bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Open Source Adoption Index
Authors: Saini Sanjeev K. , Krishnan C. N. , Rajaram L. N.
Published: February 2011

This paper reports the preliminary results of a study conducted to assess and quantify the adoption of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) by organisations and enterprises. While almost all organisations use FOSS in some form today, there is a wide variation in the manner and extent to which they do so, and presently no quantitative measure exists that can capture the true picture. The present work has built a model with two sets of parameters that, when fed with relevant data about an organisation, generates a single number, the FOSS Adoption Index (FAI), for that organisation. The index is so defined that the higher its value for an organisation, the greater is the extent of FOSS adoption in that organisation. Beyond the single measure FAI that gives a coarse assessment, the model also allows drilling down to finer levels of granularity that provides deeper insights into the status and role of FOSS within a given organisation. Primary data collected for two classes of organisations through questionnaire based surveys and interviews have been used to demonstrate the working of the model as well as its potential usefulness for real world situations.
Demonstrating and Communicating the Value of Nuclear Decommissioning to Society
Authors: Wareing Mark
Published: February 2011

The UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB) responsible for the remediation of the UK’s civil nuclear liabilities. To secure government funding and demonstrate that the NDA is delivering its mission, it must be able to show that it provides value for money across its estate. Value comes in many forms, such as an improved environment, hazard reduction, changes in sky line, social amenities, money, employment, and so forth. Depending on the perspective of the receiver, and their closeness to the affected area, the weighting placed on the different aspects of value will vary. Therefore, the challenge has been to get a consistent approach that measures value and is broadly acceptable to stakeholders in which different aspects are compared and decisions are made on a national basis.
Management Theory
Authors: Davies John
Published: February 2011

This paper develops a systems perspective on the interdependent relationships between management academics, management theory and management practice. The author re-examines issues raised by Ghoshal, not only about how the uncritical acceptance of an ideologically based gloomy vision of human nature has led to “bad management theories ... destroying good management practices”, but also how practice can impact the development of theory. The approach provides an opportunity to reinterpret and reveal the systemic nature of related feedback and learning processes labelled as the double hermeneutic by Giddens (1987) and as reciprocal determinism by Bandura (1978), to draw a parallel with the role of theory in the decision sciences. This paper provides a constructive illustration of the use of the systems representational tools of system dynamics to develop a systems perspective on these matters to identify the underpinning systemic structure that gives rise to Ghoshal’s views. Finally, the author identifies a means of addressing issues of concern to management theorists, analysts, and practitioners.
Toward Understanding Ethical Decision Making
Authors: Johnson Jennie , Coyle Tom
Published: February 2011

This paper proposes a step-wise methodology for the development of a scale measuring intent-to-act ethically, which is a step forward in the ethical decision-making process. To test the robustness of the methodology, data from two different populations gathered from 75 students and 181 professionals were examined to ensure reliability in ethical workplace scenarios. This research is relevant to recent issues like the current economic crisis lead by the sub-prime banking failures. The failures of Enron and Tyco are extreme examples of failure of societal members to act ethically. The construction of scale-measuring items was based on a theory of intent, and issues identified from the human resource management literature related to reasons employees do not report perceived unethical behavior in the workplace. Tested for social desirability bias, the results show that the proposed scale offers an improved reliability for assessing behavioral intent related to ethical decision-making. With these findings, this paper provides a tool for research that relies on a measure of ethical intent as a proxy for ethical behavior.
Emotion in the Pursuit of Understanding
Authors: Levine Daniel S. , Perlovsky Leonid I.
Published: February 2011

Theories of cognitive processes, such as decision making and creative problem solving, for a long time neglected the contributions of emotion or affect in favor of analysis based on use of deliberative rules to optimize performance. Since the 1990s, emotion has increasingly been incorporated into theories of these cognitive processes. Some theorists have in fact posited a “dual-systems approach” to understanding decision making and high-level cognition. One system is fast, emotional, and intuitive, while the other is slow, rational, and deliberative. However, one’s understanding of the relevant brain regions indicate that emotional and rational processes are deeply intertwined, with each exerting major influences on the functioning of the other. Also presented in this paper are neural network modeling principles that may capture the interrelationships of emotion and cognition. The authors also review evidence that humans, and possibly other mammals, possess a “knowledge instinct,” which acts as a drive to make sense of the environment. This drive typically incorporates a strong affective component in the form of aesthetic fulfillment or dissatisfaction.
Chatterbox Challenge as a Test-Bed for Synthetic Emotions
Authors: Vallverdú Jordi , Shah Huma , Casacuberta David
Published: February 2011

