Taxonomy alignment for interoperability between heterogeneous virtual organizations

Resources in virtual organizations are classified based on their local taxonomies. However, heterogeneity between these taxonomies is a serious problem for efficient cooperation processes (e.g., knowledge sharing and querying-based interactions). In order to overcome this problem, we propose a novel framework based on aligning the taxonomies of virtual organizations. Thereby, the best mapping between two organization taxonomies has to be discovered to maximize the summation of a set of partial similarities between concepts in the taxonomies. We can consider two levels of alignment processes; (i) intra-alignment in a virtual organization for building an organizational taxonomy and (ii) inter-alignment between organizational taxonomies. Particularly, for intra-alignment, features extracted from resources are exploited to enhance the precision of similarity measurement between concepts. For experimentation, twelve virtual organizations have been built with different local taxonomies. The proposed inter-alignment method has shown about 76% of precision and 68% of recall. Also, feature-based intra-alignment improved those performance, during resource retrieval by query transformation. In addition, we found out that alignment results are dependent on some characteristics of taxonomies (e.g., depth and number of classes).     

The effect of strategic alignment on the use of IS-based resources for competitive advantage

Persuasive evidence has described the strategic use of information resources in organizations. As a result, IS researchers have sought empirically to link that use to improved organizational performance. However, this alignment-performance relationship has been difficult to confirm.The current study contributes by distinguishing the alignment of the information systems plan with the business plan (ISP–BP) and the reciprocal alignment (BP–ISP). The study used 107 matched pairs of IS executives and other senior executives. Analysis showed that for IS executives both ISP–BP and BP–ISP alignment predicted the use of IS-based resources for competitive advantage. However, for other senior executives, only ISP–BP alignment predicted it. Study results suggest both groups of subjects share an understanding of the role of ISP–BP in creating competitive advantage from their information systems investments. However, the lack of a shared understanding of BP–ISP alignment may prevent organizations from achieving that advantage.     

Understanding the impact of nurses' perception and technological capability on nurses' satisfaction with nursing information system usage: A holistic perspective of alignment

Based on the holistic perspective of ‘alignment’, evaluating the alignment of human–computer interaction is crucial to ensure effective information system implementation and a positive impact on performance. This study aims to examine the impact of alignment between the nurses' perception of NIS (Nursing Information System) performability and technological capability of NIS achieving success on nurses' satisfaction and nursing care performance through the perspectives of alignment as covariation and alignment as profile deviation. A quantitative method and a cross-section design were used to collect data from 531 registered nurses in Taiwan. The results indicate that the coalignment of nurses' perception of NIS performability and the technological capability of NIS achieving success has a positive impact on nurses' satisfaction with NIS usage. Consequently, nurses' satisfaction will increase with the improved performance of nursing care. The results of this research will help the management of NIS application and development within the context of nursing care.     

A framework for designing the enterprise-wide e-commerce portal for evolving organizations

