bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Main Retina Information Processing Pathways Modeling
Authors: Wei Hui , Zuo Qingsong , Guan XuDong
Published: October 2012

In many fields including digital image processing and artificial retina design, they always confront a balance issue among real-time, accuracy, computing load, power consumption, and other factors. It is difficult to achieve an optimal balance among these conflicting requirements. However, human retina can balance these conflicting requirements very well. It can efficiently and economically accomplish almost all the visual tasks. This paper presents a bio-inspired model of the retina, not only to simulate various types of retina cells but also to simulate complex structure of retina. The model covers main information processing pathways of retina so that it is much closer to the real retina. In this paper, the authors did some research on various characteristics of retina via large-scale statistical experiments, and further analyzed the relationship between retina’s structure and functions. The model can be used in bionic chip design, physiological assumptions verification, image processing and computer vision.
Cognitive Memory for Semantic Agents Architecture in Robotic Interaction
Authors: Dourlens Sébastien , Ramdane-Cherif Amar
Published: October 2012

Since 1960, AI researchers have worked on intelligent and reactive architectures capable of managing multiple events and acts in the environment. This issue is part of the Robotics domain. An extraction of meaning at different levels of abstraction and the decision process must be implemented in the robot brain to accomplish the multimodal interaction with humans in a human environment. This paper presents a semantic agents architecture giving the robot the ability to understand what is happening and thus provide more robust responses. Intelligence and knowledge about objects like behaviours in the environment are stored in two ontologies linked to an inference engine. To store and exchange information, an event knowledge representation language is used by semantic agents. This architecture brings other advantages: pervasive, cooperating, redundant, automatically adaptable, and interoperable. It is independent of platforms.
A Novel Emotion Recognition Method Based on Ensemble Learning and Rough Set Theory
Authors: Yang Yong , Wang Guoyin
Published: October 2012

Emotion recognition is a very hot topic, which is related with computer science, psychology, artificial intelligence, etc. It is always performed on facial or audio information with classical method such as ANN, fuzzy set, SVM, HMM, etc. Ensemble learning theory is a novelty in machine learning and ensemble method is proved an effective pattern recognition method. In this paper, a novel ensemble learning method is proposed, which is based on selective ensemble feature selection and rough set theory. This method can meet the tradeoff between accuracy and diversity of base classifiers. Moreover, the proposed method is taken as an emotion recognition method and proved to be effective according to the simulation experiments.
Semantic Manipulations and Formal Ontology for Machine Learning based on Concept Algebra
Authors: Wang Yingxu , Tian Yousheng , Hu Kendal
Published: October 2012

Towards the formalization of ontological methodologies for dynamic machine learning and semantic analyses, a new form of denotational mathematics known as concept algebra is introduced. Concept Algebra (CA) is a denotational mathematical structure for formal knowledge representation and manipulation in machine learning and cognitive computing. CA provides a rigorous knowledge modeling and processing tool, which extends the informal, static, and application-specific ontological technologies to a formal, dynamic, and general mathematical means. An operational semantics for the calculus of CA is formally elaborated using a set of computational processes in real-time process algebra (RTPA). A case study is presented on how machines, cognitive robots, and software agents may mimic the key ability of human beings to autonomously manipulate knowledge in generic learning using CA. This work demonstrates the expressive power and a wide range of applications of CA for both humans and machines in cognitive computing, semantic computing, machine learning, and computational intelligence.
Text Semantic Mining Model Based on the Algebra of Human Concept Learning
Authors: Zhang Jun , Luo Xiangfeng , He Xiang , Cai Chuanliang
Published: October 2012

Dealing with the large-scale text knowledge on the Web has become increasingly important with the development of the Web, yet it confronts with several challenges, one of which is to find out as much semantics as possible to represent text knowledge. As the text semantic mining process is also the knowledge representation process of text, this paper proposes a text knowledge representation model called text semantic mining model (TSMM) based on the algebra of human concept learning, which both carries rich semantics and is constructed automatically with a lower complexity. Herein, the algebra of human concept learning is introduced, which enables TSMM containing rich semantics. Then the formalization and the construction process of TSMM are discussed. Moreover, three types of reasoning rules based on TSMM are proposed. Lastly, experiments and the comparison with current text representation models show that the given model performs better than others.
In Search of Effective Granulization with DTRS for Ternary Classification
Authors: Zhou Bing , Yao Yiyu
Published: October 2012

