bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Are You Being Served?
Authors: Millard Jeremy
Published: December 2012

In terms of public services, governments do not yet know how to treat users as different and unique individuals. At worst, users are still considered an undifferentiated mass, or at best as segments. However, the benefits of universal personalisation in public services are within reach technologically through e-government developments. Universal personalisation will involve achieving a balance between top-down government- and data-driven services, on the one hand, and bottom-up self-directed and user-driven services on the other. There are at least three main technological, organisational and societal drivers. First, top-down data-driven, often automatic, services based on the huge data resources available in the cloud and the technologies enabling the systematic exploitation of these by governments. Second, increasing opportunities for users themselves or their intermediaries to select or create their own service environments, bottom-up, through ‘user-driven’ services, drawing directly on the data cloud. Third, a move to ‘everyday’, location-driven e-government based largely on mobile smart phones using GPS and local data clouds, where public services are offered depending on where people are as well as who they are and what they are doing. This paper examines practitioners and researchers and describes model current trends based on secondary research and literature review.
Evaluating Local Partnership Incentive Policies
Authors: Sorrentino Maddalena , Spano Alessandro , Bellò Benedetta
Published: December 2012

Current research tells little about how to assess the public incentive policies designed to persuade local governments to set up partnerships. This first paper of ongoing research illustrates an evaluation method based on the ‘realist approach’, the tenets of which assign a key role to the context in which the mechanisms of a public programme work (or not). The evaluation framework is intended to be a tool to assist and inform future policymaking and practice. The paper provides a picture of the current scientific debate by exploring the relevant literature; outlines a research path aimed at building an empirically-based model for assessing public policies to promote and support local partnerships in the Italian Region of Sardinia; and indicates a possible context of use for the theory through an illustrative example.
Reflecting on E-Government Research
Authors: Rana Nripendra P. , Williams Michael D. , Dwivedi Yogesh K. , Williams Janet
Published: December 2012

After more than a decade of research in the field of e-government, it is now timely and appropriate to reflect upon the overall developmental directions in the area. This paper explores research progress to date by systematically analyzing the existing body of knowledge on e-government related issues, and reveal if there is lack of theoretical development and rigor in the area. Usable data relating to e-government research currently available were collected from 779 research articles identified from the ISI Web of Knowledge database, and by manually identifying relevant articles from dedicated journals on electronic government such as Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy (TGPPP), Electronic Government, an International Journal (EGIJ), and International Journal of Electronic Government Research (IJEGR). Based on the investigation of the various studies, findings reveal that generic e-government applications were explored more than any specific applications, and the technology acceptance model (TAM) was the most utilized theory to explain research models. Although a large number of theories and theoretical constructs were borrowed from the reference disciplines, their utilization by e-government researchers appears largely random in approach. The paper also presents limitations and further research directions for future researchers.
Technological Support for Online Communities Focusing on Music Creation
Authors: Pimenta Marcelo S. , Miletto Evandro M. , Keller Damián , Flores Luciano V. , Testa Guilherme G.
Published: December 2012

People have always found music significant in their lives, whether for enjoyment in listening, performing, or creating. However, music making in modern life tends to be restricted to the domain of the professional artists, instrumentalists, and singers. Since the advent of Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Applications, the authors’ research group has been investigating the use of Web-based technology to support novice-oriented computer-based musical activities. The main motivation of their work is the belief that no previous musical knowledge should be required for participating in creative musical activities. Consequently, any ordinary user—non-musician or novice—may enhance his creativity through engagement, entertainment, and self-expression. The goal of this chapter is to propose several concepts that emerged during their research concerning novice-oriented cooperative music creation and musical knowledge sharing (a sophisticated activity distinct from the common and well-known music sharing for listening). The authors also discuss key characteristics of Brazilian culture and the creativity styles that inspired their work. They illustrate their perspective by showing how concepts implemented and derived from cases investigated in Brazil represent a comprehensive context for embracing cooperation, flexibility, cross-cultural diversity and creativity. The resulting communityware has music as its intrinsic motivation.
The Role of Information and Computer Technology for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Facial Expression Wonderland (FEW)
Authors: Tseng Rung-Yu , Yi-Luen Do Ellen
Published: December 2012

