bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gender and Politeness in Indian Emails
Authors: Kaul Asha , Kulkarni Vaibhavi
Published: May 2010

This study extended recent attempts at analyzing and comprehending gender differences in emails with respect to cooperation and politeness in the Indian business scenario. Four hundred and ninety four emails were studied, out of which two hundred and fifty emails were written by men and two hundred and forty four by women. Collated emails related to directives and non-directives that pertained to information processing as well as soliciting task completion through adherence/violation to principles of politeness. Results revealed that specific forms of politeness will result in cooperation among team members/coworkers in email communication; adherence to politeness maxims is higher in women than in men; specific examples of violations of politeness maxims are higher in men than in women; adherence to politeness maxims in clusters is not gender specific but is contingent on the needs of the situation or the organization; and in directives the variations in use of politeness maxims across genders is the highest.
Functions and Strategies of Email Communication at the Workplace
Authors: Habil Hadina
Published: May 2010

Email communication has been the communication medium for most organizations nowadays as the Internet has become a way of life for most people. To serve the purposes of communication in organizations, email is used to coordinate action, share information and satisfy social needs. This research was carried out to examine the patterns of email communication in a public higher education institution in Malaysia. A total of 86 emails consisting of 40 email chains and five one-way communication emails were collected over a period of four weeks. These emails were analyzed for functions and strategies used by the email writers. It was found that writers of email are aware of the strategies available for disseminating information and they used the strategies differently depending on the situation, the people involved in the interaction and the subject matter.
A Pragmatic Approach to Analysing CMC Discourse
Authors: Howell-Richardson Christina
Published: May 2010

A co-operative learning task relies on the mutual interdependence of group members to achieve their task goal. Where the task involves conceptual learning, this also involves argumentation and the development of joint frames of understanding. The main aim of this research study was to understand how postgraduate students conveyed their meanings and how they managed their group interaction in asynchronous online conferencing. The chapter explains the development and use of an analytic framework, based on Conversational Analysis and neo-Gricean theories of conversational meaning, to examine, code and describe the discourse behaviours and discourse strategies of postgraduate students when engaged in co-operative learning tasks in an asynchronous and text-based, online conferencing environment. The analysis indicates systematic patterning in the ways participants compose their messages and in their use of specific discourse strategies to manage the interaction of the group process and of the discussion of the conceptual material.
An Integrated Approach to Interactions in Cyberplaces
Authors: Brivio Eleonora , Ibarra Francesca Cilento , Galimberti Carlo
Published: May 2010

Recently a change of perspective took place in online interaction research, shifting attention from technologies to what people actually do online. Therefore a new family of phenomena appeared: Psychology of Cyberspace was the first answer. Now the time has come to go further adopting an even more ‘social’ stance to study Cyberplaces giving birth to a Social Psychology of Cyberplaces. Combining three theoretical realms (objects, subjects, processes), three levels of analysis (local mediated interaction, everyday situation, social context) and two methodologies of data production (qualitative and quantitative), this chapter proposes an integrated approach to online interactions. An example of this is shown by discussing a research on Self Presentation in blogs.
Using CMC in order to investigate the language system
Authors: Hentschel Elke
Published: May 2010

Chats, blogs, mailing lists, personal e-mails or texts that can be found on homepages, in short all kinds of computer-mediated communication, offer a very good opportunity to observe ongoing forms of language change as well as language awareness on the part of the?users. The new medium makes it possible to watch the emergence of new rules at the same time as they are being formed, and to observe current processes of linguistic reanalysis by the language users. Observations of this kind are possible on all levels of the language system, with regard to phonetics and the phonological system as well as to morphology, morpho-syntax and syntax. This chapter will give a short résumé of the research that has been done so far in this field and outline the many further possibilities of exploration that have not yet been followed up.
Green Energy
Authors: Miller Wendy , Birkeland Janis
Published: May 2010

Despite the general evolution and broadening of the scope of the concept of infrastructure in many other sectors, the energy sector has maintained the same narrow boundaries for over 80 years. Energy infrastructure is still generally restricted in meaning to the transmission and distribution networks of electricity and, to some extent, gas. This is especially true in the urban development context. This early 20th century system is struggling to meet community expectations that the industry itself created and fostered for many decades. The relentless growth in demand and changing political, economic and environmental challenges require a shift from the traditional ‘predict and provide’ approach to infrastructure which is no longer economically or environmentally viable. Market deregulation and a raft of demand and supply side management strategies have failed to curb society’s addiction to the commodity of electricity. None of these responses has addressed the fundamental problem. This chapter presents an argument for the need for a new paradigm. Going beyond peripheral energy efficiency measures and the substitution of fossil fuels with renewables, it outlines a new approach to the provision of energy services in the context of 21st century urban environments.
Ubiquitous and Smart System Approaches to Infrastructure Planning
Authors: Lee Sang Ho , Yigitcanlar Tan , Wong Johnny K.W.
Published: May 2010

