bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Genomics Applications in Public Health
Authors: Ebomoyi E. William
Published: September 2016

In the transformation of health, through genomics applications in public health, many of the disease burdens which were incriminated for low life expectancies are being scientifically challenged. However, efficient environmental sanitation played a major role in the eradication of hitherto life threatening vector-borne diseases. However, the outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases and chronic and degenerative conditions pose new challenges. Dr. Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health meticulously identified the aging phenomenon. Health disparities and emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and emerging non-communicable (obesity) as the precursors new health problems which demand innovative strategies. He has suggested, as key of the components of the future paradigm, the four Ps which comprise predictive, personalized, preemptive and, participatory techniques to combat national and international public health challenges. This innovative approached is currently being utilized to preempt the onset of many chronic and degenerative diseases.
A Framework to Analyze Variation of the Satisfaction of Patients for Outpatient Needs
Authors: Jana Arnab , Harata Noboru
Published: September 2016

This study explored outpatient healthcare seeking behavior in India and estimated predisposing and enabling factors that influenced the satisfaction derived from the health care activity. The study assumed that if these gaps are fulfilled in the local facilities, this might invigorate lesser popular public providers within the neighborhood. The study was conducted in the state of West Bengal India. A multilevel framework was developed to incorporate factors affecting the satisfaction of the healthcare activity. Analysis revealed dependency on regional facilities and extensive traveling. Excessive traveling affected satisfaction negatively whereas in cases where respondent availed services from local primary health centers had positive impact on satisfaction. On the route to daily activity, ability to visit referred facility and visit to facility with modern amenities often triggered satisfaction. Segmented policy designed to fulfill these preferences might be indispensable to enhance local sufficiency.
Accountability and Public Reporting
Authors: Tanzariello Maria , Bucci Sabina , Ricciardi Walter , Giulio de Belvis Antonio
Published: September 2016

Patient engagement is based on the assumption that making patients co-producers of their health might enhance their satisfaction and responsibility with the healthcare system and it strictly linked with the health provider choice. Making patients active participants in their healthcare is considered a crucial component of high-quality healthcare services. Quality of care is a central concern for health systems: accountability, transparency, and public reporting are some key factors in promoting healthcare improvement. In the healthcare field, public reporting is one of the major tools in supporting patients' decisions making process, by providing structure, process and outcome measures. We performed a web-based analysis of the major initiatives of public reporting in order to highlight their main characteristics: properties (public or private), data source (health providers, ad hoc surveys, etc.), general information reported (i.e. size, language spoken, amenities), doctors' information, patients' ratings (satisfaction /experience), clinical indicators.
The Role of Management Accounting Systems in Public Hospitals and the Construction of Budgets
Authors: Pereira de Campos Carla Marina , Rodrigues Lúcia Lima , Jorge Susana Margarida Faustino
Published: September 2016

The role of management accounting systems (MAS) in the construction of budgets in the public health sector has been one of the least studied topics in the international literature. Furthermore, several studies have confirmed the loss of relevance of traditional approaches to budgeting due to the need to implement techniques that are more performance-oriented. Since public hospitals are organisations that depend significantly on public funds, with substantial impacts on governments' budgets, the pressure for reducing expenditures is strong, causing increased difficulties in hospital management. In order to analyse the role of MAS in the preparation of hospital budgets, this chapter presents a literature review on this topic. This review allows to understand the loss of relevance of traditional budgeting techniques and to present alternative approaches. In this process, the implementation of different kinds of budgeting is heavily influenced by governments and professionals. Nevertheless, the research on this topic is still very scarce, evidencing the need to continue studying it.
Health Information Technology and Quality Management
Authors: Ruffin T. Ray
Published: September 2016

Even in healthcare and health information technology change will not vanish or disperse. Technology, civilization, and creative thought will drive this force increasingly forward. Health care managers will continue being judged on their ability to efficiently and effectively manage (Patton & James, 2000). The arena of Health Services Research (HSR) is trusted on by judgment deciders and the public is the principal basis of data on how thriving health systems are meeting this task (Steinwachs & Hughes, 2008). The goal of HSR is to deliver material that will ultimately lead to advances in the health of the community. HSR evaluation of quality of care has demonstrated it is an unspecified science and multifaceted, even though its description is comparatively simple (Steinwachs & Hughes, 2008). This article is to investigate the background, controversies, and problems surrounding Health Information Technology (HIT) Change and Quality Management including an overview of current changes and benefits of implementation. This will be coupled with solutions and recommendations, further research, and conclusion. This will enhance the field of research in leadership, change management, quality management, and health care.
Health Information Technology and Change
Authors: Ruffin T. Ray
Published: September 2016

