Profiling a decade of Information Systems Frontiers’ research

This article analyses the first 10 years of research published in the Information Systems Frontiers (ISF) from 1999 to 2008. The analysis of the published material includes examining variables such as most productive authors, citation analysis, universities associated with the most publications, geographic diversity, authors’ backgrounds and research methods. The keyword analysis suggests that ISF research has evolved from establishing concepts and domain of information systems (IS), technology and management to contemporary issues such as outsourcing, web services and security. The analysis presented in this paper has identified intellectually significant studies that have contributed to the development and accumulation of intellectual wealth of ISF. The analysis has also identified authors published in other journals whose work largely shaped and guided the researchers published in ISF. This research has implications for researchers, journal editors, and research institutions.

Can We Talk? Methods for Evaluation and Training of Spoken Dialogue Systems

There is a strong relationship between evaluation and methods for automatically training language processing systems, where generally the same resource and metrics are used both to train system components and to evaluate them. To date, in dialogue systems research, this general methodology is not typically applied to the dialogue manager and spoken language generator. However, any metric for evaluating system performance can be used as a feedback function for automatically training the system. This approach is motivated with examples of the application of reinforcement learning to dialogue manager optimization, and the use of boosting to train the spoken language generator.     

Spontaneous Speech Parsing in Travel Information Inquiring and Booking Systems

Grammar-based parsing is a prevalent method for natural language understanding(NLU)and has been introduced into dialogue systems for spoken language processing (SLP).A robust parsing scheme is proposed in this paper to overcome the notorious phenomena,such as garbage,ellipsis,word disordering,fragment ,and ill-form,which frequently occur in splien utterances,Keyword categories are used as terminal symbols,and the definition of grammar is extended by introducing three new rule types,by-passing,up-messing and overcrossing,in addition to the general rules called up-tying in this paper,and the use of semantic items simplifies the semantics extraction.The corresponding parser marionette,which is essentially a partial chart parser,is enhanced to parse the semantic grammar.The robust parsing scheme integrating the above methods has been adopted in an air traveling information service system called EasyFlight,and has achieved a high performance when used for parsing spontaneous speeches.     

A Comparison of Baccalaureate Programs in Information Technology with Baccalaureate Programs in Computer Science and Information Systems

Introduction A number of universities have recentlystarted to add baccalaureate programs inInformation Technology(IT)to their existingprograms in Computer Science(CS)and(Management)Information Systems(IS).Whilesome have welcomed this development,othersare less accommodating.The argument that ITbaccalaureate programs are not sufficiently distinctis most often heard from faculty in programs inComputer Science(CS)and(Management)Information Systems(IS).The argument isoften two-fold.First…     

Agile Scheduling for MES in a Complex Information Environment

Since Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is a bridge which links the upper planning system of the enterprise and the control system of the shop floor, various kinds of the information with different characteristics flow through the system. The information environment of MES and its effect on MES scheduling are analyzed. A methodological proposal is given to address the problem of agile scheduling in a complex information environment, based on which a microeconomic market and game theoretic model-based scheduling approach is presented. The future development of this method is also discussed.     

Attribute Reduction Based on Inclusion Degree for Incomplete and Fuzzy Decision Information Systems

The information systems with incomplete attribute values and fuzzy decisions commonly exist in many applications whose knowledge reduction is one of the most important practical significance. Model of incomplete and fuzzy decision information system is firstly constructed. On the basis of the notion of inclusion degree between fuzzy sets, the attribute reduction for incomplete and fuzzy decision information system, which ensures invariable inclusion degree between every tolerance class and fuzzy decision set, is raised. To reduce the complexity of finding attribute reduction, discernibility sets, discernibifity matrixes and the minimal disjunctive normal form of discernibility sets for incomplete and fuzzy decision information system are introduced. Finally, the algorithm and an example are given, and the solution of the example is proved that the approach to attribute reduction based on inclusion degree is valid.     

Can Digital Intelligence and Cyber-Physical-Social Systems Achieve Global Food Security and Sustainability?

Plants sequester carbon through photosynthesis and provide primary productivity for the ecosystem. However, they also simultaneously consume water through transpiration, leading to a carbon-water balance relationship. Agricultural production can be regarded as a form of carbon sequestration behavior.From the perspective of the natural-social-economic complex ecosystem, excessive water usage in food production will aggravate regional water pressure for both domestic and industrial purposes. Hence...     

