bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Privacy Regulation in the Metaverse
Authors: Leenes Ronald
Published: May 2011

Second Life can be seen as a social microcosmos in which fairly normal people lead a social life and where social needs develop. Privacy is one of those needs. It is a need that is seemingly at odds with the key characteristics of Second Life: social interaction, transparency and openness. This chapter sketches the state of privacy in Second Life and how privacy is regulated in and around Second Life. It argues that the current governance model in Second Life is inadequate to provide proper privacy protection. The chapter concludes by briefly discussing current developments towards self governance that may improve the situation. The chapter aims to show that virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are interesting environments to study social phenomena and their governance.
Recontextualising Technology in Appropriation Processes
Authors: Janneck Monique
Published: May 2011

For a technology use to be successful, the circumstance of its introduction into a use context—or recontextualization— is crucial. The users of a technical artifact play an active role in this process: They appropriate the technology, that is, they explore a new technology and choose how to integrate (or not integrate) it into their practices and (work) routines. This chapter discusses a variety of factors that influence technology artifact appropriation. It illustrates the process of recontextualizing technological artifacts, and common pitfalls associated with it, as well as the protagonists doing the appropriation. For empirical illustration, case studies from different use contexts are presented, including some “lessons learned” drawn from them. Concluding, further research perspectives and challenges are discussed.
Socio-Instrumental Pragmatism in Action
Authors: Sjöström Jonas , Goldkuhl Göran
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the theoretical framework of Socio-Instrumental Pragmatism (SIP) and illustrates how it has been used as an analytic instrument in the process of diagnosing a work practice and co-designing business processes and IT artefacts. A practical inquiry process has been conducted in a project group consisting of a group of Swedish municipalities, currently experiencing a number of administrative problems. SIP has informed the design process, and aided the designers in shaping the design product (a new workflow and a new IT system). Conclusions are drawn regarding SIP as an analytical tool, stating that it has guided the inquirers to focus on actors, actions and relations between actors, and supported the designers in finding design solutions to the major problems experienced in the organization.
Enabling Remote Participation in Research
Authors: Birnholtz Jeremy , Rader Emilee J. , Horn Daniel B. , Finholt Thomas
Published: May 2011

This chapter uses the theoretical notion of common ground to explore remote participation in experimental research. On one hand, there is a desire to give remote participants the same views and capabilities that they would have as local participants. On the other, there are settings where experimental specimens and apparatus are large and difficult to effectively manipulate or view from a remote vantage point, and where multiple and diverse perspectives may be useful in decision making. In exploring these issues, the authors draw on two studies of researchers in the earthquake engineering community. The first, an interview study about attitudes toward teleparticipation, suggests that engineers are wary of remote participation because they fear the inability to adequately detect signs of potential failure. The second study, an observational study of researchers conducting an experiment in a centrifuge facility, illustrates that researchers adapt to the available information, and that diverse perspectives and information may be valuable in troubleshooting.
Adaptive Complex Enterprise Framework
Authors: Ramanathan Jay , Ramnath Rajiv
Published: May 2011

The ACE structure for coordination across various services using policies to meet overall goals is presented here. The more detailed depiction of the ACE structure in Figure 1 represents further details than in Figure 2, Chapter I. The structure includes the 1) BioS Stakeholders and Dimension, 2) the goal states of their interest, and 3) Agent Interactions that achieve those goal states. The Goal achievements are aggregated for continual improvement and used in decision-making to finetune Interactions. These underlying details are developed based on framework parts presented here. They include 1) Interaction ontology, 2) Modeling notation, 3) Principles for analysis, and 4) Work Products and their use in the continuous improvement. The result is goal-oriented ACE management by objectives at all BioS dimensions as we shall see.
Relating IT to Service Innovation
Authors: Ramanathan Jay , Ramnath Rajiv
Published: May 2011

We explore how different types of opportunities for Interaction improvement - innovation, effectiveness, and resilience can be identified. Our goal here is to explore how an understanding of Interactions also helps identify opportunities for innovation and resilience. Previously we have already covered examples of IT use in Interaction effectiveness though Lean and Knowledge Management. Our focus here is on identifying opportunities through a systematic understanding of Innovation.
Business Process Modeling in the jABC
Authors: Margaria Tiziana , Steffen Bernhard
Published: May 2011

