A luddite in cyberland,or how to avoid being snared by the web

Advocates of the World Wide Web speak in glowing terms of its ability to provide greater access to information resources and to promote active reading and learning. Furthermore, students are now encouraged to construct Web pages, using hypertext as an alternative to traditional linear written documents. Although the ability to navigate the Web and to construct Web pages is not without merit, instructors who emphasize these skills are likely to sacrifice the stated objectives of most composition programs: to help students learn to write clear, coherent prose, to read critically and analytically, and to conduct meaningful research.     

低碳经济时代的建筑之道

低碳建筑是营造可持续发展未来的关键。本文通过对低碳建筑的全面分析以及对全球知名的设计实例的分析,探讨适应低碳经济时代的建筑发展的方向、目标,指出低碳建设和设计要走向集约型、走向自然、走向效率设计、走向适应性设计、走向循环设计、走向智能化设的发展途径,以及低碳建筑未来的发展方向。     

Would I lie to you? Self-serving lies and other-oriented lies told across different media

This study set out to investigate the type of media individuals are more likely to tell self-serving and other-oriented lies, and whether this varied according to the target of the lie. One hundred and fifty participants rated on a likert-point scale how likely they would tell a lie. Participants were more likely to tell self-serving lies to people not well-known to them. They were more likely to tell self-serving lies in email, followed by phone, and finally face-to-face. Participants were more likely to tell other-oriented lies to individuals they felt close to and this did not vary according to the type media. Participants were more likely to tell harsh truths to people not well-known to them via email.     

Employing computational intelligence to generate more intelligent and energy efficient living spaces

Our living environments are being gradually occupied with an abundant number of digital objects that have networking and computing capabilities. After these devices are plugged into a network, they initially advertise their presence and capabilities in the form of services so that they can be discovered and, if desired, exploited by the user or other networked devices. With the increasing number of these devices attached to the network, the complexity to configure and control them increases, which may lead to major processing and communication overhead. Hence, the devices are no longer expected to just act as primitive stand-alone appliances that only provide the facilities and services to the user they are designed for, but also offer complex services that emerge from unique combinations of devices. This creates the necessity for these devices to be equipped with some sort of intelligence and self-awareness to enable them to be self-configuring and self-programming. However, with this ＂smart evolution＂, the cognitive load to configure and control such spaces becomes immense. One way to relieve this load is by employing artificial intelligence （AI） techniques to create an intelligent ＂presence＂ where the system will be able to recognize the users and autonomously program the environment to be energy efficient and responsive to the user＇s needs and behaviours. These AI mechanisms should be embedded in the user＇s environments and should operate in a non-intrusive manner. This paper will show how computational intelligence （CI）, which is an emerging domain of AI, could be employed and embedded in our living spaces to help such environments to be more energy efficient, intelligent, adaptive and convenient to the users.     

某型导弹虚拟训练系统操作训练动作设计

对视景仿真软件Vega和DI—GUY人体仿真软件进行了介绍,从工程应用的角度,阐述如何实现虚拟人在场景中的漫游,将DI—GUY人体模型做了适当的修改,提出了一种基于空间定位装置的虚拟入手臂控制方法,给出了方法的具体实现步骤,以及空间定位装置对于本系统的具体应用方法,给出了如何设计手部的碰撞检测的方法,以便进行操作动作的训练,选取要操作的对象物,并对如何应用数据手套形成手部操作训练动作进行了介绍。     

大数据环境下我国被遗忘权之立法构建——欧盟《一般数据保护条例》被遗忘权之借鉴

在记忆成为常态,而遗忘成为例外的大数据时代,欧盟数据改革提出的“被遗忘和删除权”备受各方关注和争议.本文通过探讨被遗忘权对个人信息保护的重要意义,研究欧盟《一般数据保护条例》草案中“被遗忘和删除权”的具体内容,分析我国现阶段删除权的法律现状及缺陷,提出大数据环境下我国被遗忘权的立法构建,以期提高个人信息在线环境的安全性.     