Decision-Theoretic Rough Set (DTRS) model provides a three-way decision approach to classification problems, which allows a classifier to make a deferment decision on suspicious examples, rather than being forced to make an immediate determination. The deferred cases must be reexamined by collecting further information. Although the formulation of DTRS is intuitively appealing, a fundamental question that remains is how to determine the class of the deferment examples. In this paper, the authors introduce an adaptive learning method that automatically deals with the deferred examples by searching for effective granulization. A decision tree is constructed for classification. At each level, the authors sequentially choose the attributes that provide the most effective granulization. A subtree is added recursively if the conditional probability lies in between of the two given thresholds. A branch reaches its leaf node when the conditional probability is above or equal to the first threshold, or is below or equal to the second threshold, or the granule meets certain conditions. This learning process is illustrated by an example.
Cognitive Dynamic Systems
Authors: Haykin Simon
Published: October 2012

The main topics covered in this paper address the following four issues: (1) Distinction between how adaptation and cognition are viewed with respect to each other, (2) With human cognition viewed as the framework for cognition, the following cognitive processes are identified: the perception-action cycle, memory, attention, intelligence, and language. With language being outside the scope of the paper, detailed accounts of the other four cognitive processes are discussed, (3) Cognitive radar is singled out as an example application of cognitive dynamic systems that “mimics” the visual brain; experimental results on tracking are presented using simulations, which clearly demonstrate the information-processing power of cognition, and (4) Two other example applications of cognitive dynamic systems, namely, cognitive radio and cognitive control, are briefly described.
A Modular Dynamical Cryptosystem Based on Continuous-Interval Cellular Automata
Authors: Gonzalez Jesus D. Terrazas , Kinsner Witold
Published: October 2012

This paper presents a new cryptosystem based on chaotic continuous-interval cellular automata (CCA) to increase data protection as demonstrated by their flexibility to encrypt and decrypt information from distinct sources. Enhancements to cryptosystems are also presented including (i) a model based on a new chaotic CCA attractor, (ii) the dynamical integration of modules containing dynamical systems to generate complex sequences, and (iii) an enhancement for symmetric cryptosystems by allowing them to generate an unlimited number of keys. This paper also presents a process of mixing chaotic sequences obtained from cellular automata, instead of using differential equations, as a basis to achieve higher security and higher speed for the encryption and decryption processes, as compared to other recent approaches. The complexity of the mixed sequences is measured using the variance fractal dimension trajectory to compare them to the unmixed chaotic sequences to verify that the former are more complex. This type of polyscale measure and evaluation has never been done in the past outside this research group.
Time and Frequency Analysis of Particle Swarm Trajectories for Cognitive Machines
Authors: Schor Dario , Kinsner Witold
Published: October 2012

This paper examines the inherited persistent behavior of particle swarm optimization and its implications to cognitive machines. The performance of the algorithm is studied through an average particle’s trajectory through the parameter space of the Sphere and Rastrigin function. The trajectories are decomposed into position and velocity along each dimension optimized. A threshold is defined to separate the transient period, where the particle is moving towards a solution using information about the position of its best neighbors, from the steady state reached when the particles explore the local area surrounding the solution to the system. Using a combination of time and frequency domain techniques, the inherited long-term dependencies that drive the algorithm are discerned. Experimental results show the particles balance exploration of the parameter space with the correlated goal oriented trajectory driven by their social interactions. The information learned from this analysis can be used to extract complexity measures to classify the behavior and control of particle swarm optimization, and make proper decisions on what to do next. This novel analysis of a particle trajectory in the time and frequency domains presents clear advantages of particle swarm optimization and inherent properties that make this optimization algorithm a suitable choice for use in cognitive machines.
A Novel Algorithm for Block Encryption of Digital Image Based on Chaos
Authors: Peng Jun , Zhang Du , Liao Xiaofeng
Published: October 2012

This paper proposes a novel image block encryption algorithm based on three-dimensional Chen chaotic dynamical system. The algorithm works on 32-bit image blocks with a 192-bit secret key. The idea is that the key is employed to drive the Chen’s system to generate a chaotic sequence that is inputted to a specially designed function G, in which we use new 8x8 S-boxes generated by chaotic maps (Tang, 2005). In order to improve the robustness against differental cryptanalysis and produce desirable avalanche effect, the function G is iteratively performed several times and its last outputs serve as the keystreams to encrypt the original image block. The design of the encryption algorithm is described along with security analyses. The results from key space analysis, differential attack analysis, and information entropy analysis, correlation analysis of two adjacent pixels prove that the proposed algorithm can resist cryptanalytic, statistical and brute force attacks, and achieve a higher level of security. The algorithm can be employed to realize the security cryptosystems over the Internet.
Organizational Patterns for Security and Dependability
Authors: Asnar Yudis , Massacci Fabio , Saidane Ayda , Riccucci Carlo , Felici Massimo , Tedeschi Alessandra , El-Khoury Paul , Li Keqin , Séguran Magali , Zannone Nicola
Published: October 2012

