Is there evidence of life on martian meteorites

Abstract The acceptable reality for now is that no research has managed to conclusively show or document that there is life or no life in Mars. This research paper is of the opinion that the argument about life or lack of it in Mars should seize, until such a time when conclusive evidence to support arguments on either side will be attained. Until then, researchers need to do the hard work of verifying or refuting existing theories and counterchecking any new evidence that could be contained in the Martian meteoritesAdvertising We will write a custom essay sample on Is there evidence of life on martian meteorites? specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Is there evidence of life on Martian meteorites? According to Buseck et al, Nanocrystals of Magnetite(Fe3O4) compounds in meteorites found from mars are the strongest, yet the most controversial indicators that there is extraterrestrial life in Mars(13490). The allegation attached to the Fe3O4 is that they resemble crystals found in Meteorite ALH84001, which are formed by specific terrestrial bacteria. The ALH84001 was found in the Antarctica and later recognized as meteorite whose origin was Mars(Mckay et al 924). McKay Et al authored startling report based on chemical and structural features of ALH84001 (295).The report indicates that there was indeed life in mars. McKay Et al based their arguments on four chemical and structural features of the meteorite and although they admitted that the individual features could not prove their allegation, they sought to convince the general public as well as scientists that the four features taken collectively were evidence enough that there was indeed life in Mars(Friedmann et al 562). The first basis for their conclusion was the â€Å"igneous Mars Rock†. According to their report, the rock was of unidentified geologic context and had pores and fractured spaces that were permeated by a fluid. Their second reason was t hat the igneous rock was older than the carbon globules found there in. The third reason was that the TEM and SEM images captured of the carbon globules had features that resemble microfossils, terrestrial-biogenic-carbonate structures, and terrestrial micro organisms. Fourth, the Fe-sulfide and magnetite particles indicated that the oxidation and other reductions reaction had occurred on the compound, thus indicating the presence of microbial systems and finally, there were Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons(PAHs)on the compound thus indicating that its original surface(Mars)had carbonate globules(McKay et al 930). Buseck et al, notes that although the McKay et al theory has been criticized and largely questioned, no one scientist or researcher has been able to disapprove it(13490).The report starts by acknowledging the fact that the 1975 Viking lander experiments managed to negate the possibility that there was life on Mars. However, the report states that the conclusion from the te sts cannot be meant to conclude that there was absolutely no life in Mars. This was especially because the Viking experiments were too localized to offer a conclusive report regarding life or lack of it in Mars(McKay et al 924).Advertising Looking for essay on astronomy? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The deduction by McKay Et al that meteorite ALH84001 has enough evidence regarding life in Mars has been criticized by many scientists with Thomas-Keprta et al(2164) saying that the evidence offered was based on â€Å"presumptive bio-signatures†. In their own research, Thomas-Keprta et al classified Fe3O4 crystals and identified them to be similar to the intracellular magnetite released by MV-1(a magnetotactic bacteria-strain). In the research, Thomas Keprta et al states that the magnetite populations are chemically pure and from a single-domain(2164). They also observe a â€Å"unique† crystal habit, which they def ine as truncated hexaoctahedral(2164). They argue that since there are no known reports which could explain the truncated hexaoctahedral observations, the presence of the MV-1 strain of bacteria was most likely as a result of Natural selection rather than organic activity. They however argue that the only possibility where the magnetite crystals could be used to indicate that there is life in Mars, is if there are â€Å"unexplained inorganic processes on Mars that are absent on Earth and hence forms the truncated hexa-octahedral magnetite† (2165). Overall, Thomas-Keprta et al manages to support rather disapprove the McKay et al deduction that the ALH84001 is an indicator that there is life in Mars. Their argument does not however go unchallenged. Buseck at al, states that the â€Å"Truncated hexa-octahedral† crystals they refer to are not as unique as they make people to believe (13494).Buseck et al argues that the term means that the crystals of ALH84001 have a combin ation of octahedron, dodecahedron and cube faces. These according to them had been observed in other meteorites and hence were not a unique aspect at all. Buseck et al(13490) criticizes both studies done by Mckay Et al(929)and Thomas-Keprta et al(2165) saying that the two arguments are flawed. He claims that without the micro structural or chemical evidence to back the allegation that the features in the ALH84001 are indeed magnetite crystals, then any evidence produced thereafter is inadmissible. He further argues that magnototactic bacteria are ever-present on the Earth, despite the fact that intact chains of the nano-sized magnetite crystals from such bacteria are hard to find in earthly geological samples. As such the intact chains as found by McKay et al(925)would be hard to find because it would be unlikely that they would survive biological processes. Friedman et al acknowledges that it is quite difficult to understand how the magnetite chains hypothesized by McKay et al surv ived in their intact form(2176).This only serves to cast further doubt on the allegation of McKay et al and subsequent research conducted and documented by other authors like Friedman et al and Thomas-Keprta Et al(2164-2169).Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Is there evidence of life on martian meteorites? specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Golden et al neither refute nor support the allegation by McKay et al(370-375).They however proved that just as much as the formation of carbonates, sulfides and magnetite on ALH84001 could be attained in temperatures that support life, the same can be formed inorganically. Golden et al through a combination of precipitation and heating processes developed simple inorganic process, which they claim can offer an alternative explanation to the carbonate, Fe-sulfide and magnetite found in the meteorite ALH84001(370). The acceptable reality for now is that no research has managed to conclusively show or document that there is life or no life in Mars. This research paper is of the opinion that the argument about life or lack of it in Mars should seize, until such a time when conclusive evidence to support arguments on either side will be attained. Until then, researchers need to do the hard work of verifying or refuting existing theories and counterchecking any new evidence that could be contained in the Martian meteorites. Discussion By2007, there were 12 meteorites that had been studied or still were being studied for ingredients that would suggest life on Mars. The meteorites were thought to have originated from Mars due to their unique(often peculiar) chemistry (Kimball 1). Of all the 12, the ALH84001 has been the single most meteorites subjected to extensive study. The three most cited ingredients in the ALH84001 that suggest that there could be indeed life processes in Mars are the presence of PAHs. However, scientists note that PAHs are not unique to met eorites from Mars only. According to Kimball, meteorites from other places in the solar systems are known to have PAHs too even though it has been established that there are no traces of life there(1). The mineral within the meteorite(magnetite, carbon and Fe-sulfide)is the other indicator that some scientists use to suggest the presence of life activities in Mars. However, as seen above, some researchers have proven that it is quite possible to generate the minerals without biological processes. The time that the minerals were deposited in the meteorite is also suspect because as Kimball(1)indicates, the minerals seems to have been deposited in the specific rock later in its history, which raises the question, is it possible that the rock picked the minerals on earth rather from its origin? Stephan et al notes that the rock had fusion crusts, and mineralogical and well as chemical differences(113). These differences could have led to the contamination of the inner rock through the cracks, which could have happened during handling or in the Antarctic environment before the rock was discovered.Advertising Looking for essay on astronomy? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More An answer to this question is provided by Stephan et al, who after a study concluded that it was highly unlikely that the PAHs in the ALH84001 had an extraterrestrial origin(113). The study further provided evidence that the meteorite was contaminated by lead, which is evidently a terrestrial material. Studies by Golden et al also allude that ALH84001 continues to be contaminated with terrestrial microbial materials hence suggesting that ‘maybe’ the PAHs had been picked in its Antarctica location (374). The third reason that some researchers like McKay et al (924) and Thomas-Keprta et al(2164)suggests indicates some signs of life are the objects that resemble fossils in tiny micro-organisms when observed under a microscope. This argument is however discredited by Kimball, who argues that the fact that the largest of the â€Å"nano-fossils† got from the rock had a diameter of 100 nanometers, is evidence enough that it does not have the necessary volume to support life(1).The Smallest microorganism on earth is the Mycloplasmas and has 300 nanometer diameter. Scientists indicate that a micro-organism would need at least a 200 nanometer diameter in order to support life (Kimball 1). In addition to the ALH 84001 meteorite, other meteorites of Martian origin include â€Å"Shergotty, Nkakhla and Chassigny†. Nakhla was the first meteorite of Martian origin to be found on earth(Glavin et al 8835), and just like the LAH84001, the meteorite contained carbonates and some hydrous minerals. Research on Nakhla indicated that the rock had been exposed to some aqueous solutions after its formation, and this was the first indication that researchers need to conclude that in deed there were aqueous processes on Mars. The length of time that such processes persisted however remains a pertinent question to this day. As opposed to ALH84001 meteorite which had an estimated terrestrial age of almost 13,000 years, the Nakhla meteorite fell on 9 am 40 kilomet ers to the East of Alexandria in Egypt in 1911. The fall was observed and most of the specimen rocks were collected within days of the fall (Glavin 8834). On observation, Nakhla was found to contain d-amino acids, which were not present in the ALH84001 meteorite. According to Glavin et al, the d-amino acids were not extraterrestrial in nature and had been deposited into the rock when it hit the ground in the Nile region (8836). This conclusion was reached because in addition to finding similar d-amino- acids around the Nile soil, the amino acids would have been racemic if they were formed on Mars(Glavin 8836). The D/L ratios, which could have determined the amino-acids of Martian origin in the rock, were not possible due to the low concentration of the same. Another meteorite EETA79001 was found to contain l-enantiomers components of amino-acids (Mcdonald Bada 1179).Such are common in proteins and thus indicated that this rock too had been exposed to terrestrial contaminants, speci fically from the Antarctic ice where the meteorite had been collected. Is (was) there life in Mars? According to Glavin Bada, life in Mars just like on earth would be possible in the presence of water and â€Å"a continuous supply of pre-biotic organic compounds†(1022). The exogenous delivery of meteorites on earth from Mars has given researchers and scientists the chance to determine if indeed there was or there is life in Mar. Unfortunately this is not always possible due to the exposure of the meteorites to different substances as they fall to earth and on impact with the earth. Other attempts to identify whether there is life in Mars collectively known as the Viking Studies involved the placement of television cameras on Mars surface to detect any presence of life. This turned no results. Gas chromatograph and Mass spectrometer were also used for purposes of checking the Martian soil for organic molecules. This too showed negative results. The labeled-release equipment w as set up to check for catabolic activities by microorganisms that could be present in the Martian soil. Again, the result for this was negative. The Pyrolytic-release experiments turned negative too and had been set to capture any anabolism evidence that could be generated by microorganisms that would be in the Martian soil. Finally, a gaseous exchange experiment was conducted on Mars but showed no biological evidence in gaseous formation. The Viking studies showed that there were no signs of life in Mars(at least not as we know it one earth). However, the meteorite evidence could be a possible answer to the question that has been nagging scientists for decades now. Conclusion Although there is a possibility that there is evidence contained in the Martian Meteorites that life was or still is in Mars, researchers face enormous challenges in proofing the same. The single most challenge lies in avoiding the exposure of Martian meteorites to terrestrial environments. Right from Nakhla to ALH84001,it is evident that terrestrial environment is able to affect the rocks thus making it even harder to determine if the observations made on such are endogenous or simply as a result of the contamination from terrestrial environments. Evidently, whether there is life on Mars or not is a subject that needs more research. Unfortunately, studies by (Buseck et al 13492; Golden et al 375)indicates that meteorites like ALH84001, Nakhla and EETA79001 show different components between different researches thus indicating that their exposure to the terrestrial environment is making them less valuable for research as the days go by. As indicated in my thesis statement, researchers should concentrate on deciphering any evidence to either side, which can be deducted from the available meteorites. Works Cited Buseck, peter, Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal, Devouard, Bertrand, Frankell, Richard, McCartney, Martha Midgley, Paul. â€Å"Magnetite Morphology and Life on Mars.