bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Micro-Frauds
Authors: Wall David. S.
Published: September 2010

During the past two decades, network technologies have shaped just about every aspect of our lives, not least the ways by which we are now victimized. From the criminal’s point of view, networked technologies are a gift. The technologies act as a force multiplier of grand proportions, providing individual criminals with personal access to an entirely new field of ‘distanciated’ victims across a global span. So effective is this multiplier effect, there is no longer the compulsion to commit highly visible and risky multi-million-dollar robberies when new technologies enable offenders to commit multi-million-dollar thefts from the comfort of their own home, with a relatively high yield and little risk to themselves. From a Criminological perspective, network technologies have effectively democratized fraud. Once a ‘crime of the powerful (Sutherland, 1949; Pearce, 1976; Weisburd, et al., 1991; Tombs and Whyte, 2003) that was committed by offenders who abused their privileged position in society, fraud can now be committed by all with access to the internet. This illustration highlights the way that computers can now be used to commit crimes, and this chapter will specifically focus upon the different ways that offenders can use networked computers to assist them in performing deceptions upon individual or corporate victims in to obtain an informational or pecuniary advantage.
Female and Male Hacker Conferences Attendees
Authors: Schell Bernadette H. , Melnychuk June
Published: September 2010

To date, studies on those in the Computer Underground have tended to focus not on aspects of hackers’ life experiences but on the skills needed to hack, the differences and similarities between insider and outsider crackers, and the differences in motivation for hacking. Little is known about the personality traits of the White Hat hackers, as compared to the Black Hat hackers. This chapter focuses on hacker conference attendees’ self-reported Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) predispositions. It also focuses on their self-reports about whether they believe their somewhat odd thinking and behaving patterns—at least as others in the mainstream society view them—help them to be successful in their chosen field of endeavor.
Cyber Conflict as an Emergent Social Phenomenon
Authors: Denning Dorothy E.
Published: September 2010

This chapter examines the emergence of social networks of non-state warriors launching cyber attacks for social and political reasons. It examines the origin and nature of these networks; their objectives, targets, tactics, and use of online forums; and their relationship, if any, to their governments. General concepts are illustrated with case studies drawn from operations by Strano Net, the Electronic Disturbance Theater, the Electrohippies, and other networks of cyber activists; electronic jihad as practiced by those affiliated with al-Qa’ida and the global jihadist movement associated with it; and operations by patriotic hackers from China, Russia, and elsewhere.
CSCL Techniques in Collaborative Virtual Environments
Authors: Tsiatsos Thrasyvoulos , Konstantinidis Andreas , Terzidou Theodouli , Ioannidis Lazaros , Tseloudi Chrysanthi
Published: September 2010

This chapter reviews and compares the most promising collaborative virtual environment platforms, which have been used or proposed for supporting educational activities in terms of their potential to support collaborative e-learning. The most promising environment according to the results of this review is Second Life. Second Life is further examined by validating the platform‘s features, philosophy and policies against some basic design principles for collaborative virtual learning environments in order to better assess its design adequacy for online learning. Furthermore, the chapter will present the features that the authors have implemented within the Second Life platform, in order to facilitate both the jigsaw and fishbowl collaborative e-learning techniques. Finally, the authors will present a case study concerning the evaluation of Second Life by undergraduate students in order to assess its potential to support these collaborative e-learning techniques.
Education-Oriented Research Activities Conducted in Second Life
Authors: Feng Jiuguang , Song Liyan
Published: September 2010

Second Life (SL) is a multiuser virtual environment (MUVE) that can be used to enhance students’ learning. It is a virtual environment constructed by SL residents, where students can engage in collaborative learning with other SL residents. In the field of education, SL has been used as a professional tool, a synchronous online system, a virtual environment mimicking real life, a platform for role-playing, a communication tool between teachers and students. This chapter focuses on education-oriented research activities conducted in SL. The authors explain and analyze SL usage in higher education, foreign language instruction as well as investigated its contribution to various learning paradigms, and suggested future research directions.
New Life for Corporate Training
Authors: Dannenberg David R.
Published: September 2010

While the educational use of Second Life by the academic community is well established, the number of corporate training and development programs utilizing Second Life has yet to be fully determined. However, while the corporate training use of Second Life may not be as prolific as the academic use, it is occurring. To support this argument the author combines the use of ethnographic evaluation with a review of the existing literature surrounding the corporate use of Second Life. Presented within are what the author found to be the main advantages and hesitations that surround the corporate use of Second Life. The affordances of Second Life, the communication channels, the immersive self-directed building opportunities, and rich, content driven environments, are a unique mix that makes Second Life an ideal medium for developing corporate learning programs.
Self-Developing a MUVE for Research and Educational Innovations
Authors: Flor Nick V.
Published: September 2010

Multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) researchers need to create their own virtual worlds and to stop waiting for industry to create innovations. The technology and instructional materials for creating virtual worlds have advanced to the point where a single person, unaided, can develop a virtual world that is suitable for experimentation—even though it may lack the aesthetics of commercially available worlds. The aim of this chapter is to demystify the development of virtual worlds by describing the fundamental skill set you must acquire to self-develop a virtual world. The skills are: modeling, texturing, animation, and programming. The author focuses on two of these skills, modeling and texturing, and describe a set of core techniques for creating the exterior of a virtual world. By practicing and building on these techniques, one can create the interiors and characters for more complex MUVES.
E-Health
Authors: Lorenzo Susana , Llinas Gilberto , Mira Jose J. , Ignacio Emilio
Published: September 2010

E-health does not only imply technological progress but also a new framework for improving citizens’ health. E-health has many strong points, which include clinical applications, and training devices. Health websites have a tremendous impact, as they increase accessibility to health information. Therefore, they encourage patients in becoming a prudent actor who decides where to go and what to do. However, many patients are not familiar with the precise meaning of e-health, which varies with the context in which the term is used. Moreover, they are not familiar with terms associated with e-health. Nevertheless, the Internet might contribute towards patient-centeredness, as patients might get their first opinion from the Internet. However, websites should meet reliability and comprehensiveness requirements.
Quality Assurance in Evidence-Based Medicine
Authors: Apostolakis Ioannis , Valsamos Periklis , Varlamis Iraklis
Published: September 2010

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) refers to the careful examination of all the available evidence when making decisions about the care of the individual patient. It assumes that well known medical practices and solutions are combined with the patient’s preferences and necessities in order to provide the most appropriate solution per case. The abundance of medical information in the web, the expansion of Semantic Web and the evolution of search services allowed the easier retrieval of scientific articles. Although the available infrastructure exists and continuously improves in performance, EBM still remains a complicated and sensitive process of high importance and has a need for Quality Assurance (QA). The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to provide an introduction on the concepts of Evidence-based Medicine, and second, to stress the necessity for structured methodologies that will assure the quality of the EBM process and ameliorate the final recommendations therapy. Since evidences are the building blocks of EBM, we capitalize on their quality and provide a critical overview of the existing methodologies in Quality Assurance of evidences.
Quality and Reliability Aspects in Evidence Based E-Medicine
Authors: Atanasov Asen
Published: September 2010

This chapter is a brief survey on some e-medicine resources and international definitions focused on the three main subjects of the healthcare quality – the patient, the costs and the evidence for quality. The patients can find in e-medicine everything that they need, but often without data on the supporting evidence. The medical professionals can learn where to find e-information on cost, quality and patient safety, and, more importantly, how to distinguish claims from evidence by applying the principles of evidence based medicine. The goal is to spread and popularize the knowledge in this field with an emphasis on how one can find, assess and utilize the best present evidence for more effective healthcare. The sites discussed below could assist in the retrieval of information about methods for obtaining evidence along with the ways of measuring evidence strength and limitations. These sites also provide information on implementing the ultimate evidence-based product – clinical guidelines for better medical practice and health service.
Safety and Security in Professional and Non-Professional E-Health and Their Impact on the Quality of Health Care
Authors: Parente Suzana , Loureiro Rui
Published: September 2010

E-health involves professionals and non-professionals and raises safety and security issues that affect the quality of health care. Therefore, the chapter provides some basic ideas on e-health safety and security, focusing on the healthcare provider perspective. To clarify some of the controversies and some of the problems in the use of data, arising from the use of e-health without taking into consideration the safety and security issues, we present one novel unpublished case and six cases from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Multi-Media Consumer Information, (FDA) Patient Safety News. Topics highlight fraud, impersonation of health care professionals, misuse of data and information, and backups.
Telepaediatrics in Queensland
Authors: Edirippulige Sisira , Smith Anthony C.
Published: September 2010

Telemedicine has been shown to be an effective alternative technique to provide health services to rural and remote communities. Although the interest in telemedicine is growing, there is little evidence to show the quality and reliability of telemedicine techniques. This chapter describes the telepaediatric service in Queensland, Australia outlining some evidence for quality, reliability and sustainability.
Evaluation Considerations for E-Health Systems
Authors: Kastania Anastasia N.
Published: September 2010

