Discovery and Capture of Organizational Knowledge from Unstructured Information

Knowledge of an organization does not merely reside in structured form of information and data; it is also embedded in unstructured form. The discovery of such knowledge is particularly difficult as the characteristic is dynamic, scattered, massive and multiplying at high speed. Conventional methods of managing unstructured information are considered too resource demanding and time consuming to cope with the rapid information growth. In this paper, a Multi-faceted and Automatic Knowledge Elicitation System (MAKES) is introduced for the purpose of discovery and capture of organizational knowledge. A trial implementation has been conducted in a public organization to achieve the objective of decision capture and navigation from a number of meeting minutes which are autonomously organized, classified and presented in a multi-faceted taxonomy map in both document and content level. Key concepts such as critical decision made, key knowledge workers, knowledge flow and the relationship among them are elicited and displayed in predefined knowledge model and maps. Hence, the structured knowledge can be retained, shared and reused. Conducting Knowledge Management with MAKES reduces work in searching and retrieving the target decision, saves a great deal of time and manpower, and also enables an organization to keep pace with the knowledge life cycle. This is particularly important when the amount of unstructured information and data grows extremely quickly. This system approach of knowledge management can accelerate value extraction and creation cycles of organizations.

Developing and Implementing Successful Key Performance Indicators

Measurement and the following evaluation of performance represent important part of management. The paper focuses on indicators as the basic elements of performance measurement system. It emphasizes a necessity of searching requirements for quality indicators so that they can become part of the useful system. It introduces standpoints for a systematic dividing of indicators so that they have as high as possible informative value of background sources for searching, analysis, designing and using of indicators. It draws attention to requirements for indicators' quality and at the same it deals with some dangers decreasing indicator's informative value. It submits a draft of questions that should be answered at the construction of indicator. It is obvious that particular indicators need to be defined exactly to stimulate the desired behavior in order to attain expected results. In the enclosure a concrete example of the defined indicator in the concrete conditions of a small firm is given. The authors of the paper pay attention to the fact that a quality indicator makes it possible to get to the basic causes of the problem and include the established facts into the company information system. At the same time they emphasize that developing of a quality indicator is a prerequisite for the utilization of the system of measurement in management.

A Study of Visitors, on Service Quality, Satisfaction and Loyal in Ya Tam San Bikeway

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the feelings of tourists for the service quality of the bikeway. In addition, this study also analyzed the causal relationship between service quality and satisfaction to visitor-s lane loyalty. In this study, the Ya Tam San bikeway visitor-s subjects, using the designated convenience sampling carried out the survey, a total of 651 questionnaires were validly. Valid questionnaires after statistical analysis, the following findings: 1. Visitor-s lane highest quality of service project: the routes through the region weather pleasant. Lane "with health and sports," the highest satisfaction various factors of service quality and satisfaction, loyal between correlations exist. 4. Guided tours of bikeways, the quality of the environment, and modeling imagery can effectively predict visitor satisfaction. 5. Quality of bikeway, public facilities, guided tours, and modeling imagery can effectively predict visitor loyalty. According to the above results, the study not only makes recommendations to the government units and the bicycle industry, also asked the research direction for future researchers.

Comparison of Imputation Techniques for Efficient Prediction of Software Fault Proneness in Classes

Missing data is a persistent problem in almost all areas of empirical research. The missing data must be treated very carefully, as data plays a fundamental role in every analysis. Improper treatment can distort the analysis or generate biased results. In this paper, we compare and contrast various imputation techniques on missing data sets and make an empirical evaluation of these methods so as to construct quality software models. Our empirical study is based on NASA-s two public dataset. KC4 and KC1. The actual data sets of 125 cases and 2107 cases respectively, without any missing values were considered. The data set is used to create Missing at Random (MAR) data Listwise Deletion(LD), Mean Substitution(MS), Interpolation, Regression with an error term and Expectation-Maximization (EM) approaches were used to compare the effects of the various techniques.

