FoCus Faculty of Computing Weekly Staff Newsletter Issue 73 24th May 2010 Edited by Peter Chalk - Associate Dean

FoC Summer Show 2010 Digital Toybox 2010

Students from the Faculty will be showcasing some of their most exciting and innovative work on the 9th and 10th June in The Graduate Centre. Come and watch animations and short films, play with toys

and games, see concept art and show-reels, visit virtual landscapes and test new software applications for mobile and laptop. You will have an opportunity to meet the developers, talk to staff and enjoy some refreshments. Expect to jump around planets in solar systems inspired by Miro, hunt savage beasts on remote Scottish islands, play tunes on the SockSquid and see robots transforming into helicopters before your very eyes! Launch Party 5-9pm on Weds 9th June 2010 Public viewing 10-4pm on Thurs 10th June 2010 Any questions, please contact Fiona French f.french@londonmet.ac.uk

Useful Tools for Module Leaders 1 .Module Results Analyser The mathematics group uses a purpose designed spreadsheet for presenting analysis of module results for the external examiners. The external examiners find such statistics very helpful and it might be useful for this summer's critical evaluation. The only input required by this tool is for the module/Test/coursework marks to be typed or pasted into a designated column. The spreadsheet then automatically produces all the relevant statistics as well as a graphical output. Once these statistics are produced, a one page summary is ready for printing. The table of results can easily be copied and pasted into the module-log. The spreadsheet is available at: http://snipurl.com/foc_marksanalysis Make sure that you paste your data as paste special “values” and not formula. 2. Automated Module Questionnaire Analyser Another useful tool that has been developed and used for a number of years is the on-line module questionnaire (anonymous). The standard faculty’s module questionnaire has been implemented as survey questions on Weblearn. Once completed by the students it automatically calculates the responses and produces statistics ready for use in module log. If any module leader wishes to use this facility for the modules they teach, please contact Mehryar Adibpour. This can be made available for use in autumn semester 2010/11.

Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition Do you create open educational learning and teaching resources? If so, the Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition is for you. For details, see: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/altcCompetition.html# Last year’s successful competition resulted in six highly creative and valuable resources winning places. The competition runs again in conjunction with the ALT-C conference in Nottingham, 7-9 September, and the six winning entrants will have the opportunity to present and showcase their resources at the conference. The panel of judges will be looking for exciting and innovative resources created under a creative commons licence, and entries will be judged against a set of criteria - appropriateness, engagement, effectiveness and reusability. Deadline for entries is 25th June. There are three cash prizes up for grabs, along with three commended awards. To receive updates from the Jorum team, please join: http://snipurl.com/jorum_update

Edward Steers Seminar on EC Marie Curie Research Training Networks

The final seminar of 2009/10 was treated to a 'tour de EU funding' by Prof. Steers (pictured). He gave a colourful historical account of the GLADNET project and the success in terms of both its funding and its development of Early Stage and Experienced Researchers (ESR and ER, respectively) with Viktoria Weinstein and Tamara Gusarova on hand as living proof!

Edward then told us the less good news that the GLADNET partners’ bid for a new “Initial Training Network” under FP7 had been unsuccessful for various reasons. However, he did pass on a few tips for anyone thinking of applying next year. More information, including a short biography of Edward's 51 years here, can be found at http://snipurl.com/prof.edward_steers or by asking Edward yourself!

Growing New Markets Last week FoC staff helped host a Knowledge Connect event here at London Met called 'Growing new markets via the web'. Pen Lister and Janet Gordon gave a series of talks including 'the user experience', 'developing your internet profile' and 'social media are you in on the conversation'.

About 35 SME’s attended and a further 35 SME’s are scheduled for the re-run in June 2010. FoC thanks Alan Stuart of WoW (World of Work Agency) for acting as local co-ordinator.

