bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Innovative Smart Sensing Solutions for the Visually Impaired
Authors: Andò Bruno , Baglio Salvatore , La Malfa Salvatore , Marletta Vincenzo
Published: May 2011

Although several aids have been developed to help people with visual impairment in the accomplishment of daily activities, indoor and outdoor navigation remains a critical task when considered both as a technological and a social issue. The development of new technological approaches (such as the use of smart multi-sensor architecture) allowing for the perception of the neighboring environment and providing the user with an optimized form and degree of information are activities focused by researchers working on the field. In the chapter some systems currently being developed at the D.I.E.E.S. in Catania are briefly discussed, highlighting the efforts dedicated to develop smart methodologies for the optimization of the information the user is provided with. In particular, the attention will be focused on the PYRUS system, which adopts a multi-sensor architecture and quite complex smart post-processing to provide the user with information useful to perform urban mobility tasks, and orientation and mobility aid based on a multi-sensor network of ultrasound transducers to localize the user in the environment and to guide him/her in a safe way through the environment.
A Feedback Controlled FES in Rehabilitation
Authors: Chen Yu-Luen , Kuo Te-Son
Published: May 2011

A feedback control functional electrical stimulation (FES) system was proposed to prevent quadriceps weakness and drop-foot of the hemiplegia during gait training. The FES system is triggered by a footswitch on the heel of the affected foot to stimulate the tibialis anterior muscle for dorsi-flexion and to turn-off the knee locker in the swing phase through the main controller. The footswitch on the heel of the affected-side can be used to stimulate the quadriceps and turn-on the knee locker for quadriceps weakness in the stance phase. It was revealed that the mean velocity, cadence, stride length, active ankle motion range and functional ambulation category (FAC) were significantly improved. A paired t-test indicated that the differences in the electromyography (EMG) of the tibialis anterior and the quadriceps muscles between patient’s affected foot and unaffected foot were not significant (p>0.05) after 16 weeks of training. The proposed knee locker device with closed-loop FES system is capable of providing a hemiplegic patient with regular walking restoration after appropriate gait training.
Sensors in Assistive Technology
Authors: Chen Yu-Luen , Chang Walter , Kuo Te-Son
Published: May 2011

This chapter reports on the development of an eyeglass-type infrared-controlled computer interface for the disabled. This system may serve to assist those who suffer from spinal cord injuries or other handicaps to operate a computer. This system is comprised of three major components: (A) an infrared transmitting module; (B) an infrared receiving / signal-processing module; and (C) a main controller, the Intel-8951 microprocessor. The infrared transmitting module utilizes tongue-touch circuitry which is converted to an infrared beam and a low power laser (<0.1mW) beam. The infrared receiving / signal-processing module, receives the infrared beam and fine tunes the unstable infrared beam into standard pulses which are used as control signals. The main controller is responsible for detecting the input signals from the infrared receiving / signal-processing module and verifying these signals with the mapping table in its memory. After the signal is verified, it is released to control the keys of the computer keyboard and mouse interface. This design concept was mainly based on the idea that the use of an infrared remote module fastened to the eyeglasses could allow the convenient control of the input motion on the keys of a computer keyboard and mouse which are all modified with infrared receiving / signal-processing modules. The system is designed for individuals with spinal cord injuries and disabled in which the subjects’ movement are severely restricted. The infrared transmitting module can be easily mounted on eyeglasses or artificial limbs.
Experience Using Information and Communication Technologies with Elderly People
Authors: Nieto Laura , Groba Betania , Servia Francisco
Published: May 2011

The elderly show very low rates of access to and use of the new technologies in comparison with their significant weight in the overall population. It is essential to establish alternatives which respond to their needs and promote the access to and use of ICTs among all citizens on equal conditions. This chapter describes an experiment conducted with new technologies in the Red Cross Elderly Day Care Centre in A Coruña, using the In-TIC software and a specific methodology for intervention with elderly individuals. Three different lines of action were followed: initial evaluation of the users participating in the project; intervention by means of digital literacy and therapeutic stimulation sessions with the ICT; and final re-evaluation and data collection. The results obtained provide proof of an improvement in the users’ cognitive abilities, the acquisition of computer knowledge and skills, and the satisfaction of the elderly with regard to new technologies.
Weblogs in Higher Education
Authors: Beuschel Werner
Published: May 2011

Weblogs are a popular form of Social Software, supporting personal Web authoring as well as innovative forms of social interaction via internet. The potential of Weblogs to emphasize active student participation and collaboration raises great expectations for a new pedagogical quality in higher education. In this chapter, the author explores the value of Social Software, specifically Weblogs, for learning and teaching in institutional education. An exploratory study serves as background for the discussion. Critical issues and areas of research for using Social Software in education are concluding the chapter.
Social Structures of Online Religious Communities
Authors: Hughes Jerald , Robinson Scott
Published: May 2011