The robust economic growth across South East Asia and the significant advances in nano-technologies in the past two decades have resulted in the creation of intelligent urban infrastructures. Cities like Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong have been competing against each other to develop the first ‘ubiquitous city’, a strategic global node of science and technology that provides all municipal services for residents and visitors via ubiquitous infrastructures. This chapter scrutinizes the development of ubiquitous and smart infrastructure in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. These cases provide invaluable learnings for policy-makers and urban and infrastructure planners when considering adopting these systems approaches in their cities.
Challenges of Making Efficient Use of Existing Infrastructure
Authors: Coiacetto Eddo
Published: May 2010

In market-based economies, one of the significant challenges and aims of planning is coordinating the provision of infrastructure with development. A specific case of this involves making more efficient use of existing infrastructure by encouraging more intense, higher density, mixed-use development around transit nodes. Focusing on the development industry, the key proponents of development in market-based economies, this chapter discusses some aspects of the challenges for planners and urban policy makers in facilitating Transit Oriented Developments (TODs) in market-based economies, referring from time-to-time to the urban area of Greater Brisbane, Australia to provide a concrete example to help illustrate some of the problems. The implementation of TODs may be considerably slower than what their advocates may desire for several reasons. Developers operate in specific development submarkets (or groups thereof) for which they devise strategies to operate and compete within. These strategies may also make it difficult and unattractive to switch to or enter other markets. TODs present some special risks to developers due to their mixed-use character and their locational aspects. As a result, the range of firms with the capacity for, or interest in, undertaking TOD is likely to be small.
Semantic Interoperability Issue of Standardizing Medical Vocabularies
Authors: Hammond W. Ed
Published: May 2010

Semantic interoperability is the key to achieving global interoperability in healthcare information technology. The benefits are tremendous – the sharing of clinical data for multiple uses including patient care, research, reimbursement, audit and analyses, education, health surveillance, and many other uses. Patient safety, higher quality healthcare, more effective and efficient healthcare, increased outcomes, and potentially improved performance, higher quality of life and longer lifetimes are potential results. Decision support and the immediate linking of knowledge to the care process become easier. Semantic interoperability is a worthy goal. There are many barriers to achieving semantic interoperability. Key among these is the resolution of the many issues relating to the terminologies used in defining, describing and documenting health care. Each of these controlled terminologies has a reason for being and a following. The terminologies conflict and overlap; the granularity is not sufficiently rich for direct clinical use; there are gaps that prevent an exhaustive set; there are major variances in cost and accessibility; and no one appears eager or willing to make the ultimate decisions required to solve the problem. This chapter defines and describes the purpose and characteristics of the major terminologies in use in healthcare today. Terminology sets are compared in purpose, form and content. Finally, a proposed solution is presented based on a global master metadictionary of data elements with a rich set of attributes including names that may come from existing controlled terminologies, precise definitions to remove ambiguity in use, and complete value sets of possible values. The focus is on data elements because data elements are the basic unit of data interchange.
A Semantic Model to Address Health Questions to Professionals in Healthcare Social Networks
Authors: Echarte Francisco , Astrain José Javier , Córdoba Alberto , Villadangos Jesús
Published: May 2010

Internet social networks offer a wide variety of possibilities, including communication between users, sharing information, and the creation of virtual communities on many different subjects. One of these subjects is healthcare, where different social networks are now appearing and covering different objectives. In this chapter, a social network is described, where users can formulate healthcare questions that are automatically classified under concepts of a medical ontology and assigned to experts of each topic. These questions are then answered by healthcare expert physicians. This chapter includes a semantic classifying method that provides the automatic classification of questions by means of a medical ontology, based on the tags used to annotate them, and the previously classified questions. The chapter includes an ontological model that represents the questions, the assigned tags, the answers, the physicians, and the medical concepts.
An Integrated System for E-Medicine (E-Health, Telemedicine and Medical Expert Systems)
Authors: Chorbev Ivan , Joksimoski Boban
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents an overview of an integrated system for eMedicine that the authors propose and implement in the Republic of Macedonia. The system contains advanced medical information systems, various telemedicine services supported by modern telecommunication technologies, and decision support modules. The authors describe their telemedicine services that use wireless broadband technologies (WiMAX, 3G, Wi-Fi). A significant part of the chapter presents a web based medical expert system that performs self training using a heuristic rule induction algorithm. The data inserted by medical personnel while using the e-medicine system is subsequently used for additional learning. The system is trained using a hybrid heuristic algorithm for induction of classification rules that we developed. The SA Tabu Miner algorithm (Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search based Data Miner) is inspired by both research on heuristic optimization algorithms and rule induction data mining concepts and principles.
Healthcare Collaborative Framework Based on Web 2.0, Grid Computing and SOA
Authors: Omar Wail M.
Published: May 2010

