bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Information Systems for a Green Organisation
Authors: Deshpande Yogesh , Unhelkar Bhuvan
Published: May 2011

Green ICT is the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment. It is a new and rapidly evolving discipline with new terminologies, experimental results, regulatory restrictions and policy recommendations from scientists, ICT organizations and governments. Organizations need to monitor their practices and ICT usage carefully in order to formulate effective policies, control processes and manage content based on sound architectures. Green ICT contains a high level of complexity because of uncertainty of processes, data quality and reliability. It is also beset by dissent and debate that engulfs wider disciplines such as technology itself, sociology, ethics and law – all of which reflects into the amalgamation of wide ranging data. The success or failure of Green ICT policies is determined by the way an organisation manages the participation and social interactions of its employees and customers. A green organization works on enhancing the data and information management within the organization that revolves around information systems, their databases and their applications. This chapter takes cognizance of the overall complexity of the field and aims to bring to the fore formal, research-based approaches to the use of data and information in the domain of Green ICT to enable organizations to change in a systematic, controlled and measured manner through information portals based on ontologies. The ontological considerations include user perspectives on green ICT, actual use of information in greening an organization, and dispersal of knowledge not only within the organization but also across the industry.
Philanthropy, CSR and Sustainability
Authors: Sahay Arun
Published: May 2011

Despite business’s business being business, the business owners have been doing acts of benevolence depending upon the owner’s religion, faith, values and beliefs. Establishment of temples, mosques, churches, schools, hospitals etc. has been usual practice through which firms have shown their concern about the society and made contribution to the social cause. However, of late, it is observed that progressive businesses, after understanding the nuances of sustainable development and its reporting, have moved from philanthropic mode of contributing to society to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibity (CSR). Some of them have gone beyond CSR and have entered the domain of Strategic CSR. In the process, a new concept of Corporate Sustainability, which is based on Triple Bottom-line concept, has emerged in strategic management literature. Thus, today CSR activities are being aligned with the business strategy of the firm. In the developed countries, firms are increasingly integrating CSR with the core business activities e.g. innovation, marketing, finance etc. This article attempts to look into firm’s CSR and corporate sustainability with special reference to a developing country - India.
Role of Mobile Technologies in an Environmentally Responsible Business Strategy
Authors: Trivedi Bharti , Unhelkar Bhuvan
Published: May 2011

This chapter aims to investigate and expand the role of mobile technologies in an Environmentally Responsible Business Strategy (ERBS). An ERBS with mobile technologies can help organizations achieve socially responsible goals of reducing green house emissions, reducing physical movement of men and materials, and recycling materials – to name a few. Organizations are electronically collaborating globally through the medium of the Internet and by employing service-oriented architectures. This electronic collaboration amongst large number of globally spread businesses creates a collaborative business “ecosystem” that is also virtual. Virtual collaborations between businesses create further challenges for environmentally responsible strategies as they make it difficult to identify the precise contributors to green house emissions and pollutions. This chapter delves deeper into the role of mobile technologies in creating and enhancing what can be considered as Environmental Intelligence (EI) – extending business intelligence with mobility for a Green enterprise.
Corporate Environmental Management Information Systems Influence of Green IT on IT Management and IT Controlling
Authors: Gadatsch Andreas
Published: May 2011

Green IT (Green IS, Green ICT) is a concept of saving energy consumption to reduce IT costs. A current survey shows that only few companies in German speaking countries consider this aspect in their daily business. This is important facing the current situation of attempts of cost saving during the current economic crisis worldwide. This paper introduces into Green IT and presents an IT management and controlling concept. Then the main results of a currently presented survey are used to modify the concept. Finally an agenda for future research is given.
Efficient Information Provision for Environmental and Sustainability Reporting
Authors: Akkaya Cigdem , Wolf Petra , Krcmar Helmut
Published: May 2011

Environmental concerns have become a key issue for society as well as for individuals and businesses. To cope up with the pressure imposed by their various stakeholders increasingly demanding for “green” production, enterprises are constrained to balance their goals of economic growth, environmental protection and usage of natural resources. Environmental reporting provides a comprehensive and structured approach to inform the target groups about the proper environmental strategies and to present a transparent profile. Recent studies show that environmental reporting is spreading rapidly. To enable consistency and comparability, several organizations provide guidelines, standards and recommendations to guide organizations in their environmental management. Environmental reporting is mainly used by organizations as a medium to demonstrate compliance with applicable national and European level environmental regulations. In the last decades, they are also increasingly being used as a tool to communicate environmental matters to various stakeholders. The purpose of this chapter is to deliver fundamentals of environmental reporting based on a comprehensive literature review and a recent project in Germany. Moreover, the authors suggest two approaches to support data gathering and report generation processes for environmental reporting purposes of organizations.
E-Waste Management
Authors: Godbole Nina
Published: May 2011