Call for HE Academy Development Funding proposal The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) is pleased to announce the availability of Subject Development Fund grants of up to £3,500. This scheme has been designed to: - promote and disseminate effective teaching, learning and assessment activities - encourage development and exchange of innovative techniques - develop good practice in the evaluation of teaching methods - raise the profile of pedagogic research within the ICS disciplines Project should aim to bring into wider use exemplary techniques, methods or materials already developed and used successfully within local departments. We particularly welcome submissions which address the Higher Education Academy's three main themes: - Student Engagement - Enhancing Quality - Education for Sustainable Development Application for Funding Proposals for funding should be made using the downloadable Application Form which is available in either (PDF or Doc) format from: http://snipurl.com/ics_general_development_fund_20101 Applications should be submitted electronically. - Deadline for submission applications Wednesday 30th June 2010

First Research Student Seminar The last week we started a new series of the Faculty’s research seminars, the Research Student Seminar. This time, four researchers of a longer experience presented their

contribution to chosen knowledge areas. Shahram Salek Zamankhani (pictured) presented his Reference Model for Intrusion Handling Systems in Wireless LANs. Currently there is no standardised reference model which can be used to

compare and evaluate existing or design future intrusion handling systems for WLANs. Shahram’s new reference model is based on the concepts of various ontology modelling and simulation tools. This gives careful attention to support two important functions that is to manage the dependencies between ontologies and at the same time to keep and restore their consistencies if they alter in order to accommodate new information, or to adjust the representation of the domain as the

world changes. Qicheng Yu (pictured) talked about his Agent-based Adaptive Join Algorithm for Distributed Data Warehousing. Nowadays data warehouse applications have evolved from reporting and decision support systems to mission critical decision making systems. It requires combining both historical and current data from operational

systems. Since a join operation is one of the most expensive operations in query processing, it is vital to develop effective and efficient join techniques for a distributed warehouse environment. Qicheng presented his agent-based adaptive join algorithm called AJoin for effective and efficient online join operations in distributed data warehouses. Key aspects of the AJoin algorithm have been implemented and evaluated against other modern adaptive join algorithms. It has been shown that AJoin exhibits better performance under various distributed and dynamic data warehouse environments in our study.

John Andrew Mpapalika (pictured) discussed his Top-down LRIC Model for Interconnection Costing in Telecommunications Based on a Case Study of Tanzania. The liberalization of the telecommunications market in Tanzania influences the growth of mobile networks

and impacts on costs of interconnection between different networks. John’s research hypothesized that the growth in mobile phones and density in Tanzania follows a non-linear S shaped structure and drives down the interconnection costs. This hypothesis is supported by the Gompertz growth curve model. The model has been used to analyse the growth in mobile phones and density. Results show that the growth in the mobile density in Tanzania is still below the inflection point (the maximum rate of growth). Following the decline of the number of fixed telephones, the fixed interconnection costs become very high, as a result this research aligned the fixed and mobile interconnection rates into a single mobile interconnection rate.

Nickos G. Paltalidis (pictured) presented Key Steps for Transforming Traditional Business Models to E-Business. The adoption of an e-business strategy and especially the consequent need to transform traditional business models of operation into e-business models has been accompanied by significant changes in the enterprise architecture. Business processes, data management, software, and technical infrastructure are changing, adopting new

roles and new objectives. Various solutions have been introduced based on different perspectives. However, all these solutions aim to support the business model change in general, they do not provide full and complete support, but just general guidelines o steps described in quite general terms. Nickos research, based on an extensive review of these perspectives, aims to develop a framework for the architecting of e-business models, especially those used for B2B E-Commerce. Throughout this presentation, the main stages for developing an e-business solution were presented and a set of steps of transforming a traditional model to e-business model was recommended.

Visiting Research Fellow Congratulations to Dr Pargat Calay following his recognition as Visiting Research Fellow in the Faculty of Science, Technology and Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. This is an unpaid, but prestigious, position requiring the delivery of one or more talks there per year.

Award nominations for Gamelab Gamelab London has been nominated for two further media awards: DEAFEST - the deaf film festival. The Boy From Before - a short film drama filmed for the Deaf Channel last summer. This was screened at the festival on 21 May and will also feature in a book to be published in June.

http://www.bslbt.co.uk/kids/wicked_kids/the_boy_from_before/ BUFVC (British Universities Film and Television Council). Skills for Life TV programme produced for BBC Learning Zone comprising drama and animation for young people with learning disabilities. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ Search: learning zone – class clips – SEN

Diary Tuesday 25th May.......................................................6.00pm-8.00pm

FoC Research Student Seminar room T11-03 All items for future newsletters by Thursday 17.00 to p.chalk@londonmet.ac.uk