bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Role of Information and Communication Technologies in Knowledge Management
Authors: Becerra-Fernandez Irma , Sabherwal Rajiv
Published: May 2011

Rapid changes in the field of knowledge management (KM) have to a great extent resulted from the dramatic progress we have witnessed in the field of information and communication technology. ICT allows the movement of information at increasing speeds and efficiencies, and thus facilitates sharing as well as accelerated growth of knowledge. For example, computers capture data from measurements of natural phenomena, and then quickly manipulate the data to better understand the phenomena they represent. Increased computer power at lower prices enables the measurement of increasingly complex processes, which we possibly could only imagine before. Thus, ICT has provided a major impetus for enabling the implementation of KM applications. Moreover, as learning has accrued over time in the area of social and structural mechanisms, such as through mentoring and retreats that enable effective knowledge sharing, it has made it possible to develop KM applications that best leverage these improved mechanisms by deploying sophisticated technologies.
A Practitioner-Centered Assessment of a User-Experience Framework
Authors: McCarthy John , Wright Peter , Meekison Lisa
Published: May 2011

In this article we outline a relational approach to experience which we have used to develop a practitioner-oriented framework for analysing user experience. The framework depicts experience as compositional, emotional, spatio-temporal, and sensual, and as intimately bound up with a number of processes that allow us to make sense of experience. It was developed and assessed as part of a participative action research project involving interested practitioners. We report how these practitioners used the framework, what aspects of experience they felt that it missed, and how useful they found it as a tool for evaluating Internet shopping experiences. A thematic content analysis of participants’ reflections on their use of the framework to evaluate Internet shopping experiences revealed some strengths and some weaknesses. For example, certain features of the framework led participants to reflect on aspects of experience that they might not otherwise have considered, such as, the central role of anticipation in experience. The framework also captured aspects of experience that relate to both the sequential structure of the activity and its subjective aspects. However, it seemed to miss out on the intensity of some experiences, and participants sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between some of the sense-making processes, for example, interpreting and reflecting. These results have helped to refine our approach to deploying the framework and have inspired an ongoing programme of research on experience-centred design.
Different Levels of Information Systems Designers' Forms of Thought and Potential for Human-Centered Design
Authors: Isomäki Hannakaisa
Published: May 2011

This article describes a study clarifying information systems (IS) designers’ conceptions of human users of IS by drawing on in-depth interviews with 20 designers. The designers’ lived experiences in their work build up a continuum of levels of thought from more limited conceptions to more comprehensive ones reflecting variations of the designers’ situated knowledge related to human-centred design. The resulting forms of thought indicate three different but associated levels in conceptualising users. The separatist form of thought provides designers predominantly with technical perspectives and a capability for objectifying things. The functional form of thought focuses on external task information and task productivity, nevertheless, with the help of positive emotions. The holistic form of thought provides designers with competence of human-centred information systems development (ISD). Furthermore, the author hopes that understanding the IS designers’ tendencies to conceptualise human users facilitates the mutual communication between users and designers.
Developing a Global Perspective for Knowledge Management
Authors: Schell Martin A.
Published: May 2011

Localization of a document or other product requires tacit knowledge of the target language and culture. Although it is promoted by many activists, localization is becoming increasingly inadequate as a strategy for disseminating knowledge on the World Wide Web (WWW). The 21st century has already seen dramatic rises in the numbers of Internet users in nearly every country, making it unlikely if not impossible for any translation effort to accommodate all of the 347 languages that claim at least 1 million speakers. The best way to maximize the accessibility of Web content is to make it more explicit, not more tacit. This means developing a global perspective and writing English text clearly so that nonnative speakers can easily understand it. Global English is characterized by simpler sentence structure, less jargon, and no slang, thereby making it a viable global language for countless Web users whose native language is not considered important enough to merit a localization effort.
A Wireless Networking Curriculum Model for Network Engineering Technology Programs
Authors: Hansen Raymond A. , Smith Anthony H. , Mariga Julie R.
Published: May 2011

Wireless networking is experiencing explosive growth, both in market size and the number of new standards and technologies. Effectively educating students, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, with the abilities to evaluate, implement, and integrate wireless networks should be a key part of any information technology (IT) education program for the foreseeable future. The Computer & Information Technology Department (CIT) at Purdue University is in a unique position to fulfill this educational need through its wireless networking curriculum. This curriculum currently offers three courses within the network engineering technology program, covering topics from 802.11 networking to 3G cellular, wireless network security and manage-ment to WWAN technologies. Each course includes trend analysis of wireless networking in order to effectively prepare students for employment in this area. This paper discusses the existing wireless networking curriculum by providing a brief perspective of previous course content and detailing each current course in the areas of prerequisite knowledge, intended audience, course content, and lecture/laboratory integration.
A Model for Effectively Integrating Technology Across the Curriculum
Authors: Graham John , Semich George W.
Published: May 2011

