bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Evolution of the Digital Divide across Developing Countries
Authors: Corrocher Nicoletta , Raineri Anna
Published: May 2010

This chapter aims at investigating the evolution of the digital divide within a set of developing countries between the years 2000 and 2005. In doing so, it moves away from the traditional analysis of the digital divide, which compares developed countries and developing countries, and examines the existing gap within a relatively homogeneous group of countries. On the basis of the theoretical and empirical contributions from scholars in different disciplines, we select a series of socioeconomic and technological indicators and provide an empirical assessment of the digitalization patterns in a set of 51 low income and lower-middle income countries. By means of cluster analysis techniques, we identify three emerging patterns of the digital divide and derive a series of policy implications, related to the implementation of an effective strategy to reduce digital backwardness. The characteristics of each pattern of digitalization can be also usefully employed to understand whether past interventions, especially in the area of competition policy, have been successful in addressing country-specific issues.
Digital Divide in Turkey
Authors: Yildiz Mete
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines the nature of digital divide in Turkey. To this end, after a brief summary of the literature, first, the dimensions of digital divide in the country are explained. Then, various initiatives by the government, private firms, NGOs, and international organizations to combat digital divide are presented. Next, in the discussion section, issues for further discussion regarding digital divide in Turkey are listed. The chapter ends with the examination of the issues regarding the future prospects for overcoming digital divide in Turkey and developing countries elsewhere.
The Digital Divide in the U.S. in the 21st Century
Authors: Warf Barney
Published: May 2010

The United States has the world’s largest national population of Internet users, roughly 170 million people, or 70% of the adult population. However, the deep class and racial inequalities within the U.S. are mirrored in access to cyberspace. This chapter examines the nature of the U.S. digital divide, differentiating between Internet access and usage, using data from 1995 to 2005. Although Internet usage has grown among all sociodemographic groups, substantial differences by income and ethnicity persist. The chapter also examines discrepancies in access to broadband technologies.
The Digital Divides in the U.S.
Authors: Jackson Linda A. , Fitzgerald Hiram E. , Eye Alexander von , Zhao Yong , Witt Edward A.
Published: May 2010

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the digital divides in the U.S. in terms of access, broadband connectivity, intensity of Internet use, and nature of Internet use. These divides hold true for both adults and youth and have far-reaching implications for both groups, as well as for society as a whole. For the most part the digital divides center around race, income, and, to a lesser extent, gender. Because the digital divides are complex and multifaceted any approach to reduce or eliminate them must also be complex and multifaceted. We suggest ways that educational, community, government, and corporate resources can be brought to bear on eliminating the digital divides.
The Internet, Black Identity, and the Evolving Discourse of the Digital Divide
Authors: Kvasny Lynette , Hales Kayla D.
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, we examine how people of African descent are using an online discussion forum as a site for interrogating the existential question of “who am I?” Contrary to the typical formulations of the digital divide as a measure of disparity in access to information and communication technologies (ICTs), we make a case for how and why ICTs are being effectively used to enable and advance the interests of people who have historically been marginalized and silenced. The contributions of this research extend the digital divide discourse to affirm the cultural realities of diverse Internet users.
The Digital Divide among the Incarcerated Women in the United States
Authors: McKay Heather A. , Morris Patrice K.
Published: May 2010

A computer-based learning (CBL) program in the New Jersey women’s prison system is helping to bridge the digital divide among the incarcerated. The hallmark of this program is a computer-based learning process that begins in the prison environment and follows an inmate through the corrections system and into the community. The program provides access to computers through computer labs, use of computers in coursework, and computer ownership upon release into the community. Access to information technology helps to develop skills that will be useful for offender’s chances of employment upon reentry and may even help to reduce recidivism rates.
Broadband in America
Authors: Cooper Mark N.
Published: May 2010

Under the Bush Administration, the U.S. failed to close the digital divide and fell behind on broadband. In 2001, 54 percent of households did not have the Internet. In late 2007, 49 percent of households did nothave broadband. About 25 percent of households with incomes below $25,000 per year had broadband in 2007; whereas over 80 percent of households with incomes above $75,000 did. In 2001, the U.S. ranked third in the world in the penetration of broadband, but had fallen to 15th by 2007. A variety of measures of performance and econometric models that control for economic and social factors show a dozen nations are ahead of the U.S. The laissez faire policy pursued by the Bush administration let a duopoly of cable and telephone companies dribble out broadband at slow speed and high prices. In contrast, the nations that passed the U.S. implemented much more aggressive policies to promote broadband and instead of relying on weak intermodal competition, they required the dominant networks to be open to competition in Internet services. This kept the price down and stimulated adoption and innovation.
Digital Divide and Rural Communities
Authors: Garofalakis John , Koskeris Andreas
Published: May 2010

