A centralized tool for managing,archiving, and serving point-in-time data in ecological research laboratories

The recent proliferation of software tools that aid researchers in various phases of data tracking and analysis undoubtedly contribute to successful development of increasingly complex and data-intensive scientific investigations. However, the lack of fully integrated solutions to data acquisition and storage, quality assurance/control, visualization, and provenance tracking of heterogeneous temporal data streams collected at numerous geospatial locations continues to occupy a general problem area for scientists and data managers working in the environmental sciences. We present a new Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that allows users to: 1) automate the process of pushing real-time data streams from networks of environmental sensors or other data sources to an electronic data archive; 2) to perform basic data management and quality control tasks; and 3) to publish any subset of the data to existing cyberinfrastructure platforms for global discovery and distribution via the World Wide Web. The approach outlined here supports management of: 1) repeated field observations, 2) data from laboratory analysis of field samples, 3) simulation results, and 4) derived values. We describe how the use of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) Representational State Transfer (REST) methods for data model objects and Resource Query Language (RQL) interfaces respond to a basic problem area in environmental modelling by enabling researchers to integrate an electronic data repository with existing workflows, simulation models, or third-party software.     

PoweRGen: A power-law based generator of RDFS schemas

As the amount of RDF datasets available on the Web has grown significantly over the last years, scalability and performance of Semantic Web (SW) systems are gaining importance. Current RDF benchmarking efforts either consider schema-less RDF datasets or rely on fixed RDFS schemas. In this paper, we present the first RDFS schema generator, termed PoweRGen, which takes into account the features exhibited by real SW schemas. It considers the power-law functions involved in (a) the combined in- and out-degree distribution of the property graph (which captures the domains and ranges of the properties defined in a schema) and (b) the out-degree distribution of the transitive closure (TC) of the subsumption graph (which essentially captures the class hierarchy). The synthetic schemas generated by PoweRGen respect the power-law functions given as input with an accuracy ranging between 89 and 96%, as well as, various morphological characteristics regarding the subsumption hierarchy depth, structure, etc.     

MeDEA: A database evolution architecture with traceability

One of the most important challenges that software engineers (designers, developers) still have to face in their everyday work is the evolution of working database systems. As a step for the solution of this problem in this paper we propose MeDEA, which stands for Metamodel-based Database Evolution Architecture. MeDEA is a generic evolution architecture that allows us to maintain the traceability between the different artifacts involved in any database development process. MeDEA is generic in the sense that it is independent of the particular modeling techniques being used. In order to achieve this, a metamodeling approach has been followed for the development of MeDEA. The other basic characteristic of the architecture is the inclusion of a specific component devoted to storing the translation of conceptual schemas to logical ones. This component, which is one of the most noteworthy contributions of our approach, enables any modification (evolution) realized on a conceptual schema to be traced to the corresponding logical schema, without having to regenerate this schema from scratch, and furthermore to be propagated to the physical and extensional levels.     

Incorporating If...Then...Personality Signatures in Person Perception: Beyond the Person-Situation Dichotomy.

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assimilation for Affiliation and Contrast for Control: Complementary Self-Construals.

People have knowledge about relationships (i.e., relational schemas) that is based on their experiences. Because most people have experience with complementary behavior (interaction partners behaving similarly in terms of affiliation but oppositely in terms of control), they expect complementary behavior in their relationships. Like other beliefs about relationships, expectations of complementarity affect self-construal. The authors provide evidence for complementary self-construal; people assimilate to relevant relationship partners on the affiliation dimension and contrast on the control dimension. Consistent with the proposed role of relationship knowledge in these effects, complementary self-construal was moderated by the familiarity of the target, whether people focused on their relationship with or the appearance of the target, and whether the context was relevant for the interpersonal dimension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"I'm OK but You're Not" and Other Peer-Relational Schemas: Explaining Individual Differences in Children's Social Goals.

This study examined the links among 5th and 6th graders' (279 girls and 310 boys) self- and peer perceptions, social goals, and social behavior. Social goals mediated the effects of self- and peer perceptions on 3 types of behavior: proactive aggression, prosocial behavior, and withdrawal. In addition to their main effects (self-perception predicting variance in agentic goals, peer perception being related to communal goals), self- and peer perception interacted in influencing social goals; for instance, the effects of a positive view of oneself were different in the contexts of a positive versus a negative perception of peers. It is suggested that in order to predict children's social behavior more accurately, researchers should investigate children's dual perceptions of themselves and of their peers--that is, their peer-relational schemas--instead of assessing self-perception and peer perception in isolation from each other. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

基于模式转换的分布式多媒体系统的结构模型

对于分布式多媒体系统,创建合适的结构模型是其重要的研究课题之一。文章在基于模式转换的思想基础上,提出了一种分布式多媒体系统的结构模型,该模型可有效地支持多媒体对象的表现和通信。