bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Opportunities and Obstacles to Narrow the Digital Divide
Authors: Echeverri Margarita , Abels Eileen G.
Published: May 2011

Access to scientific information is considered a competitive advantage to foster knowledge, research, and development; improve quality of education; and advance professional practices. Although, the Web was conceived to encourage information sharing, restrictions to some publications reduce access to knowledge, especially to those in developing countries. This chapter presents a conceptual framework of the knowledge transfer cycle, and examines key factors affecting the dissemination of scientific information. Current challenges facing the open-access initiative of making scientific information free and available worldwide are also discussed. This chapter examines key factors affecting the dissemination of scientific information and current challenges posed by the open-access initiative of making scientific information free and available worldwide.
Information Technology in Times of Crisis
Authors: Shankar Kalpana , Wild David J. , An Jaesoon , Shoulders Sam , Narayanan Sheetal
Published: May 2011

Crisis and disaster management requires the sharing of complex information among numerous entities and individuals. Traditional knowledge management techniques are being used in government agencies responsible for disaster management, but many new technologies and practices, particularly the Internet and Web 2.0, are creating opportunities for individuals, responders, and trainers to share what they know and to acquire needed information, and prepare for the next crisis. However, the use of networked technologies, like the Internet, is still in its infancy, and the use of them diffuse, with very little cohesion among researchers and practitioners in disaster management. We argue that although the Internet is already in extensive use in disaster management, knowledge management will only be effected if top-down and bottoms-up approaches to information gathering, organization, and dissemination are implemented. The aim of this chapter is to provide an introduction to some of the many technologies, practices, and open problems for knowledge sharing in disaster situations, outline some persistent challenges, and suggest venues for exploration and practice.
Product Complexity as a Determinant of Transaction Governance Structure
Authors: Zhang Aimao , Reichgelt Han
Published: May 2011

A transaction governance structures (TGS) is a structure that mediates exchanges of goods or services between different agents or production stages (Williamson, 1979, 1981). According to transaction cost economics (TCE), a selection of TGS for the trade of a particular product depends on the characteristics of the transaction, such as asset specificity, uncertainty, and frequency. This article argues that TCE alone is not sufficient to explain the selection of a TGS. Product complexity also plays an important role in explaining why a particular TGS is selected for a particular product. The construct of product complexity originated in the field of industrial marketing and is an important factor in the study of purchasing behaviors of buyers, decision-making processes of suppliers, and dynamic relations between buyers and suppliers. This study integrates industrial marketing with TCE and examines the impact of product complexity on TGS in the context of banking.
Hacker Wars
Authors: Baskerville Richard
Published: May 2011

This chapter develops an analytical framework for new forms of information warfare that may threaten commercial and government computing systems by using e-collaboration in new ways. The framework covers (a) a strategic model, (b) a strategic arena, (c) e-collaboration, and (d) ethics and law. The framework is then used to compare two recorded instances of major hacker wars that erupted in the shadow of kinetic conflicts. In both cases, the hacker war appears to have been a grassroots collaborative enterprise led by loosely organized civilians, with neither government control nor permission. Collaborating across networks to coordinate their attacks, such hacker wars can attack both government and commercial computer networks without warning. The analysis shows how hacker wars demonstrate characteristics found in the frameworks, and that there are forms of e-collaboration that represent a potentially difficult new source of threat for globalized information systems.
Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, and Financial Institutions Worldwide
Authors: Reich Pauline C.
Published: May 2011

While the benefits of the Internet and other forms of computer networks are streamlining financial institutions, the same institutions are often among the first institutions to be affected by Cybercrime and Cybersecurity issues due to the financial incentives as well as their strategic place in each nation’s infrastructure and economy. We must look not only at the efficiency, but also at the negative aspects of the use of technology by financial institutions. Consumers as well as business must be well informed about conducting transactions in the safest manner possible. The nature of the Internet is cross-border, and thus Cybercrime and Internet Security issues involving financial institutions should be made known by international organizations, regional organizations and when there have been cross-border law enforcement collaborations in investigations, extraditions, etc. At present, due to the fact that law is generally written at the national (or even state level, as is the case of Identity Theft law in the US), there is a need for reporting of cross-border cases in the literature if such data can be obtained from law enforcement officials by scholars.
Cyber Contract and Indian Law
Authors: Mishra Jibitesh , Tripathy Biswajit
Published: May 2011

