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Research data is essential to scholarship. The value of research data and its management has been increasingly recognized by policy makers and higher education institutions. A deep understanding of disciplinary practices is vital to develop culturally-sensitive policy, tools and services for successful data management. Previous research has shown that data practices vary across sub-fields and disciplines. However, much less is known about how disciplinary cultures shape data practices. There is a need to theorise research data practices based on empirical evidence in order to inform policy, tools and services. The aim of the thesis is to examine the interrelation between data practices and disciplinary cultures within geography. Geography is well-established and multidisciplinary, consisting of elements from the sciences, social sciences and humanities. By examining a single discipline this thesis develops a theoretical understanding of research data practices at a finer level of granularity than would be achieved by looking at broad disciplinary groupings such as the physical and social sciences. Data collection and analysis consisted of two phases. Phase one was exploratory, including an analysis of geography department websites and researcher web profiles and a bibliometric study of collaboration patterns based on co-authorship. Phase one aimed to understand the disciplinary characteristics of geography in preparation for Phase two. The second phase consisted of a series of 23 semi-structured interviews with researchers in geography, which aimed to understand researchers data practices and their attitudes toward data sharing within the context of the sub-discipline(s) they inhabited. The findings of the thesis show that there are contrasting intellectual, social and data differences between physical and human geography. For example, intellectually, these two branches of geography differ in terms of their research objects and methods; socially, they differ in terms of the scale of their collaborative activities and the motivations to collaborate; furthermore, the nature of data, how data is collected and data sharing practices are also different between physical and human geography. The thesis concludes that differences in the notion of data and data sharing practices are grounded in disciplinary characteristics. The thesis develops a new three-dimensional framework to better understand the notion of data from a disciplinary perspective. The three dimensions are (1) physical form, (2) intellectual content and (3) social construction. Furthermore, Becher and Trowler s (2001) disciplinary taxonomy i.e. hard-soft/pure-applied, and the concepts urban-rural ways of life and convergent-divergent communities, is shown to be useful to explain the diverse data sharing practices of geographers. The thesis demonstrates the usefulness of applying disciplinary theories to the sphere of research data management.

O desenvolvimento de sistemas de ensino a distância (EaD) adaptativos vêm sendo o alvo de pesquisa nos últimos anos, porém uma das carências mais importantes é que estes sistemas não possuem dados suficientes que descrevam o aluno, de modo a realizar a adaptação adequada. Uma das grandes dificuldades no processo é a aquisição desses dados. Normalmente para a realização de um curso em um sistema de EaD na Web, o aluno, entre outras atividades, deve cadastrar-se no sistema e informar seus dados pessoais. Alguns sistemas possuem mecanismos para descoberta das preferências do aluno, seu estilo de aprendizagem ou estilo cognitivo, visando oferecer um ensino personalizado. Porém, se este mesmo aluno se matricular em outro curso que utilize outro sistema de EaD na Web, todas essas informações não são repassadas de um sistema para o outro e acabam sendo informadas ou descobertas novamente. Portanto, os sistemas não colaboram entre si no sentido de tornar as informações sobre os alunos mais completas. Quanto mais variada for a informação que os sistemas tiverem sobre os alunos, o modelo do aluno em cada sistema estará mais completo e, conseqüentemente, a adaptabilidade do conteúdo ao seu perfil, mais eficiente. O objetivo principal desta tese é solucionar a problemática associada ao gerenciamento de dados contidos no modelo de aluno quando compartilhadas entre vários ambientes de ensino a distância (EaD). Como solução, esta tese propõe o modelo LPEM (Learner Profile Exchange Model) que define as estratégias que regem o compartilhamento de dados de modelos de aluno entre diversos sistemas. O diferencial do modelo está no uso de uma ontologia (OntoLearner), baseada em padrões, para a troca de dados. A especificação da ontologia OntoLearner também consiste em uma contribuição da tese, e pode ser utilizada no contexto de qualquer sistema desse mesmo domínio. Um subconjunto relativo as principais funcionalidades do modelo foi implementado, para isso também foi definida nesta tese a especificação física do modelo, que oferece