During the last years, due to the wide spread of World Wide Web (WWW), the Internet has become one of the most valuable and effective communications media and the most inclusive source of information. However, in many cases the difficulties of establishing universal effective access could serve to reinforce current patterns of social exclusion and produce barriers to balanced development instead of supporting it. World widely there is a rising concern over the so-called “digital divide”–a term that refers to the gap existing in the opportunities to access advanced information and communication technologies between geographic areas or by individuals at different socioeconomic levels. The experience shows that specialized initiatives are needed for disadvantaged areas in order to anticipate expansion of current digital divide. This chapter is focusing on the specific instance of digital divide occurring in rural territories, and examines the ways to foster digital culture among citizens, utilizing a specific initiative (the so called “Telecentres”).
Public Policies for Broadband Development in the European Union
Authors: Feijoo Claudio , Gómez Barroso José Luis , Ramos Sergio , Rojo-Alonso David
Published: May 2010

The European Lisbon strategy considers that the generalised availability of broadband accesses is one of the European Union’s greatest challenges. In this context, the EU member states have launched information society development programmes which dedicate major sections to fighting against the digital exclusion and plan the geographical extension of broadband accesses. In all of them, it is acknowledged the role of public policies in complementing the effective operation of the market, addressing both the supply and demand sides. The aim of this chapter is to review how the objective of generalised broadband deployment can be achieved, and what instruments the public administrations are using to pursue it. The chapter includes, in particular, a comparison of practical implementations of broadband development policies, their relationships with universal service obligations, and, finally, the implications of using this segmented approach.
Shifting Focus from Access to Impact
Authors: Dahms Mona
Published: May 2010

This chapter contains two main messages: first, the concept of the ‘digital divide’ should be seen as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution. Therefore, the sooner this concept-and with it the binary categories and the ‘one size fits all’ simplified model of ‘development’-is discarded the better. Second, the main recommendation for strategies to be adopted in ICT4D projects is that focus should be on the information and communication needs of poor people rather than on technologies; beneficiaries should be actively involved in identification of their needs, in decision making about ways and means to satisfy the identified needs, about purchase of equipment and inputs and about implementation of solutions. Only by actively pursuing participatory design and participatory ‘development’ can the goal of achieving a free, fair and equal ‘information society,’ benefitting poor and rich people alike, be reached.
Accountability and Information Technology Enactment
Authors: Ghere Richard K.
Published: May 2010

This chapter focuses on the use of information technology (IT) in government and its possible impacton governance, particularly in terms of addressing the equity concerns of meeting the basic needs of regional subpopulations. In Building the Virtual State, Jane Fountain develops her theory of technology enactment (in essence, a variety of bureaucratic behaviors reacting to IT) and then applies that framework in three case studies in the book. This inquiry examines government IT enactment in various global settings to assess (1) where and how enactment occurs and (2) what, if any, effect enactment has upon governance in particular settings. The first section traces relationships between a nation’s IT development policy and that technology’s potential to promote equity in that society. The next two sections report (respectively) on the study and observations that emerge. A brief case study about the Gyandoot, an intranet system in rural India, examines the reality of e-government as a means to promote social equality. A concluding discussion reviews those observations as they relate to the human initiative in efforts to harness information technology to achieve public goals, especially those intended to improve social wellbeing in poor societies.
From Inclusive Spaces to Inclusionary Texts
Authors: Smith Simon
Published: May 2010