The usage of cyber contracts has increased exponentially in the recent times. However, the framework for this has not been clearly defined. The jurisdiction is also a major issue. In this chapter, we have revisited the electronic contacts of various types, the cyber contract in the Indian content and made an effort to find out a uniform framework for this.
The Formation of Online Trust
Authors: Bhattacherjee Anol
Published: May 2011

This study outlines three trust-building processes (relational, calculative, and institutional) that shape individual trust in online firms and describes how these processes change over time as users gain experience with the online firms. It hypothesizes three alternative belief structures resulting from the above processes as determinants of trust, theorizes the temporal nature of their effects on trust as users observe and learn from the firm’s actual behavior, and then empirically tests the hypothesized associations using data collected from a field survey of online banking users. The results indicate that relational, calculative, and institutional beliefs are indeed significant drivers of trust. However, calculative and institutional beliefs have stronger initial effects than relational beliefs for new consumers of online firms. The effect of calculative belief on trust decreases with time, while that of relational beliefs increases and that of institutional beliefs remains relatively unchanged. Research and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Introduction to Ubiquitous Computing
Authors: Mühlhäuser Max , Gurevych Iryna
Published: May 2011

The present chapter is intended as a lightweight introduction to ubiquitous computing as a whole, in preparation for the more specific book parts and chapters that cover selected aspects. This chapter thus assumes the preface of this book to be prior knowledge. In the following, a brief history of ubiquitous computing (UC) is given first, concentrating on selected facts considered as necessary background for understanding the rest of the book. Some terms and a few important standards are subsequently mentioned that are considered necessary for understanding related literature. For traditional standards like those widespread in the computer networks world, at least superficial knowledge must be assumed since their coverage is impractical for a field with such diverse roots as UC. In the last part of this chapter, we will discuss two kinds of reference architectures, explain why they are important for the furthering of Ubiquitous Computing and for the reader’s understanding, and briefly sketch a few of these architectures by way of example.
Service Discovery
Authors: Austaller Gerhard
Published: May 2011

The chapter “Ubiquitous Services and Business Processes” discussed the benefits for real time enterprises of service oriented architectures (SOA) in terms of reusability and flexibility. Web services are one incarnation of SOA. This chapter gives a brief introduction to SOA. It discusses the attributes that define SOA, the roles of the participants in a service oriented environment. The essence of SOA is that clients use services offered by a service provider to get a task done. For the moment we simplify service to “a software component with network connection”. Services are offered with a description at wellknown “places” (also called registries, repositories), where clients choose services according to their needs. The chapter discusses several approaches to describe services and to look for them. Moreover, some well-known systems, and also current research, are discussed.
Mobile Speech Recognition
Authors: Schnelle Dirk
Published: May 2011

This chapter gives an overview of the main architectures for enabling speech recognition on embedded devices. Starting with a short overview of speech recognition, an overview of the main challenges for the use on embedded devices is given. Each of the architectures has its own characteristic problems and features. This chapter gives a solid basis for the selection of an architecture that is most appropriate for the current business case in enterprise applications.
Ambient Learning
Authors: Lyardet Fernando
Published: May 2011

The vision where living and working spaces adapt to people is becoming a reality thanks to the increased embedding of computing power into everyday objects. Ambient learning focuses on the way people adopt technology in their everyday life and how technology adapts to the environment. Ambient learning is a new area in ubiquitous computing (UC) about the different learning processes that occur between people and smart technology environments. This chapter is organized as follows. First, we provide a definition of what ambient learning is, and its relevance to ubiquitous computing. Next, we present the learning concepts behind ambient learning and a detailed example of training a user. Then we examine in detail the technological building blocks behind the smart products supporting their ability to learn from each other and assemble or “compose” their functionality.
Information Assurance
Authors: Mogollon Manuel
Published: May 2011

The TCP/IP protocol is becoming the world standard for network and computer communications. The number of TCP/IP applications on the Internet and in corporate networks is continually growing, with a resulting increase in network vulnerability. When data communications security is discussed in this text, it refers to communications security for the TCP/IP protocol and to the security mechanisms implemented at the different layers of the TCP/IP stack protocol. This chapter also describes, in a general way, which security mechanisms are used for specific security services.
Certificates and Public Key Infrastructure
Authors: Mogollon Manuel
Published: May 2011

In public-key encryption, the secrecy of the public key is not required, but the authenticity of the public key is necessary to guarantee its integrity and to avoid spoofing and playback attacks. A user’s public key can be authenticated (signed) by a certificate authority that verifies that a public key belongs to a specific user. In this chapter, digital certificates, which are used to validate public keys, and certificate authorities are discussed. When public-key is used, it is necessary to have a comprehensive system that provides public key encryption and digital signature services to ensure confidentiality, access control, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. That system, public-key infrastructure or PKI, is also discussed in this chapter.
Wireless Security
Authors: Mogollon Manuel
Published: May 2011