The one thing approach is designed to overcome the classical communication hurdles between application experts and the various levels of IT experts. Technically, it is realized in terms of eXtreme Model Driven Design, a technique that puts the user-level process in the center of the development. It enables customers/users to design, animate, validate, and control their processes throughout the whole life cycle, starting with the first requirement analysis, and ending with the demand driven process evolution over its entire life span. This strict way of top-down thinking emphasizes the primary goal of every development: customer satisfaction.
Design of Repairable Processes
Authors: Cappiello Cinzia , Pernici Barbara
Published: May 2011

This chapter illustrates the concept of repairable processes and self-healing functionalities and discusses about their design requirements. Self-healing processes are able to monitor themselves, to diagnose the causes of a failure and to recover from the failure, where a failure can be either the inability to provide a given service, or a loss in the service quality. Defining the process as a composition of services, the aim of this chapter is also to provide guidelines for designing services in such a way that they can be easily recovered during their execution. Repair mechanisms are thoroughly described by distinguishing between mechanisms applicable at design time and at run time.
Temporalities for Workflow Management Systems
Authors: Combi Carlo , Pozzi Giuseppe
Published: May 2011

Time is a very important dimension of any aspect in human life, affecting also information and information management. As such, time must be dealt with in a suitable way, considering all its facets. The related literature already considered temporal information management from a pure database point of view: temporal aspects (also known as temporalities) of stored information cannot be neglected and the adoption of a suitable database management system (Temporal Database Management System - TDBMS) could be helpful. Recently, research of the temporal data management area started to consider business processes, extending and enriching models, techniques, and architectures to suitably manage temporal aspects. According to this scenario, the authors discuss here some of the main advantages achievable in managing temporal aspects and consider temporalities in process models, in exception definition, in the architecture of a Workflow Management System (WfMS), and in the scheduling of tasks and their assignment to agents.
The Journey to Business Process Compliance
Authors: Governatori Guido , Sadiq Shazia
Published: May 2011

It is a typical scenario that many organisations have their business processes specified independently of their business obligations (which includes contractual obligations to business partners, as well as obligations a business has to fulfil against regulations and industry standards). This is because of the lack of guidelines and tools that facilitate derivation of processes from contracts but also because of the traditional mindset of treating contracts separately from business processes. This chapter will provide a solution to one specific problem that arises from this situation, namely the lack of mechanisms to check whether business processes are compliant with business contracts. The chapter begins by defining the space for business process compliance and the eco-system for ensuring that process are compliant. The key point is that compliance is a relationship between two sets of specifications: the specifications for executing a business process and the specifications regulating a business. The central part of the chapter focuses on a logic based formalism for describing both the semantics of normative specifications and the semantics of compliance checking procedures.
A Data-Centric Design Methodology for Business Processes
Authors: Bhattacharya Kamal , Hull Richard , Su Jianwen
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes a design methodology for business processes and workflows that focuses first on “business artifacts”, which represent key (real or conceptual) business entities, including both the business-relevant data about them and their macro-level lifecycles. Individual workflow services (a.k.a. tasks) are then incorporated, by specifying how they operate on the artifacts and fit into their lifecycles. The resulting workflow is specified in a particular artifact-centric workflow model, which is introduced using an extended example. At the logical level this workflow model is largely declarative, in contrast with most traditional workflow models which are procedural and/or graph-based. The chapter includes a discussion of how the declarative, artifact-centric workflow specification can be mapped into an optimized physical realization.
Distributed Context Management in Support of Multiple Remote Users
Authors: Roussaki I. , Strimpakou M. , Pils C. , Kalatzis N. , Liampotis N.
Published: May 2011

In ubiquitous computing environments, context management systems are expected to administrate large volumes of spatial and non-spatial information in geographical disperse domains. In particular, when these systems cover wide areas such as cities, countries or even the entire planet, the design of scalable storage, retrieval and propagation mechanisms is paramount. This chapter elaborates on mechanisms that address advanced requirements including support for distributed context databases management; efficient query handling; innovative management of mobile physical objects and optimization strategies for distributed context data dissemination. These mechanisms establish a robust spatially-enhanced distributed context management framework that has thoroughly been designed, carefully implemented and extensively evaluated via numerous experiments.
Context-Aware Database Querying
Authors: Li Yuanping , Feng Ling , Zhou Lizhu
Published: May 2011