Mobile Information Literacy: Supporting Students’ Research and Information Needs in a Mobile World

Mobile devices have changed everyday life and they have had a great impact in higher education. This article describes a pilot project in which an academic librarian at Lehman College, City University of New York, taught information literacy exclusively via mobile devices. The concept of mobile information literacy is also reviewed, and its role in current and future teaching practices is evaluated. Lessons learned from this project tell us that mobile information literacy, albeit in its infancy, could play an essential part in students’ learning, and therefore academic librarians could incorporate it as part of their practice.     

Market influencers for ICT advancement in small states – a comparative analysis

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the relationship between Information and Communications Technology (ICT) market drivers and the level of ICT usage in small states. Main arguments in the literature review refer to institutional, socioeconomic, and demographic factors to explain ICT usage. Through a multi-method approach, this paper takes a dataset of small states to explore the relationship between ICT market variables and Internet usage. Findings highlight the importance of underlying digital platforms. A typology of small states is provided for ICT market influencers and usage, showing a varying degree of heterogeneity. Given that the sample size available to study small states limits the use of traditional analytical techniques, this paper utilizes Qualitative Comparative Analysis and demonstrates that high usage levels of digital applications for businesses, consumers, and social-media are conditions that are sufficient, but not necessary, for ICT advancement to occur. Implications for theory development and policy making are discussed in terms of market incentives.     

Facebook: a new tool for collecting health data?

Multimedia Tools and Applications - This study investigates the use of social networks as a scientific tool for gathering medical data from young subjects while promoting healthier habits. Our...     

Using ICT for school purposes: Is there a student-school disconnect?

Today's students are often portrayed in the literature as enthusiastic and wholehearted users of the Internet for school purposes, in contrast with today's schools, in which the situation is of high ICT access and low use. Via interviews with 25 post-primary students, this study examined student attitudes toward using the Internet for school purposes, revealing the reasoning behind patterns of after school ICT use and underlying perceptions of learning, the teacher's role and the desired role of ICT in schooling. Students were revealed to be ambivalent: they considered the Internet to be easy to use, reducing workload and “fun”, but at the same time “unreliable”, not “serious” enough, and not containing what they “need to know”. Thus, they primarily used it for “unimportant” assignments such as routine homework. Students described their learning goal as getting required “material” into their heads and saw the teachers as an (almost) exclusive authority regarding this required body of information, in line with schooling's information-focused agenda and teacher-centered practices. They were also less than enthusiastic about the integration of ICT into their curriculum. Although there is no apparent disconnect between school and students, it is argued that school should change in order to capitalize on the affordances of ICT and to better prepare students for life in the knowledge age.     

Decentralized Closed-loop Identification and Controller Design for a Kind of Cascade Systems

Decentralized closed-loop identification and controller design for a kind of cascade pro- cesses composed of several sub-processes are studied.There are only input couplings between adjacent sub-processes.First,the cascade process is divided into several two-input two-output systems and coupling models of adjacent sub-processes are obtained via decentralized identification.TITO sys- tem is decoupled equivalently into four independent single open-loop processes with the same input signal.Then,a distributed model predictive control algorithm is proposed based on the coupling models of adjacent sub-processes.     

Do we need sustainability as a new approach in human factors and ergonomics?

The International Ergonomics Association Technical Committee ‘Human Factors and Sustainable Development’ was established to contribute to a broad discourse about opportunities and risks resulting from current societal ‘mega-trends’ and their impacts on the interactions among humans and other elements of a system, e.g. in work systems. This paper focuses on the underlying key issues: how do the sustainability paradigm and human factors/ergonomics interplay and interact, and is sustainability necessary as a new approach for our discipline? Based on a discussion of the sustainability concept, some general principles for designing new and enhancing existent approaches of human factors and ergonomics regarding their orientation towards sustainability are proposed.

Practitioner summary: The increasing profile of sustainability on the international stage presents new opportunities for human factors/ergonomics. Positioning of the sustainability paradigm within human factors/ergonomics is discussed. Approaches to incorporating sustainability in the design of work systems are considered.     

