bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Software Industry in Egypt as a Potential Contributor to Economic Growth
Authors: Kamel Sherif
Published: May 2011

During the 1960’s computing was introduced to Egypt. Its use and applications was limited to the government and the public sector. During the 1980’s the introduction and diffusion of computing was widespread following the global personal computer evolution. Personal computers effectively affected organizational development and growth due to the continuous developments in the information technology industry and caused by increasing hardware penetration, software innovations, and the build-up of the telecommunications and information infrastructures. This chapter assesses the recent developments in the software industry in Egypt, especially post to the establishment of the ministry of communications and information technology late in the 1990’s as a major building block of the information technology industry and a possible active contributor to economic development at large through a strong, quality and much needed export-oriented software industry that could have concrete implications on the economy.
Strategic Knowledge Management in Public Organizations
Authors: Anttiroiko Ari-Veikko
Published: May 2011

New public management and the more recent concept of new public governance have become the dominant management doctrines in the public sector. Public organizations have become increasingly network-like units with various governance relations with actors from the public, business, and voluntary sectors. Their organization is based more on networks than on traditional hierarchies, accompanied by a transition from the command-and-control type of management to initiate-and-coordinate type of governance. Among the most critical factors in this transformation is knowledge, for most of what has happened has increased the overall demand to create and process knowledge, and to utilize it in the performance of governmental functions. The success of public organizations depends increasingly on how efficiently they utilize their knowledge assets and manage their knowledge processes in adjusting to local and contextual changes, as illustrated in Figure 1 (cf. Gupta, Sharma, & Hsu, 2004, p. 3; Skyrme, 1999, p. 34, Fletcher, 2003, pp. 82-83). This requires that special attention be paid to strategic knowledge management. In the early organization theories of public administration, knowledge was predominantly conceptualized within the internal administrative processes, thus to be conceived of as bureaucratic procedures, rationalization of work processes, identification of administrative functions, and selected aspects of formal decision making. New perspectives emerged after World War II in the form of strategic planning and new management doctrines. The lesson learned from strategic thinking is that we need information on the external environment and changes therein in order to be able to adapt to and create new opportunities from these changes (see Ansoff, 1979; Bryson, 1995). As the complexity in societal life and related organizational interdependency has increased due to globalization and other trends, new challenges of managing organization-environment interaction also emerged (cf. Skyrme, 1999, p. 3).
A Study of Image Engineering
Authors: Zhang Yu-Jin
Published: May 2011

Images are an important medium from which human beings observe the majority of the information they received from the real world. In its general sense, the word “image” could include all entities that can be visualized, such as a still image, video, animation, graphics, charts, drawings, even also text, and so forth. Nowadays, “image” rather than “picture” is used because computers store numerical images of a picture or scene. Image techniques, which are expanding over wider and wider application areas, have attracted more and more attention in recent years. Image engineering (IE), an integrated discipline/subject comprising the study of all the different branches of image techniques, is evolving quickly. From 1969 to 2000, a well-known bibliography series had been developed to offer a convenient compendium of the research in picture processing until 1986, as well as in image processing and computer vision after 1986. This series has been ended in 2000 by the author after a total of 30 survey papers were published (Rosenfeld, 2000a). Some limitations of this series for the termination are (Zhang, 2002b): 1. No attempt is made to summarize the cited references for each year. 2. No attempt is made to analyze the distributions of the selected references from various sources. 3. No attempt is made to provide statistics about the classified references in each group. Another survey series, but on IE, has been started since 1996 (Zhang, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000a, 2001a, 2002a, 2003, 2004, 2005). The purpose of this survey work is mainly to capture the up-to-date development of IE, to make available a convenient means of literature searching facility for readers working in related areas, and to supply a useful reference for the editors of journals and potential authors of papers. This new series overcame the weakness of the earlier mentioned one by summarizing the cited references for each year, analyzing the distributions of the selected references from various sources, and providing various statistics about the classified references in each group. This new survey series has already made consecutively for ten years. This article will present an overview of this survey series by showing the idea behind and consideration on this work as well as the comprehensive statistics obtained from this work.
Supporting the Evaluation of Intelligent Sources
Authors: Vriens Dirk
Published: May 2011