† The Natural Ac ademy on Sciences.98.24 (2001):13490-13495 Friedmann, Imre, Wlerzchos, Jacek, Ascaso, Carmen Winklhofer, Michael. â€Å"Chains of Magnetite Crystals in the Meteorite LAH84001; Evidence of Biological Origin.† Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of Americ. 98.5 (2001):2178-2181. Glavin, David, Bada, Jeffrey, Britnton, Karen McDonald, Gene. â€Å"Amino Acids in the Martian Meteorite Nakhla† Geochim Cosmochim Acta 96.16(1999):8835-8838. Glavin, David Bada, Jeffery. â€Å" Isolation of Purines and Pyrimidines from the Murchison Meteorite using Sublimation.†Lunar and Planetary Science Xxxv (2004):1022-1023. Golden, David, Mind, Douglas, Schwandt, Craig, Lauer, Howard, Socki, Richard, Morris, Richard, et al. â€Å"A Simple Inorganic Process for Formation of Carbonates, Magnetite, and Sulfides in Martian Meteorite ALH84001.† American Mineralogist 86.1(2001):370-375. Kimball, John. â€Å"Is(was) there life on Mars?† Aug. 2007.10 March 2010. Web. McDonald Gene, Bada Jeffery. A Search for Endogenous Amino Acids in the Martian Meteorite EETA79001.Geochim Cosmochim Acta. 59.6 (1995):1179-1184. McKay, David, Gibson, Everett, Thomas-Keprta, Kathie, Vali, Hojatollah, Romanek, Christopher, et al. â€Å"Search for past Life on Mars: Possible relic Biogenic Activity in Martian Meteorite ALH84001.† Science 273.5277(1996):924-930. Stephan, Thomas, Jessberger, Elmar, Heiss, Christian and Rost, Detlef. â€Å"TOF-SIMS Analysis Of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Allan Hills 84001.† Meteoritics Planetary Science 38.1(2003):109-116. Thomas-Keprta, Kathie, Clemett, Simon, Bazylinski, Dennis, Kirschvinki, Joseph, McKay, David, et al. â€Å"Truncated hexa-octahedral magnetite crystals in ALH84001: Presumptive Bio-Signatures† Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 98.5(2001):2164-2169. This essay on Is there evidence of life on martian meteorites? was written and submitted by user Isabell Wilkinson to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Free Essays on Extremist Groups

from the Koran out of context and blow everything out of proportion so they can manipulate other people to believe in the false ideals.... Free Essays on Extremist Groups Free Essays on Extremist Groups How the extremist (misplaced zeal) of the Al-Quede groups could be explained as growing out of the basic spirituality of Islam? The Koran is the Muslim’s holy book is meant to give us history of the world and let all mankind live with good moral standards. However, not all people maintain these standards in their day-to-day living. Muslim’s are religious people and believe the words of the Koran. The average Muslim is anti-violence and does not even want to be associated with any beliefs of the Taliban. Since the violent attacks on September 11, the Muslim’s have been trying to protect their reputation and hope that people realize they are not violent and that they are totally against this vicious attack. The Taliban considers themselves Muslims, even though they do not follow the terms of the Koran. They can be compared to another extremist group know as the Ku Klux Klan. Both groups rearrange their religious beliefs so they can use it in negative ways. They are taught and sometimes even raised from childhood to follow the steps of their evil beliefs. They would even sacrifice their own lives for these beliefs. When the Taliban does not get what they want, they usually hurt innocent people who have nothing to do with the actual problem. If they had a problem with people in the government, they should go after the government, instead of innocent people. The problem with these groups is that once they have a taste for power, they will never stop. They take the words from the Koran out of context and blow everything out of proportion so they can manipulate other people to believe in the false ideals....

Summarize an approved scholarly article regarding any topic in the new Assignment

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Transformational leadership style of influence

Transformational leadership style of influence ABSTRACT This piece of work will critically evaluate the approaches of transformational leadership, which enhance employee well being. It will delve into the meaning of transformational leadership and the necessary leadership approach or style that can influence employee well- being positively at work, and areas of employee well- being the leadership approach will improve. Also the overall implication that employee well-being has on performance and why it should be a core value in any organisation will be analyzed. INTRODUCTION One of the current approaches to leadership that has been the focus of much research is the transformational approach. Transformational leadership is part of the new leadership paradigm, which gives more attention to the charismatic and effective elements of leadership. The transformational leadership involves an exceptional style of influence that makes employees to perform beyond expectation. And its approach usually incorporates the charismatic and visionary leadership.(Mullins 2007). The leadership approach is the best suitable for campaigning a strategic vision of change or a new work routines. It facilitates feedbacks learning because the leadership is an effective communicator, who can inspire commitment in the employees towards realisation of the firms vision. The employees under this leadership feels secured, a sense of trust is established and feels valued, respected and important hence they are ready to be committed to the organisations goal. The leadership motivates employees to overcome resistance to change since they trust the leadership; all fears of uncertainty are easily eroded. It is obvious that the leadership of where an employee served will go along a way to give value, emotionally to the employee or the reverse maybe the case. The leadership on focus here is one which will affect employee emotions positively and build trust within the relationship because, It is a leadership that value the employee and is mostly concerned in ensuring that the employee succeed in the task or organisation goal set. All businesses seek to be in a good state of well-being, since employee in a perfect emotional, psychological, intellectual and mental state of well-being will successfully perform at a high level and the company will remain efficient and profitable. We will consider some factors or approaches of the transformational leadership that gave it achievement in improving employee well-being. TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP In recent years increasing business competitiveness and the need for the most effective use of human resources has resulted in writers on management focusing attention on how leaders revitalise or transform organisations (Laurie Mullins 2007). The transformational leadership uses strategic influences and techniques that empower employees and enhance their self-efficacy and change their values, norms and attitudes, consistent with the vision developed by the leadership which will positively enhance psychological well-being. On the other hand transactional leadership influences employees with the use of power, sanctions, rewards and formal authority to induce followers compliance behaviour (Bass 1985; CongerKanungo 1998) According to (Burns 1978) transformational leadership was defined as a process where leadership (employers) and followers (employees)engage in a mutual process of raising one another to higher levels of morality and motivation. Burns M. J was the first to bring about the concept of transformational leadership to prominence in his extensive research into leadership theories. Effective transformational leaders are those who inspires and According to Whitehead (Mullins,L. 2007) â€Å"the big word now associated with leadership is vision. The ability to see the bigger picture, to take the long-term view. What the ultimate objectives of the organisation are and how people can work together to achieve them..perhaps the most important attribute is that a good leadership inspires people by creating a climate where it is OK for people to make mistakes and learn from them, rather than what happened in the past which was to blame and punish them. Leading from this position, they gain higher level of commitment from their people than mere compliance†. As its name implies transformational leadership is a process that changes and transforms individuals. It is concerned with trust, emotions, values, standards and long term goals and includes assessing followers motives, satisfying their needs and treating them as full human beings. EMPLOYEE WELLBEING There has been many definitions of employee well-being by scholars and related professional bodies. The Chartered Institute of personnel development has defined well-being at work to be â€Å"creating an environment to promote a state of contentment which allows an employee to flourish and achieve at their full potential for the benefit of themselves and their organisation†. (CIPD 2006). The well-being in focus is more than that of physical health of avoiding falling ill or sick. This is as to do with achievement of personal well being that revolves round a number of positive decisions regarding life style, which is different from stress avoidance and not being able to cope. It represents a wider bio-pyscho-social spectrum that includes physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being. It is an initiative to help employee be more proactive at work in order to attain their full potentials-intellectually, mentally and psychologically. Well-being requires the organisation to actively enhance employees to maximise their psychological , intellectual and emotional state of health. The necessary leadership approaches are also of advantage to people at all level both inside and outside the working environment. It modifies the working environment to be highly productive, attractive and corporately responsible place to work. One being an employee will enthusiastically long to always be at work since its an environment that improves one state of mind for productivity, instead of the strictly transactional approach. Every employee prefers that leadership that cares and is ready to help develop you than the type that publicly criticise your flaws. According to Felce and Perry (1995), well-being;â€Å"comprises objective descriptors and subjective evaluations of physical, material, social and emotional well-being together with the extent of personal development and purposeful activity, all weighted by a personal set of values.† This is important because the definition extends the meaning of well-being to a range of different dimensions beyond the conventional health issues which can be stretched further to workplace. Employee wellbeing is an important factor in determining an organisations long term profitability. Many studies show a direct relation between productivity levels and the employee well-being. A happy and healthy employee will be of benefits to the employer since performance will be good, reduction in absenteeism and organisation can achieve the set goals or target. However employer does not necessarily have to focus only on the physical health conditions but more on the mental, psychological and emotional health conditions of employees.(CIPD 2006). To be organisationally effective, employee well-being needs to be part of a regular business dialogue and to be deeply embedded into an organisational leadership culture. And the leadership that has embedded employee well-being in its culture, style and approach is the transformational leadership. Organisational wellbeing involves many things but the most important of it is employees having meaningful and challenging work and having the opportunity to apply their skills and knowledge in effective working relationships (CIPD 2006). TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP APPROACH ENHANCING EMPLOYEE WELLBEING. Researchers have critically measured the approaches of transformational leadership through different ways, by interviews, questionnaires with employees in various organisations and it has been observed from the findings that the leadership has employ the following instruments in enhancing employee well-being at work. According to (Bass1998),the transformational leadership motivates employees/followers to do more than is originally expected and the extent of this transformation is measured by the effectiveness on employees performance. