Multimedia networks: issues and challenges

Video on demand, teleconferencing, digital libraries, and remote tutoring systems are just a few of the many distributed multimedia applications that have emerged in recent years. Widespread use of such applications requires networks that can offer transport services to both discrete media (such as text and digital images) and continuous media (such as audio and video). The discussion explores some of the issues involved in the design of such networks     

VANETs路由协议综述

随着车联网VANETs(Vehicular Ad hoc Networks)应用日益受到关注,研究者对VANETs路由协议进行了深入研究.为此,首先总结VANETs的特点及应用,再介绍了基于位置的、基于拓扑以及基于广播路由的概念,并着重分析和总结了近期路由协议的核心思想以及特点,此外,还从应用场景、前提条件、虚拟设备要求、电子地图需求、路由恢复策略以及转发模式六个方面对路由协议进行全面比较,最后,展望了VANETs路由技术的未来研究方向.     

Manufacturing plant control challenges and issues

Enterprise control system integration between business systems, manufacturing execution systems and shop-floor process-control systems remains a key issue for facilitating the deployment of plant-wide information control systems for practical e-business-to-manufacturing industry-led issues. Achievement of the integration-in-manufacturing paradigm based on centralized/distributed hardware/software automation architectures is evolving using the intelligence-in-manufacturing paradigm addressed by IMS industry-led R&D initiatives. The remaining goal is to define and experiment with the next generation of manufacturing systems, which should be able to cope with the high degree of complexity required to implement agility, flexibility and reactivity in customized manufacturing. This introductory paper summarizes some key problems, trends and accomplishments in manufacturing plant control before emphasizing for practical purposes some rationales and forecasts in deploying automation over networks, holonic manufacturing execution systems and their related agent-based technology, and applying formal methods to ensure dependable control of these manufacturing systems.     

Information technology issues and challenges of the globe: the world IT project

In this research, we report the information technologies rated as important by IT professionals in thirty-seven countries of the world, thus enhancing our understanding of the global technology landscape. Past research has focused primarily on the U.S. technology issues, which although useful in the U.S. context, may not generalize to all other countries. Globally, four core technologies have been ranked high for most of the countries: networks/telecommunications, business intelligence/analytics, enterprise application integration, and mobile and wireless applications. There were also differences among countries. Statistical analyses were performed to analyze the nature of these differences based on the economic level of the country and its IT infrastructure capability. Further insights were generated by performing cluster analysis; grouping the countries into three clusters (optimizers, pragmatists, and progressives), and examining their characteristics and technology priorities. These results are useful for multinational companies, governments, and international agencies as they forge their technology strategies and make investment decisions. We also lay the foundation for ongoing research to better understand the contextual factors that explain the differences in technology priorities among nations.     

Relationships between observed and perceived deviations from normative work procedures

Deviations from anticipated courses of events are often associated with accidents, while the effects of deviations that decrease productivity but do not obviously lead to human injury are less clear. A systemic approach to production and safety is introduced, and it is proposed that production deviations have effects that may lead to safety violations and personal injury. In addition, the relationship between observed and perceived production deviations from 12 senior (60–79 years old) males' routine work using three firewood processing machines is analysed. For simple machine work, perceived deviations were positively related to observed deviations per work cycle and inversely correlated to the perception of work efficiency. For more complex machine work it was more difficult to match observers' and operators' perceptions of deviations. Despite challenges in the production deviation concept, this approach offers a holistic understanding of the performance of human–machine-environment systems and complements assessments of deviations from safe working practice.     

Artificial life and embodied robotics: current issues and future challenges

In this article we explore some of the issues currently facing researchers in the interface between the twin fields of Artificial Life and Robotics, and the challenges and potential synergy of these two areas in the creation of future robotic life forms. There are three strands of research which we feel will be of key importance in the possible development of future embodied artificial life forms. These are the areas of evolutionary robotics and evolutionary humanoid robotics in particular, probabilistic robotics for deliberation, and robot benchmarking with associated metrics and standards. We briefly explore each of these areas in turn, focusing on our current research in each field and what we see as the potential issues and challenges for the future. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

Content-based image authentication: current status, issues, and challenges

With today’s global digital environment, the Internet is readily accessible anytime from everywhere, so does the digital image manipulation software; thus, digital data is easy to be tampered without notice. Under this circumstance, integrity verification has become an important issue in the digital world. The aim of this paper is to present an in-depth review and analysis on the methods of detecting image tampering. We introduce the notion of content-based image authentication and the features required to design an effective authentication scheme. We review major algorithms and frequently used security mechanisms found in the open literature. We also analyze and discuss the performance trade-offs and related security issues among existing technologies.     

Scalable,parallel computers: Alternatives,issues, and challenges

The 1990s will be the era of scalable computers. By giving up uniform memory access, computers can be built that scale over a range of several thousand. These provide highpeak announced performance (PAP), by using powerful, distributed CMOS microprocessor-primary memory pairs interconnected by a high performance switch (network). The parameters that determine these structures and their utility include: whether hardware (a multiprocessor) or software (a multicomputer) is used to maintain a distributed, or shared virtual memory (DSM) environemnt; the power of computing nodes (these improve at 60% per year); the size and scalability of the switch; distributability (the ability to connect to geographically dispersed computers including workstations); and all forms of software to exploit their inherent parallelism. To a great extent, viability is determined by a computer's generality—the ability to efficiently handle a range of work that requires varying processing (from serial to fully parallel), memory, and I/O resources. A taxonomy and evolutionary time line outlines the next decade of computer evolution, included distributed workstations, based on scalability and parallelism. Workstations can be the best scalables.     