Even in in health healthcare and health information technology change will not vanish or disperse. Technology, civilization, and creative thought will drive this force increasingly forward. Health care managers will continue being judged on their ability to efficiently and effectively manage (Patton & James, 2000). The pace of change has significantly increased since the days of the cave dweller who walked the earth until the “technology convergence” of using the ox and horse as tools. This article is to investigate the background, controversies, and problems surrounding Health Information Technology and change, and will include an overview of current changes. This will be coupled with solutions and recommendations, further research, and conclusion.
Online Spatial HIV/AIDS Surveillance and Monitoring System for Nigeria
Authors: Idowu Peter Adebayo
Published: September 2016

HIV/AIDS has now become a big threat to the world generally, most especially the Sub-Saharan Africa region as it continues to increase drastically in the region. This disease has increased the poverty level of the countries in the region. In Nigeria, millions of people infected with this deadly disease are in their productive years between 15 and 49. This surge is having a negative effect on Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan Africa countries as it lowers life expectancy, slows population growth and social and economic effect on the country. Presently, health officers in Nigeria primarily rely on monitoring HIV/AIDS prevalence only among women attending antenatal clinics as that is the only source of getting data from HIV/AIDS patients. In the country, there is no electronic HIV/AIDS database, no electronic means of capturing HIV/AIDS data and no electronic monitoring of HIV/AIDS patients. This chapter presents a prototypical HIV/AIDS surveillance and monitoring system and the prototype was developed using Dreamweaver, PHP and MySQL. With this system, users could spatially query the pattern and distribution of any HIV/AIDS disease using any known location. Also, queries based on occupation, level of education, and gender among other things are possible with this system. Though the system was developed for Nigeria, it can also be extended to other countries within Sub-Saharan Africa region.
The Analysis of Health Care Expenses of Turkey between 1990-2012
Authors: Işik Hayriye , Akdağ Yaşar
Published: September 2016

Health is described not only as the absence of disease and disability but also as physically, psychologically, and socially general well-being of people. Best practices of individuals and the society from the health services depend on taking the correct decisions on health policies. In addition, the thought that a country spending much on health services must have a perfect status of health should not be perceived as right. Effectiveness of the spending result in the efficient practices of these services. Although there have been many institutions carrying out the health services, it has been observed that the share separated for the health from the gross domestic product in Turkey increased until 2009 but decreased as of the mentioned year and it has been stated as low compared with the other countries. In this chapter the effectiveness of Turkey's health spending between 1999 and 2012 has been analysed from this view.
An Evaluation of Partnership for Productive Development in Brazil's Healthcare
Authors: Magalhães Jorge Lima , Hartz Zulmira , Antunes Adelaide M. S.
Published: September 2016

21st Century brings great challenges in the information and knowledge areas. The public health is intensified in Developing and Less Developed Countries on account of parasitic diseases as well as developed countries because emerging and reemerging diseases. This diseases associated with chronic or acute diseases can intensify causing a serious health problem as drugs resistance, neglected disease and to afford perpetuate poverty. Thus, it is urgent new ways for information management. The management of the Partnership for Productive Development (PDP) have been shown a promising tool to help internalize new technologies and foster R,D&I. This chapter gives an evaluation for Healthcare using the example of the Brazilian PDP whose last way may be considered as a Knowledge Translation. In five years were conducted 103 PDP involving public and private pharmaceutical companies and international producer, promoting the development of local economy and reducing government spending from medicines derived from PDP.
Doing Together
Authors: Koivisto Juha , Pohjola Pasi
Published: September 2016

This article examines a systemic innovation model into which the relational approach of actor-network theory (ANT) has been incorporated. The article examines what the relational approach can contribute to the conceptualization of services and to the co-development and co-design activities of them. The article operates in the context of public welfare and health services, but its analysis might be applied in any other sector and with any other object of development as well. The article presents the systemic innovation model developed in a national Innovillage project in 2009-2013 in Finland. Further, the article studies how the model has been translated into practice in the design activities of a strategic development program of social and health sector run by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland. In the discussion analytical and practical challenges of the model are specified and its further development is discussed.
Response to School Violence
Authors: McIntyre Jr. Roger Neal , Alvarez-Rivera Lorna L. , Owens T. Chris
Published: September 2016

