bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Net Centricity
Authors: Ghosh Supriya
Published: May 2010

This chapter lets you understand the terms Net-Centric and Net Centricity, and helps you identify the context and paradigm shift this really signifies within the military community and civilian marketplace. Note the integrated approach to implementing Net Centricity, the overall focus of the Net-Centric Data Strategy, the data goals, and concept of the Global Information Grid and Network Centric Warfare. We make sure that we discuss issues and challenges regarding a net-centric environment and provide you with a literature review of commercial and defense publications on the matter.
Net-Centric Military to Civilian Transformation
Authors: Ghosh Supriya
Published: May 2010

This chapter focuses broadly on the technology effects of the net-centric transformation on our industry and civilian market. We start by discussing aspects of command and control principles, how it has run its course within the military and how the hierarchical nature is changing to embrace a matrixed decision making process. We then discuss the evolution of net-centric principles and how the government contracting and civilian industry is being affected by this transformation. We then discuss specific details on DoD to civilian technology transfer. A broad set of industry topics are then discussed and is categorized based on net-centric needs. Then we provide a glimpse into upcoming industry technology areas that have shown promise. We end with a perspective from a guest author, who provides an industry perspective on the use of net-centric concepts and proliferation of net-centric computing. This chapter continues on our transformation perspectives, and steps through the net-centric future from a system perspective. We first review the current nature of the DoD that has worked based on a command and control structure. This then is giving way to the net-centric mechanisms for systems operations. We examine the net-centric transformation from the military to the civilian community and commercial marketplace. It is important to look at defense to commercial technology transfer principles. Then examine how current command and control systems run by government contractors are shifting their focus to net-centric principles. It is also important to figure out how commercial entities are taking advantage of net-centric concepts within the computer and communications industry. There has been an emergence of “Net-Centric Computing” as a concept that we further explore. The types of technologies that are involved in the computing and communications infrastructure are discussed. We then provide a guest author perspective as an industry subject matter expert on the net-centric transformation and industry initiatives.
Adhering to Open Technology Standards
Authors: Ghosh Supriya
Published: May 2010

This chapter lets you understand why open technical standards are necessary. We then provide a case study of an organization who is working toward getting various entities and international officials together to coordinate the growing need for common standards. We bring up the topic of technology standards organizations that prepare and maintain technical standards for the greater society. Each technical standard has a set of stages through their life that includes development, draft, available, and sunset. We provide an example technology classification model that can be used as a reference for representing technical standards within an organization. After this we provide an understanding of the DoD Technical Reference Model and a representative system technical standards profile. The standards profile is comprehensive in nature, and provides a common set of technical standards that are in use at any organization.
Storage Strategy for the Distributed Enterprise
Authors: Ghosh Supriya
Published: May 2010

We now switch to another crucial topic within a net-centric environment, and that is to address the digital storage needs within a global distributed environment. We address the need for greater storage; provide information as to how to determine storage requirements. We introduce the concept of storage life cycle management and discuss information management stages. A review of storage architecture is then provided which defines DAS, SAN and NAS. We go on to provide enterprise storage architecture design guidelines, and discuss the choices of centralized storage vs. distributed storage, vs. hybrid storage. We provide storage questions to consider for the enterprise and the net-centric challenges that lie ahead. We also discuss the people and processes and the dependency on network and communications.
Architecture Assessment at the Federal Enterprise Level
Authors: Ghosh Supriya
Published: May 2010

This chapter focuses on assessing the maturity of enterprise architecture within our federal government, which is peripherally tied to the net-centric readiness of military and commercial organizations. We provide an overview of federal enterprise architecture guidance and federal reference models to comply with OMB mandates. We define an enterprise architecture transition strategy that allows organizations to move from their current state to a target state. We then go ahead and assess federal agencies based on Clinger-Cohen Act and OMB mandates. We end with discussing enterprise architecture maturity and how to achieve it within a large organization. The purpose of this final section is to focus on the assessment of technology architecture throughout the government and commercial enterprise. This chapter provides a description on the use of enterprise architecture to assess our federal government agencies. Based on federal mandates, enterprise architecture processes have proliferated within the government, and this allows the ability to adhere to new upcoming technologies such as the net-centric concepts proliferation by the defense department and military organizations.
Using Fuzzy Song Sets in Music Warehouses
Authors: Deliège François , Pedersen Torben Bach
Published: May 2010

