bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Measuring Similarity of Interests for Clustering Taggers and Resources
Authors: Dichev Christo , Xu Jinsheng , Dicheva Darina , Zhang Jinghua
Published: May 2011

Collaborative tagging systems demonstrate the potential to generate collectively built organization structures forming the basis for social navigation and shared knowledge. The effectiveness of these systems for finding and re-finding information depends not only on the created tag structures but also on the ability to identify similar users. In this article, we present our study on measuring user similarity based on shared interests, utilizing data from del.icio.us. The authors propose several methods for measuring similarities aimed at clustering tags and users. They also report our initial results related to implicit grouping of tags and users.
The Role of Law in Adolescent Online Social Communication and Behavior
Authors: Burriss Larry L.
Published: May 2011

What in the world is a chapter on law doing in a book on psychology, behavior and affect (that’s af’ ekt, not ? fekt’)? Well, the analogy of a game comes to mind. The psychologist may ask such questions as, why do the players do what they do? How do they feel about the activity? How do they interact with other players? Certainly these questions are important. But at the same time the players have to play by the rules. And that’s where the law comes in.
Towards the Notion of Typical Documents in Large Collections of Documents
Authors: Klopotek Mieczyslaw , Wierzchon Slawomir , Ciesielski Krzysztof , Draminski Michal , Czerski Dariusz
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a new measure of document similarity – the GNGrank that was inspired by the popular opinion that links between the documents reflect similar content. The idea was to create a rank measure based on the well known PageRank algorithm which exploits the document similarity to insert links between the documents. A comparative study of various link- and content-based similarity measures, and GNGrank is performed in the context of identification of a typical document of a collection. The study suggests that each group of them measures something different, a different aspect of document space, and hence the respective degrees of typicality do not correlate. This may be an indication that for different purposes different documents may be important. A deeper study of this phenomenon is our future research goal.
A Robust Biclustering Approach for Effective Web Personalization
Authors: Inbarani H. , Thangavel K.
Published: May 2011

Web recommendation or personalization could be viewed as a process that recommends the customized web presentations or predicts the tailored web contents to web users according to their specific need. The first step in intelligent web personalization is segmenting web log data into web user sessions for constructing user model. These segments are later used to recommend relevant URLs to old and new anonymous users of a web site. The knowledge discovery part can be executed offline by periodically mining new contents of the user access log files. The recommendation part is the online component of a usage-based personalization system. In this study, we propose a robust Biclustering algorithm to disclose the correlation that exists between users and pages. This chapter proposes a Robust Biclustering (RB) method based on constant values for integrating user clustering and page clustering techniques which is followed by a recommendation system that can respond to the users’ individual interests. To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the recommendation, experiments are conducted in terms of the recommendation accuracy metric. The experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed Biclustering method is very simple and is able to efficiently extract needed usage knowledge accurately for web page recommendation.
iVAS
Authors: Leung Carson Kai-Sang , Carmichael Christopher
Published: May 2011

Nowadays, various data, text, and web mining applications can easily generate large volumes of data. Embedded within these data is previously unknown and potential useful knowledge such as frequently occurring sets of items, merchandise, or events. Hence, numerous algorithms have been proposed for finding these frequent sets, which are usually presented in a lengthy textual list. However, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. The use of visual representations can enhance user understanding of the inherent relations among the frequent sets. Although a few visualizers have been developed, most of them were not designed for visualizing the mined frequent sets. In this chapter, an interactive visual analytic system called iVAS is proposed for providing visual analytic solutions to the frequent set mining problem. The system enables the visualization and advanced analysis of the original transaction databases as well as the frequent sets mined from these databases.
Mammogram Mining Using Genetic Ant-Miner
Authors: Thangavel K. , Roselin R.
Published: May 2011

Image mining deals with the extraction of implicit knowledge, image data relationship, or other patterns not explicitly stored in the images. It is an extension of data mining to image domain and an interdisciplinary endeavour. This chapter focuses on mammogram classification using genetic Ant-Miner. The key idea is to generate classifier for classifying mammograms as normal or abnormal using the proposed Genetic Ant-Miner algorithm. The Genetic Algorithm has been employed to optimize some of the ant parameters. A comparative analysis is performed in order to achieve the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. Further, the experimental results reveals that the improvement of the proposed Genetic Ant-Miner in the domain of Biomedical image Analysis.
Implementing an Electronic Infrastructure
Authors: Suomi Reima
Published: May 2011

