bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Legal Issues Associated with Emerging Social Interaction Technologies
Authors: Sprague Robert D.
Published: May 2011

This chapter focuses on legal issues that may arise from the increasing use of social interaction technologies: prospective employers searching the Internet to discover information from candidates’ blogs, personal web pages, or social networking profiles; employees being fired because of blog comments; a still-evolving federal law granting online service providers sweeping immunity from liability for user-published content; and attempts to apply the federal computer crime law to conduct on social networking sites. The U.S. legal system has been slow to adapt to the rapid proliferation of social interaction technologies. This paradox of rapid technological change and slow legal development can sometimes cause unfairness and uncertainty. Until the U.S. legal system begins to adapt to the growing use of these technologies, there will be no change.
Affective Goal and Task Selection for Social Robots
Authors: Scheutz Matthias , Schermerhorn Paul
Published: May 2011

Effective decision-making under real-world conditions can be very difficult as purely rational methods of decision-making are often not feasible or applicable. Psychologists have long hypothesized that humans are able to cope with time and resource limitations by employing affective evaluations rather than rational ones. In this chapter, we present the distributed integrated affect cognition and reflection architecture DIARC for social robots intended for natural human-robot interaction and demonstrate the utility of its human-inspired affect mechanisms for the selection of tasks and goals. Specifically, we show that DIARC incorporates affect mechanisms throughout the architecture, which are based on “evaluation signals” generated in each architectural component to obtain quick and efficient estimates of the state of the component, and illustrate the operation and utility of these mechanisms with examples from human-robot interaction experiments.
Definition and Analysis of a Fixed Mobile Convergent Architecture for Enterprise VoIP Services
Authors: Penhoat Joel , Le Grand Olivier , Salaun Mikael , Lemlouma Tayeb
Published: May 2011

Fixed Mobile Convergence is an important challenge for telecommunication operators given the heterogeneity of access networks technologies and the variety of terminals. Fixed Mobile Convergence, which introduces the concept ‘Being always best connected’, is considered to be the next step in the evolution of telecommunication networks and should increase the operators’ revenues. In order to enforce the concept ‘Being always best connected’, this article presents and analyzes an architecture for enterprises, named ‘Business Zone’. After defining the Business Zone, we present its architecture and we analyze its main components while limiting our study to the transport of VoIP flows. Then we present two methods that we have patented: the first method authorizes a VoIP flow to be transmitted according to the available resources in the Business Zone; the second method enhances the decision process during a handover.
Emergency Messaging to General Public via Public Wireless Networks
Authors: Pau L-F , Simonsen P.
Published: May 2011

Warnings to the broad population in an emergency situation, irrespective of location and condition, is a public policy responsibility. Public wireless networks offer now the opportunity to deliver emergency warnings in this way with explanations, because in many countries the mobile penetration rates and coverage are higher than any other access form. The article summarizes the analysis of the selection process between Short messaging services (SMS) and Cell Broadcast (CB) messaging in the context of Denmark based on end user requirements, stakeholder roles and case-based analysis. It demonstrates the many technical, cost-benefit and other tradeoffs needed in supporting the population now with a dependable and wide-spread technology. This research is the basis for a national policy.
Factors Affecting Broadband Adoption for Mainstream Consumers
Authors: Adams Peter
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores whether past experiences with telecommunications providers and current ‘plans’ on offer serve as barriers between an individual consumers’ persuasion phase of the Innovation-Decision Process (Rogers, 2003) and the decision phase. With broadband in around 33% of Australian homes, it is important that telecommunications providers understand why the future mainstream segment of consumers will want to adopt broadband, and any barriers to this. This analysis suggests future studies are needed to investigate whether the telecommunications providers are collectively confusing potential broadband consumers in their attempts to differentiate a generic product in the market. It argues that future technology adoption studies need to consider including the complexity of the actual purchase decision when developing constructs for quantitative models. If we are to build a picture of why mainstream consumers adopt broadband, more than just the perceptions of using the technology itself need to be investigated.
Telecommunication Customer Demand Management
Authors: Qi Jiayin , Si Yajing , Tan Jing , Zhang Yangming
Published: May 2011

In the highly competitive environment, the real-time and dynamic customer demand analysis technology is required by the enterprise information systems in order to respond to customer demand efficiently and automatically. Based on a customer value hierarchy model, this chapter proposes a customer demand analysis method and proposes ways to capture customer demand knowledge. Then, we present a novel product recommendation approach, which involves the customer value hierarchy model into traditional recommender systems. Through the above steps, the telecom operators can get their customer demand and respond to their demand automatically.
Complexity Factors in Networked and Virtual Working Environments
Authors: Kettunen Juha , Putkonen Ari , Hyrkkänen Ursula
Published: May 2011

