How many hidden layers and nodes?

The question of how many hidden layers and how many hidden nodes should there be always comes up in any classification task of remotely sensed data using neural networks. Until today there has been no exact solution. A method of shedding some light to this question is presented in this paper. A near‐optimal solution is discovered after searching with a genetic algorithm. A novel fitness function is introduced that concurrently seeks for the most accurate and compact solution. The proposed method is thoroughly compared to many other methods currently in use, including several heuristics and pruning algorithms. The results are encouraging, indicating that it is time to shift our focus from suboptimal practices to efficient search methods, to tune the parameters of neural networks.     

On the Euler sequence spaces which include the spaces ?p and ?∞ I

In the present paper, we introduce the Euler sequence space consisting of all sequences whose Euler transforms of order r are in the space ?_p of non-absolute type which is the BK-space including the space ?_p and prove that the spaces and ?_p are linearly isomorphic for 1 ? p ? ∞. Furthermore, we give some inclusion relations concerning the space . Finally, we determine the α-, β- and γ-duals of the space for 1 ? p ? ∞ and construct the basis for the space , where 1 ? p < ∞.     

Assessment of the NEOTHEMI virtual museum project – An on-line survey

The NEOTHEMI Comenius 3 network focused on cultural heritage and aimed to produce a virtual museum of cultural heritage from ten countries in Europe, including Hungary, which joined the EU in 2004, and Norway, an associated country, to encourage users to develop an understanding of the cultural heritage of other European countries and to feel more European. This paper assesses the effectiveness of the project in reaching its target audience.     

Virtual reality in Africa – for Africa

The paper describes a number of virtual reality projects taking place in Africa. The availability of VR on PCs, it is argued, has made access possible for a large number of users. Applications for education and training and applications that preserve and promote African culture are particularly highlighted.     

Virtual rights? Property in online game objects and characters

The new industry of Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) brings together two sets of fictions: the interactive stories of shared computer games and the legal devices of intellectual property. In these virtual worlds, scarcity need not exist, but players tend to prefer the competition it creates. This leads to the development of property rights within the game world and players trading real money for virtual objects, ‘land’ and characters. This new phenomenon brings with it familiar legal problems such as theft, fraud and ownership disputes. Game creators also challenge the right of the players to claim ownership outside the game world. The volume and value of the items traded make real money trading an important area of current interest for intellectual property lawyers. Something is being traded, but does it fit neatly into existing conceptions of property rights and who owns it? Analysing the novel problems that result from various theoretical perspectives (utilitarianism, labour-desert theory and personality theory) leads to the conclusion that with time, we will see the development of property rights for players in online games. This connects with a growing understanding that the traditional conception of copyright law dealing with creative work generated by the solitary author is becoming less appropriate in the new creative spaces that information and communications technology brings, where individuals are both consumer and producer. In virtual worlds, new forms of intellectual property, and perhaps even new rights, are taking shape.     

Virtual or vague? a literature review exposing conceptual differences in defining virtual organizations in IS research

The concept of ??virtual organization?? was coined about 15?years ago to describe changes in organizational structures and value creation, enabled by the affordances of ICT. Not surprisingly, the Information Systems community has been influential in researching virtual organization phenomena. However, it appears that, since the notion of ??virtual?? in its most basic connotation only denotes some form of difference to a ??traditional?? form of organization, the term VO has been interpreted in varied form with an unsatisfying mix of VO notions existing in the literature. What is more, papers frequently exhibit mismatches between what they characterize as VO and the real-life phenomena they discuss. Motivated by these observations we carry out a literature analysis to explore differing notions of virtual organization. Based on a systematic classification of VO definitions, we uncover three distinct types of VO that are used in the literature, each of which interprets the notion of ??virtual?? differently, but is useful in its own right and exhibits unique management challenges. The first type, named Internal VO, revolves around internal virtualization based on distributed collaboration in virtual teams. It emerged on the back of emerging new groupware and communication technologies. Its main challenges stem from distributed project and work organization. The second type, named Network VO, describes a network of smaller companies that form a virtual entity, bringing in core competencies in short term collaborative projects. It emerged on the back of a emerging inter-organizational information systems and a trend of forming network arrangement. Its main challenges are with the governance of the multi-entity network. The third type, termed Outsourcing VO, refers to a hierarchical network of suppliers to which the focal firm outsources a significant part of its value creation, thus appearing as a virtual firm. It emerged on the back of the outsourcing trend of the last decades. Its main challenge is determining the optimal degree of integration and virtualization. With the identification and detailed exploration of the three VO types, our study contributes to a better understanding of the conceptual foundation of VO research and points to the necessity for conceptual clarity in future research.     

