bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Using Course Maps for Easy Classroom to Computer Transition
Authors: Etter Stephanie J. , Byrnes Lisa T.
Published: May 2011

Online learning is the fastest growing segment in the educational marketplace (Conhaim, 2003). As the number of online courses increases and distance learning programs grow in popularity, questions of quality and comparability of online courses with traditional methods naturally arise (Schulman & Sims, 1999). While online learning is the fastest growing educational segment, partly in thanks to on-campus students who choose to take courses online, there are still debates about not only the quality of the course content, but the quality of the technology used as well. According to Bowman (2003), in “the history of higher education, online classes are relatively new, and it is yet to be determined how to take full advantage of the technology” (p. 73). Traditional face-to-face courses, which may have been proven successful in terms of evaluations and outcomes assessments, are increasingly being converted to online courses. A study by Smith, Ferguson, and Caris (2000) concluded: “Contrary to intuition, current Web-based online college courses are not an alienating, mass-produced product. They are a laborintensive, highly text-based, intellectually challenging forum which elicits deeper thinking on the part of the students” (p. 67). Converting a traditional classroom course that is intellectually challenging and that elicits deeper thinking into an online course that can do the same can be a harrowing task. The process of converting a face-to-face course into an online course without compromising the course’s integrity and quality is a difficult burden to overcome. The burden of the conversion process can be eased, however, through the use of course maps.
Virtual School Administration
Authors: Lang Gaye
Published: May 2011

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the largest district in Texas and has often served as a model in the implementation of new methods, materials, and strategies to enhance learning. The district has often utilized input from a number of higher educational institutions in the city to assist not only in the training of employees, but in the research to implement and measure the effectiveness of teachers and programs on various levels. Therefore, a number of professionals from colleges and universities—not only from the Houston area, but also in various parts of the country— provided consultation during the planning process for the HISD Virtual School.
Winning an E-Learning Proposal or Grant
Authors: Kapp Karl M.
Published: May 2011

Winning an e-learning proposal or grant has become more difficult over the past few years because of the initially high expectations of e-learning and the subsequent disappointment in the financial results. Effective grant and proposal writers need to understand the business of e-learning and address apprehension and fears of the grantee to successfully win the opportunity to develop e-learning in corporate and academic settings. When e-learning initially burst onto the scene, the promise of untold riches was almost too much. E-learning was going to revolutionize traditional universities while simultaneously pouring millions and millions of dollars into the schools’ coffers. Dozens of major universities rapidly started to develop e-learning “branches”—many of them in partnership with private organizations. These institutions actively recruited faculty to write courses, hired instructional designers to put the courses online, and undertook large public relations efforts to market the online courses. After a few years, these universities began closing their virtual doors. The reality was that online universities failed to make a profit. They were expensive to create and revenues did not match expenditures. The dream of untold riches was just that—a dream. Students did not flock to login to e-learning courses as hoped. As an example, the E-university in the United Kingdom estimated a target student body of over 5,000 online learners; they could recruit no more than 900 (MacLeod, 2004).
The Notion
Authors: Ciulla Carlo
Published: May 2011

The goal of this chapter is to discuss the practical implications of the notion. This chapter concludes the logical reasoning outlined through the process of deduction that begun in Chapter II while reporting on the intuition. The logical reasoning was necessary in order to arrive to a determination as to what is the meaning of the intuition. Along the way it was possible to introduce the novel conception of Intensity-Curvature Functional and to connect such conception to the initial intuition of SRE. At that point the intuition was assessed in its truth and thus it was manifest to reconsider the formulation of the SRE. The implication of doing so rests in that the formulation and the conceptualization of the SRE given in Chapter IV is useful for the remainder of the book in presenting the unifying theory for the improvement of the interpolation error. The process of deduction (logical reasoning) has finally arrived to the notion that the curvature of the model interpolation function is quite relevant to the extent of improving the approximation properties of the function. The realization of the notion was already anticipated in Chapter V and this chapter further extends on the notion through the illustrations of its practical implications. In other words the process of deduction has arrived to a beneficial conclusion and for this reason it proves itself to have been useful in order to derive the notion.
The Main Innovation Determined By the Sub-Pixel Efficacy Region
Authors: Ciulla Carlo
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the reader to Section V of the book. The chapter opens up with a discussion on the undeniable evidence reported in literature that the magnitude of the interpolation error is strictly related to the magnitude of the sampling resolution. While reference to the literature on the Lagrange interpolation function is reported elsewhere (Ciulla & Deek, 2006), the chapter devotes attention to the literature and the applications related to the Sinc function. The core of the chapter reports a section that condenses the message to the reader of this book about the main innovation determined through the Sub-pixel Efficacy Region. It is delivered to the reader the realization that combining signal intensity with the curvature of the interpolation function, the approximation properties of the model function can be improved. This message is linked to the bridging concept between classic and SRE-based interpolation which is that of the curvature of the interpolation function.
Nascent Access Technologies for Individuals with Severe Motor Impairments
Authors: Power Sarah , Moghimi Saba , Nhan Brian , Chau Tom
Published: May 2011