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE The ability to perceive, observe, and manage employee emotions will enhance a foundation for social, emotional, and intellectual competencies of well-being, which is necessary for high performance on the job. It is ability that transformational leadership can use to improve productivity and psychological well-being in employees. This could be described as a type of social intelligence that involves a sensitive approach of monitoring and observing employees feelings and emotions, in order to use the observation to assist the employees thinking (mental) and action; that is working pattern for good job performance (Salovey Meyer 1990). According to (Fleishman Harris 1962) leadership with the ability to establish mutual trust, respect and good relationship among employees will achieve great productivity. TRUST Every relationship requires trust to survive, if the employees can trust the leadership under which they work, employees will turn out to be proactive on the job and winning the hearts of employees to any new change, lies in the ability of the leadership to influence which will be easier when there exist trust between the two parties. This is an approach a transformational leadership possessed that allays all fears and any form of suspicion from the employees towards their leadership. Building a good relationship like that of a transformational leadership is what makes it easy for trust to and loyalty to grow and employees embrace any new policy set by management and work without any form of threats or unknown anticipated fear. This invariably gives an employee a stable emotional state of mind to perform better. CHARISMATIC APPROACH Transformational leadership behave in ways that allowed them to serve as role models for employees. (Bass,1985) . The leadership is admired, respected, and trusted. Employees are proud to identify with the leadership and desire to imitate them. The leadership is viewed to be possessing extraordinary abilities, persistence and determination. This style is often a natural behaviour of transformational leadership, whose idealised influence emphasizes on having a collective vision by reassuring employees of the fact that , obstacles can be overcame. This leadership can be trusted to do the right thing and to demonstrate high standards of ethical and moral conduct. Invariably employees have confidence in their leadership. INSPIRATIONAL/ MOTIVATIONAL Transformational leadership behaves in a manner that motivate, inspire and encourage the people working with them by providing meaning and challenge to the employees work. This leadership gets work going by being enthusiastic and optimistic and get employees involved in envisioning attractive future states, by creating clearly communicated expectations that employee needs to meet and also show commitment to goals and shared visions.(Bass. B and Riggio E. 2006). According to (Mullins 2007) its been observed by researchers that, for the past30 years there has been increasing amounts of data to suggest that leadership has a lot more to do with inspiration and visions than with straight forward technical competence. INDIVIDUALISED CONSIDERATION This is a leadership approach that listens, and value an employee, in order to give them a sense of belonging in that the employee feels like an integral part of the organisation (Boorstin 2004) from Bernard Bass . Transformational leadership is leadership felt throughout the organisation. It is obvious that employees perform better when they are respected and valued by the leadership. Obviously this leadership style or approach goes a long way to enhance the psychological well being of employees positively and result to greater excellent performance. Every individual loves to be given consideration, which gives them sense of value, and when given a fair hearing puts the employee in a good shape of mind psychologically and emotionally to obtain an excellent performance on the job. A two- way communication is encouraged where management is near to the employee, (the leadership remembers previous discussions, is aware of individual concerns and sees the individual as a whole person rather than just an employee), Bass Riggio. This type of leadership listens effectively and gives special concern to the emotional developmental needs of their employees. INTELLECTUAL STIMULATION Transformational leadership work on the intellectual strength of the employees by encouraging them to be creative and innovative. Soliciting new approaches for the performance of work and attending to task creatively are encouraged by the leadership. The leadership stimulate employees to view problems as challenge and not as obstacle. This leadership does not openly criticise or embarrass individual employees errors or shortfalls. Employees are encouraged to proactively come up with new ideas to solving problems and are not castigated in anyway, simply because their own ideas may differ from the management ideas. Undoubtedly speaking this approach goes along a way in positively stimulating, energising and productively improving the intellectual wellbeing of any employee. When the mind is at its peak or highest level of productivity, the performance will be unspeakably incredibly excellent and organisations image and reputation is improved, services also will be good and more patronage from customers, leading to more profit. However for the employee an environment where one can be productive enhances intellectual growth and a stable and balance mental well being is achieved. This approach mentally empowers an employee to be self dependent, self reliable, accountable and general self development to becoming an expertise is obtained. COACHING This is an essential style of transformational leadership, one leadership beyond the traditional supervisor or manager that tells someone what to do instead showing them how to do it. Coaching by extension is mentoring someone, influencing people by providing new knowledge and skills required for the task. Work activities dont put smile on peoples face, what brings the smile is leadership that mentored, taught and coached employees to be better persons. Transformational leadership pays special attention to each individual employees needs for achievement and self development by acting as a coach or mentor. Employee individual differences in terms of needs and desires are recognised and are therefore developed to successively higher levels of potential. This approach is more realisable in a supportive environment with new learning opportunities. Bass describes this approach further as a type where the leadership behaviour demonstrates good understanding of individual differences for in stance in a situation where the leadership give some employees more encouragement, some are more empowered, some more firm standards, and others possible more task structure. The leadership coach by task delegation and proper monitoring of it to develop the employee and give direction and assistance where necessary and assess the progress without employee feeling being overly controlled rather appreciate the leadership style of taking time to coach and mentor. EFFECTS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING TO HIGH PERFORMANCE. Transformational leadership in its leadership style has effectively built trust between employees and management and this usually lead to a smooth and pleasant working relationship that does not give room to suspicion in case of any change in policy or organisational change. Employees trust the leadership and they in turn are committed and loyal to the organisation. The employee is in a perfect emotional state of mind, since there is no fear of unknown or any need to panic. However, the trust sometimes could lead to exploitation since leadership knows that employees so rely on every of their judgement this but its been argued that the integrity of the transformational is to ensure the individual development of the employees. This leadership cares and is concerned about the employees and also inputs the companys value in the minds of employee and constantly reminds them of the vision and goal to the realisation of a high performance. The leadership that gives attention to individual consideration is able to identify each individual strength and weakness and of course will be able to train and develop them without compares but handle them based on each persons capacity (the leadership give some employees more encouragement, some are more empowered, some more firm standards, and others possible more task structure according to their capability and needs). This leadership style improves the employee well-being psychologically since the employee is treated uniquely and not measured by the others standard or ability, it gives an employee sense of acceptance and is uniquely assessed and assisted where necessary. Employee is psychologically, emotionally and intellectually motivated to perform without fear of others is better, here employees are treated as ends and not just means.(Bass and Steidlmeier 1999). The more capable that leadership is able to recognise the personal interests and concerns of individual employee, the very likely leadership will be able to create a team where employee well-being is an integral part of getting the job done.(CIPD 2006 Journal). In a scenario where an employee under performs an emotional intelligent leadership like the transformational leadership is quick to observe that something could be wrong instead of criticising ,that leadership initiate a good relationship by communicating with the employee to know what the problem is. By so doing the employee is mentally, socially and psychologically restored, and of course performance will improve, resulting to organisational profitability. Thus, it is of necessity to reiterate that the well-being of employee goes a great way in affecting performance and in turn the organisations as a whole. The effect of intellectual stimulation on employee well-being cannot be overly emphasized. Employee is allowed to think independently, given room to be creative and allowed to do things in their own unique way which improves employee mental state of well-being. Generally speaking when there are strong relationships like that of a transformational leadership, between employees and line managers to the top managers and management as a whole, levels of well-being are enhanced. The level of performance will also be immeasurably excellent and the organisational goal is realised. One major effect of transformational leadership style is that it perfectly erodes power distance via the leadership style of delegation which gives employee a measure of autonomy to take decisions on the task delegated to be implemented. The leadership style encourages low power distance and create room for accountability and in over all gives opportunity for employees to be self efficient and of course an avenue to learn. Employees are to an extent empowered under this leadership and of course will feel valued and important, this feeling improve employees intellectual and psychological state, a feeling of empowerment and importance is essential for a positive psychological well-being. The leadership foster team work allowing every employee to participate and enhancing good relationship to the realisation of self efficacy and high performance. CONCLUSION The leadership approach has a great effect on employee well-being, because how one is been treated goes a long way in affecting the individual thinking and hence the behaviour. In order words, it is argued that transformational leadership should be a core value for organisations that will embed employee well-being in its culture and style of leadership.(Bass 1998). RECOMMENDATION I strongly recommend the transformational leadership style to be a core value to organisations in the embedding of employee well-being, based on my findings that it is the type of leadership that motivate, inspire, stimulate, and mentor employee to a mental, emotional balance and good psychological state of well-being, which will ultimately lead to a high excellent performance of employee productivity and to the organisations profitability advantage. I perfectly support the transformational leadership style in the embedding of employee well-being and recommend it to the Nigerian banking industry as particularly. However, my judgement is also based on my personal experience with my manager who has no single traits of transformational leadership in her approach, my manager was the type that does not have any relationship with the team, i was in the marketing team in the bank at that time, she does not listen to individual needs or concern, she announces and criticise the team errors, even individual weak point and it was always a sad moment at work because of her attitude, she was seen has a bully. When I changed job and joined stanbic bank, it was a different ball game altogether because the stanbic leadership style was very different, since the transformational leadership approach was a core value being an international bank. The transformational leadership style positively affected my intellectual, psychological, and emotional well-being, to the fact that i performed better and even got promoted. I will at anytime vote and argue in support of this leadership style because have been through it has an employee and i know how a good leadership can enhance employee well-being.

