Student Contest Guidelines:

GSDC-Guidelines-Final.pdf

Challenge #1:

GSDC-Challenge-1-Final.pdf

Challenge #2:

GSDC-Challenge-2-Quanser-Final.pdf

Application:

Apply at WorldSpeed.org

View the spreadsheet below, or try it full screen here.
WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

(SPA): GRANA-ISTEC-IFEES-EftA firman importante acuerdo con CALED para promover la calidad de la educación a distancia en la Región.

PDF (SPA): Convenio-Marco-Calidad-06abril2011.pdf

CAL-ED: http://www.utpl.edu.ec/caled

NanoProfessor is an exciting and comprehensive Nanoscience Education Program combining cutting-edge desktop nanofabrication instruments with a stimulating curriculum.  Students will be immersed into the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology through real hands-on experience in building custom-engineered nanoscale structures.  With an incredible range of new applications from building solar cells to fighting cancer cells, nanotechnology is the future of science and engineering education. Source: http://www.nanoprofessor.net

ISTEC and the hosting institution Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) have postponed the event for the purpose of facilitating greater member participation. The decision to change the Assembly date was not easy, and was based primarily on the following reasons:

• The decision to incorporate the Fourth version of the Ibero-American Student Contest (IV CONIBES) and a Call for papers, to be presented in a conference format that addresses activities and areas of research suggested by our members. The new date provides more adequate planning time for the preparation and review of papers and final presentations. These two events will be announced next month in a special news bulletin.

• The opportunity to organize the Second Meeting of the ISTEC Leadership Council, which has important implications in the region toward formalizing long-term strategies in the areas of: globalization, quality standards in engineering education and accreditation, innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainability.

• The original Assembly date toward the end of the year has significant budgetary implications for our members, and we are confident that the new date will facilitate broader participation.

• Another conference in Porto Alegre during the week of Nov 29 – Dec 3 posed challenges with respect to availability and prices at hotels and airlines.

We are confident that the new dates for the XVIII ISTEC General Assembly will facilitate your participation and that of your colleagues. It is our commitment to meet the expectations of our members in a framework of collaboration and participatory leadership.

The Organizing Committee of the XVIII General Assembly is at your disposal to answer any questions you may have regarding the change of dates and/or new activities that have been incorporated into the agenda.

• Number of Orders: Calculates the amount of orders from all Celsius instances that are part of the Network
• Average Order Delay: Calculates the number of days since the orders are made until they are available for download
• Number of Users: Calculates the number of users who have joined the system each month in each institution
• Main Titles: Provides valuable information on the most requested journals

It is very important that all members join this global statistical system. For each instance of Celsius NT to become part of the overall calculation, each institution must meet the following requirements:

• The Celsius Network instance must exist as such in the Celsius Directory
• The instance should have synchronized their data with the Celsius Directory
• The server where the Celsius instance is installed must allow remote connections via webservices

Network security: The collection of statistics uses an authentication protocol based on the DIGEST method. This means that only authorized instances can participate in the distributed statistics, and that only the Celsius Directory can obtain these statistics. In this way the confidentiality of the information obtained is protected and most importantly Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are prevented because each instance of Celsius NT will respond with statistical data only if the requesting party is who it claims to be. For this reason every Celsius NT needs to be synchronized with the directory before participating in this network.

To participate in Celsius Network contact us at info@istec.org

Did you know that 99% of orders received at the ISTEC-UNM office are sent the same day? Share your service statistics with us!!

This article presents the most important components and features of the ISTEC Metasearcher.

Components

The ISTEC metasearcher is divided into two major components: backend and frontend.

a) Pazpar2 backend: a standalone application developed by the company Indexdata with GPL license.

b) Masterkey frontend: a web interface developed for the Pazpar2 frontend by the company Indexdata (also with GPL license).

To connect to the various catalogs, Pazpar2 uses a widely-disseminated protocol: Z39.50, and it also allows working with another protocol widely used for information exchange: SRU.

Searches and Results

The most basic functionality is the ability to conduct general searches, where matches are often found by looking in all the fields (depending on the specific configuration of each catalog).

As expected, this tool also allows advanced searches. That is, to specify which fields to be searched: title, author, among others; and also allows the combination of several criteria.

Duplication

When searching there is the possibility that the same document appears as a result in several catalogs, to prevent duplication Pazpar2 has the necessary logic in place (configurable) to identify the results as duplicates and to unify them. Thus, a document with multiple occurrences appears in the list of results only once, indicating the number of occurrences.

Sorting and Pagination

Pazpar2 also has the capability to calculate a relevance value for each document (configurable through weights) that coincides to some extent with the search criteria. The following are some considerations for the calculation of relevance:

• The field where the match occurs.
• The number of occurrences of each term.
• The proximity of search terms within the document.
• The accuracy between the matches (partial sentences, complete, among others).

Based on these and other elements, Pazpar2 can sort the results by relevance, and also lets the user specify the sort order allowing to also sort by title, year, and other fields.

Given that the number of results is often important, pagination is frequently needed, the ISTEC Metasearcher besides pagination also allows the user to change the number of results displayed per page.

Refinements

As mentioned previously, the metasearcher provides a list of common terms for each field so they can be used as quick filters that are added to the search criteria entered manually. Either when using these quick filters or when using the advanced search, along with the list of results the system also displays a breadcrumb, which allows visualizing at all times which filters are being applied and offering the possibility to remove them individually to refine the search.

Catalog  Selection

This tool also provides the ability to select on which of all available and configured catalogs you want to perform the search. For this purpose, there is a selection screen that lists all catalogs grouped under different categories.

Internationalization

An additional feature is the possibility of internationalizing the frontend, which enables the application to be available in different languages. The metasearcher is currently available in English and Spanish.

Administration

The frontend also provides an administration section from which you can manage:

• Catalogs: Where you can add, delete and modify catalogs of the application. It also allows you to specify which groups correspond to each one.
• Groups of Catalogs: Allows managing a hierarchical structure of groups that will be used to group catalogs.
• Users: Lets specify not only which users will have access to the application, but also allows to specify will catalogs will be available to each user. In addition, it lets you create users in two ways: via username/password and through IP range.

If you want to have your catalog indexed by the ISTEC Metasearcher or for more information about the project contact us at info@istec.org.