John Swales' 3 moves formula for paper introduction and background

"
Move 1: Establishing a territory
1.Claiming centrality and/or
2.Making topic generalizations and/or
3.Reviewing items of previous research

Move 2: Establishing a niche
1.Counter-claiming or
2.Indicating a gap or
3.Question-raising or
4.Continuing a tradition

Move 3: Occupying the niche
1.Outlining purposes or
2.Announcing present research
3.Announcing principle findings
4.Indicating Research article structure
"

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Swalesian-Introduction

via Joana, via Luísa C. Thanks! :)

Google Scholar making new connections

Scholar Updates: Making New Connections - Google Scholar Blog: We analyze your articles (as identified in your Scholar profile), scan the entire web looking for new articles relevant to your research, and then show you the most relevant articles when you visit Scholar. We determine relevance using a statistical model that incorporates what your work is about, the citation graph between articles, the fact that interests can change over time, and the authors you work with and cite.

Stanford researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism

Stanford researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism: Stanford researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism A mammoth effort has produced a complete computational model of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, opening the door for biological computer-aided design.

Getting to the Bottom of Statistics

Getting to the Bottom of Statistics – Technische Universitat Darmstadt: Computer scientists at the TU Darmstadt have developed software that, aided by linked open data, i.e., enormous collections of semantically linked data accessible on the Internet, discovers correlations and regularities in statistics and formulates hypotheses regarding its interpretation

Writing research papers

Here is a rule of thumb:

The first draft of a scientific paper, including main results, should be written at least 1 month before the submission deadline. This is how long it will take to make the paper just right!

A good paper

A really good paper is one that sparks new ideas in the reader's mind about his own work

Joana Paulo Pardal

Deb Roy

I attended Deb Roy's talk at Interspeech 2009 about the Human Speechome project.

Deb Roy filmed the first 4 years of life of his newborn child at home, 24/7. From the ceiling, using state-of-the-art technology.


I was very impressed by the presentation. The corpus is a very significant contribution and it highlights the importance of studying complex phenomena from actual data. The data visualization techniques are also very important to making sense of so much data.

I was also happy to see that significant privacy issues of the project were satisfactorily handled. However, I consider it too close to some ethical borderlines that should not be crossed.

Work proposal layout

This is an interesting way to present a work plan in a dissertation:
"
Proposed work item
Completed work item
On-going work item

Goal, related publications

Hypothesis - method, expected outcome, intuition
"

--
Credit for this idea goes to Mihai Rotaru's PhD thesis proposal.
And to Joana for bringing my attention to it.

Propostas de Mestrados / MSc proposals

Estamos mais uma vez na época das propostas de Mestrados para o próximo ano! Este ano decidi propor 3 trabalhos a serem orientados pelo Prof. José Alves Marques, todos eles muito aliciantes (assim espero ;-).

O primeiro é sobre a configuração automática de Web Services, ou seja, como é que um servidor e um cliente se podem entender - automaticamente - para que a invocação de operações seja segura, fiável, etc.
O ponto de partida são as WS-Policies (mais informação disponível no WS-Map), mas vão estudar-se as ferramentas mais avançadas disponíveis no mercado, em plataformas Java e Microsoft Dot Net.
O desenvolvimento será efectuado sobre a STEP Framework que é o projecto open-source usado em Engenharia de Software e Sistemas Distribuídos, para se ter acesso total e completo ao código-fonte e conseguir uma implementação simples e eficaz.
Esta proposta destina-se a quem quiser ser um Mestre em Web Services e em sistemas de integração para o mercado empresarial.



Os dois outros trabalhos são em temas mais próximos do meu Doutoramento: RFID.

O segundo é baseado no projecto open-source Rifidi que permite a representação gráfica de toda uma aplicação com RFID. É uma forma de virtualizar um sistema RFID completo, de obter medições interessantes e de mostrar a potenciais clientes. Tem componentes de simulação muito interessantes, usando inclusivamente um motor gráfico de video-jogos.
Esta proposta destina-se a quem quiser ser muito bom em sistemas empresariais baseados em RFID abrangendo toda a empresa e a sua cadeia de fornecimento, explorando também uma componente de visualização gráfica.