Working environments are changing from the traditional model. An increasing amount of work takes place in networked and virtual environments which are not tied to one place and time. The work environment is defined “virtual,” when the employee uses information and communication technology (ICT) for collaboration (Vartiainen, 2006). The planning of working conditions becomes challenging task for managers and ICT tool developers, because there is a lack of understanding the consequences of emerging virtual work. The capacity of workers to percept and process information is burdened with the complexity and high demands of working life. Knowledge of the complexity factors of the overall work system is essential for an in depth understanding of human working capabilities and limitations (Kleiner, 2006). The complexity of work is usually considered as a factor related to the task. At the one end the task is creative and demanding and at the other end it is simple and routine-like. The expanded complexity concept also takes into account the working environment that can be different combinations of physical, virtual, social and cultural spaces. The purpose of this article is to present a framework to analyse the complexity factors in networked and virtual working environments. The approach developed in this article is intended to be generic in order to be applicable to various kinds of organisations and networks for the purpose of management. It is important that the working conditions of workers can be planned in advance to provide workers with appropriate ICT tools and data networks to enable efficient cooperation in networks in a way that the workload can be limited to a sustainable level. The described framework is assessed using the case of the Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS).
Developing an Innovative Curriculum to Prepare Networking Professionals for the Global Marketplace
Authors: Jeffries Michael , Papp Raymond
Published: May 2011

The need for business managers with strong information technology (IT) skills in general, and data communication and networking skills in particular, is now high and will be even greater in the years to come. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2007), occupations in the area of network systems and data communications analysis are projected to increase 55% by 2014. Given the trend in business to leverage information technology to decrease costs and increase efficiency in all functional areas, this demand is understandable. What is more difficult to understand is the lack of response to this demand by university IT departments as reflected in their curriculums (Hawk, 2005.) In this article we describe how one information and technology management department has attempted to meet the challenge of integrating networking skills in a coordinated fashion over a wide variety of courses to, at least in part, better prepare their students for the demands they are certain to face when they graduate.
Buffer Control Techniques for QoS Provisioning in Wireless Networks
Authors: Markou Michael M. , Panayiotou Christos G.
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the network buffer control techniques as a mean to provide QoS. This problem has been extensively studied in the context of wirelined networks; however, the proliferation of wireless networks and the introduction of multimedia applications has significantly changed the characteristics of the traffic mix that flows on the network. The objective of this chapter is to create a new methodology for automatically adapting the various buffer thresholds such that the network exhibits optimal or near optimal performance even as network conditions change. The behavior of the network (generally a discrete event system—DES) is approximated by that of a stochastic fluid model (SFM); then using infinitesimal perturbation analysis (IPA) we obtain sensitivity estimators of the performance measure(s) of interest with respect to the control parameter. These estimators are easy to compute using data observed from the DES’s sample path. Finally, the computed estimators are used in stochastic approximation algorithms to adjust the thresholds.
A Review of Recent Contribution in Agent-Based Health Care Modeling
Authors: Gill Simerjit , Paranjape Raman
Published: May 2011

This chapter reviews and summarizes eight selected paper in the area of agent-based healthcare systems. The objective of the summaries is to provide an overview of recent research work in the area and to examine the characteristics of agent-based healthcare applications. The chapter also briefly discusses reasons for adopting agent-based simulation and modeling over traditional modeling techniques.
Medical Information Representation Framework for Mobile Healthcare
Authors: Widya Ing , Mei HaiLiang , Beijnum Bert-Jan , Wijsman Jacqueline , Hermens Hermie
Published: May 2011

In mobile healthcare, medical information are often expressed in different formats due to the local policies and regulations and the heterogeneity of the applications, systems, and the adopted Information and communication technology. This chapter describes a framework which enables medical information, in particular clinical vital signs and professional annotations, be processed, exchanged, stored and managed modularly and flexibly in a mobile, distributed and heterogeneous environment despite the diversity of the formats used to represent the information. To deal with medical information represented in multiple formats the authors adopt techniques and constructs similar to the ones used on the Internet, in particular, the authors are inspired by the constructs used in multi-media e-mail and audio-visual data streaming standards. They additionally make a distinction of the syntax for data transfer and store from the syntax for expressing medical domain concepts. In this way, they separate the concerns of what to process, exchange and store from how the information can be encoded or transcoded for transfer over the internet. The authors use an object oriented information model to express the domain concepts and their relations while briefly illustrate how framework tools can be used to encode vital sign data for exchange and store in a distributed and heterogeneous environment.
Using Object Oriented Technologies to Build Collaborative Applications in Healthcare and Medical Information Systems
Authors: Dwivedi A. , Bali R.K. , Wickramasinghe Nilmini , Naguib R.N.G.
Published: May 2011

