bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evolving On-Line Pedagogy
Authors: McLaughlin Jacqueline S. , Munsell Darin S.
Published: January 2012

Technology is helping undergraduate biology instructors re-define their pedagogical “toolboxes” for the 21st century classroom. Indeed, new multimedia learning tools are evolving to fill the niche to assist student transition from simple inquiry-based learning (textbooks, less student responsibility) to professional science practice (research, more student responsibility). Moreover, these tools are creating interactive classrooms, empowering instructors to be facilitators of learning, and helping to excite the next generation of researchers and good citizens. This article will review what is meant by multimedia learning and multimedia instruction; present one example of a new type of multimedia learning tool, “research module,” that is being used in American high school and undergraduate classrooms; describe research-based parameters to follow when creating a research-based pedagogical activity; and highlight evidentiary support for the benefits and success of these multimedia modules.
Screening of Students’ Intentions to Adopt Mobile - Learning
Authors: Attalla Sohayla M. El-Sherbiny , El-Sherbiny Reem , Mokbel Wafaa A. , El-Moursy Rania M. , Abdel-Wahab Ahmed G.
Published: January 2012

Mobile technology is a growing field with emerging new discoveries. The introduction of third generation mobile network services and the convergence of mobile and traditional internet services will make the mobile communication a key enabler for achieving competitive advantages in developing countries, including opportunities for mobile learning (M-learning). This study explores the possibility of applying M-learning in Egypt by looking at the factors that affect the students’ intentions to adopt M-learning. Data was collected by a survey of 239 business students of the English program in the faculty of commerce at Mansoura University. The technology adoption model is studied with two more independent variables, namely, pressure to act and resource availability. Results showed that there are four factors that can be used in modelling students’ intentions to adopt M-learning. These factors are attitude towards M-learning, perceived usefulness, availability of resources and perceived ease of use.
Employees’ Perceptions on Organisational Justice, Job Control and Job Demands
Authors: Tynkkynen Liina-Kaisa , Sinervo Timo , Elovainio Marko , Lehto Juhani , Koivisto Anna-Maija , Noro Anja , Finne-Soveri
Published: January 2012

The issue to be addressed in this study is whether ownership and HRM practices are associated with employees’ perceptions of organisational justice, job control and job demands. The study focuses on care personnel working in sheltered housing facilities for elderly people. Multi-level linear regression is applied to analyse the data. The results support the argument that an increased similarity between public, not-for-profit and for-profit organisations is emerging in HRM issues. HRM practices were found to associate with positive outcomes in organisational justice and job control. However, to be successful in the implementation of HRM, it is crucial that employees understand the justification for each procedure as well as find it a useful resource in terms of their own job.
How Would a Ban on Prescriber-Identifying Information Impact Pharmaceutical Marketing?
Authors: Walker Doug
Published: January 2012

Recent legal proceedings have addressed pharmaceutical firms’ access to physician and brand level prescribing data. Proponents of the use of the data for marketing purposes claim constitutional protection as freedom of speech. Opponents maintain that distribution of the data compromises privacy. From the perspective of Granger-causality, this study investigates the extent to which pharmaceutical firms use this data to adjust detailing levels at the physician level. Important firm and public policy implications result. Consistent with the findings of previous work, detailing appears to Granger-cause prescription writing for a significant subset of physicians. However, the evidence that prescription writing Granger-causes adjustments in detailing levels is weak.
UML-Based Design and Validation of Intelligent Agents-Based Reconfigurable Embedded Control Systems
Authors: Ali Amen Ben Hadj , Khalgui Mohamed , Ben Ahmed Samir
Published: January 2012

The paper examines UML-based design and validation of reconfigurable embedded control systems which can have multiple software architectural configurations such that each one is designed by a set of inter-connected software components. To handle dynamic reconfiguration scenarios, the authors define a software agent which interacts with users and applies several forms of reconfiguration at different granularity levels of the system’s architecture. The agent has the ability of monitoring the system’s environment and to apply appropriate and valid reconfiguration scenarios under well-defined constraints. Three architectural levels are defined in order to consider all possible reconfiguration forms of embedded systems. The authors define a set of UML-compliant metamodels to describe the knowledge about the reconfiguration agent, the system architecture, the reconfiguration scenarios, and the reconfiguration events. Validity of reconfigurations scenarios are checked using an UML-based environment which allows evaluating architectural and reconfiguration constraints. The proposed reconfiguration approach is applied to the FESTO production system.
Statistical Methods and Artificial Neural Networks Techniques in Electromyography
Authors: Azar Ahmad Taher , Balas Valentina E.
Published: January 2012