This account explores the use of ICT to overcome social exclusion by means of eParticipation initiatives in two spheres-health promotion and local democratic participation. They offer a contrast in terms of how we think about inclusion because the intended outcomes of their e-enablement may differ. Their construction as private or public goods affects the scope for intermediaries to act as agents of digital inclusion. In eHealth, digital inclusion is often a recruitment issue, since online discussion serves as a meeting-place where people provide mutual support to others who are co-present, whereas in local eDemocracy, inclusion is a representation issue, since online discussion is a narrative, reflecting on the political life of a territorial community. As a textual Internet is more amenable to intermediation than a spatial Internet, the possibilities for deploying ICT for social inclusion were enhanced when members of the eHealth virtual community began to ‘publicise’ the discursive goods they produced, which became translatable into community health benefits via intermediation and channel integration.
Online Participation and Digital Divide
Authors: Aikins Stephen K. , Chary Meena
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines whether government officials’ deployment of resources to broaden Internet access and participation is influenced by officials’ communication preferences and socioeconomic factors. The concern that the Internet explosion has alienated and marginalized some citizens from the democratic process and civic life has generated intellectual debate and led governments and other sectors to take measures to bridge the gap created by the digital divide. Although several studies have been conducted on the subject, few are yet to be done on the influence of government officials’ communication preferences and socioeconomic factors on resource deployment to broaden access and participation. Drawing on the theories of technological diffusion and determinism, as well as developmental and democratic theories, we argue that officials’ communication preferences and socioeconomic factors will be important in broadening Internet access and participation. Survey data, local government Web site contents and census data were analyzed. Results reveal that officials are not eager to commit resources to activities that broaden access and participation because they generally prefer to communicate with citizens via traditional channels. In addition, the sizes of the elderly and Black population, as well as the relative affluence of cities, do influence the presence of deliberative features on city Web sites.
A Human Factors View of the Digital Divide
Authors: Johnson Kayenda T. , Smith-Jackson Tonya L.
Published: May 2010

This chapter addresses a problem that centers on the persistent disparities in computer use and access among citizens of varying cultural backgrounds. The chapter begins with discussion about the digital divide among ethnic minorities, particularly African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans (Latinos), in the United States. This chapter defines “access” as having a computer interface that facilitates user learning. One proposed human factors intervention for this problem of access is in recognizing and accounting for culture’s influence on cognition. This discussion is grounded in the development and employment of computer interface metaphor designs that are culturally valid for target user groups. We also provide examples of challenges that users may encounter when inappropriate interface metaphor are built into a computer interface design. Finally, the chapter highlights various human factors interventions and considerations that will provide a pathway to achieving greater levels of e-inclusivity and for providing citizens with equitable access to information.
The Empirics of the Digital Divide
Authors: Hu Wei-Min , Prieger James E.
Published: May 2010

Accurate measurement of digital divides is important for policy purposes. Empirical studies of broadband subscription gaps have largely used cross-sectional data, which cannot speak to the timing of technological adoption. Yet, the dynamics of a digital divide are important and deserve study. With the goal of improving our understanding of appropriate techniques for analyzing digital divides, we review econometric methodology and propose the use of duration analysis. We compare the performance of alternative estimation methods using a large dataset on DSL subscription in the U.S., paying particular attention to whether women, blacks, and Hispanics catch up to others in the broadband adoption race. We conclude that duration analysis best captures the dynamics of the broadband gaps and is a useful addition to the analytic tool box of digital divide researchers. Our results support the official collection of broadband statistics in panel form, where the same households are followed over time.
Active Optical Access Networks
Authors: Pagiatakis Gerasimos C.
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, active optical access networks (AONs) are examined. AONs are a special type of optical access networks in which the sharing of optical fibers among users is implemented by means of active equipment (as opposed to passive optical networks –PONs– where sharing is achieved by using multiplepassive splitters). In active optical access networks, user-side units, known as Optical Network Units (ONUs), are usually grouped in access Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) rings and fiber-interconnected to a local exchange unit, known as Optical Line Termination (OLT). In AONs (as well as in PONs) the optical fiber (originally used in the trunk network) is introduced in the access domain, namely between the customer and the local exchange. Practically, this means that the huge bandwidth provided by the optical fiber becomes directly available to the normal user. Despite the obvious financial and technoeconomical issues related to the massive deployment of optical access networks, the possibilities and challenges created are enormous. This chapter examines the various units and modules composing an active optical access network and presents the basic procedures for implementing such a network.
Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation for Ethernet Passive Optical Networks
Authors: Zheng Jun , Mouftah Hussein T.
Published: May 2010

Bandwidth allocation is one of the critical issues in the design of Ethernet passive optical networks (EPONs). In an EPON system, multiple optical network units (ONUs) share a common upstream transmission channel for data transmission. To efficiently utilize the limited bandwidth of the upstream channel, a system must dynamically allocate the upstream bandwidth among multiple ONUs based on the instantaneous bandwidth demands and quality of service requirements of end users. This chapter gives an introduction of the fundamental concepts on bandwidth allocation in an EPON system, discusses the major challenges in designing a polling protocol for bandwidth allocation, and presents an overview of the state-of-the-art dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) algorithms proposed for EPONs.
Multicast Routing in Optical Access Networks
Authors: Molnár Miklós , Zhou Fen , Cousin Bernard
Published: May 2010

