bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Left-Right Asymmetries and other Common Anatomical Variants of Temporomandibular Articular Surfaces
Authors: Scafoglieri Aldo , Van Roy Peter , Provyn Steven , Tresignie Jonathan , Clarys Jan Pieter
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, the authors describe systematically left-right asymmetries and other common anatomical variants of the temporomandibular articular surfaces as they can appear in daily clinical practice. Digital photography and macroscopic observation were used to evaluate morphologic features of TMJ surfaces of elderly subjects at 100 glenoid fossae and articular eminences of dried skull bases, and at 100 dried mandibles. Mandibular condyle shape in the horizontal plane and in the frontal plane were evaluated using a standardized classification devised by Öberg et al. (1971). Degenerative form and surface changes of the TMJ were assessed using a scale devised by Wedel et al. (1978). The antero-posterior and medio-lateral diameter of the temporomandibular articular surfaces were measured using a digital caliper. The orientation was determined using a clinical goniometer. Morphologic left-right asymmetries of the temporomandibular articular surfaces were frequently present in mandibular condyles and in glenoid fossae. In general, mandibular condyles showed more often morphologic left-right asymmetries than glenoid fossae. Anatomical variants of the articular surfaces of the left and right mandibular condyles resulted from differences in shape. The majority of the articular surfaces had an oblong horizontal outline and a rounded frontal outline. One fifth of the mandibular condyles showed pear-shaped horizontal outlines and flat or ridge-shaped frontal outlines. An important incidence of left-right asymmetries and other common anatomical variants of the temporomandibular articular joint surfaces must be considered at observation and therapy of the temporomandibular joint; arthrokinematic functional consequences may result.
A Semantic Similarity Analysis for Data Mappings between Heterogeneous XML Schemas
Authors: Kim Jaewook , Peng Yun
Published: May 2011

One of the most critical steps to integrating heterogeneous e-business applications using different XML schemas is schema mapping, which is known to be costly and error-prone. Past research on schema mapping has not made full use of semantic information imbedded in the hierarchical structure of the XML schema. This chapter investigates the existing schema mapping approaches and proposes an innovative semantic similarity analysis approach to facilitate XML schema mapping, merging and reuse. Several key innovations are introduced to better utilize available semantic information. These innovations include: (1) a layered structure analysis of XML schemas, (2) layer-specific semantic similarity measures, and (3) an efficient semantic similarity analysis using parallel and distributed computing technologies. Experimental results using two different schemas from a real world application demonstrate that the proposed approach is valuable for addressing difficulties in XML schema mapping.
Process Mediation
Authors: Vaculín Roman , Neruda Roman , Sycara Katia
Published: May 2011

In this chapter the problem of interoperability of incompatible business processes consisting of semantically annotated Web services is addressed, proposing a (semi-) automated solution, called process mediation, that analyzes the potentially incompatible process models of service requesters and service providers, identifying all incompatibilities, and automatically synthesizing reconciliation plans that can be used at runtime for resolving the identified incompatibilities. Compared to the previous research, the main novelty of this work is its strong focus on dynamic scenarios common for process-based service-oriented systems operating in open or semi-open dynamic environments. The chapter covers techniques for automated incompatibilities detection and resolution, service discovery in the process mediation context, techniques for monitoring, and techniques for fault handling and recovery. Finally, it discusses the lessons learned and provides an outlook for future research directions.
E-Business Interoperability and Collaboration
Authors: Kipp Alexander , Schubert Lutz
Published: May 2011

Current e-business frameworks lack the capability of abstracting the underlying resource infrastructures in order to allow for seamless integration and thus smooth interaction between business entities. Mainly, such frameworks are unable to abstract human, as well as computing resources in a fashion that allows seamless integration into high-level distributed workflow descriptions. Usually, workflows or distributed processes are defined by managers with little background in IT specifications and platforms. Ideally, this should not be necessary at all; however, current solutions do not provide such abstraction support. In this chapter an approach is presented that will overcome this issue allowing for a high-level resource virtualization approach, in particular enabling the integration of human as well as computational resources within high-level workflow descriptions in a SOA fashion.
Approaches for Evaluating the Conformance and Interoperability of Ontology Engineering Tools
Authors: García-Castro Raúl , Gómez-Pérez Asunción
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents two characteristics of ontology engineering tools that have a high relevance for the application of these tools, namely, their conformance and interoperability. It also discusses two methods for evaluating the conformance and interoperability of ontology engineering tools and the test data that can be used in such evaluations.
Semantic Interoperability Enablement in E-Business Modeling
Authors: Fengel Janina
Published: May 2011

