bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Geospatial Interoperability
Authors: Paul Manoj , Ghosh S.K.
Published: May 2011

Spatial information is an essential component in almost all decision support system due to the capability it provides for analyzing anything that has reference to the location on earth. Spatial data generally provides thematic information of different aspects over a region. Geospatial information, a variant of spatial information, is generally collected on thematic basis, where individual organizations are involved on any particular theme. Geospatial thematic data is being collected from decades and huge amount of data is available in different organizations (Stoimenov, Dordevi´c, & Stojanovi´c 2000). Information communities find it difficult to locate and retrieve required geospatial information from other geospatial sources in reliable and acceptable form. The problem that has been incurred is the lack of standards in geospatial data formats and storage/access mechanism (Devogele, Parent, Spaccapietra, 1998). Heterogeneity in geospatial data formats and access methods poses a major challenge for geospatial information sharing among a larger user community. With the growing need of geospatial information and widespread use of Internet has fostered the requirement of geospatial information sharing over the Web. The Geo-Web (Lake, Burggraf, Trninic, & Rae, 2005) is being envisioned to be a distributed network of interconnected geographic information sources and processing services that are: • Globally accessible, that is, they live on the internet and are accessed through standard Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and W3C interfaces, • Globally integrated data sources that make use of standard data representation for sharing and transporting geospatial data. Unless a standard means for geospatial information sharing is developed, interoperability cannot be realized. Without successful interoperability approaches, the realization of Geo-Web is not possible. Geo-Web is being developed to address the need for access to current and accurate geospatial information from diverse geospatial sources around the world. The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) initiative has been taken by many nations for providing integrated access of geospatial information (Budak, Sheth, & Ramakrishnan, 2004). Actual data will be kept under the jurisdiction of the organization producing that data. A user will be interested in availing geospatial services through well-defined interface. Without some internationally agreed upon standards for geospatial data and computational methodology, this cannot be made into existence. This chapter discusses several issues towards geospatial interoperability and adoption of geography markup language (GML) (Cox, Cuthbert, Lake, & Martell, 2001; Lake et al., 2005) as a common geospatial data format. The associated technologies that can be used for realizing geospatial interoperability have also been discussed.
Image Segmentation in the Last 40 Years
Authors: Zhang Yu-Jin
Published: May 2011

Image segmentation is an important image technique well known by its utility and complexity. To extract the useful information from images or groups of images, an inevitable step is to separate the objects from the background. Segmentation is just the right process and technique required for this task. Image segmentation is often described as the process that subdivides an image into its constituent parts and extracts those parts of interest (objects). It is one of the most critical tasks in automatic image analysis, which is at the middle layer of image engineering. Image engineering (which is composed of three layers from bottom to top: (1) image processing, (2) image analysis, and (3) image understanding) is a new discipline and a general framework for all image techniques (Zhang, forthcoming). The history of segmentation of digital images using computers can be traced back to 40 years ago. In 1965, an operator for detecting the edges between different parts of an image, Roberts operator (also called Roberts edge detector), was introduced and used for partition of image components (Roberts, 1965). Since then, the field of image segmentation has evolved very quickly and has undergone great change (Zhang, 2001a). In this article, after an introduction and explanation of the formal definition of image segmentation as well as three levels of research on image segmentation, the statistics for the number of developed algorithms in these years are provided; the scheme for classifying different segmentation algorithms is discussed; and a summary of existing survey papers for image segmentation is presented. All these discussions provide a general picture of research and development of image segmentation in the last 40 years.
Implementation of Web Accessibility Related Laws
Authors: Yu Holly
Published: May 2011

In the past three decades, the general method of delivering and receiving information has shifted from paper-based, typewriter-generated, hand-edited, and printing-press-produced publications to more technology-mediated, intelligent, WYSIWYG software-generated forms and interactive design. The Web has expanded its horizon as a gateway in carrying and delivering information to include audio and video formats. Further, the advent of the Web 2.0, or social networking/virtual community via the Web has changed the nature of the Web not only as an information carrier, but also a tool for all to use, share, and participate. Consequently, the concept of delivery of, access to, and interaction with information has changed to reflect this phenomenon. The new forms of utilizing the Web that have made it easier for non-disabled people have often created barriers for people with disabilities because, in a large part, the standard methods of access and delivery are inaccessible for people with disabilities. The disability rights movement in the United States originated during the post World War II era when large numbers of veterans who were disabled in the war joined the efforts of parents seeking education and independent living options for their children with disabilities (Slatin & Rush, 2003). The notion of access to information involving the civil rights of people with or without disabilities arises from the fact that access to information through technology has increasingly become a necessary tool for success and a source of opportunity in education and employment. With the unprecedented opportunities they created for people with and without disabilities, it has become apparent that information technologies have a tremendous potential for allowing people with disabilities to participate in mainstream activities and to support their ability to live independently. The legal foundation for protecting the right to access for persons with disabilities has been established through a series of federal and state laws, and court decisions. These laws provide a legal ground on Web accessibility implementation.
Introduction to Basic Concepts and Considerations of Wireless Networking Security
Authors: Lerma Carlos F. , Vega Armando
Published: May 2011