The nature of wireless is that of a physically open medium which makes authentication, access control, and confidentiality necessary in the implementation of a wireless LAN. There are three primary categories of networks: wireless local area network (WLAN), wireless metropolitan-area network (WMAN), and wireless personal area network (WPAN). The security for each of these types of wireless networks is discussed in this chapter.
Creative Class Theory and Economic Performance in UK Cities
Authors: Nathan Max
Published: May 2011

Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory suggests that diverse, tolerant, ‘cool’ cities will outperform others. Ethnic minorities, gay people, and counter-culturalists attract high-skilled professionals: the presence of this ‘creative class’ ensures cities get the best jobs and most dynamic companies. This chapter examines Florida’s ideas, focusing on the evidence in British cities. Drawing on previously published work, it first tests the Florida model on a set of British cities, finding weak support for the creative class hypothesis. It then examines this hypothesis in detail. It finds little evidence of a creative class, and little evidence that ‘creative’ cities do better. The chapter concludes that the creative class model is a poor predictor of UK city performance. There is other, stronger evidence that diversity, creativity, talent, and ‘quality of place’ are linked to urban economic growth. Further research is required before either can be fully integrated into policy.
E-Government in the Knowledge Society
Authors: Baum Scott , Yigitcanlar Tan , Mahizhnan Arun , Andiappan Narayanan
Published: May 2011

A key component of the knowledge society and the urban form that accompanies it is the increasing importance of information and communication technologies in daily life. It is clear that in cites around the world, the use of information and communication technologies has increasingly become part of everyday life including in the business of government. This chapter considers the role of e-governance in Singapore and in particular the potential for the Singapore e-government model to mature fully. The establishment of e-government has been an important policy goal within contemporary Singapore government. Recognizing the gains to be made by harnessing information and communication technologies to strengthen and streamline the business of governance, Singapore has successfully developed its e-government sector across three strategic plans focusing on developing a world-class e-government experience that will delight customers and connect citizens. This chapter reviews the development of e-government in Singapore, focusing on the outcomes of e-government strategic plans, and discussing issues and outcomes associated with developing a fully mature e-government position.
The Analytic Hierarchy Process
Authors: Wang John , Chakraborty Chandana , Ouyang Huanyu
Published: May 2011

The challenges of evaluation and decision making are encountered in every sphere of life and on a regular basis. The nature of the required decisions, however, may vary between themselves. While some decisions may reflect individual solutions on simple problems, others may indicate collaborative solutions on complex issues. Regardless of their distinctive nature, all decisions are outcomes of a mental process. The process involves careful evaluation of merits of all the available options leading ultimately to the choice of a single solution. Numerous efforts have been made in the literature to develop decision models ideal for choosing the best solution for a given problem. The dilemma in using these decision models, however, can hardly be avoided. With differences in underlying methodology, each model serves a specific decision-making need of the decision maker. In the absence of a universal framework suitable for handling a variety of problems, decision makers are often required to identify the model best suited for their particular need. Furthermore, they need to take account of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the chosen model.
An Attention-Based View on DSS
Authors: Carlsson Sven A.
Published: May 2011

Commentators on decision support and decision support systems (DSS) have called for serious discussion of the discourses underpinning decision support and DSS (Huber, 1981; Stabell, 1987; Humphreys, 1998). Huber and Humphreys say that decision support and DSS discourses are critical to the advancement of the academic DSS field as well as to DSS practice, but the discourses are too seldom discussed. This article questions the influential “decision-making as choice” view. We suggest that the attention-based view of the firm (Ocasio, 1997) is a promising alternative view of organizational decision-making and that this view can be a basis for DSS design. More than 50 years ago Herbert Simon suggested that to explain organizational behavior is to explain how organizations distribute and regulate the attention of their decision-makers (Simon, 1947). Simon was emphasizing the duality of structural processes and cognitive processes in structuring of organizational attention. More recent writings have either emphasized cognition and activity or structure. The attention-based view of the firm explicitly links structure, activity, and cognition and the view stresses that organizational decision- making is affected by both the limited attentional capacity of humans and the structural influences on a decision-maker’s attention.
Challenges for Decision Support in Urban Disaster Scenarios
Authors: Ochoa Sergio F. , Pino José A.
Published: May 2011