Formal Verification of a Multicast Protocol in Mobile Networks

As computer network technology becomes increasingly complex, it becomes necessary to place greater requirements on the validity of developing standards and the resulting technology. Communication networks are based on large amounts of protocols. The validity of these protocols have to be proved either individually or in an integral fashion. One strategy for achieving this is to apply the growing field of formal methods. Formal methods research defines systems in high order logic so that automated reasoning can be applied for verification. In this research we represent and implement a formerly announced multicast protocol in Prolog language so that certain properties of the protocol can be verified. It is shown that by using this approach some minor faults in the protocol were found and repaired. Describing the protocol as facts and rules also have other benefits i.e. leads to a process-able knowledge. This knowledge can be transferred as ontology between systems in KQML format. Since the Prolog language can increase its knowledge base every time, this method can also be used to learn an intelligent network.

Developing a Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework for the National University of Malaysia

Campus sustainability is the goal of a university striving for sustainable development. This study found that of 17 popular approaches, two comprehensive campus sustainability assessment frameworks were developed in the context of Sustainability in Higher Education (SHE), and used by many university campuses around the world. Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating Systems (STARS) and the Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework (CSAF) approaches are more comprehensive than others. Therefore, the researchers examined aspects and elements used by CSAF and STARS in the approach to develop a campus sustainability assessment framework for Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Documents analysis found that CSAF and STARS do not focus on physical development, especially the construction industry, as key elements of campus sustainability assessment. This finding is in accordance with the Sustainable UKM Programme which consists of three main components of sustainable community, ecosystem and physical development.

Exploring the Combinatorics of Motif Alignments Foraccurately Computing E-values from P-values

In biological and biomedical research motif finding tools are important in locating regulatory elements in DNA sequences. There are many such motif finding tools available, which often yield position weight matrices and significance indicators. These indicators, p-values and E-values, describe the likelihood that a motif alignment is generated by the background process, and the expected number of occurrences of the motif in the data set, respectively. The various tools often estimate these indicators differently, making them not directly comparable. One approach for comparing motifs from different tools, is computing the E-value as the product of the p-value and the number of possible alignments in the data set. In this paper we explore the combinatorics of the motif alignment models OOPS, ZOOPS, and ANR, and propose a generic algorithm for computing the number of possible combinations accurately. We also show that using the wrong alignment model can give E-values that significantly diverge from their true values.

Emotion Classification for Students with Autism in Mathematics E-learning using Physiological and Facial Expression Measures

Avoiding learning failures in mathematics e-learning environments caused by emotional problems in students with autism has become an important topic for combining of special education with information and communications technology. This study presents an adaptive emotional adjustment model in mathematics e-learning for students with autism, emphasizing the lack of emotional perception in mathematics e-learning systems. In addition, an emotion classification for students with autism was developed by inducing emotions in mathematical learning environments to record changes in the physiological signals and facial expressions of students. Using these methods, 58 emotional features were obtained. These features were then processed using one-way ANOVA and information gain (IG). After reducing the feature dimension, methods of support vector machines (SVM), k-nearest neighbors (KNN), and classification and regression trees (CART) were used to classify four emotional categories: baseline, happy, angry, and anxious. After testing and comparisons, in a situation without feature selection, the accuracy rate of the SVM classification can reach as high as 79.3-%. After using IG to reduce the feature dimension, with only 28 features remaining, SVM still has a classification accuracy of 78.2-%. The results of this research could enhance the effectiveness of eLearning in special education.

Thermal Stability and Crystallization Behaviour of Modified ABS/PP Nanocomposites

In this research work, poly (acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene)/ polypropylene (ABS/PP) blends were processed by melt compounding in a twin-screw extruder. Upgrading of the thermal characteristics of the obtained materials was attempted by the incorporation of organically modified montmorillonite (OMMT), as well as, by the addition of two types of compatibilizers; polypropylene grafted with maleic anhydride (PP-g-MAH) and ABS grafted with maleic anhydride (ABS-g-MAH). The effect of the above treatments was investigated separately and in combination. Increasing the PP content in ABS matrix seems to increase the thermal stability of their blend and the glass transition temperature (Tg) of SAN phase of ABS. From the other part, the addition of ABS to PP promotes the formation of its β-phase, which is maximum at 30 wt% ABS concentration, and increases the crystallization temperature (Tc) of PP. In addition, it increases the crystallization rate of PP.The β-phase of PP in ABS/PP blends is reduced by the addition of compatibilizers or/and organoclay reinforcement. The incorporation of compatibilizers increases the thermal stability of PP and reduces its melting (ΔΗm) and crystallization (ΔΗc) enthalpies. Furthermore it decreases slightly the Tgs of PP and SAN phases of ABS/PP blends. Regarding the storage modulus of the ABS/PP blends, it presents a change in their behavior at about 10°C and return to their initial behavior at ~110°C. The incorporation of OMMT to no compatibilized and compatibilized ABS/PP blends enhances their storage modulus.