Designing secure and dependable IT systems requires a deep analysis of organizational as well as social aspects of the environment where the system will operate. Domain experts and analysts often face security and dependability (S&D) issues they have already encountered before. These concerns require the design of S&D patterns to facilitate designers when developing IT systems. This article presents the experience in designing S&D organizational patterns, which was gained in the course of an industry lead EU project. The authors use an agent-goal-oriented modeling framework (i.e., the SI* framework) to analyze organizational settings jointly with technical functionalities. This framework can assist domain experts and analysts in designing S&D patterns from their experience, validating them by proof-of-concept implementations, and applying them to increase the security level of the system.
Security Gaps in Databases
Authors: Neto Afonso Araújo , Vieira Marco
Published: October 2012

When deploying database-centric web applications, administrators should pay special attention to database security requirements. Acknowledging this, Database Management Systems (DBMS) implement several security mechanisms that help Database Administrators (DBAs) making their installations secure. However, different software products offer different sets of mechanisms, making the task of selecting the adequate package for a given installation quite hard. This paper proposes a methodology for detecting database security gaps. This methodology is based on a comprehensive list of security mechanisms (derived from widely accepted security best practices), which was used to perform a gap analysis of the security features of seven software packages composed by widely used products, including four DBMS engines and two Operating Systems (OS). The goal is to understand how much each software package helps developers and administrators to actually accomplish the security tasks that are expected from them. Results show that while there is a common set of security mechanisms that is implemented by most packages, there is another set of security tasks that have no support at all in any of the packages.
Ell Secure Information System Using Modal Logic Technique
Authors: Bai Yun , Khan Khaled M.
Published: October 2012

In this paper, the authors propose a formal logic technique to protect information systems. As the widespread use of computer systems grows, the security of the information stored in such systems has become more important. As a security mechanism, authorization or access control ensures that all accesses to the system resources occur exclusively according to the access polices and rules specified by the system security agent. Authorization specification has been widely studied and a variety of approaches have been investigated. The authors propose a formal language with modal logic to specify the system security policies. The authors also provide the reasoning in response to system access requests, especially in situations where the security agent’s knowledge base is incomplete. The semantics of this language is provided by translating it into epistemic logic program in which knowledge related modal operators are employed to represent agents’ knowledge in reasoning. The authors demonstrate how this approach handles the situation where the security agent’s knowledge on access decision is incomplete. The proposed mechanism effectively prevents unauthorized and malicious access to information systems.
Building Secure Software Using XP
Authors: Al-Ahmad Walid
Published: October 2012

Security is an important and challenging aspect that needs to be considered at an early stage during software development. Traditional software development methodologies do not deal with security issues and so there is no structured guidance for security design and development; security is usually an afterthought activity. This paper discusses the integration of XP with security activities based on the CLASP (Comprehensive Lightweight Application Security Process) methodology. This integration will help developers using XP develop secure software by applying security measures in all phases and activities, thereby minimizing the security vulnerabilities exploited by attackers.
Performance Evaluation of Secure Key Deployment and Exchange Protocol for MANETs
Authors: Nisbet Alastair , Rashid M. A.
Published: October 2012

Secure Key Deployment and Exchange Protocol (SKYE) is a new encryption Key Management Scheme (KMS) based on combination of features from recent protocols combined with new features for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). The design focuses on a truly ad hoc networking environment where geographical size of the network, numbers of network members, and mobility of the members is all unknown before deployment. Additionally, all key management is performed online making it distinct from most other implementations. This paper attempts to describe the process of development of the protocol and to more thoroughly discuss the simulation software design used to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol. Simulation results show that security within the network can be increased by requiring more servers to collaborate to produce a certificate for the new member, or by requiring a higher trust threshold along the certificate request chain. SKYE works well within the limitations set by entirely online network formation and key management.
A Systematic Empirical Analysis of Forging Fingerprints to Fool Biometric Systems
Authors: Schwarzl Christian , Weippl Edgar
Published: October 2012