O terceiro é baseado no projecto Fosstrak, que é uma biblioteca open-source, que segue de perto as normas da EPCglobal, a principal autoridade mundial de normas para RFID. A biblioteca, existe, funciona e está a ser usada em produtos comerciais de grandes fabricantes. A ideia, proposta pelo coordenador do projecto Christian Floerkemeier do MIT, é analisar o desempenho do Fosstrak usando as melhores ferramentas disponíveis na plataforma Java, para depois o melhorar.
Esta proposta vai permitir um conhecimento próximo das normas EPC e das pessoas que nelas trabalham. Este conhecimento pode ser decisivo para dominar as ferramentas RFID nos produtos dos principais fabricantes, como o Microsoft BizTalk 2009, recentemente lançado.



As propostas detalhadas podem ser consultadas em:
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~miguel.pardal/msc-proposals/2009/


/ This post is bilingual: Portuguese (Portugal) and English (U.S.) /



It's MSc proposals season once again! This year I'm proposing 3 very exciting works, to be advised by Prof. José Alves Marques!

The first is about automatic Web Services configuration, i.e. how can a server and a client integrate - automatically - so that service invocation is secure, realiable, etc.
The starting point are WS-Policies (more information on WS-Map), but the most advanced Java and Microsoft Dot Net tools will be studied.
The development will be on the STEP Framework an open-source project used in Software Engineering and Distributed System courses, for full source code access, to achieve a simple and effective implementation.
This proposal is aimed at mastering Web Services and enterprise integration tools.



The other two proposals are more closely related to my PhD broad subject: RFID.

The second proposal is based on the Rifidi open-source project, that allows a graphical representation of RFID applications. It's a way to virtualize a complete RFID system, to get interesting measurements and to build a demonstration for potential customers. The simulation components are very interesting and include a videogame graphics engine.
This proposal is aimed at excelling on RFID-based enterprise systems covering the extended enterprise and its supply chain, while exploring computer graphics features at the same time.



The third proposal is based on Fosstrak open-source library project, that closely follows the EPCglobal standards - the most important RFID related standards. The library exists, works, and is being used by existing commercial tools. The proposal's idea, as proposed by Christian Floerkemeier from MIT, is to analyze Fosstrak performance using the best available Java tools and improve it.
This proposal will give a deep understanding of EPC standards and the contacts of the people working on them. This can be decisive to become a power-user of vendor RFID tools, like Microsoft BizTalk 2009, recently released.



You can find the proposals at:
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~miguel.pardal/msc-proposals/2009/

Formalizing information systems' requirements

I've been reading some of the BRIDGE project deliverables and I'm very impressed by their depth and quality.



One of the things I liked was a template to formalize information system requirements after a questionnaire to end-users. Here is an example:

ID REQ_REP_19
Priority medium
Summary Methods for communicating a delayed response are the email or HTTP POST (which even could be SOAP like)
Rationale Most of questionnaire responses agree on that. One of the methods will be chosen,
Priority Rationale WP2: depends on DS specific implementation
Requirement Methods for communicating a delayed or asynchronous response are via email or HTTP POST (which even could
be SOAP like)
References • Bridge WP2-3 report v0.3. Section 10.4 Communication mechanism for delayed/async response? (Q83)
Originator AT4 wireless
Taxonomy Functional

Tweeting live from João Barreto's PhD defense

Tweeting live from João Barreto's PhD defense. Good luck João!

The committee members are putting on their robes. José Carlos Monteiro is wearing the MIT robes, hat included.

José Alves Marques is presiding. The defense has started. First the 30 minute presentation.

João is explaining the problem. The presentation graphics look nice.

Thesis goals were rapid commitment, and minimal aborted work.

contributions a) commitment protocol, b) exploitation of non-replicas for improved consistency, c) redundancy elimination in storage and propagation of state-based updates.

João is explaining the commitment protocol based on epidemic voting (VVWV).

Moving on to b) exploitation of non-replicas. It's an interesting idea. They carry only the voting information.

Getting to c) redundancy elimination. João is placing his related publications in each slide's footer.

João has been presenting his results using graphs. It's always good to see hard data.