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is one of the Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDDs). Significant deficits in the children with ASD include lack of social communication skills and cognitive dysfunction. This paper reviews and evaluates the influence of different kinds of Information and Computer Technology (ICT) applications that facilitate intervention and training for children with ASD. This paper also presents a novel design prototype, Facial Expression Wonderland (FEW), to train the children with ASD based on the progressive levels of training under a given background context. This prototype is designed to improve the ability of the ASD children in facial expression recognition.
Privacy Preserving Principal Component Analysis Clustering for Distributed Heterogeneous Gene Expression Datasets
Authors: Li Xin
Published: December 2012

In this paper, we present approaches to perform principal component analysis (PCA) clustering for distributed heterogeneous genomic datasets with privacy protection. The approaches allow data providers to collaborate together to identify gene profiles from a global viewpoint, and at the same time, protect the sensitive genomic data from possible privacy leaks. We then further develop a framework for privacy preserving PCA-based gene clustering, which includes two types of participants: data providers and a trusted central site (TCS). Two different methodologies are employed: Collective PCA (C-PCA) and Repeating PCA (R-PCA). The C-PCA requires local sites to transmit a sample of original data to the TCS and can be applied to any heterogeneous datasets. The R-PCA approach requires all local sites have the same or similar number of columns, but releases no original data. Experiments on five independent genomic datasets show that both C-PCA and R-PCA approaches maintain very good accuracy compared with the centralized scenario.
An Early Robot Architecture for Cancer Healing
Authors: Abbas Mohamed Abdelhamid
Published: December 2012

Treating cancer tumors is a main goal of cancer research. The author of this paper identifies a new manner to treat cancer tumors more effectively using a recommended architecture of a nanorobot called CANBOT. It contains a number of nano-components: an actuator, temperature sensor, chemical sensor, and microcontroller. CANBOT starts its role by moving toward the tumor cells using the actuator. It senses the tumor cell by capturing its image and sensing its chemicals by the chemical sensor. When CANBOT distinguishes the tumor, it verifies the survival of the tumor cells by its temperature sensor. CANBOT increases the temperature of the tumor cell through the warmer. Sensing of the cancer chemicals starts over to detect the remaining existence of cancer cells. The suggested nanorobot injects the cell with the drug from a tiny tank throughout a nano pump with a small pine needle. A nano-microcontroller controls the mechanism of CANBOT formative the role of each one and the appropriate sequences. The position of the proposed nanorobot is simulated with reference to the position of the tumor using an analytical model. The conclusion is drawn that destroying the tumor requires instilling the robot into the cancer tumor directly for effective treatment.
Defining, Applying and Customizing Store Atmosphere in Virtual Reality Commerce
Authors: Krasonikolakis Ioannis G. , Vrechopoulos Adam , Pouloudi Athanasia
Published: December 2012

This paper studies the concept of Store Atmosphere in Virtual Commerce (V-Commerce) through the Web in order to empirically define its determinants and investigate their applicability and customization capabilities. A series of in depth interviews with field experts (study #1) along with an online questionnaire survey (study #2) served as the data collection mechanisms of the study. The empirical findings suggest that while the social aspect dimension of V-Commerce limits customization capabilities, it provides several innovative options for manipulating Store Atmosphere. Additionally, the results indicate that Store Atmosphere attributes can be grouped in three factors with high average scores concerning the importance users attach to them. Specifically, storefront, store theatrics, colors, music and graphics are grouped in Factor #1 and reflect the “Store’s Appeal”. Crowding, product display techniques and innovative store atmosphere services are grouped in Factor #2 labeled “Innovative Atmosphere”, while store layout constitutes the only attribute included in Factor #3. The paper outlines the theoretical and managerial implications of these research results.
Architectural Guidelines and Practical Experiences in the Realization of E-Gov Employment Services
Authors: Sánchez-Nielsen Elena , González-Morales Daniel , Peña-Dorta Carlos
Published: December 2012

Today’s Public Administration faces a growing need to share information and collaborate with other agencies and organizations in order to meet their objectives. As agencies and organizations are gradually transforming into “networked organizations,” the interoperability problem becomes the main challenge to make possible the vision of seamless interactions across organizational boundaries. Today, diverse architectural engineering guidelines are used to support interoperability at different levels of abstraction. This paper reviews the main guidelines’ categories which support aspects of architecture practice in order to develop interoperable software services among networked organizations. The architectural guidelines and practical experiences in the domain of e-Gov employment services for the European Union member state Spain are described. The benefits of the proposed solution and the lessons learned are illustrated.
Essential Steps for Successful Implementation of the EHR to Achieve Sustainable, Safe, Quality Care
Authors: Wesorick Bonnie
Published: December 2012