Enhancing Seamless Communication Through a user Co-designed Wearable Device

This work aims to describe the process of developing services and applications of seamless communication within a Telecom Italia long-term research project, which takes as central aim the design of a wearable communication device. In particular, the objective was to design a wrist phone integrated into everyday life of people in full transparency. The methodology used to design the wristwatch was developed through several subsequent steps also involving the Personas Layering Framework. The data collected in this phases have been very useful for designing an improved version of the first two concepts of wrist phone going to change aspects related to the four critical points expressed by the users.

A Community Compromised Approach to Combinatorial Coalition Problem

Buyer coalition with a combination of items is a group of buyers joining together to purchase a combination of items with a larger discount. The primary aim of existing buyer coalition with a combination of items research is to generate a large total discount. However, the aim is hard to achieve because this research is based on the assumption that each buyer completely knows other buyers- information or at least one buyer knows other buyers- information in a coalition by exchange of information. These assumption contrast with the real world environment where buyers join a coalition with incomplete information, i.e., they concerned only with their expected discounts. Therefore, this paper proposes a new buyer community coalition formation with a combination of items scheme, called the Community Compromised Combinatorial Coalition scheme, under such an environment of incomplete information. In order to generate a larger total discount, after buyers who want to join a coalition propose their minimum required saving, a coalition structure that gives a maximum total retail prices is formed. Then, the total discount division of the coalition is divided among buyers in the coalition depending on their minimum required saving and is a Pareto optimal. In mathematical analysis, we compare concepts of this scheme with concepts of the existing buyer coalition scheme. Our mathematical analysis results show that the total discount of the coalition in this scheme is larger than that in the existing buyer coalition scheme.

About Analysis and Modelling of the Open Message Switching System

The modern queueing theory is one of the powerful tools for a quantitative and qualitative analysis of communication systems, computer networks, transportation systems, and many other technical systems. The paper is designated to the analysis of queueing systems, arising in the networks theory and communications theory (called open queueing network). The authors of this research in the sphere of queueing theory present the theorem about the law of the iterated logarithm (LIL) for the queue length of a customers in open queueing network and its application to the mathematical model of the open message switching system.

Computational Method for Annotation of Protein Sequence According to Gene Ontology Terms

Annotation of a protein sequence is pivotal for the understanding of its function. Accuracy of manual annotation provided by curators is still questionable by having lesser evidence strength and yet a hard task and time consuming. A number of computational methods including tools have been developed to tackle this challenging task. However, they require high-cost hardware, are difficult to be setup by the bioscientists, or depend on time intensive and blind sequence similarity search like Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. This paper introduces a new method of assigning highly correlated Gene Ontology terms of annotated protein sequences to partially annotated or newly discovered protein sequences. This method is fully based on Gene Ontology data and annotations. Two problems had been identified to achieve this method. The first problem relates to splitting the single monolithic Gene Ontology RDF/XML file into a set of smaller files that can be easy to assess and process. Thus, these files can be enriched with protein sequences and Inferred from Electronic Annotation evidence associations. The second problem involves searching for a set of semantically similar Gene Ontology terms to a given query. The details of macro and micro problems involved and their solutions including objective of this study are described. This paper also describes the protein sequence annotation and the Gene Ontology. The methodology of this study and Gene Ontology based protein sequence annotation tool namely extended UTMGO is presented. Furthermore, its basic version which is a Gene Ontology browser that is based on semantic similarity search is also introduced.

Walking and Sustainable Urban Transportation

Walking as a type of non-motorized transportation has various social, economical and environmental privileges. Also, today different aspects of sustainable development have been emphasized and promotion of sustainable transportation modes has been considered according to this approach. Therefore, the objective of this research is exploring the circumstance of relationship between walking and sustainable urban transportation.For writing this article, the most important resources related to the traits of walking have been surveyed via a documentary method and after explaining the concept of sustainable transportation and its indicators, benefiting from the viewpoints of transportation experts of Tehran, as the capital and greatest city of Iran, different modes of urban transportation have been compared in proportion to each criterion and to each other and have been analyzed according to AHP method. The results of this study indicate that walking is the most sustainable mode of inner city transportation.