This paper serves to systematically describe the attempts made to forge fingerprints to fool biometric systems and to review all relevant publications on forging fingerprints to fool sensors. The research finds that many of the related works fail in this aspect and that past successes could not be repeated. First, the basics of biometrics are explained in order to define the meaning of the term security in this special context. Next, the state of the art of biometric systems is presented, followed by to the topic of security of fingerprint scanners. For this, a series of more than 30,000 experiments were conducted to fool scanners. The authors were able to reproduce and keep records of each single step in the test and to show which methods lead to the desired results. Most studies on this topic exclude a number of steps in producing a fake finger and fooling a fingerprint scanner are not explained, which means that some of the studies cannot be replicated. In addition, the authors’ own ideas and slight variations of existing experiment set-ups are presented.
Research Challenges in the Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented Systems
Authors: Lewis Grace A. , Smith Dennis B.
Published: October 2012

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a viable option for systems development, systems integration, and leverage of legacy systems. Despite its positive contributions and potential, SOA has been subjected to significant hype and inflated expectations, and past research efforts in this area have been unfocused. As a result, there is a strong need for systematic and unbiased research. Based on a synthesis of two leading efforts, this chapter presents a framework of research challenges for service orientation and focuses on the topics related to the migration and evolution of service-oriented systems. The chapter reviews current progress as well as gaps in addressing challenges that are derived from the framework.
Legacy to SOA Evolution
Authors: Khadka Ravi , Saeidi Amir , Idu Andrei , Hage Jurriaan , Jansen Slinger
Published: October 2012

In the last decade, there have been significant developments in legacy to SOA evolution, and that has resulted in a large research body of which there exists no comprehensive overview. This chapter provides a historic overview, focusing on the methods and techniques used in legacy to SOA evolution. The authors conducted a systematic literature review to collect legacy to SOA evolution approaches reported from 2000 to August 2011. To this end, 121 primary studies were found and evaluated using an evaluation framework, which was developed from three evolution and modernization methods widely used in the software re-engineering domain. The evaluation constitutes the inventory of current research approaches and methods and techniques used in legacy to SOA evolution. The result of the SLR also identifies current research issues in legacy to SOA evolution and provides future research directions to address those research issues.
The SOA Frontier
Authors: Rodriguez Juan M. , Crasso Marco , Mateos Cristian , Zunino Alejandro , Campo Marcelo , Salvatierra Gonzalo
Published: October 2012

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services are the current trend to integrate large and distributed systems, which is a common situation in both the business and government worlds. However, within these worlds, systems are commonly written in COBOL because they were developed several decades ago. Therefore, migration of COBOL systems into service-oriented architectures becomes a necessity. Two main approaches are used to migrate COBOL systems to SOA systems: direct and indirect migration. Direct migration implies wrapping the current COBOL routines of a system with a software layer developed under a newer platform that can be used to offer Web Services. In contrast, indirect migration requires re-designing and re-implementing the COBOL routines’ functionality using a newer platform as well. In this chapter, the authors propose a novel migration approach, which takes the best of the two previous approaches. To assess the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, this chapter presents a case study from a government agency COBOL system that has been migrated to a Web services-based system using the three approaches. As a result of having these migration attempts, the authors present the trade-off between direct and indirect migration, the resulting service interfaces quality, and the migration costs. These results also show that this new migration approach offers a good balance to the above trade-off, which makes the approach applicable to similar COBOL migration scenarios.
Migrating a Legacy Web-Based Document-Analysis Application to Hadoop and HBase
Authors: Vashishtha Himanshu , Smit Michael , Stroulia Eleni
Published: October 2012

Migrating a legacy application to a more modern computing platform is a recurring software-development activity. This chapter describes the authors’ experience with a contemporary rendition of this activity, migrating a Web-based system to a service-oriented application on two different cloud software platforms, Hadoop and HBase. Using the case study as a running example, they review the information needed for a successful migration and examine the trade-offs between development/re-design effort and performance/scalability improvements. The two levels of re-design, towards Hadoop and HBase, require notably different levels of effort, and as the authors found through exercising the migrated applications, they achieve different benefits. The authors found that both redesigns led to substantial benefit in performance improvement, and that expending the additional effort required by the more complex migration resulted in notable improvements in the ability to leverage the benefits of the platform.
Geographically Distributed Cloud-Based Collaborative Application
Authors: Solomon Bogdan , Ionescu Dan , Gadea Cristian , Litoiu Marin
Published: October 2012

