bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Interactions of deoxynivalenol and lipopolysaccharides on tissue protein synthesis in pigs
Authors: Kullik K. , Brosig B. , Kersten S. , Valenta H. , Diesing A.-K. , Panther P. , Reinhardt N. , Kluess J. , Rothkötter H.-J. , Breves G. , Dänicke S.
Published: April 2013

Possible interactions between theFusarium toxin deoxynivalenol and lipopolysaccharides onin vivo protein synthesis were investigated in selected porcine tissues. A total of 36 male castrated pigs (initial weight of 26 kg) were used. 24 pigs were fed a control diet and 12 aFusarium-contaminated diet (chronic oral deoxynivalenol, 3.1 mg/kg diet) for 37 days. Tissue protein synthesis was measured in pigs fed control diet after intravenous infusion of deoxynivalenol (100 µg/kg live weight/h), lipopolysaccharides (7.5 µg/kg live weight/h) or a combination of both compounds on the day of the measurements, while six pigs from the chronic oral deoxynivalenol group were intravenously treated with lipopolysaccharides (7.5 µg/kg live weight/h). Deoxynivalenol challenge alone failed to alter protein synthesis parameters. Fractional protein synthesis rates were exclusively reduced in liver, spleen and small intestine of lipopolysaccharides-treated pigs. Intravenous deoxynivalenol co-exposure enhanced the impacts of lipopolysaccharides on protein synthesis parameters in the spleen and the small intestine to some extent, while a chronic oral pre-exposure with deoxynivalenol relieved its effects in the spleen. Whether these interactions occur in other tissues and under other study conditions, especially toxin doses and route of entry into the body, needs to be examined further.
Cervantes frente a Cinthio: un curioso juego triangular
Authors: Ruffinatto Aldo
Published: April 2013

No cabe duda de que Cervantes, hablando en el Quijote (II.18) del papel que han de desempeñar las descripciones en las obras de ficción, pretende establecer un diálogo con Giraldi Cinthio y sus presupuestos teóricos, insinuando contextualmente destellos de ironía en un discurso en apariencia serio. Asimismo, no debe ponerse en duda el hecho de que Cervantes, al intercalar en el Persiles (III.6) la primera parte de la historia del polaco Ortel Banedre, pretende desarrollar un nuevo diálogo intertextual con el humanista ferrarense basado, esta vez, en una de las “novelle” de los Hecatommithi donde se muestran secuencias narrativas paralelas (la sexta de la Deca sexta). Tras examinar el juego triangular creado por: a) narrador primero, b) narrador segundo y c) narratorio en los dos textos, se llega aquí a descubrir las causas profundas, generadoras de los efectos visibles en la estructura superficial del relato metadiegético. El triángulo cerrado de Cinthio con su orientación del narratorio hacia el narrador primero (que de tal forma garantiza la confiabilidad de lo narrado por el narrador segundo) determina y certifica la configuración ejemplar de la historia de perdón en la versión del novelista italiano. El triángulo abierto de Cervantes, en cambio, con su falta de conexión entre narratario y narrador primero (que de tal forma deja por entero la responsabilidad de lo narrado al narrador segundo) acredita y genera las profundas modificaciones que afectan a la misma historia en la reelaboración cervantina.
Las recreaciones teatrales de Don Quijote de la Mancha de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra en Francia (siglos XVII-XXI): estado de la cuestión y nuevos datos
Authors: Marigno Emmanuel
Published: April 2013

Este artículo estudia las recreaciones teatrales quijotescas en Francia. Tras una síntesis desde el XVII hasta el 2000, se brinda una serie de datos sobre las principales características estéticas y éticas de estas quijotescas obras contemporáneas.
El inicio de la recepción cervantina en Alemania: las primeras adaptaciones teatrales del Quijote
Authors: Rivero Iglesias Carmen
Published: April 2013

El presente estudio analiza las primeras apariciones de don Quijote en la escena alemana para mostrar en qué medida determinan la recepción de la obra cervantina en el siglo XVII alemán. Estos primeros espectáculos de Heidelberg (1613) y Dessau (1614) proyectan una interpretación del Quijote que intensifica lo grotesco con respecto al original cervantino y que extrapola esa burla a la nación española en un contexto de enemistad política y religiosa entre católicos y protestantes. La primera traducción alemana sería heredera de esta concepción de la obra cervantina que iría transformándose y ganando matices hasta el segundo tercio del siglo XVIII cuando el cambio de coordenadas históricas y la irrupción de la individualidad y del genio transforman por completo su interpretación.
De canes, lobos, sierpes y rosas: Berganza y la memoria enmascarada del dios Momo
Authors: Llosa Sanz Alvaro
Published: April 2013