Deployment of field hospitals in mass casualty incidents

We propose an analysis framework to determine the location and size of emergency service facilities to be established after a disaster to cope with the demand surge. We utilize a multi-period mixed integer programming (MIP) model that simultaneously optimizes capacity allocation and casualty transportation decisions in order to provide emergency transportation and medical care services to the largest number of casualties in shortest time. The objectives are to minimize the total travel and waiting time of casualties over the search-and-rescue period and the total cost of establishing new facilities. The model minimizes a weighted sum of these objectives subject to the availability of vehicles and service capacity at existing and new facilities in each period. We provide a detailed case study of a large-scale emergency due to an expected earthquake in Istanbul to demonstrate the two-level solution approach. Service requests over time and travel times are generated with respect to regional vulnerabilities and road network conditions. Solutions and sensitivity analysis reveal the resource needs and service performance to guide preparedness strategies.     

Floodplain managers' perceptions of community flood concern,mitigation, preparedness,and response in the United States

Flooding causes more financial and physical destruction in the United States than any other natural hazard. To stem flood losses, local floodplain managers make decisions on how best to mitigate, prepare, and respond to flood hazards. Using quantitative and qualitative data gathered from interviews with 200 floodplain managers in the United States, this study explores the extent to which local communities are concerned about floods, perceptions of communities' ability to mitigate, prepare, and respond to floods, as well as the factors contributing to communities' perceptions of their ability to mitigate, prepare, and respond to floods. Findings indicate that floodplain managers generally perceived their communities to be very or somewhat concerned and prepared for floods. Floodplain managers also perceived their communities' ability to mitigate and respond to floods as being good. Lastly, the findings show that participation in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Community Rating System was positively associated with floodplain managers' perceptions of their community's ability to mitigate, prepare, and respond to floods.     

An End to End Adaptable Architecture for Streaming Media over IP Networks

Wireless networks differ in bandwidth, size and access costs each requiring a set of protocol functions to enable devices to communicate efficiently. Portable multimedia devices such as PDA's and laptops will also vary greatly however all these devices will require optimal multimedia delivery. A traditional method is for sources to limit their transmission rates to accommodate lower bandwidth links, even though high-bandwidth connectivity is available to many participants. This method similar to others does not provide optimum throughput to heterogeneous clients due to its quest for a common denominator bandwidth. In addition, due to the divergence of users and applications, traditional protocol stacks are frequently enriched with additional functionality such as transport protocol functionality, synchronization and presentation coding which can lead to a performance bottleneck due to the insufficient processing power and memory of portable devices.Micro-protocols attempt to eradicate this bottleneck by optimising the protocol stack to the functionality that is actually required by the application. A side effect of this is that it allows a device such as a PDA to offer protocol functions, which would not normally be available due to its memory constraints achievable by downloading necessary micro-protocols for new environments and discarding previous micro-protocols. Multicast media groups overcome the heterogeneous client problem where clients subscribe to different quality of services in accordance with resource availability and move between groups according to bandwidth availability.Chameleon is 100% Java middleware for multimedia streaming to heterogeneous mobile clients, which allows the dynamic configuration of protocols with respect to application requirements and available network resources. We evaluate the dynamic reconfigurability of the middleware in order to demonstrate runtime adaptation. We especially concentrate on the primary quality transformation technique (PQT) of the middleware which enables clients to subscribe to media groups in accordance with available resources and network capacity.     

Autonomic control and personalization of a wireless access network

As ICT services are becoming more ubiquitous and mobile and access technologies grow to be more heterogeneous and complex, we are witnessing the increasing importance of two related needs: (i) users need to be able to configure and personalize their services with minimal effort; (ii) operators desire to engineer and manage their networks easily and efficiently, limiting human agency as far as possible. We propose a possible solution to reach these goals. Our vision, developed in the so-called Simplicity project, is based on a personalization device, which, together with a brokerage framework, offers transparent service configuration and runtime adaptation, according to user preferences and computing/networking context conditions. The capabilities of this framework can be exploited: (i) on the user side, to personalize services, to improve the portability of services over heterogeneous terminals and devices, to adapt services to available networking and terminal technologies; (ii) on the network side, to give operators more powerful tools to define new solutions for distributed, technology-independent, self-organizing, autonomic networking systems. Such systems could be designed so as to be able to react autonomously to changing contexts and environments.In this paper, we first describe the main aspects of the Simplicity solution. We then want to show that our approach is indeed viable. To prove this point, we present an application which exploits the capabilities of the Simplicity system: a mechanism to drive mobile users towards the most appropriate point of access to the network, taking into account both user preferences and network context. We use simulation to evaluate the performance of this procedure in a specific case study, where the aim is to balance the load in an 802.11b access network scenario. The numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed procedure when compared to a legacy scenario and to another solution from literature.To give ample proof of the feasibility of our solution, we also designed and implemented a real prototype. The prototype enables not only the load to be balanced among different 802.11 access points, but also network and application services to be differentiated as a function of user profiles and network load. The main aspects of this prototype are presented in this paper.     