The emergence of music recommendation systems calls for the development of new data management technologies able to query vast music collections. In this chapter, the authors present a music warehouse prototype able to perform efficient nearest neighbor searches in an arbitrary song similarity space. Using fuzzy songs sets, the music warehouse offers a practical solution to three concrete musical data management scenarios: user musical preferences, user feedback, and song similarities. The authors investigate three practical approaches to tackle the storage issues of fuzzy song sets: tables, arrays, and compressed bitmaps. They confront theoretical estimates with practical implementation results and prove that, from a storage point of view, arrays and compressed bitmaps are both effective data structure solutions. With respect to speed, the authors show that operations on compressed bitmap offer a significant grain in performances for fuzzy song sets comprising a large number of songs. Finally, the authors argue that the presented results are not limited to music recommendations system but can be applied to other domains.
(Approximate) Frequent Item Set Mining Made Simple with a Split and Merge Algorithm
Authors: Borgelt Christian , Wang Xiaomeng
Published: May 2010

In this chapter the authors introduce SaM, a split and merge algorithm for frequent item set mining. Its core advantages are its extremely simple data structure and processing scheme, which not only make it very easy to implement, but also fairly easy to execute on external storage, thus rendering it a highly useful method if the data to mine cannot be loaded into main memory. Furthermore, the authors present extensions of this algorithm, which allow for approximate or “fuzzy” frequent item set mining in the sense that missing items can be inserted into transactions with a user-specified penalty. Finally, they present experiments comparing their new method with classical frequent item set mining algorithms (like Apriori, Eclat and FP-growth) and with the approximate frequent item set mining version of RElim (an algorithm the authors proposed in an earlier paper and improved in the meantime).
Fuzzy Clustering with Repulsive Prototypes
Authors: Rehm Frank , Winkler Roland , Kruse Rudolf
Published: May 2010

A well known issue with prototype-based clustering is the user’s obligation to know the right number of clusters in a dataset in advance or to determine it as a part of the data analysis process. There are different approaches to cope with this non-trivial problem. This chapter follows the approach to address this problem as an integrated part of the clustering process. An extension to repulsive fuzzy c-means clustering is proposed equipping non-Euclidean prototypes with repulsive properties. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the feasibility of the authors’ technique.
Early Warning from Car Warranty Data using a Fuzzy Logic Technique
Authors: Last Mark , Mendelson Yael , Chakrabarty Sugato , Batra Karishma
Published: May 2010

Car manufacturers are interested to detect evolving problems in a car fleet as early as possible so they can take preventive actions and deal with the problems before they become widespread. The vast amount of warranty claims recorded by the car dealers makes the manual process of analyzing this data hardly feasible. This chapter describes a fuzzy-based methodology for automated detection of evolving maintenance problems in massive streams of car warranty data. The empirical distributions of time-to-failure and mileage-to-failure are monitored over time using the advanced, fuzzy approach to comparison of frequency distributions. The authors’ fuzzy-based early warning tool builds upon an automated interpretation of the differences between consecutive histogram plots using a cognitive model of human perception rather than “crisp” statistical models. They demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed tool on warranty data that is very similar to the actual data gathered from a database within General Motors.
Dual-Design Strategies for Modularizing E-Learning for Academic and Commercial Uses
Authors: Hai-Jew Shalin
Published: May 2010

This chapter addresses applied strategies for modularizing e-learning along both an academic university track and a commercial one. Academic qualifications and professional certifications have been seen as complementary in some ways, antithetical in others. Another way to visualize both is as one-in-the-same in terms of learning contents, albeit with versioning for the various differences. The chunking of a curriculum for both a formalist college setting and for a business one involves creative applications of the module format, particularly given the disparate needs and learning outcomes of the two (often) different learner audiences. This case examines the differences between the learning needs of both demographics. This case then sets the dual-design scene from an instructional designer point-of-view.
Moving Toward a Blended Course Delivery System
Authors: Blakey Leah
Published: May 2010

Today’s university students demand a high degree of flexibility in scheduling, as well as a quality educational experience. Many students enjoy the flexibility of online courses, but some have learning styles that make a traditional classroom experience preferable. This chapter draws on the experiences from numerous institutions; however, the particular experiences of Drury University’s transition to blended classes will be at the center of this case study. The issues the schools have faced, as well as the resolutions that were designed and implemented, will be discussed in detail. The goal of the chapter is to provide a detailed, practical guide to the best practices in blended education.
Alignment of Course Objectives and Assessment Items
Authors: Lightfoot Kenneth , Schwager David
Published: May 2010