The Internet has already now revolutionised many industries. The biggest changes are yet maybe to come in many industries, but the banking field can be seen as a pioneer in the application of modern information technology in general and of the Internet in particular. For example, in banking hardly anyone speaks about e-Banking: e-activity is banking as normal, no especial “e” is needed. This chapter discusses the banking industry as a user of the Internet and other modern information and communication technology (ICT). Germany and Finland are used as case examples and make comparisons between them. The banking industry has utilized several technologies of computer networking over several decades, and also got a “flying start” to the Internet technologies, that nowadays are a backbone of the banking industry. As stated, this chapter compares some of the related developments in Germany and in Finland.
Agent-Based Virtual Environments for Marketing
Authors: Wang Rui , Wang Xiangyu
Published: May 2011

This chapter investigates the use of SecondLife as a virtual environment to help the commercial sector in marketing process. It presents the use of Immersive Virtual Reality concept to design a distributed marketing system for commercial sector based on the Benford’s Mixed Reality boundaries theory and Motivated Learning Agents model. System framework has been proposed in this chapter and boundaries as well as agents factors in this framework have been discussed.
Implementing Virtual Reality in the Healthcare Sector
Authors: Bayona Sofia , Espadero José Miguel , Fernández José Manuel , Pastor Luis , Rodríguez Ángel
Published: May 2011

This chapter will concentrate on the advantages that VR can offer to the Healthcare Sector. After a brief introduction, the second section will present an analysis of the areas where VR techniques can be successfully applied. Next section will describe some existing VR applications in healthcare. The development of a VR surgery simulator, with all the aspects that make this process challenging, will be presented on the following section. An analysis of the difficulties specific to healthcare environments while dealing with the design and development of VR applications will be covered in the next section. The last section will be devoted to conclusions and future perspectives of VR in the Healthcare Sector.
Application of Topographical Capture Techniques for Modelling Virtual Reality
Authors: Abadía Mercedes Farjas , Quintana Manuel Sillero , Calvo Pedro Ángel Merino
Published: May 2011

Since the dawn of time man has attempted to represent the human figure with techniques ranging from simple drawings to techniques that manage to reflect the movement of body segments. In parallel, cartographic techniques have developed very advanced capture and 3D representation systems, but even though they have been applied in recent years to other sciences, they have not been applied yet to virtual reality. The appearance of the laser acquisition systems has enabled us to acquire data without discrimination on points and to get quick 3D models. This situation allows us to work directly on the concept of surface and to analyze it from the uniqueness of the detail, compared to traditional systems which capture points for, later, imaging surfaces from them. Under this prism, a research group was formed by graduates in Physical Activity and Sport and in Cartography, in order to bring together both sciences and to improve techniques of capture and representation of the human body. The road is not completely gone, but some results have been obtained and are presented in this work.
Associations Between Driving Forces to Adopt ICT and Benefits Derived from that Adoption in Medical Practices in Australia
Authors: MacGregor R. C. , Hyland P. N. , Harvie C.
Published: May 2011

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is today seen as a catalyst for change in the way work is carried out. Over the past decade there have been a number of studies examining both the decision-making behind ICT adoption (the driving forces for adoption) as well as the perceived benefits from that adoption. However, no studies have attempted to determine, or indeed map whether emphasis given to specific driving forces have manifested in differing perceptions of perceived benefits. The purpose of this chapter is to examine whether emphasis on particular driving forces for ICT adoption are associated with the perception of particular benefits. A study was undertaken amongst 198 Australian GPs. Results suggest that greater emphasis on improving communications gives rise to higher perceived benefits both in terms of communications and practice effectiveness, while emphasis on other drivers does not significantly alter the perception of benefits derived from adoption.
Supporting Synchronous Collaboration with Heterogeneous Devices
Authors: Guicking Axel , Tandler Peter , Grasse Thomas
Published: May 2011

The increasing availability of mobile devices in today’s business contexts raises the demand to shift the focus of groupware framework design. Instead of solely focusing on functional requirements of specific application domains or device characteristics, nonfunctional requirements need to be taken into account as well. Flexibility concerning the integration of devices and tailorability of the framework according to different usage contexts is essential for addressing device heterogeneity. Besides flexibility, in order to support the development of real-world applications involving heterogeneous devices, robustness and scalability concerns have to be addressed explicitly by the framework. This article presents Agilo, a groupware framework for synchronous collaboration. The framework incorporates approaches addressing flexibility, robustness, and scalability issues. The combination of these concerns makes it suitable for development of collaborative applications involving up to hundreds of users. As an example application, a commercial electronic meeting system is presented by illustrating typical usage scenarios, explaining applicationspecific requirements and describing the system design.
Workflow Discovery
Authors: Goderis Antoon , Li Peter , Goble Carole
Published: May 2011

