bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
E-Learning and the Semantic Web
Authors: Ahmud-Boodoo Raadila Bibi Mahmud Hajee
Published: September 2015

A number of 3.0 e-learning systems have been proposed in the literature to capture the numerous benefits that the Semantic Web has to offer to the higher education sector. These 3.0 e-learning systems identify some essential Semantic Web characteristics that are either discussed as stand-alone factors or tend to revolve around the complexities of the Semantic Web technology and its implementation, often disregarding users' needs. Conversely, a comprehensive analysis of e-learning models for higher education in the literature revealed several Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that are relevant to the Semantic Web but often overlooked in 3.0 e-learning models. Consequently, this chapter provides an overview of the CSFs of e-learning relevant to 3.0 e-learning systems as well as an overview of the main Semantic Web characteristics for e-learning to define a new and combined set of 3.0 e-learning characteristics that will holistically represent 3.0 e-learning systems capturing the needs and expectations of users. The new initial 3.0 e-learning model proposed is evaluated within the higher education sector in Mauritius.
Mobile Learning Services on Cloud
Authors: Barać Dušan , Radenković Miloš , Jovanić Branislav
Published: September 2015

This chapter discusses providing mobile learning services on cloud. Mobile cloud computing brings numerous benefits and enables overcoming technical constraints of mobile learning. The main techniques and approaches in mobile cloud computing are analyzed. A model for mobile learning services delivering through cloud computing is proposed. Several examples of mobile learning services implementations on cloud are presented: Android native application that provides Moodle learning management system features and a SMS service and mobile application for managing the infrastructure of e-learning system.
Street Poetry in Augmented Reality
Authors: Guazzaroni Giuliana
Published: September 2015

Mobile device and augmented reality facilities may represent access points to navigate the city, to observe different layers of reality, to redraw the urban geography, and to explore the real environment. It is an emotional journey to observe familiar places from different perspectives and angles: a continuous sliding between two worlds (real and virtual), an invitation to participation, reflection, and rediscovery of public spaces. “Street Poetry in Augmented Reality” exhibitions are urban paths to engage citizens, students, and visitors with local heritage, memories, and art. In this chapter, the format “Emotional Mapping of Museum Augmented Places” is discussed using the evaluation of the experiences that were implemented in two different Italian towns: L'Aquila and Macerata.
SDWS
Authors: Bravo Maricela , Rodríguez José , Pascual Jorge
Published: September 2015

This paper introduces SDWS (Semantic Description of Web Services), a Web tool which generates semantic descriptions from collections of Web services. The fundamental approach of SDWS consists of the integration of a set of ontological models for the representation of different Web service description languages and models. The main contributions of this proposal are (i) a general ontological model for the representation of Web services, (ii) a set of language-specific ontological models for the representation of different Web service descriptions implementations, and (iii) a set of software modules that automatically parse Web service descriptions and produce their respective ontological representation. The design of the generic service model incorporates the common elements that all service descriptions share: a service name, a set of operations, and input and output parameters; together with other important elements that semantic models define: preconditions and effects. Experimental results show that the automatic generation of semantic descriptions from public Web services is feasible and represents an important step towards the integration of a general semantic service registry.
Urban Planning 3.0
Authors: Anttiroiko Ari-Veikko , Caves Roger W.
Published: September 2015

This chapter addresses the challenges that changing technologies pose to urban planning. Urban planning continues to be influenced by an emerging creativity and knowledge-sharing culture that has an inherent connection to digital transformation. Technology certainly plays an important role in the production of content and its distribution. Such a transformation is giving urban planning a new look, which is depicted in the concepts of Urban Planning 2.0 and Urban Planning 3.0. In this chapter, this paradigm shift is explained and illustrated with a special view to identifying the ways these second and third generations of the Web affect urban planning. There is a plethora of pilot projects and new practices in Urban Planning 2.0, even if experiences as a whole are so few and far between, which makes it difficult to assess both the best practices in this field and the long-term impacts of their application. Recent developments associated with the applications of Web 3.0 and related technology trends in urban planning, which are designed to bring intelligence into planning, have hardly seen daylight due to both technological and socio-technical challenges associated with them. In brief, in the case of Web 2.0, we know on the basis of our initial experiences by and large how it may support urban planning; however, in the case of Web 3.0, technological uncertainties and systemic dimension of related applications make the concept more ambiguous and thus more challenging to assess what the true potential of this emerging Web trend is from the point of view of urban planning.
The Development of Virtual Reality Technologies for People on the Autism Spectrum
Authors: Newbutt Nigel
Published: September 2015

