Web-Based Memorializing After September 11: Toward a Conceptual Framework

Web-based memorializing is an emerging set of social practices mediated by computer networks, through which digital objects, structures, and spaces of commemoration are produced. Based on in-depth analysis of eight Web sites produced to memorialize victims of the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, we demonstrate that Web-based memorializing bears a diverse array of characteristics, only some of which are consistent with offline memorializing. Our analysis suggests that although Web sites produced by institutions or organizations may differ somewhat in form and content from those produced by individuals, public and private modes of memorializing observed offline are interpenetrated on the Web. Finally, we identify communal functions served and contributions to public memory made via Web-based memorializing, and propose a conceptual framework for use in future studies of Web-based memorializing practices.     

The Grassmannian Atlas: A General Framework for Exploring Linear Projections of High‐Dimensional Data

Linear projections are one of the most common approaches to visualize high‐dimensional data. Since the space of possible projections is large, existing systems usually select a small set of interesting projections by ranking a large set of candidate projections based on a chosen quality measure. However, while highly ranked projections can be informative, some lower ranked ones could offer important complementary information. Therefore, selection based on ranking may miss projections that are important to provide a global picture of the data. The proposed work fills this gap by presenting the Grassmannian Atlas, a framework that captures the global structures of quality measures in the space of all projections, which enables a systematic exploration of many complementary projections and provides new insights into the properties of existing quality measures.     

Effects of Crisis‐Triggered Demographic Depletion on Organizational Change: The Case of Israeli Kibbutzim

This study postulates that, in addition to economic triggers and organizational age, demographic depletion is an equally significant catalyst of change during crisis. The study analyzes 23 changes measured annually over a six‐year span in 53 Israeli kibbutzim. Employing longitudinal econometric analyses, demographic depletion was found to be significant in estimating change intensity, followed by return on sales and organizational age.     

Managing Crises in the EU: Some Reflections of a Non‐EU Scholar

In recent years the EU has been increasingly involved in development and implementation of crisis policy as a component of its development and security policy. This process is seriously complicated by the EU architects, who had never conceived it as a crisis management institute. Therefore they failed to design built‐in organisational capacities into the Union to mitigate and respond to crises. In addition, the EU‐agreed overarching concept of crisis as such and EU crisis in particular is missing. Both issues remain a primary question on research and policy agendas. Provided below are some of the author's considerations and comments on these issues. It is argued that, despite the existing divergence in crisis interpretations in the EU, coherent conceptualisation is possible and approaches to this are introduced. Practical implications of generic crisis conceptualisation for EU crisis management policy are analysed. Within this context three major lessons from international experience, including that from the USA and Russia, are emphasised. These concern the issues of organisational flexibility, learning from earlier major crises and comprehensive training of crisis decision units critical for efficient crisis management policy.     

Crisis Politics in Authoritarian Regimes: How Crises Catalyse Changes under the State–Society Interactive Framework

Most studies and research on crisis management and government crises focus on nations that are advanced and democratic. Through the institutionalized mechanism of voting, the public can respond to a government's handling of a crisis without destabilizing the democratic system of government. However, the consequences of crises, particularly governance crises, in authoritarian regimes have not been adequately addressed. Drawing upon different frameworks in the field, this paper proposes a heuristic crisis development ladder and a state–society interactive framework more relevant for studying crisis management in authoritarian nations such as China. By focusing on the catalytic effect of crisis that accelerates reforms and changes, this paper argues that critical crises are politically powerful and decisive in authoritarian systems, especially in the context of an increasingly proactive civil society. This paper illustrates the crisis provoking politics that influences decision‐making under non‐democratic rule.     

Understanding the new Information risks: The Requirement for a New Information Security Conceptual Framework

If one were to ask CIOs about their corporate technology structure, their response would focus on apparent concerns derived from the management of numerous types of servers, network bandwidth, operating system currency, contract lifecycles, personnel cost run rates, the numbers of projects, investments envelopes, and so forth. Managing these issues might create a sense of well-being, that all is under control. However, if you asked questions relating to information structure, the response would be less detailed, and much less specific.     

Modeling the Interaction of Users and Mobile Payment System: Conceptual Framework

This article has been retracted.     

Toward a Conceptual Emulation Framework for the Preservation of Archaeological 3D Visualizations

Through the Preservation of Complex Objects Symposia (POCOS), leading researchers and practitioners have managed to propose strategies for preserving digital art and computer games. The same is not true for the preservation of archaeological visualizations. This article therefore discusses the following question: “Can emulation be employed to effectively preserve obsolete computer visualizations from the Archaeology domain?” Guidelines and test results coming from this work would be of great benefit to the archaeological community, and would contribute knowledge to other research communities, specifically those interested in similar data types/3D visualizations.     