E-health evaluation, which involves different dimensions, has increased. In traditional healthcare, quality dimensions exist but these are not sufficiently exploited for e-health. Reliability is often examined regarding technology, software, demand and survival. This chapter reviews the reasons that e-health systems need to be evaluated, the methods followed for conducting e-health evaluation studies and the main points that characterize an evaluation procedure as successful. Many researchers have presented evaluation considerations for e-health. Herein, the emphasis is on analyzing a series of ideas mined from the scientific literature that allows drawing up practical considerations for e-health evaluation. These considerations focus both on quality and reliability assurance as well as on quality and reliability improvement.
R&D Centre Growth Based on Regional Innovation System
Authors: Zhao Jingyuan
Published: September 2010

The chapter focuses on comparing and analyzing the development models of typical regional innovation systems in the world, discussing the relationship of regional innovation system and R&D centre growth, and points out that the emergence of R&D centre and growth are tight relative with the development of regional innovation system. Through researching on typical cases of India’s Banglore, Singapore and Taiwan’s Xinzhu, the paper summarizes the experience that establishing and perfecting regional innovation system will improve R&D centre growth. Using the experience for reference, some strategies to promote R&D centre are put forward as conclusions.
The Regional Innovation Capacity Model
Authors: Lerro Antonio , Schiuma Giovanni
Published: September 2010

This chapter aims to present a conceptual model aimed to understand the Intellectual Capital-based (IC) characteristics of the regional innovation capacity. The proposed Regional Innovation Capacity Model (RICM) can be used for interpretative and normative purposes to analyse the innovation dynamics taking place at regional and territorial level. From an interpretative point of view, the model identifies the pillars grounding the innovation capacity of a local system. While, from a normative perspective, the model can inspire the definition of guidelines driving the design and the implementation of actions, projects and programmes aimed to stimulate and sustain regional development dynamics. The RICM adopts a knowledge-based perspective assuming that IC, in the forms of regional knowledge assets, and knowledge dynamics, in the form of knowledge transfer and learning processes, are the drivers of innovative processes and outputs. The chapter concludes proposing a future research agenda.
Breaking Out from Lock-In
Authors: Hospers Gert-Jan
Published: September 2010

This chapter discusses strategies aimed at regional-economic structural change in the German Ruhrgebiet. The Ruhrgebiet used to be the largest industrial area in Western-Europe. After the crisis in the coal and steel industry the region pursued re-industrialisation policies in the 1960s and 1970s. These attempts were largely unsuccesful. Therefore, since the 1980s the involved actors gradually adopted regional innovation strategies. Thus, they were able to break out from the region’s lock-in situation. The re-orientation of the Ruhrgebiet towards innovation based on the industries’ expertise and past (e.g. environmental technology, energy and industrial tourism) is more successful than its earlier re-industrialisation attempts. Also for other old industrial areas in Europe this kind of place-based renewal might be the future.
Embracing Emerging Technologies
Authors: Ng Pak Tee
Published: September 2010

Many countries are attempting to develop themselves as intelligent nations, equipped and empowered by advanced info-communications technology (ICT). This chapter describes and analyses how Singapore attempts to develop an intelligent nation under its umbrella vision and strategy of Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015). It examines the substance of the vision and highlights some of the initiatives implemented to realise the vision. It also discusses the different roles of the government in implementing the iN2015 vision and some of the challenges ahead.
From Lab to Market
Authors: Egbetokun A. A. , Siyanbola W. O. , Oyewale A. A.
Published: September 2010

For nations to compete successfully in the long run, they must innovate; and innovating entails building new competencies, new capabilities and new knowledge. Starting with a brief review of the concepts of Science, Technology and Innovation, this chapter discusses the factors militating against the translation of scientific R&D outputs into innovations in Nigeria. The situation in selected Asian countries are reviewed to highlight the significance of specific factors such as institutional framework, adequate funding and knowledge pool in the process of building indigenous innovation capability for national development. Policies, strategies and structures that could facilitate the effective management of R&D and innovation, and enhance university-industry connections are suggested.
Innovation Policy, Competitiveness, and Growth
Authors: Kokkinou Aikaterini
Published: September 2010

This chapter focuses on the actors of knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurship, as comparative advantages towards regional sustainable development. The chapter describes the analytical framework in which technical change, innovation and entrepreneurship activities are considered as among the most important factors influencing sustainable economic development, both in national and regional level. Within this analytical framework, the chapter aims to provide a clear understudying of the main related questions summarized in the following: To which extent economic development depends on the presence of a network favorable to knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurship, based on the endogenous development capabilities? How could the level of regional innovation activities be enhanced? How could the effect of innovation activities on regional development be estimated? What is the relative position of a region as far as development and innovation competitiveness are concerned?
Mapping the Innovation Activities in Europe
Authors: Korres George M.
Published: September 2010