Virtual engineering at work: the challenges for designing mechatronic products

The product race has become an innovation race, reconciling challenges of branding, performance, time to market and competitive pricing while complying with ecological, safety and legislation constraints. The answer lies in “smart” products of high complexity, relying on heterogeneous technologies and involving active components. To keep pace with this evolution and further accelerate the design cycle, the design engineering process must be rethought. The paper presents a mechatronic simulation approach to achieve this goal. The starting point is the current virtual prototyping paradigm that is widely adopted and that continues to improve in terms of model complexity, accuracy, robustness and automated optimization. Two evolutions are discussed. A first one is the extension to multi-physics simulation answering the design needs of the inherent multi-disciplinarity of “intelligent” products. Integration of thermal, hydraulic, mechanical, haptic and electrical functions requires simulation to extend beyond the traditional CAD-FEM approach, supporting the use of system, functional and perception models. The second evolution is the integration of control functions in the products. Where current industrial practice treats mechanical system design and control design as different design loops, this paper discusses their integration in a model-based design process at all design stages, turning concepts such as software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop into basic elements of an industrial design approach. These concepts are illustrated by a number of automotive design engineering cases, which demonstrate that the combined use of perception, geometric and system models allows to develop innovative solutions for the active safety, low-emission and high-comfort performance of next-generation vehicles. This process in turn poses new challenges to the design in terms of the specification and validation of such innovative products, including their failure modes and fault-tolerant behaviour. This will imply adopting a model-based system engineering approach that is currently already common practice in software engineering.     

Process diagnostics using trace alignment: Opportunities, issues, and challenges

Business processes leave trails in a variety of data sources (e.g., audit trails, databases, and transaction logs). Hence, every process instance can be described by a trace, i.e., a sequence of events. Process mining techniques are able to extract knowledge from such traces and provide a welcome extension to the repertoire of business process analysis techniques. Recently, process mining techniques have been adopted in various commercial BPM systems (e.g., BPM|one, Futura Reflect, ARIS PPM, Fujitsu Interstage, Businesscape, Iontas PDF, and QPR PA). Unfortunately, traditional process discovery algorithms have problems dealing with less structured processes. The resulting models are difficult to comprehend or even misleading. Therefore, we propose a new approach based on trace alignment. The goal is to align traces in such a way that event logs can be explored easily. Trace alignment can be used to explore the process in the early stages of analysis and to answer specific questions in later stages of analysis. Hence, it complements existing process mining techniques focusing on discovery and conformance checking. The proposed techniques have been implemented as plugins in the ProM framework. We report the results of trace alignment on one synthetic and two real-life event logs, and show that trace alignment has significant promise in process diagnostic efforts.     

Coping with information technology challenges to identity: A theoretical framework

Drawing on ideas from identity control theory and coping theory and on a diverse range of social psychology literature, we propose an integrative theoretical framework that unpacks and traces the processes by which information technology comes to affect users’ identity. We define four types of strategies (acting on the situation, adjusting the self, cathartic practices and distancing) through which people cope with technological challenges to the self. We suggest that these strategies may lead to four individual-level outcomes, namely reinforced identity, redefined identity, ambivalent identity and anti-identity. The model is provided with a preliminary support through reference to real life situations, carefully selected from extant empirical IS enquiries.     

Agile transition and adoption human-related challenges and issues: A Grounded Theory approach

Agile methods in software development have been introduced to cope with the inherent problems of the traditional methods. The increasing prevalence of using these methods reflects their important role in the future of software development. However, leaving traditional approach and adapting to Agile approach has been a central attention of the researchers. Indeed, Agile transition needs enough time and effort and most often is subject to several challenges and barriers, mainly because of its people-centric nature. Human-related challenges in several studies have been reported as the major transition challenges. However, exploring the primary origins and reasons of these challenges has received less effort in a large-scale research study. A Grounded Theory in context of Agile software development has been conducted involving 49 Agile practitioners across the 13 different countries. This study identified different aspects of human-related challenges throughout Agile transition process. The results of this study show that the root of the emerged issues is the people's perceptions about Agile transition. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the origins and reasons of these challenges and issues in order to help software companies and development teams. Considering the findings may help them to facilitate Agile transition process with less cost, time and effort and to get better results by considering these potential challenges.     

Opportunities and challenges in improving surgical work flow

Safe and efficient surgical operations depend on a work environment larger than the individual operating room (OR) and on communications at different levels of the hospital organization. Extensive communication is needed before and during surgery to ensure that surgical rooms, equipment, and supplies; patients; surgeons; supporting personnel; and accompanying documentation are all ready at the appropriate times. In this article, we compile the results of three of our studies of communication activities outside ORs, with the goal of identifying opportunities and challenges in the workflow of surgery. The first study demonstrates the amount of communication work performed by OR coordinators. The second study demonstrates the potential functions of a whiteboard in communication. The third study describes an organizational learning strategy of proactive event reporting. We apply computer-supported cooperative work and organizational learning concepts to the findings and suggest ways in which information technology may improve surgical workflow.     

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.     

Smart home security: challenges,issues and solutions at different IoT layers

The Journal of Supercomputing - The Internet of Things is a rapidly evolving technology in which interconnected computing devices and sensors share data over the network to decipher different...     

A survey on video content rating: taxonomy,challenges and open issues

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Rating a video based on its content is one of the most important solutions to classify videos for audience age groups. In this regard, Film content rating and TV...