As the number of individuals without physical access to communication or environmental interaction escalates, there are increasing efforts to uncover novel and unconventional access pathways. In this chapter, we introduce three emerging access technologies for individuals with severe disabilities: near-infrared spectroscopy, electroencephalographic measurement of visually-evoked potentials and infrared thermographic imaging of the face. The first two technologies harness activity directly from the brain while the third exploits spontaneous temperature changes in the face. For each technology, we discuss the physiological underpinnings, the requisite instrumentation, the scientific evidence to date and the future outlook.
Elderly People, Disability, Dependence and New Technologies
Authors: Millán-Calenti José , Maseda Ana
Published: May 2011

The potential impact of new assistive technologies to help people stay in their own homes for longer, age well and independently is a crucial challenge for future empowerment of the elderly. The main goals of this chapter are to draw attention to the characteristics of the elderly population and their situation regarding the increase in life expectancy and aging-related aspects, increasing the risk of disability and dependence. Notably, the role of information and communication technologies as supportive tools can help the elderly to improve their quality of life and independence. Services adapted to this population, e.g., tele-health, domotics or robotics, are examined in the text. We also look at the most relevant future opportunities and challenges to society towards new products and services.
Wireless Sensor Networks and Systems
Authors: Lloret Jaime , Garcia Miguel , Coll Hugo , Edo Miguel
Published: May 2011

Sensor networks are one of the most powerful technologies applied to control and supervising systems. They are present in almost all environments, so we can find them in different industrial, medical, security and/or home applications. In addition, the use of wireless technologies applied to sensor networks improves the final system. Examples given are the enlargement of the coverage area and the low deployment costs. Nowadays a combination of both items is used in many common implementations of a wide variety of applications. This chapter is focused on the use of sensor networks applied to disabled and elderly people. We will study the wireless technologies most used for this purpose and we will show a survey with the benefits when they are applied.
Sensors and their Application for Disabled and Elderly People
Authors: Tomas Jesus , Lloret Jaime , Bri Diana , Sendra Sandra
Published: May 2011

Over the years, several systems have been developed in order to improve the quality of life of the disabled and elderly people. Moreover, many systems and devices have been deployed based on their necessities. All of these systems integrate sensors, in order to carry out their functions, and they combine the electronic field, for the sensing systems, and the mechanic field, for their mobile parts. In this paper, we will classify the sensors and their basic principles. The signals gathered by them usually have very low values, thus operational amplifiers are employed frequently to amplify these signals. Finally, we will show the most well known sensor applications for disabled and elderly people. It will be very useful for researchers that need to integrate sensors in their deployment.
Experiences using Information and Communication Technologies with Children Affected by Cerebral Palsy
Authors: Pousada Thais , Piñeiro Miriam , Vizcaya Yolanda
Published: May 2011

Intervention using the New Technologies in children suffering from Infantile Cerebral Palsy (ICP) is aimed at attaining or promoting individual abilities of each user. To this end, all possible means and resources are facilitated to enable them to access communication and thus to attain higher levels of social integration and individual advancement for their personal development. One such resource is In-TIC, assistive software for the creation of virtual keyboards customised to the capabilities of each individual user. The experience gained from the application of this software, in combination with assistive hardware, has made it possible to facilitate and improve the access to and use of computers for children suffering from infantile cerebral palsy in the ASPACE Coruña Centre.
The Roles of Social Networks and Communities in Open Education Programs
Authors: Dholakia Utpal M. , Baraniuk Richard
Published: May 2011

Open Education Programs provide a range of digitized educational resources freely to educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. In the current chapter the authors study how the educational experience for users and the effectiveness of these programs can be enhanced by incorporating new social networking technologies along with traditional virtual communities, such as bulletin boards and chat-rooms. An overview of open education programs is provided, discussing their common characteristics and participants’ motivations for joining and contributing to such programs. The authors also consider the roles played by collaboration processes in open education programs, examine how communities evolve on theses sites, their roles in making the programs sustainable, and what site organizers can do to enhance these processes. They conclude the chapter with a discussion of future trends and how social networking technologies will contribute to the next generation of open education programs. Throughout, their discussion is informed by our experiences and engagement with the Connexions project (www.cnx.org).
Identifying New Virtual Competencies for the Digital Age
Authors: Gow Kathryn
Published: May 2011