To survive, organizations need to produce and process information about their environment, for instance, about customers, competitors, suppliers, governments, or all kinds of socioeconomic and technological trends. The process of obtaining this information is often called competitive intelligence (cf Fleisher & Blenkhorn, 2001; Kahaner, 1997; Vriens, 2004). An important stage in the competitive intelligence process is the collection stage. In this stage, one has to determine relevant sources, access them, and retrieve data from them (cf Bernhardt, 1994; Kahaner). For each data class, many possible sources are available, and determining the right ones is often difficult. Moreover, accessing sources and retrieving data may require a lot of effort and may be problematic (cf Cook & Cook, 2000; Fuld, 1995; Kahaner, 1997). In this chapter, we present a tool for supporting the effective and efficient use of sources: the source map. In essence, a source map links data classes to sources and contains information about these links. This information indicates the adequacy of sources in terms of ease of access, ease of retrieval, and usefulness of the retrieved data. A source map can support the selection of appropriate sources and it can support the assessment of the overall adequacy of available sources.
Supporting the Mentoring Process
Authors: Neville Karen
Published: May 2011

While the concept of knowledge management (KM) is not new, the focus on knowledge management as a strategy has heightened in recent times as organizations realize the importance of knowledge as an intangible asset contributing to the enhancement of competitive advantage (Bolloju & Khalifa, 2000). In the 21st century, it is believed that successful companies are those that effectively acquire, create, retain, deploy, and leverage knowledge (Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2000). Knowledge work is the ability to create an understanding of nature, organizations, and processes, and to apply this understanding as a means of generating wealth in the organization. Evidently, the focus on knowledge management as a strategy has become central to organizations (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). Ichijo, Von Krogh, and Nonaka (1998) view knowledge as a resource that is unique and imperfectly imitable, allowing firms to sustain a competitive advantage. Additionally, many approaches to managing knowledge are marred by obstacles of sustainability (Kulkarni, Ravindran, & Freeze, 2006). As a direct result organizations fail to realize the expected returns on investment from knowledge management implementations or strategies (Zyngier, 2007). However, if knowledge management as a formalized organizational strategy is supported, it can be sustained. Therefore in an economic environment where organizations have been forced to take a step back and reevaluate their core competencies and ability to innovate, organizational knowledge has come to the forefront as a valuable strategic asset (Haghirian, 2003). It is the objective of this article to provide an example of knowledge workers and experts collaborating to implement successful training and learning programs to support knowledge management activities in their organization. The authors hope that the case discussed will inform researchers of an appropriate model in designing an interactive learning environment which enables a positive knowledge sharing environment and in turn contributes to the growth of an organization’s memory.
Technological and Social Issues of E-Collaboration Support Systems
Authors: Karacapilidis Nikos
Published: May 2011

Removal of communication impediments and provision for techniques that systematically direct the pattern, timing, and content of cooperative processes are two key prerequisites in the contemporary organization. Their establishment has been proven to facilitate the solution of ill-structured problems by a set of individuals working together as a team, through the interactive sharing of information between them. E-collaboration involves a variety of both communication and cooperation issues, in that it leverages the connective powers of a computer network to coordinate the efforts of a group of people. By using e-collaborative capabilities in an organization, people can operate as a single business entity, thus making joint decisions of added value.
Technologies for Information Access and Knowledge Management
Authors: Mandl Thomas
Published: May 2011

In the 1960s, automatic indexing methods for texts were developed. They had already implemented the “bag-ofwords” approach, which still prevails. Although automatic indexing is widely used today, many information providers and even Internet services still rely on human information work. In the 1970s, research shifted its interest to partial-match retrieval models and proved their superiority over Boolean retrieval models. Vector-space and later probabilistic retrieval models were developed. However, it took until the 1990s for partial-match models to succeed in the market. The Internet played a great role in this success. All Web search engines were based on partial-match models and provided ranked lists as results rather than unordered sets of documents. Consumers got used to this kind of search systems, and all big search engines included partial-match functionality. However, there are many niches in which Boolean methods still dominate, for example, patent retrieval. The basis for information retrieval systems may be pictures, graphics, videos, music objects, structured documents, or combinations thereof. This article is mainly concerned with information retrieval for text documents.
Telescopic Ads on Interactive Digital Television
Authors: Cauberghe Verolien , De Pelsmacker Patrick
Published: May 2011

behaviour, it also offers new advertising opportunities (Cauberghe & De Pelsmacker, 2006). One of them is the telescopic advertisement. This format consists of a “30-second TV ad with a call-to-action button with clickable content or micro sites featuring individual still screens providing additional product information” (Bellman & Varan, 2004, p. 2). When the viewer clicks on the call-to-action button, he or she leaves the linear broadcast stream to enter a dedicated advertising location (DAL). There, the viewer can navigate through the additional information, which can be structured in different layers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of two aspects of the complexity of a telescopic ad by experimentally manipulating the amount of information and the level of interactivity in the DAL. Additionally, the role of time spent in the DAL is explored.
Transmission of Scalable Video in Computer Networks
Authors: Monteiro Jânio M. , Calafate Carlos T. , Nunes Mário S.
Published: May 2011

