Problem-driven Approach Research Articles

Marrying Fe nanoclusters with 3D carbon nanofiber aerogels: Triggering fast and robust faradic capacitive deionization

Faradic-capacitive deionization (FDI) has emerged promising research branch of capacitive deionization (CDI) to address the crisis in freshwater supply due to its high desalination capacity and unique ion storage mechanism over traditional CDI. However, the ion-storage mechanism of FDI imposes notable limitations on its desalination kinetics, while issues such as volumetric expansion (as well as the damage caused to the composite material’s structure) contribute to poor cycling stability. Herein, we developed a rational material design of Fe nanocluster-impregnated CNFAs (Fe NCs@CNFAs) and further used it as chloride-capturing electrode for FDI. This unique nanostructure not only provides fast surface-driven pseudo capacitance but also establishes a flexible scaffold that effectively protects the Fe NCs from severe morphology changes. As a result, our Fe NCs@CNFAs-based FDI exhibited both ultrahigh desalination capacity (120.38 mg g−1) and fast desalination rate (0.42 mg g−1 s−1), with robust cycling stability (showing only a 15.25 % decrease in desalination capacity after 100 cycles). This study underscores the significance of the problem-driven approach by leveraging soft scaffold-protected ultrasmall nanocluster to induce fast and durable desalination performance.

The biomimetic potential of novel adaptations in subterranean animals

Subterranean habitats can be considered harsh conditions with lack of light, low nutrients levels and constant high humidity. To thrive under such conditions, cave-adapted species have evolved a range of novel morphological, physiological and behavioural adaptations. These adaptations might have significant biomimetic potential. Biomimetics or biologically inspired design is a relatively new interdisciplinary field that aims to harness the processes and mechanisms in nature that have been optimised over millions of years’ evolution to improve our own technology. There are two main approaches to biologically inspired design—the problem-driven approach starting with an engineering problem and searching through biological equivalents and the solution-driven approach, which starts with a biological example or solution followed by the identification of a suitable engineering application. While the former approach is the most popular and is favoured by engineers, the latter remains the most successful and is typically driven by fundamental biological research. However, few biomimetic solutions or concepts have so far been described from subterranean habitats despite the rich potential. In this review paper, I first outline the theory behind biologically inspired design before I review the few biomimetic related studies of cave adapted organisms mainly based on the exceptional lateral line systems in blind cave fish. However, the main body of the review focuses on identifying and discussing subterranean adaptations with a particular strong potential including biomimetics sensors, adhesion in high humidity and wet conditions and biomaterials

Public diplomacy in an age of perpetual crisis: assessing the EU's strategic narratives through six crises

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the EU's public diplomacy – towards both domestic and external audiences – during times of crisis. The EU's public diplomacy is examined across six major crises: the Eurozone crisis (2008), the Ukrainian crisis (2014), the migrant crisis (2015), the Brexit referendum (2016), the new transatlantic relationship (2017) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2019). The goal of examining these crises in conjunction is to derive policy-relevant insights.Design/methodology/approachThis article adopts a problem-driven approach – the problem being how successful is the EU at public diplomacy during times of crisis – that draws theoretical and empirical insights from Communication Studies, International Relations and EU studies via a “strategic narratives” framework. It situates the EU as a unique public diplomacy actor, one which is becoming more prominent due to the mediatisation of diplomacy, especially driven by the advent of cyberspace.FindingsThe article finds that the EU has been experiencing a cycle of crises that have affected the political, economic, symbolic and social foundations of the common project. The EU has had some notable success – such as restoring confidence at the height of the Eurozone crisis – and some notable challenges – such as effectively combatting disinformation. Regardless, the EU has the potential to better manage these and future crises by engaging in an effective public diplomacy strategy that tells a shared European story that informs and inspires people, both domestically and externally.Originality/valueThe article offers an original examination of the EU's public diplomacy response to six different crises. It looks at different types of crises and utilises concepts from different social science perspectives. It offers novel strategic and policy recommendations.

Understanding Effective Use of Big Data: Challenges and Capabilities (A Management Perspective)

While prior research has provided insights into challenges and capabilities related to effective Big Data use, much of this contribution has been conceptual in nature. The aim of this study is to explore such challenges and capabilities through an empirical approach. Accordingly, this paper reports on a multiple case study approach, involving eight organizations from the private and public sectors. The study provides empirical support for capabilities and challenges identified through prior research and identifies additional insights viz. problem-driven approach, time to value, data readiness, data literacy, data misuse, operational agility, and organizational maturity assessment.