This chapter provides the foundational steps for successful implementation of the EHR that will achieve sustainable, safe, quality care. The focus is on the point of care, where the hands of those who give and receive care meet. The billions of dollars spent to automate, regardless of vendor, bring no assurance to reach the desired clinical outcomes to become the best place to give and receive care. The process begins with leadership’s commitment to transform culture and practice coupled with clarity on the role of technology to achieve that end. The fundamental elements that must be addressed and the strategies to achieve sustainable outcomes will be based on the nature of the work, the lessons and outcomes of the Elsevier CPM Resource Center International Consortium of over 346 rural, community, and university settings at various levels of EHR implementation.
Improving Patient Safety with Telemedicine
Authors: Aas I. H. Monrad
Published: December 2012

The patient safety and quality problem in health care are considerable. To err is human, but primum non nocere (first, do no harm) means work against the adverse events and work for good quality. The purpose of the chapter is to explore the potential role for patient safety of a telemedicine network organization with centralization and decentralization taken into consideration. Network organization is of importance for strengthening of professional communities and competence complementation. For the building of strong professional communities, some size can be necessary, and this can be promoted by centralization. In the telemedicine era, a new way of organizing can be network organization, combined with centralization and decentralization. Not to do anything with the significant patient safety and quality problem is fundamentally wrong and morally indefensible. To err is human, to continue to err is diabolic, and to forgive is divine.
E-Health Decision Support Systems for the Diagnosis of Dementia Diseases
Authors: Castiglioni Isabella , Gilardi Maria Carla , Gallivanone Francesca
Published: December 2012

The increase of incidence and prevalence of dementia diseases makes urgent the clinical community to be supported in the difficult diagnostic process of dementia patients. E-health decision support systems, based on innovative algorithms able to extract information from in vivo neuroimaging studies, can make a quite different way to perform neurological diagnosis and enlarge domains and actors involved in the diagnostic process. A number of image-processing methods that extract potential biomarkers from the in vivo neuroimaging studies have been proposed (e.g. volume segmentation, voxel-based statistical mapping). A number of new shape descriptors have also been developed (e.g. texture-based). Other approaches (e.g. machine learning, pattern recognition) have been proven effective, for both structural and functional data, in making automatic diagnoses. The integration of these sophisticated diagnostic tools into secure, efficient, and wide e-infrastructures is the prerequisite for the real implementation of e-health support services to the clinical and industrial communities managing dementia patients.
SEMantic PATHways
Authors: Alexandrou Dimitrios Al. , Pardalis Konstantinos V.
Published: December 2012

One of the main challenges to be confronted by modern health care, so as to increase treatment quality, is the personalization of treatment. The treatment personalization has to be combined with a decrease in hospitalization costs. It requires continuous reconfiguration and adaptation of the selected treatment schemes since both the “current” circumstances in a health care organization change rapidly, and each patient constitutes a unique case. In this chapter, an innovative software infrastructure is presented, which provides an integrated IT environment concerning the totally dynamic composition of health care business processes (Clinical Pathways) during execution time. The software comprises a health care process execution engine, accompanied by a semantic infrastructure (ontology) for reconfiguring the Clinical Pathways. The SEMPATH (SEMantic PATHways) Ontology comprises three main parts: a) the Clinical Pathway part, b) the Business & Finance part, and c) the Quality Assurance part. During the execution of Clinical Pathways, the system reasons over a set of semantic rules and dynamically selects the next steps of the treatment. A graphical designer interface is implemented for the definition of the rule-set for the Clinical Pathways adaptation in a user-friendly way, alongside with a graphical user interface for the execution of the treatment schemes.
Use of Barcodes to Improve Safety in Healthcare
Authors: So Hing-Yu
Published: December 2012

The application of barcode technology for verification, that is, confirming that the right procedure or medication is administered to the right patient, at the right time, can improve safety significantly in many healthcare processes. Details of applying barcodes in transfusion and medication administration are described to illustrate how they can help to reduce errors. However, the effectiveness of barcodes in error reduction relies on the compliance of staff. Workarounds – omission of steps, steps out of sequence, or unauthorized steps – can compromise patient safety. The technical, organizational, patient-related, and environmental factors, which encourage those practices, need to be understood to prevent their occurrence. Also, the introduction of barcodes can lead to a workflow change and increased workload, which may lead to adverse effects. Successful introduction of barcodes must take into account the design of the process, the change management, the human factors issues, as well as related organizational issues.
PINATA
Authors: Dingli Alexiei , Abela Charlie , D’Ambrogio Ilenia
Published: December 2012