The role of virtual reality technologies to help people with autism has been well documented and is an area of research that continues to develop. While the evidence base is somewhat limited, there are many studies that have started to explore the potential of virtual reality technologies for people with autism. Work conducted by Strickland et al. (1996), Murray (1997), Charitos et al. (2000), Parsons and Mitchell (2002), Parsons et al. (2006, 2007), Cobb (2007), Fabri and Moore (2005), and Fabri et al. (2004) have all added to this positive picture of virtual reality technologies to support people on the autism spectrum, specifically in terms of social interaction and social skills development. This chapter uncovers the evidence base and work of others in relation to virtual reality technologies used by people with autism. This chapter concludes with a view as to what future work might pursue in this field.
Performance Improvement of Clustered WSN by Using Multi-Tier Clustering
Authors: Meena Yogesh Kumar , Trivedi Aditya
Published: September 2015

In the last few decades, the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) paradigm has received huge interest from the industry and academia. Wireless sensor networking is used in various fields like weather monitoring, wildfire detection/monitoring, battlefield surveillance, security systems, military applications, etc. Moreover, various networking and technical issues still need to be addressed for successful deployment of WSN, especially power management. In this chapter, the various methods of saving energy in sensor nodes and a method by which energy can be saved are discussed with emphasis on various energy saving protocols and techniques, and the improvement in the Performance of Clustered WSN by using Multi-tier Clustering. By using a two-tier architecture in the clustering and operation of sensor nodes, an increase in the network lifetime of the WSN is gained. Since this clustering approach has better results in term of energy savings and organizing the network, the main objective of this chapter is to describe power management techniques, two-tier architecture, clustering approaches, and network models to save the energy of a sensor network.
Transport Protocol Performance for Multi-Hop Transmission in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)
Authors: Yunus Farizah , Ariffin Sharifah H. S. , Syed-Yusof S. K. , Ismail Nor-Syahidatul N. , Fisal Norsheila
Published: September 2015

The need for reliable data delivery at the transport layer for video transmission over IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has attracted great attention from the research community due to the applicability of multimedia transmission for many applications. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed to transmit data within a network at a low rate and a short distance. However, the characteristics of WSNs such as dense deployment, limited processing ability, memory, and power supply provide unique challenges to transport protocol designers. Additionally, multimedia applications add further challenges such as requiring large bandwidth, large memory, and high data rate. This chapter discusses the challenges and evaluates the feasibility of transmitting data over an IEEE 802.15.4 network for different transport protocols. The analysis result highlights the comparison of standard transport protocols, namely User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Transport Control Protocol (TCP), and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). The performance metrics are analyzed in terms of the packet delivery ratio, energy consumption, and end-to-end delay. Based on the study and analysis that has been done, the standard transport protocol can be modified and improved for multimedia data transmission in WSN. As a conclusion, SCTP shows significant improvement up to 18.635% and 40.19% for delivery ratio compared to TCP and UDP, respectively.
Towards Semantic Mashups
Authors: Kalou Aikaterini K. , Koutsomitropoulos Dimitrios A.
Published: September 2015

Semantic Mashups constitute a relatively new genre of applications that illustrate the combination of the current trends of the Web, i.e. the Semantic Web and Web 2.0. The great benefit of Semantic mashups lies in the ability to aggregate different and heterogeneous data with rich semantic annotations and due to this, an additional ease of integration. In this paper, the authors attempt to outline the transition from conventional to semantic mashups, analyzing the former's limitations and identifying improvements and contributions which can come in with the advent of the later. Furthermore, the authors survey the background technologies on which semantic mashups are based, like Semantic Web Services and the process of data triplification. The authors also investigate the current trends and efforts put into developing tools and frameworks, which are designed to support users with little programming knowledge in semantic mashup application development, such as Semantic Pipes or Jigs4OWL. After presenting and illustrating the theoretical and technological background of this genre of mashups, the authors look into some use cases and systems. Among others, the authors present their mashup, called Books@HPClab, in which they introduce a personalized semantic service for mashing up information from different on-line bookstores.
Answering Continuous Description Logic Queries
Authors: Bobed Carlos , Bobillo Fernando , Ilarri Sergio , Mena Eduardo
Published: September 2015