Advanced Interfaces for Vehicle Teleoperation: Collaborative Control, Sensor Fusion Displays, and Remote Driving Tools

We are working to make vehicle teleoperation accessible to all users, novices and experts alike. In our research, we are developing a new control model for teleoperation, sensor-fusion displays and a suite of remote driving tools. Our goal is to build a framework which enables humans and robots to communicate, to exchange ideas and to resolve differences. In short, to develop systems in which humans and robots work together and jointly solve problems.     

Activity-based justification of IT investments

Ever since investments in IT moved from operational to decision support, academics and practitioners have been looking for ways to justify the costs. Traditional approaches, such as NPV, have been shown inadequate in capturing qualitative and quantitative benefits, and techniques developed to address the issue have proved limited in their ability to link investment justification with impact assessment. Recent literature has called for the use of business processes to assess the impact of IT and the same processes can be used to justify investments in IT. The activity-based costing (ABC) approaches in the field of accounting were developed to relate investments to product profitability by allocating the burden to those that receive the most benefit. Thus, this paper uses the ABC approach to relate investments to activities, so that it can be used to justify IT investment. The paper provides a model to determine when the approach, referred to as activity-based justification, is most appropriate and its value is illustrated using a case study.     

C语言程序设计的教学方法探索

C程序设计是计算机相关专业的基础入门课程,其指导思想是:使学生通过学习既掌握高级编程语言的知识、编程技术和基本算法,又掌握程序设计的思想和方法,更具备利用计算机求解实际问题的能力,能灵活运用高级语言进行程序设计。其重点是培养学生掌握程序设计的思想和方法,难点是作为程序设计的入门课程,应当如何引导学生突破传统的思维方式,培养程序设计的新思想。本文从如何提高C语言课程教学质量、增强教学效果、培养和提高学生分析问题、解决问题能力和创新能力等方面,谈谈在教学上的一些经验和体会。     

Analysis and classification of data sets for calibration and validation of agro-ecosystem models

Experimental field data are used at different levels of complexity to calibrate, validate and improve agro-ecosystem models to enhance their reliability for regional impact assessment. A methodological framework and software are presented to evaluate and classify data sets into four classes regarding their suitability for different modelling purposes. Weighting of inputs and variables for testing was set from the aspect of crop modelling. The software allows users to adjust weights according to their specific requirements. Background information is given for the variables with respect to their relevance for modelling and possible uncertainties. Examples are given for data sets of the different classes. The framework helps to assemble high quality data bases, to select data from data bases according to modellers requirements and gives guidelines to experimentalists for experimental design and decide on the most effective measurements to improve the usefulness of their data for modelling, statistical analysis and data assimilation.     

智能车载感知与侧翻预警系统的设计

为了防止汽车在行驶过程中发生侧翻,使汽车始终处在安全工况下行驶,减少交通事故,设计了一种基于ARM9的智能车载感知和侧翻预警系统,对汽车在途行驶时的侧倾角和侧倾角速度进行监测,并采用多阶递推模型对汽车侧倾姿态进行预测,当预测到侧倾达到极限工况时发出报警信息,提醒驾驶人员注意并采取相应减少侧向加速度的措施,从而达到预防汽车侧翻事故的发生,并基于VB2005,Matlab和NIMeasurement Studio开发了车载感知与侧翻预警系统软件,进行了系统仿真。实车道路试验与系统仿真实验进行了比较,结果表明:车载感知和预警系统能够及时准确预测汽车侧翻,提高汽车主动安全。     

A personal chronicle: creating better information systems, withsome guiding principles

The author identifies four guiding principles which have come into play in this work of creating information systems and tools to support information systems. The first principle, open-eyes, is used to characterize information systems that remain open to new information, and consequently can compensate for changes in their mission or inaccuracies in their execution of that mission. The second principle involves abstraction levels, which in information systems are similar to differentiation in calculus. They are used to study the changes within a group of heterogeneous objects, with respect to an object type classification, so as to understand and make use of their patterns and ultimately to control the new objects of each type. The third principle, layered architecture, is used to identify a pattern of successive reimplementations of a set of functions, so as to isolate specific environmentally oriented issues. The fourth principle involves relationships, used to define associations between objects and constraints on those associations and to provide access to objects based on their associations. Reference is made to several specific projects which revealed the operation of these principles     