In this article we analyze scalable video transmission, from the perspective of video coding standards and the necessary developments in protocols that support media distribution in current and future network architectures. In the next section we start by describing the first contributions to this topic and following developments in related video coding standards. We then describe the structure of a scalable video bitstream, taking the novel H.264/SVC standard as reference, and we further proceed with an analysis of the protocols that can be used for the description, signaling, and transport of scalable video. We describe different network scenarios and examples where scalable video offers significant advantages, before moving on to some remarks on future trends in this area, discussing those mechanisms that must be associated with SVC techniques to achieve an efficient and robust transmission system, and concluding the article.
Trends in the Higher Education E-Learning Markets
Authors: Regazzi John J. , Caliguiri Nicole
Published: May 2011

This article describes research undertaken at the Scholarly Communications Lab of the College of Information and Computer Science at Long Island University in the area of higher education e-learning market in the United States. It is organized around three topics: a definition of e-learning and distance education; a description of the size, growth, and future outlook for this market; and the identification of some of the key growth drivers both historically and for the future.
Triune Continuum Paradigm
Authors: Naumenko Andrey
Published: May 2011

This article reviews the Triune Continuum Paradigm—a logically rigorous theoretical base for organization of conceptual frameworks that are used for system modeling in different contexts (e.g., in software development, in enterprise architecture, in the architecture of financial services, in jurisprudence, etc.). This paradigm is an important contribution to the system modeling domain, because currently none of the prevailing system modeling frameworks has a satisfactory formal theoretical foundation.
Underwriting Automobile Insurance Using Artificial Neural Networks
Authors: Kitchens Fred
Published: May 2011

For hundreds of years, actuaries used pencil and paper to perform their statistical analysis It was a long time before they had the help of a mechanical adding machine. Only recently have they had the benefit of computers. As recently as 1981, computers were not considered important to the process of insurance underwriting. Leading experts in insurance underwriting believed that the judgment factor involved in the underwriting process was too complex for any computer to handle as effectively as a human underwriter (Holtom, 1981). Recent research in the application of technology to the underwriting process has shown that Holtom’s statement may no longer hold true (Gaunt, 1972; Kitchens, 2000; Rose, 1986). The time for computers to take on an important role in the insurance underwriting process may be upon us. The author intends to illustrate the applicability of artificial neural networks to the insurance underwriting process.
Unified Modeling Language 2.0
Authors: Fettke Peter
Published: May 2011

Mature engineering disciplines are generally characterized by accepted methodical standards for describing all relevant artifacts of their subject matter. Such standards not only enable practitioners to collaborate, but they also contribute to the development of the whole discipline. In 1994, Grady Booch, Jim Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson joined together to unify the plethora of existing object-oriented systems engineering approaches at semantic and notation level (Booch, 2002; Fowler, 2004; Rumbaugh, Jacobson & Booch, 1998). Their effort leads to the unified modeling language (UML), a well-known, general-purpose, tool-supported, processindependent, and industry-standardized modeling language for visualizing, describing, specifying, and documenting systems artifacts.
The Use of ICTs in Small Business
Authors: Burgess Stephen
Published: May 2011

This article examines the main drivers and barriers facing small business owner/managers in the manner in which they use information and communications technologies (ICTs) within their businesses. The early part of the article examines thenotion of whatis meantby smallbusiness. Thediscussion then moves onto describing some of the drivers and barriers to the use of ICTs in small business and the implications of these to small businesses.
Videoconferencing for Schools in the Digital Age
Authors: Martin Marie
Published: May 2011

Wallis and Steptoe (2006) tell of a “dark little joke” that is bandied about among certain educators. It recounts the tale of Rip Van Winkle, who on reawakening in 2006 after his hundred years’ sleep, experiences utter bewilderment until at last he finds solace in the familiar environment of a classroom, where teaching is going on as it did back in 1906. The story is amusing. The message is blunt. In the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, despite ongoing technology-driven societal transformation, schools are still functioning largely in the easily recognizable traditional model of the industrial era (Steinkuehler, 2006; Veletsianos, 2007). The rush to computerize the classroom has generally not brought about a corresponding change of mindset on the part of educators (Cuban, 2006; Spector, 2000; Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, & Gee, 2005; Thornburg, 2003). Schools are failing to address the needs of the Net generation of learners (Barnes, Marateo, & Ferris, 2007; van ‘t Hooft, 2007). These digital learners who have grown up in a technology-saturated world that has defined and shaped their way of learning find school irrelevant and boring (Mc- Combs, 2000). By drawing on the literature and on case studies from within the experience of the author and other educators in Northern Ireland (NI), this article seeks to demonstrate that videoconferencing, alone as well as alongside other technologies, and used with appropriate pedagogy, can help transform the traditional classroom and make it a place hospitable to the learning needs of the Net generation.
Viewing Text-Based Group Support Systems
Authors: Esther E. Klein Esther E. , Herskovitz Paul J.
Published: May 2011