This chapter focuses on the identification of a range of competencies that entry level workers, and thus graduating students, will need to acquire to be successful in the 21st Century of work. While core or basic competencies will still form the prerequisite generic skills that all entry level workers must demonstrate, as the first year progresses, depending on the field in which they are employed, they will be asked to utilise self management, entrepreneurial, and virtual competencies in order to maintain their employment status. Even if they have ICT skills, they will need to have the knowledge and ability in social software, as well as the ability to communicate across the Web, in order to succeed in the digital age. Other attributes, such as cross cultural and professional skills, along with an appreciation of Web ontologies will facilitate entry-level workers as they move into the world of international liaisons.
Supporting Student Blogging in Higher Education
Authors: Kerawalla Lucinda , Minocha Shailey , Kirkup Gill , Conole Gráinne
Published: May 2011

With a variety of asynchronous communication and collaboration tools and environments such as Wikis, blogs, and forums, it can be increasingly difficult for educators to make appropriate choices about when and how to use these technologies. In this chapter, the authors report on the findings from a research programme on educational blogging which investigated the blogging activities of different groups of Higher Education students: undergraduate and Masters-level distance learners, and PhD students. The authors discuss empirical evidence of students’ experiences, perceptions, and expectations of blogging. We provide an empirically-grounded framework which can guide course designers and educators in their decision-making about whether and how to include blogging in their course-contexts so as to create value and to generate a positive student experience. Also, this framework can help guide students who are either thinking about blogging for themselves, or who are undertaking course-directed blogging activities.
Email Worm Detection Using Data Mining
Authors: Masud Mohammad M. , Khan Latifur , Thuraisingham Bhavani
Published: May 2011

This chapter applies data mining techniques to detect email worms. Email messages contain a number of different features such as the total number of words in message body/subject, presence/absence of binary attachments, type of attachments, and so on. The goal is to obtain an efficient classification model based on these features. The solution consists of several steps. First, the number of features is reduced using two different approaches: feature-selection and dimension-reduction. This step is necessary to reduce noise and redundancy from the data. The feature-selection technique is called Two-phase Selection (TPS), which is a novel combination of decision tree and greedy selection algorithm. The dimensionreduction is performed by Principal Component Analysis. Second, the reduced data is used to train a classifier. Different classification techniques have been used, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes and their combination. Finally, the trained classifiers are tested on a dataset containing both known and unknown types of worms. These results have been compared with published results. It is found that the proposed TPS selection along with SVM classification achieves the best accuracy in detecting both known and unknown types of worms.
Privacy-Preserving Data Mining and the Need for Confluence of Research and Practice
Authors: Fu Lixin , Nemati Hamid , Sadri Fereidoon
Published: May 2011

Privacy-Preserving Data Mining (PPDM) refers to data mining techniques developed to protect sensitive data while allowing useful information to be discovered from the data. In this chapter the review PPDM and present a broad survey of related issues, techniques, measures, applications, and regulation guidelines. The authors observe that the rapid pace of change in information technologies available to sustain PPDM has created a gap between theory and practice. They posit that without a clear understanding of the practice, this gap will be widening, which, ultimately will be detrimental to the field. They conclude by proposing a comprehensive research agenda intended to bridge the gap relevant to practice and as a reference basis for the future related legislation activities.
Complex-Valued Neural Network and Inverse Problems
Authors: Ogawa Takehiko
Published: May 2011

Network inversion solves inverse problems to estimate cause from result using a multilayer neural network. The original network inversion has been applied to usual multilayer neural networks with real-valued inputs and outputs. The solution by a neural network with complex-valued inputs and outputs is necessary for general inverse problems with complex numbers. In this chapter, we introduce the complex-valued network inversion method to solve inverse problems with complex numbers. In general, difficulties attributable to the ill-posedness of inverse problems appear. Regularization is used to solve this ill-posedness by adding some conditions to the solution. In this chapter, we also explain regularization for complex-valued network inversion.
Face Modeling
Authors: Kim Daijin , Sung Jaewon
Published: May 2011