Much has been written on the promise of Web service discovery and (semi-) automated composition. In this discussion, the value to practitioners of discovering and reusing existing service compositions, captured in workflows, is mostly ignored. We present the case for workflows and workflow discovery in science and develop one discovery solution. Through a survey with 21 scientists and developers from the myGrid/Taverna workflow environment, workflow discovery requirements are elicited. Through a user experiment with 13 scientists, an attempt is made to build a benchmark for workflow ranking. Through the design and implementation of a workflow discovery tool, a mechanism for ranking workflow fragments is provided based on graph sub-isomorphism detection. The tool evaluation, drawing on a corpus of 89 public workflows and the results of the user experiment, finds that, for a simple showcase, the average human ranking can largely be reproduced.
Achieving Multiple Literacy in Science Education
Authors: Mackenzie Sinclair
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides a teacher’s view of the role and influence of multiple literacy in secondary school science. Multiple literacy from the author’s perspective, (who is a secondary classroom science teacher) is the concept of doing things that teachers have always done in their lessons, but achieving them by incorporating new, engaging, ICT-rich strategies.
Multiple Literacies in the ICT Age
Authors: Fehring Heather
Published: May 2011

The exponentially changing world of the Information Age is reflected in the emphasis on multiple literacies and the impact of information communication technology (ICT) in teaching and learning practices in global educational environments. Students’ learning, teachers’ curricula and teacher education programmes are being adapted to these changing circumstances. The concept of multiple literacies has had a powerful influence on classroom practice. Multimodal and multidimensional curricula have become the standard for students from a very young age to lifelong learners. While discipline-specific literacies such as scientific literacy are widely acknowledged as essential components of a multiple literacies concept, notions of ‘information literacy’ have taken centre stage in discussions of students’ ability to access, retrieve and critically evaluate the information that floods the ICT driven delivery modes of the 21st century. However, it is important to remember that learning is a complex process, and that “Who is looking after our children?” is still an essential question to ask.
Virtual Worlds for Science Learning
Authors: Grimley Mick , Nilsen Trond , Kerr Roslyn , Green Richard , Thompson David
Published: May 2011

This chapter proposes that the use of virtual worlds for science education is warranted and fits well with contemporary learning theory in the context of constructivist instructional approaches being desirable and that learners learn best when they are engaged in active mental processing. Over recent years, games have become increasingly social, supporting massively multi-player online game experiences and then evolving into virtual worlds, such as Second Life, which show significant promise for educational uses. This chapter introduces the field of virtual worlds, and then discusses relevant theory and research. The authors describe the potential of virtual worlds for education by emphasizing how they can be leveraged as an effective tool for constructivist teaching techniques. In addition, the authors present some of the literature that supports their use for science education. This chapter concludes with practical concerns and some possible solutions in the context of future research directions.
Using Assessment to Promote Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills in Adults
Authors: Arend Bridget D.
Published: May 2011

Adult education in the twenty-first century is tasked with developing skilled workers with critical thinking and problem solving skills that will allow them to succeed in a fast-paced and rapidly changing economy. Most adult education takes place in structured educational settings and course-level assessment is seen to be the strongest factor directing students‘ time and energy in such settings. Therefore, course-level assessment methods, which are the grading practices and methods within a course environment, should be used to promote critical thinking and problem solving skills in adults. This chapter describes formative and summative assessment methods and techniques that promote these higher order thinking skills in adults.
Key Establishment for Securing Pervasive Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Banerjee Anusree , P. Divya , E. L. Jeevan , Abraham Jibi
Published: May 2011

Technological growth in embedded systems has given a leading growth for pervasive computing in today’s human world. But the possibility of leakage of private information necessitates the need for security. Confidentiality service allows concealment of messages transmitted between communicating parties from the outsiders. To achieve confidentiality, it should be able to encrypt and decrypt the messages using a secret key. The key used must be agreed upon by the parties before start transmission. This chapter gives an overview of the issues in establishing a secret key, a scheme to establish the key and its implementation results. The scheme utilizes the fact that communication in sensor networks follows a paradigm called aggregation. Keys are split into shares and forwarded using disjoint paths in the network to reduce the effect of node compromise attack. The implementation results show that even though the scheme fits properly with the available memory with the sensor nodes, its communication overhead is high.
Pervasive Computing and Ambient Intelligence Development
Authors: Bureš Vladimír , Cech Pavel
Published: May 2011