Electronic Waste (e-Waste) is a major concern given the negative effects it creates on our environment. Huge quantities of e-Waste are generated every year and the rate is expected to rise in our digital economy. There are regulations and laws around e-Waste; however for its effective enforcement, all the relevant stakeholders need to come together to enforce the laws and regulations. In this chapter, the author describe the e-Waste problem, the challenges and issues involved and finally, present the life-cycle approach (cradle-to-grave) and finally, the author present a policy framework for effective e-Waste management.
Information and Communication Technology As Key Infrastructure for Sustainable Cities
Authors: Kusakabe Motoo
Published: May 2011

The ‘Sustainable cities’ initiative has been widely accepted as a participatory development initiative to achieve environmental and social goals. In the cities in developing countries with a severe constraint in their capacity for participatory planning, a potentially effective way to build ‘sustainable city’ initiative is to use an e-government portal designed to support citizens’ participation in planning and monitoring processes and knowledge sharing among participating cities. In the Nigeria Delta region, 23 local governments were chosen to pilot this initiative. This region has been suffering from weak local governance and protracted youth unemployment caused by ‘youth bulge’ that led to severe social unrest. In such circumstances, this pilot had a strong focus on enhancing local governance and job-creation among young people in knowledge-intensive industries, particularly using information and communication technologies. This chapter investigates positive and negative sides of this approach using the cross-country and city-level survey data.
Sustainable Business Initiatives in the Context of Emerging Economies
Authors: Nathadwarawala Jay (Luv) M. , Nathadwarawala Khush M.
Published: May 2011

Emerging economies, becoming popular under the acronym of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), are facing unique challenges related to sustainability. The challenges faced by these economies are quite different to those faced by developed economies such as UK, USA and Australia. These differences arise – from the BRIC perspective – due to the lack of existing infrastructure, potential for huge growth in the markets, need for greater awareness from the consumers and the challenges in implementing regulatory compliances. Improving the performance of organizations and industries in which they exist is a crucial step towards achieving control and improving sustainability. This chapter outlines and discusses issues and challenges related to implementing green concepts in emerging economies, corresponding measures and also proposes an approach to ameliorating the challenges.
Traffic and Climate Change Impacts on Water Quality
Authors: Mahbub Parvez , Ayoko Godwin , Egodawatta Prasanna , Yigitcanlar Tan , Goonetilleke Ashantha
Published: May 2011

Understanding the impacts of traffic and climate change on water quality helps decision makers to develop better policy and plans for dealing with unsustainable urban and transport development. This chapter presents detailed methodologies developed for sample collection and testing for heavy metals and total petroleum hydrocarbons, as part of a research study to investigate the impacts of climate change and changes to urban traffic characteristics on pollutant build-up and wash-off from urban road surfaces. Cadmium, chromium, nickel, copper, lead, iron, aluminium, manganese and zinc were the target heavy metals, and selected gasoline and diesel range organics were the target total petroleum hydrocarbons for this study. The study sites were selected to encompass the urban traffic characteristics of the Gold Coast region, Australia. An improved sample collection method referred to as ‘the wet and dry vacuum system’ for the pollutant build-up, and an effective wash-off plan to incorporate predicted changes to rainfall characteristics due to climate change, were implemented. The novel approach to sample collection for pollutant build-up helped to maintain the integrity of collection efficiency. The wash-off plan helped to incorporate the predicted impacts of climate change in the Gold Coast region. The robust experimental methods developed will help in field sample collection and chemical testing of different stormwater pollutants in build-up and wash-off. 
Remarks on a Fuzzy Approach to Flexible Database Querying, Its Extension and Relation to Data Mining and Summarization
Authors: Kacprzyk Janusz , de Tré Guy , Zadrozny Slawomir
Published: May 2011