An urgent challenge confronting society today is the vulnerability of urban areas to “eXtreme” Events (XEs) (Mileti, 1999; CWR, 2002; Godschalk, 2003). These hazardous situations include natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, as well as accidental and intentional disasters such as fires and terrorist attacks. At the global level, a total of 608 million people were affected by these disasters in 2002, out of which 24,500 died (IFRC, 2003). The economic damages to property and the environment were estimated at $27 billion dollars (IFRC, 2003). From January to October 2005, the number of people killed in disasters globally was estimated at 97,490 and the economical losses were approximately U.S. $159 billion (WHO, 2006). These significant human and economic costs emphasize the urgent need to reduce the vulnerability of urban areas to XEs (Mileti, 1999; CWR, 2002; Godschalk, 2003), improve the impact of relief team actions in these situations (NRC, 1999; NSTC, 2003), and the decision making process (Stewart, 2002; Mendonca, 2007).
Cooperative Decision Support Systems
Authors: Zaraté Pascale
Published: May 2011

The subject of our research aims to support in the most suitable way the collaborative decision-making process. Several scientific approaches deal with collaborative decision-making: decision analysis (Carlsson & Turban, 2002; Doyle & Thomason, 1999; Keeney & Raiffa, 1976) developing different analytical tools for optimal decision-making; in management sciences the observation of decision-making styles activity (Nuut, 2005; Fong, Wyer, & Robert 2003); decision-making as a group work (Esser, 1998; Matta & Corby, 1997); studies concerning different types of decisions focalised on number of actors: individual (Keeney & Raiffa, 1976), group (Shim, Warkentin, Courtney, Power, Sharda, & Carlsson, 2002), cooperative (Zaraté, 2005), and collaborative (Karacapilidis & Papadias, 2001). For the collaborative decision-making field, the situation is clear. In most of research studies, the concept of collaborative decision-making is used as a synonym for cooperative decision-making. Hence, the collaborative decision-making process is considered to be distributed and asynchronous (Chim, Anumba, & Carillo, 2004; Cil, Alpturk, & Yazgan, 2005). However, we can stand out several works, having different research approaches, considering collaborative decision-making process as multi-actor decision-making process, where actors have different goals. Considering (Panzarasa, Jennings, & Norman, 2002) the collaborative decision-making process is seen as “a group of logically decentralised agents that cooperate to achieve objectives that are typically beyond the capacities of an individual agent. In short, the collaborative decision-making has generally been viewed and modelled as a kind of distributed reasoning and search, whereby a collection of agents collaboratively go throughout the search space of the problem in order to find a solution.” The main interrogation of this article is to study the best way to support collaborative decision-making process.
Evaluation of Decision-Making Support Systems
Authors: Phillips-Wren Gloria E. , Mora Manuel , Forgionne Guisseppi
Published: May 2011

Decision support systems (DSSs) have been researched extensively over the years with the purpose of aiding the decision maker (DM) in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing environment (Sprague & Watson, 1996; Turban & Aronson, 1998). Newer intelligent systems, enabled by the advent of the Internet combined with artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques, have extended the reach of DSSs to assist with decisions in real time with multiple informaftion flows and dynamic data across geographical boundaries. All of these systems can be grouped under the broad classification of decision-making support systems (DMSS) and aim to improve human decision making. A DMSS in combination with the human DM can produce better decisions by, for example (Holsapple & Whinston, 1996), supplementing the DM’s abilities; aiding one or more of Simon’s (1997) phases of intelligence, design, and choice in decision making; facilitating problem solving; assisting with unstructured or semistructured problems (Keen & Scott Morton, 1978); providing expert guidance; and managing knowledge. Yet, the specific contribution of a DMSS toward improving decisions remains difficult to quantify.
The Impact on Decision Making of Centralisation in a Multinational Manufacturing Company
Authors: Carton Fergal
Published: May 2011