The number of organizations offering e-commerce solutions is growing exponentially each year. Without a doubt, e-commerce will no longer be a choice for organizations rather it will be a competitive necessity to ensure business prosperity. Integral to the success of e-commerce is having good e-commerce software that can enable organizations to offer online products and services as well as integrate their business processes and supply chains within and with their collaborators or partners in a perfect, seamless manner. One of the main obstacles for adoption of e-commerce faced by many organizations; however, has been the lack of such proper integrated e-commerce software. There have been few ready-made software solutions offered by vendors, which can be customized for organizations’ business models and processes, and these solutions are based on “piece meal” approaches and thus lack much of the enterprise capabilities organizations need to adopt. In this paper, we suggest a framework for developing an enterprise-wide integrated e-commerce portal for evolving organizations. Such a framework will help any organization to design a distributed, extensible, cross-platform, collaborative and integrated e-commerce portal. Sushil K. Sharma is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. Prior to joining the faculty at Ball State, Dr. Sharma held the Associate Professor position at the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow (India) and Visiting Research Associate Professor at the Department of Management Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is of two text books (Programming in C, and Understanding Unix), and Co-editor of four edited books. Dr. Sharma has published more than 100 refereed research papers in many peer-reviewed national and international journals and conference proceedings. His contributions have appeared in journals such as; International Journal of Information Management, International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management (IJHTM), Electronic Government Journal, Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations (JECO), Journal of Global Information Technology Management (JGITM), The Journal of Computer Information Systems (CIS), Journal of Logistics Information Management (JLIM), and International Journal of Management. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for International Journal of Cases on Electronic Commerce (IJCEC) and is on Editorial board for the International Journal of Electronic Finance (IJEF) and the Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations (JECO). In the past, he has also been a guest editor for special issue of Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management and Journal of Global Information Technology Management (JGITM). Dr. Sharma’s primary teaching and research interests are in e-commerce, computer and network security, ERP Systems, database management systems, and knowledge management. Jatinder (Jeet) N. D. Gupta is currently Eminent Scholar of Management of Technology, Professor of Management Information Systems, Industrial and Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama. Most recently, he was Professor of Management, Information and Communication Sciences, and Industry and Technology at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering (with specialization in Production Management and Information Systems) from Texas Tech University. Co-author of a textbook in Operations Research, Dr. Gupta serves on the editorial boards of several national and international journals. Recipient of the Outstanding Faculty and Outstanding Researcher awards from Ball State University, he has published numerous papers in such journals as Journal of Management Information Systems, International Journal of Information Management, Operations Research, INFORMS Journal of Computing, Annals of Operations Research, and Mathematics of Operations Research. More recently, he served as a co-editor of several special issues including the Neural Networks in Business of Computers and Operations Research and books that included Decision Making Support Systems: Achievements and Challenges for the New Decade and Creating Knowledge-based Healthcare Organizations published by Idea Group Publishing. He is also the coeditor of the book: Managing E-Business published by Heidelberg Press, Heidelberg, Australia. His current research interests include e-Commerce, Supply Chain Management, Information and Decision Technologies, Scheduling, Planning and Control, Organizational Learning and Effectiveness, Systems Education, Knowledge Management, Information Security, and Enterprise Integration. Dr. Gupta has held elected and appointed positions in several academic and professional societies including the Association for Information Systems, Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI), and the Information Resources Management Association (IRMA). Nilmini Wickramasinghe, PhD, MBA, GradDipMgtSt, BSc. Amus.A (piano) Amus.A(violin): Currently, Dr Wickramasinghe is an associate professor and the associate director of the Center for the Management of Medical Technologies at Stuart Graduate School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology. Her teaching interests cover the areas of knowledge management as well as e-commerce and m-commerce, IT for competitive advantage, organizational impacts of technology and healthcare issues. In addition, Dr Wickramasinghe teaches and presents regularly in many universities in Europe and Australiasia. She is currently carrying out research and is well published having written numerous book chapters, refereed journal articles and some books in the areas of management of technology, in the field of healthcare as well as focusing on IS issues especially as they relate to knowledge work and e-business. Dr Wickramasinghe is honored to be able to represent the United States of America for the Health Care Technology Management (HCTM) Association (URL http://www.hctm.net/events/2005/conference_2005.html).     

A new functional for variational mesh generation and adaptation based on equidistribution and alignment conditions

A new functional is presented for variational mesh generation and adaptation. It is formulated based on combining the equidistribution and alignment conditions into a single condition with only one dimensionless parameter. The functional is shown to be coercive but not convex. A solution procedure using a discrete moving mesh partial differential equation is employed. It is shown that the element volumes and altitudes of a mesh trajectory of the mesh equation associated with the new functional are bounded away from zero and the mesh trajectory stays nonsingular if it is so initially. Numerical examples demonstrate that the new functional performs comparably as an existing one that is also based on the equidistribution and alignment conditions and known to work well but contains an additional parameter.     

略谈企业档案部门和企业领导的关系

本文分析了企业档案部门和企业领导之间的关系,认为要领导重视档案工作必须自己先重视。并提出相应的建议,以期为有关档案工作者提供参考。     

SAMBO—A system for aligning and merging biomedical ontologies

Due to the recent explosion of the amount of on-line accessible biomedical data and tools, finding and retrieving the relevant information is not an easy task. The vision of a Semantic Web for life sciences alleviates these difficulties. A key technology for the Semantic Web is ontologies. In recent years many biomedical ontologies have been developed and many of these ontologies contain overlapping information. To be able to use multiple ontologies they have to be aligned or merged. In this paper we propose a framework for aligning and merging ontologies. Further, we developed a system for aligning and merging biomedical ontologies (SAMBO) based on this framework. The framework is also a first step towards a general framework that can be used for comparative evaluations of alignment strategies and their combinations. In this paper we evaluated different strategies and their combinations in terms of quality and processing time and compared SAMBO with two other systems.     