The adoption and diffusion of e-health and the application of IT in healthcare is increasing at a rapid rate. Both European and U.S. governments are making e-health a priority on their agendas. The technical infrastructure required to support initiatives such as community healthcare integrated networks (CHINs) and telemedicine efforts is often dependent upon connecting different types of computer networks, each running on different types of technologies so as to present to the user the image of a single virtual electronic health highway. It is generally agreed that current software development technology cannot deliver this due to limitations of restricted scalability, fragmented management, and inflexibility in providing business support. One of the potential solutions may be the use of Object Oriented (OO) technology. This article explores the feasibility of combining OO technologies with healthcare based workflow management systems (WFMS). We introduce the concept of workflow technologies and discuss the main advantages and limitations of WFMS. We detail the circumstances in which the use of WFMS could be considered and the technological factors necessary for its successful implementation.
Best Practices for Implementing Electronic Health Records and Information Systems
Authors: Kucukyazici Beste , Keshavjee Karim , Bosomworth John , Copen John , Lai James
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces a multi-level, multi-dimensional meta-framework for successful implementations of EHR in healthcare organizations. Existing implementation frameworks do not explain many features experienced and reported by implementers and have not helped to make health information technology implementation any more successful. To close this gap, we have developed an EHR implementation framework that integrates multiple conceptual frameworks in an overarching, yet pragmatic meta-framework to explain factors which lead to successful EHR implementation, in order to provide more quantitative insight into EHR implementations. Our meta-framework captures the dynamic nature of an EHR implementation through their function, interactivity with other factors and phases, and iterative nature.
Electronic Medical Records
Authors: Trimmer Ken , Cellucci Leigh W. , Wiggins Carla , Woodhouse William
Published: May 2011

Many policymakers, industry experts, and medical practitioners contend that the U.S. health care system—in both the public and private sectors—is in crisis. Among the numerous policy issues associated with the provision of US healthcare is the call for increased adoption and use of health care information technology (HIT) to address structural inefficiencies and care quality issues [11, p. 33]. This paper reports the first steps in a multi-phased research effort into Electronic Medical Records system adoption. The first two phases of our research applies the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology as a lens to interpret the responses of physicians completing their Residency in Family Medicine and the third phase examines the role of organizational culture as a critical variable for effective strategy implementation in the same setting.
Current Practices in Select Healthcare Systems
Authors: Sadanand Venkat
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, current practices of healthcare delivery in three economically advanced countries will be reviewed. Is healthcare delivery commensurate with economic prosperity? Countries with technological and economic advantages may be better poised to deliver healthcare efficiently. However, this is not the case in fact. The following review will show that medico-legal and technological prowess may not translate into a healthier life and better healthcare delivery. It will be argued that poor allocation of ample resources is tantamount to resource insufficiency. The chapter will cite anonymous but true cases of patients to illustrate the salient points.
Organizational Factors
Authors: Brear Michelle
Published: May 2011

The influence of organizational factors on the success of informatics interventions in healthcare has been clearly demonstrated. This health specific research, informed by a larger body of evidence emerging from interdisciplinary organizational, psychological and sociological research, has confirmed the view that organizational factors can be the decisive factor in the success of an intervention (Lorenzi et al, 1997). However it remains rare for organizational factors to be explicitly addressed in the implementation process. As such their contribution to the success or failure of informatics applications is not properly understood. This has implications for future interventions. Applications which were not utilized or did not perform adequately in a particular setting may be dismissed, while other, less appropriate systems may be adopted because organizational factors influenced their success. Explicit study of the role of organizational factors on the implementation of health informatics interventions is necessary to develop an understanding of their influence in the healthcare context. Healthcare organizations tend to be highly task oriented, labor intensive and dependent on interdisciplinary teamwork, so the influence of organizational factors within them may differ considerably from the business settings in which they have traditionally been studied (Chau, 2001). Health organisations are also increasingly underresourced due to the global downturn in government social spending, health sector privatization and aging populations. It is these characteristics which necessitate rapid uptake of informatics applications, capable of automating aspects of healthcare provision and reducing labor intensity (Coiera, 2004). From a technical perspective, rapid and fundamental transformation of the healthcare sector through informatics is achievable. However, without a clear understanding of, and ability to manage organizational factors it is unlikely that informatics applications will realize their potential in the health sector. This short review provides an overview of the key organizational factors influencing the success of informatics interventions. It begins by positioning informatics interventions in the broader context of organizational change, before discussing the current understanding of selected factors.
Managing E-Procurement in Public Healthcare
Authors: Federici Tommaso , Resca Andrea
Published: May 2011