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) as an environment, where pervasive computing methods, tools, or products are taking place, is a concept envisioning information society in the future. AmI can be investigated from several points of view, whereas a technological perspective is the one most frequently presented. However, as the fragments of AmI vision are becoming reality, the educational perspective is of growing importance. Managerial workplace may be considered as a typical environment where pervasive, or ubiquitous, computing and AmI are being currently introduced. Hence, the proper education of future managers or IT specialists should aim at students’ ability to define requirements for the structure and behaviour of AmI from different viewpoints and from final users’ perspective namely. The problem is that AmI is a system with high level of complexity due to the need to unite many related aspects from different problem domains. Therefore, relevant tools and methods should be taught so that students can comprehend such a complexity. A brief description of the situation in the selected Czech university and results based on particular tools and methodological approaches are depicted in the following chapter.
SMART
Authors: Pino Esteban , Curtis Dorothy , Stair Thomas , Ohno-Machado Lucila
Published: May 2011

Patient monitoring is important in many contexts: at mass-casualty disaster sites, in improvised emergency wards, and in emergency room waiting areas. Given the positive history of use of monitoring systems in the hospital during surgery, in the recovery room, or in an intensive care unit, the authors sought to use recent technological advances to enable patient monitoring in more diverse circumstances: at home, while traveling, and in some less well-monitored areas of a hospital. This chapter presents the authors’ experiences in designing, implementing and deploying a wireless disaster management system prototype in a real hospital environment. In addition to a review of related systems, the sensors, algorithms and infrastructure used in our implementation are presented. Finally, general guidelines for ubiquitous methodologies and tools are shared based on the lessons learned from the actual implementation.
Navigating a Speckled World
Authors: Leach Matthew , Benyon David
Published: May 2011

The Speckled Computing project is a large multisite research project based in Scotland, UK. The aim of the project is to investigate, prototype, and produce tiny (1mm3) computational devices, called Specks, that can be configured into wireless sensor networks, called SpeckNets. Our particular interest is in how people might interact in such environments, what interaction tools they require, and what characteristics are required to be provided by the operating system of the Specks. Interaction in these environments places the human physically inside an information space. At one time, the human may be interacting with one Speck, at another with a hundred, and at another with several thousand. Moreover, the Specks themselves have no input method, apart from their sensors, and no output display. We explore these issues through taking some theories of distributed information spaces, some design principles from information visualization, and report on some empirical studies of prototypes and simulations that have been developed.
Creating Virtual Marae
Authors: Greenwood Janinka , Te Aika Lynne Harata , Davis Niki
Published: May 2011

Maori people have a history of adaptation of new technologies. In recent decades Maori innovators have taken and adapted digital technologies for a range of purposes that can be broadly defined as educational. In this chapter, the authors examine three cases where groups have utilised, and ‘colonised’, a range of particular technologies in order to build capacity for their tribal groups and wider community. In this way they use technologies as tools to overcome some of the financial, social and political deprivation caused by historic and continuing colonisation. The authors initially locate their exploration in a discussion of the historical context of colonisation, Maori movement towards self-determination, and in a discussion of Maori values and approaches to knowledge. They then present the three cases, beginning with one from a formal tertiary education programme (a Maori one), then examining a tribal initiative for language revitalisation and finally looking at a national use of digital media through Maori television.1
Point-and-Chat®
Authors: Slotznick Benjamin
Published: May 2011

Point-and-Chat®, most simply, is the first software for Instant Messaging with a built-in screen reader, designed to be used in conjunction with Augmentative/Alternative Communication (AAC) devices. For many AAC users, especially those who have difficulty reading and writing, an AAC device is the primary or only way they can communicate with other people. This communication is primarily one-on-one and face-to-face. The goal of Point-and-Chat® is to take the skills that an AAC user has in producing the spoken word and provide scaffolding that will enable the AAC user to use those skills to communicate with the written word. The primary impediment to effective use of Point-and-Chat® by AAC users appears to be a lack of appropriate text-chat vocabularies for poor readers, including vocabulary strategies to re-establish conversations when the conversational thread has been lost.
Security Over the Information Systems Development Cycle
Authors: Blanco C. , Rosado D. , Gutiérrez C. , Rodríguez A. , Mellado D. , Fernández-Medina E. , Trujillo J. , Piattini M.
Published: May 2011