Can Forest Management Units facilitate adaptive comanagement reform in Indonesia?

A multi-jurisdictional governance system, polycentric power regimes, and overlapping rights complicate policy responses for addressing forest governance problems in Indonesia. Confronting issues that have existed for centuries as part of Indonesia's socio-cultural and political reality cannot easily be solved at the macro-scale. However, we argue that they can be tackled at the micro-scale. Adaptive co-management could offer a means of finding collaborative solutions to these problems, and we believe this approach will be effective when the problems are defined locally in a specific area with a limited number of stakeholders. This paper examines the capacity of Forest Management Units (FMUs), as the lowest level operational structure of forest management in Indonesia, to facilitate reform for adaptive co-management approaches. We examined this through an analytical framework derived from the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation approach. This paper identifies the importance of stakeholders' acceptance to enable FMUs to coordinate adaptive co-management.

Avoiding disciplinary garbage cans: a pledge for a problem-driven approach to researching international public administration

ABSTRACT In this article, we distinguish two approaches to studying international public administrations (IPAs). On the one hand, there is a line of research that is grounded in traditional Public Administration (PA) and seeks to understand IPAs through established disciplinary lenses. On the other hand, scholars conceive IPAs as posing new problems and questions and are trying to integrate the standpoints of their respective disciplines into a broader research agenda. We argue that both perspectives have their merits – and limitations. However, the more IPAs are understood as phenomena heralding the emergence of transnationalized political systems, the less traditional PA toolkits appear able to capture the innovative aspects IPAs may hold. This essay thus argues for keeping IPA research as a field of study open, integrative and mixed – to encourage out of the box thinking and innovation, rather than stifle it.

A Product Architecture-Based Tool for Bioinspired Function-Sharing

Abstract In this work, we show that bioinspired function-sharing can be effectively leveraged in engineering design by abstracting and emulating the product architecture of biological systems that exhibit function-sharing. Systems that leverage function-sharing enable multiple functions to be performed by a single structure. Billions of years of evolution have led to the development of function-sharing adaptations in biological systems. Currently, engineers leverage biological function-sharing by imitating serendipitously encountered biological structures. As a result, utilizing bioinspired function-sharing remains limited to some specific engineering problems. To overcome this limitation, we propose the reduced function-means tree as a tool to simultaneously abstract both biological adaptations and their associated product architecture. The tool uses information from an existing bioinspired design abstraction tool and an existing product architecture representation tool. A demonstration study illustrates the tool's ability to abstract the product architectural interactions of function-sharing biological systems. The abstracted product architectural interactions are then shown to facilitate problem-driven bioinspiration of function-sharing. The availability of a problem-driven approach may reduce the need to imitate biological structures to leverage biological function-sharing in engineering design. This work is a step forward in analyzing biological product architectures to inspire engineering design. The future work will focus on validating the proposed tool by performing user studies.

Fostering problem driven collaboration in a development context: The ASEAN study of health workforce governance

Transnational challenges such as societal ageing, rapid epidemiological transitions from managing chronic disease and infectious disease such as COVID-19, and environmental vulnerabilities raise urgent concerns for collaborative governance. This study addresses the challenges of monitoring outcomes and accountabilities i n a development context. Problem-driven collaboration, with a focus on identifying urgent, locally defined problems offers a potential solution to designing relevant performance management systems. Based on a case-survey design, the study analyses two collaborative governance networks in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) promoting the mobility of health workers. The analysis draws on 20 (n = 20) in-depth interviews with high-level country delegates and officials and a content analysis of 380 confidential reports from 10 countries in ASEAN. The results provide a deeper understanding of how a problem-driven approach can foster collaborative governance and overcome barriers to policy implementation. Implications for monitoring practices include the role of measuring “felt needs” – perceived gaps in implementation of policy objectives, and how problem-driven collaboration can add value to performance management systems in a development context.