During the last years, mobile computing has been the focus of many research efforts, due mainly to the ever-growing use of mobile devices. In this context, there is a need to manage dynamic data, such as location data or other data provided by sensors. As an example, the continuous processing of location-dependent queries has been the subject of thorough research. However, there is still a need of highly expressive ways of formulating queries, augmenting in this way the systems' answer capabilities. Regarding this issue, the modeling power of Description Logics (DLs) and the inferring capabilities of their attached reasoners could fulfill this new requirement. The main problem is that DLs are inherently oriented to model static knowledge, that is, to capture the nature of the modeled objects, but not to handle changes in the property values (which requires a full ontology reclassification), as it is common in mobile computing environments (e.g., the location is expected to vary continually). In this paper, the authors present a novel approach to process continuous queries that combines 1) the DL reasoning capabilities to deal with static knowledge, with 2) the efficient data access provided by a relational database to deal with volatile knowledge. By marking at modeling time the properties that are expected to change during the lifetime of the queries, the authors'system is able to exploit both the results of the classification process provided by a DL reasoner, and the low computational costs of a database when accessing changing data (mobile environments, semantic sensors, etc.), following a two-step continuous query processing that enables us to handle continuous DL queries efficiently. Experimental results show the feasibility of the authors' approach.
Network Layer for Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks
Authors: Zubair Suleiman , Fisal Norsheila , Abazeed Mohammed B. , Khalid Zubair , Salihu Yahya O. , Salihu Bala A. , AbdulAzeez Hassan T. , Suleiman Ahmad
Published: September 2015

Based on recent trends, Cognitive Radio paradigm has become an integral part of future communication networks of which Wireless Sensor Network is an integral part. However, Cognitive Radio (CR) introduces critical issues that have to be addressed for communication in networks to be achieved. Routing, being the core of communication, has to be critically examined within the context of Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks. In this chapter, the authors discuss relevant issues on the topic of routing in Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks (CRSN). As a basis, a general overview of routing in the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is made. The applicability of these protocols in CRSN is discussed and the need for integrating Opportunistic Spectrum Access components into existing Wireless Sensor Network protocols is exposed. Factors affecting routing in CRSN are outlined with an emphasis on a cross layering design approach based on a generalized framework. Recent works in this respect are categorized, and finally, open issues in need for research attention are pinpointed.
F3N
Authors: Elmazi Donald , Spaho Evjola , Matsuo Keita , Oda Tetsuya , Ikeda Makoto , Barolli Leonard
Published: September 2015

Sensor networks supported by recent technological advances in low power wireless communications along with silicon integration of various functionalities are emerging as a critically important computer class that enable novel and low cost applications. There are many fundamental problems that Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) research will have to address in order to ensure a reasonable degree of cost and system quality. Cluster formation and cluster head selection are important problems in WSN applications and can drastically affect the net- work's communication energy dissipation. However, selecting of the cluster head is not easy in different environments which may have different characteristics. In this paper, in order to deal with this problem, the authors propose a power reduction algorithm for WSNs based on Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Number of Neighbour Nodes (3N). They call this system F3N. The authors evaluate F3N and LEACH by many simulation results. The performance of F3N system is evaluated for tree different parameters: Remaining Battery Power of Sensor (RPS); Degree of Number of Neighbour Nodes (D3N); and Distance from Cluster Centroid (DCC). From the simulation results, they found that the probability of a sensor node to be a cluster head is increased with increase of number of neighbour nodes and remained battery power and is decreased with the increase of distance from the cluster centroid.
Distributed Learning Algorithm Applications to the Scheduling of Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Daneshfar Fatemeh , Maihami Vafa
Published: September 2015

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a network of devices denoted as nodes that can sense the environment and communicate gathered data, through wireless medium to a sink node. It is a wireless network with low power consumption, small size, and reasonable price which has a variety of applications in monitoring and tracking. However, WSN is characterized by constrained energy because its nodes are battery-powered and energy recharging is difficult in most of applications. Also the reduction of energy consumption often introduces additional latency of data delivery. To address this, many scheduling approaches have been proposed. In this paper, the authors discuss the applicability of Reinforcement Learning (RL) towards multiple access design in order to reduce energy consumption and to achieve low latency in WSNs. In this learning strategy, an agent would become knowledgeable in making actions through interacting with the environment. As a result of rewards in response to the actions, the agent asymptotically reaches the optimal policy. This policy maximizes the long-term expected return value of the agent.
Mobile Healthcare Computing in the Cloud
Authors: Lee Tae-Gyu
Published: September 2015

Previous medical services for humans provided healthcare information using the static-based computing of space-constrained hospitals or healthcare centers. In contrast, current mobile health information management computing and services are being provided so that they utilize both the mobility of mobile computing and the scalability of cloud computing to monitor in real-time the health status of patients who are moving. In addition, data capacity has sharply increased with the expansion of the principal data generation cycle from the traditional static computing environment to the dynamic computing environment. This chapter presents mobile cloud healthcare computing systems that simultaneously leverage the portability and scalability of healthcare services. This chapter also presents the wearable computing system as an application of mobile healthcare.
Energy Consumption Analysis of Secure and Clustered Wireless Sensor Network
Authors: Pokharel Ashim , Nigussie Ethiopia
Published: September 2015

