bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Developing a User Centered Model for Ubiquitous Healthcare System Implementation
Authors: Yu Jongtae , Guo Chengqi , Kim Mincheol
Published: May 2011

In the advent of pervasive computing technologies, the ubiquitous healthcare information system, or u-health system, has emerged as an innovative avenue for many healthcare management issues. Drawing upon practices in healthcare industry and conceptual developments in information systems research, this article aims to explain the latent relationships amongst user-oriented factors that lead to individual’s adoption of the new technology. Specifically, this study focuses on the introduction of chronic disease u-health system. Using the ordinary line square (OLS) regression analysis, we are able to discover the insights concerning which constructs affect service subscriber’s behavioral intention of use. Based on the data collected from over 440 respondents, empirical evidences are presented to support that factors such as medical conditions, perceived need, consumer behavior, and effort expectancy significantly influence the formation of usage intention.
Understanding Computerised Information Systems Usage in Community Health
Authors: Yaghmaei Farideh
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces factors that affect computer usage. Discussions of computer systems effectiveness or system success frequently focus on questions of which factors provide better system usage. As there are many factors that affect computer system usage, measuring the influence of the factors is necessary. The objective of the current study was to gain a further understanding of some factors that affect the use of computerised information systems. Most studies have been in business and few studies have been conducted in the health sector and specifically in community health. The study measured the role of external variables on computer attitude, subjective norms, and intention to use computers based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA) (1). These external factors included: demographic characteristics, users’ characteristics (computer experience), organisational support, and involvement.
An e-Healthcare Mobile Application
Authors: Panteli Niki , Pitsillides Barbara , Pitsillides Andreas , Samaras George
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a longitudinal study on the implementation of an e-health mobile application, DITIS, which supports network collaboration for home healthcare. By adopting the stakeholders’ analysis, the study explores the various groups that have directly or indirectly supported the system during its implementation. The system was originally developed with a view to address the difficulties of communication and continuity of care between the members of a home healthcare multidisciplinary team and between the team and oncologists often hundreds of kilometers away. DITIS evolved to be much more than that and even though it was introduced 5 years ago, it is considered a novel application. Despite this, its implementation has been slow, and several challenges, including the system’s sustainability, have to be faced. This chapter aims to understand these challenges and the results of the study point to a diversity of interests and different degrees of support.
Application of Unified Modelling Language (UML) to the Modelling of Health Care Systems
Authors: Vasilakis Christos , Lecnzarowicz Dorota , Lee Chooi
Published: May 2011

The unified modelling language (UML) comprises a set of tools for documenting the analysis of a system. Although UML is generally used to describe and evaluate the functioning of complex systems, the extent of its application to the health care domain is unknown. The purpose of this article is to survey the literature on the application of UML tools to the analysis and modelling of health care systems. We first introduce four of the most common UML diagrammatic tools, namely use case, activity, state, and class diagrams. We use a simplified surgical care service as an example to illustrate the concepts and notation of each diagrammatic tool. We then present the results of the literature survey on the application of UML tools in health care. The survey revealed that although UML tools have been employed in modelling different aspects of health care systems, there is little systematic evidence of the benefits.
Strategic Moves Related to Broadband Diffusion on the French VoD and TV Market
Authors: Daidj Nabyla , Vialle Pierre
Published: May 2011

The launch of triple-play services, including IPTV can be considered as a “critical event” having a strong structural impact on the market. In this paper, we analyse the evolution of the VoD supply in France, and in particular the effect of the launch of IPTV systems. Firstly, the launch of attractive triple-play offers has induced a strong development of the French broadband Internet access market, which in turn has resulted in the entry of numerous players in the VoD market. Secondly, the adoption of IPTV system has changed the competitive and strategic positioning of main players in the VoD value-chain, thus inducing or amplifying strategic moves along this value-chain. In particular, we show how the diffusion of IPTV systems has induced a switch from complementary convergence to competitive convergence
Critical Issues in Evaluating Education Technology
Authors: Adedokun-Shittu Nafisat Afolake , Shittu Abdul Jaleel Kehinde
Published: May 2011