as funcionalidades do modelo na forma de Web services. Uma arquitetura orientada a serviços também é descrita na tese e serve de referencia para implementação do modelo LPEM. O protótipo serviu de indicativo para comprovar que a solução proposta é possível de ser implementada, gerando os resultados esperados quanto ao compartilhamento dos dados. / The development of adaptive systems has been the target of some research works over the last years. However, an important lack to be considered is that these systems do not have enough information about the student in order to provide an adequate adaptation. One of the most important drawbacks for this lack is the difficulty of acquiring such information. New learners of an e-learning system are normally required to update their personal information before proceeding in one of the offered courses. Some systems are able to adapt its course content presentation using some techniques that discover the learner’s preferences, level of previous knowledge, and cognitive style. However, this important information about learners is not shared among different e-learning systems. This forces the learner to fill cumbersome forms in each new system, and also forces each new systems to analyze and process new learner’s behavioral information. By consequence, current systems do not collaborate with each other in order to enrich the information related to users of different e-learning systems. Considering these problems, the main objective of this thesis is to address the problem of data management within the learner’s model when data are shared among different e-learning systems. In this thesis we propose the LPEM (Learner Profile Exchange Model) model, which defines the strategies to share the learner’s data model among the different systems. The main contribution of the proposed model is the use of an ontology, named OntoLearner, which is based on standards for data exchange. The ontology OntoLerarner is a contribution as well, since it has been developed for LPEM but can be used by any other system in this domain. A subset of the main functionalities of the proposed model was implemented. For that purpose, the physical model was defined in order to provide a functionalities model for Web Services. The prototype shows that the proposed solution can be implemented, generating the results expected for data sharing.

Redes BitTorrent (BT) atualmente representam o método Par-a-Par (P2P) de compartilhamento de arquivos pela Internet mais utilizado. Relatórios de monitoramento recentes revelam que as cópias de conteúdo sendo compartilhadas são, em grande maioria, ilegais e que filmes são os tipos de mídia mais populares. Iniciativas de pesquisa que tentaram entender a dinâmica da produção e do compartilhamento de conteúdo em redes BT não conseguiram prover informações precisas acerca da disseminação de cópias ilegais. No presente trabalho realizamos um extenso estudo experimental para caracterizar o comportamento de produtores, publicadores, provedores e consumidores de arquivos violando direitos autorais. O estudo conduzido é baseado em dados coletados durante sete meses de monitoração de enxames compartilhando filmes por meio de uma das comunidades públicas mais populares de BT. Os dados foram obtidos via emprego de uma arquitetura de monitoração do \universo" BitTorrent, o que permitiu popular uma base com informações acerca de mais de 55.000 torrents, 1.000 rastreadores e 1,9 milhões de IPs. Nossa análise não somente mostra que um pequeno grupo de usuários ativos _e responsável pela maior parte do compartilhamento de cópias ilegais, como desvenda relacionamentos existentes entre esses atores e caracteriza os padrões de consumo respeitados pelos usuários interessados nesse tipo de conteúdo. / BitTorrent (BT) networks are nowadays the most employed method of Peerto- Peer (P2P) le sharing in the Internet. Recent monitoring reports reveal that content copies being shared are mostly illegal and movies are the most popular media type. Research e orts carried out to understand the dynamics of content production and sharing in BT networks have been unable to provide precise information regarding the dissemination of illegal copies. In this work we perform an extensive experimental study in order to characterize the behavior of producers, publishers, providers and consumers of copyright-infringing les. This study is based on seven months of traces obtained by monitoring swarms sharing movies via one of the most popular BT public communities. Traces were obtained with an extension of a BitTorrent \universe" observation architecture, which allowed the collection of a database with information about more than 55,000 torrents, 1,000 trackers and 1.9 million IPs. Our analysis not only shows that a small group of active users is responsible for the majority of disseminated illegal copies, as it unravels existing relationships among these actors and characterizes consuming patterns respected by users interested in this particular set of contents.