Context is an essential element in mobile and ubiquitous computing. Users’ information needs can be better understood and supplied by means of context-awareness. Context data may be sensed, inferred, or directly input by users, and so forth, which calls for specific query mechanisms to acquire context information. On the other hand, traditional non-context-aware database querying techniques need to be re-examined, taking query context into account. In order to design effective context-aware database query processing mechanism, the authors survey the latest developed context-aware querying techniques in the data management field. They outline six ways to query context directly, and provide a categorization about how to use context in querying traditional databases. The approaches of handling imperfect context in context-aware database querying are also described. They discuss some potential research issues to be addressed at the end of the chapter.
Incorporating Human Factors in the Development of Context-Aware Personalized Applications
Authors: Tsianos Nikos , Germanakos Panagiotis , Lekkas Zacharias , Mourlas Constantinos
Published: May 2011

The notion of context in context-aware applications is not merely an issue of external situational circumstances or device/channel properties, but it could also refer to a wide array of user characteristics that have an effect throughout users’ interactions with a system. Human factors such as cognitive traits and current state, from a psychological point of view, are undoubtedly significant in the shaping of the perceived and objective quality of interactions with a system, and by defining context in that sense, personalization may as well become an essential function of context aware applications. The research characterthat is presented in this chapter focuses on identifying human factors that relate to users’ performance in Web applications that involve information processing, and a framework of personalization rules that are expected to increase users’ performance is depicted. The environments that empirical results were derived from were both learning and commercial; in the case of E-Learning personaliza tion was beneficial, while the interaction with a commercial site needs to be further investigated due to the implicit character of information processing in the Web.
Automated Bacterial Colony Counting for Clonogenic Assay
Authors: Chen Wei-Bang , Zhang Chengcui
Published: May 2011

Bacterial colony enumeration is an essential tool for many widely used biomedical assays. This chapter introduces a cost-effective and fully automatic bacterial colony counter which accepts digital images as its input. The proposed counter can handle variously shaped dishes/plates, recognize chromatic and achromatic images, and process both color and clear medium. In particular, the counter can detect dish/plate regions, identify colonies, separate aggregated colonies, and finally report consistent and accurate counting result. The authors hope that understanding the complicated and labor-intensive nature of colony counting will assist researchers in a better understanding of the problems posed and the need to automate this process from a software point of view, without relying too much on specific hardware.
Blending Collaborative Online Learning with Workplace and Community Contexts
Authors: Smith Peter J. , Stacey Elizabeth , Ha Tak Shing
Published: May 2011

The majority of research and literature in collaborative learning online has been focussed on groups of students organised into units of study by an educational institution. There are, however, large numbers of adult students for whom participation in institutionally controlled online collaborative learning occurs side by side with participation in situated learning contexts such as their work or their community. This chapter draws on research conducted by the authors with adult learners who participate in communities of practice and communities of learning in their own work or life contexts, and provides insights into how these outside-institution learning environments can be used in a more deliberate blending to enhance student learning experience.
Collaborating Agents for Adaptation to Mobile Users
Authors: Carrillo-Ramos Angela , Pinheiro Manuele Kirsch , Villanova-Oliver Marlène , Gensel Jérôme , Berbers Yolande
Published: May 2011

The authors of this chapter present a two-fold approach for adapting content information delivered to a group of mobile users. This approach is based on a filtering process which considers both the user’s current context and her/his preferences for this context. The authors propose an object-based context representation, which takes into account the user’s physical and collaborative contexts, including elements related to collaboration tasks and group work in which the user is involved. They define the notion of preference for an individual or a group of people that develops a collaborative task and give a typology of preferences before proposing a formalism to represent them. This representation is exploited by a context matching algorithm in order to select only user preferences which can be applied according to the context of use. This chapter also presents the framework PUMAS which adopts a Multi-Agent System approach to support our propositions.
Artificial Immune Systems as a Bio-Inspired Optimization Technique and Its Engineering Applications
Authors: Chen Jun , Mahfouf Mahdi
Published: May 2011