In large parts of Europe, the development of healthcare is subject to contrasting forces: explosion in spending, while governments are faced with budget constraints, and pressures to be innovative, technologically advanced in order to improve the services’ quality. Even though e-procurement initatives can be seen as a solution to the first issue in this dilemma, such initiatives have not been widely deployed and have not delivered the expected benefits so far. In this perspective, as case study of an e-procurement implementation of an Italian local healthcare agency has been examined because of the comprehensive design of the e-procurement system, the differentiation of tools adopted and the multiple solutions already implemented or in progress. The aim of this work is to reconstruct, by following a knowledge management approach, the steps that led to the introduction of e-procurement as a new operating practice, by redesigning supply purchasing, supply chain and logistic processes.
Projecting Health Care Factors into Future Outcomes with Agent-Based Modeling
Authors: Bobashev Georgiy , Borshchev Andrei
Published: May 2011

Human behavior is dynamic; it changes and adapts. In this chapter, we describe modeling approaches that consider human behavior as it relates to health care. We present examples the demonstrate how accounting for the social network structure changes the dynamics of infectious disease, how social hierarchy affects the chances of getting HIV, how the use of low dead-space syringe reduces the risk of HIV transmission, and how emergency departments could function more efficiently when real-time activities are simulated. The examples we use build from simple to more complex models and illustrate how agent-based modeling opens new horizons for providing descriptions of complex phenomena that were not possible with traditional statistical or even system dynamics methods. Agent-based modeling can use behavioral data from a cross-sectional representative study and project the behavior into the future so that the risks can be studied in a dynamical/temporal sense, thus combining the advantages of representative cross-sectional and longitudinal studies for the price of increased uncertainty. The authors also discuss data needs and potential future applications for this method.
Physician Characteristics Associated with Early Adoption of Electronic Medical Records in Smaller Group Practices
Authors: O’Neill Laim , Talbert Jeffery , Klepack William
Published: May 2011

To examine physician characteristics and practice patterns associated with the adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) in smaller group practices. Primary care physicians in Kentucky were surveyed regarding their use of EMRs. Respondents were asked if their practice had fully implemented, partially implemented, or not implemented EMRs. Of the 482 physicians surveyed, the rate of EMR adoption was 28%, with 14% full implementation and 14% partial implementation. Younger physicians were significantly more likely to use EMRs (p = 0.00). For those in their thirties, 45% had fully or partially implemented EMRs compared with 15% of physicians aged 60 and above. In logistic regression analyses that controlled for practice characteristics, age, male gender, and rural location predicted EMR adoption. Younger physicians in smaller group practices are more likely to adopt EMRs than older physicians. EMRs were also associated with an increased use of chronic disease management.
An Exploratory Study of Patient Acceptance of Walk-In Telemedicine Services for Minor Conditions
Authors: Serrano Christina I. , Karahanna Elena
Published: May 2011

Though healthcare costs continue to soar, the healthcare industry lags other service industries in applying information technology to improve customer (i.e., patient) service, improve access to healthcare services, and reduce costs. One particular area of concern is overuse and overcrowding of emergency departments for nonurgent care. Telemedicine is one potentially important application of information technology in this realm. The objective of this study is to examine the antecedents of patient acceptance of walk-in telemedicine services for minor ailments. Drawing upon theoretical models in the healthcare and technology acceptance literatures and based on salient beliefs elicited during interviews with 29 potential adopters, the authors develop a conceptual model of antecedents of patient acceptance of walk-in telemedicine services for minor conditions. While relative advantage, informational influences, and relationship with one’s physician emerged as important predictors of acceptance, media richness and e-consultation diagnosticity emerged as central concerns for potential adopters. They discuss the study’s implications for research and practice and offer suggestions for future empirical studies.
Disability Determinations and Personal Health Records
Authors: Blechman Elaine A.
Published: May 2011