Businesses all over the world are faced with the challenge of having to flexibly react to change and to dynamically work with varying business partners. For establishing electronic business, the underlying processes and subsequent IT-support need to be described clearly. For doing so, conceptual modeling has become an indispensable means. Models describe interrelated business objects and activities, expressed in a certain modeling language with elements labeled in natural language. If the decision for the labels is not dominated by rules, models are semantically heterogeneous, not only concerning their modeling language, but more importantly, concerning their domain language, making their comparison or integration a non-trivial task. For its alleviation Semantic-Web technologies are applied. Transforming legacy models of different types into ontologies allows for reusing and connecting the domain facts modeled. Here, the novel method of semantic model referencing developed for this task is used, and this chapter will show how it can provide the basis for semantic integration.
HLA Supported, Federation Oriented Enterprise Interoperability
Authors: Zacharewicz Gregory , Chen David , Vallespir Bruno
Published: May 2011

This chapter aims at presenting some future trends given in the final results of the INTEROP Network of Excellence (Chen et al., 2007) that prospect ways to support federation oriented enterprise interoperability. At first, a detailed definition of enterprise interoperability is given and the relevant concepts are structured in an Enterprise interoperability framework. A review will show two early collaborative interoperable platforms developed in the 90’s. Then, a review of more recent solutions to establish interoperability, which aim to solve previous shortcomings, is proposed. The study in this chapter focused on ongoing researches for solutions based on the High Level Architecture (HLA) at the technological level because it tends to provide the desired properties. This standard was originally developed for military interoperability of large simulators with real environment. Indeed, the HLA standard has been successfully transposed for enterprise interoperability at the implementation level, reusing modeling and simulation developed through years of experiences in distributed systems to manage causality, confidentiality and interoperability. The presentation of HLA platforms will be followed by a synthetic comparison of the various approaches. The state-of-the-art is concluded by presenting MDA (Model Driven Architecture) methodology which supports the transformation of enterprise models from conceptual level to models for execution or simulation and the emerging MDI (Model Driven Interoperability) methodology. From that postulate, it is proposed to rationalize the development lifecycle of distributed enterprise models by merging the HLA FEDEP and the MDA / MDI methodology to a unified lifecycle that will guide the development of distributed enterprises models from conceptual level to the implementation of an HLA compliant solution. At the end, and as a perspective, some discussion is given on methodology to facilitate the reuse of legacy platforms in new interoperable system of systems.
Understanding Consumers’ Behaviour when Using a Mobile Phone as a Converged Device
Authors: Chang Po-Chien
Published: May 2011

This research aims at developing an empirical model to explore the factors that influence consumers’ use of mobile phones as converged devices. The use of mobile phones as converged devices refers to the utility of the various functions and services embedded in mobile phones, such as PIM, e-mail, entertainment, and commerce. The exploratory work draws from in-depth interviews and theories to identify some of the critical factors that drive consumer to use a mobile phone for various functions. The interview data was transcribe and analysed to construct a model. The finding shows that although Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and other studies on mobile phones have been used to explain consumers’ adoption of different information technologies, they need further enrichment when applied to multi-functional (or converged) technologies and dynamic use contexts. Therefore, the result provides a significant step towards a better understanding of consumer behaviour in the context of technology convergence.
A Bluetooth User Positioning System for Locating, Informing, and Extracting Information using Data Mining Techniques
Authors: Garofalakis John , Mettouris Christos
Published: May 2011

Until now, user positioning systems were focused mainly on providing users with exact location information. This makes them computational heavy while often demanding specialized software and hardware from mobile devices. In this paper we present a new user positioning system. The system is intended for use with m-commerce, by sending informative and advertising messages to users, after locating their position indoors. It is based exclusively on Bluetooth. The positioning method we use, while efficient is nevertheless simple. The m-commerce based messages, can be received without additional software or hardware installed. Moreover, the location data collected by our system are further processed using data mining techniques, in order to provide statistical information. After discussing the available technologies and methods for implementing indoor user positioning applications, we shall focus on implementation issues, as well as the evaluation of our system after testing it. Finally, conclusions are extracted.
ContextRank
Authors: Arabo Abdullahi , Shi Qi , Merabti Madjid
Published: May 2011