Multinational companies faced with an uncertain world are notorious for centralising control of their far flung empires to the extent that local decision making becomes a matter of managers merely executing orders rather than showing creativity or initiative in solving issues. Control can be best exerted by standardising processes and centralising responsibility for decision making. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are a perfect vehicle for such centralising forces, imposing a common way of doing business across the organisation, and simultaneously providing a head office with centralised control of those practices. On the other hand, these highly integrated systems exacerbate rather than resolve the managers’ information deficit problems. Though providing a high level of granularity of transactional data, they fail to assist managers in controlling business performance to predefined targets. Taking the material purchasing department of a manufacturing multinational as an example, this article studies the impact of ERP-enabled centralisation on day to day decision making of managers both at a local plant and at corporate head office (HQ). Although huge improvements in data integrity at an operational level (inventory, procurement, standardisation of codes, prices, and so forth) have made local cost control much more robust, local managers have sacrificed the ability to investigate these costs. As prices are set centrally by commodity teams, local managers have been disempowered with respect to leveraging purchase price variance (PPV) and quality in their relationships with suppliers. Furthermore, they are asked to implement radical cost saving programmes without disturbing the availability of raw materials for production. From a local point of view, managers do not have a say in the setting of targets, and do not have the tools (or know how) to work with the detailed transactional data in the ERP system to be able to understand cost drivers. HQ, on the other hand, gain in visibility of local costs, and typically make no change to integrate their own planning applications, retaining legacy tools and interfaces. This article examines the apparent imbalance between the price paid by local materials buyers, namely a huge bureaucratic overhead, and the benefit derived by corporate purchasing.
Information Distribution Decisions Supported by Argumentation
Authors: Brena Ramon , Chesñevar Carlos
Published: May 2011

Information and knowledge (IK) are each day more valuable assets in modern organizations (Atkinson, Court, & Ward, 1998; Carrillo, 1998; Liebowitz & Beckman, 1998). Distributing IK is indeed one of the main processes in knowledge management (Liebowitz & Wilcox, 1997; Horibe, 1999). Now, deciding which piece of IK goes to which member of an organization is a decision problem not simple in real organizations. There are many aspects that should be considered, such as what are the responsibilities and tasks of each person, which access rights they have, what are their preferences, and so on. Taking into account all these aspects requires either a huge amount of human labor or the help of an information-technology tool. In this article we explore how a particular technology, automated argumentation, which is a kind of automatic reasoning, can be applied to solve decision problems related to information distribution in an organization.
Knowledge Based DSS
Authors: Klein Michel R.
Published: May 2011

“A knowledge based DSS is a computer information system that provides information and methodological knowledge (domain knowledge and decision methodology knowledge) by means of analytical decision models and access to data base and knowledge base to support a decision maker in making decisions in complex and ill structured tasks.” (Klein & Methlie) The conceptual frameworks of knowledge based DSS is the result of the merging of two conceptual frameworks, the DSS framework and the knowledge based framework. These two frameworks were developed in parallel over a period of about 20 years, roughly from 1965 to 1985. We shall briefly recall these two frameworks and then explain why they were merged. The knowledge based DSS framework has since then evolved in its own right, taking into account methodological and technological advances.
Unambiguous Goal Seeking Through Mathematical Modeling
Authors: Forgionne Giusseppi , Russell Stephen
Published: May 2011

All decision-making support systems (DMSS) provide both input and output feedback for the user. This feedback helps the user find a problem solution and captures any created knowledge for future reference. Goal seeking is an important form of DMSS feedback that guides the user toward the problem solution. Often in the decision support literature there is a concentration on providing forward-oriented decision assistance. From this perspective, the decision problem is viewed from the problem forward, towards a solution and advice is given with that orientation. In the literature, this is most often seen in “what-if” analysis. Goal seeking takes an inverted view where a preferred or optimal solution is known and the advice provided identifies values for the decision problem variables so that the optimal or preferred solution is obtained. Goal seeking approaches can be useful not only in identifying a solution, but also examining and explaining the relationships between decision variables. Unlike what-if analysis, which is forward oriented, goal seeking starts with a preferred outcome and decision makers do not have to manipulate decision variables in a recursive manner to examine different decision scenarios.
An Alternative Learning Platform to Facilitate Usability and Synchronization of Learning Resources
Authors: Ng Eugenia M.W.
Published: May 2011

The Internet was initially set up in the 1960s and 1970s for supporting research in the military. It was then developed in 1981 in the academic community to connect university computers to enhance communications between academic researchers so that they could efficiently exchange ideas about the ongoing research (Coyle, 1997). Files transfer protocol was frequently used for transferring of files and computer-mediated communication (CMC) was also popular in the education context. Formats of CMC include e-mail, bulletin board, and list servers. With the decreasing hardware and data communication costs and increasing bandwidth, the Internet has altered our options for living, studying, working, and entertainment. It appears to be the most powerful information technology tool for education in the 21st century. There are many reasons for its popularity, and the main reasons can be attributed to accessing information easily, freely, and speedily. It provides powerful search functions, enables synchronized communication such as video, audio conference, and chat, and enables multiple presentation formats such as animation and video streaming without any add-on software or hardware. In fact, the Internet is more than technology, it is a Web of social relations imaginatively constructed by symbolic processes initiated and sustained by individuals and groups.
The Implementation of Practices with ICT as a New Teaching-Learning Paradigm
Authors: Cartelli Antonio
Published: May 2011