The biomimetics potential of cave-dwelling animals

Biomimetics or biologically inspired design is a relatively new interdisciplinary field that aims to harness the processes and mechanisms in nature that have been optimised over million of years’ evolution to improve our own technology. There are two main approaches to biological inspired design – the problem-driven approach starting with an engineering problem and searching through biological equivalents or the solution-driven approach which starts with a biological example or solution followed by the identification of a suitable engineering application (Lenau et al. 2018). While the former approach is the most popular and is favoured by engineers, the latter remains the most successful and is typically driven by fundamental biological research. However, no biomimetic solutions or concepts have so far been described from subterranean habitats despite the rich potential arising from the wonderfully diverse range of bizarre morphological, physiological and behavioural adaptations that have arisen in response to the environmental constraints. In this presentation I give an outline of potential biomimetics examples arising from cave-dwelling animals in three technology fields. Biomaterials – the high humidity, lack of light and stable temperatures may have given rise to novel biomatarials. A promising study on the properties of silk from the Tasmanian cave spider Hickmania troglodytes is currently underway (Piorkowski et al. 2017). Adhesion devices. The high humidity and smooth wet surfaces underground may have given rise to unique morphological adaptations to adhere to and move on these surfaces. Potential target organisms include millipedes, springtails and cave angel fish. Biorobotics. Biomaterials – the high humidity, lack of light and stable temperatures may have given rise to novel biomatarials. A promising study on the properties of silk from the Tasmanian cave spider Hickmania troglodytes is currently underway (Piorkowski et al. 2017). Adhesion devices. The high humidity and smooth wet surfaces underground may have given rise to unique morphological adaptations to adhere to and move on these surfaces. Potential target organisms include millipedes, springtails and cave angel fish. Biorobotics. The characteristics of the subterranean habitats potentially offer rich inspiration for the design of exploration robots ranging from flexible movement in constrained spaces, flight in low light conditions and non-visual navigation. The hope is that this presentation will inspire experienced biospeleologists to consider and explore potential novel biomimetic applications in their own study organisms.

Problem-driven scenario generation: an analytical approach for stochastic programs with tail risk measure

Scenario generation is the construction of a discrete random vector to represent parameters of uncertain values in a stochastic program. Most approaches to scenario generation are distribution-driven, that is, they attempt to construct a random vector which captures well in a probabilistic sense the uncertainty. On the other hand, a problem-driven approach may be able to exploit the structure of a problem to provide a more concise representation of the uncertainty. In this paper we propose an analytic approach to problem-driven scenario generation. This approach applies to stochastic programs where a tail risk measure, such as conditional value-at-risk, is applied to a loss function. Since tail risk measures only depend on the upper tail of a distribution, standard methods of scenario generation, which typically spread their scenarios evenly across the support of the random vector, struggle to adequately represent tail risk. Our scenario generation approach works by targeting the construction of scenarios in areas of the distribution corresponding to the tails of the loss distributions. We provide conditions under which our approach is consistent with sampling, and as proof-of-concept demonstrate how our approach could be applied to two classes of problem, namely network design and portfolio selection. Numerical tests on the portfolio selection problem demonstrate that our approach yields better and more stable solutions compared to standard Monte Carlo sampling.

Prospective study using archetypes and system dynamics

PropósitoEste artículo propone una combinación de métodos de pronósticos que permite una comprensión holística de una situación futura, dadas ciertas variables de influencia mediante una combinación de datos reales y conocimiento de expertos.Diseño/metodología/enfoqueLa propuesta combina dos métodos conocidos: (i) arquetipos de sistemas que corresponden a estructuras genéricas, lo que nos permite manejar los modelos, y (ii) la dinámica de sistemas que ofrece soporte técnico a nivel computacional para evaluar diferentes escenarios o soluciones de problemas.ResultadosEl caso de estudio considera la situación de la industria minera en Chile y sus variables relacionadas, incluidos cuatro escenarios diferentes. Según la metodología propuesta, los resultados indican que i) el precio del cobre es primordial para la industria y sus efectos no se limitan a las ganancias de la empresa; ii) un largo período de caída en los precios del cobre podría detener los proyectos de exploración y desarrollo.Limitaciones en la investigación/implicacionesLos arquetipos sistémicos siguen siendo un tema de investigación y su aplicación en diferentes campos del conocimiento continúa aumentando para mejorar este enfoque de simulación.Implicaciones prácticasEl estudio de caso ilustra la combinación de una matriz de Vester y los modelos de arquetipos del sistema inicial que se enriquecen utilizando el enfoque de dinámica de sistemas. De hecho, el caso de estudio apunta a comprender las consecuencias de diferentes escenarios basados en el enfoque orientado a los problemas proporcionado por Vester.Implicaciones socialesEl objetivo de los estudios prospectivos para situaciones de gran escala y complejas es modelar la situación real para obtener soluciones que puedan mejorar el bienestar social.Originalidad/valorLa metodología propuesta contribuye a la literatura existente mediante la integración de técnicas como la matriz de Vester, el modelado de arquetipos del sistema y la simulación de dinámica de sistemas, todo lo cual se propuso anteriormente en la literatura como técnicas independientes.