Owing to growing population health needs, the proportion of medical staff to patients keeps diminishing; yet, the quality in healthcare services is likely to increase. Through the amalgamation of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and Semantic Web technologies, PINATA seeks to deal with this issue. To perk up the quality of healthcare services, PINATA utilises pervasive devices to help doctors and nurses to concentrate on the patient. The movement of medical staff and patients is tracked by means of Wi-Fi sensors whilst an automated camera system monitors the interaction of people within their environment. The system operates autonomously in response to particular situations by guiding medical staff towards emergencies in a timely manner and providing them with the information they require on their handheld devices. This assures that patients are given the best possible attention on a 24/7 basis especially when the medical staff is not nearby.
HPV Detection
Authors: Spathis Aris , Archondakis Stavros , Karakitsos Petros
Published: December 2012

Human papilloma viruses (HPVs) have been acknowledged to be the leading risk factor of cervical intra-epithelial lesion creation (CIN) and cervical cancer development (CxCa), while recently, a vaccine protecting from the most commonly HPV types found in CxCa has been produced and introduced in vaccination schemes across the globe. Many different techniques have been created and utilized in HPV detection and monitoring with a vast amount of them being commercialized and few of them integrated in screening strategies. However, there has been no effort in combining data from all the different techniques and provide efficient patient triaging schemes, since, apart from the obvious increase of patient cost, the amount of data and its interpretation in patient management has been impossible.
Systems Modeling of Proliferation Mechanisms in Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
Authors: Lambrou George I. , Zaravinos Apostolos , Adamaki Maria , Vlahopoulos Spiros
Published: December 2012

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is the most common neoplasm in children, but the mechanisms underlying leukemogenesis are poorly understood, despite the existence of several theories regarding the mechanics of leukemic cell proliferation. However, with the advent of new biological principles, it appears that a systems approach could be used in an effective search of global patterns in biological systems, so as to be able to model the phenomenon of proliferation and gain a better understanding of how cells may progress from a healthy to a diseased state. This chapter reviews the current knowledge on proliferation dynamics, along with a discussion of the several existing theories on leukemogenesis and their comparison with the theories governing general oncogenesis. Furthermore, the authors present some “in-house” experimental data that support the view that it is possible to model leukemic cell proliferation and explain how this has been performed in in vitro experiments.
Proactive Security Protection of Critical Infrastructure
Authors: Bailey Bill , Doleman Robert
Published: December 2012

The belief that a static alarm system will safeguard critical infrastructure without additional support mechanisms is misplaced. This complacency is no longer satisfactory with the increase in worldwide threat levels and the potential social consequences. What is required is a more proactive, comprehensive security management process that adds to the ability to prevent, detect, deter, respond, and defeat potential harmful events and incidents. The model proposed here is proactive and grounded upon current operational procedures used by major companies in hostile and dangerous environments. By utilising a clearly defined comprehensive risk management tool, a more systematic security, threat, risk, and vulnerability assessment (STRVA), process can be developed. This process needs to identify deliberate targeting of assets through multiple intelligence gathering capabilities, plus defeat testing to probe existing security defences. The consequence approach to a potential breakthrough is at the essence of this methodology.
Patching our Critical Infrastructure
Authors: Knorr Konstantin
Published: December 2012

Worm epidemics such as Stuxnet and Conficker have raised great interest in the public and media lately and stressed the question of how our critical infrastructure can be protected against such attacks. Besides reactive measures like incident response, pro-active counter measures are required. Patch management is such an essential pro-active measure for the secure operation of our critical infrastructure. It is an indispensable activity which is required in many standards. This chapter focuses on patch and update management for industrial control systems that are part of our critical infrastructure. Standards for the automation of patch management and selected operational security standards are discussed in the context of patch management. The main contribution of the chapter is the definition and description of a standard conform patch management process for industrial control systems with special focus on the interaction between operator and vendor of such systems.
A Community-Oriented Approach to CIIP in Developing Countries
Authors: Ellefsen Ian , von Solms Sebastiaan
Published: December 2012