For an effective and efficient information search of databases, various issues should be solved. A very important one, though still usually neglected by traditional database management systems, is related to a proper representation of user preferences and intentions, and then their representation in querying languages. In many scenarios, they are not clear-cut, and often have their original form deeply rooted in natural language implying a need of flexible querying. Although the research on introducing elements of natural language into the database querying languages dates back to the late 1970s, the practical commercial solutions are still not widely available. This chapter is meant to revive the line of research in flexible querying languages based on the use of fuzzy logic. This chapter recalls details of a basic technique of flexible fuzzy querying, discusses some newest developments in this area and, moreover, shows how other relevant tasks may be implemented in the framework of such queries interface. In particular, it considers fuzzy queries with linguistic quantifiers and shows their intrinsic relation with linguistic data summarization. Moreover, the chapter mentions so called “bipolar queries” and advocates them as a next relevant breakthrough in flexible querying based on fuzzy logic and possibility theory.
An Extended Relational Model & SQL for Fuzzy Multidatabases
Authors: Sharma Awadhesh Kumar , Goswami A. , Gupta D.K.
Published: May 2011

Many real world problems involve imprecise and ambiguous information rather than crisp information. Recent trends in the database paradigm are to incorporate fuzzy sets to tackle imprecise and ambiguous information of real world problems. Fuzzy query processing in multidatabases have been extensively studied, however, the same has rarely been addressed for fuzzy multidatabases. This chapter attempts to extend the SQL to formulate a global fuzzy query on a fuzzy multidatabase under FTS relational model discussed earlier. The chapter provides architecture for distributed fuzzy query processing with a strategy for fuzzy query decomposition and optimization. Proofs of consistent global fuzzy operations and some of algebraic properties of FTS Relational Model are also supplemented.
Relational Techniques for Storing and Querying RDF Data
Authors: Sakr Sherif , Al-Naymat Ghazi
Published: May 2011

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a flexible model for representing information about resources in the Web. With the increasing amount of RDF data which is becoming available, efficient and scalable management of RDF data has become a fundamental challenge to achieve the Semantic Web vision. The RDF model has attracted attentions in the database community and many researchers have proposed different solutions to store and query RDF data efficiently. This chapter focuses on using relational query processors to store and query RDF data. It gives an overview of the different approaches and classifies them according to their storage and query evaluation strategies.
Querying Multimedia Data by Similarity in Relational DBMS
Authors: Barioni Maria Camila Nardini , Kaster Daniel dos Santos , Razente Humberto Luiz , Traina Agma J.M. , Júnior Caetano Traina
Published: May 2011

Multimedia objects – such as images, audio, and video – do not present the total ordering relationship, so the relational operators (‘<’, ‘=’, ‘=’, ‘>’) are not suitable to compare them. Therefore, similarity queries are the most useful, and often the only types of queries adequate to search multimedia objects stored in a database. Unfortunately, the ubiquitous query language SQL – the most widely employed language in Database Management Systems (DBMS) – does not provide effective support for similarity queries. This chapter presents an already validated strategy that adds similarity queries to SQL, supporting a powerful set of similarity operators. The chapter also describes techniques to store and retrieve multimedia objects in an efficient way and shows existing DBMS alternatives to execute similarity queries over multimedia data.
Signal Processing for Optical Wireless Communications and Sensing
Authors: Green Roger , Higgins Matthew , Joshi Harita
Published: May 2011

This chapter covers a broad area within the domain of optical communications, and, specifically, optical wireless communications, as it shares particular features with both RF wireless and optical fiber communications. There are several challenges within the field, concerned with distribution of the optical field, signal bandwidth, and receiver SNR. This chapter examines three specific areas of the technology which address these issues, namely, modulation methods for optical wireless using OFDM, genetic algorithm-based methods for optimisation of the optical fields indoors for power and bandwidth uniformity, and receiver-amplifier techniques for bandwidth and sensitivity maximisation.
Advanced Signal Processing Techniques in Non-Destructive Testing
Authors: Al-Ataby A. , Al-Nuaimy W.
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes some recent advances in signal processing as applied to NDT problems. This is an area that has made progress for over twenty years and its importance is gaining attention gradually, especially since the new advanced techniques in signal processing and pattern recognition.
Blended Courses as Drivers of Institutional Transformation
Authors: Dziuban Charles , Hartman Joel , Cavanagh Thomas B. , Moskal Patsy D.
Published: May 2011

The authors discuss the transformational potential of blended learning and the importance of alignment with strategic initiatives of the institution. They show that key elements for student and faculty support result in numerous positive outcomes, including increased access and the ability to manage growth effectively. Research findings with very large student samples show the impact of blended learning on student achievement, identify predictors of student success, and illustrate correlates of student satisfaction with blended learning when ambivalent feelings mediate student perceptions of the educational environment. By illustrating these principles through a case study in a large metropolitan research university, the authors contend that strategic alignment and evaluation results inform each other in an incremental, transformational process.
Meeting the Challenges in Evaluating Mobile Learning
Authors: Vavoula Giasemi , Sharples Mike
Published: May 2011