In the field of computer vision, researchers have proposed many techniques for representation and analysis of the varying shape of objects, such as active contour (Kass et. al., 1998) and deformable template (Yuille et. al., 1989). However, the active contour, which consists of a set of points, is too flexible to limit its deformation to a reasonable amount of variations for a specific object and it does not have the ability to specify a specific shape. The deformable template, which consists of a set of parametric curves, is difficult to represent all the shape deformations of an object due to 3D rotation or self-deformations because the deformations are too complex to be explained by the combination of hand crafted simple parametric curves.
Data, Information and Knowledge
Authors: Zvárová Jana , Veselý Arnošt
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the basic concepts of medical informatics: data, information, and knowledge. Data are classified into various types and illustrated by concrete medical examples. The concept of knowledge is formalized in the framework of a language related to objects, properties, and relations within ontology. Various aspects of knowledge are studied and illustrated on examples dealing with symptoms and diseases. Several approaches to the concept of information are systematically studied, namely the Shannon information, the discrimination information, and the decision information. Moreover, information content of theoretical knowledge is introduced. All these approaches to information are illustrated on one simple medical example.
Generating and Verifying Risk Prediction Models using Data Mining
Authors: Davis Darryl N. , Nguyen Thuy T.T.
Published: May 2011

Risk prediction models are of great interest to clinicians. They offer an explicit and repeatable means to aide the selection, from a general medical population, those patients that require a referral to medical consultants and specialists. In many medical domains, including cardiovascular medicine, no gold standard exists for selecting referral patients. Where evidential selection is required using patient data, heuristics backed up by poorly adapted more general risk prediction models are pressed into action, with less than perfect results. In this study, existing clinical risk prediction models are examined and matched to the patient data to which they may be applied using classification and data mining techniques, such as neural nets. Novel risk prediction models are derived using unsupervised cluster analysis algorithms. All existing and derived models are verified as to their usefulness in medical decision support on the basis of their effectiveness on patient data from two UK sites.
The Critical Success Factors and Integrated Model for Implementing E-Business in Taiwan's SMEs
Authors: Chen Te Fu
Published: May 2011

To date, identifying barriers and critical success factors (CSFs) and integrating business model in implementing e-business for SMEs, have not been systematically investigated. Few existing studies have derived their CSFs and business models from large companies’ perspectives, and have not considered the needs of integration for smaller businesses. This chapter is aimed to bridge this gap. Existing studies on CSFs and e-business models were reviewed and their limitations were identified. By integrating insights drawn from these studies, as well as adding some new factors, the author proposed a set of 18 CSFs which is believed to be more useful for SMEs. The importance of the proposed CSFs was theoretically discussed and justified. In addition, a case study was conducted to evaluate the extent of success of this proposition. The overall results from the case study assessment were positive, thus reflecting the appropriateness of the proposed CSFs and integrated models. The set of CSFs and integrated models can act as a list of items and an easy to follow model for SMEs to address when adopting e-business. This helps to ensure that the essential issues and factors are covered during implementation. For academics, it provides a common language for them to discuss, and study the factors crucial for the success of e-business in SMEs. This study is probably the first to provide an integrative perspective of CSFs and integrated model for implementing e-business in the SME sector. It gives valuable information, which hopefully will help this business sector to accomplish e-business visions.
Fundamentals of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics
Authors: Schadschneider Andreas , Klüpfel Hubert , Kretz Tobias , Rogsch Christian , Seyfried Armin
Published: May 2011

Multi-Agent Simulation is a general and powerful framework for understanding and predicting the behaviour of social systems. Here the authors investigate the behaviour of pedestrians and human crowds, especially their physical movement. Their aim is to build a bridge between the multi-agent and pedestrian dynamics communities that facilitates the validation and calibration of modelling approaches which is essential for any application in sensitive areas like safety analysis. Understanding the dynamical properties of large crowds is of obvious practical importance. Emergency situations require efficient evacuation strategies to avoid casualties and reduce the number of injured persons. In many cases legal requirements have to be fulfilled, for example, for aircraft or cruise ships. For tests already in the planning stage reliable simulation models are required to avoid additional costs for changes in the construction. First, the empirically observed phenomena are described, emphasizing the challenges they pose for any modelling approach and their relevance for the validation and calibration. Then the authors review the basic modelling approaches used for the simulation of pedestrian dynamics in normal and emergency situations, focussing on cellular automata models. Their achievements as well as their limitations are discussed in view of the empirical results. Finally, two applications to safety analysis are briefly described.
Analyzing Transactions Costs in Transport Corridors Using Multi Agent-Based Simulation
Authors: Henesey Lawrence , Persson Jan A.
Published: May 2011