This chapter analyses the innovation activities and the way they contribute essentially to the regional dimension and growth. The chapter aims to investigate how technological infrastructure and innovation capabilities affect not only regional growth, but also the whole periphery and economy, as well as how technological innovation is essential if companies - and countries - are to maintain their competitiveness in global markets. Furthermore, this chapter describes the relative measures and indexes introduced by E.U. and O.E.C.D. during the last years, concerning Research and Development Expenditures, patents e.t.c., namely measuring innovation activities. However, there are a lot of underlying problems and questions regarding the measurement of innovation activities at a regional level. This chapter attempts to analyze the whole framework of innovation statistics and in particular to examine the measurement and also the statistical estimation of innovation activities in E.U.. Within this context, it is also aiming to emphasize and review the appropriate techniques, the most common methods and the particular related problems.
A Systematic Approach for Managing the Risk Related to Semantic Interoperability between Geospatial Datacubes
Authors: Sboui Tarek , Salehi Mehrdad , Bédard Yvan
Published: September 2010

Geospatial datacubes are the database backend of novel types of spatiotemporal decision-support systems employed in large organizations. These datacubes extend the datacube concept underlying the field of Business Intelligence (BI) into the realm of geospatial decision-support and geographic knowledge discovery. The interoperability between geospatial datacubes facilitates the reuse of their content. Such interoperability, however, faces risks of data misinterpretation related to the heterogeneity of geospatial datacubes. Although the interoperability of transactional databases has been the subject of several research works, no research dealing with the interoperability of geospatial datacubes exists. In this paper, the authors support the semantic interoperability between geospatial datacubes and propose a categorization of semantic heterogeneity problems that may occur in geospatial datacubes. Additionally, the authors propose an approach to deal with the related risks of data misinterpretation, which consists of evaluating the fitness-for-use of datacubes models, and a general framework that facilitates making appropriate decisions about such risks. The framework is based on a hierarchical top-down structure going from the most general level to the most detailed level, showing the usefulness of the proposed approach in environmental applications.
Theoretical Analysis of Strategic Implementation of Enterprise Architecture
Authors: Iyamu Tiko
Published: September 2010

In the past and present, organizations experience difficulty in managing information, technology, changing from system to system, implementing new technology, maintaining compatibility with existing technologies, and changing from one business process to another. It is thought that these challenges could be prohibitive to the organization, and in this regard, many organizations deploy Enterprise Architecture (EA) in an attempt to manage the situations. The deployment of EA does not go without its challenges from development to implementation. This study focuses on the implementation of EA by using two case studies. The case studies are theoretically analysed from the perspective of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to gain better understanding of the socio-technical influence in the implementation of EA in the organisations. This was done by following the negotiation process that took place among the actors, both humans and non humans.
M2M Network Ontology for Service Ubiquity
Authors: Biswas Pratik K. , Grønbæk Inge
Published: September 2010

The evolving Internet may encounter an explosion in the number of communicating end systems, namely, smart devices and wireless sensors. Machine-to-machine services in such a network could benefit society in many areas, including environment, health care, trade, transportation, alarms and surveillance. However, such developments depend on powerful communication features with global interoperability for service ubiquity. This paper presents an architecture for the evolving Internet that decouples service logic from protocols and network elements while shielding users from underlying technologies. It also proposes an ontology-based approach for representing network interoperability as well as network services. The network ontology provides a vocabulary for uniformly describing the managed elements of the network topology under consideration, while the service ontology provides an API-based vocabulary for provisioning interoperable and ubiquitous services over the Internet. Using these ontologies, services may be replicated and deployed in diverse execution environments. The applicability of ontologies for service ubiquity is illustrated with a case-study.
A Study of Applying RFID for Heat Block Management in IC Packaging Factory
Authors: Wang Wei-Ling , Wang Shu-Jen , Huang Chiao-Tzu
Published: September 2010

In the integrated circuit (IC) packaging process, including operations of die sawing, die bonding, wire bonding, molding, plating, marking, trim/form, and inspection. Purposes of packaging include protecting ICs, making ICs easier to handle, and connecting ICs to the circuit outside. The wire bond stations are the bottleneck in the packaging and assemble process where the heat block is the key auxiliary parts in the stations. This research proposes a RFID-enabled Heat Block Management System (RHMS) to accurately control the progress of the IC packaging production line to meet the customer requirements. Our research analyzed all the flows of heat block management operations during before and after introducing RHMS. Hypothesis testing can verify significant difference between two sample sizes. Based on the statistics test of hypothesis, we compared the difference for before and after introducing RHMS. The results show that the RHMS can bring advantage for heat block management in wire bond stations. Moreover, it has clear improvement of saving counting and revising operation time. The contributions of this research are not only a case study but also a direction for applying RFID technology on IC packaging industry.
SPARK
Authors: Solovyev Alexey , Mikheev Maxim , Zhou Leming , Dutta-Moscato Joyeeta , Ziraldo Cordelia , An Gary , Vodovotz Yoram , Mi Qi
Published: September 2010