Widely available broadband services in the Internet require high capacity access networks. Only optical networking is able to efficiently provide the huge bandwidth required by multimedia applications. Distributed applications such as Video-Conferencing, HDTV, VOD and Distance Learning are increasingly common and produce a large amount of data traffic, typically between several terminals. Multicast is a bandwidth-efficient technique for one-to-many or many-to-many communications, and will be indispensable for serving multimedia applications in future optical access networks. These applications require robust and reliable connections as well as the satisfaction of QoS criteria. In this chapter, several access network architectures and related multicast routing methods are analyzed. Overall network performance and dependability are the focus of our analysis.
The Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser
Authors: Rissons Angélique , Mollier Jean-Claude
Published: May 2010

The proposal chapter aims at highlighting the tremendous emergence of the Vertical-Cavity Surface- Emitting Laser (VCSEL) in the FTTX systems. The VCSEL is probably one of the most important and promising components of the “last-leg” Optical Access Networks. To satisfy the bandwidth rise as well as the inexpensive design constraints, the VCSEL has found its place between the Light-Emitting-Diode (LED) and the Edge-Emitting-Laser (EEL) such as the DFB (Distributed-Feedback) laser. Hence, the authors dedicate a chapter to the promising VCSEL technology that aims to give an overview of the advances, the physical behavior, and the various structures regarding VCSELs. They discuss the VCSEL features and performance to weigh up the specific advantages and the weaknesses of the existing technology. Finally, diverse potentials of Optical Access Network architectures are discussed.
IT Governance and IT Risk Management Principles and Methods for Supporting 'Always-On' Enterprise Information Systems
Authors: Spremic Mario
Published: May 2010

Most organizations in all sectors of industry, commerce, and government are fundamentally dependent on their information systems (IS) and would quickly cease to function should the technology (preferably information technology–IT) that underpins their activities ever come to halt. The development and governance of proper IT infrastructure may have enormous implications for the operation, structure, and strategy of organizations. IT and IS may contribute towards efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness improvements of both interorganizational and intraorganizational systems. On the other hand, successful organizations manage IT function in much the same way that they manage their other strategic functions and processes. This, in particular, means that they understand and manage risks associated with growing IT opportunities, as well as critical dependence of many business processes on IT and vice-versa. IT risk management issues are not only marginal or ‘technical’ problems but become more and more a ‘business problem.’ Therefore, in this chapter, a corporate IT risk management model is proposed and contemporary frameworks of IT governance and IT audit explained. Also, it is depicted how to model information systems and supporting IT procedures to meet ‘always-on’ requirements that comes from the business. In fact, a number of IT metrics proposed in the chapter support the alignment of IT Governance activities with business requirements towards IT.
Risks Evaluation and IT Audit Aspects of Business Intelligence Solutions
Authors: Ko Andrea
Published: May 2010

Many organizations are struggling with a vast amount of data in order to gain valuable insights and get support in their decision-making process. Decision-making quality depends increasingly on information and the systems that deliver this information. These services are vulnerable and risky from security aspects, and they have to satisfy several requirements, like transparency, availability, accessibility, convenience, and compliance. IT environments are more and more complex and fragmented, which means additional security risks. Business intelligence solutions provide assistance in these complex business situations. Their main goal is to assist organizations to make better decisions. Better decisions means that these solutions support the management of risks, and they have a key role in raising revenue and in reducing cost. The objectives of this chapter are to give an overview of the business intelligence field and its future trends, to demonstrate the most important business intelligence solutions, meanwhile highlighting their risks, business continuity challenges, and IT audit issues. In spite of the fact that this chapter focuses on the business intelligence solutions and their specialities, risk management and the related IT audit approach can be applied for other categories of information systems. IT audit guidelines, best practices, and standards are presented as well, because they give effective tools in controlling process of business intelligence systems.
Principles and Experiences
Authors: Aktas Mehmet S.
Published: May 2010