This work represents a comparative study for the activity of the masseter muscle for patients before trial base denture insertion and the activity of the same muscle after trial denture base insertion for both right and left masseter muscles. The study tried to find if there were significant differences in the activity of the masseter muscle before and after patients wearing their trial denture base using two approaches: parametric statistical methods and a Neural Network Classifier. Statistical analysis was performed on three feature vectors extracted from autoregressive (AR) modeling, Discrete Wavelet Transform (WT), and from Wavelet Packet Transform (WP). The least significant difference test and the student t-test have not proved significant differences in the masseter muscle activity before and after wearing denture. However, using the same feature vectors, a neural network classifier has proved that there are significant differences in the masseter muscle activity before and after patients wearing trial denture base.
Investigation of Deforestation of Environmental Protection Areas of Madeira River Permanent Preservation Areas in Rondônia Amazon, Brazil
Authors: Rodrigues dos Anjos Marcelo , Schulz Marla
Published: January 2012

The deforestation of the Amazon protected areas involves a series of deleterious environmental factors, such as social conflicts, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, deterioration of watersheds, and environmental services offered, that still are not considered in studies of environmental impacts and when studied, are not valued economically or end up being undersized, resulting in loss of economic opportunities associated to the sustainable use of natural resources in areas of interest for conservation. This study had as objective to point out illegal activities in and around the area of special environmental protection (APA) of the Madeira River in Rondonia in accordance with the provisions of the Terms of Reference, No. 001/CAO-AMB/MP/2006, with action and support of interagency bodies BPM / PM, SEDAM, SIPAM, INCRA, IBAMA, EMBRAGEO in order to understand the dynamics of deforestation in protected areas and indigenous lands of the state.
Cooperation Among Members of Online Communities
Authors: Merani M. L. , Capetta M. , Saladino D.
Published: January 2012

Today some of the most popular and successful applications over the Internet are based on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) solutions. Online Social Networks (OSN) represent a stunning phenomenon too, involving communities of unprecedented size, whose members organize their relationships on the basis of social or professional friendship. This work deals with a P2P video streaming platform and focuses on the performance improvements that can be granted to those P2P nodes that are also members of a social network. The underpinning idea is that OSN friends (and friends of friends) might be more willing to help their mates than complete strangers in fetching the desired content within the P2P overlay. Hence, an approach is devised to guarantee that P2P users belonging to an OSN are guaranteed a better service when critical conditions build up, i.e., when bandwidth availability is scarce. Different help strategies are proposed, and their improvements are numerically assessed, showing that the help of direct friends, two-hops away friends and, in the limit, of the entire OSN community brings in considerable advantages. The obtained results demonstrate that the amount of delivered video increases and the delay notably decreases, for those privileged peers that leverage their OSN membership within the P2P overlay.
A Source Based On-Demand Data Forwarding Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Brandl Martin , Kos Andreas , Kellner Karlheinz , Mayerhofer Christian , Posnicek Thomas , Fabian Christian
Published: January 2012

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are becoming more important in the medical and environmental field. The authors propose an on-demand routing protocol using sensor attractiveness-metric (Pa) gradients for data forwarding decisions within the network. Attractiveness-based routing provides an efficient concept for data-centric routing in wireless sensor networks. The protocol works on-demand, is source-initiated, has a flat hierarchy and has its origin in the idea of pheromone-based routing. The algorithm supports node-to-sink data traffic and is therefore a lightweight approach to generalized multihop routing algorithms in WSNs. The performance evaluation of the proposed protocol is done by extensive simulation using a multi-agent based simulation environment called NetLogo. The efficiency of the attractiveness-based routing algorithm is compared in simulations with the well known Dynamic Source Routing algorithm (DSR). The authors conclude that the Pabased routing algorithm is well suited for easy to set up WSNs because of its simplicity of implementation and its adaptability to different scenarios by adjustable weighting factors for the node’s attractiveness metric.
Explaining Developer Attitude Toward Using Formalized Commercial Methodologies
Authors: Hendersen Dave , Sheetz Steven D. , Bélanger France
Published: January 2012

Although software development methodologies can improve software quality, developers typically have a negative attitude toward using them. To encourage a positive attitude, organizations must convince developers of the usefulness of methodologies. However, the traditional conceptualization of perceived usefulness (PU) may not be detailed enough to explain and engender positive developer attitudes toward methodologies. To determine the ways in which a methodology is useful, in this paper, the authors propose and test a multidimensional conceptualization of PU. A survey of software developers suggests that in the context of methodologies, PU is multidimensional, helping developers achieve a variety of objectives.
Financial Impact of Information Security Breaches on Breached Firms and their Non-Breached Competitors
Authors: Zafar Humayun , Ko Myung , Osei-Bryson Kweku-Muata
Published: January 2012

