bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Data Mining in Decision Support for Bioenergy Production
Authors: Ayoub Nasser , Naka Yuji
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents Data Mining, DM, as a planning and decision support tool for biomass resources management to produce bioenergy. Furthermore, the decision making problem for bioenergy production is defined. A Decision Support System, DSS that utilizes a DM technique, e.g. clustering, integrated with other group of techniques and tools, such as Genetic Algorithms, GA, Life Cycle Assessment, Geographical Information System, GIS, etc, is presented. A case study that shows how to tackle the decision making problem is also shown.
Digitization Initiatives and Knowledge Management
Authors: Chailla A. M. , Dulle F. W. , Malekani A. W.
Published: May 2010

Digitization initiatives and Knowledge Management have become a part and parcel of each other in the changing global information society. Where as Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge, digitization initiatives refer to either jointly or collaborative efforts to translate existing library holdings whether in print, graphical, audio or combination of all, into digital format commonly known as electronic resources. Digitization initiatives have become a corner stone for KM in today’s electronic environment. The term ‘digital library’ emanates from ‘digitization’ referring to the libraries where some or all of the information sources are available in electronic format and are made available electronically over the Internet for user access. East African university libraries, through digitization should provide coordinated access to digital information contained within their libraries creating conducive electronic environment in all universities for access to e-resources and provision of universities’ generated literature on-line to users outside campuses. Furthermore, incorporating data mining techniques, access to these resources could be improved and the system could be made more efficient in making intelligent decision. The chapter discusses the problems of digitization, challenges and future opportunities for East African university libraries with focus on collaborative efforts and strategies backed up with policies for investments in ICTs training and integration of ICTs into the core university activities for effective Knowledge Management (KM) and information dissemination. It is argued in the chapter that digitization of library information will add value to more effective university KM, information access and use in multidisciplinary fields including local content.
Data Mining in Public Administration
Authors: Wang John , Hu Xiaohua , Zhu Dan
Published: May 2010

Data mining involves searching through databases for potentially useful information such as knowledge rules, patterns, regularities, and other trends hidden in the data. In order to complete these tasks, the contemporary data mining packages offer techniques such as neural networks, inductive learning decision trees, cluster analysis, link analysis, genetic algorithms, visualization, and so forth (Hand, Mannila, & Smyth, 2001; Wang, 2006). In general, data mining is a data analytical technique that assists businesses in learning and understanding their customers so that decisions and strategies can be implemented most accurately and effectively to maximize profitability. Data mining is not general data analysis, but a comprehensive technique that requires analytical skills, information construction, and professional knowledge. Businesses are now facing globalized competition and are being forced to deal with an enormous amount of data. The vast amounts of data and the increasing technological ability to store them also facilitated data mining. In order to gain a certain level of competitive advantage, businesses now commonly adopt a data analytical technology called data mining. Nowadays, data mining is more widely used than ever before, not only by businesses who seek profits, but also by nonprofit organizations, government agencies, private groups, and other institutions in the public sector. Organizations use data mining as a tool to forecast customer behavior, reduce fraud and waste, and assist in medical research.
Closing the Gap Between XML and Relational Database Technologies
Authors: Malloy Mary Ann , Mlynkova Irena
Published: May 2010

As XML technologies have become a standard for data representation, it is inevitable to propose and implement efficient techniques for managing XML data. A natural alternative is to exploit tools and functions offered by relational database systems. Unfortunately, this approach has many detractors, especially due to inefficiency caused by structural differences between XML data and relations. But, on the other hand, relational databases represent a mature, verified and reliable technology for managing any kind of data including XML documents. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview and classification of existing approaches to XML data management in relational databases. They view the problem from both state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art perspectives. The authors describe the current best known solutions, their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, they discuss some open issues and their possible solutions.
Continuous and Progressive XML Query Processing and its Applications
Authors: Bressan Stéphane , Tok Wee Hyong , Zhao Xue
Published: May 2010

Since XML technologies have become a standard for data representation, a great amount of discussion has been generated by the persisting open issues and their possible solutions. In this chapter, the authors consider the design space for XML query processing techniques that can handle ad hoc and continuous XPath or XQuery queries over XML data streams. This chapter presents the state-of-art techniques in continuous and progressive XML query processing. They also discuss several open issues and future trends.
Security Issues in Outsourced XML Databases
Authors: Dang Tran Khanh
Published: May 2010