The primary objective of this chapter is to introduce Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) as a relatively new bio-inspired optimization technique and to show its appeal to engineering applications. The advantages and disadvantages of the new computing paradigm, compared to other bio-inspired optimization techniques, such as Genetic Algorithms and other evolution computing strategies, are highlighted. Responding to some aforementioned disadvantages, a population adaptive based immune algorithm (PAIA) and its modified version for multi-objective optimization are put forward and discussed. A multi-stage optimization procedure is also proposed in which the first stage can be regarded as a vaccination process. It is argued that PAIA and its variations are the embodiments of some new characteristics which are recognized nowadays as the key to success for any stochastic algorithms dealing with continuous optimization problems, thus breathing new blood into the existing AIS family. The proposed algorithm is compared with the previously established evolutionary based optimization algorithms on ZDT and DTLZ test suites. The promising results encourage us to further extract a general framework from the PAIA as the guild to design immune algorithms. Finally, a real-world engineering problem relating to the building of a transparent fuzzy model for alloy steel is presented to show the merits of the algorithm.
Artificial Immune System in the Management of Complex Small Scale Cogeneration Systems
Authors: Freschi Fabio , Repetto Maurizio
Published: May 2011

The increasing cost of energy and the introduction of micro-generation facilities and the changes in energy production systems require new strategies to reach their optimal exploitation. Artificial Immune System (AIS) metaphor can be used to reach this aim. In this kind of management, the energy system can be seen as a living body which must react to external stimuli (cost of fuel, energy prices, fares, etc.) fulfilling its internal requirements (user loads, technical constraints, etc.). In this chapter, a developed procedure based on AIS is described and applied to this problem. Its performance is compared with the mixed integer linear programming on the same test. The result shows that AIS based method obtained better results, in terms of computational efficiency, compared with classical energy production management procedures based on Mixed Integer Linear Programming.
A Hardware Immune System for MC8051 IP Core
Authors: Wang Xin , Luo Wenjian , Li Zhifang , Wang Xufa
Published: May 2011

A hardware immune system for the error detection of MC8051 IP core is designed in this chapter. The binary string to be detected by the hardware immune system is made from the concatenation of the PC values in two sequential machine cycles of the MC8051. When invalid PC transitions occurred in the MC8051, the alarm signal of the hardware immune system can be activated by the detector set. The hardware immune system designed in this chapter is implemented and tested on an FPGA development board, and the result is given in waveforms of the implemented circuits. The disadvantages and future works about the system are also discussed.
Ant Colony Optimization for Use in Content Based Image Retrieval
Authors: Konstantinidis Konstantinos , Sirakoulis Georgios Ch. , Andreadis Ioannis
Published: May 2011

The aim of this chapter is to provide the reader with a Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system which incorporates AI through ant colony optimization and fuzzy logic. This method utilizes a two-stage fuzzy modified ant colony algorithm employing in parallel low-level features such as color, texture and spatial information which are extracted from the images themselves. The results prove the system to be more efficient compared to popular and contemporary methods such as the histogram intersection, joint histograms and the scalable color histogram of the MPEG-7 standard. However, due to the high computational burden of the AI methods the system is quite slow when implemented in software. Thus in order to speed up the whole process the reader is also provided with the hardware implementation analysis of the whole system. The increase in speed is phenomenal.
Fuzzy Chaotic Neural Networks
Authors: Mo Tang , Kejun Wang , Jianmin Zhang , Liying Zheng
Published: May 2011

An understanding of the human brain’s local function has improved in recent years. But the cognition of human brain’s working process as a whole is still obscure. Both fuzzy logic and dynamic chaos are internal features of the human brain. Therefore, to fuse artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic and dynamic chaos together to constitute fuzzy chaotic neural networks is a novel method. This chapter is focused on the new ways of fuzzy neural networks construction and its application based on the existing achievement in this field. Four types of fuzzy chaotic neural networks are introduced, namely chaotic recurrent fuzzy neural networks, cooperation fuzzy chaotic neural networks, fuzzy number chaotic neural networks and self-evolution fuzzy chaotic neural networks. Chaotic recurrent fuzzy neural networks model is developed based on existing recurrent fuzzy neural networks through introducing chaos mapping into the membership layer. As it is a dynamic system, the input of neuron not only processes the information of former monument but also contains chaos maps information which is provided by dynamic chaos. Cooperation fuzzy chaotic neural network is proposed on the basis of simplified T-S fuzzy chaotic neural networks and Aihara chaotic neuron. It realizes fuzzy reasoning process by a neural network structure in which the rule inference part is realized by chaotic neural networks. Then enlightened by fuzzy number neural networks we propose a fuzzy number chaotic neuron, which is obtained by blurring the Aihara chaotic neuron. Using these neurons to construct fuzzy number chaotic neural networks, the mathematical model and weight updating rules are also given. At last, a self-evolution fuzzy chaotic neural network is proposed according to the principle of self-evolution network, which unifies the fuzzy Hopfield neural network constitution method.
Optimal Diffusion Encoding Strategies for Fiber Mapping in Diffusion MRI
Authors: Karampinos Dimitrios C. , Dawe Robert , Arfanakis Konstantinos , Georgiadis John G.
Published: May 2011

Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (diffusion MRI) can provide important information about tissue microstructure by probing the diffusion of water molecules in a biological tissue. Although originally proposed for the characterization of cerebral white matter connectivity and pathologies, its implementation has extended to many other areas of the human body. In a parallel development, a number of diffusion models have been proposed in order to extract the underlying tissue microstructural properties from the diffusion MRI signal. The present study reviews the basic considerations that have to be taken into account in the selection of the diffusion encoding parameters in diffusion MRI acquisition. Both diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and high-order schemes are reviewed. The selection of these parameters relies strongly on requirements of the adopted diffusion model and the diffusion characteristics of the tissue under study. The authors review several successful parameter selection strategies for the imaging of the human brain, and conclude with the basics of parameter optimization on promising applications of the technique on other tissues, such as the spinal cord, the myocardium, and the skeletal muscles.
Computer-Aided Diagnosis in Breast Imaging
Authors: Costaridou Lena , Skiadopoulos Spyros , Karahaliou Anna , Arikidis Nikolaos , Panayiotakis George
Published: May 2011

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. Mammography is currently the most effective modality in detecting breast cancer, challenged by the presence of dense breast parenchyma with relatively low specificity in distinguishing malignant from benign lesions. Breast ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) are significant adjuncts to mammography providing additional diagnostic information. Various Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CADx) schemes have been proposed across modalities, acting as clinical tools that provide a “second opinion” to assist radiologists in the diagnostic task of lesion characterization by means of quantitative image feature extraction and classification methods. The advent of multimodality imaging broadens the role of CADx, in terms of complementary tissue properties analyzed. In this chapter, major stages of CADx schemes in breast imaging are reviewed, while challenges and trends are discussed and highlighted by corresponding application examples of CADx methodologies for microcalcification clusters in mammography and masses in Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI.
Assessment of Stroke by Analysing Cartoid Plaque Morphology
Authors: Kyriacou E. , Christodoulou C.I. , Loizou C. , Pattichis M.S. , Pattichis C.S. , Kakkos S.
Published: May 2011

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the Western world and a major cause of disability in adults. The objective of this work was to investigate morphological feature extraction techniques and the use of automatic classifiers; in order to develop a computer aided system that will facilitate the automated characterization of carotid plaques for the identification of individuals with asymptomatic carotid stenosis at risk of stroke. Through this chapter we summarize the recent advances in ultrasonic plaque characterization and evaluate the efficacy of computer aided diagnosis based on neural and statistical classifiers using as input morphological features. Several classifiers like the K-Nearest Neighbour(KNN) the Probabilistic Neural Network(PNN) and the Support Vector Machine(SVM) were evaluated resulting to a diagnostic accuracy up to 73.7%.
Nonlinear Ultrasound Radiation-Force Elastography
Authors: Giannoula Alexia , Cobbold Richard S.C.
Published: May 2011

“Elastography” or “elasticity imaging” can be defined as the science and methodology of estimating the mechanical properties of a medium (including soft tissue). In this chapter, an overview of elastography and its relation to tissue pathology will be presented. The basic principles of the static and dynamic methods will be described with special emphasis on the dynamic methods that rely on the acoustic radiation force of ultrasound. Of interest are the low-frequency narrowband shear waves that can be generated by a modulated radiation force produced by the interference of two continuous-wave (CW) ultrasound beams of slightly different frequencies. The advantages of using narrowband shear waves to estimate the viscoelastic properties of tissue will be discussed. Furthermore, an implementation of the inverse-problem approach will be presented and it will be shown how harmonic maps of the local shear modulus and viscosity can be reconstructed based on both the fundamental and higher-harmonic components of the propagated narrowband shear waves.
A Simulation Primer
Authors: Becker Katrin , Parker James R.
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides an introduction to digital simulations for those interested in using or designing them for instructional purposes. There has been some disagreement in various circles about how to define simulations and digital games and this issue is addressed. The two primary categories of simulation (discrete and continuous) are also described as well as their basic structure. Reasons to use simulations and how they may be used in educational applications are outlined. After having read this chapter, readers will have a clearer picture of what simulations are and how they can be used.
Modding Neverwinter Nights Into Serious Games
Authors: Loh Christian Sebastian , Byun Jae Hwan
Published: May 2011