Local networks have been, from the beginning, a controversial topic. The organizations that have implemented these types of networks have shown their concern about their levels of security. Ever since the discovery of vulnerabilities among first-generation wireless networks (Borisov, Goldberg, & Wagner, 2001), analysts and security companies have tried to understand and mitigate those risks. Some of those efforts have contributed towards the study of wireless security. Other efforts have failed, presented a different group of vulnerabilities, or require expensive proprietary software and hardware. Finally, other efforts try to mitigate the problem piling up a complex group of security technologies, like virtual private networks. Despite the benefits they bring, a great number of concerns related to security have limited the massive adoption of wireless networks, particularly in sectors that are highly aware of the existing security risks such as the financial and government sectors. Even though there are a significant number of risks inherent to the mass transmission of data to any individual within the boundaries of a wireless network, a good amount of these are installed without any security measure at all. However, the majority of businesses that have implemented some sort of wireless security measures have done so in the most rudimentary way, bringing a false sense of security to users. When the first IEEE 802.11 wireless standards were in the phase of development, security was not as important as it is today. The level of complexity of network threats was much lower and the adoption of wireless technologies was still in an introductory phase. It was under these circumstances that the first standard for wireless network security, known as wired equivalent privacy (WEP), was originated. WEP underestimated the necessary means to turn air security into an element equivalent to the security provided by a cable. In contrast, the security methods of modern wireless networks are designed to work in hostile environments where there is a lack of well-defined physical network perimeters.
Intrusion Detection Based on P2P Software
Authors: Czirkos Zoltán , Hosszú Gábor
Published: May 2011

The importance of the network security problems come into prominence by the growth of the Internet. The article presents a new kind of software, which uses just the network, to protect the hosts and increase their security. The hosts running this software create an Application Level Network (ALN) over the Internet. Nodes connected to this ALN check their operating systems’ log files to detect intrusion attempts. Information collected is then shared over the ALN to increase the security of all peers, which can then make the necessary protection steps by oneself. The developed software is named Komondor (Czirkos, 2006), which is a famous Hungarian guard dog. The novelty of the system Komondor is that Komondor nodes of each host create a Peer-To-Peer (P2P) overlay network. Organization is automatic; it requires no user interaction. This network model ensures stability, which is important for quick and reliable communication between nodes. By this build-up, the system remains useful over the unstable network. The use of the peer-to-peer network model for this purpose is new in principle. Test results proved its usefulness. With its aid, real intrusion attempts were blocked. This software is intended to mask the security holes of services provided by the host, not to repair them. For this it does not need to know about the security hole in detail. It can provide some protection in advance, but only if somewhere on the network an intrusion was already detected. It does not fix the security hole, but keeps the particular attacker from further activity.
Linguistic Indexing of Images with Database Mediation
Authors: Udoh Emmanuel
Published: May 2011

Computer vision or object recognition complements human or biological vision using techniques from machine learning, statistics, scene reconstruction, indexing and event analysis. Object recognition is an active research area that implements artificial vision in software and hardware. Some application examples are autonomous robots, surveillance, indexing databases of pictures and human computer interaction. This visual aid is beneficial to users, because humans remember information with greater accuracy when it is presented visually than when it originates in writing, speech or in kinesthetic form. Linguistic indexing adds another dimension to computer vision by automatically assigning words or textual descriptions to images. This augments content-based image retrieval (CBIR) that extracts or searches for digital images in large databases. According to Li and Wang (2003), most of the existing CBIR projects are general-purpose image retrieval systems that search images visually similar to a query sketch. Current CBIR systems are incapable of assigning words automatically to images due to the inherent difficulty of recognizing numerous objects at once. This current situation is stimulating several research endeavors that seek to assign text to images, thereby improving image retrieval in large databases. To enhance information processing using object recognition techniques, current research has focused on automatic linguistic indexing of digital images (ALIDI). ALIDI requires a combination of mathematical, statistical, computational, and graphical backgrounds. Many researchers have focused on various aspects of linguistic processing such as CBIR (Ghosal, Ircing, & Khudanpur, 2005; Iqbal & Aggarwal, 2002, Wang, 2001) machine learning techniques (Iqbal & Aggarwal, 2002), digital library (Witen & Bainbridge, 2003) and statistical modeling (Li, Gray, & Olsen, 20004, Li & Wang, 2003). A growing approach is the utilization of statistical models as demonstrated by Li and Wang (2003). It entails building databases of images to be used for supervised learning. A trained system is used to recognize and identify new images with statistical error margin. This statistical modeling approach uses a hidden Markov model to extract representative information about any category of images analyzed. However, in using computer to recognize images with textual description, some of the researchers employ solely text-based approaches. In this article, the focus is on the computational and graphical aspects of ALIDI in a system that uses Web-based access in order to enable wider usage (Ntoulas, Chao, & Cho, 2005). This system uses image composition (primary hue and saturation) in the linguistic indexing of digital images or pictures.
Mobile Payment
Authors: Gódor Gyõzõ , Faigl Zoltán , Szalay Máté
Published: May 2011