The Expenditure Cycle

CHAPTER 10 THE REVENUE CYCLE: SALES AND CASH COLLECTIONS SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 10. 1This should generate a great deal of discussion. The basic issue concerns the willingness of consumers to divulge the kind of information that would allow companies to personalize the sales interaction versus concerns that such information would be misused or sold to other parties. In addition, with the growing problem of identity theft, consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about the safety and security of their personal information. Companies that wish to collect this data will most likely have to demonstrate the need for this information to the consumer and also the company’s ability to keep this information secure. 10. 2Digitized products force little change on the four business activities of the revenue cycle. For all products, whether digitized or not, an order must be taken, the product shipped, an invoice delivered, and cash collected. The only thing that digitized products do is change the way these four activities are carried out. Digitized products actually facilitate the four activities by incorporating electronic sales orders, shipping, billing, and cash collections. 10. 3Employees need to be trained to use the POS properly. Such training should include understanding how the POS works, stressing that . In that errors on the employees part will directly affect the inventory master file numbers. If an item does not â€Å"scan†, then it must be rescanned or dealt with so that the integrity of the records is upheld. Similarly, employees should be trained not to skip sales. If an item does not â€Å"scan†, the employee should be trained to accurately enter in the â€Å"bar code† of the item. Entering a generic or erroneous code not only creates an inventory error, but it also frustrates the customer who may take their business elsewhere. In addition, employees should be trained to report and/or fix errors in bar codes as they are encountered and in a timely manner. 10. The report already provides dollar amounts outstanding by number of days past due by customer and by invoice. However, the percentage of total accounts receivable categorized by days past due would help to alert management of categories that are increasing. This could also be reported by customer and by invoice. This way if a particular invoice was not being paid, the company could more quickly identify the invoice, contact the customer, and potentially resolve any problems or disputes about the particular invoice. In addition, reporting by customer can help to identify chronic â€Å"slow paying† customers so that corrective action could be taken such as offering discounts for quick payment, changes in term, and notifying the credit manager to restrict credit for this particular customer. Furthermore, the company may have a certain threshold for each category of past due accounts either in percentages or absolute dollars. A metric could be calculated and presented that highlights the categories exceeding that threshold. 10. This is a good question to get students to explore and compare the role of technology in dynamic price setting policies. You may want to preface the discussion by relating the following scenario: You have graduated from collage and started your own consulting firm. A client has an urgent need that requires you to travel to his location. Since this is a last minute trip, you pay full price for an airline ticket. Since this client is on a fixed contract, you cannot char ge the cost of the ticket back to the client. While riding on the airplane you find yourself sitting next to a college student who is majoring in accounting. During the course of the conversation with this accounting student, you find that he purchased his airline ticket from a discount reseller and paid less than half of what you paid for the same flight. How do you feel about this arrangement? Do think this type of pricing arrangement could transfer to other products? Would the companies that sell these other products be put at a competitive disadvantage when customers find that they are paying different prices for the same goods or services? 0. 6The instructor can facilitate discussion of invoiceless pricing in a B2C environment by asking students how they would feel about not receiving a phone or cable bill. What are the problems the phone or cable company and phone or cable consumers encounter without a paper bill? What about billing problems and disputes. What about payment deadlines or consumers that want to pay in person or pay in cash? 10. 7Any form of electronic or digital cash has the same audit risks as physical cash: susceptibility to theft and loss of an audit trail. In addition, digital â€Å"cash† also has risks associated with the durability of the store of value – to what extent can the cash be recovered if the storage media becomes defective? Another issue concerns the potential loss of privacy, because the digital currency can be â€Å"marked† in a manner that enables tracing its path through the economy. 10. 8 Why not indeed? Copies of the sales order can be used by inventory personnel as a picking ticket to select inventory items ship to the customer. In similar fashion, the sales order converted into a picking ticket can also be used as a packing slip. Just make sure a copy is sent with the package and not the original so that in case there is a problem the original form can be reviewed for any errors or discrepancy. If sales orders are created electronically, the information contained on the electronic sales order can be used to create paper (or electronic) picking tickets, packing slips, or invoices. SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO THE PROBLEMS 10. 1Types of controls used at various steps in the revenue cycle. Process/ Activity ThreatApplicable Controls (P = Preventive, D = Detective, C = Corrective) Sales order entry1. Incomplete or inaccurate customer orders 2. Credit sales to customers with poor credit 3. Legitimacy of order 4. Lost sales due to stockouts, excessive carrying costs, and lost revenue due to markdownsVarious data entry edit controls P Proper credit approval, prior to delivery of goods or services P; accurate, current customer data P Authorized customer purchase order P; digital signatures D Inventory control systems P; periodic physical inventory counts D; improved sales forecasts P; better supply chain management P and C Shipping5. Shipping errors: †¢Wrong merchandise Wrong quantities †¢Wrong address 6. Theft of inventory Compare sales order with packing list and shipping documents D; bar coding P Physical access controls P; documentation of all inventory movements D; periodic physical inventory counts D Billing and accounts receivable7. Failure to bill 8. Billing errors 9. Errors in maintaining customer accountsSegregation of shipping and billing functions P; one-for-one matching of invoices (or EDI acknowledgments) against shipping documents D and C Comparison of sales orders, shipping documents, and invoices P and C; various edit checks D and C Data entry edit checks D and C; use of remittance advices P; monthly statements to customers D and C Process/ Activity ThreatApplicable Controls (P = Preventive, D = Detective, C = Corrective) Cash collections10. Theft of cash Segregation of cash handling and accounts receivable functions P; use of lockboxes or EFT P; bank account reconciliation by someone not involved in cash receipts processing D and C; segregation of bad debt/credit memo authorization from cash handling and accounts receivable functions P General11. Loss of data 12. Poor performance Backup procedures C; disaster recovery plans P; physical and logical access controls P Development and periodic review of appropriate performance metrics D and C 10. 2 Information Technology to enhance the restriction of physical access to inventory: 1. Electronic locks on all entrances and exits to the inventory area. 2. Smart card technology where employees must scan their ID card prior to entering/exiting the inventory area. 3. Install motion detectors. 4. Attach security tags to inventory items and install security tag scanners at each exit of the inventory area. . Attach RFID tags to inventory items to track the movement of inventory. 6. Install and monitor surveillance cameras in the inventory area. 7. Install an infrared alarm system. 8. Build a fence around the inventory area and equip the fence with cameras and sensors. 10. 3a. Shipping personnel should be required to document (on paper or by computer) receipt of goods from the finished goods storeroom. This procedure acknow ledges responsibility for custody of the goods transferred. b. Either a redundant data check or closed loop verification could be used. If the transactions are being entered in batches, redundant data such as the first five characters of the customer's name could be included in each input record; after finding a match on customer account number, the system would also verify that the name characters match before posting the transaction. If the transactions are being entered online, the system could respond to operator entry of the account number by retrieving and displaying the customer's name for the operator to review. c. Up-to-date credit records should be maintained, and credit checks should be made prior to approval of sales orders. . A receiving report should be required to support the authorization of credits for sales returns. e. Separate the function of authorizing write-offs of uncollectible accounts from the function of handling of collections on account, in order to prevent any single individual from perpetrating this type of fraud. f. Shipping personnel should be required to record the actual quantity shi pped on the order document and/or enter the quantity shipped into the sales order processing system, in order that bills can be prepared based upon the quantity shipped rather than the quantity ordered. . Supervision of mailroom operations, limitation of authority to endorse checks to the cashier only, and instructions to the bank to accept only those checks endorsed for deposit in the company's account. h. Cash receipts should be listed and totaled in the mailroom before the cashier receives the checks. A third person compares the amount deposited as shown by a validated deposit slip to the batch total prepared in the mailroom. i. All sales tickets should be prenumbered and accounted for. This would quickly spot a missing ticket. j. Segregate shipping and billing functions. k. Implement accurate inventory control and sales forecasting systems including periodic physical inventory counts and frequent review and revision of sales forecasts. l. A system of user IDs and passwords is the first line of defense followed by allowing â€Å"read only† access to customer data for sales staff, implement access controls over individual terminals, and maintaining activity logs. m. Regular backups with copies being stored off-site. n. Backup generators as well as cold and/or warm site contracted backup facilities. o. Encrypting sensitive data prior to transmission, creating virtual private networks, and transmitting data over secure socket layer (SSL) networks. p. A system of user IDs and passwords is the first line of defense followed by allowing â€Å"read only† access to price lists for sales staff, implement access controls over individual terminals, and maintaining activity logs. q. A system of user IDs and passwords is the first line of defense followed by allowing â€Å"read only† access to customer data for sales staff, implement access controls over individual terminals, and maintaining activity logs. In addition, formal non-compete agreement could be used when hiring personnel. r. A nightly backup with copies being stored off-site. s. Periodically testing backup data for access and compatibility with current company hardware and software. 10. 4 Formulas: Sales (1% Growth Rate) E5 and Row 5:=D5*101%, =E5*101%, =F5*101%, †¦ Cash Collections:D7:=D5*40% E7:=E5*40%+D5*30% F7:=F5*40%+E5*30%+D5*20% G7:=G5*40%+F5*30%+E5*20%+D5*8% Copy and paste G7 formula to remaining cells Beginning Balance:E2:=D9 (same formula for remaining cells in Row 2) Ending Balance:D9:=D3+D7 (same formula for remaining cells in Row 9) Spinner and Scroll Bar:

Field Trip

Trip Report Yorgos Amanatidis This is a trip report for the Web Science Conference 2009 (WebSci'09) that took place from the 18th to the 20th of March 2009, in Athens, Greece. Location: The Conference was held at the â€Å"Hellenic Cosmos† complex of the Foundation of the Hellenic World. Hellenic Cosmos was indeed very suitable for such an event. The place was technologically equipped, the location was easily accessible for me, both by public transportation and by car, with adequate parking space.Although I stayed in Piraeus, I can assume that the transportation to/from the Conference was equally easy for all the participants. Organization: Concerning the organization and the advertisement of WebSci'09, I have to say that everything was well planed and the conference was quite publicized. However, and this was not an objection of me alone, most of the publicity was due to the unusually large number of members of the Greek Parliament that talked during the Conference.Workshops, Talks, Posters: I attended the Web Science Curriculum Workshop and just the first hour of the UIWoSC Workshop due to my jet lag. I understand that the two workshops were planned to have only a few participants, however they were very interesting and illustrative of the struggle to determine the boundaries of an emerging scientific area. To say my opinion, I cannot see web science independent of computer science, and I think the most plausible direction is the one of information science, as it is called in the U. S.I attended several talks and enjoyed most of them, although the topics of some sessions diverged too much from my idea of what web science should/will be, e. g. the â€Å"Cultural Convergence and Digital Technology† session. I had the chance to talk to a few people about my research and get some interesting ideas on more applied directions; I was a bit disappointed though, that two of the three other speakers in my session did not show up. Finally, a few thoughts a bout the Poster Session. I found many of the posters really interesting and I had the chance to talk to some of the authors.It seems to me, that it would be a good idea if the poster session was a bit more â€Å"central† in the program, since at the and of the first day most people were already exhausted. Also, it would be nice to have some information about the posters on the web page of the conference. Overall, I would say that attending