Developing countries are fast becoming players in an increasingly interconnected world. Many developing countries are making use of technological solutions to address unique challenges. However, in many cases, this growth is not accompanied with the development of appropriate information infrastructure protection structures. As technological solutions are deployed in developing countries, there will be a large number of new users gaining access to Internet-based systems. In many cases, these new users might lack the skills necessary to identify computer security threats. Inadequate cyber security measures can increase the risk and impact of cyber attacks. The development of internal structures to address Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIIP) is dependent on the environment in which it will be deployed. Therefore, traditional CIIP structures might not adequately address the technological challenges found in developing countries. In this chapter, the authors aim to address the development of CIIP structures in developing regions by elaborating on the set of unique challenges that exist. Furthermore, they aim to present a community-oriented structure aimed at providing CIIP, in what they refer to as a “bottom-up” manner. The larger aim of CIIP structures in developing regions is to support the future development and deployment of cyber security mechanisms and to allow developing countries to play a trusted role in global cyber security efforts.
Safety and Security in SCADA Systems Must be Improved through Resilience Based Risk Management
Authors: Johnsen Stig O.
Published: December 2012

This chapter describes vulnerabilities related to safety and security in distributed process control systems integrated with information and communication technology (ICT). The author describe key vulnerabilities and how to mitigate these vulnerabilities by current best practices, which have worked in an industrial setting in Norway. Distributed process control systems are denoted as SCADA systems, i.e. supervisory control and data acquisition systems. Increased networking and increased use of ICT impacts the complexity and vulnerability of the SCADA systems. To improve safety and security, there must be a focus on systematic knowledge generation between ICT and process experts and a focus on exploring resilience as a strategy to manage risks and support continuity of operations (resilience seen as the ability to bounce back and sustain operations). Best practices in risk management in this area are to establish policies, improve risk awareness, perform risk assessment in collaboration between ICT and SCADA professionals, focus on segregation of networks, focus on active protection against malicious software, improve reporting and sharing of incidents, and establish and explore disaster/recovery plans. In addition, there should be focus on certification and testing of components in ICT and SCADA systems and improvement of resilience to mitigate uncertainty and complexity.
Information Sharing for CIP
Authors: Robinson Neil
Published: December 2012

This chapter describes and contrasts policy, economic theory, and insights concerning the establishment and operation of Information Exchanges (IE). In the context of this chapter, IEs are specific mechanisms meant to stimulate the exchange and sharing (aside from pure disclosure) of a range of confidential information relating to security between owner-operators of critical infrastructure. Information shared in IEs may be of varying types but is reported to generally be of a non-technical nature. In the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) community, a number of nations have established IEs; for example, European SCADA and control systems exchange has been operating since 2005. The chapter primarily considers these issues through the perspective of efforts to address the security of the Critical Information Infrastructures (CII). Despite IEs being seen by policy-makers as important to tackle CIP issues, limited empirical operational evidence exists to suggest that IEs constitute a useful mechanism to successfully overcome the economic incentives governing the disclosure of information. The chapter concludes by identifying opportunities to further explore the disparities and reasons for the indicative disjuncture between economic theory, policy, and practice. The chapter is thus aimed primarily at managers, policy-makers, and non-technical personnel considering participation in an IE.
A Survey on Video Coding Principles and Standards
Authors: Koumaras H. , Kourtis M.A.
Published: December 2012

This chapter presents a general overview of the video coding principles and standards. This chapter launches with a brief explanation of the video coding process, and analyzes its discrete components, using specific examples. It then proceeds to an overall outline of the most important video coding standards by MPEG and their individual profiles/versions, and of the novel video coding standard High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). Additionally, this chapter contains a description of the objective and subjective video quality evaluation methods that are widely used in video quality assessment. The chapter concludes with a report on future trends and developments regarding the field of video processing.
Source Coding Methods for Robust Wireless Video Streaming
Authors: Fleury Martin , Altaf Mohammad , Moiron Sandro , Qadri Nadia , Ghanbari Mohammed
Published: December 2012

As real-time video streaming moves to the mobile Internet, there is a greater need to protect fragile compressed bit-streams from the impact of lossy wireless channels. Though forward error correction (FEC) has a role, if it is applied without adaptation, it may introduce excessive communication overhead. Alternatively, error resilience methods provide additional protection at the application layer of the protocol stack, without replication of any protection already provided at the data-like layer. In this chapter, a case study shows that these resilience methods can be applied adaptively through stream switching according to channel conditions. Error resilience can work hand-in-hand with error concealment, again applied through source coding. There are many error resilience and concealment methods, which this chapter surveys at a tutorial level. The chapter also includes an overview of video streaming for those unfamiliar with the topic. Though error concealment is a non-normative feature of the H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding) codec standard, there is a range of new techniques that have been included within the Standard such as flexible macroblock ordering and stream switching frames. The chapter additionally reviews error concealment provision, including spatial, temporal, and hybrid methods. Results show that there are tradeoffs between the level of protection and the level of overhead, according to the severity of the wireless channel impairment.
Free-Viewpoint 3DTV
Authors: Zinger S. , Do L. , de With P. H. N. , Petrovic G. , Morvan Y.
Published: December 2012

