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Mobile application (app) websites such as Google Play and AppStore allow users to review their downloaded apps. Such reviews can be useful for app users, as they may help users make an informed decision; such reviews can also be potentially useful for app developers, if they contain valuable information concerning user needs and requirements. However, in order to unleash the value of app reviews for mobile app development, intelligent mining tools that can help discern relevant reviews from irrelevant ones must be provided. This paper surveys the state of the art in the development of such tools and techniques behind them. To gain insight into the maturity of the current support mining tools, the paper will also find out what app development information these tools have discovered and what challenges they are facing. The results of this survey can inform the development of more effective and intelligent app review mining techniques and tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical path of disease varies due to the changes in external factors, and the key to the changes is the decision-making in symptomatic treatment by medical experts; how to make full use of historical medical data and recommend high quality treatment options to new cases under the current circumstance of data explosion, is the research focus of this paper. This paper first presents the standard for medical path based on cloud platform, going into the construction of workflow-based flow model of medical services; finally, a process mining algorithm based on medical evolution factor is given to realize the evolution of online medical program of a disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Websites have evolved into an excellent medium of information dissemination and visibility. Hence governments and organizations around the world have websites as primary medium for information communication. The universal accessibility of this web medium remains a major challenge for both web developers and accessibility researchers. Conformance of WCAG 2.0 guidelines by web pages is a significant factor in measuring universal accessibility. This paper presents an exploratory study about the accessibility of Indian university website homepages. We have analyzed the homepages of 302 Indian universities under different conformance levels of WCAG 2.0 recommendation using automatic accessibility evaluation tools to find accessibility report of websites and then classified them comparatively into three groups namely low accessible websites called Tier-III, medium accessible websites called Tier-II and high accessible websites called Tier-I. Statistical classification and accessibility report of websites shows that an array of further improvements have to be made in order to make them more accessible and usable in terms of WCAG 2.0. Based on the results of the analysis, this paper proposes the necessary steps which shall be taken to further enhance the accessibility of the websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports design and development of a PLC-based controller for pneumatic pressing machine, which performs the most critical operation in an engine bearing manufacturing plant. The paper firstly overviews the manufacturing process of engine bearing and then discusses the need of automating the pneumatic press. The proposed automation system involves (a) speed control by replacing the conventional method with a variable frequency drive (VFD), (b) feeder and pusher control using PLC, (c) fault detection and safety measures, (d) and PLC-based sequential control of all the processes carried out on pneumatic press. The control system is based on MicroLogix-1000 PLC from Allen Bradley and the ladder logic program for it has been written on RSlogix-500. For the evaluation of the proposed control system, the PLC program was emulated on RSLogix Emulate-500 and the operations of the pneumatic press were simulated on FluidSIM-P. The results of simulation validate the design of PLC-based controller in general and digital input-output connections of the PLC and PLC program in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic congestion is a problem that becomes government concern in many big cities like Surabaya. Some initiatives have been carried out by the government to decrease the intensity of traffic congestion, ranging from various policy like special lane for motorcycle, odd – even license plate, etc. However, it is yet to be successful to decrease the heavy traffic in many big cities in Indonesia. The right solution tends to encourage people to use public transport instead of private cars. Within the framework of Intelligent Transport System, this paper proposes an advanced traveller information system with itinerary optimisation by Angkot, a common public transport mode in Indonesia. The itinerary optimisation is modelled as an orienteering problem and is solved using iterative local search – hill climbing algorithm. The experiment results show that generally the proposed algorithm could solve the problem fast and effectively. In addition to propose the initial algorithm, the main contribution of this paper is a new dataset for orienteering problem that may encourage researcher to come up with more sophisticated algorithm. Eventually, the proposed system could encourage more people to use public transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motive is an important underlying reason an organization engages in a particular behavior, which includes initiating a particular information systems adoption. Adoption motives, however, are situational, urging motivational studies to be contingent on the context. The purposes of this paper are therefore twofold: (1) reflecting on the case of Indonesian e-voting initiative, to examine the local government’s motives behind e-government adoption; (2) to identify emerging themes that might have influenced the process of e-voting adoption in several Indonesian villages. Qualitative data were collected from five government leaders at both municipal and village levels in a municipality that have previously conducted village e-voting elections. This study found that performance-related rationalities, i.e. cost-savings, reducing service delivery-time, are the main drives for e-voting adoption in this case. Although instances of motives belonging to technological and strategic clusters have also been recorded, none of the leaders responded to operation-related motives. This might be due to the simplistic interpretation of e-voting as merely a replacement for paper-ballots, while its broader implication to democratic values and election best practices have been largely ignored. Moreover, it was evident from the study that the decision to adopt voting technology in this case has been significantly influenced by political interests, where strong cases of leadership further accelerated the adoption process. The strong determination exhibited by higher level leaders has put significant pressures on the lower level authorities to implement e-voting, which might have conflicted with their own organizational strategy, socio-cultural norms, and citizen preparedness. This study is important to identify context-based rationales behind e-voting initiatives in Indonesia and the results are relevant to assist Indonesian government in the development of other e-government strategy in the future. This paper further emphasizes for a broader strategy which takes account of the risks of impairing democratic values and generating conflicts during electoral processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper proposes a new and intuitive model to evaluate the utilitarian e-service quality on textile and fashion B2C websites in Spain. The relevant variables to include into this model have been validated through an in-depth literature review and a reliability study based on an empirical investigation. Among the several methodologies used to develop the model, the paper proves that fuzzy inference systems (FIS) have numerous advantages. The following are particularly relevant: the ease to manage non-linear behaviours and the intuitive way of incorporating knowledge to evaluate B2C websites. This knowledge can stem both: from the expert know-how or from the evaluation of consumer satisfaction on these websites. The knowledge is made explicit through if-then rules which work with linguistic-type concepts −agreed upon by experts, closer to the human reasoning mode. Finally, the usefulness of the proposed model and the defined FIS suitability to evaluate the model are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the possibility of implementing location-based game using the smartphone’s GPS to enhance the player’s experience. With the GPS technology, the player can play in a real world as well as in the virtual game world. We postulate this thus will enhance the player’s experience. To test the hypothesis, a horror game genre with location-based features was developed. The game was evaluated to thirty participants. The results demonstrate the game allowed the participants to explore a new place with fun. In addition, the participants claimed that the game allow them to enjoy a new experience in playing horror game. The participants described that playing the game was giving them more tension compare to playing a conventional horror game. Moreover, the participants claimed that they feel more familiar with the place they’ve explored during the game. Finally, some improvements could be done to improve the experience enhancement to the game. First, more variation in the storyline, quests and the enemy. As the game evaluated in this paper is served only as a prototype, the variation of the storyline, quests and the enemy (i.e. the ghost) is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to relevance theory ( Sperber and Wilson, 1995 ), information ( a set of assumptions in its terminology) is relevant if it satisfies two conditions; firstly, it should generate a substantial amount of interest ( positive cognitive effects in its terminology); and secondly, its processing should demand as little mental effort as possible. In my opinion, this pair of conditions should be supplemented with the notions of contextual constraint and non-intended non-propositional effect . As will be argued in this paper, this RT extension is particularly appropriate for the analysis of Internet-mediated communication, since nowadays we are witnessing a turn into what has been labeled phatic Internet , massive exchanges of messages with little informational relevance but enormous impact on users’ feelings of connectivity and sociability, among others. The aim of this paper is to apply this proposal of extension to mobile instant messaging (specifically WhatsApp ) and explore some of the constraints and non-propositional effects that play a role in the eventual relevance of WhatsApp interactions, which typically generate relevance from these non-propositional effects and not from the prototypical object of pragmatic research, namely the propositional content of the messages in the shape of explicatures and/or implicatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ACSM (Hayashida et al., 2014) consists of a method of discerning the aliased states in a POMDP (Partially Observable Markov Decision Process) which is one of Markov decision process such that an agent observes local information about the environment, and choosing the appropriate action based on the internal memory and the sensory information which an agent obtains from the environment. Though ACSM achieves the highest performance in the existing methods based on classifier systems, it requires a huge number of memories for the internal memories, and spends long time for some large scaled problems. This paper improves a classifier system, ACSM (Anticipatory Classifier System with Memory) focused on the process of learning of ACSM, and the aim of this paper is to make the system more efficient. The improved method is named ACSMr in this paper, and some numerical experiments using 5 kinds of maze problems which are well used as benchmark problems for POMDPs are executed. ACSMr achieves greater experimental result than the existing classifier systems for the maze problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1996 we developed an Icon User Interface design for handheld computers that enabled non-literate trackers to enter complex data. When employed in large numbers over extended periods of time, trackers can gather large quantities of complex, rich biodiversity data that cannot be gathered in any other way. One significant result in the Congo was that data collected by trackers made it possible to alert health authorities to outbreaks of Ebola in wild animal populations, weeks before they posed a risk to humans. Trackers can also play a critical role in preventing the decimation of large mammal fauna due to poaching. Collectively, the seven case studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate the richness and complexity of scientific data contributed by community-based citizen science. Furthermore, trackers can also make novel contributions to science, demonstrated by scientific papers co-authored by trackers. This may have far-reaching implications for the development of an inclusive citizen science. Community-based tracking can significantly contribute to large-scale, long-term monitoring of biodiversity on a worldwide basis. However, community-based citizen science in developing countries will require international support to be sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the study of the reliability parameters of traditional communication networks, a set of new communication network evaluation parameters are proposed in this paper, including network reliability parameters, network availability parameters and network completion parameters, to evaluate the transmission of the entire communication network performance. Moreover, the derivation formulas for different parameters are also listed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stand-alone and the combined model of Convolutional Neural networks (CNNs) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Deep neural Networks (DNNs) have shown great improvements in a variety of Speech Recognition tasks. In this paper we also combined these networks but in this paper we used them for multilingual speech recognition, for the prediction and correction (PAC) architecture, in order to calculate the state probability. Our proposed model is known as PAC-MCLDNN. In this paper, we present experiment results for multilingual training on AP16-OLR task. Furthermore, cross-lingual model transfer and multitask learning for under resourced languages such as Uyghur and Vietnam are also performed which further improved the recognition results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operable representation of robot mechanisms is the key to the computerization of type synthesis of parallel mechanisms (PMs). Geometric algebra, an effective mathematical tool for geometric representation and computation, is introduced to describe the position and orientation characteristics (POC) of robot mechanisms, including serial and parallel mechanisms, in this paper. According to the correspondence between the POC of the joint axis and the motion output characteristics of the moving link, the POC union is defined by the outer product operation for the serial kinematic chain and the POC intersection is defined by the shuffle product operation for the parallel kinematic chain. In this paper, a moving coordinate system independent of the position of a mechanism is established for the expression of the joint axes. The direct symbolic algorithm for the motion output characteristics of robot mechanisms, including union and intersection, is proposed and validated via several case studies of 3R open chain, Sarrus linkage, 3-RCC PM and 3-RPS PM. The analysis procedure shows intuition and explicitness that is suitable for computer-aided derivation of the POC set of a mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The band-limited linear predictive coding (BLPC) vocoder-based adaptive feedback