bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Formal Design Model of a Telephone Switching System (TSS)
Authors: Wang Yingxu
Published: February 2011

A typical real-time system, the Telephone Switching System (TSS), is a highly complicated system in design and implementation. This paper presents the formal design, specification, and modeling of the TSS system using a denotational mathematics known as Real-Time Process Algebra (RTPA). The conceptual model of the TSS system is introduced as the initial requirements for the system. Then, the architectural model of the TSS system is created using the RTPA architectural modeling methodologies and refined by a set of Unified Data Models (UDMs). The static behaviors of the TSS system are specified and refined by a set of Unified Process Models (UPMs) such as call processing and support processes. The dynamic behaviors of the TSS system are specified and refined by process priority allocation, process deployment, and process dispatching models. Based on the formal design models of the TSS system, code can be automatically generated using the RTPA Code Generator (RTPA-CG), or be seamlessly transformed into programs by programmers. The formal model of TSS may not only serve as a formal design paradigm of real-time software systems, but also a test bench of the expressive power and modeling capability of exiting formal methods in software engineering.
The Formal Design Model of a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS+)
Authors: Wang Yingxu , Zeng Guangping , Ngolah Cyprian F. , Sheu Philip C.Y. , Choy C. Philip , Tian Yousheng
Published: February 2011

A real-time operating system (RTOS) provides a platform for the design and implementation of a wide range of applications in real-time systems, embedded systems, and mission-critical systems. This paper presents a formal design model for a general RTOS known as RTOS+ that enables a specific target RTOS to be rigorously and efficiently derived in real-world applications. The methodology of a denotational mathematics, Real-Time Process Algebra (RTPA), is described for formally modeling and refining architectures, static behaviors, and dynamic behaviors of RTOS+. The conceptual model of the RTOS+ system is introduced as the initial requirements for the system. The architectural model of RTOS+ is created using RTPA architectural modeling methodologies and refined by a set of Unified Data Models (UDMs). The static behaviors of RTOS+ are specified and refined by a set of Unified Process Models (UPMs). The dynamic behaviors of the RTOS+ system are specified and refined by the real-time process scheduler and system dispatcher. This work is presented in two papers in serial due to its excessive length. The static and dynamic behavioral models of RTOS+ is described in this paper; while the conceptual and architectural models of RTOS+ has been published in IJSSCI 2(2).
Granular Computing and Human-Centricity in Computational Intelligence
Authors: Pedrycz Witold
Published: February 2011

Information granules and ensuing Granular Computing offer interesting opportunities to endow processing with an important facet of human-centricity. This facet implies that the underlying processing supports non-numeric data inherently associated with the variable perception of humans. Systems that commonly become distributed and hierarchical, managing granular information in hierarchical and distributed architectures, is of growing interest, especially when invoking mechanisms of knowledge generation and knowledge sharing. The outstanding feature of human centricity of Granular Computing along with essential fuzzy set-based constructs constitutes the crux of this study. The author elaborates on some new directions of knowledge elicitation and quantification realized in the setting of fuzzy sets. With this regard, the paper concentrates on knowledge-based clustering. It is also emphasized that collaboration and reconciliation of locally available knowledge give rise to the concept of higher type information granules. Other interesting directions enhancing human centricity of computing with fuzzy sets deals with non-numeric semi-qualitative characterization of information granules, as well as inherent evolving capabilities of associated human-centric systems. The author discusses a suite of algorithms facilitating a qualitative assessment of fuzzy sets, formulates a series of associated optimization tasks guided by well-formulated performance indexes, and discusses the underlying essence of resulting solutions.
Delay-Range-Dependent Robust Stability for Uncertain Stochastic Neural Networks with Time-Varying Delays
Authors: Feng Wei , Wu Haixia
Published: February 2011

This paper is concerned with the robust stability analysis problem for uncertain stochastic neural networks with interval time-varying delays. By utilizing a Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and conducting stochastic analysis, the authors show that the addressed neural networks are globally, robustly, and asymptotically stable if a convex optimization problem is feasible. Some stability criteria are derived for all admissible uncertainties, and these stability criteria are formulated by means of the feasibility of a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be effectively solved by some standard numerical packages. Five numerical examples are given to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed robust stability criteria.
The Formal Design Models of a Set of Abstract Data Types (ADTs)
Authors: Wang Yingxu , Tan Xinming , Ngolah Cyprian F. , Sheu Philip
Published: February 2011