The amount of multimedia content on the Internet has been growing at a remarkable rate, and users are increasingly looking to share online media with colleagues and friends on social networks. Several commercial and academic solutions have attempted to make it easier to share this large variety of online content with others, but they are generally limited to only sending Web links. At the same time, existing products have not been able to provide a scalable system that synchronizes disparate Web content sources among many users in real-time. Such a goal is especially desired in order to provide the benefits of cloud deployments to collaborative applications. Many Web-based applications cannot predict the number of connections that they may need to handle. As such, applications must either provision a higher number of servers in anticipation of more traffic, or be faced with a degradation of the user experience when a large number of clients connect to the application. Cloud-based deployments can alleviate these issues by allowing the application’s server base to auto scale based on the user demand. A cloud deployment can also employ servers in different geographic locations in order to offer better latency and response times to its clients. Moving a collaborative application from using a single server to a cloud and then to a distributed cloud is not a trivial matter, however. This chapter will show our experience with how such a transition can be performed, and will present the architectural changes that had to be implemented at the server and cloud level in order to create a distributed execution that resides in the cloud.
Experiences with Cloud Technology to Realize Software Testing Factories
Authors: Brown Alan W.
Published: October 2012

In enterprise software delivery, the pursuit of software quality takes place in the context of a fundamental paradox: balancing the flexibility that drives speed of delivery with the rigor required to verify that what is being delivered is complete, correct, and appropriate for its intended use. One common approach to address this concern is to create “software testing factories” with the aim of increasing testing efficiency by standardizing and speeding up delivery of testing services. To achieve this balance, software testing factories are turning to cloud-based infrastructures as an essential delivery approach. Cloud technology exhibits characteristics that make adoption of software testing factories particularly attractive: elasticity of resources, ease of deployment, and flexible pricing. In this chapter, the author examines the role and structure of software testing factories and their realization using cloud technology, illustrates those concepts using real world examples, and concludes with some observations and a discussion on future directions.
Cloud-Enabled Software Testing Based on Program Understanding
Authors: Chiang Chia-Chu , Yu Shucheng
Published: October 2012

Cloud computing provides an innovative technology that enables Software as a Service (SaaS) to its customers. With cloud computing technologies, a suite of program understanding tools is suggested to be deployed in a cloud to aid the generation of test cases for software testing. This cloud-enabled service allows customers to use these tools through an on-demand, flexible, and pay-per-use model. Lastly, the issues and challenges of cloud computing are presented.
Cloud-Based Testing for Context-Aware Cyber-Physical Systems
Authors: Berger Christian
Published: October 2012

Cloud-based applications like email services or office suites enable real-time collaboration and traceability for shared data from nearly anywhere by using a modern web-browser. Thus, a significant shift has happened to these common applications to focus only on their usage than on their maintenance. However, today’s software development projects spend a noteworthy amount of resources to setup and maintain necessary development tools–over and over again. Thus, a similar shift for these development tools in the future would enable to spend valuable resources more on the actual project’s goals than on the tools’ maintenance. Especially development projects for cyber-physical systems, which interact with the real life’s surroundings by relying on sensors and actuators, have specific needs when using cloud-based solutions. In this contribution, preconditions, design decisions, and limitations of a cloud-based testing approach for CPS are outlined and discussed on the example “Hesperia.” “Hesperia” bases on the experiences from the development of “Caroline”–an autonomously driving vehicle for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. “Hesperia” as a cloud-based testing approach was tested 2009 during the development of an autonomously driving vehicle at the University of California, Berkeley.
Using the Cloud for Testing NOT Adjunct to Development
Authors: Gentleman W. Morven
Published: October 2012

Software testing, whether performed by the software development organization itself or on behalf of the software development organization by an independent testing organization, is typically described in the literature as part of the development or maintenance process for the purpose of improving the quality of the software product (i.e. finding and removing defects). Nevertheless, interested parties other than the software development organization perform software testing for reasons other than finding and removing defects, and such testing can be facilitated when the software is available as a service in the cloud. Unfortunately, access to software only as a service in the cloud can inhibit certain kinds of testing. In this chapter, the author discusses who such other interested parties might be, what they intend to learn from software testing, and what some of the techniques are they might use.
Leveraging the Cloud for Large-Scale Software Testing – A Case Study
Authors: Pakhira Anjan , Andras Peter
Published: October 2012