Due to limited energy resources, different design strategies have been proposed in order to achieve better energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks, and organizing sensor nodes into clusters and data aggregation are among such solutions. In this work, secure communication protocol is added to clustered wireless sensor network. Security is a very important requirement that keeps the overall system usable and reliable by protecting the information in the network from attackers. The proposed and implemented AES block cipher provides confidentiality to the communication between nodes and base station. The energy efficiency of LEACH clustered network and with added security is analyzed in detail. In LEACH clustering along with the implemented data aggregation technique 48% energy has been saved compared to not clustered and no aggregation network. The energy consumption overhead of the AES-based security is 9.14%. The implementation is done in Contiki and the simulation is carried out in Cooja emulator using sky motes.
Weaving Web 2.0 and Facial Expression Recognition into the 3D Virtual English Classroom
Authors: Shih Ya-Chun
Published: September 2015

Of late, considerable attention has been given to the linking or “mashing up” of virtual worlds and Web 2.0 tools. The authors incorporated several Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, audioblogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, and a facial expression organizer together into the 3D Virtual English Classroom called VEC3D 5.0, thereby opening up new possibilities for collaborative language learning. In considering the needs of language learners, this study combines synchronous and asynchronous learning environments and methods to propose a blended language learning solution. VEC3D 5.0 offers the possibility of applying situated learning, multimodal communication, and facial expression recognition to language learning and teaching. VEC3D 5.0 has shown itself to possess tremendous potential as an optimal language learning environment. Integrating Web 2.0 applications in the form of open social networking and information sharing tools into VEC3D 5.0 supports collaborative and reflective language learning, and in particular, writing and cultural learning. The purpose of this study is to explore the application of a hybrid prototype solution, which combines the inherent strengths of both virtual environments and Web 2.0 applications, and to provide a framework for developing innovative pedagogies for experiential language learning in this context.
Personal Mobile Cloud Computing Affordances for Higher Education
Authors: Chaka Chaka
Published: September 2015

Within the cloud computing ecosystem and its different permutations, there exists personal mobile cloud computing. The latter has not been covered and investigated much in relation to its affordances for higher education (HE), especially in South Africa. Thus, this chapter argues that personal mobile cloud computing can offer HE significant educational affordances in the form of cloud computing value chain. It does so by providing one South African example entailing a two-project study in the HE sector in which the cloud affordances of Twitter and Facebook were leveraged for educational purposes. Regarding Twitter, one of its affordances is that it was exploited as a cloud based virtual blackboard for a course content, thereby facilitating micro-teaching and micro-learning. Concerning Facebook, one of its affordances is that it served as a cloud based mobile computing environment in which a course-specific writing process was mounted by the instructor and participants. A collective affordance for both Twitter and Facebook was both consumerization and BYOD approaches to teaching and learning.
The Impact of Web 2.0 in the Teaching and Learning Process
Authors: Costa Carolina , Teixeira Leonor , Alvelos Helena
Published: September 2015

Web 2.0 represents the second generation of the Web applications, based on online services collaboration and sharing that promote different ways of interaction between people. These applications provide several collaboration and communication opportunities, like social interaction, feedback, conversation, and networking, thus being a perfect environment for the teaching and learning context. The main goal of this chapter is to present the most used Web 2.0 tools, their major advantages and disadvantages, and their specificity when used in the teaching and learning process. It is believed that their use can greatly improve the teaching and learning process and, consequently, the need to adjust the traditional practice to the new technological paradigm emerges.
Web 2.0 in Governance
Authors: Spiliotopoulou Lefkothea , Charalabidis Yannis
Published: September 2015

There has been significant research in the private sector towards systematic exploitation of the emerging Web 2.0/Web 3.0 and social media paradigms. However, not much has been achieved with regards to the embodiment of similar technologies. Currently, governments and organizations are making considerable efforts, trying to enhance citizens' participation in decision-making and policy-formulation processes. This chapter presents a novel policy analysis framework, proposing a Web-based platform that enables publishing content and micro-applications to multiple Web 2.0 social media and collecting citizens' interactions (e.g. comments, ratings) with efficient use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) of these media. Citizens' opinions and interactions can then be processed through different techniques or methods (Web analytics, opinion mining, simulation modeling) in order to use the extracted conclusions as support to government decision and policy makers.
Higher Education and Web 2.0
Authors: Isaías Pedro , Pífano Sara , Miranda Paula
Published: September 2015

