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Inter-organizational business cooperations can be described from different viewpoints each fulfilling a specific purpose. Since all viewpoints describe the same system they must not contradict each other, thus, must be consistent. Consistency can be checked based on common semantic concepts of the different viewpoints. This is sufficient for equal concepts, while weakly related concepts, e.g. related to runtime behavior of viewpoints, have to be considered explicitly. In this paper we identify dynamic consistency issues correlated to the runtime behavior between value and coordination viewpoints on behalf of an example. In particular, an issue class on occurrence estimations of execution options and an issue class on granularity differences in modelling are identified and illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When using electronic services, people are often asked to provide personal information. This raises many privacy issues. To gain the trust of the user, service providers can use privacy policy languages such as P3P to declare the purpose and usage of this personal information. User agents can compare these policies to privacy preferences of a user and warn the user if his privacy is threatened. This paper extends two languages: P3P and APPEL. It makes it possible to refer to certified data and credentials. This allows service providers to define the minimal level of assurance. It is also shown how different ways of disclosure (exact, blurred, verifiably encrypted...) can be specified to achieve more privacy friendly policies. Last, the paper describes a privacy agent that makes use of the policies to automate privacy friendly information disclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless PAN Mesh Network (WMN) is currently going to be standardized and enhanced to take full advantages of the flexible and heterogeneous networks. Although the standard (802.15.5) is under-construction, WMNs are expected to become popular as they have the ability to connect all kinds of current networks. So far, there is no applied architecture which is efficient enough to completely solve routing and security problems in WMN. To assist IEEE P805.15 in routing and security aspects, in this paper, we propose an adaptive algorithm for detecting bogus nodes when they attempt to intrude into the network by attacking routing protocol. In addition, a procedure to find the most optimal path between two nodes is presented along with adaptive pre-conditions for WMNs. We also show that our algorithm is robust according to the mobility of the nodes and it is easy to implement in currently proposed architectures. It can work with many kinds of wireless networks as well as can reduce computational costs. Keywords: Wireless PAN Mesh Networks, Security, Intrusion Detection, Clustering, Optimal Path, Routing, Attack on Routing Protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a holistic approach to enhance human knowledge in distributed and strictly linked contexts. Current semantic web technologies focus their attention only on the machine side of the interaction process. Our approach considers both the human and the machine working together to accomplish a task, stressing the importance of adapting data, tools and interactions to the different skills, contexts and tasks of the users. Multimodal interactive systems based on Semantic Web technologies support the sharing of knowledge among co-workers in different real networked environments. We present a scenario in the building sector, in which mobile systems are needed to reduce loosing of information on technical drawings from the building yard to the office. The paper presents a specification method and its link to semantic web technologies to satisfy the emerging requirements. Keywords: Multimodal interactive system (MIS), Semantic Web technologies, Human-Computer Interaction, Knowledge Sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within organizations, workflow systems can automate business processes by centrally coordinating activity sequences. But outside their borders, organizations are autonomous entities that cannot be subject to centralized process control. Their internal processes are autonomously defined and controlled, and what they need is to synchronize those concurrent processes. Just like Petri nets are a valuable tool to model activity sequencing in local business processes, π-calculus becomes a useful tool to model concurrency in inter-organizational processes. After a review of the main developments in cross-organizational workflow management, this paper illustrates the use of π-calculus to model the interactions between business processes running concurrently in different organizations. These interactions range from invoking external services to more complex patterns such as contract negotiation and partner search and selection. The paper concludes with a case study that illustrates the application of the proposed approach in a more realistic business scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the domain of business-to-business (B2B) collaboration, companies are pursuing the objective of electronically linking their business processes for improving their supply chains. For creating such inter-organizational collaboration, intra- and inter-organizational knowledge workers (IKWs) function as assisting experts. However, IKWs must not constantly "reinvent the wheel" but should instead be supported by a repository that contains knowledge about how to design business processes. Thus, this paper proposes the support of IKWs by a pattern repository for the effective and efficient design of inter-organizational business processes. A pattern is conceptually formulated knowledge that is technology independent. By storing patterns in a uniform specification template of a meta model, it is possible to perform systematic reasoning. Having information readily available about the technology support of individual patterns, IKWs can quickly analyse with which intersection of pattern sets it is possible to link intra-organizational business processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of software process improvement in a virtual environment where several organizations are cooperatively involved in the development