Free-ViewPoint (FVP) interpolation allows creating a new view between the existing reference views. Applied to 3D multi-view video sequences, it leads to two important applications: (1) FVP service provided to the user, which enables the possibility to interactively select the viewing point of the scene; (2) improved compression of multi-view video sequences by using view prediction for inter-view coding. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of the essential steps for 3D free-view video communication, which consists of the free-viewpoint interpolation techniques, a concept for free-view coding and a scalable free-view video streaming architecture. For facilitating free-view to the user, the chapter introduces the free-viewpoint interpolation techniques and the concept of warping. The authors assume that 3D video is represented by texture and depth images available for each view. Therefore it is possible to apply Depth Image Based Rendering (DIBR), which uses the depth signal as a important cue for geometry information and 3D reconstruction. Authors analyze the involved interpolation problems, such as cracks, ghost contours and disocclusions, which arise from an FVP interpolation and propose several solutions to improve the image quality of the synthesized view. Afterwards, they present a standard approach to FVP rendering used currently by the research community and our FVP interpolation. Additionally, authors show the use of FVP rendering for the multi-view coding and streaming and discuss the gains and trade-offs of it. At the end of the chapter are the state-of-the-art achievements and challenges of FVP rendering and a vision concerning the development of free-viewpoint services.
Construction Briefing Process in Malaysia
Authors: Jaafar Mastura , King Arkin Kong Chung
Published: December 2012

Malaysia is progressing smoothly toward the achievement of Vision 2020. In achieving this vision, the country has to undergo tremendous development. Aside from providing houses for the people, the construction industry has to support the development of other industries with various types of wide-scale projects implemented by either public or private sectors. It is acknowledged that project briefing is the most important process conducted during the initial stage of project development. The research was undertaken to study the public sector’s construction briefing process and to investigate the problems arising during the process. Data was gathered through face-to-face interview. The data gathered supported that the public sector was using the RIBA plan of work but leaning towards the Netherlands approach. In addition, the project brief was seen as a powerful tool to be controlled at the early stage of project planning (initial stage). The result supported previous studies that pointed out the lack of knowledge and the involvement of inexperienced parties, either clients or consultants, as the main barriers for the integrated and strategic project briefing. This study contributes useful and beneficial information for the public sector to mitigate the project problems.
Mobile Context Data Mining
Authors: Chen Enhong , Bao Tengfei , Cao Huanhuan
Published: December 2012

The mobile devices, such as iPhone, iPad, and Android are becoming more popular than ever before. Many mobile-based intelligent applications and services are emerging, especially those location-based and context-aware services, e.g. Foursquare and Google Latitude. The mobile device is important since it can detect a user’s rich context information with its in-device sensors, e.g. GPS, Cell ID, and accelerometer. With such data and suitable data mining methods better understanding of users is possible; smart and intelligent services thus can be provided. In this chapter, the authors introduce some mobile context mining applications and methods. To be specific, they first show some typical mobile context data types with a mobile phone which can be detected. Then, they briefly introduce mining methods that are related to two mostly used types of mobile context data, location, and accelerometer. In the following, we illustrate in detail two context data mining methods that process multiple types of context data and can deal with the more general problem of user understanding: how to mine users’ behavior patterns and how to model users’ significant contexts from the users’ mobile context log. In each section, the authors show some state-of-the-art works.
Topic Modeling for Web Community Discovery
Authors: Somboonviwat Kulwadee
Published: December 2012

The proliferation of the Web has led to the simultaneous explosive growth of both textual and link information. Many techniques have been developed to cope with this information explosion phenomenon. Early efforts include the development of non-Bayesian Web community discovery methods that exploit only link information to identify groups of topical coherent Web pages. Most non-Bayesian methods produce hard clustering results and cannot provide semantic interpretation. Recently, there has been growing interest in applying Bayesian-based approaches to discovering Web community. The Bayesian approaches for Web community discovery possess many good characteristics such as soft clustering results and ability to provide semantic interpretation of the extracted communities. This chapter presents a systematic survey and discussions of non-Bayesian and Bayesian-based approaches to the Web community discovery problem.
Method for Modeling User Semantics and its Application to Service Navigation on the Web
Authors: Sasajima Munehiko , Kitamura Yoshinobu , Mizoguchi Riichiro
Published: December 2012