This case study examines how achieving close alignment between course objectives and course assessments should be an essential goal in the course design/revision process regardless of what mode of delivery is involved. By examining the revision of two courses (Western Civilization I & II) offered at Thomas Edison State College, the authors demonstrate how the application of sound instructional design principles to achieve this alignment resulted in the measurable improvement of student learning outcomes. The major issue examined in this study is how to achieve a close correlation between what a course states that a student should be able to do after successful completion, what practice it offers them to achieve this proficiency, and how they are assessed to determine what level of proficiency they have attained.
Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (Great Plains IDEA)
Authors: Moxley Virginia , Maes Sue , Anderson Dawn
Published: May 2010

This chapter will examine the organizational and technological challenges encountered by the highly successful Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (Great Plains IDEA) since its members began offering multi-university online academic programs in 2000. Members include the following universities: Colorado State, Iowa State, Kansas State, Texas Tech, Michigan State, Missouri, Montana State, Nebraska, North Dakota State, Oklahoma State, and South Dakota State. Inter-institutional online academic programs are a cost-effective means of rapidly increasing access and addressing emerging educational needs. The chapter explains how the Great Plains IDEA began, operates and has evolved, as well as the mistakes made, lessons learned, and upcoming challenges. A major technological challenge was identifying a secure multi-institution enrollment system for sharing student data between enrolling and teaching institutions the award-winning ExpanSIS system. The authors hope that higher education leaders will be convinced that inter-institutional collaboration is a viable solution to many higher education challenges.
Finding a Niche through an External Degree-Completion Program
Authors: Smith Evan S. , Nagel Terrie
Published: May 2010

The University of Missouri began seriously investigating an external degree- completion program in 2000, working with an existing Bachelor of General Studies Degree Program (BGS). Concerns included the development of Capstone and Writing Intensive courses. The program has entailed training advisors; updating curriculum; revising student services procedures; marketing; and coordinating with other branches of Extension.
The E-Mentoring Network for Diversity in Science and Engineering
Authors: Porush David
Published: May 2010

MentorNet is dedicated to diversifying the engineering and scientific workforce by providing e-mentoring to students in colleges and universities, with a special focus on underrepresented majors in engineering and science. It was founded in 1997 by Dr. Carol Muller, who led it as its sole President and CEO until 2008.The seeds for MentorNet were sown in 1995 when Muller, then associate dean at Dartmouth’s School of Engineering, initiated a pilot e-mentoring program as part of the campus Women in Science Project, which she had co-founded. Muller’s insight, one that has sustained MentorNet throughout its history, is that engineering and science are the engines of progress and economy in the U.S. and globally, but they are also extraordinarily challenging disciplines, and especially so for underrepresented cohorts who may be the first in their family to aspire to professional careers in engineering and science, or who may still face subtle discrimination because of their gender or ethnicity. Getting as much talent into the science and technology pipelines creates benefits for the global economy, for the institutions who need that talent, and first and foremost, for talented students themselves. Our vision, like our program, is potentially global and paradigm-changing. Our technology is a means to an important end: making and sustaining relationships across barriers of identity, race, class, age gender, ethnicity, and nationality for the benefit of talent development.
Collaborative Reflection in Globally Distributed Inter-Cultural Course Teams
Authors: Bowskill Nicholas , McConnell David
Published: May 2010

This chapter looks at processes for conducting collaborative reflection in action and collaborative reflection on action. The authors examine this in the context of globally distributed inter-cultural course teams. From a review of the literature, they identify the significance of openness, structure and dialogue as factors that support collaborative reflection. The authors consider these factors in our own experience of global online teaching. They explore and focus upon one technique used in our collaborative inter-cultural reflective practice. This technique involves having one tutor maintain and share an online journal with the other tutors in the course team. This process combined reflective writing and discussion in action. The authors suggest that having one tutor author and share a learning journal may provide facilitation and structure that supports reflective dialogue in inter-cultural globally distributed teams. They consider the influence of cultural pedagogy on inter-cultural reflection. The authors’ technique is culturally sensitive in that it respects the right of others to read the journal and to comment only if they wish. Finally, the authors close with a look at instrumentalist versus developmental collaborative reflective practice.
Designing an Architecture to Provide Ubiquity in Mobile Learning
Authors: Carmona-Murillo Javier , Cortés-Polo David , González-Sánchez José Luis
Published: May 2010

