Interactive context-aware user-driven metadata correction in digital libraries

Personal name variants are a common problem in digital libraries, reducing the precision of searches and complicating browsing-based interaction. The book-centric approach of name authority control has not scaled to match the growth and diversity of digital repositories. In this paper, we present a novel system for user-driven integration of name variants when interacting with web-based information??in particular digital library??systems. We approach these issues via a client-side JavaScript browser extension that can reorganize web content and also integrate remote data sources. Designed to be agnostic towards the web sites it is applied to, we illustrate the developed proof-of-concept system through worked examples using three different digital libraries. We discuss the extensibility of the approach in the context of other user-driven information systems and the growth of the Semantic Web.     

Evidence from the surgeons: gesture control of image data displayed during surgery

We gathered ethnographic evidence from surgeons about the concept of gesture-based control over the display of their patients’ radiographic scan data during surgery. This would give the surgeons direct access to their patients’ scan data without compromising their sterile working field and without needing to rely on other clinicians to interpret display instructions. Our approach involved interviewing surgeons and observing them in the operating theatre. We included evidence from earlier publications in this field and we used a grounded theory approach to analyse our data. Our findings address diversity across the surgical specialties, preoperative versus intraoperative use of the data, preferences for simple natural gestures, the role of another person controlling the display, broad system constraints and the willingness of surgeons to collaborate with their time and effort in this research.     

Scheduling an operating theatre under human resource constraints

In the present economic context, the operating theatre is considered as a critical activity in health care management. By virtue of its huge consumption of human and material resources, the operating theatre is one of the most important sources of expenses of the hospitals. A less costly organization of the operating rooms calls for a more rational use of the resources and a more refined planning of the surgical units. In addition to these considerations, we are concerned about the well-being of the medical staff. We integrate this human factor into the optimization procedure by stressing the human resources’ availabilities in the design of the schedules. This planning process is typically decomposed in two sequential phases: a planning stage followed by a scheduling stage. Due to this decomposition the resulting solutions may turn out to be sub-optimal. In this paper, we propose a formulation that includes both the planning and scheduling of the surgical operations. We also propose a heuristic solution procedure based on genetic algorithms to counter the large running times inherent in tackling this kind of hard optimization problem.     

Workload analysis for scientific literature digital libraries

Workload studies of large-scale systems may help locating possible bottlenecks and improving performances. However, previous workload analysis for Web applications is typically focused on generic platforms, neglecting the unique characteristics exhibited in various domains of these applications. It is observed that different application domains have intrinsically heterogeneous characteristics, which have a direct impact on the system performance. In this study, we present an extensive analysis into the workload of scientific literature digital libraries, unveiling their temporal and user interest patterns. Logs of a computer science literature digital library, CiteSeer, are collected and analyzed. We intentionally remove service details specific to CiteSeer. We believe our analysis is applicable to other systems with similar characteristics. While many of our findings are consistent with previous Web analysis, we discover several unique characteristics of scientific literature digital library workload. Furthermore, we discuss how to utilize our findings to improve system performance.     

Genomic Big Data and Privacy: Challenges and Opportunities for Precision Medicine

Genome science is rapidly shifting from research labs and biobanks to the clinical setting. The resulting genomic big data, or large-scale networked genetic material, is a disruptive technology. On one hand, clinical genomics advances life-saving innovation through precision medicine. On the other, the digital databases they are built upon raise new concerns for informational risk to personal privacy. While a traditional biomedical approach focuses on risks and benefits to the human body, our socio-technical analysis sheds lights on the emerging terrain of the human body as digital code. In this paper, we analyze emerging issues related to clinical genomics based on a 3-year collaborative clinical research project to develop a genomic test for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) cancer in British Columbia (BC), the first of its kind in Canada. We found the most pressing issues for genomic researchers and clinicians were challenges around informed consent, return of results and return of incidental findings. In light of technological advances and the emerging context of networked privacy, we outline several recommendations for best practices in diffusing clinical genomics to the healthcare system.     

Continuous interaction in future computing systems

The latest developments in human computer interfaces aim at greater ease of use, and the exploitation of human communication and interaction skills typical of non-computerised environments. This kind of interaction is continuous rather than purely discrete. Continuous interaction implies a tighter coupling between system and user, and raises complicated synchronisation issues where real-time requirements and intrinsic variation of human behaviour play an essential role. In this paper, we propose a human centred layered reference model to reduce the design complexity of systems exhibiting continuous interaction. In the context of the layered model, we discuss the role that formal modelling can play in the design of these systems.