Technology training for college faculty has become an important part of the mission of colleges and universities today. Funding is allocated toward not only purchasing new technologies but also training faculty to use these technologies with their students in the classroom to better prepare them for the information workplace. Our interest at Robert Morris University was to develop a sequential staff development model that would not only help train faculty, but also help them apply and eventually integrate technology with their students across all of the academic disciplines. This model looks at three key phases of staff development: the training phase, the application or use phase, and the final phase of integration that involves a transformation from the teacher-centered to the learner centered classroom.
You're in My World Now
Authors: Humphreys Sal
Published: May 2011

This chapter considers how the interactive and social nature of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) presents challenges to systems of organisation, control, and regulation used for more conventional media products. It examines how the interactive structures of games cast players as producers of content, not merely consumers. This productive role creates a distributed production network that challenges the ideas of authorship which underpin copyright and intellectual property. The role of the publishers is shown to encompass community as well as intellectual property management. The communities generated within these games are a key source of economic benefit to the publishers. The contract that determines the conditions of access and the forms of governance inside proprietary worlds is considered in light of this newly intensified relationship between commerce and community. Questions are raised about the accountability of publishers, the role of the market, and the state in determining conditions of access.
Exploring the Rhetoric on Representing the User
Authors: Iivari Netta
Published: May 2011

Users should be involved in information technology (IT) artifact development, but it is often difficult and rare, especially in the development of commercial IT artifacts for external use. This paper critically examines discursive construction of user involvement in academia and in the IT artifact product development industry. First, three academic discourses on user involvement are identified. Then, discursive construction of user involvement is explored in four IT artifact product development organizations, in which user involvement is indirect and labeled as usability work. Five discourses on usability work are identified. They are related to the academic discourses on user involvement, and some of them are criticized (Asaro, 2000) as“forms of technological colonialism,” merely “silencing the users” instead of “giving them a voice.” It is recommended that especially the human-computer interaction (HCI) community should carefully reflect on what kinds of discourses on user involvement it advocates and deems as legitimate.
Are Cross-Gender Conversations in Threaded Discussions Reminiscent of Communicating Across Cultural Boundaries?
Authors: Gefen D.avid , Geri Nitza , Paravastu Narasimha
Published: May 2011

At the core of sociolinguistic theory is the recognition that men and women when engaging in an open conversation communicate differently because of their different respective social objectives in communication. Oral conversations are, according to sociolinguists, akin to cross cultural conversations and hence the tendency toward same-gender conversations. Extrapolating to the realm of threaded discussions in online courses, these gender differences, it is hypothesized, should translate into mild gender segregation in the threaded discussions as well as men showing a greater proclivity to dominate the discussion. Data from 233 students in 27 courses support these hypotheses and allow a significant identification of the gender of the student based on whom they reference in the threaded discussion and the way they reference others. Implications on managing threaded discussions are discussed.
Management of New Genetic Knowledge for Economic and Regional Development of Ethnic Minorities in China
Authors: Leppanen Jan-Eerik
Published: May 2011

The banking of genetic appliances and DNA represents an attempt to understand sustainable use and preservation for the benefit of current and future generations. The goal of this chapter is to highlight BioBanking as a tool for accelerating knowledge, understanding, conservation, and sustainable use of biodiversity. Genetic biobanks, collected from indigenous peoples, may pose some ethical risks for the ethnic populations. The new information in the hands of insurance companies, employees or governmental agencies could mean insecurity for ethnic minorities if the use of information violates the fundamental human rights of ethnic people. The new genetic knowledge may alter the relations between the individual (the self) and the community; the individual and the state; and the community and the state. This chapter will explore the technical issues, difficulties and benefits this tool provides when dealing with marginalized ethnic populations in Southwest China.
Privacy-Preserving Data Mining on the Web
Authors: Oliveira Stanley R.M. , Zaiane Osmar R.
Published: May 2011