The value of information accumulated on the Web is enhanced when it is provided to the user who faces a problematic situation that can be solved by the information. The authors have investigated a task-oriented menu that enables users to search for mobile Internet services not by category but by situation. Construction of the task-oriented menu is based on a user modeling method that supports descriptions of user activities, such as task execution and defeating obstacles encountered during the task, which in turn represents the users’ situations and/or needs for certain information. They built task models of the mobile users that cover about 97% of the assumed situations of mobile Internet services. Then they reorganized “contexts” in the model and designed a menu hierarchy from the viewpoint of the task. The authors have linked the designed menu to the set of mobile Internet service sites included in the i-mode service operated by NTT docomo, consisting of 5016 services. Among them, 4817 services are properly connected to the menu. This chapter introduces a framework for a real scale task-oriented menu system for mobile service navigation with its relations to the SNS applications as knowledge resources.
A Wiki Platform for Language and Intercultural Communication
Authors: Xing Minjie , Zou Bin , Wang Dongshuo
Published: December 2012

This chapter studies a wiki project that electronically links English students learning Business Chinese in the UK and Chinese students learning Business English in China. The focus is placed upon enhancing English/Chinese language skills and intercultural communication competence. Students’ messages on the wiki illustrate that cultural values and cultural competence are important parts of business communication. The results of a questionnaire survey and a focus group interview indicate that the interaction between language learners and native speakers not only helped students improve each other’s language, but also allowed them to understand the business norms and behaviours in another culture. The chapter concludes with a proposal that wikis can be a platform for enhancing language output and intercultural communication competence, if well designed and monitored.
Language Economy in Computer-Mediated Communication
Authors: White Jonathan R.
Published: December 2012

This chapter presents an analysis of economised language in textchat data from non-native English-speaking students in an MA programme in English Linguistics. Previous research by the author demonstrated that forms clipped or otherwise reduced from their full version can be considered evidence that an Internet community of practice has formed. The author argues here that this implies that the learners are exhibiting autonomy, and he also demonstrates that the same can be concluded for the ellipsis. The functions of the ellipsis are identified, which demonstrates that students are interacting, and therefore, are at least in the process of forming a social learning community.
Getting Smart about Split Attention
Authors: Mancilla Rae Lynne
Published: December 2012

This chapter examines second language (L2) listening and note-taking tasks performed by international students in university settings, guided by Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and the split attention effect. It provides a background of the cognitive aspects of L2 listening processes, academic lecture listening, and note-taking, as they interface with temporal, physical, and affective forms of split attention to compromise information decoding and learning outcomes for L2 learners. While this work does not present new findings in the field, it reviews existing studies that provide insight into the Echo SmartpenTM by Livescribe as a mobile e-learning tool for alleviating the split attention effect, and enhancing the encoding and external storage functions of note-taking for L2 learners.
The Use of VLE for Monitoring Independent Language Learning in Large Cohort Provision
Authors: Franc Catherine , Morton Annie
Published: December 2012

The Department of French at the University of Manchester is currently innovating in eLearning in order to enhance both language provision and student performance. Within the context of the core language module Independent Learning Programme, they are exploring ways to enhance new technologies to address following questions: how to encourage our large cohort of French studies students throughout their degree to engage in regular and systematic independent learning; how to equip them with appropriate language specific and transferable skills for lifelong independent learning; and how to enhance intrinsic motivation particularly with extrinsic motivational factors such as feedback and feedforward.
Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Training and Assessment (CAPTA) Programs
Authors: Tsurutani Chiharu
Published: December 2012

Pedagogical support for pronunciation tends to fall behind other areas of applied linguistics and CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) due to technological difficulty in speech recognition and the lack of knowledge in phonetics of both language teachers and learners. This chapter discusses the gap between the need for pronunciation training and the capacity of CAPTA programs in terms of phonetic and phonological development of second-language (L2) learners. Pronunciation difficulties experienced by L2 learners will be explained cross-linguistically, and the most recent developments in the production of CAPTA programs will be discussed in relation to the type of pronunciation errors dealt with by these programs. Considering that native-like pronunciation is no longer required in the current multi-lingual society, the author proposes achievable and pedagogically sound goals for the development of CAPTA programs as well as for L2 learners.
Project Management-Based Design for Online Learning
Authors: Kurubacak Gulsun , Yuzer T. Volkan
Published: December 2012

