate performances. To the best of our knowledge, the cycling performance of the Sb2S3/SGS composite is superior to those reported for any other Sb-based materials for SIBs. Computational calculations demonstrate that sulfur-doped graphene (SGS) has a stronger affinity for Sb2S3 and the discharge products than pure graphene, resulting in a robust composite architecture for outstanding cycling stability. Our stu...

This paper investigates the embodied performance of ‘doing citizen science’. It examines how ‘citizen scientists’ produce scientif c data using the resources available to them, and how their socio-technical practices and emotions impact the construction of a crowdsourced data infrastructure. We found that conducting citizen science is highly emotional and experiential, but these individual experiences and feelings tend to get lost or become invisible when user-contributed data are aggregated and integrated into a big data infrastructure. While new meanings can be extracted from big data sets, the loss of individual emotional and practical elements denotes the loss of data provenance and the marginalisation of individual ef orts, motivations, and local politics, which might lead to disengaged participants, and unsustainable communities of citizen scientists. The challenges of constructing a data infrastructure for crowdsourced data therefore lie in the management of both technical and social issues which are local as well as global.Keywords: crowdsourcing, big data infrastructure, citizen science

The surface structures and compositions of Au-Rh bimetallic nanoclusters on an ordered thin film of Al

Self-organized alloying of Au with Rh in nanoclusters on an ordered thin film of Al

Sodium ion batteries (SIBs) have been considered a promising alternative to lithium ion batteries for large-scale energy storage. However, their inferior electrochemical performances, especially cyclability, become the major challenge for further development of SIBs. Large volume change and sluggish diffusion kinetics are generally considered to be responsible for the fast capacity degradation. Here we report the strong chemical bonding of nanostructured Sb

In this paper, we discuss the development and piloting of a new methodology for illuminating the socio-material constitution of data objects and flows as data move between different sites of practice. The data journeys approach contributes to the development of critical, qualitative methodologies that can address the geographic and temporal scale of emerging knowledge infrastructures, and capture the ‘life of data’ from their initial generation through to re-use in different contexts. We discuss the theoretical development of the data journeys methodology and the application of the approach on a project examining meteorological data on their journey from initial production through to being re-used in climate science and financial markets. We then discuss three key conceptual findings from this project about: (1) the socio-material constitution of digital data objects, (2) ‘friction’ in the movement of data through space and time and (3) the mutability of digital data as a material property that contributes to driving the movement of data between different sites of practice.

In this paper we use a case study of a project to create a Web 2.0-based, Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for researchers to share digital resources in order to reflect on the principles and practices for embedding eResearch applications within user communities. In particular, we focus on the software development methodologies and project management techniques adopted by the project team in order to ensure that the project remained responsive to changing user requirements without compromising their capacity to keep the project `on track', i.e. meeting the goals declared in the project proposal within budget and on time. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we describe how the project team, whose members are distributed across multiple sites (and often mobile), exploit a repertoire of coordination mechanisms, communication modes and tools, artefacts and structuring devices as they seek to establish the orderly running of the project while following an agile, user-centred development approach.

Ontologies - a form of structured and logically related knowledge or classification hierarchy embedded in a computer system - are regarded by many scientists as having enormous promise for the consistent use and re-use of data. To realise this promise, however, is not straightforward. In this paper, based on ethnographic observation, we argue that the challenges for ontology building are 'social' as much as they are technical. By this we mean the routine work undertaken in the building process and the problems and difficulties entailed can be understood in terms of the practices of knowledge workers and the practical nature of 'sorting things out'. Getting a better sense of how, in practise, this work gets done gives a sense of the main challenges of building successful ontologies and how this impacts on the design of tool support. In considering the practices of one group in particular, we try to show how, for members, the technical problems of determining what classification structure is appropriate, and what its boundaries might be, depend substantially on assumptions about the 'community' and its interests and purposes. This 'turn to the social' has ramifications for the understanding of ontology building and use. Specifically, 'modelling' approaches to ontology building tell us little about the practical organisation of the work and how this relates to the prospect of successful sharing. Ethnographic enquiry may reveal important issues that are otherwise missed.