Privacy-preserving data mining (PPDM) is one of the newest trends in privacy and security research. It is driven by one of the major policy issues of the information era—the right to privacy. This chapter describes the foundations for further research in PPDM on the Web. In particular, we describe the problems we face in defining what information is private in data mining. We then describe the basis of PPDM including the historical roots, a discussion on how privacy can be violated in data mining, and the definition of privacy preservation in data mining based on users’ personal information and information concerning their collective activities. Subsequently, we introduce a taxonomy of the existing PPDM techniques and a discussion on how these techniques are applicable to Web-based applications. Finally, we suggest some privacy requirements that are related to industrial initiatives and point to some technical challenges as future research trends in PPDM on the Web.
A Tutorial on Hierarchical Classification with Applications in Bioinformatics
Authors: Freitas Alex , de Carvalho Andre´ C.P.L.F.
Published: May 2011

In machine learning and data mining, most of the works in classification problems deal with flat classification, where each instance is classified in one of a set of possible classes and there is no hierarchical relationship between the classes. There are, however, more complex classification problems where the classes to be predicted are hierarchically related. This chapter presents a tutorial on the hierarchical classification techniques found in the literature. We also discuss how hierarchical classification techniques have been applied to the area of bioinformatics (particularly the prediction of protein function), where hierarchical classification problems are often found.
Mining Association Rules in Data Warehouses
Authors: Tjioe Haorianto Cokrowijoyo , Taniar David
Published: May 2011

Data mining applications have enormously altered the strategic decision-making processes of organizations. The application of association rules algorithms is one of the well-known data mining techniques that have been developed to cope with multidimensional databases. However, most of these algorithms focus on multidimensional data models for transactional data. As data warehouses can be presented using a multidimensional model, in this paper we provide another perspective to mine association rules in data warehouses by focusing on a measurement of summarized data. We propose four algorithms — VAvg, HAvg, WMAvg, and ModusFilter — to provide efficient data initialization for mining association rules in data warehouses by concentrating on the measurement of aggregate data. Then we apply those algorithms both on a non-repeatable predicate, which is known as mining normal association rules, using GenNLI, and a repeatable predicate using ComDims and GenHLI, which is known as mining hybrid association rules.
A Multi-Agent Approach to Collaborate Knowledge Production
Authors: Manuel Dodero Juan , Diaz Paloma , Aedo Ignacio
Published: May 2011

Knowledge creation or production in a distributed knowledge management system is a collaborative task that needs to be coordinated. A multi-agent architecture for collaborative knowledge production tasks is introduced, where knowledge-producing agents are arranged into knowledge domains or marts, and where a distributed interaction protocol is used to consolidate knowledge that is produced in a mart. Knowledge consolidated in a given mart can, in turn, be negotiated in higher-level foreign marts. As an evaluation scenario, the proposed architecture and protocol are applied to coordinate the creation of learning objects by a distributed group of instructional designers.
A Framework for Organizational Data Analysis and Organizational Data Mining
Authors: Knobloch Bernd
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces a framework for organizational data analysis suited for data-driven and hypotheses-driven problems. It shows why knowledge discovery and hypothesis verification are complementary approaches and how they can be chained together. It presents a methodology for organizational data analysis including a comprehensive processing scheme. Employing a plug-in metaphor, data analysis process engineering is introduced as a way to set up data analysis processes based on taxonomies of tasks that have to be performed during data analysis and on the idea of re-using experience from past data analysis projects. The framework aims at increasing the benefits of data mining and other data analysis approaches, by allowing a wider range of business problems to be tackled and by providing the users with structured guidance for planning and running analyses.
A Methodology for Building XML Data Warehouses
Authors: Rusu Laura Irina , Rahayu J. Wenny , Taniar David
Published: May 2011

Developing a data warehouse for XML documents involves two major processes: one of creating it, by processing XML raw documents into a specified data warehouse repository; and the other of querying it, by applying techniques to better answer users’ queries. This paper focuses on the first part; that is identifying a systematic approach for building a data warehouse of XML documents, specifically for transferring data from an underlying XML database into a defined XML data warehouse. The proposed methodology on building XML data warehouses covers processes including data cleaning and integration, summarization, intermediate XML documents, and updating/linking existing documents and creating fact tables. In this paper, we also present a case study on how to put this methodology into practice. We utilise the XQuery technology in all of the above processes.
Physical Modeling of Data Warehouses Using UML Component and Deployment Diagrams
Authors: Luján-Mora Serg , Trujillo Juan
Published: May 2011