This chapter examines interaction-oriented virtual religious communities online in the light of sociological theory of religious communities. The authors find that the particular importance of identity, authenticity and authority in religious communities populating online discussion forums may give rise to special problems online, which are demonstrated here to be direct outcomes of the necessary reliance on information technology to carry out functions of online religious social groups which are intended to correspond to offline religious categories. The authors draw upon both sociological theory of religious communities and information systems theory of computer-mediated communications to identify salient points of similarity and difference between online and offline religious social structures, and conclude that online religious forum communities as presently constituted are unlikely to be able to directly replicate the traditional social structures of the offline religious institutions from which they originated, due to the particular powers and constraints on action embodied in social software.
Interactivity Redefined for the Social Web
Authors: Sachdev V. , Nerur S. , Teng J. T.C.
Published: May 2011

With the trend towards social interaction over the Internet and the mushrooming of Web sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube in the social computing space, practitioners and researchers are motivated to explain the sudden surge in user interest. The authors propose that interactivity is an important and appropriate subject of investigation to shed light on this explosion in social media use. Based on a review of the extant literature, they justify the use of interactivity for addressing research questions motivated by this new phenomenon. In particular, they propose a redefinition of interactivity for the social computing domain and term it Social Computing Interactivity (SCI). The authors suggest possible operationalizations of the dimensions of SCI and explore theory bases which would inform a study of their relevance in predicting the continued growth of social computing.
Rootkits and What We Know
Authors: Arnett Kirk P. , Schmidt Mark B. , Johnston Allen C , Kim Jongki , Hwang HJ
Published: May 2011

Respondents from eight Korean and United States higher education institutions were surveyed as to their knowledge and experience with various forms of computer malware. The surveys provide insight into knowledge of rootkits that have become coffee lounge discussion following the once secretive Sony rootkit news break in late 2005 and then the rash of accusations and acknowledgements of other rootkits that followed. The surveys provide an empirical assessment of perceptions between students in the two countries with regard to various forms of malware. The two groups are similar in many respects but they exhibit significant differences in self-reported perceptions of rootkit familiarity. U.S. respondents report higher levels of familiarity for all assessed malware types, including the fictional “Trilobyte” virus. A timeline-based comparison between virus and rootkit knowledge reveals that relatively little is known about rootkits today. This highlights dangers related to existing knowledge levels but presents hope for solutions and an accelerated rootkit awareness curve to improve worldwide malware protection.
Dynamic Control Mechanisms for User Privacy Enhancement
Authors: Ali Eldin Amr
Published: May 2011

Despite the expected benefits behind context-awareness and the need for developing more and more context-aware applications, we enunciate that privacy represents a major challenge for the success and widespread adoption of these services. This is due to the collection of huge amount of users’ contextual information, which would highly threaten their privacy concerns. Controlling users’ information collection represents a logical way to let users get more acquainted with these context-aware services. Additionally, this control requires users to be able to make consent decisions which face a high degree of uncertainty due to the nature of this environment and the lack of experience from the user side with information collectors’ privacy policies. Therefore, intelligent techniques are required in order to deal with this uncertainty. In this chapter, the auhtors propose a consent decision-making mechanism, ShEM, which allows users to exert automatic and manual control over their private information. An enhanced fuzzy logic approach was developed for the automatic decision making process. The proposed mechanism has been prototyped and integrated in a UMTS location-based services testbed on a university campus. Users have experienced the services in real time. A survey of users’ responses on the privacy functionality has been carried out and analyzed as well. Users’ response on the privacy functionality was positive. Additionally, results obtained showed that a combination of both manual and automatic privacy control modes in one approach is more likely to be accepted than only a complete automatic or a complete manual privacy control.
Defeating Active Phishing Attacks for Web-Based Transactions
Authors: Luo Xin , Guan Tan Teik
Published: May 2011

Till now, the best defense against phishing is the use of two-factor authentication systems. Yet this protection is short-lived and comparatively weak. The absence of a fool-proof solution against Man-inthe-Middle, or Active Phishing, attacks have resulted in an avalanche of security practitioners painting bleak scenarios where Active Phishing attacks cripple the growth of web-based transactional systems. Even with vigilant users and prudent applications, no solutions seem to have addressed the attacks comprehensively. In this chapter, the authors propose the new Two-factor Interlock Authentication Protocol (TIAP), adapted from the Interlock Protocol with two-factor authentication, which is able to defend successfully against Active Phishing attacks. They further scrutinize the TIAP by simulating a series of attacks against the protocol and demonstrate how each attack is defeated.
Information Security Effectiveness
Authors: Knapp Kenneth J. , Marshall Thomas E. , Rainer R. Kelly , Ford F. Nelson
Published: May 2011