Testing is a critical phase in the software life-cycle. While small-scale component-wise testing is done routinely as part of development and maintenance of large-scale software, the system level testing of the whole software is much more problematic due to low level of coverage of potential usage scenarios by test cases and high costs associated with wide-scale testing of large software. Here, the authors investigate the use of cloud computing to facilitate the testing of large-scale software. They discuss the aspects of cloud-based testing and provide an example application of this. They describe the testing of the functional importance of methods of classes in the Google Chrome software. The methods that we test are predicted to be functionally important with respect to a functionality of the software. The authors use network analysis applied to dynamic analysis data generated by the software to make these predictions. They check the validity of these predictions by mutation testing of a large number of mutated variants of the Google Chrome. The chapter provides details of how to set up the testing process on the cloud and discusses relevant technical issues.
Bio-Inspired Techniques for Resources State Prediction in Large Scale Distributed Systems
Authors: Visan Andreea , Istin Mihai , Pop Florin , Cristea Valentin
Published: October 2012

The state prediction of resources in large scale distributed systems represents an important aspect for resources allocations, systems evaluation, and autonomic control. The paper presents advanced techniques for resources state prediction in Large Scale Distributed Systems, which include techniques based on bio-inspired algorithms like neural network improved with genetic algorithms. The approach adopted in this paper consists of a new fitness function, having prediction error minimization as the main scope. The proposed prediction techniques are based on monitoring data, aggregated in a history database. The experimental scenarios consider the ALICE experiment, active at the CERN institute. Compared with classical predicted algorithms based on average or random methods, the authors obtain an improved prediction error of 73%. This improvement is important for functionalities and performance of resource management systems in large scale distributed systems in the case of remote control ore advance reservation and allocation.
Distributed Adaptive Windowed Stream Join Processing
Authors: Tran Tri Minh , Lee Byung Suk
Published: October 2012

This paper presents an adaptive framework for processing a window-based multi-way join query over distributed data streams. The framework integrates distributed plan modification and distributed plan migration within the same scope by using a building block called the node operator set (NOS). An NOS is housed in each node that participates in the join execution, and specifies the set of atomic operations to be performed locally at the host node to execute its share of the global execution plan. The plan modification and migration techniques presented are for the case of updating the NOSs centralized at a single node and the case of updating them distributed at each node. The plan modification is triggered by the change of stream statistics and adjusts the join execution order and placement greedily to satisfy a cost invariant. The plan migration uses the distributed track strategy to accelerate the migration of window extents to new nodes. The migration of all window extents is synchronized. Experiments confirm the effectiveness of the developed adaptive framework on reducing the join execution cost and indicate a small additional adaptation-overhead for distributing the NOS update.
Integrating Production Automation Expert Knowledge Across Engineering Domains
Authors: Moser Thomas , Biffl Stefan , Sunindyo Wikan Danar , Winkler Dietmar
Published: October 2012

The engineering of a complex production automation system involves experts from several backgrounds, such as mechanical, electrical, and software engineering. The production automation expert knowledge is embedded in their tools and data models, which are, unfortunately, insufficiently integrated across the expert disciplines, due to semantically heterogeneous data structures and terminologies. Traditional integration approaches to data integration using a common repository are limited as they require an agreement on a common data schema by all project stakeholders. This paper introduces the Engineering Knowledge Base (EKB), a semantic-web-based framework, which supports the efficient integration of information originating from different expert domains without a complete common data schema. The authors evaluate the proposed approach with data from real-world use cases from the production automation domain on data exchange between tools and model checking across tools. Major results are that the EKB framework supports stronger semantic mapping mechanisms than a common repository and is more efficient if data definitions evolve frequently.
Using ICT to Overcome Constraints in the Agriculture Value Chain
Authors: Debrah Siegfried Kofi , Asare Isaac Kwadwo
Published: October 2012

Development partner efforts and private sector initiatives on ICT applications in agriculture have brought new opportunities for farmers and traders to reduce transaction costs and increase incomes. The applications are primarily used for linking actors in the agricultural value chain, accessing real time information on prices, buyers and sellers, transport and haulage, and other relevant information services in the agricultural value chain. Limited evidence from Ghana and elsewhere show that cell phone applications have resulted in increased incomes but the impacts and sustainability of other ICT applications have proven elusive. The role of ICT in overcoming the key constraints in the agricultural value chain and for making evidence-based decisions will be greatly enhanced if farmers, aggregators, and other stakeholders in the value chain pay attention to their business scope and schedule planning, executing, monitoring and control, procurement, risk planning, and stakeholder communications in a “project management” context. When this is done, ICT applications will facilitate supply chain management through sharing of timely and pertinent information on producers, buyers and other services, thereby helping to promote industry competitiveness. The major challenges to the widespread use and sustainability of ICT remain access to the appropriate ICT tool, poor road and storage infrastructure (particularly in the farming communities) and illiteracy on the part of the majority of smallholder farmers.
ICT in Agricultural Development
Authors: Lawal-Adebowale O. A.
Published: October 2012