By making research content more reusable, and providing a social infrastructure that facilitates sharing, the human aspects of the scholarly knowledge cycle may be accelerated and -time-to-discovery' reduced. We propose that the key to this is the sharing of methods and processes. We present myExperiment, a social web site for discovering, sharing and curating Scientific Workflows and experiment plans, and describe how myExperiment facilitates the management and sharing of research workflows, supports a social model for content curation tailored to the researcher and community, and supports Open Science by exposing content and functionality to the users' tools and applications. Based on this, we introduce the notion of the Research Object-the work objects that are built, transformed and published in the course of scientific experiments-and suggest that by encapsulating methods with results we can achieve research that is more reusable and repeatable and hence rapid and robust. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

This empirical paper shows how free/libre open source software (FLOSS) contributes to mutual and collaborative learning in an educational environment. Unlike proprietary software, FLOSS allows extensive customisation of software to support the needs of local users better. This also allows users to participate more proactively in the development and implementation process of a FLOSS-based system. In this paper, we observes how implementing FLOSS in an Italian high school challenges the conventional relationship between end users themselves (e.g. teachers and students) and that between users and developers. The findings will shed some light on the social aspects of FLOSS-based computerization - including the role of FLOSS in social and organizational change in educational environments and the ways that the social organization of FLOSS are influenced by social forces and social practices.

In this paper, we focused on the study of electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation in a particular anisotropic medium—Infinity-anisotropic (IA) metamaterial. IA metamaterials, which include infinity index-anisotropic and infinity loss-anisotropic metamaterial, have the ability to suppress the diffraction limit of EM wave. Thus the deep subwavelength wave could propagate in the IA metamaterials without diffraction. Through proper design and combination of IA metamaterials, we have successfully realized a subwavelength beam splitter, a subwavelength compressor, as well as a device to transfer irradiation from a line source into multiple directional subwavelength beams. We have performed full-wave simulations to validate our designs and realized the IA metamaterial devices with the multilayer dielectric/metal structure.

Openly accessible data sets (open data) have been recognized as valuable assets for creating business opportunities, revitalizing innovation and transparentizing organizational conducts. Public Service Broadcasters (PSB) such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have been motivated to experiment with open data and new forms of innovation in content making, delivery and audience engagement. Through a case study of the BBC Backstage project, this article examines how such open innovation processes of engaging the public in the reuse and remix of open data were conceived, supported, managed and maintained. The research found that BBC Backstage had played an important role in encouraging and motivating people to reuse and repurpose the open data released by the BBC. New forms of outputs have emerged, as seen in the Data Arts visualization project and the R&DTV clips mashups. The article argues that PSB public value can be co-produced through opening up data sets, encouraging reuse and remix, and building up a network of enthusiastic and capable active audiences, the techno-elites, whose status has been encouraged the open data culture and alike. Lessons learned can help understand the meanings of open data from the PSB perspective, and the implications in media industry thereby foster innovation in future media and creative industries.

Unlike innovation based on a strong professional culture involving close collaboration between professionals in academia and/or corporations, the current Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development entails a global knowledge network, which consists of 1) a heterogeneous community of individuals and organizations who do not necessarily have professional backgrounds in computer science but have developed the competency to understand programming and working in a public domain; 2) corporations. This paper describes the operation of the hybrid form of developing and implementing software, and also identifies several key factors shaping the collaboration between FLOSS firms and the community.

This special issue includes seven articles that make significant contribution to the literature pertaining to knowledge and public policy around Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). Focusing on questions in two themes (i) motivation and organization and (ii) public policy, the articles in this volume develop new analytic models and report on new empirical findings, as an important step in bridging the wide gap that exists in public policy literature around FLOSS. Warning against rhetorical pitfalls that have been prevalent in FLOSS research, this introduction starts with a short history of FLOSS development, continues with a brief thematic literature review and review of the misconceptions surrounding FLOSS, and concludes with a first introduction of the articles that follow.

This is a book review on Trottier, D. (2012). Social media as surveillance: Rethinking visibility in a converging world. Surrey, England: Ashgate. 213 pp.

The surface structures and compositions of Au-Rh bimetallic nanoclusters on an ordered thin film of Al2O3/NiAl(100) were investigated, primarily with infrared reflection absorption spectra and temperature-programmed desorption of CO as a probe molecule under ultrahigh-vacuum conditions and calculations based on density-functional theory. The bimetallic clusters were formed by sequential deposition of vapors of Au and Rh onto Al2O3/NiAl(100) at 300 K. Alloying in the clusters was active and proceeded toward a specific structure-a fcc phase, (100) orientation, and Rh core-Au shell structure, regardless of the order of metal deposition. For Au clusters incorporating deposited Rh, the Au atoms remained at the cluster surface through position exchange and became less coordinated; for deposition in reverse order, deposited Au simply decorated the surfaces of Rh clusters. Both adsorption energy and infrared absorption intensity were enhanced for CO on Au sites of the bimetallic clusters; both of them are associated with the bonding to Rh and also a decreased coordination number of CO-binding Au. These enhancements can thus serve as a fingerprint for alloying and atomic inter-diffusion in similar bimetallic systems.

