bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sequential Pattern Mining from Sequential Data
Authors: Sakurai Shigeaki
Published: May 2011

Owing to the progress of computer and network environments, it is easy to collect data with time information such as daily business reports, weblog data, and physiological information. This is the context in which methods of analyzing data with time information have been studied. This chapter focuses on a sequential pattern discovery method from discrete sequential data. The methods proposed by Pei et al. (2001), Srikant & Agrawal (1996), and Zaki (2001) efficiently discover the frequent patterns as characteristic patterns. However, the discovered patterns do not always correspond to the interests of analysts, because the patterns are common and are not a source of new knowledge for the analysts. The problem has been pointed out in connection with the discovery of associative rules. Blanchard et al. (2005), Brin et al. (1997), Silberschatz et al. (1996), and Suzuki et al. (2005) propose other criteria in order to discover other kinds of characteristic patterns. The patterns discovered by the criteria are not always frequent but are characteristic of viewpoints. The criteria may be applicable to discovery methods of sequential patterns. However, these criteria do not satisfy the Apriori property. It is difficult for the methods based on the criteria to efficiently discover the patterns. On the other hand, methods that use the background knowledge of analysts have been proposed in order to discover sequential patterns corresponding to the interests of analysts (Garofalakis et al., 1999; Pei et al., 2002; Sakurai et al., 2008b; Yen, 2005).
From Chinese Philosophy to Knowledge Discovery in Databases A Case Study
Authors: Liu Pei , Boutin Eric
Published: May 2011

The field of scientometrics has been looking at the identification of co-authorship through network mapping. Research on this topic focuses on the cooperation of two authors who have published papers together. However, this paper is exploring the latent association of two authors. By ‘latent association’, we mean that the collaboration between two researchers has not yet occurred but might very likely take place in the future. In this paper, we will aim to find out a couple of authors who have never published together and who bear similar academic interests or study similar subjects. We will also show how the concepts of Yuan (Interdependent arising), Kong (Emptiness), Shi (Energy) and Guanxi (Relationship) in Chinese philosophy contribute to understand ‘latent associations’. These four Chinese concepts are the theoretical basis of this paper. By explaining one by one what each concept is about we hope to tackle the two following questions: What do those four concepts exactly tell us? And how are they linked together? Finally, we will look at the empirical case study in scientometrics. We hope to show that this application of Chinese concepts can unravel latent associations between researchers in Database.
XML Document Clustering
Authors: Tagarelli Andrea
Published: May 2011

The ability of providing a “standardized, extensible means of coupling semantic information within documents describing semistructured data” (Chaudhri, Rashid, & Zicari, 2003) has led to a steady growth of XML (extensible markup language) data sources, so that XML is touted as the driving force for representing and exchanging data on the Web. The motivation behind any clustering problem is to find an inherent structure of relationships in the data and expose this structure as a set of clusters where the objects within the same cluster are each to other highly similar but very dissimilar from objects in different clusters. The clustering problem finds in text databases a fruitful research area. Since today semistructured text data has become more prevalent on the Web, and XML is the de facto standard for such data, clustering XML documents has increasingly attracted great attention. Any application domain that needs organization of complex document structures (e.g., hierarchical structures with unbounded nesting, object-oriented hierarchies) as well as data containing a few structured fields together with some largely unstructured text components can be profitably assisted by an XML document clustering task.
SWIFT
Authors: Shanker Udai , Misra Manoj , Sarje Anil K.
Published: May 2011

Many applications such as military tracking, medical monitoring, stock arbitrage system, network management, aircraft control, factory automation, and so forth that depend heavily on database technology for the proper storage and retrieval of data located at different remote sites have certain timing constraints associated with them. Such applications introduce the need for distributed real-time database systems (DRTDBS) [Ramamritham, 1993]. The implementation of DRTDBS is difficult due to the conflicting requirements of maintaining data consistency and meeting distributed transaction’s deadlines. The difficulty comes from the unpredictability of the transactions’ response times [Huang, 1991]. Due to the distributed nature of the transactions and in presence of other sources of unpredictability such as data access conflicts, uneven distribution of transactions over the sites, variable local CPU scheduling time, communication delay, failure of coordinator and cohort’s sites, and so forth, it is not easy to meet the deadline of all transactions in DRTDBS [Kao & Garcia – Monila, 1995]. The unpredictability in the commitment phase makes it more serious because the blocking time of the waiting cohorts due to execute-commit conflict may become longer. Hence, due to unique characteristics of the committing transactions and unpredictability in the commitment process, design of an efficient commit protocol is an important issue that affects the performance of DRTDBS [Shanker, Misra & Sarje, 2006d].
MECP
Authors: Shanker Udai , Misra Manoj , Sarje Anil K.
Published: May 2011