Nowadays, mobility offers potential opportunities for student’s learning. The well-known paradigm “learning anywhere anytime” is possible thanks to mobile terminals and wireless technologies that solve the limited access of wired technologies for usage due to lack of mobility. In this scenario, many projects are dealing with the use of mobility to solve specific learning activities in different environments. This chapter presents a project called Campus Ubicuo and its architecture. The novelty of this system is the integration of several wireless technologies in an only mobility learning environment. The development of the project has been divided in four parts, isolating the user interface from the communication model and from the data management. This means that the system is available in different contexts and could be easily adaptable to several organizations such as hospitals, schools, or city councils. We explain how this architecture has been designed and developed to become a solid base of mobility learning systems.
A Mobile Service Platform for Trustworthy E-Learning Service Provisioning
Authors: Luo Zongwei , Zhang Tianle
Published: May 2010

Distant e-learning emerges as one of promising means for people to learn online. Although there is a substantial increase in computer and network performance in recent years, mainly as a result of faster hardware and more sophisticated software, there are still problems in the fields of integrating various resources towards enabling distant e-learning. Further, with the advances of technologies in RFID, sensors, GPS, GPRS, IP networks, and wireless networks, mobile learning is becoming a viable means for teaching and learning. In this book chapter, we develop a service platform for mobile learning with trustworthy service provisioning based on an organic integration of our prior research results in service grid, on demand e-learning, and trusted mobile asset tracking. In this platform, the virtual learning services for students, instructors and course providers are provided leveraging on service grid resource management capabilities on group collaboration, ubiquitous data access, and computing power. Challenges and requirements for mobile learning service platform are discussed. An RFID based e-learning data integration is proposed with integrated service networks for intelligent e-learning information access and delivery.
Context-Awareness and Distributed Events in Mobile Learning
Authors: Boticki Ivica , Mornar Vedran , Hoic-Bozic Natasa
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents a system called MILE (Mobile and Interactive Learning Environment) which is used to support a blended approach to learning and teaching with mobile devices. The system has a modular and extensible system architecture which aims at supporting different platforms and devices both for students and for teachers. To better adapt to its users the system uses so called contextual widgets-components which gather, process, and store contextual data. To disseminate education–related events, specifically designed distributed events protocol (DEP) is used. Various applicative modules for mobile connected devices can be implemented upon the described architecture. They are, together with the experience gained in the project, described towards the end of the chapter.
Exploring Learner Identities through M-Learning
Authors: Wallace Ruth
Published: May 2010

Learning is about making connections: connections from the known to the unknown through interactions and dialogue; connections between people’s ideas and identities. Participation in learning is informed by an understanding of participants’ connections to understanding of themselves and their membership of different groups. The engagement of disenfranchised learners is supported by the opportunities for learners to participate in learning experiences where their knowledge is valued and they are partners in co-producing knowledge and materials. Mobile technologies have considerable potential to support disenfranchised learners to participate in creating and defining a space where they belong in formal education settings. M-learning provides opportunities for learners and educators to be active agents in learning, share their own worlds and perspectives, and together create and recreate their understandings of the world and their own place within it. This chapter analyses a range of learning programmes that have utilised m-learning to engage disenfranchised learners in regional areas across Northern Australia. The author argues that m-learning is more than a tool to engage learners, it provides an insight into understanding how people learn and develop strong identities as learners. The discussion demonstrates the potential of m-learning to engage with ways of knowing and representing knowledge in ways that build strong connections to broad and diverse learning and knowledge societies.
Breaking the Hierarchy
Authors: Granter Beth
Published: May 2010

This chapter, inspired by direct experience from working on the development of the University of Sussex’s Student Personal Learning and Social Homepages (SPLASH) project, discusses how ‘Web 2.0’ technologies can be used to make institutional websites more democratic. The SPLASH mashup project was non-typical in that it intended to create an environment which would be fully customisable by the learner, so that no content was obligatory. Examples from working on this project are used to illustrate benefits which can be gained from, and barriers to the uptake of, more open publishing methods and an organically structured site architecture. Issues affecting learners, tutors, the institution as a whole, and how the power dynamic between all three may change, are discussed. Parallels are drawn between teaching methods online and those offline, both traditional and modern.
PLE
Authors: Leone Sabrina
Published: May 2010