Studying democratic innovations: toward a problem-driven approach to case study research

ABSTRACTHajer and Wagenaar (2003. Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xiv, 16) advanced a conception of policy analysis – “Deliberative Policy Analysis” – that “rests on three pillars: interpretation, practice and deliberation.” This form of policy analysis, they argued, supports “more direct, participatory forms of democracy” involving “democratic deliberation on concrete issues” (xv, 29). Since their writing, empirical research on such initiatives – “democratic innovations,” for short – has blossomed. However, while deliberative policy analysis is itself post-positivist in orientation, many researchers bring a (quasi-) positivist orientation to their work on democratic innovations. A key challenge for deliberative policy analysts is, then, how to participate in this field of inquiry while maintaining a post-positivist orientation. Pragmatist philosophy, I submit, can help them to meet this challenge. Pragmatism rejects a number of positivist assumptions about the nature of empirical inquiry. Relatedly, it supports the claim that policy analysis should be interpretive, practice-oriented, and deliberative. Indeed, it suggests that policy analysis cannot avoid being so. By way of illustration, I indicate how pragmatism points to an approach to case study research that rests on the three pillars.

New Obligations for Internet Intermediaries in the Digital Single Market — Safe Harbors in Turmoil?

The E-Commerce Directive (hereafter “ECD”) has been crucial for the flourishing of the information society. The directive introduced horizontally across all sectors a framework of conditional liability enabling the development and functioning of online services in various forms. Internet intermediaries, performing mere conduit, caching or hosting functions are shielded from liability for the illegal conduct of third parties provided that the intermediary is in no way involved with the information transmitted, or, in the case of hosting services, does not have knowledge or awareness of the illegal activities taking place. Upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, the service is required to expeditiously act to stop the illegal conduct. Portrayed as the gatekeepers of information online, intermediaries have been targeted by the European Digital Single Market in various contexts. The general theme is the following: the digital environment provides numerous opportunities, but these are tightly linked to regulatory challenges and as gatekeepers of information, online platforms should embrace more responsibility as far as the availability of illegal content on their services is concerned. As a result, a line of policy and legislative actions seek to nuance the existing liability regime for Internet intermediaries. The emerging framework deeply differs from the conditional liability regime within the ECD. Even though the safe harbour pursuant to Article 14 of the ECD is said to remain intact, the landscape is nowadays supplemented by a new Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market (hereafter “DSM directive”), an amendment to the Audio-visual Media Services Directive (hereafter “amended AVMSD”) and a guidance on the interpretation of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (hereafter “UCPD Guidance”). These pieces of legislation generate further layers of obligations on online intermediaries such as monitoring obligations, duties of diligence, reporting and flagging, requests to cooperate with rightholders, requirements to conclude licensing agreements, obligation to adopt appropriate measures to prevent unlawful content and calls for them to design platforms in a way that prevents consumers from being misled. Moreover, this new emerging framework is strongly characterised by problem-driven approach to regulation depending on the kind of content at stake. Theoretically, the new regime for intermediaries would have to function in a complementary manner with the current ECD conditional liability framework. However, the emphasis on the adoption of automatic filtering systems and a clear encouragement to invest in such technologies results in a dangerous clash with Articles 14 and 15 of the ECD. More precisely, using filtering systems blurs the line between active and passive hosting providers, a distinction subject to detailed analysis by the CJEU in a number of cases. The jurisprudence of the court has gradually associated the requirement of knowledge and awareness of copyright infringing content with the active role of an intermediary. Such a role goes beyond the mere provision of services neutrally and the technical automatic processing of data provided by users. In other words, proactive measures suggest that intermediaries would retain control over what is uploaded on their services by third parties. Such an approach would transform hosting providers from passive into active ones, eventually depriving them from the benefit of the safe harbour exemption from liability. The inconsistency holds true even though it has been mentioned by the Commission that such measures, when taken as part of the application of the terms of services of the online platform, would not render these service providers active ones, in particular when they process large volumes of material through automatic means. Furthermore, Article 15 of the ECD expressly prohibits Member States from imposing on intermediaries monitoring obligations of a general nature which is also seriously compromised with the new obligation upon intermediaries. The coherence and consistency of this new liability framework is thus highly questionable. The article argues that intermediaries are no longer subject to a conditional liability, but instead fall within the ambit of an organisational liability regime, whereby liability depends on the structure adopted by the undertaking in relation to the diverse types of content. The following addresses three categories of illegal content which have become the subject of legislative attention at an EU level as part of the DSM, namely copyright infringing, harmful (hate speech and content harmful to children) and misleading content.