This chapter sets forth to examine the different forms of violence that are present within U.S. school systems along with the general response to these acts. Acts of institutional and personal violence will be discussed along with the potential harm that each act presents. While institutional violence often goes ignored, the impact of these acts can have a substantial negative influence on the life and future career of children. Alternatively, instances of personal violence frequently receive substantial media attention while also causing high levels of fear among the American public regarding the safety of our schools. The most publicized and heinous type of personal violence that has transpired within school settings is events involving an active shooter(s). In addition to identifying the various types of violence, suggestions for improvement and preparedness are offered to reduce the prevalence of violence within schools.
Phenomenology, Epigenome and Epigenetic Influence on the Growth and Development of School-Age Children
Authors: Ebomoyi E. William
Published: September 2016

This chapter focused on the impact of phenomenology, epigenome, and epigenetic factors in the growth and development of school-age children. The biological and social determinants of human development were explored. Inevitably, the inherited gene–chromosomes play a significant role in human growth and development. The academic institutions are set up to facilitate the process of nurturing school-age children, not only in their physical growth and development, but also in their social adjustment to enable them to become fully functioning adults. By far most important, we explored the role of epigenetics in human aging process, since numerous existential events as weathering, stress, nutrition inclement weather, and chemical/pesticides in our environment contribute to aging.
Exacerbating Health Risks in India due to Climate Change
Authors: Roy Joyashree , Ghosh Duke , Mukhopadhyay Kuheli , Ghosh Anupa
Published: September 2016

While climate change is expected to exacerbate human health risks, it also provides an excellent opportunity for defining and implementing preventive actions. Developing nations like India, with low infrastructure facilities, limited resources, varied development priorities and, often with large population, are particularly vulnerable to health impacts - more so under the climate change regime. The greatest challenge facing the current Indian health service provisioning system is that it has to cater to the health service needs of its large population within a short time and with sustainable impact. Limited health ‘cure infrastructure' (low per capita availability of doctor, hospital beds, etc.), lack of qualified health practitioners, absence of a strong monitoring system in disease surveillance and rising cost of ‘cure infrastructure' are some of the major drawbacks of the existing system in India. There is therefore, a need for mainstreaming more preventive measures which will enhance human health resilience and make the population less exposed and more resilient to the predicted impacts of climate change. To provide preventive care to the Indian population, a paradigm shift in strategy is required. The new regime needs to emphasize on an integration of ‘traditional preventive health care systems' with modern cure targeted pharmaceuticals and non-health sector interventions. Such a system is expected to reduce the long term demand for cure infrastructure and will provide a more holistic inclusive solution to the Indian problems.
Rough Fuzzy Set Theory and Neighbourhood Approximation Based Modelling for Spatial Epidemiology
Authors: Tripathy Balakrushna , K. Sharmila Banu
Published: September 2016

Modern epidemiological studies involve understanding individual and social level inferences and their role in the transmission and distribution of disease instances. The geographic relevance in epidemiology has been analysed in concurrence with these inferences. The substantial amount of data involved in an epidemiological study is usually very large and intuitively involves missing values and uncertainty. Rough Set Theory (RST) has been used in medical informatics for ‘outcome prediction' and ‘feature selection'. It can be used to construct the decision system involving spatial, medical and demographic data effectively. This chapter proposes the use of rough sets in conjunction with parallel techniques like Fuzzy sets, Intuitionistic systems and Granular (Neighborhood Approximation) computing for the classic problem of data representation, dimensionality reduction, generation and harvest of minimal rules. RST handles missing values and uncertainty more specific to spatial and medical features of data.
Health Policy Implementation
Authors: Rouzbehani Khadijeh
Published: September 2016

This research describes policy implementation components of a health system and explains how they affect outcomes. It argues that implemented policies affect various components of a health system in terms of service delivery, workforce, information, financing, medical products, technologies, leadership and governance. Using health system as framework of analysis, the paper explains that the outcome of health policy implementation determines the availability, quality and equitability of program service delivery. The paper goes on to argue that policy implementation barriers, such as demand-and supply-side barriers, market, insufficient resources, cultural barriers, imperfect communication, information, education, coordination, leadership and governance affect the poor and vulnerable groups in developed and developing countries from benefitting from public spending on public health policies and programs.
Public Hospitals in China
Authors: Wei Donghai , Rubino Louis
Published: September 2016