Contextual information and Identity Management (IM) is of paramount importance in the growing use of portable mobile devices for sharing information and communication between emergency services in pervasive ad-hoc environments. Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANets) play a vital role within such a context. The concept of ubiquitous/pervasive computing is intrinsically tied to wireless communications. Apart from many remote services, proximity services (context-awareness) are also widely available, and people rely on numerous identities to access these services. The inconvenience of these identities creates significant security vulnerability as well as user discomfort, especially from the network and device point of view in MANet environments. The need of displaying only relevant contextual information (CI) with explicit user control arises in energy constraint devices and in dynamic situations. We propose an approach that allows users to define policies dynamically and a ContextRank Algorithm which will detect the usability of CI. The proposed approach is not only efficient in computation but also gives users total control and makes policy specification more expressive. In this Chapter, the authors address the issue of dynamic policy specification, usage of contextual information to facilitate IM and present a User-centered and Context-aware Identity Management (UCIM) framework for MANets.
A QoS Aware Framework to Support Minimum Energy Data Aggregation and Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Kumar Neeraj , Patel R.B.
Published: May 2011

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), the sensor nodes obtain data and communicate its data to a centralized node called base station (BS) using intermediate gateway nodes (GN). Because sensors are battery powered, they are highly energy constrained. Data aggregation can be used to combine data of several sensors into a single message, thus reducing sensor communication costs and energy consumption. In this article, the authors propose a QoS aware framework to support minimum energy data aggregation and routing in WSNs. To minimize the energy consumption, a new metric is defined for the evaluation of the path constructed from source to destination. The proposed QoS framework supports the dual goal of load balancing and serving as an admission control mechanism for incoming traffic at a particular sensor node. The results show that the proposed framework supports data aggregation with less energy consumption than earlier strategies.
The Soveria.it Project
Authors: Iazzolino Gianpaolo , Pietrantonio Rinaldo
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes a best practice of e-government and e-democracy implemented in Southern Italy, the Soveria.it project. The project was part of a wider strategy pursued by the local administration of Soveria Mannelli started in the early 1990s to promote the use of information and communication technology. Ultimate goal of the strategy was to turn a small and less technologically developed town into a modern fully wired information technology-city. This case is relevant not only for the change produced from a technological, bureaucratic, and social point of view, but also for some of the limits encountered. The latter demonstrate how a too heavily top-down approach can be a weakness for stimulating the growth of less developed areas and provides a possible solution for it – i.e., a better understanding of the the society’s needs and a stronger partnership with civil society and local firms. The chapter analyzes the project origins, its technological and organizational aspects, its impacts and its limits. It then summarizes the main lesson learned.
Gender Evaluation of Rural E-Governance in India
Authors: Anupama Saxena
Published: May 2011

In the present chapter, the author seeks to identify the existing gender gaps in rural e-governance in India and has attempted to explore the factors responsible for these gaps with reference to a rural e-governance scheme in one of the most economically and socially challenged state of India as an illustration to support some of the points sought to be made in the paper. The author argues that in Indian context, where rural women are already less visible in the public sphere due to socio–cultural factors and men already dominate, e-governance is more available and accessible to men. Hence to avoid the emergence of a gender based digital divide in rural governance that would further marginalize the rural women, it is necessary that the potential of ICTs is exploited in such a manner as to address the existing gender issues in rural governance, which are still obstructing women’s way to participate equally in the process. Women’s abilities, needs, perceptions and building women’s capacities to use the ICTs are other important factors that should be given due consideration while planning for rural e- governance to make it meaningful to women.
Integrating Electronic Government and Public Administration Reform Strategies
Authors: Ojo Adegboyega , Janowski Tomasz
Published: May 2011

Better integration of Electronic Government (EGOV) and Public Administration Reform (PAR) strategies has been identified by global EGOV benchmark reports as one of the contemporary issues to address in improving the outcomes of EGOV programs. This chapter presents a technique for aligning EGOV and PAR strategies based on the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) of Henderson and Venkatraman. By treating EGOV and PAR strategies as two different alignment domains, similar to organizational and technological domains respectively, we re-frame the original SAM to address our specific alignment needs. Our model provides a procedure and metrics for analyzing: (1) alignment between a pair of EGOV and PAR strategies and (2) the internal coherency of an EGOV strategy. We discuss our experience in applying this approach in Macao and conclude with how it may be used in aligning EGOV with other strategies such as those related to governance and development.
Danish eGovernment Success Factors
Authors: Nielsen Morten Meyerhoff
Published: May 2011

As illustrated by the specific eGovernment strategies, initiatives and good practice examples Danish authorities, at all levels of government, posses a number of strengths equipping them well for further digitisation and a move to Government 2.0. Strengths which include: Well developed strategies, goals and activities; single point of entry initiatives; attended and aligned development, common standards and enterprise architecture; joint development, strategies, corporation and marketing; guidelines and methodologies developed specifically to optimise the use of ICT etc.
E-Government and Competitiveness in Latin America
Authors: Valenti Pablo
Published: May 2011

