Learning the attachment theory with the CM-ED concept map editor

This paper presents a study carried out at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU with the aim of evaluating the CM-ED (concept map editor) with social education students. Concept mapping is a widely accepted technique that promotes meaningful learning. Graphically representing concepts of the learning domain and relationships between them helps students integrate new knowledge into their current cognitive structure. Due to the flexibility of computer-aided drawing graphs, several concept mapping tools have been developed and their use has been studied over the last few years. CM-ED is a multilingual and multimedia software program designed for drawing concept maps. Until recently, CM-ED had been mainly used and evaluated in computer science university degree. This paper represents a qualitative step in the evaluation of CM-ED: from technical students to students of more theoretical fields. The main characteristics of the CM-ED editor and the carried out study are presented in this paper.     

Improving retention strategies for IT professionals working in the public sector

Despite much research interest, effective retention of IT professionals has proved difficult for many public sector organizations. By concentrating on intention to leave, researchers may not have provided a clear way to formulate effective retention strategies. Consequently, we used intention to stay as an alternative lens to identify factors that can reduce turnover of IT professionals. Our findings indicated that attitudes, perceived behavioral control (PBC), and identification with the organization all had a statistically significant relationship with intention to stay; attitude was the strongest. It was concluded that existing retention strategies needed to be refocused on the issues that make IT staff stay; a number of practical recommendations for IT managers are presented.     

Color discrimination enhancement for dichromats using self-organizing color transformation

Color deficient persons, especially dichromats, have difficulty in discriminating certain kinds of colors. To help dichromats discriminate colors better, a color transformation method is proposed. The method utilizes the redundancy of color information, changing the colors of a scene into discernable ones for dichromats. The self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm is used to build a nonlinear color map, maintaining the neighboring relations between colors. Results of both subjective observation and quantitative evaluation show that the method can effectively enhance the color discrimination for dichromats. This study provides a new approach to rectify color vision deficiency.     

Interface feature prioritization for web services: Case of online flight reservations

Acceptance, utility, and usability of system designs have become a focal interest in human–computer interaction (HCI) research, yet at present there is a lack detailed understandings of which system design features influence them. The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of five product design features; customization, adaptive behavior, memory load, content density, and speed on user preference through an experimental study by using conjoint analysis. In experimental study, instead of classical conjoint cards, prototypes were generated for products. Besides, desirability and market segments of product prototypes were identified. In line with the results, among the five product design features, speed is the most and customization is the least important features that affect user preference. Contrary to the expectations, customization has a relatively small importance value in this research. Subsequent design features that influence user preference after speed are minimal memory load, adaptive behavior, and content density, respectively. According to findings, interfaces that have high-speed, minimal memory load, adaptive behavior, low content density, and customization features are more preferable than those that do not.     

Towards an understanding of the consumer acceptance of mobile wallet

This study seeks to validate a comprehensive model of consumer acceptance in the context of mobile payment. It uses the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model with constructs of security, trust, social influence, and self-efficacy. Structural equation modeling is used to construct a predictive model of attitudes toward the mobile wallet. Individuals’ responses to questions about attitude and intention to adopt/use a mobile wallet were collected and analyzed with various factors modified from UTAUT. While the model confirms the classical role of technology acceptance factors (i.e., perceived usefulness and ease of use are key antecedents to users’ attitude), the results also show that users’ attitudes and intentions are influenced by perceived security and trust. In the extended model, the moderating effects of demographics on the relations among the variables were found to be significant. The proposed model brings together extant research on mobile payment and provides an important cluster of antecedents to eventual technology acceptance via constructs of behavioral intention to use and actual system usage.     

Impacts of geographical knowledge, spatial ability and environmental cognition on image searches supported by GIS software

Google Earth search function was used to study the impacts of small-scale spatial ability, large-scale environmental cognition, and geographical knowledge on new technology usage. The participants were 153 junior high students from central Taiwan. Geography grades served as indicators of prior knowledge, mental rotation and abstract reasoning skills as indicators of spatial ability, and sketch maps of school neighborhoods as indicators of environmental cognition (including landmark representation, intersection representation, and frame of reference). Lastly, the authors announced the landmarks searching worksheet and asked the participants to accomplish 16 familiar and unfamiliar landmark searching tasks using Google Earth with keyword search function disabled. The result showed the strongest predictor of landmark searching performance is ‘frame of reference’ in environmental cognition, followed by ‘mental rotation’ of spatial ability, ‘landmark representation’ of environmental cognition, and geographical knowledge. Google Earth landmark searches require complex cognitive processing; therefore, our conclusion is that GIS-supported image search activities give students good practice of active knowledge construction.     