Web 2.0 has been adopted by many as the best way for forming a collaborative framework e.g., sharing resources, experiences, information, knowledge and feedback. A collaborative framework for application to e-health is necessary to provide patients with the awareness that assists in improving their health. Moreover, collaborative framework can be used by physician to exchange experiences and discuss challenge cases. However, the use of Web 2.0 with healthcare applications is not simple as the use of Web 20 with other enterprise applications according to the privacy of healthcare applications, which requires high quality and security of data, availability of resources, maintainability of services, system security, and Quality of Services (QoS). To offer the required requirements, grid computing is proposed here. Grid computing supporting enterprise applications through offering massive resources through resources collaborative framework that is offering power computing, storage devices, and services. The use of grid computing by Web 2.0 requires robust model that is able to deploy, discover, invoke, and integrate resources in open standard format. Therefore, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is adopted as a model for managing the mixing between Web 2.0 and grid computing technologies. SOA for Web 2.0 and Grid Computing (SOAW2G) are used throughout this work to offer a fabric for e-health applications.
An Agent-Based Architecture to Ubiquitous Health
Authors: Fernández Daniel Ruiz
Published: May 2010

Currently, evolution of health services is strongly influenced by the development of information and communication technologies. Distribution of health services brings new challenges to computer systems, with regard to processing capability as well as to communications, storage and security. The proposal explained in this chapter is an architecture design to be easily adapted to advances in healthcare decentralization. It is intended to provide the capability to implement a global distribution of healthcare, even reaching the patient’s home, workplace or holiday hotel. This is a distributed architecture which is flexible to implement new functionalities and accessible from anywhere. The architecture is based on the paradigm of agents and defines the different types of agents that may form the system and their interactions.
Mobile Virtual Communities in Healthcare The Chronic Disease Management Case
Authors: El Morr Christo
Published: May 2010

The number of citizens with chronic diseases is increasing and is expected to grow more in the next few decades; consequently, the cost of healthcare delivery will increase, and it becomes vital for societies to investigate ways to decrease healthcare cost. On the other hand, mobile technologies are becoming widespread; besides, virtual communities (VCs) are evolving and are taking advantage of users’ mobility. This chapter explores the ways in which mobility within virtual communities can play an important role in facing the current and future healthcare challenges, suggests that mobile VCs (MVCs) can help patients with chronic disease to self-manage their health, shows the many advantages of this approach, particularly in terms of enhanced healthcare delivery and reduced healthcare cost, and discusses the challenges that this approach faces.
Privacy Enhancing Technologies in Electronic Health Records
Authors: Stingl Christian , Slamanig Daniel
Published: May 2010

In recent years, demographic change and increasing treatment costs in North American and European countries demand the adoption of more cost efficient, highly qualitative and integrated health care processes. The rapid growth and availability of the Internet facilitate the development of eHealth services and especially of electronic health records (EHRs) which are promising solutions to meet the aforementioned requirements. The EHR integrates all relevant medical information of a person and represents a lifelong documentation of the medical history. Considering implementations of EHRs, one of the most critical factors of success is the protection of the patient’s privacy, which is clearly reflected in surveys concerning such systems. This chapter will provide a security analysis of EHR systems, discuss basic and enhanced security methods and finally introduce levels of security to classify EHR systems.
Privacy-Based Multiagent Brokering Architecture for Ubiquitous Healthcare Systems
Authors: Masaud-Wahaishi AbdulMutalib , Ghenniwa Hamada
Published: May 2010