The attainment of lifelong learning objectives is being mediated by a complex process of innovation in education and society, by the integration of institutional actions and by the major role of coordination that university has assumed. The revolution that technology has engendered in every field has flowed into a rethinking of knowledge, knowledge management, teaching and learning, networks and the individual. The knowledge society requires new roles and skills, new forms of communication and a new awareness as “active citizens”. Consequently, the shifting role of education systems in networked organizations is decisive in order to support learners in forming diverse personal learning networks to deeply understand complex fields. This chapter aims to discuss consistency (i.e. solidity and reliability) and effectiveness (i.e. success, usefulness and value) of a personal learning environment as a new learning space and to highlight its contribution and relevance to lifelong learning. PLE critical points and approaches will be discussed exploiting three case studies.
Personalised eLearning in Further Education
Authors: Bariso Elfneh Udessa
Published: May 2010

Electronic media can contribute to personalisation of learning both in formal and informal contexts. Efforts are made both at individual and organisational levels in Further Education to harness new technologies to enhance personal learning experiences. Personalised eLearning supports contents, activities and collaboration aimed at meeting the needs and wants of the learner (Hill, 2004 & 2008; Coryell & Chlup, 2007). However, some technology critics argue that there is very little research to support whether eLearning is an effective approach to minimise the exclusion of disadvantaged groups in society, e.g. learners of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) (Webb, 2006). The author contends that use of technology could act as a barrier to participation in learning. This study was conducted to assess the extent to which eLearning resources promote integrative/explorative learner-centred Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). This chapter reports on the findings of a qualitative action research project involving one-to-one interviews with learners (n=12) at the College of North East London (CONEL) on their deployment of various new technologies (virtual and personal learning environments) in ESOL studies during the academic year 2007/8. Additionally, three focus group interviews were held including six learner interviewees each (n=18). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four colleagues who actively integrated CALL into delivery of their ESOL sessions. Data was also collected from programme reviews, course evaluation reports and a research diary. The results of the study suggest that new technologies promote personalised learning when applied with careful planning even among learners who appear to be technophobic or are reluctant to use e-resources. Barriers hindering the integration of e-resources into the curriculum are discussed and possible solutions are also suggested.
Video-Enriched Learning Experiences for Performing Arts Students
Authors: Ramírez Martinell Alberto , Sime Julie-Ann
Published: May 2010

To close the gap between formal education and professional practice, Higher Education (HE) practitioners need to be aware of the importance of offering realistic learning scenarios where students can profit from personalised learning opportunities and meaningful learning. In this chapter, the authors study the extent to which viewing video recordings of the individual performances of dance and music students benefited the learning process. Evidence was gathered from two groups of undergraduate performing arts students at a HE institution in the United Kingdom, and from their corresponding teachers, who independently offered their students a personalised way of accessing visually relevant feedback on their performances via a virtual learning environment. Results suggest that this access to personalised learning facilitated critical reflection and learning from experience. It enabled the students to reposition themselves in relation to their actual performance, fostered their will to learn, and reaffirmed them as potential professional performers.
Effective Assignment Feedback through Timely and Personal Digital Audio Engagement
Authors: Nortcliffe Anne , Middleton Andrew
Published: May 2010

Audio feedback is a method that can provide rich, personal and detailed feedback that can convey more than the written word. This is particularly achieved through the capturing of the expressive quality of the speaker’s voice. Audio feedback has the potential to promote student engagement in the feedback process, as it is not associated with the negative connotations of written feedback. This chapter will draw upon the growing literature base and recent research. It will indicate how different approaches to using audio technology can enhance the learning experience and the feedback process through its personal and timely qualities. The chapter will conclude with guidelines for best practice for implementation of audio feedback.
Information and Knowledge
Authors: Bezzazi El Hassan
Published: May 2010

Defining data, information, knowledge and their relationships is mainly a point of view matter. Indeed, the same entity may be related to any of these concepts depending on the use of it. This is true, at least as long as the entity is communicable through some means (text, voice, gesture, signal, object, or media, for example). By restricting our attention to symbolic entities and to the World Wide Web in particular, we can learn much about these concepts, their interconnections, the functions that apply on them and their values.
On the Infological Interpretation of Information
Authors: Stefanowicz Bogdan
Published: May 2010

In the chapter, a proposition of so-called infological interpretation of information is presented. The concept was formulated by Bo Sundgren (1973) in his publication devoted to data bases. Sundgren developed a consistent theory of a model of data base based on the concept of message as a specific set of data. The model inspires not only a new interpretation of information but also is a good base for manifold analysis of the concept. In the chapter, the following basic concepts are disused: properties of information, diversity of information, and information space.
Expanding the Strategic Role of Information Interactions in the Enterprise Environment
Authors: Olah Judit , Axvig Ole
Published: May 2010