In an outsourced XML database service model, organizations rely upon the premises of external service providers for the storage and retrieval management of their XML data. Since, typically, service providers are not fully trusted; this model introduces numerous interesting research challenges. Among them, the most crucial security research questions relate to data confidentiality, user and data privacy, queryassurance, secure auditing, and secure and efficient storage model. Although there exists a large number of related research works on these topics, the authors are still at the initial stage and the research results are still far from practical maturity. In this chapter, they extensively discuss all potential security issues mentioned above and the existing solutions, and present open research issues relevant to security requirements in outsourced XML databases.
Conditions and Key Success Factors for the Management of Communities of Practice
Authors: Loyarte Edurne , Rivera Olga
Published: May 2010

Communities of practice (CoPs) have been taken into account by both practitioners and academics during the last ten years. From a strategic point of view, CoPs have shown their importance for the management of organizational knowledge by offering repositories of knowledge, improved capacity of making knowledge actionable and operational (Brown & Duguid, 1998) and by facilitating maintenance, reproduction, and extension of knowledge (Brown and Durguid, 2001). CoPs are also reported to achieve value creation and competitive advantages (Davenport and Prusak, 1998), learning at work (Swan et alt., 2002) that promotes organizational competitiveness (Furlong and Johnson, 2003), innovation, even a radical type (Swan et alt., 2002), responsiveness, improved staff skills and reduced duplication (du Plessis, 2008). This impressive list of achievements is not for free; some authors have pointed out the limits of CoP’s (Duguid, 2005; Roberts, 2006; Amin & Roberts, 2008) from diverse points of view, including diversity of working environments, size, spatial or relational proximity, but mainly emphasizing the specificity of CoPs as a social practice paradigm, as it was defined by Wenger (1999, 2000) credited as the “inventor” of the term “CoP” (Lave and Wenger, 1991). This chapter focuses on the consideration of CoPs as an organizational reality than can be managed (Thompson, 2005), the contradictions that the idea of managing them generates, and how these controversial points can be overcome in a sound and honest way. To do so, we review different cases of CoP’s within organizations intended for the managerial team to achieve important organizational goals. Our analysis provides: (a) a reflection regarding the Key Success Factors in the process of integrating communities of practice, (b) insight to the structure of a model of cultivation, intended as a guideline for new experiences in this area, and (c) an informative account of this model’s adaptation to the studied organizations.
The Generative Potential of Appreciative Inquiry for CoP
Authors: Vat Kam Hou
Published: May 2010

The chapter investigates an actionable framework of knowledge sharing, from the perspective of appreciative inquiry. This framework should accommodate the creation of appreciative processes that would encourage or better institutionalize knowledge sharing among people of interest in an organization. The idea is extensible to the building of communities in cyberspace so much facilitated in today’s Internet and World Wide Web, and it is increasingly visible that such a model of knowledge sharing is quite promising for today’s virtual enterprises. The premise in our exploration is that organizations were beginning to understand the power of unleashing knowledge among individuals. What they struggled with was how exactly to unleash that power, albeit that the very behavior of hoarding knowledge is what makes employees successful. The presence of an explicitly appreciative format rendered by the enterprise should allow many to say what is on their mind without being questioned, critiqued or put on the defense. And it could be done using the many electronic services of technology-enabled appreciative systems made available. However, the task of identifying what to watch in building a knowledge-sharing community online is not at all straightforward. For example, community can be examined by focusing on how users or participants work with and learn from the experience of community participation, or on the nature of collective imagination and feelings of identity as a tool for understanding belonging and attachment to particular virtual communities. Our investigation should provide a basis to think about the generative potential of some appreciative processes on a virtual community’s knowledge activities. The design and refinement of technology as the conduit for extending and enhancing an organization’s appreciative systems is an essential issue, but the role of the individuals as participants in a virtual community is as important. The emergent challenge is to de-marginalize the concept of appreciative sharing of knowledge among members of the organization, expositing on the effective meaning behind the organization’s creation of the appreciative framework for knowledge work through which purposeful individual or organizational activities could be supported with the elaboration of suitable information technologies.
Social TV
Authors: Mantzari Evangelia , Lekakos George , Vrechopoulos Adam
Published: May 2010

Until recently, television viewing was perceived as a passive experience that aimed in satisfying a person’s or a group’s need for entertainment, information and, in some cases, education. However, the development of Interactive Digital Television (iDTV) and the significant change of society’s expectations due to the appearance of the World Wide Web brought new dynamics on the medium. To that end, nowadays, iDTV adopts a more social role (Social TV) in order to satisfy the individuals’ request for active participation, communication and (virtual) community formulation. This chapter aims at describing the characteristics of Social TV, while providing information about its systems and business applications. Similarly, the present study attempts to explain if and how Social TV can become a new setting for virtual communities and what are the potential implications for its viewers.
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Social Visualization within Virtual Communities
Authors: Schimke Diana , Stoeger Heidrun , Ziegler Albert
Published: May 2010