WebSci'09, was a useful and interesting experience, and I will try to attend WebSci conferences again in the future. WebSci’09 Report – Norhidayah Azman When I received the e-mail saying that I was one of the lucky recipients of the WebSci'09 bursary award, I couldn't believe my eyes.Firstly, it dawned on me that I was going to attend the first ever conference to be run by WSRI. Then secondly, I was going to go to Athens! The conference ran from 18-20 March 2009 in the beautiful Hellenic Cosmos of the Foundation of the Helleni c World. The moment me and my friends set eyes on the venue, we were truly excited. I fully agree with Dame Wendy when she said in her welcoming address that the futuristic dome was reason enough to come there for the conference. The city centre also provided more than enough distractions for us delegates before and after the conference.Being a first-year PhD student, I was thrilled to be given to the opportunity to mingle amongst these brilliant minds congregating in support of a common goal: to witness the future of the Web. I also had the pleasure of talking to Bebo White, a prominent personality in the world of Web research. He said it was such a good reception for a conference where nobody knows what it's about! Lots of prominent speakers graced the event, delivering interesting keynote speeches that provided a good overview of the breadth and depth of Web Science.Sir Tim Berners-Lee, with his affable conduct, showcased his revolutionary thinking during the opening WWW Forum. H e said that 80% of the world's population does not have access to the Internet, thus future technological developments must be inclusive of this huge populace. To help reach out to more people, he suggested building a water-based wireless router! It's quite interesting to see the different ways of how different keynote speakers envisage the evolution of the Web.Joseph Sifakis likens its maturity today as similar to physics during the Middle Ages, while Nigel Shadbolt symbolized the Web's issues as an elephant in the room. He also asked: how do you evaluate the economic value of collective content? Nosh Contractor gave an excellent speech, clearly outlining the ways to identify different generative mechanisms that explain emergent structures observed in large-scale networks. He emphasized that technology does not spell the death of distance, because from his experimental results using EverQuest, individuals within a 50km radius is 22. times more likely to be friends online than compa red to a 50-80km radius. The papers and panels presented were eye-opening as well. This is where the breadth of Web Science seemed very apparent. On the same track, you could find a Computer Science paper followed by a Law paper which was then followed by a Sociology paper. The different approaches and angles towards addressing Web issues do spur a lot of discussion during the Q sessions, which I find very refreshing. I attended the following tracks: Trust and Distrust, Openness vs. Control, Social Networks, and Government, Citizens, Law and the Web.Throughout these tracks, some of the interesting issues included reputation, mobile Web, collaborative filtering, trust propagation, Net neutrality, digital identities and Bibles written in Klingon. My favourite was the legal panel which discussed privacy and data retention issues. It was interesting to see how the perspectives of law practitioners and computer scientists clash when it comes to determining the roles of law in the Web. I really enjoyed my days in Greece. The intellectual stimulation was well complemented by the cultural sites across Athens.I am thrilled to be a part of Web Science's history, and what better place to do this than in a historical city like Athens! Summary Report for WebSci ’09 Conference Athens, Greece 18th-20th March, 2009 by Bipana Bantawa Doctoral Student It was indeed very exciting to attend my first Web Science conference and I admit that I came back with mixed feelings about the proceedings of the conference. The very first workshop on web science curriculum turned out to be more like a presentation session and I really wish there could have been a better way to handle the unprecendented number of participants.Although it was mandatory to submit a position paper to attend the workshop, most of the attendees joined at the last minute and I believe we lost a great opportunity to have an engaging debate about the subject. In the end I would have agreed with Jim Hendlerâ€⠄¢s argument that the curriculum should be such that students should be able to create something new and only relevant elements from different disciplines should be chosen for the purpose.The second workshop on the impact of the web was conducted on similar lines and I was eagerly looking forward to have a discussion, which ofcourse did not materialise due to the structure of the room and number of participants. I certainly enjoyed most of the participant’s views and Steven Harnad’s introduction to the debate could not have been more appropriate. Nigel Shadbolt’s key note speech on the second day was certainly promising and encouraging to novices like myself.His emphasis on philosophy and multidisciplinarity was the highlight for me of that day. The following paper session on ‘teaching and learning’ began with a presentation, which really disappointed me since it gave us a brief overview of the web phenomenon in a very superficial manner without muc h evidence to back it up. It might be a bit too critical about it, but maybe I was expecting something new and exciting as a strarter. However, Carl Lagoze’s presentation on OreChem introduced me to new methodologies that I had been looking for.The highlight of the third day and perhaps the entire conference for me was Noshir contractors key note, which was perhaps the most engaging speeches of the event and it was wonderful to hear from a true multidisciplinarian and I am certainly going to follow his work, which I believe I would not have found so easily otherwise. The paper session on social networks was the one that was most memorable that day and I quite enjoyed Schindler and Vrandecic’s presentation on wikipedia’s new features and Halpin’s philosophical arguments for this methodologies.Overall, I definitely gained a lot from attending this conference by getting to meet academics from different disciplines and fellow doctoral students who had such di verse views that I had to challenge my own. I was also introduced to new methodologies and theories which I will study in detail in the next couple of months to determine what could be important for my research. I appreciated the diversity of participants and their effort to understand each other although they came from completely different academic disciplines, which I imagine is not an easy matter.The opportunity to briefly introduce myself to several academics whose work I intend to follow and maybe ask for advice on different aspects on my own idea was truly invaluable. It was my first conference as a doctoral student and I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate. Apart from learning more about the emerging field, I feel greatly encouraged to pursue my own research and attend future conferences and I am looking forward to the next websci event. Thank you, again. WebSci09 Conference Attendance Report Mohamed Bishr m. [email  protected] e The first W ebSci conference was a very good chance for me to attend the birth of a new research community. The overall organization of the conference was, in fact excellent, and the poster session where I was involved was very well managed. I have met several interesting people at the conference; as well I have managed to make valuable contacts for my research and career. The conference as an interaction platform proved very valuable to me. The papers presented at the conference, while being diverse, managed to attract my attention for the most part.Especially papers focusing on non-technical aspects of the web as this is an area that is often understudied. The location of the conference was ideal, and allowed me to experience a new country and culture, which is always a benefit I’m look forward to from attending conferences. My attendance of the conference was supported by a generous grant from WSRI sponsors, and as a young researcher this support is warmly appreciated and I hope it wi ll continue to the next few years of the WebSci conference.Overall, it was, for me, a very good opportunity to present my work and receive feedback from a multi-disciplinary audience. It is also, a forum of established people in their domains which I have found very stimulating. WebSci09 Trip Report Ilaria Bordino I have been very glad to be given the opportunity to attend the 1st Web Science Conference. We all know that in the last few years the Web has really changed the life of everybody. In particular, it has changed the way in which we communicate and collaborate, disclosing possibilities that could not be even imagined before.The Web Science Research Initiative is promoting a joint work of several different scientific fields, with the aim of gaining a clear comprehension of the fundamental issues that have to be addressed in order to improve the future design and usage of the World Wide Web. This new Science is inherently multidisciplinary, as it requires to take into consider ation different aspects that actually need to apply knowledge derived from several fields, like physics, computer science and also social science. The peculiar nature of this new Science has made the participation in this conference a novel and great experience for me.First of all, I had the chance of meeting the great scientists that are the founders of the Web Science Initiative. It was really nice to meet people that have given so great a contribution to the development of the Web and to listen to their opinions and ideas about the crucial issues that researchers have to take into consideration when thinking about the future of the Web. The presented papers were also very interesting because they spanned different topics from research areas much broader than the ones that I am used to see when taking part in typical Computer Science conferences.There was a lot of interaction between computer scientists and social scientists. This is important, because the WWW does not exist witho ut the participation of people and organizations. Significant parts of people's lives are now spent online in many countries. For example, among the topics that were taken into consideration, there were eCommerce, Social Sciences and e-learning, e-culture, Cybercrime, tagging systems. The researchers discussed many problems that have a critical importance for the so called online society, like openness and control, privacy and trust.The conference also addressed issues concerning people's behavior and motivation on line. Yana Breindl Ph. D Candidate Information and Communication Sciences Department Universite Libre de Bruxelles Belgium Susan Davies Administrator for the Web Science Research Initiative School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton UK April 20th, 2009 Subject: WebSci'09 Bursary Report To whom it may concern, The Websci'09 conference was worth participating in. From the first day on, the program was of outstanding quality.It was a unique occasion for me as a Ph. D student to listen to high-standing speakers which turned out to be quite approachable as the size of the conference was small enough to feel comfortable. The various panels were highly interesting and touched upon most issues related to the World Wide Web. Coming from a social sciences background, I found it very stimulating to get in touch with many scholars from various disciplines and especially the computer sciences. At stages it was hard to discuss ones research objects in more depth.The topics represented were very wide-ranging and the lack of common concepts and knowledge about the others' disciplines turned out to be quite a challenge as conversations risked to remain somewhat superficial. However, the conference left me more convinced than ever that it is very necessary to favor interdisciplinary research. When studying the World Wide Web, legal, political, social, technical and security issues need to be addressed. As the web constitutes a unique site fo r research, scholars from all fields need to think about how to address its many challenges.In this sense, it could have been even more interesting to organize methodological panels. Indeed, all participants would have benefited from a deeper insight into how other disciplines study the WWW. It was extremely rewarding to be part of such an ambitious project and I am looking forward to the next conference. Sincerely, Yana Breindl Report about WebSci’09 Conference Author: Lucia Ciofi It is not an easy task to write a report about a conference. A conference, obviously, it is not made up only of presented papers and posters, which, at least, it is possible to read whenever you want thanks to on-line publishing.A conference conveys something more and the spare value comes mainly from sensations and emotions felt during the happening. Let me remember then, that it has been exciting to see such a gathering of many famous researchers, whose work is widely known and appreciated. Besid e it has been really impressive to see the success of the conference among the students, as there was a huge number of them attending the conference, and it is easy to reckon how the idea to become a web scientist is regarded as an appealing one.What instead, from my point of view, it has been difficult to perceive during the conference, it is a unitary vision for the Web Science. This is probably due to two facts: first one, Web Science is still a very young discipline and second one, its aim to follow an interdisciplinary approach it is extremely complex to obtain. Then it is still difficult to find out a way of its own. Probably for this reason the program seemed to be a bit fragmented and that each fragment was not fully connected to each other.Beside the lack of a common language across the various disciplines involved in Web Science makes difficult to understand the point of view of researchers that come from different cultural backgrounds. However the main target of the confe rence was to officially declare that this discipline has moved its first steps and it is no more a project of a few people, but that it has become a field of work shared by many different researchers and this target has been fully reached.For what concerns the choice of topics for the paper sessions, it seems that it has been paid more attention to social aspects connected with the Web and a bit less attention has been given to infrastructural aspects, for example, only the session entitled â€Å"Web of data† was concerned with technological developments connected with the Web, but it could have been interesting to expand this topic. Again it must be difficult to find a proper balance among so many different aspects addressed by this discipline.On the other side the poster session has tried to solve the aforementioned question but it has resulted a bit confusing for the high number of posters presented and the different research areas addressed. At last it could be worthy to make a reflection about how an interdisciplinary approach could be a dangerous way to follow in the training of future web scientists, because it could result in having researchers that will have a rich cultural background but that could not master any particular area in order to conduct a proper research work as the one required nowadays.Among the papers presented, I would remember the work â€Å"Semantic technologies for learning and teaching in the web 2. 