Type theories are fundamental for underpinning data object modeling and system architectural design in computing and software engineering. Abstract Data Types (ADTs) are a set of highly generic and rigorously modeled data structures in type theory. ADTs also play a key role in Object-Oriented (OO) technologies for software system design and implementation. This paper presents a formal modeling methodology for ADTs using the Real-Time Process Algebra (RTPA), which allows both architectural and behavioral models of ADTs and complex data objects. Formal architectures, static behaviors, and dynamic behaviors of a set of ADTs are comparatively studied. The architectural models of the ADTs are created using RTPA architectural modeling methodologies known as the Unified Data Models (UDMs). The static behaviors of the ADTs are specified and refined by a set of Unified Process Models (UPMs) of RTPA. The dynamic behaviors of the ADTs are modeled by process dispatching technologies of RTPA. This work has been applied in a number of real-time and non-real-time system designs such as a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS+), a Cognitive Learning Engine (CLE), and the automatic code generator based on RTPA.
Assimilating and Optimizing Software Assurance in the SDLC
Authors: Adeniji Aderemi O. , Lee Seok-Won
Published: February 2011

Software Assurance is the planned and systematic set of activities that ensures software processes and products conform to requirements while standards and procedures in a manner that builds trusted systems and secure software. While absolute security may not yet be possible, procedures and practices exist to promote assurance in the software lifecycle. In this paper, the authors present a framework and step-wise approach towards achieving and optimizing assurance by infusing security knowledge, techniques, and methodologies into each phase of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
SLIM
Authors: Cugola Gianpaolo , Margara Alessandro
Published: February 2011

One of the main obstacles to the adoption of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) outside the research community is the lack of high level mechanisms to easily program them. This problem affects distributed applications in general, and it has been replied by the Software Engineering community, which recently embraced Service Oriented Programming (SOP) as a powerful abstraction to ease development of distributed applications in traditional networking scenarios. In this paper, the authors move from these two observations to propose SLIM: a middleware to support service oriented programming in mobile Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSANs). The presence of actuators into the network, and the capability of SLIM to support efficient multicast invocation within an advanced protocol explicitly tailored to mobile scenarios, make it a good candidate to ease development of complex monitoring and controlling applications. In the paper the authors describe SLIM in detail and show how its performance easily exceeds traditional approaches to service invocation in mobile ad-hoc networks.
Semantic eBusiness
Authors: Singh Rahul , Iyer Lakshmi , Salam A.F.
Published: February 2011

We define Semantic eBusiness as “an approach to managing knowledge for coordination of eBusiness processes through the systematic application of Semantic Web technologies.” Advances in Semantic Web-based technologies offer the means to integrate heterogeneous systems across organizations in a meaningful way by incorporating ontology—a common, standard, and shareable vocabulary used to represent the meaning of system entities; knowledge representation, with structured collections of information and sets of inference rules that can be used to conduct automated reasoning; and intelligent agents that collect content from diverse sources and exchange semantically enriched information. These primary components of the Semantic Web vision form the foundation technology for semantic eBusiness. The challenge for research in information systems and eBusiness is to provide insight into the design of business models and technical architecture that demonstrate the potential of technical advancements in the computer and engineering sciences to be beneficial to business and consumers. Semantic eBusiness seeks to apply fundamental work done in Semantic Web technologies to support the transparent flow of semantically enriched information and knowledge—including content and know-how—to enable, enhance, and coordinate collaborative eBusiness processes within and across organizational boundaries. Semantic eBusiness processes are characterized by the seamless and transparent flow of semantically enriched information and knowledge. We present a holistic view of semantic eBusiness that integrates emergent and well-grounded Semantic Web technologies to improve the current state of the art in the transparency of eBusiness processes.
Querying the Web Reconsidered
Authors: Bry François , Koch Christoph , Furche Tim , Schaffert Sebastian , Badea Liviu , Berger Sacha
Published: February 2011

A decade of experience with research proposals as well as standardized query languages for the conventional Web and the recent emergence of query languages for the Semantic Web call for a reconsideration of design principles for Web and Semantic Web query languages. This chapter first argues that a new generation of versatile Web query languages is needed for solving the challenges posed by the changing Web: We call versatile those query languages able to cope with both Web and Semantic Web data expressed in any (Web or Semantic Web) markup language. This chapter further suggests that well-known referential transparency and novel answer-closedness are essential features of versatile query languages. Indeed, they allow queries to be considered like forms and answers like form-fillings in the spirit of the query-by-example paradigm. This chapter finally suggests that the decentralized and heterogeneous nature of the Web requires incomplete data specifications (or incomplete queries) and incomplete data selections (or incomplete answers); the form-like query can be specified without precise knowledge of the queried data, and answers can be restricted to contain only an excerpt of the queried data.
General Adaption Framework
Authors: Kaykova Olena , Khriyenko Oleksiy , Kovtun Dmytro , Naumenko Anton , Terziyan Vagan , Zharko Andriy
Published: February 2011