Important data base system resources are the data items that can be viewed as logical resource, and CPU, disks and the main memory which are physical resources [Garcia-Molina et al. 1992]. Though, the cost of main memory is dropping rapidly and its size is increasing, the size of database is also increasing very rapidly. In real time applications, where the databases are of limited size or are growing at a slower rate than memory capacities are growing, they can be kept in the main memory. However, there are many real time applications, which handle large amount of data and require support of an intensive transaction processing. The amount of data they store is too large (and too expensive) to be stored in the main memory.
Bind but Dynamic Technique
Authors: Hammoud Ahmad , Haraty Ramzi A.
Published: May 2011

Most Web developers underestimate the risk and the level of damage that might be caused when Web applications are vulnerable to SQL (structured query language) injections. Unfortunately, Web applications with such vulnerability constitute a large part of today’s Web application landscape. This article aims at highlighting the risk of SQL injection attacks and provides an efficient solution.
The Role of Organization in Agent Systems
Authors: Dignum Virgina
Published: May 2011

Agent Organization can be understood from two perspectives: organization as a process and organization as an entity. That is, organization is considered both as the process of organizing a set of individuals, or as an entity in itself, with its own requirements and objectives. In fact, agent organizations demand the integration of both perspectives and rely for a great extent on the notion of openness and heterogeneity of MAS. Practical applications of agents to organizational modeling are being widely developed, however, formal theories are needed to describe interaction and organizational structure. Furthermore, it is necessary to get a closer look at the applicability of insights and theories from organization sciences to the development of agent organizations. In this chapter, current approaches to agent organizations are discussed. Agent Organizations bring concepts and solutions from sociology and organizational theory into agent research, integrating organizational and individual perspectives, and aim at the dynamic adaptation of models to organizational and environmental changes, both of which are impacted by the notion of openness and heterogeneity. The chapter also presents a promising application of agent organizations to the area of human-agent teams.
Spotting Environmental Drivers
Authors: Al-Shammari Minwir
Published: May 2011

The only constant in life is change, and business organizations are not different. Environmental uncertainties made transition to knowledge-based economies made establishment of effective CKM mechanisms within companies crucial to business competitiveness. This chapter examines the importance of business environmental conditions in driving an organizational change, viz. CKM. The basic premise of the chapter is that business organizations need to strive to adapt to opportunities as well as challenges brought by constant, complex, rapid, and discontinuous environmental uncertainties. In their quest for SCA, organizations need to leverage their DCCs in scanning environmental drivers for CKM as well as in the crafting a holistic CKM strategy.
Reorganizing People
Authors: Al-Shammari Minwir
Published: May 2011

The ability of an organization to compete in rapidly changing business environments is contingent upon its ability to develop competitive strategies that enable leverage of distinctive core competencies and delivery of value-adding products or services to customers. Once the competitive strategies have been identified, a plan is developed to support those strategies. The plan will specify the design and use or creation of strengths in the organization’s resources. The current chapter looks into the reorganization of people in teams as a major pillar of CKM. Although this chapter is devoted to discussion of the role of people in CKM, the role of people as well as ICTs and business processes will continue to play a significant role in the CKM core value chain activities covered in the remaining parts of this book. Setting the stage for CKM strategic change, requires reinvention of the internal setup of organizations manifested by its three major infrastructural components: reorganizing people, retooling ICTs, and redesigning processes. This chapter explores the role of one organizational architectural component, reorganizing people, as it relates to CKM strategic change. King (1995) introduces the concept of Strategic Capabilities Architecture wherein the guiding architecture of a firm should be based on the strategic vision. In other words, this vision bridges the existing status of the firm (“Where it is”) and its projected future status (“Where it wants to be”) related to the firm’s current and future capabilities. The guiding rule here is that no single capability of the firm can provide a SCA to the firm. The firm cannot compete on the basis of “low cost” or “best quality” or “customer service.” The SCA of the firm derives from the “synergy” of the firm’s various capabilities. Porter, as cited in Pastore (1995), proposes a similar concept in his notion of “complementarities”. He argues that the various competitive capabilities of the firm should be “complementary” or “synergistic” so that capabilities cannot be easily imitated by rivals. The same argument has been made with reference to different ICT-related innovations, such as BPR (Davenport & Short 1990, Davenport 1993, Davenport & Stoddard 1994). Organizational reinvention, or transformation, as a concept and an approach has become popular in recent years, largely from its alignment with contemporary trends in corporate strategy, technology, and human resources, rather than from its inherent attractions. It intends to bring about a remarkable shift in one or more of technological, human, process, and/or structural dimensions of organizations (Blumenthal and Haspeslagh, 1994). However, if it is viewed independently of these advantages, the approach promises great benefits but also can be difficult, challenging, and disruptive (Graetz et al., 2006).
A Summary of Recent and Old Results on the Security of the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange Protocol in Finite Groups
Authors: Florescu Ionut
Published: May 2011