of a software product, each one using its own development process. The main focus of the paper is a methodology, called Process and Project Alignment Methodology, to improve the development process of a single organization based on projects knowledge. However, the authors believe that the same fundaments can be applied in a virtual organization and discuss the extension of the presented methodology to a virtual organizational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The direct banking business is characterized by integrated distribution channel politics and holistic sales approaches combined with multi-channel-management. Direct banks in Europe and especially in Germany are currently facing increasing market competition. The crucial factors for growth are product innovation, cost control and the flexibility to react individually to each customer in a rapidly changing business environment. In order to compete, direct banks are forced to undergo a drastic transformation of business processes as well as organizational and managerial structures. The application of new concepts in building information systems is therefore necessary in order to further support business needs and allow for the management and adaptation of systems that are dependent on the fast changing market requirements. This paper shows how the information technology (IT) landscape of one of the five leading direct banks in Germany could be optimized by means of a service-based orientation. The case outlined in this paper focuses on the customer service domain. The main goal is to concurrently reduce costs by automating business processes and to increase the quality of customer services. A reference model for these customer service processes is then introduced. Based on this model, this paper describes a business component-oriented system architecture according to identified business components, and their corresponding services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) using a certificate has already been widely used in a variety of fields for the provision of security service. Accordingly a Certification Authority (CA) that issues a certificate must securely construct a Certification Authority System and manage it. It is significantly important for a CA to ensure its service to continue to operate properly by preparing for any disaster caused by a CA's private key compromise no matter what the cause is. In this paper, we provide the definitions of PKI disaster recovery and PKI business continuity, which are more clear and specific than ever before. We also present three requirements for a PKI model preparing for a disaster. Then we propose a PKI model that ensures business continuity in the event of a disaster in which a CA key is exposed. It is easily applied to the existing PKI structure. We stress that the proposed PKI model in this paper is the first to ensure both applicability to the existing models and business continuity in the event of a disaster. Keywords: Public key infrastructure, PKI model, business continuity, forward secure signature scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case in the development of a knowledge community support system in the context of an industrial association group in the construction sector. This system is a result of the Know-Construct project which aims at providing association sponsored SME communities of the construction sector with a sophisticated information management platform and community building tools for knowledge sharing. The paper begins by characterizing the so-called construction industry knowledge community. The Know-Construct system concept and the its general architecture are described, focusing on the semantic resources, in particular the ontologies structure. The final part of the paper depicts the approach to the actual introduction of the system in the community. An action-research approach was planned to obtain research results regarding the social acceptance of semantic resources such as the ontologies and technical classifications used in system. Keywords: enterprise sponsored virtual communities, ontology based infor-mation systems, action-research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provoke further theorising and action by the Community Informatics community about working with Indigenous communities. In particular, we present research undertaken with the Indigenous Maori and Pakeha (European) community in Aotearoa/New Zealand as a case study to learn from. Maori are of interest because of their engagement with, and speaking out, about ICTs. We suggest that particular attention needs to be paid from an ethical perspective in working with diversity in order that research and action are undertaken that benefits both the researcher and participant community. Community Informatics would benefit from more attention to articulating its assumptions about the nature of research and action with cultural diversity in its role as a bridge between diverse communities and the design and implementation of Information and Communication Technologies. Keywords: Community technology; community informatics; Maoris and technology;Kaupapa Maori research (Indigenous Knowledge); New Zealand and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web service composition is a distributed model to construct new web service on top of existing primitive or other composite web services. Many research efforts have been made in web services composition and coordination. In such a scenario, an important issue is how to assess the degree of trustworthiness one can have about the web service composition, especially their performance and dependability characteristics. In this paper, we propose a petri net based approach to predict the reliability of web service composition. The first step of the approach involves the transformation of web service composition specification into Stochastic Petri Nets (SPN) model. The proposed transformation is built upon BPEL. From the SPN model, we can derive the reliability and performance measure of web service composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time animation of virtual humans, capable of interacting realistically with others, requires a sophisticated architecture for the integration of different elements. A more flexible architecture for intelligent virtual agents emphasizing on the learning process should be designed to fulfil these requirements. In this paper we present an open and flexible architecture, IVAL, that has being designed to accomplish the requested necessities. IVAL is based on the Web Service principles, as well as on the fundaments of the Open Agent Architecture (OAA) and it intends to accomplish determined objectives through the cooperation with other agents that inhabit the environment. One of the main purposes is to introduce a realistic learning process based on the interaction with the environment as similar as possible to humans been doing. This paper also presents a set of languages, based on the standard Extensible Markup Language (XML), that have been designed to get a more appropriate representation of all the required information elements. Keywords: Intelligent virtual agent, learning, Web Service, XML. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RDF is a recommended standard for describing knowledge about resources over the Web. If we talk about querying RDF, we must consider important aspects concerning Web querying: distributed information and context oriented description of resources. In this paper we propose a framework that provides better, more complete answering to RDF queries than classical answering mechanisms. This framework provides a way to combine several RDF documents in order to compute a more complete answer to a given query. The combination of RDF documents is performed under some conditions, leading to a safe combination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years, several studies have been made on Location Based Service (LBS) middleware platform about performance and architecture. And service area is extended as mobile client is an indispensable factor in LBS. Although LBS middleware platform process a large transactions to cope with interoperability and real time processing, current LBS system use an existing Geographical Information System (GIS). In this paper, we propose an Open LBS Middleware Platform (OLMP) which is possible to process a large moving object and to support different mobile clients such as PDA and cellular phone. We describe the system architecture of an OLMP and a main memory DBMS. A proposed OLMP is consisted of open LBS components, mobile gateway, and main memory DBMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a framework to enable implicit interaction between mobile users in order to establish and maintain social networks according to the preferences and needs of each individual. A user model is proposed which can be constructed by the user and appended with information regarding the user's privacy preferences. Design choices and tool support regarding the framework are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion of mobile devices and the development of their services and applications are connected with the possibility to communicate anytime and anywhere according to a natural approach, which combines different modalities (speech, sketch, etc.). A natural communication approach, such as sketch-based interaction, frequently produces ambiguities. Ambiguities can arise in sketch recognition process by the gap between the user's intention and the system interpretation. This paper presents a classification of meaningful ambiguities in sketch-based interaction and discusses methods to solve them taking into account of the spatial and temporal information that characterise the drawing process. The proposed solution methods use both sketch-based approaches and/or integrated approaches with other modalities. They are classified in: prevention, a-posteriori and approximation methods. Keywords: Sketch based interaction, ambiguity resolution, mobile environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a secure component executes sensitive operations, the information carried by the power consumption can be used to recover secret information. Many different techniques have been developped to recover this secret, but only few of them focus on the recovering of the executed code itself. Indeed, the code knowledge acquired through this step of Simple Power Analysis (SPA) can help to identify implementation weaknesses and to improve further kinds of attacks. In this paper we present a new approach improving the SPA based on a pattern recognition methodology, that can be used to automatically identify the processed instructions that leak through power consumption. We firstly process a geometrical classification with chosen instructions to enable the automatic identification of any sequence of instructions. Such an analysis is used to reverse general purpose code executions of a recent secure component. Keywords: Power Analysis, Side Channel, Chip Instructions, Reverse Engineering, Pattern Recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wireless Rope is a framework to study the notion of social context and the detection of social situations by Bluetooth proximity detection with consumer devices and its effects on group dynamics. Users can interact through a GUI with members of an existing group or form a new group. Connection information is collected by stationary tracking devices and a connection map of all participants can be obtained via the web. Besides interaction with familiar persons, the Wireless Rope also includes strange persons to provide a rich representation of the surrounding social situation. This paper seeks to substantiate the notion of social context by an exploratory analysis of interpersonal proximity data collected during a computer conference. Two feature functions are presented that indicate typical situations in this setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trading Agent Competition (TAC) is an international forum which promotes high-quality research regarding the trading agent problem. One of the TAC competitive scenarios is Supply Chain Management (SCM) where six agents compete by buying components, assembling PCs from these components and selling the manufactured PCs to customers. The idea of TAC SCM is the development of agent-based architectures that implement wide-applicable business strategies which efficiently manage cross-enterprise processes. In this paper, we analyze the TAC SCM environment and describe the main features of the CrocodileAgent, our entry in the TAC SCM Competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researches related to storing XML data have been performed and some of them proposed methods to improve the performance of databases by reducing the joins between tables. Those methods are very efficient in deriving and optimizing tables from a DTD or XML schema in which elements and attributes are defined. Nevertheless, those methods are not effective in an XML schema for biological information such as microarray data because even though microarray data have complex hierarchies just a few core values of microarray data repeatedly appear in the hierarchies. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to extract core features which is repeatedly occurs in an XML schema for biological information, and elucidate how to improve classification speed and efficiency by using a decision tree rather than pattern matching in classifying structural similarities. We designed a database for storing biological information using features extracted by our algorithm. By experimentation, we showed that the proposed classification algorithm also reduced the number of joins between tables. Keywords: structural similarity, decision tree, semi-structured data, microarray database, bioinformatics, schema mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present our progress on a framework for collection and presentation of biomedical information through ontology-based mediation. The framework is built on top of a methodology for computational prioritization of candidate disease genes, called Endeavour. Endeavour prioritizes genes based on their similarity with a set of training genes while using a wide variety of information sources. However, collecting information from different sources is a difficult process and can lead to non-flexible solutions. In this paper we describe an ontology-based mediation framework for efficient retrieval, integration, and visualization of the information sources Endeavour uses. The described framework allows to (1) integrate the information sources on a conceptual level, (2) provide transparency to the user, (3) eliminate ambiguity and (4) increase efficiency in information display. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on CAPTCHA has led CAPTCHA design into adopting almost exclusively graphical implementations that deal mostly with character recognition. This has reached an exhaustion point, where new approaches are vital to the survival of the technique. This paper discusses the early stages of a research that intends to solve the open problem of a CAPTCHA in the text domain offering, this way, innovative research possibilities to the CAPTCHA paradigm. It is essentially an investigation on a CAPTCHA that draws its security from the cognitive and computational aspects behind phonetic punning riddles found on Knock-Knock Jokes. By the specification of a computational model, the implementation of a prototype and its experimentation with human individuals, it is shown that the proposal is indeed feasible and that studies in non conventional areas for Information Security are the key for developing the proposed goal. Keywords: Security, CAPTCHA, Text Domain, Natural Language, Compu-tational Humor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Ad Hoc network is a multi-path autonomous system comprised of a group of mobile nodes with wireless transceivers. In this paper, we first review the present research in key management in Ad Hoc networks. Then, by considering the characteristics of Ad Hoc networks in which the free movement of nodes can lead to a variety of topological changes, especially network separation and convergence, we propose a new key management scheme based on a combination of techniques, such as hierarchical topology structure, virtual CA (certification authority), offline CA and certificate chain. We show that the proposed scheme would improve key management in security, expandability, validity, fault tolerance and usability. Keywords: Ad Hoc networks, key management, identity-based cryptosystem, threshold cryptography, hierarchical cluster algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information technology constitutes a substantial component of the critical infrastructure of many nations. Systems used by utilities and service industries such as electricity, water, wastewater treatment and gas are key components of these critical infrastructures. These critical infrastructures rely on a range of technologies commonly known as Process Control Systems in the production, distribution or management aspects of their services. To ensure continued delivery of these critical services, it is important to ensure that the process control systems used to control, monitor and manage the infrastructure are secured against physical and cyber security threats. A number of information security standards have been defined by various industry and government regulatory bodies to provide guidance in securing process control systems. However, managing compliance to several standards can become an added administrative overhead to organizations. This paper reviews the challenges in maintaining compliance with multiple standards and postulates that a holistic information security management system is required to ensure ongoing security of these process control systems. It proposes the implementation of international standards ISO/IEC 17799 and 27001 as a practical approach to managing the various compliance requirements and providing a framework to implement, monitor, manage and improve the security of process control systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of Software Security has been evident, since it has been shown that most attacks to software systems are based on vulnerabilities caused by software poorly designed and developed. Furthermore, it has been discovered that it is desirable to embed security already at design phase. Therefore, patterns aiming at enhancing the security of a software system, called security patterns, have been suggested. The main target of this paper is to propose a mathematical model, based on fuzzy set theory, in order to quantify the security characteristics of systems using security patterns. In order to achieve this we first determine experimentally to what extent