A new document representation using term frequency and vectorized graph connectionists with application to document retrieval

This paper presents a new document representation with vectorized multiple features including term frequency and term-connection-frequency. A document is represented by undirected and directed graph, respectively. Then terms and vectorized graph connectionists are extracted from the graphs by employing several feature extraction methods. This hybrid document feature representation more accurately reflects the underlying semantics that are difficult to achieve from the currently used term histograms, and it facilitates the matching of complex graph. In application level, we develop a document retrieval system based on self-organizing map (SOM) to speed up the retrieval process. We perform extensive experimental verification, and the results suggest that the proposed method is computationally efficient and accurate for document retrieval.     

软件交互行为的可信性分析与态势预测研究

研究现代分布式软件系统中交互实体的行为可信性问题,关注运行期意图、情景、行为和行为效应之间的关系,采用先进的统计机器学习工具分析行为踪迹规律,提出了一个新的软件行为分析与态势预测方法.针对松散聚合的交互实体间可能产生新的交互事件和行为模式的问题,本文用分层Dirichlet过程和无限隐Markov模型对被监测的交互接口数据进行聚类确定未知交互事件,用含有未知事件的序列进行行为模式的半监督学习,由管理者将其添加到规则与知识库中.在确定未知事件和行为模式时,用Beam抽样方法较其他方法(如Gibbs抽样)有更高的数据抽样和推理效率.当知识库的行为模式达到一定规模时,系统便可以无监督地对交互行为进行分析和预测.本文用HMM的Viterbi算法分析当前交互事件的最佳序列,从而确定当前交互行为的善恶,对恶意行为及时报警,对非恶意行为的后续趋势进行主动预测.通过仿真实验证实了该方法在软件行为分析与预测上具有独特的优势.     

基于身份密码学的安全性研究综述

目前IBE已经成为公钥加密领域的一个研究热点,而安全性是构建IBE方案的重要因素.在设计公钥加密方案时,通常主要考虑在各种攻击模型下所要达到的安全目标,使用安全目标与攻击模型相结合的方式来定义安全性.在对已提出的IBE方案进行归纳分析的基础上,概括了IBE安全性的形式化定义;总结了安全性所依赖的各种数学难题基础,对各种数学难题之间的强弱关系进行了分析;进而,基于这些强弱关系描述了IBE安全性之间的相互转化规律以及达到高安全性的转化方法,这些方法有一个共同点,就是在加密方案的构造过程中使用了某种测试;接下来,从安全性和效率的角度对比了已提出的典型IBE方案,指出低安全性向高安全性转化必然会带来额外开销,导致效率下降;最后,总结了IBE的缺点、未来研究趋势以及开放性问题.     

Ambient演算的一种分层语义

网络计算系统中涉及的操作复杂,很难直接给出一种的语义描述框架.作为一种网络计算模型,Ambient演算主要刻画了计算的分布性和移动性.目前关于Ambient的语义研究很多,但均是基于规约规则的语义形式.这种描述方式尽管简洁,一方面却具有不确定性,不利于实际的网络计算系统的设计和直接实现;另一方面,这种语义描述方式均在一个层次上描述Ambient演算系统中的各种行为语义,使得Ambient演算中各种计算行为纠缠在一起,复杂而难以理解.根据Ambient演算的结构特点,给出了Ambient演算的一种分层语义描述形式,系统以ambient为单元,分成3层进行描述,分别给出不同层上行为的语法定义、语义定义、语义方程以及不同层间的转换函数的定义,从而给出Ambient演算系统的指称语义描述形式.这种描述方式从层次化的角度分析了Ambient演算的计算行为,有助于对Ambient演算中行为的理解和实际应用系统的实现.