Ubiquitous healthcare is an emerging technology that promises increases in efficiency, accuracy and availability of medical treatment; however it also introduces the potential for serious abuses including major privacy violations. Brokering is a capability-based coordination approach for ubiquitous healthcare Systems (UHS). A major challenge of brokering in open environments is to support privacy. Within the context of brokering, the authors model privacy in terms of the entities’ ability to hide or reveal information related to its identities, requests, and/or capabilities. This work presents a privacy-based multi-agent brokering architecture that supports different privacy degrees. Unlike traditional approaches, the brokering is viewed as a set of services in which the brokering role is further classified into several sub-roles each with a specific architecture and interaction protocol that is appropriate to support a required privacy degree. To put the formulation in practice, a prototype of the proposed architecture has been implemented to support information-gathering capabilities in healthcare environments using FIPA-complaint platform (JADE).
Academic Family Health Teams Collaborative Lessons from the Far Flung North
Authors: Topps David
Published: May 2010

Working collaboratively, in widely distributed settings, poses unique challenges. The Academic Family Health Team, affiliated with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, has had to adopt a wide variety of information sharing practices and collaborative software tools, in order to function effectively in such roles as clinicians, educators and researchers. Based on an ongoing action research model, this chapter describes approaches taken and lessons learned while developing the informatics infrastructure to support interprofessional practice. The author describes how common procedures and software tools can benefit from a Web 2.0 approach, comparing commercial and open-source aspects of possible solutions. Ubiquitous data access for point of care decision making is supported by integrating web services, mobile devices and multi-stream communications. Resource discovery is enabled by integrating information streams into the medical record, into wireless device interfaces and via clinical dashboards. Effective team collaboration is highly enhanced through such infrastructure support.
Dynamic Business Processes and Virtual Communities in Wireless eHealth Environments
Authors: Georgiadis Dimosthenis , Germanakos Panagiotis , Mourlas Constantinos , Samaras George , Christodoulou Eleni
Published: May 2010

Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) related applications tend to be a trend for most successful businesses, organizations and domains nowadays, as is the Healthcare sector. Healthcare specialists often work in remote areas facing many problems and challenges driven mainly from the limitations and constraints of the mobile and wireless technologies in relation to the tasks at hand. Due to the sensitive area of healthcare provision, this chapter discusses that additional features need to be incorporated in current CSCW systems, like the dynamic creation of medical virtual teams, dynamic workflows and the automatic triggered events upon time expiration, in order to be more effective and efficient. In this respect and having in mind the new Web 2.0 characteristics, a set of new features applied in our proposed CSCW system, DITIS, is analyzed in an attempt to encapsulate all the needs of eHealth applications. Furthermore, an extensive evaluation of the system is presented, supporting the need for such enhancements since a significant increase in communication, coordination and collaboration has been shown among the subjects.
Digital Pathology and Virtual Microscopy Integration in E-Health Records
Authors: Rojo Marcial García , Daniel Christel
Published: May 2010

In anatomic pathology, digital pathology integrates information management systems to manage both digital images and text-based information. Digital pathology allows information sharing for diagnosis, biomedical research and education. Virtual microscopy resulting in digital slides is an outreaching technology in anatomic pathology. Limiting factors in the expansion of virtual microscopy are formidable storage dimension, scanning speed, quality of image and cultural change. Anatomic pathology data and images should be an important part of the patient electronic health records as well as of clinical datawarehouses, epidemiological or biomedical research databases, and platforms dedicated to translational medicine. Integrating anatomic pathology to the “healthcare enterprise” can only be achieved using existing and emerging medical informatics standards like Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM®1), Health Level Seven (HL7®), and Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT®), following the recommendations of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE®).
Technology and Human Resources Management in Health Care
Authors: Kabene Stefane M. , King, Lisa  , Gibson Candace J.
Published: May 2010

Health care has lagged behind most industries and businesses in its adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT). Many of the current information technologies and those to be deployed and developed over the next few years (e.g. electronic health records, telehealth applications, elearning technologies, social networking via Web 2.0) could be of benefit in health care delivery and improvement of the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of health care services. The uses of technology in human resources management (HRM) can help improve the medical care that health professionals provide to their patients. For instance, technology can be used to maximize communication, collaboration and support between health professionals separated by distance, as well as provide immediate and up-to-date patient care information. ICT can also be used for distance training and education for those facing geographic isolation and provide a medium through which continued education can be maintained for both rural and urban health professionals. However, due to the differences in barriers to ICT use found for each group, such as computer illiteracy, geographic isolation or poor infrastructure, different steps need to be taken in order to ensure the successful implementation and use of information technologies in both urban and rural communities in developed and developing regions across the world.
Learning across Social Spaces
Authors: Ahamer Gilbert , Strobl Josef
Published: May 2010