Multi-scale modeling of complex biological systems remains a central challenge in the systems biology community. A method of dynamic knowledge representation known as agent-based modeling enables the study of higher level behavior emerging from discrete events performed by individual components. With the advancement of computer technology, agent-based modeling has emerged as an innovative technique to model the complexities of systems biology. In this work, the authors describe SPARK (Simple Platform for Agent-based Representation of Knowledge), a framework for agent-based modeling specifically designed for systems-level biomedical model development. SPARK is a stand-alone application written in Java. It provides a user-friendly interface, and a simple programming language for developing Agent-Based Models (ABMs). SPARK has the following features specialized for modeling biomedical systems: 1) continuous space that can simulate real physical space; 2) flexible agent size and shape that can represent the relative proportions of various cell types; 3) multiple spaces that can concurrently simulate and visualize multiple scales in biomedical models; 4) a convenient graphical user interface. Existing ABMs of diabetic foot ulcers and acute inflammation were implemented in SPARK. Models of identical complexity were run in both NetLogo and SPARK; the SPARK-based models ran two to three times faster.
Simulation of Pedestrian Behavior in Intermodal Facilities
Authors: Usher John M. , Kolstad Eric , Liu Xuan
Published: September 2010

Planning pedestrian environments requires that designers understand how pedestrians interact with their environment and one another. With improved knowledge, the design and planning of pedestrian areas can provide improvements in safety, throughput, and utility. This paper provides an overview of the Intermodal Simulator for the Analysis of Pedestrian Traffic (ISAPT). It focuses on the methodologies used in simulation of the pedestrian traffic, including route planning and navigation. Several illustrations of the system’s ability to reproduce observed crowd behavior are provided.
Simple Lightweight Authentication Protocol
Authors: Gódor Gyozo , Imre Sándor
Published: September 2010

Radio frequency identification technology is becoming ubiquitous and, as a side effect, more authentication solutions come to light, which include numerous security issues. The authors’ have previously introduced a solely hash-based secure authentication algorithm that is capable of providing protection against most of the well-known attacks, which performs exceptionally well in very large systems. In this paper, the authors give a detailed examination of small computational capacity systems from the point of view of security. This paper defines the model of attacker and the well-known attacks that can be achieved in these kinds of environments, as well as an illustration of the proposed protocol’s performance characteristics with measurements carried out in a simulation environment. This paper shows the effects of numerous attacks and the system’s different parameters on the authentication time while examining the performance and security characteristics of two other protocols chosen from the literature to compare the SLAP algorithm and give a proper explanation for the differences between them.
The Role of Culture in Business Intelligence
Authors: Park Jore , Fables Wylci , Parker Kevin R. , Nitse Philip S.
Published: September 2010

Global business intelligence will struggle to live up to its potential if it fails to take into account, and accurately interpret, cultural differences. This paper supports this assertion by considering the concept of culture, explaining its importance in the business intelligence process, especially in foreign markets, and demonstrating that attention to culture is currently inadequate in most international business intelligence efforts. Without a tool capable of modeling social interaction in disparate cultures, BI efforts will under perform when extended to the global arena. The Cultural Simulation Modeler is examined as a means of enhancing essential cultural awareness. The core components of the modeler are explained, as are the limitations of automated information gathering and analysis systems.
Data Warehousing Requirements Collection and Definition
Authors: Jukic Nenad , Velasco Miguel
Published: September 2010

Defining data warehouse requirements is widely recognized as one of the most important steps in the larger data warehouse system development process. This paper examines the potential risks and pitfalls within the data warehouse requirement collection and definition process. A real scenario of a large-scale data warehouse implementation is given, and details of this project, which ultimately failed due to inadequate requirement collection and definition process, are described. The presented case underscores and illustrates the impact of the requirement collection and definition process on the data warehouse implementation, while the case is analyzed within the context of the existing approaches, methodologies, and best practices for prevention and avoidance of typical data warehouse requirement errors and oversights.
Autonomic Computing for a Complex Problem of Experimental Physics
Authors: Wibig Tadeusz
Published: September 2010