Taking a sequential qualitative-quantitative methodological approach, the authors propose and test a theoretical model that includes four variables through which top management can positively influence security effectiveness: user training, security culture, policy relevance, and policy enforcement. During the qualitative phase of the study, the authors generated the model based on textual responses to a series of questions given to a sample of 220 information security practitioners. During the quantitative phase, we analyzed survey data collected from a sample of 740 information security practitioners. After data collection, we analyzed the survey responses using structural equation modeling and found evidence to support the hypothesized model. They also tested an alternative, higher-order factor version of the original model that demonstrated an improved overall fit and general applicability across the various demographics of the sampled data. They then linked the finding of this study to existing top management support literature, general deterrence theory research, and the theoretical notion of the dilemma of the supervisor.
A Complex-Valued Hopfield Neural Network
Authors: Chakravarthy V. Srinivasa
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes Complex Hopfield Neural Network (CHNN), a complex-variable version of the Hopfield neural network, which can exist in both fixed point and oscillatory modes. Memories can be stored by a complex version of Hebbs rule. In the fixed-point mode, CHNN is similar to a continuous-time Hopfield network. In the oscillatory mode, when multiple patterns are stored, the network wanders chaotically among patterns. Presence of chaos in this mode is verified by appropriate time series analysis. It is shown that adaptive connections can be used to control chaos and increase memory capacity. Electronic realization of the network in oscillatory dynamics, with fixed and adaptive connections shows an interesting tradeoff between energy expenditure and retrieval performance. It is shown how the intrinsic chaos in CHNN can be used as a mechanism for annealing when the network is used for solving quadratic optimization problems. The networks applicability to chaotic synchronization is described.
Complex-Valued Symmetric Radial Basis Function Network for Beamforming
Authors: Chen Sheng
Published: May 2011

The complex-valued radial basis function (RBF) network proposed by Chen et al. (1994) has found many applications for processing complex-valued signals, in particular, for communication channel equalization and signal detection. This complex-valued RBF network, like many other existing RBF modeling methods, constitutes a black-box approach that seeks typically a sparse model representation extracted from the training data. Adopting black-box modeling is appropriate, if no a priori information exists regarding the underlying data generating mechanism. However, a fundamental principle in practical data modelling is that if there exists a priori information concerning the system to be modeled it should be incorporated in the modeling process. Many complex-valued signal processing problems, particularly those encountered in communication signal detection, have some inherent symmetric properties. This contribution adopts a grey-box approach to complex-valued RBF modeling and develops a complex-valued symmetric RBF (SRBF) network model. The application of this SRBF network is demonstrated using nonlinear beamforming assisted detection for multiple-antenna aided wireless systems that employ complex-valued modulation schemes. Two training algorithms for this complex-valued SRBF network are proposed. The first method is based on a modified version of the cluster-variation enhanced clustering algorithm, while the second method is derived by modifying the orthogonal-forward-selection procedure based on Fisher ratio of class separability measure. The effectiveness of the proposed complex-valued SRBF network and the efficiency of the two training algorithms are demonstrated in nonlinear beamforming application.
Face Recognition
Authors: Kim Daijin , Sung Jaewon
Published: May 2011

In the modern life, the need for personal security and access control is becoming an important issue. Biometrics is the technology which is expected to replace traditional authentication methods that are easily stolen, forgotten and duplicated. Fingerprints, face, iris, and voiceprints are commonly used biometric features. Among these features, face provides a more direct, friendly and convenient identification method and is more acceptable compared with the individual identification methods of other biometrics features. Thus, face recognition is one of the most important parts in biometrics.
Management of Medical Website Quality Labels via Web Mining
Authors: Karkaletsis Vangelis , Stamatakis Konstantinos , Karampiperis Pythagoras , Labský Martin , Růžička Marek , Svátek Vojtěch , Cabrera Enrique Amigó , Pöllä Matti , Mayer Miquel Angel , Gonzales Dagmar Villarroel
Published: May 2011