What stimulates teachers to integrate ICT in their pedagogical practices? The use of digital learning materials in education

The question ‘What stimulates teachers to integrate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in their pedagogical practices?’ was addressed in the context of teachers’ usage of digital learning materials (DLMs). We adopted Fishbein’s Integrative Model of Behavior Prediction (IMBP), to investigate the various relationships between distal and proximal variables and intention. Mediation analysis revealed that the proximal variables attitude, subjective norm, and self-efficacy towards DLMs were significant predictors of teachers’ intention to use DLMs. The contribution of subjective norm, however, was modest. Attitude, subjective norm and self-efficacy mediated the effects of the following three distal variables on intention: previous use of DLMs, perceived knowledge and skills to use DLMs, and colleagues’ usage of DLMs. Persuasive communication and skills based training seem, therefore, appropriate interventions to promote a positive attitude towards DLMs and improve self-efficacy in using DLMs.     

Can a Shared-Memory Model Serve as a Bridging Model for Parallel Computation?

A parallel multithreaded program that is ostensibly deterministic may nevertheless behave nondeterministically due to bugs in the code. These bugs are called determinacy races, and they result when one thread updates a location in shared memory while another thread is concurrently accessing the location. We have implemented a provably efficient determinacy-race detector for Cilk, an algorithmic multithreaded programming language. If a Cilk program is run on a given input data set, our debugging tool, which we call the ``Nondeterminator,' either determines at least one location in the program that is subject to a determinacy race, or else it certifies that the program is race free when run on the data set. The core of the Nondeterminator is an asymptotically efficient serial algorithm (inspired by Tarjan's nearly linear-time least-common-ancestors algorithm) for detecting determinacy races in series-parallel directed acyclic graphs. For a Cilk program that runs in T time on one processor and uses v shared-memory locations, the Nondeterminator runs in O(T α(v,v)) time, where α is Tarjan's functional inverse of Ackermann's function, a very slowly growing function which, for all practical purposes, is bounded above by 4 . The Nondeterminator uses at most a constant factor more space than does the original program. On a variety of Cilk program benchmarks, the Nondeterminator exhibits a slowdown of less than 12 compared with the serial execution time of the original optimized code, which we contend is an acceptable slowdown for debugging purposes. Received November 11, 1997, and in final form September 21, 1998.     

Adaptivity and a Posteriori Error Control for Bifurcation Problems?II: Incompressible Fluid Flow in Open Systems with Z 2 Symmetry

In this article we consider the a posteriori error estimation and adaptive mesh refinement of discontinuous Galerkin finite element approximations of the bifurcation problem associated with the steady incompressible Navier?CStokes equations. Particular attention is given to the reliable error estimation of the critical Reynolds number at which a steady pitchfork or Hopf bifurcation occurs when the underlying physical system possesses reflectional or Z ₂ symmetry. Here, computable a posteriori error bounds are derived based on employing the generalization of the standard Dual?CWeighted?CResidual approach, originally developed for the estimation of target functionals of the solution, to bifurcation problems. Numerical experiments highlighting the practical performance of the proposed a posteriori error indicator on adaptively refined computational meshes are presented.     

Can quantum discord increase in a quantum communication task?

Quantum teleportation of an unknown quantum state is one of the few communication tasks which has no classical counterpart. Usually the aim of teleportation is to send an unknown quantum state to a receiver. But is it possible in some way that the receiver’s state has more quantum discord than the sender’s state? We look at a scenario where Alice and Bob share a pure quantum state and Alice has an unknown quantum state. She performs joint measurement on her qubits and channel to prepare Bob’s qubits in a mixed state which has higher quantum discord than hers. We also observe an interesting feature in this scenario, when the quantum discord of Alice’s qubits increases, then the quantum discord of Bob’s prepared qubits decreases. Furthermore, we show that the fidelity of one-qubit quantum teleportation using Bob’s prepared qubits as the channel is higher than using Alice’s qubits.     

An Online Algorithm for a Problem in Scheduling with?Set-ups?and Release Times

We address the problem of sequential single machine scheduling of jobs with release times, where jobs are classified into types, and the machine must be properly configured to handle jobs of a given type. The objective is to minimize the maximum flow time (time from release until completion) of any job. We consider this problem under the assumptions of sequence independent set-up times and item availability with the objective of minimizing the maximum flow time. We present an online algorithm that is O(1)-competitive, that is, always gets within a constant factor of optimal. We also show that exact offline optimization of maximum flow time is NP-hard.