Information security breaches pose a growing threat to organizations and individuals, particularly those that are heavily involved in e-business/e-commerce. An information security breach can have wide-ranging impacts, including influencing the behaviors of competitors and vice versa within the context of a competitive marketplace. Therefore, there is a need for further exploration of implications of information security breaches beyond the focus of the breached firm. This study investigates the financial impact of publicly announced information security breaches on breached firms and their non-breached competitors. While controlling for size and the industry the firm operates in, the authors focus on specific types of information security breaches (Denial of Service, Website Defacement, Data Theft, and Data Corruption). Unlike previous studies that have used event study methodology, the authors investigate information transfer effects that result from information security breaches using the matched sampling method. The study reveals statistically significant evidence of the presence of intra-industry information transfer for some types of security breaches. The authors also found evidence of contagion effects, but no similar evidence concerning competition effect.
Technology Assimilation Across the Value Chain
Authors: Bharati Pratyush , Chaudhury Abhijit
Published: January 2012

In this paper, the authors study technology assimilation, aggregating technologies and assimilation stages for SMEs. The authors employ the twin lenses of organizational innovation and elements of institutional theory. The research validates some institutional actors and most firm characteristics as important determinants. The relative weaknesses of the institutional actors provide evidence of structural isolation in the SME environment that is inhibiting information flow from intermediaries like government support agencies and vendors. The authors recommend a proactive role on the part of technology and enterprise intermediaries to design SME-appropriate solutions.
A Strategy for Estimating Nutrient Concentrations Using Remote Sensing Datasets and Hydrological Modeling
Authors: Alarcon Vladimir J. , McAnally William H.
Published: January 2012

This paper presents a methodology for estimating nutrient concentrations of total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) through the use of hydrological modeling, remote sensing datasets, and nutrient export coefficients. The strategy is applied to the Upper Tombigbee watershed, located in the northern region of the states of Mississippi and Alabama, USA. USGS GIRAS (1986), NASA MODIS MOD12Q1 (2001-2004) land use datasets, and USGS-DEM topographical datasets were used to characterize the physiography of the watershed. TN and TP concentration values estimated using the methodology were compared to values reported in the literature.
Spatial Modeling of Natural Phenomena and Events with Artificial Neural Networks and GIS
Authors: Noack Silke , Barth Andreas , Irkhin Alexey , Bennewitz Evelyn , Schmidt Frank
Published: January 2012

Artificial neural networks (ANN) are used for statistical modeling of spatial events in geosciences. The advantage of this method is the ability of neural networks to represent complex interrelations and to be “able to learn” from known (spatial) events. The software advangeo® was developed to enable GIS users to apply neural network methods on raster geodata. This statistic modeling can be displayed in a user-friendly way within the ESRI ArcGIS environment. The complete workflow is documented by the software. This paper presents three pilot studies conducted to illustrate the possibilities of spatial predictions with the use of existing raster datasets, which described influencing factors and the selection of known events of the phenomenon to be modeled. These applications included (1) the prognosis of soil erosion patterns, (2) the prediction of mineral resources, and (3) vulnerability analysis for forest pests.
The RiskCity Training Package on Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment
Authors: van Westen Cees , Woldai Tsehaie
Published: January 2012

As part of the capacity-building activities of the United Nations University – ITC School on Disaster Geo-Information Management (UNU-ITC DGIM) the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) has developed a training package on the application of GIS for multi-hazard risk assessment. The package, called RiskCity comprises a complete suite of exercise descriptions, together with GIS data and presentation materials on the various steps required to collect and analyze relevant spatial data for hazard, vulnerability and risk assessment in an urban environment. The package has been developed in collaboration with several partner organizations on different continents, and is used as the basis for a series of courses. Currently it is available as a distance education course.
Harnessing Nigeria’s Investment in Satellite Technology for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security
Authors: Opeyemi Zubair A. , Akinyede J. O.
Published: January 2012

This paper examines the relevance of satellite technology in promoting and sustaining agricultural development and food security in Africa and Nigeria in particular. Some of the common problems facing agricultural development in Nigeria and Africa as a whole are discussed. The authors justify the relevance of Nigeria’s investment in satellite technology for improving agricultural production in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. The paper also presents selected applications of NigeriaSat-1 in sustainable agriculture and food security as embarked on by the government of Nigeria through the National Space Research and Development Agency. Policy recommendations were made to further boost agricultural production and food security in Africa and particularly Nigeria.
An Extensive Group Decision Methodology for Alliance Partner Selection Problem in Collaborative Networked Organisations
Authors: Kara Selin Soner , Ayadi Omar , Cheikhrouhou Naoufel
Published: January 2012