Newly disabled workers are often unemployed, uninsured, and indigent. They are in desperate need of Social Security OASDI monthly benefits, and the Medicare health insurance that follows 24 months after benefits begin. Applicants must prove that their medical conditions (excluding drug and alcohol abuse) have resulted in severe functional limitations that prevent them from any gainful employment. Delays and denials of benefits result when applicants cannot find or retrieve medical records from providers familiar with their medical history, health status, and functional limitations. The disability application workflow is complex, particularly for applicants with cognitive and mental health impairments. Health information technology (HIT) has been used to automate care delivery workflow through provider-controlled, electronic health record systems (EHRs). Disability applicants’ workflow could, just as well, be automated through consumer-controlled, unbound, and intelligent personal electronic health record systems (PHRs), which are not tethered to a health plan or employer network, and which automatically exchange information updates with authorized providers’ EHRs. Applicants’ PHRs may later prove helpful with self-management of chronic conditions prior to Medicare coverage and with periodic reevaluations of their medical status.
Predicting Voluntary Participation in a Public Health Program Using a Neural Network
Authors: Heilman George E. , Cain Monica , Morton Russell S.
Published: May 2011

Researchers increasingly use Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to predict outcomes across a broad range of applications. They frequently find the predictive power of ANNs to be as good as or better than conventional discrete choice models. This article demonstrates the use of an ANN to model a consumer’s choice to participate in North Carolina’s Maternity Care Coordination (MCC) program, a state sponsored voluntary public health service initiative. Maternal and infant Medicaid claims data and birth certificate data were collected for 59,999 births in North Carolina during the years 2000-2002. Part of this sample was used to train and test an ANN that predicts voluntary enrollment in MCC. When tested against a holdout production sample, the ANN model correctly predicted 99.69% of those choosing to participate and 100% of those choosing not to participate in the MCC program.
Emerging Approaches to Evaluating the Usability of Health Information Systems
Authors: Kushniruk Andre W. , Borycki Elizabeth M. , Kuwata Shige , Ho Francis
Published: May 2011

It is essential that health information systems are easy to use, meet user information needs and are shown to be safe. However, there are currently a wide range of issues and problems with health information systems related to human-computer interaction. Indeed, the lack of ease of use of health information systems has been a major impediment to adoption of such systems. To address these issues, the authors have applied methods emerging from the field of usability engineering in order to improve the adoption of a wide range of health information systems in collaboration with hospitals and other healthcare organizations throughout the world. In this chapter we describe our work in conducting usability analyses that can be used to rapidly evaluate the usability and safety of healthcare information systems, both in artificial laboratory and real clinical settings. We then discuss how this work has evolved towards the development of software systems (“virtual usability laboratories”) capable of remotely collecting, integrating and supporting analysis of a range of usability data.
Personal Health Records
Authors: Randeree Ebrahim
Published: May 2011

An increasing focus on e-health and a governmental push to improve healthcare quality while giving patients more control of their health data have combined to promote the emergence of the personal health record (PHR). The PHR addresses timeliness, patient safety, and equity, goals that the Institute of Medicine has identified as integral to improving healthcare. The PHR is vital to the National Health Information Network (NHIN) that is being developed to give all Americans access to electronic health records by 2014. Despite increasing public access to PHRs via employers, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and independent entities, it is unclear whether the PHR will be successfully implemented and adopted by the public. This chapter looks at how PHRs address the needs, desires, and expectations of patients, explores the data quality concerns regarding patient-generated information (data capture, sharing and integration with other systems), discusses social implications of adoption, and concludes with a discussion of the evolving role that PHRs play in the growth of patient-centered e-health.
Introducing E-Procurement in a Local Healthcare Agency
Authors: Federici Tommaso
Published: May 2011

This chapter deals with the introduction of electronic procurement in the public healthcare domain. After a brief discussion on the healthcare spending characteristics and on the suitability of e-procurement tools in the public sector; the long-lasting experience of e-procurement implementation promoted by an Italian Local Healthcare Public Agency is described. This initiative included some pilot projects and applied many different solutions; always involving both a new ICT tool and a thorough process redesign. The development of the innovation introductions is discussed; together with their organizational and managerial background; the description of the new processes; and the analysis of the most relevant results. The chapter provides a fairly comprehensive illustration of available solutions; opportunities; and challenges in this still neglected topic.
Shifting Ground for Health Information Systems
Authors: Miscione Gianluca , Staring Knut
Published: May 2011