Participation and system usage is crucial for virtual communities to develop and sustain. However, many communities report very low participation rates of members. Finding and studying strategies for fostering participation in virtual communities is therefore a growing field of research and different approaches for strengthening participation in virtual communities exist – among them social visualization. While many tools for visualizing social interactions have been developed, not much empirical evidence about their actual effectiveness exists. To find out more about the effectiveness of social visualization on the participation rate (number of logins, forum posts, personal messages, and chat posts) the authors conducted an empirical study within CyberMentor – a virtual community for high school girls interested in science and technology. In their sample of N=231 girls the authors did not find a significant difference between the number of logins in the phases before and after the introduction of the visualization tool. The number of forum post, chat posts and personal messages however increased significantly after the incorporation of the visualization tool. Long-term effects were found for one-to-many communication technologies (forum, chat), but not for personal messages (one-to-one).
GRIDS in Community Settings
Authors: Barbounakis Ioannis , Zervakis Michalis
Published: May 2010

The authors have been running the second decade since the time that pioneers in Grid started to work on a technology which seemed similar to its predecessors but in reality it was envisioned totally divergent from them. Many years later, the grid technology has gone through various development stages yielding common solution mechanisms for similar categories of problems across interdisciplinary fields. Several new concepts like the Virtual Organization and Semantic Grid have been perfected bringing closer the day when the scientific communities will collaborate as if all their members were at the same location, working with the same laboratory equipment and running the same algorithms. Many production-scale standard-based middlewares have been developed to an excellent degree and have already started to produce significant scalability gains, which in the past, were considered unthinkable.
Virtual Community Practice Toolkits Using 3D Imaging Technologies
Authors: Triantafylliadis George , Grammalidis Nikolaos , Tzovaras Dimitiros
Published: May 2010

Extending visual communications to the third dimension (3D) has been a dream over decades. The ultimate goal of the viewing experience is to create the illusion of a real environment in its absence. However limitations of visual quality and user acceptance prevented the development of relevant mass markets so far. Recent achievements in research and development triggered an increasing interest in 3D visual technologies. From technological point of view, this includes improvements over the whole 3D technology chain, including image acquisition, 3D representation, compression, transmission, signal processing, interactive rendering and 3D display. In the center of all these different areas, the visualization of 3D information stands as the major aspiration to be satisfied, since 3D enriches the interaction experience. This enhanced user experience that 3D imaging offers compared to 2D, is the main reason behind the rapid increase of the virtual communities using and managing 3D data: Archaeological site 3D reproductions, virtual museums (in the field of cultural heritage); 3D plays, special effects (in the field of entertainment); virtual classes (in the field of learning) are only some examples of the potentialities of 3D data. It’s clear that 3D imaging technologies provide a new and powerful mechanism for collaborative practicing. In this context, this chapter focuses on the utilization of 3D imaging technology and computer graphics, in various virtual communities in the domains of education, cultural heritage, protection, commerce, and entertainment.
Designing Practice-Oriented Interactive Vocabularies for Workflow-Based Virtual CoP
Authors: Akoumianakis Demosthenes , Milolidakis Giannis , Vellis George , Kotsalis Dimitrios
Published: May 2010

This chapter concentrates on the development of practice-specific toolkits for managing on-line practices in the context of virtual communities of practice. The authors describe two case studies in different application domains each presenting alternative but complementary insights to the design of computer-mediated practice vocabularies. The first case study describes how established practices in music performance are encapsulated in a suitably augmented music toolkit so as to facilitate the learning objectives of virtual teams engaged in music master classes. The second case study is slightly different in orientation as it seeks to establish a toolkit for engaging in new coordinative practices in the course of building information-based products such as vacation packages for tourists. This time the virtual team is a cross-organization virtual community of practice with members streamlining their efforts by internalizing and performing in accordance with the new practice. Collectively, the case studies provide insight to building novel practice-specific toolkits to either encapsulate existing or support novel practices.
Research Communities in Context
Authors: Dimitrova Dimitrina , Koku Emmanuel
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines a community of professionals, created by a government agency and charged with conducting country-wide, cross-disciplinary, and cross-sectoral research and innovation in the area of water. The analysis describes the structure of the community and places it in the context of existing project practices and institutional arrangements. Under challenging conditions, the professionals in the area recruit team members from their trusted long-term collaborators, work independently on projects, use standard communication technologies and prefer informal face-to-face contacts. Out of these practices emerge a sparsely connected community with permeable boundaries interspersed with foci of intense collaboration and exchange of ideas. In this community, professionals collaborate and exchange of ideas with the same colleagues. Both collaboration and exchanges of ideas tend to involve professionals from different disciplines and, to a lesser extent, from different sectors and locations.
Enabling Virtual Music Performance Communities
Authors: Alexandraki Chrisoula , Valsamakis Nikolas
Published: May 2010