1 minute conclusions slide. Maybe too fast? Now all 9 publications are on display in the final slide.

Marc Shapiro is now asking questions to João.

Discussing whether application semantics should or shouldn't be used.

Carlos Moreno (DI/Univ. Minho) made some good overall comments about the thesis. Now going chapter by chapter.

Carlos Moreno is asking some questions to João. Some of the issues were out of the thesis' scope

Q&A with Carlos Moreno continues... Now discussing the possibility of applying the results to sensor networks.

Carlos Moreno asking a question about the sampling (Are 5 runs enough to average?). Now moving to final question.

José Carlos Monteiro (JCM) is now addressing João. Particularly liked Chapter 2. It explains all the required concepts.

JCM found a gap: algorithms are for limited devices but there are no figures for resource consumption of algorithms.

José Alves Marques (JAM) is talking now. Lot of effort in the thesis. Chapter 2 is very good although a glossary missing.

JAM is asking what is the rationale of the thesis - or is the thesis just a sum of 3 parts?

Paulo Ferreira is the final speaker. It's an important day for João - he's wearing a tie!

João started his work in early 2000s. Research started with MS ad-hocFS. He has a good publication record.

Paulo Ferreira is giving some nice questions to João. It's a good thing to have a friendly adviser.

The defense is over. We're now waiting for the announcement of the new Doctor...

Congratulations Doctor João Barreto! It was a pleasure being here. Now, back to Distributed Systems course work and my own PhD.

Copyright notice (as suggested by IEEE)

Science is all about people and information sharing, namely, publications. Most scientists keep a web page with all their publications, along with BibTeX files. For instance, check out my publications page.

However, the publications are copyrighted so some caution is advised when making them available. IEEE suggests the placement on your web page of the following copyright notice:

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

The evolution of the Web

The current day Internet is the global network that connects people from all over the world and enables them to meet to work and have fun together.

At the center of the enormous growth of Internet use in 1990s was a new application: the World Wide Web. The Web leveraged the existing Internet infrastructure and protocols TCP/IP and and provided a simple and elegant abstraction: "Everything is a resource; Any resource can link to other resources".

The Web has evolved from its origins. We can summarize the evolution in three stages: the web of documents, the web of applications, and the web of users.

The web of documents was the original hypertext document system, built from HTML pages linking to other pages. The pages were initially static, but soon there were many ways technologies to generate dynamic pages.

The web of applications came next, leveraging the dynamic web page technologies. Some successful web applications examples are: e-commerce (e.g. Amazon.com), web mail (e.g. Hotmail), and customized portals (e.g. Yahoo!). Soon, the application providers realized that the user inputs were very useful to improve the web applications and its capabilities.

The web of users is the current stage in the Web development. It is also known by the moniker Web 2.0. The user inputs became central in the provided applications. Amazon's recommendations are an early example of this. More notably, the Google search engine took advantage of user clicks on results to create a PageRank. More recently, the user contributions are even more explicit, with social networking applications, like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Delicious, among many others.

So, what is next for the Web? It is about to become even more world wide.

There are three technology trends that will shape the next stage of the Web: mobile Internet access, geographic information systems, and automatic identification and sensing.

Mobile access to the Internet, using hand-held devices and wireless networks is on the rise.
People are starting to use the Web in new places and situations where a desktop or laptop computer would not be possible or convenient. As a result, there are new user needs and requirements.

Geographical information systems, like Google Maps, allow users to access map data with several information layers, to locate points of interest and provide directions. The current user location can be determined using a GPS enabling location-aware applications.

Automatic identification and sensing technologies, like RFID identifiers and sensors, are making their way to supply chains in retail, pharmaceutical, and other industries. Soon it will be possible to tag any valuable or interesting physical object, enabling item level track & trace. In addition, the object identity can be used as a search parameter, to retrieve data from the Web.

When these three technologies are combined, an Internet of Things emerges, a Web of Things, where people and the physical world can interact in novel ways.

As an example scenario consider the following. A person walks into a bookstore and finds an interesting book. However the only available copy has a torn page. Using the mobile phone camera, the user scans the book's bar-code and queries if the book is available in any other nearby bookstore. It isn't, so the user goes to a on-line shop and orders one copy to be delivered the next day at his home.