Information security is currently considered to be a crucial aspect of systems development. However it has traditionally been considered during the final stages of development, once the main components of the system have been developed and therefore provides solutions which are inappropriate for security integration. Software engineering has traditionally been separated from security engineering, and security issues have not usually been included in software engineering processes, activities, techniques, models, and so on. Furthermore, security engineering has not been aligned with information systems, and has focused rather on the definition of protocols, cryptographic algorithms, access control policies, etc. However, the scientific community is beginning to realize the importance of aligning software engineering and security engineering in order to develop more secure systems. Security in software engineering is a branch of research in which many contributions dealing with security integration from the early development stages have recently appeared. This chapter discusses some of the most interesting contributions in this area, and also provides a summary of our contributions through the development of various research lines dealing with different strategies to integrate security into information systems development as early in the development stages as is possible.
Privacy Aware Systems
Authors: Coen-Porisini Alberto , Colombo Pietro , Sicari Sabrina
Published: May 2011

Enterprises have adopted various strategies to protect customers’ privacy and to make public their policies. This chapter presents a conceptual model for supporting the definition of privacy policies. The model, described by means of UML, introduces a set of concepts concerning privacy and defines the existent relationships among those concepts along with the interfaces for the definition of privacy related mechanisms. The chapter also illustrates how the conceptual model can be used to build design solutions for three recurrent requirements for privacy aware systems concerning the definition of anonymity, the acquisition of the informed consent, and privacy policies enforcement. The proposed problems are separately illustrated and a solution based on the conceptual model is described for each of them. Finally, in order to assess the model and the design solutions, this chapter presents an example concerning the health domain.
Advances in Privacy Preserving Record Linkage
Authors: Karakasidis Alexandros , Verykios Vassilios S.
Published: May 2011

However, even though many solutions have been proposed towards addressing this problem, a new side effect rises regarding the privacy of the data which usually has to be protected during linkage. Sensitive information such as names, addresses, and illnesses, especially in cases of medical data, should not be revealed without further evidence to any participant of the merging procedure. This raises the need of creating new techniques for linking data while, at the same time, the privacy of the subjects described by these data is preserved. This need led to the evolvement of a new research area called privacy preserving record linkage. This chapter will attempt to present the state of the art of the methods proposed to address the privacy preserving record linkage problem and provide a taxonomy of these techniques based on their core characteristics.
Modern Diffusion of Products with Complex Network Models
Authors: Tanaka Atsushi
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, some important matters of complex networks and their models are reviewed shortly, and then the modern diffusion of products under the information propagation using multiagent simulation is discussed. The remarkable phenomena like “Winner-Takes-All” and “Chasm” can be observed, and one product marketing strategy is also proposed.
E-Mail Based Mobile Communication System for Interactive Lecture Support
Authors: Maeda Toshiyuki , Okamoto Tadayuki , Fukushige Yae , Asada Takayuki
Published: May 2011

The authors of this chapter present an e-mail based mobile communication system for interactive lecture support. This system consists of: attendance management subsystem, attendance history management subsystem, short examination management subsystem, questionnaire subsystem, and assignment delivery subsystem. Both students and teachers mainly use only e-mail functions and it can access the server. This system can be used regardless of terminal models only if mails can be sent and received through the Internet. In this chapter, the outline of this system is described, and the functions and effects are discussed.
Knowledge Management and Democracy
Authors: Górniak-Kocikowska Krystyna
Published: May 2011

The main problem discussed in this chapter is the question of compatibility between knowledge management in the knowledge economy and democracy in the ICT-driven global society. The assumption is made that democracy is the dominant form of organizing the global society on a variety of levels; and that it is regarded as desirable and morally superior in comparison with other such forms.
Glocality, Diversity and Ethics of Distributed Knowledge in Higher Education
Authors: Alves da Silva Nuno Sotero , Alvarez Isabel Maria Surdinho Borges , Rogerson Simon
Published: May 2011

Global networks through distributed systems technology granted a new meaning to knowledge creation, storage and distribution within higher education context. This global dimension imposes a considerable amount of ethical and social impacts concerning distributed knowledge because it is expressed within local contexts. Nonetheless, main stream literature highlights equity and cultural sensitivity as leading issues, and disregards the existent social dilemmas concerning organizational innovation in higher education. Therefore, this chapter aims to promote a philosophical and empirical argument within contextual determinants, in order to explore the ethical and social key dilemmas of distributed knowledge between global and local diversity in higher education. For that, under scrutiny will be a specific layer regarding first co-author e-University strategic implementation framework which interacts with ethics and culture, in order to, understand e-learning current practices in higher education, as well as, to nominate potential future guidelines concerning these trends.
Renewal and Personal Mastery in Knowledge-Based Organisations
Authors: Lohikoski Päivi
Published: May 2011