The chapter provides an overview of virtual music communities focusing on novel collaboration environments aiming to support networked and geographically dispersed music performance. A key objective of the work reported is to investigate online collaborative practices during virtual music performances in community settings. To this effect, the first part of the chapter is devoted to reviewing different kinds of communities and their corresponding practices as manifested through social interaction. The second part of the chapter presents a case study, which elaborates on the realization of virtual music communities using a generic technological platform, namely DIAMOUSES. DIAMOUSES was designed to provide a host for several types of virtual music communities, intended for music rehearsals, live performances and music learning. Our recent experiments provide useful insights to the distinctive features of these alternative community settings as well as the practices prevailing in each case. The chapter is concluded by discussing open research issues and challenges relevant to virtual music performance communities.
A Qualitative Study of the Applicability of Technology Acceptance Models to Senior Mobile Phone Users
Authors: van Biljon Judy , Renaud Karen
Published: May 2010

We report on an investigation into mobile phone adoption by older users. Technology adoption is a process from ignorance to considering it a necessity. Moreover, acceptance is an essential precursor of adoption. Many models consider either acceptance or adoption, but in fact these are interrelated. Furthermore, most theoretical models are based on responses from students or economically active adults. This begs the question: Do existing models incorporate the phases and the factors that lead to mobile phone adoption and acceptance by older adults? We thus studied the needs, uses, and limitations of older users and then gathered information about experiences and opinions of these users. We then mapped the verified acceptance factors against adoption processes in a two-dimensional matrix. This led to the proposal for the novel senior technology acceptance and adoption model (STAM), which incorporates acceptance factors into the adoption process, thereby consolidating the research in both these areas.
Multimodal Fission
Authors: Grifoni Patrizia
Published: May 2010

An important issue for communication processes in general, and for multimodal interaction in particular, is the information output arrangement and organization (multimodal fission). Considering information structure, intonation, and emphasis for the output by speech, considering moreover spatio-temporal coordination of pieces of information for visual (video, graphics, images, and texts) outputs, designing outputs for each kind of modality, and synchronizing the different outputs modalities is one of the most relevant challenges of the multimodal interaction design process; it is called fission. This challenge is becoming more and more important with the use of a lot of different interaction devices from laptop to mobile and smart-phones, in different contexts. This chapter provides some basic concepts involved in the fission processes design and describes some of the most relevant approaches discussed in the literature.
Temporal and Spatial Aspects of Pointing Gestures
Authors: Müller-Tomfelde Christian , Chen Fang
Published: May 2010

The detailed and profound understanding of the temporal and spatial organisation of human pointing actions is key to enable developers to build applications that successfully incorporate multimodal human computer interaction. Rather than discussing an ideal detection method for manual pointing we will discuss crucial aspects of pointing actions in time and space to develop the right solution for a particular application. One core element of pointing in the temporal domain is the so called dwell-time, the time span that people remain nearly motionless during pointing at objects to express their intention. We also discuss important findings about the spatial characteristics of the target representation for the pointing gesture.The findings foster better understanding of the role of pointing gestures in combination with other modalities and inform developer with substantial knowledge about the temporal-spatial organisation of the pointing gesture.
Standards for Multimodal Interaction
Authors: Dahl Deborah A.
Published: May 2010

This chapter discusses a wide variety of current and emerging standards that support multimodal applications, including standards for architecture and communication, application definition, the user interface, and certifications. It focuses on standards for voice and GUI interaction. Some of the major standards discussed include the W3C multimodal architecture, VoiceXML, SCXML, EMMA, and speech grammar standards. The chapter concludes with a description of how the standards participate in a multimodal application and some future directions.
Pervasive Grids
Authors: Parashar Manish , Pierson Jean-Marc
Published: May 2010

Pervasive Grid is motivated by the advances in Grid technologies and the proliferation of pervasive systems, and is leading to the emergence of a new generation of applications that use pervasive and ambient information as an integral part to manage, control, adapt and optimize. However, the inherent scale and complexity of Pervasive Grid systems fundamentally impact how applications are formulated, deployed and managed, and presents significant challenges that permeate all aspects of systems software stack. In this chapter, the authors present some use-cases of Pervasive Grids and highlight their opportunities and challenges. They then present why semantic knowledge and autonomic mechanisms are seen as foundations for conceptual and implementation solutions that can address these challenges.
National Intellectual Capital Stocks and Organizational Cultures
Authors: Nazari Jamal A. , Herremans Irene M. , Manassian Armond , Isaac Robert G.
Published: May 2010