Integration of heterogeneous applications and data sources into an interoperable system is one of the most relevant challenges for many knowledge-based corporations nowadays. Development of a global environment that would support knowledge transfer from human experts to automated Web services, which are able to learn, is a very profit-promising and challenging task. The domain of industrial maintenance is not an exception. This paper outlines in detail an approach for adaptation of heterogeneous Web resources into a unified environment as a first step toward interoperability of smart industrial resources, where distributed human experts and learning Web services are utilized by various devices for self monitoring and self diagnostics. The proposed General Adaptation Framework utilizes a potential of the Semantic Web technology and primarily focuses on the aspect of a semantic adaptation (or mediation) of existing widely used models of data representation to RDF-based semantically rich format. To perform the semantic adaptation of industrial resources, the approach of two-stage transformation (syntactical and semantic) is elaborated and implemented for monitoring of a concrete industrial device with underlying XML-based data representation model as a use case.
Trust Metrics on Controversial Users
Authors: Massa Paolo , Avesani Paolo
Published: February 2011

In today’s connected world, it is possible and indeed quite common to interact with un-known people whose reliability is unknown. Trust metrics are a technique for answering questions such as “Should I trust this person?” However, most of the current research assumes that every user has a global quality score everyone agrees on and the goal of the technique is just to predict this correct value. We show on data from a real and large user community, Epinions.com, that such an assumption is not realistic because there is a significant portion of what we call controversial users, users who are trusted by many and distrusted by many: a global agreement about the trustworthiness value of these users does not exist. We argue, using computational experiments, that the existence of controversial users (a normal phenomenon in complex societies) demands local trust metrics, techniques able to predict the trustworthiness of a user in a personalized way, depending on the very personal views of the judging user as opposed to most commonly used global trust metrics, which assume a unique value of reputation for every single user. The implications of such an analysis deal with the very foundations of what we call society and culture and we conclude discussing this point by comparing the two extremes of culture that can be induced by the two different kinds of trust metrics: tyranny of the majority and echo chambers.
GlobalMind
Authors: Chung Hyemin , Lieberman Henry
Published: February 2011

The need for more effective communication between people of different countries has increased as travel and communications bring more of the world’s people together. Communication is often difficult because of both language differences and cultural differences. Attempts to bridge these differences include many attempts to perform ma-chine translation or provide language resources such as dictionaries or phrase books; however, many problems related to cultural and conceptual differences still remain. Automated mechanisms to analyze cultural similarities and differences might be used to improve traditional machine translators and as aids to cross-cultural communica-tion. This article presents an approach to automatically compute cultural differences by comparing databases of common-sense knowledge in different languages and cultures. GlobalMind provides an interface for acquiring databases of common-sense knowledge from users who speak different languages. It implements inference modules to compute the cultural similarities and differences between these databases. In this article, the design of the GlobalMind databases, the implementation of its inference modules, as well as an evaluation of GlobalMind are described.
Using a Natural Language Understanding System to Generate Semantic Web Content
Authors: Java Akshay , Nirneburg Sergei , McShane Marjorie , Finin Timothy , English Jesse , Joshi Anupam
Published: February 2011

We describe our research on automatically generating rich semantic annotations of text and making it available on the Semantic Web. In particular, we discuss the challenges involved in adapting the OntoSem natural language processing system for this purpose. OntoSem, an implementation of the theory of ontological semantics under continuous development for over 15 years, uses a specially constructed NLP-oriented ontology and an ontological-semantic lexicon to translate English text into a custom ontology- motivated knowledge representation language, the language of text meaning representations (TMRs). OntoSem concentrates on a variety of ambiguity resolution tasks as well as processing unexpected input and reference. To adapt OntoSem’s representation to the Semantic Web, we developed a translation system, OntoSem2OWL, between the TMR language into the Semantic Web language OWL. We next used OntoSem and OntoSem2OWL to support SemNews, an experimental Web service that monitors RSS news sources, processes the summaries of the news stories, and publishes a structured representation of the meaning of the text in the news story.
Semantic Web Services and Mobile Agents Integration for Efficient Mobile Services
Authors: Baousis Vasileios , Spiliopoulos Vassili , Zavitsanos Elias , Hadjiefthymiades Stathes , Merakos Lazaros
Published: February 2011