More and more companies address collaborations and cooperation as strategic topics to build competitive networks and broaden the global competences provided by the community thus created. These companies can cooperate with partners to share resources, competences, risks, or costs. Besides, penetrating new markets can be easier when associating new partners. The selection process of an adequate partner considered for a specific objective is a key success factor. This paper proposes an evaluation methodology for selecting an alliance partner in the case of a network of enterprises, manufacturing high precision mechanical components. An extensive group decision methodology is developed using both quantitative data and qualitative judgments in the evaluation of criteria. Since some performances cannot be represented with crisp numbers, the proposed methodology allows experts to use linguistic variables to express their judgments for the assessment of qualitative criteria. Two main phases are integrated in this methodology. In the first phase, criteria and experts weightings are calculated to determine the criteria importance using fuzzy the analytical hierarchy process. In the second phase, a technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution is proposed to rank the different alternatives, corresponding to the alternative partnerships.
Delivery Reliability in Machinery and Equipment Industry
Authors: Schuh Günther , Stich Volker , Brosze Tobias , Potente Till , Jasinski Thomas , Cuber Stefan
Published: January 2012

European machinery and equipment manufacturers face multiple logistical challenges in their daily business. Interacting in complex non-hierarchical production networks and thus living with the consequences of a lack of transparency, temporal instability, or imbalanced share of market power finally leads to an inadequate OEM’s delivery adherence which in many cases can be traced back to suppliers’ late deliveries. This paper presents a framework for improving delivery reliability in non-hierarchical production networks by applying market mechanisms. Knowing the financial consequences of a supplier’s belated delivery provides useful information which can be applied in terms of financial incentives. The framework is supported by the results of a study which has been conducted by the authors throughout German, Spanish, and Italian machine tool manufacturers and their suppliers.
A Structural Model to Investigate Factors Affect Patient Satisfaction and Revisit Intention in Jordanian Hospitals
Authors: Al-Refaie Abbas
Published: January 2012

By measuring to what extent hospitals meet or exceed patient’s expectations, hospital managers can determine the needed service design and delivery improvements that contribute to patient satisfaction and revisit intention. It is necessary to evaluate quality of health care services from patient perspective. This research investigates the factors, including hospital performance, hospital stay, hospital facilities, interaction with patients, service quality, and patient security culture, that affect significantly patient satisfaction and revisit intention in Jordanian hospitals using structural equation modeling. Data were collected from five main hospitals. The results showed that hospital performance has no significant effect on patient satisfaction and revisit intention. This result indicates that the patients are facing troubles in admission, registration, waiting time, and response time for results of medical tests. Also, the hospital stay, hospital facilities, service quality, and patient security culture are found significantly important in achieving patient satisfaction and revisit intention. Further, the interaction with patients’ requirements and needs significantly related to service quality and hospital stay. These results shall provide policy and planning manager a great assistance in determining the factors that improve hospital performance, maintain quality medical services, and plan future improvements in the design and development of medical health care services in Jordan.
A Hybrid Simulated Annealing and Simplex Method for Fixed-Cost Capacitated Multicommodity Network Design
Authors: Yaghini Masoud , Karimi Mohammad , Rahbar Mohadeseh , Akhavan Rahim
Published: January 2012

The fixed-cost Capacitated Multicommodity Network Design (CMND) problem is a well known NP-hard problem. This paper presents a matheuristic algorithm combining Simulated Annealing (SA) metaheuristic and Simplex method for CMND problem. In the proposed algorithm, a binary array is considered as solution representation and the SA algorithm manages open and closed arcs. Several strategies for opening and closing arcs are proposed and evaluated. In this matheuristic approach, for a given design vector, CMND becomes a Capacitated Multicommodity minimum Cost Flow (CMCF) problem. The exact evaluation of the CMCF problem is performed using the Simplex method. The parameter tuning for the proposed algorithm is done by means of design of experiments approach. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by solving different benchmark instances. The results of the proposed algorithm show that it is able to obtain better solutions in comparison with previous methods in the literature.
A Hybrid Meta-Heuristic Algorithm for Dynamic Spectrum Management in Multiuser Systems
Authors: Cordova Hernan X. , Van Biesen Leo
Published: January 2012