With interdisciplinary approaches leading to new and enriched perspectives, we argue that an encounter between information technology (IT) and sociology will result in a heightened understanding of the problem of textual ambiguity in text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC)1 in general and in group support systems (GSS) in particular. Such approaches where IT meets sociology have already been taking place in other areas of group research (e.g., see Ahuja & Carley, 1998). “[W]ith the global and technological transformations of the workplace” (Aakhus, 2001, p. 341), as IT and the Internet gain wide acceptance throughout society as well as the global economy (e.g., see Friedman, 2000) and as CMC and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) become commonplace, both information systems (IS) scholars and sociologists have increasingly studied the patterns of human behavior in virtual groups. This article2 is an attempt to advance that effort. Specifically, the purpose of this article is to apply the insights of Georg Simmel—an early and oft-neglected German theorist of sociology working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—on written communication to text-based GSS, which are interactive computer-based information systems that support and structure group interaction and intellectual teamwork (see also Ackermann & Eden, 1994; Fjermestad, J., 2004; Klein, 2000; Klein & Dologite, 2000; Nunamaker, 1997; Poole & DeSanctis, 1990; Zigurs & Buckland, 1998), “promot[ing] communication, collaboration and coordination among teams of people” (Ahalt, 2000, p. 1159).
Virtual Work Research Agenda
Authors: Bélanger France
Published: May 2011

The paper by Bélanger, Watson-Manheim, and Jordan (2002) addresses the gap between research conducted and practitioner concerns in virtual work. One of the key difficulties in conducting research in this area is the overlap between terms used (McCloskey & Igbaria, 1998; Pinsonneault & Boisvert, 2001). While there are other distributed work arrangements such as hotelling, neighborhood work centers and flextime, most of the previous literature has focused on telecommuting (telework) and virtual teams/ organizations. In this article, the term virtual work represents work environments where individuals spend some time working in a non-face-to-face (FTF) mode, using information and communication technologies to perform work activities. Virtual work environments are increasingly employed by organizations. While there is increased complexity and potential for problems, virtual work strategies allow organizations a great deal of flexibility to compete in a rapidly changing business environment. While existing research provides insights into such environments, it does not clearly deal with major concerns faced by managers (referred to as the “gap” between research and practice). One of the potential reasons for this gap is that practicing managers are concerned with current challenges in their own work setting while academics are concerned with developing more generalizable rules and understanding.
Virtualization and Its Role in Business
Authors: Kisielnicki Jerzy A.
Published: May 2011

A new management trend of the global information technology (IT) application—virtualization—has appeared in the contemporary management. Virtualization is a process of enterprise transformation (using IT) that allows breaking through various limitations of organizational constraints. Virtualization changes dramatically the image of business, especially of small and medium enterprises (SMEs); by adopting the concept of virtualization, they can become fully competitive and may effectively operate in the global market. Barriers of the scale between SMEs and large organizations disappear. This new type of organizations is often called in literature modern organization or virtual organization. Organizations of this type have an effective decision-making process, and function based on economic criteria. Consequently, their opportunities to grow and to compete in the global market are greater than for traditional SMEs. Hence the thesis that virtualization allows individual organizations to enter strategic co-operative alliances with other similar businesses. Such of virtual organizations have a competitive position in the global market. In the literature, there are many terms used to define virtual organization: “network organizations” (Drucker, 1988, p. 9), “organizations after re-engineering” (Hammer & Champy, 1993, pp. 77-79), “crazy organization,” “crazy time for crazy organization” (Peters, 1994, pp. 5-7), and “intelligent enterprise” (Quinn, 1992, p. 3).
Web-Based GIS
Authors: Cardoso de Paiva Anselmo , de Souza Baptista Cláudio
Published: May 2011

One of the main concerns on Web-based geographical information systems (Web GIS) is related to performance issues, as these datasets need to migrate, as fast as possible, from server to client tiers (Peng & Tsou, 2003). This is the problem of generation and transmission of the digital maps, which are suitable for user needs. Another important issue is to enable fast and easy Internet GIS application deployment. In this chapter, we discuss solutions proposed for Web GIS based on the vector format, particularly the iGIS framework (Baptista, Leite Jr., Silva, & Paiva, 2004). The iGIS is a Web GIS that renders maps using multiresolution techniques, and enables user interaction them, using the W3C SVG specification. The chapter also addresses the issues that affect Web GIS performance, presenting an overview of the techniques that increase Web GIS performance and the results obtained by using the iGIS framework.
Web Usability
Authors: Becker Shirley Ann
Published: May 2011