China has had some initial success in its current health care reform efforts. Five areas of reform have been targeted and include providing universal coverage, equitable access to basic health insurance, establishing an essential medicine system, and improving primary health care facilities. The last area, the reform of the public hospitals, remains the most difficult to reform. General guidelines have been established by the national government and movement is being taken to delegate authority to local units for implementation. The aim of this paper is to compare China's formal government sponsored health care reform plan for public hospitals to the acknowledgement and acceptance by a sample of health care leaders in Guangzhou. Challenges are strong and include cost accountability, doctor training, employee empowerment, improprieties, and the influence of private hospitals. Based on this qualitative research, conclusions and recommendations are made by the authors as to what is necessary to have effective pubic hospital reform in China.
A Follow up to Semi-Automatic Systems for Exchanging Health Information
Authors: Emmanouil Dimitrios , Mourtzikou Antonia
Published: September 2016

The present research is an attempt to explore the applicability of the best possible service in the area of organized health care services, at fixed predefined points of service. The suggestion is that there should be a system that will receive and provide information about health matters of general public concern. Thus following the lead of Citizen Service Centers in Greece, it can be extended conveniently to mobile devices. The main survey was conducted on a sample of Municipalities and Citizens in the year 2013. The results indicate that the new proposed system could be more secure for citizens for future use, based on supervising procedure by proper employee who will provide more help to the users, instead of a fully automatic system.
Improving the Effects of Global Health Initiatives through FOMENT
Authors: Haider Muhiuddin , Makrinos Theofani , Sarkar Madhurima
Published: September 2016

The incidence of communicable and non-communicable diseases is rising globally in both developed and developing nations. New methodologies are required for reaching the general population and promoting preventative behavior. The objective of this chapter is to discuss the Focus, Organization, Management, Environment, Network, and Technology (FOMENT) process as a strategy and a tool to enhance the impact and efficiency of the diffusion process within public health systems and change agencies, especially in developing countries. FOMENT can be seen as an extension of Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations Theory (DOI) and can be used by organizations to maximize the diffusion rate of health initiatives into a community. The understanding of individual variables from DOI and organizational variables from FOMENT, as well as their corresponding indicators will support the convergence approach to enhance diffusion capacity building (DCB) needed for the adoption of innovations and related behavior change.
Change through Experience
Authors: Khalil Georges Elias
Published: September 2016

The following chapter presents an overview of the research and practice related to the application of theories in games for health. In particular, theoretical frameworks that embrace experiential play and emotional involvement are discussed, and their ability to dictate game design and evaluation are explored. A series of evidence-based games for health are presented as examples of interventions that have applied theory during game design and have shown success. By embracing theoretical concepts in health games, the present chapter will advance one's understanding with respect to how health games contribute to behavior change, patients' self management of care, or adherence to care. The chapter concludes with some potential implications for future research in the context of health game design and evaluation.
Advanced Intervention Strategies for Suicide in Patients with Chronic Mental Illness
Authors: Jha Shailesh , Khanna Amit , Khanna Prerna
Published: September 2016

Chronic mental illnesses are common to find in routine clinical practice and suicide is one of the dreaded outcomes. The concept under defining chronic mental illness has evolved in few decades as now the critical elements for defining the chronic mental illness are psychiatric diagnosis, functional disability, and illness duration. There are various studies on prevalence of suicide and especially in patients with CMI. There is rising trend of research on suicide in patient with psychiatric illness in last decade and found ever over thousand published article in year 2014. This chapter will include literature based on various aspect of suicide including neurobiological factors like neurotransmitters, neural circuits, genetic and epigenetic factors, response on pharmacotherapy and newer generation novel treatment strategies and various psychosocial factors.
Survey Paper on Semantic Web
Authors: Unadkat Rimpal
Published: September 2016

The World Wide Web (WWW) allows the people to share the information (data) from the large database repositories globally. The tremendous growth in the volume of data and with the terrific growth of number of web pages, traditional search engines now days are not appropriate and not suitable anymore. Search engine is the most important tool to discover any information in World Wide Web. Semantic Search Engine is born of traditional search engine to overcome the above problem. However, to overcome this problem in search engines to retrieve meaningful information intelligently, semantic web technologies are playing a major role. In this paper the authors present survey on the role of search engines in intelligent web, Background, Challenges and some issues.
Real Time in Self-Adaptability of Web Services to the Context based on Workflow
Authors: Felhi Faîçal , Akaichi Jalel
Published: September 2016

Real time impact in many applications is the subject of a recent field of studies in information systems. Web services are a solution for the integration of distributed information systems that are autonomous, heterogeneous and auto adaptable to the context. This impact can resolve many problems in different systems based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and web services. In this paper, the authors are interested in defining an approach to provide the different needs of self-adaptability of SOA to the context based on workflow, define the real time goal in their approach and show the feasibility and performance evaluation of their approach in an ambulance trajectory case study.
Exploring the Inherent Growth of e-Tailing via e-Personalization and Technological Innovations
Authors: Smith Alan D.
Published: September 2016