In a modern enterprise environment, many information resources are available to people working to produce valuable output. Due to technology proliferation, remote work access, and multiple geographical locations generating their own solutions for local infrastructure challenges, as well as the fact that modern professionals are tasked to make decisions autonomously, it is not self-evident what types of information resources could or should be accessed in what order in order to move processes towards the desired product outcome. Our integrated model was developed using the results of an empirical study. The model puts a user-centered focus on business process model building by mapping all information interactions surrounding the business processes (i.e. creation, storage, management, retrieval of documents/ contents as well as information and data). The model characterizes the business processes by types of information interaction, analyzes process phases by those interactions and evaluates actual locations of information content extractions.
Information Management in a Grid-Based E-Health Business Environment
Authors: Andronikou Vassiliki , Sideras Gabriel , Halkos Dimitrios , Firopoulos Michael , Varvarigou Theodora
Published: May 2010

E-business today has moved focus to information sharing and integration across organisational boundaries in an effort to transform business processes throughout the value chain and standardize collaboration among communicating entities. Healthcare comprises a strongly collaborative distributed business environment in which information value plays a strategic role and informational privacy comprises a great concern. This new era in e-business, however, is followed by a series of issues that need to be addressed both at application and infrastructural level, such as information heterogeneity, system interoperability, security and privacy. The Grid as a technology enables sharing, selection, and aggregation of a wide variety of distributed resources comes to fill these gaps. In this chapter, the communication of information among healthcare organisations operating over a Grid infrastructure will be presented and analysed both from a technical and a business perspective.
Intelligent Agents for Business Process Management Systems
Authors: Grundspenkis Janis , Mislevics Antons
Published: May 2010

The chapter is focused on the usage of intelligent agents in business process modelling and business process management systems in particular. The basic notions of agent-based systems and their architectures are given. Multiagent systems as sets of multiple interacting software agents, as well as frameworks and methodologies of their development are discussed. Three kinds of architectures of agent-based systems – holons, multi-multi-agent systems and aspect-oriented architecture are described. Examples of already implemented agent-based systems in logistics, transportation and supply chain management are given. The chapter gives an insight into recent business process management systems and their architectures, and highlights several issues and challenges which underpin the necessity for agent-based business process management. Methodologies and implementation of agent-based business process management systems are discussed and directions of future research in this area are outlined.
The Information Sector in the Economy and its Strategic Value
Authors: Dziuba Dariusz T.
Published: May 2010

This discussion focuses on the idea of an information society studied in view of economic aspects. The subject matter of inquiry is a strategic sector decisive for the situation of economy, society and the state: the so-called information sector in the economy. Its importance and intrinsic value are discussed. Studies on economics of the information sector are brought to light as well as relationships with other disciplines, including economics of information (information systems) and information ecology. Based on the Polish Classification of Activities (PKD), the methodology of classification and categorization of the information sector is developed and used to evaluate its development and, indirectly, the development of the information society in Poland. Research is based on available statistics on the number of employed persons and employment in 1997-2006. It is evidenced that the information sector dominates in Poland today (in the four-sector model of the economy) and the trend of its regular growth is observed.
New Forms of Work in the Light of Globalization in Software Development
Authors: Smite Darja , Borzovs Juris
Published: May 2010

Globalization in software development introduced significant changes in the way organizations operate today. Software is now produced by team members from geographically, temporally and culturally remote sites. Organizations seek benefits that global markets offer and face new challenges. Naturally resistant to change, these organizations often do not realize the necessity for tailoring existing methods for distributed collaboration. Our empirical investigation shows a great variety in the ways organizations distribute responsibilities across remote sites and conclude that these can be divided into two main categories: joint collaboration that requires investments in team building and independent collaboration that requires investments in knowledge management and transfer. Finally, we discuss practices that are applied in industry to overcome these challenges and emphasize necessity to fully understand the pros and cons of different ways to organize distributed software projects before starting a project in this new environment.
Entity-Centric Semantic Interoperability
Authors: Bouquet Paolo , Stoermer Heiko , Barczynski Wojcech , Bocconi Stefano
Published: May 2010