The World Wide Web is an important channel of information exchange in many domains, including the medical one. The ever increasing amount of freely available healthcare-related information generates, on the one hand, excellent conditions for self-education of patients as well as physicians, but on the other hand, entails substantial risks if such information is trusted irrespective of low competence or even bad intentions of its authors. This is why medical Web site certification, also called quality labeling, by renowned authorities is of high importance. In this respect, it recently became obvious that the labelling process could benefit from employment of Web mining and information extraction techniques, in combination with flexible methods of Web-based information management developed within the Semantic Web initiative. Achieving such synergy is the central issue in the MedIEQ project. The AQUA (Assisting Quality Assessment) system, developed within the MedIEQ project, aims to provide the infrastructure and the means to organize and support various aspects of the daily work of labelling experts.
Discovering Knowledge from Local Patterns in SAGE Data
Authors: Crémilleux Bruno , Soulet Arnaud , Kléma Jiri , Hébert Céline , Gandrillon Olivier
Published: May 2011

The discovery of biologically interpretable knowledge from gene expression data is a crucial issue. Current gene data analysis is often based on global approaches such as clustering. An alternative way is to utilize local pattern mining techniques for global modeling and knowledge discovery. Nevertheless, moving from local patterns to models and knowledge is still a challenge due to the overwhelming number of local patterns and their summarization remains an open issue. This chapter is an attempt to fulfill this need: thanks to recent progress in constraint-based paradigm, it proposes three data mining methods to deal with the use of local patterns by highlighting the most promising ones or summarizing them. Ideas at the core of these processes are removing redundancy, integrating background knowledge, and recursive mining. This approach is effective and useful in large and real-world data: from the case study of the SAGE gene expression data, we demonstrate that it allows generating new biological hypotheses with clinical application.
Knowledge-Based Induction of Clinical Prediction Rules
Authors: Kwiatkowska Mila , Atkins M. Stella , Matthews Les , Ayas Najib T. , Ryan C. Frank
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes how to integrate medical knowledge with purely inductive (data-driven) methods for the creation of clinical prediction rules. It addresses three issues: representation of medical knowledge, secondary analysis of medical data, and evaluation of automatically induced predictive models in the context of existing knowledge. To address the complexity of the domain knowledge, the authors have introduced a semio-fuzzy framework, which has its theoretical foundations in semiotics and fuzzy logic. This integrative framework has been applied to the creation of clinical prediction rules for the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea, a serious and under-diagnosed respiratory disorder. The authors use a semio-fuzzy approach (1) to construct a knowledge base for the definition of diagnostic criteria, predictors, and existing prediction rules; (2) to describe and analyze data sets used in the data mining process; and (3) to interpret the induced models in terms of confirmation, contradiction, and contribution to existing knowledge.
Pervasive Business Infrastructure
Authors: Godara Varuna
Published: May 2011

The need for more and more flexibility (in terms of time and location) in business operations, contextbased services, decentralization of business processes, and information processing and innovative services has introduced new ubiquitous environments, sensing technologies, and pervasive devices. This new category of devices, sensors, and ubiquitous environments, has the capabilities to observe the users all the time using sensors; provide timely information to service providers using communication channels; and offer accurate services to users anywhere and anytime through tiny mobile terminals. This chapter provides the users of the pervasive business technologies an overview of the basic infrastructure and protocols used to form these ubiquitous wireless environments and provide context-based comfort, while taking care of confidentiality, secrecy, integrity, and authenticity. Along with an introduction to the markup languages, protocols, and security threats, the chapter concludes with the discussion of a range of common biometric, cryptographi,c and routing solutions.
Falling Behind
Authors: Pratt Jonathan G.M.
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents the major findings of case study research investigating uncritical assessment of an institution-wide learning management system in an Australian university. Suburban University illustrates the ways in which a range of social and institutional influences, operating internally and externally to an organization, can affect managerial decision making. Many of the parties involved were unaware of the influence of some of these factors upon them at the time of assessment. When these parties also lacked a background in the areas they sought to manage (i.e., the educational enterprise of the university), critical assessment was made even more difficult. Therefore, universities that teach skills in critical assessment to their students can sometimes be uncritical in their own decision making, particularly when the vice chancellor fears “falling behind” other adopting universities and key organizational decision makers lack relevant theoretical frameworks to inform decision making in the areas they manage.
Pervasive Computers in Aviation Passenger Risk Profiling
Authors: Glambedakis Antony
Published: May 2011