A government’s service provision to enterprises via electronic means has a significant impact on the productivity levels of such country’s economy. One of the tax procedures with the greatest impact on economic activity and government capacity to enforce compliance with tax obligations is the use of invoices. The electronic invoice is the digital equivalent of the traditional paper invoice. In recent years, several Latin American countries have begun to adopt the electronic invoice. The modernization of this tax procedure has had a great impact in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of tax administration and in turn has fostered business development.
Single Nucleotide Polymorphism and its Application in Mapping Loci Involved in Developing Human Diseases and Traits
Authors: Ji Rui-Ru
Published: May 2011

Common diseases or traits in humans are often influenced by complex interactions among multiple genes as well as environmental and lifestyle factors rather than being attributable to a genetic variation within a single gene. Identification of genes that confer disease susceptibility can be facilitated by studying DNA markers such as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associated with a disease trait. Genome-wide association approaches offers a systematic analysis of the association of hundreds of thousands of SNPs with a quantitative complex trait. This method has been successfully applied to a wide variety of common human diseases and traits, and has generated valuable findings that have improved the understanding of the genetic basis of many complex traits. This chapter outlines the general mapping process and methods, highlights the success stories, and describes some limitations and challenges that lie ahead.
Cancer and Signaling Pathway Deregulation
Authors: Liu Yingchun
Published: May 2011

Cancer is a complex disease that is associated with a variety of genetic aberrations. The diagnosis and treatment of cancer have been difficult because of poor understanding of cancer and lack of effective cancer therapies. Many studies have investigated cancer from different perspectives. It remains unclear what molecular mechanisms have triggered and sustained the transition of normal cells to malignant tumor cells in cancer patients. This chapter gives an introduction to the genetic aberrations associated with cancer and a brief view of the topics key to decode cancer, from identifying clinically relevant cancer subtypes to uncovering the pathways deregulated in particular subtypes of cancer.
Linking Interactome to Disease
Authors: Garcia Maxime , Stahl Olivier , Finetti Pascal , Birnbaum Daniel , Bertucci François , Bidaut Ghislain
Published: May 2011

The introduction of high-throughput gene expression profiling technologies (DNA microarrays) in molecular biology and their expected applications to the clinic have allowed the design of predictive signatures linked to a particular clinical condition or patient outcome in a given clinical setting. However, it has been shown that such signatures are prone to several problems: (i) they are heavily unstable and linked to the set of patients chosen for training; (ii) data topology is problematic with regard to the data dimensionality (too many variables for too few samples); (iii) diseases such as cancer are provoked by subtle misregulations which cannot be readily detected by current analysis methods. To find a predictive signature generalizable for multiple datasets, a strategy of superimposition of a large scale of protein-protein interaction data (human interactome) was devised over several gene expression datasets (a total of 2,464 breast cancer tumors were integrated), to find discriminative regions in the interactome (subnetworks) predicting metastatic relapse in breast cancer. This method, Interactome-Transcriptome Integration (ITI), was applied to several breast cancer DNA microarray datasets and allowed the extraction of a signature constituted by 119 subnetworks. All subnetworks have been stored in a relational database and linked to Gene Ontology and NCBI EntrezGene annotation databases for analysis. Exploration of annotations has shown that this set of subnetworks reflects several biological processes linked to cancer and is a good candidate for establishing a network-based signature for prediction of metastatic relapse in breast cancer.
Connecting Microbial Population Genetics with Microbial Pathogenesis Engineering Microfluidic Cell Arrays for High-throughput Interrogation of Host-Pathogen Interaction
Authors: Sethu Palaniappan , Putty Kalyani , Lian Yongsheng , Kalia Awdhesh
Published: May 2011

A bacterial species typically includes heterogeneous collections of genetically diverse isolates. How genetic diversity within bacterial populations influences the clinical outcome of infection remains mostly indeterminate. In part, this is due to a lack of technologies that can enable contemporaneous systems-level interrogation of host-pathogen interaction using multiple, genetically diverse bacterial strains. This chapter presents a prototype microfluidic cell array (MCA) that allows simultaneous elucidation of molecular events during infection of human cells in a semi-automated fashion. It shows that infection of human cells with up to sixteen genetically diverse bacterial isolates can be studied simultaneously. The versatility of MCAs is enhanced by incorporation of a gradient generator that allows interrogation of host-pathogen interaction under four different concentrations of any given environmental variable at the same time. Availability of high throughput MCAs should foster studies that can determine how differences in bacterial gene pools and concentration-dependent environmental variables affect the outcome of host-pathogen interaction.
Flexible and dynamic SLAs management in Service Oriented Architectures
Authors: Di Modica Giuseppe , Tomarchio Orazio
Published: May 2011