The data requirements of e-business applications have been increased over the years. These applications present an environment for acquiring, processing, and sharing data among interested parties. To manage information in such data-intensive application domain, independent enterprise e-business applications have developed their own solutions to information services. However, these solutions are not interoperable with each other, target vastly different systems, and address diverse sets of requirements. They require greater interoperability to enable communication between different systems, so that they can share and utilize each other’s resources. To address these challenges, we discuss principles and experiences for designing and building of a novel enterprise information system. We introduce a novel architecture for a hybrid information service, which provides unification, federation, and interoperability of major Web-based information services. The hybrid information service is designed as an add-on information system, which interacts with the local information services and assembles their metadata instances under one hybrid architecture. It integrates different information services using unification and federation concepts. In this chapter, we summarize the principles and experiences gained in designing and building the semantics, architecture, and implementation for the hybrid information service.
Optimization of Enterprise Information Systems through a 'User Involvement Framework in Learning Organizations'
Authors: Dave Sumita , Shrivastava Monica
Published: May 2010

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) today is being adopted by business organizations worldwide with a view to maximize their capabilities. But more often than not the expected outcomes are not delivered due to inaccurate calculations with respect to the organization’s ability to adapt to the change. Although the benefits of enterprise information systems in streamlining the functions of the organization cannot be questioned, preparing the organization to adopt the new system needs more focused efforts. In order to ensure that the existing capabilities of the organizations are an enabler and not an inhibitor in the adoption process, they need to be learning organizations. A study was conducted in Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), one of the leading steel manufacturing public companies in India, where ERP is to be adopted. In spite of the fact that it has a strong backbone of resources in terms of information technology (IT) infrastructure, the implementation process is virtually on a standstill. In this chapter, an evaluation of the psychological capabilities of the organization is done. This can be evaluated through the mindset of the workforce and the willingness with which they are ready to adopt change.
Leagility in Manufacturing and Procurement
Authors: Gupta Sumeet , Garg Miti , Goh Mark , Kumar Maya
Published: May 2010

A combination of lean and agile concepts, leagility has gained ground in recent years. While it has found widespread applications in the domain of manufacturing, other domains such as procurement can also benefit from the principles of leagility. We study the application of concepts of leagility in PC manufacturing through the case of Dell and based on our experience with a worldwide retailer, we develop a conceptual framework in this paper which can be used as the basis for applying the principles of leagility in the domain of procurement. The framework would be of particular significance to academics as it extends the field of leagility to procurement. At the same time, manufacturing and retail firms can derive benefits by downsizing their inventory using the principles and conceptual framework discussed in this chapter.
Information Supply Chains
Authors: Arora Hina , Raghu T.S. , Vinze Ajay
Published: May 2010

Information supply chains (ISCs) take an information-centric view of supply chains, where information is not only used to support supply chain operations, but also to create value for customers and enable business partners to collectively sense and respond to opportunities in a networked ecosystem. Creating value in the ISC involves gathering, organizing, selecting, synthesizing, and distributing information. In so doing, ISCs should provide secure, confidential, reliable, and real time access to heterogeneous information, while ensuring that the right information is delivered to the intended recipients at the right time. In other words, security, information quality, and information lead-time delays are critical performance determinants in ISCs. Recent disaster events such as Hurricane Katrina have highlighted the need for and value of ISCs by exposing the vulnerability of supply chains to demand surges and supply disruptions. Mitigating supply chain vulnerabilities requires a mechanism that allows for continuously sensing the environment, detecting existing or anticipated vulnerabilities, and responding to these vulnerabilities in real time through information sharing and collaboration. This chapter describes how the autonomic computing paradigm can be used to build resilient information supply chains by restructuring the associated relationships, chains, and networks.
Individual Identification from Video Based on "Behavioural Biometrics"
Authors: Pratheepan Y. , Condell J.V. , Prasad G.
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents multiple methods for recognizing individuals from their “style of action/actions,” that is, “biometric behavioural characteristics.” Two forms of human recognition can be useful: the determination that an object is from the class of humans (which is called human detection), and the determination that an object is a particular individual from this class (which is called individual recognition). This chapter focuses on the latter problem. For individual recognition, this chapter considers two different categories. First, individual recognition using “style of single action,” that is, hand waving and partial gait, and second, individual recognition using “style of doing similar actions” in video sequences. The “style of single action” and “style of doing similar actions,” that is, behavioural biometric characteristics, are proposed as a cue to discriminate between two individuals. Nowadays, multibiometric security systems are available to recognise individuals from video sequences. Those multibiometric systems are combined with finger print, face, voice, and iris biometrics. This chapter reports multiple novel behavioural biometric techniques for individual recognition based on “style of single action” and “style of multiple actions” (i.e., analysing the pattern history of behavioural biometric motion), which can be additionally combined with finger print, face, voice, and iris biometrics as a complementary cue to intelligent security systems.
Multilinear Modeling for Robust Identity Recognition from Gait
Authors: Cuzzolin Fabio
Published: May 2010