The widespread usage of new telecommunication technologies implies the demand on payment via Internet since the ’90s. First, these solutions were applied only by pioneer users, while average men still chose traditional payment methods such as payment by cash, cheque, or bank transfer. In the latest decade, the notable improvement of mobile communications allowed the provision of customized services. A new payment method has appeared which is called mobilepayment. Consequently, increasing number of banks provide access to their services via mobile equipment. Reliable network security is an essential prerequisite for the expansion of the rapidly growing world of electronic payment. Public key infrastructure (PKI) offers the capabilities needed to provide this security. Establishing trust in a wireless public key infrastructure (WPKI) is crucial for the success of applications that will exploit the opportunities created by handheld wireless devices. This trust is based on the reliability of the technology but also on a carefully implemented system of laws, policies, standards, and procedures. The development of trusted electronic transactions is motivated by legislation. The EU adopted a legislative framework to guarantee the security and acceptance of electronic signatures in 1999. The U.S. adopted legislation for the recognition of electronic signatures in national and global trade in June 2000 (Sievers, 2000). This article deals with mobile payment and mobile banking services and focuses particularly on the mobile side of the system. First, we introduce the technological background necessary for developing m-services, and we define the m-payment reference model. After that, the differences between chip-card and software based implementations will be presented. Finally, we conclude the article and summarize the main terms used in the article.
Multi-Agent Mobile Tourism System
Authors: Yu Maw Soe , Lar Thein Ni
Published: May 2011

Nowadays, with the emergence of high-speed wireless networks, various portable devices such as personal digital assistant (PDAs), mobile phones, and other wearable equipment are widely used by people in their daily lives. Contextawareness plays a vital role in enabling smart environments, wearable computing, and wireless computing. This article presents the multi-agent system, which uses mobile technology to offer services in the tourism domain. Agent-based systems are widely used for mobile and distributed information systems. Agents can also help in preventing the user from being overwhelmed by irrelevant information using personalization methods. This technology provides the integration of information from diverse sources, while personalization provides the filtering technique to deliver the relevant information to the users. The system gives up-to-date information based on the user’s preferences and other contextual information such as sight location, weather condition, and special functions that are arranged during the visit. The system consists of two types: Web-based and mobile-based. We design the system as client-server architecture, supporting desktop clients as well as mobile clients on a handheld device with appropriate interfaces. However, in this article, we now focus on the mobile-based tourism system. The handheld device or PDA is used for receiving information from a Web server. In past years a broad spectrum of different Web-based tourism has been established. The acceptance and consequently the competitiveness of a tourism system are mainly determined by the quantity and quality of data it provides. Therefore, most existing tourism systems try to fulfill the tourist’s request (interest) for an extensive data collection (Rumetshofer & Wob, 2005). Tourism information (e.g., travel schedules, etc.) are distributed, dynamic, and heterogeneous. The users (tourists) may face difficulty using them when planning their trips. Nowadays, the improvements in wireless communication technologies such as handheld devices to the Internet open up new prospects for e-commerce and e-tourism. Today, new technologies allow more flexible access to information booking services and other tourist support (Belz, Nick, Poslad, & Zipf, 2002). Tourism has been a popular area for mobile information systems. There are a number of obstacles to introducing new technology in tourism. Electronic guidebooks and maps have been a popular application area for mobile technology. In the near future, a broader range of services will become available to users anywhere, at any time. People can receive their required information by interacting with their PDA from wherever they are. Kanellopoulos and Kotsiantis (2006) stated that the tourism industry makes efforts to implement techniques that can reduce travel cost and improve performance.
Multiagent Systems in the Web
Authors: do Prado Hércules Antonio , Filho Aluizio Haendchen , Sayão Míriam , Ferneda Edilson
Published: May 2011