This article addresses the institutional scaling of information systems through the interplay of globally distributed free and open source software development with organizational processes. Through examining various phases of a long term project to implement information systems for the public health care sector in resource-poor countries, we highlight changing sources of acceptance and legitimation. The analysis centers on the balance between local and global levels, from pilot sites, through an emerging broader organizational field, to increasingly involving national level institutional settings. In parallel to the established view of the scaling of ICT implementations as relating to complexity and risk in the form of unintended side-effects of the growth of a system, the authors highlight the qualitative switch between regulatory contexts. Shifting relations to local institutions means that scalability requires actors to interact with quite different organizational cultures, accountabilities and communicative practices.
Broadband and Structural Separation from the Perspective of Transaction Cost Economics
Authors: Fuke Hidenori
Published: May 2011

Conduct regulation and structural separation are often discussed in industrial organisation studies as options to prevent the abuse of market power by vertically integrated firms toward the downstream market. Both the structural separation of NTT and conduct regulation have been discussed in the Japanese telecommunications industry since the introduction of competition in 1985 and the issue is still being discussed, although the industry is going through a transition from POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) to the broadband internet. Past discussions have been inclined toward elimination of the harmful effects of vertical integration. However, there is a benefit of vertical integration in the sense that it will promote the efficient management of the firm concerned. I will present a new contention that it is important to conclude a balanced analysis of costs and benefits of vertical integration based on transaction cost theory. Structural separation in the broadband market entails significant transaction costs between a carrier with access facilities and firms offering broadband services by renting these facilities as input. These kinds of transaction costs are comparatively negligible in POTS. I will make it clear that the balance analysis of costs and benefits of structural separation has become more important in broadband than in POTS based on the actual differences in network structure.
Towards a Customer Centric E-Government Application
Authors: Thominathan Santhanamery , Thurasamy Ramayah
Published: May 2011

Information Communication Technology (ICT) have played an important role in today’s global economy. Many countries have gained successful growth due to the implementation of ICT. In Malaysia, increased utilization of ICT has contributed significantly to the total factor productivity. One of the main contributing factors is the e-commerce and Internet based services. Therefore this case study aims to examine the contribution of the newly introduced E-government application namely E-filing system. E-filing system is a newly developed online tax submission services offered by the government to the tax payers in the country where they are able to easily, quickly and safely file their tax returns. The primary discussion in this case study concerns on the Malaysian’s ICT revolution, followed by the introduction of E-Filing system, the challenges and barriers faced by the government and concluded with the future trends in the implementation of this system.
A Primer on Reinforcement Learning in the Brain
Authors: Ludvig Elliot A. , Bellemare Marc G. , Pearson Keir G.
Published: May 2011

In the last 15 years, there has been a flourishing of research into the neural basis of reinforcement learning, drawing together insights and findings from psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. This remarkable confluence of three fields has yielded a growing framework that begins to explain how animals and humans learn to make decisions in real time. Mastering the literature in this sub-field can be quite daunting as this task can require mastery of at least three different disciplines, each with its own jargon, perspectives, and shared background knowledge. In this chapter, the authors attempt to make this fascinating line of research more accessible to researchers in any of the constitutive sub-disciplines. To this end, the authors develop a primer for reinforcement learning in the brain that lays out in plain language many of the key ideas and concepts that underpin research in this area. This primer is embedded in a literature review that aims not to be comprehensive, but rather representative of the types of questions and answers that have arisen in the quest to understand reinforcement learning and its neural substrates. Drawing on the basic findings in this research enterprise, the authors conclude with some speculations about how these developments in computational neuroscience may influence future developments in Artificial Intelligence.
Salient Region Detection for Biometric Watermarking
Authors: Bin Ma , Chun-lei Li , Yun-hong Wang , Xiao Bai
Published: May 2011

Visual saliency, namely the perceptual significance to human vision system (HVS), is a quality that differentiates an object from its neighbors. Detection of salient regions which contain prominent features and represent main contents of the visual scene, has obtained wide utilization among computer vision based applications, such as object tracking and classification, region-of-interest (ROI) based image compression, etc. Specially, as for biometric authentication system, whose objective is to distinguish the identification of people through biometric data (e.g. fingerprint, iris, face etc.), the most important metric is distinguishability. Consequently, in biometric watermarking fields, there has been a great need of good metrics for feature prominency. In this chapter, we present two salient-region-detection based biometric watermarking scenarios, in which robust annotation and fragile authentication watermark are respectively applied to biometric systems. Saliency map plays an important role of perceptual mask that adaptively select watermarking strength and position, therefore controls the distortion introduced by watermark and preserves the identification accuracy of biometric images.
Interoperability in Digital Libraries
Authors: Suleman Hussein
Published: May 2011