Role of social media community in strengthening trust and loyalty for a university

As the increasing internationalization of higher education creates competition among the universities, many institutions are making use of social media communities to attract and retain students. We surveyed 206 users of a university Facebook page to investigate how it may be related to their identification with the university community and the university brand. We further investigate how this identification is associated with the trust and loyalty to the institution and is likely to be linked to positive behaviors such as promoting the university to their peers as an active member of the university community. Our results show that the perceived strength of the Facebook community is related to the identification with the university community and the university brand which in turn are related to trust and loyalty. Higher loyalty is linked to citizenship behaviors such as increased contribution to the educational process labeled in-role behaviors and providing positive word of mouth about the university labeled extra-role behaviors. With the challenges of a diverse and global student body which is expected to continue increasing, universities can benefit from use of social media in developing identity, loyalty and trust.     

Supporting Public Availability and Accessibility with Elvin: Experiences and Reflections

We provide a retrospective account of how a generic event notification service called Elvin and a suite of simple client applications: CoffeeBiff, Tickertape and Tickerchat, came to be used within our organisation to support awareness and interaction. After overviewing Elvin and its clients, we outline various experiences from data collated across two studies where Elvin and its clients have been used to augment the workaday world to support interaction, to make digital actions visible, to make physical actions available beyond the location of action, and to support content and socially based information filtering. We suggest there are both functional and technical reasons for why Elvin works for enabling awareness and interaction. Functionally, it provides a way to produce, gather and redistribute information from everyday activities (via Elvin) and to give that information a perceptible form (via the various clients) that can be publicly available and accessible as a resource for awareness. The integration of lightweight chat facilities with these information sources enables awareness to easily flow into interaction, starting to re-connect bodies to actions, and starting to approximate the easy flow of interaction that happens when we are co-located. Technically, the conceptual simplicity of the Elvin notification, the wide availability of its APIs, and the generic functionality of its clients, especially Tickertape, have made the use of the service appealing to developers and users for a wide range of uses.     

Government preparedness: Using simulation to prepare for a terrorist attack

The heightened threat of terrorism has caused governments worldwide to plan for responding to large-scale catastrophic incidents. In England the New Dimension Programme supplies equipment, procedures and training to the Fire and Rescue Service to ensure the country's preparedness to respond to a range of major critical incidents. The Fire and Rescue Service is involved partly by virtue of being able to very quickly mobilize a large skilled workforce and specialist equipment. This paper discusses the use of discrete event simulation modeling to understand how a fire and rescue service might position its resources before an incident takes place, to best respond to a combination of different incidents at different locations if they happen. Two models are built for this purpose. The first model deals with mass decontamination of a population following a release of a hazardous substance—aiming to study resource requirements (vehicles, equipment and manpower) necessary to meet performance targets. The second model deals with the allocation of resources across regions—aiming to study cover level and response times, analyzing different allocations of resources, both centralized and decentralized. Contributions to theory and practice in other contexts (e.g. the aftermath of natural disasters such as earthquakes) are outlined.     

Can technology build organizational social capital? The case of a global IT consulting firm

Knowledge management (KM) and knowledge management systems (KMS) have been positioned as strategies and tools that enable organizations to create and transfer knowledge in order to sustain competitive advantage. While KM as a strategy gained legitimacy, KMS have struggled to show a causal relationship to knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. KMS contribution to the economic performance of organizations has been harder to prove, mainly because of a lack of collection of data and thus analysis of knowledge metrics. This has lead to an unjustifiable move to underplay the role of technology in creating and transferring knowledge. We strived to revive interest in KMS by exploring their ability to accumulate social capital and showing its effect on the creation and transfer of knowledge. We posited that social capital was the mediating factor between KMS and knowledge creation and transfer and hypothesized that: (1) KMS will positively affect an organization's ability to build social capital, and that (2) social capital will enhance a firm's ability to create and transfer knowledge. Qualitative data collected from a multinational IT consulting firm was used to validate the framework.