Regarding fundamental protocols in cryptography, the Diffie-Hellman (Diffie and Hellman, 1976) public key exchange protocol is one of the oldest and most widely used in today’s applications. Consequently, many specific cryptographic implementations depend on its security. Typically, an underlying (finite dimensional) group is selected to provide candidates for the key. The study of the security of the exchange as depending on the structure of the underlying group is even today poorly understood, with the most common approaches relying on the security of the Discrete Logarithm problem or on the size of the group. Recent developments bring to attention that the relationship is not necessarily valid and that more research is needed that will relate the underlying structure of the group and the security of the Diffie- Hellman exchange. In this chapter, we describe the problem in detail, we present the relationship with the previously studied Discrete Logarithm and Computational Diffie-Hellman problems, we expose the various concepts of security, and we introduce a new statistical concept specifically designed to serve the assessment of the security of the exchange.
Cyber Security and Anti-Social Networking
Authors: Shore Malcolm
Published: May 2011

This chapter is about the way in which computer hackers invoke social networking paradigms to support and encourage their activities. It reviews the evolution of hacking as a form of social networking, from its roots in Bulletin Board systems to the current attacks on Second Life, and considers the motivation for hacking. Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior and Beveren’s Flow Theory model are, when considered together, found to explain many of the observed characteristics of early hacker activity. The place of social networks in motivating hacking is explored, and some observations are made in relation to hacking and the Second Life environment. A number of control variables are identified which can be used to reduce the likelihood of people engaging in the hacking activity. Addressing the social network factors which motivate hacking provides an important early step in addressing cybercrime.
Formal Analysis of Workflows in Software Development
Authors: Delugach Harry S.
Published: May 2011

Automated tools are often used to support software development workflows. Many of these tools are aimed toward a development workflow that relies implicitly on particular supported roles and activities. Developers may already understand how a tool operates; however, developers do not always understand or adhere to a development process supported (or implied) by the tools, nor adhere to prescribed processes when they are explicit. This chapter is aimed at helping both developers and their managers understand and manage workflows by describing a preliminary formal model of roles and activities in software development. Using this purely descriptive model as a starting point, the authors evaluate some existing tools with respect to their description of roles in their processes, and finally show one application where process modeling was helpful to managers. We also introduce an extended model of problem status as an example of how formal models can enrich understanding of the software development process, based on the analysis of process roles
Being Face to Face
Authors: Allan Mary , Thorns David
Published: May 2011

The chapter introduces the Bourdieuean habitus and field theory as a framework for an alternative way of investigating how perceptions of Media Rich Conferencing Technologies (MRCT) such as video conferencing, Access Grid and Telepresence systems affect approaches to their design, implementation and application, and the ways in which they are utilized by end users. The habitus and field theory is utilized to provide a break-way from prevalent models of analyzing technology uptake and innovation diffusion and provides a new framework for positioning the MRCT as a social construct operating within interrelating social, economic, environmental, and technological systems. This new positioning opens the way for an alternative view of the role of MRCT and facilitates new approaches to their design.
How to Engage Users in Online Sociability
Authors: Calvi Licia
Published: May 2011

The chapter presents and combines the results of two case studies dealing with online communities1 in order to understand under which conditions people are willing to engage in online sociability. Of the two studies considered, one case collected user needs data for an urban mobile application; the other focused on a virtual network connecting home and outside organizations. The chapter shows that people are interested in engaging in online networks mainly to connect to people they already know, but not to get in contact with the strangers and the anonymous others available to them online. The author argues that these results cast doubt on the viability of one single view on online sociability and hope that understanding the dynamics and motivations underlying online communities will help construct better online social places where people will feel more engaged.
Socio-Technical Systems and Knowledge Representation
Authors: Launders Ivan
Published: May 2011