This chapter highlights some issues that are critical in evaluating technology in education such that it will be implemented to meet educational goals and it will also serve as a spotlight for policy makers and educators to make a worthwhile return on their technology investment. Schools and institutions of learning invest heavily on technology before establishing clear plans on how it will be integrated into teaching and learning to achieve educational goals. Even though many studies have reported positive impact of technology on students’ learning yet; not much of studies have been carried out to investigate whether the investment on technology in schools have been commensurate with the investment. Particularly needs assessment on both students and teachers’ technology needs is often ignored before technology implementation. Educators and policy makers need to consider certain evaluation issues before committing huge budgets into technology. It is crucial to ask what can technology do that cannot be done without it, what percentage of the institution’s budget should be invested on technology, how should technology be integrated in the curriculum to achieve educational goals and lots more before investing on educational technology to avoid resource wastage. Thus, this chapter highlights these critical issues in the light of a study conducted on the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in Malaysian secondary school (Adedokun, 2008). The research investigated some concerns that culminated from the integration of ICT in the instruction of English, mathematics and science in Malaysia among which are: Can the teachers deliver? Do they have the strong will to deliver? Are there adequate facilities for them to carry out this new task? Do they possess the necessary skills for them to be able to deliver? Does the government provide adequate training on the integration of ICT in subject content? Are the students prepared for the change in the medium of instruction? What is the present situation in schools with regards to the use of ICT? And is better teaching and learning achieved with the integration of ICT?
M-Government
Authors: Almutairi Mubarak S.
Published: May 2011

In developing countries like the Saudi Arabia, due to high mobile phone penetration rates, any electronic government initiatives that don’t take mobile technology into account will eventually fail. While the number of landline phones and internet subscribers are growing steadily over the past few years, the number of mobile phone users and its penetration rates are skyrocketing. In the near future and with the many mobile phone features, mobile phones will remain the main media of communication and a main source for providing information to citizens and customers.
EDFA and EDFL Review
Authors: Bouzid Belloui
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, I propose a comprehensive study of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and erbium doped fiber laser (EDFL). The chapter is based on three principal levels: the first is at the atomic level, where it is evident and meaningful to give general and deep studies on erbium spectra at theoretical background angle. The important part that needs to be understood in the erbium is its energy level splitting and lasing. The second level is based on the EDFA and EDFL critical, where many research papers have been reviewed to show and clarify their strong and weak side at different views. To specify the weakness of the classical EDFA and EDFL, and to describe the future generations and its characteristics, it is very important to review the recent published papers and books. At the experimental level a full investigation is given. Vast and new designs were invented showing high-gain and low-noise-figure (NF) utilizing a new technique called double pass with filter. An efficient amplification occurs at the signal wavelength of 1550 nm when it travels along the design quadruple pass double stages with filter amplifier (QPDSF). The highest gain of 62.56 dB with a low NF of 3.98 dB was achieved for an input signal power of -50 dBm and pump powers of 10 and 165 mW in the second and first stage amplifiers respectively. This important result shows also, a large difference of 40 dB gain between the QPDSF and the single stage single pass (SPSS) EDFA configuration. This design is used to show high gain of 62.56 dB compared to SPSS which records only 20 dB. A higher power and wider spectrum of ASE is observed for the double pass compared with single pass. A comparative investigation is presented and analyzed for various configurations. At the end, a high output power EDFL configuration is reported. It incorporates a double stages linear cavity with fiber loopback and a tunable bandpass filter TBF. The configuration increases the output power by suppressing the amplified spontaneous emission and achieves a highly stable output power of more than 18 dBm at 1560 nm. A standard spectrum is attained with TBF adjustment.
A User-Friendly Application-based Design Aid Tool for Power Electronics Converters
Authors: Bouketir Omrane
Published: May 2011

Power electronics and its related subjects are well-known difficult to understand especially for students taking them for first time. This is due to nature of the subjects which involve many areas and disciplines. The introduction of general-purpose simulation package has helped the student a step further in understanding this subject. However, because of the generality of these tools and their drag-and-drop and ad-hoc features, the students still face problems in designing a converter circuit. In this section, the problem above is addressed by introducing a design aid tool that guides the student over prescribed steps to design a power electronics circuit. The tool is interfaced with Pspice and its knowledge base encompasses two types of knowledge; topologies’ knowledge and switching devices’ knowledge. The first step in the design procedure is the selection of an application of the desired circuit. Then few steps are to be followed to come out with the appropriate topology with the optimum switching devices and parameters. System structure, its different modules and the detailed design procedure are explained in the following paragraphs. At the end a design example is demonstrated and its results are displayed and discussed. It is aimed that this tool will enhance the understanding of the subject by introducing an interactive user friendly graphical interface that guides the user to the right topology. The complex design steps are hidden for the sake of saving the design time. However, an explanation module is included for the users who want to know how the results are drawn.
Using Computational Modelling to Understand Cognition in the Ventral Visual-Perirhinal Pathway
Authors: Cowell Rosemary A. , Bussey Timothy J. , Saksida Lisa M.
Published: May 2011