Human identification from gait is a challenging task in realistic surveillance scenarios in which people walking along arbitrary directions are viewed by a single camera. However, viewpoint is only one of the many covariate factors limiting the efficacy of gait recognition as a reliable biometric. In this chapter, we address the problem of robust identity recognition in the framework of multilinear models. Bilinear models, in particular, allow us to classify the “content” of human motions of unknown “style” (covariate factor). We illustrate a three-layer scheme in which image sequences are first mapped to observation vectors of fixed dimension using Markov modeling, to be later classified by an asymmetric bilinear model. We show tests on the CMU Mobo database that prove that bilinear separation outperforms other common approaches, allowing robust view- and action-invariant identity recognition. Finally, we give an overview of the available tensor factorization techniques, and outline their potential applications to gait recognition. The design of algorithms insensitive to multiple covariate factors is in sight.
Activity and Individual Human Recognition in Infrared Imagery
Authors: Bhanu Bir , Han Ju
Published: May 2010

In this chapter the Authors introduce the concepts behind the mouse dynamics biometric technology, present a generic architecture of the detector used to collect and process mouse dynamics, and study the various factors used to build the user’s signature. The Authors will also provide an updated survey on the researches and industrial implementations related to the technology, and study possible applications in computer security.In this chapter, we investigate repetitive human activity patterns and individual recognition in thermal infrared imagery, where human motion can be easily detected from the background regardless of the lighting conditions and colors of the human clothing and surfaces, and backgrounds. We employ an efficient spatiotemporal representation for human repetitive activity and individual recognition, which represents human motion sequence in a single image while preserving spatiotemporal characteristics. A statistical approach is used to extract features for activity and individual recognition. Experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves good performance for repetitive human activity and individual recognition.
Gaze Based Personal Identification
Authors: Fookes Clinton , Maeder Anthony , Sridharan Sridha , Mamic George
Published: May 2010

This chapter describes the use of visual attention characteristics as a biometric for authentication or identification of individual viewers. The visual attention characteristics of a person can be easily monitored by tracking the gaze of a viewer during the presentation of a known or unknown visual scene. The positions and sequences of gaze locations during viewing may be determined by overt (conscious) or covert (subconscious) viewing behaviour. Methods to quantify the spatial and temporal patterns established by the viewer for both overt and covert behaviours are proposed. The former behaviour entails a simple PIN-like approach to develop an independent signature while the latter behaviour is captured through three proposed techniques: a principal component analysis technique (‘eigenGaze’); a linear discriminant analysis technique; and a fusion of distance measures. Experimental results suggest that both types of gaze behaviours can provide simple and effective biometrics for this application.
Speaker Verification and Identification
Authors: Jin Minho , Yoo Chang D.
Published: May 2010

A speaker recognition system verifies or identifies a speaker’s identity based on his/her voice. It is considered as one of the most convenient biometric characteristic for human machine communication. This chapter introduces several speaker recognition systems and examines their performances under various conditions. Speaker recognition can be classified into either speaker verification or speaker identification. Speaker verification aims to verify whether an input speech corresponds to a claimed identity, and speaker identification aims to identify an input speech by selecting one model from a set of enrolled speaker models. Both the speaker verification and identification system consist of three essential elements: feature extraction, speaker modeling, and matching. The feature extraction pertains to extracting essential features from an input speech for speaker recognition. The speaker modeling pertains to probabilistically modeling the feature of the enrolled speakers. The matching pertains to matching the input feature to various speaker models. Speaker modeling techniques including Gaussian mixture model (GMM), hidden Markov model (HMM), and phone n-grams are presented, and in this chapter, their performances are compared under various tasks. Several verification and identification experimental results presented in this chapter indicate that speaker recognition performances are highly dependent on the acoustical environment. A comparative study between human listeners and an automatic speaker verification system is presented, and it indicates that an automatic speaker verification system can outperform human listeners. The applications of speaker recognition are summarized, and finally various obstacles that must be overcome are discussed.
Visual Attention for Behavioral Biometric Systems
Authors: Spampinato Concetto
Published: May 2010