Using a set of macro-level socio-economic indicators, we first explore whether two Middle Eastern countries (Lebanon and Iran) provide the foundation for organizations to develop their intellectual capital (IC). Then, we investigate the role of micro-level organizational characteristics that might support or hinder the development of IC management processes within organizations. The insight gained through our comparison will shed light on some important organizational attributes that foster the management of IC for wealth creation. The analysis has important implications for multinational corporations (MNCs) that have operations in the Middle East, are contemplating business involvement in the Middle East, or that have employees with Middle Eastern origin.
Managing Corporate Responsibility to Foster Intangibles
Authors: Pedrini Matteo
Published: May 2010

This paper presents a model for the integrated management of Corporate Responsibility (CR) initiatives and intangible resources. The model defines an approach for structuring a company’s social efforts (stakeholder management) in such a way as to increase competitiveness through the development of the intangible resources. After having presented an analysis of the studies conducted on the benefits of CR initiatives on the development of intangible resources, the text proposes a protocol to evaluating each CR initiative according to the model.
Knowledge Management and the Links to Human Capital Management
Authors: Gloet Marianne
Published: May 2010

This paper explores various linkages between knowledge management (KM) and human capital management (HCM) in the context of developing leadership and management capabilities to support sustainability. Based on the prevailing literature, a framework linking human resource management (HRM), KM and HCM is applied to the development of leadership and management capabilities to support sustainability. The framework identifies ways to promote sustainability through creating effective links between KM and HCM by which organizations can develop their leadership and management capabilities to support sustainability across business, environmental and social justice contexts. This approach provides managers with a framework for addressing sustainability issues and for developing individual and organizational capabilities to support sustainability through KM and HCM practices.
Building and Maintaining Human Capital with Learning Management Systems
Authors: Butler Tom , Grace Audrey
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, the authors examine how building, integrating and maintaining human capital with Learning Management Systems acts as an enabler for the management if intellectual capital within multinational organizations. They draw upon learning theory and training practices to demonstrate that human capital is best viewed through a competence lens; that is, accounting for human capital should focus on matters of individual and organizational competence, and that the development of human capital is, in essence, an exercise in competence development, which involves training and learning. This, then, is this chapter’s point of departure in understanding how IT-based systems can enable training and foster learning, thereby building an organization’s human capital.
Intelligent Business Process Execution using Particle Swarm Optimization
Authors: Kress Markus , Mostaghim Sanaz , Seese Detlef
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, the authors study a new variant of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to efficiently execute business processes. The main challenge of this application for the PSO is that the function evaluations typically take a high computation time. They propose the Gap Search (GS) method in combination with the PSO to perform a better exploration in the search space and study its influence on the results of our application. They replace the random initialization of the solutions for the initial population as well as for the diversity preservation method with the GS method. The experimental results show that the GS method significantly improves the quality of the solutions and obtains better results for the application as compared to the results of a standard PSO and Genetic Algorithms. Moreover, the combination of the methods the authors used show promising results as tools to be applied for improvement of Business Process Optimization.
Neural Networks in Medicine
Authors: Logeswaran Rajasvaran
Published: May 2010

Automatic detection of tumors in the bile ducts of the liver is very difficult as often, in the defacto noninvasive diagnostic images using magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP), tumors are not clearly visible. Specialists use their experience in anatomy to diagnose a tumor by absence of expected structures in the images. Naturally, undertaking such diagnosis is very difficult for an automated system. This chapter proposes an algorithm that is based on a combination of the manual diagnosis principles along with nature-inspired image processing techniques and artificial neural networks (ANN) to assist in the preliminary diagnosis of tumors affecting the bile ducts in the liver. The results obtained show over 88% success rate of the system developed using an ANN with the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) architecture, in performing the difficult automated preliminary detection of the tumors, even in the robust clinical test images with other biliary diseases present.
From ‘Collecting' to ‘Deciding'
Authors: Tzagarakis Manolis , Karousos Nikos , Gkotsis Giorgos , Kallistros Vasilis
Published: May 2010

Current tools aiming at supporting argumentative collaboration either provide means to successfully tame wicked problems or offer advanced reasoning mechanisms to facilitate decision making creating a gap in today’s landscape of systems supporting argumentative collaboration. The consequences of this gap are in particular severe for communities of practice when they have to employ tools from both sides to support their collaboration needs. The authors argue that a key factor in bridging this gap is viewing argumentative collaboration as an emergent phenomenon. Proper support of the emergent aspects of argumentative collaboration would benefit systems supporting argumentative collaboration as this would enable those systems to support the evolution of the entire collaboration at different levels. The authors describe how such approach has been implemented in CoPe_it! a prototype argumentative collaboration support system. In CoPe_it!, an incremental formalization approach facilitates the emergence of individual and loosely coupled resources into coherent knowledge structures and finally decisions.
Simultaneous Feature Selection and Tuple Selection for Efficient Classification
Authors: Dash Manoranjan , Gopalkrishnan Vivekanand
Published: May 2010