The authors present a series of studies in which computational models are used as a tool to examine the organization and function of the ventral visual-perirhinal stream in the brain. The prevailing theoretical view in this area of cognitive neuroscience holds that the object-processing pathway has a modular organization, in which visual perception and visual memory are carried out independently. They use computational simulations to demonstrate that the effects of brain damage on both visual discrimination and object recognition memory may not be due to an impairment in a specific function such as memory or perception, but are more likely due to compromised object representations in a hierarchical and continuous representational system. The authors argue that examining the nature of stimulus representations and their processing in cortex is a more fruitful approach than attempting to map cognition onto functional modules.
Computational Models of Learning and Beyond
Authors: Alonso Eduardo , Mondragón Esther
Published: May 2011

The authors propose in this chapter to use abstract algebra to unify different models of theories of associative learning -- as complementary to current psychological, mathematical and computational models of associative learning phenomena and data. The idea is to compare recent research in associative learning to identify the symmetries of behaviour. This approach, a common practice in Physics and Biology, would help us understand the structure of conditioning as opposed to the study of specific linguistic (either natural or formal) expressions that are inherently incomplete and often contradictory.
Video Summarization by Redundancy Removing and Content Ranking
Authors: Wang Tao , Gao Yue , Wang Patricia , Hu Wei , Li Jianguo , Du Yangzhou , Zhang Yimin
Published: May 2011

Video summary is very important for users to grasp a whole video’s content quickly for efficient browsing and editing. In this chapter, we propose a novel video summarization approach based on redundancy removing and content ranking. Firstly, by video parsing and cast indexing, the approach constructs a story board to let user know about the main scenes and the main actors in the video. Then it removes redundant frames to generate a “story-constraint summary” by key frame clustering and repetitive segment detection. To shorten the video summary length to a target length, “time-constraint summary” is constructed by important factor based content ranking. Extensive experiments are carried out on TV series, movies, and cartoons. Good results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Copyright and Digital Libraries
Authors: Geiger Christophe
Published: May 2011

Challenged by new technology, copyright is currently in turmoil. Increasingly regarded by the general public as a curb to the universal dissemination of knowledge, it seems to have no alternative but to include access to information in order to meet the challenges posed by the knowledge society.3 It might even be its ability to bring together opposing but complementary views that will guaranty its durability in the future and whether it can adapt to a new economic, technological and social environment. Copyright law has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to new developments in the past and has the necessary tools to ensure that this continues to be the case in the future, although the massive technological changes will probably require rethinking the mechanisms for its implementation. It is, therefore, necessary not to think in terms of opposing rights, but of the complementary nature of copyright and the right of access to information, so as to reconcile the two, which is both necessary and desirable. The issue of how to accommodate those two rights is of course of particular importance for libraries that wish to use the fantastic opportunities of digital technologies to both preserve and make accessible works in a easy and cost effective way to the public. Conceiving an optimal legal framework, allowing digital libraries to expand while at the same time securing a fair return to creators and editors might therefore constitutes one of the main challenges for copyright in the digital age. Accordingly, it will be necessary, first of all, to reiterate a number of basic principles of copyright law and carry out a brief historical survey. A study will then need to be carried out of how the advent of the information society has changed the existing balances. This will be followed by a brief discussion of recent developments in the legal provisions currently in force. This in turn would lead us to consider both the changes necessary to those provisions to ensure better access to information as well as certain initiatives that are either under way or planned, with the aim of striking a balance between the interests involved.
The Audiovisual Works as Digital Library Content
Authors: Tsigou Charis
Published: May 2011