specific security patterns enhance several security aspects of systems. To determine this, we have developed two systems, one without security patterns and one containing them and have experimentally determined the level of the higher robustness to attacks of the latter. The proposed mathematical model follows. Keywords: Software Security, Security Patterns, Fuzzy Risk Analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of Corporate Capital Protection Assurance. The authors provide a holistic Corporate Capital Protection Assurance model consisting of effective due diligence controls so that any organization regardless of its size or state of maturity can provide assurance to its members and stakeholders that all relevant ‘Corporate Capital' (in the widest sense including aspects like intellectual capital, brand name, electronic assets, public opinion, trust, human capital, competitiveness etc) will be adequately protected. Corporate Capital Protection Assurance is more than information security protection of the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. It includes the aspects mentioned above, as well as the policies, procedures, processes and human skills that must be protected. Therefore the authors have defined Corporate Capital Protection Assurance as the management commitment and leadership, with all the supporting people and structures all working together to provide for the adequate protection of the company's Corporate Capital. Thus Corporate Capital Protection Assurance entails more than information security and information security governance. It includes for e.g. the protection of a digital forensic infrastructure, aspects relating to risk management, to business continuity planning and control, to the protection of human resource information, knowledge and human resource skills, as well as the protection of information relating to policy formulation and content. All of theses aspects need to be controlled in a formalized cohesive manner so that they are aligned with the overall business strategy and culture of the organization. This model will provide a consolidated view of all these above-mentioned types of corporate capital resources that cannot alone be protected by Information Security Governance controls and yet still require that require protection. Therefore this paper will provide a consolidated view of all these types of protection that should be provided by an organization, as well as provide a detailed exposition on the creation of and use of this Corporate Capital Protection Assurance model for organizations globally. Keywords: Corporate Capital Protection and Assurance, Information Security Governance, IT Governance, Digital Forensic Governance, Corporate Governance, Project Management Governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a gait authentication based on time-normalized gait cycles. Unlike most of the previous works in gait recognition, using machine vision techniques, in our approach gait patterns are obtained from a physical sensor attached to the hip. Acceleration in 3 directions: up-down, forward-backward and sideways of the hip movement, which is obtained by the sensor, is used for authentication. Furthermore, we also present a study on the security strength of gait biometric against imitating or mimicking attacks, which has not been addressed in biometric gait recognition so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protection of network security components, such as firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems, is a serious problem which, if not solved, may lead a remote adversary to compromise the security of other components, and even to obtain the control of the system itself. We are actually working on the development of a kernel based access control method, which intercepts and cancels forbidden system calls potentially launched by a remote attacker. This way, even if the attacker gains administration permissions, she will not achieve her purpose. To solve the administration constraints of our approach, we use a smart card based authentication mechanism for ensuring the administrator's identity. In this paper, we present an enhanced version of our authentication mechanism, based on a public key cryptographic protocol. Through this protocol, our protection module efficiently verifies administrator's actions before granting her the privileges to manipulate a component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong consensus about the need for IPsec, although its use is not widespread for end-to-end communications. One of the main reasons for this is the difficulty for authenticating two end-hosts that do not share a secret or do not rely on a common Certification Authority. In this paper we propose a modification to IKE to use reverse DNS and DNSSEC (named DNSSEC-to-IKE) to provide end-to-end authentication to Internet hosts that do not share any secret, without requiring the deployment of a new infrastructure. We perform a comparative analysis in terms of requirements, provided security and performance with state-of-the-art IKE authentication methods and with a recent proposal for IPv6 based on CGA. We conclude that DNSSEC-to-IKE enables the use of IPsec in a broad range of scenarios in which it was not applicable, at the price of offering slightly less security and incurring in higher performance costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design a secure public key encryption scheme and its security proof are one of the main interests in cryptography. In 2004, Canetti, Halevi and Katz [8] constructed a public key encryption (PKE) from a selective identity-based encryption scheme with a strong one-time signature scheme. In 2005, Boneh and Katz [6] improved Canetti-Halevi-Katz construction by replacing a strong one-time signature with a message authentication code, but it is not publicly verifiable. Later, Boyen, Mei and Waters [7] constructed PKE scheme directly from Waters' IBE scheme [17] , which is only secure against direct chosen-ciphertext attack and is not secure against adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack. In 2006, Tan [16] further improved the efficiency of Canetti-Halevi-Katz (CHK) construction by directly from Boneh-Boyen identity based encryption (IBE) scheme [4] with a weak one-time signature. In this