Serge Miranda

NFC Mobiquitous Information Service Prototyping at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and Multi-mode NFC Application Proposal

In July 2010, more than 5 billions of Earth inhabitants (out of 6.8) had a cell phone (Ericsson Study) with more than 2 millions of new subscribers a day in 2010. We expect 3.3 billion of Smart phones in 2015, Google just announced mid November 2010 that their Nexus “S” smart phones will be NFC (Near Field Communication, [1], [2], [3]) by the end of 2010. This changes drastically the landscape of information service engineering. RFID tags and NFC standard in cell phones will be cornerstone of the ICT future in this new paradigm of “local wide web”: “Smart objects with smart phones on …smart LOCAL places is a summary of our digital future, digital divide will not be on infrastructure but on SERVICES” [5]. In this paper we give an overview of a portfolio of NFC innovative services prototyped at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis since the inception of the standard in 2004, infer some architectural and economics lessons, and propose a key research contribution based upon a genuine generic framework for multi-mode NFC applications within a SIM card.

Nice Future Campus, un bouquet de services NFC dans une carte virtuelle étudiant

Nice Future Campus (NFC) est aujourd’hui la premiere carte etudiante virtuelle multiservice mobiquitaire en Europe, embarquee dans un telephone mobile NFC. Ce projet comprend un bouquet de services embarques dans la carte SIM d’un mobile NFC : gestion de tickets et coupons (utilisation du telephone portable de la meme facon qu’un ticket), controle d’acces, paiement au restaurant universitaire, bibliotheque mobiquitaire, transport public et informations sur le campus avec acces aux reseaux sociaux via le mobile. Les trois modes du standard NFC sont experimentes dans ce bouquet de services. Ce projet a ete conduit dans le cadre d’un contrat IPER avec le ministere de l’Industrie et un consortium d’industriels avec un copilotage par le MBDS.

Complex-Statistical-Table Structure and Operators for Macro Statistical Databases

They are two kinds of Statistical DataBases (SDBs), micro and macro-SDBs. Micro-SDBs describe individual entities or events, they are mainly used for statistical analysis. Macro-SDBs contain only summary-data achieved by statistical-mathematical operations on micro-SDBs. In this paper, we propose a data-structure called Complex Statistical Table (CST) which offer a formal and homogeneous framework to develop macro-SDBs. In order to manipulate CST structure, we define two classes of operators : CST transposition operators making data-organisation dynamic and CST retrieval operators that work on CST instances. We also propose a discussion pointing out our approach contrasted with other contributions of this field.

Lessons inferred from NFC mobiquitous innovative information service.

In this article, we first overview NFC proof-of-concept and pilot projects which were developed in MBDS innovation group since the inception of the NFC standard in 2004 under partnership and contracts from industry partners and the French Ministry of Industry. We give a generic NFC multi-modal development framework to ease NFC development inspired by our data base know how. We then infer some architectural lessons and introduce a CS research on formal interaction layer to handle mobiquitous systems (ASTRA project). We finally outline an area of Economic research concerning mobiquitous virtual cash along with a discussion on expected business models.

Relationship Between Legitimacy and Organizational Success

This article explores the relationship between legitimacy and success in the high education sector. To do so the relationship between legitimacy and organizational results is analysed as well as the relationship between legitimacy and the access to resources. Eight hypotheses related to the legitimacy of the European Higher Education Area in the public universities of Madrid (Spain) are proposed. Hypotheses are tested by using data from students (783 questionnaires), teachers (761 questionnaires) and other publicly available secondary data. Results suggest differences according to the source and the type of legitimacy analysed. There is no appreciable relation between teacher’s legitimacy and their results. However, universities with high teacher’s legitimacy show better access to resources. Regarding student’s legitimacy, we found that universities with high legitimacy obtain a little more better result. Furthermore, high student’s legitimacy leads to better access to resources. This research provides answers to some gaps of the legitimacy literature. Do greatest legitimacy organizations obtain better results? Do they get better access to resources? What type of legitimacy lead to better organizational results?

RTL - A Relation and Table Language for Statistical Databases

In this paper, we present a multidimentional data language-RTL (Relation and Table Language) allowing statisticans to handle micro and macro statistical databases. We first describe our data model for statistical applications, based upon a twofold structure : relation and Complex Statistical Table (CST). Then, we present RTL, that encompasses relational algebra with aggregate operator, transformation operators, in order to achieve conversion between relations and CSTs, and specific CST-manipulation operators, allowing to modify CST organization (and making this data-structure dynamic) or to aggregate macro-data.