The digital reproduction and transmission of audiovisual works seems to be the next stage of dissemination and commercial exploitation of protected works, following musical works. Additionally, the latest major novelty of the information society is the creation of digital libraries, for profit or not, at national and international level. The inclusion of audiovisual works in digital libraries and their resulting exploitation raise a number of legal issues. This chapter aims to review the economic rights involved in the process of digital exploitation as well as the delimitation of the safeguarding of the moral rights, which the libraries are bound to observe. Such review examines both continental and common law jurisdictions. It does not, however, address issues related to the off-line exploitation of audiovisual works or their further use by the user of the digital library services.
Toward Diversity in Researching Teaching and Technology Philosophies-in-Practice in e-Learning Communities
Authors: Parchoma Gale
Published: May 2011

e-Learning is pervasively perceived as a singular enterprise, subject to broad claims and overarching critiques. From this viewpoint, the strengths and weakness of large-scale e-learning implementations in supporting all forms of teaching and learning in higher education can be examined through best-practices lenses. This chapter contests the e-learning singularity paradigm through examining a sample of diverse e-learning communities, each of which may be associated with distinct teaching and technology philosophies-of-practice, as well as divergent research and development histories. A gestalt view of interacting and interlocking teaching and technology philosophies underpins a call for local actions aimed at achieving the democratization of e-learning environment design and fostering both difference and connectivity across e-learning communities of research and practice.
Data Mining Techniques for Communities’ Detection in Dynamic Social Networks
Authors: Robardet Céline
Published: May 2011

Social network analysis studies relationships between individuals and aims at identifying interesting substructures such as communities. This type of network structure is intuitively defined as a subset of nodes more densely linked, when compared with the rest of the network. Such dense subgraphs gather individuals sharing similar property depending on the type of relation encoded in the graph. In this chapter we tackle the problem of identifying communities in dynamic networks where relationships among entities evolve over time. Meaningful patterns in such structured data must capture the strong interactions between individuals but also their temporal relationships. We propose a pattern discovery method to identify evolving patterns defined by constraints. In this paradigm, constraints are parameterized by the user to drive the discovery process towards potentially interesting patterns, with the positive side effect of achieving a more efficient computation. In the proposed approach, dense and isolated subgraphs, defined by two user-parameterized constraints, are first computed in the dynamic network restricted at a given time stamp. Second, the temporal evolution of such patterns is captured by associating a temporal event types to each subgraph. We consider five basic temporal events: the formation, dissolution, growth, diminution and stability of subgraphs from one time stamp to the next one. We propose an algorithm that finds such subgraphs in a time series of graphs processed incrementally. The extraction is feasible thanks to efficient pruning patterns strategies. Experimental results on real-world data confirm the practical feasibility of our approach. We evaluate the added-value of the method, both in terms of the relevancy of the extracted evolving patterns and in terms of scalability, on two dynamic sensor networks and on a dynamic mobility network.
A Methodological Approach for Blended Communities
Authors: Annese Susan , Traetta Marta
Published: May 2011

The current diffusion of blended communities, characterized by the integration of online and offline interactions, has made necessary a methodological reflection about the suitable approaches to explore psychosocial dynamics in virtual and real communities. In this chapter we propose a mixed approach that ‘blends’ qualitative and quantitative methods: by combining qualitative content analysis with Social Network Analysis we investigate participation dynamics and by employing this methodological combination in an original way we create an innovative method, called Positioning Network Analysis, to examine identity dynamics. We will describe the characteristics of this methodological device, providing some examples in order to show the manifold use of these original tools.
Exploring Virtual Communities with the Internet Community Text Analyzer (ICTA)
Authors: Gruzd Anatoliy
Published: May 2011

The chapter presents a new web-based system called ICTA (http://netlytic.org) for automated analysis and visualization of online conversations in virtual communities. ICTA is designed to help researchers and other interested parties derive wisdom from large datasets. The system does this by offering a set of text mining techniques coupled with useful visualizations. The first part of the chapter describes ICTA’s infrastructure and user interface. The second part discusses two social network discovery procedures used by ICTA with a particular focus on a novel content-based method called name networks. The main advantage of this method is that it can be used to transform even unstructured Internet data into social network data. With the social network data available it is much easier to analyze, and make judgments about, social connections in a virtual community.
Making the Virtual Real
Authors: Lansiquot Reneta D.
Published: May 2011

The emerging critical global collaboration paradigm and the use of virtual learning communities can form structured domains that require complementary methods for educational research. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how the social nature of virtual worlds can be used to teach technical writing and the academic research process. A yearlong, mixed methodology, research study is used to demonstrate the effect of this blended learning pedagogical approach on writing apprehension in advanced technical writing courses. Students wrote manuals collaboratively for an audience of their peers. Second Life, the online 3D virtual world created entirely by its residents, was both their subject of study and a mode of meaningful communication.
A Computational Model of Social Capital in Virtual Communities
Authors: Daniel Ben K.
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a Bayesian Belief computational model of social capital (SC) developed within the context of virtual communities. The development of the model was based on insights drawn from more than five years of research into social capital in virtual communities. The Chapter discusses the key variables constituting social capital in virtual communities and shows how the model was updated using practical scenarios. The scenarios describe authentic cases drawn from several virtual communities. The key issues predicted by the model as well as challenges encountered in building, verifying and updating the model are discussed.
Understanding Online Communities by Using Semantic Web Technologies
Authors: Passant Alexandre , Kinsella Sheila , Bojars Uldis , Breslin John G. , Decker Stefan
Published: May 2011