The chapter is so articulated: the first section will tackle the state of art of the attention theory, with the third paragraph related to the computational models that implement the attention theories, with a particular focus on the model that is the basis for the proposed biometric systems. Such an algorithm will be used for describing the first biometric system. The following section will tackle the people recognition algorithms carried out by evaluating the FOAs distribution. In detail, two different systems are proposed: 1) a face recognition system that takes into account both the behavioral and morphological aspects, and 2) a pure behavioral biometric system that recognizes people according to their actions evaluated by a careful analysis of the extracted FOAs.
Statistical Features for Text-Independent Writer Identification
Authors: Sun Zhenan , Li Bangyu , Tan Tieniu
Published: May 2010

Automatic writer identification is desirable in many important applications including banks, forensics, archeology, and so forth. A key and still open issue in writer identification is how to represent the distinctive and robust features of individual handwriting. This chapter presents three statistical feature models of handwritings in paragraph-level, stroke-level, and point-level, respectively, for text-independent writer identification. The three methods evolve from coarse to fine, showing the technology roadmap of handwriting biometrics. The proposed methods are evaluated on CASIA handwriting databases and perform well in both Chinese and English handwriting datasets. And the experimental results show that fine scale handwriting primitives are advantageous in text-independent writer identification. The best performing method adopts the probability distribution function and the statistical dynamic features of tripoint primitives for handwriting feature representation, achieving 95% writer identification accuracy on CASIA-HandwritingV2 with 1,500 handwritings from more than 250 subjects. And a demo system of online writer identification is developed to demonstrate the potential of current algorithms for real world applications.
Game Playing Tactic as a Behavioral Biometric for Human Identification
Authors: Yampolskiy Roman V. , Govindaraju Venu
Published: May 2010

This chapter expends behavior based intrusion detection approach to a new domain of game networks. Specifically, our research shows that a behavioral biometric signature can be generated based on the strategy used by an individual to play a game. We wrote software capable of automatically extracting behavioral profiles for each player in a game of poker. Once a behavioral signature is generated for a player, it is continuously compared against player’s current actions. Any significant deviations in behavior are reported to the game server administrator as potential security breaches. In this chapter, we report our experimental results with user verification and identification, as well as our approach to generation of synthetic poker data and potential spoofing approaches of the developed system. We also propose utilizing techniques developed for behavior based recognition of humans to the identification and verification of intelligent game bots. Our experimental results demonstrate feasibility of such methodology.
Multimodal Biometrics Fusion for Human Recognition in Video
Authors: Zhou Xiaoli , Bhanu Bir
Published: May 2010

This chapter introduces a new video based recognition system to recognize noncooperating individuals at a distance in video, who expose side views to the camera. Information from two biometric sources, side face and gait, is utilized and integrated for recognition. For side face, an enhanced side face image (ESFI), a higher resolution image compared with the image directly obtained from a single video frame, is constructed, which integrates face information from multiple video frames. For gait, the gait energy image (GEI), a spatiotemporal compact representation of gait in video, is used to characterize human walking properties. The features of face and gait are extracted from ESFI and GEI, respectively. They are integrated at both of the match score level and the feature level by using different fusion strategies. The system is tested on a database of video sequences, corresponding to 45 people, which are collected over several months. The performance of different fusion methods are compared and analyzed. The experimental results show that (a) the idea of constructing ESFI from multiple frames is promising for human recognition in video and better face features are extracted from ESFI compared to those from the original side face images; (b) the synchronization of face and gait is not necessary for face template ESFI and gait template GEI; (c) integrated information from side face and gait is effective for human recognition in video. The feature level fusion methods achieve better performance than the match score level methods fusion overall.
A Technology for Pattern-Based Process Design and its Application to Collaboration Engineering
Authors: Kolfschoten Gwen L. , Briggs Robert O. , Vreede Gert-Jan de
Published: May 2010

As many business processes are collaborative in nature, process leaders or process managers play a pivotal role designing collaboration processes for organization. To support the design task of creating a new collaborative business process, best practices or design patterns can be used as building blocks. For such purposes, a library of design patterns and guidelines would be useful, not only to capture the best practices for different activities in the process in a database, but to also offer the users of this database support in selecting and combining such patterns, and in creating the process design. This chapter describes the requirements for a tool for pattern based collaboration process design, specifically for design efforts following the Collaboration Engineering approach.
Pattern-Based Tool Design for Shared Knowledge Construction
Authors: Lukosch Stephan
Published: May 2010