The rapid evolution of Internet has opened a new era in the distributed systems scenery: the bigger part of the information systems currently developed is focused in Web applications. Typically, the information resources in Web systems are dynamic, distributed, and heterogeneous. Since these computing environments are opened, information resources can be connected or disconnected at any time. This ubiquity of Web and its distributed and interconnected characteristics represent a natural field for multiagent systems (MAS), spreading this kind of application. Software agents can dynamically discover, orchestrate, and compose services, check activities, run business processes, and integrate heterogeneous applications. Most of the large organizations adopt heterogeneous and complex information systems. These systems must coordinate their applications in order to provide efficient support to business processes and consistent information management. Unfortunately, the operational software underlying these systems usually does not handle multitask distributed heterogeneous applications. Currently, enterprises are strongly interested in the strategic advantages of adopting distributed infrastructures that are designed to be dynamic, flexible, adaptable, and interoperable. In this context, the demand for agent-based applications has increased, opening new types of applications that include e-commerce, Web services, knowledge management, semantic Web, and information systems in general. Interesting solutions to B2B (business to business), e-business, and also applications that require interoperability based on knowledge about applications and business processes, will definitely benefit from the MAS technology. Also, intelligent information agents are regarded as one of the most promising areas for applying agents’ technology. Intelligent information agents act in fields like collaborative systems on Internet, knowledge discovery from heterogeneous sources, systems for intelligent management of information, and so on. The Web can also be seen as a big distributed database having XML (extensible markup language) and its extensions or modifications as an underlying data model. In this context, the MAS development has received support from new tools in order to make it easier for the developer to cope with specific requirements for Web architectures. It is accepted that these improvements in the technology, mainly by the new tools that are becoming available, will lead MAS technology to be explored in its full potential. So, we can state that the application domain of MAS is going to be strongly enlarged, defining a turning point in the systems development activity. In this chapter, we provide an overview on MAS technology, discuss how this technology is impacting the Web context, and provide a sound description of the concepts that are relevant to the application developers and target users.
Nonspeech Audio-Based Interfaces
Authors: Nomura Shigueo , Shiose Takayuki , Kawakami Hiroshi , Katai Osamu
Published: May 2011

Visual and auditory imagery combination offers a way of presenting and communicating complex events that emulate the richness of daily experience (Kendall, 1991). It is notable that sound events arise from the transfer of energy to a sound object in everyday life. Even in childhood, we learn to take the following attitudes about the sound events: • Recognize the occurrence of sound events and relate them to physical events. • Classify and identify heterogeneous sound events through a lifetime of experience. Important distinctions in the data can be communicated by exploiting simple categorical distinctions of sound events. Taste, smell, heat, and touch are not suitable channels for data presentation because our perception of them is not quantitative. However, the auditory system constitutes a useful channel for data presentation (Yeung, 1980). Furthermore, sounds play an important role in the study of complex phenomena through the use of auditory data representation according to Buxton (1990) and Kendall (1991). It is known that our ears and brains can extract information from nonspeech audio that cannot be, or is not visually displayed (Buxton, 1990).
The Role of Human Factors in Web Personalization Environments
Authors: Germanakos Panagiotis , Tsianos Nikos , Lekkas Zacharias , Mourlas Constantinos
Published: May 2011

The explosive growth in the size and use of the World Wide Web as a communication medium as well as the new developments in ICT allowed service providers to meet these challenges, developing new ways of interactions through a variety of channels enabling users to become accustomed to new means of service consumption in an “anytime, anywhere and anyhow” manner. However, the nature of most information structures is static and complicated, and users often lose sight of the goal of their inquiry, look for stimulating rather than informative material, or even use the navigational features unwisely. Hence, researchers and practitioners studied adaptivity and personalization to address the comprehension and orientation difficulties presented in such systems, to alleviate such navigational difficulties and satisfy the heterogeneous needs of the users, allowing at the same time Web applications of this nature to survive. There are many approaches to address these issues of personalization but usually, each one is focused upon a specific area, that is, whether this is profile creation, machine learning and pattern matching, data and Web mining or personalized navigation. Some noteworthy, mostly commercial, applications in the area of Web personalization that collect information with various techniques and further adapts the services provided, are among others the Broadvision’s One-To-One, Microsoft’s Firefly Passport, the Macromedia’s LikeMinds Preference Server, the Apple’s WebObjects, and so forth. Other, more research-oriented systems, include ARCHIMIDES (Bogonikolos et al., 1999), Proteus (Anderson et al., 2001), WBI (Magglio & Barret, 2001), BASAR (Thomas & Fischer, 1997), and mPERSONA (Panayiotou & Samaras, 2004). Significant implementations have also been developed in the area of adaptive hypermedia, with regards to the provision of adapted educational content to students using various adaptive hypermedia techniques. Such systems are, among others, INSPIRE (Papanikolaou, Grigoriadou, Kornilakis, & Magoulas, 2003), ELM-ART (Weber & Specht, 1997), AHA! (De Bra & Calvi, 1998), Interbook (Brusilovsky, Eklund, & Schwartz, 1998), and so forth.
The Role of Information in the Choice of IT as a Career
Authors: Creamer Elizabeth G.
Published: May 2011