This chapter sets out to inform the reader about the impact of pervasive computers in aviation passenger risk profiling. First is an overview of the perception of risk from a passenger perspective, including definitions and general descriptions of risk; and discussion on how perception can influence decisions, and thus behaviour. Then follows a section on profiling, its definition, how it can be done, where it is done, problems that have been encountered with its application, and recent developments in profiling including Australia’s growing involvement in its use. The issue of pervasive computers is interwoven throughout, to highlight its role in passenger profiling. The chapter then discusses the legislation that relates to aviation and concludes by noting that passenger perception of risk and use of profiling techniques is an important factor that needs to be addressed in the application of passenger profiling to risk management in the Australian aviation industry.
Knowledge Sharing and Pervasive Computing
Authors: Brook Phillip W.J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores the implications of knowledge sharing in an era of pervasive computing, and concludes that, perhaps counter-intuitively, people will need to come together more to establish the trust that is necessary for effective knowledge sharing. Practices such as team-work should result in closer ties between peers, and this relationship can encourage increased sharing of knowledge related to the work at hand. With the advent of pervasive computing, the question can be asked as to what the impact of this technology could/will have on the sharing of knowledge in a team situation. At the same time, the changing attitudes to how knowledge is acquired make it even more important that knowledge is acquired in its historical context, which may be best achieved by person-to-person knowledge transfer. It is argued that these social aspects will be more important in a world of pervasive computing than in conventional businesses.
MATSim-T
Authors: Balmer Michael , Rieser Marcel , Meister Konrad , Charypar David , Lefebvre Nicolas , Nagel Kai
Published: May 2011

Micro-simulations for transport planning are becoming increasingly important in traffic simulation, traffic analysis, and traffic forecasting. In the last decades the shift from using typically aggregated data to more detailed, individual based, complex data (e.g. GPS tracking) andthe continuously growing computer performance on fixed price level leads to the possibility of using microscopic models for large scale planning regions. This chapter presents such a micro-simulation. The work is part of the research project MATSim (Multi Agent Transport Simulation, http://matsim.org). In the chapter here the focus lies on design and implementation issues as well as on computational performance of different parts of the system. Based on a study of Swiss daily traffic – ca. 2.3 million individuals using motorized individual transport producing about 7.1 million trips, assigned to a Swiss network model with about 60,000 links, simulated and optimized completely time-dynamic for a complete workday – it is shown that the system is able to generate those traffic patterns in about 36 hours computation time.
Applying Situated Agents to Microscopic Traffic Modelling
Authors: Ferreira Paulo A.F. , Esteves Edgar F. , Rossetti Rosaldo J.F. , Oliveira Eugénio C.
Published: May 2011

Trading off between realism and too much abstraction is an important issue to address in microscopic traffic simulation. In this chapter the authors bring this discussion forward and propose a multi-agent model of the traffic domain where integration is ascribed to the way the environment is represented and agents interoperate. While most approaches still deal with drivers and vehicles indistinguishably, in the proposed framework vehicles are merely moveable objects whereas the driving role is played by agents fully endowed with cognitive abilities and situated in the environment. The authors discuss on the role of the environment dynamics in supporting a truly emergent behaviour of the system and present an extension to the traditional car-following and lane-change models based on the concept of situated agents. A physical communication model is proposed to base different interactions and some performance issues are also identified, which allows for more realistic representation of drivers’ behaviour in microscopic models.
An Unmanaged Intersection Protocol and Improved Intersection Safety for Autonomous Vehicles
Authors: Dresner Kurt , Stone Peter , Van Middlesworth Mark
Published: May 2011

Fully autonomous vehicles promise enormous gains in safety, efficiency, and economy for transportation. In previous work, the authors of this chapter have introduced a system for managing autonomous vehicles at intersections that is capable of handling more vehicles and causing fewer delays than modern- day mechanisms such as traffic lights and stop signs [Dresner & Stone 2005]. This system makes two assumptions about the problem domain: that special infrastructure is present at each intersection, and that vehicles do not experience catastrophic physical malfunctions. In this chapter, they explore two separate extensions to their original work, each of which relaxes one of these assumptions. They demonstrate that for certain types of intersections—namely those with moderate to low amounts of traffic—a completely decentralized, peer-to-peer intersection management system can reap many of the benefits of a centralized system without the need for special infrastructure at the intersection. In the second half of the chapter, they show that their previously proposed intersection control mechanism can dramatically mitigate the effects of catastrophic physical malfunctions in vehicles such that in addition to being more efficient, autonomous intersections will be far safer than traditional intersections are today.
Development of Data Warehouse Conceptual Models
Authors: Niedrite Laila , Treimanis Maris Solodovnikova , Grundmane Liga
Published: May 2011