In analyzing freight transportation systems, such as the intermodal transport of containers, often direct monetary costs associated with transportation are used to evaluate or determine choice of Transport Corridor. In forming decisions on Transport Corridor cooperation, this chapter proposes that transaction cost Simulation modelling can be considered as an additional determinant in conducting Transport Corridor analysis. The application of Transaction Costs theory in analyzing the organisational structures and the transactions that occur, assists in indicating as to which governance structure results in higher efficiencies. The use of Multi-Agent based Simulation for modelling the organisational structure and mechanisms provides a novel approach in understanding the organisational relationships in a regional Transport Corridor.
Data Mining in Aviation Safety Data Analysis
Authors: Suomi Reima , Sjöblom Olli
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces aviation safety data analysis as an important application area for data mining. In the beginning of the chapter, the reader is introduced to the basic concepts of data mining. After that, the field of aviation safety management is discussed, and in that connection data mining is identified as a key technology to study through flight incidents reports. Afterwards the test runs for four data mining products, for possible use in the Finnish civil aviation authority, are described in detail. However, before the testing of tools the preparation of the test data for the tools is described in detail. The chapter ends with conclusions that tell that even sophisticated data mining tools are just tools: they do not provide any automatic tools, but skilled users can use them for searching clues in the data.
Interactive Quality-Oriented Data Warehouse Development
Authors: Pighin Maurizio , Ieronutti Lucio
Published: May 2011

Data Warehouses are increasingly used by commercial organizations to extract, from a huge amount of transactional data, concise information useful for supporting decision processes. However, the task of designing a data warehouse and evaluating its effectiveness is not trivial, especially in the case of large databases and in presence of redundant information. The meaning and the quality of selected attributes heavily influence the data warehouse’s effectiveness and the quality of derived decisions. Our research is focused on interactive methodologies and techniques targeted at supporting the data warehouse design and evaluation by taking into account the quality of initial data. In this chapter we propose an approach for supporting the data warehouses development and refinement, providing practical examples and demonstrating the effectiveness of our solution. Our approach is mainly based on two phases: the first one is targeted at interactively guiding the attributes selection by providing quantitative information measuring different statistical and syntactical aspects of data, while the second phase, based on a set of 3D visualizations, gives the opportunity of run-time refining taken design choices according to data examination and analysis. For experimenting proposed solutions on real data, we have developed a tool, called ELDA (EvaLuation DAta warehouse quality), that has been used for supporting the data warehouse design and evaluation.
Distributed Approach to Continuous Queries with kNN Join Processing in Spatial Telemetric Data Warehouse
Authors: Gorawski Marcin , Gebczyk Wojciech
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes realization of distributed approach to continuous queries with kNN join processing in the spatial telemetric data warehouse. Due to dispersion of the developed system, new structural members were distinguished: the mobile object simulator, the kNN join processing service, and the query manager. Distributed tasks communicate using JAVA RMI methods. The kNN queries (k Nearest Neighbour) joins every point from one dataset with its k nearest neighbours in the other dataset. In our approach we use the Gorder method, which is a block nested loop join algorithm that exploits sorting, join scheduling, and distance computation filtering to reduce CPU and I/O usage.
Analyses and Evaluation of Responses to Slowly Changing Dimensions in Data Warehouses
Authors: Frank Lars , Frank Christian
Published: May 2011

A Star Schema Data Warehouse looks like a star with a central, so-called fact table, in the middle, surrounded by so-called dimension tables with one-to-many relationships to the central fact table. Dimensions are defined as dynamic or slowly changing if the attributes or relationships of a dimension can be updated. Aggregations of fact data to the level of the related dynamic dimensions might be misleading if the fact data are aggregated without considering the changes of the dimensions. In this chapter, we will first prove that the problems of SCD (Slowly Changing Dimensions) in a datawarehouse may be viewed as a special case of the read skew anomaly that may occur when different transactions access and update records without concurrency control. That is, we prove that aggregating fact data to the levels of a dynamic dimension should not make sense. On the other hand, we will also illustrate, by examples, that in some situations it does make sense that fact data is aggregated to the levels of a dynamic dimension. That is, it is the semantics of the data that determine whether historical dimension data should be preserved or destroyed. Even worse, we also illustrate that for some applications, we need a history preserving response, while for other applications at the same time need a history destroying response. Kimball et al., (2002), have described three classic solutions/responses to handling the aggregation problems caused by slowly changing dimensions. In this chapter, we will describe and evaluate four more responses of which one are new. This is important because all the responses have very different properties, and it is not possible to select a best solution without knowing the semantics of the data.
The Generative Power of Signs
Authors: Duong Deborah V.
Published: May 2011