Several approaches have been proposed to model different aspects of a Data Warehouse (DW) during recent years, such as the modeling of a DW at the conceptual and logical level, the design of the ETL (Extraction, Transformation, Loading) processes, the derivation of the DW models from the enterprise data models, and customization of a DW schema. At the end of the design, a DW has to be deployed in a database environment, requiring many decisions of a physical nature. However, few efforts have been dedicated to the modeling of the physical design of a DW from the early stages of a DW project. In this article, we argue that some physical decisions can be taken from gathering main user requirements. In this article, we present physical modeling techniques for DWs using the component diagrams and deployment diagrams of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Our approach allows the designer to anticipate important physical design decisions that may reduce the overall development time of a DW, such as replicating dimension tables, vertical and horizontal partitioning of a fact table, and the use of particular servers for certain ETL processes. Moreover, our approach allows the designer to cover all main design phases of DWs from the conceptual modeling phase to the final implementation. To illustrate our techniques, we show a case study that is implemented on top of a commercial DW management server.
GeoCache
Authors: Savary Lionel , Gardarin Georges , Zeitouni Karine
Published: May 2011

GML is a promising model for integrating geodata within data warehouses. The resulting databases are generally large and require spatial operators to be handled. Depending on the size of the target geographical data and the number and complexity of operators in a query, the processing time may quickly become prohibitive. To optimize spatial queries over GML encoded data, this chapter introduces a novel cache-based architecture. A new cache replacement policy is then proposed. It takes into account the containment properties of geographical data and predicates, and allows evicting the most irrelevant values from the cache. Experiences with the GeoCache prototype show the effectiveness of the proposed architecture with the associated replacement policy, compared to existing works.
Managing Late Measurements in Data Warehouses
Authors: Golfarelli Matteo , Rizzi Stefano
Published: May 2011

Though in most data warehousing applications no relevance is given to the time when events are recorded, some domains call for a different behavior. In particular, whenever late measurements of events take place, and particularly when the events registered are subject to further updates, the traditional design solutions fail in preserving accountability and query consistency. In this article, we discuss the alternative design solutions that can be adopted, in presence of late measurements, to support different types of queries that enable meaningful historical analysis. These solutions are based on the enforcement of the distinction between transaction time and valid time within the schema that represents the fact of interest. Besides, we provide a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the solutions proposed, aimed at enabling wellinformed design decisions.
Intelligent Cache Management for Mobile Data Warehouse Systems
Authors: Huang Shi-Ming , Lin Binshan , Deng Qun-Shi
Published: May 2011

This research proposes an intelligent cache mechanism for a data warehouse system in a mobile environment. Because mobile devices can often be disconnected from the host server and due to the low bandwidth of wireless networks, it is more efficient to store query results from a mobile device in the cache. For more personal use of mobile devices, we use a data mining technique to determine the pattern from a record of previous queries. Then the data, which will be retrieved by the user, are prefetched and stored in the cache, thus, improving the query efficiency. We demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach with experiments using simulation. Comparison of our approach with a standard approach indicates that there is a significant advantage to using mobile data warehouse systems.
Generalization Data Mining in Fuzzy Object-Oriented Databases
Authors: Angryk Rafal , Ladner Roy , Petry Frederick E.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we consider the application of generalization-based data mining to fuzzy similarity-based object-oriented databases (OODBs). Attribute generalization algorithms have been most commonly applied to relational databases, and we extend these approaches. A key aspect of generalization data mining is the use of a concept hierarchy. The objects of the database are generalized by replacing specific attribute values by the next higher-level term in the hierarchy. This will then eventually result in generalizations that represent a summarization of the information in the database. We focus on the generalization of similarity-based simple fuzzy attributes for an OODB using approaches to the fuzzy concept hierarchy developed from the given similarity relation of the database. Then consideration is given to applying this approach to complex structure-valued data in the fuzzy OODB.
Model Identification Through Data Mining
Authors: Liberati Diego
Published: May 2011

Four main general purpose approaches inferring knowledge from data are presented as a useful pool of at least partially complementary techniques also in the cyber intrusion identification context. In order to reduce the dimensionality of the problem, the most salient variables can be selected by cascading to a K-means a Divisive Partitioning of data orthogonal to the Principal Directions. A rule induction method based on logical circuits synthesis after proper binarization of the original variables proves to be also able to further prune redundant variables, besides identifying logical relationships among them in an understandable “if . then ..” form. Adaptive Bayesian networks are used to build a decision tree over the hierarchy of variables ordered by Minimum Description Length. Finally, Piece-Wise Affine Identification also provides a model of the dynamics of the process underlying the data, by detecting possible switches and changes of trends on the time course of the monitoring.
Predicting Future Customers via Ensembling Gradually Expanded Trees
Authors: Yu Yang , Zhan De-Chuan , Liu Xu-Ying , Li Ming , Zhou Zhi-Hua
Published: May 2011