cancellation (AFC) removes the high-frequency bias, while the low frequency bias persists between the desired input signal and the loudspeaker signal in the estimate of the feedback path. In this paper, we present a BLPC vocoder-based adaptive feedback canceller with probe noise with an objective of reducing the low-frequency bias in digital hearing-aids. A step-wise mathematical analysis of the proposed feedback canceller is presented employing the recursive least square and normalized least mean square adaptive algorithms. It is observed that the optimal solution of the feedback path is unbiased for an unshaped probe noise, but is biased for a shaped probe signal; the bias term does not consist of correlation between the desired input and the loudspeaker output. The identifiability conditions are analysed and it is shown that a delay, greater than or equal to the length of the adaptive filter, must be introduced in the forward path to achieve an unbiased feedback path estimate. Algorithm analysis and computer simulations presented in this paper justify the reason for selecting the proposed design over the existing BLPC vocoder-based feedback cancellation algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide spread of internet resources has emerged new paradigms of learning and knowledge delivery to facilitate and enhance learning particularly in e-learning systems. The important milestones of these new paradigms are known as digital learning objects (DLO) which are smallest packed bits for learning. The abundance of these DLOs raises an important question on how to select effectively high quality reusable learning objects. There exist many soft computing approaches such as; fuzzy computing, neural networks, evolutionary computing, support vector machines, machine learning and probabilistic reasoning. In this paper, fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods in choosing suitable DLOs were reviewed. This paper discusses recent variety of soft computing methods used in selecting and evaluating digital learning objects through multi criteria decision analysis approaches used; for selecting metrics like basic topical, course similarity, internal topical, basic and user similarity personal, and context similarity situational relevance and for evaluation; scalarization method, employing triangular, trapezoidal and distance based similarity (adapted from TOPSIS techniques). As DLOs continue to evolve it is inevitable to utilize multi-criteria techniques for selecting and or improving quality. The abundance of DLOs has increased the need for applying practical soft computing techniques to retrieve high quality, reusable DLOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various kinds of smart devices, including personal video recorders, smart TVs, smart phones, and digital cameras frequently manipulate multimedia files, such as frame trimming or inserting. However, because the standard file system APIs do not provide appropriate operations for multimedia file editing, application developers have to implement editing operations by using the conventional read and write operations. Therefore, editing multimedia files unnecessarily incur a large number of I/O operations, resulting in significant performance drawbacks. This paper proposes the design of two novel file system operations, split () and merge (), to remedy the performance overhead of manipulating multimedia files. Unlike conventional file system operations, these operations are carried out only at the metadata level and are accompanied by no actual data movement, so they take negligible time to finish regardless of file size. In addition to the design proposal, this paper introduces the implementation details of the proposed design for three representative file systems: Ext4, FAT32, and exFAT. The evaluation with a commercial digital camera showed that the movie file trimming took less than 1 s for most cases, which is well over 1000% improvement over the conventional approach. In addition, the number of I/O operations, which significantly affects the lifespan of flash memory storage components, was suppressed to less than 1% of that with the conventional approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global software development (GSD) is gaining ever more relevance. Although communication is key in the exchange of information between team members, multi-site software development has introduced additional obstacles (different time-zones and cultures, IT infrastructure, etc.) and delays into the act of communication, which is already problematic. Communication is even more critical in the case of Agile Global Software Development (AGSD) in which communication plays a primary role. This paper reports an exploratory study of the effects of tools supporting communication in AGSD. More precisely, this paper analyses the perception of team members about communication infrastructures in AGSD. The research question to which this study responds concerns how development teams perceive the communication infrastructure while developing products using agile methodologies. Most previous studies have dealt with communication support from a highly technological media tool perspective. In this research work, instead, observations were obtained from three perspectives: communication among team members, communication of the status of the development process, and communication of the status of the progress of the product under development. It has been possible to show that team members perceive advantages to using media tools that make them feel in practice that teams are co-located, such as smartboards supported by efficient video-tools, and combining media tools with centralized repository tools, with information from the process development and product characteristics, that allow distributed teams to effectively share information about the status of the project/process/product during the development process in order to overcome some of the still existing problems in communication in AGSD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capitalization of activities occurring during collaborative brainstorming sessions is a real challenge. It is still enhanced when two remote teams have to participate in the same work sessions. Activities which have tangible results like digital notes are easier to capitalize. However many other events may happen which can only be captured by videos. We use the mandatory system of video conference between two remote teams to capitalize non-tangible results like agreement or disagreement between participants. We developed a system for supporting remote collaboration. The paper describes the design of two main parts of this system. First it presents the resource channel i.e. the way the teams can exchange, display and synchronize data on large multi-touch devices. Then it presents the video channel i.e. the way people can be aware of the other team. The paper concludes with some observations about the current version of this system alloted to the capitalization of collaborative team activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In production systems, manufacturers face important decisions that affect system profit. In this paper, three of these decisions are modelled simultaneously: due date assignment, production scheduling, and outbound distribution scheduling. These three decisions are made in the sales, production planning and transportation departments. Recently, many researchers have devoted attention to the problem of integrating due date assignment, production scheduling and outbound distribution scheduling. In the present paper, the problems of minimizing costs associated with maximum tardiness, due date assignment and delivery for a single machine are considered. Mixed Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) and a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) are used for the solution. This problem is NP-hard, so two meta-heuristic algorithms, an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm (AGA) and a Parallel Simulated Annealing algorithm (PSA), are used for solution of large-scale instances. The