The first intelligent agent social model, in 1991, used tags with emergent meaning to simulate the emergence of institutions based on the principles of interpretive social science. This symbolic interactionist simulation program existed before Holland’s Echo, however, Echo and subsequent programs with tags failed to preserve the autonomy of perception of the agents that displayed and read tags. The only exception is Axtell, Epstein, and Young’s program on the emergence of social classes, which was influenced by the symbolic interactionist simulation program. Axtell, Epstein, and Young’s program has since been credited for strong emergence. This chapter explains that autonomy of perception is the essential difference in the symbolic interactionist implementation of tags that enables this strong emergence.
Propositional Logic Syntax Acquisition Using Induction and Self-Organisation
Authors: Sierra Josefina , Santibáñez Josefina
Published: May 2011

This chapter addresses the problem of the acquisition of the syntax of propositional logic. An approach based on general purpose cognitive capacities such as invention, adoption, parsing, generation, and induction is proposed. Self-organisation principles are used to show how a shared set of preferred lexical entries and grammatical constructions, that is, a language, can emerge in a population of autonomous agents which do not have any initial linguistic knowledge. Experiments in which a population of autonomous agents constructs a grammar that allows communicating the formulas of a propositional logic language are presented. These experiments extend previous work by considering a larger population and a much larger search space of grammar rules. In particular, the agents are allowed to order the expressions associated with the constituents of a logical formula in arbitrary order. Previous work assumed that the expressions associated with the connectives should be placed in the first position of the sentence.
Developing Relationships Between Autonomous Agents
Authors: Watson Scott , Dautenhahn Kerstin , Ho Wan Ching (Steve) , Dawidowicz Rafal
Published: May 2011

This chapter is a continuation from Part I, which has described contemporary psychological descriptions of bullying in primary schools and two Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) designed as anti-bullying interventions. The necessary requirements for believable, autonomous agents used in virtual learning environments are now outlined. In particular, we will describe the technical and engagement-oriented considerations that need to be made. The chapter concludes with recommendations of how to meet these needs and how to design a VLE by including potential users in the development process.
A Simulation of Temporally Variant Agent Interaction via Belief Promulgation
Authors: Conover Adam J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter concludes a two part series which examines the emergent properties of multi-agent communication in “temporally asynchronous” environments. Many traditional agent and swarm simulation environments divide time into discrete “ticks” where all entity behavior is synchronized to a master “world clock”. In other words, all agent behavior is governed by a single timer where all agents act and interact within deterministic time intervals. This discrete timing mechanism produces a somewhat restricted and artificial model of autonomous agent interaction. In addition to the behavioral autonomy normally associated with agents, simulated agents should also have “temporal autonomy” in order to interact realistically. This chapter focuses on the exploration of a grid of specially embedded, message-passing agents, where each message represents the communication of a core “belief”. Here, we focus our attention on the how the temporal variance of belief propagation from individual agents induces emergent and dynamic effects on a global population.
Agents in Security
Authors: Richardson Theodor
Published: May 2011

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) are designed to differentiate malicious traffic, from normal traf- fic, on a network system to detect the presence of an attack. Traditionally, the approach around which these systems are designed is based upon an assumption made by Dorothy Denning in 1987, stating that malicious traffic should be statistically differentiable from normal traffic. However, this statement was made regarding host systems and was not meant to be extended without adjustment to network systems. It is therefore necessary to change the granularity of this approach to find statistical anomalies per host as well as on the network as a whole. This approach lends itself well to the use of emergent monitoring agents per host, that have a central aggregation point with a visualization of the network as a whole. This chapter will discuss the structure, training, and deployment of such an agent-based intrusion detection system and analyze its viability in comparison to the more traditional anomaly-based approach to intrusion detection.
Search as a Tool for Emergence
Authors: North Michael J. , Howe Thomas R. , Collier Nick , Tatara Eric , Ozik Jonathan , Macal Charles
Published: May 2011

Search has been recognized as an important technology for a wide range of software applications. Agentbased modelers often face search challenges both when looking for agents that need to be connected to one another and when seeking appropriate target agents while defining agent behaviors. This chapter presents an approach to simplifying such search problems and shows examples of its use. The approach presented in this chapter offers both imperative and declarative methods to find sets of agents with particular attributes in particular locales. The imperative approach allows for flexible reactions to the agents that are discovered through querying. The declarative approach builds on the imperative approach and introduces a temporal dimension to the process by explicitly allowing for searches that activate in the future depending on the conditions that obtain in a given model.
Knowledge Flow and Learning Design Models towards Lifewide E-Learning Environments
Authors: Pettenati M.C. , Cigognini M.E.
Published: May 2011