Our LAMDAer team has won the 10th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 2006 Data Mining Competition (open category) grand champion. This report presents our solution to the PAKDD 2006 Data Mining Competition. Following a brief description of the task, we discuss the difficulties of the task and explain the motivation of our solution. Then, we propose the Gradually Expanded Tree Ensemble (GetEnsemble) method, which handles the difficulties via ensembling expanded trees. We evaluated the proposed method and several other methods using AUC, and found the proposed method beats others in this task. Besides, we show how to obtain cues on which kind of second generation (2G) customers are likely to become third generation (3G) users with the proposed method.
Routing Attribute Data Mining Based on Rough Set Theory
Authors: Liu Yanbing , Sun Shixin , Wang Menghao , Tang Hong
Published: May 2011

QOSPF(Quality of Service Open Shortest Path First)based on QoS routing has been recognized as a missing piece in the evolution of QoS-based services in the Internet. Data mining has emerged as a tool for data analysis, discovery of new information, and autonomous decision-making. This paper focuses on routing algorithms and their applications for computing QoS routes in OSPF protocol. The proposed approach is based on a data mining approach using rough set theory, for which the attribute-value system about links of networks is created from network topology. Rough set theory of-fers a knowledge discovery approach to extracting routing-decisions from attribute set. The extracted rules can then be used to select significant routing-attributes and make routing-selections in routers. A case study is conducted to demonstrate that rough set theory is effective in finding the most significant attribute set. It is shown that the algo-rithm based on data mining and rough set offers a promising approach to the attribute-selection problem in internet routing.
A Hybrid Approach for Data Warehouse View Selection
Authors: Shah Biren , Ramachandran Karthik , Raghavan Vijay
Published: May 2011

Materialized view selection is one of the crucial decisions in designing a data warehouse for optimal efficiency. Static selection of views may materialize certain views that are not beneficial as the data and usage trends change over time. On the contrary, dynamic selection of views works better only for queries demanding a high degree of aggregation. These facts point to the need for a technique that combines the improved response time of the static approach and the automated tuning capability of the dynamic approach. In this article, we propose a hybrid approach for the selection of materialized views. The idea is to partition the collection of all views into a static and dynamic set such that views selected for materialization from the static set are persistent over multiple query (and maintenance) windows, whereas views selected from the dynamic set can be queried and/or replaced on the fly. Highly aggregated views are selected on the fly based on the query access patterns of users, whereas the more detailed static set of views plays a significant role in the efficient maintenance of the dynamic set of views and in answering certain detailed view queries. We prove that our proposed strategy satisfies the monotonicity requirements, which is essential in order for the greedy heuristic to deliver competitive solutions. Experimental results show that our approach outperforms Dynamat, a well-known dynamic view management system that is known to outperform optimal static view selection.
Kernel Width Selection for SVM Classification
Authors: Ali Shawkat , Smith Kate A.
Published: May 2011

The most critical component of kernel based learning algorithms is the choice of an appropriate kernel and its optimal parameters. In this paper we propose a rule based meta-learning approach for automatic radial basis function (rbf) kernel and its parameter selection for Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. First, the best parameter selection is considered on the basis of prior information of the data with the help of Maximum Likelihood (ML) method and Nelder-Mead (N-M) simplex method. Then the new rule based meta-learning approach is constructed and tested on different sizes of 112 datasets with binary class as well as multi class classification problems. We observe that our rule based methodology provides significant improvement of computational time as well as accuracy in some specific cases.
Fundamentals of Multimedia
Authors: Agnew P. W. , Kellerman Anne S.
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces multimedia, defined as interacting with information that employs most or all of the media: text, graphics, images, audio, and video. Students and faculty need to learn to create and use high-quality multimedia documents, including references, lecture materials, reports, and term papers. The authors provide a framework for understanding multimedia in its rapidly changing context. They discuss a wide spectrum of multimedia end-user devices that range from smart cell phones and powerful PCs to intelligent cars and homes. They also propose a vision of pervasive multimedia any time and anyplace, and discuss related issues, controversies, and problems. Typical problems are excessive complexity and a plethora of choices that paralyze many potential users. The chapter concludes with a discussion of possible solutions to major problems and probable future trends.
Teaching Computer Graphics and Multimedia
Authors: DiMarco J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter defines and examines situations, problems, and processes faced by teachers of technology. Based on experience teaching at three colleges with different economic, academic, ethnic, and financial attributes, this chapter provides stable and practical approaches to solving common issues. Each school environment and student population presents different technical and interpersonal challenges. Real experiences involving set up of college laboratories, development of digital curriculum, and creation of accredited programs are highlighted and transferred into tangible strategies. If you are new to teaching digital subjects, this text may help you get started. If you are an experienced teacher, this may bring you a new strategy or perspective. Ultimately, this chapter aims to assist student teachers, experienced teachers, artists, information technologists, and computer scientists in becoming stronger in transferring knowledge and skills in the digital realm. In addition, the chapter hopes to invite scholars and educators to explore teaching computer graphics and multimedia within the context of their own disciplines.
Data Hiding in Document Images
Authors: Chen M. , Memon Nasir , Wong Edward K.
Published: May 2011