     

A reference framework for continuous interaction

The latest developments in human computer interfaces aim at greater ease of use, and the exploitation of human communication and interaction skills typical of non-computerised environments. This kind of interaction is continuous rather than purely discrete. Continuous interaction implies a tighter coupling between system and user, and raises complicated synchronisation issues where real-time requirements and intrinsic variation of human behaviour play an essential role. In this paper, we propose a human centred layered reference model to reduce the design complexity of systems exhibiting continuous interaction. In the context of the layered model, we discuss the role that formal modelling can play in the design of these systems. Published online: 14 May 2002     

Remote Collaboration Over Video Data: Towards Real-Time e-Social Science

The design of distributed systems to support collaboration among groups of scientists raises new networking challenges that grid middleware developers are addressing. This field of development work, ‘e-Science’, is increasingly recognising the critical need of understanding the ordinary day-to-day work of doing research to inform design. We have investigated one particular area of collaborative social scientific work – the analysis of video data. Based on interviews and observational studies, we discuss current practices of social scientific work with digital video in three areas: Preparation for collaboration; Control of data and application; and Annotation configurations and techniques. For each, we describe how these requirements feature in our design of a distributed video analysis system as part of the MiMeG project: our security policy and distribution; the design of the control system; and providing freeform annotation over data. Finally, we review our design in light of initial use of the software between project partners; and discuss how we might transform the spatial configuration of the system to support annotation behaviour.     

Transforming Scholarly Practice: Embedding Technological Interventions to Support the Collaborative Analysis of Ancient Texts

e-Research and Cyberinfrastructure programmes actively promote the development of new forms of scientific practice and collaboration through the implementation of tools and technologies that support distributed collaborative work across geographically dispersed research institutes and laboratories. Whilst originating in scientific domains, we have more recently seen a turn to the design of systems that support research practices in the social sciences and the arts and humanities. Attempts to embed large-scale infrastructures into research settings has brought to the fore the necessity of understanding the knowledge, skills and practices of researchers within a variety of disciplines that might use these technologies. In this paper, we consider an approach to gathering requirements through the introduction of various technical interventions for relatively short term periods so that we may come to an understanding their impact on routine work practices. Drawing upon an analysis of the detailed ways in which classicists work with digital images, we discuss the requirements for systems that support them as they collaborate in the interpretation of particular types of images. We discuss implications for the development of infrastructures to support research collaboration in this area and conclude with reflections upon the experiences gained from conducting naturalistic studies in parallel with design interventions.     

Hybrid crafting: towards an integrated practice of crafting with physical and digital components

With current digital technologies, people have large archives of digital media, such as images and audio files, but there are only limited means to include these media in creative practices of crafting and making. Nevertheless, studies have shown that crafting with digital media often makes these media more cherished and that people enjoy being creative with their digital media. This paper aims to open up the way for novel means for crafting, which include digital media in integrations with physical construction, here called ‘hybrid crafting’. Notions of hybrid crafting were explored to inform the design of products or systems that may support these new crafting practices. We designed ‘Materialise’—a building set that allows for the inclusion of digital images and audio files in physical constructions by using tangible building blocks that can display images or play audio files, alongside a variety of other physical components—and used this set in four hands-on creative workshops to gain insight into how people go about doing hybrid crafting; whether hybrid crafting is desirable; what the characteristics of hybrid crafting are; and how we may design to support these practices. By reflecting on the findings from these workshops, we provide concrete guidelines for the design of novel hybrid crafting products or systems that address craft context, process and result. We aim to open up the design space to designing for hybrid crafting because these new practices provide interesting new challenges and opportunities for future crafting that can lead to novel forms of creative expression.     

Telling the story of older people e-mailing: An ethnographical study

While e-mail is the Internet application most used by older people, very little is known about how they interact with e-mail systems and use them in their daily lives. We undertook a 3-year ethnographical study aimed at revealing and explaining real life e-mailing. We describe and discuss the nature of e-mail use in terms of social circles; frequency, type of content and patterns of communication; relationship with other technologies and activities; motivation and interactive experiences. Within this context of everyday use, we uncover and explain the (relative) importance of several interaction barriers, such as cognitive load, difficulties using input devices and perception of visual information. We claim that cognitive difficulties are much more relevant than difficulties in reading from the screen, for instance, so challenging results of current HCI research with older people. We show and discuss some implications for designing better e-mail systems (and interactive technologies) for older people.     

Collaboration and Trust in Healthcare Innovation: The eDiaMoND Case Study

This paper presents findings from an investigation into requirements for collaboration in e-Science in the context of eDiaMoND, a Grid-enabled prototype system intended in part to support breast cancer screening. Detailed studies based on ethnographic fieldwork reveal the importance of accountability and visibility of work for trust and for the various forms of ‘practical ethical action’ in which clinicians are seen to routinely engage in this setting. We discuss the implications of our findings, specifically for the prospect of using distributed screening to make more effective use of scarce clinical skills and, more generally, for realising the Grid’s potential for sharing data within and across institutions. Understanding how to afford trust and to provide adequate support for ethical concerns relating to the handling of sensitive data is a particular challenge for e-Health systems and for e-Science in general. Future e-Health and e-Science systems will need to be compatible with the ways in which trust is achieved, and practical ethical actions are realised and embedded within work practices.     