The requirement for ubiquitous service access in wireless environments presents a great challenge in light of well-known problems like high error rate and frequent disconnections. In order to satisfy this requirement, we propose the integration of two modern service technologies: Web Services and Mobile Agents. This integration allows wireless users to access and invoke semantically enriched Web Services without the need for simultaneous, online presence of the service requestor. Moreover, in order to improve the capabilities of Service registries, we exploit the advantages offered by the Semantic Web framework. Specifically, we use enhanced registries enriched with semantic information that provide semantic matching to service queries and published service descriptions. Finally, we discuss the implementation of the proposed framework and present our performance assessment findings.
Bringing Semantic Services to Real-World Objects
Authors: Paolucci Massimo , Broll Gregor , Hamard John , Rukzio Enrico , Wagner Matthew , Schmidt Albrect
Published: February 2011

The last few years have seen the emergence of two parallel trends: the first of such trends is set by technologies such as Near Field Communication, 2D Bar codes and RFID that support the association of digital information with virtually every object. By using these technologies, ordinary objects such as coffee mugs or advertisement posters provide digital information that can be easily processed. The second trend is set by (semantic) Web services that provide a way to automatically invoke functionalities across the Internet lowering interoperability barriers. The PERCI system, discussed in the article, provides a bridge between these two technologies allowing the invocation of Web services using the information gathered from the tags to effectively transform every object in a service proxy.
The Influence of Internet Security on E-Business Competence in Jordan
Authors: Shaqrah Amin A.
Published: February 2011

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between internet security and e-business competence in Jordan. The proposed conceptual model examined the antecedents and consequences of e-business competence of its empirical validity, the sample of 152 banking and exchange firms, and tests the posited structural equation model. Results consistently support the validity of the proposed conceptual model, finding that both organizations realize the importance of e- business for their business and are willing to proceed further with e- business. In this regard, businesses are highly concerned about internet security, their awareness of security hazards, and minimal internet performance, concluding that public awareness of the ICT is very low. In light of the data collected, the study has proposed certain recommendations for the interested authorities to improve e- business in Jordan.
The Ethics of Outsourcing Online Survey Research
Authors: Allen Peter J. , Roberts Lynne D.
Published: February 2011

The increasing level of Internet penetration over the last decade has made web surveying a viable option for data collection in academic research. Software tools and services have been developed to facilitate the development and deployment of web surveys. Many academics and research students are outsourcing the design and/or hosting of their web surveys to external service providers, yet ethical issues associated with this use have received limited attention in academic literature. In this article, the authors focus on specific ethical concerns associated with the outsourcing of web surveys with particular reference to external commercial web survey service providers. These include threats to confidentiality and anonymity, the potential for loss of control over decisions about research data, and the reduced credibility of research. Suggested guidelines for academic institutions and researchers in relation to outsourcing aspects of web-based survey research are provided.
Identifying the Ethics of Emerging Information and Communication Technologies
Authors: Stahl Bernd Carsten , Heersmink Richard , Goujon Philippe , Flick Catherine , van den Hoven Jeroen , Wakunuma Kutoma , Ikonen Veikko , Rader Michael
Published: February 2011

Ethical issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important because they can have significant effects on human liberty, happiness, and people’s ability to lead a good life. They are also of functional interest because they can determine whether technologies are used and whether their positive potential can unfold. For these reasons, policy makers are interested in finding out what these issues are and how they can be addressed. The best way of creating ICT policy that is sensitive to ethical issues pertain to being proactive in addressing such issues at an early stage of the technology life cycle. The present paper uses this position as a starting point and discusses how knowledge of ethical aspects of emerging ICTs can be gained. It develops a methodology that goes beyond established futures methodologies to cater for the difficult nature of ethical issues. The authors outline how the description of emerging ICTs can be used for an ethical analysis.
A Practitioner-Centered Assessment of a User-Experience Framework
Authors: McCarthy John , Wright Peter , Meekison Lisa
Published: February 2011

In this article we outline a relational approach to experience which we have used to develop a practitioner-oriented framework for analysing user experience. The framework depicts experience as compositional, emotional, spatio-temporal, and sensual, and as intimately bound up with a number of processes that allow us to make sense of experience. It was developed and assessed as part of a participative action research project involving interested practitioners. We report how these practitioners used the framework, what aspects of experience they felt that it missed, and how useful they found it as a tool for evaluating Internet shopping experiences. A thematic content analysis of participants’ reflections on their use of the framework to evaluate Internet shopping experiences revealed some strengths and some weaknesses. For example, certain features of the framework led participants to reflect on aspects of experience that they might not otherwise have considered, such as, the central role of anticipation in experience. The framework also captured aspects of experience that relate to both the sequential structure of the activity and its subjective aspects. However, it seemed to miss out on the intensity of some experiences, and participants sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between some of the sense-making processes, for example, interpreting and reflecting. These results have helped to refine our approach to deploying the framework and have inspired an ongoing programme of research on experience-centred design.
Web Services in National Healthcare
Authors: Guah Matthew W. , Currie Wendy L.
Published: February 2011