The study of computing technology and user interfaces was initiated during the 1970s when industrial research laboratories began to focus on human-computer interaction (HCI) (Badre, 2002). In the 1980s, the personal computer was introduced, thus expanding the need for designing effective user interfaces. HCI became a discipline during this time, and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) established the Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction. One of the first textbooks on HCI, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (Schneiderman, 19891), was published. Shortly thereafter, HCI became part of the ACM curriculum promoting the development of effective user interfaces. Software tools were developed in order to assist in designing usable interfaces while employing usability engineering methods. Many of these methods focused on usability from the perspective of ease of use, ease of learning, user satisfaction, and zero defects (Nielsen, 1993). The World Wide Web (Web) became an integral part of HCI research in the 1990s, as organizations rushed to deploy a corporate Web site. Many of these Web sites took advantage of cutting-edge technology, including graphics and animation, with little regard for the impact on the user. As a result, users became disgruntled by lengthy download times, complex navigation schemes, nonintuitive search mechanisms, and disorganized content.
Web-Based Algorithm and Program Visualization for Education
Authors: Pareja-Flores Cristóbal , Urquiza-Fuentes Jaime , Velázquez Iturbide J. Ángel
Published: May 2011

Probably, the most common use of the Web for programming courses is as a communication medium, facilitating submission and administration of assignments and grades (Burd, 2000). Another common use of the Web for programming education is as a public repository of high quality problems, such as the Lab Repository (Knox, 2006) and the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (Skiena & Revilla, 2003). Web sites may also host other resources, such as slides and audio lectures (Skiena & Revilla, 2003), algorithm animations (Brummond, 2001), or programming tools (English, 2001). These collections have no structure or, at best, are lineally or hierarchically structured, but more advanced repositories are possible. In this case, a management system must be delivered that, using (semi)structured mark-up languages, allows retrieving, maintaining, and publishing. A good representative is the eXercita system (Gregorio-Rodríguez et al., 2000, 2002). Finally, programming tools have been ported to be executed on the Web (Pareja-Flores & Velázquez-Iturbide, 2002). This article describes a different class of Web-based tools for programming education, namely tools for algorithm and program visualization. After the Background section, we describe the evolution of these systems, educational uses, and lessons learned. Finally, we outline future trends in the use of the Web for programming education and our personal conclusions.
A Web-Enabled Course Partnership
Authors: Kock Ned , Cai Gangshu
Published: May 2011

This article discusses a course partnership involving a large engineering and professional services company, and a public university, both headquartered in Philadelphia,. An action research study of the course partnership is used as a basis. Like typical action research studies (Checkland, 1991; Lau, 1997; Peters & Robinson, 1984; Winter, 1989; Wood- Harper, 1985), ours aimed at providing a service to the research clients (Jonsonn, 1991; Rapoport, 1970; Sommer, 1994), while at the same time performing an exploratory investigation of the effect of Web-based collaboration technologies on course partnerships. The research clients in question were the students and the industry partner. Also, in line with a subclass of action research, namely participatory action research (Greenwood, Whyte, & Harkavy, 1993; Elden & Chisholm, 1993; McTaggart, 1991; Whyte, 1991), one of the research clients, the industry partner, participated actively in the compilation and analysis of the exploratory research data, as well as in the interpretation of the findings.
Wireless Networks for Vehicular Support
Authors: Manzoni Pietro , Calafate Carlos T. , Cano Juan-Carlos , Skarmeta Antonio , Gianuzzi Vittoria
Published: May 2011