The transformational role of ICT in the social and economic spheres of man engendered development of the communication technology in Nigeria. Based on the telecom deregulation policy of the Nigerian Government in 2001, the country witnessed an upsurge of private investment in ICT development and its consequential ICT revolution. An empirical survey of diffusion and adoption pattern of ICT in the Nigerian agricultural system showed that mobile phone constitutes the most widely adopted ICT device by the agricultural researchers, extension agents, and rural farmers. In addition to this was computer and internet adoption by the researchers and radio transistors by the rural farmers. All eight agricultural research organisations and four extension agencies surveyed had electronic mail addresses and telephone lines for information exchanges. Six of the agricultural organisations - CRIN, FRIN, NIHORT, IAR&T, NIOMR, and NAERLS, and one of the extension agencies – LSADA, had organisational websites for hoisting generated agricultural information. Based on rural farmers’ access to radio, and to some extent television, the research and extension organisations aired agricultural programmes on these electronic media for the farmers. ICT usage in the Nigerian agricultural system is however challenged by less development and exploration of communication technologies, poor electric power supply, and poor human operational skills development for effective utilisation of the information-driven technologies. This situation thus necessitates the need for pro-agriculture ICT development and human capacity for effective utilisation in the Nigerian agricultural system.
Marketing Strategies for E-Government and E-Agriculture Services in South Africa
Authors: Maumbe Blessing , Owei V.
Published: October 2012

The government of South Africa (GSA) has embarked on a major program for e-service delivery. The Batho Pele Gateway Project is the access portal to government information and a key driver of the e-government transformation in South Africa. Although the GSA is determined to make e-government service delivery successful, the average citizen does not fully comprehend the key transformations driving government engagement with civil society and businesses. Therefore, the Cape Gateway Project (CGP) is confronted with the immense task to develop and implement a strategic marketing program for e-government by the Provincial Government of the Western Cape (PGWC) which is not only a portal, but also a call centre and walk-in centre. Various marketing tactics have been deployed, but their efficacy in elevating awareness levels and converting that to actual sustained use of e-government service delivery remains unknown. This chapter proposes an e-government marketing framework and uses CGP experience to examine communication and branding strategies for e-government in a South African context. Key challenges facing e-government market communication strategy are highlighted.
Enhanced Knowledge Management
Authors: Shiferaw Abebe , Sehai Ermias , Hoekstra Dirk , Getachew Abrahm
Published: October 2012

Knowledge management (KM) provides opportunity for organizations to achieve higher efficiency and increased output. With objective of attaining opportunities in KM at district level, Woreda Knowledge Centers (WKC) were established and used in ten districts in Ethiopia from 2005 to 2010. WKC is a tele-center used to gather, share, classify, access, and use knowledge at district (woreda) level. The study involves questionnaire, group discussion, timeline, SWOT analysis, and KM performance assessment and document review. This chapter presents WKC usefulness, establishment steps, challenges, and opportunities. In ten districts, of the 500 survey respondents, 79% and 71% agree on an increase in knowledge delivery and availability, respectively. Temporal comparison showed that WKC increased staff capacity to document, access, share, and use knowledge leading to improved extension communication. The study recommends that WKC be established by ministry of agriculture and its partners to enhance KM at district level for agricultural development.
Situational Analysis of the Status of E-Agriculture in Tamil Nadu, India
Authors: Priya P Senthil , Mathiyalagan N.
Published: October 2012