We propose six challenges in evaluating mobile learning: capturing and analysing learning in context and across contexts, measuring mobile learning processes and outcomes, respecting learner/participant privacy, assessing mobile technology utility and usability, considering the wider organisational and socio-cultural context of learning, and assessing in/formality. A three-level framework for evaluating mobile learning is proposed, comprising a micro level concerned with usability, a meso level concerned with the learning experience, and a macro level concerned with integration within existing educational and organisational contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of how the framework meets the evaluation challenges and with suggestions for further extensions.
Ethical Considerations in Implementing Mobile Learning in the Workplace
Authors: Wishart Jocelyn
Published: May 2011

Workplace based personal and professional development is essential for students in the health, social care and teaching professions. In this era of ubiquitous computing recording and reflecting upon learning and reviewing student progress in the workplace is easily enabled via mobile technologies. Yet researchers and student users in these settings continue to find using personal, mobile technologies a challenge; though now it is much less a technical challenge than one requiring institutional and cultural innovation in permissions and behaviours within these settings.This article describes the outcomes of a recent international workshop conducted with experts in the fields of mobile learning and education on prioritising areas of concern and establishing best practice. In conclusion it presents a framework for consideration by the mobile learning community that can be used to highlight or prioritise ethical considerations before conducting research into the use of mobile devices by students in workplaces and schools.
iPod Technologies Advancing Dance and Digital Performance
Authors: Wilson Dennie , Andrews Ben , Dale Crispin
Published: May 2011

The iPod is a pervasive technology that has had an influential impact upon engagement with sound and visual media. The extent to which the iPod can act as a learning and teaching technology is still at an embryonic stage. The chapter reports upon the research project entitled Choreo:pod which has explored the student creation of dance performance for the iPod screen, in addition to its use as a wider learning and teaching technology. The chapter discusses the process students engaged in when reflecting upon their experiences of engaging with the iPod as part of a blended learning approach.
Improving Cross-Cultural Awareness and Communication through Mobile Technologies
Authors: Botha Adele , Vosloo Steve , Kuner John , van den Berg Madelein
Published: May 2011

Increasingly, technology is mediating the way in which the youth around the world communicate, consume content and create meaning. As mobile communication media and the internet become more pervasive, young people from different cultures and communities are afforded more opportunities for collaboration across previously unbridgeable distances. The need for cross-cultural awareness and communication is thus more important than ever. The initiative described in this article, successfully demonstrated the role of mobile phones and the web as mediating technologies in the development of intercultural competencies and communication skills among a group of teenagers scattered across two countries.[Article copies are available for purchase from InfoSci-on-Demand.com]
Laser Scanning Confocal Imaging of Forensic Samples and Their 3D Visualization
Authors: Salih Anya
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes the application of confocal imaging in fluorescence and reflection modes and the analysis of the three-dimensional (3D) data sets of samples relevant to forensic medical investigations. In the last three decades, confocal microscopy has become a widely used technique in the fields of biological and medical sciences. Gradually, its use is becoming more widespread in forensic sciences as it offers numerous advantages over conventional wide-field microscopy. One of the key advantages is the generation of sharply focused 3D data stacks of imaged material, without out-of-focus blur. The technique generates digital optical sections from sample surface down to a depth of 100-300 µm from which a multitude of structural, sculptural and optical parameters in 3D and 4D can be obtained and analysed. This chapter discusses several examples of confocal imaging for medical forensic applications, including the 3D analysis of finger prints, hair, skin abrasions and grass pollen exine morphology to provide new diagnostic and prognostic information. The chapter also covers practical applications of a powerful 3D visualization and analyses software.
Data Hiding in Digitized Medical Images
Authors: Raval Mehul S.
Published: May 2011

This chapter envelops data hiding techniques applied to medical images for improving their security. It covers types of medical images, their security requirements and types of threats to them. This provides a sufficient background and reasoning for applying data hiding techniques to the medical images. The purpose of this chapter is to study requirements of data hiding techniques with respect to medical imaging and to cover state of art methods in this domain. These techniques are developed from different application perspectives helping to understand their limitations and strengths. The chapter culminates with study of algorithms for reversible watermarking techniques and discussion on future of watermarking in medical domain.
Monitoring the Trascriptome
Authors: Arhondakis Stilianos , Tsiliki Georgia , Kossida Sophia
Published: May 2011