En este artículo busco establecer un camino que conecta el motivo central del perro murmurador en El coloquio de los perros cervantino con una antigua fábula lucianesca cuyo protagonista, el dios Momo, descubre ante Júpiter el carácter fiel y la memoria en el can, mientras que la serpiente se desvela con una perniciosa naturaleza adulatoria y llena de falsedad engañadora. Quiero mostrar cómo estos canes habladores lo son bajo el influjo del dios Momo, divinidad de la sátira y la crítica capaz de ver las ocultas intenciones de los hombres. Mediante el ejercicio de la memoria, Berganza recupera murmurando todo un camino biográfico que se convierte en relato, y muestra ante el lector la moraleja de la fábula de la serpiente acerca de la desconfianza ante las intenciones engañosas entre el género humano.
Sobre la figura de Trampagos en El rufián viudo de Cervantes
Authors: Hsu Carmen Y.
Published: April 2013

En el presente trabajo se propone examinar la figura de Trampagos en El rufián viudo y la deuda que Cervantes tiene con la poesía germanesca de Rodrigo de Reinosa, Álvaro de Solana y Juan Hidalgo. Asimismo, se intentará señalar que, además de los convencionalismos del tipo del rufián que se advierten en la caracterización de Trampagos, se aprecian asimismo las improntas de numerosas tradiciones literarias – con las églogas garcilasianas como referencias más significativas. La presencia de la poesía garcilasiana introduce un cambio de sensibilidad y nuevos temas, contribuyendo así a la creación de un personaje que supera la fórmula literaria.
Escritura cervantina en Sanco Panco: parodia y recreación del Quijote según Salvador de Madariaga
Authors: Dotras Bravo Alexia
Published: April 2013

La novela de Salvador de Madariaga Sanco Panco fue publicada en 1964 por la editorial mexicana Latino Americana. Concebida como una parodia crítica, no solo al régimen de Franco, sino también a los líderes políticos mundiales, fue rechazada por la prensa española y bien recibida en Iberoamérica. Con un juego doble de identidades, cervantinas por un lado, y políticas contemporáneas por otro, se desarrolla una de las obras del polígrafo, nunca después reeditada. Madariaga presenta una novela claramente cervantina en su escritura, en su estilo, como el propio título asegura: La más verídica que verdadera historia de Sanco Panco. Escribiola Miguel de Corzantes y la da hoy a luz Salvador de Madariaga, haciendo un guiño nada más empezar a la técnica del manuscrito hallado, que parodia Cervantes. Pero también presenta una voluntad completamente contemporánea, al tratar los asuntos y personajes más relevantes de la política mundial, sin nombrarlos directamente. Así, en este trabajo intentaré ofrecer el juego del autor para recrear la escritura cervantina, especialmente el Quijote, jugando con las identidades, quijotescas y contemporáneas, para poder analizar las intenciones de su autor y el valor narrativo de esta pericia técnica. Asimismo, pretendo situar a Madariaga en el puesto que reclama en la historia de la literatura española, no solo como erudito cervantista, sino como escritor capaz de aprovechar y llevar a cabo proyectos coherentes de creación literaria.
Análisis de un texto portugués sobre el Quijote: la Relaçam de tudo o que sucedeu no sítio e defensa da grande cidade de Praga
Authors: Vargas Díaz-Toledo Aurelio
Published: April 2013

En el presente trabajo se edita por primera vez un texto portugués de 1743 conocido como Relaçam de tudo o que sucedeu no sítio e defensa da grande cidade de Praga, en cuya parte final se incluye una pequeña carta firmada ficticiamente por Sancho Panza y dirigida a su amo don Quijote de la Mancha. Además de ofrecer un breve estudio sobre la transmisión textual del primer documento, se lleva a cabo un análisis de la misiva que la sitúa en una nueva línea de la recepción del Quijote distinta de las conocidas actualmente en tierras portuguesas.
Up-to-Date Feature Selection Methods for Scalable and Efficient Machine Learning
Authors: Alonso-Betanzos Amparo , Bolón-Canedo Verónica , Fernández-Francos Diego , Porto-Díaz Iago , Sánchez-Maroño Noelia
Published: April 2013

With the advent of high dimensionality, machine learning researchers are now interested not only in accuracy, but also in scalability of algorithms. When dealing with large databases, pre-processing techniques are required to reduce input dimensionality and machine learning can take advantage of feature selection, which consists of selecting the relevant features and discarding irrelevant ones with a minimum degradation in performance. In this chapter, we will review the most up-to-date feature selection methods, focusing on their scalability properties. Moreover, we will show how these learning methods are enhanced when applied to large scale datasets and, finally, some examples of the application of feature selection in real world databases will be shown.
Evaluating Scalability of Neural Configurations in Combined Classifier and Attention Models
Authors: Achler Tsvi
Published: April 2013