Feature selection and tuple selection help the classifier to focus to achieve similar (or even better) accuracy as compared to the classification without feature selection and tuple selection. Although feature selection and tuple selection have been studied earlier in various research areas such as machine learning, data mining, and so on, they have rarely been studied together. The contribution of this chapter is that the authors propose a novel distance measure to select the most representative features and tuples. Their experiments are conducted over some microarray gene expression datasets, UCI machine learning and KDD datasets. Results show that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods quite significantly.
Optimizing Software Development Cost Estimates Using Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization
Authors: Gonsalves Tad , Yamagishi Kei , Kawabata Ryo , Itoh Kiyoshi
Published: May 2010

Software development projects are notorious for being completed behind schedule and over budget and for often failing to meet user requirements. A myriad of cost estimation models have been proposed to predict development costs early in the lifecycle with the hope of managing the project well within time and budget. However, studies have reported rather high error rates of prediction even in the case of the well-established and widely acknowledged models. This study focuses on the improvement and fine-tuning of the COCOMO 81 model. Although this model is based on software development practices that were prevalent in the 80s, its wide use in industry and academia, the simple form of the parametric equations and the availability of the data in an online repository make it attractive as a test-bed for further research in software development cost estimation. In this study, we show how the recently developed Computational Intelligence techniques can effectively improve the prediction power of existing models. In particular, we focus on the adaptation of the Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) algorithm in simultaneously minimizing two objective functions – prediction error rate and model complexity. This provides the project manager with an opportunity to choose from a set of optimal solutions represented in a trade-off relationship on the Pareto front. Traditional search algorithms use knowledge of the terrain and expert heuristics to guide the search; such uses make them problem-specific and domain-dependent. The MOPSO meta-heuristic approach relies neither on the knowledge of the problem nor on the experts’ heuristics, making its application wide and extensive.
Introduction to an Architectural Theory: Design as Theory Application
Authors: Munasinghe Harsha
Published: May 2010

Architect is not commissioned to do research, but to design. At his/her best, the architect may look at some built environments in the name of precedent studies. Debate whether architect need to do research or could the designing be theory application is growing. This paper aims at introducing truism of the disciplinary model, which is implicitly used in architectural research but seldom openly studied in philosophy of architecture. The key question is, whether theories of architecture are vehicles which the basis of the truism, the analogy from natural sciences, entails and whether relativity can be excluded from applying to architectural reality, as it seems to be done presently. At its best, truism may bring life to the dusty ghosts of the past and at its worst, forms a vicious circle of implicit rules of interpretation, a conspiracy of proper attitude passionately governed by gurus and adherents. First, the disciplinary model is described and examples given to exemplify its role in history writing. Finally, we conclude with remarks on the implications of the discussed disciplinary model. DOI: 10.4038/besl.v8i1.1907 Built-Environment Sri Lanka Vol.8(1) 2008 20-22
Use of insurance in managing construction risks: Evaluation of Contractors’ All Risks( CAR) insurance policy
Authors: Perera BAKS , Rathnayake RMCK , Rameezdeen R
Published: May 2010

Contractors' All Risks (CAR) insurance is an all inclusive insurance cover used in construction contracts. This research evaluated the efficiency of use of this insurance policy for civil engineering projects in Sri Lanka. It identified in addition, the factors affecting the efficiency of use of CAR policy. Data collected through a survey was used to identify the above factors and appraise the level of efficiency. Using secondary data, it was found that, Third Party damages were high as 85%, where 94% of them were house damages. 47% of CAR claims were settled by the insurer. However 73% of that were under settled. That means totally 34% of claims were under settled 53% of claims were rejected by insurers. Poor knowledge & experience on risk management of local contractors, insufficient and erroneous supplementary data were the reasons for this and considerable percentage was rejected due to foreseeable damage. On the other hand insurers also significantly concerned on continuing the business with contractors and accept risks as it is, rather than concentrating on magnitude of the risk. DOI: 10.4038/besl.v8i2.1909Built-Environment Sri Lanka Vol.8(2) 2008 24-31
Leptin Modulates Innate and Adaptive Immune Cell Recruitment after Cigarette Smoke Exposure in Mice
Authors: Vernooy Juanita H. J. , Bracke Ken R. , Drummen Nadja E. A. , Pauwels Nele S. A. , Zabeau Lennart , van Suylen Robert Jan , Tavernier Jan , Joos Guy F. , Wouters Emiel F. M. , Brusselle Guy G.
Published: May 2010