This chapter considers the affordances of social networking theories and tools in building new and effective e-learning practices. We argue that “Connectivism” (social networking applied to learning and knowledge contexts) can lead to a re-conceptualization of learning in which formal, non-formal, and informal learning can be integrated so as to build potentially lifelong learning activities which can be experienced in “personal learning environments”. In order to provide a guide for the design, development, and improvement of e-learning environments, as well as for the related learning activities, we provide a knowledge flow model and the consequent learning design model, highlighting the stages of learning, the enabling conditions, and possible technological tools to be used for the purpose. In the conclusion to the chapter, the derived model is applied in a possible scenario of formal learning in order to show how the learning process can be designed according to the presented theory.
Interface and Features for an Automatic ‘C' Program Evaluation System
Authors: Mandal Amit Kumar , Mandal Chittaranjan , Reade Chris
Published: May 2011

A system for automatically testing, evaluating, grading, and providing critical feedback for submitted ‘C’ programming assignments has been implemented. The interface and key features of the system are described in detail along with some examples. The system gives proper attention towards the monitoring of a student’s progress and provides complete automation of the evaluation process, with a fine-grained analysis. It also provides online support to both the instructors and students and is designed for serviceoriented integration with a course management system using Web services.
Utilizing Web Tools for Computer-Mediated Communication to Enhance Team-Based Learning
Authors: Gomez Elizabeth Avery , Wu Dezhi , Passerini Katia , Bieber Michael
Published: May 2011

Team-based learning is an active learning instructional strategy used in the traditional face-to-face classroom. Web-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools complement the face-to-face classroom and enable active learning between face-to-face class times. This paper presents the results from pilot assessments of computer-supported team-based learning. The authors utilized pedagogical approaches grounded in collaborative learning techniques, such as team-based learning, and extended these techniques to a web-based environment through the use of computer-mediated communications tools (discussion web-boards). This approach was examined through field studies in the course of two semesters at a US public technological university. The findings indicate that the perceptions of team learning experience such as perceived motivation, enjoyment and learning in such a web-based CMC environment are higher than in traditional face-to-face courses. In addition, our results show that perceived team members’ contributions impact individual learning experiences. Overall, Web-based CMC tools are found to effectively facilitate team interactions and achieve higher-level learning.
Bounded Cardinality and Symmetric Relationships
Authors: Pendegraft Norman
Published: May 2011

Bounded cardinality occurs when the cardinality of a relationship is within a specified range. Bounded cardinality is closely linked to symmetric relationships. This article describes these two notions, notes some of the problems they present, and discusses their implementation in a relational database.
Different Kinds of Hierarchies in Multidimensional Models
Authors: Malinowski Elzbieta
Published: May 2011

In the database design, the advantages of using conceptual models for representing users’ requirements are well known. Nevertheless, even though data warehouses (DWs) are databases that store historical data for analytical purposes, they are usually represented at the logical level using the star and snowflake schemas. These schemas facilitate delivery of data for online analytical processing (OLAP) systems. In particular, hierarchies are important since traversing them, OLAP tools perform automatic aggregations of data using the roll-up and drill-down operations. The former operation transforms detailed data into aggregated ones (e.g., daily into monthly sales) while the latter does the opposite.
Requirement Specification and Conceptual Modeling for Data Warehouses
Authors: Malinowski Elzbieta
Published: May 2011

Data warehouses (DWs) integrate data from different source systems in order to provide historical information that supports the decision-making process. The design of a DW is a complex and costly task since the inclusion of different data items in a DW depends on both users’ needs and data availability in source systems. Currently, there is still a lack of a methodological framework that guides developers through the different stages of the DW design process. On the one hand, there are several proposals that informally describe the phases used for developing DWs based on the authors’ experience in building such systems (Inmon, 2002; Kimball, Reeves, Ross, & Thornthwaite, 1998). On the other hand, the scientific community proposes a variety of approaches for developing DWs, discussed in the next section. Nevertheless, they either include features that are meant for the specific conceptual model used by the authors, or they are very complex. This situation has occurred since the need to build DW systems that fulfill user expectations was ahead of methodological and formal approaches for DW development, just like the one we had for operational databases.
Horizontal Data Partitioning
Authors: Bellatreche Ladjel
Published: May 2011