O desenvolvimento de sistemas de ensino a distância (EaD) adaptativos vêm sendo o alvo de pesquisa nos últimos anos, porém uma das carências mais importantes é que estes sistemas não possuem dados suficientes que descrevam o aluno, de modo a realizar a adaptação adequada. Uma das grandes dificuldades no processo é a aquisição desses dados. Normalmente para a realização de um curso em um sistema de EaD na Web, o aluno, entre outras atividades, deve cadastrar-se no sistema e informar seus dados pessoais. Alguns sistemas possuem mecanismos para descoberta das preferências do aluno, seu estilo de aprendizagem ou estilo cognitivo, visando oferecer um ensino personalizado. Porém, se este mesmo aluno se matricular em outro curso que utilize outro sistema de EaD na Web, todas essas informações não são repassadas de um sistema para o outro e acabam sendo informadas ou descobertas novamente. Portanto, os sistemas não colaboram entre si no sentido de tornar as informações sobre os alunos mais completas. Quanto mais variada for a informação que os sistemas tiverem sobre os alunos, o modelo do aluno em cada sistema estará mais completo e, conseqüentemente, a adaptabilidade do conteúdo ao seu perfil, mais eficiente. O objetivo principal desta tese é solucionar a problemática associada ao gerenciamento de dados contidos no modelo de aluno quando compartilhadas entre vários ambientes de ensino a distância (EaD). Como solução, esta tese propõe o modelo LPEM (Learner Profile Exchange Model) que define as estratégias que regem o compartilhamento de dados de modelos de aluno entre diversos sistemas. O diferencial do modelo está no uso de uma ontologia (OntoLearner), baseada em padrões, para a troca de dados. A especificação da ontologia OntoLearner também consiste em uma contribuição da tese, e pode ser utilizada no contexto de qualquer sistema desse mesmo domínio. Um subconjunto relativo as principais funcionalidades do modelo foi implementado, para isso também foi definida nesta tese a especificação física do modelo, que oferece as funcionalidades do modelo na forma de Web services. Uma arquitetura orientada a serviços também é descrita na tese e serve de referencia para implementação do modelo LPEM. O protótipo serviu de indicativo para comprovar que a solução proposta é possível de ser implementada, gerando os resultados esperados quanto ao compartilhamento dos dados. / The development of adaptive systems has been the target of some research works over the last years. However, an important lack to be considered is that these systems do not have enough information about the student in order to provide an adequate adaptation. One of the most important drawbacks for this lack is the difficulty of acquiring such information. New learners of an e-learning system are normally required to update their personal information before proceeding in one of the offered courses. Some systems are able to adapt its course content presentation using some techniques that discover the learner’s preferences, level of previous knowledge, and cognitive style. However, this important information about learners is not shared among different e-learning systems. This forces the learner to fill cumbersome forms in each new system, and also forces each new systems to analyze and process new learner’s behavioral information. By consequence, current systems do not collaborate with each other in order to enrich the information related to users of different e-learning systems. Considering these problems, the main objective of this thesis is to address the problem of data management within the learner’s model when data are shared among different e-learning systems. In this thesis we propose the LPEM (Learner Profile Exchange Model) model, which defines the strategies to share the learner’s data model among the different systems. The main contribution of the proposed model is the use of an ontology, named OntoLearner, which is based on standards for data exchange. The ontology OntoLerarner is a contribution as well, since it has been developed for LPEM but can be used by any other system in this domain. A subset of the main functionalities of the proposed model was implemented. For that purpose, the physical model was defined in order to provide a functionalities model for Web Services. The prototype shows that the proposed solution can be implemented, generating the results expected for data sharing.