The implementation of a national programme for information technology into the complex environment of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) system is only the first step in a system modernisation journey for this multifaceted organisation. This article reports the findings of a two-year research study on the decline of the ASP (application service provision) industry, from which the current move to Web services was born. It combines the case of the NHS with existing literature on disparate research perspectives to explore the effects of the ‘Not Invented Here’ syndrome on an IS implementation journey. The article also suggests ways that project leaders can redirect such strong feelings about a new system to increase the chances for a successful outcome. Information systems (IS) is “an instantiation of information technology (IT), where the same information technology is instantiated in different ways” (Lee, 1999). A rich organizational and political process is required for a given set of IT to be instantiated, relying greatly upon the continual managing, maintaining, and changing of technology to sustain the instantiation. Within a rather diverse NHS environment, IS may include relational aspects like the effectiveness of system design, the timely delivery of such systems, an appropriately obtained usability training by all users, and future impact of IT in the organisational and entire society.
USE IT to Create Patient-Relation Management for Multiple Sclerosis Patients
Authors: Michel-Verkerke Margreet B. , Schuring Roel W. , Spil Ton A.M.
Published: February 2011

Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) visit various healthcare providers during the course of their disease. It was suggested that information and communication technology might help to orchestrate their care provision. We have applied the USE IT tool to get insight in the relevant problems, solutions, and constraints of MS care both in the organizational and the information-technological area. There is hardly a chain of healthcare, but rather, a network in which informal communication plays an important role. This informal network worked reasonably effective, but it was inefficient and slow. The MS patient count is small for most care providers. Patients thought that a lack of experience caused their major problems: insufficient and inadequate care. To improve care, we proposed a solution that combines an MS protocol, the introduction of a central coordinator of care and a patient-relation management (PRM) system. This is a simple Web-based application based on an agreement by the caregivers that supports routing, tracking, and tracing for an MS patient and supplies the caregivers with professional guidelines. It is likely that we would have suggested a far more complicated ICT solution if we had only analyzed the MS care process as such without specific consideration of the dimensions in the USE IT tool.
A Unicode Keyboard for African Languages
Authors: Bodomo Adams , Marfo Charles , Cunningham Andrew , Mok Sally Y.K.
Published: February 2011

Writing technology is a central issue for Human Language Technology (HLT) both in terms of theory and actual implementation. Two issues that neatly divide theory and practical implementation are what and how to represent. What to represent takes us into the realm of linguistic analysis. Once the question of what to represent is answered reasonably well, the question of how to represent has to be addressed. This is where computer technology comes in. Challenging issues that have to be addressed in alphabetic writing systems are how to felicitously represent difficult graphemes and other diacritics. These issues are discussed with reference to two African languages — Dagaare and Twi. After reviewing works for the development of orthography for these languages (Bodomo, 1997, 2000; GLASC, 1990; Hartell, 1993), we propose a set of Unicode graphemes for Dagaare and Twi, respectively, based on a discussion of the phonemic systems of the languages. We then indicate how these conceptualized Unicode graphemes that we have proposed can be developed practically into a real keyboard system for the two languages.
A Method to Quantify Corpus Similarity and its Application to Quantifying the Degree of Literality in a Document
Authors: Denoual Etienne
Published: February 2011

Comparing and quantifying corpora are key issues in corpus-based translation and corpus linguistics, for which there is still a notable lack of standards. This makes it difficult for a user to isolate, transpose, or extend the interesting features of a corpus to other NLP systems. In this work, we address the issue of measuring similarity between corpora. We suggest a scale between two user-chosen corpora on which any third given corpus can be assigned a coefficient of similarity, based on the cross-entropy of statistical N-gram character models. A possible application of this framework is to quantify similarity in terms of literality (or, conversely, orality). To this end, we carry out experiments on several well-known corpora in both English and Japanese and show that the defined similarity coefficient is robust in terms of language and model order variations. Comparing it to other existing similarity measures shows similar performance while extending widely the range of application to electronic data written in languages with no clear word segmentation. Within this framework, we further investigate the notion of homogeneity in the case of a large multilingual resource.
The Function of Representation in a "Smart Home Context"
Authors: Edenius Mats
Published: February 2011