Being knowledge management crucial to companies, it seems reasonable to understand an organisation intellectual capital. The three leading components of intellectual capital (human capital, structural capital and relational capital), are intrinsically bounded to the organisational ICT system, organisational structure, and to workers personal mastery. Nonetheless, in order to evolve organisational intellectual capital it is required a high level of personal mastery, which is clearly bounded to human resources. Therefore, this chapter aims to promote a theoretical and empirical discussion in order to understand the diverse dimensions between renewal, personal mastery, and employee wellbeing within a knowledge-based organisation (Finnish ICT-company). For that, the chapter is divided into six major sections: the research questions; theoretical framework and main concepts; the case study organisation and research methods applied; findings; discussion; and future research.
iClassroom
Authors: O’Loughlin Eugene F. M.
Published: May 2011

Hand-held technologies such as Apple’s iPod/iTouch/iPhone devices are now capable of being used for educational purposes as well as for entertainment. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the issues, content authoring, usage, workload, and pedagogical consequences of creating an iClassroom for mobile learning based on these devices. Use of podcasts and vodcasts by students, and their rate of success are varied as shown by studies reviewed from the literature and carried out by the author for this chapter. Several strategies for reducing workload at an individual and institutional level are proposed for adoption by educators. Key recommendations from this chapter are an increased emphasis on evaluation, usage of models for developing content, and an inclusion of iPod/iTouch/iPhone devices as part of an overall architecture for m-learning.
Evaluating the Performance of Decision Making Units in the Food Production Industry
Authors: Stiakakis Emmanouil , Sifaleras Angelo
Published: May 2011

The proposed research focuses on the food production industry. More specifically, we are interested in evaluating the performance of this industry at firm-level. This will provide us the possibility to identify high performing firms, use them as reference units and analyze their common policies and characteristics. Since this study deals with evaluating the relative performance of one unit compared to others, the most appropriate method to be used is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). A major benefit of the DEA methodology is that, it supports the manager in order to take decisions in difficult cases, where complex relations exist between the multiple inputs and outputs involved in the activities of his/her company. This chapter presents an extensive case study involving the use of a well known Decision Support System (DSS) entitled DEA-Solver. For the purposes of this research, the most recent data available at the time of writing have been chosen, published by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. Such a choice ensures the credibility, as well as the conformity of the sampled data. The proposed model uses several variables as inputs and outputs, i.e. the number of employees, capital expenditure, R&D investment, net sales, and operating profit. Furthermore, this research aims to identify key factors / policies, which play an important role in the success of a food producer. We believe that, these findings will be of great interest to all companies in the food production industry.
A Web and Mobile System for Environmental Decision Support
Authors: Carswell James D. , Gardiner Keith , Bertolotto Michela , Rizzini Andrea
Published: May 2011

Current field data collection methods for many of today’s scientific and other observer/monitor type applications are still entrenched in the “clipboard age”, requiring manual data transcription to a database management system at some (often much) later date, and only allows for visualisation and analysis of recently captured field data “back in the lab”. This chapter is targeted at progressing today’s pen & paper methodology into the spatially enabled mobile computing age of realtime multi-media data input, integration, visualisation, and analysis simultaneously both in the field and the lab. The system described is customized to the specific needs of the Canadian Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Fish Habitat Management Group requirements for fish species at risk assessment, but is ready for adaptation to other environmental agency applications (e.g. forestry, health-pesticide monitoring, agriculture, etc.). The chapter is ideally suited to all agencies responsible for collecting field data of any type that have not yet moved to a state-of-the-art mobile and wireless data collection, visualisation, and analysis work methodology.
A Decision Support System for Scheduling Partial Harvesting in Aquaculture
Authors: Yu Run , Leung PingSun , Kam Lotus E. , Bienfang Paul
Published: May 2011

The implementation of partial harvesting for intensive aquaculture is a difficult undertaking for the aqua-farmers, due to the complex nature of tracking the effects of reducing density on growth, survival and eventually on productivity and profitability. In this chapter, we describe the partial harvesting decision support system (PHDSS) developed by Kam et al. (2008). The PHDSS is designed to assist aqua-farmers in determining the best harvesting strategy for a production cycle. Potential harvesting strategies include both partial harvest and single-batch harvest. The chapter navigates the readers through the system, using shrimp culture as a case study.
A Web-based Spatial DSS for estimating biomass-to-energy supply in Thessaly
Authors: Rozakis Stelios
Published: May 2011