Lenses and reflectors are common devices in manipulating electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation and are largely utilized in radiation and receiving systems of electromagnetic engineering. The recently proposed significant concept of transformation electromagnetics provided an effective tool to design devices that could control the EM wave with desired ray traces. In this presentation, we will demonstrate several examples of applying the transformation electromagnetics in the design of a novel EM wave lens that could focus EM wave with better resolution than the Abbe-Rayleigh diffraction limit and a planar retrodirective reflector. The design procedures, device performances as well as the consideration of practical realizations will be analyzed.

The concept cosmopolitanism has the potential of becoming one of the most interesting social scientific tools for understanding contemporary social life. Operationalising it however, has proved a difficult task. Here, researchers utilise different single indicators while making claims towards the same theoretical concept. This not only undermines the theoretical complexity immanent in the term cosmopolitanism, but also creates a false intersubjectivity in the field of cosmopolitanism studies. In order to ‘save’ cosmopolitanism from the risk of becoming an ‘empty signifier’ (Skrbis et al. 2004) or a ‘‘free-floating’ discursive geist’ (Holton 2009), in an attempt to address the ‘muddy’ (Calhoun 2008) nature of the concept, this paper presents a methodological blueprint that locates the process of definition in the intersection of the theoretical and the empirical. As such, the proposed methodological way of conduct starts on the conceptual level in order to define the central theoretical tenets included in the cosmopolitan disposition. It then operationalises these claims into indicators that are included in an exploratory analysis of the data set. In conducting a minor quantitative study on ‘digital natives’ in Sweden the method is illustrated as being able to discern manifestations of ‘actually existing cosmopolitanisms’ (Malcomson 1998) and thus avoid the risk of reductionism involved with the use of one-dimensional indicators or pre-existing, less-than-adequate variables in secondary data.

Much user generated content (UGC) is produced or reproduced by volunteers. Many UGC platforms exist nowadays to facilitate the process of co-production. The majority of them, however, show a gender imbalance of their contributors’ communities, including platforms for collecting Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). Causes of this gender imbalance have not yet been elaborated sufficiently. In order to identify some of these factors which influence women’s participation in UGC platforms, case studies were carried out to compare different spatially explicit, spatially implicit, and non-spatial UGC projects. The case study analysis is based on a conceptual framework used to analyse participants’ motivations for contributing VGI in reference to gender. The findings suggest several criteria related to the imbalance of female and male contributors in the field of VGI.

This peer-reviewed chapter advances social science research on text mining and data mining, which are key artificial intelligence technologies applied in the digital humanities. The chapter provides a detailed documentation of an interdisciplinary project conducted by a team consisting of social scientists, linguists and software engineers to develop a set of bespoke text-mining tools for researchers in the humanities. Through looking at the user-participatory development processes of the text-mining tools, this chapter aims to improve our understandings of digital humanities in the context of scholarly research and, from a pragmatist perspective, to highlight its trans-disciplinary potential. The paper both analyses and produces an empirical account of interdisciplinary research practices across the social sciences and humanities. It concludes with a discussion of some methodological and socio-technical challenges of the 'digital humanity' emerging in this shift towards trans-disciplinarity, particularly focusing on the topic of 'interpretative flexibility'. The edited collection, which is interdisciplinary in nature, develops knowledge of how the application of new computational techniques and visualisation technologies in the arts and humanities is resulting in fresh approaches and methodologies for the study of new and traditional corpora. It includes articles from internationally significant scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich. The realisation of this piece has benefited from discussion at the 2009 Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) conference at Bradford, 14–16 January 2009, and the Computational Turn Workshop at Swansea on 9 March 2010, where an earlier version of this paper was presented.