With the proliferation of digital media such as images, audio, and video, robust digital watermarking and data hiding techniques are needed for copyright protection, copy control, annotation, and authentication of document images. While many techniques have been proposed for digital color and grayscale images, not all of them can be directly applied to binary images in general and document images in particular. The difficulty lies in the fact that changing pixel values in a binary image could introduce irregularities that are very visually noticeable. Over the last few years, we have seen a growing but limited number of papers proposing new techniques and ideas for binary image watermarking and data hiding. In this chapter we present an overview and summary of recent developments on this important topic, and discuss important issues such as robustness and data hiding capacity of the different techniques.
On a Design of SCORM-Compliant SMIL-Enabled Multimedia Streaming E-Learning System
Authors: Li S. T. , Lin C. H. , Yu P. T.
Published: May 2011

E-learning plays a key enabling role in knowledge management for individuals, schools, and enterprises. Nevertheless, the lack of standards in content and learning management systems (LMSs) makes the reusability and interoperability of learning resources infeasible. The emergence of the SCORM specification has shed light on the standardization of e-learning. Unfortunately, the existing SCORM-compliant asset model is simplified; only a few asset types are allowed. On the other hand, W3C’s declarative-style SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) is becoming prevalent in designing Web-based instructions with the consideration of temporality and spatiality of presentations. In addition, advances in real-time multimedia technologies can vitalize further these instructions. In this study, we propose an SMIL-enabled asset model with the enhancement of multimedia streaming. To render SCORM-compliant SMIL-enabled streaming contents, a Java applet-based SMIL RTP/RTSP LMS system is designed. We develop the proposed system in the Java EJB environment to tackle the issue of platform interoperability. The resulting system demonstrates an encouraging direction towards a more vivid and interactive SCORM-compliant e-learning.
Security of Mobile Devices for Multimedia Applications
Authors: Pulkkis Goran , Grahn Kaj , Karlsson Jonny , Tran Nhat Dai
Published: May 2011

This chapter surveys security of mobile computing devices with focus on multimedia applications. Mobile computing devices are handheld devices such as PDAs (personal digital assistants) and smartphones with smaller size, processing, storage, and memory capacity compared to PCs (personal computers). The portability and various wireless network connection interfaces of the handheld devices greatly increase the risks of loss and theft of the device, exposure of confidential data, as well as the opportunities for unauthorized device, network, and network service access. The initial part of the chapter concentrates on discussing these basic security issues. Security requirements for wired and mobile multimedia network applications are outlined and network protocols (SIP, SRTP) for secure multimedia streaming services are presented. Mobile device security can be based on IPSec VPN technology and secure mobility is especially important in videoconferencing. Current research on roaming security and testbeds for mobile multimedia are also presented. In an appendix, commercially available mobile security solutions, mostly for basic mobile security requirements, are listed.
Multimedia Authoring for Communities of Teachers
Authors: Guerraz A , Roisin Cecile , Mikae Jan , Deltour Romain
Published: May 2011

One way of providing technological support for communities of teachers is to help participants to produce, structure and share information. As this information becomes more and more multimedia in nature, the challenge is to build multimedia authoring and publishing tools that meet requirements of the community. In this paper, we analyze these requirements and propose a multimedia authoring model and a generic platform on which specific community-oriented authoring tools can be realized. The main idea is to provide template-based authoring tools while keeping rich composition capabilities and smooth adaptability. It is based on a componentoriented approach integrating homogeneously logical, time and spatial structures. Templates are defined as constraints on these structures.
Screenspace
Authors: Jones K. H.
Published: May 2011

From tiny interactive cellphone screens (keitai) to supersized jumbo LED displays, Tokyo’s urban landscape is changing drastically. A corner that once displayed billboards that occasionally flipped has now become lit-up and is in constant motion. Keitai, with their built-in cameras, now allow images to be sent from one to another and have become essential to urban life. As these screens become architectural and fashion statements, Tokyo’s nomadic high-tech culture is commuting even greater distances, living in more compact housing, and allowing for “cellspace” and “screenspace” to merge.
Digital Watermarking for Multimedia Transaction Tracking
Authors: Yu D. , Sattar Farook
Published: May 2011