The UK National Health Service (NHS) provides the opportunity to undertake local socio-technical system design to help staff maximize the opportunities of using mobile technology whilst minimizing the impact of change to existing patient systems. A real-world example from a local NHS socio-technical system is considered, that contains a collection of mobile clinicians and technology which provides home care to patients. The success of the Mobile NHS service has a high dependency upon the social aspects of the solution and draws upon a combination of people, resources, technology and economic events. This chapter considers multiagent system architectures, to model social complexity, and capture system knowledge, and then outlines a prototyping technique as a means of implementing and testing the design model. It concludes that the practice of implementing a prototype ontology provides a valuable step in clarifying meaning and understanding of concepts at the outset.
EA Knowledge for ACE Deployment
Authors: Ramanathan Jay , Ramnath Rajiv
Published: May 2011

The knowledge infrastructure for enterprise architecture presented here has a taxonomy of useful patterns and pattern applications illustrated in Figure 1. The applications help deploy EKI and enable operations as illustrated herein. As emphasized previously, since the organization progresses towards more comprehensive or customer circumstance-based services, it becomes necessary to support many new types of Requests. From the business perspective, the underlying enterprise interoperability problem is typically stated as a requirement to produce an improved business result from services implemented in software tools. These include communication endpoints by which the systems can be considered to be components that will interact with each other and thereby form a new, integrated service capable of performing new functions. In turn, each system that contributes information or functionality is often required to expose new services. Thus, the trend is toward exposing more-and-more functionality from existing applications and using interoperability to compose these functions in different and new ways.
Modelling Constructs
Authors: Kindler Ekkart
Published: May 2011

There are many different notations and formalisms for modelling business processes and workflows. These notations and formalisms have been introduced with different purposes and objectives. Later, influenced by other notations, comparisons with other tools, or by standardization efforts, these notations have been extended in order to increase expressiveness and to be more competitive. This resulted in an increasing number of notations and formalisms for modelling business processes and in an increase of the different modelling constructs provided by modelling notations, which makes it difficult to compare modelling notations and to make transformations between them. One of the reasons is that, in each notation, the new concepts are introduced in a different way by extending the already existing constructs. In this chapter, the authors go the opposite direction: showing that it is possible to add most of the typical extensions on top of any existing notation or formalism—without changing the formalism itself. they introduce blocks with some additional attributes defining their initiation and termination behaviour. This serves two purposes: First, it gives a clearer understanding of the basic constructs and how they can be combined with more advanced constructs. Second, it will help combining different modelling notations with each other. Note that, though they introduce a notation for blocks in this chapter, they are not so much interested in promoting this notation here. The notation should just prove that it is possible to separate different issues of a modelling notation, and this way making its concepts clearer and the interchange of models easier. A fully-fledged block notation with a clear and simple interface to existing formalisms is yet to be developed.
Compiling Business Process Models into Executable Code
Authors: Pautasso Cesare
Published: May 2011

Model-driven architecture (MDA), design and transformation techniques can be applied with success to the domain of business process modeling (BPM) with the goal of making the vision of business-driven development a reality. This chapter is centered on the idea of compiling business process models for executing them, and how this idea has been driving the design of the JOpera for Eclipse workflow management tool. JOpera presents users with a simple, graph-based process modeling language with a visual representation of both control and data-flow aspects. As an intermediate representation, the graphs are converted into Event-Condition-Action rules, which are further compiled into Java bytecode for efficient execution. These transformations of process models are performed by the JOpera process compiler in a completely transparent way, where the generated executable artefacts are kept hidden from users at all times (i.e., even for debugging process executions, which is done by augmenting the original, high level notation). The author evaluates his approach by discussing how using a compiler has opened up the several possibilities for performing optimization on the generated code and also simplified the design the corresponding workflow engine architecture.
Systems for Interorganizational Business Process Management
Authors: Grefen Paul
Published: May 2011

This chapter is devoted to automated support for interorganizational business process management, that is, formation and enactment of business processes that span multiple autonomous organizations. A treatment of intra- and interorganizational business processes is included to provide a conceptual background. It describes a number of research approaches in this area, including the context of these approaches and the design of the systems proposed by them. The approaches are described from early developments in the field relying on dedicated technology to current designs based on standardized technology from the service-oriented context. The chapter thereby provides an overview of developments in the area of interorganizational business process management.
A New System in Guided Surgery
Authors: Jacotti Michele , Ciambrone Domenico
Published: May 2011