This chapter present the principles and practices of interoperability – the ability of systems to work together – as it pertains to digital libraries. While there is no well-defined theoretical basis for interoperability, it has gradually emerged as a major aspect in the creation of digital library systems, particularly in modern digital repositories such as those adopted by the Open Access movement. The need for standardisation is a key element of interoperability, and is considered in tandem with the more technical elements. Principles of interoperability have emerged through experimentation and any future attempts to infuse interoperability into a system should build on these principles, such as simplicity and orthogonality. In practice, experiments with system and protocols have demonstrated what works and what does not and where there is a need for additional interventions, such as the successful OAI-PMH and RSS standards. The key interoperability technologies currently in use in digital library systems are introduced and contextualised in terms of their applicability and motivations. In this discussion, the line between digital library standards and Web standards is intentionally fuzzy because of the increasingly symbiotic relationship between these communities.
Collaboration through Digital Libraries
Authors: Micsik András
Published: May 2011

This chapter addresses the collaborative aspects of digital libraries as a special case of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW). Libraries always had social and cultural roles, and worked as a dedicated place for learning, research and sometimes also for opinion exchange and debates. The Internet era gave birth to digital libraries which can also represent a whole range of collaborative functions. The suitable collaborative functions are different for young students, general public or scientists and also different in the view of the user’s goals, such as finding content, finding answers or creating new content. The collaborative aspects of these library functions are described here in details with typical examples. Despite of these examples, many librarians think that digital libraries failed to ride the waves of emerging web technologies, and current digital libraries cannot serve general information needs well enough, so they are not among the first sources of information and collaboration support any more. An important moment in the evolution of DL systems was the appearance of Web 2.0 technology and social computing. The Web 2.0 brought not only fancier user interfaces, but enriched functionality for building communities and collaborating extensively through the Web. Library 2.0 was the late response of the librarian community for social sites, since Library 2.0 is user-centered, with focus on rich social interactions through multi-media content. Moreover, for many, Library 2.0 is not about technology, but about a new philosophy of constant evaluation and innovation with the help of library users. In fact, Library 2.0 allows the users to change the library in many ways. The challenges for libraries within the Web 2.0 era are summarized here, along with the research issues waiting to be solved, as we think that the prospects of collaborative functionalities are far reaching and they could become a key motivation for using digital libraries.
Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage by Means of Digital Libraries
Authors: Korres Stylianos , Kokotsaki Eva
Published: May 2011

The entire world‘s cultural and educational resources are being more and more produced, distributed and accessed in digital form, rather than on paper. Born-digital heritage available on-line, including electronic journals, World Wide Web pages or on-line databases, are now an integral part of the world‘s cultural heritage. Consequently preservation of cultural and scientific heritage has undergone substantial changes and has come across new challenges. Traditional methods for preservation have been backed by technological tools of enormous capacities, creating the impression of a constant “revolution”. Most importantly, preservation has shifted from a passive stance (storage) to more active attitude (digitization, migration). However, the transition from the analogue past to the digital future is not smooth, as one would hope (or at least as libraries and their users would have hoped). The digital collection and preservation of on-line cultural and scientific assets was faced with legal instruments pertaining to “analogue age”, such as the legal deposit and the traditional rules of copyright law, which in the digital age seem as inadequate tools for the effective preservation of cultural and scientific heritage and the securing of a wide access to that heritage. Recent and pending changes in the areas of legal deposit and Copyright law attempt to modernize the legislation, but as it is demonstrated, a lot more has to be done in that direction. This chapter presents an overview of the present situation, challenges and problems with a focus on European Community and International Law.
Recurrent Interactions, Acts of Communication and Emergent Social Practice in Virtual Community Settings
Authors: Akoumianakis Demosthenes
Published: May 2011

