DEFINITION Sensor networks allow for micro-monitoring of different phenomena of interest in arbitrary physical environments. With this unique capability, sensor networks can capture the events in the real world as they happen in the form of high-resolution spatiotemporal data of various modalities, and provide the opportunity for real-time querying and analysis of the data for immediate respons...

Orchestrating learning is a quite complex task. In fact, it has been identified as one of the grand challenges in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) by the Stellar Network of Excellence. The objective of this article is to provide teachers and students with a tool to help them in their effort of orchestrating learning, that makes use of awareness artefacts. Using this powerful mechanism in lab ...

The grand challenge for the 21st century is to harness the accumulating knowledge of Earth’s biodiversity and the ecosystems that support it. To accomplish this, we must mobilize biological information  assemble it, organize it, and deliver it with dramatically increased capacity. We must elevate the global biological information infrastructure to a new level of capability  a “next generation...

Government intervention often gives rise to contests in which the possible ‘prizes’ are determined by the existing status-quo and some new publicpolicy proposal . In this paper we study the general class of such two-player public-policy contests and examine the effect of a change in the proposed policy, a change that may affect the payoffs of the two contestants, on their effort and performance...

Sustainable water management is one of the global grand challenges of our time. Tackling this challenge through corrective actions would require the participation of the general public, a public with sound awareness of the challenge and commitment. One such awareness raising intervention could be through the use of water symbolism and proverbs, targeted to particular society. Water has the diff...

Virtual reality has gone from research to educational tool to indispensible clinical application in patient care. A brief review of the current status of the use of VR in medicine will provide the springboard for the current gaps that provide future opportunities in simulation as well as an introduction to new advanced technologies that are revolutionizing medicine and which will require VR for...

44 JPT • MARCH 2012 Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of articles on the great challenges facing the oil and gas industry as outlined by the SPE Research and Development (R&D) Committee. The R&D challenges comprise broad upstream business needs: increasing recovery factors, in-situ molecular manipulation, carbon capture and sequestration, produced water management, higher resolution ...