The increasing adoption of service oriented architectures across different administrative domains forces service providers to use effective mechanisms and strategies of resource management in order to guarantee the quality levels their customers demand during service provisioning. Service level agreements (SLA) are the most common mechanism used to establish agreements on the quality of a service (QoS) between a service provider and a service consumer. However, the proposed solutions have not been taken up by business stakeholders due to the low flexibility and usability together with the lack of interoperability. Any framework for SLA management should address several issues, such as SLA modeling and representation, SLA publication and discovery, protocols for establishing and negotiating SLAs, SLA monitoring and enforcement. This chapter addresses the issues related to the SLA management in service composition scenarios, which impose stronger requirements about flexibility of SLAs, and presents a framework for the management of dynamic SLAs.
Configuration of Non-Functional Properties in Embedded Operating Systems
Authors: Hofer Wanja , Sincero Julio , Schröder-Preikschat Wolfgang , Lohmann Daniel
Published: May 2011

In embedded operating systems (OSes), non-functional properties like reliability, performance, or memory footprint are of special importance. State-of-the-art OS product lines focus on the configurability of functional characteristics of the system. This chapter proposes an approach that aims at also making non-functional properties indirectly configurable and maintainable by the system configurator. In order to reach this goal, the CiAO OS product line used here has configurable architectural properties, which have no functional influence on the target system, but instead bear an impact on its non-functional properties. Additionally, the chapter develops a feedback approach that gains information about the non-functional properties of an already configured system to assist further configuration decisions, and presents and details the CiAO approach and evaluates it using two case studies from the CiAO operating system.
Aggregating Functional and Non-Functional Properties to Identify Service Compositions
Authors: Blanco Eduardo , Cardinale Yudith , Vidal María-Esther
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents an aggregated metric to estimate the quality of service compositions, and two algorithms to select the best compositions based on this metric. Both algorithms follow different strategies to prune the space of possibilities while minimizing the evaluation cost. The first algorithm, DP-BF, combines a best first strategy with a dynamic-programming technique. The second one, PT-SAM, adapts a Petri-net unfolding algorithm and tries to find a desired marking from an initial state. An experimental study was conducted in order to evaluate the behavior of DP-BF and PT-SAM compared to SAM and to the exhaustive solution. The experiments show that the quality of the compositions identified by the presented algorithms is close to the optimal solution produced by the exhaustive algorithm, while the optimization time is close to the time required by SAM to identify a solution.
Prediction of Non-Functional Properties of Service-Based Systems
Authors: Taweel Adel , Tyson Gareth
Published: May 2011

From the outset, service-based systems offer several advantages, including the promise of shortening the development life cycle, reducing the costs of software development and faster utilisation of recent technical improvements in the software industry in terms of capability, reliability, compatibility, performance, and so forth. However, this is rarely realised in practice. An important issue of service-based systems is that they are likely to be (or perhaps already being) used in domains where human life and/or economic loss are possible and the need for a highly reliable system is a must. However, would it be possible to build reliable service-based systems that meet such domains’ requirements? Does it necessarily mean that composing a system from highly reliable services produce a highly reliable system? Is it possible to predict quality attributes of a service-based system from its services before building it? In this chapter, the complexity of this issue is highlighted, focusing on reliability, in an attempt to answer some of these questions. The chapter outlines various approaches that attempt to address this issue, and proposes a possible way forward for predicting the reliability of service-based systems from its individual services.
The Use of Computer Games in Education
Authors: Hainey Thomas , Connolly Thomas , Stansfield Mark , Boyle Liz
Published: May 2011

Games-based learning has captured the interest of educationalists as it is perceived as a potentially highly motivating approach for learning in a diverse number of areas. Despite this, there is a dearth of empirical evidence in the GBL literature, and confusion as to where games-based learning fits in relation to games, simulations, and serious games. This chapter will present a review of the current state of the GBL empirical literature, but will particularly focus on the fields of software engineering, Information Systems, and computer science. This chapter will also take into account the advantages and disadvantages that have to be considered when selecting a GBL approach.
Learning with Video Games
Authors: St-Pierre René
Published: May 2011