Practitioners, researchers, and policy makers alike are puzzled by the continued intransigence to the integration of women to undergraduate and graduate majors, as well as occupation, in fields like engineering and information technology (IT). While strong advances in the direction of gender equity have been made in the last two decades in fields like biology and mathematics and in the professional fields of medicine and law, women only still represent about 20% of the undergraduate enrollments in engineering and computer science (NSF, 2000). This gender gap persists persist despite the near evaporation of evidence of gender differences in performance in these fields, such as in the dramatic narrowing of gender differences in the high school course taking patterns, including in advance placement courses (Clewell & Campbell, 2002). Gender differences in the enrollment in computer-related courses and out-of-class, informal programs in science and engineering persist, however (Volman & van Eck, 2001). Academics have used several major groups of theories to try to understand the reasons for women’s under-representation in IT and engineering. Social psychological theories are one of four major groupings of theoretical frameworks identified by Clewell and Campbell (2002). As compared to perspectives that seek biological or cognitive explanations for women’s disinclination to pursue careers in some fields, social-psychological theorists consider environmental, social, and attitudinal influences. Factors such as teachers’ and advisors’ attitudes and beliefs, pedagogical practices in the way math and sciences courses are taught, and the influence of parents and the media are some of the factors considered by social-psychological theorists (Clewell & Campbell, 2002). The research described in this entry belongs to the group of social-psychological theories that look to environmental, rather than individual, explanation for women’s underrepresentation in certain fields in science and engineering, including information technology. It considers the role of parents and the role of interactions with teachers, counselors, and important others in interest in a career in information technology.
Satellite-Based Mobile Multiservices Platform
Authors: Markhasin Alexander
Published: May 2011

The future fourth generation (4G) of the satellite-based wireless and mobile communications is particularly important for global providing of the mobile broadband global information technologies (IT) multi-services and mobile e-applications (m-applications) for geographically dispersed mass users in support of anytime, anywhere, and any required quality of service (QoS) capabilities in a low-cost way. The recent broadband satellite systems described in Ivancic et al. (1999), Evans et al. (2005), Skinnemoen, Vermesan, Iuoras, Adams, and Lobao (2005) are based mainly on centralized low-­meshed architecture with very high traffic concentration. Such structure is not adequate in context of the traffic topology for rural, remote, and difficult for access (RRD) regions. Markhasin (2001) noted that the cost of centralized systems is unacceptably large for deployment of future mass broadband communications in RRD regions (North Siberia, Scandinavia, Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Central and South East Asia, South America, Australia, etc.). As it was shown in Markhasin (2001, 2004), the future low-cost IT multi-service platforms for RRD regions can be built optimal on a mix of the terrestrial and satellite-based mobile and wireless communications with radically distributed (neural-­like) all-­IP/ATM architecture that requires breakthrough steps for search advanced satellite, mobile, and wireless 4G technologies. Markhasin (1996) and Frigon, Chan, and Leung (2001) noted that the improvement of medium access control (MAC) protocols has a dominant effect on ensuring the breakthrough features of future QoS-aware mobile and wireless technologies. The survey and analytical comparison of the fundamental principles of QoS-oriented MAC protocols were described in Markhasin, Olariu, and Todorova (2004, 2005). The radically novel multi-­functional MAC technology (MFMAC) for long-delay space mediums with fully distributed dynamic control of QoS, traffic parameters, and bandwidth resources was proposed in Markhasin (2001, 2004). This article will be focused on future QoS-aware, satellite-based, fully distributed, mesh, and scalable mobile IT multi-service and m-Applications platform’s networking technology 4G for RRD regions.
Self Organization Algorithms for Mobile Devices
Authors: Sánchez-Acevedo M.A. , López-Mellado E. , Ramos-Corchado F.
Published: May 2011