Can you imagine it? If you can, and would like to work on it, leave a comment here on the blog or email me.

My first official paper reviews

I've been invited to review some papers for a major conference in my research area. I did it gladly, after all, peer-reviewing is the cornerstone of the scientific process.

I became a user of the EDAS Conference Manager and I can say it's a very competent knowledge work system. Not very flashy, but helps a lot in getting the job done.

The review form is very concise and provides guidance when writing a review.

--

Familiarity: Expert, Familiar, Some knowledge, Novice
Presentation: Well written and understandable, Mostly well written and understandable, Understandable but needs improvement, Difficult to follow poorly written or organized
Recommendation: Strong accept, Weak accept, Weak reject, Strong reject

Contribution: What are the major issues addressed in this paper? What are the main contributions? Are these important and relevant for the conference?

Strength: What is the strength of the paper? What would be major reasons to consider this paper for inclusion in the program? (1-3 sentences)
Weakness: What are the weak points in this paper? What would be the major reasons NOT to include this paper in the program? (1-3 sentences)
Detailed Comments: Please provide detailed feedback on technical quality and presentation to help the Program Committee assess the paper and to help the authors improve their paper.

Comments to the Program Committee: These comments will be seen ONLY by the Program Committee Members (not by the authors)

The Price of Forgoing Basic Research

Not all research is the same. What role can academia play in the economic development of a country?

Read the business week article by Bill Buxton, Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research.

Using index cards to help you write

Photo credits to Dustin Wax

I wrote down the ideas for the paper, one per index card.
Next I sorted them, and placed small post-its on the corner with a sequence (#) number (e.g. 1, 2, 2.1, 2.2, 3, ...).
Next I wrote the paper using the index card sequence. I didn't concentrate on the sentence connections that much. I left this for later rewriting.
I reread the paper and rewrote it several times, but the general structure was stable. It allowed me to focus on what I meant at the paragraph level rather than on the order of the paragraphs.
Finally, I wrote a new set of index cards, to summarize the paper contents and help me present the ideas on a meeting.
I felt very productive!

Thanks to Joana for the suggestion!

How to write a paper review

Outline:
1 - Write a quick summary of the paper in your own words. Don't repeat the abstract, but state what stuck in your mind;
2 - Enumerate the paper contributions;
3 - Describe the paper's strengths and weaknesses;
4 - Write detailed comments about specific things;
5 - Approve or disapprove the paper.

Of course, if you're on the paper writer side, try to anticipate what a reviewer would say about your paper in these terms, and improve what can be improved.

Pocket classes / Aulas de bolso

Here is a modern day dilemma: how to combine domestic chores with the demands of knowledge work? One inventive way of making the most of your time is to have "pocket classes"!

Photo credits: Joana

You just need an iPod and some eLectures (from iTunes U, for instance) to get started! And a notebook to make some notes once in a while.

/ This post is bilingual: English (U.S.) and Portuguese (Portugal) /

Eis um dilema dos tempos modernos: Como conciliar as tarefas domésticas com as exigências do trabalho de conhecimento? Uma forma creativa de aproveitar o tempo é ter "aulas de bolso"!

Para começar basta ter um iPod e algumas aulas electrónicas (do iTunes U, por exemplo). E um bloco de notas, para tirar apontamentos de vez em quando.

The history of RFID

Jeremy Landt, in IEEE Potentials, Oct-Nov 2005
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1549751
(requires IEEE library access)

Googling the Internet and beyond

Aleksandar Kuzmanovic, EECS Department, Northwestern University
MIT CSAIL seminar

This was a breadth talk, covering several topics:
- TCP congestion control - removing exponential back-off - paper on ACM CCR 2008;
- DoS against streaming CDN (e.g. Akamai) - how to attack a CDN network, how to leverage a CDN network knowledge of network topology to make better routing decisions - paper on IEEE ICDCS 2008, and Usenix/ACM IMC 2008;
- Googling the Internet - an interesting approach to profiling internet usage by querying google about IP addresses - paper "unconstrained endpoint profiling" on ACM SIGCOMM 2008
- IDNet mesh - identity validation credentials - work in progress

Very lively talk, with some interesting research.