The brain’s neuronal circuits that are responsible for recognition and attention are not completely understood. Several potential circuits have been proposed using different mechanisms. These models may vary in the number connection parameters, the meaning of each connection weight, the efficiency, and the ability to scale to larger networks. Explicit analysis of these issues is important because for example, certain models may require an implausible number of connections (greater than available in the brain) in order to process the amount of information the brain can process. Moreover certain classifiers may perform recognition, but may be difficult to efficiently integrate with attention models. In this chapter, some of the limitations and scalability issues are discussed and a class of models that may address them is suggested. The focus is on modeling both recognition and a form attention called biased competition. Models are also explored that are both static and dynamic during recognition.
Numerical Version of the Non-Uniform Method for Finding Point Estimates of Uncertain Scaling Constants
Authors: Nikolova Natalia D. , Tenekedjiev Kiril I.
Published: April 2013

The chapter focuses on the analysis of scaling constants when constructing a utility function over multi-dimensional prizes. Due to fuzzy rationality, those constants are elicited in an interval form. It is assumed that the decision maker has provided additional information describing the uncertainty of the scaling constants’ values within their uncertainty interval. The non-uniform method is presented to find point estimates of the interval scaling constants and to test their unit sum. An analytical solution of the procedure to construct the distribution of the interval scaling constants is provided, along with its numerical realization. A numerical procedure to estimate pvalue of the statistical test is also presented. The method allows making an uncertainty description of constants through different types of probability distributions and fuzzy sets.
Widely Linear Estimation with Geometric Algebra
Authors: Nitta Tohru
Published: April 2013

This chapter reviews the widely linear estimation for complex numbers, quaternions, and geometric algebras (or Clifford algebras) and their application examples. It was proved effective mathematically to add , the complex conjugate number of , as an explanatory variable in estimation of complex-valued data in 1995. Thereafter, the technique has been extended to higher-dimensional algebras. The widely linear estimation improves the accuracy and the efficiency of estimation, then expands the scalability of the estimation framework, and is applicable and useful for many fields including neural computing with high-dimensional parameters.
Business Intelligence Solutions for Decision-Making in Global Organizations
Authors: Bal Yasemin , BAL Mert
Published: April 2013

Organizations have started to compete in a challenging and competitive environment with the effects of globalization. In today’s world, organizations must manage many environmental factors. Technological developments are one of those factors to which organizations must manage and adapt themselves to gain competitive advantage. With increasing data flow, it has become more difficult for organizations to store this data and gain useful knowledge to manage their business operations and functions. This explosive growth in data and databases has generated an urgent need for new techniques and tools that can intelligently and automatically transform the processed data into useful information and knowledge. This situation is especially more difficult for global organizations that have various branches in different countries around the world. Parallel with these developments in information technology for business applications, management information systems and business intelligence solutions have gained more importance. This paper investigates the importance of using business intelligence solutions and techniques for decision making process in the perspective of business functions in global organizations. Business intelligence solutions and techniques will be introduced, followed by explanation of the use of these systems in decision making processes within the context of global organizations.
Foreign Market Entry Mode Choice
Authors: Wong Ho Yin
Published: April 2013

The purpose of this chapter is to empirically examine firms’ internal and external factors that can affect their foreign market mode choice. The model is comprised of internal factors such as control, domestic business experience, and industry type; and external factors in terms of culture of foreign markets and intensity of competition. A mail-out survey to Australian firms involved in international business generated 315 useful responses. The hypotheses were tested using direct logistic regression analysis. Among the five variables, industry type, domestic business experience, and intensity of competition were found statistically significant. While industry type and domestic business experience encourage non-export mode, intensity of competition favours export mode. The major contributions of this study are the discovery of a variable, domestic business experience that is new in the literature; and the reinforcement of the importance of examining both internal and external factors when making a foreign market entry mode choice.
Measuring the Effects of Advertising Polysemy on Branding
Authors: Brown Ulysses J. , Arora Anshu Saxena , Arora Amit
Published: April 2013

In the advertising research literature, polysemy is defined as different interpretations for the same advertising message. The multiple ad-interpretations can be attributable to complexities and diversities in culture and/or consumers’ own demographics, perceptions, attitudes, lifestyles, values, behavior, and psychographics. We provide a bipolar and dichotomous perspective on advertising polysemy as positive and negative polysemy with research and practice examples from the print advertisements for alcoholic beverages and corporate social responsibility to explain the conditions that lead to the emergence of positive and negative polysemic contexts for the same message. Furthermore, the study explores how polysemy leads to better branding. The research investigates the concept of polysemy and the generation of idiosyncratic meanings, and examines the impact of advertising polysemy on consumer-based brand equity. The research proposes and measures the advertising polysemy and consumer-based brand equity conceptual framework supported by accommodation theory, consumer response theory, and theory of hierarchy of effects, leading to stronger ad-evoked feelings, ad and brand attitudes, and consumer-based brand equity.
Local Embeddedness and Expatriates’ Effectiveness for Knowledge Transfer within MNCs
Authors: Ji Fiona Xiaoying , Connerley Mary L.
Published: April 2013