Playing video games stimulates affective, cognitive, and communicational processes, thus facilitating the emergence of knowledge. In order to support this idea, this chapter first historically contextualizes the evolution of educational video games and provides some basic classification of genres. Then it identifies the major theoretical currents that may inspire teachers and designers to develop learning scenarios adapted to educational video games. It also describes some interesting examples of the educational usage of video games by the general public and of video games specifically created for a particular pedagogical context. Several arguments are presented to stimulate discussions around motivation, evalution, and learning aspects of educational video games usage and design. With the intention of supporting an approach that responds to user needs, some models identifying user profiles are also described. Finally, this chapter presents general design specifications for successful development of educational video games projects.
Motivating By Design
Authors: Toprac Paul
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes how to design a motivating educational game for middle school students using digital-game based learning techniques in a problem-based learning environment. Specifically, The Alien Rescue Game (TARG), a problem-based digital-game based learning program, is compared to commercial digital games to determine how to design a motivating educational game. Results showed that students believed that their interest in learning science was influenced by their self-efficacy, attainment value, intrinsic value, utility value, cost perceptions, and knowledge. Furthermore, these same influences affected players’ perceptions of and experience with commercial digital games. Thus, these motivational constructs should be considered when developing educational games, with self-efficacy, intrinsic value, knowledge, and cost being the most important based. Intrinsic motivation sources were found to be control, challenge, immersion, and socializing. Considerations and implications for the design of motivating digital game-based learning programs, recommendations, and future research directions are presented.
As You Like It
Authors: Linek Stephanie B.
Published: May 2011

Game-based learning is based on the idea of using the motivational potential of video games within the educational context. Thus, when designing an educational game, not only the fun and game play but also the instructional efficiency of the educational game is of pivotal importance. This chapter provides an overview on media psychological approaches and findings that could be helpful for understanding and creating an educational game. Thereby, a special focus lies on the benefit of an interdisciplinary approach that allows for the integration of an appropriate scientific base from psychology with best-practice game design.
Effective Game use in Neurorehabilitation
Authors: Perry Joel C. , Andureu Julien , Cavallaro Francesca Irene , Veneman Jan , Carmien Stefan , Keller Thierry
Published: May 2011

Games possess highly favourable attributes to bring to the field of neurorehabilitation by means of providing motivation and goal-directed exercise tasks. For the use of games to be effectively integrated in the commercial and clinical rehabilitation marketplace, it is necessary that a unified and comprehensive rehabilitation gaming platform be developed following principles of user-centered design. The needed platform must contain compatible modules for the planning and execution of treatment as well as progress assessment, and its development must take into consideration the needs and viewpoints of the involved stakeholders and the required supporting factors, including: patient, prescriber, therapist, care-provider, family, clinic, as well as supporting scientific evidence, technology, and policy. A proposed platform and needed components are explained and an example prototype rehabilitation platform is provided for discussion.
Playful Pedagogies
Authors: Williamson Ben , Sandford Richard
Published: May 2011

Game-based learning is proliferating in formal school classrooms, yet to date there is relatively little evidence to demonstrate its benefits. This chapter provides analysis from empirical studies of computer games use in authentic classroom settings. It explores game-based learning as the result of specific game-based pedagogies that are being developed and practised by increasing numbers of classroom teachers in UK schools. In particular, the chapter focuses on the ways in which practising classroom teachers discuss and describe game-based learning in relation to their curricular intentions and their less formal cultural assumptions about the relevance of gaming in learners’ new media ecologies outside of school. The chapter argues that teachers have developed a cultural discourse and a curricular discourse for articulating game-based learning. These two modes for understanding game-based learning are described, and data from two studies are discussed to indicate how these understandings translate into classroom activity.
Promoting Sexual Health Education via Gaming
Authors: Chib Arul
Published: May 2011

The spread of contagious STDs, HIV/AIDS, and unintended pregnancies amongst marginalized youth in developing nations is a source of concern. This study examines the use of an educational interactive game to educate Peruvian youth about sexual and reproductive health. 102 teenagers living in the barrios of Lima played an interactive educational multimedia game. The research design consisted of pre- and post-intervention surveys. The study utilized social cognitive theory to determine the influence of prior knowledge, self-efficacy and game-playing on respondents attitudes. In this particular case, prior attitudes, knowledge, resistance to peer-pressure and game-playing were significant predictors of attitudes towards sexual health. Implications and strategies for teachers utilizing interactive games for promotion of sexual education are discussed.
Practical Applications of Serious Games in Education
Authors: Axe Helen , Routledge Helen
Published: May 2011