This case explores the mutual link between education, structural evolution, social spaces and institutional change. It develops theoretical perspectives and illustrates them by practical cases. Three approaches of learning (psychological, evolutionist and ontological) lead to specific targets for successful learning settings, both for individual and societal learning. A series of structural transitions seems to best characterize the genesis of economies, civilizations and targets. “Space” is here understood as being created by social, esp. communicative action and can hence be generated anew by pervasive learning processes. Learning across social spaces means both intercultural and interdisciplinary learning and places learners into diverse systems of meaning. In a series of cases for learning settings, especially dialogic intercultural learning is identified as a key path to a harmonious development of nations.
Planning a Quality Education System
Authors: Sukati C. W. S.
Published: May 2010

Responding to the social, technological, economic and political (STEP) environmental factors, UNISWA established the Institute of Distance Education (IDE) in 1994 to increase access to university education by offering its programmes using the distance education delivery mode. The success achieved by this intervention has led to a number of problems and challenges that now confront the Institute which work against the realization of its goals. An evaluation of these challenges points to the urgent need to use new ICTs in the delivery of content. Doing this, would enable the institution to increase its enrolments at a lower cost per enrolled student. It would further lead to the blurring of the boundaries between the conventional university and the IDE. This chapter argues for the use of online learning, and the need for a new strategic plan for the university.
Development of a Transnational Framework for E-Learning Technologies
Authors: Graham Deryn
Published: May 2010

This case study looks at the creation of a Transnational Framework for e-Learning Technologies. It describes how the original study which aimed to “Develop a Framework for e-Learning” through a given exemplar in a United Kingdom institution, has gone through several iterations. From initially considering e-Tutoring/e-Moderating from a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) point of view, to the adoption of Blended Learning as a solution to problems revealed by the Framework. Proceeding to evaluate e-Learning in terms of PESTE (Political, Economic, Social, Technical and Environmental) factors, restated here in the form of STEP (Social, Technological, Economical and Political) factors, which led to the realization of major external issues for e-Learning. Most recently, the study evolved to revisit e-Learning from an HCI and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) perspective, by applying a Cooperative Work Framework. The resulting final incarnation, a Transnational Framework for e-Learning, is thus presented.
Second Life Brought to Life
Authors: Yee Kevin , Hargis Jace
Published: May 2010

This case presents the challenges and successes encountered when a university attempts to offer a course in a new online virtual learning environment (VLE). Overcoming the resistance towards change requires many aspects—innovation, expertise, funds, culture, persistence, attitude, collaboration, willingness to take risk and possibly open to experiencing a failed event. Most importantly, there is a need for addressing the individual needs of student learning. Being able to develop networks and reach outside of those networks for expertise, input, and commitments are essential to moving forward and becoming successful at offering a unique and innovative VLE. Ultimately, the social, technological, economic, and political parameters involved in this process are all significant and requires workarounds in order to provide an innovative, individualized teaching and learning model.
Integrated Cross-cultural Virtual Classroom Exchange Program
Authors: O’Neill Eunhee Jung
Published: May 2010

As information and communication technology (ICT) evolves, the scope of social interactions expands globally through the Web, and knowledge has become a key source for economic production. The capacity to understand diverse cultures and the ability to utilize ICT for knowledge acquisition and application have become critical to increasing and sustaining global solidarity, peace and development. Accordingly, society expects educational institutions to provide students with cultural learning opportunities and ICT skills. In an effort to address these issues, a cross-cultural virtual classroom exchange program using an online course management system was introduced to public schools in Korea and the USA. By investigating technological, pedagogical, and organizational factors, this paper analyzes the adaptability of public schools in Korea and the USA with respect to integrating cross-cultural virtual exchange activities within their respective curricula. Ultimately, this case recommends solutions for increasing adaptability, and invites international collaboration among education stakeholders to disseminate the cross-cultural virtual learning worldwide.
A Proposed Framework for Studying Educational Virtual Worlds
Authors: Mena Ricardo Javier Rademacher
Published: May 2010

There are several theories about entertainment and education. Some, like Caillois’ Play Domains, categorize broad domains of play. Others, like Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, categorize narrowly defined types of intelligences. To the author’s knowledge however, there has never been a mix of entertainment and education theories in a single conceptual framework. In this chapter, a framework will be systematically built called The Education and Entertainment (EE) Grid. This grid will showcase how entertainment theories from Robert Caillois and Richard Bartle can be applied to educational contexts and how educational theories from Benjamin Bloom and Howard Gardner can be applied to entertainment contexts. A wide spectrum of education and entertainment theories will first be reviewed and special attention will be given to the four theories comprising the EE Grid. Two individual grids, the ENT and EDU Grids, will then be built as a preliminary step to constructing the first version of the EE Grid. Once built, a comparison with other similar frameworks in the field of game design will be discussed. Finally, a few hypothetical examples of how the EE Grid could be used will be presented.
Designing Educational Games
Authors: Tang Stephen , Hanneghan Martin
Published: May 2010

