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Using the InCites tool of Thomson Reuters, this study compares normalized citation impact values calculated for China, Japan, France, Germany, United States, and the UK throughout the time period from 1981 to 2010. InCites offers a unique opportunity to study the normalized citation impacts of countries using (i) a long publication window (1981 to 2010), (ii) a differentiation in (broad or more narrow) subject areas, and (iii) allowing for the use of statistical procedures in order to obtain an insightful investigation of national citation trends across the years. Using four broad categories, our results show significantly increasing trends in citation impact values for France, the UK, and especially Germany across the last thirty years in all areas. The citation impact of papers from China is still at a relatively low level (mostly below the world average), but the country follows an increasing trend line. The USA exhibits a stable pattern of high citation impact values across the years. With small impact differences between the publication years, the US trend is increasing in engineering and technology but decreasing in medical and health sciences as well as in agricultural sciences. Similar to the USA, Japan follows increasing as well as decreasing trends in different subject areas, but the variability across the years is small. In most of the years, papers from Japan perform below or approximately at the world average in each subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of any robotic system requires input from engineers from a variety of technical fields. This paper describes a project-based module, Biologically-Inspired Robotics, that is offered to Electronics and Computer Science students at the University of Southampton, U.K. The overall objective of the module is for student groups to investigate the interface between robotics and biology and develop a system (either hardware or software) to illustrate biological principles. This paper discusses the details of the implementation and delivery of the module, together with evaluation feedback. A number of the robotic systems developed by project groups are presented in order to illustrate the diversity and quality of the systems that have been developed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: In this paper we discuss the redesign of a support management system deployed in a small and medium sized enterprise (SME) in the UK. The original system was not fulfilling its needs as it had not captured work practices in a way that was recognizable to the users. The advantages of the redesign included: improved usefulness; improved efficiency and productivity; reduced learning time; improved usability; and increased acceptance among users. The system is used to support complex and distributed cooperative activities taking place in an SME. We evaluated the current system and analysed work practices using a user-centred design and evaluation philosophy. In this paper we discuss how user needs are incorporated into the enhanced design of the support management system. The user-centred design techniques used in this research include interviews, questionnaires, observations and user tests. We present comparative evaluation results that show significant improvement in performance of user tasks using the redesigned support management system. The contribution of this paper is the presentation of a case study to show how a user-centred design and evaluation philosophy can lead to better requirements capture resulting in systems that more accurately capture the users’ conceptual models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to enrich our understanding of the history and substance of cybernetics. It reviews the work of three British cyberneticians — W. Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask — paying attention particularly to the materiality of their practice — the strange and fascinating devices and systems that were at the heart of their work — and to the worldly projects they pursued — scientific, technological, artistic, organizational, political and spiritual. Connections are drawn between cybernetics and recent theoretical work in science and technology studies, in the hope of illuminating key features of both. The paper concludes by suggesting that the antidisciplinary impulse of contemporary science studies might find inspiration in the work of cyberneticians — that theory does not have to remain confined to the realm of theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey using a scenario-based questionnaire format has provided insight into the perceptions of U.K academics who teach programming on computing courses. This survey across various higher education (HE) institutions investigates what academics feel constitutes source-code plagiarism in an undergraduate context. Academics' responses on issues surrounding source-code reuse and acknowledgement are discussed. A general consensus exists among academics that a "zero tolerance" plagiarism policy is appropriate; however, some issues concerning source-code reuse and acknowledgement raised controversial responses. This paper discusses the most important findings from the survey and proposes a definition of what can constitute source-code plagiarism from the perspective of U.K. academics who teach programming on computing courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]