It is the hope of essentially all e-tailers to deliver personalized and real-time communications to customers that are tailored to their interests, preferences, based on big data mining that customers will value over privacy concerns. The technology (e.g., interaction data from segmentation marketing, transactions data, and sophisticated analytics) should optimize the customer's journey through the array of brands via unique identifiers from customer's profiles that provide enrichment, not just enlargement, of each brand's value proposition. These interactions can vary from simple transactional e-mails to conversations with product experts and recommended selections based on previous purchases from a variety of websites. Through appropriate multivariate analyses and data-reduction techniques, the basic elements e-personalization, namely online purchasing behaviors, personalized communications, information retrieval services, degree of personal web presence, quality assurance of customer service, and the promotion of customization services, were found to be conceptually and statistically related to retailer benefits of e-personalization (e.g., increased buying and creates customer loyalty).
Personalization Approaches for Ranking
Authors: Potey Madhuri A. , Sinha Pradeep K.
Published: September 2016

Search engine technologies are evolving to satisfy the user's ever increasing information need; but are yet to achieve perfection especially in ranking. With the exponential growth in the available information on the internet; ranking has become vital for satisfactory search experience. User satisfaction can be ensured to some extent by personalizing the search results based on user preferences which can be explicitly stated or learned from user's search behavior. Machine learning algorithms which predict user preference from the available information related to the user are extensively experimented for personalization. Among several studies undertaken for re-ranking the documents, many focus on the user. Such approaches create user model to capture the search context and behavior. This study attempts to analyze the research trends in user model based personalization and discuss experimental results in personalized information retrieval area. The authors experimented to extend the state of the art in the specific areas of personalization.
Coordinate the Express Delivery Supply Chain with Option Contracts
Authors: Zhang Mengying , Qin Jin
Published: September 2016

In this paper, the authors study the capacity decision problem in an express delivery supply chain consisting of an online retailer and an express delivery provider where products sold by the online retailer are delivered by the express delivery provider to end customers. Unlike the case of the traditional manufacturer-retailer channels, the delivery capacity is a kind of “service product” that cannot be inventoried. To avoid the risk of unprofitable capacity, the delivery provider tends to build a limited delivery capacity which is smaller than the system-wide optimal capacity. To solve such a problem, the authors investigate the capacity coordination issue in this service supply chain using option contracts. By allowing the online retailer to reserve the capacity in advance, the delivery provider could rent a part of capacity which surpasses its self-owned capacity from a third party logistics. It is demonstrated that, compared with the benchmark based on a newsvendor model, option contracts can coordinate the delivery service supply chain. The authors also figure out the feasible option contracts that improve member's expected profit and show the degree of improvement that could be achieved.
Storage Location Assignment and I/O Location Design on Storage Planning
Authors: Hu Michael H. , Chen Mu-Chung , Ku Meei-Yuh
Published: September 2016

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationships with storage location assignment and location of I/O points in details in the warehouse operation planning. Dedicated storage warehouse design and three different allocation methods (throughput-to-storage ratios, space-filling curve with X and Y type) were studied using the simulated annealing method. The computer program was implemented with the Access software by Microsoft. The result shows that cost of the storage method of throughput-to-storage ratios can achieve the lowest cost, and then the space-filling curve with X and Y type. However, the storage method of throughput-to-storage ratios may result in the discontinuity of the storage locations.
Ranking the Factors that Impact Customers Online Participation in Value Co-creation in Service Sector Using Analytic Hierarchy Process
Authors: Hasan Nabil , Rahman Azizah Abdul
Published: September 2016

Ranking the factors that impact customer participation and engagement in value co-creation in service sector enables practitioners, especially service providers, to identify vital factors from those that are unimportant and that are essential for their service quality success and development. The objective of this study is to prioritize the factors that impact customer participation in value co-creation in the service sector. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is adopted by using Multi-Criteria Decision Making technique (MCDM) to determine the relative importance of the factors in influencing customer participation in the value co-creation through online platform. In order to rank the factors, this study is planned and performed in two stages. In the first stage some critical success factors that impact customer participation in value co-creation were identified through the literature review and preliminary case study. In the second stage, a pairwise comparison is designed based on AHP method to collect the opinions of experts and questionnaires were distributed among 10 organizational experts and academics as respondents. The pairwise comparisons obtained from this stage are analyzed by AHP using super decision software and excel spreadsheet. The research findings indicate that the success factors to engage customers in value co-creation activities have different priorities and weights. The weights obtained from AHP indicate that the organizational factors and individual factors got higher scores and ranked higher than the technological factors respectively. The most important results indicated that organizational aspects such as rewards and remunerations, open innovation culture and the organization leadership style are higher priority than any other factors, and in technology aspect it is verified that platform reliability and easy access got the fourth higher priority as well. Therefore, such results and weights obtained from this study will be used for prioritizing the factors that impact customer participation in value co-creation in the service sector and will be taken into consideration when value co-creation online platforms or systems are designed.
An Empirical Study of the Balanced Scorecard Model
Authors: Nisha Nabila
Published: September 2016