There are many methods in the area of data warehousing to define requirements for the development of the most appropriate conceptual model of a data warehouse. There is no universal consensus about the best method, nor are there accepted standards for the conceptual modeling of data warehouses. Only few conceptual models have formally described methods how to get these models. Therefore, problems arise when in a particular data warehousing project, an appropriate development approach, and a corresponding method for the requirements elicitation, should be chosen and applied. Sometimes it is also necessary not only to use the existing methods, but also to provide new methods that are usable in particular development situations. It is necessary to represent these new methods formally, to ensure the appropriate usage of these methods in similar situations in the future. It is also necessary to define the contingency factors, which describe the situation where the method is usable.This chapter represents the usage of method engineering approach for the development of conceptual models of data warehouses. A set of contingency factors that determine the choice between the usage of an existing method and the necessity to develop a new one is defined. Three case studies are presented. Three new methods: userdriven, data-driven, and goal-driven are developed according to the situation in the particular projects and using the method engineering approach.
A Simulation of Temporally Variant Agent Interaction via Passive Inquiry
Authors: Conover Adam J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a description of ongoing experimental research into the emergent properties of multi-agent communication in “temporally asynchronous” environments. Many traditional agent and swarm simulation environments divide time into discrete “ticks” where all entity behavior is synchronized to a master “world clock”. In other words, all agent behavior is governed by a single timer where all agents act and interact within deterministic time intervals. This discrete timing mechanism produces a somewhat restricted and artificial model of autonomous agent interaction. In addition to the behavioral autonomy normally associated with agents, simulated agents should also have “temporal autonomy” in order to interact realistically. Part I of this two-part series focuses on an exploration of the effects of incremental migration of John Conway’s “Game of Life” form a simple cellular automata simulation to a framework for the exploration of spatially embedded agents.
Agent Feedback Messaging
Authors: Schilling Richard
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a generalized messaging infrastructure that can be used for distributed agent systems. The principle of agent feedback messaging, upon which the infrastructure is built, is presented with examples. Agent feedback messaging allows agents to function as an intelligent agent ecosystem that spans multi-node computing clusters and facilitates agent communications in a way that mimics naturally occurring biofeedback mechanisms. An implementation of agent feedback messaging, AFM, is also described. Biosimulation and a solution to the travelling salesman problem are also presented as examples.
Evaluating Computerized Adaptive Testing Systems
Authors: Economides Anastasios A. , Roupas Chrysostomos
Published: May 2011

Many educational organizations are trying to reduce the cost of exams, the workload, delay of scoring, and the human errors. Also, organizations try to increase the accuracy and efficiency of the testing. Recently, most examination organizations use Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) as the method for large scale testing. This chapter investigates the current state of CAT systems and identifies their strengths and weaknesses. It evaluates 10 CAT systems using an evaluation framework of 15 domains categorized into 3 dimensions: Educational, Technical and Economical. The results show that the majority of the CAT systems give priority to security, reliability, and maintainability. However, they do not offer to the examinee any advanced support and functionalities. Also, the feedback to the examinee is limited and the presentation of the items is poor. Recommendations are made in order to enhance the overall quality of a CAT system. For example, alternative multimedia items should be available so that the examinee would choose his preferred media type. Feedback could be improved by providing more information to the examinee or providing information anytime the examinee wished.
Multimedia Authoring for Communities of Teachers
Authors: Guerraz Agnès , Roisin Cécile , Mikác Jan , Deltour Romain
Published: May 2011

One way of providing technological support for communities of teachers is to help participants to produce, structure and share information. As this information becomes more and more multimedia in nature, the challenge is to build multimedia authoring and publishing tools that meets requirements of the community. In this paper we analyze these requirements and propose a multimedia authoring model and a generic platform on which specific community-oriented authoring tools can be realized. The main idea is to provide template-based authoring tools while keeping rich composition capabilities and smooth adaptability. It is based on a component-oriented approach integrating homogeneously logical, time and spatial structures. Templates are defined as constraints on these structures.
Evolutionary Database
Authors: Deufemia Vincenzo , Polese Giuseppe , Vacca Mario
Published: May 2011

Waterfall methodologies can poorly cope with changes, making maintenance considerably an expensive process. For this reason, incremental and iterative methodologies were introduced (Larman & Basili, 2003). They view system development as a step-by-step process, with the introduction of new functionalities to meet user needs. The main problem arising in both paradigms is the complexity in facing changes. Therefore, an increased automated support in this task would result in a reduction of efforts and costs, especially in incremental methodologies, because it would make them more systematic.
Interrogative Agents for Data Modeling
Authors: Deufemia Vincenzo , Polese Giuseppe , Vacca Mario
Published: May 2011

The problem of changes in software development is a complex one, and it is almost impossible to avoid it. Indeed, the continuous evolution of the real world causes frequent changes in functional requirements, which entail frequent modifications to the software, yielding a gradual decay of its overall quality. To tackle this problem, two methodologies have been proposed: waterfall methodologies, and incremental/iterative methodologies. The formers try to prevent changes, whereas the second ones consider system development as a step by step process.
Caching, Hoarding, and Replication in Client/Server Information Systems with Mobile Clients
Authors: Höpfner Hagen
Published: May 2011