Play has been an informal approach to teach young ones the skills of survival for centuries. With advancements in computing technology, many researchers believe that computer games1 can be used as a viable teaching and learning tool to enhance a student’s learning. It is important that the educational content of these games is well designed with meaningful game-play based on pedagogically sound theories to ensure constructive learning. This chapter features theoretical aspects of game design from a pedagogical perspective. It serves as a useful guide for educational game designers to design better educational games for use in game-based learning. The chapter provides a brief overview of educational games and game-based learning before highlighting theories of learning that are relevant to educational games. Selected theories of learning are then integrated into conventional game design practices to produce a set of guidelines for educational games design.
The Design of a Health Literacy Game
Authors: McCabe Jennifer
Published: May 2010

This chapter describes the design and development of a game that was created to teach undergraduate students concepts related to health literacy. A brief discussion of the nature of games and how and why they appeal to college students is followed by a synopsis of some of the literature that influenced the design of the game in 2005. The chapter goes on to describe the game in detail, including the learning objectives, gameplay elements, design challenges, and skills included. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of some evaluations that were done on the game and direction for future development.
The Application of ‘Activity Theory' in the Design of Educational Simulation Games
Authors: Peachey Paul
Published: May 2010

As you read this text you perform an activity. Activity is literally everything we do and yet we are unaware of most of our operations. In this chapter, I will describe activity through a psychological lens and explain how this relates to the process of learning. The conceptual instrument used for analysis is ‘activity theory’; a cultural-historical concept that was formulated in Russia during the 1920s. I will offer suggestions as to how activity theory may be used in the design of computer simulation games directed at education and highlight its conceptual underpinnings. In the latter part of the chapter, I offer possible directions for further research in this field.
Games and the Development of Students' Civic Engagement and Ecological Stewardship
Authors: Anderson Janice L.
Published: May 2010

In recent years, researchers and classroom teachers have started to explore purposefully designed computer/video games in supporting student learning. This interest in video and computer games has arisen in part, because preliminary research on educational video and computer games indicates that leveraging this technology has the potential to improve student motivation, interest, and engagement in learning through the use of a familiar medium (Gee, 2005; Mayo, 2009; Squire, 2005; Shaffer, 2006). While most of this early research has focused on the impact of games on academic and social outcomes, relatively few studies have been conducted exploring the influence of games on civic engagement (Lenhart et al, 2008). This chapter will specifically look at how Quest Atlantis, a game designed for learning, can potentially be utilized to facilitate the development of ecological stewardship among its players/students, thereby contributing to a more informed democratic citizenry.
Modifying Popular Board Games to Illustrate Complex Strategic Concepts
Authors: Gallagher Scott , Cavazos David , Harper Steven
Published: May 2010

Simulations can be powerful tools in helping students learn about strategic management. This chapter discusses the value of simulations in helping to illustrate the importance of contingency, the impossibility of a perfect strategy, planning ahead, and aligning internal resources to external environments in strategic management classes. The authors also discuss the benefits that simulations can offer in going beyond the book and class, being interesting, and the importance of instrumentality in facilitating student learning. This chapter then compares self reported student learning results for each of these variables for two simulations, a professionally packaged simulation and a “home-brewed” one based on a popular board game. The authors expected the professional simulation to do better on every variable except instrumentality. Surprisingly, the “home-brewed” simulation scored better on most of the dimensions. Therefore, they conclude by encouraging management educators to aggressively explore their instincts for simulation learning opportunities.
Using Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Video Games to Facilitate Habits of Mind
Authors: Evans Michael A.
Published: May 2010