Today, the effective use of the Balance Scorecard (BSC) model can bring in a holistic approach to performance measurement and break the traditional use of financial indicators alone to measure the performance of any service-sector organization. As such, the aim of this paper is to examine the underlying hypotheses of the BSC model and how they can be used for performance evaluation by focusing on the banking sector of Bangladesh. Results indicate a positive correlation among the BSC perspectives at a statistically significant level and in a sequential way for the selected banks. Findings of the study particularly highlights that banks which have experienced improvements in their selected financial indicators like ROA, ROE, etc had evidently increased their efforts towards the characteristics under the learning and growth, internal business process and customer perspectives. These findings thus clearly have a number of important implications for bank managers in the context of Bangladesh.
Enhancing Interface Understandability as a Means for Better Discovery of Web Services
Authors: Maabed Usama Mahmoud , El-Fatatry Ahmed , El-Zoghabi Adel
Published: September 2016

Service-oriented architecture has greatly influenced web-based development. However, the dream of system integration and automatic service discovery has only been partially fulfilled. Discovery within poorly defined web services has raised several concerns about the visionary promise of service-oriented computing, most notably in terms of the ability to understand and assemble application functionality from loosely coupled services. Well-developed Web Service interfaces enable service consumers to choose and bind to valid and well-understood web service interfaces. The aim of this paper is to propose a new approach that allows the utilization of a large number of currently published web services that lack proper descriptions and that therefore are not considered during the traditional search and discovery process. The author develops a new metric for web service clarity to enhance quality control during the registration and operation phases. The results prove that using the proposed approach, the discovery process can be significantly enhanced.
A Constraint Programming Approach for Web Log Mining
Authors: Kemmar Amina , Lebbah Yahia , Loudni Samir
Published: September 2016

Mining web access patterns consists in extracting knowledge from server log files. This problem is represented as a sequential pattern mining problem (SPM) which allows to extract patterns which are sequences of accesses that occur frequently in the web log file. There are in the literature many efficient algorithms to solve SMP (e.g., GSP, SPADE, PrefixSpan, WAP-tree, LAPIN, PLWAP). Despite the effectiveness of these methods, they do not allow to express and to handle new constraints defined on patterns, new implementations are required. Recently, many approaches based on constraint programming (CP) was proposed to solve SPM in a declarative and generic way. Since no CP-based approach was applied for mining web access patterns, the authors introduce in this paper an efficient CP-based approach for solving the web log mining problem. They bring back the problem of web log mining to SPM within a CP environment which enables to handle various constraints. Experimental results on non-trivial web log mining problems show the effectiveness of the authors' CP-based mining approach.
Provenance in Web Feed Mash-Up Systems
Authors: Sansrimahachai Watsawee
Published: September 2016

The recent emergence of web 2.0 technologies and rich internet applications is driving the development of a new class of applications that combines data from diverse sources which we refer to as “mash-ups.” One of the most popular mash-ups comes in the form of web feed mash-ups relying on syndication technologies such as RSS and Atom. This kind of mash-ups aggregates web feeds derived from multiple news websites or blogs and then timely presents them in a single interface. In such systems, it is difficult to know exactly how feed results in data mash-ups are generated. In particular, it is difficult for users to make determinations about whether information is trusted. Therefore, it is necessary that web feed mash-ups have to support a mechanism that is capable of recording and querying provenance information - the information about the process that led to result data. In this paper, the author proposes a provenance tracking solution that enables provenance functionality to be facilitated in web feed mash-ups. He demonstrates how the provenance of feed mash-up results to be determined by means of a provenance query algorithm. To tackle the storage problem resulting from the persistence of intermediate web feeds, a novel storage optimization method is introduced. Finally, the author evaluates his provenance solution in terms of storage consumption for provenance collection, demonstrating significant reductions in storage size and achieving reasonable storage overheads.
Low Dose Pioglitazone Attenuates Oxidative Damage in Early Alzheimer's Disease by Binding mitoNEET
Authors: Hammack Charles D. , Perry George , LeBaron Richard G. , Villareal Greg , Phelix Clyde F.
Published: September 2016