Leptin, a pleiotropic type I cytokine, was recently demonstrated to be expressed by resident lung cells in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients and asymptomatic smokers. To elucidate the functional role of leptin in the onset of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, we tested leptin-deficient ob/ob mice (C57BL/6), leptin receptor-deficient db/db mice (C57BKS), and littermates in a model of cigarette smoke (CS)-induced pulmonary inflammation. Wild-type (WT) C57BL/6 mice were exposed for 4 or 24 wk to control air or CS. Pulmonary leptin expression was analyzed by immunohistochemistry and real-time PCR. Pulmonary inflammation upon 4 wk CS exposure was evaluated in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and lung tissue of WT, ob/ob, and db/db mice. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed leptin expression in bronchial epithelial cells, pneumocytes, alveolar macrophages, and bronchial/vascular smooth muscle cells. The 4 and 24 wk CS exposure increased leptin expression in bronchial epithelial cells and pneumocytes versus air-exposed WT mice (p < 0.05). The 4 wk CS exposure resulted in increased accumulation of neutrophils, dendritic cells, macrophages, and lymphocytes in BALF and lung tissue of WT, ob/ob, and db/db mice. CS-exposed ob/ob and db/db mice showed in general higher numbers of neutrophils and lower numbers of CD4+, CD8+, and dendritic cells versus CS-exposed WT mice. Consistently, CXCL1 levels were enhanced in BALF of CS-exposed ob/ob and db/db mice versus WT mice (p < 0.05). Exogenous leptin administration completely restored the skewed inflammatory profile in ob/ob mice. These data reveal an important role of leptin in modulating innate and adaptive immunity after CS inhalation in mice.
Evolutionarily Conserved TCR Binding Sites, Identification of T Cells in Primary Lymphoid Tissues, and Surprising Trans-Rearrangements in Nurse Shark
Authors: Criscitiello Michael F. , Ohta Yuko , Saltis Mark , McKinney E. Churchill , Flajnik Martin F.
Published: May 2010

Cartilaginous fish are the oldest animals that generate RAG-based Ag receptor diversity. We have analyzed the genes and expressed transcripts of the four TCR chains for the first time in a cartilaginous fish, the nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum). Northern blotting found TCR mRNA expression predominantly in lymphoid and mucosal tissues. Southern blotting suggested translocon-type loci encoding all four chains. Based on diversity of V and J segments, the expressed combinatorial diversity for γ is similar to that of human, α and β may be slightly lower, and δ diversity is the highest of any organism studied to date. Nurse shark TCRδ have long CDR3 loops compared with the other three chains, creating binding site topologies comparable to those of mammalian TCR in basic paratope structure; additionally, nurse shark TCRδ CDR3 are more similar to IgH CDR3 in length and heterogeneity than to other TCR chains. Most interestingly, several cDNAs were isolated that contained IgM or IgW V segments rearranged to other gene segments of TCRδ and α. Finally, in situ hybridization experiments demonstrate a conservation of both α/β and γ/δ T cell localization in the thymus across 450 million years of vertebrate evolution, with γ/δ TCR expression especially high in the subcapsular region. Collectively, these data make the first cellular identification of TCR-expressing lymphocytes in a cartilaginous fish.
8-Methoxypsoralen Plus Ultraviolet A Therapy Acts via Inhibition of the IL-23/Th17 Axis and Induction of Foxp3+ Regulatory T Cells Involving CTLA4 Signaling in a Psoriasis-Like Skin Disorder
Authors: Singh Tej Pratap , Schön Michael P. , Wallbrecht Katrin , Michaelis Kai , Rinner Beate , Mayer Gerlinde , Schmidbauer Ulrike , Strohmaier Heimo , Wang Xiao-Jing , Wolf Peter
Published: May 2010