The technologies monitoring the transcriptome are under a continuous status of development and implementation, producing high amounts of expression data which require reliable and well structured databases. This chapter provides a general overview and a reliable guide of these technologies, as developed from the early ‘90s until today, and of the most important available expression databases. The first part aims at introducing to the reader the fundamental functional aspects of these technologies, which are under a continuous development in order to obtain a more accurate description of the transcriptome. The second part offers the necessary information to those who are interested in further exploiting expression data in their research.
Resolving Sample Traces in Complex Mixtures with Microarray Analyses
Authors: Lambrou George I. , Koultouki Eleftheria , Adamaki Maria , Moschovi Maria
Published: May 2011

This chapter reviews the microarray technology and deal with the majority of aspects regarding microarrays. It focuses on today’s knowledge of separation techniques and methodologies of complex signal, i.e. samples. Overall, the chapter reviews the current knowledge on the topic of microarrays and presents the analyses and techniques used, which facilitate such approaches. It starts with the theoretical framework on microarray technology; second, the chapter gives a brief review on statistical methods used for microarray analyses, and finally, it contains a detailed review of the methods used for discriminating traces of nucleic acids within a complex mixture of samples.
Digital Applications in Forensic Odontology
Authors: Barsley Robert E. , Senn David R. , David Thomas J. , Wright Franklin D. , Golden Gregory S.
Published: May 2011

Forensic Odontology or forensic dentistry is the use of dental expertise, dental findings, and dental facts in legal proceedings. The principal efforts of dentists in this regard are geared toward establishing the identity of unknown human remains or verifying the identity of visually unrecognizable human remains. The digital revolution has impacted all aspects of forensic odontology. This chapter will discuss the impact on person identification through dental means, dental identification in mass or disaster victim incidents, establishing the age of an unknown individual or human remains through dental examination, digital photography in dentistry and forensic odontology, and the use of digital methods in the analysis and comparison of bite mark evidence.
E-Business Interoperability
Authors: Dorloff Frank-Dieter , Jahns Veit , Schmitz Volker
Published: May 2011

A long-standing and important goal in the field of e-business is to achieve interoperability between interacting commercial, private, and public partners as well as to support it by adequate communication and Information Systems. For the design and realization of such interoperable systems, many instruments, methods, and technologies were developed in the past, such as standards and ontologies for the exchange of data and knowledge. Most of them focus on the technical issues of interoperability. But in practice, e-business refers to interactions between self-determined, goal-driven social-technical systems. Thus, further aspects like business goals, organizations, business processes, and social relationships have to be modeled and discussed. Therefore, a more holistic understanding of interoperability is attempted in this chapter. Based on this extended perception of interoperability in e-business this chapter will consider and discuss not only well known facets of interoperability, but also additional often neglected facets of interoperability, and try to systematize them with the aid of the concept of morphology.
Business Artifacts for E-Business Interoperability
Authors: Badr Youakim , Narendra Nanjangud C. , Maamar Zakaria
Published: May 2011