Game Modification, or Modding, is a unique and valuable way of learning with digital games as well as a means to earn beginners’ stripes in the game design world. Beginners who emerge successful from a modding experience, having created at least one playable game, have stepped out of the comfort zone of being gamers, and shown the courage in taking on a real-world adventure. Their rewards are altogether different from having beaten the toughest boss in a game. A team of modders share a unique bond with one another as comrades, as members of a fellowship. It is an experience found, not in the retelling of ancient epics by others, but in the making of one’s own adventure. This chapter is an account of one such undertaking that shows the potential and value of game modding for education, Readers who are contemplating the use of game modding for creating serious games should find the chapter useful.
Balancing the Public Policy Drivers in the Tension between Privacy and Security
Authors: Bagby John W.
Published: May 2011

The public expects that technologies used in electronic commerce and government will enhance security while preserving privacy. These expectations are focused through public policy influences, implemented by law, regulation, and standards emanating from states (provincial governments), federal agencies (central governments) and international law. They are influenced through market pressures set in contracts. This chapter posits that personally identifiable information (PII) is a form of property that flows along an “information supply chain” from collection, through archival and analysis and ultimately to its use in decision-making. The conceptual framework for balancing privacy and security developed here provides a foundation to develop and implement public policies that safeguard individual rights, the economy, critical infrastructures and national security. The illusive resolution of the practical antithesis between privacy and security is explored by developing some tradeoff relationships using exemplars from various fields that identify this quandary while recognizing how privacy and security sometimes harmonize.
Pandemic Influenza, Worker Absenteeism and Impacts on Critical Infrastructures
Authors: Jones Dean A. , Nozick Linda K , Turnquist Mark A. , Sawaya William J.
Published: May 2011

A pandemic influenza outbreak could cause serious disruption to operations of several critical infrastructures as a result of worker absenteeism. This chapter focuses on freight transportation services, particularly rail and port operations, as an illustration of analyzing performance of critical infrastructures under reduced labor availability. It develops models to assess the likely impacts of varying levels of worker absenteeism on the capacity of these critical systems. Using current data on performance of specific rail and port facilities, we reach some conclusions about the likelihood of severe operational disruption under varying assumptions about the absentee rate. Other infrastructures that are more dependent on information technology and less labor-intensive than transportation might respond to largescale worker absenteeism in different ways, but the general character of this analysis can be adapted for application in other infrastructures.
A Changed Economy with Unchanged Universities? A Contribution to the University of the Future
Authors: Cunha Maria Manuela , Putnik Goran D.
Published: May 2011

Individualised open and distance learning at the university continuing education and post-graduate education levels is a central issue of today. The advanced information and communication technologies together with several applications offer new perspectives, such as the so-called virtual university. Simultaneously, to gain market share, several organisational arrangements are emerging in the virtual university field, like consortia arrangements and joint venture initiatives between and among institutions and organisations. The dynamically changing social and economical environment where we live claims for new approaches to virtual and flexible university continuing and post-graduate education, such as the concept of Agile/Virtual University proposed by the authors. However, the implementation of this concept (and of other similar concepts) does not rely just on basic information and communication infrastructure, neither on dispersedly developed applications. Although absolutely necessary as support, the added value comes from the higher-level functions to support individualised learning projects. The implementation of the Agile/Virtual University concept requires a framework and a specific supporting environment, a Market of Teaching Resources, which are discussed in the article.
On Leadership, Intellectual Capital Creation and IT Governance
Authors: O’Donnell David , Guo Lin
Published: May 2011

This chapter positions a discussion of intellectual capital, governance, IT and leadership in the context of a resource-based and dynamic capabilities view of the firm. It then discusses in very pragmatic terms how leadership may be associated with IT governance and both knowledge sharing and knowledge creation from a micro-practices perspective. The chapter then presents four vignettes on the experiences of exemplary pioneering leaders to illustrate this argument. The leaders chosen are Leif Edvinsson of Scandia in Sweden, Robert Buckman of Buckman Laboratories in the United States, Hu Gang of NCD in China, and Lars Kolind of Oticon in Denmark. The chapter concludes with the pragmatic argument that leadership matters.
Personnel Performance Management in IT eSourcing Environments
Authors: Hernández-López Adrián , Colomo-Palacios Ricardo , García-Crespo Ángel , Martín Fernando Paniagua , Acosta Pedro Soto
Published: May 2011