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) is an area under intensive research that promises to improve security on the road by developing an intelligent transport system (ITS). The main purpose is to create an inter-communication network among vehicles, as well as between vehicles and the supporting infrastructure. The system pretends to offer drivers data concerning other nearby vehicles, especially those within sight. The problem of information sharing among vehicles and between the vehicle and the infrastructure is another critical aspect. A general communication infrastructure is required for the notification, storage, management, and provision of context-aware information about user travel. Ideally an integrated vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication paradigm enriched with an information management system would solve the problem. The infrastructure should manage all the collected safety events garnered from vehicles and the interesting information to be provided to the user, which is adapted to the car context and driver preferences. Finally, security issues should be considered. Since the information conveyed over a vehicular network may affect critical decisions, fail-safe security is a necessity. The first directive for any V2V communication scheme is, therefore, that every safety message must be authenticated. Because of the high speed and therefore short duration within which communication between two cars is possible, communication must be non-interactive, and message overhead must be very low. The urgency of safety messages implies that authentication must be instantaneous without additional communication. Moreover, providing strong security in vehicular networks raises important privacy concerns that must also be considered. Safety messages include data that is dangerous to the personal privacy of vehicle owners. Most relevant is the danger of tracking a vehicle through positional information. A set of security basics to address these challenges should be proposed that can be used as the building blocks of secure applications. In this article we will focus on the aforementioned technologies and engineering issues related to vehicular ad-hoc networks, emphasizing the challenges that must be overcome to accomplish the desired vehicular safety infrastructure.
The Internet, Health Information, and Managing Health
Authors: Reddick Christopher G.
Published: May 2011

This article examines the use of the Internet for gathering health information by boomers and seniors. This study attempts to determine whether online health seekers (individuals that have Internet access and have searched for health information online) have changed their behaviors from the information they found online. Essentially, has online health information helped them to manage their health more effectively? This research analyzes the Kaiser Family Foundation e-Health and the Elderly public opinion dataset of access by boomers and seniors to online health information. The major results indicate that boomers marginally use online health information more than seniors for the management of their health. The most significant results indicated that boomers and seniors who are more aware and have positive feelings toward online health information would use it more to manage their health.
Assessment of Human Factors in Adaptive Hypermedia Environments
Authors: Tsianos Nikos , Germanakos Panagiotis , Lekkas Zacharias , Mourlas Constantinos
Published: May 2011

The plethora of information and services as well as the complicated nature of most Web structures intensify the navigational difficulties that arise when users navigate their way through this large information space. Personalized services that are highly sensitive to the immediate environment and the goals of the user can alleviate the orientation and presentation difficulties experienced by the relatively diverse user population. User profiles serves as the main component of most Web personalization systems. Main scope of this chapter is to present the various techniques employed by such systems with regards to user profiles extraction and introduce a comprehensive user profile, which includes User Perceptual Preference Characteristics. It further analyzes the main intrinsic users’ characteristics like visual, cognitive, and emotional processing parameters incorporated as well as the “traditional” user profile characteristics that together tend to give the most optimized personalization outcome. It finally overviews a Web adaptation and personalization system and presents evaluation results that further support the importance of human factors in the information space.
Context and Adaptivity-Driven Visualization Method Selection
Authors: Golemati Maria , Vassilakis Costas , Katifori Akrivi , Lepouras George , Halatsis Constantin
Published: May 2011

Novel and intelligent visualization methods are being developed in order to accommodate user searching and browsing tasks, including new and advanced functionalities. Besides, research in the field of user modeling is progressing in order to personalize these visualization systems, according to its users’ individual profiles. However, employing a single visualization system, may not suit best any information seeking activity. In this paper we present a visualization environment, which is based on a visualization library, i.e. is a set of visualization methods, from which the most appropriate one is selected for presenting information to the user. This selection is performed combining information extracted from the context of the user, the system configuration and the data collection. A set of rules inputs such information and assigns a score to all candidate visualization methods. The presented environment additionally monitors user behavior and preferences to adapt the visualization method selection criteria.
OntoExtractor
Authors: Leida Marcello
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces OntoExtractor, a tool for the semi-automatic generation of the taxonomy from a set of documents or data sources. The tool generates the taxonomy in a bottom-up fashion. Starting from structural analysis of the documents, it produces a set of clusters, which can be refined by a further grouping created by content analysis. Metadata describing the content of each cluster is automatically generated and analysed by the tool for producing the final taxonomy. A simulation of a tool, based on an implicit and explicit voting mechanism, for the maintenance of the taxonomy is also described. The author depicts a system that can be used to generate the taxonomy from a heterogeneous source of information, using wrappers for converting the original format of the document to a structured one. This way, OntoExtractor can virtually generate the taxonomy from any source of information just adding the proper wrapper. Moreover, the trust mechanism allows a reliable method for maintaining the taxonomy and for overcoming the unavoidable generation of wrong classes in the taxonomy.
A Workflow Management System for Ontology Engineering
Authors: Carcagnì Alessandra , Corallo Angelo , Zilli Antonio , Ingraffia Nunzio , Sorace Silvio
Published: May 2011