Traditional solutions to address interoperability issues are mainly process-centric so that consistent interactions among collaborating enterprises are ensured. These solutions examine interoperability from a technological perspective with focus on exchanging information messages between distributed and heterogeneous applications. However, interoperability from a business perspective has been overlooked in the past due to the complexity of reconciling diverse business strategies, organizational constraints, and IT infrastructures. Business interoperability denotes the ability of diverse enterprises to collaborate together to coproduce added-value products and services. In this chapter, a new line of thinking is promoted whereby interoperability is data-centric instead of process-centric. Business interoperability is dealt with by adopting business artifacts that are able to cross organizational boundaries, and by introducing a stack of three layers - strategy, service, and resource. Artifacts are self-contained business records that include attributes, states, and life cycles that reflect the changes in these states. The artifact concept not only describes a business entity, but also encompasses knowledge about what to process without explaining how to do it. The shift from processes to artifacts makes business interoperability “quite simple’’ to deploy and renders collaboration easy to manage and analyze. The chapter also introduces several interaction patterns that regulate the exchange of artifacts between enterprises. The ideas and proposals in this chapter are discussed via a realistic case-study to demonstrate how business people can seamlessly manage their day-to-day activities and intuitively construct interoperable and sustainable collaborations at the business and technological levels.
Validating Component-Based Implementations of Business Processes
Authors: Lemcke Jens , Friesen Andreas , Rahmani Tirdad
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides a formal specification of non-atomic, relaxed action refinement suited for component-based business process engineering. Engineering a business process involves multiple process models created by different people on different levels of abstractions. Keeping the models consistent during the engineering procedure—refinement validation—is one objective of this chapter. In component-based software engineering, the lowest abstraction of a business process is mapped on existing components that have a description of their behaviors. Checking the consistency of process and component behavior—grounding validation—is the second objective. Both refinement and grounding validation increase the robustness of business process implementations and the productivity of process engineers. Technically, the specification given in this chapter is in terms of deadlock analysis in safe Petri nets. The evaluation of this straight-forward implementation underlines the exponential complexity of deadlock analysis in safe Petri nets. For use cases with more than 30 activities per process or heavy parallelism, optimized implementations are needed.
Planning Based Service Composition
Authors: Vukovic Maja , Robinson Peter
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents how automated service composition can be considered as a planning problem. Furthermore it identifies the following three specific technical requirements for planning systems in order to handle service composition problem: (1) richness of domain description, (2) control constructs for assembling complex actions, and (3) a mechanism for plan optimization. This chapter illustrates a number of existing planning systems and discusses their applicability to automated service composition. The chapter then describes a service composition framework, based on a forward chaining planner, and how the abstract plan is instantiated into an executable service. Finally, the chapter discusses future research directions in planning based service composition.
An Ontology-Based Framework to Semantically Describe XML-Based Business Documents
Authors: Rico Mariela , Caliusco Ma. Laura , Chiotti Omar , Galli Ma. Rosa
Published: May 2011

The objective of this chapter is to present an ontology-based framework for supporting the representation of the semantics of the XML-based EBDs, which are interchanged between trading partners for managing a decentralized B2B collaborative relationship. This framework is based on the idea of making explicit contextual features, generally implicit in an ontology, for allowing the semantic interoperability between the Information Systems belonging to different contexts. The use of the framework is illustrated with an application example.
E-Business and Information Security Risk Management
Authors: Fenz Stefan
Published: May 2011

For almost all private individuals and especially organizations, information technology (IT) including hardware, software, and data is an irreplaceable part of their everyday life/business. Thus, IT has to be protected in an adequate way to ensure that it delivers the expected services. Information security risk management (ISRM) helps to holistically protect the IT and to minimize their failure probability at reasonable costs. This chapter shows why ISRM is important for e-businesses, gives a brief overview about the ISRM history, describes current problems in ISRM, and presents novel ISRM methods as potential solutions to the stated problems. The chapter closes with an outlook on future ISRM research directions.
RFID in the Healthcare Industry
Authors: Buyurgan Nebil , Hardgrave Bill C.
Published: May 2011

With its potential and unique uses, healthcare is one of the new sectors where RFID technology is being considered and adopted. Improving the healthcare supply chain, patient safety, and monitoring of critical processes are some of the key drivers that motivate healthcare industry participants to invest in this technology. Many forward-looking healthcare organizations have already put the potential of RFID into practice and are realizing the benefits of it. This study examines these empirical applications and provides a framework of current RFID implementations in healthcare industry and opportunities for continued applications. The framework also presents a categorical analysis of the benefits that have been observed by the healthcare industry. In addition, major implementation challenges are discussed. The framework suggests asset management, inventory management, authenticity management, identity management, and process management are the broad areas in which RFID adoptions can be categorized. Even though this categorization captures most of the current and potential research, more empirical studies and evaluations are needed and more applied investigations have to be conducted on integrating the technology within the industry in order to fully utilize RFID.
Estimating and Conveying User Activity Levels in a Multi-User Computer Assisted Exercise Motivation System
Authors: Graves Corey A. , Muldrew Sam , Judd Brandon , Rotich Jerono
Published: May 2011

The Electronic Multi-User Randomized Circuit Training (EMURCT, pronounced “emmersed”) system has been developed to utilize pervasive computing and communication technology to address the lack of motivation that individuals have for exercising regularly. EMURCT is capable of producing a totally different workout sessions with every use, for up to 7 trainees simultaneously using a common workout circuit, in an effort to reduce boredom. EMURCT is composed of three different components, a client application, an administrator application and a web service. This project also uses Wi-Fi signal strength to estimate the activity level of individuals using the system. Based on the activity level being read from each smart device, the event scheduler has the option of releasing any trainee from his/her assigned station if it feels that he/she is not working out, and someone else’s smart device is requesting that station. Initial experiments indicate that the best signal strength reading comes from preset, dedicated access points.
Mobile Technologies in the New Zealand Real-Estate Industry
Authors: Scornavacca Eusebio , Herrera Federico
Published: May 2011