During the last few years, the Web that we used to know as a read-only medium shifted to a read-write Web, often known as Web 2.0 or the Social Web, in which people interact, share and build content collaboratively within online communities. In order to clearly understand how these online communities are formed, evolve, share and produce content, a first requirement is to gather related data. In this chapter, we give an overview of how Semantic Web technologies can be used to provide a unified layer of representation for Social Web data in an open and machine-readable manner thanks to common models and shared semantics, facilitating data gathering and analysis. Through a comprehensive state of the art review, we describe the various models that can be applied to online communities and give an overview of some of the new possibilities offered by such a layer in terms of data querying and community analysis.
Participant-Observation as a Method for Analyzing Avatar Design in User-Generated Virtual Worlds
Authors: Turner Jeremy O. , McCracken Janet , Bizzocchi Jim
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores the epistemological, and ethical boundaries of the application of a participant-observer methodology for analyzing avatar design in user-generated virtual worlds. We describe why Second Life was selected as the preferred platform for studying the fundamental design properties of avatars in a situated manner. We will situate the specific case study within the broader context of ethnographic qualitative research methodologies, particularly focusing on what it means to live – and role-play - within the context that one is studying, or to facilitate prolonged engagement in order to have the research results accepted as trustworthy or credible (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). This chapter describes a case study where researchers can extract methods and techniques for studying “in-world” workshops and focus groups. Our speculations and research questions drawn from a close analysis of this case study will illuminate the possible limitations of applying similar hybrid iterations of participation-observation tactics and translations of disciplinary frameworks into the study of user-generated content for future virtual world communities. Finally, we will review the broader epistemological and ethical issues related to the role of the participant-observation researcher in the study of virtual worlds.
Proposed Techniques for Data Collection and Analysis in the Study of News-Oriented Virtual Communities
Authors: Gibbs William J. , McKendrick Joseph E.
Published: May 2011

News providers today offer interactive sources that engage people, enable them to build community, and to participate in the news. At the same time, the digital interfaces through which people access the news are continuingly evolving, diverse, and oftentimes visually complex. How these factors shape human information seeking in news-oriented virtual communities is a relatively new area of study and therefore greater understanding of their influence on human behavior is of much practical value. In this chapter, the authors explore trends and developments in news-oriented virtual communities. They review several data collection and analysis techniques such as content analysis, usability testing and eye-tracking and propose that these techniques and associated tools can aid the study of news communities. They examine the implications these techniques have for better understanding human behavior in virtual communities as well as for improving the design of these environments.
Measuring the World City Network
Authors: Taylor Peter
Published: May 2011

Measuring the world city network is achieved by careful specification of a network model plus customised data collection to operationalize the model. The resulting interlocking network is described as advanced producer service firms in the role of city network-makers through their routine work across multiple offices. The basic measurement derived is the network connectivity of a city; this describes how well that city is integrated into the world city network. Selected results from the latest data collection (2008 – 175 firms, 526 cities) are presented with leading (‘alpha’) cities divided into connectivity strata. It is shown that compared to previous analyses in 2000 and 2004, the upper echelons of the world city network are becoming more and more integrated.
Policy-Oriented City Networks in Cyberspace
Authors: Frey Klaus , Procopiuck Mário , Rosa Altair
Published: May 2011

Whereas the academic debate on global networks used to be dominated by a focus on economic and financial flows, partially on strategies of technological or infrastructural integration, much less attention used to be dedicated to local/global articulations emerging around a wide variety of sociopolitical issues such as the fight against poverty, the strengthening of human rights or protection of the environment. In this chapter the authors endeavor to point out the limitations of traditional approaches in capturing the complexity and diversity of the emerging city networks and use the methodology of web sphere analysis to map and analyze new articulations of sociopolitical governance between different cities in the context of environmental policy as it is carried out in Curitiba, Brazil. The study is based on the mapping of Internet hyperlink connections and shows how a virtual transnational public space with the potential to support environmental governance processes in cities is emerging.
Why Where You Are Matters
Authors: Lyon David
Published: May 2011