Development of a bicycle level of service model for urban street segments in mid-sized cities carrying heterogeneous traffic: A functional networks approach

Abstract Roadways in developing countries usually carry heterogeneous traffic where on-street bicyclists encounter a very complex interaction with various categories of vehicles. In order to quantify the operational conditions of bicyclists under such conditions, a reliable bicycle level of service (BLOS) model is yet to be devised. This study intends to partially fill this gap by proposing a BLOS model suitable for urban road segments in mid-sized cities carrying heterogeneous traffic. A recently introduced artificial intelligence technique namely, associativity functional network (FN) is implemented for the development of this model. FN is a problem-driven approach that overcomes several limitations of the artificial neural network (ANN) technique. The urban bicycling environments persisting on 74 street segments are analyzed, and 8 influencing variables (geometric, traffic and built environmental, etc.) are identified. Of these variables, interruptions caused by frequent stoppages of intermittent public transits and frequency of driveways carrying high volume of traffic are newly introduced. In the modeling process, a strong relationship has been established between the identified variables and perceived BLOS scores collected through perception surveys. The resulting BLOS model has shown a high reliability for its applications in the mid-sized cities and has reported a high correlation coefficient (R) of 0.94 with the average observations. Besides, a sensitivity analysis is also carried out to identify the relative importance of input variables based on their contribution in the BLOS estimation. As observed, effective width of the outside lane, traffic volume, and on-street parking activity are by far the most important variables, which contribute 38.3%, 21.8%, and 12.7% respectively in the prediction of facility BLOS. Thus, these three attributes should be largely prioritized while making any plan of actions for the betterment of bicyclists.

Standards for Duty of Care? Debating Intermediary Liability from a Sectoral Perspective

The EU’s current regulatory framework for the content liability of online intermediaries was created in 2000 with the Ecommerce Directive (ECD). Already in those days, during the run-up to the ECD, there was an intense debate regarding whether a light-touch approach or more stringent content liability regime for intermediaries would be the appropriate way forward. 20 years later the debate is essentially led from the same angle, but has predictably, increased in complexity as the internet makes massive strides in transforming the “offline” world. There are those who argue that a purely horizontal approach in regulating internet intermediaries, or online platforms, remains sufficient. Others think the time has come to reflect the disruptive entrances online platforms made in various sectors of society in more vertical changes affecting substantive law. The EU Commission sits on the fence it seems, however. In its communication on online platforms and the digital single market, the Commission announced last year that it would leave the current intermediary liability regime as it is for now “while implementing a sectoral, problem-driven approach to regulation”. This paper will map out and critically evaluate some current sectoral (read vertical) regulatory developments, which may affect intermediary liability. It will look at recent, more top-down approaches proposed by the EU (e.g. in copyright), as well as self-regulatory efforts. This will be compared to less publicized developments, which have notably taken place in the area of product and financial regulation affecting ecommerce, such as for example efforts to combat the sale of fake medicines, unsafe products online, or anti-money laundering compliance. In these areas, it is argued that regulatory authorities have more proactively engaged online platforms, both on a legislative and practical level. A special focus in this context will be on the role of reasonable duties of care which intermediaries may be required to apply in order to detect and prevent infringements. Could these more “grassroots” developments and the convergence of online and offline worlds provide blueprints to encourage the development of a new content liability framework based on sectoral duties of care?

Improvement of creativity via the six-steps bio-inspiration strategy

Bionics is a relatively new interdisciplinary science, which synthesizes the knowledge of biology and other sciences. Industrial designers, architects and engineers find the application of principles and methods of bionics efficient for deriving inspiration and improving their creative thinking.Designers explore natural systems by adopting one of the two main bionic strategies: solution-driven or problem-driven approach. The first one deals with abstraction of the principle in biological systems as an inspiration for application in the product design process. The second one searches for a solution in natural systems for already recognized design problems.We adopted the Bi-directional bionic design method proposed by Versos and Coelho and started to implement it in our educational process. Many student projects have been made and important experience achieved. With this research we wanted to emphasize the possibilities and advantages of the bionic strategy and to offer our contribution for the phase of inspiration for a new product development or an improvement of the existing ones. Our main goal was to apply solution oriented strategy for efficient exploring of nature in the phase of searching for inspiration. We propose several steps in the process of exploration of natural systems followed by identification of important natural solutions and a structured way of documentation in order to become more noticeable and observable to attract an attention of designers and engineers. The recognized natural solutions could become a trigger for inspiration for various design solutions. The proposed strategy could be applied in the education of design and engineering students for improvement of their creativity.