The Real Estate industry can be viewed as a prime candidate for using mobile data solutions since it possesses a dispersed workforce as well as intensive and complex information requirements. This paper investigates the perceived value of mobile technologies in the New Zealand Real-Estate industry. It was found that mobile technologies are perceived as a strategic element in the Real-Estate industry. However, the use of data services still is bounded by industry practices and voice remains the most used application among agents.
New Perspectives on Adoption of RFID Technology for Agrifood Traceability
Authors: Gandino Filippo , Sanchez Erwing Ricardo , Montrucchio Bartolomeo , Rebaudengo Maurizio
Published: May 2011

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an ubiquitous technology which may provide important improvements for the agri-food in different fields, e.g., supply chain management and alimentary security. As a consequence of local laws in many countries, which lay down that the traceability of food products is mandatory, industrial and academic research entities have been conducting studies on traceability management based on non-traditional technologies. A relevant outcome from these studies states that RFID systems seem to help reducing processing time and human-related errors in traceability operations due to their automation characteristics; nevertheless, engineering and economical constraints slow down their full adoption. The main purpose of this chapter is to analyze, describe and compare the most significant and novel RFID-based traceability systems in the agri-food sector while providing an exhaustive survey of benefits, drawbacks and new perspectives for their adoption.
Mobile Novelty Mining
Authors: Kwee Agus T. , Tsai Flora S.
Published: May 2011

Service-oriented Web applications allow users to exploit applications over networks and access them from a remote system at the client side, including mobile phones. Individual services are built separately with comprehensive functionalities. In this article, the authors transform a standalone offline novelty mining application into a service-oriented application and allow users to access it over the Internet. A novelty mining application mines the novel, yet relevant, information on a topic specified by users. In this article, the authors propose a design for a service-oriented novelty mining application. After deploying their service-oriented novelty mining system on a server, use case scenarios are provided to demonstrate the system. The authors’ service-oriented novelty mining system increases the efficiency of gathering novel information from incoming streams of texts on their mobile devices for users.
The Governance of Partnerships in Local Government
Authors: Castelnovo Walter
Published: May 2011

Partnering is often claimed to represent a solution small local government organizations (SLGOs) can resort to in order to manage innovation. However, especially when private partners are involved, resources and specialized competencies need to be allocated on the management of the partnership in order to guarantee that it will deliver a public value. SLGOs often lack such resources and this can make it difficult for them to benefit from Public-Private Partnerships. In the chapter a solution to this problem will be suggested based on the concept of Integrated System of Local Government, that represents a form of strategic and long term partnership for the sharing of resources and specialized competences among SLGOs. More specifically, it will be argued that if the partnership with the private partners is established directly by the integrated system, on behalf of its members, this can guarantee a better governance of the partnership even when the public sector organizations involved are SLGOs.
E-Government in Russia
Authors: Hohlov Yuri , Styrin Evgeny
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores Russia’s implementation of the national e-government strategy and information policies. Based on official, national strategic documents and a number of e-government cases that highlight different projects at the federal and regional levels, we outline the formidable barriers and idiosyncrasies of managing e-government development in Russia.
The Contribution of Colombian Civil Society Organizations to E-Government for the Improvement of Transparency through the Use of Information and Communication Technologies
Authors: Casasbuenas Julián G.
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents the experience of civil society organizations in Colombia to improve the transparency of the municipalities’ administrations through the project ‘Internet for Accountability’ developed by Colnodo in partnership with Corporation Transparency for Colombia. Within this initiative, a website for municipalities was developed and afterwards improved and expanded by the Territorial e-government Strategy (GELT) and implemented by the Connectivity Agenda of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies. The chapter begins by describing the current situation of the municipalities’ websites and how they have been expanded with the support of the GELT strategy. Subsequently, presents the consultation carried out with the municipalities in order to find out the impact and usage of the websites on citizens’ participation and accountability. Finally, presents the conclusions based on the experience of the organizations involved and the information gathered during the consultation.
Is the Internet Mightier than the Sword
Authors: Lidman Russell
Published: May 2011