The traceability of bodies and goods has become a central feature of surveillance systems in the twenty-first century. This heightened visibility is made possible by numerous technical means but among the most important is the global expansion of mobile telephony. By this means, for example, employers may trace the location of employees, parents of children, marketers of consumers and police of suspects. How this happens involuntarily, how it builds on the ‘mundane mobilities’ of voluntarily acknowledging the location of the caller, what its consequences are for the increased transparency of, and digital discrimination among, mobile telephone users, is discussed in the context of broad theories of surveillance today. These technologies are in constant development, that simultaneously renders them more effective as surveillance devices and they are thus of more than mere academic interest.
Casting the Ubiquitous Net of Information Control
Authors: Tai Zixue
Published: May 2011

Alongside the quick rise of the Internet as a pivotal economic and cultural force in Chinese society, the Chinese government has implemented a two-tiered strategy in coming to grips with the great potentials and underlying risks associated with the network era. This chapter offers a critical, in-depth overview of China’s state-orchestrated Internet surveillance apparatus from the Great Firewall to the latest Green Dam project. It first examines the conceptual and historical evolution of the Golden Shield program, followed by an analysis of the legal framework through which official regulation is justified or rationalized. Next, the chapter looks at the prevalent practice of industry self-regulation among both Chinese and foreign companies engaged in online business in China, and it ends with the discussion of the aborted official effort of extending content control to individual computers with the Green Dam Youth Escort project.
Mobile and Locative Media
Authors: Santaella Lucia
Published: May 2011

Mobile and locative media are, inescapably, surveillance media. Surveillance is a feature which has not been decreasing by the use of these media, but instead it has been increasing with ever growing levels of subtlety. These media are introducing a new regime of surveillance, one which I have been calling tracking surveillance, a regime that is distinct from panoptic and scopic surveillance. Tracking surveillance’s omnipresence should not mislead us to assume that these other two modes of surveillance have disappeared. Much on the contrary, these three regimes operate simultaneously, since the appearance of a new mode of surveillance does not lead to the demise of another. Due to the capillarity which characterizes surveillance in this era of connectedness and mobility, surveillance as an issue stands as a privileged standpoint for examining the ambivalent character, in between Thanatos and Eros, with which mobile and locative media have been operating in societies nowadays.
Urban Surveillance in Mexico
Authors: Botello Nelson
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, the symbolic cultural dimension of technology and surveillance technologies in two cities and two commercial centers in central Mexico will be explored, especially the various Closed Circuit Television Systems (CCTV). This will allow the analysis of the way in which these technologies have made viable specific ways of sorting and governance of public and private spaces in the country. This document then examines the relationship established between the symbolic meanings given to these surveillance technologies in said urban spaces. Included is a series of observations and interviews of those in charge of these systems.
A New Mechanical Algorithm for Calculating the Amplitude Equation of the Reaction-Diffusion Systems
Authors: Liu Houye , Wang Weiming
Published: May 2011

Amplitude equation may be used to study pattern formatio. In this chapter, we establish a new mechanical algorithm AE_Hopf for calculating the amplitude equation near Hopf bifurcation based on the method of normal form approach in Maple. The normal form approach needs a large number of variables and intricate calculations. As a result, deriving the amplitude equation from diffusion-reaction is a difficult task. Making use of our mechanical algorithm, we derived the amplitude equations from several biology and physics models. The results indicate that the algorithm is easy to apply and effective. This algorithm may be useful for learning the dynamics of pattern formation of reaction-diffusion systems in future studies.
The Mathematical Modeling and Computational Simulation for Error-Prone PCR
Authors: Luo Lixin , Zhu Fang , Deng Si
Published: May 2011

Many enzymes have been widely used in industrial production, for they have higher catalytic efficiency and catalytic specificity than the traditional catalysts. Therefore, the performance of enzymes has attracted wide attention. However, due to various factors, enzymes often cannot show their greatest catalytic efficiency and the strongest catalytic ability in industrial production. In order to improve the enzyme activity and specificity, people become increasingly interested in the transformation and modification of existing enzymes. For the structure modification of proteinase, this chapter introduces a computational method for modelling error-prone PCR. Error-prone PCR is a DNA replication process that intentionally introduces copying errors by imposing mutagenic reaction condition. We then conclude about the mathematical principle of error-prone PCR which may be applied to the quantitative analysis of directed evolution in future studies.
Synthetic Worlds, Synthetic Strategies
Authors: Ayiter Elif
Published: May 2011