Standard experimental data analysis is based mainly on conventional, deterministic inference. The complexity of modern physics problems has become so large that new ideas in the field are received with the highest of appreciation. In this paper, the author has analyzed the problem of contemporary high-energy physics concerning the estimation of some parameters of the observed complex phenomenon. This article confronts the Natural and Artificial Networks performance with the standard statistical method of the data analysis and minimization. The general concept of the relations between CI and standard (external) classical and modern informatics was realized and studied by utilizing of Natural Neural Networks (NNN), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and MINUIT minimization package from CERN. The idea of Autonomic Computing was followed by using brains of high school students involved in the Roland Maze Project. Some preliminary results of the comparison are given and discussed.
A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm based Fuzzy Approach for Abnormal Retinal Image Classification
Authors: Anitha J. , Vijila C. Kezi Selva , Hemanth D. Jude
Published: September 2010

Fuzzy approaches are one of the widely used artificial intelligence techniques in the field of ophthalmology. These techniques are used for classifying the abnormal retinal images into different categories that assist in treatment planning. The main characteristic feature that makes the fuzzy techniques highly popular is their accuracy. But, the accuracy of these fuzzy logic techniques depends on the expertise knowledge, which indirectly relies on the input samples. Insignificant input samples may reduce the accuracy that further reduces the efficiency of the fuzzy technique. In this work, the application of Genetic Algorithm (GA) for optimizing the input samples is explored in the context of abnormal retinal image classification. Abnormal retinal images from four different classes are used in this work and a comprehensive feature set is extracted from these images as classification is performed with the fuzzy classifier and also with the GA optimized fuzzy classifier. Experimental results suggest highly accurate results for the GA based classifier than the conventional fuzzy classifier.
The Cognitive Process of Comprehension
Authors: Wang Yingxu , Gafurov Davrondzhon
Published: September 2010

Comprehension is an ability to understand the meaning of a concept or an action. Comprehension is an important intelligent power of abstract thought and reasoning of humans or intelligent systems. It is highly curious to explore the internal process of comprehension in the brain and to explain its basic mechanisms in cognitive informatics and computational intelligence. This paper presents a formal model of the cognitive process of comprehension. The mechanism and process of comprehension are systematically explained with its conceptual, mathematical, and process models based on the Layered Reference Model of the Brain (LRMB) and the Object-Attribute-Relation (OAR) model for internal knowledge representation. Contemporary denotational mathematics such as concept algebra and Real-Time Process Algebra (RTPA) are adopted in order to formally describe the comprehension process and its interaction with other cognitive processes of the brain.
Participate When Mapping Realities
Authors: Ahamer Gilbert , Jekel Thomas , Vogler Robert
Published: September 2010

Tools for recording individual perspectives of realities have long constituted the guiding theme for geographers. In this article, the “bird’s eye” view resides within the spectator of complex socio-economic realities. The cases presented in this paper show the practical contributions of IT, especially of e-learning platforms and of Geographic Information Science and Systems, in facilitating the exchange of fact-based concepts for the construction of social spaces and spaces of understanding. Societal learning can enlarge and approximate spaces of understanding. Social spaces are a type of “social capital”. Learning changes interdisciplinary realities (“n”) seen through the lenses of interculturally diverse understanding (“m”), hence it constitutes a m:n type of “mapping perceptions” that successfully facilitates consensus finding.
Customer Relationship Management through Communication Strategy
Authors: Ahmed Abdel Moneim M. B.
Published: September 2010

Changes in today’s organisations are often necessary for survival due to the world becoming smaller and the threat from foreign imports becoming more apparent to businesses. Often the most damaging element of this foreign threat is the low costs at which they can operate. Many factors, including inexpensive labour, exchange rates and economies, make production more efficient and reduce the overall costs significantly to enable a significant competitive edge. For example, Fibres is a polyester manufacturer who faces this threat and has realised the need for change towards more speciality products with differentials other than price. However, this will involve major changes in production, including the production methods and the adoption of TQM to ensure that the differential of quality is utilized. This paper examines communication as an enabler for change and studies the current communication methods within the company against the desired improvement processes from groups within those companies, culminating in a targeted internal marketing strategy to aid future business changes.
MaGate
Authors: Huang Ye , Brocco Amos , Courant Michele , Hirsbrunne Beat , Kuonen Pierre
Published: September 2010