Social interaction regulation in virtual web environments using the Social Theatres model

At the present time virtual communities are overspread in the web, providing users a cyber-place to share common purposes and interact with other users around the world. Interaction in these environments grapple with new challenges concerning to provide their users better tools to interact and fulfil their goals. In this context we propose a model to create regulated interaction environments based on the theatre metaphor: the Social Theatres. A dynamic multi-layer software architecture (ASTeaS) was developed to support this web-based interaction model, allowing easy construction of such social interaction spaces and adaptation to users' devices requirements. In this paper we discuss the usage of interaction regulation in virtual environments supported by the Social Theatres model and evaluate some aspects of the users interaction in two different case study scenarios.     

Design Factors for Summary Visualization in Visual Analytics

Data summarization allows analysts to explore datasets that may be too complex or too large to visualize in detail. Designers face a number of design and implementation choices when using summarization in visual analytics systems. While these choices influence the utility of the resulting system, there are no clear guidelines for the use of these summarization techniques. In this paper, we codify summarization use in existing systems to identify key factors in the design of summary visualizations. We use quantitative content analysis to systematically survey examples of visual analytics systems and enumerate the use of these design factors in data summarization. Through this analysis, we expose the relationship between design considerations, strategies for data summarization in visualization systems, and how different summarization methods influence the analyses supported by systems. We use these results to synthesize common patterns in real‐world use of summary visualizations and highlight open challenges and opportunities that these patterns offer for designing effective systems. This work provides a more principled understanding of design practices for summary visualization and offers insight into underutilized approaches.     

Experiences in Automating the Analysis of Linguistic Interactions for the Study of Distributed Collectives

An important issue faced by research on distributed collective practices is the amount and nature of the data available for study. While persistent mediated interaction offers unprecedented opportunities for research, the wealth and richness of available data pose issues on their own, calling for new methods of investigation. In such a context, automated tools can offer coverage, both within and across collectives. In this paper, we investigate the potential contributions of semantic analyses of linguistic interactions for the study of collective processes and practices. In other words, we are interested in discovering how linguistic interaction is related to collective action, as well as in exploring how computational tools can make use of these relationships for the study of distributed collectives.     

Considering Operational Security Risk during System Development

Software products today are riddled with defects, some of which leave systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Although high-quality development processes can limit vulnerabilities, these processes alone aren't sufficient for operational security. The operational security of software-intensive systems is closely linked to the practices and techniques used during system design and development. In this article, we discuss OCTAVE within the context of analyzing an organization's potential operational security risks for a software-intensive system development project prior to actual deployment     

Enterprise Network Traffic Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Using Web Technology

Today's enterprise networks are composed of multiple types of interconnected networks. Furthermore, organizations use a variety of systems and applications on these networks. Operations and management staff must provide an efficient, reliable and secure operating environment to support an organization's daily activities. Enterprise networks must be monitored for performance, configuration, security, accounting and fault management. Current management practices typically involve the use of complex, hard-to-learn and hard-to-use tools. What is needed desperately is a set of simple, uniform, ubiquitous tools for managing networks. Web-based management promises to provide such solutions. This paper focuses on the use of Web technology and the Multi-Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) for the purposes of enterprise network traffic monitoring and reporting. In this paper, we first examine the requirements for enterprise network traffic monitoring, analysis and reporting, and then present the design and implementation of a Web-based network traffic monitoring and reporting system that satisfies those requirements. We also present guidelines we have formulated and used for analyzing enterprise network traffic. We then discuss our experiences in using such a system for traffic monitoring on two large enterprise networks.     

SAGE: Semantic Annotation of Georeferenced Environments

The emergence of portable 3D mapping systems are revolutionizing the way we generate digital 3D models of environments. These systems are human-centric and require the user to hold or carry the device while continuously walking and mapping an environment. In this paper, we adapt this unique coexistence of man and machines to propose SAGE (Semantic Annotation of Georeferenced Environments). SAGE consists of a portable 3D mobile mapping system and a smartphone that enables the user to assign semantic content to georeferenced 3D point clouds while scanning a scene. The proposed system contains several components including touchless speech acquisition, background noise adaptation, real time audio and vibrotactile feedback, automatic speech recognition, distributed clock synchronization, 3D annotation localization, user interaction, and interactive visualization. The most crucial advantage of SAGE technology is that it can be used to infer dynamic activities within an environment. Such activities are difficult to be identified with existing post-processing semantic annotation techniques. The capability of SAGE leads to many promising applications such as intelligent scene classification, place recognition and navigational aid tasks. We conduct several experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system.     

Knowledge work and communication challenges in networked enterprises

A modern enterprise is a heavily wired and networked socio-technical system where multiple components play in symphony to yield a competitive position in the ear of digital economy. While the underling communication and interaction systems facilitate knowledge workers to carry out the enterprise mission and furnish service to the society, there are many other aspects that rather have adverse effects on the productivity of an enterprise and interruption of knowledge workers, which pose a serious scientific challenge. In this paper, we briefly discuss certain challenging aspects of knowledge work and communication processes in networked enterprises that require more profound scientific attention in networked enterprises. This paper introduces the problem, identifies some specific research challenges, and then briefly discusses emerging research that addresses some of these challenges.