This text will attempt to delineate the underlying theoretical premises and the definition of the output of an immersive learning approach pertaining to the visual arts to be implemented in online, three dimensional synthetic worlds. Deviating from the prevalent practice of the replication of physical art studio teaching strategies within a virtual environment, the author proposes instead to apply the fundamental tenets of Roy Ascott’s “Groundcourse”, in combination with recent educational approaches such as “Transformative Learning” and “Constructionism”. In an amalgamation of these educational approaches with findings drawn from the fields of Metanomics, Ludology, Cyberpsychology and Presence Studies, as well as an examination of creative practices manifest in the metaverse today, the formulation of a learning strategy for creative enablement unique to online, three dimensional synthetic worlds; one which will focus upon “Play” as well as Role Play, virtual Assemblage and the visual identity of the avatar within the pursuits, is being proposed in this chapter.
Social and Citizenship Competencies in a Multiuser Virtual Game
Authors: Mejía Germán Mauricio , Londoño Felipe César , Escandón Paula Andrea
Published: May 2011

Colombia is a country that is growing in technological and economical areas, but cultural diversity, armed conflict, and everyday violence are forces that lessen the progress. The Ministry of Education proposed in 2004 standards for citizenship competencies that intend to teach children and youths abilities to live peacefully and respect the others. These standards have encouraged multiple initiatives and innovation to achieve goal in social and citizenship competencies. A research group of Universidad de Caldas created and evaluated a serious virtual game to support this policy. The game is a multiuser virtual game called Civia that shows a metaphor of collective challenge. Peaceful interaction, participation and respect are values required for survival in the game. Players can take individual decisions that affect positively or negatively the collective status, but an overall positive balance is needed to maintain collective resources. It was expected that collective auto regulation led to the learning of patterns and competencies to live peacefully together. Currently, there is no consensus in the research community about what and how video games can take learning outcomes and behavioral effects. An evaluation of the game shows positive results; however, some concerns about the complexity of everyday life about social interaction and learning transferability arise. The authors discuss findings according to proposed theories and models about effects of video games in education and behavior.
Adapting Rewards to Encourage Creativity
Authors: Grove F. , Jorgenson N. , Brummel B. , Sen S. , Gamble R.
Published: May 2011

Creativity drives innovation and improves the quality of products, problem solving skills, information technology solutions and entrepreneurship. Curriculum standards for CS education typically lack the emphasis and coverage to promote or encourage creative approaches to Software Engineering, focusing on technological solutions rather than innovative design. As a result, creativity is not directly rewarded. This chapter discusses the development of a multi-agent system to apportion rewards for creative contributions to collaborative and group problem solving among students in a software projects course. Encouraging creativity in a classroom team environment, especially for software development, needs a collaboration framework that combines idea management with a motivating reward system. Their multi-agent reward system works directly with the idea capture and visualization portion of SEREBRO, a Web application that combines social networking with software product development tools to foster creativity. The authors discuss the multi-agent reward system and an initial evaluation of its use in a computer science course.
Agents with a Theory of Mind in Virtual Training
Authors: Harbers Maaike , van den Bosch Karel , Meyer John-Jules Ch.
Published: May 2011

Virtual training provides an effective means to train complex, dynamic tasks like social interaction, negotiation and crisis management. The virtual characters with whom the trainee interacts are often played by autonomous, intelligent agents. For effective training, it is required that the agents behave in a believable way. In order to display believable social behavior, the agents must be able to take others’ perspectives into account. This can be achieved by equipping them with a theory of mind, that is, the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs and desires to others. In this chapter the authors describe an executable model for agents with a theory of mind, based on the BDI (belief desire intention) approach. The aim of the model is to develop agents that display believable social behavior and provide explanations about their behavior.
Scenario Authoring by Domain Trainers
Authors: Richards Debbie , Taylor Meredith
Published: May 2011