In our society, we seem almost completely engaged in a variety of representational processes. By rendering events and processes “still”, they can be more easily manipulated and transferred into a stock of movable resources which can provide the possibility to control. It is in that context information technology can give us power. In this article it is argued that in order to understand information technology we must begin with representation. I will illustrate such a perspective by a case study that puts a smart home-technology in focus and exemplifies how it may let us deeper our knowledge about IT, how that knowledge is constructed, what actors are involved, what drives them and what kinds of issues are at stake.
Managing Socio-Technical Integration in Iterative Information System Development Projects
Authors: Bygstad Bendik
Published: February 2011

The challenges of information systems (IS) development have changed significantly in the past 15 years. From a situation where the main problem was to build stable systems based on a requirements specification, the IS project manager now faces challenges of integration; for example: how to integrate a new information system into large existing information infrastructures and unstable business processes? Building on a socio-technical perspective, four types of integration were identified and analyzed: external and internal stakeholder integration, and internal and external technical integration. A longitudinal case study of an e-business development project in the airline industry identified and highlighted some managerial challenges of integration. Findings include: Internal technical and (to some extent) stakeholder integration is well supported by traditional project management techniques and software engineering frameworks, such as the Rational Unified Process (RUP). However, the challenges of external stakeholder and technical integration is underrated in IS development research, and not well supported in RUP.
Enhancing Interaction with Dynamic Environments
Authors: Wang Minhong , Wang Huaiqing
Published: February 2011

Organizations around the world are facing the challenge of a rapidly changing environment. As a result, organizations are paying more attention to supporting process management by adapting to the dynamic environment. Traditional process or workflow management techniques are based on predefined logical procedures, which offer little support for dynamic situations. In this study, an agent-based, adaptive approach for achieving the flexibility and adaptability in process evolution is developed, based on continuous awareness of situations and real-time decisions of activities. Compared with other related work, this study has gone further by incorporating events into a context so as to watch over the whole environment and exercise timely and decision-based control of expected or unexpected changes and volumes of interactions with an absence of routine procedures. As a result, this approach is well suited for human-computer interaction and other open, dynamic and interactive situations not all known a priori, cannot all be assumed to be fully controllable in their behaviors, and must interact on a sophisticated level of communication and coordination.
Emotional Digitalization as Technology of the Postmodern
Authors: Hohmann Claus
Published: February 2011

This article introduces emotional digitalization as a phenomenon of future information systems. It argues that emotional digitalization is a progress that will lessen the gap between technology and humanity, as well as between computer and man. The author develops and verifies his assumption besides theoretical references arising from his experiences with the information technology within the BrandLand Autostadt.
Development of E-Government Services For Cultural Heritage
Authors: Andrea Carugati , Elias Hadzilias
Published: February 2011

This article is aimed at defining a framework for the design of e-government services on cultural heritage. Starting from an analysis of three cases on digitization of different types of cultural objects, we highlight the problems existing in the creation of e-services on cultural heritage. These cases show the existence of four key issues in the development of this kind of information systems: digitization, requirement engineering, standardization, and interoperability. The proposed framework addresses these issues, focusing on the user requirements on one side, and the cultural object representation—which is the key to interoperability—on the other. In the cultural domain, the EU Lisbon strategy pushes for the compatibility of shared content across multiple, locally generated contents. Dynamic content exchange requires the use of a prescriptive framework for the development of cultural heritage Web sites. This article provides such a framework, using observation from concrete applications, knowledge of information systems development methodologies, and the IDEF0 modelling method.
Global Information Ethics
Authors: Floridi Luciano
Published: February 2011

The article argues that Information Ethics (IE) can provide a successful approach for coping with the challenges posed by our increasingly globalized reality. After a brief review of some of the most fundamental transformations brought about by the phenomenon of globalization, the article distinguishes between two ways of understanding Global Information Ethics, as an ethics of global communication or as a global-information ethics. It is then argued that cross-cultural, successful interactions among micro and macro agents call for a high level of successful communication, that the latter requires a shared ontology friendly towards the implementation of moral actions, and that this is provided by IE. There follows a brief account of IE and of the ontic trust, the hypothetical pact between all agents and patients presupposed by IE.
Giving and Taking Offence in a Global Context
Authors: Weckert John
Published: February 2011