Oxidative damage (OD) is considered to be a central component in the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). 8-hydroxyguanosine (8-OHG), a readily oxidized ribonucleic acid found in AD, was used as a biomarker to investigate the role of OD in the progression of the disease. A disruption in two critical Thioredoxin-Dependent Peroxiredoxin System components, peroxiredoxin-3 (Prx-3) and thioredoxin (Trx), may serve as a source of the increased accumulation of OD observed in AD. We demonstrate that OD, in the form of 8-OHG, was quantitatively most significant during the earliest stage of AD [F (3, 25) = 5.08, p < .01]. A drastic decline in mitochondrial protein levels of Prx-3 [F (3, 25) = 8.74, p. < 01] and Trx [F (3, 25) = 4.33, p. < 05] were also observed across the progression of the disease. We then tested the efficacy of pioglitazone, a thiazolidinedione class drug aimed to delay onset of AD by acting on mitoNEET. Our results showed a significant reduction in the oxidized variant of mitoNEET within the incipient population when a 0.8mg dose was simulated in silico (p = 0.0242; a. < 05).
Principled Reference Data Management for Big Data and Business Intelligence
Authors: Pandit Sushain , Milman Ivan , Oberhofer Martin , Zhou Yinle
Published: September 2016

Most large enterprises requiring operational business processes utilize several thousand instances of legacy, upgraded, cloud-based, and/or acquired information management applications. With the advent of Big Data, Business Intelligence (BI) systems, receive unconsolidated data from a wide-range of data sources with no overarching governance procedures to ensure quality and consistency. Although different applications deal with their own flavor of data, reference data is found in all of them. Given the critical role that BI plays in ensuring business success, the fact that BI relies heavily on the quality of data to ensure that the intelligence being provided is trustworthy, and the prevalence of reference data in the information integration landscape, a principled approach towards management, stewardship and governance of reference data becomes necessary to ensure quality and operational excellence across BI systems. The authors discuss this approach in context of typical reference data management concepts and features, leading to a comprehensive solution architecture for BI integration.
Corporate Reputation and C2C Websites
Authors: Zoghlami Amira Trabelsi , Ben Yahia Karim , Touzani Mourad
Published: September 2016

Exchanges between Internet users have clearly increased with the proliferation of social networks. That has revalorized Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) Websites which represent an important information source for clients. With the increase of actors in C2C markets, the reputation of the company is a fundamental element for internet users' choices. The objective of this research paper is to identify the factors that can affect the companies' reputation whose products are sold by consumers in C2C websites. A qualitative study was conducted. This study is based on the analysis of ads' content of two Tunisian C2C websites as well as interviews with C2C websites' users. The results highlight the determinants of companies' reputation in C2C websites: quality of the classified advertisements, quality of the C2C website, price and electronic word-of-mouth (as a receiver). All these elements affect companies' reputation in C2C website users' mind. This reputation can also have consequences, such as electronic word-of-mouth (as a sender) and intention to buy the companies' products in the future.
E-Satisfaction and E-Loyalty
Authors: Kushwaha Gyaneshwar Singh , Kaushal Mukesh
Published: September 2016

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of most important factors of online shopping such as brand, price, and service quality on consumer's e-satisfaction and e-loyalty comparatively. It is for understanding the better online shopping in the Indian e-commerce context. The paper uses thorough literature review of closely related articles to analyze and confirm the conceptual model proposed in the research. The results indicate that Indian consumers are still price sensitive and influenced by branded products and excellent service quality while online shopping. However, service quality directly as well as positively affects both e-satisfaction and e-loyalty. The paper is different of its kind to discuss comparatively to the impact of brand, price and service quality on Indian customer e-satisfaction and e-loyalty. The study shows that the service quality aspects of online shopping websites need to be strengthened to motivate consumers to buy online.
A Cross-Cultural Comparison of a Global Brand's Strategies on Micro-Blogging Sites
Authors: Florenthal Bela , Chao Mike Chen-Ho
Published: September 2016