Horizontal data partitioning is the process of splitting access objects into set of disjoint rows. It was first introduced in the end of 70’s and beginning of the 80’s (Ceri et al., 1982) for logically designing databases in order to improve the query performance by eliminating unnecessary accesses to non-relevant data. It knew a large success (in the beginning of the 80’s) in designing homogeneous distributed databases (Ceri et al., 1982; Ceri et al., 1984; Özsu et al., 1999) and parallel databases (DeWitt et al., 1992; Valduriez, 1993). In distributed environment, horizontal partitioning decomposes global tables into horizontal fragments, where each partition may be spread over multiple nodes. End users at the node can perform local queries/transactions on the partition transparently (the fragmentation of data across multiple sites/processors is not visible to the users.). This increases performance for sites that have regular transactions involving certain views of data, whilst maintaining availability and security. In parallel database context (Rao et al., 2002), horizontal partitioning has been used in order to speed up query performance in a sharednothing parallel database system (DeWitt et al., 1992). This will be done by both intra-query and intra-query parallelisms (Valduriez, 1993). It also facilitates the exploitation of the inputs/outputs bandwidth of the disks by reading and writing data in parallel. In this paper, we use fragmentation and partitioning words interchangeably.
Database Support for Workflow Management Systems
Authors: Pinheiro Francisco A.C.
Published: May 2011

A workflow is a series of work processes performed under rules that reflect the formal structure of the organization in which they are carried out and the relationships between their various parts. Workflow applications are software applications used to automate part of workflow processes. They run under the control of a workflow management system (WfMS). The WfMS usually comprises an organizational model, describing the process structure, and a process model, describing the process logic. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC, 2008) publishes a set of workflow definitions and related material, including a reference model. Databases are commonly used as a WfMS supporting technology. Not only workflow data are maintained in databases but also the rules governing processes can be stored in database schemas. Database functionality can be used both for defining and managing process models as well as for environment notification and process enactment. This article shows how particular database-related technologies can be used to support WfMS.
Politically Oriented Database Applications
Authors: Pinheiro Francisco A.C.
Published: May 2011

Technology pervades every aspect of modern life. It has an impact on the democratic life of a nation (Chen, Gibson, & Geiselhart, 2006) and is frequently an object of dispute and negotiation, affecting the way politics is done, by shaping new forms of planning and performing political actions. The changing of professional politics is fuelled up by the increasing use of information and communication technologies by both citizens and organizations. Attempts to increase the use of technology to run elections (Hawthorn & Simons, 2006) are just one aspect of this movement. Many researchers also identify a steady pace of change on the nature of political parties and the ways politics is performed by politicians: Margetts (2001) notices the emergence of cyber parties, characterized by technologically-aided relationships between party and voters rather then formal membership. Pedersen and Saglie (2005) present a survey discussing how this and other kinds of party organizations (e.g. media and networked parties) affect traditional Scandinavian parties. Information systems are themselves instruments of power in several ways. As an example, Hayes and Walsham (1999) discuss the political use of information stored in shared databases. Their study shows how databases storing contact and activity information were used by employees and managers to foster they careers, impose their views and control people subordinated to them. Applications used in or related to politics are information intensive, making databases a prime element in building politically oriented applications. This article discusses some aspects of database related technology necessary for this kind of application.
Spatio-Temporal Indexing Techniques
Authors: Vassilakopoulos Michael , Corral Antonio
Published: May 2011

Time and space are ubiquitous aspects of reality. Temporal and Spatial information appear together in many everyday activities, and many information systems of modern life should be able to handle such information. For example, information systems for traffic control, fleet management, environmental management, military applications, local and public administration, and academic institutions need to manage information with spatial characteristics that changes over time, or in other words, Spatio-temporal Information. The need for Spatio-temporal applications has been strengthened by recent developments in mobile telephony technology, mobile computing, positioning technology, and the evolution of the World Wide Web. Research and technology that aim at the development of Database Management Systems (DBMSs) that can handle Spatial, Temporal, and Spatio-temporal information have been developed over the last few decades. The embedding of spatio-temporal capabilities in DBMSs and GISs is a hot research area that will continue to attract researchers and the informatics industry in the years to come.
Matching Relational Schemata to Semantic Web Ontologies
Authors: Katsiouli Polyxeni , Papapanagiotou Petros , Tsetsos Vassileios , Anagnostopoulos Christos , Hadjiefthymiades Stathes
Published: May 2011

The Semantic Web (SW; Berners-Lee, Hendler, & Lassila, 2001) is already in its implementation phase and an indication of this is the intense research and development activity in the area of SW tools and languages. SW is based on metadata, which describe the semantics of the Web content. SW envisages the enrichment of data with semantics in order to be machine understandable and enable knowledge reasoning. The core element for achieving such Web evolution is ontology: “Ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization” (Gruber).