Information and communication technology (ICT) is today influencing many aspects of our lives from administration to economy from culture and entertainment to work, and so forth. Education is receiving from IT and ICT a great deal of suggestions just from their first beginning. It is well known, for example, that Taylor (1980) outlined three metaphors for computer use in education: tutor, tool, and tutee: first, tutor (by looking at the possible use of computer to support or to substitute teachers); second, tool (by using suitable editing tools to support students’ autonomous learning); and last, tutee (by adopting special programming languages for the development of metacognitive skills in students’ minds). The reader will easily recognize in the above metaphors many ideas belonging respectively to the behaviorist, the cognitivist, and the constructivist psycho-pedagogical paradigms.
Online Catalogue of Manuscripts Conserved in Libraries in the Veneto Region
Authors: Vanin Barbara
Published: May 2011

In 2003 the Veneto Regional Council set up a project to catalog all manuscript holdings in libraries in the Veneto region, in order to provide a freely accessible, uniform online open catalog (1) via shared cataloguing standards. The implementation of this project entailed coordinating its scientific and organizational aspects, as well as checking and revising the catalog descriptions. The Biblioteca del Museo Correr was in charge of coordinating the project, which had previously set up a cataloging project of its manuscript holdings in 2001, starting with its oldest holding, the Teodoro Correr collection. The coordinating team, composed of Paolo Eleuteri, Barbara Vanin and Francesco Bernardi, and later also Alessia Giachery, initially created a catalog data sheet model, which features a brief description that is suitable for the mainly modern material present in the libraries (2). It provides a brief codicological description and a more detailed description of the manuscripts contents. At the same time Guidelines for cataloging manuscripts (3) were set out, which provided the framework in terms of cataloging for the MANUS software system developed by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche italiane. Together with the Veneto Regional Council an initial group of libraries of various typologies were selected, which completely lacked catalogs or adequate tools to access their manuscript holdings. They were asked to present targeted cataloging projects.
Towards a New Model for Knowledge Construction and Evolution
Authors: Cartelli Antonio
Published: May 2011

The 20th century has marked the transformation of the philosophical definition of knowledge into a new and different one. The new idea of knowledge mostly depends on the experiences and theories from human and social sciences like psychology, pedagogy, anthropology, sociology, and so forth. But many contributions to its specification are also due to biology, neurophysiology, telecommunication, cybernetics, and other scientific disciplines. In other words knowledge is today a complex matter and its analysis and definition depends on the observation fields one can use for its analysis.
The Transport-Level Requirements of the Internet-Based Streaming
Authors: Tegze Dávid , Hosszú Gábor
Published: May 2011

This article presents the comparison of different transport level congestion control schemes, including variants of the TCP (Postel, 1981). The protocol mechanisms, implemented in various protocols are hard to investigate in a uniform manner (Hosszú, 2005); therefore, the simulator SimCast (Simulator for multicast) is developed for traffic analysis of the unicast (one-to-one communication) and multicast (one-to-many communication) streams. In this article, the TCP and other transport protocol mechanisms will be compared using the SimCast simulator (Orosz & Tegze, 2001). The simulated results are presented through examples.
Usability-Oriented Quality Model Based on Ergonomic Criteria
Authors: Montero Francisco , Lozano María Dolores , González Pascual
Published: May 2011

World Wide Web software development is a challenge. The need to provide appealing and attractive user interfaces is combined with the fact that the World Wide Web is not merely an information transfer tool anymore. The capacity to offer additional services plays an important role. The World Wide Web makes these services available to a greater number of individuals who have different characteristics, knowledge and profiles. The World Wide Web demands quick development with high quality level. This chapter makes an important contribution in the field of software product characterization for the World Wide Web, proposing a quality model that focuses on quality in use or usability. Said quality model, which has been partially tested on real users through several experiments, is based on international standards and ergonomic criteria. The model has proved useful for organizing and applying the experience available in the development of user interfaces for Web applications and has improved noticeably its final quality in use.
The Usability Dimension in the Development of Web Applications
Authors: Matera Maristella , Rizzo Francesca , Cortázar Rebeca , Perallos Asier
Published: May 2011

