ERCIM News 77
April 2009
Special theme Future Internet Technology
Guest editors François Baccelli (INRIA and École Normale Supérieure) and Jon Crowcroft (University of Cambridge)
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by Annette Kik and Gunnar Klau
What does a disease like lymph cancer have in common with city heating? This unusual association popped up when CWI researcher Gunnar Klau discussed his work with a fellow researcher. Klau now exploits maths originally developed for optimizing heating networks to analyse data from cancer patients. His method appears to be faster and better than previous ones, and it is hoped that his results will help doctors in understanding the disease and in the end contribute to the quest for new and better medicines.
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by Jiří Šmerda and Radka Findeisová
A group at Masaryk University has developed a method that creates comparable statistical reports on the use of heterogeneous digital libraries. It achieves this by analysing network traffic to selected digital library repositories. Such statistical reports are crucial, particularly to aid institutions in evaluating and optimizing their digital library portfolios.
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by Stefano Baccianella, Andrea Esuli and Fabrizio Sebastiani
Researchers from ISTI-CNR, Pisa, are working on an automatic rating system for online product reviews based on an analysis of their textual content.
Online product reviews are now available on a variety of Web sites, and are being used by consumers with increasing frequency in order to make purchase decisions between competing products. For example, according to a study performed on TripAdvisor (one of the most popular online review sites for tourism-related activities) of users of the TripAdvisor online booking system, 97.7% are influenced by other travellers' reviews, and of those, 77.9% use the reviews as an aid in choosing the best place to stay.
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by Harry Rudin
For well over two years, it has been hoped that the international investigation known as the Interphone Study would shed much-needed light on the question of whether mobile phone usage is a threat to our health. While the final results are not yet in, an excellent evaluation of the current status of the study has just been published. The indications are that if there are health dangers, they likely come from intensive, long-term use.
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by Letizia Jaccheri
The Open Wall is a computer-based art installation developed by students, researchers and artists. The Open Wall enables its developers and observers to engage in dialogue that leads to increased understanding about creativity, cooperation, openness and authorship of software-intensive processes and content.
The SArt project is conducted by the software engineering group in the Department of Computer Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. We study the intersection of software and art in order to improve our knowledge of creativity, cooperation, openness and authorship in software-intensive processes and content. The Open Wall project is one of SArt's projects.
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by Gerhard Chroust, Karin Rainer and Markus Roth
The importance of preparedness against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) dangers is growing immanently. SimRad.NBC generates the foundation for a user- and practice-oriented simulation and communication tool for first responders in such emergency scenarios.
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by Donatella Castelli and Stephanie Parker
What is playing an increasingly central role in the way we communicate, deal with information, learn, conduct commerce, work, deliver and use government services, carry out research, and practise and benefit from health care? The answer is: digital libraries.