Chatterbox Challenge is an annual web-based contest for artificial conversational systems, ACE. The 2010 instantiation was the tenth consecutive contest held between March and June in the 60th year following the publication of Alan Turing’s influential disquisition ‘computing machinery and intelligence’. Loosely based on Turing’s viva voca interrogator-hidden witness imitation game, a thought experiment to ascertain a machine’s capacity to respond satisfactorily to unrestricted questions, the contest provides a platform for technology comparison and evaluation. This paper provides an insight into emotion content in the entries since the 2005 Chatterbox Challenge. The authors find that synthetic textual systems, none of which are backed by academic or industry funding, are, on the whole and more than half a century since Weizenbaum’s natural language understanding experiment, little further than Eliza in terms of expressing emotion in dialogue. This may be a failure on the part of the academic AI community for ignoring the Turing test as an engineering challenge.
Environmental and Social Impact of Stormwater Outfalls at Lake Michigan Beaches
Authors: Silva Marcia , McLellan Sandra
Published: February 2011

Milwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin and home to approximately one million people. Lake Michigan waters in Milwaukee’s coastal area are mainly used for recreational purposes and drinking water. These coastal waters are impacted by many sources of pollution, from which the presence of sewage is a main concern, as this sewage contains numerous harmful pathogens. In this paper, the authors examine and analyze the beaches of Milwaukee for pollutants to serve as an impetus for future action.
Consumers Perception of Corporate Social Responsibility Empirical Study in Romanian Retail
Authors: Pop Nicolae Al. , Vaduva Sebastian A. , Dabija Dan Cristian , Fotea Ioan S.
Published: February 2011

To build a better and more profitable corporate image, Western firms have been investing in social responsibility. The Romanian consumer has fairly recently been exposed to this holistic marketing concept since the Revolution of 1989, and in this regard, in this article, the authors verify conventional corporate social responsibility principles of building customer loyalty as well as goodwill from stakeholders. The paper explores the competitive advantage and its various components in which companies make use of marketing instruments that influence CSR activities of retailers.
Sustainable Agriculture The United States versus the European Union
Authors: Varner Carson H. , Varner Katrin C.
Published: February 2011

This paper examines developing issues and attitudes that unite and divide the United States and the European Union as the discussion and regulation of agriculture evolves. While some terms, such as “organic,” are defined in law in both the United States and European Union, the increasingly used “sustainability” is an evolving concept. The main sustainability issue is how to provide food and fiber for a rapidly growing world population. In this context, the role of biotechnology is questioned. Americans tend to favor what are sometimes called genetically modified crops, while Europeans remain cautious. Europeans lean more toward organic farming, while Americans assert that much of the world will starve if organic methods are required. This paper reviews the directions that the discussion of these issues is taking and will show areas of agreement and where the two sides diverge.
Innovations and Continuous Improvements and Their Impact on Firms’ Performance
Authors: Zain Mohamed , Kassim Norizan
Published: February 2011

This paper examines the influence of innovation and continuous improvement practices on the competitiveness of firms, which in turn affect their performance. Results obtained from 112 Qatari firms confirm that continuous improvements had a significant positive influence on the firms’ competitiveness. Among six of the ten Ekvall’s creative climate factors examined, only four had some positive influence on the competitiveness of the firms. The authors also found that the organization’s internal environment had significant positive influence on the competitiveness of the firms. Furthermore, results show that organizational competitiveness significantly influenced performance. Managerial implications of the findings are also provided.
Congestion Management Using Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Technique
Authors: Balaraman Sujatha , Kamaraj N.
Published: February 2011

This paper proposes the Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization (HPSO) method for solving congestion management problems in a pool based electricity market. Congestion may occur due to lack of coordination between generation and transmission utilities or as a result of unexpected contingencies. In the proposed method, the control strategies to limit line loading to the security limits are by means of minimum adjustments in generations from the initial market clearing values. Embedding Evolutionary Programming (EP) technique in Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm improves the global searching capability of PSO and also prevents the premature convergence in local minima. A number of functional operating constraints, such as branch flow limits and load bus voltage magnitude limits are included as penalties in the fitness function. Numerical results on three test systems namely modified IEEE 14 Bus, IEEE 30 Bus and IEEE 118 Bus systems are presented and the results are compared with PSO and EP approaches in order to demonstrate its performance.
Unit Commitment by Evolving Ant Colony Optimization
Authors: Vaisakh K. , Srinivas L. R.
Published: February 2011

