Information and Communication Technologies in Education, Research, and Industrial Applications

The problems related to the phenomenon of Big Data are currently among the top 10 hottest topics of information and communication technology. Big Data phenomenon refers to the data explosion observed today. At present, the term is widely used in different communities of many application domains, including researchers and practitioners. Big Data analysis can provide for many new opportunities in many respects motivating and stimulating industrial and commercial take-up of novel emerging technologies. The in-depth analysis of Big Data processing and analytics publications shows that the most of them write about “new opportunities” and “new challenges”. However, very few papers present the solutions for predictive analytics that go beyond the limits of OLAP-like processing models and technologies. The goal of this paper is to outline in more detail not only the nature of opportunities and particular challenges but also some original solutions to attack them.

University rankings are rankings of institutions in higher education, ordered by combinations of factors. Rankings are conducted by various organizations, such as news media, websites, governments, academics and private corporations. Due to huge financial and other interests, the rankings of universities worldwide recently received increasing attention. The rankings are based on different criteria and collect data in various ways. As a result, there is a large divergence in the specific rankings of different institutions. In order to compare rankings so that safe conclusions about their reliability are drawn, data from the sites of different such ranking lists must be collected. In this paper we present this first step for university ranking comparison, namely we discuss in detail how we have developed a Prolog application, called URank, that collects the data, by (a) extracting them from the various ranking list web sites using web data extraction techniques, (b) uniquely identifying the University entities within the above lists by linking them to the DBpedia linked open data set, and (c) constructing a combined data set by merging the individual ranking list data sets using their DBpedia URI as a primary key.

This paper deals with the investigations of increasing dependability of computing operations for fuzzy numbers with triangular and bell-shape membership functions (MFs). Special attention is paid to the synthesis of analytic models of the MFs for the results of fuzzy arithmetic operations. New analytical models of the result’s MFs with the description of synthesis procedures for the multiplication operation with triangular fuzzy numbers in R ⁺ and R are presented in a universal style. The general analytic models for determination of \( \alpha \)-cuts parameters (direct and inverse approaches) for result fuzzy sets are given. Modeling results confirm the efficiency of the proposed models and fuzzy arithmetic algorithms for fuzzy information processing.

We propose a decidable formal theory which describes high-level properties of abstract continuous-time dynamical systems called Nondeterministic Complete Markovian Systems (NCMS). NCMS is a rather general class of systems which can represent discrete and/or continuous evolutions in continuous time and which is sufficient for modeling a wide range of real-time information processing and cyber-physical systems (CPS). We illustrate the obtained results with a proof of the mutual exclusion property of a CPS which implements Peterson’s algorithm.

In the paper complex event processing systems are considered. The survey of problems and approaches to their solutions associated with this technology is contained in the paper. Based on this survey a mathematical model for complex event processing systems is proposed. Samples of such a model are called a CEP-machines. Authors have demonstrated that this model is closely related with the notion of a pre-automaton introduced in their earlier papers. The proposed model provides rigorous formulations of problems associated with complex event processing. Authors have proved that processing ability of such systems is determined by some compromise between the class of processed event stream and a number of complex events. Further in the paper the problem of CEP-machine synthesis basing on the formal specification has been solved. Authors have established the conditions ensuring possibility of algorithmic realisation for CEP-machines.

In the chapter basic properties of nominative data and functions over nominative data (nominative functions) are investigated from the perspective of abstract algebra. A set of all nominative data over arbitrary fixed sets of names and values together with basic operations which include naming, denaming, and overlapping is considered as an algebraic structure and its main properties are studied. Nominative data with complex names satisfy the principle of associative naming and processing. For such data a natural equivalence relation is introduced. Properties of nominative functions (mathematical models of programs over nominative data) and predicates are studied. A notion of nominative stability of nominative functions and predicates is considered. A two-sorted algebra of nominative functions and predicates which generalizes Glushkov algorithmic algebras is introduced and it is proved that the set of nominative stable functions and the set of nominative stable predicates constitute its sub-algebra. The obtained results form a mathematical basis for nominative program logic construction.

This paper presents results on development of the auto-tuning framework named TuningGenie aimed at automating adjustment of parallel tasks to target platform. The framework works with source code of parallel software and performs source-to-source transformations by using facilities of a rule-based rewriting system. This approach significantly raises flexibility of proposed solution and enables changing computation structure of a tuned program in a declarative way. The framework’s architecture, lifecycle, offered toolset for optimization, demo examples and results of tuning of a computationally complex task of short-term meteorological forecasting are presented.

Explaining the workings of a processor can be done in several ways. Just a written explanation, some pictures, a simulator program or a real hardware demo. The research presented here is based on the idea that a slowly working hardware demo could be a nice tool to explain to IT students the inner workings of a processor.

The paper describes the methods of information-competence formation for Ukrainian university students. The Information-Technology Competences Model has been built. Pedagogical conditions for the effective formation of student’s information competency are identified and implemented. The results of the EU-funded project TEMPUS TACIS “ECDL for Ukrainian Administrators” are presented. The survey also incorporates the results from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine’s project, “Creating an Internet Portal for ECDL Distance Learning for Higher Educational Establishments”. For basic information competences level formation of students, it is suggested to use the ECDL international program. The experience of Kherson State University in ICT training for university students in accordance with the international standards is also demonstrated.