Biomass-to-energy projects have become attractive these days because of recent European policy measures that attempt to address acute environmental, agricultural and energy challenges accumulated during the last 30 years. Bio-energy issues constitute spatially dependent problems by definition due to the state-of-the-art technology and the bulky nature of biomass. Moreover, biomass profitability is linked to the structure and perspectives of the arable cropping systems since these are able to supply considerable quantities in the short and medium term required to fulfil the ambitious targets aimed at by policy makers. Therefore, appropriate tools are necessary to enable a comprehensive analysis and support decisions of policy makers, industry, researchers and farmers. Spatial Decision Support Systems that have been developed to support bio-energy decisions are used as a basis enhanced by a web-based interface, in this exercise resulting in a Web-SDSS. This tool is implemented in Thessaly, the most significant arable cropping region in Greece, in order to evaluate selected energy crop supply. The methodology and architecture of this tool are detailed in this paper, followed by an illustrative description of its operational version implemented in ex-tobacco producing areas.
Recruitment and Retention of Healthcare Professionals for the Changing Demographics, Culture, and Access in Canada
Authors: Kabene Stéfane M. , Wolfe Melody , Leduc Raymond
Published: May 2011

The Canadian healthcare system strives to serve a population altered by ever-changing demographics, cultural shifts, and diverse societal populations, and to serve those in rural communities with remote access to health care. The following chapter examines Canada’s current healthcare system and the effects on demand for services and the supply of healthcare providers created by the need to service rural populations, by limited access to medical schools, and by the introduction of foreign medical/health professionals. More specifically, the chapter reviews the symptoms of a strained medical system plagued by “brain waste” due to the non-use of qualified immigrant healthcare professionals, long wait times as a result of inadequate staffing and resources, and a school system that hinders the development of aspiring medical care professionals from rural and international areas. If Canada is to face these challenges with efficacy and vigour, effective human resources management techniques and competent human resources professionals are a necessary prologue. Medical knowledge and skill must be valued; healthcare professionals should be utilized more efficiently to improve healthcare access and minimize brain waste.
The Impact of Telehealth on the Healthcare Workforce
Authors: Edirippulige Sisira , Marasinghe Rohana , Maon Siti Noorsuriani , Fujisawa Yoshikazu
Published: May 2011

The pressures on the health workforce have a profound impact on the quality of care. The solution to health workforce issues is a global concern and governments and health systems around the world are seeking solutions to the problems of worker shortages and access to health services. Education and training of more doctors, nurses, and other health professionals require long-term policy changes, funding, and infrastructure development. Telehealth has been identified as an alternative solution to address some of these critical issues and this chapter outlines the potential of telehealth to address some challenges facing the health workforce. The discussion will provide evidence for feasible and effective adoption of telehealth solutions.
The Health Informatics Professional
Authors: Lui Keith
Published: May 2011

Health informatics (HI) is an increasingly important discipline to healthcare. HI is the scientific field concerned with improving how information in healthcare is captured, used, and managed. Developments in HI have streamlined and improved the efficacy of health service delivery, ranging from administration to bedside care to telehealth. Anecdotally, one observes that the paradigm of health domain experts working with information technology (IT) domain experts still produces health information systems that fail or do not work adequately; thus, there is a need for individuals knowledgeable in both information methods/tools and health. HI is a very broad discipline, but demonstrates features of a profession that set it apart from conventional IT or computer science; one notes different aspects of knowledge and skill and an ethos that is more aligned with that of health. This chapter provides an overview of HI, introducing the concepts of HI, its history, and how it relates to the skills, knowledge and attitudes of the emerging HI professional. HI is changing how healthcare is delivered and HI professionals are a part of that process. There are a range of roles these individuals fill, with some overlap with more established positions, such as health information managers. Despite the emergence of the HI profession, there are hurdles to overcome in terms of consistent education and registration or accreditation/credentialing.
Interoperability
Authors: Breitenstrom Christian , Eckert Klaus-Peter , Fromm Jens
Published: May 2011

The EU Services Directive (EU-SD), which was passed in December 2006, should simplify access to the services market in all Member States of the European Union and eliminate bureaucratic barriers for Service Providers. This chapter presents an overview of the major functional components and processes that are necessary to implement and run the EU-SD between all stakeholders such as Service Providers, newly introduced Points of Single Contact and Responsible Public Authorities, based on a general framework for federated enterprise SOA. Especially in Germany, consisting of federated and autonomous federal states, but equally between different Member States, interoperability between different components is one of the major challenges of the EU-SD. This chapter elaborates on the interoperability aspect of data/document exchange between the stakeholders, using a secure “call by reference” concept that is implemented by an Electronic Safe, together with appropriate concepts for identity and access management.
Evolutionary Lagrangian Inverse Modeling for PM10 Pollutant Dispersion
Authors: Toro María Victoria
Published: May 2011