In this chapter the authors describe a new system for guided surgery in implantology. The aim of this system is to have a “user friendly” computerized instrument for the oral surgeon during implant planning and to have the dental lab included in the decisional process. This system gives him the possibility to reproduce the exact position of the implants on a stone model; the dental technician can create surgical guides and provisional prosthesis for a possible immediate loading of the implants. Another objective of this system is to reduce the economic cost of surgical stents; in such a way it can be applied as a routine by the surgeon.
Strategies for Blended Approaches in Teacher Education
Authors: Geer Ruth
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes an investigation of strategies for fostering higher order cognition in a blended learning environment. The exploration, which utilised a qualitative case study approach, highlights the critical nature of effective instructional design. The study extends the educator’s understanding of the complexities of online and blended learning environments through an analysis of the discourse of computer-mediated communication in a first year teacher education course. The investigation resulted in the development of a pedagogical framework which outlines the relationship between pedagogies, technologies and their related learning outcomes. Critical indicators, which are potentially important as strategies and early warning signs of “students at risk”, become evident in the analysis. This research had led to notions of imprinting and cognitive tracks which can be used to inform strategies for teaching and learning using a blended approach.
Conclusion
Authors: Gerbic Philippa , Stacey Elizabeth
Published: May 2011

The conclusion draws together the main themes identified under the sections of the book with a synthesis of the recommendations presented by the chapter authors which connect the outcomes of these research studies with practical suggestions in all aspects of blended learning practice. It identifies and discusses future trends and implications for learning as well as areas of further research.
Combining Relevance Information in a Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval Environment
Authors: Foley Colum , Smeaton Alan F. , Jones Gareth J.F.
Published: May 2011

Traditionally information retrieval (IR) research has focussed on a single user interaction modality, where a user searches to satisfy an information need. Recent advances in both Web technologies, such as the sociable Web of Web 2.0, and computer hardware, such as tabletop interface devices, have enabled multiple users to collaborate on many computer-related tasks. Due to these advances there is an increasing need to support two or more users searching together at the same time, in order to satisfy a shared information need, which we refer to as Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval. Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval (SCIR) represents a significant paradigmatic shift from traditional IR systems. In order to support an effective SCIR search, new techniques are required to coordinate users’ activities. In this chapter we explore the effectiveness of a sharing of knowledge policy on a collaborating group. Sharing of knowledge refers to the process of passing relevance information across users, if one user finds items of relevance to the search task then the group should benefit in the form of improved ranked lists returned to each searcher.In order to evaluate the proposed techniques the authors simulate two users searching together through an incremental feedback system. The simulation assumes that users decide on an initial query with which to begin the collaborative search and proceed through the search by providing relevance judgments to the system and receiving a new ranked list. In order to populate these simulations we extract data from the interaction logs of various experimental IR systems from previous Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) workshops.
A Semantic Web Based Approach for Context-Aware User Query Formulation and Information Retrieval
Authors: Hoang Hanh Huu , Nguyen Tho Manh , Tjoa A Min
Published: May 2011

Formulating unambiguous queries in the Semantic Web applications is a challenging task for users. This article presents a new approach in guiding users to formulate clear requests based on their common nature of querying for information. The approach known as the front-end approach gives users an overview about the system data through a virtual data component which stores the extracted metadata of the data storage sources in the form of an ontology. This approach reduces the ambiguities in users’ requests at a very early stage and allows the query process to effectively perform in fulfilling users’ demands in a context-aware manner. Furthermore, the approach provides a powerful query engine, called context-aware querying, that recommends the appropriate query patterns according to the user’s querying context.
Immune Based Bio-Network Architecture and its Simulation Platform for Future Internet
Authors: Ding Yong-Sheng , Zhang Xiang-Feng , Ren Li-Hong
Published: May 2011

Future Internet should be capable of extensibility, survivability, mobility, and adaptability to the changes of different users and network environments, so it is necessary to optimize the current Internet architecture and its applications. Inspired by the resemble features between the immune systems and future Internet, the authors introduce some key principles and mechanisms of the immune systems to design a bio-network architecture to address the challenges of future Internet. In the bio-network architecture, network resources are represented by various bioentities, while complex services and application can be emerged from the interactions among bio-entities. Also, they develop a bio-network simulation platform which has the capability of service emergence, evolution, and so forth. The simulation platform can be used to simulate some complex services and applications for Internet or distributed network. The simulators with different functions can be embedded in the simulation platform. As a demonstration, this chapter provides two immune network computation models to generate the emergent services through computer simulation experiments on the platform. The experimental results show that the bio-entities on the platform provide quickly services to the users’ requests with short response time. The interactions among bio-entities maintain the load balance of the bio-network and make the resources be utilized reasonably. With the advantages of adaptability, extensibility, and survivability, the bio-network architecture provides a novel way to design new intelligent Internet information services and applications.
Analysis and Quantification of Motion within the Cardiovascular System
Authors: Golemati Spyretta , Stoitsis John , Nikita Konstantina S.
Published: May 2011