Given the emergent need for usability, during last year’s traditional development processes have been extended for enabling the fulfillment of usability requirements. Usability Evaluation Methods (UEMs) have been therefore proposed at any stage of the development process, to verify the usability of incremental design artifacts, as well as of the final product. This chapter surveys the most emergent UEMs, to be adopted during the whole lifecycle of Web information systems for promoting usability. For each evaluation method, the main features, as well as the emerging advantages and drawbacks are illustrated. Some future trends, related to the need of evaluating the usability of UEMs are also discussed.
Looking for Information in Fuzzy Relational Databases Accessible Via Web
Authors: Martínez-Cruz Carmen , Blanco Ignacio José , Vila M. Amparo
Published: May 2011

The Semantic Web has resulted in a wide range of information (e.g., HML, XML, DOC, PDF documents, ontologies, interfaces, forms, etc.) being made available in semantic queries, and the only requirement is that these are described semantically. Generic Web interfaces for querying databases (such as ISQLPlus©) are also part of the Semantic Web, but they cannot be semantically described, and they provide access to one or many databases. In this chapter, we will highlight the importance of using ontologies to represent database schemas so that they are easier to access. The representation of the fuzzy data in fuzzy databases management systems (FDBMS) has certain special requirements, and these characteristics must be explicitly defined to enable this kind of information to be accessed. In addition, we will present an ontology which allows the fuzzy structure of a fuzzy database schema to be represented so that fuzzy data from FDBMS can also be available in the Semantic Web.
Agent-Based Intelligent System Modeling
Authors: Tang Zaiyong , Huang Xiaoyu , Bagchi Kallol
Published: May 2011

An intelligent system is a system that has, similar to a living organism, a coherent set of components and subsystems working together to engage in goal-driven activities. In general, an intelligent system is able to sense and respond to the changing environment; gather and store information in its memory; learn from earlier experiences; adapt its behaviors to meet new challenges; and achieve its pre-determined or evolving objectives. The system may start with a set of predefined stimulusresponse rules. Those rules may be revised and improved through learning. Anytime the system encounters a situation, it evaluates and selects the most appropriate rules from its memory to act upon. Most human organizations such as nations, governments, universities, and business firms, can be considered as intelligent systems. In recent years, researchers have developed frameworks for building organizations around intelligence, as opposed to traditional approaches that focus on products, processes, or functions (e.g., Liang, 2002; Gupta and Sharma, 2004). Today’s organizations must go beyond traditional goals of efficiency and effectiveness; they need to have organizational intelligence in order to adapt and survive in a continuously changing environment (Liebowitz, 1999). The intelligent behaviors of those organizations include monitoring of operations, listening and responding to stakeholders, watching the markets, gathering and analyzing data, creating and disseminating knowledge, learning, and effective decision making. Modeling intelligent systems has been a challenge for researchers. Intelligent systems, in particular, those involve multiple intelligent players, are complex systems where system dynamics does not follow clearly defined rules. Traditional system dynamics approaches or statistical modeling approaches rely on rather restrictive assumptions such as homogeneity of individuals in the system. Many complex systems have components or units which are also complex systems. This fact has significantly increased the difficulty of modeling intelligent systems. Agent-based modeling of complex systems such as ecological systems, stock market, and disaster recovery has recently garnered significant research interest from a wide spectrum of fields from politics, economics, sociology, mathematics, computer science, management, to information systems. Agent-based modeling is well suited for intelligent systems research as it offers a platform to study systems behavior based on individual actions and interactions. In the following, we present the concepts and illustrate how intelligent agents can be used in modeling intelligent systems. We start with basic concepts of intelligent agents. Then we define agent-based modeling (ABM) and discuss strengths and weaknesses of ABM. The next section applies ABM to intelligent system modeling. We use an example of technology diffusion for illustration. Research issues and directions are discussed next, followed by conclusions.
Ambient Intelligence
Authors: Sadri Fariba , Stathis Kostas
Published: May 2011

In recent years much research and development effort has been directed towards the broad field of ambient intelligence (AmI), and this trend is set to continue for the foreseeable future. AmI aims at seamlessly integrating services within smart infrastructures to be used at home, at work, in the car, on the move, and generally in most environments inhabited by people. It is a relatively new paradigm rooted in ubiquitous computing, which calls for the integration and convergence of multiple disciplines, such as sensor networks, portable devices, intelligent systems, human-computer and social interactions, as well as many techniques within artificial intelligence, such as planning, contextual reasoning, speech recognition, language translation, learning, adaptability, and temporal and hypothetical reasoning. The term AmI was coined by the European Commission, when in 2001 one of its Programme Advisory Groups launched the AmI challenge (Ducatel et al., 2001), later updated in 2003 (Ducatel et al., 2003). But although the term AmI originated from Europe, the goals of the work have been adopted worldwide, see for example (The Aware Home, 2007), (The Oxygen Project, 2007), and (The Sony Interaction Lab, 2007). The foundations of AmI infrastructures are based on the impressive progress we are witnessing in wireless technologies, sensor networks, display capabilities, processing speeds and mobile services. These developments help provide much useful (row) information for AmI applications. Further progress is needed in taking full advantage of such information in order to provide the degree of intelligence, flexibility and naturalness envisaged. This is where artificial intelligence and multi-agent techniques have important roles to play. In this paper we will review the progress that has been made in intelligent systems, discuss the role of artificial intelligence and agent technologies and focus on the application of AmI for independent living.
Ambient Intelligence Environments
Authors: Ramos Carlos
Published: May 2011