This chapter focuses on the issue of transaction tracking in multimedia distribution applications through digital watermarking terminology. The existing watermarking schemes are summarized and their assumptions as well as the limitations for tracking are analyzed. In particular, an Independent Component Analysis (ICA)-based watermarking scheme is proposed, which can overcome the problems of the existing watermarking schemes. Multiple watermarking technique is exploited—one watermark to identify the rightful owner of the work and the other one to identify the legal user of a copy of the work. In the absence of original data, watermark, embedding locations and strengths, the ICA-based watermarking scheme is introduced for efficient watermark extraction with some side information. The robustness of the proposed scheme against some common signal-processing attacks as well as the related future work are also presented. Finally, some challenging issues in multimedia transaction tracking through digital watermarking are discussed.
Multimedia, Information Compexity, and Cognitive Processing
Authors: Andres Hayward P.
Published: May 2011

Organizations are faced with increasing costs needed to train employees in today’s high technology environment. Educators are also striving to develop new training and teaching methods that will yield optimal learning transfer and complex skill acquisition. This study suggests that trainee/learner cognitive processing capacity, information presentation format and complexity, and multimedia technology should be leveraged in order to minimize training duration and costs and maximize knowledge transfer. It presents a causal model of how multimedia and information complexity interact to influence sustained attention, mental effort and information processing quality, all of which subsequently impact comprehension and learner confidence and satisfaction outcomes. Subjects read a text script, viewed an acetate overhead slide presentation containing text-with-graphics, or viewed a multimedia presentation depicting the greenhouse effect (low complexity) or photocopier operation (high complexity). Causal path analysis results indicated that presentation media (or format) had a direct impact on sustained attention, mental effort, information processing quality, comprehension, and learner confidence and satisfaction. Information complexity had direct effects on sustained attention, mental effort and information processing quality. Finally, comprehension and learner confidence and satisfaction were both influenced through an intervening sequence of sustained attention, mental effort and information processing quality.
Distributed Approach for QoS Guarantee to Wireless Multimedia
Authors: Chetan Kumar S. , Venkataram P. , Sircar Ranapratap
Published: May 2011

Providing support for QoS at the MAC layer in the IEEE 802.11 is one of the very active research areas. There are various methods that are being worked out to achieve QoS at MAC level. In this article we describe a proposed enhancement to the DCF (distributed coordination function) access method to provide QoS guarantee for wireless multimedia applications.
Visualization, Estimation and User Modeling for Interactive Browsing of Personal Photo Libraries
Authors: Tian Qi , Moghaddam Baback , Lesh Neal , Shen Chia
Published: May 2011

Recent advances in technology have made it possible to easily amass large collections of digital media. These media offer new opportunities and place great demands for new digital content user-interface and management systems which can help people construct, organize, navigate, and share digital collections in an interactive, face-to-face social setting. In this chapter, we have developed a user-centric algorithm for visualization and layout for content-based image retrieval (CBIR) in large photo libraries. Optimized layouts reflect mutual similarities as displayed on a two-dimensional (2D) screen, hence providing a perceptually intuitive visualization as compared to traditional sequential one-dimensional (1D) content-based image retrieval systems. A frameworkfor user modeling also allows our system to learn and adapt to a user’s preferences. The resulting retrieval, browsing and visualization can adapt to the user’s (time-varying) notions of content, context and preferences in style and interactive navigation.
Securing the Infrastructure for Service-Based E-Learning Environments
Authors: Schwingel Simon , Vossen Gottfried , Westerkamp Peter
Published: May 2011

E-learning environments and their system functionalities resemble one another to a large extent. Recent standardization efforts in e-learning concentrate on the reuse of learning material only, but not on the reuse of application or system functionalities. The LearnServe system, under development at the University of Muenster, builds on the assumption that a typical learning system is a collection of activities or processes that interact with learners and suitably chosen content, the latter in the form of learning objects. This enables us to divide the main functionality of an e-learning system into a number of stand-alone applications or services. The realization of these applications based on the emerging technical paradigm of Web services then renders a wide reuse of functionality possible, thereby giving learners a higher flexibility of choosing content and functionalities to be included in their learning environment. In such a scenario, it must be possible to maintain user identity and data across service and server boundaries. This chapter presents an architecture for implementing user authentication and the manipulation of user data across several Web services. In particular, it demonstrates how to exploit the SPML and SAML standards so that cross-domain single sign-on can be offered to the users of a service-based learning environment. The chapter also discusses how this is being integrated into LearnServe.
Assisting Learners to Dynamically Adjust Learning Processes by Software Agents
Authors: Pan  , Pan  , Weidong  , Weidong
Published: May 2011