present paper is the first time that crossover and mutation operators in AGA and neighbourhood generation in PSA have been used in the structure of optimal solutions. We used the Taguchi method to set the parameters, design of experiments (DOE) to generate experiments, and analysis of variance, the Friedman, Aligned Friedman, and Quade tests to analyse the results. Also, the robustness of the algorithms was addressed. The computational results showed that AGA performed better than PSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a mixed methodological approach to address cost and schedule delays in large-scale engineering programs (LSEP). Research has identified potential causes or factors for schedule delays, such as: ineffective human resources policies and practices, consolidation of the aerospace industry, too many stakeholders, and lack of knowledge-based acquisition practices. Current methods and tools are ineffective in helping project managers to accurately predict schedule performance during LSEP development. The authors describe research to investigate the feasibility of: (1) deriving quantitative and qualitative causal factors correlating to schedule performance during LSEP development; (2) developing a framework and a tailorable predictive model using the causal factors in a Bayesian Network (BN) model; and (3) using the resultant framework and BN model, with expert knowledge elicited from subject matter experts, to predict schedule performance and inform decision makers on actions needed to manage schedule performance. Finally, this paper discusses a version of a BN model developed by mapping a conceptualization of the framework created using a systemigram with a BN pattern that includes dependencies from causal and control factors to schedule performance. The BN incorporates a direct causal dependence of schedule performance and mitigation actions to the consequences of schedule performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simplicity of the pen-and-paper game Sprouts hides a surprising combinatorial complexity. We describe an optimisation called boundary matching that accommodates this complexity to allow move generation for Sprouts games of arbitrary size at interactive speeds. This extended version of the paper also describes methods for plotting and visualising Sprouts moves, using a conforming Delaunay triangulation of the game's underlying geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to specify databases completely at the conceptual level, conceptual database specification languages should contain a data definition (sub)language (DDL), for specifying data structures (+ constraints ), a data retrieval (sub)language (DRL), for specifying queries , as well as a (declarative) data manipulation (sub)language (DML), for specifying transactions . Object Role Modeling (ORM) is a powerful method for designing and querying database models at the conceptual level. By means of verbalization the application is also described in natural language as used by domain experts, for communication and validation purposes. ORM currently comprises a DDL and a DRL (ConQuer). However, the ORM-method does not yet contain an expressive DML for specifying transactions at the conceptual level. In an earlier paper we designed a syntactic extension of the ORM-method with a DML for specifying transactions at the conceptual level in a purely declarative way. For all transactions we proposed syntaxes, verbalizations, and diagrams. However, we did not give a formal semantics then. The purpose of this paper is to add a clear, formal and purely declarative semantics to the proposed ORM-transactions. The paper also formally defines rollbacks and illustrates everything with examples (including a solution to a well-known transaction specification problem). The extension of ORM with an expressive set of completely declaratively specified transactions makes ORM complete as a database specification method at the conceptual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet was developed as a packet data network where users and data sources (server) with specific IP addresses interacted over a pre-established communication channel. This model of client–server data communication has evolved into a peer-to-peer mode of data sharing in recent times. Applications like, YouTube, Bit Torrent, social networks have revolutionized the idea of user generated contents. Modern users care only for specific data items irrespective of their sources. So, the idea of using IP addresses to identify servers hosting a particular content is losing its importance. Moreover, want of IP addresses is a challenging issue haunting the Internet community since long. The need of the time is a content-centric networking platform where data hosts are of less importance, and Named Data Networking (NDN) has been proposed to that end. NDN allows users to float a data request without any knowledge about the hosting entity. NDN can handle user mobility, security issues more efficiently than the current Internet. Although NDN has been proposed in 2010, so far, there is no survey paper studying its architecture and various schemes proposed for its different characteristic features, like, naming, adaptive forwarding and routing, caching, security, mobility, etc. In this paper, we introduce a novel taxonomy to study NDN features in depth. We have also covered several NDN applications. We conclude our survey by identifying a set of open challenges which should be addressed by researchers in due course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online subject guides are commonly used by libraries to provide information support to students. LibGuides (a cloud-based commercial product launched in 2007) represents one of the latest incarnations of the traditional subject guide or portal, and are widely used across American academic libraries. In Ireland however, library subject guides of entirely local design and hosted on a local web server still dominate. This paper outlines the project management process involved in implementing a LibGuides pilot at University College Dublin Library, including the planning, design and implementation of a new range of subject-related guides. The pilot nature of the project necessitated a strong focus on evaluation, particularly in assessing the effectiveness and suitability of LibGuides as a platform for delivering information literacy support, both from an administrative and end-user perspective. A two-stranded approach was used in this review process, incorporating quantitative web statistics and analytics alongside qualitative feedback from students, academic staff and Library staff. Feedback that was gathered suggested that the LibGuides subject guides were generally viewed very positively by both staff and students. Notwithstanding this, awareness (as indicated through usage statistics) remained moderate during the pilot, pointing to the importance of the visibility, positioning and promotion of guides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose in this paper to study the energy-, thermal- and performance-aware resource management in heterogeneous datacenters. Witnessing the continuous development of heterogeneity in datacenters, we are confronted with their different behaviors in terms of performance, power consumption and thermal dissipation: indeed, heterogeneity at server level lies both in the computing infrastructure (computing power, electrical power consumption) and in the heat removal systems (different enclosure, fans, thermal sinks). Also the physical locations of the servers become important with heterogeneity since some servers can (over)heat others. While many studies address independently these parameters (most of the time performance and power or energy), we show in this paper the necessity to tackle all these aspects for an optimal resource management of the computing resources. This leads to improved energy usage in a heterogeneous datacenter including the cooling of the computer rooms. We build our approach on the concept of heat distribution matrix to handle the mutual influence of the servers, in