This chapter argues that the notion of identity of and reference to entities (objects, individuals, instances) is fundamental in order to achieve semantic interoperability and integration between different sources of knowledge. The first step in order to integrate different information sources about an entity is to recognize that those sources describe the same entity. Unfortunately, different systems that manage information about entities commonly issue different identifiers for these entities. This makes reference to entities across information systems very complicated or impossible, because there are no means to know how an entity is identified in another system. The authors propose a global, public infrastructure, the Entity Name System (ENS), which enables the creation and re-use of identifiers for entities. This a-priori approach enables systems to reference entities with a globally unique identifier, and makes semantic integration a much easier job. The authors illustrate two enterprise use cases which build on this approach: entity-centric publishing, and entity-centric corporate information management, currently being developed by two leading companies in their respective fields.
Sharing Resources through Ontology Alignments in a Semantic Peer-to-Peer System
Authors: Euzenat Jérôme , Mbanefo Onyeari , Sharma Arun
Published: May 2010

In heterogeneous semantic peer-to-peer systems, peers describe their resources through ontologies that they can adapt to their particular needs. In order to interoperate, queries need to be transformed with respect to alignments between their ontologies before being evaluated. Alignments are thus critical for sharing resources in such systems. The authors report an experiment that explores how such alignments can be obtained in a natural way. In particular, asking users to provide alignments is a heavy constraint that must be relaxed as much as possible. This can be attempted through automatic matching. However, the authors suggest other possible solutions.
Quality-Driven, Semantic Information System Integration
Authors: Mencke Steffen , Kunz Martin , Rud Dmytro , Dumke Reiner
Published: May 2010

The importance of automatic integration in every field of application is beyond controversy these days. Unfortunately, existing solutions are mainly focusing on the automation aspect. But for the success in the long run, the quality must be of substantial interest – it is an inherent characteristic of any product (Garvin, 1984). Existing quality-related information can be reused to optimize this aggregation of entities to thereby always provide the best possible combination (Kunz et al., 2008b). Such aggregation of entities can be done taking into consideration different characteristics like quality attributes, functional requirements, or the ability for automated procedures.
A Structured Methodology for Developing 3D Web Applications
Authors: González-Calleros Juan Manuel , Vanderdonckt Jean , Muñoz-Arteaga Jaime
Published: May 2010

Effective and satisfying Web usability is crucial for successfully built Web applications. Traditionally, Web development considered 2D User Interfaces (2D UI) based on Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). Since the end of the 90’s, the evolution of technology and computers capacity introduced a new paradigm, the Web 3D. Similarly to traditional web development, Web 3D development requires an interdisciplinary approach and a profound theoretical background. In this chapter the authors attempt to structure a methodology to support 3DUIs development. The development methodology is articulated on three axes: models and their specification language, method, and tools that support the methodology based on the underlying models. The method considers guidelines to support its correct use towards producing usable 3DUIs.
A Case Study of Usability Engineering in the Defence Industry
Authors: Hogg Steve , Holt Patrik O’Brian , Aitchison Jim
Published: May 2010

The work discussed in this chapter is a case study of real application of usability engineering and Agile methods in the defence industry. The area of application is the monitoring of legal compliance to import and export of technology (ITAR). Manual compliance for an organization like BAE SYSTEMS presents serious challenges and is prone to errors, which can potentially lead to serious penalties. BAE decided to automate the compliance process using intranet technology with a time scale of three months. Several factors contributed to the successful development of the system and these include detailed but flexible planning, close and intense involvement of users and stakeholders and real time iteration of prototypes. The system is currently in use and while not without limitations, is seen as successful and provides a methodological framework for future similar work.
Detection and Classification of Interacting Persons
Authors: Blunsden Scott , Fisher Robert
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents a way to classify interactions between people. Examples of the interactions we investigate are: people meeting one another, walking together, and fighting. A new feature set is proposed along with a corresponding classification method. Results are presented which show the new method performing significantly better than the previous state of the art method as proposed by Oliver et al. (2000).
Unifying Rough Set Analysis and Formal Concept Analysis Based on a Logic Approach to Granular Computing
Authors: Zhou Bing , Yao Yiyu
Published: May 2010