Ant Colony Optimization is more suitable for combinatorial optimization problems. ACO is successfully applied to the traveling salesman problem, and multistage decision making of ACO has an edge over other conventional methods. In this paper, the authors propose the Evolving Ant Colony Optimization (EACO) method for solving unit commitment (UC) problem. The EACO employs Genetic Algorithm (GA) for finding optimal set of ACO parameters, while ACO solves the UC problem. Problem formulation takes into consideration the minimum up and down time constraints, start up cost, spinning reserve, and generation limit constraints. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated on the systems with number of generating units in the range of 10 to 60. The test results are encouraging and compared with those obtained by other methods.
A Nearly One-to-One Method to Convert Analog Signals into a Small Volume of Data
Authors: Ciulin Dan
Published: February 2011

The actual quantizing and sampling procedure leads to irreducible errors that do not permit to reconstruct correctly the initial analog signal. To diminish the reconstruction errors to an acceptable level one has to increase the volume of transmitted data. Then, it results in big (or even very big) data volumes that are difficult to store and/or transmit. A deal has been made sometimes between the quality and the resulted data volume in order to have small enough volumes. The paper presents a new (theoretically) one-to-one method to convert physical realizable analog signals into a small volume of data. This method uses the (Shannon) Sampling Theorem, the Bandwidth Compression Theorem and a new Quantizing and Sampling Theorem described in this paper. The Quantizing and Sampling Theorem is based on the properties of phase/frequency modulation and on the properties of a Phase Lock Loop (PLL) to decode also amplitude-modulated signals. Practically, this new method may realize a (theoretically) nearly one-to-one conversion of a physically realizable analog signal into a small volume of data. Adequate software and hardware have to be realized to achieve technically this goal. To diminish the errors of calculus, error- free calculus methods have to be used.
Socially-Aware Design
Authors: Beale Russell
Published: February 2011

In this article we discuss ‘slanty design’, which incorporate three new principles into a conventional user-centered design process. These are designing for non-goals (things you wish the user not to be able to do); creating anti-usability (designing so that it is difficult to achieve the non-goals); and clean design (solutions without unwanted side-effects that then have to have solutions designed for them). Slanty design incorporates many of the concepts of socio-technical approaches, and is explained using a variety of examples, including an airport baggage carousel, and the remaining challenges outstanding are described.
From Pragmatism to Interaction Design
Authors: Mørch Anders I.
Published: February 2011

This article presents an approach to interaction design that is inspired by sociotechnical systems (STS) and grounded in sociocultural theory. The focus is on the early phases of the design process and in particular how theoretical ideas can stimulate design. It starts by surveying key works in theory-based design in HCI and CSCW. The notion of ‘externalized design’ of buildings has been adopted as a framework for how to incorporate conceptual (non-computational) artifacts in user interfaces. The framework is applied to the retrospective analysis of an interactive system developed by the author (Janus). The system was stimulated by the notion of reflection-in-action. A three-staged process provides gradual steps for translating reflection-in-action into a concrete user interface: 1) selection, 2) appropriation, and 3) translation. The article ends by discussing strengths and limitations of the approach, and identifies directions for further work.
Extending Sociotechnical Design to Project Conception
Authors: Kampf Constance
Published: February 2011

Project management processes offer specific sites for understanding the interplay of the social and the technical. This article focuses on the connection between knowledge and technology through knowledge communication processes, cultural & rhetorical contexts in projects, and the iterative process of project conception rooted in sense-making by designers. The data comes from a Project management course in which the students were asked to design and plan projects to situate a mobile phone game in a social context. The course was taught simultaneously at the Helsinki School of Economics in Finland and the Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Denmark. The analysis demonstrates the potential of knowledge communication concepts for social technical design and highlights the cultural context of the designers as a key factor to consider in socio-technical design.
A Way Out of the Information Jungle
Authors: Jahnke Isa
Published: February 2011

The emergence of community-oriented Information and Communication Technology platforms, e.g., forum software or wikis, the penetration of media in society has increased. In academia, forms of communication and cooperation to share knowledge are changing under open Web 2.0 conditions. In this regard, teaching and learning scenarios are moving towards technology-enhanced lifelong learning communities. This contribution presents the results of a longitudinal study of a Socio-Technical Community (STC) launched in 2002. The STC, which supports the study organization as well as teaching and learning in higher education, has been evaluated from its founding to its sustainable development and transformation phase in 2009. The study shows results in three specific areas: The learners’ satisfaction with the STC, the type and quality of use, and if the STC is a helpful support for students to progress through their studies more efficiently than without an STC. The central conclusion is that spaces for computer-mediated communication are important for students regarding informal learning about organizing their own studies. Informal learning with a socio-technical community is more effective than without due to its individualization of learning in large groups.
Supporting CSCW and CSCL with Intelligent Social Grouping Services
Authors: Tsai Jeffrey J.P. , Zhang Jia , Huang Jeff J.S. , Yang Stephen J.H.
Published: February 2011