Shared knowledge construction aims at supporting the creation and gathering of new knowledge. It relies on tools for computer-mediated interaction. The design and development of these tools is difficult, as not only the interaction of one user with the tool but also the interaction among the users themselves has to be taken into account. For designing and developing successful tools, it is crucial to involve end-users in the development process and to create shared understanding of the requirements as well as the solutions among the end-users and developers. In this chapter, the author analyzes the problems when developing tools for computer-mediated interaction in general and present a novel pattern-based approach for supporting developers as well as integrating end-users in the development process. The author shows the applicability of this approach by introducing tools for shared knowledge construction and describing their pattern-based design. The author concludes by giving an outlook on future research directions.
Preparing the Next Generation of Innovators through Collaboration
Authors: Darrah Marjorie , Dowling Angela
Published: May 2010

Every country is challenged to stay competitive in the new global economy. The education system within a country must play a pivotal role in ensuring the next generation is prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st Century workplace. Companies have realized that collaboration is a key competency that will bring success in the global economy. It is necessary that teachers understand the needs of our changing economy and incorporate methods to facilitate collaboration, communication, creativity, leadership, responsibility, self-direction, and people skills. This challenge is a global issue and this chapter discusses the steps the US is taking to ensure that its citizenry remains innovative, how the business community is using collaboration to be competitive, the issues encountered in schools to meet challenges of the 21st Century, and positive evidence that the landscape of education is changing in response to the desperate need to produce the next generation of innovators.
Automatically Evaluating the Quality of Contents Created in Collaborative Knowledge Building
Authors: Ng Kwong Bor
Published: May 2010

Using wikis, with minimum planning, significant projects can be accomplished almost effortlessly by collaborative knowledge building through continuous contributions from caring community members. Since any registered member can change the content of a wiki page at any time, how to enhance the quality of a wiki becomes a pressing issue. This paper reports a pilot study of identifying factors that can enhance the quality of contents built by open collaborative knowledge building. Using stepwise discriminant analysis and logistic regression, several variables were successfully identified that could contribute positively to the high quality of wiki pages. The result was analyzed using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves from signal detection theory. The predictor worked remarkably well and was promising, with a high detection rate and a low false-alarm rate. The finding can help programmers and architects of open collaborative knowledge building systems to design and implement mechanisms that will facilitate high quality content creations.
Speak First, Then What?
Authors: Heuer Jay
Published: May 2010

In a world of information overload, digital collaboration provides the means to spew out more and more content. Mass does not equal class. Simply adding data to a “knowledge base” does not make it better, just as adding “eyeballs” to a web site does not make it more significant. In this chapter, Dr. Heuer explores how to unleash the undernourished “dark side” of collaboration: Listening. As a seasoned practitioner of online collaboration, he argues from the lead user’s perspective. His objective: to propose enhancements to a hypothetical system, increasing the amount of “Listening” (that is content consumption rather than production) in online collaboration. This should help transform a band of content junkies into true participants in a discussion rather than folks on soapboxes.
Collaboration in Open Source Domains
Authors: Çetin Görkem , Gokturk Mehmet
Published: May 2010

Free and open source software (F/OSS) developers have a tendency to build feature-centric projects rather than following a user-centered design, ignoring the necessity of usability in the resulting product.While there are many reasons behind this, the main cause can be stated as the lack of awareness of usability from developers’ point of view and little interaction of project stakeholders with Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) studies. This chapter examines different types of collaboration methods of usability experts and developers focusing particularly on open source projects, together with potential issues envisaged during the communication phases. The chapter also focuses on the collaboration trends and patterns of HCI experts, developers and users with an emphasis on concerns related to inefficient exploitation of current tools and technologies and provides an open usability engineering method which could be exploited in distributed projects.
Lights, Camera, Action! Via Teacher Librarian Video Conferencing
Authors: Farmer Lesley
Published: May 2010

How can professional organizations build an online community of practice that enables teacher librarians globally to connect meaningfully and make a difference locally—and beyond? Video conferencing is one solution. Using video conferencing, teacher librarians have a unique opportunity to help build a strong collaborative, professional network that will positively impact best practices while at the same time raise awareness of twenty-first century librarianship. Critical elements and practices are identified that facilitate communities of practice and support teacher librarian professional development. Aspects of video conferencing are detailed, and a case study on the use of video conferencing explains how to facilitate a nation-wide community of practice among teacher librarians.