Redes BitTorrent (BT) atualmente representam o método Par-a-Par (P2P) de compartilhamento de arquivos pela Internet mais utilizado. Relatórios de monitoramento recentes revelam que as cópias de conteúdo sendo compartilhadas são, em grande maioria, ilegais e que filmes são os tipos de mídia mais populares. Iniciativas de pesquisa que tentaram entender a dinâmica da produção e do compartilhamento de conteúdo em redes BT não conseguiram prover informações precisas acerca da disseminação de cópias ilegais. No presente trabalho realizamos um extenso estudo experimental para caracterizar o comportamento de produtores, publicadores, provedores e consumidores de arquivos violando direitos autorais. O estudo conduzido é baseado em dados coletados durante sete meses de monitoração de enxames compartilhando filmes por meio de uma das comunidades públicas mais populares de BT. Os dados foram obtidos via emprego de uma arquitetura de monitoração do \universo" BitTorrent, o que permitiu popular uma base com informações acerca de mais de 55.000 torrents, 1.000 rastreadores e 1,9 milhões de IPs. Nossa análise não somente mostra que um pequeno grupo de usuários ativos _e responsável pela maior parte do compartilhamento de cópias ilegais, como desvenda relacionamentos existentes entre esses atores e caracteriza os padrões de consumo respeitados pelos usuários interessados nesse tipo de conteúdo. / BitTorrent (BT) networks are nowadays the most employed method of Peerto- Peer (P2P) le sharing in the Internet. Recent monitoring reports reveal that content copies being shared are mostly illegal and movies are the most popular media type. Research e orts carried out to understand the dynamics of content production and sharing in BT networks have been unable to provide precise information regarding the dissemination of illegal copies. In this work we perform an extensive experimental study in order to characterize the behavior of producers, publishers, providers and consumers of copyright-infringing les. This study is based on seven months of traces obtained by monitoring swarms sharing movies via one of the most popular BT public communities. Traces were obtained with an extension of a BitTorrent \universe" observation architecture, which allowed the collection of a database with information about more than 55,000 torrents, 1,000 trackers and 1.9 million IPs. Our analysis not only shows that a small group of active users is responsible for the majority of disseminated illegal copies, as it unravels existing relationships among these actors and characterizes consuming patterns respected by users interested in this particular set of contents.

Redes BitTorrent (BT) atualmente representam o método Par-a-Par (P2P) de compartilhamento de arquivos pela Internet mais utilizado. Relatórios de monitoramento recentes revelam que as cópias de conteúdo sendo compartilhadas são, em grande maioria, ilegais e que filmes são os tipos de mídia mais populares. Iniciativas de pesquisa que tentaram entender a dinâmica da produção e do compartilhamento de conteúdo em redes BT não conseguiram prover informações precisas acerca da disseminação de cópias ilegais. No presente trabalho realizamos um extenso estudo experimental para caracterizar o comportamento de produtores, publicadores, provedores e consumidores de arquivos violando direitos autorais. O estudo conduzido é baseado em dados coletados durante sete meses de monitoração de enxames compartilhando filmes por meio de uma das comunidades públicas mais populares de BT. Os dados foram obtidos via emprego de uma arquitetura de monitoração do \universo" BitTorrent, o que permitiu popular uma base com informações acerca de mais de 55.000 torrents, 1.000 rastreadores e 1,9 milhões de IPs. Nossa análise não somente mostra que um pequeno grupo de usuários ativos _e responsável pela maior parte do compartilhamento de cópias ilegais, como desvenda relacionamentos existentes entre esses atores e caracteriza os padrões de consumo respeitados pelos usuários interessados nesse tipo de conteúdo. / BitTorrent (BT) networks are nowadays the most employed method of Peerto- Peer (P2P) le sharing in the Internet. Recent monitoring reports reveal that content copies being shared are mostly illegal and movies are the most popular media type. Research e orts carried out to understand the dynamics of content production and sharing in BT networks have been unable to provide precise information regarding the dissemination of illegal copies. In this work we perform an extensive experimental study in order to characterize the behavior of producers, publishers, providers and consumers of copyright-infringing les. This study is based on seven months of traces obtained by monitoring swarms sharing movies via one of the most popular BT public communities. Traces were obtained with an extension of a BitTorrent \universe" observation architecture, which allowed the collection of a database with information about more than 55,000 torrents, 1,000 trackers and 1.9 million IPs. Our analysis not only shows that a small group of active users is responsible for the majority of disseminated illegal copies, as it unravels existing relationships among these actors and characterizes consuming patterns respected by users interested in this particular set of contents.