To elucidate the molecular action of 8-methoxypsoralen plus UVA (PUVA), a standard dermatological therapy, we used K5.hTGF-β1 transgenic mice exhibiting a skin phenotype and cytokine abnormalities with strong similarities to human psoriasis. We observed that impaired function of CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) and increased cytokine levels of the IL-23/Th17 pathway were responsible for the psoriatic phenotype in this mouse model. Treatment of K5.hTGF-β1 transgenic mice with PUVA suppressed the IL-23/Th17 pathway, Th1 milieu, as well as transcription factors STAT3 and orphan nuclear receptor RORγt. PUVA induced the Th2 pathway and IL-10–producing CD4+CD25+Foxp3+Tregs with disease-suppressive activity that was abolished by anti-CTLA4 mAb treatment. These findings were paralleled by macroscopic and microscopic clearance of the diseased murine skin. Anti–IL-17 mAb treatment also diminished the psoriatic phenotype of the mice. This indicated that both induced Tregs involving CTLA4 signaling and inhibition of the IL-23/Th17 axis are central for the therapeutic action of PUVA.
Multiple Mechanisms Downstream of TLR-4 Stimulation Allow Expression of NKG2D Ligands To Facilitate Macrophage/NK Cell Crosstalk
Authors: Eissmann Philipp , Evans J. Henry , Mehrabi Maryam , Rose Emma L. , Nedvetzki Shlomo , Davis Daniel M.
Published: May 2010

The activating receptor NKG2D recognizes proteins that are not normally expressed at the surface of most cells but are expressed during a cellular “stress” response (e.g., upon induction of the DNA damage pathway). This establishes recognition of “induced self” as an important strategy for surveillance of infections or tumor transformation. However, NKG2D ligands can also be induced on human macrophages by TLR stimulation, which has been far less studied. In this paper, we clarify that LPS, which ligates TLR-4, preferentially upregulated MICA and not MICB; CL097, which ligates TLR-7/8, upregulated both MICA and MICB; and polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid, which ligates TLR-3, upregulated neither. To probe how LPS stimulation triggers MICA expression, we determined that the stability of MICA mRNA was much longer than that of MICB mRNA, but neither was changed by LPS stimulation. This finding suggests that increased levels of MICA mRNA following LPS stimulation resulted from increased transcription. However, it was not sufficient for surface protein expression, which was controlled posttranscriptionally via a separate pathway involving the ataxia telangiectasia mutated/ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related kinases. Moreover, LPS stimulation decreased expression of microRNAs (miRNA)—miR-17-5, miR-20a, and miR-93—which target MICA, implicating a novel role for miRNAs in NKG2D ligand expression. Thus, TLR stimulation allows expression of NKG2D ligands through multiple pathways, including downmodulation of specific miRNAs.
P2X7 Receptor-Mediated Killing of an Intracellular Parasite,Toxoplasma gondii, by Human and Murine Macrophages
Authors: Lees Michael P. , Fuller Stephen J. , McLeod Rima , Boulter Nicola R. , Miller Catherine M. , Zakrzewski Alana M. , Mui Ernest J. , Witola William H. , Coyne Jessica J. , Hargrave Aubrey C. , Jamieson Sarra E. , Blackwell Jenefer M. , Wiley James S. , Smith Nicholas C.
Published: May 2010

The P2X7R is highly expressed on the macrophage cell surface, and activation of infected cells by extracellular ATP has been shown to kill intracellular bacteria and parasites. Furthermore, single nucleotide polymorphisms that decrease receptor function reduce the ability of human macrophages to kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis and are associated with extrapulmonary tuberculosis. In this study, we show that macrophages from people with the 1513C (rs3751143, NM_002562.4:c.1487A>C) loss-of-function P2X7R single nucleotide polymorphism are less effective in killing intracellular Toxoplasma gondii after exposure to ATP compared with macrophages from people with the 1513A wild-type allele. Supporting a P2X7R-specific effect on T. gondii, macrophages from P2X7R knockout mice (P2X7R−/−) are unable to kill T. gondii as effectively as macrophages from wild-type mice. We show that P2X7R-mediated T. gondii killing occurs in parallel with host cell apoptosis and is independent of NO production.
Meningeal Mast Cells Affect Early T Cell Central Nervous System Infiltration and Blood-Brain Barrier Integrity through TNF: A Role for Neutrophil Recruitment?
Authors: Sayed Blayne A. , Christy Alison L. , Walker Margaret E. , Brown Melissa A.
Published: May 2010

Mast cells contribute to the pathogenesis of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a rodent model of the human demyelinating disease multiple sclerosis. Yet their site and mode of action is unknown. In both diseases, myelin-specific T cells are initially activated in peripheral lymphoid organs. However, for disease to occur, these cells must enter the immunologically privileged CNS through a breach in the relatively impermeable blood-brain barrier. In this study, we demonstrate that a dense population of resident mast cells in the meninges, structures surrounding the brain and spinal cord, regulate basal CNS barrier function, facilitating initial T cell CNS entry. Through the expression of TNF, mast cells recruit an early wave of neutrophils to the CNS. We propose that neutrophils in turn promote the blood-brain barrier breach and together with T cells lead to further inflammatory cell influx and myelin damage. These findings provide specific targets for intervention in multiple sclerosis as well as other immune-mediated CNS diseases.