Https://www.acadlore.com/article/CIS/2017_5_1/cis2017.05010052

A growing number of educational programs in sustainability science has paralleled the rise of the field itself. The educational approach of these programs follows the problem-driven, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary nature of the field itself. However, its effectiveness has yet to be systematically evaluated. Similarly, while ad-hoc evaluation schemes have attempted to monitor the quality of the educational programs, there is no standard method that accounts for the particularities of sustainability science programs. This study thus addresses the need for an assessment of the problem-driven approach of educational programs in sustainability science. We have conducted student self-assessments of field courses in the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science (GPSS-GLI) at The University of Tokyo, which positions its field courses at the center of its curriculum. The self-assessments were based on five key competencies identified as particularly important for sustainability professionals. Workshops and questionnaires engaged students in a reflection of the six field courses and of their own personal development through the activities offered. Our questionnaire results indicate that the majority of participants were satisfied with how the courses furthered their personal development. While some participants expressed frustration at being unable to sufficiently address the respective field's sustainability challenges due to time constraints, students generally recognized the five key competencies as important for addressing sustainability issues after participating in the courses. Moreover, participants attributed much of their learning to their active engagement in planned field research activities, rather than to passive learning. Variations in results across different course units provide material for further analysis and development of the curriculum. This study is an initial attempt at assessment, with room for ongoing improvement and further research to address additional requirements for fostering the next generation of sustainability professionals.

Extending the Uintah Framework through the Petascale Modeling of Detonation in Arrays of High Explosive Devices

The Uintah software framework for the solution of a broad class of fluid-structure interaction problems has been developed by using a problem-driven approach that dates back to its inception. Uintah uses a layered task-graph approach that decouples the problem specification as a set of tasks from the adaptive runtime system that executes these tasks. Using this approach, it is possible to improve the performance of the software components to enable the solution of broad classes of problems as well as the driving problem itself. This process is illustrated by a motivating problem: the computational modeling of the hazards posed by thousands of explosive devices during a deflagration-to-detonation transition that occurred on Highway 6 in Utah. In order to solve this complex fluid-structure interaction problem at the required scale, substantial algorithmic and data structure improvements were needed to Uintah. These improvements enabled scalable runs for the target problem and provided the capability to mode...

MONA 2: A Light Cheminformatics Platform for Interactive Compound Library Processing.

Because of the availability of large compound collections on the Web, elementary cheminformatics tasks such as chemical library browsing, analyzing, filtering, or unifying have become widespread in the life science community. Furthermore, the high performance of desktop hardware allows an interactive, problem-driven approach to these tasks, avoiding rigid processing scripts and workflows. Here, we present MONA 2, which is the second major release of our cheminformatics desktop application addressing this need. Using MONA requires neither complex database setups nor expert knowledge of cheminformatics. A new molecular set concept purely based on structural entities rather than individual compounds has allowed the development of an intuitive user interface. Based on a chemically precise, high-performance software library, typical tasks on chemical libraries with up to one million compounds can be performed mostly interactively. This paper describes the functionality of MONA, its fundamental concepts, and a collection of application scenarios ranging from file conversion, compound library curation, and management to the post-processing of large-scale experiments.

Neutralidade de Rede: O caso Comcast v. Netflix e o Marco Civil da Internet

Propósito – O artigo pretende fazer uma reflexão sobre como o Estado brasileiro avançou quanto à defesa do princípio da neutralidade de rede. Para essa análise, será utilizado o caso Comcast vs. Netflix como exemplo para comparar as ações do Estados Unidos e do Brasil sobre o tema.
 Metodologia/abordagem/design – O texto segue o método de abordagem de análise de problema para poder tirar conclusões sobre as práticas adotadas pelos Estados Unidos e pelo Brasil.
 Resultados – Foi constatado que o Brasil está na vanguarda sobre governança da internet, especialmente por zelar pela neutralidade de rede.
 Implicações práticas – O artigo serve para compreensão da discussão sobre neutralidade de rede e, especialmente, sobre o processo do Marco Civil da Internet no Brasil.
 Originalidade/relevância do texto – O artigo, ao fornecer uma perspectiva comparada entre o Estado americano e brasileiro, mostra como esse bem público, qual seja o da internet neutra e aberta, tem sido preservado.