Value not virtual ‐ one library's response to the virtual campus

The purpose statement of Deakin University Library is ‘We help people learn.’ This applies equally to on or off‐campus students, which has meant that the Library has strived to provide innovative resources and services to break down the barriers of geography and time experienced by our remote students. With the advances in information and communication technologies, Deakin University Library has been able to capitalise on these developments to deliver electronic services to both on and off‐campus students, thus complementing the valuable services provided by the Library team. While the services provided through the virtual or digital library are a great leap forward, providing access to a wide range of resources and services 24 hours per day x 7 days per week, these services must be seen in conjunction with the professional assistance provided by librarians. Deakin University Library's success is in its customer focus and the value added digital services available through the virtual campus.     

REMOTE: desk-top Virtual Reality for future command and control?

This paper discusses a study in supporting collaborative military planning in which groupware, video-conferencing and a desktop Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) were used. It discusses the design and implementation of the CVE and the setup and execution of the study using questionnaires and observation. The results of the study questionnaires showed that the CVE was not seen by users as the best of the ways offered to support collaborative planning; these results are discussed and their implication for the design of such a CVE are assessed.

Virtual Observations: a software tool for contextual observation and assessment of user’s actions in virtual reality

Virtual Reality - In this paper, we present ‘Virtual Observation’ (VO) a software tool for contextual observation and assessment of user’s directly from within the virtual reality...     

Will virtual education initiatives succeed?

The use of information technology to enhance teaching and learning processes has been practiced for a number of years now. However, the rapid growth in the use of the Internet has led to a new dimension in interactive and collaborative learning anytime and anyplace dynamically. With the explosion of “virtual education initiatives”, the question of the feasibility and success criteria for such projects quickly arises. To address the question in an organized way, we propose a project assessment based on critical success factors. Hence, in this article, we draw on a widely recognized critical success factor framework. We (slightly) adjust the framework to fit the special characteristics of virtual education initiatives, and apply to one case study, namely the virtual education initiative at the Faculty of Business at the City University of Hong Kong. The results suggest that the past success of the case is due to the adherence to the large majority of critical success factors. However, it also outlines some areas of concern. The paper concludes with a discussion on the strength and limitations of virtual learning environment as well as future directions. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Can virtual reality be used to measure and train surgical skills?

The quantitative literature on the use of virtual environments to measure and train a variety of surgical skills is critically reviewed. We selected works from the years 1995-2000. Theoretical perspectives, such as those of Saltzman (1979), Bernstein (1967) and Schmidt (1975) and techniques, such as hierarchical task analysis, are presented and contrasted with the largely atheoretical approach of the practitioners of virtual surgery. It is concluded that the quantitative work discussed provides few findings of value to practising surgeons. This may be due in part to the lack of consideration paid to fundamental issues in the learning of motor skills, such as whether motor skills learning is most effective with varying training conditions and the distinction between purely motoric aspects and knowledge of procedures. Possible ways forward for surgical training are outlined. It is suggested that the theoretical perspectives and techniques available in the area of motor behaviour should be incorporated into future experimental studies of surgery in virtual environments.     

On the stability and convergence of self-tuning control–virtual equivalent system approach

This article presents a unified understanding and judgement of the stability and convergence of a general self-tuning control (STC) system, which consists of arbitrary control strategy, arbitrary parameter estimation algorithm and a deterministic/stochastic linear time-invariant (LTI) plant. The necessary conditions required for the global stability and convergence of a general STC system are relaxed, i.e. the convergence of parameter estimates is removed for both deterministic and stochastic STC schemes. To reach this goal, ‘virtual equivalent system (VES)’ concept and methodology is adopted. With the help of VES, the original nonlinear dominant (nonlinear in structure) problem is converted to a linear dominant (linear in structure) problem. The results developed in this article show that STC systems are stable and convergent for the abundance of control strategies and parameter estimation algorithms, which will provide great flexibility in the applications of STC.     