The inclusion of Web 2.0 in education has been a polemic process comprised both with enthusiasm and scepticism. There is empirical evidence of Web 2.0's effective employment in educational contexts and it seems that the background of hesitation that has always accompanied Web 2.0's didactic progress is now more concentrated on questioning how to use it rather than whether or not it should be used. In light of this predicament, this chapter aims to analyse how some Web 2.0 tools are being used in higher education as well as to uncover what best practices should guide their successful deployment. This chapter begins by providing an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of using Web 2.0 pedagogically, and it then focuses on particular cases where educators have experimented with YouTube, wiki technology, and Twitter in their teaching settings. The lessons learned and the outcomes of their experiences are combined with current theory on Web 2.0 in education to serve as guidelines.
A Survey of MAC Layer Protocols to Avoid Deafness in Wireless Networks Using Directional Antenna
Authors: Sharma Rinki , Kadambi Govind , Vershinin Yuri A. , Mukundan K. N.
Published: September 2015

Directional antennas have gained immense popularity among researchers working in the area of wireless networks. These antennas help in enhancing the performance of wireless networks through increased spatial reuse, extended communication range, energy efficiency, reduced latency, and communication reliability. Traditional Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols such as IEEE 802.11 are designed based on use of omnidirectional antennas. Therefore, suitable design changes are required to exploit the benefits of directional antennas in wireless networks. Though directional antennas provide many benefits to enhance network performance, their inclusion in the network also results in certain challenges in network operation. Deafness is one such problem that occurs among nodes using directional antennas. This chapter concentrates on the problem of deafness, which is introduced due to the use of directional antennas in wireless ad-hoc, sensor, and mesh networks. Many researchers have provided numerous solutions to deal with the problem of deafness in these networks. In this chapter, the authors first explain the problem of deafness and then present an extensive survey of solutions available in the literature to deal with the problem of deafness in wireless ad-hoc, sensor, and mesh networks. The survey is accompanied by a critical analysis and comparison of available solutions. Drawbacks of available solutions are discussed and future research directions are presented.
Privacy and Security of Wireless Communication Networks
Authors: Sadkhan Sattar B. , Abbas Nidaa A.
Published: September 2015

Wireless networks are inherently more vulnerable than their wired counterparts. In addition, complications arise in the presence of node mobility and dynamic network topology. Moreover, intermittent connectivity, whether caused by mobility or periodic node sleep, brings about additional challenges. At the same time, node resource constraints make direct adoption of existing security solutions difficult, if not impossible. Wireless Communication Network Security and Privacy analyze important problems in the realms of wireless networks and mobile computing. The Security aspects relate to authentication, access control and authorization, nonrepudation, privacy and confidentiality, integrity, and auditing. Privacy is an essential feature of any product or service.
Security Challenges in Wireless Sensor Network
Authors: Tripathi Meenakshi , Gaur M.S. , Laxmi V.
Published: September 2015

Wireless Sensor Networks are a subset of ad hoc networks. Their unique characteristics are smaller node size, high node density, unattended operation in remote areas. Dynamic topology and wireless communication make them vulnerable to numerous types of attacks. In addition to that, memory, processing, and energy constraint make it difficult to incorporate compute-intensive security solutions in these networks. Existing solutions for developing cost and energy efficient algorithms do not fit the security parameters for these resource constrained networks. As a result, these networks remain vulnerable to several types of attacks. This chapter presents a survey of various attacks at the different layers of WSN protocol stack, their detection, and countermeasures. Although every layer of the stack has its own security challenges, the network layer is most vulnerable to many security attacks because it provides an excellent basis for traffic monitoring activities, which helps the attacker form a strategy to perform the attack. The most common attacks on this layer are the Sybil attack, selective forwarding attack, wormhole attack, sinkhole attack, etc. This survey provides a comprehensive view of present attacking strategies to disrupt the normal functioning of WSN.
Security in Mobile Computing
Authors: Samawi Venus W.
Published: September 2015

These days, peoples expected to move around carrying their mobile devices, talking to friends, completing their work, accessing emails etc. His/her pictures, work, study, even relationship (friends, and family) all is in the mobile device. Therefore, mobile devices (especially smart phones) become an ideal target for different attacks. Mobile computing also becomes important in enterprises and organizations. Therefore, it is important to illustrate the state of art on vulnerabilities and threats on mobile device. This chapter is addressed to explain mobile computing concept, features, architecture, operating systems, and risks to mobile devices. Mobile operating system structureand characteristicsare demonstrated. The author also illustrates mobile security issues, and type of threats to mobile devices. Finally, features and security models of two popular smartphone operating systems, Android and iOS, are illustrated. It was found that the security models of these two smartphones is immature and do not meet the enterprises security policies.
Data Processing and Exchange Challenges in Video-Based Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Pescaru Dan , Curiac Daniel-Ioan
Published: September 2015