The estimation of motion of the myocardial and arterial wall is important for the quantification of tissue elasticity and contractility and has gained attention as a determinant of cardiovascular disease. In this chapter, a review is attempted regarding the analysis and quantification of motion within the cardiovascular system from sequences of images. The main sources of cardiovascular wall motion include blood pressure, blood flow and tethering to surrounding tissue. The most commonly applied techniques for cardiovascular motion analysis include feature-based and pixel-based methodologies; the latter further include block matching, optical flow and registration techniques. Two distinct paradigms based on these methodologies are highlighted, namely myocardium and carotid artery wall motion. The current status of research in these areas is reviewed and future research directions are indicated.
DNA Microarrays
Authors: Chatziioannou Aristotelis , Moulos Panagiotis
Published: May 2011

The completion of the Human Genome Project and the emergence of high-throughput technologies at the dawn of the new millennium, are rapidly changing the way we approach biological problems. DNA microarrays represent a promising new technological development, widely used for the investigation and identification of genes associated with important biological processes. The chapter is divided in two parts: the first discusses current methods for the acquisition and quantitation of the microarray image while the second focuses in the analysis and interpretation of the microarray signals (standardization, normalization, statistical analysis etc.)
Image Processing and Machine Learning Techniques for the Segmentation of cDNA
Authors: Giannakeas Nikolaos , Fotiadis Dimitrios I.
Published: May 2011

Microarray technology allows the comprehensive measurement of the expression level of many genes simultaneously on a common substrate. Typical applications of microarrays include the quantification of expression profiles of a system under different experimental conditions, or expression profile comparisons of two systems for one or more conditions. Microarray image analysis is a crucial step in the analysis of microarray data. In this chapter an extensive overview of the segmentation of the microarray image is presented. Methods already presented in the literature are classified into two main categories:methods which are based on image processing techniques and those which are based on Machine learning techniques. A novel classification-based application for the segmentation is also presented to demonstrate efficiency.
Advanced ROI Coding Techniques for Medical Imaging
Authors: Doukas Charalampos , Maglogiannis Ilias
Published: May 2011

Medical images are often characterized by high complexity and consist of high resolution image files, introducing thus several issues regarding their handling. Current compression schemes produce high compression rates, sacrificing however the image quality and leading this way to unenviable examination. Region of Interest (ROI) coding has been introduced as an efficient technique for addressing such issues, by performing advanced image compression and preserving quality in diagnostically critical regions. This chapter discusses the basic ROI approaches and provides an overview of state of the art ROI coding techniques for medical images along with corresponding results.
Computers and the End of Progressive Education
Authors: Shaffer David Williamson
Published: May 2011

Multiculturalism is an essential tool for democratic citizenship in a world made ever more closely interconnected by information technologies. In this paper, I propose a model for progressive multicultural education in the computer age. I begin by describing the Pragmatic Progressive model of learning implicit in Dewey’s writing on education. I then discuss two revisions to the model in light of technological developments and theoretical work over the last few decades. Taken together, these revisions suggest that we might profitably revisit—and revise—Dewey’s ideas in the post-industrial era. I bring these ideas together to describe a theory of pedagogical praxis that offers an opportunity to move from multiculturalism to multisubculturalism: a view of education that focuses on diverse educational goals rather than diverse pathways to a single pedagogical end—and thus a view of learning more suited to the diverse ways of thinking and living that characterize our increasingly integrated world.
Designing Commercial Simulations for Teachers
Authors: Piccolo Damián , Oskorus Anna
Published: May 2011