基于对象重用的企业建模设计

给出了一种基于对象重用的企业建模设计。该设计以类库为核心,采用软件重用的理论和方法,形成了一套支撑基于对象重用企业建模方法实现的集成化体系,解决了对象的定义、生成、组织、检索、重用等问题,可以快速方便地生成所需的企业模型。     

A case study on the relationship between neuro-sensory work and work load

A series of experiments were carried out to obtain data on the psycho-physiological reactions of train conductors/operators while at work. From the results, it can be said that: (1) There exists a strong and positive correlation between heart rate variations and those of CFF, (2) heart rate and CFF variations at work became lower as working hours increased, (3) the driver's deterioration of the level of psycho-physiological reactions' drivers showed on going is higher than that of returning, (4) Driving at midnight or in the early morning seems to cause a significantly larger reduction of brain related arousal level.     

A semantic model for actions and events in ambient intelligence

Event ma nagement and response generation are two essential aspects of systems for ambient intelligence. This work proposes handling these issues through the use of a semantic model for ambient intelligence which, under the umbrella of a philosophical and common-sense optic, describes what actions and events are, how they are connected, and how computational systems should think about their meaning. This model entails an approach with which to both reason about and model context events and generate behavioral responses to those events, when necessary. The model supports this ad hoc response generation by automatically composing services when those which are available do not meet the expected functionality (without requesting user intervention). An evaluation methodology is presented and illustrated with a case scenario, in which synthetic data has been generated to emulate events and analyze the system response. The evaluation of the system response is carried out on the basis of a vector of attributes.     

A relation between edit distance for ordered trees and edit distance for Euler strings

We consider a relationship between the unit cost edit distance for two rooted ordered trees and the unit cost edit distance for the corresponding Euler strings. We show that the edit distance between trees is at least half of the edit distance between the Euler strings and is at most 2h+1 times the edit distance between the Euler strings, where h is the minimum height of two trees. The result can be extended for more general cost functions.     

A comprehensive approach to model and use context for adapting applications in pervasive environments

With an increasing diversity of pervasive computing devices integrated in our surroundings and an increasing mobility of users, it will be important for computer systems and applications to be context-aware. Lots of works have already been done in this direction on how to capture context data and how to carry it to the application. Among the remaining challenges are to create the intelligence to analyze the context information and deduce the meaning out of it, and to integrate it into adaptable applications. Our work focuses on these challenges by defining generic context storage and processing model and by studying its impact on the application core. We propose a reusable context ontology model that is based on two levels: a generic level and a domain specific level. We propose a generic adaptation framework to guarantee adaptation of applications to the context in a pervasive computing environment. We also introduce a comprehensive adaptation approach that involves content adaptation and presentation adaptation inline with the adaptation of the core services of applications. Our case study shows that the context model and the application adaptation strategies provide promising service architecture.     

A framework for data-driven informatization of the construction company

With the advent of big data era, the construction industry has focused on processing large quantities of engineering data and extracting their value. However, inaccurate manual entries and delayed data collection have created difficulties in making full use of information. Meanwhile, difficulty sharing data and weak interoperability of data among business information systems also leaves company headquarters without the resource integration that can facilitate decision making. To overcome these challenges, we proposed a big data infrastructure called the enterprise integrated data platform (EIDP) for use by construction companies. We discuss a case study, and offer a framework for future business improvement that contributes to closed-loop construction supply chain management, cost management and control, knowledge discovery, and decision making. The proposed informatization solution provides a theoretical basis for realizing data sharing and interoperability between business management and project management. On this basis, it will help construction companies to improve the efficiency of both company operations and project delivery by optimizing the business process and supporting decision making.     

A simulation testbed for analyzing trust and reputation mechanisms in unreliable online markets

Modern online markets are becoming extremely dynamic, indirectly dictating the need for (semi-) autonomous approaches for constant monitoring and immediate action in order to satisfy one’s needs/preferences. In such open and versatile environments, software agents may be considered as a suitable metaphor for dealing with the increasing complexity of the problem. Additionally, trust and reputation have been recognized as key issues in online markets and many researchers have, in different perspectives, surveyed the related notions, mechanisms and models. Within the context of this work we present an adaptable, multivariate agent testbed for the simulation of open online markets and the study of various factors affecting the quality of the service consumed. This testbed, which we call Euphemus, is highly parameterized and can be easily customized to suit a particular application domain. It allows for building various market scenarios and analyzing interesting properties of e-commerce environments from a trust perspective. The architecture of Euphemus is presented and a number of well-known trust and reputation models are built with Euphemus, in order to show how the testbed can be used to apply and adapt models. Extensive experimentation has been performed in order to show how models behave in unreliable online markets, results are discussed and interesting conclusions are drawn.     