Current debate on women in free/libre open source software (FLOSS) tends to fall into the gender stereotype of men and women when coming across to the gender issue. This article stays away from a reductionism that simplifies the gender issue in the FLOSS community to the level of a fight between men and women. Instead of splitting women from men in the FLOSS development, this analysis helps motivate both men and women to work together, reduce the gender gap and improve the disadvantaged statuses of women and a wider users’ community in the FLOSS development. More importantly, it addresses not only the inequality that women face in computing, but also other inequalities that other users face, mainly emerging from the power relationships between expert and lay person (namely, developer and user) in software design. In so doing, the issue at stake is not only to create a welcome environment for women to join the FLOSS development, but also to come up with a better way of encouraging both sexes to collaborate with each other. This article starts from how FLOSS can make a difference for today’s information society, and present some successful stories of implementing FLOSS in developing countries and rural areas to empower women and the minority. Consequently, it discusses the problem of including more women and the minority in the FLOSS development through deconstructing the myth of the programming skill.

This empirical paper shows how free/libre open source software (FLOSS) contributes to mutual and collaborative learning in an educational environment. However, unlike proprietary software, FLOSS allows extensive customisation of software and supports the needs of local users better. In this paper, we observes how implementing FLOSS in an Italian high school challenges the conventional relationship between end users themselves (e.g. teachers and students) and that between users and developers. The findings will shed some light on the social aspects of FLOSS-based computerization -- including the roles of FLOSS in social and organizational change in educational environments and the ways that the social organization of FLOSS are influenced by social forces and social practices.

Wire bonding has been the most popular interconnection method in semiconductor device packaging. Recently, due to the increasing demand for enhancing the reliability of the device, fine wire diameter and more function property, attention has been focused on failure solution of wire bonding. Au-Al intermetalilic compound formation and associated Kirkendall voids have resulted in wire bond failures. 2N gold alloy wire (Purity: 99%) is recommended to replace 4 N gold wire (Purity: 99.99%) for improving 1st bond failure. Due to palladium-rich layer formation at the gold ball and intermetallic compound, the Pd barrier layer restrain the gold atom not continued move to Al metallization side to avoid crack propagation. However, the gold wire with Pd element cannot overcome the crack propagation or void formation. Slower intermetallic compound property of Cu wire is investigated with thicker Al metalization. This paper describes the characteristics of Cu-Al amd Au-Al inermetallic compounds and characterizes the diffenece in the intermetallic compound growth between Au-Al and Cu-Al for thicker Al metallization (~5um).

Current debate on women in free/libre open source software (FLOSS) tends to fall into the gender stereotype of men and women when coming across to the gender issue. This article stays away from a reductionism that simplifies the gender issue in the FLOSS community to the level of a fight between men and women. Instead of splitting women from men in the FLOSS development, this analysis helps motivate both men and women to work together, reduce the gender gap and improve the disadvantaged statuses of women and a wider users’ community in the FLOSS development. More importantly, it addresses not only the inequality that women face in computing, but also other inequalities that other users face, mainly emerging from the power relationships between expert and lay person (namely, developer and user) in software design. In so doing, the issue at stake is not only to create a welcome environment for women to join the FLOSS development, but also to come up with a better way of encouraging both sexes to collaborate with each other. This article starts from how FLOSS can make a difference for today’s information society, and present some successful stories of implementing FLOSS in developing countries and rural areas to empower women and the minority. Consequently, it discusses the problem of including more women and the minority in the FLOSS development through deconstructing the myth of the programming skill.