One of the major sources of performance degradation of current Digital Subscriber Line systems is the electromagnetic coupling among different twisted pairs within the same cable bundle (crosstalk). Several algorithms for Dynamic Spectrum management have been proposed to counteract the crosstalk effect but their complexity remains a challenge in practice. Optimal Spectrum Balancing (OSB) is a centralized algorithm that optimally allocates the available transmit power over the tones making use of a Dual decomposition approach where Lagrange multipliers are used to enforce the constraints and decouple the problem over the tones. However, the overall complexity of this algorithm remains a challenge for practical DSL environments. The authors propose a low-complex algorithm based on a combination of simulated annealing and non-linear simplex to find local (almost global) optimum spectra for multiuser DSL systems, whilst significantly reducing the prohibitive complexity of traditional OSB. The algorithm assumes a Spectrum Management Center (at the cabinet side) but it neither relies on own end-user modem calculations nor on messaging-passing for achieving its performance objective. The approach allows furthering reducing the number of function evaluations achieving further reduction on the convergence time (up to ~27% gain) at reasonable payoff (weighted data rate sum).
A Novel Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problem
Authors: Roy Rahul , Dehuri Satchidananda , Cho Sung Bae
Published: January 2012

The Combinatorial problems are real world decision making problem with discrete and disjunctive choices. When these decision making problems involve more than one conflicting objective and constraint, it turns the polynomial time problem into NP-hard. Thus, the straight forward approaches to solve multi-objective problems would not give an optimal solution. In such case evolutionary based meta-heuristic approaches are found suitable. In this paper, a novel particle swarm optimization based meta-heuristic algorithm is presented to solve multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems. Here a mapping method is considered to convert the binary and discrete values (solution encoded as particles) to a continuous domain and update it using the velocity and position update equation of particle swarm optimization to find new set of solutions in continuous domain and demap it to discrete values. The performance of the algorithm is compared with other evolutionary strategy like SPEA and NSGA-II on pseudo-Boolean discrete problems and multi-objective 0/1 knapsack problem. The experimental results confirmed the better performance of combinatorial particle swarm optimization algorithm.
Development of Intellectual Property of Communications Enterprise and Analysis of Current Situation of Patents in Emerging Technology Field
Authors: Ding Wenjia
Published: January 2012

In the process of promoting the national intellectual property strategy, domestic enterprises should seize the opportunity to develop their own intellectual property system according to their actual situations. The communication industry as an example of statistical data and specific analysis of patent applications in emerging technology field in recent years are supplied in the article.
Image Fusion of ECT/ERT for Oil-Gas-Water Three-Phase Flow
Authors: Zhang Lifeng
Published: January 2012

The tomographic imaging of process parameters for oil-gas-water three-phase flow can be obtained through different sensing modalities, such as electrical resistance tomography (ERT) and electrical capacitance tomography (ECT), both of which are sensitive to specific properties of the objects to be imaged. However, it is hard to discriminate oil, gas and water phases merely from reconstructed images of ERT or ECT. In this paper, the feasibility of image fusion based on ERT and ECT reconstructed images was investigated for oil-gas-water three-phase flow. Two cases were discussed and pixel-based image fusion method was presented. Simulation results showed that the cross-sectional reconstruction images of oil-gas-water three-phase flow can be obtained using the presented methods.
The Information Construction of Wind Farm Based on SIS System
Authors: Wan-Ye Yao , Shi Yin
Published: January 2012

In the wind farms, fans are widely distribution with large amount and they are away from the monitoring center, working environment is poor. In order to ensure the safe and stable operation of the wind farms, the wind power operation requirements need to be satisfied, own better function performance and stability of remote monitoring system to improve the management efficiency. In view of this, the power group increasing highly requirements on wind farm group management,but at present, the single SCADA system which the fan manufacturers offered has failed to meet the requirements. On the basis, this article designs the wind farm supervisory information system (SIS), and realizes wind farm cluster control, data analysis, performance optimization and fault warning.
Self-Adaptable Discovery and Composition of Services Based on the Semantic CompAA Approach
Authors: Lacouture J. , Aniorté P.
Published: January 2012

With the next generation of distributed systems, applications become nomad, ubiquitous or ambient. It becomes challenging to dynamically maintain or update functionalities, or to preserve non-functional properties, like the extensibility of the system and the quality of service. This paper describes the CompAA component model. The main contribution introduces the variability concept with the specification of adaptation points integrated by a mixed component/agent approach. The result is the production of self-adaptable entities, including self-discovery and self-composition mechanisms. An experiment in the area of training, based on very scalable services (e-Portfolio), validates these contributions and provides an exemplification of CompAA mechanisms.
Performance Analysis of an OCSP-Based Authentication Protocol for VANETs
Authors: Serna-Olvera Jetzabel , Casola Valentina , Rak Massimiliano , Luna Jesús , Medina Manel , Mazzocca Nicola
Published: January 2012