This article examines the concept of offence, both its giving and taking, and argues that such an examination can shed some light on global ethical issues. It examines the nature of offence, what, if anything, is wrong in giving offence, the obligations on the offended, whether or not offence is objective, and offence in a global setting. It argues for the view that choice and context provide some way of distinguishing between offence which is a serious moral issue and that which is not. It is morally worse to offend those who have no choice in the area of the offence, for example race, than in areas where there is choice. Intermediate cases such as religious belief, choice depends largely on education and exposure to alternatives. Context is important in that offending the vulnerable is morally worse than offending those in more powerful, or privileged groups.
Trusting Computers Through Trusting Humans
Authors: Adam Alison , Spedding Paul
Published: February 2011

This article considers the question of how we may trust automatically generated program code. The code walkthroughs and inspections of software engineering mimic the ways that mathematicians go about assuring themselves that a mathematical proof is true. Mathematicians have difficulty accepting a computer generated proof because they cannot go through the social processes of trusting its construction. Similarly, those involved in accepting a proof of a computer system or computer generated code cannot go through their traditional processes of trust. The process of software verification is bound up in software quality assurance procedures, which are themselves subject to commercial pressures. Quality standards, including military standards, have procedures for human trust designed into them. An action research case study of an avionics system within a military aircraft company illustrates these points, where the software quality assurance (SQA) procedures were incommensurable with the use of automatically generated code.
Pixel Chix and Digi Guys
Authors: McLean Rachel
Published: February 2011

The purpose of this article is to widen the debate surrounding participation in the eSociety, shifting the focus from access and economic power to skills and knowledge. It will present empirical research which, whilst not starting out as research into skills for the eSociety, revealed some relevant and enlightening issues. Focusing on two diverse contexts of activity (shopping and health care support) I will illustrate how the status quo (that the educated and economically rich have privileged, unfettered access to the services of the e-society) is flawed, misleading to stakeholders, and detrimental to both service providers and consumers. From a critical social theory (CST) perspective this paper critiques assumptions that the internet brings about citizen empowerment through increased access to information, and opportunities to communicate and share knowledge with service providers and other consumers. It demonstrates that this assumption derives from the myth that technology per se brings huge benefits, including wealth and empowerment. Concludes that access to ICTs alone does not bring about effective engagement in the eSociety.
Mobile Phone Use Across Cultures
Authors: Khattab Ishraga , Love Steve
Published: February 2011

Recently, the ubiquitous use of mobile phones by people from different cultures has grown enormously. For example, mobile phones are used to perform both private and business conversations. In many cases, mobile phone conversations take place in public places. In this article, we attempt to understand if cultural differences influence the way people use their mobile phones in public places. The material considered here draws on the existing literature of mobile phones, and quantitative and qualitative work carried out in the UK (as a mature mobile phone market) and the Sudan (that is part of Africa and the Middle East culture with its emerging mobile phone market). Results indicate that people in the Sudan are less likely to use their mobile phones on public transport or whilst walking down the street, in comparison to their UK counterparts. In addition, the Sudanese are more willing to switch off their mobile phones in places of worship, classes, and meetings. Implications are drawn from the study for the design of mobile phones for different cultures.
Defining Trust and E-Trust
Authors: Taddeo Mariarosaria
Published: February 2011

The paper provides a selective analysis of the main theories of trust and e-trust (that is, trust in digital environments) provided in the last twenty years, with the goal of preparing the ground for a new philosophical approach to solve the problems facing them. It is divided into two parts. The first part is functional toward the analysis of e-trust: it focuses on trust and its definition and foundation and describes the general background on which the analysis of e-trust rests. The second part focuses on e-trust, its foundation and ethical implications. The paper ends by synthesising the analysis of the two parts.
Humans and Emerging RFID Systems
Authors: Pitkänen Olli , Niemelä Marketta
Published: February 2011

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology offers a lot of promises. To redeem them, RFID applications have to respect privacy and they need to be supported by the legal system. The article evaluates how the current EU directives on data protection support emerging applications that are based on RFID tags. The evaluation is based on user scenarios that illustrate human needs in relation to technologies and applications. The article continues earlier analyses and uses more realistic and state-of-the-art applications and scenarios. We conclude by pointing out further research needs in the field of RFID and data protection.
The Many Sides of Human Resource Information Systems
Authors: Poutanen Hilkka , Puhakka Vesa
Published: February 2011