This article presents an intelligent social grouping service for identifying right participants to support CSCW and CSCL. We construct a three-layer hierarchical social network, in which we identify two important relationship ties – a knowledge relationship tie and a social relationship tie. We use these relationship ties as metric to measure the collaboration strength between pairs of participants in a social network. The stronger the knowledge relationship tie, the more knowledgeable the participants; the stronger the social relationship tie, the more likely the participants are willing to share their knowledge. By analyzing and calculating these relationship ties among peers using our computational models, we present a systematic way to discover collaboration peers according to configurable and customizable requirements. Experiences of social grouping services for identifying communities of practice through peer-to-peer search are also reported.
Machine Learning and Value-Based Software Engineering
Authors: Zhang Du
Published: February 2011

Software engineering research and practice thus far are primarily conducted in a value-neutral setting where each artifact in software development such as requirement, use case, test case, and defect, is treated as equally important during a software system development process. There are a number of shortcomings of such value-neutral software engineering. Value-based software engineering is to integrate value considerations into the full range of existing and emerging software engineering principles and practices. Machine learning has been playing an increasingly important role in helping develop and maintain large and complex software systems. However, machine learning applications to software engineering have been largely confined to the value-neutral software engineering setting. In this paper, the general message to be conveyed is to apply machine learning methods and algorithms to value-based software engineering. The training data or the background knowledge or domain theory or heuristics or bias used by machine learning methods in generating target models or functions should be aligned with stakeholders’ value propositions. An initial research agenda is proposed for machine learning in value-based software engineering.
Exploring the Cognitive Foundations of Software Engineering
Authors: Wang Yingxu , Patel Shushma
Published: February 2011

It is recognized that software is a unique abstract artifact that does not obey any known physical laws. For software engineering to become a matured engineering discipline like others, it must establish its own theoretical framework and laws, which are perceived to be mainly relied on cognitive informatics and denotational mathematics, supplementing to computing science, information science, and formal linguistics. This paper analyzes the basic properties of software and seeks the cognitive informatics foundations of software engineering. The nature of software is characterized by its informatics, behavioral, mathematical, and cognitive properties. The cognitive informatics foundations of software engineering are explored on the basis of the informatics laws of software and software engineering psychology. A set of fundamental cognitive constraints of software engineering, such as intangibility, complexity, indeterminacy, diversity, polymorphism, inexpressiveness, inexplicit embodiment, and unquantifiable quality measures, is identified. The conservative productivity of software is revealed based on the constraints of human cognitive capacity.
Positive and Negative Innovations in Software Engineering
Authors: Jones Capers
Published: February 2011

The software engineering field has been a fountain of innovation. Ideas and inventions from the software domain have literally changed the world as we know it. For software development, we have a few proven innovations. The way software is built remains surprisingly primitive. Even in 2008 major software applications are cancelled, overrun their budgets and schedules, and often have hazardously bad quality levels when released. There have been many attempts to improve software development, but progress has resembled a drunkard’s walk. Some attempts have been beneficial, but others have been either ineffective or harmful. This article puts forth the hypothesis that the main reason for the shortage of positive innovation in software development methods is due to a lack of understanding of the underlying problems of the software development domain. A corollary hypothesis is that lack of understanding of the problems is due to inadequate measurement of quality, productivity, costs, and the factors that affect project outcomes.
A Theory of Program Comprehension
Authors: Guéhéneuc Yann-Gaël
Published: February 2011

There exists an extensive literature on vision science, on the one hand, and on program comprehension, on the other hand. However, these two domains of research have been so far rather disjoint. Indeed, several cognitive theories have been proposed to explain program comprehension. These theories explain the processes taking place in the software engineers’ minds when they understand programs. They explain how software engineers process available information to perform their tasks but not how software engineers acquire this information. Vision science provides explanations on the processes used by people to acquire visual information from their environment. Joining vision science and program comprehension provides a more comprehensive theoretical framework to explain facts on program comprehension, to predict new facts, and to frame experiments. We join theories in vision science and in program comprehension; the resulting theory is consistent with facts on program comprehension and helps in predicting new facts, in devising experiments, and in putting certain program comprehension concepts in perspective.
Requirements Elicitation by Defect Elimination
Authors: Mahalakshmi G.S. , Geetha T.V.
Published: February 2011