The development of expatriates’ social relationships in a local environment is critical given that social ties are considered the key players of a Multinational Corporation’s (MNC) network and a prerequisite for knowledge transfer within the organization. By building on the national and organizational culture literature, we develop a conceptual model to better understand how expatriates can effectively build local embeddedness. Our conceptual arguments include how four groups of culture-related factors predict expatriates’ local embeddedness, expatriates’ cross-cultural experience, expatriates’ cultural orientation, local national culture, and MNCs’ organizational culture. Finally, we also investigate under what conditions expatriates’ social ties within the MNC can influence the expatriates’ effectiveness in knowledge transfer.
SEcure Neighbor Discovery
Authors: AlSa’deh Ahmad , Rafiee Hosnieh , Meinel Christoph
Published: April 2013

SEcure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) was proposed to counteract threats to the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP). It is a strong security extension that can make the IPv6 local link very safe. SEND relies on dynamically Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGAs) and X.509 certificates. However, SEND is not easily deployed and is still vulnerable to some types of attacks. This chapter evaluates the practical considerations of a SEND deployment taking a cryptographic approach as a means of securing the IPv6 local link operations. It reviews the remaining vulnerabilities and gives some recommendations with which to facilitate SEND deployment.
Offline/Online Security in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
Authors: Hsin Wen-Jung , Harn Lein
Published: April 2013

Mobile ad hoc network is a network comprised of mobile nodes quickly forming an autonomous network for a particular purpose such as emergency search and rescue. One of the most prominent security challenges for such a network is the limited capacity in the mobile nodes, thereby preventing costly computation operations. However, this limitation on a mobile node manifests itself only when the mobile node is dispatched on an active duty (i.e., online). One can prepare the mobile nodes as much as possible offline in anticipation of an upcoming deployment. In this chapter, the authors present three offline/online authentication and key agreement schemes and one offline/online non-repudiation scheme, all aiming at fast online computation for mobile nodes in mobile ad hoc networks.
Preserving the Privacy of Patient Records in Health Monitoring Systems
Authors: Elkhodr Mahmoud , Shahrestani Seyed , Cheung Hon
Published: April 2013

The goal of this chapter is to discuss the challenges of generic security protocols and platforms for securing Electronic Health Records (EHR) in general and for their adoption in shared care environments in particular. The chapter introduces various methods and security solutions based on existing protocols, discusses their potentials, and describes some experiences with their implementations. Amongst the main challenges that e-health technology faces, security is considered as one of the major obstacles to its deployment. The chapter proposes an authentication approach, referred to as Ubiquitous Health Trust Protocol (UHTP), which aims at minimizing the security risk associated with the remote access of EHRs using portable devices. In particular, the proposed approach has been used to create ways for secure collaboration providing a set of generic services such as read/write, authentication, and trust management, as well as advanced functionality for mobile access. The experience in adopting the approach using Java on the Android platform is described.
A Computationally Improved Control Policy for FMS Using Crucial Marking/Transition-Separation Instances
Authors: Huang Yi-Sheng , Pan Yen-Liang
Published: April 2013

Deadlock prevention, deadlock detection, and deadlock avoidance strategies are used to solve the deadlock problems of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS). The theory of regions has been recognized as the unique method for obtaining maximally permissive controllers in the existing literature. All legal and live maximal behavior of a Petri net model can be preserved by using a Marking/Transition-Separation Instance (MTSI). However, obtaining all sets of MTSIs is an extremely time consuming problem. This work proposes Crucial Marking/Transition-Separation Instances (CMTSIs) that allow designers to employ few MTSIs to deal with deadlocks. The advantage of the proposed policy is that a maximally permissive controller can be obtained with drastically reduced computation. Experimental results, by varying the markings of given net structures, indicate that it is the most efficient policy to obtain optimal controllers among existing methods based on the theory of regions.
A Critical-Siphon Approach to Fastest Deadlock Controller for S3PR
Authors: Chao Daniel Yuh
Published: April 2013

The authors developed a theory to show that exactly one monitor is required for the set of siphons in the family of 2-compound siphons and how to assign its initial markings. This avoids redundant monitors and the unnecessary associated computational burden. Neither reachability graph nor minimal siphon needs to be computed to achieve polynomial complexity—essential for large systems. This chapter redevelops the theory more formally and further applies this approach to two well-known S3PR to obtain a controller full or near maximally permissive, where Weighted Control (WC) arcs are nevertheless necessary to keep the controlled model maximally permissive. However, optimal control for siphons involving WC arcs are still under research. As many as possible for simpler structures are desired to reduce WC arcs. In addition, fast computation is important for dynamic reconfiguration situations. The authors develop a single theorem to identify the condition where WC places cannot be replaced by Ordinary Control (OC) arcs, while others can be replaced.
Composition of Functional Petri Nets
Authors: Zaitsev Dmitry A.
Published: April 2013