The history of human resource information systems stretches to the 1960s, when human resource data were separated from payroll systems. In the 1980s, researchers and practitioners became more interested in human resource information systems, and in the 1990s several studies, articles, user experiences, opinions and descriptions were published in journals, magazines and on the internet. Still, despite the number of literature, no survey or framework exists that constructs a synthesis of the fragmented issues of human resource information systems from both of these viewpoints, that is, information systems and human resource management. In this paper, an initial framework for human resource information systems is introduced to underline the importance and the need for consolidating the knowledge on the phenomenon.
Automatic Language Translation
Authors: Samanta Swadesh Kumar , Woods John , Ghanbari Mohammed
Published: February 2011

In this paper, the authors demonstrate that language diversity imposes a significant barrier in message communication like Short Messaging Service (SMS). SMS and other messaging services, including Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and e-mail, are widely used for person-to-person and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) communications due to their reach, simplicity and reliability of delivery. Reach and service delivery can be further enhanced if the message is delivered in the recipient’s preferred language. Using language translation software and a database server, the authors show that the messages can be delivered as per language preference of the recipient irrespective of the language of the original message. They demonstrate the proposed mechanism can deliver a large number of services, such as education, health care management, notification in emergency situations, news and weather reports, to those who are currently not able to access them due to language barrier.
The Influence of Information Control upon On-line Shopping Behavior
Authors: Gu Linwu , Aiken Milam , Wang Jianfeng , Wibowo Kustim
Published: February 2011

Previous studies have explored privacy instruments and disclosures as factors that affect on-line shopping intentions or attitudes. However, few have evaluated how information control affects this behavior. This paper draws on psychological and social justice theories to gain an understanding of how information control impacts on-line purchasing directly or indirectly through the mediation of intrinsic motivation. The resulting causal model was validated using structural equations with data from 179 respondents. Results show that perceived information control affects cognitive absorption, and users, as expected, value procedural fairness.
Digital Energy
Authors: Simonov Mikhail , Mussetta Marco , Zich Riccardo
Published: February 2011

Since energy use is a type of consumer behavior reflecting the interests to maximize some objective function, the human being activities seen in energy terms might be used to create the social aggregations or groups. Electric energy generated from ecologic sources brings some unpredictability. Authors model the unpredictability of the distributed generation in order to create a tool for minimization. Authors propose the novel method to build real life smart micro grids in the distributed generation context characterized by zero emissions. The proposed tool becomes an instrument to create the social aggregation of users and negotiate locally the “social” energy in real time, strengthening and mastering a virtual neighborhood of the local community.
Should Employees Accept Their Boss’s Facebook ‘Friend’ Request?
Authors: Karl Katherine , Peluchette Joy , Schlaegel Christopher
Published: February 2011

This study examines gender and cultural differences in reactions and responses to a Facebook ‘friend’ request from the boss. The auhtors found respondents were more likely to have positive (e.g., pleased, honored) reactions followed by questionable reactions (e.g., worried, suspicious) and least likely to have negative reactions (e.g., disgusted, offended). Although most respondents would accept the request, many would have reservations about doing so. Contrary to expectations, no gender differences were found. Significant cultural differences were found such that U.S. respondents were more likely than German respondents to have negative and questionable reactions and German respondents were more likely than U.S. respondents to have positive reactions. Implications and suggestions for future research are then discussed.
Business Models for On-line Social Networks
Authors: Rana Omer F. , Caton Simon
Published: February 2011

With the increasingly ubiquitous nature of social networks and Cloud computing, users are starting to explore new ways to interact with and exploit these developing paradigms. Social networks reflect real world relationships that allow users to share information and form connections, essentially creating dynamic virtual communities. By leveraging the pre-established trust formed through friend relationships within a social network “Social Clouds” can be realized, which enable friends to share resources within the context of a social network. The creation of Social Clouds gives rise to new business models through collaboration within social networks. In this paper, the authors describe such business models and discuss their impact.
Case Study- Web-Based Education Diffusion
Authors: Aggarwal A. K. , Legon Ron
Published: February 2011

Web-based education is diffusing across universities, disciplines, globes and educational levels. Many institutions are at the crossroad whether or not to adopt web-based education (WBE). In many cases their survival may depend on how successfully they can adopt WBE. In this regard, they can learn from the early adopters of WBE and, from their experiences, both good and bad without reinventing the wheel. This paper has two specific purposes: the first, describe WBE diffusion at a upper level university in the U.S., and, the second, is to discuss its diffusion experiences so that other universities can benefit from it. This paper relates diffusion of innovation theory and the 4 “P’s” of marketing to discuss Web education diffusion. We feel this is a first attempt in this direction. This paper should be useful worldwide for universities planning to start WBE and are looking for some guidance on “how”, “where” and “what” to follow to initiate the process.