The Semantic Web approach based on the ontological representation of knowledge domains seems very useful for improving document management practices, the formal and machine-mediated communication among people and work team and supports knowledge based productive processes. The effectiveness of a semantic information management system is set by the quality of the ontology. The development of ontologies requires experts on the application domain and on the technical issues as representation formalism, languages, and tools. In this chapter a methodology for ontology developing is presented. It is structured in six phases (feasibility study, expliciting of the knowledge base, logic modelling, implementation, test, extension, and maintaining) and highlights the flow of information among phases and activities, the external variables required for completing the project, the human and structural resources involved in the process. The defined methodology is independent of any particular knowledge field, so it can be used whenever an ontology is required. The methodology for ontology developing was implemented in a prototypal workflow management system that will be deployed in the back office area of the SIMS (Semantic Information Management System), a technological platform that is going to be developed for the research project DISCoRSO founded by the Italian Minister of University and Research. The main components of the workflow management system are the editor and the runtime environment. The Enhydra JaWE and Enhydra Shark are well suited as they implement the workflow management standards (languages), they are able to manage complex projects (many tasks, activities, people) and they are open source.
A Guide to Non-Disclosure Agreements for Researchers Using Public and Private Sector Sources
Authors: Witman Paul D.
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides a set of guidelines to assist information systems researchers in creating, negotiating, and reviewing nondisclosure agreements, in consultation with appropriate legal counsel. It also reviews the use of nondisclosure agreements in academic research environments from multiple points of view, including the perspectives of both public and private sectors. Active academic researchers, industry practitioners, and corporate legal counsel all provided input into the compiled guidelines. An annotated bibliography and links are provided for further review.
Enabling Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks
Authors: Wang Jing
Published: May 2011

Wireless sensor networks have seen a wealth of research efforts and practical implementations in recent years. With the advance of CMOS cameras and microphones, wireless multimedia sensor networks are proposed to be a promising solution to a variety of applications in surveillance and intrusion detection, smart traffic control, automated health care, environmental monitoring, and so forth. It is composed of wirelessly connected small devices, which are able to capture multimedia data from the surrounding environment, besides its capabilities of processing the multimedia data using the embedded CPU and transmitting data to the sink through wireless communication. In this chapter, we firstly address features of WMSNs and challenges facing the realization of WMSNs by introducing two experimental applications of WMSNs. As energy efficient routing and distributed source coding are two critical components for the success of WMSNs, we discuss existing work in these two areas subsequently, in order to reveal details about the challenges and potential solutions to the problems posed by WMSNs. At the end of this chapter, open problems on cross-layer design, quality of information and privacy and security are briefly discussed.
Streaming Multimedia via Peer-to-Peer Systems
Authors: Adetola Oredope
Published: May 2011

The concept of multimedia streaming gives the end-users the ability to playback various multimedia contents while they are still being downloaded from the provider. This provides a major advantage in which users do not need to wait for the whole media clips to be downloaded; it also reduces the time of delivery and allows their bandwidth to be efficiently used for other purposes. In this chapter, we review the advantages, limitations and challenges faced by current peer-to-peer approaches in multimedia streaming, taking a close look at the architectures, protocols, service quality, and case studies. Our analysis reveals that, when placed in the context of mobile systems, peer-to-peer streaming is still at its infancy. We illustrate shortcomings and provide an outlook for mobile peer-to-peer streaming, highlighting the most pressing research issues. The reader will appreciate the current state-of-the-art of this remarkable technology and ways in which it may become a reality.
Context Modelling Approaches for Mobile Systems
Authors: Avola Danilo
Published: May 2011

The actual mobile technology and the increasing need to obtain rich multimedia content about each and every aspect of the human life are changing the approach of the users to the World Wide Web. Indeed, the pervasive use of mobile devices and the heterogeneity of the provided services and information make the accessibility and usability of the Web resources a hard assignment. In particular two main tasks have been identified as focal issues, the first one regards the choose of a suitable model to express the complex activities of the Web (context modeling approaches), and the second one regards the translation of the different schemas, representing these Web activities, in a more suitable, manageable and standardizing schema. In this chapter we will present the problems related to the modeling of context data, and we will describe the actual and future approaches of Context Modeling according to the mobile devices world.
An Improved Particle Swarm Optimization for Indoor Positioning
Authors: Zhu Hui
Published: May 2011