paper, we construct an efficient public key encryption scheme without one-time signature, which preserves a publicly verifiable property and secure against adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack. The construction of the proposed scheme is based on Boneh-Boyen identity-based encryption (IBE) scheme [2] and a trapdoor function. We also show that the proposed scheme is more efficient than CHK construction. Keywords: Cryptography, public key encryption, bilinear maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirically based method of indicator measurement for systematically linking applied Information Systems project outcomes with their technology inputs and particularly for assessing the situation before and after the development and deployment of the system. The result is a method to guide technology developers and decision makers in developing and deploying systems for which the community based outcomes may be systematically assessed and specifically in this instance as applied in the development and deployment of e-Government systems in support of enhanced locally based e-good governance. Keywords: applied information systems project outcomes, systematic assessment, systematic measurement, community based outcomes, indicators, e-Government systems, good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at showing how beneficial it is to use an analysis grid as a guide to evaluate the dynamics of an online community and, on the basis of this grid, to develop agent-based models to explore each of the dimensions characterizing online communities within this grid. Several models from different perspectives have been proposed to study the dynamics of online communities (socio-technical perspective, life stages perspective...). In this paper, we consider two dimensions to evaluate them: the informational one and the social one. Their constituents are derived from an empirical analysis and a review of the literature on online communities and reputation. Keywords: methodology, analysis grid, agent-based models, online communities, participation, informational aspects, social aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often research on online communities could be compared to archaeology[16] : researchers look at patterns in digital traces that members leave to characterise the community they belong to. Relatively easy access to these traces and a growing number of methods and tools to collect and analyse them make such analysis increasingly attractive. However, a researcher is faced with the difficult task of choosing which digital artefacts and which relations between them should be taken into account, and how the findings should be interpreted to say something meaningful about the community based on the traces of its members. In this paper we present a framework that allows categorising digital traces of an online community along five dimensions (people, documents, terms, links and time) and then describe a tool that supports the analysis of community traces by combining several of them, illustrating the types of analysis possible using a dataset from a weblog community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global crisis in human development and prosperity exists. Its constituents include extreme poverty, illiteracy, gender imbalances, and armed conflict. One response has been the creation of the Millennium Development Goals. The recent United Nations World Summit on the Information Society affirmed support for linking the further development of the global information society to these goals. This paper argues that community informatics has a specific role to play in contributing to the realization of the Millennium Development goals and the improvement of human development in general. Keywords: community informatics, human development, poverty, Millennium Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will present the results of an empirical research dealing with the concept of virtual individual networks. This is a special case of social computing, in what it focuses on the concept of networking but from the point of view of an individual who is engaged in social relations (i.e., networking, indeed). The emphasis is also more on the social needs of individuals while networking and not so much on the technology tout court, although, of course, the identification of the individual social needs while networking will be used to define the requirements of the technology that might be used to this end. Keywords: Social computing, communities, individual requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent success of social networking sites like mySpace, Friendster, Orkut, LinkedIn, Ecademy and openBC indicates that extending one's social network through a virtual medium is a popular proposition. The social networking paradigm can be integrated with the knowledge management field, in which sharing knowledge with others is a central issue. This paper investigates how the social networking concept can be applied to support knowledge sharing between people. Together with common features in the architecture of social networking systems, a number of platform independent usage patterns are discussed that can support knowledge sharing between members. Finally, we present the open source KnoSoS system, which integrates the discussed architecture and usage patterns. Keywords: social networking, knowledge management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community informatics research has found that the provision of technical connectivity in local neighbourhoods alone does not ensure community interaction. Externally initiated projects applied to communities by government or commercial bodies have encountered difficulties where the project's goals do not correspond to the host community's. Differing expectations can lead to disillusionment or rejection. Self-organised initiatives developed from within communities appear to be more aligned with residents' goals and purposes and may not face these issues. However, such initiatives have also encountered difficulties in maintaining volunteer input and achieving technological sustainability. Valuable insights can be drawn from both cases. In this paper we review examples of each type of initiative and consider lessons that can be taken forward into