Vehicular Ad-Hoc NETworks (VANETs) improve road safety by preventing and reducing traffic accidents, but VANETs also raise important security and privacy issues. A common approach widely adopted in VANETs is the use of Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) and digital certificates in order to enable authentication and confidentiality, usually relying on a large set of regional Certification Authorities (CAs). Despite the advantages of the latter approach, it raises new problems related with the secure interoperability among the different –and usually unknown- issuing CAs. This paper addresses authentication and interoperability issues in vehicular communications, considering an interregional scenario where mutual authentication between all the nodes is needed. The use of an Authentication Service (AS) is proposed, which supplies vehicles with a trusted set of authentication credentials by implementing a near real-time certificate status service via the well-known Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). The proposed AS also implements a mechanism to quantitatively evaluate the trust level of a CA, in order to decide on-the-fly if an interoperability relationship can be created. The feasibility and performance of the proposed mechanisms are demonstrated via simulations and quantitative analyses by providing a set of communication measurements considering an urban scenario.
A Model Driven Engineering Approach Toward User Interfaces Adaptation
Authors: Bouchelligua W. , Mahfoudhi A , Abed M.
Published: January 2012

In ubiquitous computing, the context of use (user, platform, environment) is in a permanent change. This has brought about new challenges in the Human Computer Interface (HCI) engineering to obtain User Interfaces (UI) that are compliant to their context of use. This paper has benefitted from the interests of parameterized principle transformation in the framework of the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) to propose approaches based on the models for the generation of the adaptable UI. It provides meta-models for the various components of the context of use which plays the role of the transformation parameter of the abstract interface into a concrete interface. It is through a case study of an information system of industrial supervision that the approach is shown to be reliable.
The Interplay between Practitioners and Technological Experts in the Design Process of an Archaeology Information System
Authors: Federici Tommaso , Braccini Alessio Maria
Published: January 2012

This case describes the design and development process of a computer-based information system for the management of archaeological finds and related documents. Adaptive Structuration Theory is used as the conceptual framework to analyse the role and actions of different people involved in the design and development process, during the different stages of the case. The case addresses key issues, such as an initiative taking place in an organizational context where users show different needs, profiles and levels of information technology literacy. It focuses primarily on the interactions between practitioners and technological experts during the design and development process. Another matter of interest comes from the fact that, in this sector, no other information system for finds management was already available. Moreover, this case targets the domain of archaeology that has not received so much attention by Information Systems literature to date.
Source Camera Identification Issues
Authors: Hu Yongjian , Li Chang-Tsun , Zhou Changhui , Lin Xufeng
Published: January 2012

Statistical image features play an important role in forensic identification. Current source camera identification schemes select image features mainly based on classification accuracy and computational efficiency. For forensic investigation purposes; however, these selection criteria are not enough. Consider most real-world photos may have undergone common image processing due to various reasons, source camera classifiers must have the capability to deal with those processed photos. In this work, the authors first build a sample camera classifier using a combination of popular image features, and then reveal its deficiency. Based on the experiments, suggestions for the design of robust camera classifiers are given.
Validating the Satisfaction and Continuance Intention of E-learning Systems
Authors: Lin Tung-Cheng , Chen Ching-Jen
Published: January 2012

Many e-learning studies have evaluated learning attitudes and behaviors, based on TAM. However, a successful e-learning system (ELS) should take both system and information quality into account by applying ISM developed by Delone and McLean. In addition, the acceptance for information system depends on the perceived usefulness and ease of use according to TAM. This research combined TAM with ISM by introducing system quality, quality of platform information, and course information as an antecedent of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. These factors were crucial for understanding users’ intention to continue their use of ELS. This study investigated 412 students with ELS experiences. The results indicate that system quality, platform information, and course information had significantly related to user satisfaction and their intention to use ELS continuously.
Benefits and Risks of Social Networking Sites
Authors: Kiser Angelina I. T.
Published: January 2012

One of the challenges facing university and college professors is the use of effective and efficient communication with their students. One solution could be the use of social networking sites to engage students and the U.S. 2010 Digital Year in Review (2011), social networking continues to grow as one of the web’s top activities with 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users accessing break down communication barriers, according to a social networking site every month. The study includes an in-depth review of the uses, benefits and risks of social networking sites as well as how they might be utilized in a college or university setting. The researcher in this study surveyed university business students at a private, four-year, Hispanic-serving institution in Texas about their use of social networking sites and how professors might integrate these sites into the curriculum.
Use of the Internet by Medical Practitioners in Private Hospitals in Warri, Delta State, Nigeria
Authors: Adomi Esharenana E. , Egbaivwie Ericson , Ogugua Jonathan C.
Published: January 2012