Authoring is a bottleneck in the widespread uptake of technology for training and education as the time and skill needed for domain experts such as trainers and teachers to develop learning modules is prohibitive. In this project the authors are particularly concerned with providing experiential knowledge transfer, where the trainer is able to create scenarios similar to those they have experienced and allow their trainees to consider appropriate responses to such situations. For this the authors need an environment which is immersive for both parties, in which knowledge is acquired, transferred and gained in the context of the scenario. The scenario itself becomes part of the knowledge to be experienced. To this end they have created a simple approach involving synthetic agents within a Virtual Environment who can be changed along with their dialog and behaviour to create and modify scenarios as deemed appropriate by the domain expert in order to improve the learning experiences of the trainee.
Multi-Agent Reconfigurable Embedded Systems
Authors: Khalgui Mohamed
Published: May 2011

The chapter deals with reconfigurable embedded control systems following component-based technologies and/or Architecture Description Languages used today in industry. The author defines Control Components as software units to support control tasks of the system which is assumed to be a network of components with precedence constraints. The author defines an agent-based architecture to handle automatic reconfigurations under well-defined conditions by creating, deleting or updating components to bring the whole system into safe and optimal behaviors. To cover all reconfiguration forms, the agent is modelled by nested state machines such that states correspond to other state machines. Several complex networks can implement the system where each one is executed at a given time when a corresponding reconfiguration scenario is automatically applied by the agent. To check the correctness of each one of them, we apply in several steps a refinement-based approach that automatically specifies feasible Control Components according to NCES. The model checker SESA is automatically applied in each step to verify deadlock properties of new generated components, and it is manually used to verify CTL-based properties according to user requirements. We implement the reconfiguration agent by three modules that allow interpretations of environment evolutions, decisions of useful reconfiguration scenarios and finally their applications. Two Industrial Benchmark Production Systems FESTO and EnAS available in the author’s research laboratory are applied to explain the paper contribution.
Cognitive Tools for Group Decision Making
Authors: Castellani Marco
Published: May 2011

This chapter combines the use of cognitive mapping and the repertory grid technique in a socio-organizational perspective and in a problem-solving oriented approach, so as to avoid some recurrent trappings of decision making such as biased goal-oriented behaviour and misleading perceptions of the task environment. The approach requires that a group of people facing a forthcoming choice are randomly split up into three sub-groups of nearly the same number. Subjects in the first sub-group are interviewed about their representation of the problem setting and on potential strategies. In this preliminary step the interviewer, after building up the resulting individual cognitive maps, extracts and codes the main recurrent concepts (“states of the world”). These concepts are used for an evaluation of the task environment by the second sub-group, whose subjects use the repertory grid technique. Individuals are shown how to express their viewpoint in terms of “constructs”, which are theoretical abstractions for exploring concepts or real events. The repertory grids elicited provide the building blocks for the final phase of the approach, assigned to the third sub-group. This group is required to generate feasible alternatives for targets derived from grid evidence by exploiting the “province of meaning” through a very simple diagrammatic scheme. The entire approach, which represents a narrow method where each step is linked to the following one, is discussed by making references to the results of a pilot experiment.
Spatial Ontologies in Multi-Agent Environmental Planning
Authors: Borri Dino , Camarda Domenico
Published: May 2011

Landscapes and townscapes have been studied by many disciplinary areas over time. This study addresses the cognitive and perceptual dimensions of environmental spacescapes in planning by human agents. In fact, because of their dynamic complexity, environmental spacescapes create challengesfor the typical spatial behaviour of an agent perceiving and navigating in it. Therefore, environmental planning activities need to identify and manage the ‘fundamentals’ of spacescapes from the viewpoints of living single agents or multi-agent organizations, those to whom the planning effort is addressed. In this framework, the chapter deals with spatial ontologies in multi-agent systems. Some recent experiments are described and discussed here, highlighting spatial features of navigated environments from an environmental planning perspective.
Supporting Communities of Practice by Advancing Knowledge Management
Authors: De Liddo Anna , Concilio Grazia
Published: May 2011

In this chapter the authors investigate a tool integration perspective to support knowledge management and exchange between Web-based and traditional collaborative environments. In particular they discuss the integration between a tool (CoPe_it!) supporting collaborative argumentation and learning in Web-based communities of practices and a hypermedia and sense making tool (Compendium) acting as a personal and collective knowledge management (KM) system in traditional collaborative environments. The authors describe the tools and drive a comparative analysis of the two groupware by focusing on the general applicability of the tools integration for supporting communities of practices and, more generally, collaborative works. Moreover the authors present the results of a case study in which the tools integration has been applied within a real community of practice. Finally they discuss main results of the tools integration in order to leverage communities of practice to a truly collaborative environment with no communication boundaries.