This chapter presents the main challenges in developing complex systems built around the core concept of Video-Based Wireless Sensor Networks. It summarizes some innovative solutions proposed in scientific literature on this field. Besides discussion on various issues related to such systems, the authors focus on two crucial aspects: video data processing and data exchange. A special attention is paid to localization algorithms in case of random deployment of nodes having no specific localization hardware installed. Solutions for data exchange are presented by highlighting the data compression and communication efficiency in terms of energy saving. In the end, some open research topics related with Video-Based Wireless Sensor Networks are identified and explained.
A Viable Option?
Authors: Irish Julie E. N.
Published: September 2015

This chapter considers whether a computer-aided technology, single-user virtual environments, can provide a viable option to teach social skills to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Viability is discussed in terms of key themes found in the literature: evidence-basis, generalizability, cost effectiveness, appropriateness for children with ASD, user experience, teacher's contribution, and usefulness for caregivers. A matrix is developed to provide a viability rating for each theme. The chapter concludes that evidence-basis and generalizability for single-user virtual environments as an intervention to teach social skills to children with autism spectrum disorder is weak but that cost effectiveness, appropriateness to teenage children with ASD, positive experience of the user, and potential usefulness for caregivers is strong, whilst the teacher's contribution is a mixed rating between ease of use for the teacher and the high one-on-one time commitment required.
Theoretical Foundations of a CSCL Script in Persistent Virtual Worlds According to the Contemporary Learning Theories and Models
Authors: Pellas Nikolaos
Published: September 2015

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) has proved to be one of the reliable contemporary approaches to education that is based on the fundamental principles of collaborative learning procedures between users (instructor and students) in electronic learning environments or Virtual Worlds (VWs). This approach to education has resulted in many considerable changes in the traditional “status quo” of e-Education. This chapter presents a literature review of major revamped principles of Learning Theories and Models that occurred in the early 21st century and reinforced the vast majority of CSCL pursuits and capabilities. It adopts Stahl's (2000) theoretical model to articulate a novel framework for e-Education in VWs. The meaning and contribution of this approach to education will be more understandable through the analysis of collaborative learning climate conditions in the 3D technologically advanced environments based on the interests, demands, and needs of trained users.
Game Theory for Collaboration in Future Networks
Authors: Moura José André , Marinheiro Rui Neto , Silva João Carlos
Published: September 2015

Cooperative strategies have the great potential of improving network performance and spectrum utilization in future networking environments. This new paradigm in terms of network management, however, requires a novel design and analysis framework targeting a highly flexible networking solution with a distributed architecture. Game Theory is very suitable for this task, since it is a comprehensive mathematical tool for modeling the highly complex interactions among distributed and intelligent decision makers. In this way, the more convenient management policies for the diverse players (e.g. content providers, cloud providers, home providers, brokers, network providers or users) should be found to optimize the performance of the overall network infrastructure. The authors discuss in this chapter several Game Theory models/concepts that are highly relevant for enabling collaboration among the diverse players, using different ways to incentivize it, namely through pricing or reputation. In addition, the authors highlight several related open problems, such as the lack of proper models for dynamic and incomplete information games in this area.
Climate Change Education through Art and Science Collaborations
Authors: Gough Phillip , Dunn Kate , de Bérigny Caitilin
Published: September 2015

This chapter introduces three arts projects that employ different collaborative methods to promote climate change awareness through community-based environmental education. The artworks provide new access points to climate change information, rather than acting as a representative for the discipline of science. This allows different ways of knowing about climate change through the experience of the artworks. The artworks were created through collaboration between scientists and creative practitioners, such as artists or designers, who has expertise in communicating information to a non-expert audience. The collaboration is aided through the creation of a boundary object, which allows creative practitioners to develop their understanding of the science they are presenting to their audience. The artworks also act as a boundary object between the scientist and the general public, allowing both groups to understand and transform their knowledge about climate change.
Incremental Learning and Gradual Changes
Authors: Winarto Yunita Triwardani , Stigter Kees/Cornelis Johan
Published: September 2015