Redundant data management is a must in client server information systems with mobile clients. Based on the level of autonomy of mobile devices/ users techniques for handling such data can be divided into caching, hoarding, and replication. These three terms are often used incorrectly in the literature. To our knowledge the exact definition of the terms has never been published in an international book or journal. We fill this gap with this article. We furthermore explain the terms cache replacement, cache invalidation, cache maintenance, automated hoarding, and synchronization of replicated data.
Spatial Network Databases
Authors: Vassilakopoulos Michael
Published: May 2011

A Spatial Database is a database that offers spatial data types, a query language with spatial predicates, spatial indexing techniques, and efficient processing of spatial queries. All these fields have attracted the focus of researchers over the past 25 years. The main reason for studying spatial databases has been applications that emerged during this period, such as Geographical Information Systems, Computer-Aided Design, Very Large Scale Integration design, Multimedia Information Systems, and so forth. In parallel, the field of temporal databases, databases that deal with the management of timevarying data, attracted the research community since numerous database applications (i.e., Banking, Personnel Management, Transportation Scheduling) involve the notion of time.
Merging, Repairing, and Querying Inconsistent Databases
Authors: Caroprese Luciano , Zumpano Ester
Published: May 2011

Data integration aims to provide a uniform integrated access to multiple heterogeneous information sources designed independently and having strictly related contents. However, the integrated view, constructed by integrating the information provided by the different data sources by means of a specified integration strategy could potentially contain inconsistent data; that is, it can violate some of the constraints defined on the data. In the presence of an inconsistent integrated database, in other words, a database that does not satisfy some integrity constraints, two possible solutions have been investigated in the literature (Agarwal, Keller, Wiederhold, & Saraswat, 1995; Bry, 1997; Calì, Calvanese, De Giacomo, & Lenzerini, 2002; Dung, 1996; Grant & Subrahmanian, 1995; S. Greco & Zumpano, 2000; Lin & Mendelzon, 1999): repairing the database or computing consistent answers over the inconsistent database. Intuitively, a repair of the database consists of deleting or inserting a minimal number of tuples so that the resulting database is consistent, whereas the computation of the consistent answer consists of selecting the set of certain tuples (i.e., those belonging to all repaired databases) and the set of uncertain tuples (i.e., those belonging to a proper subset of repaired databases).
Inconsistency, Logic Databases, and Ontologies
Authors: Alonso-Jiménez José A. , Borrego-Díaz Joaquín , Chávez-González Antonia M.
Published: May 2011

Nowadays, data management on the World Wide Web needs to consider very large knowledge databases (KDB). The larger is a KDB, the smaller the possibility of being consistent. Consistency in checking algorithms and systems fails to analyse very large KDBs, and so many have to work every day with inconsistent information. Database revision—transformation of the KDB into another, consistent database—is a solution to this inconsistency, but the task is computationally untractable. Paraconsistent logics are also a useful option to work with inconsistent databases. These logics work on inconsistent KDBs but prohibit non desired inferences. From a philosophical (logical) point of view, the paraconsistent reasoning is a need that the self human discourse practices. From a computational, logical point of view, we need to design logical formalisms that allow us to extract useful information from an inconsistent database, taking into account diverse aspects of the semantics that are “attached” to deductive databases reasoning (see Table 1). The arrival of the semantic web (SW) will force the database users to work with a KDB that is expressed by logic formulas with higher syntactic complexity than are classic logic databases.
C-MICRA
Authors: Udoh Emmanuel , Bhuiyan Salim
Published: May 2011

In the field of bioinformatics, small to large data sets of genes, proteins, and genomes are analyzed for biological significance. A technology that has been in the forefront of generating large amounts of gene data is the microarray or hybridization technique. It has been instrumental in the success of the human genome project and paved the way for a new era of genetic screening, testing, and diagnostics (Scheena, 2003). The microarray data set can be made of thousands of rows and columns. It often contains missing values, exhibits high-dimensional attributes, and is generally too large for manual management or examination (Tseng & Kao, 2005; Turner, Bailey, Krzanowski, & Hemingway, 2005). Database technology is necessary for the extraction, sorting, and analyzing of microarray data sets.
Machine Learning and Data Mining in Bioinformatics
Authors: Tzanis George , Berberidis Christos , Vlahavas Ioannis
Published: May 2011