There exists a growing body of evidence which supports the use of serious games in education: highlighting increased motivation, engagement, and comprehension among users. However a lack of awareness and understanding of how these games can be used in the classroom is a key barrier to adoption. This chapter will share the success stories and lessons learned from the use of serious games, both in formal education and informal education with the goal to create an increased awareness and understanding among educationalists leading to the creation of a new ecology of learning, fostering collaboration, engagement, and innovation.
A Study on Whether Digital Games can Effect Spatial Reasoning Skills
Authors: Corradini Andrea
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores the use of a set of 2D recreational puzzle games for training basic spatial skills such as tilting, rotating and flipping. An experiment was carried out with twenty-four human subjects. Initially, the subjects’ spatial capabilities were assessed by having them play two games which require spatial manipulations and reasoning. Following this initial assessment, subjects were split into three groups. The members of group 1 acted as the control group and were not required to practice on any spatial tasks. The individuals in group 2 and 3 were instead invited to take part in a training phase where they had to play with a set of math puzzle games of varying difficulties. Members of group 2 played the games by carrying out spatial instructions as imparted by a research assistant. Members of group 3 played the games individually and without any restrictions. The subjects of group 2 and 3 are referred to as trained subjects and executor subjects, respectively. By the end of training, all subjects were asked to repeat the initial assessment procedure in a control session. The comparison of the data collected during the control session with that collected during the initial assessment, indicates that both trained players and executors performed much better in terms of spatial capabilities than the subjects in the control group. Specifically, trained players and executors made fewer spatial manipulative errors and successfully completed spatial tasks faster than their peers in the control group.
Collaborative Learning
Authors: Rahman Hakikur
Published: May 2011

Learning is considered as one of the essential tool to empower a community. Over the past three decades, technology mediated learning has been recognized as an alternate channel strengthening the traditional forms of education. However, the organizational learning at the peripheries and capacity development at the grass roots remain almost unattended, despite recognized global efforts under many bottom-up empowerment sequences. Social components at large within the transitional and developing economies remain outside the enclosure of universal access to information and thus access to knowledge has always been constricted to equitably compete with the global knowledge economy. Despite challenges in designing and implementing collaborative learning techniques and technologies, this article would like to emphasize on introducing collaborative learning at community level and improve the knowledge capacity at the grass roots for their empowerment. The article, further, investigates the relationship of collaborative learning towards improved e-governance.
Enhancing Accessibility to Information Systems by Dynamic User Interfaces
Authors: Richter Stefan , Kuhn Norbert , Naumann Stefan , Schmidt Michael
Published: May 2011

It exploits standard document formats based on XML and web service technology to achieve independency from software and hardware platforms. This is also helpful for conventional governmental processes because people within the group of interest stated above often also have problems to access non-digitized information, for instance when they have to read announcements within public administration offices.
Users’ Perception of Internet Characteristics in the Academic Environment
Authors: Almobarraz Abdullah
Published: May 2011

This paper examines the characteristics of internet that motivate faculty members of Imam Muhammad Bin Saud University (IMSU) in Saudi Arabia to utilize the Internet in their research and instructional activities. The framework of the study was the attributes of innovations offered by Rogers. A modified instrument was adopted to collect the data and measure the attributes. The result revealed that the majority of IMSU faulty members used the Internet for research and academic activities twice a month or less, indicating a low Internet adoption rate. Multiple regression analysis showed that all attributes of innovation individually predicted Internet adoption. The combination of all attributes indicated the model could predict Internet adoption among faculty.
Instrumented Usability Analysis for Mobile Devices
Authors: Crossan Andrew , Murray-Smith Roderick , Brewster Stephen , Musizza Bojan
Published: May 2011

Instrumented usability analysis involves the use of sensors during a usability study which provide observations from which the evaluator can infer details of the context of use, specific activities or disturbances. This is particularly useful for the evaluation of mobile and wearable devices, which are currently difficult to test realistically without constraining users in unnatural ways. To illustrate the benefits of such an approach, we present a study of touch-screen selection of on-screen targets, whilst walking and sitting, using a PocketPC instrumented with an accelerometer. From the accelerometer data the user’s gait behaviour is inferred, allowing us to link performance to gait phase angle, showing there were phase regions with significantly lower error and variability. The article provides examples of how information acquired via sensors gives us quantitatively measurable information about the detailed interactions taking place when mobile, allowing designers to test and revise design decisions, based on realistic user activity.
Lessons out of Chaos
Authors: Glascock Anthony P. , Kutzik David M.
Published: May 2011