Functional Petri nets and subnets are introduced and studied for the purpose of speed-up of Petri nets analysis with algebraic methods. The authors show that any functional subnet may be generated by a composition of minimal functional subnets. They propose two ways to decompose a Petri net: via logical equations solution and with an ad-hoc algorithm, whose complexity is polynomial. Then properties of functional subnets are studied. The authors show that linear invariants of a Petri net may be computed from invariants of its functional subnets; similar results also hold for the fundamental equation of Petri nets. A technique for Petri nets analysis using composition of functional subnets is also introduced and studied. The authors show that composition-based calculation of invariants and solutions of fundamental equation provides a significant speed-up of computations. For an additional speed-up, they propose a sequential composition of functional subnets. Sequential composition is formalised in the terms of graph theory and was named the optimal collapse of a weighted graph. At last, the authors apply the introduced technique to the analysis of Petri net models of such well-known networking protocols as ECMA, TCP, BGP.
Old Age, the Internet, and Advancing Technology
Authors: Murnane John S.
Published: April 2013

The benefits to the old and very old of mental stimulation and close connections with family are well documented. Access to email and the Web can make very large contributions to both. This chapter describes a small research project to place Internet-linked computers in a retirement complex in Melbourne, Australia. The aim was to research the existing computer skills of the residents, provide lessons in the use of email, general computer and Internet use, investigate the most appropriate type of lessons, and document problems and residents areas of interest. This chapter describes ways to minimise problems with applications and hardware, and potential advantages of up-to-date technology such as Tablet computers and ‘Smart’ Television are discussed.
Interpretive Strategies for Analyzing Digital Texts
Authors: Petty Sheila , Benedicenti Luigi
Published: April 2013

This paper brings together the disciplines of media studies and software systems engineering; it focuses on the challenge of finding methodologies to measure, test and decode meaning in digital cultural objects. The authors draw on a variety of examples: interactive online digital art projects; an interactive, immersive screen-based art installation; re-mediated digital art installation; a videogame; and a medical interface example, in order to determine if it is possible to map interpretive strategies that include a blending of old and new criteria, but ultimately promoting an equal partnership between artist and audience, and thus, a community of co-creators.
Creating and Analysing a Social Network Built from Clips of Online News
Authors: Figueira Álvaro , Devezas José , Cravino Nuno , Revilla Luis-Francisco
Published: April 2013

Current online news media are increasingly depending on the participation of readers in their websites while readers increasingly use more sophisticated technology to access online news. In this context, the authors present the Breadcrumbs system and project that aims to provide news readers with tools to collect online news, to create a personal digital library (PDL) of clips taken from news, and to navigate not only on the own PDL, but also on external PDLs that relate to the first one. In this article, the authors present and describe the system and its paradigm for accessing news. We complement the description with the results from several tests which confirm the validity of our approach for clustering of news and for analysing the gathered data.
What are the Characteristics of the Firms that are Most Prone to Mobile Selling?
Authors: San-Martín Sonia
Published: April 2013

Vendors are actively considering the mobile phone as a means of marketing nowadays and should also analyze its potential as a means of selling. In this study, we present the survey results from a sample of 125 firms, in Spain. The author outlines two types of firms (sceptical and receptive) on the basis of factors that drive or inhibit this type of selling. The author then characterize those types of potential mobile firms regarding TOE (technological, organizational and environmental) variables and CRM (perceived customer relationship performance, perceived customer value, electronic database and benefits of mobile CRM) variables. To the best of the author’s knowledge, previous studies have neither analyzed mobile selling in Spain nor proposed an exhaustive characterization of mobile vendor firms and strategies.
An Analysis of the Effect of e-Government Readiness on Business Climate, Corruption Perception, and the Rate of New Entrepreneurs
Authors: Zouain Deborah Moraes , Almeida Gustavo De Oliveira , Sato Emilia Mathilde Moraes Zouain
Published: April 2013

This research aims to understand the relationship between e-government, business climate, corruption perception and its impact in the entrepreneurial activity. Data was collected from various databases, for the years 2008, 2010 and 2012, using panel data. The reports used were The Doing Business Report from World Bank, E-Government Survey from the United Nations, Corruption Perception Index by Transparence International and entrepreneurship data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. After joining the databases, correlation analysis and panel least squares regressions were performed. The results indicate that when a country is more “e-gov” ready, it may have a more dynamic business sector and less perception of corruption. The probable causes of the relationships are discussed, including suggestions for an integrative approach to allow developing countries to diminish the gap of e-government readiness. Future research to understand the difference of impact of e-government in developed and developing countries are also suggested.
Electronic and Mobile G2C Services
Authors: Exarchou Maria , Karatzika Paraskevi , Zarmpou Theodora , Vlachopoulou Maro
Published: April 2013