School teachers of the future are coming from a new generation. This generation is fluent and even unseparated from digital devices. As representatives of a new culture, future school teachers should play a major of implementing ICT in education. Unfortunately, schools are still traditional and during Curricular Practical Training school mentors can’t share their ICT in teaching findings, because they have little or none of such experience. Thus, future teachers should be ready to develop new approaches in education and help other teachers of elder generations to take advantages of it. University educators and the authors of ICT policies should provide opportunities for future teachers to communicate with their elder colleagues as peers and form their ability to discuss practical issues about ICT in Education. To meet these needs teachers from Kherson State University have organized series of joint ICT workshops for school teachers and students of pedagogical specialties. There are many benefits from such learning format, both for students and teachers. Teachers can learn more about ICT and share their experience, get inspiration and find affinity group, to become mentors for younger colleagues. In such groups, students can communicate with more experienced colleagues, find out more about teaching methods from experts, develop a better ability to express their vision, defend their ideas, help others to create teaching content with ICT, and be proactive as professionals. The results of such learning format, typical trends and difficulties are outlined and analyzed in the paper.

This article provides the rationalization for a comprehensive assessment of computer-oriented learning environment efficiency of an institute of postgraduate pedagogical education and provides the definitions of the ‘efficiency of computer-oriented learning environment of an institute of postgraduate pedagogical education’, and the ‘assessment criteria for computer-oriented learning environment efficiency of an institute of postgraduate pedagogical education’. In order to measure the efficiency of computer-oriented learning environment of an institute of postgraduate pedagogical education, a multi-criteria factor evaluation model was created. It includes, in the first place, the factors defining computer-oriented learning environment of an institute of postgraduate pedagogical education. The article provides the rationalization for and describes the developed criteria of efficiency assessment in such an environment and divides them into corresponding criterion characteristics as well as establishes the numeric values of coefficients of importance of all characteristics, criteria and efficiency factors of computer-oriented learning environment of an institute of postgraduate pedagogical education.

Methods of using e-learning courses to support learning activities of students at higher educational institutions are the subject of a large number of scientific and educational studies. In particular, much attention is paid to the structure, content, and format of educational resources of e-learning courses. However, the problem of dependency of their efficiency on the learning styles of students still needs to be further researched. This paper deals with the learning styles characteristic for IT students on the basis of determining their leading modality, designs the structure of e-learning courses for IT students considering the dominating learning styles, and provides the results of pedagogical experiment by measuring the performance and satisfaction in learning activity.

Bio-Design Automation (BDA) denotes the nascent domain-specific Information and Communication Technology (ICT) discipline for synthetic biology, which constitutes the core technology of the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE). Ultimately, the success or failure of synthetic biology and the emerging KBBE equates to the progress or lack of progress in establishing an industrial strength BDA discipline. In this paper, we seek answers to the question “What does it take for BDA to become an industrial strength discipline?” Our goal is to stimulate a broad community discussion including Business Managers, Computer Scientists, ICT professionals, Synthetic Biologists, etc. around this question. To jump-start the debate, we will provide four core hypotheses covering what we believe are the most important aspects to be considered. Given that industrial strength is a composite aggregate of several technical and managerial variables, we have chosen to take a holistic approach and not restrict ourselves a priori to any particular viewpoints. Last, but not least, we will apply our findings and provide a prototypical industrial implementation of a BDA platform.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the verification objectives and features for information and control systems (ICS) software at the different stages of life cycle, in particular, on development and operation stages for space ICS software. Theoretic-set description of objectives, verified functions considering their criticality for space systems software and scenarios of online verification are proposed. Availability Markov chains based models are developed for different scenarios of space systems software online verification. Multi-fragment Markov models of ICS software for a serviced spacecraft is researched taking into account updating and removal of detected faults.

This paper deals with modeling of network’s dynamic using evolutionary games approach. Today there are many different protocols for data transmission through Internet, providing users with better or worse service. The process of choosing better protocol could be considered as a dynamic game with players (users), trying to maximize their payoffs (e.g. throughput). In this work we presented the model of network’s dynamic using differential equations with discontinuous right side and proved existence and uniqueness of solution, formulated payoff matrix for a network game and found conditions of equilibrium existence depending of loss sensitivity parameter. The results are illustrated by simulations.

The paper investigates what kinds of firms’ social preferences (egoists, altruists or punishers) prove to be evolutionarily stable strategies under Cournot competition in the market of homogeneous product. Combining the traditional and evolutionary approaches to competition we define the conditions that forecast the attitude and profit dynamics of competitors under Cournot competition and adaptive behavior of rivals.

The paper deals with the concept of plagiarism, self-plagiarism and their basic types. Open access to scientific global experience in the Internet and the benefits of electronic format led to the appearance of a numerous array of works that duplicate each other. With the exponential growth in scientific production, plagiarism has become a huge problem for editors of scientific e-journals because it is too difficult to detect immediately its presence in the manuscript. The article’s object is the plagiarism automatic detection tools for text documents. The purpose of the presented research is to consider this popular software and online resources and their possibility to check text similarity, carry out their detailed analysis test and evaluate them according to defined software specifications, productivity of functioning and obtained results during the checking. As a result, there are presented recommendations of tools that meet the needs of scholars and can be used by the editors of scientific journals.