One of the main concerns when it comes to mitigating the effects of the concentration of the particulate matter PMx in an area of study is the fact to determine its behavior over time, overcoming both physical and mathematical limitations in terms of a phenomenon of dispersion. Therefore, this chapter develops and analyzes a model based on the principles of evolutionary computation (EC) in order to determine the space-time behavior of the concentration of the particulate matter PMx in a study area. The proposed model has three submodels within an integrated solution, which constitute the individual to evolve. The transformation of the possible solutions or generational population is made by using an asynchronous evolutionary model, due to genetic dependency between substructures. The proposed model was validated for configurations of n sources of emissions and m monitoring stations that measure the quality of the air in a study area.
Personal Learning Enviroments
Authors: Ribeiro Jaime , Casanova Diogo , Nogueira Fernanda , Moreir António , Almeida Margarida
Published: May 2011

Gifted Students, in spite of their very well known characteristics, have specific education needs in order to achieve their potential. Although they do not present a special educational need in the common meaning, they have very particular learning needs that, if overlooked, may lead to adverse feelings towards school and learning that can result in academic failure. Authors in the field agree that giftedness can and must be developed and providing challenging and facilitative learning environments is the first building block. The PLE, held up by WEB 2.0, for its openness and possibilities it offers to learn autonomously, resorting to exploration, discovery, networking with like-minded peers and experts fits the style and pace of learning of its user and shows to be a tool to fully suite the particular traits of these students. In this chapter a 5 dimension ple is conceptualized that accommodates the cognitive, emotional and education needs of gifted students.
Considering the Role of E-government in Cybercrime Awareness and Prevention
Authors: Miller J. Mitchell , Higgins George E. , Lopez Kristina M.
Published: May 2011

Cybercrime has exponentially increased in recent years as an unavoidable byproduct of greater internet use, generally, and presents a wide range of criminal threats to large companies and individuals alike. While cyber offenses (e.g., cyberharassment, cyberstalking, identity theft, and intellectual property theft) and their address have been examined across diverse academic disciplines including criminology, electrical engineering, sociology, and computer science, minimal consideration has been given to the role of e-government in combating cybercrime – a somewhat ironic oversight given the computerized context of both. After reviewing the nature of cybercrime, this chapter considers e-government policies addressing cybercrime awareness, prevention, and victimization services. Discussion centers on the prospects for cybercrime theoretical research program development toward best practices public policy.
The Key Elements of Online Learning Communities
Authors: Du Jianxia , Liu Yunyan , Brown Robert L.
Published: May 2011

An online learning community can be a place for vibrant discussions and the sharing of new ideas in a medium where content constantly changes. This chapter will first examine the different definitions that researchers have provided for online learning communities. It will then illuminate several key elements that are integral to onlinelearning communities: interactivity, in both its task-driven and socio-emotional forms; collaboration, which both builds and nurtures online communities; trusting relationships, which are developed primarily through social interaction and consist of shared goals and a sense of belonging or connectedness; and communication media choices, which impact the other three elements. This chapter also provides suggestions for the practical application of these elementsin the online classroom.
Dispatches from the Graduate Classroom
Authors: Nordengren F.R. Fritz , York Ann M.
Published: May 2011

This chapter is a practical overview of both the theoretical, evidence-based research in pedagogy and the anecdotal, experience-based practices of faculty who work daily in online and blended learning communities. This approach combines best practices with theoretical aspects of delivering and facilitating education with diverse adult learners. Issues and trends in E-learning are presented with specific examples for implementation and suggestions for future research. Using an evidence-based approach, theauthors will explore and summarize recent research with a concurrent analysis of the anecdotal popular literature. Theauthors explore the concept of information literacy andother skills necessary to succeed in the Web 2.0 world.Their discussion takes us away from the traditional “sage on stage” versus “guide on side” dichotomy towards both a new understanding of Web 2.0’s role in education as well as a preface to what may become Web 3.0 and beyond.
Balancing Tradeoffs in Designing, Deploying, and Authoring Interactive Web-Based Learn-By-Doing Environments
Authors: Qiu Lin
Published: May 2011

Computer-based learn-by-doing environments have been used to provide students supportive and authentic settings for challenge-based learning. This chapter describes the design tradeoffs involved in interactive learning environment design, deployment, and authoring. It presents a combination of design choices in INDIE, a software tool for authoring and delivering learn-by-doingenvironments. INDIE’s design balances the tradeoffs andleverages Web technologies to improve the accessibilityand deployability of learning environments as well as feedback generation and authorability. It explores a vision of learning environments that are more accessible andusable to students, more supportive and customizable to instructors, and more authorable to software developers.