This study explores the use of the Internet by medical practitioners in private hospitals in Warri Delta State, Nigeria. Descriptive survey design was adopted and questionnaire was the instrument used to collect data. The total population and sample for the study were 137 medical practitioners from 30 private hospitals in Warri. Findings revealed that most medical practitioners used the Internet on a regular basis; a majority of the medical practitioners started using the Internet between 1 – 5 years ago; most of the medical practitioners spend 2 – 5 hours using the Internet per visit; a majority of medical practitioners used the Internet without assistance. Medline, journals and PubMed were the Internet resources used by most of the medical practitioners. Internet use enables the respondents to improve patient care, keep up-to-date; high cost of Internet access and lack of access to the Internet were some of the problems facing most of medical practitioners. The study recommends that hospital management should provide their medical practitioners with Internet facilities to enable them access to the most recent and accurate information for effective service delivery. The findings will help health care authorities especially in developing countries to improve on Internet access facilities to medical practitioners.
Knowledge Representation
Authors: Chua Cecil Eng Huang , Storey Veda C. , Chiang Roger H.
Published: January 2012

Substantial work in knowledge engineering has focused on eliciting knowledge and representing it in a computational form. However, before elicited knowledge can be represented, it must be integrated and transformed so the knowledge engineer can understand it. This research identifies the need to separate knowledge representation into human comprehension and computational reasoning and shows that this will lead to better knowledge representation. Modeling of human comprehension is called conceptual knowledge representation. The Conceptual Knowledge Representation Scheme is developed and validated by conducting a combined qualitative/quantitative repeated-measures experiment comparing the Conceptual Knowledge Representation Scheme to two computation-oriented ones. The results demonstrate that the Conceptual Knowledge Representation Scheme better facilitates human comprehension than existing representation schemes. Four principles of the Conceptual Knowledge Representation Scheme emerge that help to attain effective knowledge representation. These are: (1) a focus on human comprehension only, (2) design around natural language, (3) addition of constructs common in the domain, and (4) constructs for representing abstract versions of detailed concepts.
Situational Method Engineering to Support Process-Oriented Information Logistics
Authors: Bucher Tobias , Dinter Barbara
Published: January 2012

Process-oriented information logistics is proposed as a novel concept aimed at supporting and improving the execution of an organization’s operational processes by the embedding of analytic information and/or analysis capabilities into process execution. The article reports on findings of an exploratory study that is directed at identifying design factors and realization approaches of process-oriented information logistics. Based on this empirical analysis, so-called development situations are identified. They represent abstractions of situational characteristics that influence the applicability, effectiveness, and efficiency of an information systems development method. The development situations are systematized in a so-called context type vs. project type matrix. Insights into development situations of process-oriented information logistics are particularly useful for the engineering of situational methods aimed at the implementation and advancement of this concept.
Extended TOPSIS with Correlation Coefficient of Triangular Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets for Multiple Attribute Group Decision Making
Authors: P. John Robinson , C. Henry AmirtharajE.
Published: January 2012

This paper extends the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) for solving multi-attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problems under triangular intuitionistic fuzzy sets by using its correlation coefficient. In situations where the information or the data is of the form of triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (TIFNs), some arithmetic aggregation operators have to be defined, namely the triangular intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted averaging (TIFOWA) operator and the triangular intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid aggregation (TIFHA) operator. An extended TOPSIS model is developed to solve the MAGDM problems using a new type of correlation coefficient defined for TIFNs based on the triangular intuitionistic fuzzy weighted arithmetic averaging (TIFWAA) operator and the TIFHA operator. With an illustration this proposed model of MAGDM with the correlation coefficient of TIFNs is compared with the other existing methods.
Social Media in DMSS System Development and Management
Authors: O’Leary Daniel E.
Published: January 2012

This paper surveys and extends the use of social media technologies as part of decision making support system (DMSS) development and management. In particular, this paper investigates how social media technologies, such as wikis, blogs, micro-blogs and tagging, have been and can be used to facilitate development and management of DMSS, through communication and collaboration. However, the author suggests going beyond simply communication and collaboration. The particular focus is on using an analysis of digital media content to address a range of issues, including using social media content to facilitate capturing project history, doing an analysis of that content to facilitate documentation development, and monitoring content from social media to provide insights into project development. Domain-based characteristics of the text are investigated to discover meaning in social media content.
Analytical Processing Over XML and XLink
Authors: Caetano da Silva Paulo , Times Valéria Cesário , Ciferri Ricardo Rodrigues , Ciferri Cristina Dutra de Aguiar
Published: January 2012