A Feasibility-study of a Micro- Communications Sonobuoy Deployable by UAV Robots

This paper describes a feasibility study that is included with the research, development and testing of a micro communications sonobuoy deployable by Maritime Fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (M-UAV) and rotor wing Quad Copters which are both currently being developed by the University of Adelaide. The micro communications sonobuoy is developed to act as a seamless communication relay between an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and an above water human operator some distance away. Development of such a device would eliminate the requirement of physical communication tethers attached to submersible vehicles for control and data retrieval.

Transmitting a Distance Training Model to the Community in the Upper Northeastern Region

The objective of this research seeks to transmit a distance training model to the community in the upper northeastern region. The group sampling consists of 60 community leaders in the municipality of sub-district Kumphawapi, Kumphawapi Disrict, Udonthani Province. The research tools rely on the following instruments, they are : 1) the achievement test of community leaders- training and 2) the satisfaction questionnaires of community leaders. The statistics used in data analysis takes the statistical mean, percentage, standard deviation, and statistical T-test. The resulted findings reveal : 1) the efficiency of the distance training developed by the researcher for the community leaders joining in the training received the average score between in-training and post-training period higher than the setup criterion, 2) the two groups of participants in the training achieved higher knowledge than their pre-training state, 3) the comparison of the achievements between the two group presented no different results, 4) the community leaders obtained the high-to-highest satisfaction.

Relationship between Communication Effectiveness and the Extent of Communication among Organizational Units

This contribution deals with the relationship between communication effectiveness and the extent of communication among organizational units. To facilitate communication between employees and to increase the level of understanding, the knowledge of communication tools is necessary. Recent experience has shown that personal communication is critical for smooth running of companies and cannot be fully replaced by any form of technical communication devices. Below are presented the outcomes of the research on the relationship between the extent of communication among organisational units and its efficiency.

Utilizing Analytic Hierarchy Process to Analyze Consumers- Purchase Evaluation Factors of Smartphones

Due to the fast development of technology, the competition of technological products is turbulent; therefore, it is important to understand the market trend, consumers- demand and preferences. As the smartphones are prevalent, the main purpose of this paper is to utilize Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to analyze consumer-s purchase evaluation factors of smartphones. Through the AHP expert questionnaire, the smartphones- main functions are classified as “user interface", “mobile commerce functions", “hardware and software specifications", “entertainment functions" and “appearance and design", five aspects to analyze the weights. Then four evaluation criteria are evaluated under each aspect to rank the weights. Based on an analysis of data shows that consumers consider when purchase factors are “hardware and software specifications", “user interface", “appearance and design", “mobile commerce functions" and “entertainment functions" in sequence. The “hardware and software specifications" aspect obtains the weight of 33.18%; it is the most important factor that consumers are taken into account. In addition, the most important evaluation criteria are central processing unit, operating system, touch screen, and battery function in sequence. The results of the study can be adopted as reference data for mobile phone manufacturers in the future on the design and marketing strategy to satisfy the voice of customer.

Feature Subset Selection Using Ant Colony Optimization

Feature selection is an important step in many pattern classification problems. It is applied to select a subset of features, from a much larger set, such that the selected subset is sufficient to perform the classification task. Due to its importance, the problem of feature selection has been investigated by many researchers. In this paper, a novel feature subset search procedure that utilizes the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is presented. The ACO is a metaheuristic inspired by the behavior of real ants in their search for the shortest paths to food sources. It looks for optimal solutions by considering both local heuristics and previous knowledge. When applied to two different classification problems, the proposed algorithm achieved very promising results.

In Search of Excellence – Google vs Baidu

This paper compares the search engine marketing strategies adopted in China and the Western countries through two illustrative cases, namely, Google and Baidu. Marketers in the West use search engine optimization (SEO) to rank their sites higher for queries in Google. Baidu, however, offers paid search placement, or the selling of engine results for particular keywords to the higher bidders. Whereas Google has been providing innovative services ranging from Google Map to Google Blog, Baidu remains focused on search services – the one that it does best. The challenges and opportunities of the Chinese Internet market offered to global entrepreneurs are also discussed in the paper