The lessons learned from nine years of the testing of a behavioral monitoring system—the Everyday Living Monitoring System (ELMS) — outside the laboratory in the real world are discussed. Initially, the real world was perceived as messy and filled with noise that just delayed and complicated the testing and development of the system. However, over time, it became clear that without embracing the chaos of the world and listening very carefully to its noise, the monitoring system could not be successfully moved from the laboratory to the real world. Specific lessons learned at each stage of development and testing are discussed, as well as the challenges that are associated with the actual commercialization of the system.
How It Started
Authors: Koblentz Evan
Published: May 2011

Internet access on cellular phones, after emerging as a new technology in the mid-1990s, is now a thriving activity despite the global economic recession. IDC reported smartphone sales of 1.18 billion units in 2008 (IDC, 2009), compared to the unconnected personal digital assistants approaching merely 1 million units per quarter in the second half of 2003. However, the concept of using handheld devices for wide-area data applications began 25 years prior to the beginning of the end of PDAs.
Diversity and Design
Authors: Holley Debbie , Oliver Martin
Published: May 2011

Higher Education Institutions have worked to make equality of access to electronic curriculum resources the ‘status quo’. However, there is evidence that simply providing e-learning – no matter how well intentioned – is insufficient to address the problems that students are experiencing. A three stage model has been developed through analysis of students’ learning experiences at an inner-city, post-1992 University to illustrate how students have to negotiate their engagement with Higher Education. The model provides a way of mapping aspects of course design to different portraits of students, enabling students to be considered as high, medium and low risk in terms of retention. The value of this model for design and analysis of courses is located within the debate of how inclusive business schools curricula are for a diverse student body.
ICTs and Social Inclusion
Authors: Marr Ana , Yan Lin
Published: May 2011

Microfinance, defined as the provision of small-scale financial services for low-income populations, has widely been regarded in alleviating poverty and facilitating social inclusion. While much has been debated on the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on social inclusion, paucity remains on how ICTs contribute to microfinance in developing countries. Social inclusion, particularly in the sense of increasing access to microfinance, is important to entrepreneurs in developing countries, especially among women entrepreneurs in rural areas. A major challenge is to understand how ICTs contribute to microfinance, both in terms of reaching to a large population, and in providing efficient and effective services. This chapter investigates the role ICTs play in facilitating microfinance in developing countries. To do so, the current literature on ICTs and social inclusion and the literature on microfinance are reviewed in order to provide an integrated conceptual framework on how ICTs contribute to microfinance in enhancing social inclusion in developing countries.
Enterprise Risk Management
Authors: Stair Gary A.
Published: May 2011

How a company successfully implements an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program, to identify and manage potential risks, can mean the difference between financial freedom and financial despair. The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) guidelines, a voluntary private-sector organization in the United States, has developed internal control guidelines to provide guidance to executive management and governance entities on critical aspects of organizational governance, business ethics, internal control, fraud, and financial reporting. This chapter will discuss an approach to build an ERM implementation plan within a pharmaceutical company by outlining the responsibilities and influences of industry participants, sales forces, middle-management and senior leadership and the ways in which they focus on monitoring and developing the risk mitigation process. The influences of technologies are integrated and new directions, such as e-media and e-detailing (Virtual Sales Representatives) are also explored.
E-Business/ICT and Carbon Emissions
Authors: Yi Lan
Published: May 2011

The high-tech industry, its associated Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and subsequent e-business and Internet applications, have had profound effects on our economic lives, social development and environment. This revolutionary change is not only appreciated by computer gurus, but also by private and public organisations. This chapter attempts to focus on the relationship between the e-business/ICT and carbon emission–one of the causes of global warming. Aspects to be considered include energy consumption and CO2 emission associated with the Internet throughout its lifecycle-from manufacturing of Internet equipment/hardware to its usage and final disposal. On the other hand how Internet technology facilitates environment management and benefits industries via, for example Carbon Trading, will be discussed. The aim of this chapter is to provide a clarification and comprehensive picture of the carbon impact of ICT/e-business to private and public organisations as well as individuals, especially some “behind-the-scene” type of facts. Therefore environmental factors can be taken into account for more informed decision-making during business conduction.
Preparing Teachers to Teach Online
Authors: Sales Gregory C.
Published: May 2011

The vast majority of today’s teachers were never taught using computers. They have no firsthand experience using computers for teaching and learning and they may even believe computers are a threat to their jobs. Helping these teachers to become effective online teachers requires a systematic multi-layered approach to professional development. First, teachers have to be convinced of their institution’s commitment to online instruction. Then, they need support and guidance as they move through various levels of understanding and concern about what online learning is and its role and value in education. Finally, teachers need to develop competencies that will enable them to be successful online teachers. This chapter presents a brief background on the use of technology in education, research on approaches to professional development, and specific information on the competencies required to be an effective online teacher.