Water is an essential element of life. The government of Ethiopia in collaboration with development allies’ attempts to increase pure water supply. Even though the coverage boosted dramatically still there is critical challenges in maximizing equipment’s reliability, improving service quality, maximizing capacity utilization, minimizing life cycle costs of water production mach...

This paper discusses some grand challenges in which music information research will impact our daily lives and our society in the future. Here, some fundamental questions are how to provide the best music for each person, how to predict music trends, how to enrich human-music relationships, how to evolve new music, and how to address environmental, energy issues by using music technologies. Our...

A grand challenge in network science is apparently the missing of a structural theory of networks. The authors have showed that the existence of community structures is a universal phenomenon in real networks, and that neither randomness nor preferential attachment is a mechanism of community structures of network 1. This poses a fundamental question: What are the mechanisms of community struct...

Personalised elearning is being heralded as one of the grand challenges of next generation learning systems, in particular, its ability to support greater effectiveness, efficiency and student empowerment. However, a key problem with such systems is their reliance on bespoke content developed for, and only used by, these systems. The challenge for adaptive systems in scalably supporting persona...

Urban food strategies are increasingly being used as means to address a multitude of challenges presented by food system failings. The use of participatory approaches has become common practice in the field of urban food systems planning. These approaches are believed to democratize, legitimize and increase effectiveness of addressing challenges. Despite these “promises”, they have also been vi...

The list of engineering "Grand Challenges" lately developed by the National Academy of Engineering enters a long historical tradition of such epically scaled to-do lists, dating back to the profession's U.S. origins in the mid-19 century. The mission statements, codes of ethics, and, later, lists of so-called grand challenges that have issued from engineering societies have served the dual func...

Librarians have many and varied difficulties. For some library problems research is not the best remedy. Improved coordination, clarification of values, or drawing on existing research results may suffice. When research is indicated, it pays to be selective. Investing in research, like any other kind of investment, should be judged in terms of the probability of success, the likely delay before...