new networked neighbourhood initiatives currently being developed. We consider one specific example, an inner-city master-planned residential development in Australia seeking to establish a community association to support socio-economic sustainability and governance of the local ICT infrastructure. We offer recommendations drawn from existing projects that may be applied to this site and to a wider context, and consider some implications for the future selection, deployment and maintenance of community information systems. Keywords: community informatics; community information systems; community networks; grassroots communities; networked communities; master-planned communities; urban neighbourhoods; ICT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediation between buyers (service requester's agents) and sellers (service provider's agents) is one of the most difficult problems in real electronic markets. In this paper, we propose an economic approach to solving this problem combined with AI (Artificial Intelligence) concepts. Firstly, we enable provider agents to dynamically and autonomously advertise semantic descriptions of available services by proposing a new auction model based on Pay-Per-Click advertising auctions. We call it the Semantic Pay-Per-Click Agent (SPPCA) auction. Requester agents then use two-level filtration of the advertised services to efficiently discover eligible services. In the first level of filtration, a semantic-based mechanism for matchmaking between services requested by buyers and those advertised by sellers is applied. Services which pass the first level of filtration are then considered on the second level. Here information regarding the actual performance of service providers is considered in conjunction with the prices bid by service provider's agents in the SPPCA auction. A final set of advertised services is then chosen and proposed to the buyer agent as an answer to its request. Keywords: Intelligent software agents, Web services, the semantic Web, OWL-S, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) auctions, digital economy, electronic commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic web services have the potential to change the way knowledge and business services are consumed and provided on the Web. The current semantic web service architectures, however, do not provide with integrated functionality of automated composition, dynamic binding, and invocation. Openness and dynamics of the Web environment limits the usage of previous approaches based upon the traditional AI planning techniques. This paper introduces a BDI agent system for semantic web service composition and invocation. Through some tests on healthcare web services, we found our agent-oriented approach has the potential enough to improve robustness and flexibility of semantic web services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a new extension and reinterpretation of one of the most successful models of awareness in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), called the Spatial Model of Interaction (SMI), which manage awareness of interaction through a set of key concepts, to manage task delivery in collaborative distributed systems. This model , called AMBLE (Awareness Model for Balancing the Load in Collaborative Grid Environments), also applies some theoretical principles of multi-agents systems to create a collaborative environment that can be able to provide an autonomous, efficient and independent management of resources available in a Grid. This model has been implemented using web services and some experimental results carried out over and real and heterogeneous grid are presented with the end of emphasizing the performance speedup of the system using the AMBLE model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two types of behavioural model in the WSMO semantic description of services: an orchestration and a choreography, together called the interface. While an orchestration defines a service's behaviour as a composition of existing parts, a choreography is intended to document the conversation of messages exchanged with a single client. In this paper we present a three-level model for behavioural descriptions, and how the Cashew workflow model fits into this, building on existing work in, and establishing connections with, semantic web services, workflow, and software engineering design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of the upcoming Internet on scientific research worldwide was enormous, not the least in biomedical research. Especially the Human Genome Project was the inspiration for many biological databases publicly available via the Internet. As of now, conducting biomedical research without the Internet is nearly impossible. The information needed for analysis and interpretation of experimental results is usually scattered over a multitude of heterogeneous data sources: sequence databases, protein resources, gene expression data repositories, literature databases, functional annotation databases, etc. Many researchers depend on the Internet as the most important source of biomedical information. As the amount of available data increases at a rate never seen before, researchers are now faced with the problem of finding the information they need, in a format they can work with. Several initiatives exist that try to integrate multiple data sources or facilitate complex bioinformatics queries and analyses. However, the integration is not always in tune with the userb of this workshop was to bring together researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas with respect to knowledge systems in bioinformatics that make extensive use of medical and biological semantics and ontologies, web services technologies, or distributed databasing and computing to tackle the issues mentioned above. Out of approximately 20 submitted papers, 10 papers were accepted for oral presentation. These are the papers you will find further on. Together they give a very nice overview of where we are now and where current research is headed. We were very pleased with the number of people interested in contributing to this workshop, both authors and reviewers. Every submission has received three outstanding reviews, which made the task of accepting papers of high quality quite