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The virtual observatory (VO) is a collection of interoperable data archives, tools and applications that together form an environment in which original astronomical research can be carried out. The VO is opening up new ways of exploiting…

The Collaborative Analysis Versioning Environment System (CAVES) project concentrates on the interactions between users performing data and/or computing intensive analyses on large data sets, as encountered in many contemporary scientific…

The Virtual Observatory (VO) is an international attempt to collect astronomical data (images, simulation, mission-logs, etc), organize it and develop tools that let astronomers access this huge amount of information. The VO not only…

In traditional access control policies, every access granted and administrative account introduces an additional vulnerability, as a corruption of a high-privilege user can compromise several sensitive files. Privocracy is an access control…

In this paper, we introduce the Generalist Virtual Agent (GVA), an autonomous entity engineered to function across diverse digital platforms and environments, assisting users by executing a variety of tasks. This survey delves into the…

Voice over IP (VoIP) is an emerging communication service allowing voice transmission over a private or a public IP network. VoIP allows significant benefits for customers and service providers including cost savings, phone and service…

Democracy is not a single mechanism. It is a space of possible configurations -- a spectrum stretching from pure direct participation to full delegation of authority. The systems we live under today occupy a narrow band of that spectrum,…

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Virtual Assistants (VAs) e.g., Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and High-Flyer Deepseek has turned them into convenient interfaces for managing emerging technologies such…

This paper addresses policy challenges of complex virtual environments such as virtual worlds, social network sites, and massive multiplayer online games. The complexity of these environments--apparent by the rich user interactions and…

During the execution of large scale construction projects performed by Virtual Organizations (VO), relatively complex technical models have to be exchanged between the VO members. For linking the trade and transfer of these models, a…

Since its inception in the early 2000, the Virtual Observatory (VO), developed as a collaboration of many national and international projects, has become a major factor in the discovery and dissemination of astronomical information…

Algorithmic decision support is increasingly used in a whole array of different contexts and structures in various areas of society, influencing many people's lives. Its use raises questions, among others, about accountability, transparency…

Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) are component-based architectures, characterized by reusability, modularization and composition, usually offered by HTTP (web services) and often equipped with a Quality of Services (QoS) measure. In…

The development of Open-Source Software (OSS) projects relies on the collaborative work of contributors, generally scattered around the world. To enable this collaboration, OSS projects are hosted on social-coding platforms like GitHub,…

Agent Based Models are very popular in a number of different areas. For example, they have been used in a range of domains ranging from modeling of tumor growth, immune systems, molecules to models of social networks, crowds and computer…

Due to the increasing complexity and heterogeneity of contemporary Command, Control, Communications, Computers, & Intelligence systems at all levels within military organizations, the adoption of the Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)…

The Virtual Observatory (VO) provides access to both, data and theory. Quality control is a general problem and the VO user needs partly some experience to judge the reliability of the VO products. As far as spectral analysis is concerned,…

In societal-scale decision-making systems the collective is faced with the problem of ensuring that the derived group decision is in accord with the collective's intention. In modern systems, political institutions have instatiated…

A multi-disciplinary understanding of the concepts of identity, agency, relationships, interactions, and information could help us develop mitigation strategies for responsible human-algorithmic systems in the field of AI. It is imperative…

With the increase of the populations, resources are becoming scarcer, and a smarter way to make use of them becomes a vital necessity of our societies. On the other hand, resource management is traditionally carried out through well…