Nearly half of all new teachers leave the field of education within the first five years (Ingersoll, 2003; Alliance for Excellent Education, 2005). Many of these teachers cite difficulties in classroom management as a contributing factor in why they left (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2005). To help prepare new teachers for the realities of the classroom, aha! Process, Inc. created a series of simulations, the aha! Process Classroom SIMs. These simulations provide a safe environment in which to practice Dr. Ruby K. Payne’s classroom management strategies from her book “Working With Students: Discipline Strategies for the Classroom” (2006). This chapter will discuss the design challenges the development team overcame to create these commercial simulations.
simClass
Authors: Kim Bokyeong , Cheong Donguk
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents the theory, structure, and development process used in designing a teaching simulation. simClass was designed to help teachers practice differentiated teaching based on students’ traits such as intelligence and personality. simClass has been shown to provide an effective environment for simulating many important steps of teaching. The development process for teaching simulation consists of three phases: learning and analyzing the phenomenon of teaching, designing elements for a teaching simulation and developing and implementing field trials of the simulation. This chapter shows how simClass followed the three phases of the development process for teaching simulation. At the end of the chapter, several implications for the research of teaching simulations were presented.
Standards and Standardization Practice
Authors: Schoechle Timothy
Published: May 2011

Technical standards have always played a vital role in the development of industrial society. Historically, standards can be traced to origins in the invention of currency and in early human activities such as warfare, trade and printing—in societies as diverse as ancient China and Rome. For example, Venetian war galleys were mass produced: the size, fittings, ropes and even oars were all standardized and interchangeable (Cargill, 1997, p. 18). Throughout history, standardization evolved as a social practice and it tends to reflect the particular political and economic cultures involved.
The Global Context of Standardization
Authors: Schoechle Timothy
Published: May 2011

The purpose of this chapter is to situate this study in a global economic and social context, and to review the literature and discourses that inform this study and identify its objects of analysis. The discourse on enclosure, including its key concepts, is examined in some detail. The study is couched in an immediate discursive context and then in a greater economic, social, and historical context. The discourse on standards and standardization is briefly surveyed here, but a detailed analysis is left for later discussion in Chapter VII. The key relevant discourses are examined. Related and useful discourses on social construction of technology and on institutionalization are also examined.
An Efficient and Effective Approach to Developing Engineering E-Training Courses
Authors: Tseng Judy C.R. , Tsai Wen-Ling , Hwang Gwo-Jen , Wu Po-Han
Published: May 2011

In developing traditional learning materials, quality is the key issue to be considered. However, for high technical e-training courses, not only the quality of the learning materials but also the efficiency of developing the courses needs to be taken into consideration. It is a challenging issue for experienced engineers to develop up-to-date e-training courses for inexperienced engineers before further new technologies are proposed. To cope with these problems, a concept relationship-oriented approach is proposed in this paper. A system for developing e-training courses has been implemented based on the novel approach. Experimental results showed that the novel approach can significantly shorten the time needed for developing e-training courses, such that engineers can receive up-to-date technologies in time.
Improving the Usefulness of Learning Objects by Means of Pedagogy-Oriented Design
Authors: Dettori Giuliana , Forcheri Paola , Ierardi Maria Grazia
Published: May 2011

Learning Objects (LOs) are increasingly considered potentially helpful to improve teachers’ work and to spread innovation in the school system. Their technological roots, however, often make them scarcely appealing to the teachers. A key issue to tackle in order to boost their diffusion is to make them closer to actual teacher’s work by emphasising pedagogical aspects. To this end, the authors propose a typology of LOs that allows teachers to highlight differences in the pedagogical approach embedded in their productions, hence sharing not only content but also educational competence. Moreover, in order to allow re-user teachers to explicit and share the pedagogical experience gained while re-using some material, they suggest endowing repositories with ad hoc facilities, such as comments and itineraries related to the repository’s LOs. Comments would allow people to share narrations of experiences of use, while learning itineraries would point out logical connections of various kinds among small groups of LOs, hence helping the users overcome the content fragmentation induced by the granularity of LOs. These proposals are described and exemplified by drawing from our training experience.
Supporting Learners' Appropriation of a Web-Based Learning Curriculum
Authors: Rasseneur-Coffinet Dorothée , Smyrniou Georgia , Tchounikine Pierre
Published: May 2011

This article presents an approach and tools that can help learners appropriate a Web-based learning curriculum and become active participants in their learning. The approach is based on a detailed modeling of the curriculum and intends to equip the learners with different computer-based tools facilitating a multiple point of view perception of the curriculum, while promoting self evaluation and self regulation of the learners’ curriculum performance. The proposed architecture is generic and can be used in the context of an already existing Web-based learning system. We define what we call “appropriation,” describe our approach, present different tools that have been implemented, and present the findings from the first experiments.
Frameworks for IT Governance Implementation
Authors: Stevens Frank
Published: May 2011