heterogeneous environments, which is novel in this context. We propose a heuristic to solve the server placement problem and we design a generic greedy framework for the online scheduling problem. We derive several single-objective heuristics (for performance, energy, cooling) and a novel fuzzy-based priority mechanism to handle their tradeoffs. Finally, we show results using extensive simulations fed with actual measurements on heterogeneous servers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that expectations of mothers intensified over the course of the twentieth century, culminating in an ideology of intensive mothering, which many find difficult to meet. This intensification was a natural corollary of the widening definition of a mother's responsibilities towards her child over the last century. In this paper, I examine cultural messages communicated to parents concerning their responsibility for fostering their preschool child's cognitive development through an analysis of a selection of content downloaded from an Australian government-funded parenting website. The analysis shows that the message that parents are responsible for fostering their preschool child's cognitive development pervades the analysed content. It is conveyed through the 'pedagogic discourse' of the content, by the discursive construction of parents as 'pedagogic subjects' and bolstered by the scientific framework in which the information and advice are embedded. This expectation demands intensive parenting practices, and it is directed at mothers to a far greater extent than fathers. This paper argues that early years parenting in Australia has become increasingly cognitively-focused and that the gender neutral 'parent' is subject to the expectation that she should foster her child's cognitive development in the preschool years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The knowledge of the technical condition of the water distribution systems (WDS) is a key issue to predict the performance of the WDS and to optimize maintenance and rehabilitation of the WDS. Common practice employs only practitioner experience to assess the technical condition of the WDS. The presented paper summarizes a basic theory of indirect condition assessment including several definitions of condition assessment, factors contributing to deterioration and possible outputs of the condition assessment. Furthermore, the legal requirements concerning this issue specifically in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic are listed. There is also a summary of the studies of condition assessment methods of water mains. As a part of the intended complex methodology for condition assessment of WDS, a methodology for condition assessment of water mains was developed. The methodology is based on condition indicators (CI) formulated using a multi-objective optimization. The paper presents the proposed methodology and its application in two case studies. The proposed methodology achieved good results and it showed certain significant benefits – e.g. satisfactory level of detail, optional user modification. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper presents the application of object-oriented modeling techniques to control software development for complex manufacturing systems, with particular focus on case studies taken from the packaging industry and design patterns that can be abstracted from such case studies. The proposed methodology for control software modeling and implementation is based on a practical approach refined on the basis of on-the-field experience and interactions with control engineers involved in the development projects. The final objective of the paper is to review and analyze patterns for the solution of design and implementation issues that typically arise in the considered application domain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of the present study was to construct goal-setting mechanisms in a web-based portfolio assessment system (WBPAS), based on the self-regulated learning (SRL) process proposed by Zimmerman, and to examine effects of these mechanisms on SRL. The participants were two classes of 11th graders taking the website design class in a vocational high school. The participants were assigned randomly to either an experimental group (n = 40) learning with a WBPAS or a control group (n = 41) learning with a paper-based portfolio. The study results revealed the following: a) the quality of goal-setting mechanisms may facilitate SRL. b) Students setting learning goals with the WBPAS demonstrated significantly better SRL than students setting learning goals with the paper-based portfolio. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A key point for the efficient use of large grid systems is the discovery of resources, and this task becomes more complicated as the size of the system grows up. In this case, large amounts of information on the available resources must be stored and kept up-to-date along the system so that it can be queried by users to find resources meeting specific requirements (e.g. a given operating system or available memory). Thus, three tasks must be performed, (1) information on resources must be gathered and processed, (2) such processed information has to be disseminated over the system, and (3) upon users’ requests, the system must be able to discover resources meeting some requirements using the processed information. This paper presents a new technique for the discovery of resources in grids which can be used in the case of multi-attribute (e.g. {OS = Linux &memory =4GB}) and range queries (e.g. {50GB< disk-space <100GB}). This technique relies on the use of content summarisation techniques to perform the first task mentioned before and strives at the main drawback found in proposals from literature using summarization. This drawback is related to scalability, and is tackled by means of using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) techniques, namely Routing Indices (RIs), to perform the second and third tasks. Another contribution of this work is a performance evaluation conducted by means of simulations of the EU DataGRID Testbed which shows the usefulness of this approach compared to other proposals from literature. More specifically, the technique presented in this paper improves on the scalability and produces good performance. Besides, the parameters involved in the summary creation have been tuned and the most suitable values for the presented test case have been found. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The global diffusion of smartphones and tablets, exceeding traditional desktops and laptops market share, presents investigative opportunities and poses serious challenges to law enforcement agencies and forensic professionals. Traditional Digital Forensics techniques, indeed, may be no longer appropriate for timely analysis of digital devices found at the crime scene. Nevertheless, dealing with specific crimes such as murder, child abductions, missing persons, death threats, such activity may be crucial to speed up investigations. Motivated by this, the paper explores the field of Triage, a relatively new branch of Digital Forensics intended to provide investigators with actionable intelligence through digital media inspection, and describes a new interdisciplinary approach that merges Digital Forensics techniques and Machine Learning principles. The proposed Triage methodology aims at automating the categorization of digital media on the basis of plausible connections between traces retrieved (i.e. digital evidence) and crimes under investigation. As an application of the proposed method, two case studies about copyright infringement and child pornography exchange are then presented to actually prove that the idea is viable. The term “feature” will be regarded in the paper as a quantitative measure of a “plausible digital evidence”, according to the Machine Learning terminology. In this regard, we (a) define a list of crime-related features, (b) identify and extract them from available devices and forensic copies, (c) populate an input matrix