This paper aims to develop an Indian-logic based approach for automatic generation of software requirements from a domain-specific ontology. The structure of domain ontology is adapted from Indian logic. The interactive approach proposed in this paper parses the problem statement, and the section of domain ontology, which matches the problem statement, is identified. The software generates questions to stakeholders based on the identified concepts. The answer is analysed for presence of flaws or inconsistencies. Subsequent questions are recursively generated to repair the flaw in the previous answer. These answers are populated into requirements ontology, which contains problem specific information coupled with the interests of the stakeholder. The information gathered is stored in a database, which is later segregated into functional and non-functional requirements. These requirements are classified, validated and prioritized based on combined approach of AHP and stakeholders’defined priority. Conflict between requirements is resolved by the application of cosine correlation measure.
Measurement of Cognitive Functional Sizes of Software
Authors: Misra Sanjay
Published: February 2011

One of the major issues in software engineering is the measurement. Since traditional measurement theory has problem in defining empirical observations on software entities in terms of their measured quantities, Morasca tried to solve this problem by proposing Weak Measurement theory. Further, in calculating complexity of software, the emphasis is mostly given to the computational complexity, algorithm complexity, functional complexity, which basically estimates the time, efforts, computability and efficiency. On the other hand, understandability and compressibility of the software which involves the human interaction are neglected in existing complexity measures. Recently, cognitive complexity (CC) to calculate the architectural and operational complexity of software was proposed to fill this gap. In this paper, we evaluated CC against the principle of weak measurement theory. We find that, the approach for measuring CC is more realistic and practical in comparison to existing approaches and satisfies most of the parameters required from measurement theory.
On Cognitive Computing
Authors: Wang Yingxu
Published: February 2011

Inspired by the latest development in cognitive informatics and contemporary denotational mathematics, cognitive computing is an emerging paradigm of intelligent computing methodologies and systems, which implements computational intelligence by autonomous inferences and perceptions mimicking the mechanisms of the brain. This article presents a survey on the theoretical framework and architectural techniques of cognitive computing beyond conventional imperative and autonomic computing technologies. Theoretical foundations of cognitive computing are elaborated from the aspects of cognitive informatics, neural informatics, and denotational mathematics. Conceptual models of cognitive computing are explored on the basis of the latest advances in abstract intelligence and computational intelligence. Applications of cognitive computing are described from the aspects of autonomous agent systems and cognitive search engines, which demonstrate how machine and computational intelligence may be generated and implemented by cognitive computing theories and technologies toward autonomous knowledge processing.
Hierarchical Function Approximation with a Neural Network Model
Authors: de Mingo Luis F. , Gómez Nuria , Arroyo Fernando , Castellanos Juan
Published: February 2011

This article presents a neural network model that permits to build a conceptual hierarchy to approximate functions over a given interval. Bio-inspired axo-axonic connections are used. In these connections the signal weight between two neurons is computed by the output of other neuron. Such architecture can generate polynomial expressions with lineal activation functions. This network can approximate any pattern set with a polynomial equation. This neural system classifies an input pattern as an element belonging to a category that the system has, until an exhaustive classification is obtained. The proposed model is not a hierarchy of neural networks; it establishes relationships among all the different neural networks in order to propagate the activation. Each neural network is in charge of the input pattern recognition to any prototyped category, and also in charge of transmitting the activation to other neural networks to be able to continue with the approximation.
Cognitive Location-Aware Information Retrieval by Agent-Based Semantic Matching
Authors: Chan Eddie C. L. , Baciu George , Mak S. C.
Published: February 2011

This paper proposes semantic TFIDF, an agent-based system for retrieving location-aware information that makes use of semantic information in the data to develop smaller training sets, thereby improving the speed of retrieval while maintaining or even improving accuracy. This proposed method first assigns intelligent agents to gathering location-aware data, which they then classify, match, and organize to find a best match for a user query. This is done using semantic graphs in the WordNet English dictionary. Experiments will compare the proposed system with three other commonly used systems and show that it is significantly faster and more accurate.
A High Level Model of a Conscious Embodied Agent
Authors: Wiedermann Jirí
Published: February 2011