一种支持动态自主学习的知识表示结构——语义神经网络

分别分析了传统的语义网络和人工神经网络方法在知识表示方面的特点和不足,提出了将两者结合起来构建具有语义单元和神经单元双重机能的语义神经单元的设想。以此为基础,构造出具有全连通结构的语义神经网络,给出了网络的权值学习方法及概念单元的语义联想机制,从而形成自主学习与语义联想相统一的集成化知识表示结构。它既能对概念语义及其关联关系进行直观、准确的表示,同时又对概念语义的联想、学习和更新等过程提供统一的支持平台。     

不确定信息的认知结构表示、推理和学习

提出了一个对不确定信息进行表示、推理和学习的统一框架.通过引入4-值认知结构刻画不确定性,提供了更强的度量能力和更高的推理效率,同时支持相关不确定信息的有效获取,从而更加接近实际应用的需要.     

Learning a Generative Model for Multi‐Step Human‐Object Interactions from Videos

Creating dynamic virtual environments consisting of humans interacting with objects is a fundamental problem in computer graphics. While it is well‐accepted that agent interactions play an essential role in synthesizing such scenes, most extant techniques exclusively focus on static scenes, leaving the dynamic component out. In this paper, we present a generative model to synthesize plausible multi‐step dynamic human‐object interactions. Generating multi‐step interactions is challenging since the space of such interactions is exponential in the number of objects, activities, and time steps. We propose to handle this combinatorial complexity by learning a lower dimensional space of plausible human‐object interactions. We use action plots to represent interactions as a sequence of discrete actions along with the participating objects and their states. To build action plots, we present an automatic method that uses state‐of‐the‐art computer vision techniques on RGB videos in order to detect individual objects and their states, extract the involved hands, and recognize the actions performed. The action plots are built from observing videos of everyday activities and are used to train a generative model based on a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). The network learns the causal dependencies and constraints between individual actions and can be used to generate novel and diverse multi‐step human‐object interactions. Our representation and generative model allows new capabilities in a variety of applications such as interaction prediction, animation synthesis, and motion planning for a real robotic agent.     

Exploring High‐Dimensional Structure via Axis‐Aligned Decomposition of Linear Projections

Two‐dimensional embeddings remain the dominant approach to visualize high dimensional data. The choice of embeddings ranges from highly non‐linear ones, which can capture complex relationships but are difficult to interpret quantitatively, to axis‐aligned projections, which are easy to interpret but are limited to bivariate relationships. Linear project can be considered as a compromise between complexity and interpretability, as they allow explicit axes labels, yet provide significantly more degrees of freedom compared to axis‐aligned projections. Nevertheless, interpreting the axes directions, which are often linear combinations of many non‐trivial components, remains difficult. To address this problem we introduce a structure aware decomposition of (multiple) linear projections into sparse sets of axis‐aligned projections, which jointly capture all information of the original linear ones. In particular, we use tools from Dempster‐Shafer theory to formally define how relevant a given axis‐aligned project is to explain the neighborhood relations displayed in some linear projection. Furthermore, we introduce a new approach to discover a diverse set of high quality linear projections and show that in practice the information of k linear projections is often jointly encoded in ～ k axis‐aligned plots. We have integrated these ideas into an interactive visualization system that allows users to jointly browse both linear projections and their axis‐aligned representatives. Using a number of case studies we show how the resulting plots lead to more intuitive visualizations and new insights.     

Towards a System‐Oriented Framework for Analysing and Evaluating Emergency Response

Information can be provided by studying and evaluating past emergencies and the response in connection to them. This information would then be useful in efforts directed at preventing, mitigating and/or preparing for future emergencies. However, the analysis and evaluation of emergency response operations is not an easy task, especially when the operation involves several cooperating actors (e.g. the fire and rescue services, the police, the emergency medical services, etc.). Here, we identify and discuss four aspects of this challenge: (1) issues related to the values governing the evaluation, (2) issues related to the complexity of the systems involved, (3) issues related to the validity of the information on which the analysis and evaluation is based and (4) issues related to the limiting conditions under which the emergency response system operated. An outline of a framework for such an analysis and evaluation, influenced by systems theory, accident investigation theories and programme evaluation theories dealing with the above aspects, is introduced, discussed and exemplified using empirical results from a case study. We conclude that the proposed framework may provide a better understanding of how an emergency response system functioned during a specific operation, and help to identify the potential events and/or circumstances that could significantly affect the performance of the emergency response system, either negatively or positively. The insights gained from using the framework may allow the actors involved in the response operation to gain a better understanding of how the emergency response system functioned as a whole, as well as how the actors performed as individual components of the system. Furthermore, the information can also be useful for actors preparing for future emergencies.