Performance management is one of the vital areas within any organization since it permits the supervision, measurement and control of the activities of employees. In outsourcing environments, this kind of activities are even more crucial, since the distance between supplier and client increases the difficulties in carrying out the process. This circumstance requires an improved and more specific level of the management of performance of the new organizational activities brought about by the client-supplier paradigm. This paper proposes a model of improvement of performance management of the activities of clients and suppliers, governed by the eSCM (eSourcing Capability Model) through the use of the management of performance of human capital defined in the People-CMM (People Capability Maturity Model). The overall objective of the work is to develop the new model that manages, in the most efficient way possible, one of the most important assets of the organizations: human capital.
Performance Measurement in an Outsourcing Environment
Authors: Ho Luke , Atkins Anthony S.
Published: May 2011

In the UK, 88% of companies utilise some form of outsourcing of their Information Technology (IT) operations. The evidence from the literature indicates that approximately 50% of these outsourcing decisions results in complications and in some cases failure. There is a need for outsourcing management frameworks to provide strategic direction and guidance in the decision-making process. This chapter describes the application of one such framework, known as the Holistic Approach {Business, Information, Organisation} (HABIO) framework, to two major commercial organisations indicating financial assessment, monitoring information for performance and quality of service which can be incorporated into service operations and benchmarking criteria.
Information Visualization and Interface Culture
Authors: Smith Greg J.
Published: May 2011

This text seeks to contextualize the history of and discourse surrounding information visualization. It positions visualization in relation to broader 20th century visual culture and addresses the evolution of the interface as a ubiquitous tool and the aesthetics for understanding the organization of information. A timeline of precursors to the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed and a survey of recent related history and theory is conducted to deliver additional perspectives on information aesthetics. The text concludes with a brief survey of several recent visualization projects to illustrate the variety of fields being engaged and enriched by contemporary information design.
Mathematics, Computer Mathematical Systems, Creativity, Art
Authors: Rakov Sergiy , Gorokh Viktor , Osenkov Kirill
Published: May 2011

The chapter discusses the possibilities modern IT opens for Mathematics and its applications to real life, in particular to Art – by an example of automated construction of caricatures. The research approach in math education which is based on computer modeling as a methodology of a competency approach is discussed as well as the future educational environment with free access to Internet resources and possibilities to operate software in distributive mode. Many examples are given – from simple illustrations to new math facts invented with original dynamic geometry package DG and proved with the help of computer algebra system Derive.
Context-Based Intelligent Service for Healthcare Applications
Authors: Smirnov Alexander , Levashova Tatiana
Published: May 2011

The chapter presents an approach to implementation of an intelligent service for decision support in healthcare logistics taking an advantage of the knowledge logistics idea. The approach is based on synergistic integration of knowledge acquired from distributed sources in order to obtain new or complement insufficient knowledge. The approach is based on the methodology that assumes three levels of information integration. The application domain is described via an application ontology using the formalism of object-oriented constraint networks. The problem is represented by an abstract context that is obtained as a result of the slicing operation on the application ontology. Finally, filling the abstract context with up-to-date information about the current situation produces an operational context. Contexts of both types share the same knowledge representation formalism that is used by the application ontology. As a result the operational context can be considered as a constraint satisfaction problem. Solving this task produces feasible decisions in the current situation.
Improving the Quality of Healthcare Services through Information and Quality Interrelation
Authors: Kostagiolas P.A. , Kaitelidou D.
Published: May 2011

The ongoing information revolution calls for the exploitation of new information services that may set to support the traditional quality management approaches in healthcare. The developments in information and communication technologies offer new opportunities, with the need for effective information management grow ing within it. This chapter addresses the following issues: What might be an approach for quality management considering the rapid advances of information technology and the growth of the “new economy”? What might be the contribution of library and information services in the improvement of the healthcare services quality? In order to study the aforementioned questions, initially the information requirements of well known quality management approaches such as ISO 9001:2000 and EFQM are investigated and thereafter, the role of library and information services is discussed. The design of library and information services for the support of quality is an interesting and innovative area of research within healthcare services.
Practical Action and Mindfulness in Health Information Security
Authors: Collmann Jeff , Cooper Ted
Published: May 2011