easy. We hope you will enjoy reading them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile users require location based, situation aware services, especially when healthcare is involved. Within "Nomadic Media" an Eureka-ITEA International projects, Ontology based semantic web service discovery and orchestration have been studied and applied to provide mobile users with innovative healthcare services. The designed system identifies, orchestrates and customises the services, according to the health status of the user and his usage location, usage conditions and environmental situations. The paper will describe the developed technologies and the implemented services. Similar approach was followed in PIPS: "Personalised Information Platform for Life & Health Services". However in PIPS more emphasis has been applied in the definition and the development of Use Cases and service definition and development for Patients and Citizen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past several years, the World Wide Web has experienced a new era, in which user communities are greatly involved and digital content explodes via the Internet. Community information systems have been highlighted with the emerging term "Social Software". In this paper, we explore the impact of social software on the community of cultural heritage management. Furthermore, mobile and ubiquitous technologies have provided capabilities for more sophisticated approach to cultural heritage management. We analyze these features of mobile information systems for cultural communities. We also present a mobile community framework with mobile Web Services to enable professionals to collect, manage and retrieve cultural heritage information in wide user communities. Keywords: Social Software, Cultural heritage management, mobile Web Services, Web 2.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces "PROMONT", a project management ontology. PROMONT models project management specifications from a number of sources, most notably the upcoming DIN 69901 model for the exchange of project data. As a reference ontology it helps to build a common understanding of project related terms and methods thus facilitating the management of projects conducted in dynamic virtual environments. It is especially well suited for cross-enterprise project related business processes such as integration management, communication and controlling. A distributed project scenario is used to illustrate how a project plan is broken down for individual partners, and how activities are coordinated in a heterogeneous group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GPS-based applications have become very popular during the last years, specially among drivers, who use them to find the best way to their destination. However, their use is still far from taking advantage of the wide range of possibilities that GPS offers. The SIAPAS application goes one step further by adding new functionality to the typical GPS-based map. SIAPAS runs on a PDA and it allows drivers to find a parking space that suits their needs inside a parking lot. This paper describes how the system has been designed and implemented, and shows the results of some experiments that have been carried out to test its utility and usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is a promising research topic for social networks, since it is a basic component of our real-world social life. Yet, the transfer of the multi-facetted concept of trust to virtual social networks is an open challenge. In this paper we provide a survey and classification of established and upcoming trust systems, focusing on trust models. We introduce a set of criteria as basis of our analysis and show strengths and short-comings of the different approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the design of culturally appropriate web user interfaces in the age of globalization. A research study that focuses on identification and rating of visual web interface design elements that act as "cultural markers" is presented. Within this study, a web crawling technology collected data on verifiable, culture specific, web page design elements. In particular, data was collected on color usage for fifteen countries, based on the large number of country-specific websites. We found that there is a palette of certain colors that is predominantly used for website design in all countries studied. This palette was identified as an "international" color palette to distinguish it from country-specific color preferences, also found in our study. Based on these findings, international and country-specific color palettes, when incorporated in to a Web design tool, will allow designers to develop localized and international interface designs for global social networking and business applications. Keywords: Cultural interface design, localization, usability, color palette. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing elementary resources to research institutes, storing a part of the world's biodiversity and carrying out essential research, biological resource centers (BRCs) fulfil an important role in contemporary life sciences. There are currently over 500 BRCs registered at the World Data Center for Microorganisms. All of these institutes offer information on their cultures independently and there is no efficient linkage between the biological material and its related data held by information providers such as Genbank, Swissprot and PubMed. As a result, researchers searching for information on microbial strains or species frequently encounter inconsistencies. This paper presents the StrainInfo.net bioportal for integrating the information provided by BRCs and third party information holders. It is shown how intelligent data integration is the best protection against information overkill and is a necessary precursor for more advanced data mining to further exploit the assets of BRCs. To establish a solid service to the research community, the suggested integration is accomplished following the knuckles-and-nodes approach. Initially implemented as a web interface, the underlying system also provides possibilities for setting up web services. The StrainInfo.net bioportal will be made available at http://www.StrainInfo.net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]