0 era† which has reported a clear summary about which are the current positions in Semantic Web field and its possible developments in the future. Beside it seems important the effort spent trying to classify the current technologies available, since there is a lot of confusion in this area at the moment.Another work really engaging, it has been the one entitled â€Å"Class associated structure derived from linked objects† which identifies a possible model to describe the structure of RDF data published on the web following the linked data principles. The capability to understand such a model is really important for the implementation of new applications, as it has been important for the current web, the analysis of the model of the information structure which allowed the birth of the famous Page Rank algorithm. Another work worth mentioning is the one entitled â€Å"Social meaning from the web: From Wittgenstein To Search Engines†.It takes the move from an ongoing discussion about the meaning of the URIs. The object debated is: from the point of view of the Semantic Web, the URI is a simple identifier without any meaning or it has to convey a meaning, as it is often used to identify different things in different situations? The author thinks that an URI has to convoy a meaning but he is not satisfied with the current approaches to solve this issue. His idea then, is to find the meaning of a URI through the meaning that the community of users gives to it, and in order to reach this pur pose, he has studied the queries made to a search engine.The idea is good but it is possible to scale for all URIs this kind of approach? In the poster session I have appreciated the one entitled â€Å"Towards a reference architecture for Semantic Web applications†. The purpose of this work was to find common features that are present in many different semantic applications and from this analysis it has been tried to define a common architecture, which could represent a reference to develop software frameworks in order to aid the implementation of semantic applications, an approach that currently is widely used for the development of common web applications.Web Science 2009 Conference Trip Report. By Shankaron Gambi, Sheffield Hallam University. The Web science conference was the first ever conference of its kind to be held and Athens was to make it one of the most memorable. Being held in Athens Foundation of the Hellenic World the conference boasted a unique venue that repr esented a virtual future and helped to convey the conferences message of the webs power and its importance in our future world and everyday lives. The conference was on all sides a real success and easily met its key objectives of bridging the gap between computer science and social science.People from Psychology, Computer science, Web design, Sociology, Philosophy and other disciplines readily filled the conference rooms, each presentation focusing on a number of diverse aspects of the impact of the Web on our lives. What was most enjoyable about this was that people genuinely seemed interested in learning about the research being carried out in different disciplines and many people like myself used the conference to help them shed light on different aspects of their own research.The key emphasize of the conference-society on-line, really brought alive the importance of understanding the web from both a behavioural and technological perspective. Coming from a social psychological p erspective I have long thought that together such disciplines could offer insightful answers to many research questions. I am already theorizing the conclusions of my PhD which incorporate both spheres of the webs technological and social aspects. A real highlight of the conference for me was the poster session held on Wednesday evening.This was a highlight for me not only because I was presenting my own research in a poster but because of the opportunity it gave people to actively ask questions about other researchers work and learn so much more about the work being done in the very new field of web science. I also met some very interesting people who had some very original ideas and who will no doubt go onto make some very big contributions to the new field of web science. There is already talk about next year's Web Science's 2010 conference commencing.I believe that this conference will only get bigger and more popular as the years go on and perhaps may include a number of other diverse disciplines which is very exciting. I will be in my final year of my PhD then and so plan to apply to present my research there. Overall, I really enjoyed the conference. I feel that the conferences success was in its highlighting the importance and significance the web is playing in changing the way people communicate, socialize, work and generally live. Such an emphasis showed the positive power the web can have on many people’s distant and isolating lives.In such cases I believe that the power of the web has helped many people and society as a whole to live in a more connected way and has helped dissolve the loneliness and isolation in what would be a very disconnected offline world without it! 1 Web Science 2009 Report Harry Halpin H. [email  protected] ac. uk School of Informatics University of Edinburgh 2 Buccleuch Place EH8 9LW Edinburgh Scotland, UK The Web Science 2009 conference was an astounding success, and I can only give the briefest highlights.In part icular, I presented Edinburgh’s more traditional Informatics curriculum, such as our over-subscribed information retrieval course, and received very useful feedback on the latest work on Web Science curriculum. One of the most personally productive sessions for me was the workshop on â€Å"Workshop on Understanding The Impact of the Web on Scholarly Communication (UIWoSC). † Stevan Harnad’s presentation, even over video, on the concept of the Web as â€Å"sky-writing† was of immense relevance to my own work, as he seems to be pursuing similar ideas but from a slightly di? erent angle.We seem to have a major theoretical disagreement, as I am ultimately interested in how â€Å"collective intelligence† forms in the form of a new relational theory of the self based on the ideas of Maturana and Deleuze, while he is more interested in the Web as a form of external medium operating within a more classical Lockean or Kantian cognitive framework. I also exp lained the role of W3C Incubator Groups in possibly standardizing a vocabulary for open linked bibliographic databases. From the various sessions, I found the paper on â€Å"On Measuring Expertise in Collaborative Tagging Systems† by Yeung et al. o be by to be very relevant to my previous work on collaborative tagging systems. The largest surprise I had was during the poster session, where a poster by Jeremy Smart, Jim Hendler, and others talked about how my Ph. D. advisor, Andy Clark’s, philosophical analysis on the Extended Mind could be applied to the Web. I had an absolutely fascinating conversation with Jeremy Smart, and perhaps future collaboration could result. The invited talk by Noshir Contractor opened my eyes to a whole new world of statistical generative models for networks, and I explained linked open data to him in a way he really enjoyed over lunch.The highlight of the conference for me was of course my talk, in which I had the honor of having Tim Berner s-Lee, Jim Hendler, and Nigel Shadbolt in the audience. The talk went well, although it was di? cult for me to compress my entire Ph. D. thesis into a relatively short talk. Jim Hendler gave very excellent feedback about my sampling method and how I should make my sample more representative of the Semantic Web. Tim Berners-Lee gave me an invaluable hour or so of his time to give his feedback, and con? rmed in person a lot of the theses that I was attributing to him.Lastly, Nigel Shadbolt mentioned how his Ph. D. work was on a similar topic, work that I am now investigating. WebSci’09 Trip Report Dave Karpf May 21, 2009 The WebSci’09 conference proved to be an excellent experience for me in all regards. Going into the conference, I recognized it as my first opportunity to meet and interact with the international, cross-disciplinary web science community and an excellent chance to present my research and gain feedback from members of the various fields represented there. I could not be happier with how everything turned out.From an early interaction on Wednesday evening with semantic web developer Lynda Hardman to several excellent conversations with students and faculty at the Oxford Internet Institute, I built the framework for what I believe will be longtermproductive working relationships. The presentation of my conference paper, â€Å"Why Bowl Alone When You Can Flashmob the Bowling Alley? Implications of the Mobile Web for Online-Offline Reputation Systems,† was to a large and enthusiastic audience which asked several useful questions for further exploration.I am currently revising the conference paper for publication with Policy and Internet, one of the conference cosponsoring journals. Keynote speeches by Tim Berners-Lee, Noshir Contractor, and Nigel Shadbolt were particularly illuminating for me, drawing together topics in network theory, the semantic web, and data mining in ways that had clear relevance to my work in political scie nce. I also particularly appreciated Jim Hendler’s enunciation during the keynote Friday night that â€Å"we aren’t all from the same tribe. More than anything, what I took away from the conference was a clear sense of what Web Science is and what it isn’t. Web Science isn’t a single discipline. It is a space where those elements of the various disciplines who share an interest in the web come together and interact with each other, â€Å"cross-pollinating,† if you will. Those speeches, along with papers presented at the â€Å"Government† and â€Å"Legal† panels, were probably the most impactful for me as a scholar. As a whole, I was extremely pleased to have attended WebSci’09 and was thankful for the generous bursary support which helped make the trip possible.I am looking forward to next year’s conference and am already considering possible paper topics. WebSci09 Trip Report Spyros Kotoulas I have attended the first W ebSci conference in Athens, Greece. In general, the conference was a happy mix of computer scientists (especially SemWeb people), sociologists, lawyers, philosophers , politicians, journalists and other disciplines that I failed to spot. I think that everybody contributed to making a really interdisciplinary conference. The opening event was attended by approx. 000 people and the rest of the conference by approx. 200 – 300. The conference started with a workshop on web science curricula. Researchers from various universities presented new studies that they have devised for Web Science. I think there were about 5 of purely web science curricula, and some related ones. There was a lengthy discussion about which disciplines should be included in a web science curriculum. Some proposals, along with an argument supporting them were: Humanities: We need to be able to examine and interpret sources on the Web.Linked data: It is all about links and knowing WHAT it is that we are talki ng about. Social science: We need sociology to show us how the Web is changing the world. Other proposals, for which the argument was not so clear to me were philosophy, economics & business, art, humanities. Although there was effort to â€Å"throw† some of these disciplines out, it did not happen. Furthermore, the curricula presented did not contain all of these disciplines. The opening event was meant for a much broader audience. Major greek policial figures attended. As a result, the audience was approx. 1000 people.The keynotes from Tim Berners-Lee and Wendy Hall were, as expected a bit of general information about Web Science, intended for a general audience. They were followed by a very different keynote. The accent changed from that of a british Sir and a Dame to than of a person from Crete and the content from generally the Web to embedded systems: J. Sifakis (Turing award laureate) gave a talk about reliability and security of embedded systems, with a bit technical content. A keynote by N. Shadbolt was also about web science in general. There several talks/keynotes about trust, security and privacy.The point was made that it is essential for the Web. Some people were advocating that this should be done through legislation and some by system design. These talks were generally interesting. There were in total 27 paper presentations in (mostly) 2 parallel sessions. The topics were quite diverse, covering all aforementioned disciplines. I saw presentations on privacy, linked data, user interfaces, sociology, law and more. All in all, there were quite interesting and only a few of them I could not follow. I should also note that this was not the same for the non-comp. ci participants. I have serious doubts that they could understand some of the more technical presentations. There was a 2,5 hours poster session. Approx 40% of the poster presenters did not show up in the conference, mainly from the non comp. sci. fields. I was presenting a poster abo ut MaRVIN. There was much interest for it. Namely, I was kept talking for almost the entire session and I barely had time to look at other posters. Admittedly, the interest was from the Sem. Web people. Researchers from other disciplines shunned with fear from papers with very technical content. 