This paper considers how to reduce corruption and improve governance, with particular attention to the impacts of information and communication technology. The media and the press in particular have played an important role in opposing corruption. The Internet and related tools are both supplementing and supplanting the traditional roles of the press in opposing corruption. A regression model with a sample of 164 countries demonstrates that, controlling for the independent variables commonly employed in empirical work on corruption, greater access to the Internet explains reduced corruption. The effect is statistically significant albeit modest. It is possible that the social media will have a growing impact on reducing corruption and improving governance. A number of examples of current uses of these media are provided. Recent insight and experience suggest how the newer information and communication technologies are somewhat tipping the balance toward those opposing corruption.
Parties and ICTs
Authors: Cardenal Ana Sofía
Published: May 2011

This chapter asks whether, and to what extent, parties are using the Internet for political mobilization. Internet offers new opportunities for political mobilization. If we believe that parties want above all to win elections, the question that follows is, how are they using the Internet to further this goal? I argue that if parties are not fully exploiting the Internet for political mobilization is because it is not always in their interest to do so. A key argument of this chapter is that using the new media to mobilize support may have different costs and benefits for parties depending on their characteristics. To test hypotheses concerning the characteristics of parties that matter for online mobilization, I propose and develop a methodology to assess the efficacy of party websites as platforms for political mobilization. To test the argument, I engage in website analysis using evidence from parties in Spain and Catalonia.
Experiences of the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in the Promotion of E-Governance in Latin America
Authors: Zapata Nestor , Kuechemann Christof
Published: May 2011

Although the three cases that we describe have not been evaluated in their impact, they turn out to be valuable, specially because they show that countries with scarce resources can likewise face this type of initiatives successfully, providing a signal of commitment with a more efficient and specially more transparent government.
Current Omics Technologies in Biomarker Discovery
Authors: Ding Wei , Qiu Ping , Liu Yan-Hui , Feng Wenqing
Published: May 2011

Biomarkers are playing an increasingly important role in drug discovery and development and can be applied for many purposes, including disease mechanism study, diagnosis, prognosis, staging, and treatment selection. Advances in high-throughput “omics” technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, significantly accelerate the pace of biomarker discovery. Comprehensive molecular profiling using these “omics” technology has become a field of intensive research aiming at identifying biomarkers relevant for improved diagnostics and therapeutics. Although each “omics” technology plays important roles in biomarker research, different “omics” platforms have different strengths and limitations. This chapter aims to give an overview of these “omics” technologies and their current application in the biomarker discovery.
Biclustering of DNA Microarray Data
Authors: Tchagang Alain B. , Pan Youlian , Famili Fazel , Tewfik Ahmed H. , Benos Panayiotis V.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, different methods and applications of biclustering algorithms to DNA microarray data analysis that have been developed in recent years are discussed and compared. Identification of biological significant clusters of genes from microarray experimental data is a very daunting task that emerged, especially with the development of high throughput technologies. Various computational and evaluation methods based on diverse principles were introduced to identify new similarities among genes. Mathematical aspects of the models are highlighted, and applications to solve biological problems are discussed.
Knowledge-Driven, Data-Assisted Integrative Pathway Analytics
Authors: Reddy Padmalatha S. , Murray Stuart , Liu Wei
Published: May 2011

Target and biomarker selection in drug discovery relies extensively on the use of various genomics platforms. These technologies generate large amounts of data that can be used to gain novel insights in biology. There is a strong need to mine these information-rich datasets in an effective and efficient manner. Pathway and network based approaches have become an increasingly important methodology to mine bioinformatics datasets derived from ‘omics’ technologies. These approaches also find use in exploring the unknown biology of a disease or functional process. This chapter provides an overview of pathway databases and network tools, network architecture, text mining and existing methods used in knowledge-driven data analysis. It shows examples of how these databases and tools can be used integratively to apply existing knowledge and network-based approach in data analytics.
Network-Driven Analysis Methods and their Application to Drug Discovery
Authors: Ziemek Daniel , Brockel Christoph
Published: May 2011

Drug discovery and development face tremendous challenges to find promising intervention points for important diseases. Any therapeutic agent targeting such an intervention point must prove its efficacy and safety in patients. Success rates measured from first studies in human to registration average around 10% only. Over the last decade, massive knowledge on biological systems has been accumulated and genome-scale primary data are produced at an ever increasing rate. In parallel, methods to use that knowledge have matured. This chapter will present some of the problems facing the pharmaceutical industry and elaborate on the current state of network-driven analysis methods. It will focus especially on semi-quantitative methods that are applicable to large-scale data analysis and point out their potential use in many relevant drug discovery challenges.