and (d) process it with different Machine Learning mining schemes to come up with a device classification. We perform a benchmark study about the most popular mining algorithms (i.e. Bayes Networks, Decision Trees, Locally Weighted Learning and Support Vector Machines) to find the ones that best fit the case in question. Obtained results are encouraging as we will show that, triaging a dataset of 13 digital media and 45 copyright infringement-related features, it is possible to obtain more than 93% of correctly classified digital media using Bayes Networks or Support Vector Machines while, concerning child pornography exchange, with a dataset of 23 cell phones and 23 crime-related features it is possible to classify correctly 100% of the phones. In this regards, methods to reduce the number of linearly independent features are explored and classification results presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The influence of negative online word-of-mouth on the behavior of those receiving it has been addressed extensively in the academic literature. Remarkably, the question whether negative online word-of-mouth should also be seen as a behavioral indicator of its sender remains unaddressed. Answering this question is relevant as it provides companies with insight into the need to engage in interaction with those who negatively express themselves online or whether these expressions should be seen as temporary emotional releases without any intended conduct. To fill the existing research gap, this research paper proposes and empirically tests a sender-oriented model, investigating the influence of emotions, negative online word-of-mouth on repatronage and switching intentions. As disclosing negative feedback online may also reflect the sender’s motivation to inform the consumer community or to provide constructive feedback to the company responsible for the dissatisfying consumption, community usefulness and company usefulness are included as behavioral moderators. The results of an empirical survey conducted amongst real senders of negative information confirm that negative online word-of-mouth is directly driven by positive and negative emotions and is strongly predictive for the sender’s intended conduct. The motivation to help other consumers was demonstrated to function as behavioral moderator. The paper concludes with theoretical and managerial implications, and suggests avenues for further research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper describes a method to automatically discover features which distinguish the language use of cultural subgroups operating within the same broader language/culture. Sociolinguists have long known that special features such as vocabulary use, phonetic features (like accents), and syntactic characteristics develop within the in-group language of frequently interacting subgroups. These features set apart the group''s language from the discourse of others speaking the same broader language. Our interest is to learn these features automatically and use them to distinguish the writing of one subgroup from another. The s pecial vocabulary and jargon of various subgroups has often been catalogued. This research focuses instead on syntactic differences which can be learned from digital text and the specialized use of vocabulary which is not topic or domain specific (e.g. we deliberately omit domain related jargon.) Our main data source is blogs and related discussions from a number of North American subculture groups, such as radical feminists and militia groups. In this paper we present our findings on looking for blogs whose participants have a particular subcultural affiliation, designated as “blogs of interest.” Our hypothesis is that we can ignore the particular topic of a blog discussion, through means described in the paper, and isolate other linguistic indicators that help us determine whether or not a blog is “of interest” We start with an overview of the process of training our system and describe its use in identifying blogs of the desired cultural subgroup. We then describe in detail the training process in which a series of grams are scored and aggregated to find key, highly indicative blog passages. The last section reports on an experiment we conducted that proved the concept against several North American English language blogging communities [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A 2010 survey (Nielsen) showed that 22.7% of the time spent on the Internet is on a social network. Moreover, there is an increasing demand to access social networks by mobile phones, i.e., around 30% globally. Social networking has become a reality, and it generates an incredible amount of information that is sometimes difficult for users to process, especially from mobile phones. Several links, activities, and recommendations are proposed by networked friends every hour, which together are nearly impossible to manage. There is a need to filter and make accessible such information to users, which is the motivation behind developing a mobile recommender that exploits social network information. Thus, in this paper, we propose the design and the implementation of a SOcial Mobile Activity Recommender (SOMAR) that can integrate Facebook social network mobile data and sensor data to propose activities to the user (e.g., concert or computer science seminar). The recommendations are completely calculated in situ in the mobile device with an embedded data mining component. We analyze how to compute and update the social graph in case of changes in social relationships or user context. The paper also presents a case study to analyze the performance of the method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Energy efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol designs for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have already generated interests among researches due to ever increasing range of applications of WSNs. Nodes in a WSN typically operate unattended with a limited power source, energy efficient operations of the sensor nodes especially at the MAC level is very important because majority of energy expenditure take place at the radio level. MAC protocols in WSNs for diverse applications with different objectives have been proposed by researchers. In this paper, we investigate three energy-efficient synchronous MAC protocols for WSNs emphasizing their strength and weakness. Our analysis as well as simulation studies reveal the suitability of these protocols in deployed sensor fields. As a result of our investigation, we found out some open research issues in energy-efficient MAC layer design which we highlighted toward the end of this paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, an adaptive channel reservation scheme for multi-class traffic is proposed to ensure the quality- of-service for multimedia wireless cellular networks and to minimize the dropping of handoff calls. Although different numbers of guard channels are reserved for the handoff calls of different traffic classes, handoff calls of a class with low priority can access the guard channels of its next higher class handoff calls with a certain probability determined by the mobility of calls and channel occupancy. In this paper we developed a generalized analytical model to investigate the performance of this proposed scheme. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights • Models for diagnosis aid may provoke distrust among practitioners and patients. • The development of models for diagnosis aid falls under data mining concerns. • The survey raises an expert-aware approach for suitable diagnosis aid. • Interpretability is a major concern for the acceptance of diagnosis aid models. • The recourse to data mining for diagnosis aid poses many technical challenges. Abstract Data mining continues to play an important role in medicine; specifically, for the development of diagnosis aid models used in expert and intelligent systems. Although we can find abundant research on this topic, clinicians remain reluctant to use decision support tools. Social pressure explains partly this lukewarm position, but concerns about reliability and credibility are also put forward. To address this reticence, we emphasize the importance of the collaboration between both data miners and clinicians. This survey lays the foundation for such an interaction, by focusing on the specifics of diagnosis aid, and the related data modeling goals. On this regard, we propose an overview on the requirements expected by the clinicians, who are both the experts and the final users. Indeed, we believe that the interaction with clinicians should take place from the very first steps of the process and throughout the development of the predictive models, thus not only at the final validation stage. Actually, against a current research approach quite blindly driven by data, we advocate the need for a new expert-aware approach. This survey paper provides guidelines to contribute to the design of daily helpful diagnosis aid systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper aims to introduce a marine and typhoon meteorological information system based on WebGIS and rich internet application(RIA), which integrate many kinds of data of typhoon and weather information according to a spatio-temporal model. The application based on such a system has been launched on the web with the URL http://typhoon.weather.com.cn/. This paper discusses the targets and design framework of the system, and analyzes the key problem of spatio-temporal model application in the system. Based on this typhoon information system, users can search every typhoon''s information in Pacific costal region from 1949, such as monitoring data, forecast, satellite images, radar images, weather alerts, typhoon tracks, etc. The system has a lot of advantages compares to other similar systems, and it is fit for promotion as practical applications in other fields. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper summarizes the development of electronic records management, and due to current defects and shortcomings, discusses the more effective and reasonable information security management program. For the system security issues, the paper has done an overall security analysis of system from the application layer, network layer, and database layer to physical and management levels, and has made a system''s security strategy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents the techniques of GIS and applies it into the management of the information system of Taihu Lake Basin, providing a new managing pattern for the Taihu Lake Basin. Through the construction of the integrated management information system of Taihu Lake Basin water among different departments of information sharing resources, it effectively use resource information scattered in various sectors and improves the data and useful information value. The paper illustrates the architecture and function module of the system and describes the main techniques in its realization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the advances presented in the manuscripts included in this issue. The authors of these manuscripts were asked to propose future directions and challenges in their respective research areas. This paper summarises these proposals and concludes with general directions and challenges related to computing in civil and building engineering. The suggested directions include enhancing digital information modelling and extending the standardised product and process modelling technologies; improving decision-support capabilities and decision–implication analysis through integrating wider-aspects of the problem space; embedding optimisation techniques more holistically; and integrating all of these by making more use of virtualisation in an attempt to simplify the use of the output technologies. The challenges that will arise as a consequence will inevitably include reducing the inherent complexity in such a manner that the resulting models are both realistic and useable by all of the disciplines involved. Another main challenge is the inclusion of concepts that are significant but less readily formalised than traditional engineering ones. It could be argued that the high-level directions and challenges mentioned above are not very different from those that could have been predicted a considerable number of years ago. However, it is worth stressing that, with increased capabilities and reach of information technologies and greater expectations of decision makers, the current ambitions are an order of magnitude greater. The proposed directions and the resulting challenges are now much greater in both scale and breadth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper proposes a novel application for estimating the size and evolution of web page populations, based on the capture–recapture methodology, which is mainly used in wildlife biological studies. Firstly, we present the necessary modifications and amendments needed for the web capture–recapture paradigm, and then we discuss the limitations confronted. The paper provides the implementation details of the proposed web capture recapture model along with its initial assessment. The anticipated outcome was to examine whether we can conduct capture–recapture experiments on the web (or a web sub-universe such as an Internet search engine directory), in order to further estimate evolution rates in web page populations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, password management problems of network and system management will be handled. In this concept, password management and its usage in systems and networks will be introduced. Then password management problems that occurs in such situations like employee change, internal or external password distribution, will be investigated. In this paper the determination of password management problems will be done and these problems will be introduced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in hydrogen production using nuclear energy. A number of countries are actively exploring the option of nuclear hydrogen production and have established concrete roadmaps for near and far term achievements. This paper presents a summary of information presented at some IAEA technical meetings on status of nuclear hydrogen production including ongoing related R&D activities in Member States. The paper highlights, in addition, the IAEA hydrogen economic evaluation programme (HEEP) which has recently been developed under agreement and in collaboration with the BHABHA Atomic Research Centre (BARC). HEEP software can be used to perform the economics of the most promising processes for hydrogen production. Current processes considered in HEEP are: high and low temperature electrolysis, thermo-chemical processes including S–I process, conventional electrolysis and steam reforming. HEEP software is also suitable for comparative between nuclear and fossil energy sources, and for solely hydrogen production or cogeneration with electricity. The HEEP modelling includes various aspects of hydrogen economy including storage, transport, and distribution with options to eliminate or include specific details as required by the users. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Sensing coverage is a performance metric that reflects the quality of surveillance of a field by a wireless sensor network. This paper investigates the problem of minimum connected -coverage in homogeneous and heterogeneous wireless sensor networks, where each point in a field is covered (or sensed) by at least active nodes while minimizing the necessary total number of active nodes and guaranteeing connectivity between them. First, we study the case of homogeneous nodes to gain some insights on how to address the problem of -coverage using heterogeneous nodes. Our methodology to solve the minimum connected -coverage problem consists of two main phases: sensing range slicing and active node scheduling. The goal of the slicing phase is to decompose the sensing range of a sensor node into smaller, congruent regions such that each of them is guaranteed to be -covered when exactly nodes are deployed in it. The purpose of the scheduling phase is to specify which nodes turn on (or become active), how, and when. In this paper, we propose two -coverage protocols using different scheduling approaches. In the first protocol, called self-scheduling driven k-coverage, each sensor node turns itself on based on the local information it has about its sensing neighbors in order to -cover its sensing range. The second protocol, called triggered-scheduling driven -coverage, allows a sensor node to trigger a necessary number of its sensing neighbors to become active in order to achieve -coverage of its sensing range. Then, to promote the use of self-scheduling driven -coverage and triggered-scheduling driven -coverage in real-world sensing applications, we show how to relax some commonly used assumption for coverage configuration protocols in wireless sensor networks. More specifically, we discuss a more general framework, where the nodes are heterogeneous in terms of their sensing ranges. Precisely, we propose two protocols for -coverage using heterogeneous nodes and generalize them by considering convex sensing and communication models. Simulation results show that triggered-scheduling driven -coverage outperforms self-scheduling driven -coverage with regard to the number of nodes required for connected -coverage configuration as well as the network lifetime. We find that self-scheduling driven -coverage outperforms an existing connected -coverage protocol for wireless sensor networks. Also, we find that heterogeneity has a positive impact on our -coverage protocol performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: According to the peer-to-peer (P2P) sociality, an expert-driven multi-semantic self-organized P2P semantic community model is built in this paper to resolve the two principle problems of P2P resource management, which are how to possess enormous number of high quality shared resource, how to find the resource quickly and accurately. The main contribution of this paper is: ① the autonomous peer (AP) model and Autonomic Semantic Community (ASC)model are build, ② one local domain-related trust and trusted evaluation is projected that bases on semantic similarity, history evaluation and time effect and it takes the requirement and owned resource two aspects into account to present one AP. ③ an algorithm of fusing APs’local trust degree and self-evaluation is designed.④ a procedure to collaboratively elect expert AP e is proposed. ⑤ Self-organized community formation algorithm SoFA and its communication mechanism are built. In SoFA, APs gather its communication information and according to it to evaluate itself and other APs locally, build and dynamically adjust local topology, elect the domain expert AP e and then an expert-driven ASC is established. Experiment shows our domain trust evaluation and self-evaluation mechanism and SoFA could not only adaptively optimize network to improve the efficiency of service (resource) discovery but also base on the synthesized trust degree to find the free-riders, malice peers, low quality service peers and to keep them within limits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Rather than a document that is constantly being written as in the wiki approach, the Living Document (LD) is a document that also acts as a document router, operating by means of structured and organized social tagging and using existing ontologies. It offers an environment where users can manage papers and related information, share their knowledge with their peers and discover hidden associations amongst the shared knowledge. The LD builds upon both the Semantic Web, which values the integration of well-structured data, and the Social Web, which aims to facilitate interaction amongst people by means of user-generated content. In this vein, the LD is similar to a social networking system, with users as central nodes in the network, with the difference that interaction is focused on papers rather than people. Papers, with their ability to represent research interests, expertise, affiliations, and links to web based tools and databanks, are the central axis for interaction amongst users. To support this, we have also implemented a novel web prototype that enables researchers to accomplish three activities central to the Semantic Web vision: organizing, sharing and discovering. Availability: http://www.scientifik.info/livingdocument. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to analyze what kind of Internet or interactive computer-based patient education programs have been developed and to analyze the effectiveness of these programs in the field of breast cancer patient education. Patient education for breast cancer patients is an important intervention to empower the patient. However, we know very little about the effects and potential of Internet-based patient education in the empowerment of breast cancer patients. Methods: Complete databases were searched covering the period from the beginning of each database to November 2008. Studies were included if they concerned patient education for breast cancer patients with Internet or interactive computer programs and were based on randomized controlled, on clinical trials or quasi-experimental studies. Results: We identified 14 articles involving 2374 participants. The design was randomized controlled trial in nine papers, in two papers clinical trial and in three quasi-experimental. Seven of the studies were randomized to experimental and control groups, in two papers participants were grouped by ethnic and racial differences and by mode of Internet use and three studies measured the same group pre- and post-tests after using a computer program. The interventions used were described as interactive computer or multimedia programs and use of the Internet. The methodological solutions of the studies varied. The effects of the studies were diverse except for knowledge-related issues. Internet or interactive computer-based patient education programs in the care of breast cancer patients may have positive effect increasing breast cancer knowledge. Conclusion: The results suggest a positive relationship between the Internet or computer-based patient education program use and the knowledge level of patients with breast cancer but a diverse relationship between patient''s participation and other outcome measures. Practice implications: There is need to develop and research more Internet-based patient education. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper argues that if new communications technologies and online spaces are to yield ‘new relationship[s] with learners’ (, p. 11) then research that is tuned to recognize, capture and explain the pedagogical processes at the centre of such interactions is vital. This has implications for the design of pedagogical activities within Initial Teacher Education (ITE) intended to develop student teachers’ professional knowledge and understanding of e-learning strategies. A case study is presented of an intervention, which attempted to synthesize a face-to-face and online school-based experience with University-based lectures, in order to develop student teachers’ capacity to theorize and reflect upon the development of their online pedagogical practice. Theory that focuses on the complex and symbiotic nature of professional knowledge and learning was developed to analyse data in the form of interviews with student teachers and archived extracts from their online interactions with the children. The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of a pedagogical-research design based upon the authentic and situated use of e-learning strategies and technologies for developing student teachers’ professional knowledge and understanding of online pedagogy. Ultimately the paper concludes that, from the perspective of a dynamic conceptualisation of e-learning as continuously emerging () then a pedagogical-research design that develops and captures student teachers’ capacity to reflect upon the development of their own online pedagogy and professional knowledge and understanding in relation to e-learning is vital. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]