In this paper, the author describes a simple yet cognitively powerful architecture of an embodied conscious agent. The architecture incorporates a mechanism for mining, representing, processing and exploiting semantic knowledge. This mechanism is based on two complementary internal world models which are built automatically. One model (based on artificial mirror neurons) is used for mining and capturing the syntax of the recognized part of the environment while the second one (based on neural nets) for its semantics. Jointly, the models support algorithmic processes underlying phenomena similar in important aspects to higher cognitive functions such as imitation learning and the development of communication, language, thinking, and consciousness.
Cognitive Memory
Authors: Widrow Bernard Carlos , Aragon Juan
Published: February 2011

Taking inspiration from life experience, the authors have devised a new form of computer memory. Certain conjectures about human memory are keys to the central idea. This paper presents a design of a practical and useful “cognitive” memory system in which the new memory does not function like a computer memory where specific data is stored in specific numbered registers; retrieval is done by reading the contents of the specified memory register, or done by matching key words as with a document search. Incoming sensory data would be stored at the next available empty memory location and could be stored redundantly at several empty locations. The stored sensory data would neither have key words nor would it be located in known or specified memory locations. Retrieval would be initiated by a prompt signal from a current set of sensory inputs or patterns. The search would be done by a retrieval system that makes use of auto-associative artificial neural networks. In this paper, the authors present a practical application of this cognitive memory system to human facial recognition.
Perspectives on Cognitive Computing and Applications
Authors: Wang Yingxu , Pedrycz Witold , Baciu George , Chen Ping , Wang Guoyin , Yao Yiyu
Published: February 2011

Cognitive Computing (CC) is an emerging paradigm of intelligent computing theories and technologies based on cognitive informatics, which implements computational intelligence by autonomous inferences and perceptions mimicking the mechanisms of the brain. The development of Cognitive Computers (cC) is centric in cognitive computing methodologies. A cC is an intelligent computer for knowledge processing as that of a conventional von Neumann computer for data processing. This paper summarizes the presentations of a set of 6 position papers presented in the ICCI’10 Plenary Panel on Cognitive Computing and Applications contributed from invited panelists who are part of the world’s renowned researchers and scholars in the field of cognitive informatics and cognitive computing.
A Rigorous Approach to the Definition of an International Vocational Master’s Degree in Information Security Management
Authors: Girard Frédéric , Meunier Bertrand , Hua Duan , Dubois Eric
Published: February 2011

In Luxembourg, like in many other countries, information security has become a central issue for private companies and public organizations. Today, information is the main asset of a company for its business and, at the same time, regulations are imposing more and more rules regarding its management. As a consequence, in Luxembourg, a clear need has emerged regarding the development of new learning trajectory fulfilling the requirements of the new job profile associated with a Chief Security Officer. This need was relayed by the national professional security association which asked for the development of a new education program targeting professional people engaged in a lifelong learning trajectory. The paper reports on the rigorous and scientific participatory approach for producing the adequate learning program meeting requirements elicited from the professional association members. The authors present the skills card that has been elaborated for capturing these requirements and the program, which has been built together with the University of Luxembourg for matching these requirements. This program proposes a holistic approach to information security management by including organization, human and technical security risks within the context of regulations and norms.
Secure Software Education
Authors: Simpson J. J. , Simpson M. J. , Endicott-Popovsky B. , Popovsky V.
Published: February 2011

This article establishes a context for secure information systems development as well as a set of models used to develop and apply a secure software production pedagogy. A generic system model is presented to support the system context development, and to provide a framework for discussing security relationships that exist between and among information systems and their applications. An asset protection model is tailored to provide a conceptual ontology for secure information system topics, and a stable logical framework that is independent of specific organizations, technologies, and their associated changes. This asset protection model provides a unique focus for each of the three primary professional communities associated with the development and operation of secure information systems. In this paper, a secure adaptive response model is discussed to provide an analytical tool to assess risk associated with the development and deployment of secure information systems, and to use as a security metric. A pedagogical model for information assurance curriculum development is then established in the context and terms of the developed secure information system models. The relevance of secure coding techniques to the production of secure systems, architectures, and organizational operations is also discussed.
Service Science, Quo Vadis?
Authors: Géczy Peter , Izumi Noriaki , Hasida Kôiti
Published: February 2011