Self-organization is a phenomenon in nature which has been studied in several areas, namely biology, thermodynamics, cybernetics, computing modeling, and economics. Systems exhibiting self-organization have well defined characteristics such as robustness, adaptability, and scalability, which make self-organization an attractive field of study for two kinds of applications: a) maintaining the communication among mobile devices in wireless networks, and b) coordination of swarms of mobile robots. In ad hoc networks, there is not necessarily an underlying infrastructure in which the nodes can maintain communicated with other nodes; so due to this feature, it is necessary to provide efficient self-organization algorithms for routing, managing, and reconfiguring the network. Furthermore, self-organization in nature provide clear examples about how complex behaviors can arise from only local interaction between entities, namely the ants colony, feather formation, and flock of birds. Based on the above mentioned examples, several algorithms have been proposed to accomplish robot formations using only local interactions. Due to resource constraints in mobile devices, selforganization requires simple algorithms for maintaining and adapting wireless networks. The use of resources for establishing robot formations can be reduced by improving simple rules to accomplish the formation. This article first presents a brief overview of several works developed in ad hoc networks; then, delves deeper into the key algorithms; and finally, challenges arising in this area are discussed.
Introduction to Ontology Engineering
Authors: Ceravolo Paolo , Damiani Ernesto
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides an introduction to ontology engineering discussing the role of ontologies in informative systems, presenting a methodology for ontology design, and introducing ontology languages. The chapter starts by explaining why ontologies are needed in informative systems, then it introduces the reader to ontologies by leading him/her in a stepwise guide to ontology design. It concludes by introducing ontology languages and standards. This is a primer reading aimed at preparing novice readers of this book to understanding more complex dissertations; for this reason it can be avoided by expert readers.
Activity Theory for Knowledge Management in Organisations
Authors: Uden Lorna
Published: May 2011

Current approaches to KMS (Knowledge Management Systems) tend to concentrate development mainly on technical aspects, but they ignore social organisational issues. Effective KMS design requires that the role of technologies is supporting business knowledge processes rather than storing data. CHAT (Cultural Historical Activity Theory) can be used as a theoretical model to analyse the development of knowledge management systems and knowledge sharing. Activity theory as a philosophical and crossdisciplinary framework for studying different forms of human practices is well suited for study research within a community of practice such as knowledge management in collaborative research. This chapter shows how activity theory can be used as a kernel theory for the development of a knowledge management design theory for collaborative work.
Historical Research in Information System Field
Authors: Mustonen-Ollila Erja , Heikkonen Jukka
Published: May 2011

This chapter gives important methodological, theoretical, and practical guidelines to the information system (IS) researchers to carry out a historical study. This study shows how a new theory can be discovered inductively from historical studies using a methodological guideline from Mason, McKenney, and Copeland (1997b), using multiple data collection methods, such as semistructured interviews, archival files, and published news, and using novel data analysis methods from learning and intelligent systems, such as the Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), SOMs combined with U-matrices, and the Bayesian network modeling. It also outlines the benefits, the main problems, the characteristics, and the implications of historical research in the information system field. Finally this chapter gives future some research directions of historical research.
Analyzing the Use of Information Systems in Logistics Industry
Authors: Pokharel Shaligram
Published: May 2011

Information and communication technology (ICT) refer to a family of technologies that facilitate information capturing, storing, processing, disseminating, and providing a supportive role for human activities to enhance organizational efficiency and effectiveness. With the use of ICT, organizations are expected to have better decision-making capabilities and faster execution of activities. Logistics activities in a company consist of a wide scope of processes ranging from planning and implementing material flow and storage, services, and information from the point of origin to the point of consumption. If ICT could be used to support these activities, logistics cost would decrease over the long term and the efficiency of logistics activities would increase substantially. In this chapter, we explain a method for studying the impact of ICT in logistics companies. This type of study is useful to devise a long term business process improvement policy in a country or a region. We suggest methods for collecting data and presenting them through descriptive and statistical analysis. We suggest the use of t-statistic method to test relationships between various variables and ICT implementation. We have provided a hypothetical case study to show the steps in the analysis. We believe that the chapter will be useful to researchers in conducting studies on the impact and suitability of ICT in logistics and other service providing sectors. The results obtained from this type of study can help the decision makers to understand the opportunities and hurdles in achieving greater efficiency in the organizational processes through the use of modern information technology.
Data Mining Medical Digital Libraries
Authors: Cunningham Colleen
Published: May 2011