Corporate governance has received a lot of attention over the last few years. A big contributing factor to this was a number of major corporate fraud cases and the subsequent introduction of new regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The attention to Corporate Governance also leads to questions about IT governance as well, since direction and control over IT plays a vital role in supporting the business processes. A number of frameworks are used for implementing and improving IT governance in an organization. This chapter discusses and compares two such frameworks: ITIL V3 and Cobit 4.1 and shows that ITIL V3 and Cobit 4.1 create the most added value when used in combination.
Developing a Tool to Enhance Strategic Alignment Towards Business Performance
Authors: Fairchild Alea , Smits Martin , Ribbers Piet , van Geel Erik
Published: May 2011

This document summarizes the initial findings of a research project started in August 2006 on IT-Business alignment. The main goal of this I-Fit project is to develop tools to improve alignment between business and IT in companies. The I-Fit project takes the perspective of the business manager: how a business manager can influence and increase the value of the IT services that he receives. Based on the literature on strategic alignment and information quality, we develop the I-Fit model. The model assumes causal relationships between ‘IT governance’, ‘Strategic Alignment, ‘Information Quality’, and ‘Business Performance’ in an organization, as shown in the paper. This model has been used to develop a Quickscan questionnaire to use as a tool to pinpoint areas of concern regarding alignment in a company. The tool was tested and validated, demonstrating that the approach taken is valid and deserves further pursuit.
3D Sound Simulation over Headphones
Authors: Picinali Lorenzo
Published: May 2011

What is the real potential of computer science when applied to music? It is possible to synthesize a “real” guitar using physical modelling software, yet it is also possible virtually to create a guitar with 40 strings, each 100 metres long. The potential can thus be seen both in the simulation of that which in nature already exists, and in the creation of that which in nature cannot exist. After a brief introduction to spatial hearing and the binaural spatialization technique, passing from principles of psychoacoustics to digital signal processing, the reader will be included on a voyage through multi-dimensional auditory worlds, first simulating what in nature already exists, starting from zero and arriving at three “soundscape dimensions”, then trying to advance the idea of a fourth “auditory dimension”, creating synthetically a four-dimensional soundscape.
The Aesthetics of Net dot Art
Authors: Cheng Yueh Hsiu Giffen
Published: May 2011

The development of net art originates from the rising of net media generally. During the past two decades, Net art has overthrown the standards of traditional aesthetics, just like the conclusion given by Walter Benjamin that: “Technology and techniques restructure the human sensory apparatus (Esther, 2000, p. 42).” Even though we can admire the unique aesthetics of net art as they appear in some postmodern art movements, Net Art is in such a multi-polar form that one cannot easily find a single point from which to admire it. Based on the research of literature reviews and case studies in net art, this article tries to discuss the characteristics of net art, and classify net art into eight catalogs (Email Art, Non-linear Narrative, Online Performance, Information Art, Game art, Collaborative creation, Internet Community, Physical Interaction) in order to emerge the aesthesis of net art from the general aspect of contemporary arts.
Health Technology Assessment in Health Economics
Authors: Simoens Steven
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces health technology assessment and health economics as tools for decision makers to allocate scarce resources in the healthcare sector. It argues that information about the safety, efficacy and effectiveness, organizational implications, social and ethical consequences, legal considerations, and health economic aspects of the application of a health technology needs to be taken into account with a view to informing decisions about the registration and reimbursement of a health technology. Also, the author hopes that understanding the methodology and use of health technology assessment and health economics will persuade the reader of the added value of such studies and promote the application of health technologies that support further health improvements, whilst containing health expenditure.
The Role of Subjective Computer Training and Management Support to Use Computers in Community Health Centers
Authors: Yaghmaei Farideh , Jayasuriya Rohan
Published: May 2011

There have been many changes to information systems in the last decade. Changes in information systems require users to constantly update their computer knowledge and skills. Computer training is a critical issue for any user because it offers great capabilities for the users. The purpose of this study was to measure the effect of subjective computer training and management support on computer attitude, computer anxiety, and subjective norms to use computers. The data was collected from community health centers staff. The results of the study showed that trained health staff as computer users had more favorable attitude, less computer anxiety, and more attention to others expectation (managers and policies of organizations) to use computers than untrained users. However, there were no relationships between management support on computer attitude, computer anxiety, and subjective norms. Lack of computer training of the majority of the health staff confirmed the need for more attention to this issue special in health centers.