Electronic and mobile government services represent a tremendous impetus to move forward in the 21st Century with the potential to bring about a higher quality and more cost effective services to enhance the relationship between citizens and government. In this chapter, the municipalities’ electronic services provided to citizens are examined based on the literature review and the assessment of their websites. As a result, a typology of electronic and mobile services is proposed. Furthermore, the users’ perspective is inquired in order to depict the awareness, the usage and the attitude of citizens in relation to the electronic and mobile services provided by the municipalities in Northern Greece. Therefore, electronic services are used only by a small percentage of Greek citizens due to lack of awareness and trust in electronic government. Mobile services are regarded to be beneficial, while high cost and lack of network connection seem to be barriers for their usage.
Factor Advantages of the Republic of Serbia in Agricultural Production and a Need for Accomplishment of Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Market
Authors: Parausic Vesna , Potrebic Velibor , Simonovic Zoran
Published: April 2013

A significant wealth, which a country can have in factor conditions (abundance of natural resources, available labor with tradition in agricultural production), can enable to the country a good starting position or good initial terms for development of intensive and competitive agricultural production. However, by themselves, these factor conditions will not provide to the country high productivity and employment in agriculture, high life standard of agricultural producers, and high export results. Numerous theoretical papers point out the fact that for highly developed and intensive agriculture, which provides to the country and the agricultural producers high employment and life standard, it is necessary to build and strengthen new sources of competitive advantage, of which the most important are: research and development activities, associations and joining in clusters, and setting up a stimulating micro-economic business environment. The authors in the chapter determine, by statistical and comparative analysis, a working hypothesis that favorable factor conditions in agriculture by themselves do not lead to accomplishment and keeping up a sustainable competitive advantage of the country, on domestic and foreign market. By analyzing export results of selected European countries in the field of agriculture, the authors determine conditions that are necessary for a country to achieve high and sustainable competitive advantage on the international market. The chapter also presents the conditions needed to set up “new” sustainable sources of agricultural producers` competitive advantage in the Republic of Serbia.
Consulting as a Factor of Enterprises' Development in Serbian Agribusiness
Authors: Cvijanovic Drago , Mihailovic Branko
Published: April 2013

The subject of this chapter is consulting in Serbia, which is analyzed through a prism of factors in its development and its influence on enterprises’ performance in agribusiness. In order to realize the analysis successfully and to get relevant results, it is necessary to move the observed problem into the wider context of economic events, the basic influences on agribusiness development ways in Serbia, which is the goal of this study. At the end, regardless of the level of research success, this chapter represents the basis for future studies of the consulting services and their support to business management.
Sustainable Development Indicators
Authors: Mieila Mihai , Toplicianu Valerica
Published: April 2013

Since the economic development ceased to represent by itself the main issue in achieving human well-being—at least for western societies—scientists have discovered that the sustainability may represent an even more significant threat for human civilisation in a fundamental sense, almost irrespective of material wealth. Sustainability assumes that the economic development is deployed in compliance with the other facets of human demand for well-being: preservation of biodiversity and climate, the human rights, the integrate approach of distributional justice, etc. Evaluation of development sustainability represents a real scientific challenge, proved by the wide variety of indicators in existing national and international sets. The Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) are the practical tool that address the balance between the development and sustainability, ensures evaluation and translation of knowledge into meaningful and manageable units of information to support analyses and research, and to inform planning and decision-making. There are pointed out the fundamentals of SDIs design and theoretic specific frameworks. As the majority of indicators are applicable straightforward, the main focus in presentation is upon the calculation algorithm of aggregate SDIs. In this respect, the chapter comprises the estimation algorithm of capital components of wealth; also, there are introduced the human life quality and environmental indicators, that can represent a suitable complement of wealth measurement, for a comprehensive development in agreement with the surrounding nature, society, and respect for future generations.
Cultural Pluralism in the Context of the Knowledge Society Ecosystem
Authors: Bakry Saad Haj , Al-Ghamdi Ali
Published: April 2013

With Huntington’s warning of a “clash of civilizations” following the end of the cold war, “cultural pluralism” has become important for enhancing world peace and supporting development. In this paper, cultural pluralism is viewed as a “knowledge society” problem, where intercultural knowledge is produced, disseminated and used within an ecosystem of mutual understanding and respect. The authors present key cultural pluralisms efforts, providing an overall picture of the issues involved. These efforts include: the 2001 United Nations (UN) resolution on dialogue among civilizations; the 2001 UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declaration on cultural diversity; the 2005 Rabat conference on dialogue among cultures and civilizations; and the 2008 Madrid world conference on dialogue. In the second part of this paper, cultural pluralism issues are restructured according to the knowledge society ecosystem framework, where they are organized according to the five STOPE domains: strategy, technology, organization, people and the environment, and where they interact with the intercultural knowledge activities. The resulting cultural pluralism ecosystem framework is useful as a tool for organizing and interrelating future studies on the subject and promoting peace and development.
Multiple Solitudes
Authors: Robertson Lorayne , Thomson Dianne
Published: April 2013