Given the exponential growth rate of medical data and the accompanying biomedical literature, more than 10,000 documents per week (Leroy et al., 2003), it has become increasingly necessary to apply data mining techniques to medical digital libraries in order to assess a more complete view of genes, their biological functions and diseases. Data mining techniques, as applied to digital libraries, are also known as text mining.
The Evaluation of Wireless Devices Used by Staff at Westmead Hospital
Authors: Lazarus Sandra Synthia
Published: May 2011

This chapter reports on a study to research and evaluate the use of latest generation wireless devices— typically personal digital assistant devices (PDAs)—by clinical staff at the large Westmead Hospital located in the west of Sydney, Australia. Currently, medical reports in this and other hospitals are primarily recorded on paper supported by personal computers at nursing stations. However, there is very little or no access to medical reports and decision-making tools for medical diagnosis at the patient’s bedside—the precise location at which most medical decision-making occurs. Delays in access to essential medical information can result in an increased time taken for accurate diagnosis and commencement of appropriate medical management of patients. This chapter discusses the application of hand held devices into more powerful processing tools connected to a centralised hospital data repository that can support medical applications.
Tele-Medicine
Authors: Al-Qirim Nabeel A.Y.
Published: May 2011

This chapter reviews the strategic planning of health information systems in New Zealand. This step is deemed necessary to identify the main accelerators and/or impediments that influence technology adoption and diffusion in health organisations in New Zealand. This research introduces the tele-medicine technology as one possible solution to provide continuous, quality, and immediate medical care to rural patients and to encourage networking among the different hospitals in New Zealand. This research suggests that in order to realise tele-medicine benefits in health care delivery in New Zealand, certain issues need to be addressed such as implementing comprehensive cost-benefit analysis and identifying the benefits sought from adopting the telemedicine technology. The New Zealand context is unique and this perspective with respect to tele-medicine adoption and success is addressed in this research.
Computer-Based Health Information Systems
Authors: C.R. Ranjini , Sahay Sundeep
Published: May 2011

Large investments are being made to reform the health sector in developing countries as the potential of ICTs in achieving health goals is being increasingly recognized. However, there have been various reports that indicate this potential of ICT is not being fully realized on the ground in particular settings. In this chapter, an empirical investigation of the introduction of health information systems in the primary health-care sector in India is reported. Three cases—the India Health Care Project, Family Health Information Management System, and Integrated Health Information Management Systems—are presented. The authors argue against adopting a technocentric approach during the development of the HIS and suggest that these efforts should be sensitive to the sociotechnical context. Furthermore, a variety of constraints are identified. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the potentials of integration to address some of the identified constraints.
Security in E-Health Applications
Authors: Sucurovic Snezana
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents security solutions in integrated patient-centric Web-based health-care information systems, also known as electronic healthcare record (EHCR). Security solutions in several projects have been presented and in particular a solution for EHCR integration from scratch. Implementations of Public key infrastructure, privilege management infrastructure, role based access control and rule based access control in EHCR have been presented. Regarding EHCR integration from scratch architecture and security have been proposed and discussed. This integration is particularly suitable for developing countries with wide spread Internet while at the same time the integration of heterogeneous systems is not needed. The chapter aims at contributing to initiatives for implementation of national and transnational EHCR in security aspect.
Computational Fluid Dynamics and Neural Network for Modeling and Simulations of Medical Devices
Authors: Morsi Yos S.
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes the utilization of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with neural network (NN) for analysis of medical devices. First, the concept of mathematical modeling and its use for solving engineering problems is presented followed by an introduction to CFD with a brief summary of the numerical techniques currently available. A brief introduction to the standard optimization strategies for NN and the various methodologies in use are also presented. A case study of the design and optimization of scaffolds for tissue engineering heart valve using the combined CFD and NN approach is presented and discussed. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the combined NN and CFD techniques and their future potential prospective.
Integrated Process and Data Management for Healthcare Applications
Authors: Jablonski Stefan , Lay Rainer , Meiler Christian , Faerber Matthias , Volz Bernhard , Dornstauder Sebastian
Published: May 2011