The trend in the direction of hardware cost reduction and miniaturization allows including computing devices in several objects and environments (embedded systems). Ambient Intelligence (AmI) deals with a new world where computing devices are spread everywhere (ubiquity), allowing the human being to interact in physical world environments in an intelligent and unobtrusive way. These environments should be aware of the needs of people, customizing requirements and forecasting behaviours. AmI environments may be so diverse, such as homes, offices, meeting rooms, schools, hospitals, control centers, transports, touristic attractions, stores, sport installations, and music devices. Ambient Intelligence involves many different disciplines, like automation (sensors, control, and actuators), human-machine interaction and computer graphics, communication, ubiquitous computing, embedded systems, and, obviously, Artificial Intelligence. In the aims of Artificial Intelligence, research envisages to include more intelligence in the AmI environments, allowing a better support to the human being and the access to the essential knowledge to make better decisions when interacting with these environments
ANN-Based Defects' Diagnosis of Industrial Optical Devices
Authors: Voiry Matthieu , Amarger Véronique , Bernier Joel , Madani Kurosh
Published: May 2011

A major step for high-quality optical devices faults diagnosis concerns scratches and digs defects detection and characterization in products. These kinds of aesthetic flaws, shaped during different manufacturing steps, could provoke harmful effects on optical devices’ functional specificities, as well as on their optical performances by generating undesirable scatter light, which could seriously damage the expected optical features. A reliable diagnosis of these defects becomes therefore a crucial task to ensure products’ nominal specification. Moreover, such diagnosis is strongly motivated by manufacturing process correction requirements in order to guarantee mass production quality with the aim of maintaining acceptable production yield. Unfortunately, detecting and measuring such defects is still a challenging problem in production conditions and the few available automatic control solutions remain ineffective. That’s why, in most of cases, the diagnosis is performed on the basis of a human expert based visual inspection of the whole production. However, this conventionally used solution suffers from several acute restrictions related to human operator’s intrinsic limitations (reduced sensitivity for very small defects, detection exhaustiveness alteration due to attentiveness shrinkage, operator’s tiredness and weariness due to repetitive nature of fault detection and fault diagnosis tasks). To construct an effective automatic diagnosis system, we propose an approach based on four main operations: defect detection, data extraction, dimensionality reduction and neural classification. The first operation is based on Nomarski microscopy issued imaging. These issued images contain several items which have to be detected and then classified in order to discriminate between “false” defects (correctable defects) and “abiding” (permanent) ones. Indeed, because of industrial environment, a number of correctable defects (like dusts or cleaning marks) are usually present beside the potential “abiding” defects. Relevant features extraction is a key issue to ensure accuracy of neural classification system; first because raw data (images) cannot be exploited and, moreover, because dealing with high dimensional data could affect learning performances of neural network. This article presents the automatic diagnosis system, describing the operations of the different phases. An implementation on real industrial optical devices is carried out and an experiment investigates a MLP artificial neural network based items classification.
Artificial Intelligence for Information Retrieval
Authors: Mandl Thomas
Published: May 2011

This article describes the most prominent approaches to apply artificial intelligence technologies to information retrieval (IR). Information retrieval is a key technology for knowledge management. It deals with the search for information and the representation, storage and organization of knowledge. Information retrieval is concerned with search processes in which a user needs to identify a subset of information which is relevant for his information need within a large amount of knowledge. The information seeker formulates a query trying to describe his information need. The query is compared to document representations which were extracted during an indexing phase. The representations of documents and queries are typically matched by a similarity function such as the Cosine. The most similar documents are presented to the users who can evaluate the relevance with respect to their problem (Belkin, 2000). The problem to properly represent documents and to match imprecise representations has soon led to the application of techniques developed within Artificial Intelligence to information retrieval.