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Background: The ECRAN (European Communication on Research Awareness Needs) project was initiated in 2012, with support from the European Commission, to improve public knowledge about the importance of independent, multinational, clinical trials in Europe. Methods: Participants in the ECRAN consortium included clinicians and methodologists directly involved in clinical trials; researchers working in partnership with the public and patients; representatives of patients; and experts in science communication. We searched for, and evaluated, relevant existing materials and developed additional materials and tools, making them freely available under a Creative Commons licence. Results: The principal communication materials developed were: 1. A website (http://ecranproject.eu) in six languages, including a Media centre section to help journalists to disseminate information about the ECRAN project 2. An animated film about clinical trials, dubbed in the 23 official languages of the European Community, and an interactive tutorial 3. An inventory of resources, available in 23 languages, searchable by topic, author, and media type 4. Two educational games for young people, developed in six languages 5. Testing Treatments interactive in a dozen languages, including five official European Community languages 6. An interactive tutorial slide presentation testing viewers' knowledge about clinical trials Conclusions: Over a 2-year project, our multidisciplinary and multinational consortium was able to produce, and make freely available in many languages, new materials to promote public knowledge about the importance of independent and international clinical trials. Sustained funding for the ECRAN information platform could help to promote successful recruitment to independent clinical trials supported through the European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network.

Background: The ECRAN (European Communication on Research Awareness Needs) project was initiated in 2012, with support from the European Commission, to improve public knowledge about the importance of independent, multinational, clinical trials in Europe. Methods: Participants in the ECRAN consortium included clinicians and methodologists directly involved in clinical trials; researchers working in partnership with the public and patients; representatives of patients; and experts in science communication. We searched for, and evaluated, relevant existing materials and developed additional materials and tools, making them freely available under a Creative Commons licence. Results: The principal communication materials developed were: 1. A website (http://ecranproject.eu) in six languages, including a Media centre section to help journalists to disseminate information about the ECRAN project 2. An animated film about clinical trials, dubbed in the 23 official languages of the European Community, and an interactive tutorial 3. An inventory of resources, available in 23 languages, searchable by topic, author, and media type 4. Two educational games for young people, developed in six languages 5. Testing Treatments interactive in a dozen languages, including five official European Community languages 6. An interactive tutorial slide presentation testing viewers' knowledge about clinical trials Conclusions: Over a 2-year project, our multidisciplinary and multinational consortium was able to produce, and make freely available in many languages, new materials to promote public knowledge about the importance of independent and international clinical trials. Sustained funding for the ECRAN information platform could help to promote successful recruitment to independent clinical trials supported through the European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network.

In this position paper, we argue that a new methodological paradigm and software platform is required for developing citizen-oriented social computing applications. The platform that we propose is based on the idea of 'Collective Intelligence as a Service', and is grounded in the formalisation of computational models derived from an empirical analysis of psychological processes and social practices. This in turn provides the enablers for developing radically innovative tools for computational sustainability and computer-supported collective action in smart communities (e.g. Smart cities). Our vision is illustrated with two exemplars, one a healthcare application for patients with peripheral arterial disease, and the other an application for collaborative energy conservation to meet targets set out in a city's Sustainable Energy Action Plan.

We have developed a model and a platform for end-to-end run-time monitoring behavior and performance analysis and consequent dynamic adaptation of distributed applications. This paper concentrates on how we coordinate and actuate the potentially multi-part adaptation operating externally to the target systems that is without requiring any a priori built-in adaptation facilities on the part of said target systems. The actual changes are performed on the fly onto the target by communities of mobil software agents coordinated by a decentralized process engine. These changes can be coarse grained, such as changing the operational parameters entire components or rearranging the connections among components, or fine-grained, such as changing the operational parameters internal state and functioning logic of individual components. We discuss our successful experience using our approach in dynamic adaptation of a large-scale commercial application which require both coarse and fine grained modifications., The original document contains color images.

Sustainable urban mobility is an important dimension in a Smart City, and one of the key issues for city sustainability. However, innovative and often costly mobility policies and solutions introduced by cities are liable to fail, if not combined with initiatives aimed at increasing the awareness of citizens, and promoting their behavioural change. This paper explores the potential of gamification mechanisms to incentivize voluntary behavioural changes towards sustainable mobility solutions. We present a service-based gamification framework, developed within the STREETLIFE EU Project, which can be used to develop games on top of existing services and systems within a Smart City, and discuss the empirical findings of an experiment conducted in the city of Rovereto on the effectiveness of gamification to promote sustainable urban mobility.

Sustainable urban mobility is an important dimension in a Smart City, and one of the key issues for city sustainability. However, innovative and often costly mobility policies and solutions introduced by cities are liable to fail, if not combined with initiatives aimed at increasing the awareness of citizens, and promoting their behavioural change. This paper explores the potential of gamification mechanisms to incentivize voluntary behavioural changes towards sustainable mobility solutions. We present a service-based gamification framework, developed within the STREETLIFE EU Project, which can be used to develop games on top of existing services and systems within a Smart City, and discuss the empirical findings of an experiment conducted in the city of Rovereto on the effectiveness of gamification to promote sustainable urban mobility.

Multi-User Dimensions (MUDs) [3], and their Object-Oriented versions (MOOs) [6], are geographically distributed, programmable client-server systems that support the cooperation of multiple users according to the virtual environment metaphor. In this metaphor, users are allowed to concurrently navigate in a set of "virtual" rooms. Rooms are interconnected through doors and may contain objects. Users are allowed to explore the contents of rooms, create and manipulate objects, and contact other users visiting the same room.