In this paper, the authors examine the potential and the reality of pan-Canadian digital curriculum policy access in the current web-enabled global landscape. The authors discuss theory related to the affordances offered by digital technologies for the sharing of research and policy, as well as theory relative to knowledge mobilization and communities of practice, both of which support collaboration and consultation for informed policy development. The authors present their findings from two investigations to test digital access to curriculum policies across Canada’s provinces and territories through their Ministry of Education websites. Through this analysis, the authors provide evidence of the current affordances and barriers related to digital access to curriculum policies and offer suggestions to facilitate knowledge mobilization around curricular responses to child and adolescent health issues.
Effects of Virtual World Environments in Student Satisfaction
Authors: Saleeb Noha , Dafoulas Georgios A.
Published: April 2013

Universities and educational institutions are currently becoming more dependent on delivering courses within online virtual worlds, such as 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLES). There is insufficient research on how environmental and architectural design elements of 3D virtual educational spaces and buildings inside these virtual worlds can affect the e-learning process of the students and their satisfaction and contentment. This study investigates students’ satisfaction from different architectural features used in 3D educational facilities by recording, from surveys, students’ degree of agreeability toward varied design characteristics in different learning spaces within 3D VLES. Defining best perceived design traits can improve 3D educational space design to augment a student’s overall e-learning experience, and lead to general design guidelines for future creation of 3D virtual educational facilities.
Cataloguing and Searching Musical Sound Recordings in an Ontology-Based Information System
Authors: Albuquerque Marcelo de O. , Siqueira Sean Wolfgand M. , Braz Maria Helena L.B>
Published: April 2013

Although a lot of information is available worldwide, getting the right piece of information is challenging. In addition, integrating information from different sources is still very complicated. To make the different information systems to interoperate, it is necessary to provide common knowledge structures. Ontologies have been developed for making the semantics of a domain explicit. However, using such formal structures is not straightforward and their benefits are not clear to the users. The work presented in this paper explores the use of an ontology for musical sound recordings in order to allow cataloguing and searching for such information. Therefore it investigates how the knowledge society can benefit from ontologies, with focus on the culture, more specifically the music domain. Some possible benefits and pitfalls are also described and a case study shows an evaluation of the proposed approach by users of this domain.
A Pattern of Reference to Insure Organizational Learning Process
Authors: Grundstein Michel
Published: April 2013

In this paper, referring to the Model for General Knowledge Management within the Enterprise (MGKME), the author emphasizes two of the operating elements of this model, which are essential to insure the organizational learning process that leads to the appropriate use of concepts, methods, and tools of innovative technology: “Ad hoc Infrastructures” and “Organizational Learning Processes”. Nonaka’s SECI models and the Japanese concept of Ba underlie these two elements. The author discusses a case in which the “Semi-opened Infrastructure Model” (SopIM) was implemented to deploy artificial intelligence and knowledge-based systems within a large industrial company.
Ontological Description and Similarity-Based Discovery of Business Process Models
Authors: Belhajjame Khalid , Brambilla Marco
Published: April 2013

Project repositories are a central asset in software development, as they preserve the knowledge gathered in past development activities. Locating relevant information in a vast project repository is problematic, because it requires manually tagging projects with accurate metadata, an activity which is time consuming and prone to errors and omissions. Just like any other artifact or web service, business processes can be stored in repositories to be shared and used by third parties, e.g., as building blocks for constructing new business processes. The success of such a paradigm depends partly on the availability of effective search tools to locate business processes that are relevant to the user purposes. A handful of researchers have investigated the problem of business process discovery using as input syntactical and structural information that describes business processes. This work explores an additional source of information encoded in the form of annotations that semantically describe business processes. Business processes can be semantically described using the so called abstract business processes. These are designated by concepts from an ontology which additionally captures their relationships. This ontology can be built in an automatic fashion from a collection of (concrete) business processes, and this work illustrates how it can be refined by domain experts and used in the discovery of business processes, with the purpose of reuse and increase in design productivity.
A Method for Eliciting Goals for Business Process Models based on Non-Functional Requirements Catalogues
Authors: Cardoso Evellin , Almeida João Paulo A. , Guizzardi Renata S. S. , Guizzardi Giancarlo
Published: April 2013