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a theoretically based argument for using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) video games to teach life science topics in the seventh grade science classroom. Specifically, the game Spore™, a turn-based strategy game, will be examined as a potential tool and environment for cultivating knowledge building and model-based reasoning. Though the diversity in methods of the reasoning processes are great and varied, researchers believe that “scientists’ work involves building and refining models of the world” (Lehrer & Schauble, 2006, p. 371). The argument forwarded is that Spore™, contextualized by purposeful efforts of instructors and researchers, may facilitate the development and refinement of scientific habits of mind and computational thinking. An exploratory case study derived from an overview of five sections of a seventh grade life science course (n=85), where a two-week lesson on evolutionary biology was significantly revised, illustrates opportunities for and challenges to incorporating COTS games into formal middle school science classroom.
Design-Researching Gamestar Mechanic
Authors: Games Ivan Alex
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents the results of a three-year design research study of Gamestar Mechanic, a multiplayer online role-playing game designed to teach middle school children to think like designers by exposing them to key practices behind good computer game production. Using discourse-based ethnographic methods, it examines the ways in which the multimodal meaning representations of the language of games (Gee, 2003) provided within Gamestar Mechanic, have helped learners think and communicate in increasingly sophisticated ways with and about game design. It also examines the implications of these language and literacy skills for other areas of players’ lives, as well as for the improvement of the game as a learning environment over time.
Second Life as a Tool for Engaging Students Across the Curriculum
Authors: Stevens Kathryn E. , Kruck S.E. , Hawkins Jeremy , Baker Suzanne C.
Published: May 2010

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world that possesses great potential as an innovative teaching tool. SL not only allows users to meet, interact, and collaborate in a virtual space, but also to create their own learning environments. This chapter explores how virtual worlds such as Second Life can be used to enhance the overall educational experience of both traditional and distance education students. We describe applications of SL to teaching diverse classes in art history and museum studies, business, and psychology, and to community building across the university. In general, our experiences with using SL have been positive, and our students report enjoying the creativity and flexibility of SL as well as the opportunity for social interaction in the virtual world. We provide recommendations to those considering the use of SL.
IP Quality of Service Models
Authors: El-Kader Sherine M. Abd
Published: May 2010

Currently the Internet offers a point-to-point delivery service, which is based on the “best effort” delivery model. In this model, data will be delivered to its destination as soon as possible, but with no commitment about bandwidth or latency. Using protocols such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the highest guarantee the network provides is reliable data delivery. This is adequate for traditional data applications like e-mail, web browsing, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Telnet, but inadequate for applications requiring timeliness. For example, multimedia conferencing or audio and video streaming applications, which require high bandwidth capacity and are sensitive to delay and delay variation. For these applications to perform adequately, Quality of Services (QoS) must be quantified and managed, and the Internet must be modified to support real-time QoS and controlled end-to-end delays. The efforts to enable end-to-end QoS over the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) networks have led to the development of two different architectures, the Integrated services architecture (Intserv) and the Differentiated services architecture (Diffserv), which although different, support services that go beyond the best effort service. This chapter will present a detailed discussion on these IPv4 quality of services models. First, the Integrated services architecture with its related issues such as the reservation setup protocol will be demonstrated. Second, the Differentiated services architecture with a description of the services they provide will be described. Finally, a comparison between the Best-effort, the Integrated and Differentiated services will be done.
Disruption in the ICT-Sector
Authors: Bross Justus , Wang Long , AlNemr Rehab
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, the authors discuss innovations associated with the transition from the circuit-switched public telephone network to IP packet-switched networks for the provision of voice services by focusing on research findings in the area of quality of service (QoS). To give a meaningful answer on how this transition affects the telecommunications industry, we elaborate on the frequently-cited concept of disruptive innovations, pioneered by Harvard Professor Clayton M. Christensen.
QoS Signaling Security in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
Authors: Sornil Ohm
Published: May 2010

A quality of service (QoS) signaling system is necessary for QoS provision in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET). A QoS signaling system in MANETs is vulnerable to various types of attacks, ranging from fabrication and modification of messages to denial of services, which can cause failures of QoS provisions. Security is thus a critical issue for a signaling system. However, distinctive characteristics of MANETs make security mechanisms effective in conventional networks inapplicable in this environment. This chapter describes issues and challenges, and examines mechanisms specifically designed to provide security for QoS signaling systems in MANETs.
Contract Law and Virtual Worlds
Authors: Adrian Angela
Published: May 2010