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a newly appeared technique for evolutionary computation. It was originated as a simulation for a simplified social system such as the behavior of bird flocking or fish schooling. An improved PSO algorithm (IPSO) is introduced to solve the nonlinear optimization for indoor positioning. The algorithm achieves the optimal coordinates through iterative searching. Compared with standard PSO algorithm, the algorithm converges faster and can find the global best position. The error of position estimated by this algorithm is smaller than that estimated in Taylor Series Expansion (TSE) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). Thus this algorithm is proven to be a fast and effective method in solving nonlinear optimization for indoor positioning.
A Gesture-Based Intuitive Interaction System and its Target Selection Algorithm
Authors: Yoo Jong-Woon
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents an intelligent interface system, including a new gesture-based wearable input device called iThrow as a main user interface for mobile devices, and an infrastructure helping users be aware of and make use of various electronic devices in user-friendly manners. In this kind of intelligent interface system, selecting an object among multiple ones is one of the fundamental functions because it is a precursor to all other subsequent actions. We propose a new selection algorithm that improves selection speed by adaptively resizing the objects’ angular widths. Results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the ray-based selection technique in selection speed by about 62.6%.
Medical Education in the 21st Century
Authors: Kabene Stefane M.
Published: May 2011

As with many disciplines, the fields of healthcare in general and medicine, in particular, have made vast strides in improving patient outcomes and healthcare delivery. But, have healthcare professionals and medical academia been able to maximize the utilization of new technologies to improve the delivery of the right knowledge, to the right people, at the right time across geographical boundaries? In order to provide the best quality of care, regardless of patient or provider location, specific issues must be addressed. Healthcare consumers and providers recognize that the system is often over worked, time constrained, poorly funded and desperately in need of a means to maintain up-to-date knowledge and efficient skills in order to deliver the best quality of care (Health Canada, 1998). We also know that there is a large disparity in both the quality and types of healthcare available between developed and developing countries (Lown, Bukuchi & Xavier, 1998). Within a single country there are also differences in healthcare services based upon location (rural vs. urban areas), wealth, age, gender and a host of other factors (Health Canada, 2004). However, because Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be a simple and cost effective tool, it can make desperately needed medical knowledge available to developing coun tries (Pakenham-Walsh, Smith & Priestly, 1997). Furthermore, it is becoming more difficult to get physicians and extended healthcare professionals to participate in face-to-face seminars in order to learn about the progress and changes in the delivery of healthcare. Time, travel requirements and cost are the biggest barriers to overcome. For rural areas and developing countries these issues are even more evident (Ernst and Young, 1998). Today, many institutions and countries are exploring and implementing ICT solutions to help reduce these inequities. The fact remains however that in the case of developing countries, a critical shortage of healthcare professionals remains (Fraser and McGrath, 2000). Adding to the problem is the fact that the telecommunications network, the backbone of ICT, in Africa is the least developed in the world (Coeur de Roy, 1997) This article concentrates on two main aspects of ICT. First, it examines ways in which ICT can assist in information and knowledge transfer and second, it explores the challenges of ICT implementation.
Knowledge Management in Healthcare
Authors: Sharma Sushil K. , Wickramasinghe Nilmini , Gupta Jatinder N.D.
Published: May 2011

Healthcare organizations are facing many challenges in the 21s t Century due to changes taking place in global healthcare systems. Spiraling costs, financial constraints, increased emphasis on accountability and transparency, changes in education, growing complexities of biomedical research, new partnerships in healthcare and great advances in IT suggest that a predominant paradigm shift is occurring. This shift is necessitating a focus on interaction, collaboration and increased sharing of information and knowledge which is in turn leading healthcare organizations to embrace the techniques of Knowledge Management (KM) in order to create and sustain optimal healthcare outcomes. This chapter describes the importance of knowledge management systems for healthcare organizations and provides an overview of knowledge management technologies and tools that may be used by healthcare organizations.
Knowledge Management in Hospitals
Authors: Desouza Kevin C.
Published: May 2011

The medical field in recent years has been facing increasing pressures for lower cost and increased quality of healthcare. These two pressures are forcing dramatic changes throughout the industry. Managing knowledge in healthcare enterprises is hence crucial for optimal achievement of lowered cost of services with higher quality. The following chapter focuses on developing and fostering a knowledge management process model. We then look at key barriers for healthcare organizations to cross in order to fully manage knowledge.
Decision Support With BPEL and Web Services
Authors: Morrison Iain
Published: May 2011

A review of difficulties experienced with proprietary guidelines languages and in clinical decision support has led us to the development of a decision support system (DSS) based on a service oriented architecture (SOA) using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Web services. BPEL allows simple branching conditions and tests to be set based on the information artifacts in the workflow. For more complex tests, we preferred to place decision support in an external DSS Web service. An advantage of this approach is that the DSS could evolve independently of the clinical workflow. We have implemented an exemplar of the above using the Java expert system shell (JESS). The domain objects are sent by the BPEL engine into the DSS which consults external rules, reasons on the domain objects and rules, and transmits recommendations back. The article will discuss issues involved in implementation using as an example drug-drug adverse reactions.