Machine learning is one of the oldest subfields of artificial intelligence and is concerned with the design and development of computational systems that can adapt themselves and learn. The most common machine learning algorithms can be either supervised or unsupervised. Supervised learning algorithms generate a function that maps inputs to desired outputs, based on a set of examples with known output (labeled examples). Unsupervised learning algorithms find patterns and relationships over a given set of inputs (unlabeled examples). Other categories of machine learning are semi-supervised learning, where an algorithm uses both labeled and unlabeled examples, and reinforcement learning, where an algorithm learns a policy of how to act given an observation of the world.
An Overview on Signature File Techniques
Authors: Chen Yangjun
Published: May 2011

An important question in information retrieval is how to create a database index which can be searched efficiently for the data one seeks. Today, one or more of the following four techniques have been frequently used: full text searching, B-trees, inversion and the signature file. Full text searching imposes no space overhead, but requires long response time. In contrast, B-trees, inversion and the signature file work quickly, but need a large intermediary representation structure (index), which provides direct links to relevant data. In this paper, we concentrate on the techniques of signature files and discuss different construction approaches of a signature file. The signature technique cannot only be used in document databases, but also in relational and object-oriented databases. In a document database, a set of semistructured (XML) documents is stored and the queries related to keywords are frequently evaluated. To speed up the evaluation of such queries, we can construct signatures for words and superimpose them to establish signatures for document blocks, which can be used to cut off non-relevant documents as early as possible when evaluating a query. Especially, such a method can be extended to handle the socalled containment queries, for which not only the key words, but also the hierarchical structure of a document has to be considered. We can also handle queries issued to a relational or an objectoriented database using the signature technique by establishing signatures for attribute values, tuples, as well as tables and classes.
GR-OLAP
Authors: Gossa Julien , Bimonte Sandro
Published: May 2011

The Grid is an emerging solution for sharing resources through a network. It is meant to manage heterogeneous resources in world-scale multi-institutional networks. Grid resources monitoring and network monitoring are very active research areas with actually efficient solutions. Unfortunately, these solutions are limited in terms of analysis of the gathered data. Our proposition is to use data warehouse (DW) and online analytical processing (OLAP) technologies on Grid monitoring information. This allows new complex analyses of crucial importance for Grid users’ everyday tasks. Unfortunately, the implementation raises several challenging issues. This article is organized as follows. First, we introduce concepts of DW, OLAP, and Grids, and we discuss recent advances in Grid monitoring as well as the needs and usage of the Grid users. Then we present our conceptual and implementation solutions. Finally, we discuss our main contribution and point out the future works.
Mobility Prediction in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks
Authors: Gavalas Damianos , Konstantopoulos Charalampos , Mamalis Basilis , Pantziou Grammati
Published: May 2011

A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a network without using any existing infrastructure. All mobile nodes function as mobile routers that discover and maintain routes to other mobile nodes of the network and therefore, can be connected dynamically in an arbitrary manner. The mobility attribute of MANETs is a very significant one. The mobile nodes may follow different mobility patterns that may affect connectivity, and in turn protocol mechanisms and performance. Mobility prediction may positively affect the service-oriented aspects as well as the application-oriented aspects of ad hoc networking. At the network level, accurate node mobility prediction may be critical to tasks such as call admission control, reservation of network resources, pre-configuration of services and QoS provisioning. At the application level, user mobility prediction in combination with user’s profile may provide the user with enhanced location-based wireless services, such as route guidance, local traffic information and on-line advertising. In this chapter we present the most important mobility prediction schemes for MANETs in the literature, focusing on their main design principles and characteristics.
Modelling Dimensions for Agent Organizations
Authors: Coutinho Luciano R. , Sichman Jaime S. , Boissier Olivier
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we discuss the concepts of agent organization, organizational model, and review some existing organizational models. Before the review, we discuss how to classify the diverse aspects of agent organizations currently captured by organizational models. These aspects are named “modelling dimensions”. We show that there are at least four basic dimensions: the structural dimension mainly composed of roles and groups, the interactive dimension characterized by dialogical interaction structures, the functional dimension formed by goal/task decomposition, and the normative dimension in which we find the concepts of norms, rights, rules, and so forth. Apart from the basic dimensions, we also identify four other complementary dimensions: environment, evaluation, evolution, and ontology. These are related to the aspects of situatedeness, measurement, adaptation, and domain specific semantics of agent organizations. Finally, we compare the organizational models reviewed and describe how the idea of modelling dimension can help in finding correspondences between organizational models.
Creating Knowledge about Customers
Authors: Al-Shammari Minwir
Published: May 2011

Increasingly, knowledge is becoming a primary engine of growth in the globalized business world and is making nations more competitive as they shift from information-based to knowledge-based economies. In business contexts, knowing customers better is expected to help companies gain an SCA over others. This chapter represents the last activity in leveraging CKM value-chain. It seeks to discuss various concepts, issues, and trends concerning composition of knowledge about customers.