Healthcare applications are demanding with respect to their IT needs. Due to their complexity they need strong IT support which must provide enough freedom to their users in the medical domain because of the high degree of flexibility required by them. We have chosen a process based technology, called data logistics, which can cope with these almost conflicting requirements. Data logistics is based on clinical processes. However, when data logistics processes are executed, this happens transparently to the users and provides them a huge degree of freedom in determining the sequence of process execution. In order to cope with these challenging features, the process execution environment for data logistics processes is generated according to our model driven development approach called process driven architecture (PDA). Several clinical studies illustrate the feasibility, effectiveness, and efficiency of the data logistics approach. This article both exposes the rationale of the data logistics approach and provides a deep inside into the implementation concepts.
Approximate Processing for Medical Record Linking and Multidatabase Analysis
Authors: Zhang Qing
Published: May 2011

In this article we investigate how approximate query processing (AQP) can be used in medical multidatabase systems. We identify two areas where this estimation technique will be of use. First, approximate query processing can be used to preprocess medical record linking in the multidatabase. Second, approximate answers can be given for aggregate queries. In the case of multidatabase systems used to link health and health related data sources, preprocessing can be used to find records related to the same patient. This may be the first step in the linking strategy. If the aim is to gather aggregate statistics, then the approximate answers may be enough to provide the required answers. At least they may provide initial answers to encourage further investigation. This estimation may also be used for general query planning and optimization, important in multidatabase systems. In this article we propose two techniques for the estimation. These techniques enable synopses of component local databases to be precalculated and then used for obtaining approximate results for linking records and for aggregate queries. The synopses are constructed with restrictions on the storage space. We report on experiments which show that good approximate results can be obtained in a much shorter time than performing the exact query.
Discovering Multimedia Services and Contents in Mobile Environments
Authors: Wang Zhou , Koubaa Hend
Published: May 2011

Accessing multimedia services from portable devices in nomadic environments is of increasing interest for mobile users. Service discovery mechanisms help mobile users freely and effi- ciently locating multimedia services they want. The chapter first provides an introduction to the topic service discovery and content location in mobile environments, including background and problems to be solved. Then, the chapter presents typical architectures and technologies of service discovery in infrastructure-based mobile environments, covering both emerging industry standards and advances in the research world. Their advantages and limitations, as well as open issues are discussed, too. Finally, the approaches for content location in mobile ad hoc networks are described in detail. The strengths and limitations of these approaches with regard to mobile multimedia services are analyzed.
Mobile and Electronic Commerce Systems and Technologies
Authors: Hu Wen-Chen , Yang Chyuan-Huei Thomas , Yeh Jyh-haw , Hu Weihong
Published: May 2011

The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application and research subject: mobile commerce. Understanding or constructing a mobile or an electronic commerce system is an arduous task because the system involves a wide variety of disciplines and technologies and the technologies are constantly changing. To facilitate understanding and constructing such a system, this article divides the system into six components: (i) applications, (ii) client computers or devices, (iii) mobile middleware, (iv) wireless networks, (v) wired networks, and (vi) host computers. Elements in these components specifi- cally related to the subject are described in detail and lists of current technologies for component construction are discussed. Another important and complicated issue related to the subject is the mobile or electronic commerce application programming. It includes two types of programming: client-side and server-side programming, which will be introduced too.
Location-Based Services in the Mobile Communications Industry
Authors: Ververidis Christopher , Polyzos George C.
Published: May 2011

Advances in wireless communications and information technology have made the mobile Web a reality. The mobile Web is the response to the need for anytime, anywhere access to information and services. Many wireless applications have already been deployed and are available to customers via their mobile phones and wirelessly connected PDAs (personal digital assistants). However, developing the “killer” wireless application is still a goal for the industry rather than a reality. One direction for developing such applications points to locationbased services (LBSs). LBSs are services that are enhanced with and depend on information about a mobile station’s position. Location information by itself is not the ultimate service, but if location information is combined with content, useful services may be developed. These services offer the capability to users and machines to locate persons, vehicles, machines, and resources, as well as the possibility for users to track their own locations (GSM Association, 2003). The focus of this article is the analysis of the most critical success factors and challenges for LBS.
Voice-Enabled User Interfaces for Mobile Devices
Authors: Moser Louise E. , Melliar-Smith P. M.
Published: May 2011

The use of a voice interface; along with textual; graphical; video; tactile; and audio interfaces; can improve the experience of the user of a mobile device. Many applications can benefit from voice input and output on a mobile device; including applications that provide travel directions; weather information; restaurant and hotel reservations; appointments and reminders; voice mail; and e-mail. We have developed a prototype system for a mobile device that supports client-side; voice-enabled applications. In fact; the prototype supports multimodal interactions but; here; we focus on voice interaction. The prototype includes six voice-enabled applications and a program manager that manages the applications. In this chapter we describe the prototype; including design issues that we faced; and evaluation methods that we employed in developing a voice-enabled user interface for a mobile device.