While traditional approaches in business process modeling tend to focus on “how” the business processes are performed (adopting a behavioral description in which business processes are described in terms of procedural aspects), in goal-oriented business process modeling, the proposals strive to extend traditional business process methodologies by providing a dimension of intentionality to business processes. One of the key difficulties in enabling one to model goal-oriented processes concerns the identification or elicitation of goals. This paper reports on a case study conducted in a Brazilian hospital, which obtained several goal models represented in i*/Tropos, each of which correspond to a business process also modeled in the scope of the study. NFR catalogues were helpful in goal elicitation, uncovering goals that did not come up during previous interviews prior to these catalogues’ use.
Predicting OSS Development Success
Authors: Raja Uzma , Tretter Marietta J.
Published: April 2013

Open Source Software (OSS) has reached new levels of sophistication and acceptance by users and commercial software vendors. This research creates tests and validates a model for predicting successful development of OSS projects. Widely available archival data was used for OSS projects from Sourceforge.net. The data is analyzed with multiple Data Mining techniques. Initially three competing models are created using Logistic Regression, Decision Trees and Neural Networks. These models are compared for precision and are refined in several phases. Text Mining is used to create new variables that improve the predictive power of the models. The final model is chosen based on best fit to separate training and validation data sets and the ability to explain the relationship among variables. Model robustness is determined by testing it on a new dataset extracted from the SF repository. The results indicate that end-user involvement, project age, functionality, usage, project management techniques, project type and team communication methods have a significant impact on the development of OSS projects.
Government Services in Outlying Regions
Authors: Mellouli Sehl , Chartier Anne , Roy Marie-Christine , Poulin Diane
Published: April 2013

E-government offers the potential to provide easy and flexible access to a vast array of government services, particularly in outlying regions where traditional service centers are scarce and costly. However, past research shows that online services use decreases in non-urban areas. The objective of this chapter is to identify factors that influence the use of e-government services in outlying regions. In the delivery of any government services, there are two parties: citizens and the government. Hence, in order to better identify these factors, we conducted our study from two points of view: the citizens’ and the government’s managers. These results show that attitude positively affects intention to use e-government services. From the citizens’ perspective, attitude is in turn influenced by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, and trust. From the managers’ perspective, several social, economic, demographic, and psychological factors should be considered for the development of online services.
Enhancing Information Services through Public-Private Partnerships
Authors: Eom Seok-Jin , Fountain Jane E.
Published: April 2013

What are e-government success factors for using public-private partnerships to enhance learning and capacity development? To examine this question, the authors developed a comparative case analysis of the development of the Business Reference Model (BRM), a national-level e-government initiative to promote shared information services, in the U.S. federal government and the Korean central government. The results indicate institutional arrangements deeply affect the outcomes of knowledge transfer. The study shows that private sector partners in both countries played various roles as “brokers” of information technology (IT) knowledge between government and the private sector by: raising awareness of the necessity of the BRM; providing best practices; developing pilot projects; and developing implementation strategies. However, the study finds that the two countries took entirely different approaches to working with non-governmental organizations in BRM development with implications for project success and lessons for e-government success. The study is meant to deepen understanding of the embeddedness of public-private partnerships in institutional contexts and the implications of such institutional arrangements for knowledge sharing on e-government success. The study examines knowledge transfer in the context of similarities and differences in partnership structures across two advanced industrialized countries with leading roles in e-governance.
Implementation of Information and Communications Technologies for Financial Inclusion in Programs to Alleviate Poverty in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico
Authors: Mariscal Judith , Rentería César
Published: April 2013

The main objective of this chapter is to analyze innovative ICT implementation on CTP in three countries in the region: Bolsa Familia (Brazil), Oportunidades (Mexico) and Familias en Acción (Colombia). These three countries are implementing pilot programs that include ITC. These experiences may important insights for future successful implementation of ICT for CTP in other countries.
Developing E-government Readiness Factors
Authors: Zheng Lei
Published: April 2013

E-government readiness is critical and fundamental to e-government success. This paper reviews and differentiates the definitions of e-readiness, e-government readiness and e-government maturity, and examines the literatures on current assessment practices to identify issues, controversies and problems. The chapter then proposes a bottom-up approach to develop a field-based E-government readiness assessment method and factors that could be usable and applicable for a specific local government with its own unique e-government priorities and goals, and then tests the approach in a city government in China and receives positive feedbacks. As a result of this new approach and methods, a set of specific readiness assessment factors, rather than predefined all-size-fits-all criteria, are derived. The method takes both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and collects both primary and secondary data.
E-Government in Singapore
Authors: Ha Huong
Published: April 2013

This chapter is significant as it will provide better insights for further research in e-Government, given the high demand for good governance and better delivery of public services. The lessons drawn from Singapore’s e-Government, in terms of how to achieve a balance between technology adoption, citizen engagement and effective public administration, can be further developed into an e-Government model applicable to other neighbouring countries.