Mapping the relationships between work and sustainability and the opportunities for ergonomic action

A map was drawn up of the relationships between work (in its multiple interpretations) and sustainability (sustainable development and corporate sustainability) based on a bibliographic analysis of articles that discuss these themes jointly in the current academic literature. The position of the discipline of ergonomics focused on work was identified from this map and, based on its specific academic literature, it was possible to identify where this discipline could contribute so that work and workers can be included in the discourse of sustainable development and considered in corporate sustainability policies. Ergonomics can be actively influential within the organization on issues relating to work improvements; it may boost integrated increases in the organization's performance and in workers' well-being; it can provide support for changes and new (environmental) sustainability-related work requirements to be considered; and it can contribute to the definition of the concept of work in a context of sustainable development.     

AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on SiC and Si substrates: A review from the small‐signal‐modeling's perspective

In this article, small‐signal modeling approaches for GaN HEMTs on SiC and Si substrates have been developed. The main advantage of these approaches is their accuracy, reliability, and dependency on only cold S‐parameter measurements to extract the parasitic elements of the device. The proposed equivalent circuit model for GaN on Si HEMT considers extra effects due to parasitic conduction through substrate or buffer layers. S‐parameter measurements at different bias conditions in addition to physical based analysis have been used to validate the accuracy and reliability of the developed modeling methods. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:389–400, 2014.     

Introducing synchronous e-discussion tools in co-located classrooms: A study on the experiences of ‘active’ and ‘silent’ secondary school students

Even though the advantages of online discussions over face-to-face discussion formats have been extensively discussed and investigated, the blending of synchronous online discussion tools in co-located classroom settings has been considered with far less intensity. In this paper, we report on secondary school students’ experiences and preferences concerning two different discussion formats for critical debate in co-located classroom settings: face-to-face and synchronous, computer-mediated communication (CMC). Data was collected with the help of self-report questionnaires (N = 70) and structured interviews (N = 4). A differentiation was made between students that define themselves as active participants in face-to-face classroom discussions and those who usually remain silent in these settings. The findings highlight several potential advantages of the computer-mediated discussion format, especially in terms of the social-interactive and managerial aspects of classroom discussions. Comparisons between the two groups show that ‘silent’ students welcome the introduction of CMC with enthusiasm, whereas ‘active’ students do not show a clear preference. Practical implications as well as new directions for further research are discussed.     

A new algebraic model for implementing expert systems represented under the ‘Concept-Attribute-Value’ paradigm

This paper is concerned with expounding a new representation paradigm for modeling expert systems based on computing Groebner Bases. Previous research on Groebner Bases expert systems has so far been connected to modeling expert systems based on propositional logics. Our approach instead is based on the well-known Artificial Intelligence ‘Concept-Attribute-Value’ paradigm for representing knowledge. More precisely, our research is based on translating an already existent expert system described in terms of the ‘Concept-Attribute-Value’ paradigm to a new algebraic model which represents knowledge by means of polynomials. In this way, issues about consistence and inference within this expert system will be, through this new model, transformed into algebraic problems involving calculating Groebner Bases. By using this new model of ours, some interesting advantages ensue: on the one hand, knowledge representation may be performed in a more straightforward and intuitive way; on the other, calculating the Groebner Bases associated to our algebraic model is usually faster adopting this new ‘Concept-Attribute-Value’-based paradigm than it was in previous propositional logic-based expert systems.     

Integrative framework for assessing firms’ potential to undertake Green IT initiatives via virtualization – A theoretical perspective

Green IT (information technology) has recently emerged into an active research area in the information systems (IS) discipline. A major gap that exists in the Green IT research literature today is the absence of a theoretical framework that can be used to assist organizations in assessing their potential for undertaking Green IT initiatives and implementing them via modern technological means such as virtualization. This study attempts to bridge this gap by developing and proposing an integrative framework which focuses on identifying and examining the factors that contribute to the assessment of a firm’s readiness to go green via IT-enabled virtualization. The framework is firmly grounded using three well-established IS theories: (a) technology-organization-environment, (b) process-virtualization, and (c) diffusion of innovation. It integrates these three theoretical lenses to utilize the strengths of each for assessing the potential for undertaking Green IT initiatives and the stages of Green IT implementation at the organizational level. The implications of the outcome of this study, both for the IS researchers and for the practicing managers are discussed. The plan for empirical testing and validation of our propositions is presented, as well as suggestions for future extensions of this study.