The environmental consequences of climate change in agriculture have been degrading farmers' livelihood and welfare because of their inability to cope with the unusual risks and livelihood crises due to climate change. However, state policies addressing farmers' needs to develop their coping mechanism towards the unusual consequences of climate change have not been defined appropriately. To continue relying on their conventional ways of farming would not effectively help them to survive in the midst of unusual weather conditions. A long-term educational commitment to improve farmers' agrometeorological learning is urgent. The authors present their inter- and trans-disciplinary collaborative works in providing climate services to farmers through Science Field Shops. Improving farmers' anticipation capability has been carried out through various means of learning. The authors describe the incremental learning process and the gradual changes the farmers in Indramayu Regency have gone through since 2010.
Oblique Aerial Image Acquisition, 3D City Modeling, 3D City Guide Project for Konya Metropolitan Municipality
Authors: Ozerbıl Tuncer , Gokten Ergun , Onder Mustafa , Selcuk Osman , Sarılar Nilhan Ciftci , Tekgul Ayhan , Yılmaz Erdal , Tutuneken Alpaslan
Published: September 2015

Usage of aerial oblique cameras and oblique images in generation of 3D city models has become popular all over the world in recent years and various solutions has been developed involving specialized methods and softwares. The first comprehensive step in this field was taken by Konya Metropolitan Municipality in Turkey in 2012 and the project undertaken by GEOGIS has been successfully completed in February 2014. It is the first time in Turkey that 3D city model of this large scale has been generated. The project involves: Aerial image acquisition of the project area with vertical and oblique cameras respectively and photogrammetric triangulation; Development of OttoPenta software, which can display oblique images in pentaview screen, make spatial queries and also can measure the horizontal, vertical distance and area; Digitization of roof and roof structures from vertical stereo images using photogrammetric interpretation techniques and generation of 3D solid building models using this data; Assigning building ID numbers to solid models to integrate with the GIS data of the Municipality that is available in Oracle Spatial database; Automatic texturing of 3D models with oblique images; Exporting of textured 3D models into Oracle Spatial Database in CityGML format, complying the OGC standards; and development of KNVCity software, to create and publish the 3D city guide on WEB and mobile devices. The goal of this paper is sharing the experience and knowledge that was gained during the 3D City modeling and 3D city guide project which was performed for the first time in Turkey.
The Use of the Terrestrial Photogrammetry in Reverse Engineering Applications
Authors: Yastikli Naci , Erisir Zehra , Altintas Pelin , Cak Tugba
Published: September 2015

The reverse engineering applications has gained great momentum in industrial production with developments in the fields of computer vision and computer-aided design (CAD). The reproduction of an existing product or a spare part, reproduction of an existing surface, elimination of the defect or improvement of the available product are the goals of industrial reverse engineering applications. The first and the most important step in reverse engineering applications is the generation of the three dimensional (3D) metric model of an existing product in computer environment. After this stage, many operations such as the preparation of molds for mass production, the performance testing, the comparison of the existing product with other products and prototypes which are available on the market are performed by using the generated 3D models. In reverse engineering applications, the laser scanner system or digital terrestrial photogrammetry methods, also called contactless method, are preferred for the generation of the 3D models. In particular, terrestrial photogrammetry has become a popular method since require only photographs for the 3-dimensional drawing, the generation of the dense point cloud using the image matching algorithms and the orthoimage generation as well as its low cost. In this paper, an industrial application of 3D information modelling is presented which concerns the measurement and 3D metric modelling of the ship model. The possible usage of terrestrial photogrammetry in reverse engineering application is investigated based on low cost photogrammetric system. The main aim was the generation of the dense point cloud and 3D line drawing of the ship model by using terrestrial photogrammetry, for the production of the ship in real size as a reverse engineering application. For this purpose, the images were recorded with digital SLR camera and orientations have been performed. Then 3D line drawing operations, point cloud and orthoimage generations have been accomplished by using PhotoModeler software. As a result of the proposed terrestrial photogrammetric steps, 0.5 mm spaced dense point cloud and orthoimage have been generated. The obtained results from experimental study were discussed and possible use of proposed methods was evaluated for reverse engineering application.
Comparative Study of Fuzzy Entropy with Relative Spike Amplitude Features for Recognizing Wake-Sleep Stage 1 EEGs
Authors: Sriraam Natarajan , Purnima B. R. , Krishnaswamy Uma Maheswari
Published: September 2015