This work presents the design and architecture of a decentralized grid scheduler named MaGate, which is developed within the SmartGRID project and focuses on grid scheduler interoperation. The MaGate scheduler is modular structured, and emphasizes the functionality, procedure and policy of delegating local unsuited jobs to appropriate remote MaGates within the same grid system. To avoid an isolated solution, web services and several existing and emerging grid standards are adopted, as well as a series of interfaces to both publish MaGate capabilities and integrate functionalities from external grid components. Meanwhile, a specific swarm intelligence solution is employed as a critical complementary service for MaGate to maintain an optimized peer-to-peer overlay that supports efficient resource discovery. Regarding evaluation, the effectiveness brought by job sharing within a physically connected grid community with the use of the MaGate has been illustrated by means of experiments on communities of different scale, and under various scenarios.
A Grid-Aware Emergency Response Model (G-AERM) for Disaster Management
Authors: Asimakopoulou Eleana , Anumba Chimay J , Bouchlaghem Dino
Published: September 2010

The emergency management community is working toward developments associated with the reduction of losses in lives, property and the environment caused by natural disasters. However, several limitations with the particular collaborative nature of current Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in use have been reported. In particular, how emergency management stakeholders within an ICT environment can bring together all their resources in a collaborative and timely manner so as to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency response tasks. With this in mind, the authors describe the Grid-Aware Emergency Response Model (G-AERM) to make the best of functionality offered by emerging ICT to support intelligence in decision making toward a more effective and efficient emergency response management.
A Goal-Driven Management Approach based on Knowledge Exploitation for e-Government Projects
Authors: Sarantis Demetrios , Charalabidis Yannis , Askounis Dimitris
Published: September 2010

The implementation of electronic Government projects in public sector organisations is a challenging task, due to technical, organisational and cultural specificities of the domain. Research shows that such IT projects have higher failure rates than similar approaches in the private sector, also indicating the lack of a method to transfer knowledge and apply best management practices in an effective way. The proposed management approach aims to recognise structure and reuse past successful attempts, in ways that support the overall viability of an e-Government project. After stating the fundamental principles of project management that apply to public sector IT projects, the authors present a conceptual model for e-Government project management, including entities such as dimensions, goals, activities, deliverables and roles that can be structured and adapted to cover all types of relevant projects in an out-of-the-box approach. This knowledge base of predefined project components can then be populated and utilised in making more informed decisions for effective project management of e-Government initiatives. This way, the proposed method supports public officials and practitioners in learning from past experience projects and in designing and running e-Government projects in a more systematic manner, thus, significantly increasing the likelihood of project success.
The Same Wine but in New Bottles. Public E-Services Divide and Low Citizens’ Satisfaction
Authors: Harfouche Antoine
Published: September 2010

When introducing public e-services, the Lebanese government predicted that it would reduce inequality between citizens (OMSAR, 2002). However, the results of this research prove that this will not be the case, and the introduction of the virtual channel of services delivery system will create a public e-services divide. In response to the research questions: “what is an e-services divide?” and “what are its antecedents and consequences?”, this cross-sectional explanatory research shows that the public e-services divide will separate citizen’s who have access to ICTs, who have the skills to use ICTs, and who accept use of public e-services from the others. The public e-services divide will result from the e-access divide, the e-skills divide, and from the public e-services acceptance divide, which will lead to lower citizen satisfaction.
Implementation of FFT on General-Purpose Architectures for FPGA
Authors: Garzia Fabio , Airoldi Roberto , Nurmi Jari
Published: September 2010

This paper describes two general-purpose architectures targeted to Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation. The first architecture is based on the coupling of a coarse-grain reconfigurable array with a general-purpose processor core. The second architecture is a homogeneous multi-processor system-on-chip (MP-SoC). Both architectures have been mapped onto two different Altera FPGA devices, a StratixII and a StratixIV. Although mapping onto the StratixIV results in higher operating frequencies, the capabilities of the device are not fully exploited. The implementation of a FFT on the two platforms shows a considerable speed-up in comparison with a single-processor reference architecture. The speed-up is higher in the reconfigurable solution but the MP-SoC provides an easier programming interface that is completely based on C language. The authors’ approach proves that implementing a programmable architecture on FPGA and then programming it using a high-level software language is a viable alternative to designing a dedicated hardware block with a hardware description language (HDL) and mapping it on FPGA.
Adoption of a Comprehensive Web-Based Wealth Management Service
Authors: Dahlberg Tomi , Öörni Anssi
Published: September 2010