Although it is sometimes tempting to treat information security as a domain of its own, this approach will inevitably yield failures of information security and failures for the organization. This occurs because serious breaches may originate from organizational conditions not obviously related to information security policies, procedures or practices and because information security practices operate in, and are affected by the context of their parent organization. For these reasons, healthcare leaders must comply with but look beyond good industry practices alone while planning, implementing, and evaluating information security programs. In this chapter, we demonstrate that a consensus exists on key good information security measures that all healthcare leaders should, and often do use in designing their information security programs. We follow this analysis with two case studies that demonstrate the limitations of focusing only on good information security practices. These case studies help explain the mutual interaction between health information security programs and their wider organizational context by introducing key concepts about organizational performance, including “practical action,” “practical resistance,” “sponsored social movement,” and “mindfulness” and examining them at the individual, group, organizational, and cross domain levels of organizational life.
Appreciative Inquiry
Authors: Reed Jan , Nilsson Agneta , Holmberg Lena
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes the ways in which appreciative inquiry research has developed outlining its links to action research. Both share an emphasis on research for change, developing knowledge through an exploration of current practice, and an application of findings in informing strategies for the future. Where appreciative inquiry is distinct, however, is in the way that it focuses on positive aspects of practice rather than problems, thus facilitating participation in projects. This chapter gives some more details of the appreciative inquiry process and then an overview of related healthcare and IT research is presented. Following this some examples of the use of appreciative inquiry in IT research are given, and the chapter points to ways in which the use of appreciative inquiry can contribute to IT development.
The E-Learning Phenomenon
Authors: Rajasingham Lalita
Published: May 2011

This chapter contributes to the ongoing discussion on current best practice and trends in e-learning and virtual classes in higher education. With the increasing importance of knowledge as competitive advantage and engine of economic growth in an increasingly interconnected, multicultural and multilingual world, modern universities based on building and transport technologies are assuming virtual dimensions to address the pressures of rising enrolments, increasing fiscal constraints and rapid technological advancements. The Internet and globalisation are changing how we bank, shop, play, and learn. Can universities adapt, or is e-learning going to be an educational fad like educational television of the 1970s? Based on international research, this chapter examines some signposts using pilot projects as a key pedagogical method in the journey from idea to execution and the factors leading to success or failure of e-learning initiatives. Will the e-learning phenomenon represent a new and sustainable university paradigm for the emerging knowledge society?
Advancing E-Learning Policy and Practice
Authors: Birch Dawn , Burnett Bruce
Published: May 2011

Tertiary education is increasingly a contested space where advances in Information Communications Technologies and their application to technology-mediated e-learning environments have forced university administrators and educators to dislocate themselves from traditional correspondence modes of student engagement. Compounding this paradigmatic shift within the traditional sphere of distance education pedagogy are multiple and conflicting pressures on academics to develop flexible, engaging, cost-effective and sustainable interactive learning resources that incorporate both multimedia and hypermedia. This chapter reports on a study that examined factors that influence educators’ decision to adopt and integrate educational technology and convert traditional print-based distance education materials into interactive multimodal e-learning formats. Although the broader study was conducted in a single Australian university and investigated pedagogical, institutional and individual factors, this chapter restricts its focus to solely the pedagogical motivations and concerns of educators. It is argued that findings from the study have significance at the institutional level, particularly in terms of developing an underlying pedagogical rationale that can permeate the e-learning culture throughout the university, while at the same time, providing a roadmap for educators who are yet to fully engage with the e-learning format.
A Business Model for the Exchange of E-Learning Courses in an International Network
Authors: Brox Christoph
Published: May 2011

In three projects funded by the European Commission (EC), European and Latin-American project partners have developed, improved, and successfully tested an e-learning business model for the exchange of e-learning courses. Typically, high-quality e-learning is expensive and many ambitious e-learning projects have been discontinued after the end of the funding period. The mission of the three EC projects was to ameliorate this problem by creating an organisational model for exchanging e-learning courses with limited resources. The design of this model rests on two pillars: firstly the re-use of existing resources and secondly the sharing of resources in an international network. Each university in the consortium develops one e-learning course, which is based on an existing course and teaching materials. This is then provided, including teaching, to the students of the partner institutions. In return, each partner university receives two or more courses on a non-fee basis. As a result, the business model was validated. After the end of the project, eduGI, the project partners have continued with the model, exchanging e-learning courses without the need for further funding and with even lower costs and higher benefits than providing the courses as regular face-to-face classes. Although this business model was developed by institutions specifically in the context of Geoinformatics, the exact field is irrelevant; teachers and decision makers of all scientific fields can apply this business model.