Granular computing is an emerging field of research that attempts to formalize and explore methods and heuristics for human problem solving with multiple levels of granularity and abstraction. A fundamental issue of granular computing is the construction, representation and utilization of granules and granular structures. Basic granules represent the basic pieces of knowledge. A granular structure reflects the connections between different pieces of knowledge. The main objective of this book chapter is to examine a logic approach to granular computing for combining rough set analysis and formal concept analysis. Following the classical interpretation of concepts that a concept consists of a pair of an extension and an intension, the authors interpret a granule as a pair containing a set of objects and a logic formula describing the granule. The building blocks of granular structures are basic granules representing elementary concepts or pieces of knowledge. They are treated as atomic formulas of a logic language. Different types of granular structures can be constructed by using logic connectives. Within this logic framework, this chapter shows that rough set analysis and formal concept analysis can be interpreted uniformly by using the proposed logic language. The two theories share high-level similarities, but differ in their choices of definable granules and granular structures. Algorithms and evaluation measures can be designed uniformly for both theories.
Neural Networks for Language Independent Emotion Recognition in Speech
Authors: Wang Yongjin , Bhatti Muhammad Waqas , Guan Ling
Published: May 2010

This chapter introduces a neural network based approach for the identification of human affective state in speech signals. A group of potential features are first identified and extracted to represent the characteristics of different emotions. To reduce the dimensionality of the feature space, whilst increasing the discriminatory power of the features, a systematic feature selection approach which involves the application of sequential forward selection (SFS) with a general regression neural network (GRNN) in conjunction with a consistency-based selection method is presented. The selected parameters are employed as inputs to the a modular neural network, consisting of sub-networks, where each sub-network specializes in a particular emotion class. Comparing with the standard neural network, this modular architecture allows decomposition of a complex classification problem into small subtasks such that the network may be tuned based on the characteristics of individual emotion. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated for various subjects, speaking different languages. The results show that the system produces quite satisfactory emotion detection performance, yet demonstrates a significant increase in versatility through its propensity for language independence.
Aiding the Development of Active Applications
Authors: Daniel Florian , Pozzi Giuseppe
Published: May 2010

Active applications are characterized by the need for expressing, evaluating, and maintaining a set of rules that implement the application’s active behavior. Typically, rules follow the Event-Condition-Action (ECA) paradigm, yet oftentimes their actual implementation is buried in the application code, as their enactment requires a tight integration with the concepts and modules of the application. This chapter proposes a rule management system that allows developers to easily expand its rule processing logic with such concepts and modules and, hence, to decouple the management of their active rules from the application code. This system derives from an exception manager that has previously been developed in the context of an industry-scale workflow management system and effectively allows developers to separate active and non-active design concerns.
Using Graphics to Improve Understanding of Conceptual Models
Authors: Masri Kamal , Parker Drew , Gemino Andrew
Published: May 2010

Making Entity-Relationship diagrams easier to understand for novices has been a topic of previous research. This study provides experimental evidence that suggests using small representative graphics (iconic graphics) to replace standard entity boxes in an ER diagram can have a positive effect on domain understanding for novice users. Cognitive Load Theory and the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning are used to hypothesize that iconic graphics reduce extraneous cognitive load of model viewers leading to more complete mental models and consequently improved understanding. Domain understanding was measured using comprehension and transfer (problem solving) tasks. Results confirm the main hypothesis. In addition, iconic graphics were found to be less effective in improving domain understanding with English as second language (ESL) participants. ESL results are shown to be consistent with predictions based on the Cognitive Load Theory. The importance of this work for systems analysts and designers comes from two considerations. First, the use of iconic graphics seems to reduce the extraneous cognitive load associated with these complex systems. Secondly, the reduction in extraneous load enables users to apply more germane load which relates directly with levels of domain understanding. Thus iconic graphics may provide a simple tool that facilitates better understanding of ER diagrams and the data structure for proposed information systems.
The Application-Based Domain Modeling Approach
Authors: Reinhartz-Berger Iris , Sturm Arnon
Published: May 2010

Domain analysis provides guidelines and validation aids for specifying families of applications and capturing their terminology. Thus, domain analysis can be considered as an important type of reuse, validation, and knowledge representation. Metamodeling techniques, feature-oriented approaches, and architectural-based methods are used for analyzing domains and creating application artifacts in these domains. These works mainly focus on representing the domain knowledge and creating applications. However, they provide insufficient guidelines (if any) for creating complete application artifacts that satisfy the application requirements on one hand and the domain rules and constraints on the other hand. This chapter claims that domain artifacts may assist in creating complete and valid application artifacts and presents a general approach, called Application-based DOmain Modeling (ADOM), for this purpose. ADOM enables specifying domains and applications similarly, (re)using domain knowledge in applications, and validating applications against the relevant domain models and artifacts. The authors demonstrate the approach, which is supported by a CASE tool, on the standard modeling language, UML, and report experimental results which advocate that the availability of domain models may help achieve more complete application models without reducing the comprehension of these models.