The world is dominated by service-based economies. The service sector in developed economies accounts for over 75% of economic activities. The industrial and agrarian economic activities amount to around 20% and 5%, respectively. Despite their dominant position, services are the least studied part of the economy. This is partly attributed to the complexity and diversity of services, and inherent difficulties in providing a comprehensive theoretical foundation with well-defined concepts, tools, methods, and practical implications. Service science is an emerging discipline that fills in the gap. It is an interdisciplinary endeavor bringing together economics, management, engineering, and information and system sciences. The authors present a concise historical account of the development of economic activities leading to the present body of services. Aspects of service diversity and evolution are addressed. Scientific approaches to elucidation of services are overviewed. They are organized into four logical categories and examined from both macro and micro-level viewpoints. The emerging service science requires effort in synthesizing partial knowledge from individual disciplines and encompassing both micro and macro characteristics of services. A future perspective on service science is also offered.
Modeling of Service Systems
Authors: Böttcher Martin , Fähnrich Klaus-Peter
Published: February 2011

An important aspect in the field of service science is service modeling; however, no comprehensive modeling approach exists. In this regard, the authors analyze literature of service science and look at existing modeling approaches. Based on this analysis they identify concepts necessary for modeling services. This paper specifies a semi-formalized meta-model comprising the concepts found and for having a more applicable meta-model, the authors transfer it into a technical space. Additionally a concrete syntax and implemented an editor, which supports service modeling, is specified. Overall, this work comprises existing approaches and presents a well-structured formalized meta-model for the domain of service modeling. This meta-model may be used as a starting point for further research within the area of service modeling.
Service Blueprinting as a Failure Elimination Tool in the Case of Outsourcing Services
Authors: Yli-Viitala Pirjo , Kuusisto Jari , Meyer Kyrill
Published: February 2011

This paper applies the service blueprinting method as a tool that can produce a systematic description and analysis of an industrial outsourcing service process. The key objective is to characterise critical incidents and potential failure situations from the service provider’s perspective. The main benefit of the service blueprinting technique is that it makes the service provision process, failure situations, and relevant actors systematically visible. In this regard, it facilitates more detailed analysis and reveals opportunities for service improvements in the context of industrial outsourcing services. Suggested improvements can facilitate service process improvements that strengthen businesses competitiveness in the marketplace. The analysis also yields more specific suggestions for improvements.
Simulation Based Evaluation of Service Science Productivity for Solution Providers
Authors: Tackenberg Sven M. , Gärtner Thomas , Duckwitz Sönke , Schlick Christopher
Published: February 2011

Many companies offer customized solutions by integrating services into their product portfolio. In this regard, a systematic planning for solution providers is crucial, otherwise, task sequences or the assignment of resources to achieve the business objectives can be incorrect. In order to evaluate and to raise the service productivity, service models and simulation techniques have been used to determine the sequence of activities and to assign actors and resources to tasks. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that service solutions can be prospectively modeled, simulated, and optimized. To achieve improved service productivity, the concepts for service productivity are reviewed and a Petri net based simulation approach is introduced. Tests confirm that the simulation approach is capable of calculating a number of service performance metrics that focus on the effect of a stochastic makespan for tasks and the variable assignment of actors and iterations to activities. In the validation study, a service solution process for a power plant construction is considered to analyze the external validity of the simulation model, as well as the structural validity of the corresponding computational models. Simulation results demonstrate the approach providing a convergence to a global optimal service solution.
A Service Oriented SLA Management Framework for Grid Environments
Authors: Pouli V. , Marinos C. , Grammatikou M. , Papavassiliou S. , Maglaris V.
Published: February 2011

Traditionally, network Service Providers specify Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to guarantee service availability and performance to their customers. However, these SLAs are rather static and span a single provider domain. Thus, they are not applicable to a multi–domain environment. In this paper, the authors present a framework for automatic creation and management of SLAs in a multi-domain environment. The framework is based on Service Oriented Computing (SOC) and contains a collection of web service calls and modules that allow for the automatic creation, configuration, and delivery of an end-to-end SLA, created from the merging of the per-domain SLAs. This paper also presents a monitoring procedure to monitor the QoS guarantees stipulated in the SLA. The SLA establishment and monitoring procedures are tested through a Grid application scenario targeted to perform remote control and monitoring of instrument elements distributed across the Grid.
Modelling Self-Led Trust Value Management in Grid and Service Oriented Infrastructures
Authors: Brown Antony , Sant Paul , Bessis Nik , French Tim , Maple Carsten
Published: February 2011