Current commercial and academic OLAP tools do not process XML data that contains XLink. Aiming at overcoming this issue, this paper proposes an analytical system composed by LMDQL, an analytical query language. Also, the XLDM metamodel is given to model cubes of XML documents with XLink and to deal with syntactic, semantic and structural heterogeneities commonly found in XML documents. As current W3C query languages for navigating in XML documents do not support XLink, XLPath is discussed in this article to provide features for the LMDQL query processing. A prototype system enabling the analytical processing of XML documents that use XLink is also detailed. This prototype includes a driver, named sql2xquery, which performs the mapping of SQL queries into XQuery. To validate the proposed system, a case study and its performance evaluation are presented to analyze the impact of analytical processing over XML/XLink documents.
Is More Technology Better for Communication in International Virtual Teams?
Authors: Duranti Cleber Marchetti , Carvalho de Almeida Fernando
Published: January 2012

With the advent of the collaboration tools based on ICT (Information and Communication Technology), the distances between the team members of a company spread around the world have shrunk, at least virtually. Using the most complete collaboration/communication technologies for project meetings, although beneficial at first glance, is not always the best choice when one considers the diverse cultural aspects of the team members of different nationalities. This article examines the adequacy of the communication tools for project communication in line with the cultural differences by comparing the views of American and Brazilian groups used to communicating through ICT on a daily basis for project related work. The results show significant differences between the perceptions and attitudes of the two groups regarding the adequacy of the communication tools in addressing usual project tasks.
SME E-Cooperation
Authors: Alderete María Verónica
Published: January 2012

Virtual Cooperation among SME firms can be analyzed from different theoretical perspectives. This paper considers e-cooperation among firms under asymmetric information. Firms cooperate jointly to produce some output or service, and they organize in teams whose firms’ characteristics are imperfectly observed. Suppose firms can observe their efforts or actions but they cannot observe the disutility of effort which they can discover after the contract is signed. The objective of this paper is to analyze virtual cooperation contracts under hidden information based on the original papers of Holmstrom (1982) and Rasmussen (1987). Some conditions are derived under which it is possible to implement an optimal sharing rule for a virtual team of SME under a hidden information frame.
What Predicts Commercial Bank Leaders’ Intention to Use Mobile Commerce?
Authors: Halbach Maddy , Gong Tao
Published: January 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate the roles leadership behaviors have on technology acceptance models, focusing on bank leaders’ intention to use mobile-commerce. The study included responses from 101 senior-level managers working at FDIC-insured commercial banks in the United States. Three instruments including Kouzes and Posner’s (1987) leadership practice inventory (LPI), Wu and Wang’s (2005) mobile commerce technology acceptance model (MC-TAM), and Oreg’s (2003) resistance to change model (RTC) were employed. A correlation analysis revealed that two transformational leadership behaviors—model the way and enabling others to act—positively relate to behavioral intent to use mobile commerce. A regression analysis found that perceived compatibility, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use are positively related to the behavioral intent to use m-Commerce. However, the authors found that the RTC and LPI model cannot predict the willingness to use m-Commerce.
Intelligent Agent for Modeling and Processing Decisional Workflows in Logistics
Authors: Tamisier Thomas , Feltz Fernand
Published: January 2012

The authors present the design and some implementation trials of Atlas, a new reasoning and decision making assistant used for processing complex and heterogeneous procedural workflows. Benefiting from a multicore implementation, Atlas includes different solving engines that are selected according to the intrinsic complexity of the problem being processed. The operational knowledge of Atlas is accessed through 2 different views. In an analytical view, the knowledge is modeled on elementary if-then rules, which are processed by a resolution engine written in the Soar architecture. A synthetic view offers a pictorial representation of all the knowledge, and in particular, shows the inter-dependence of the rules and their procedural references. In addition to allowing an efficient processing, the system checks the coherence of the knowledge and produces a justification of the decision with respect to relevant operational procedures.
Mobile Virtual Heritage Exploration with Heritage Hunt with a Case Study of George Town, Penang, Malaysia
Authors: Tan Kiam Lam , Lim Chen Kim , Talib Abdullah Zawawi bin Haji
Published: January 2012

Computer games with fully intensive graphics are very common in desktop computers or game console, but the development of mobile games with intensive graphics are fairly new. With the advancement in mobile phone technology, it is possible to create a mobile game incorporates integrate the virtual reality techniques. In this paper, the authors present a virtual heritage application called M-Heritage Hunt that integrates virtual reality and game for mobile platforms. M-Heritage Hunt provides panoramic views of the heritage sites and a game background that is customized for the core of heritage zone of George Town, Penang in Malaysia. M-Heritage Hunt was evaluated and examined by letting the respondents to play the game in its proposed setting.