In recent years, there is scarcely any field in the various sectors of the world economy that has not been influenced by the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT), and the field of agriculture is no exception. Within the past decade, many projects have been implemented by governments, private sector, and NGOs in developing countries to streamline the production, storage, selection of markets, and commercialization of agricultural commodities. These new ICT have opened up numerous opportunities for the farmers to increase the timeliness, quality, relevance, availability, and accessibility of critical agricultural information. The UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that one billion people worldwide – most of whom depend in some way on agriculture for their livelihoods – still lack connection to any kind of ICT. Indian farmers face competition from global forces and the usage of ICT tools. Advances in ICT help farmers to access accurate, timely, relevant information and services, thereby facilitating an environment for more remunerative agricultural practices to meet the new challenges. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the existing rural agrarian digital divide in Tamilnadu, India. The chapter describes the information needs, ICT access, and new opportunities for farmers in rural Tamilnadu. The chapter also examines the status of E-Agriculture in Tamilnadu and the ICT interventions that are available to Tamilnadu farmers. The study outlines the emerging opportunities for rural farmer’ participation in the knowledge society and offers some guidance on how the farmers can take advantage of ICT and utilize the information management system to derive maximum benefit out of the technology.
Information and Communication Technology and its Potential to Transform Indian Agriculture
Authors: Singh Saurabh
Published: October 2012

The role of Information Communication Technology in enhancing food security is well established and has been recognized at worldwide forums like World Summit of Information Society (WSIS) 2004-2005. Information Technology includes use of computer, internet, geographical information system, and mobile phone, besides traditional media. Every sphere having to do with agriculture has scope for information technology to make significant contribution, but in a few areas, its impact can be instantaneous. The present era, also known as the information era, requires creation of information expressway interlinking farmers, markets, corporate, agricultural scientists, and buyers of agricultural products. This may help producers to realize maximum share from the price paid by end consumer. In the present agricultural marketing system, middlemen share a significant portion from price paid by end consumer, and what the farmer gets is residue. Thus, the two major areas where information technology intervention can create progress are creation of information expressway for farmers; and strengthening farmers’ linkages to supply chain. These two aspects have been discussed with the help of initiatives like AGMARKNET, NDDB Procurement Process, e-Choupal, and EID’s Parry’s Corner. The effort is to facilitate learning with real life examples as contrasted against pure and abstract discussion based learning.
ICT Based Pest Management System for Sustainable Pulse Production
Authors: Sharma O P , Singh Niranjan , Bhardwaj Archana , Vennila S , Bhagat Someshwar , Mehta Neelam , Kumar Kamlesh
Published: October 2012

“E-National Pest Reporting and Alert System” in pulse crops is a unique ICT based decision support system, which is very effective and easy to operate through a centralized server system at National Centre for Integrated Pest Management, New Delhi, connected with internet and mobile phones. This system has developed to cater to the needs of rural farmers of India, who grow pulse crops. The useful information is collected, stored, processed, and interpreted, and the appropriate advisories are sent to the registered farmers through centralized server system. They apply suitable corrective measures as per advisories at right time, and thereby, heavy loss caused by various pests can be checked/minimized below economic threshold level. Based on the past experiences and larger response of the stakeholders, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Govt. of India, suggested that this program should be extended and implemented in all pulse growing states. This system is quiet useful bottom to top level officials/policy makers, involved in E-Pest Surveillance programme.
Terrorism and the Internet
Authors: Ramsay Gilbert
Published: October 2012

Over the last few years, it has often been suggested that use of the Internet for a variety of terrorist purposes constitutes a serious threat, and requires action of some kind at the international level. This chapter begins by examining the threat. It argues that the looseness of “terrorism” as a phenomenon – particularly as represented on the Internet – means that the problem may have been exaggerated. The issue, after all, is not in and of itself that terrorist organizations or individual “terrorists” are using the Internet, but rather, whether there is more terrorist violence happening as a result. This question is far from resolved, but there does not seem to be compelling evidence that there is. The chapter then considers the proposition that an “international problem” like terrorist use of the Internet requires an “international solution.” It provides the observation that this formula assumes a symmetry between actions available to terrorist actors and states which may, in itself, make for unimaginative counter-terrorism policy. It then considers whether there is a residue of issues arising from terrorist use of the Internet which can genuinely not be countered at a local level, and which are not already relevant to existing international counter-terrorism provisions. Given the serious changes action here would imply for Internet governance, and the uncertainty of the gains that would be delivered in terms of security, there is probably not good reason yet for drastic international action against specifically terrorist misuse of the Internet.
China’s Cyber Tool
Authors: Thomas Timothy L.
Published: October 2012

This chapter analyses how China is using cyber reconnaissance to achieve electronic shi, defined as strategic advantage. It examines China’s cyber strategy and information age advantages; Chinese financial and military cyber threats; China’s hacker population; and Chinese organizations devoted to cyber defense. Once attained, electronic shi allows a country to “win victory before the first battle.”