Current developments in grid and service oriented technologies involve fluid and dynamic, ad hoc based interactions between delegates, which in turn, serves to challenge conventional centralised structured trust and security assurance approaches. Delegates ranging from individuals to large-scale VO (Virtual Organisations) require the establishment of trust across all parties as a prerequisite for trusted and meaningful e-collaboration. In this paper, a notable obstacle, namely how such delegates (modelled as nodes) operating within complex collaborative environment spaces can best evaluate in context to optimally and dynamically select the most trustworthy ad hoc based resource/service for e-consumption. A number of aggregated service case scenarios are herein employed in order to consider the manner in which virtual consumers and provider ad hoc based communities converge. In this paper, the authors take the view that the use of graph-theoretic modelling naturally leads to a self-led trust management decision based approach in which delegates are continuously informed of relevant up-to-date trust levels. This will lead to an increased confidence level, which trustful service delegation can occur. The key notion is of a self-led trust model that is suited to an inherently low latency, decentralised trust security paradigm.
Demand-driven Development of Service Compositions in Organizational Networks
Authors: Feenstra Ralph , Janssen Marijn , Overbeek Sietse
Published: February 2011

Organizational collaborate more and more in organizational networks to remain competitive. New systems can be created by assembling a set of elementary services provided by various organizations. Several composition methods are available, yet these methods are not adopted in practice as they are primarily supply-driven and cannot deal the complex characteristics of organizational networks. In this paper, the authors present a service composition development method and a quasi-experiment to evaluate this method by comparing it with existing ones. The development method is able to deal with incomplete information, to take the demand as a starting point, to deal with news services that do not exist yet, to include and to evaluate non-functional requirements, to show various stakeholder views, and to help to create a shared vision. Visualization and evaluation of alternative compositions and negotiation about the desired results are important functions of any composition method in organizational networks.
Semantics for the Semantic Web
Authors: Sheth Amit , Ramakrishnan Cartic , Thomas Christopher
Published: February 2011

Enabling applications that exploit heterogeneous data in the Semantic Web will require us to harness a broad variety of semantics. Considering the role of semantics in a number of research areas in computer science, we organize semantics in three forms — implicit, formal, and powerful — and explore their roles in enabling some of the key capabilities related to the Semantic Web. The central message of this article is that building the Semantic Web purely on description logics will artificially limit its potential, and that we will need to both exploit well-known techniques that support implicit semantics, and develop more powerful semantic techniques.
A Tool for Working with Web Ontologies
Authors: Kalyanpur Aditya , Parsia Bijan , Hendler James
Published: February 2011

The task of building an open and scalable ontology browsing and editing tool based on OWL, the first standardized Web-oriented ontology language, requires the rethinking of critical user interface and ontological engineering issues. In this article, we describe Swoop, a browser and editor specifically tailored to OWL ontologies. Taking a “Web view” of things has proven quite instructive, and we discuss some insights into Web ontologies that we gained through our experience with Swoop, including issues related to the display, navigation, editing, and collaborative annotation of OWL ontological data.
A Context-Based Approach for Supporting Knowledge Work with Semantic Portals
Authors: Hadrich Thomas , Priebe Torsten
Published: February 2011

Portals are an enabling technology for knowledge management (KM): They provide users with a consolidated interface that allows accessing various types of structured and unstructured information. From the view of KM, their success depends not only on the ability to provide information and knowledge depending on the user’s tasks in business processes (exploitation of knowledge) but also on the ability to support unstructured, creative and learning-oriented actions of knowledge work (exploration of knowledge). However, knowledge management lacks concepts for integrated support of these orientations of knowledge work. The concept of knowledge stance is seen as a promising starting point. This paper presents the INWISS portal prototype that employs Semantic Web technologies for context-based integration of various information sources and applications on a semantic level and discusses extensions to this portal for the support of knowledge stances.
Unraveling the Taste Fabric of Social Networks
Authors: Liu Hugo , Maes Pattie , Davenport Glorianna
Published: February 2011

Popular online social networks such as Friendster and MySpace do more than simply reveal the superficial structure of social connectedness — the rich meanings bottled within social network profiles themselves imply deeper patterns of culture and taste. If these latent semantic fabrics of taste could be harvested formally, the resultant resource would afford completely novel ways for representing and reasoning about web users and people in general. This paper narrates the theory and technique of such a feat — the natural language text of 100,000 social network profiles were captured, mapped into a diverse ontology of music, books, films, foods, etc., and machine learning was applied to infer a semantic fabric of taste. Taste fabrics bring us closer to improvisational manipulations of meaning, and afford us at least three semantic functions — the creation of semantically flexible user representations, cross-domain taste-based recommendation, and the computation of taste-similarity between people — whose use cases are demonstrated within the context of three applications — the InterestMap, Ambient Semantics, and IdentityMirror. Finally, we evaluate the quality of the taste fabrics, and distill from this research reusable methodologies and techniques of consequence to the semantic mining and Semantic Web communities.