Blockchain technology emerged in 2009 together with the introduction of Bitcoin, the first virtual currency which enabled nodes in a network, that do not necessarily trust each other, to exchange digital value without the use of trusted intermediaries. Since then, the idea of disintermediation and decentralization has gained traction in a large number of applications outside the world of finance and virtual currencies. This thesis is written in collaboration with Scania, an automotive industry manufacturer, with the purpose of gaining a better understanding of blockchain technology and how it can be used in the transportation industry. This thesis proposes five potential blockchain use cases that aim to either enhance Scania’s existing services or to create new services. Out of these five use cases, one is deemed inappropriate in regards to the use of blockchain technology while the other four have potentials benefits. The common denominator among these use cases is that they are decentralized in nature meaning that the use of intermediaries is mitigated. It is recognized that all use cases could be implemented using traditional, centralized databases and that the use of blockchain boils down to a technology choice with its own trade-offs relative to other potential choices. This thesis concludes that blockchain technology offers a new kind of database architecture, the main benefit of which is that it lets several non-trusting entities agree on a common set of facts, without having a trusted intermediary establishing these facts.

Background: The genes that produce antibodies and the immune receptors expressed on lymphocytes are not germline encoded; rather, they are somatically generated in each developing lymphocyte by a process called V(D) J recombination, which assembles specific, independent gene segments into mature composite genes. The full set of composite genes in an individual at a single point in time is referred to as the immune repertoire. V(D) J recombination is the distinguishing feature of adaptive immunity and enables effective immune responses against an essentially infinite array of antigens. Characterization of immune repertoires is critical in both basic research and clinical contexts. Recent technological advances in repertoire profiling via high-throughput sequencing have resulted in an explosion of research activity in the field. This has been accompanied by a proliferation of software tools for analysis of repertoire sequencing data. Despite the widespread use of immune repertoire profiling and analysis software, there is currently no standardized format for output files from V(D) J analysis. Researchers utilize software such as IgBLAST and IMGT/High V-QUEST to perform V(D) J analysis and infer the structure of germline rearrangements. However, each of these software tools produces results in a different file format, and can annotate the same result using different labels. These differences make it challenging for users to perform additional downstream analyses. Results: To help address this problem, we propose a standardized file format for representing V(D) J analysis results. The proposed format, VDJML, provides a common standardized format for different V(D) J analysis applications to facilitate downstream processing of the results in an application-agnostic manner. The VDJML file format specification is accompanied by a support library, written in C++ and Python, for reading and writing the VDJML file format. Conclusions: The VDJML suite will allow users to streamline their V(D) J analysis and facilitate the sharing of scientific knowledge within the community. The VDJML suite and documentation are available from https:// vdjserver. org/ vdjml/. We welcome participation from the community in developing the file format standard, as well as code contributions.

The goal of the thesis is to analyse and coherently describe a branch that haven't been sufficiently described in professional literature yet. To reach this goal thesis uses author's experience with specific share server development and operation and puts it as an example on which it explains all the important attributes and dependencies. Diploma thesis is aimed to an issue of internet file sharing. In it's first part it describes file sharing in general including history of internet file sharing. Two case studies of the most popular but different share servers follow. The thesis aims on business, technical, social and legal aspects of file sharing using share servers. In it's practical part the thesis aims on the specific share server project and especially cares of process, business, technical and user aspects. Within the process part running processes and their meaning for the whole share server project are analysed. The business part describes the dependencies of profit and costs components on individual variable attributes of share server system a it's environment. The technical part focuses on hardware, software and network devices from which share server is composed. In the part which focuses on the user interface and usability author critically evaluates the actual state of share server's website and describes possible improvements especially in the area of usability. In the last part of the thesis author evaluates the current state of share servers branch and estimates it's future development.