7 papers accepted for presentation – 16% acceptance rate 115 accepted as posters – 75% acceptance rate Ordered list of participation by country (my own approximation, they have shown a tag cloud): UK – There were many presentations from Southampton people US Greece Spain Netherlands All in all, it was a very educational experience and it was really great looking at how different disciplines fit together. Report During the 18th and 20th of March 2009 I had the opportunity to attend and participate as a volunteer and as a new scientist at the WEB Science Conference: Society Online 2009.The experience was unique and worthwhile. I attended the most interested to me lectures and spend many hours during the poster session reading the most of the posters of the conference. As far as it concerns the lectures I attended the presentations of distinguished scientists from around the world on issues that are related to my scientific area and interests such as Socio-Psychology of the Web. As far as it concerns the posters I really was enthusiastic about the number of them and the multi-dimensionality of the issues they covered.I had the chance to keep notes useful to my scientific research, meet posters’ authors and have discussions about our common research interests. Additionally, as I had expressed the willingness and I been selected to be at the organizing committee, I voluntarily offered my help whenever and wherever there was a need during the preparation months and during the three days of the conference. This was another aspect of my participation to the conference and it was a very important and useful experience, an undoubtedly life experience. The conference organization phase gave me the opportunity to understand better and in depth many issues related to a scientific conference and science. Finally, as my research work was selected for the poster session I had the chance during the conference and especially during the poster session to present to many people and especially to people who where experienced researchers or academicians the work that had been done by me up to these days and receive back their comments. Dialogues developed about the theme and content of my poster and offered me a lot of material opinions, impressions, scientific methods, future implications) so as to improve my work in future. I end up with the conclusion that the WebScience Conference Society OnLine 2009 was very successful and as far as it concerns my case it was a great challenge and a experience I lived to the full. Helen Koutsonika Report It was my great honor to attend WebSci’09 in Athens, Greece in March. First of all, I would l ike to thank Susan Davies in the Southampton University. Without her help, as a postgraduate student from China, I wouldn’t be able to get the bursary and afford my travelling expense.Also, I want to thanks her colleague, Samantha Collins, for her reminding me of the report. I am really sorry for the late of this report. It was a fancy trip. As soon as I relaxed from the discomposure in my first oversea travel, I indulged myself in enjoying the beautiful view outside the plane. The clouds above Beijing, the sea near the United Arab Emirates (where I changed my flight) and the mountains surrounding the Athens were all very impressive. And of course, the Aegean Sea! It was so amazing! In the four days in the Greece, I lived in a youth hotel near the Sigma Square.Although the conference was held in the Hellenic World, which located between the Piraeus and Athens, the metro was very convenience for me to go to the conference. In the wonderful conference, I met with many famous sc holars such Tim Berners-Lee and Joseph Sifakis, whose topics greatly attracted my attention. From the presentations in the WWW Forum, I knew the latest advancements in the area of the Internet research. What was more exciting was that my poster attracted the interest of many scholars. By responding to the comments and explained my research to them, I help them understand more deeply the situation in China.As I have just accepted a PhD admission from the Hong Kong City University, where I am supposed to continue my research on internet and its impact on society, I think such an wonderful experience of attending an international conference will make me more sure of the topics that I should devote my time on. As I mentioned in my bursary-application letter: this fancy travel will undoubtedly be an unforgettable memory of me, a future scholar: at the age of 24, he got his first English paper published; and at the same time, it was the first time he went abroad to see another world.Wu Li ngfei School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University Jun. 12, 2009 REPORT ON WEB SCIENCE 2009 CONFERENCE: SOCIETY ON-LINE 18-20 March 2009, Athens, Greece Date: 18 March 2009 The conference starting with two half-day workshops: Second Web Science Curriculum Workshop (WSCW2) chair by Dr. Catherine Pope, and Workshop on Understanding The Impact of the Web on Scholarly Communication (UIWoSC) chair by Dr. Leslie Carr. The opening ceremony officiated by H. E. President of the Hellenic Republic, Dr. K. Papoulias. Welcome addresses were given by 3 other important persons including Prof. Dame Wendy Hall.Primary keynotes had been given by Prof. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Prof. J. Sifakis. Prof. Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave talked about the concept of Web Science by comparing it with human neuron in mind. WWW design could be redesigned to replicate the neurons in human mind. Social Networks for human should be nurtured and encouraged from all over the world where web could be used for lot s of benefits especially for humanity. The second keynotes speaker talked about system design in software engineering. Date: 19 March 2009 The first keynote given by Prof. Nigel Shadbolt emphasized on refining our insight about the Web Science.He talked about the dynamic of Web Science where it is for global used either in computer science or other domains, such as sociology, law etc, by avoiding the two culture syndrome. The collaborative between all domains could enhance creativity, engineering and science which will generate new innovation and development, because collaborative innovations came from collective intelligents. The conference followed with paper sessions, and I attended the Trust and Distrust session. First paper covered about reputation systems which explained about the set size, proxy and algorithm for the systems.Second paper was about recommendation system which recommend about topic or others with personalization. And last paper talked about the Devil’s l ong tail. Afterwards, I have attended the Legal Panel session where the discussed about data retention, law – between practical and moral/ethical and transferring data through mobile devices. The second keynote given by Jacques Bus, covered the principle of trust, 7 laws of identity and privacy including accountability, transparency, fair distribution of responsibilities, support tool and protection of personal sphere.The conference followed with panel discussion on Trust on the Web; paper sessions of Tags and Search and posters session. Date: 20 March 2009 Starting with paper session on Web of Data, covered papers on Class association structure, social meaning on the Web, interactive information access and new features to Wikipedia. The conference continued with discussion panel on the Cultural Convergence. The third keynote given by Noshir Contractor highlighted on Social Networks, based on Generative Mechanism regarding the questions and answers of 8 issues on why do we cr eate and sustain networks?.Followed by more paper sessions and ended with closing ceremony. Written by: Miss Zurina Muda IAM, ECS, University of Southampton April 2009 WEB SCIENCE CONFERENCE 2009 March 18-20, Athens – Greece Dade Nurjanah Learning Societies Lab Electronics and Computer School University of Southampton [email  protected] soton. ac. uk The Web Science describes the evolution of the web and systems on the web. The implementation of systems is not only related to technological aspect systems but also social aspect. This one page report The Web Science Conference 2009 held at Theatron, in Athens Greece, on March18-20, 2009.The conference was excellent that many researchers of many fields attended the event and many interdisciplinary papers and pages. All sessions conducted in English and the Poster session were excellent. The parallel sessions I attended are the ones which related to my PhD research: Learning and Teaching, Openness versus Control, Web of Data an d Life Online. The paragraphs below briefly summarize papers and poster presented in the Web Science Conference 2009. Teaching and Learning. Nowadays, with the popularity of web and Web 2. , learning systems has changed to open content system with evolving courseware that support lifelong learning. However, Learning is not only about content delivery. It must involve content, services and users, and considers three aspects of technological, methodological and organizational aspects. Deal with the three aspects, semantic technology has given significant improvement to learning systems by adding some information to content that both human and machines can understand, and also providing reasoning mechanisms which support adaptation and personalization of learning.In addition to semantic technology, social network aspects has changed the paradigm of learning provided by learning tools from adaptiveindividualized learning to personalized-collaborative learning. With this paradigm learnin g is not a personal process between teacher and learner, but also social process that each learner can learn from other learners. Collaborative Work, Knowledge Sharing and Online Community. There are many social systems that facilitate social interaction and collaborative work. One of them is Wikis that have shifted authoring paradigm to community driven knowledge development.It facilitates knowledge and content creation which is complex, immense and requires collaborative expertise. In addition, it leads to the development of online communities. However, the social webs have a problem in managing content that always evolve, thus causing complex structure and the difficulties in finding information. Semantic technologies like semantic annotation offer a solution to overcome the problem by structuring the content. We call the systems Semantic Wikis. At the other side of collaborative work, collaborative tagging provides a way for organizing and sharing knowledge.It enables user to fi nd other research and researcher which are relevant to a particular domain. The relevancy of fields can also be found from other social technologies like Friend Of A Friend (FOAF). This network can also lead to the development of online communities. E-Commerce, e-Government, and e-Health. The web also gives impacts to daily life. Marketing including auctions, counseling, behavioral interventions, culture and governmental tasks are some works harnessing the web. Some works in the fields applied cognitive aspects to improve the result.The implementations raise issues of policy and regulation, trust and distrust, security, control, and bandwidth capacity. WebScience 2009 18th – 20th March, Athens – Greece I had the opportunity to participate in the WebScience 2009 conference. It was a very interesting experience: my first international conference. I met many people from various areas: from psychology to engineering. The most interesting meeting was the WWW Forum, where I had the possibility to know Time Berners-Lee, the father of HTTP technology.For me, it was the first time I met a person that has changed the future of the computer science. Moreover, I had the opportunity to talk with him and I found a very kind person, open to new ideas. Apart from the WWW Forum, the conference had more interesting appointments. It started with a workshop about the definition of an academic curriculum on Web Science: a head to head among different areas. Participants started an animated discussion about the possibility to develop a curriculum with psychological and sociological topics, besides informatics ones.This discussion allowed me to reflect about a point, today very popular in the community of science: the relation between humanities and informatics. Just few weeks ago, I participated in another workshop, where participants attempted to a similar discussion. During next days, I attempted to all sessions about social network, socio-psychological aspects of t he Web, Tag and Search. Some of presented papers were very interesting and gave me the possibility to understand new aspects of problems that I am studying for my personal research.In particular, there was an article about a mathematic model to represent a typical social network: the authors showed how it is possible to formalize unpredictable behaviours. Another one was about the measurement of user’s expertise in tagging based search. The last one that I want to talk about is a study to define the sense to be a member of a community, considering Facebook as an example. Another interesting meeting was the poster session. I found many interesting works related to my research area and I met authors for a comparison and an idea exchange.In conclusion, I want to give thanks to the local organization that helped me with the accommodation and various useful information during the conference. Moreover, I want to congratulate the organization for the chosen venue: I discovered a lov ely city that offered me a funny stay. At the end, I want to give thanks to the Web Science Research Initiative that gave me the possibility to attempt to this very interesting workshop. I hope to meet you soon and to participate together to future conferences. Best Regards, Teresa Onorati Phd Student University Carlos III of MadridWebSci’09 – Trip Report Clare Owens, [email  protected] soton. ac. uk I had the privilege of attending WebSci’09, thanks to a bursary provided by the conference organisers. The conference was a wonderful event, and I feel that my attendance benefited me in various ways: An obvious significant point for me was the poster session, where I presented my poster on methods for re-imagining social tools in new contexts. During this session I spoke to various people from a broad range of backgrounds, including computer scientists, sociologists and a reporter from an IT news company.Given this diversity of background, I received an equally b road range of feedback from these people, which was highly useful – as was the experience of explaining my work to noncomputer scientists. I also had the opportunity to meet and network with many people during the conference. Of particular note is the connection I formed with Lynda Hardman, head of the Interactive Information Access group at a university in Amsterdam. Lynda turns out to be carrying out research somewhat related to my own, and I hope to remain in contact with her and possibly collaborate in the future.Of course, I also attended various paper sessions, which broadened my knowledge of all things Web Science. I was particularly interested to learn of work regarding perception of extremist activity online; the meaning of URIs (presented by Harry Halpin from the University of Edinburgh – we continued the discussion of his paper during the coffee session afterwards); SemWeb technologies to augment museum repositories (this paper was by Lynda); and offloading cognition onto the web. In addition to the above, I was inspired by the various keynotes, especially those given by Tim Berners-Lee and Nosh Contractor.Overall, the conference was awash with activity and energy, and the opportunity to meet and speak with people from such diverse backgrounds was wonderful. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organisers for running this event, and also the scholarship programme. Betty Purwandari’s Bursary Report Web Science Conference Athens, Greece (18 – 20 March 2009) It was enormously great to attend the 1st Web Science Conference, because it gave a unique experience to feel the real vibrant of a new born Web Science community.The participants consisted of two different tribes. One of them was computer scientists, who traditionally gathered in the World Wide Web conferences. Another tribe consisted of social scientists, lawyers, political scientists, economists, and psychologists, who have studied the Web from non techn ical point of view. In this report, I write some highlights about keynote speakers, interesting papers and posters, useful contacts, suggestion for the 2nd Web Science Conference, along with conclusion of lessons learnt from the conference.On the opening ceremony, Prof Dame Wendy Hall spoke about the basic idea of Web Science, plus general goal of the conference. She emphasised a crucial issue in Web Science to develop a new methodology, in order to anticipate potential social impact of the web, as well as to help us build more robust system. She said, â€Å"It is not just about the technology. It is about human behavior. † Later on, Prof Sir Tim Berners-Lee delivered a remarkable speech. He mentioned two challenges in Web Science. Firstly, he mentioned the importance to adjust the mobile web to help less fortunate people in the developing world.Secondly, there was a necessity to advance the web as links of data, not just as links of web pages. The next day, Prof Nigel Shadbo lt thoroughly explained the existence of Web Science as a new or old discipline. And on the last day, Dr Noshir Contractor impressively talked about some real data and examples in the USA, showing how social networking on the web related to communication theories. Among conference papers, David Karpf’s paper (Why Bowl Alone When You Can Flashmob the Bowling Alley? ) was very closely related to my research area.It was about the impact of iPhones on a reputation system among US politicians. I have had conversation with Mr Karpf ([email  protected] upenn. edu), a PhD candidate in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He gave references to Thomas Valente’s and Everett Rogers’ papers about the diffusion of innovation. It could be used to forecast the impact of mobile web to rural people. There were also some interesting papers from the Oxford Internet Institute. However, they focused on the impact of the web on European Union countries, not to the developing world.A discussion with Prof Helen Margetts revealed that I should contact Prof Richard Heeks, from the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester (http://www. sed. manchester. ac. uk/idpm/staff/heeks_richard. htm). It turned out that Prof Heeks did significant research on mobile phone for development. In addition, there was a very interesting poster from the Brazilian Institute for Web Science Research. I had to keep contacting them for future cooperation. For the next Web Science Conference, it would be better if all talks are in English, in order to make all sessions being more inclusive.If there are speakers who will use different languages, it could be very helpful if the information about headphones and translation service is written clearly on the conference booklet. As a conclusion, it was tremendously amazing listening to talks from various experts, getting involved in discussion with people from a mixture of disciplines having the same interests in the web, as well as building networks for future collaboration. As a new web scientist, I really hope to grow and mature with the new born Web Science community. WebSci’09: Society Online ?Conference Trip Report Mark Schueler? Athens, Greece? 18th–20th March 2009 I was quite fortunate to attend the first global Web Science conference, held at the Hellenic Cosmos in Athens last month. Attended by over 300 registrants and leading figures in the Web world, it provided an excellent view of current and forthcoming developments in the study of the Web’s technological and social dimensions. I attended sessions on: Web Science Curriculum Understanding the Impact of the Web on Scholarly Communication Trust and Distrust Legal Panel Openness vs.Control Social Networks Cultural Convergence and Digital Technology I also heard keynotes by: Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee Professor Joseph Sifakis Professor Nigel Shadbolt Professor Noshir Contractor I had the pl easure of meeting a number of people working in areas relevant to my work, including Pascal Jurgens, Shankaron Gambi, Peter Geczy, Wolf Richter, Chris Eckl, Dave Tarrant and Erik Cambria. I also met several people with key Web credentials and broad general interest, including Bebo White, Daniel Weitzner, Jim Hendler, Ian Millard, Michalis Vafopoulos, and Thanassis Tiropanis.The high point of the conference was Noshir Contractor’s talk, which ranged across the essence of contemporary, leading-edge developments in social uses of the Web. All taken, WebSci’09 provided a broad-ranging view of all the latest in Web Science. Despite a few off-moments, the overall experience was quite productive and I look forward to attending this conference again in the future. I was able to learn more about the state of the art of Web Science. I met interesting contributors to the field, and learned more about current research and possible opportunities for collaboration. In the end, WebSc i’09 was quite a worthwhile experience.WebSci’09 Conference Trip Report Rob Vesse April 2, 2009 1 Wednesday The Conference opened on the Wednesday evening with a series of Welcome Speeches and Keynotes by a variety of people. Wendy Hall gave a brief but e? ective welcome and introduction to Web Science while Tim Berners-Lee gave a potted history of the Web leading up to the Semantic Web and Web Science as his Keynote. Josef Sifakis gave a keynote that contained remarkably little Web Science except for the closing few slides where he discussed the future of the Web of Things which the Semantic Web and Ubiquitous Computing may ultimately lead to. Thursday Thursday was in my opinion the best day of the Conference with several interesting paper sessions, some excellent panel sessions and the poster session. The day began with Nigel Shadbolt giving the keynote discussing Web Science as a whole before moving to the ? rst paper session ’Trust & Distrust’. This s ession included an interesting paper presented by Kieron O’Hara on how the web can facilitate (though not create) extremism in religion [3].I then attended the Legal Panel which involved some intriguing discussions and arguments regarding the EUs proposed ISP Data Retention plans and how this might a? ect our privacy and whether it needs to come into force as law or not. Statistics regarding how little the authorities have actually used this kind of information provided food for thought about whether they could really justify it. In the afternoon I missed the keynote in order to sit in on an impromptu panel organised by Les Carr for a Skype session with Web Science Masters students back in Southampton.The panel consisted of Nigel Shadbolt, Noshir Contractor, Helen Margetts and James Hendler answering questions posed by the Masters students about Web Science, I also spoke brie? y to the Masters students to give them my impressions of the opening Keynotes and the conference so far. Then I went on to attend the ’Tags & Search’ paper session in which I was particularly impressed by Yeung et al’s SPEAR algorithm for determining expertise in collaborative tagging system which can thwart most existing spam attacks on these systems [4]. 1In the evenings poster session I saw several interesting posters but most notable was Heitmann et al ’s poster on a reference architecture for describing semantic web (SW) applications that was based upon an analysis of the structure of a wide variety of existing SW applications [2]. This provides an easy way to evaluate the completeness of any SW application you build and compare it to others. 3 Friday On Friday morning I attended the ‘Web of Data’ paper session which included Harry Halpin’s shortened version of the talk he recently gave at Southampton on Social Meaning on the Web [1].This was of particular interest to me since the issue of meaning of URIs is potentially signi? c ant in my research. Afterwards there was a Panel session on Cultural Convergence and Digital Technology which I felt was a very poor session, a Greek MP gave an interesting opening speech but the other speakers were poor. Two of them were techno-phobes who primarily moaned about the impact of the web on society and the other simply wanted to talk about the digital technology in theatre work she’d done which had no connection to the web.After lunch Noshir Contractor gave the keynote which was very positive about the potential of Web Science and presented a little bit of some research that he and his collaborators are already carrying out on Social Networking in Massively Multi-player Online Games which has had some surprising results. I attended the ‘Life On-Line’ paper session in the afternoon which contained a couple of interesting papers on work being conducted by other researchers at Southampton though nothing was directly relevant to my own research. The Conf erence ? ished with some closing remarks by Wendy Hall followed by a long speech by the Managing Director of the Conference centre which highlighted the centre’s long term history of innovative web and technology use to present cultural exhibits. 4 Conclusion Overall the Conference was highly interesting with the opportunity to talk to or hear from a wide variety of people; in particular those from outside Computer Science. We have a tendency to get wrapped up in the technology and it’s fascinating to get a clear non-technical point of view on the web from people in other ? elds.The Conference also gave me the opportunity to get to know more of the people from Southampton who are involved with Web Science and gain a broader view of the ? eld as a whole. 2 References [1] Harry Halpin. Social meaning on the web: From wittgenstein to search engines. In WebSci’09: Society On-Line, 2009. [2] Benjamin Heitmann, Conor Hayes, and Eyal Oren. Towards a reference architect ure for applications leveraging semantic web technologies. In WebSci’09: Society On-Line, 2009. [3] Kieron O’Hara and David Stevens. The devil’s long tail: Religious moderation and extremism on the web.In WebSci’09: Society On-Line, 2009. [4] Ching Man Au Yeung, Michael Noll, Nicholas Gibbins, Christoph Meinel, and Nigel Shadbolt. On measuring expertise in collaborative tagging systems. In WebSci’09: Society On-Line, 2009. 3 WebSci’09: Trip Report Patricia Victor The call for papers of this new conference immediately aroused my interest, since some of the main topics were about trust, social networking and e-commerce – precisely what I’m working on. When reading the CFP again, I also noticed that it was not going to be a typical AI/CS conference like I was used to, but something completely di? rent, with people coming from all kinds of research areas. I only had to look at the program of the session in which I was presenting to see that this was the case indeed: the other two speakers had a background in sociology and political sciences (and I think the largest part of the public too). This was certainly an interesting opportunity to listen and learn from researchers in an area I was not familiar with, but it also brought along some di? culties for me; adapting myself to the writing style and the way of presenting sociology-related talks was not that easy.The same holds for the organization of the session: personally, I don’t see the bene? t of postponing questions till after all talks have ? nished, then letting people ask all the questions at once, and only then allowing to address all of them (I’m more in favor of asking one question, then answering that question, then proceeding with the next one, etc. ) But apart from that, the talks in my session were really interesting and refreshing, and I learned some new things that I de? nitely have to check out (Yelp, MoveOn, and the Smart Mobs b ook for instance).Of course there were also other sessions that I looked forward to. For instance the Tags and Search session, a topic related to what I’m doing and which always contains exciting new work. Furthermore, to my pleasant surprise, a lot of the keynotes/talks were about trust, in all its shapes. In particular, Paul Spirakis’ talk was very interesting because he discussed several ways to measure trust, something I’m working on myself. Through these talks I came across a lot of new pointers, and from Kai Rannenberg I learned that you can do a lot while sitting on the toilet1 .Furthermore, I really enjoyed the WWW forum (except the long welcome notes in Greek): I already had the opportunity once to hear Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaking, but this time he really captured my attention for the whole duration of the speech: not at all technical, but an agreable talk about the genesis of the Web and it’s future consequences. Finally, overall, attending Web Sci was a completely new experience for me, I’ve met a lot of interesting and nice people, the conference was well-organized, the food was delicious, and Athens was beautiful, and the weather too – well, at least most of the time2 . The 2I Japanese Networked Washlet try to forget the fact that I arrived soaking wet at the Theatron the ? rst evening†¦ 1 CONFERENCE TRIP REPORT WebSci’09: Society On-Line March 18 – 11, 2009 At Athens, Greece By Huan WANG Nanyang Technological University To my understanding, this is the first international conference specifically called for web scientists from different disciplines all over the w