Software companies offering subscriptions to virtual worlds want protection for their intellectual and economic investment. As such, companies condition entry to their worlds upon acceptance of a EULA which will generally impose strict restrictions on rights of participants. Professor Julie Cohen’s (1998) explanation in ‘Lochner in Cyberspace’ illustrates how private contracts routinely extend beyond real world law. ‘Lochnerism’ describes judicial activism in the sphere of economic legislation. It comes from the case, Lochner.v.New.York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905). “For an example of the use of the term in the present context, consider the following: Many commentators have recognized the similarities between the Court’s current approach to structural media regulation and its approach to economic and social legislation during the Lochner era. Importing content neutrality and tiered scrutiny into the constitutional analysis of structural regulation has opened the door to deep economic review.” (Burnstein, 2004 pp 1057-1058; Benkler, 2003 pp 201-205) Compare the assertion that First Amendment defences of the right of databases to control access to their contents have “some fairly strong parallels” with “the traditional conception of Lochner.” (Richards, 2005 pp 1212-13) This can be seen to extending to virtual worlds via these complex agreements with their ‘click-wrap format’ which discourage a complete review of their terms. Click-wrap agreements are online interactive contracts similar to shrink-wrap licenses. Shrink-wrap licenses are often used for software, where a consumer is deemed to agree to the license when he removes the plastic shrink-wrap packaging from the product box. Click-wraps appear on-screen and the participant must either agree or disagree to the terms before advancing to the next screen. Click-wrap agreements are of the shrink-wrap license. (Casamiquela, 2002, pp 477-80; Lemley, 1995) The motivation for the explosion of software licensing agreements remains in dispute. There are those who believe EULAs benefit corporations and consumers alike, while critics bemoan its influence on the application of intellectual property law.
Dynamically Reconfigurable Networks-on-Chip Using Runtime Adaptive Routers
Authors: Véstias Mário P. , Neto Horácio C.
Published: May 2010

The recent advances in IC technology have made it possible to implement systems with dozens or even hundreds of cores in a single chip. With such a large number of cores communicating with each other there is a strong pressure over the communication infrastructure to deliver high bandwidth, low latency, low power consumption and quality of service to guarantee real-time functionality. Networks-on-Chip are definitely becoming the only acceptable interconnection structure for today’s multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoC). The first generation of NoC solutions considers a regular topology, typically a 2D mesh. Routers and network interfaces are mainly homogeneous so that they can be easily scaled up and modular design is facilitated. All advantages of a NoC infrastructure were proved with this first generation of NoC solutions. However, NoCs have a relative area and speed overhead. Application specific systems can benefit from heterogeneous communication infrastructures providing high bandwidth in a localized fashion where it is needed with improved area. The efficiency of both homogeneous and heterogeneous solutions can be improved if runtime changes are considered. Dynamically or runtime reconfigurable NoCs are the second generation of NoCs since they represent a new set of benefits in terms of area overhead, performance, power consumption, fault tolerance and quality of service compared to the previous generation where the architecture is decided at design time. This chapter discusses the static and runtime customization of routers and presents results with networks-on-chip with static and adaptive routers. Runtime adaptive techniques are analyzed and compared to each other in terms of area occupation and performance. The results and the discussion presented in this chapter show that dynamically adaptive routers are fundamental in the design of NoCs to satisfy the requirements of today’s systems-on-chip.
Dynamic Reconfigurable NoC (DRNoC) Architecture
Authors: Krasteva Yana E. , de la Torre Eduardo , Riesgo Teresa
Published: May 2010

The aim of this Chapter is to present a highly flexible reconfigurable NoC solution for commercial FPGAs on one side, and on the other side, to provide an innovative approach for fast NoC emulation. The reconfigurable on-chip communication solution that is proposed in this chapter is capable of being reconfigured by means of adapting routers, network interfaces and cores themselves. The main distinguishing characteristic of the presented on-chip communication approach is that it permits to distribute the available on-chip communication resources among different communication topologies and thus, independent and application specific communication strategies can coexist and run in parallel. Furthermore, the proposed solution is not limited to NoCs and it permits to build a vari ety of on-chip communication. The proposed method in this Chapter for fast emulation provides a rapid way of validating different communication alternatives. The emulation method is based on the original idea of hard core re-usability through the exploitation of partial reconfiguration capabilities of some state of the art FPGAs. Both aspects have been tested and validated using a proof of concept approach and are discussed along this Chapter.
Dynamically Reconfigurable NoC for Future Heterogeneous Multi-core Architectures
Authors: Ahmad Balal , Ahmadinia Ali , Arslan Tughrul
Published: May 2010

To increase the efficiency of NoCs and to efficiently utilize the available hardware resources, a novel dynamically reconfigurable NoC (drNoC) is proposed in this chapter. Exploiting the notion of hardware reconfigurability, the proposed drNoC reconfigures itself in terms of switching, routing and packet size with the changing communication requirements of the system at run time, thus utilizing the maximum available channel bandwidth. In order to increase the applicability of drNoC, the network interface is designed to support OCP socket standard. This makes drNoC a highly re-useable communication framework, qualifying it as a communication centric platform for high data intensive SoC architectures. Simulation results show a 32% increase in data throughput and 22-35% decrease in network delay when compared with a traditional NoC with fixed parameters.