Designing an online learning milieu by utilizing project management-based design has different dimensions, such as the responsibility assignment management, implementation management, time management, cost management, procurement management, risk management, quality insurance management, human resources management, and communication management perspectives of online learning design and its models. The main purpose of this chapter is to elucidate the dimensions, components, and characteristics of Project Management-Based Online Learning Design (PMBOLD). This chapter, therefore, focuses on how to design and deliver online learning based on utilizing project management approach. Based on the main purpose of this study, the authors consider on how to plan, organize, secure, and manage resources to bring about the successful completion of online learning goals and objectives. They also discuss online learning design and its models from a progressive and transformative viewpoint of project management-based design. This is vital for distance education designers to examine online learning models how to bring a global and multicultural partnership of faculty, administrators, professionals, teachers, community activists, researchers, and parents as well as understand and challenge the injustices digital societies face.
eLearning Project Management for Innovation Management
Authors: Lambropoulos Niki , Gourdin Alain , Soamiadana Marcella , Danis Sophi , Bakharia Aneesha
Published: December 2012

The global crisis led educational institutions to adjust their curricula, pedagogical methodologies, and use of tools to the new alternate external environment. ITIN is a French IT Institute which has based its entire structure on dealing with such challenges by changing its pedagogical educational settings as well as its evaluation methodologies. One major change is related to Team Project-Based eLearning (TPBeL) utilization in order to advance students’ knowledge, team skills, and collaboration in authentic working environments via Computer Supported Collaborative eLearning (CSCeL) for the Innovation Management eCourse. This book chapter discusses the TPBL and CSCeL approaches and presents a case study with 43 ITIN students. To achieve triangulation, diverse research methods were employed, including: individual questionnaires, thematic discussion analysis, and social network analysis. The results showed that the students’ perceptions on teamwork skills developed within a Team PBL were positively increasing and they used several team work techniques simultaneously such as group co-construction of their assignments as well as the puzzle method. An interesting result suggests an absolute difference about what happened in teamwork and how the students perceived it; most students did not develop a group perceptive on their teamwork despite the fact that the group assignments were successfully completed. Lastly, they suggested that they enjoyed working very hard in an intensive eCourse, although it was the first time they used the Moodle Learning Management System and its integrated tools to collaborate for learning purposes.
Using an Evolving Electronic Stylebook as a Touchstone for Online Learning Project Management
Authors: Hai-Jew Shalin
Published: December 2012

For complex instructional design projects, having an evolving electronic stylebook offers a critical advantage in terms of organizing the work for quality and shared understandings. A stylebook may serve as a touchstone, a test, or criterion for the quality of a thing, because it is the documentary record for online learning projects. This chapter addresses the main contents of such an electronic stylebook and the criticality for the evolution of this work as the project parameters change.
Through the Looking Glass to Ourselves
Authors: Stowers Gwen , Fasching-Varner Kenneth , Brimhall-Vargas Mark , Clark Christine
Published: December 2012

This chapter describes the project of developing online multicultural and bilingual teacher educational curricula in a manner that encourages particular intellectual and behavioral learning outcomes for teacher education students. The pedagogical process by which these outcomes are achieved—facilitation of e-dialogue—acts as the project’s management approach. The goal of the project is the development of transformational respect for and among all learners (both teacher education students as well as their largely public school PK-12 students), and sustenance of faculty (both teacher education and PK-12) hope and possibility through progressive e-education; resultantly, systems of oppression in schools and the broader society can be dismantled.
Managing an E-Marketing Plan for an Online Learning Curriculum
Authors: Hai-Jew Shalin
Published: December 2012

The design of an online learning curriculum is not the end of the work for that course or curriculum. Further work involves a marketing outreach to potential learners in order to encourage their enrollment and participation in the course. In the electronic age, it is not just sufficient to send out information through the electronic mailing lists of a department or through local media or established university channels; rather, it’s critical to position an online learning course or sequenced curriculum globally to most effectively capitalize on the electronic connectivity of the Internet and Web. Online courses are not just there for the convenience of geographically localized learners who have busy schedules. Reaching a broader potential audience of learners may lead to several types of competitive advantage: a broader diversity of international learners; a stronger tuition base to support the teaching-and-learning work; positive challenges for the instructors and subject matter experts, and heightened and less provincial learning opportunities. Further, those on the development team have a critical role to play in terms of marketing an online course—because of the intimate knowledge of the course curriculum, its design, and the targeted learners.