Free/libre open source software (FLOSS) has become a prominent phenomenon in the ICT field and the wider public domain for the past years. However, according to a FLOSS survey on FLOSS developers in 2002, “women do not play a role in the [FLOSS] development; only 1.1% of the FLOSS sample is female.” (Ghosh, Glott, Krieger, & Robles, 2002). In the mainstream research on FLOSS communities, many researchers also overlook different processes of community-building and diverse experiences of members, and presume a stereotyped male-dominated “hacker community” (e.g., Levy, 1984; Raymond, 2001; Himanen, 2001; Thomas, 2002). Moreover, issues around gender inequality are often ignored and/or muted in the pile of FLOSS studies. Female programmers often are rejected ex/implicitly from the software labour market (Levesque & Wilson 2004). The requirements of female users are not respected and consulted either (European Commission, 2001). This feature is opposite to the FLOSS ideal world where users should be equally treated and embraced (op. cit.). While many researchers endeavour to understand the FLOSS development, few found a gender-biased situation problematic. In short, women are almost invisible in current FLOSS-related literature. Most policies targeting at advocating FLOSS are also gender blind. Thus, this essay highlights the need for increased action to address imbalances between women’s and men’s access to and participation in the FLOSS development in cultural (e.g., chauvinistic and/or gender-biased languages in discussions on mailing lists or in documentations), economic (e.g., unequal salary levels for women and men), political (e.g., male-dominated advocacy environment) and technical (e.g., unbalanced students gender in technical tutorials) spheres. On the other hand, it also emphasises the powerful potential of FLOSS as a vehicle for advancing gender equality in software expertise. FLOSS helps transport knowledge and experience of software engineering through distributing source code together with the binary code almost without any limit. Many FLOSS licences such as the General Public Licence (GPL) also facilitates the flow of information and knowledge. In other words, if appropriately harnessed, FLOSS stands to meaningfully contribute to and mutually reinforce the advancement of effective, more expedited solutions to bridging the gender digital divide. In the end, this article points out that while women in more advanced countries have a better chance of upgrading their ICT skills and knowledge through participating in the FLOSS development, the opportunity is less available for women in the developing world. It is worth noting that although the gender issues raised in this article are widespread, they should not be considered as universally indifferent. Regional specificities in gender agenda in software engineering should be addressed distinctly (UNDP/UNIFEM, 2004).

A common critique on free/libre open source software (FLOSS) is that FLOSS–oriented products, often mutated from or based on parallel works, are not really innovative. FLOSS’ development process and subsequent products (e.g. software packages, maintaining services, or the formation of user groups, etc.) definitely denote a kind of innovation driving our world towards a knowledge–based society. This perspective challenges the conventional notion of innovation in technological and economic arenas from a glocalised perspective. I argue that software development is not solely a matter of technical engineering or economic progress. Rather, it also involves cultural, social and political factors. Through interaction and negotiation, FLOSS innovation is embedded in the translation of problems and knowledge–sharing between user and designer, and between lay and expert. Narratives of Linux users groups (LUGs) show that the influence of local knowledge and tacit skills is very much in evidence in the FLOSS innovation system. Practices in LUGs denote the codification of local knowledge and its translation into more formalised and sophisticated expertise. This raises fundamental questions about whether institutional involvement should continue along its techno–economic route of relying entirely on specialists (programmers) to reach developmental decisions, or whether the process should be made more democratic by allowing a broader range of social interests to have some input into software development. In this paper, I demonstrate the values of local tinkering, soft skills and tacit knowledge in FLOSS innovation. I investigate how locally defined software problems and locally crafted solutions towards the problems are codified and translated into expert knowledge within FLOSS innovation through intense hands–on practices and ongoing debate. The process of translating local knowledge into formal expertise is analysed in light of data collected from the York Linux User Group (YLUG). While FLOSS is gaining unprecedented recognition at an accelerating pace, and more institutional resources are made available, noticeably from national agencies and industry, it is crucial to get a genuine picture of FLOSS development, on which this paper will shed some light.

History shows how communal sharing and problem-solving strengthen software functionality and innovation

Diverse choices and practices shape innovation patterns in software development

We explore some recurring socio-technical problems encountered in the development of infrastructure for sharing and re-using data across sites and social scales for eHealth research. We link these problems to contradictions between underlying assumptions about data as a commodity whose reuse is not compromised when it is extracted from the context in which it has been captured, and the reality of data as entangled with, and constituted through, local practice. To illustrate these problems, we draw on the experiences of a number of HealthGrid projects developing infrastructures for data sharing and reuse, and trace the strategies that have evolved to address them. These experiences problematize the “one size fits all” model initially adopted by HealthGrids, and highlight the need for design and development strategies that are able to engage with local needs and thereby ensure that the technical infrastructure is properly aligned with the human infrastructure it is supposed to support.

We report the growth and characterization of ZnO/ZnTe core/shell nanowire arrays on indium tin oxide. Coating of the ZnTe layer on well-aligned vertical ZnO nanowires has been demonstrated by scanning electron microscope, tunneling electron microscope, X-ray diffraction pattern, photoluminescence, and transmission studies. The ZnO/ZnTe core/shell nanowire arrays were then used as the active layer and carrier transport medium to fabricate a photovoltaic device. The enhanced photocurrent and faster response observed in ZnO/ZnTe, together with the quenching of the UV emission in the PL spectra, indicate that carrier separation in this structure plays an important role in determining their optical response. The results also indicate that core/shell structures can be made into useful photovoltaic devices.