Micro-blogging platforms have been used increasingly by multinational companies as a marketing tool. Global corporations utilize platforms such as Twitter and Weio, leading micro-blogging sites, and promote their brand equity and increase engagement with their customers. The question is whether they use these platforms strategically, localizing the content and the structure to meet the needs of their target population. This study uses case study content analysis to begin answering this question. Starbucks posts over a one-month period on Twitter in the U.S. and on Sina Weibo in China were analyzed using three existing validated frameworks: descriptive analysis, content classification, and content customization. The results indicate that Starbucks somewhat localizes its posts to its Chinese consumers, in terms of content, symbols, values, and offerings. In terms of descriptive analysis, the study found that Starbucks underutilizes its Sina Weibo site compared to its Twitter site; posts more community-related information on Sina Weibo than on Twitter; and provides more action-related information on Twitter than on Weibo. This paper goes on to suggest micro-blogging strategies for multinational companies in the Managerial Implications section and concludes with a discussion on the direction of future research for scholars in this field.
PID, Fuzzy and Model Predictive Control Applied to a Practical Nonlinear Plant
Authors: Borgeest Kai , Schneider Peter Josef
Published: September 2016

For the cooling system of a mobile machine with m control variables and with n=m correction variables different control strategies have been investigated in order to minimize power to save energy and to reduce fan noise with sufficient cooling. The plant is nonlinear and not identified. Three different kinds of controllers have been investigated in several variations, i.e. fuzzy control, PI(D) and model predictive control (MPC). 14 different criteria have been used for evaluation. In many respects a linear controller with fuzzy prediction proved best, in particular the prediction model can handle nonlinear properties of the plant. A problem of advanced control schemes with unidentified plants is the difficulty to prove stability.
Professional and Personal Service Robots
Authors: Zielinska Teresa
Published: September 2016

The short history of service robots with its precursors is presented. The definitions of service robot are discussed with some statistical data. The history of service robots summarizes the ancient period with robot precursors, the middle ages and the period of industrial revolution. The representative examples of different kinds of service robots built in the XX c. and XXI c. are given. The article is concluded focusing on the future trends.
Colour as an Indicator of Vulnerability of Users Within Social Networks
Authors: Cox Amanda , Al-Saggaf Yeslam , McLean Kate
Published: September 2016

Social networking users are presented with a plethora of profile and privacy settings; most of which are left defaulted. As a result, there is little understanding of the fields that make up the user profile, the privacy settings available to safeguard the user, and the ramifications of not changing the same. Concerns relating to the unprecedented quantities of Personally Identifiable Information being stored need to be addressed. By employing a risk matrix to a social media profile, a user could be alerted to the potential dangers of the information being contained within the profile. By adapting this tool, the risks to the individual user of a social media profile will be minimised.
Factors Influence Intention to Adopt Internet Medical Information on Bulletin Boards
Authors: Liu Ying Chieh , Huang Yu-An
Published: September 2016

The considerable attention that increasing needs to acquire Internet Medical Information (IMI) has received in recent years, there has been little research to systematically investigate the factors influencing users' intention to adopt the IMI. The authors apply the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) to evaluate how users form the intention to adopt IMI on bulletin boards. An online survey was conducted collecting 339 questionnaires from users of bulletin boards to validate the proposed model. The authors' findings suggest that both systematic and heuristic processes had significant effects on intention to adopt information. Subjective knowledge positively moderated the systematic process, while trust in word of mouth positively moderated the heuristic process. The key contributions of this study are: (1) the HSM was examined in a natural setting instead of a laboratory setting, which made the results more credible and generalizable; (2) the HSM was extended by proposing two moderators (subjective knowledge and trust in word of mouth) to give insight into the users' considerations when evaluating IMI.
A Model for Impact of Organizational Project Benefits Management and its Impact on End User
Authors: Hamidi Hodjat
Published: September 2016

Today, the interests of an organization cannot be obtained by a single company, because the companies try to focus their business on the activities which are worthwhile to be focused on and they outsource other activities. In this paper, we proposed a conceptual framework and examined it to find the effect of some of the individual, organizational, and technological factors on the usage of organizational project benefits management and its impact on the end user. The outsourcing of information technology has been posed seriously for a long time; therefore, the managers have to increase their knowledge on the subject of outsourcing of information technology and deciding methods. This article has been provided for the purpose of providing a quantitative model for ranking the outsourcing options of information technology which makes use of organizational project benefits management analysis and analytic net process. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is an important supporting tool and is usually used as a tool to systematically analyze the inner and outer environment of the organization. The analysis of organizational project benefits management makes it possible to determine the importance of criteria and the ability to evaluate the options to be decided. Analytic net process is suggested to determine the complex structure of outsourcing and determining the weight of the criteria and final stratification; furthermore, by applying this method the interdependence of the main criteria can be considered. The results of the studied case show that the consideration of the dependencies causes a decrease in the strengths and opportunities and increase in the weight of opportunities and threats.