In order to make online learning more productive, software agent technology has been applied to provide services for learners to assist them to construct knowledge in constructivist ways. This paper is focused on the application of software agents in assisting learners to dynamically adjust learning processes. Unlike pedagogical agents, the agents in this application do not hold domain knowledge but simply assist learners to get through the learning process by a variety of supportive services. They assist learners to develop personalized preferred learning plans and guide them to dynamically align learning towards their goals. In this paper, the online learning process is first investigated and an approach to assisting learners to dynamically adjust learning processes is outlined. Then the structure of the UOL (unit of learning) database that provides links between a practical learning scenario and the required services is explored. A multi-agent architecture for realizing the services is configured and the roles of the involved agents are described. After that, the related agent algorithms for guiding learners to dynamically adjust learning processes are described.
Multiagent Systems and Web Services in Enterprise Environments
Authors: Ramírez Eduardo H. , Brena Ramón F.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we discuss the general aspects related to the utilization of MultiAgent systems in Enterprise environments with special emphasis on the integration architectures enabled by Web Service technologies. Also, we present a decoupled architectural approach that allows Software Agents to interoperate with enterprise systems using Web Services. The proposed solution leverages existing technologies and standards in order to reduce the time-to-market and increase the adoption of agent-based applications. Finally, we show some case studies of knowledge-oriented Web services that have been designed following the discussed approach and outline some current research and business concerns for the field.
Advances in Classification of Sequence Data
Authors: Kumar Pradeep , Krishna P. Radha , Bapi Raju S. , Padmaja T. M.
Published: May 2011

In recent years, advanced information systems have enabled collection of increasingly large amounts of data that are sequential in nature. To analyze huge amounts of sequential data, the interdisciplinary field of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is very useful. The most important step within the process of KDD is data mining, which is concerned with the extraction of the valid patterns. Recent research focus in data mining includes stream data mining, sequence data mining, web mining, text mining, visual mining, multimedia mining and multi-relational data mining. Sequence data may be discrete or continuous in nature. Most of the research on discrete sequence data concentrated on the discovery of frequently occurring patterns. However, comparatively less amount of work has been carried out in the area of discrete sequence data classification. In this chapter, data taxonomy is introduced with a review of the state of art for sequence data classification. The usefulness of embedding partial subsequence information extracted using sliding window technique into traditional classifier like kNN has been demonstrated. kNN has been tested with various vector based distance/similarity metrics. Further, with the use of S3M similarity metric, the full subsequence information embedded in the data sequences is extracted. The experimental data taken is DARPA’98 IDS benchmark dataset collected from UCIML dataset repository. The chapter closes by pointing out various application areas of sequence data and also the open issues in sequence data classification problem.
Adaptive Neurodynamics
Authors: Negrello Mario , Huelse Martin , Pasemann Frank
Published: May 2011

Neurodynamics is the application of Dynamical system’s theory (DST) to the analysis of the structure and function of recurrent neural networks (RNNs). In this chapter, we present recurrent neural networks artificially evolved for the control of autonomous robots (Evolutionary Robotics), and further analysed within dynamical system’s tenets (Neurodynamics). We search for the characteristic dynamical entities (e.g. attractor landscapes) that arise from being-environment interactions that underpin the adaptation of animat’s (biologically inspired robots). In that way, when an efficient controller is evolved, we are able to pinpoint the reasons for its success in terms of the dynamical characteristics of the evolved networks. The approach is exemplified with the dynamical analysis of an evolved network controller for a small robot that maximizes exploration, while controlling its energy reserves, by resorting to different periodic attractors. Contrasted to other approaches to the study of neural function, neurodynamics’ edge results from causally traceable explanations of behavior, contraposed to just correlations. We conclude with a short discussion about other approaches for artificial brain design, challenges, and future perspectives for Neurodynamics.
Differentiating Instruction to Meet the Needs of Online Learners
Authors: Braidic Silvia
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces how to differentiate instruction in an online environment. Fostering successful online learning communities to meet the diverse needs of students is a challenging task. Since the “one size fits all” approach is not realistic in a face-to-face or online setting, it is essential as an instructor to take time to understand differentiation and to work in creating an online learning environment that responds to the diverse needs of learners. It is our responsibility to ensure that the teaching and learning that takes place online is not only accessible, but of quality. The author hopes that developing an understanding of differentiation and specific instructional strategies to differentiate online will inform the learner of ways to maximize learning by addressing the diverse needs of students.