The design of electronic financial services differ crucially from that of conventional services due to their inability to adjust sporadically to the needs and wants of consumers, as adaptability is strongly associated with the human component of services production. In this regard, identification of the motives driving adoption and consumption is the precondition for successful implementation of electronic services. This article reports the results of a survey conducted for an R&D project with the objective to design an innovative and comprehensive wealth management service for consumers, a service that is offered mainly via the internet. In this study, the authors found that the conventional wisdom of mainstream finance and technology adoption theories, return-risk thinking, and cost-benefit analysis of product characteristics were insufficient to predict adoption. Rather, the adoption decision appears to be dominated by the perceived fit between the new service and the consumer’s established consumption patterns.
SMS Banking
Authors: Petrova Krassie , Yu Shi
Published: September 2010

Mobile banking is a mobile service that allows the user to perform banking transactions using a mobile handheld device and a mobile service known as short text messaging (SMS). Deploying an expanded Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study aims to identify the factors that influence the customer’s decision to use SMS banking. Findings from relevant literature and outcomes of the analysis of qualitative data were gathered through focus group discussions to build a model, and a survey was conducted to explore the model with respect to individuals’ behaviour when considering using SMS banking. Findings show that service quality, as well as the degree of customers’ awareness about the service, influence participants’ perceptions about the usefulness of SMS banking and their intentions to use and adopt the service in the future.
One Anchor Distance and Angle Based Multi - Hop Adaptive Iterative Localization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Kotwal S. B. , Verma Shekhar , Tomar G. S. , Abrol R. K. , Nigam Suryansh
Published: September 2010

This paper presents distance and angle measurements based Multi-Hop Adaptive and Iterative Localization algorithm for localization of unknown nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The present work determines uncertainty region of unknown nodes with respect to known (anchor) nodes using noisy distance and angle measurements. This node transmits its uncertainty region to other unknown nodes to help them determine their uncertainty region. Because of noisy distance and angle measurements, the error propagation increases the size of regions of nodes in subsequent hops. Using only one anchor node as reference, the proposed iterative localization algorithm reduces the error propagation of this noisy distance and angle measurements and the uncertainty region of all unknown nodes within a given communication range. The results clearly indicate the improved efficiency of the proposed algorithm in comparison with existing algorithms.
Evaluating Student Perceptions of Using Blogs in an Online Course
Authors: Gullett Evelyn , Bhandar Mamata
Published: September 2010

This article is based on an exploratory study on the use of blogs to support learning in an online MBA school. In this paper, the authors examine students’ perceptions toward blogs and their effectiveness. The study finds that although students are open to the idea of using blogs to enhance presentation and reflection of their learning, concerns exist on their suitability for threaded discussions in the presence of other platforms like threaded discussion boards. Therefore, what is less clear is the learning value and potential of blogs, especially that subset of learning that is orchestrated (and credentialed) by formal learning organisations.
For All of Our Languages We are Not Natives Here
Authors: Gillen Martina
Published: September 2010

This paper seeks to explore the concept of the digital divide by critiquing the notion of the digital native and its relationship to the legal conception of technology transfer and sited knowledge. It is the contention of this paper that technology transfer is key in developmental issues currently facing the international community in general, and is the first and paramount step in bridging the digital divide specifically. In order to be sustainable, a technology transfer must include capacity building strategies in which the notion of suitably embedded knowledge is already present in other areas of international IP law; specifically in the areas of Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Traditional Cultural Expression (TCE). Finally, if this concept of embedded knowledge is further applied to the idea of the digital divide then it becomes apparent that there is a socially damaging and a potentially ecologically unsound digital divide at work, even among those who are resource rich.
A System Dynamics Approach to Changing Perceptions about Thermal Water Quality Trading Markets
Authors: Bier Asmeret
Published: September 2010

Thermal water quality trading markets give point source thermal polluters the option to comply with effluent restrictions by paying nearby landowners to plant shade trees. The shade trees cool the water, offsetting thermal pollution emitted by the point source. Thermal trading has the potential to create greater environmental benefits at a lower cost than traditional regulation, however; only one such program has been implemented to date in the United States. In this regard, a shift in potential stakeholders’ perceptions of these markets could be useful in allowing the markets to spread. This paper explains why system dynamics modeling is a useful tool for creating such a shift in perception, and describes a method of teaching participants about thermal trading. The method begins with a classroom simulation exercise, uses lessons from that exercise to create a model of a thermal trading market, and uses that model to conduct policy design and uncertainty analyses.
Enterprise Applications for Supply Chain Management
Authors: Sherer Susan A.
Published: September 2010

Although many companies have implemented ERP systems to track and share information among cross functional business processes, they often supplement these with legacy, custom, or best of breed applications to support supply chain execution and management. This article offers a framework for understanding all types of enterprise applications that support the supply chain. In this study, the author organizes these applications, define acronyms, and describe the various types of systems that make up an information infrastructure for supply chain management.