OATH – the answer to ID theft?

Online commerce and communication has long been hampered by fears about consumer security and privacy combined with a lack of standards and high costs for technologies that attempt to address these concerns. To resolve these issues, a new industry-wide collaboration was launched earlier this year. Tasking itself with the development of an open reference architecture by leveraging existing open standards for the universal adoption of strong authentication technology across all networks, the Open Authentication Reference Architecture (OATH) group aims to develop authentication, giving customers the confidence to conduct commerce online.     

Łukasiewicz logic and Riesz spaces

We initiate a deep study of Riesz MV-algebras which are MV-algebras endowed with a scalar multiplication with scalars from \([0,1]\) . Extending Mundici’s equivalence between MV-algebras and \(\ell \) -groups, we prove that Riesz MV-algebras are categorically equivalent to unit intervals in Riesz spaces with strong unit. Moreover, the subclass of norm-complete Riesz MV-algebras is equivalent to the class of commutative unital C \(^*\) -algebras. The propositional calculus \({\mathbb R}{\mathcal L}\) that has Riesz MV-algebras as models is a conservative extension of ?ukasiewicz \(\infty \) -valued propositional calculus and is complete with respect to evaluations in the standard model \([0,1]\) . We prove a normal form theorem for this logic, extending McNaughton theorem for ? ukasiewicz logic. We define the notions of quasi-linear combination and quasi-linear span for formulas in \({\mathbb R}{\mathcal L},\) and relate them with the analogue of de Finetti’s coherence criterion for \({\mathbb R}{\mathcal L}\) .     

Mediating Media Studies – Stimulating critical awareness in a virtual environment

Second Life has become increasingly popular with educators and educational institutions, because of the educational possibilities it seems to offer. While there has been a lot of hype and academic publications about educational design or the theoretical framing of teaching in virtual environments, there have been few publications focussing on actual teaching and learning experiences of lecturers and students in Higher Education institutions. This article uses practical examples from an introductory course on Media studies taught at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to demonstrate that even simple tasks in Second Life can be used to great effect if properly contextualised into the course being taught. High levels of technical skills, or extraordinary educational designs are less important to employing Second Life successfully in a Higher Education environment, than a proper evaluation of student learning outcomes, and teaching goals.     

Defining the lines between virtual and real world purchases: Second Life sells,but who’s buying?

The present study examines the virtual spending habits of Residents in Second Life, a unique Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) with a thriving economy where virtual goods and services are purchased with real money. Large corporations are entering the virtual worlds of MMORPGs through advertising; yet, few studies have examined the relationship between virtual identities, virtual consumption and real world consumption. This study formulates a preliminary taxonomy of user motivations for playing Second Life and addresses how these diverse reasons impact both virtual and ‘real world’ consumer behaviors. A total of 209 participants completed a Web-based questionnaire. The independent variable in the study was motivation for using Second Life, and respondents completed measures of frequency of purchasing different products, motivations for using Second Life, and demographic characteristics. Results are consistent with the expectation that not all Second Life users are the same in their motivations or behaviors, despite popular media coverage of the phenomenon.     

Leveling up: Are non-gamers and women disadvantaged in a virtual world classroom?

Today's young gamers are tomorrow's students who expect more immersion from their online learning experiences. Teachers and administrators, however, must ask are some students at a disadvantage in such a class and does gender play a role? We examine the degree to which gaming experience and gender influence sense of presence in a virtual world learning classroom. Feelings of presence are key to involvement in virtual worlds. Participants, 348 undergraduates, interacted within a custom designed virtual world classroom focusing business negotiation skills. Results reveal that while gaming experience gives a slight advantage, lack of previous software ownership and gender do not put learners at a disadvantage. This finding shows that non-gamers and females can equally participate in a virtual world classroom, relieving concerns of adoption.