The chapter builds on recent efforts aiming to develop a conceptual frame of reference for gaining insight to and analyzing ‘practice’ in virtual communities. Following a thorough analysis of related works in new media, community-oriented thinking and practice-based approaches as well as reflections upon recent case studies, the chapter discusses what is it that differentiates offline from online practice, how these two are intertwined in virtual settings and what may be an appropriate methodological frame of reference for analyzing them. In this vein, instead of reproducing arguments for community management (i.e., discovering, forming and sustaining communities) and the underlying methodological challenges commonly encountered in Information Systems research, our effort is focused on understanding emergent social practices through a practice lens framed in technology constituting structures and cultural artifacts. Through a cross case design we formulate the argument that community results from the history of co-engagement of actors in a joint field, while in virtual settings, it is recurrent interactions that lead to an act of communication or the enactment of practice. Our main conclusions are (a) online social practices are shaped through cycles of ‘constructing – negotiating – reconstructing’ cultural artifacts in virtual settings, and (b) practice-oriented toolkits designed to support cycles of ‘constructing – negotiating – reconstructing’ cultural artifacts offer new grounds for understanding innovative engagement by virtual communities.
Context and Explanation in e-Collaborative Work
Authors: Brézillon Patrick
Published: May 2011

In a face-to-face collaboration, participants use a large part of contextual information to translate, interpret and understand others’ utterances by using contextual cues like mimics, voice modulation, movement of a hand, etc. Such a shared context constitutes the collaboration space of the virtual community. Explanation generation, one the one hand, allows to reinforce the shared context, and, in the other hand, relies on the existing shared context. The situation is more critical in e-collaboration than in face-to-face collaboration because new contextual cues are to be used. This chapter presents the interests of making explicit context and explanation generation in e-collaboration and which types of new paradigms exist then.
Intelligent LMS with an Agent that Learns from Log Data in a Virtual Community
Authors: Ueno Maomi
Published: May 2011

This study describes an agent that acquires domain knowledge related to the content from a learning history log database in a learning community and automatically generates motivational messages for the learner. The unique features of this system are as follows: The agent builds a learner model automatically by applying the decision tree model. The agent predicts a learner’s final status (Failed; Abandon; Successful; or Excellent) using the learner model and his/her current learning history log data. The constructed learner model becomes more exact as the amount of data accumulated in the database increases. Furthermore, the agent compares a learner’s learning processes with “Excellent” status learners’ learning processes stored in the database, diagnoses the learner’s learning processes, and generates adaptive instructional messages for the learner. A comparison between a class of students that used the system and one that did not demonstrates the effectiveness of the system.
Understanding and Using Virtual Ethnography in Virtual Environments
Authors: Hancock Robert , Crain-Dorough Mindy , Parton Becky , Oescher Jeff
Published: May 2011

This chapter proposes to outline a process of virtual ethnography that combines emic and etic methods of data gathering adapted to the virtual context to provide a ‘true’ (Richardson, 2000) accounting of the social constructs inherent in the virtual world. The first section of this chapter discusses the unique characteristics of virtual ethnography when used to explore virtual environments such as Second Life or MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. The second section presents some of the methodological issues related to conducting such research. Finally, the third section offers for consideration some unique challenges related to the application of such methods. Two concerns are discussed: 1) identifying an understanding the phenomenological structures unique to a particular virtual environment and 2) the implications of such knowledge with regard to the design of new virtual educational environments.
An Approach for Analysing Interactions within Virtual Learning Communities
Authors: Repetto Manuela
Published: May 2011

The model is organised in five categories and about thirty indicators and it can be applied through the development of a coding scheme, a self-assessment questionnaire for learners, and an assessment grid for tutors. Triangulation of data obtained from these tools and integration of them with ethnographic analysis make this approach for analysing interactions a reliable means to allow assessment and self-regulation of learners, while exploring the nature of learning within virtual learning environments (VLEs).
Deciding to Use ICT in the Arab Culture
Authors: Fakhfakh Sonda
Published: May 2011

Compared to the Western world, the Arab world endures a lack of ICT use and a scarcity in software production and services. One of the explanations that were advanced in order to determine the reasons of these deficiencies is the Arab world’s cultural context. In this chapter, which reports on a doctoral research, we focus on two dominant values which are supposed to be descriptive of the Arab world: obedience to authority and collectivism. We examine their hypothesized influence on ICT use within an Arab context (Tunisia) and at an individual level. Data collection was carried out on 378 Tunisian students in three quasi-experimental settings measuring the degree of obedience, and by a pilot questionnaire determining, among other things, the level of collectivism. While the obedience to the authority figures appears to positively affect the probability of technology use in the first experiment, the rationality seems to influence choices in the second and third experiments, and to deny any pressure of the foreign nationality of the figure. The results of this study also reveal that all participants have a collectivistic tendency. However, the influence of collectivism is found to be mixed.