Electroencephalogram (EEG) based sleep stage analysis considered to be the gold standard method for assessment of sleep architecture. Of importance, transition between the first two stages, wake-sleep stage 1 found to be reliable quantitative tool for drowsiness and fatigue detection. The selection of appropriate feature pattern for EEGs is a quite challenging task due to its non-linear and non-stationary nature of the EEG signals. This research work attempts to provide a comparative study of time influence of time domain feature, relative spike amplitude (RSA) with entropy feature, fuzzy entropy(FE) for recognizing the transition between wake and sleep stage 1. EEGs extracted from offline polysomnography database is used and the extracted RSA and FE wake-sleep stage 1 derived EEG features are further classified using a feedback recurrent Elman neural network (REN) classifier. EEGs are segmented into 1s pattern. Simulation of the REN classifier revealed that the FE feature with REN yields a CA of 99.6% compared to that of with RSA feature.
Proposed Threshold Algorithm for Accurate Segmentation for Skin Lesion
Authors: Satheesha T. Y. , Sathyanarayana D. , Prasad M. N. Giri
Published: September 2015

Automated diagnosis of skin cancer can be easily achieved only by effective segmentation of skin lesion. But this is a highly challenging task due to the presence of intensity variations in the images of skin lesions. The authors here, have presented a histogram analysis based fuzzy C mean threshold technique to overcome the drawbacks. This not only reduces the computational complexity but also unifies advantages of soft and hard threshold algorithms. Calculation of threshold values even the presence of abrupt intensity variations is simplified. Segmentation of skin lesions is easily achieved, in a more efficient way in the following algorithm. The experimental verification here is done on a large set of skin lesion images containing every possible artifacts which highly contributes to reversed segmentation outputs. This algorithm efficiency was measured based on a comparison with other prominent threshold methods. This approach has performed reasonably well and can be implemented in the expert skin cancer diagnostic systems
Classification of Brain MR Images Using Corpus Callosum Shape Measurements
Authors: Bhalerao Gaurav Vivek , Sampathila Niranjana
Published: September 2015

The corpus callosum is the largest white matter structure in the brain, which connects the two cerebral hemispheres and facilitates the inter-hemispheric communication. Abnormal anatomy of corpus callosum has been revealed for various brain related diseases. Being an important biomarker, Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brain followed by corpus callosum segmentation and feature extraction has found to be important for the diagnosis of many neurological diseases. This paper focuses on classification of T1-weighted mid-sagittal MR images of brain for dementia patients. The corpus callosum is segmented using K-means clustering algorithm and corresponding shape based measurements are used as features. Based on these shape based measurements, a back-propagation neural network is trained separately for male and female dataset. The input data consists of 54 female and 31 male patients. This paper reports classification accuracy up to 92% for female patients and 94% for male patients using neural network classifier.
Information Security Culture
Authors: Lim Joo S. , Maynard Sean B , Ahmad Atif , Chang Shanton
Published: September 2015

There is considerable literature in the area of information security management (ISM). However, from an organizational viewpoint, the collective body of literature does not present a coherent, unified view of recommended security management practices. In particular, despite the existence of ‘best-practice' standards on information security management, organizations have no way of evaluating the reliability or objectivity of the recommended practices as they do not provide any underlying reasoning or justification. This paper is a first step towards the development of rigorous and formal instruments of measurement by which organizations can assess their security management practices. The paper identifies nine security practice constructs from the literature and develops measurement items for organizations to assess the adequacy of their security management practices. The study uses a multiple case study approach followed by interviews with a panel of four security experts to validate and refine these security practice constructs and their associated measures.
Market Potential for Residential Biomass Heating Equipment
Authors: Athiyaman Adee
Published: September 2015

This paper provides estimates of market potential for biomass-residential-heating equipment in the US: that is, the greatest amount of biomass-residential-heating equipment that can be sold by the industry. The author's analysis is limited to biomass equipment used most to heat the housing unit. Assuming that households equipped with 10+ year old primary heating devices will replace rather than repair the devices he predicts that approximately 1.4 million units of residential home heating equipment will be replaced in 2015. The author's research also shows that customers do not ascribe much value to biomass home heating. The marketing implication for such a “negative” state is to find buyers who greatly value the benefits of biomass heating equipment.
Education-Healthy Development Binomial from the Health of Whole Living Entity Perspective
Authors: Miltiade Stanciu
Published: September 2015

Social life including economic life should evolve in harmony with live world ecology. The economy, as human society product should harmonize with the exigencies of “the health of whole living entity”. However, the realities of the present lived at local and global level reveal: inhuman social inequalities, frustrating consumerism, systemic pollution, poverty in the middle abundance, science without humanism, wealth without honest work etc. generated by negative human behaviors. The transition towards healthy development defined by the win-win principle, assumes that everything healthy for the natural environment is also healthy for man-created environment. This complex and long process is based on the re-spiritualization of the current educational model based on skills with the educational model in the cause of life.